Date: 2011-05-19 04:00:00+00:00
Description: What's it like to be a zombie? Timothy Lipton finds that out in this hilarious, first-person look at the life and times of one of the undead. A victim of an experiment gone wrong on the way to finding a cure for the zombie plague sweeping the globe, Timothy soon hooks up with a partner -- Zombie Marilyn Monroe -- who turns out to be the unlikely accomplice he needs to navigate his way across the Wasteland to regain his memory and find the mysterious 'Meridian.' In their zombie Odyssey, Tim and Marilyn encounter the Wild Man, the Fat Lady, the Naked People and even Tim's wife. 'Zombie Honeymoon

Zombie Road Trip

T. Alex Miller

Chapter 1. New reality

People don’t taste like chicken.

That was the first thought that went through Timothy Lipton’s disheveled brain when he got his first taste. The others were there before him, getting what he could only imagine were the “good parts.” On the menu was a woman in a little black dress, at first screaming wildly then gurgling into silence as they piled on and, quite simply, tore her apart. Eight or ten of them were on her, and Tim saw one with a chunk of breast in his mouth, another with her liver, someone else with a length of intestine.

Tim got a finger. At first, he had most of her arm, but one of the others had torn it from him just as he’d started to bite into the pinky.

Well, OK to start modestly, he thought. Although he was ravenous. He could see it in the others, that surging hunger. And they weren’t hiding it or holding back. Oh, no. In some ways, the naked orgy of flesh consumption he’d been witnessing since he’d crossed over was almost gratifying. After the typical adult lives of managing the id with all manner of hedging, politeness and reservation, he was seeing the Zees — a demographic he’d now apparently joined — dive in teeth first. Earlier, he had no idea whether it was hours or days, he’d seen a Zee female rip the genitalia off a still-alive black man with her bare hands while another was sucking his eyeballs out. She’d fallen back on her haunches and started her feast, eyes darting, mandibles slavering, blood everywhere.

It’d looked pretty chewy, he’d thought, before averting his gaze. He imagined the other males Zees in the area wincing at the sight, but none of them paid any attention. None of them ever paid much attention to each other, except if one was in the way of a meal. Then they were all sharp elbows and animal grunts and moans.

Now, walking away from the freshly dismembered woman and gnawing on the pinky, Tim tried to make sense of what he was doing, his addled brain feeling half drunk, half asleep yet somehow razor sharp in the flesh consumption department. It seemed both all wrong and utterly right. He needed this pinky, this flesh; that much was clear. There was more in there about this new world he was inhabiting, buried, that he knew he needed to think about. But thinking didn’t come easy.

Eating the pinky was like consuming a buffalo wing. Messy, with lots of bone and not much meat. Plus, the bloody digit was raw, unseasoned and rather tough. The nail had polish on it, which he somehow knew not to eat, and he could see the fingerprint — which meant something once. He got one or two tiny bites of flesh into his mouth, chewed and swallowed.

There, he’d done it. And no, it didn’t taste like chicken. It didn’t taste like anything.

He’d had worse. But he needed more.

Chapter 2. Marilyn

It was late autumn, just a day past Halloween, although Tim would no longer know from seasons except as it related to his joints. On that first day as the sun went down and the temperature dropped, he felt the mobility going out of his arms and legs as the synovial fluid gelled in his joints. He wanted only to sit, to rest.

And all this time he’d thought zombies were more nocturnal.

And there, he’d said it: zombie. A Zee. A stupid flesh-eating ghoul. Except so far all he’d had were two tiny bits of pinky. He was starving, but the place he’d wound up had no live (i.e., ready to eat) people anywhere he could see. There were the requisite burning buildings and upside-down cars; at some point a plane came hurtling into the ground and burst into flames. Tim had perked up, thinking the roasted bodies within would be more palatable for his newbie sensibilities. But as he started lurching toward the wreck, he came to realize it was much farther away than he realized.

Everything, in fact, was much farther away. For all the lurching zombies are known to do, there was a little-known fact you’d just never know until you became one: It hurts like a mother fucker to be a zombie. You’re dead, or dead-ish. So of course it hurts. Makes sense. It hurt to walk, hurt to move at all, hurt to see. It would’ve hurt to breathe, but so far as Tim could tell, he was no longer breathing. Or was he? He tried to take a deep breath and feel the air coming into his lungs, but it only caused him to gag.

Didn’t make sense. Zombies don’t make sense. Must learn to live with that. Or was it “die with that?” That didn’t make sense, either.

And then, on top of starving, Tim had, well, gone ahead and messed himself. Felt it coming, nothing to do but let it happen. Piss too, of course. He’d tried to fumble with his pants to try to crap like a man, but nothing doing. Hands of concrete. His piano-playing days were over.

That’s another thing they never mentioned in the zombie movies: Zombies smell awful. They’re dead, of course, so there’s a certain amount of decomposition going on. Their diet is raw human flesh, so no amount of Tic Tacs in the world would chill the vulture breath on these fuckers. They don’t care, of course, nor can their deadened senses even register the colossal reek that emanates from them.

Scary zombies: They’re all walking around with a load in their pants — sans diapers.

Except for the naked ones, and there were plenty of them around, for whatever reason. People sleeping naked or in the shower or having sex when whatever happened happened. Tim always felt like laughing when he saw the naked Zees, since most people looked pretty bad naked in the best of times. Dead, they were comedy — all saggy asses and wrinkled tits and dangling johnsons and man-boobs bathed in blood and gore. But the laugh center of his brain was damaged. It was like there was Point A that knew something was funny, and Point C where a laugh might occur, but Point B that put it all together was completely gone.

Another note, then: Zombies have no sense of humor. Or irony, for that matter. After a few days, Tim felt he’d seen it all: women chewing on tits, guys munching on balls, a one-armed Zee with a length of knotted intestine around his neck. It would all be so terribly funny in a sick, sick way, if only …

Yeah, no funny bone.

But he was different, that much he knew. He was watching the other Zees, checking them out and making observations. And he never once saw any of the others looking at him or at one another. What was he, some kind of high-functioning zombie? A genius Zee? Maybe the next step on a fast-moving evolutionary train? He desperately wanted to look in a mirror, wondering if he’d have a “smarter” look about him than all these dumb-ass Zees bumbling around him. Sure, Tim had very soiled jeans and some kind of burrs stuck in his hair, but at least he didn’t spend all day walking into the same wall, like he’d seen one guy doing. And he’d seen this one half-naked chick walking around with a toilet seat around her neck and a plunger stuck to her ass. No telling how that’d happened, but she sure as hell wasn’t doing anything about it. She was just going about her business like nothing was wrong. And she could do that, because none of the Zees reacted to her, and the only living people she got close to were soon dead. Not that they’d be concerned with ridding her of her embarrassing accoutrements, of course. They’d try to blow her head off. That’s just the way it was, nowadays.

It was now probably something like Day 5, a few days after the pinky, and Tim had been on the move, painfully, for some time. He’d been walking through fields and woods with no houses around and no prey, and his hunger was approaching crazy levels. He imagined he now looked pretty much like that super-scary zombie that always sent people screaming into the woods in those movies: ferociously hungry look, wild eyes, lurching forward with grasping hands and evil intent. Terrifying!

He was now outside a farm house, looking in the kitchen window. It was the only house around for miles, so far as he could tell. He figured he could see himself in the window, but there wasn’t anything there. What, was he like a vampire who didn’t have a reflection?

He doubted it. In the world of the undead, vampires, Tim figured, were like the French poodles sleeping on scented pillows, while zombies were the mutts left out in the rain. Vampires could turn into bats and fuck women and wear cool clothes. But there was absolutely nothing cool or magical about being a zombie. It was sort of like waking up to the worst imaginable hangover in the entire universe, times the power of a thousand or so. Add shit, blood, dirt and someone’s colon for lunch on top of that and you have a pretty good idea of what it’s like to be a zombie.

Still, the “smarter zombie” idea had grabbed hold of Tim, and he’d become convinced he’d be able to see some manifestation of those smarts if he could just get a look in a mirror. Inside the farmhouse, there had to be one — plus food — but Tim had no idea how to get inside the house.

Genius Zombie couldn’t figure out a door knob.

That was OK. None of these others could, either. They were all starving, and there was obviously some fresh meat inside — but no one could do anything about it. There were hundreds of Zees outside, stinking up the joint, milling around and, every now and then, stopping 30.06 rounds being fired from an upper story window.

Snipers: A zombie’s worst enemy. Tim was on the good side of the house now, but that morning he’d been standing over by the garage lifting up this dead chick’s dress when the head of a Zee next to them had just literally exploded. One minute, he’d been standing there with his dumb-ass hungry look, doing the milling/drooling thing, and then there was the sound of a shot and his whole head just turned into red and gray paste splattered on the wall.

Tim got the hell out of there. True, the chick whose dress he was lifting up was the best-looking zombie he’d ever seen, but she wasn’t worth dying for — again. She looked like a hot chick who’d dressed up as a zombie for Halloween — like she was “Zombie Marilyn Monroe” or something, with her platinum wig. She wasn’t all that fucked-up looking, either. Most zombies have big, nasty neck or face wounds from when they were attacked and made into zombies, but Zombie Marilyn Monroe had nothing bad Tim could see — other than some blood and dirt stains on her short white dress. No biggie. As a zombie, you’ve got to expect that kind of thing. She had smeared makeup all over her face and neck, confirming Tim’s theory that she’d been made up to look like, maybe, a zombie. Talk about irony! Her wig and massive fake books were slightly askew, but otherwise she looked pretty well put together.

In life, she was the kind of woman he’d probably have been terrified to talk to. But when he found himself at the zombie version of a cocktail party — standing outside a farmhouse with a bunch of other undead waiting to get picked off by a large-caliber weapon — he figured what the hell. He reached down and lifted up her dress, just to get a look-see.

This wasn’t exactly the smoothest move of all time. Tim still had major hands of stone, but even so, lifting up a dress was a lot easier than unzipping a fly. And after a couple of tries, he got it up high enough to check out the situation.

Thong and tattoo, as he might’ve guessed. Sadly, though, what must’ve been a pretty nice ass had good-sized bites taken out of both cheeks. It was like some sick bastard had gotten her while she was sleeping. A real mess, but at least it hadn’t interfered with the whole top-of-thong tattoo-above-the-crack thing he’d loved so much as a warm-blooded biped. The tattoo was a flower of some sort; nothing special. But it was nice, pretty classy, he thought. Except for the big missing chunks of ass. If she weren’t a zombie, he figured, she’d be pretty upset about that, because it was obviously an ass she’d put a lot of work and thought into.

Perusing the Zee girl with her chewed-up ass, Tim waited for the expected signal from brain to penis, but as he expected, the link was broken. All his dick was good for anymore was dribbling urine down his leg. Even so, the Point A brain part that enjoyed the sight of a thong-and-tattoo combo was still more or less in place, so he looked for a while, wondering if he should feel guilt for what was no doubt an incident of sexual assault on his part. If that kind of thing applied to dead folks, at least.

Zombie Marilyn Monroe didn’t pay any attention to Zombie Timothy Lipton lifting her dress up and down. She was standing there looking up at the clouds, her mouth agape and drooling. There were so many zombies standing around that there was no room to move much. And when the guy next to them got drilled by the farmer, no one paid any attention except Tim. He turned to run — OK, lurch — away, and he took a good look at Marilyn to see if any of this had registered with her. Her vacant, empty eyes were stone-cold blue, and her formerly pouty, probably moist lips were dried and cracked. In another world, Tim would’ve paid her money to let him apply lip balm. Now, he would’ve been happy to see just a glimmer of anything in there.

But then WHAM! A slug hit her in the shoulder, spun her around and dumped her on the ground.

Tim kept moving.

Chapter 3. Hunger

Nothing to eat.

