I, Zombie (3 page)

This is before the years stretch out into what feels like a
forever. When sick men refuse to die. When innocent men find something to be
guilty of. When years jumble together like water beading up on glass.

Gloria thought of the men in her life she had lost while
another man passed through her guts. She shambled on, foul and reeking, a
single day’s horror stretching out like the wide avenue before her, no end in
sight, no more fooling herself, no more thinking:
I can take this
.

6 • Jennifer Shaw

New York had long been a city of hurry. Even the tourists
couldn’t relax when they came on vacation. Jennifer watched them fly from one
must-see to another, packing in shows, walking until their feet and backs hurt,
always terrified they’d miss one more sight. Few could simply sit in a park and
feed the birds. And yet, that was all any of them did anymore. Tourists strewn
throughout the parks, feeding the birds until their bones showed. Resting.

The only thing that came in a hurry anymore was the sunsets.
The light dwindled to the west without warning, impossibly tall buildings
catching the last of the rays, shadows creeping up their gaunt faces and
stretched necks until the sky turned the color of blood and finally the deep
black of death.

This was when the misery of the shuffle grew impossibly
worse. Jennifer found she couldn’t sleep, didn’t even know what that would mean
anymore. Her body roamed eternal, her mind trapped. Entire city blocks would go
by like sleepy miles on a long drive. She would snap alert and wonder how she
got there, have a brief moment of panic like waking to a dead limb, fighting to
control some horribly numb part of herself, all to no avail. That surge of
adrenaline would soon subside as chemicals both useless and impotent faded into
her dead flesh. These responses were only good for rattling her poor nerves.
They were old ghosts of her former self, shaking useless and haunting chains.

The air grew cool with the setting sun, and Jennifer
remembered those interminable drives across Long Island to see her parents,
pushing herself late into the night after a long day of work. With the radio
blaring and the windows down, her thoughts would tune out while her body
cruised on auto. Coming to miles later, she would glance in the rearview mirror
and marvel at turns she’d steered around with absolutely no awareness of them.

The walks at night were like those drives. Every grueling
and frigid night since that boy bit her arm was like a dozen of those long
drives. From sundown to sunup, the fitful non-sleep of scents and sounds, an
occasional feed, the sad company of the groaning and jostling shuffle.

The cold of looming winter made it even easier to drift in
and out. The chill worked itself deep into her bones, attacking her skin where
it was bare. An early encounter with a handful of survivors had shredded her
shirt, leaving it hanging from her belt in bloody tatters. Her thin bra offered
little comfort. At night, her nipples grew sore from staying hardened so long.
It was as if some parts of her were still alive, but only the parts that could
add to her suffering.

When she was most miserable—in the dead of night with her
nipples aching—her thoughts turned to the boy who had bitten her. And
invariably from there, she thought of the young man she had days later bitten
in turn. Like her, the young man she had attacked managed to get away. It felt
like the thing to do when it was happening. You’re threatened, hormones and
chemicals serve their purpose, instilling you with fear, and so your body wants
to yank loose and flee.

But now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was like a dog’s bite,
where pulling just made it worse. She’d watched an older man’s eyes go dim
during a feed, once. Enough of him had been eaten that he didn’t have time to
turn. There wasn’t enough to come back. Jennifer had seen the last of that
man’s life leave his body, had felt him go perfectly still, and was beginning
to count men like him among the lucky.

There was a desperate need to shiver, but she couldn’t. It
was worse than an itch she couldn’t reach, a crippling form of paralysis. The
sunset came like a switch flicked, the temperature plummeting, and Jennifer
imagined wrapping her arms around her body, tried to will her hands to adjust
the remains of her shredded shirt—

Instead, she trudged along, frozen and freezing, unable to
move and unable to stop.

There were others among the shuffle who had it even worse.
She felt horrible for the half-naked members, for those who looked as though
they’d been bitten in their sleep and had somehow startled awake and managed to
get away. They walked barefoot through the streets of broken glass and left
smears of foul-smelling blood behind them.

