I, Zombie

Michael’s balancing act came to an end, his good leg chewed away by the shotgun blast. He tipped forward, stumbling on the flopping lower half of his shin, which bent and twisted until his foot was pointing backward. His face struck the pavement, his discombobulated arms fluttering uselessly by his side, too uncoordinated to break his fall.

He waited for death. He waited for unconsciousness. His sister was there, bending down, reaching out a hand to him—but it was the fever of sobriety. It was a construct of the pain.

Screams came out as gurgles, bloody drool dripping onto the pavement, a flashback to a thousand nights spent hugging a toilet, the taste of bile in one’s mouth, the smell of urine, realizing he’d wetted himself in his stupor.

A new low. This was always his thought, every weekend in college getting smashed and regretting it, every Monday morning hung over in class, promising he’d never do it again. By Thursday, such promises were forgotten. By Saturday, he hated himself once more.

Michael’s limbs stirred. He screamed internally as hot steel was pressed to a dozen unnatural joints in his legs. His dumb physical self was trying to stand. His unthinking body was telling the rest of him, a friend who knew better, that he was good enough to walk.

Propped up on his arms, he felt the ravenous puppeteer that had a hold of his will command his legs forward, foot twisting unnaturally, the sensation of his skin being tugged as it was the only thing holding him together.

Several times, his body tried to get his mangled feet beneath him. Each time was a new height of sensation, bones like shattered glass grinding together, the crunch and pop of thin shards giving way, a dull roar reaching his ears that he vaguely recognized as his own voice. He was unable, even, to mercifully pass out.

Eventually, his drunken body learned what the brain could not tell it: walking was out. It would never happen again.

Michael lay still a moment, appreciating the end of the struggle, the throbs and electricity soaring and coursing through his body. This could be the end. Please, let this be the end. There would be no more regrets. No chance at anything regrettable. Come for me, darkness! he screamed in his mind. And he could hear it. He could hear that reading voice that used to pop in his mind when he was forced to stare at books, that ability for the talking side of his brain to send signals over to the hearing side.

Fucking die! he yelled to himself. He yelled it so loudly that he could hear it in his mouth, in the depths of his throat, like a swallowed whisper.

He thought of his sister. His mother, whom he carried inside of him. He was losing it, but this time to clarity. He laughed madly and silently at the thought of his mother carrying him inside her belly, and now she was inside his, a mystical torus, a fucking Mobius strip of mother and son in each other’s guts.

What if he’d never die?

There was a scraping sound nearby. Michael’s sideways view of the world was momentarily full of dragging feet, and then a yellow cab, pavement, and a building where survivors must be laughing and raiding, scrambling for food, popping another shell into a shotgun.

Passing minutes. Dragging feet. The undead surrounded him, and then moved on. They were summoned perhaps by the blast that took his good leg or by the smell of the living, a smell that lingered somewhere beyond the persistent pain—

More scraping. The world lurched forward. Michael spilled out of his agony-filled haze and realized he was moving. Something was dragging him along.

And then he felt it. His arms reaching out, fingernails finding the rough nicks in the city streets, fingernails bending backward and breaking as he hauled himself forward, fingernails dragging him along after the others.

No.

Fuck no, Michael screamed.

Oh, fucking no dear God please fucking kill me now, he yelled.

And nobody heard him. All that remained was the scraping noise, hands clawing at the pavement, a body learning to adjust itself to this new and crippling low as it figured out how to move, how to go out and seek ever new and deeper valleys in which to crawl.

16 • Gloria

Morning came, and birdsong filled the air around all the trees but one. Unlike the squirrels, which would burrow through the leaves by undead feet, the birds chirped warily and from a distance. When they did swoop in, it was only briefly to pick maggots from a cheek or eye socket. They would perch on a shoulder and pluck a morsel or scrap of rotten flesh, maybe a torn bit of fabric for their nest, and then flap away to a far branch. While they preened and ate and squawked at the world, another leaf would lose its precarious grip and drift down around Gloria and the others.

It had been an especially cold night for all of them. Frost lay in patches, the browning leaves looking as if dusted in sugar, the uncut grass and tall weeds adorned with frozen crystals. Gloria wasn’t sure how the mother and child in the tree had survived the bitter cold, but they were already moving about on the broad limb. The mom directed her child into a patch of sunlight that managed to lance through the distant buildings and silent trees to warm a spot of air. Their whispers leaked through chattering teeth.

Gloria had spent much of the night drifting in and out. She remembered coming to and hearing the sobs, which she assumed at first to be from the child, but it was the mother crying. She also saw the pack had grown in number. The tree was one of those crab pots the poor animals could crawl into but never get out of. Gloria and the rest would be there until the couple starved and rotted, until the appetite was gone, the scent dissipating.

It was bitingly cold, and the evidence formed in puffs of false breath, the undead groaning in hungry frustration, the woman and young girl above adding their own shivering clouds to the air.

Gloria circled beneath them. She watched as the mother seemed to succumb to the stress and cold, as she lost her mind. It took a moment to realize what she was doing, that she was stripping herself bare in the morning chill. With her chin lifted toward the promise of a meal, Gloria followed, curious and confused, as the woman tore her thin shirt into strips and began twisting them together. She was talking to her daughter as she worked, explaining something, some kind of plan.

Whispers of a plan made Gloria feel torn. There was the thrill of maybe witnessing an escape, perhaps a dash down the creaking and frost-slick limbs, a daring swing or jump to a neighboring tree. Some plan that relied on racing naked ahead of the stumbling pack, running through the woods still dappled in darkness, hoping to avoid the promise of a roaming bite.

Gloria felt the allure of such daring and guile. She also dreaded the loss of a meal, no end to her infernal hunger, and all those days wasted following their scents.

Strips of clothing were tied together. A belt. Torn and threadbare jeans, much too large. The mother worked in her underwear fifteen feet above Gloria’s head. It was the daughter’s turn to cry. While she sobbed, her mother looped the knotted fabric around the limb on which they crouched. They were both sobbing. The mother stroked the girl’s hair, caressed her cheek. Gloria could see them shivering. Maybe she imagined the blue cast to the woman’s naked skin. Perhaps it was real. How they survived the night, she couldn’t understand. With her clothes off, Gloria felt she could see every bone in her emaciated body.

“Shhh,” she said, consoling her child. “It’s okay.”

She arranged the improvised rope around her daughter’s neck, adjusting it as if getting her ready for school. The girl’s thin arms held her mother’s wrists. Bits of bark rained down from their movement on the limb.

“I love you,” the mother said. The words were interspersed with sobs.

And before Gloria could process what was happening, before she could fully wake, there was a final kiss on the forehead, a scrambling of thin arms as the child realized what plans her mother had for their escape, and then a painful shove out into the open air, the crunch of rope on bark, the yank and pop of a young neck, and then bare feet swinging in the frosty air, the last of the leaves from that great bough leaping to their deaths, shaken off by this disturbance in the tree.

Gloria circled beneath the girl, horrified. A police officer waved at the air, the flesh hanging just out of reach, the child slowly spinning as the twisted rope settled.