Zombie hunger was much different than the regular kind Tim had experienced as a human. It was more gnawing, more visceral, more frenzied. He’d even seen some Zees chewing on their own arms, albeit not too seriously. Even dead, it seemed, self-preservation mode had some meaning, and it didn’t make any sense to chew off the arm you might need later to pull someone’s tongue out (one of the more disturbing things he’d seen since his rebirth as ghoul). Besides, if Zees wouldn’t eat each other, there wouldn’t appear to be any inspiration for self-consumption.

Zees wouldn’t eat each other, wouldn’t eat animals, so far as he could tell, wouldn’t eat bugs or any kind of plants. There was obviously something about live human flesh that kept the impossible possible. That, and the need for the flesh-eating trope as the cornerstone of any zombie flick. If they only ate worms or kumquats, well, not much dramatic tension there.

And so it was that Tim started working on a new theory about what was going on, as his hunger grew and the apparent availability of fresh humans to attack and eat declined precipitously. Tim’s theory was this: He was actually in a zombie movie, the producers of which had created this outbreak or disease or whatever to create a more realistic landscape. After all, he reasoned, all the makeup was probably the biggest expense in a Z-flick, after the explosions and stuff. If you could cast a film with the real thing, wouldn’t that be a big cost savings?

So far, though, Tim had seen no cameras, lights, craft-services tents or other signs that would indicate movie-making. He hadn’t ruled out the hidden-camera possibility, but he also knew zombie-movie gore relied on the close-up, and you can’t get that with a camera in a tree.

Compared to Z-flicks he’d seen, the real deal was much more disturbing to Tim. He’d never taken any kind of classes on anatomy, for one thing, so in the course of seeing folks being ripped apart, he’d come across things he never knew were inside the human body. It occurred to him that he didn’t really know the difference between a liver and a spleen, and he’d wonder about some of the stuff going by: Was that a gall bladder disappearing into the bloody maw of the Zee in the Dracula outfit? What’s the difference between a vein and an artery, and how come the thicker ones seemed so much chewier?

In those first days, when there were still a fair amount of squealing live ones to feast upon, Tim had gotten over his early inhibitions pretty quickly. Even so, he didn’t go for the low-hanging fruit of soft belly and genitalia. He recalled a book where he learned that’s the way wolves and other predators worked: After a kill, the first thing they ate was the anus, the genitalia, the entrails – the easier stuff to get to. Personally, Tim found intestines revolting. They were full of shit – or stuff on its way to be shit – and the texture was simply too slippery to handle. He’d be damned if we going to eat some guy’s balls, although he certainly wasn’t averse to a nice, fresh tit. Tits weren’t genitalia anyway, were they? Certainly part of the reproductive system.

As for going downtown on women, he’d never had a chance. Thankfully. The guy Zees went after that like mad, and it was the source of the only real Zee-on-Zee violence he’d seen. This was early on, when he was still around the home where the big Halloween costume party had taken place. The woman in question was having her arms torn off, her tits devoured and her legs fought over by the Three Musketeers and, he guessed, D’Artagnan, and she’d caught Tim’s eyes at the height of it. For the briefest moment, the imploring look almost caused him to do something: to help, to pull the face of the guy in the Porthos outfit out of her crotch and save her.

But it passed, and he sank his teeth into a calf as her screaming turned to that whimper-gurgle that always signified the end. His pity soon turned to anger, though, as he discovered she’d been wearing pantyhose, some of which was now stuck in his teeth.

Note to self, thought Tim: Avoid women wearing pantyhose.

Although now, with live squealers so rare, he doubt he’d have any scruples about what the fresh meat was wearing. At some point, the hunger became so agonizing to some of the Zees that he saw them running into trees, walking off cliffs, shuffling into fires to be immolated rather than suffer the hunger.

So much for his self-preservation theory. Of course, the ones who ran into trees or walked off cliffs were more or less OK. The one thing that continued to hold true, so far as Tim could tell, was that the only way to kill a Zee was to shoot it in the head, chop or lop off its head, or hit it really hard in the head. Or burn it. Freezing would probably work, too, he figured. And he’d get a chance to observe that theory before too long: It must be November now, and it was already starting to get below freezing at night.

So add constant cold to the world’s worst hangover.

Actually, even when it was warmer out, Tim felt cold. It was different from the cold he remembered as a live person, though. Zombie cold was all encompassing and unpleasant, but it also felt more natural — like it was to be expected. Thinking about it, with what was left of his brain, Tim arrived at another apparent truism: The only thing that made him not feel cold was when he was eating squealers. And the glow lasted for a few hours, after which he’d be freezing again. Zees must have digestive systems like cheetahs, he thought, fast and adapted to quickly processing raw meat. The key to Zee happiness, then, was consumption of fresh human flesh and a constant replenishment of such. It was the only way to feel warmer, more human.

Made sense. The ultimate goal of a Zee was probably to stop being a Zee, even if they didn’t necessarily know that. They just had this one simple drive, the one basic menu request which, when satisfied, chilled them out for a bit.

But the tide was already changing, Tim could see. After a week or so, the squealers had moved from being on the defensive — running away, holing up in houses — to forming roving bands of attack parties. They pretty much kept to daytime hours, but the Zees took it on the chin pretty badly when they came out. Since the average Zee didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain — much less shuffle out of the way of a truckload of hicks with pistols, rifles, machetes and cans of gasoline — there wasn’t much hope for them.

Not that there ever was. But Tim, as a genius Zee, a higher order of some sort with a slightly less fucked-up brain, would be able to take advantage of the raiders’ attack parties, would he not?

After stumbling away from the garage after Marilyn was shot, he’d made his way to higher ground and had spent some time literally walking in circles. For some reason, he wasn’t ready to venture out beyond the farm, and he kept ambling, hoping for a kill that would never come.

He wasn’t alone. Like the humans they were before, Zees had proclivities and, perhaps, the faintest hint of personality. Some were herd-like and more likely to be down there by the house with the group. Others were content to work the periphery, and it was among this group that Tim saw some of what might considered some of the “harder cases” — tough hombres who looked like the first ones in on a kill. Some of them had even come up to Tim and gotten in his face, sniffing at him and shoving just a bit. He’d shove back and they’d back off, but he didn’t appreciate the attention. He wanted, more than anything, to be left alone.

He was leaning against a tree, trying to keep a little bit dry as a cold rain fell while observing the Zees clustered around that white farmhouse — the one that emitted lead from its upper windows on a regular basis. Even if it didn’t make much of a dent in the Zee population, he supposed it made them feel like they were doing something. And, as Tim knew from watching many a zombie movie, the inhabitants would, at some point, need to come charging out. They would need food, or water, or they’d just feel like the time had come to bail. And that’s what the Zees were waiting for: either to figure out some way in or for the squealers to come out.

Tim was looking for Marilyn Monroe in the crowd, wondering if she’d recovered OK from being shot in the shoulder the other day. Or was it the other week, or even a month ago? He couldn’t tell. But Zees typically didn’t go far if they knew squealers were around, and he’d spotted her blonde wig a few times in the previous days.

But where was she today? She seemed to favor the garage as a hangout, but there wasn’t any sign of her. No, wait: There she was, shuffling around the corner of the building. For a brief moment, she was in the clear enough that Tim could see her head to foot. She looked good, overall, even though the 30.06 slug had torn away part of her shoulder and bloodied her nice white dress. She had some leaves in her wig, which was even more askew on her head. Tim marveled that it was still there at all, after all she’d been through. He could see her natural hair underneath – looked like a chestnut brown with a little bit of red in it.

Marilyn was missing a shoe, and her short dress revealed twin trails of shit and blood down her legs. If Zees still could digest food and expend calories, Tim thought, did the females still menstruate? Made no sense. From what he’d seen, Zees didn’t have much blood in them – or what was left was dark and congealed. Sure, if you blasted one in the head with a high-powered rifle, there would be stuff flying out. But it wasn’t like regular liquid blood; it was more like a vile gel, dark and thick.

But the blood on Zombie Marilyn Monroe’s leg was red, fresh. And if she was still having periods, Tim thought, maybe they could hook up and have zombie babies? He felt the two poles of the laugh center in his brain be activated, then go flaccid as the thought fizzled like a sunken soufflé.

But maybe she just got lucky and got hold of a squealer, some of the blood landing on her legs. She just looked kind of pathetic, and Tim had worked up this ridiculously idealized visage of her in his mind in the days since he’d seen her last: the hot zombie, one who retained some of her sex appeal even through the degrading, humiliating, disgusting life of a Zee.

The saddest thing about Marilyn, Tim saw, was that the rifle shot had torn away part of her chest, and it appeared clear that the massive set of tits she was sporting was part of her Halloween night costume. Her left boob was still a healthy D cup, even if it was a fake, shifted upward and rubbing against her chin. But her right was deflated, mostly gone, giving her the appearance of a listing ship about to go under.

She didn’t care, though. She just shuffled out in front of the garage door, gaping up at the sky as she always did. To Tim, though, that gave some hope, like maybe she was an optimistic Zee who knew there were better days ahead. Watching her standing there, he felt a sudden urge to go down and join her. Maybe lift up her dress again, or see if he could shove her remaining tit back into place.

That was the kind of thing that simply had to pass for romance in this world.

Suddenly, though, there was new activity down there: The garage door started moving up, and as the Zees slowly reacted to the phenomenon, a large, black pickup truck gunned its engine and came roaring out. The cab had guns poking out of the windows, and the bed contained five or six guys bristling with weapons.

Their first Zee was Marilyn, who was flattened by the grill of the truck as it mowed her down. Tim watched as if in slow motion as she started to turn to see what was coming at her. The truck hit her and her head snapped back like a crash-test dummy. She was sucked under the truck in a flash, and Tim saw her broken body lying there for just a few seconds before the mass of Zees closed in around her to stare at the truck now bouncing across the field.

Shot after shot dropped Zees left and right, and Tim noticed with a start that the thing was heading right for the copse of trees in which he was hiding.

Made sense. It was higher ground, and just to the right of the grove was an open area where the raiders could survey the field of Zees below.

Tim played dead. He let his legs fall out from under him and landed in a heap at the base of his tree. He very much wanted to continue watching to see if Marilyn was OK (her head hadn’t come off, so far as he could tell, so she should be alright, in a relative sense). But he dared not move as the truck skidded to a halt not 20 feet from where he lay.

Well, at least this is something I’m good at — playing dead.

He then mentally kicked himself for making such a cheap, obvious joke. In life, he’d been the guy always ready with the irreverent take. Zombie dead jokes when you’re a zombie was like shooting fish in a barrel. And damn, there’s another cliché! Tim hissed in frustration, then quieted himself when one of the armed men looked in his direction.

Shit! Did they hear me? But the man turned back around.

Zombie hissing was something Tim not only hadn’t mastered, he wasn’t comfortable doing it. Many of the other Zees spent a lot of time hissing or moaning or groaning or making what would be known and heard by the squealers as “inhuman” or “ungodly” sounds. Even so, being struck mute — as an expected side effect of death — was unpleasant, to say the least. At least hissing was an outlet of sorts, even if Tim felt it beneath his dignity as only a partial Zee.

The flesh-eating ghoul part of him, though, was on red alert as the scent of the nearby men wafted in his direction. There was cigarette smoke, gun powder, sweat and cologne in the air, not to mention palpable notes of deep fear. For all the deadening of other senses, Tim had noticed his sense of small had grown to bloodhound levels, and a sixth sense for fear had also manifested itself. All the gun-waving and Zee slaying aside, these guys were scared shitless, Tim knew, and he slightly opened one eye to see if it looked like they were formulating some kind of plan.

They were. Maybe. They were outside the truck, five of them, and speaking loudly and pointing. To Tim’s ears, though, it sounded like they were speaking Malay or Portuguese or something. It was a series of indecipherable whines, pops and moans that Tim recognized as language and nothing more.

