slowly backs up against a wall, turns, shuffles in another direction. It makes no sound and doesn’t seem to be looking at anything. Julie and I watch it for a few minutes.
‘I don’t like this,’ she says.
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s… sad.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Don’t know.’
It stops in the middle of the street, swaying slightly. Its face displays absolutely nothing. Just skin stretched over a skull.
‘I wonder how it feels,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘To be like them.’
I watch the zombie. It starts swaying a little harder, then it collapses. It lies there on its side, staring at the frozen pavement.
‘What’s it… ?’ Julie starts, then stops. She looks at me with wide eyes, then back at the crumpled body. ‘Did it just
We wait in silence. The corpse doesn’t move. I feel a wriggling sensation inside me, tiny things creeping down my spine.
‘Let’s go,’ Julie says, and turns away. I follow her back into the building. We can’t think of anything to say all the way home.
Breathe those useless breaths. Drop this piece of life you’re holding to your lips. Where are you? How long have you been here? Stop now. You have to stop.
Squeeze shut your stinging eyes, and take another bite.
In the morning, my wife finds me slumped against one of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the runways. My eyes are open and full of dust. My head leans to one side. I rarely allow myself to look so corpse- like.
Something is wrong with me. There is a sick emptiness in my stomach, a feeling somewhere between starvation and hangover. My wife grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet. She starts walking, dragging me behind her like rolling luggage. I feel a flash of bitter heat pulse through me and I start speaking at her. ‘Name,’ I say, glaring into her ear. ‘Name?’
She shoots me a cold look and keeps walking.
‘Job? School?’ My tone shifts from query to accusation. ‘Movie? Song?’ It bubbles out of me like oil from a punctured pipeline. ‘
My wife turns and spits at me. Actually spits on my shirt, snarling like an animal. But the look in her eyes instantly cools my eruption. She’s… frightened. Her lips quiver. What am I doing?
I look at the floor. We stand in silence for several minutes. Then she resumes walking, and I follow her, trying to shake off this strange black cloud that’s settled over me.
She leads me to a gutted, burned-out gift shop and lets out an emphatic groan. Our kids emerge from behind an overturned bookcase full of best-sellers that will never be read. They’re each gnawing a human forearm, slightly brown at the stumps, not exactly fresh.
‘Where did… get those?’ I ask them. They shrug. I turn to my wife. ‘Need… better.’
She frowns and points at me. She grunts in annoyance, and my face falls, duly chastised. It’s true, I haven’t been the most involved parent. Is it possible to have a midlife crisis if you have no idea how old you are? I could be in my early thirties or late teens. I could be younger than Julie.
My wife grunts at the kids and gestures down the hall. They hang their heads and make a wheezy whining noise, but they follow us. We are taking them to their first day of school.
Some of us, maybe the same industrious Dead who built the Boneys’ stair-church, have built a ‘classroom’ in the food court by stacking heavy luggage into high walls. As my family and I approach, we hear groans and screams from inside this arena. There is a line of youngsters in front of the entryway, waiting their turn. My wife and I lead our kids to the back of the line and watch the lesson now in progress.
Five Dead youths are circling a skinny, middle-aged Living man. The man backs up against the luggage, looking frantically left and right, his empty hands balled into fists. Two of the youths dive at him and try to hold his arms down, but he shakes them off. The third one nips a tiny bite in his shoulder and the man screams as if he’s been mortally wounded, because, in effect, he has. From zombie bites to starvation to good old-fashioned age and disease, there are so many options for dying in this new world. So many ways for the Living to stop. But with just a few debrained exceptions, all roads lead to
‘Wrong!’ their teacher roars. ‘Get… throat!’
The children back away and watch the man warily.
‘Throat!’ the teacher repeats. He and his assistant lumber into the arena and tackle the man, forcing him to the ground. The teacher kills him and stands up, blood streaming down his chin. ‘Throat,’ he says again, pointing to the body.
The five children exit shamefaced, and the next five in line are prodded inside. My kids look up at me anxiously. I pat their heads.
The five youths inside are nervous, but the teacher shouts at them and they begin to move in. When they get close enough all five lunge at the same time, two grabbing for each arm and the fifth going for the throat. But the old man is shockingly strong. He twists around and flings two of them hard against the wall of luggage. The impact shakes the wall and a sturdy metal briefcase topples down from the top. The man grabs it by the handle, raises it high, and smashes it down on one of the youths’ heads. The youth’s skull caves in and his brain squishes out. He doesn’t scream or twitch or quiver, he just abruptly collapses into a heap of limbs, flat and flush with the floor as if he’s been dead for months already. Death takes hold of him with retroactive finality.
The whole school goes silent. The remaining four children back out of the arena. No one really pays attention as the adults rush inside to deal with the man. We all gaze at the youth’s crumpled corpse with sad resignation. We can’t tell which of the gathered adults might be his parents, since all our expressions are about the same. Whoever they are, they will forget their loss soon enough. By tomorrow the Boneys will show up with another boy or girl to replace this one. We allow a few uncomfortable seconds of silence for the killed child, then school resumes. A few parents glance at each other, maybe wondering what to think, wondering what this all means, this bent, inverted cycle of life. Or maybe that’s just me.
My kids are next in line. They watch the current lesson intently, sometimes standing on tiptoes to see, but they aren’t afraid. They are younger than the rest, and will probably be matched against someone too frail to put up much fight, but they don’t know this, and it’s not why they’re unafraid. When the entire world is built on death and horror, when existence is a constant state of panic, it’s hard to get worked up about any one thing. Specific fears have become irrelevant. We’ve replaced them with a smothering blanket far worse.
I pace outside the 747 boarding tunnel for about an hour before going in. I open the jet’s door quietly. Julie is curled up in business class, sleeping. She has wrapped herself in a quilt made of cut-up jeans that I brought back as a souvenir a few weeks ago. The morning sun makes a halo in her yellow hair, sainting her.
‘Julie,’ I whisper.
Her eyes slide open a crack. This time she doesn’t jolt upright or edge away from me. She just looks at me with tired, puffy eyes. ‘What?’ she mumbles.
‘How… are… ?’
‘How do you think I am?’ She puts her back to me and wraps the blanket around her shoulders.
I watch her for a moment. Her posture is a brick wall. I lower my head and turn to go. But as I step through the doorway she says, ‘Wait.’
I turn around. She is sitting up, the blanket piled on her lap. ‘I’m hungry,’ she says.
I look at her blankly. Hungry? Does she want an arm or leg? Hot blood, meat and life? She’s Living… does she want to eat herself? Then I remember what being hungry used to mean. I remember beefsteaks and pancakes,
