I, Zombie

so full and happy. Matt was fucking it up. Sarah was screaming like they were back to day one, like she’d never seen anything like this before in her life.

Matt’s shotgun was lowered at his face. Dennis tried to call out, to beg his friend to wait, the words a bloody hiss. As much as he wanted to duck and weave, to bob his head out of the way, all his body did was lumber forward, dragging a leg behind him, hands waving at the air as Matt took steps backwards.

“Fucking do it!” Sarah screamed. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Her eyes darted frantically from what was left of her friend to the mess Dennis had become. Dennis tried to beg Matt to swing the gun around on her. Couldn’t he see? This was the end of things. This was the inevitable. The shotgun’s long barrel shook, that cylinder of deep shadow aimed right between Dennis’s eyes, the panic and terror rising up that his friend would do it, just as they had promised to each other all those long days ago.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said. He was crying, too. His fucking best friend in the world, his new friend, his only friend, was crying. The shock was wearing off. Matt’s jaw was set, old promises remembered. Sarah begged him, her hands on his arm, barrel trembling, and Dennis begged him as well in mute gurgles. A new fear took hold. This was the end, one pull of the trigger. For weeks, the terror of being turned had spurred them on, but it wasn’t the fear of death, of not existing, but of existing like this. And now Dennis knew it wasn’t that bad. There was nothing to be scared of. Except now, he was scared of his friend, of that barrel of deep shadow.

His screams filled his own head as he waited for it to come. Screams that tickled the region of his brain that could listen to silence, that could hear his own thoughts, the area where reading and nightmares took place. His fingertips brushed Matt’s thigh, dragging one leg along, lurching forward.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said again.

Set teeth. An ungodly thunderclap, a violence of noise, a trill of panic as Dennis braced for the end of all things.

He felt the blow to his other leg, felt it kick back behind him, the flesh flayed off by the eruption of metal pellets. Dennis flopped to the ground, utterly deaf, the world spinning and ringing, hot lava spreading from his knee to his groin.

For all his gyrations, he was able merely to roll over. One of his legs mostly didn’t. It was attached by a few strands of soft tissue, skin and tendon and blue jean.

He heard Sarah’s voice first, the high-pitched bitching joining the scream of sirens in his stunned eardrums. She was screaming Lisa’s name, begging her boyfriend to do it, what had to be done.

And then Matt’s voice, the deafness receding a notch, saying he couldn’t, forgetting his promises, the pact they’d made. Saying, goddammit and shut up, he fucking couldn’t.

Dennis lay there, his legs burning, his body on fire, arms waving at the air. Sarah ran past, blubbering, to cradle Lisa. Matt yelled at her to stay away. To stay the fuck away. He cocked the shotgun, the hollow clunk of an empty shell bouncing on the tile, and went to pull her off.

The two of them were cussing and crying as they hurried from the scene of what Dennis had done. They left him there, arms gyrating at the darkened ceiling, the smell of Lisa fading, a wheel on a shopping cart crying out as it was pushed along under a heavy load, and then silence. And a thought. A sickening thought for Dennis that this was how his forever would remain.

23 • Chiang Xian

The throngs of sick tourists had wandered off, the streets outside full of the silent traffic of darting candy bar wrappers and the haze of smoke from unseen fires. There were pink smears on the glass, streaks of gore and abraded flesh where the undead had bumped and pressed and waved their stupid arms to get at the foul meat.

Chiang cared less and less for what went on out there. She had company, now. And while this boy—whose name would be Shen, she’d decided—stumbled and bumped in staggering circuits throughout the shop, she practiced chasing him, practiced controlling her feet, making a game of it, stopping now and then to eat from his parents before they lost their taste.

Shen, of course, hadn’t quite the hang of it. He knocked things over and stumbled on the cans scattered about. He crawled up in the window display and sampled some of the rancid meat, even gnawed on her parents’ shins. And since neither of them could talk, not yet at least, it was up to Chiang to supply the dialogue. She would crouch by Shen’s father while the boy ate what was left of the man’s thigh, and do both their voices over his loud smacking. Mostly, she would coach him, urging him to exert more will, to maybe one day help her move the heavy shelf blocking the door so they could both get out.

Practice, she would tell him, kicking a can, just an extra jerk of her knee as she was stepping along. See? See? she would shout. I can do it, and so can you!

The words would tumble out different, of course, like screams in a nightmare, but she thought it was getting better, that her tongue was learning just as her fingers and hands once had. Everyone has different abilities, she reminded herself. It was important to be patient with him. Some people had a hard time getting out of bed, forcing themselves to go to school. Some could just do it, always could. Different abilities. She would be patient.

In the meantime, she had a playmate to bump after in the meat shop. And so the two of them played chase during the day and a game she called There-You-Are at night. They played while the smell of their dead parents mingled in the air, and it was easy to pretend, if you knew how, that their grunts were giggles, their labored hisses the noise of happy laughter, just two kids wasting time while they wasted away, the both of them eying that heavy shelf by the door that kept them trapped inside.

Part III • Jeffery Biggers

24 • Jeffery Biggers

Where were the people? It was hard to figure at first, why with the outbreak there weren’t more people. Ten million in New York, and most of them were just… gone. Jeffery had assumed it would spread, that the avenues and streets would be crowded from one side to the other with the chompers. But then, most people didn’t get away, did they? They got more than a bite. They got consumed.

And so the streets were full of cars, but no people. Just remains. That was the sickest thing, seeing the bones, all the cleaned carcasses. Getting bit and surviving was rarer than getting eaten whole. Rarer and worse. Being infected was hella worse. But so few got infected, right? How many got a scratch or a bite like Jeffery did and still managed to get clear, find a place to hole up until it weren’t their choice how to move or what to do? Not many, he didn’t figure. Most got eaten. That’s where the ten million went. Gone. Eaten up and shat out by those who remained.

Jeffery remembered the one that got him. Goddamn that woman. Goddamn that crazy bitch.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t stop playing that day over and over in his head as he rode among the pack, weaving around the jammed cars with blinking hazards and open doors, a picked-clean skeleton sitting there in one of ’em with its seatbelt still on like it might crank the engine and go for a drive, some ad for a damn MADD commercial.

Jeffery remembered spotting the bitch from that upstairs apartment he’d staked out for his own. He hadn’t planned on leaving that place until the cupboards were bare. Earlier that morning, he had escaped a few mobs, had