He closed his eye. It was true, then: Zees couldn’t understand human language. He’d suspected it from some previous encounters with squealers. But none of them really spoke much English as they were being dismembered, disemboweled and eaten alive. What would one say in such a situation anyway? “No! Stop! Please! Have a heart?” Made no sense. Even if the forces that created Zees were a mystery, their intentions were always strikingly obvious to the squealer: I want to kill and eat you, now, and nothing you say or do will dissuade me from that.

Tim continued to lie still and thought about his here-and-now, populated as it was by two groups of people — one of which spoke Portuguese and wanted badly to shoot him in the head; the other which hissed and grunted and wanted only to eat the Portuguese speakers.

What a world! Forming that phrase in his mind, Tim felt the barest hint of a smile cross his face. Well, if this was what it was, he’d best play his role, and the beast inside him was near-crazed with hunger. When the men started to fan out from the truck in a semi-circle, leaving one scared-looking teenager behind as some kind of guard, Tim waited another few moments and slowly got to his feet behind the tree.

The guard was standing in the bed of the pickup, shuffling in a constant circle with his gun raised and a lit cigarette dangling between his lips. This was a bad idea to start with, Tim thought. Zees, which above all others could afford to power down a carton of smokes a day, did not smoke. Putting a cigarette in your mouth and lighting it was like ringing the dinner bell. The smell of it said only one thing to any Zee in the area: live human nearby!

Unlike the other Zees, Tim had something resembling patience on his side, and he was peering out from behind the tree, timing his rotations to coincide with when the kid was facing away from him. After a few minutes, the kid settled down and kept his focus on his partners, who were walking down the hill shooting Zees. Before long, he was laughing and shouting encouragement. And he lit another cigarette.

Tim moved out from behind his tree.

Chapter 4. Meat

Up until this moment, Tim had not had a solo kill. He’d always been part of the mob, and on the periphery at that. He’d end up with miscellaneous blobs of flesh, bones to gnaw on or other not-so-prime cuts like scalps, hands or ears. Whatever is was that made a Zee charge in first for the best stuff, Tim didn’t seem to have it. The Reluctant Zombie, he though, that’s me.

But the gnawing in his core after supping only on offcuts the past several days was about to to change. When the kid with the gun turned toward the slowly advancing Tim, he popped up from behind the wheel well, grabbed the kid by the legs and hauled him over the side. The gun fell from his hands as he landed on his back, his head striking a rock. Tim was ready with another rock, which he brought down between the kid’s eyes.

Kneeling over the still-breathing victim, Tim took in the body and sized up vulnerabilities. He was wearing a down vest and sweat pants and boots. The only exposed flesh was face and hands, so Tim started there, sinking his teeth into a faintly bearded cheek and tearing away a lump of flesh.

At this, the kid woke up and looked into Tim’s eyes and screamed. Then, out of nowhere, he produced a pistol and shot Tim in the shoulder.

Dumb ass thought Tim of himself. You should’ve gone right for the carotid artery. Now you’ve got a live one, a squealer. The other assholes will be running up the hill any minute.

He knew he had to work fast. He hissed, reared back and found the kid’s neck with his teeth. Bull’s eye! He felt the pulsing artery underneath his incisors and clamped his jaw down tightly. The skin broke, the kid wiggled wildly beneath him, and then his teeth found each other on either side of the artery, which exploded into Tim’s mouth with a gush of hot blood that just about choked him.

He jerked away, a chunk of flesh and part of the kid’s artery still gushing in his mouth. The wiggling stopped immediately and Tim watched the light disappear from the kid’s eyes as he stopped wiggling.

It was that easy.

Looking over the top of the pickup bed, it looked like the other Zee hunters hadn’t noticed the kid’s screams or the gunshot — they were thick in a crowd of Zees a hundred yards away, firing as fast as they could.

Tim turned back to his lunch. He probably didn’t have much time, but at least now he’d get more than a scrap of cheek and neck. He put his mouth on the gaping neck wound and allowed more of the still-pulsing blood to jet into his mouth. This, as he was now learning, was the good stuff, zombie gold. Fresh arterial blood like this made him feel a warm glow inside after so much time in the cold, and he could feel a life-giving energy from it. Who said vampires and zombies didn’t have anything in common? He stayed on the neck wound as long as he dared, sucking at it when the heart stopped pumping it in for free. He then tore off some more chunks from around the kid’s neck and face, then gave him a big French kiss that resulted in the prize of a fresh tongue. He tore off the lips and swallowed them, then grabbed each hand and tore off the meatier bits of flesh around the thumbs and palms.

But he was stalling, he knew. The real volume was down lower, and Tim turned to the kid’s trunk with a mixture of greedy zeal and lurking revulsion. Fortunately, the sweats were easy to pull down, and he started by ripping off some chunks of thigh and forcing them down his throat.

He then turned to the rest, throwing any other scruples to the wind as he emulated the wolf and went for the soft, easy flesh and organs below.

Having finally crossed that bridge, he let out a victorious hiss with his arms outspread and was about to go for the kid’s ample gut when he saw another man standing in front of him, gun leveled. He said something that was truly insulting in Portuguese and hit Tim full in the chest with a rifle blast.

Tim fell sideways behind the back of the pickup and immediately started to crawl away. The foolish man set down his gun and knelt by his fallen buddy, apparently assuming a point-blank blast to a Zee’s chest bought him a few seconds of grieving.

Tim was on him in a flash, going this time immediately for the carotid and pulling away half the guy’s neck in a geyser of arterial blood. The fountain reached all the way to the pickup’s window, coating it in a grisly shower of red and making Tim think that, if this really were a stealth-filmed zombie flick, the director would be very pleased indeed.

No time for any more feeding, though, as Tim could see the other three guys making it up the hill. They were slow and fat, though, giving him time to rip out the would-be hero’s tongue, waggle it in his teeth at the approaching trio of doomed hunters, and disappear into the woods. He watched the ensuing action from behind some more trees.

They had planned their attack poorly, without enough guys to cover all their flanks, and hordes of Zees were closing in on them. These guys also didn’t seem to have comprehended the No. 1 zombie-killing rule that it’s a shot to the head that really does the trick.

Standing in the trees contemplatively chewing the hero’s tongue, Tim watched the horde close in on the trio, then bring them down in a mass of Portuguese squealing and flying body parts. In previous days, this would have been the part where Tim waded in for his share, but he felt sated now — that arterial blood was like some kind of mega energy drink.

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud, roaring hiss just behind him, which caused Tim to jump aside. Two ghouls lurched past him, headed for the kill.

And 10 steps behind them came Zombie Marilyn Monroe.

Tim watched her approach as if in slow motion, which in fact was not too far from reality. Marilyn didn’t look well, at least relative to what a Zee typically looks like. She was shot up and bloody, with the fake boob pushed up around her neck. She had a Dodge Ram logo tattooed on her forehead from being run over by the truck (payback is a bitch — Marilyn, I took care of those motherfuckers for you, darlin’) and her once-white dress was covered in mud and in tatters. One side of it was ripped away enough that Tim could see her chewed-up ass.

As she drew closer, Tim stood and stared at her, wondering if there would be any glimmer of recognition or if she’d just shuffle by. He positioned himself so that he was directly in her path, and she simply walked right into him and stopped, the top of her head coming to rest under his chin.

She didn’t move. It was as if she’d arrived at some predetermined location and simply could go no further. Even with the promise of a feed just before her, Tim thought, she was choosing to be here with me. Either that, or she was so starved and out of energy that any obstacle would cause her to cease forward momentum.

Tim spit out the hero’s tongue into his hand and found Marilyn’s mouth with it. He gently shoved until she opened, and he saw her chew once or twice and swallow.

That’s a Zee box of chocolates, sweetheart. Enjoy.

Tim took a step back and looked at Marilyn, who seemed to have brightened a couple of notches from her snack. He reached up and clumsily shoved the fake breast back into place in her dress, then pulled up the sleeve on the other side to at least partially cover her rifle wound. He then looked into her eyes to see if there was anything there.

Marilyn had bright blue eyes, although the whites were thoroughly bloodshot. They were dead, zombie eyes, but still Tim thought he could discern a distant touch of something in there: sadness, wanting, hope? Then, suddenly, her head snapped up and she hissed at the feeding frenzy scene, which was fully underway. She broke away from Tim and started shuffling toward the pickup faster than Tim had ever seen her move.

You go, girl! Good luck with dinner; doubt there’s much left.

Zees fell into several distinct groups when it came to hunting and feeding. Oftentimes, the ones who made the kill were happy with the “quick cuts” of flesh — the tits, the asses, the balls and guts and cheeks — not to mention the quaffs of blood. They’d move off and the next crew would move in. These were the folks who were happy with a length of intestine, part of a liver, maybe a lung or two. These were relatively portable items, and the Team 2 Zees were often seen just outside a kill zone, enjoying their haul sitting on their haunches. Team 3 was even more patient. They took the time to find things like an appendix, tracheas (tough but long-lasting treats), maybe a uterus or some endocrine-system selects: pancreas, thymus glands and the like.

Team 4, which was in action now and of which Tim suspected Marilyn was a member, worked on even harder stuff. The alpha member of Team 4 usually got the head, the main goal of which was to reach the brain. By this time, the eyes, nose, lips and ears were mostly gone, as well as the cheeks and scalp. But Team 4 members knew the brain could be accessed from the bottom, once the spinal column had been ripped out and all. They would spend hours working on it, and there was risk in doing so since hunters might show up or other Zees could butt in for a piece of the action.

Tim had never had brain, but he guessed there was something to it, given Team 4’s perseverance. As he watched Marilyn report for duty, the head of the rifle hero was in the possession of another Zee — a woman with long nails and tiny hands who was doggedly scraping at the base of the skull looking for paydirt. Marilyn homed in on a spinal column lying against the wheel of the truck. She grabbed it hungrily and started working the spaces between the vertebrae, sucking and gnawing at whatever was in there. Then she’d whack the spinal column against the ground, pick up what fell off and start crunching discs in her teeth.

Tim felt a spike of pride at her skill.

And Marilyn here, she’s a spinal expert. Something of a surgeon, in fact.

Oh really? What hospital does she work at?

Tim would have to work on the answer to that one.

Chapter 5. Remember

Now that his belly was full of guard and hero parts, he felt more relaxed than he had in days … or weeks or whatever this time period was being segmented into. Days blended into nights, dawn came and looked indistinguishable from dusk — except for the level of squealer activity. Since the Zees were always half frozen and slow moving by the time the sun was struggling up over the horizon, the humans thought it a fine time to be active in extermination activities.

Tim was sure to stay out of range of the upper-story 30.06 — especially in those early morning hours. And on the morning after the big kill and his second meeting with Zombie Marilyn Monroe, he was still up on the hill a hundred yards or so from the house.

I haven’t left this place in a long time. Why is that?

The white house and barn, the two sheds, the various different-colored vehicles in the driveway — they’d all become part of his visual landscape as surely as the filthy black jeans and checked shirt he wore as uniform. It was also true that the same general population of Zees hung around the place day after day, hoping, it seemed, for a different set of circumstances to arise. Wasn’t there some saying about that being the definition of madness? But, then, it had happened yesterday, the different set of circumstances.

Having four of their number plunge into a field of Zees and perish had an obvious effect on the remaining squealers in the house. This morning, every weapon in the house was being deployed against the shuffling, freezing mob of drooling idiots, and Tim watched from the crook of his tree as they toppled one after another. Shouts of triumph and encouragement rang from the upper windows, and Tim thought again about what to him was a bizarre lack of survival instinct on the part of the lesser Zees. They had hunger, which drove them with rigid discipline and yielded success despite their many shortcomings. But why wouldn’t they know to step out of harm’s way?

But, then, that wasn’t entirely true either. Looking down at the crowd milling around the house, he noticed some Zees who might be viewed as being more cautious or furtive. A gaggle of them was standing on the other side of the garage, out of the line of fire. Occasionally, and seemingly taken in turns, they would peer around the structure to see what was up. Twice that morning, Tim saw a garage-peeping Zee get his head blown off.

