I had a mantra and it was this: Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat…
Eve’s moans were at a fever pitch, loud enough to attract our brethren. She needed a sock in her maw. Pronto. I signaled as much to Joan, putting my hand over my mouth and nodding in Eve’s direction. The old gal did a 180, back to the garage, almost creaking as she turned. She was a dutiful zombie, a first-class minion.
We were almost to the end of the driveway. The Trail of a Thousand Zombie Tears.
“Brains,” Ros said. “Mmmmmmm.”
Ros’s arms were outstretched; he was slipping into character, losing cognition. I grabbed his elbow and shook him. Forcing him to face me, I made the peace sign, then pointed the two fingers to my eyes, then to his eyes, signaling: Look at me. Stay with me.
Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat the human…Do not eat…
Saint Joan muffled Eve’s moans. The suburb was quiet save for Green Cap’s sobbing. No snow shovels hit concrete; no children cried “Ollie ollie oxen free.” There were no dogs barking or screen doors slamming or cars revving. No middle-aged women power-walking or Mormons knocking on doors.
No one was left.
We reached Green Cap. Guts jumped off him and helped Annie hog-tie his ankles and wrists together.
“Why are you doing this?” Green Cap asked.
“You drive,” Ros said.
“You want me to be your chauffeur?”
We nodded.
“None of you can drive?” he asked.
“Too hard,” Ros said.
I took out my pad, wrote this down, and held it in front of Green Cap’s eyes:
Dear Sir,
Don’t be afraid. Although we covet your brains, we need you to drive us to Chicago. And please, call me Jack.
“Holy shit,” Green Cap said, looking up at me.
“Nice man,” Ros said. “He’ll drive.”
Green Cap wiggled on the driveway like a worm. Annie and Guts had done a fine job with the rope. “Don’t see that I have a choice,” he said. “How many like you are there?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“We’re special,” Ros said.
I pointed at the note, like the ghost of Christmas future forcing Ebenezer Scrooge to look at his own grave.
“Okay, Jack,” Green Cap said. “You can call me Pete. I used to be an electrician but now I’m a survivor. A good one too. After the evacuation, I ruled all of King’s Court.” He lifted his chin as if to encompass the entire subdivision.
“Not anymore,” Ros said.
Up the street, a flash of color, along with a fresh tingling in my shoulder. The feral. I nodded at Annie and Guts and they took off, Guts running ahead, Annie lagging behind with the rifle over her shoulder.
Saint Joan came walking down the driveway, swinging her doctor’s bag and winking like a kind, matronly nurse in a World War I movie.
Compared to the Zombie Apocalypse, World War I was a walk in the park. Forget trench warfare and machine guns. Forget Woodrow Wilson and A Farewell to Arms. Hell, forget World War II and Hiroshima while you’re at it. Remove genocide and the postwar baby boom from your mind.
Now is the only thing that’s real.
“Leave Eve,” Ros said.
“Groooaaamph,” I said, meaning, “Perhaps.”
I wondered if humans still did it, the old in-out. And whether Pete was lonely in his barren subdivision. Were matters of the flesh and heart important to him? Were there Jews left in Israel?
Did the Holy Land ever even exist in the first place?
I wrote Pete another note: We need to find Howard Stein, creator of the virus. Is he still alive? Take us to him.
“Stein. Him,” Pete said. “Killed by a mob, apparently. Of humans, mind you, not the undead. This is word-of-mouth info-no more CNN-so I can’t vouch for the truth of it. But yeah. His own kind turned on him.”
“Go on,” Ros said, and coughed up some black goop.
“From what I heard,” Pete continued, glancing at Ros, “zombies controlled most of the city. A group of scientists and politicians were holed up in a building downtown and Stein was their leader, for a time. Guess he said that since he created them, he knew how to fight them. Food started running low, tempers high, and at some point they realized they weren’t holed up but trapped.”
“Stupid humans,” Ros said, shaking his head. “Typical.”
“Long story short, they decided Stein was the cause of their misery, so they took revenge. Can’t say I blame them. They threw him over the fire escape, right into the stenches below.”
Teeming masses. Quiet desperation.
“He didn’t even hit the ground, there were so many of them. Of you, I mean. Gobbled him right up. Apparently, there was nothing left.”
So Nietzsche was right: God is dead. And I had been looking forward to meeting my maker. He would have listened to me, understood my worth. I sat down in the driveway.
Ros must have seen the disappointment in my face. “We’ve still got each other, captain,” he said. “We’ll make it.”
I stood up, gathering myself for the troops. They were counting on me to lead them.
I wrote: Take us where we want to go. Or else!
Pete squeezed his eyes shut. A tear traveled down his cheek.
I nudged his head with my toe. His eyes opened; I bit the air and moaned. I was a fierce and hungry zombie. A fiend. Hear me roar!
“Kill me,” he said. “Just kill me already.”
“No way, José,” Ros said. “You drive.”
Pete sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Where to?”
Chicago, I wrote. I had to see it for myself.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BRAINS! BRAINS, I tell you. We needed a thalamus for the road. A frontal lobotomy. A side of cerebellum. A medulla oblongata. Anything to take our minds off the meat of Pete, who was lying supine on the street, curled in the cul-de-sac, a lamb for us wolves, as open and available as any whore.
Ros, Joan, and I waited for Annie and Guts to return. We did the zombie dance, circling around Pete like Native Americans in a peyote trance. I paused and wrote down my thoughts like a self-help housewife:
This is my affirmation journal. My dream book. Captain’s Log: Stardate: Zombie Apocalypse. Do not eat the human!
There was a gunshot followed by silence. Moans wafted through the subdivision like wind through an Aeolian harp.
Guts turned the corner onto Pawn Way. He was skipping, the feral’s leg slung over one shoulder like a hobo’s stick.
“Annie?” Ros asked, and Guts jerked his thumb in the direction he came from, imitating our gait and throwing in a few robotic dance moves and a moon walk. Show-off. He pulled a handful of brains out of his jeans pocket, which he proffered to me with his customary bow.
I smashed the red, hot sweetness into my face with both hands, smearing it on my cheeks. I could not get those brains into my mouth fast enough.
If I could breathe, I would have panted.
Ros and Joan went to town on the leg. From the garage, Eve resumed her moaning.
“Shut her up,” Ros said.
Annie returned from the hunt, dragging the rest of the girl behind her by a rope; intestines hung around Annie’s neck, bouncing against her budding breasts like Mardi Gras beads. Isaac stood, gripping the edge of his carriage, and shrieked. It was a loud and piercing sound.
“Stupid zombies,” Ros said, a big toe hanging out the side of his mouth like a cigar stub. “Too loud.”
Guts, our little caretaker, our golden boy, he gave Isaac the spleen. The baby sucked on it like a bottle.
“God help me,” Pete said. “Here she comes.”
I turned to see Eve shuffling toward Pete, her arms outstretched. The bandage had fallen off her stump of a wrist and it looked like a giant used tampon, black with blood. The senseless wench, the garden hose was still wrapped around her ankle. Her eyes were entirely yellow, as jaundiced as Marge Simpson. It was hard to believe I once loved her.