Sights like these gradually faded as darkness fell across
the city streets, smothering them like a heavy blanket. There hadn’t been power
in the tall buildings for over a week, and with the moon in full wane, the
nighttime became a mass of shifting dead beneath a glittering sprinkle of
stars. Bodies bumped against Jennifer, some of them still sticky from a feed
the shuffle had shared earlier that day. What had been revolting the first few
nights was now something different. A knock against her neighbor was the only
touch she knew. If it wasn’t this, it was the frantic clawing from a woman
dying on the sidewalk, eyes wide with fear, shrieks turning to gurgles as
Jennifer devoured her from belly to neck. It was a small thing, these bumps in
the night. Small, but then it was the
only
.

The shuffle moved through the pitch black streets by scent
and by feel, groans escaping from the most miserable among them. Evidence of
survivors became more apparent after dark. The living stirred in the tall
buildings with the bob and weave of flashlights, or the orangish flicker of
fires that burned where fires should never be. Jennifer remembered her days of
surviving. She remembered the black ring of char on carpets and expensive
hardwoods as folders full of projects that seemed so dire weeks ago were tossed
on as fuel for warmth. There were others up there doing today what weeks ago
she had done. How safe did they think they were? How secure? The attack could
come at any time for them. She knew. From out of nowhere,
BAM!
And then
the running, the metallic taste of fear and the hollow and cool rasp of
desperate lungs, the danger around every corner, new allies split up and
separated, friends becoming monsters, sitting in a stall in a men’s restroom,
heels tucked up on the seat, growing numb. Shivering, back when she could.

Jennifer sniffed the air and saw the glitter of a fire high
up in the heavens. What was life like for the living up there? Had it changed?
Were people still subsisting on vending machine scraps? Food running low?
Fights breaking out as fear and hunger took hold? She remembered how lonely it
had felt. Anyone she had cared about or known had been stripped away from her,
gone. She was left surviving with strangers. Getting to know people the next
cubicle down. But they hadn’t been as alone as they’d imagined. The hallways
and floors of sameness had gradually become infested with small shuffles.
Jennifer remembered running. She remembered the boy who bit her. If she had
known, she would have just laid down and waited for her own eyes to dim, for
her soul to escape.

The lights from a helicopter drifted among the stars,
faintly blinking. They had grown fewer in recent days. Jennifer had hoped they
would become more abundant. She had imagined them bringing supplies back in the
time when she’d known hope. She had dreamed of them coming to haul away the
living. Someone had said they’d seen this happen the first day or two. But
those were private helicopters or ones with television station numbers on the
side. The hunter green and black helicopters had soon replaced these, and they
now hovered warily and only at a distance. They did nothing. And gone were the
days of hope.

Now, when Jennifer saw a helicopter, she didn’t imagine it
bringing supplies. She pictured instead a man inside with a long gun trained
across her shuffle.
Shoot
, she would plead to this young soldier.
Do
it
. It comforted her to imagine the warmth of a red dot on the center of
her forehead. She would silently scream and wave imagined limbs while she prayed
for the bullet—but it never came. The helicopters simply hovered and watched,
and Jennifer imagined they had their reasons. Maybe the members of the shuffle
were still considered citizens. Hadn’t there been a controversy once? Some
woman with a man’s name who had captivated America? A woman mostly gone,
obviously not able to do anything but suffer, and yet that’s all they would
allow her to do.

Terry, right? What finally happened to her? Jennifer
couldn’t remember. The story had gone on too long for her to care.

Maybe it would be the same for her and the shuffle. Maybe
the soldiers had orders to observe, nothing more. Maybe the politicians were
meeting in chambers somewhere and dithering. Maybe the rest of America was
glued to its televisions, watching in amazement, the elderly covering their
mouths in shock, the young calling their friends and making jokes, saying how
cool this shit was, could you believe it?