What was that old saw about curiosity? And cats, was it? Like odd little winds that came from no particular direction, scraps of human memory floated into Tim’s consciousness and floated out again. True, they were often clichés or bits of old songs lodged in his long-term memory, but they were connections to his former self. He wanted to grab at them, stuff them back into his brain, but they proved elusive.

Wait. Curiosity killed the cat. That was it! Tim grunted in glee, rocked back and forth on his feet and looked around to see if Marilyn could somehow share in his triumph. Stepping out from behind his tree, he described a slow circle in the mud to find her. When his rotation brought him in line with the house, he realized his mistake and started shuffling back to safety, but not fast enough. A bullet caught him in the side of the head, ripping off part of his right ear lobe and dropping him to the ground. He scrabbled back behind the tree and felt the damage.

Yep, missing part of an ear, and an ugly furrow along the right side that didn’t seem too terribly deep. What was left of his brain was still functioning, and he tried it out internally.

Curiosity killed the cat. And almost killed Tim.

The impulse and mechanism to laugh came and went, and then here was Marilyn, limping past him and directly into the killing field — as if she had a breakfast date with the squealers.

Tim struggled to his feet, feeling his new bullet wound pound inside his head as he fought for balance, hanging onto the tree. The first shot missed Marilyn and caught him in the left arm.

Just winged. Stupid silly Marilyn.

He grabbed Marilyn by the arm and dragged her behind the tree. She gave a zombie snarl and fought him, but only for a moment. He grabbed her head with both hands, looked in her stupid, dumb-ass dead eyes, and shook his head “no” over and over. Then he pointed to the new wound in his arm and shook his head some more.

Of all the zombie flicks in the world, why’d she have to wander into mine?

Marilyn seemed to take the upbraiding in stride as she segued back into her favorite activity: staring at the sky.

She wasn’t alone in that occupation. Many of the Zees spent their down-time — that is, the time in between chasing and eating squealers and/or being pursued or killed by same — with mindless staring. Some found solace in the sky, others were happy to look at a tree or a mound of dirt or even their own fingers. Many Zee driveways were not making it all the way to the road, and it occurred to Tim that the only reason the Zee revolution was even partly successful at all was due to sheer numbers. If some smart Zee came along and led them, maybe they could really make a go of it.

But that wasn’t Tim. And besides, even if he’d wanted to, it looked like he’d have his hands full just getting one Zee moving in a particular direction. Because a plan was forming in his mind, and even though the reasons behind it were based on just the faintest palimpsest of memory, there wasn’t much else to hang his hat on at the moment. He could stand around this fucking white house and wait to get shot in the head or just freeze solid when winter set in, or he could try to do something to … to improve his situation. Somehow, having a partner in all this seemed integral to the mission, and even if sex appeared to be out of the question, if he had to pick a Zee to tag along, why not the cutest one? Certainly better than the ghoul twitching in the field with a pitchfork stuck in his back, or that other fucked-up chick down by the grain silo with a shotgun hole in her middle so big you could see daylight out the other side.

This place was wasted, and getting colder by the day. There was a word creeping into the periphery of Tim’s mind, and it was getting stronger and stronger so that he could almost make it out — like a car coming toward him on the highway he’d soon know the make and model of. Fuck. Well, it’d come to him soon if he kept focusing on it. For now, it was time to move. They had full bellies and the sleet that was falling earlier had slowed to a slight drizzle. He put his hand in Marilyn’s and she didn’t resist when he started gently tugging her.

But which way? Which way would be warmer, or have the most promise of fresh squealers — maybe even a pocket of live ones who hadn’t yet been surrounded?

And then the word that was evading him crept in: South.

Chapter 6. Walking

“South” meant the same to Tim as “warm,” and with thick clouds scudding across the sky and frost on the ground every morning, he intuited a simple fact: The Zees weren’t going to last long out here. He’d already seen his first stiff: A guy in hospital scrubs who’d had his legs shot off — frozen to the ground like a statue. It was, in fact, the first time Tim had seen the Zees pay much attention to one of their fallen kin. The frozen surgeon had a circle of Zees surrounding him that morning, seemingly marveling at his petrified, skyward-looking face. Tim figured with no legs, he wasn’t able to keep moving enough to prevent himself from freezing, and he wondered if the Zees who were looking at him — from a safe distance of a few feet — would take it as some sort of cautionary tale.

Marilyn should see this. But where the hell was she?

A moment ago, he’d seen her standing and looking at the fast-moving clouds. But now she was nowhere to be found. Tim turned to take one last look at the frozen doctor just as one of the idiots in the house got off a lucky shot and hit the Zee-sicle right in the head. The guy’s skull actually split right down the middle, the two parts shearing off in near-perfect halves — one side still stuck to the spinal column as the left side of the guy’s face fell to the ground with a sickly thud. Tim half hoped the head half would shatter into a million pieces, like a glass vase, but it just rolled to one side and stopped to show a near-perfect cutaway view of the brain and skull. Falling to the side with no neck to support it anymore was the doctor’s stethoscope.

All the Zees surrounding him moaned low and stepped back a few paces. Another shot rang out, and an ugly chick in a waitress getup took a slug in the chest. She fell forward on top of the partly headless guy, and the group of Zees moaned again, took another step back, then started shuffling randomly, bumping into one another as more shots kicked up frozen dirt around them.

The phrase “Check, please!” popped into Tim’s mind, and he double-shuffled back behind his tree. There, he found Marilyn, sitting on the ground looking even more dead and cold than she had earlier. Was she giving up? She’d stopped looking at the sky, her head had fallen to her chest and, finally, her platinum wig had fallen off to reveal short, mousy brown hair.

Tim kicked her gently and she stirred. He tugged at her shoulder, then shook her until she looked up and managed a pathetic snarl.

That’s my girl. Get pissed! Get that zombie mojo going!

He tugged more at her, tried to get a hand under an armpit to give her a lift. But he had no strength in his arms anymore. She was going to need to get her dead ass up on her own. Tim moved a few feet away, grunted, and gave Marilyn a “let’s go” wave. She gave him a fixed stare and, to his surprise, started to attempt getting to her feet. Now he could help her if she was going to help herself. He got his hands under her arms and lifted with all his strength. After a few tries and with the help of the tree, they got her standing. Tim walked a few steps and gave her the “let’s go” gesture again. Again, a weak snarl from Marilyn, but somewhere in those dead blue eyes he saw the tiniest spark of purpose.

She wanted to live. Or, if this wasn’t exactly living, she wasn’t ready to call it completely quits yet. With a soft moan, she put one foot in front of the other, then again, until she was shuffling ever so slowly behind Tim. Looking constantly over his shoulder, he kept beckoning and she kept moving. Before long, they were out of sight of the white house and the 30.06, moving through hilly, heavily treed terrain.

Now, he wondered, which way was south? As a concept, it meant “warmer,” but in practice, every direction looked more or less the same. Tim couldn’t even recall how many directions there were; it certainly seemed as if the possibilities were endless. There was nothing for it, really, than to just start walking and hope either it turned out to be a lucky guess or they came across something … some kind of clue.

As they moved away from the farmhouse, the number of Zees thinned out. Here and there they saw a dead one, or the evidence of a Zee-on-squealer encounter: dark blood stains on the ground, bits of clothing and hair, maybe a cell phone or some jewelry and not much else. As food supplies dwindled, the Zees were in waste-not, want-not mode.

Tim was hoping that, even after a short time shuffling “south” they’d start to notice a warming trend, but instead a cold wind came up right on their backs and a driving rain pelted them. Even so, didn’t many winds come from the north? So if it was at their backs, maybe they were, somehow, headed south. Tim pressed on, oddly cheered by the foul weather — even if he had no way to communicate his new-found hope to his partner.

It had only been a short time of walking, but already Tim was tired of the constant coaxing of Marilyn. Finally, he put his arm around her shoulder and walked with her, exerting a gentle but constant pressure on the poor, fucked-up former woman to keep her going. In truth, Tim doubted she’d make it very far. She appeared very weak, she had multiple gunshot wounds, her ass was torn up (which he assumed was affecting her locomotion — wasn’t your ass basically part of your legs?) and it had been a day or two since she’d had anyone’s spine to suck on.

We need to find some fresh squealer.

But where? All they saw around them were the occasional Zees – many of which were in as bad or worse shape as Marilyn. As the day wore on, the rain and wind backed off and the sun moved slowly up in the sky to warm things slightly. Tim could feel his own body respond with what seemed like added strength, and they came out of the woods into some kind of neighborhood. As they walked, they saw more carnage from the cold night before. Zees were lying every which way on the ground, across shrubs, against abandoned vehicles. Some appeared cold and finished, like frozen doctor guy, but most of them were still moaning, groaning and twitching, their pale purple tongues lolling out of their mouths as if hoping some random squealer would wander by and bleed on them.

Ultimately, Tim was hoping to come to a road, one of those bigger ones that had signs that told things like south and … what was the other one? North. There had to be one around here, with all these houses and streets. He hoped when the time came, he’d be able to tell one symbol from another. Somehow, he thought he would.

So Tim’s shopping list had his mind focused on three things: squealer, highway, south. At the same time, as the day wore on and he contemplated another cold night, he began to wonder if there was any chance they could find some kind of shelter. He really didn’t think Marilyn would make it another night out in the cold.

Ever since whatever happened happened, it had been pretty clearly established that Zees were on the outside while squealers stayed inside. Yes, the more adventurous ones came out to kill Zees, and Tim was sure some of the more ambitious Zees had managed to infiltrate some houses to dine on the contents therein.

That’s what we need. A house the Zees have already been to.

Tim knew once all the squealers had been eaten in a particular house, no Zee would stick around inside. They were too focused on finding more meat and too stupid to appreciate the benefit of shelter. So he started looking closely at each house they passed. Most appeared abandoned, their owners long gone in the (probably mistaken) assumption that somewhere other than here had to be better vis-à-vis Zee infestation. He had an eye out for open doors, smears of blood around the threshold, signs of a battle, bones.

He didn’t have to look far. The sun was nearly setting when he saw a small, cottage-like house that fit the bill. There was the requisite smashed car against a tree, blackened and charred. Dry, blackened blood everywhere on the side of the house, in the grass and on surrounding trees. Hanging open was the front door, as well as a smashed screen door. The scene was cold: Whatever had happened here had taken place some time ago, and no other Zees appeared in the vicinity.

He guided Marilyn in the direction of the bloody front door, and they got as far as the first of three low steps when he stopped.

Zees can’t climb stairs. Can they?

As a higher Zee, Tim figured he’d have no problem, but when he approached the first step himself, he found he lacked utterly the ability or knowledge to navigate it. But how hard could it be? Surely it simply meant lifting one foot, placing it on the step, then lifting the other and placing it there as well. He was able to do that first thing, but when he lifted his second foot to complete the process, he toppled backwards, falling onto a viscera-coated tricycle in the walkway.

He thought he heard the slightest suggestion of a chuckle issue from Marilyn, but when he glanced up at her face, it was frozen in its usual mask of simmering malevolence.

This is bullshit. Not going to get very far in this world if you can’t figure out how to climb stairs.

He tried again, and again, getting to the point where at least he wasn’t falling down but, nevertheless, still reeling backwards in a struggle to maintain balance after every failure. After about the tenth try, he had a mini revelation: He put his hand on one of the hand rails and made it up the first step, then the second and the third until he was standing triumphantly on the front porch. He beckoned to Marilyn, trying to impart with convoluted hand gestures how she ought to employ this newly learned technique to climb stairs. But she’d found a 10-inch section of someone’s spinal cord, and she was eagerly exploring it with her mouth to find bits of whatever she could consume.

Tim shook his head and went into the house. He’d come back out for her later – after he scoped out the house to see if it was safe.