The helicopter lights moved against stars impossibly far
away. All the lights were far away and out of reach. Jennifer remembered what a
boyfriend had once told her about the stars, how they could be long gone but
still shining. They could have burned out a thousand years ago, and their light
would just now be reaching Earth. Gone and yet still there. Dead and seen at
the same time.

Trash rustled in the darkness and stirred against Jennifer’s
ankles. There was no one left to come and sweep it away. It flew out from
busted windows when the wind gusted. It gathered against the stoops and in the
gutters. There was the smell of a fire somewhere, the distant whisper of
conspiring flames, and Jennifer wondered what the rest of the world was doing.
Were they succumbing to the same disease as her shuffle? Or did they watch,
glued to their televisions once again as her city burned, as it all came
crumbling down into streets of staggering ruin? Was this nothing more than
another story for gaping jaws and wide eyes? Or would the soldiers in those
faraway helicopters and the politicians in their chambers find some way to shut
it down, to turn it off, to do anything more for her than change the fucking
channel—?

7 • Michael Lane

Michael ate his mother until his stomach burst. He could
feel it rupture, could feel the organ stretch to bloating as he ate and kept on
eating—and then it popped. His insides seemed to rearrange themselves as
hastily swallowed mouthfuls of her flesh sagged down inside his own guts. Small
bits of sinew and fat remained stuck between his teeth like roast beef.

One craving had been sated. Michael thought again of the
little black kit on top of the fridge, the spoon with its heat-warped patina, a
plastic orange lighter low on fluid, a needle that had dipped into his arm a
thousand times, depositing its nectar like a honeybee, leaving him there on the
sofa, head lolling in rapture, his mother drooling on herself in the next room
as she filled a clear bag with frothing yellow piss.

From the neck up, she still looked the same. She was just as
dead to him, just as eerily alive. Eyes open, she stared at an empty patch of
floor. Her jaw was slack, her lips parted, as if she might finally say
something, might finally snap out of it and fucking say something.

Michael felt the strain of her flesh inside his belly. The
cat and his mother felt heavy in his abdomen, taut from taking in too much.
Greedy. Always greedy.

He moved away from her, numb and disgusted with himself. Her
chest stood open. Blood dripped from Michael’s face, and contented grunts came
from somewhere. Before him, his mother’s belly was a gory pit, her ribs like
pink fingers, like two open hands cradling nothing. Michael imagined crawling
inside those glistening palms. He felt himself shrinking down, time zipping backwards,
until he could fit inside her belly, could pull the flaps of loose skin over
him like a blanket and return to the womb in which he had gestated. Maybe he
could be born again, not like those assholes at NA but
really
born
again. He wouldn’t be a monster this time. He’d be someone who takes care of
his mother. Someone who takes better care of himself.

A scent from the streets wafted in and filled the decrepit
apartment, nicotine-stained curtains flapping in the breeze. Michael turned,
his nose following the smell of the living, his guts full of his mother’s guts
but already thinking of the next fix. One more bite, like that bee sinking its stinger
into his arm, filling him with its nectar.

He stood and staggered toward the window. He craved a
cigarette. Michael always craved a smoke after a meal. A clay pot on the sill
used to hold flowers when his sister was still coming around, before she’d
given up on the two of them. Now it was mounded with crushed butts, filters
stained muddy brown with tar, trails of ash everywhere.

Knocking over the pot, he clumsily groped through the open
window and fell head-first onto the landing. His shoulder slammed painfully
into the steel grating, and his overfull belly sloshed sickeningly. Michael
could taste the bile and blood come partway up his throat before sinking back
down. Almost reflexively, he righted himself, arms waving for balance, grunts
and groans that were not his leaking past bloody lips.

Here was Michael’s sanctuary, high above the streets. Here
was where he sat between soaring highs, filling himself with deep inhalations
of smoke to choke down the numb lows. Here was where he suffered the broad and
empty valleys between his life’s feeble peaks, so few in number.