In the living room, it appeared as if an epic struggle had taken place. Chairs were toppled over, lamps lay smashed on the floor and the carpet was a riot of every bodily juice imaginable tossed together with bits of clothes, books, broken glass and a tanker’s worth of dried blood and smallish, dried-out body parts.

It seemed clear there had only been Team 1 and 2 Zees that’d worked this site. The Team 3s and 4s would’ve taken care of everything else here but the stains — and at some point he was sure they wouldn’t scruple to suck on the carpet or the throw pillows. Too bad everything looked to be at least several days dried, otherwise Marilyn could’ve had a field day. She was all about the fresh and juicy, and he doubted that desiccated spine would hold her interest for long.

Similar scenes greeted Tim in the kitchen and the first-floor bedroom. Nothing was moving, but there had obviously been an extraordinary amount of activity here not long ago: maybe half a dozen squealers in a death battle against dozens of zombies. Again, a director’s wet dream, but Tim had given up on his theory that he was in a Truman Show-style zombie flick. Even the most elaborate production budget in the world couldn’t have accounted for the scope of the Zee outbreak and the level of personnel involved.

This really is hell, then. Rather liked the idea that it was only a movie; only a dream. Something you could exit from at some point. Something temporary.

There was a short stairway to the home’s second level, and Tim bumped his way up it. The climbing-stairs thing had apparently been a short-term lapse in memory and motor skill; he was able to negotiate this particular set with no difficulty. Walking up the stairs in a deserted home recently ransacked by zombies might give one pause, but Tim reflected on the fact that he felt no fear. Even if there were flesh-eating ghouls up there doing all manner of creepy, horrible stuff, it wouldn’t faze him; Zees don’t faze. It was oddly comforting to know he could deal with a tableau like that with some modicum of aplomb. He was actually more concerned with the fact that he’d just started thinking in words like a 19th century novelist. A modicum of aplomb? Just more flotsam from the past, he figured. It’ll pass.

There wasn’t anything upstairs — no blood, guts, errant limbs or signs of struggle. Whatever had gone on had been contained to the yard and the downstairs, and Tim stood in the doorway of a room painted all in pink with a four-poster bed and elegant sheets and felt like he was looking into another world — like a museum diorama. Fuzzy stuffed animals lined a shelf that ran around the entire room, and there was perfect order to the many other girlish possessions arranged on chairs, on several bookshelves and on the bed itself.

The bed: How long had it been since he’d lain in one — or even contemplated such? Slowly, suddenly feeling very much the intruder in this shrine to girlhood, Tim moved toward the bed much as a living person in a vampire flick might approach a corpse he was afraid might suddenly pop awake. He let his hand brush against the ruffled comforter but gained no insight: Still made as of concrete, his hands had very little feeling left in them.

I could lie down on this thing and take a rest.

The thought of seeking and possibly even acquiring something resembling “comfort” hit him like an epiphany. When you’re a Zee, you’re not often thinking of the finer things. A creature you are, but not one of comforts. He stood and looked fixedly at the bed, thinking back on all the patches of cold ground he’d rested upon in the past few weeks. You didn’t sleep as a Zee, of course; you were more like a fish. Rest a little, but the horrid living nightmare is one you experience awake, 24/7.

Stiff and awkward as he was, Tim could think of no graceful way to “climb into bed,” and so he simply let himself tip over, landing on his side with his legs dangling off the bed and his cheek pressed against a stuffed purple rabbit.

He imagined it felt quite good, even though his Zee body could register little in the way of what might be considered a positive sensation. The most obvious tactile thing happening for him was the synthetic hairs of the bunny starting to tickle his nose.

Tickle. What the hell?

He lasted only a few moments in that position before he started to feel something else creeping into his deadened brain. It was something not quite right, something suggesting to him that his behavior was in some way wrong; that he should get up and out of there. But why? He was his own zombie, was he not? Free to stalk the countryside and do as he would, not beholden to the laws of man and to be stopped only with a well-placed bullet to the head (or immolation or decapitation or, apparently, a good freezing).

The feeling, as it turned out upon further reflection, was guilt. Here he was in a relatively warm house, cozying up to a purple bunny on this delightful bed while poor Marilyn was outside in the cold, probably gnawing on some poor fucker’s scapula. But it was a very soft, cushy bed, and the longer he lay there, the deeper he seemed to fall into the embrace of the bedding and mattress. He wasn’t even sure he could get up if he wanted to, and strictly speaking, if it was time to just finally die conclusively, this wouldn’t be a bad place to do it. But how would it go and how long would it take? He guessed if he continued to lie in the bed he would eventually starve to … death. But would his mad zombie brain allow him to do so? Or would it force him up and out the door to find more man-flesh? And anyway, what about Marilyn? Had he not made a commitment of sorts to her — a promise to lead her in the direction they needed to go? And what about the drive to head south – what was that about?

The bunny hairs were still tickling his nose, and now he felt them on his lips. Just checking to see if he had any sensation on his tongue, he stuck it out and tried to taste the bunny. Nothing much, but …

Maybe if I gave it a good lick …

It was then that she hissed.

Tim struggled to a sitting position and there was Marilyn, standing there all zombie-mean, bloody face from her recent feed and looking, if this was at all possible, more unhappy than he’d ever seen her. All she needed to complete the picture of angry spouse was a rolling pin in one hand.

Tim patted the covers next to him, an invitation Marilyn scorned as she shuffled out of view with another hiss and back down the stairs. Tim started to get up out of the bed, then fell back into the covers, face once again pressed into the purple bunny.

I’m a zombie, but surely I can be a dick as well as any human guy.

Chapter 7. Company

Tim lay in the girl’s bed for what seemed a very long time. Occasionally, the notion of getting up and going downstairs to somehow placate Marilyn flitted through his mind, but it was fleeting. And it wasn’t that he wasn’t concerned about her. But what he was seeing lying there looking at the blue ceiling of the room — a blue ceiling painted with clouds, in fact — made him rather preoccupied. Mostly he kept his eyes closed, opening them from time to time to reiterate in his mind the clouds-on-blue tableau hovering above him. It was in this position that he was able to conjure shards of what had been before … his life. There were several people far over the horizon, discernible only as blurs, suggestions. But they were there. One was a woman, and there was a child, or maybe two, along with some other adults who figured in that life somewhere. They were trying to tell him something, many things, in fact. But he couldn’t hear them; it was an indistinct sort of mumbling, like many voices tumbling over one another, none of them making any sense. He opened his eyes, blinked at the painted clouds, then closed them again trying to make the people come closer, to talk more clearly. At one point, the woman got close enough to reach out with her hand, as if to touch Tim’s face. He felt his whole body relax as it hadn’t done in a long time, anticipating the touch that never quite came.

And then Marilyn was suddenly there, standing above him with what could charitably be described as an expectant look. She was holding out her hand, and Tim, surprised, took it as she helped him up. Tim realized now there were noises all around them, downstairs and out in the yard. With Marilyn, still holding her hand, they walked to a window and looked out at two squealers running toward the house. Zees had appeared all around, but none of them could match the pace of the man and woman sprinting ahead of them. From their vantage point at the window, Tim and Marilyn saw the pair disappear, then heard them enter the house and slam the front door shut. Before they could secure the rest of the house, though, Zees were already entering through the back door and the smashed windows, and the squealer couple had no recourse but to run upstairs, right into the exquisite girl’s room.

Since Tim and Marilyn were on the far side of the room and partially hidden by the lush drapes around the window, the fresh couple didn’t see them until it was too late. The door was closed and a mob of Zees was streaming up the stairs, making escape the way they came impossible. With another hideous pair of zombies blocking the only window, they did what came naturally: They started throwing shit at Tim and Marilyn.

First came all the ornate plates off the wall, followed by a collection of porcelain horses, zoo animals and unicorns. Marilyn hissed as they broke around her face and neck, but she didn’t move; nor did Tim. It was obvious enough that dinner had been delivered, and it was unarmed save the girlish missiles. By the time the squealers had resorted to throwing the stuffed animals and doll furniture at them, Tim was almost ready to feel sorry for them.

They’d come a long way, it was clear. They were scraped and bloodied but not, apparently, zombie-bit. They looked cold; neither had a coat and, in fact, they were dressed only in their underwear. The man was in plain blue boxers, button fly, with a tremendous beer belly hanging over them. The woman had an emerald green thong-and-bra set stretched to capacity. Her double-D breasts alone were dinner for two, her ass would feed an army, and Tim guessed the chunky duo would provide sustenance for many weeks.

It was, he couldn’t help thinking, an odd way to size up company. But he brushed the thought away as he dimly tried to formulate a plan for turning the plate-throwing fatties into dinner. They had to be subdued, but it was two on two; not the usually swarm of Zees on one unfortunate victim. True, they couldn’t go out the door — the Zees from the outside were already pounding on it, wanting in — but it wasn’t a long drop to the ground from the window if they could get to it. He could see them eyeing the window as their means of escape.

Marilyn had no such hesitation, now that the hard objects had all been thrown. With a really excellent hissing kind of screech, she lunged at the man and jumped up onto him, circling her legs around his back and sinking her teeth into his neck before he had a chance to even react. The two of them fell backward, the man’s head hitting the edge of a white chest of drawers. Marilyn ripped a great piece of flesh from the now-unconscious man’s throat, and a geyser of arterial blood hit the wall.

Tim was impressed. Here he thought Marilyn was only a Type 4 scavenger zombie, not an able hunter. He felt a twitch of something resembling pride as she continued mauling the man’s neck, and he took his eyes off Emerald Thong long enough for her to run past him and get halfway out the window before Tim could grab her from behind.

He had her by the bra strap as he pulled her backwards and threw her onto the bed. Her massive breasts broke free as the strap broke, and she came after him with a lamp made to look like a carousel. She whipped him across the face with the lamp, then stabbed at him with what was left.

Tim fell back and almost went out the window himself as the woman stood panting, looking back and forth between the zombie in front of her and the other one having her mate for dinner. Tim couldn’t help staring at her tits, which featured not only great heft and accompanying stretch marks but wide, dark areolae and grape-sized nipples that were hard and erect — as if she were sexually aroused.

Thong saw Tim looking at her tits and let out a Portuguese yell, coming at him again with the lamp. But then here was Marilyn, flying in from the side and hitting Thong in the sweet spot on her neck with her gnashing incisors. Blood sprayed all over the beautiful bedspread, and Thong gave a last tremor before falling still. With a look Tim interpreted as “there you go, you stupid bastard — do I have to do everything around here?” Marilyn hopped off the bed and resumed her work on the Belly. Tim watched fascinated as she deftly pulled the boxers down and slipped the man’s penis into her mouth. For a moment, it looked like she was going to give the guy a blowjob, and she let her eyes find Tim’s as she sucked the guy’s dick all the way in while cradling his balls. He thought he could discern an almost a mischievous light in her eyes, but it quickly disappeared as she bit down and pulled away with her prize with a triumphant grunt.

Tim gave her a weak “thumbs-up” and turned to Thong. His hunger was past the ravenous stage, and the freshly killed, almost naked woman lying on the bed right before him was the Zee equivalent of having the Thanksgiving bird set down on the table. Scooting over her so he could still see Marilyn at work, he took a giant titty in his mouth and bit off the nipple.

With his prey dead, Tim didn’t feel the normal zombie mania to rip and tear with abandon. He tore away another piece of the woman’s breast and chewed it contemplatively, again trying to compare the taste of human flesh to that of anything else. It wasn’t a fair comparison in the first place, since he’d never really eaten raw chicken, pork, beef or lamb. He’d had sushi, of course, and could say with some certainty that this woman — or at least her boob — didn’t taste like fish. The other thing was that his taste buds weren’t in the best of shape, which was probably just as well. As he chewed and swallowed, he had to acknowledge that he really couldn’t taste much of anything. Mostly, it was that hit of blood salt and minerals that seemed to appeal to his zombie palate – not so much a flavor as it was a presence, and a strong one at that. In fact, it was that property that alerted Zees to the presence of squealers — they couldn’t hide it, their inherent freshness. As he took a drink from the woman’s still-pulsing neck, he could feel that same thrill he had back at the farmhouse, almost like drinking liquid adrenalin. It was tough to beat.

He finished Thong’s right breast, scraping rib with his incisors, and sat back against the wall feeling utterly sated. Marilyn was in the same position against the dresser, blood and gore dripping from her mouth and a look on her face that said “Woo! I’m stuffed!” Before her were the partially eaten remains of the unfortunate man, who’d been relieved of his sexual organs, both eyes, his man-boobs and his cheeks, nose and lips. His intestines had poured out of an exploratory gash in his belly made by Marilyn, but it looked like she hadn’t gotten started on them yet. Could be she wasn’t an intestine kinda gal — they weren’t for everyone.

Outside the door they could hear more of their Zee brethren, scratching and shuffling, occasionally pounding and wiggling the door knob. The Squealers had locked it on their way in, and in Tim’s experience, there wasn’t a Zee on earth that could work a locked door — even if he had the key. Even so, there wasn’t much doubt they wouldn’t be alone too much longer; they should eat while they could. Tim leaned over and tore an earlobe off Thong. He spit out an earring, gave a couple of chews and swallowed. He gestured to Marilyn to do the same.

Keep eatin’, baby. I don’t know how many more of these fuckers are left out there.

Tim was contemplating going after the other breast or moving south for some of that special brand of zombie cunnilingus when a skinny male Zee crashed through the window and, after a frantic survey of the room’s bounty, made a beeline for the pile of intestines. Marilyn hissed and tried to push him away, but the skinny Zee ignored her as he grabbed up handfuls of entrails and started stuffing them in his mouth.

Another Zee followed, this one jumping on Thong, pulling off her last vestige of clothing and ripping into her thighs and labia with frenetic glee. As the room started to fill up with even more Zees from the window, Tim looked over at Marilyn and some kind of communication passed between them. With a last, wistful glance at the remaining breast, Tim made his way to the window with Marilyn, where a chain of Zees were crawling over each other trying to get in. Tim and Marilyn were able to wriggle between the ones at the window, then use the rest of them as a sort of slide to the ground. It was now raining, hard, and the slippery Zee-bodies path to the ground among all the groping, groaning Zees was almost fun. When an arm was flung into his face, Tim on a whim grabbed it and ripped out a bite of putrefied flesh.

The offended Zee hissed and whacked Tim over the head with his other arm, but he then turned right back to the mission at hand: scrabbling up the heap and through the window to whatever was left of the good stuff. Tim, for his part, was simply trying to answer a question he had: Why don’t Zees eat one another?

As he and Marilyn walked through the downpour away from the crowd, he chewed on the bit of Zee forearm thoughtfully. Yes, it was certainly not fresh – it tasted like lunch meat a few weeks past its expiration date. It was also both rubbery and falling apart. With a couple of chews, it turned into a mass of pulpy gristle that had none of the bloody, chewy richness of fresh.

He spat it out on the ground, eliciting a sharp look from Marilyn.

What, I shouldn’t waste food? These motherfuckers are everywhere!

As they walked away, Tim turned back to look at the little house with that sanctuary of a room he’d enjoyed, however briefly. A hundred or so yards away, they found a tree under which to take cover, and Marilyn stood with him as they watched the Zees storm the place. It looked like ants on a candy bar.

And Tim wondered if he’d ever lie in a bed again.

Chapter 8. The Scrum

With full bellies, Tim and Marilyn sat under the big tree and watched their incredibly fucked-up world go by. Most of the leaves had already fallen, the ground was cold and sodden and Marilyn had gore all down her chest — but it was still nice to sit under a tree with a girl. Tim, for his part, would be damned if he was going to spend all his time either standing or shuffling about like the other Zees; Marilyn seemed inclined to take his lead. As they sat, they watched the activity at the little house ebb and flow (or Tim watched; Marilyn was fixedly studying the bark patterns on the tree). Occasionally, another interested Zee would loom into view, grunting and scuffling past like someone late to the ballgame. Tim imagined there wasn’t much left of Thong and Belly, and he tried to grasp in his mind what that meant; why it mattered — or if it even did. Technically, in the old world at least, it was a double murder — and a particularly gruesome one at that. In these times, it was simply the way things were, and there weren’t any cops or courts around to say otherwise. What was the big deal about murder? Someone has a reason for another person to be dead, and someone stops living — and caring about whether they were alive or dead. The problem, as Tim saw it now, was before the murder occurred; afterwards, the issues of concern to the victim were rendered moot. And no amount of punishment would change what was essentially the ultimate verdict.

But surely Tim’s own survival mattered to him, and for whatever reason he’d decided Marilyn’s fate was important as well. The meaning of life floated to the surface of his mind, like a plastic bottle suddenly released from the bottom of a lake. As a card-carrying member of the flesh-eating undead, existence — such as it was — generally and simply meant finding the next meal. And that was just to gain power to seek out the next meal. And was that so much different than anyone or anything else on the planet? It was just their choice of diet and lack of table manners that made the Zees so reprehensible.

That got Tim thinking about volume, and he had another instance of a random fact from the past popping onto his path – like finding sand dollars on the beach: An African elephant forages for 400 pounds of stuff a day to keep going. He didn’t know how accurate that might be, but there it was: a kernel of knowledge, a latent shard of information from his squealer days. So the question for him was how much human flesh did the average Zee need to keep going?

He truly was a special zombie, and perhaps growing more special by the day. Could it be, he wondered, that he was getting “better” — less Zee-like? If so, would eating more or less squealer help him progress? There, sitting under the bare tree in the rain with his zombie girlfirne, Tim the zombie decided to try to lay off eating live humans so much.

Just enough to get by, no mas.

It was not necessary to have breakfast, lunch and dinner (or snacks); one decent draught of blood and a few hunks of flesh every other day or so seemed to suffice. Kept them going. Tim had also discovered that it was a good idea to consume water when it could be found. Why, that very morning, he and Marilyn had stretched out supine in front of an algae-filled pond and slaked what had turned out to be a tremendous thirst. (Marilyn still had a trail of dried pond scum on her chin, mixed in with the gore from Belly.) Other Zees walked right by as they drank, and upon further observation Tim noted that he’d only occasionally seen another of their kind drink. He had, however, begun to look more closely at fallen Zees, trying to get a handle on what had killed them, eventually.

Sure, some had been whacked by squealers, and it was easy to see their handiwork: the small entry wound and gaping exit; the occasional de-cap; the burned remnant; the stove-in cranium. (Squealers out of ammo were having to resort to close work with bats, pieces of rebar and even small household appliances. Tim had seen one squealer take out half a dozen Zees with a blender, which he wielded as a sort of nunchaku and used to great effectiveness … until the cord broke and he was torn to pieces in less time than it would take to whip up a fruit smoothie.)

But by far the most frequent example of Zee downfall Tim observed was simple expiration: They would fall in their tracks, their sunken frames belying starvation while their pinched, desiccated faces and drawn-back lips confirmed Tim’s theory: The average Zee was too stupid to know to drink; they only knew about eating.

Silly Zees.

It was raining harder now, and Tim looked over at Marilyn as if to say “Wanna get a room?” She looked bad – quite bad indeed. Although she’d eaten, the rain had caused all the leftover zombie makeup from the party to streak down her face. And this was on top of her natural zombie pallor. Far from the almost-hot Zee he’d first encountered at the farmhouse, Marilyn was now one of the scarier looking ones around. It was hanging out with him, he imagined, that had made her face more complex, more human, than it’d been before. Although still dumb as a post, doing things like drinking and relaxing had perhaps reignited some part of her ruined gray matter – enough to make her think, if ever so slightly, that there was a world beyond this, or that pulling the balls off a live man and eating them in front of him was, maybe, bad. Wrong. A sin of the first order.

The sun, wherever it was behind the rain clouds, eventually went down, but Tim and Marilyn continued to sit under their tree. The rain tapered off and the gloom descended, and Marilyn finally stopped looking at the tree bark and settled her gaze on something in the distance. Tim had noticed Marilyn – and other Zees – were capable of a sort of “pause” mode, where they rested until something — usually hunger or squealers approaching — drove them into motion again. He’d been able to do the same thing earlier, but now the trick evaded Tim, as did sleep. His “rest” periods were ones where he closed his eyes and stood by helplessly as his mind left the station, freely wandering over the wrecked landscape both physical and emotional – an unmoored, rudderless vessel as terrifying as it was fascinating.

Under the tree, he conjured back what he’d been seeing in the girl’s room. Those people, ones who’d probably meant something to him and, perhaps, would again if he were actually on the road to recovery. She had long, darker hair, it was revealed to him finally, and two smaller people with him – children, girls. And there were several other people; people with demands they were making of him, even as he sat under this tree not knowing who they were. Were they behind the “south” thing – that goal he had in mind? He felt they were. And he also felt that, with more time, these pieces would coalesce into a more recognizable picture, something tangible enough that he could act upon them. Find these people, go south, do the thing, whatever it was.

The other part of his rest periods now was a measure of anxiety that was growing daily. Just days ago, he’d still thought of the world full of flesh-eating zombies in which he lived as a curious but familiar place where he had an established niche. Now, as he peered into the mist-shrouded pre-dawn landscape – occasionally punctuated by far-off cries and moans or by undead chunking past – he felt just a little bit frightened. It was, he was sure, the latent squealer in him that feared this place, and he did his best to beat it down. Employing the voice and tone of a Marine drill sergeant, Tim instructed his brain to tell him this:

Stick to the facts, soldier! You are a fucking zombie with one fucking mission: to chase down and eat live humans! Do not let other shit get in the way of that goal.

In the morning, Marilyn’s ass was frozen to the ground.

The rain had finally stopped, but dawn still revealed no sun, the world wrapped in a cloud. Tim had allowed himself to sit still for so long that his eyelids were actually frozen shut, and it took some doing to activate them again. As he struggled to his feet, the thin scrim of ice that covered his entire body fell off in tiny tinkles, and he stood over Marilyn as she tried to get up. Even holding onto his hand, Tim pulling with his meager strength, wasn’t enough to free her, so he stood off to the side, placed his foot on her shoulder and gave her a good shove. She fell over, got on all fours and barfed up some of yesterday’s dinner. Tim looked away, annoyed. Now she was going to be all hungry again.

Still partly frozen, Tim knew the best thing for them was to move. South, if possible, if he could find some indication of what that might be. There were no other Zees about, or people that he could see. Part of him recognized the utter creepiness of the scene while his practical side recognized that the shroud of fog kept them invisible from any snipers looking for an early-morning kill.

It was quiet, only the sound of their shuffling feet breaking the silence. They appeared to be in a field or a meadow, with waist-high grass or crops of some kind to wade through. Marilyn shuffled with her head down, her limp more pronounced from the cold and, perhaps, yesterday’s activity. Her ass had to hurt, Tim knew, not just from being chewed off but being frozen as well. But he also knew Zee pain was more of a deadened distraction than a sharp feeling. As he walked, he thought about his own wounds: his partially shot-off ear, the gunshot wounds in his chest and neck, the slug he’d taken in the shoulder and the sliced-open cheek from one of the My Little Pony plates hurled at him by Thong & Belly. The bullet in the shoulder must’ve lodged in flesh; he didn’t feel like he had a broken bone or anything serious going on in there. “Serious,” he knew, being a relative term: He should be dead. Or more dead, at any rate. The ear, he could live without. Some old Hemingway line floated into his here-and-now, and he tried some tough love on himself.

You lose an ear, you lose an ear. There’s worse things than lose an ear.

Hell, look at Marilyn – ass totally chewed off, face all fucked up from getting hit by a truck. She ain’t complaining. Buck up, fuckface.

As the sun started to burn off the morning fog, Tim saw more houses coming into view, and he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to head toward them or away from them. If they went toward them, there was always the chance of fresh meat (and fresh danger), not to mention the opportunity to look for “south” clues. Steering clear had its appeal, though: Ambling along with just Marilyn and no other distractions held its charm.

He looked over at Marilyn to see what she “thought.” Noticing his gaze, she looked up at him and he couldn’t help but think she could use a rest. Maybe they could even get inside a home, sit on a couch or something. He moved slightly ahead of her and set a course for another small house, this one at the end of a row of houses that looked more or less the same. As they got closer, the usual signs of Zee-squealer encounters were evident everywhere, although the lack of much in the way of leftovers told Tim the Team 4 Zees had already been through here and cleared the kill zones of anything edible.

“Quiet,” Tim said, aloud and in a slurred voice that instantly reminded him of the retarded kid Charlie from the neighborhood where he grew up.

Marilyn turned slowly and looked at him as Tim stood, shocked, his hand reaching up to his mouth, fingers touching his lips – amazed at what he’d just done. Trying to downplay his feat (and suddenly wary of Marilyn as the gulf between them widened), he moved forward, gesturing with his hands for her to follow.

The neighborhood, it turned out, was not as quiet as he’d thought. Turning the corner of the house, they heard the unmistakable sounds of a feeding frenzy coming from up the street somewhere. Marilyn didn’t hesitate, breaking instantly into what for her was high gear: a spastic shuffling that caused her remaining fake tit to break free and flop around her neck like the scarf of a WWI flying ace. Tim followed reluctantly as she passed through the gates of a small park with a set of brightly colored plastic playground equipment. Under a thing meant to look like some kind of ship was a gaggle of Zees and what looked to be five or six separate, fresh kills. Another group was massing in and around a school bus parked nearby.

Marilyn worked the periphery of the scrum for scraps while Tim looked for answers. What were these squealers doing out here, in a neighborhood that’d already been wiped out? In a moment, he saw it: A flung-open basement door about 200 feet from the park with another couple of kills between it and the playground. The squealers were in touch with the people on the bus and thought they had their ride out of this place. But a couple of torched vehicles had blocked off the road, so the closest the bus could get was … there. Tim could play it back easily enough from here: The door unbarred after weeks of defense, the mad dash across the road and playground to the sanctuary of the bus – and the fucking Zees coming out of nowhere, en masse, to nip the escape in the bud.

Tim was mildly impressed. Yes, the Zees were fatally and aggressively stupid on many things, but when it come to waiting out squealers and being in the right place at the right time, they had some kind of sixth sense. He couldn’t help but wonder, though, if any of them – like him – were smart and getting smarter. He felt a twinge of jealousy – the one-eyed man in a land of the blind afraid to discover … another one-eyed man.

But who was it? And did he (or, OK, she) even exist? He peered into the feeding scrum and saw no stand-outs, no superior-looking Zee hanging back from the crowd, perhaps casually munching on a kidney as he enjoyed the fruits of his planning.

There was Marilyn, sitting at the end of a plastic slide with what looked like a bit of foot. The sight of it all made Tim feel hungry, despite the previous day’s gorge-fest.

Maybe I could have a little something …

Tim knew from experience the best way to penetrate a scrum was just barge in, all sharp elbows, hissing and gnashing teeth. He definitely had a late-to-the-party feel, though, and this group of Zees was so quiet, he felt the need to approach more cautiously. Getting close, he could see the kill had advanced to its later stages. The bodies were no longer recognizable, just various pieces disappearing into the slavering maws of the killers. As casually as he could, he sidled up and reached an arm in, grabbing in the general direction of the kill through the mass of stinking Zee bodies. First, his fingers closed around a handful of wood chips, but moving to the left, his fingers found something hard and slick: maybe a bit of bone with, hopefully, some flesh still attached.

As he started to pull his prize to him, one of the Zees suddenly turned, grabbed his arm and looked at him with a strange expression of recognition. If he could’ve talked, Tim imagined he might have said, “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Instead, the Zee — an angry-looking teenager in a tattered football jersey — brought Tim’s arm to his mouth and took a bite out of his forearm.

Tim jumped back, dropped his prize and stared as the teen Zee thoughtfully chewed the piece off Tim’s arm. He looked like a guy at a wine tasting, swirling the taste in his mouth and about to make some ridiculous pronouncement — like “nice finish.”

Tim suddenly felt every wound, every piece of lead, every fucked-up part of his body surging outward — a manifestation of some primal anxiety he couldn’t name. If this Zee found his flesh palatable, it could spell a lot of trouble. If not, then Tim could continue to move about in the world of Zees.

With a grunt, the teen zombie spat out his bit of Tim after a few chews and went back to the pile. Confused and disgusted and even slightly hurt at the rejection, Tim lurched over to Marilyn and nudged her with his foot.

Let’s go honey. Party’s over.

Tim didn’t know how much time he had left.

Chapter 9. Rain

Marilyn gave a perfunctory hiss and yielded to Tim’s urge to leave. She just took her meal to go, gnawing at the ankle with grating teeth-on-bone sounds. They were only a few hundred feet away from the playground scrum when the first shots rang out. Tim and Marilyn stopped and, from the safety of a clump of trees, watched the party they were just attending be decimated by a group of guys in yet another Dodge Ram. They blasted onto the playground and dispatched the feasting Zees in a matter of seconds with automatic weapons. Tim watched as the teen who’d sampled his arm had his head separated from his body by a burst of machine-gun fire.

Impressive.

These guys weren’t military, but they looked like old hands: professional zombie whackers with plenty of firepower and nothing but time on their hands. Marilyn fretted at the Zee carnage, wavering from side to side with plaintive moans and, consequently, drawing attention their way. The Zee killers were double-tapping the forms on the ground; putting one last round in each head to ensure the job was done.

But one of them was now looking in their direction — and pointing. Saying something in Portuguese. With a grunt and a shoulder bump, Tim let Marilyn know they had to leave, and with Tim in the lead they lurch-staggered as fast as they could in between two houses. Tim held up his hand in front of Marilyn to stop, and looked around for somewhere to hide. No open doors beckoned. No, wait: There was one across the street. A screen door held partially open by something dead.

The sound of the Zee killers’ truck grew now louder as Tim and Marilyn made their way across the street toward the house. Up the stairs, over the dead Zee in the doorway and into a living room just as the truck roars up the street.

They’ll either come in here and find us … or not.

Tim plopped on the couch, pulling Marilyn down with him. They sat still and listened as the truck went up and down the street, some of the men walking, shooting randomly, kicking at doors. Yelling. Tim listens to see if he can understand anything; to see if he’s learned Portuguese. A few things sound familiar, although he can’t place their meaning. Again that gap: He could form words in his mind, but somewhere between there and his ears, the mechanism for understanding speech was gone. Then how did he manage to utter that one word earlier? Did that mean it was growing back, that he just needed more time? Or was it just mouthing something he’d heard or remembered, like a mynah bird?

As the sounds of the Zee killers faded, Tim closed his eyes and leaned into Marilyn. Safe for now, whatever that meant. The idea of self-preservation seemed vaguely ludicrous. What, indeed, was there to live for? Or to go around like this for? How, though, were Tim and Marilyn any different — better or worse — than those hunting them? Whatever the cause of all this, it certainly wasn’t their fault. Was it too much to ask the squealers for a little help, some understanding, possibly even a cure? Maybe the Zees could be rounded up, put in a zoo-like place and observed as curiosities. In cages. But what could they be fed to keep them alive if not live humans?

Tim had no answer for that. So far as he could tell, nothing satisfied like squealer meat – or blood. At least Tim himself wasn’t tasty enough to appeal to Zees – at least not yet. What was that all about, he wondered, that teen Zee sample bite? If he really was changing, becoming more human, would he start to smell different? Look different, maybe? He wondered at Marilyn, the sweet, hapless little Zee next to him, and whether she’d be onto him soon as well. Sinking her teeth into his neck with an apologetic look …

It would be nice if just one thing made sense.

Well, maybe one thing did: The desire of squealers to whack Zees before they got chomped themselves. And they presented, Tim realized, a very real threat.

The band they’d seen were a new breed. Organized, very well armed and, most importantly, apparently not in the least bit afraid of Zees. They’d been wearing some kind of protective clothing, boots and even helmets. Not easy marks to bite, and Zees were pretty limited in their offensive options. The only way to tackle these guys would be with a much bigger crowd of Zees to overwhelm them.

Marilyn sighed, and the mangled piece of foot she’d been holding slid from her hand and hit the ground with a clunk. Tim opened his eyes and looked at her. Still alive-ish, her eyes wide open but with that thousand-mile stare: pause mode. It started to rain, growing to a downpour that drummed mercilessly on the roof of the house. The Zee killers were gone, for now, perhaps back to their redoubt from which they would launch fresh assaults against Zees in the morning.

By then, though, Tim knew they’d be gone. Crossing the street earlier, he’d seen in the distance what looked like a bigger road – the kind of road that might have signs of the kind he was looking for. Signs that would somehow say “south.” They would rest for a time, maybe wait out the rain.

It took a while, though. With Marilyn in her mini-coma next to him, Tim sat most of the night with his eyes closed and his mind working its dark recesses for memories of before. There were bits that floated by that were almost tangible: childhood scenes — one time when he broke an arm, another a fight between his parents; yelling. A big, black dog with only three legs chasing him, but whether it was his dog he was playing with or a mean dog on the street, he couldn’t tell. At one point, he discovered if he focused too hard on recalling a memory, it would slip away. He could grasp more of it if he moved it to the side but still kept it in the frame while thinking of something else.

The dog was his. The fight was real; one of many. And yes, he’d broken his collar bone, actually, falling out of a bed that was high up. A bunk bed.

It’s all in there. You just have to dig it up.

Nothing from recent memory, though. Nothing to tell him what happened, who we was, what south meant and who those people were he was supposed to go and see. If one of them was indeed a mate of some sort, and the little ones were his children, what good would it do to show up like this?

“Mommy, mommy! Look, Daddy’s home. Um, sort of.”

Hiss. Scream. Chomp. Horror.

Somehow he needed to clean himself up before any such reunion – and curb his human flesh appetite which was, he knew, entirely incompatible with family life. With any life. Zees didn’t have a chance. Nothing they did made sense. The world they inhabited – indeed, the world they created – was as unsustainable as fossil fuel and a lot less short-lived. Sooner or later, the squealers would all be in leather pants, padded jackets and big boots, gloves and helmets. They would systematically exterminate every Zee they found without hesitation or sympathy. They would burn their bodies in big piles and stand around cracking jokes and smoking cigarettes as the smoke rose. TV cameras would cover it for a while, until such point as the exterminations and burnings became mere background activity — like trash collection.

It bothered Tim that you could be so sick and expect no help from anyone. It was like catching the flu and a death sentence at the same time. He’s got it, so shoot to kill. The desire to get close enough to a squealer to explain his situation was becoming a real possible course of action in Tim’s mind. If only he could speak some more – more than saying “It’s quiet.” Then, he could demonstrate he wasn’t just any dumb zombie. He could feel the squealer growing inside him, even if he still looked like shit and hadn’t yet potty-trained himself.

But sitting there on the couch next to his zombie girlfriend, trying to commune with his trapped, inner squealer, Tim was becoming more aware of one thing: With his mind’s emergence, so, too, was his body becoming more alive. And with that there was a growing increase in pain: He felt all that lead in his chest more acutely, his ear was starting to throb, the slug in his shoulder burned while a million other cuts, scrapes and abrasions sung out from all corners of his corporeal self. If his brain did regenerate and he was to join the world of the living again, he damn sure was going to need a little time in one of those … expensive places. What was it called?

Hospital.

The word galvanized him. Hospital wasn’t just where he needed to get some help; it was where he belonged – some part of his former life. He was sure of it. He stood abruptly (if one can call taking 45 seconds to get to your feet “abrupt”) and moved to the window. Marilyn tipped over sideways on the couch with a groan, but Tim ignored her to look outside.

The rain was just about done. Most of what dripped in front of the window was coming off the eave, and a tired, heavily masked sun was struggling up over the horizon. Tim watched as the shadows gave way to a dull, gray dawn. There was a corpse in the yard — a woman in a dress with her legs partially devoured, her head twisted at an impossible angle and her face frozen in a terrible scream. Next to her were two dead Zees, both with large-caliber head wounds. A meal interrupted.

But Tim took in the macabre tableau the same way he noticed the swingset and wheelbarrow in the yard, and his focus moved past the yard and over the mangled chain-link fence to something beyond. This little house was sitting on the periphery of the neighborhood, with its backyard overlooking that larger road he’d seen yesterday. Standing tall right next to the road was a sign with symbols on it. There was a big “9,” which Tim recognized as a number, and five symbols under that: “S-O-U-T-H.”

He jerked around, walked over and kicked Marilyn in the leg a little harder than he’d meant to. Her eyes switched from glazed to evil (if tired) zombie, and they searched his.

“It’s quiet,” he said, his voice a rasp of broken glass on concrete. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 10. The Road

Another day, another miserable dawn. There was something about a pervasive zombie plague, Tim supposed, that brought out the worst in the weather. Fortunately, it hadn’t snowed again, but it was cold enough for frost and, when it rained later in the day, it froze on the blacktop they were walking on. Marilyn was the first to slip and fall, and Tim fell too as he tried to help her up. After several more wipeouts, Tim led them to the scrub grass and weeds on the shoulder, there to walk among the broken glass, discarded coffee cups, trucker bombs and other detritus from the busy, traveling world before. There was a mist, a low layer of fog that made everything extra creepy. Occasionally, they’d see Zees stagger out of the woods and across the road, but no squealers — aggressive or otherwise — appeared at all that first morning on 9 South.

In places where the weeds grew too high, they were forced back out onto the road — an uncomfortably exposed place many of the Zees seemed to avoid instinctively. As expected, there was an array of crashed and burned-out cars, each with the visual remnants of some awful story: a door flung open, a smear of blood and a scattering of fabric and shoes not far away. Tim had seen many a Zee simply ingest clothing — especially lighter garments like women’s blouses or underwear — as part of the meal deal, so it wasn’t unusual to see only scraps. The shoes were pretty much always left behind, sometimes with the feet still in them (no Team 4 Zees were on hand at the time, he figured; they always took care of that kind of detail).

Again, if he’d been making a film … this road was a beautiful set. And it wasn’t just crappy old Buicks like you often see filmmakers use to keep the budget down. There were Mercedes, BMWs, Acuras, new-looking Hondas and Toyotas — most of them fucked up, bloody, burnt, crashed, totaled. And then there were some just sitting there with the doors locked, like their owners had just stopped in the middle of the highway, gotten out and walked (or, more likely, ran) away. The fact that they’d thought to click the doors locked while being chased by flesh-crazed Zees amused Tim enough that his mouth twitched and he made a slight grunting noise.

Marilyn turned and looked at him and gave a little sniff.

I don’t smell like dinner yet, do I, darlin? Cuz if I do, you’re going to either be on your own or taking a nap with a piece of rebar through your skull. And why do I sound like the evil ex in a bad country song when I talk to you in my mind?

He felt bad even thinking it, but it was the truth. He may be Sam to her Frodo for now, but if what he thought was happening was really happening, there was going be a reassessment in their relationship. And after all, what good was she? She was moving slower than Tim due to what he suspected was some kind of dislocated hip from her truck accident. She looked and smelled like shit — still. Not that one can expect much in beauty from a Zee, but hell, she’d started out OK. The platinum wig would’ve helped if she still had it, even if the misaligned fake tits had thankfully gone by the boards along the way. Her white dress was so torn, muddy and bloody that it looked like she’d mopped the floor of a slaughterhouse with it. She was, in fact, dangerously close to losing the dress altogether. Most of the top part had fallen down around her waist, revealing a cheap white brassiere and a chest as flat as her pulse. The only plus was that the material from the top was now draped over her chewed ass, hiding, for the moment, the evidence of her last horrific moments as a human.

He wondered what would happen if he just picked up his pace and started pulling away from Marilyn. Would she make noises, hustle to catch up … or just fall behind, accepting her fate as a walking corpse in a lonely world?

Hell, he liked Marilyn well enough. She was rather like a pet – something to care for in a place where no one cared about anything. She filled some need in him, and who knows — maybe he could fuck her some day, somehow. Like if they got better and he could be reasonably well assured his dick wouldn’t fall off inside her.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a nice black Mazda, its driver door wide open and the keys still dangling in the ignition.

It gave him an idea. Holding up his hand to Marilyn, he walked over to the car and sort of fell into the seat (knee bending of any kind was never easy). He must’ve driven these things in the past, and he waited for something to come back to him about the car’s basic operation. The keys were important, he knew, so he reached out and touched them. He jiggled them, making enough noise to cause Marilyn to rock back and forth and mumble like an agitated village idiot. Tim put his hands on the steering wheel and felt the levers at his feet.

Yes, you push those things and turn this thing and you go.

The part where you turn the key suddenly occurred to him, and he did it — only to hear a lame clicking from under the hood. He tried again and again and again until the clicking stopped altogether. Which was just as well: Marilyn was going ape-shit over the sound for some reason.

Maybe she was one of those girls who really likes cars.

Well, there were plenty of other cars on the road. He signaled to Marilyn and they continued walking. Some stretches of the highway had no cars at all; others had wrecks off to the side, in the trees or right in the middle. It took another hour before they came upon another intact vehicle with unlocked doors. Tim had noticed his hands of concrete had mellowed out some, giving him back the barest modicum of dexterity — enough to open the door of an old, brown Chevy — the kind that should’ve been wrecked — and would have been wrecked in a zombie movie.

Anyway … door open, ass in seat, turn the key … the thing roars to life. Standing there beside the open door, Marilyn literally pissed herself, the stream running down her leg as she did her little spaz dance. Ignoring her, Tim turned his attention to the next step: making the thing go. He stomped his foot down on one of the pedals and the motor raced so loud it made Marilyn fall to the ground with her hands over her ears, screeching. He stomped the other pedal and nothing happened.

An hour passed as Tim fiddled with all the different knobs, levers and other controls in the car. Marilyn went from peeing herself to stumbling around in the weeds looking for vertebrae to suck. When Tim finally thought to move the stick thing jutting out from behind the steering wheel and the car lurched forward, she was, of course, standing right there in front of the Chevy. She took the full weight of the vehicle in her midsection as it surged forward.

The car stalled and Tim got out. No sign of Marilyn. He looked under the car and there she was, her head turned looking at him and the smell of burning flesh becoming pervasive as the muffler and tailpipe roasted her left side.

“It’s quiet!” Tim said, for no reason — or perhaps as some kind of stab at reassuring her. He got back in the car and managed to start it again and move it off Marilyn. Except he moved it a bit too far: His heavy foot on the gas propelled the old Chevy several hundred yards up and off the road, where it slammed into a copse of trees. No airbags in these old things, Tim took the full windshield shot in the face and smarted as the steering column slammed his chest. It took some doing to climb out of the wrecked car and make his way back to Marilyn, but he did. She’d managed to get upright and was leaning against an overturned 18-wheeler, looking at him as he approached like “Where the hell have you been?”

If Marilyn looked bad before, she was really up for a makeover now. The tailpipe had sizzled her flesh while also taking care of the rest of her dress, so there she was in her thong and bra, standing there in near-freezing weather as the rain started up again. Tim gestured at her to get moving and was amazed to see she was actually walking a little better than before. Maybe the Chevy blast had reset her hip somehow? Even so, her glacial pace was trying his patience — something he’d only recently discovered he even had. The whole notion of urgency was back, and he just wanted to continue south. He had the car thing almost figured out, and it’d do both of them good to get out of the rain and give their shattered bodies a chance to rest.

Stumbling forward in what had become a hard, freezing rain, they found another unlocked car — some sort of minivan — and clambered in. Tim got the doors closed as Marilyn collapsed on the back seat, the whole vehicle smelling like a pig roast from her grilled leg.

Let’s just wait here a bit. Just wait. When the rain dies down … when the rain dies down I’ll try to … try to drive this fucking thing. South.

Chapter
11. Driving

Marilyn had found some sort of blanket and had managed to pull it over herself. Interesting, thought Tim, wondering if she was starting to learn and evolve basic skills from being around him. Sitting in the driver’s seat of the minivan, his hands on the steering wheel, Tim tried to remember more details about driving. In a little bit, he’d give it another try, but for now, he just wanted to sit, listen to the rain drumming on the roof and wonder about the world outside the van. With each day, he became filled with more and more questions, where once he was a black hole of incuriousness (the state in which, he was pretty sure, all Zees existed).

How long would this last? How long could it last before there were no more squealers to eat – or before the squealers really took back the place?

Was there any way to go from being a Zee back to a human? Like some kind of cure?

Was it true what he suspected, that if you got Zee-bit you turned into a Zee? In some ways, this was academic, since once a Zee bit you, there were usually another 20 Zees to pile on for a feast — and you didn’t last very long in what might be called a recognizable mammalian form. Sure, the zombie bite was a standard trope in the zombie flick: get bit, become a zombie. But Tim had yet to witness it in this world. Were it true, it would skew the answer to the first question about how long this could last. And some unused gears in Tim’s mind suddenly started spinning and whirring as he contemplated some kind of equation:

The length and severity of a Zee outbreak was a factor of population (Zees & Squealers) and their ratio to one another; the rate at which Squealers are turned into Zees as well as the rate at which Zees consume Squealers; the amount of time between when Squealers turn from frightened, defensive to angry, offensive on both a local and a regional and even national level; the geographic scope of the outbreak; and, finally, the ability of Squealers to prevent themselves from being either turned into Zees or eaten by them (conversion rate). Somewhere in there another number had to be accounted for: the availability of food and how long a Zee could go before starving to “death.” Oh, and weather — don’t forget weather. And then this: When Zees froze in the winter, would they thaw out hungry as ever in the spring?

It was a lot of variables. So far, the only organized squealers they’d seen were those guys at the park. But Tim figured there had to be more like them out there. They’d been lucky the day before, mostly because, Tim figured, the hunters hadn’t taken into account any level of Zee intelligence — the smarts that had allowed Tim and Marilyn to hide, to take cover. The reality was that, in any future matchup, they stood little chance of successfully fighting or outmaneuvering guys like this. Even if he could creep up on one and go after his neck, they were wearing helmets, high leather collars, all that. He’d be whacked before he could even find, much less bite, the jugular or carotid.

No, the best way to deal with the squealer squads was to stay out of their sight. They also had to hope that all the squealers weren’t aligning themselves like this. If there weren’t some more small, scared groups or even individuals out there, they’d starve. Tim was already starting to feel himself changing from peckish to ravenous, and he knew Marilyn was likely in the same boat.

But she was OK for now, lying back there with her blanket over her – including her face. He knew she was under there with her eyes wide open, staring into the fabric and waiting for the next time Tim would kick her into action. He got down on the floor himself and pulled a corner of the blanket over himself and tried to rest. When it stopped raining, he figured, he’d give the car thing another try.

Plus, he had another idea.

A few hours passed and Tim felt the light changing. The rain had stopped and a weak sun was peeking out of the clouds. It took some doing, but he managed to get back in the driver’s seat again. Still nothing was moving out there, and the road was mostly clear in front of him – at least for a ways. With Marilyn still on pause in the back, Tim turned the key and the quiet engine came to life.

One thing he’d learned was that it wasn’t a good idea to have your foot all the way down on the go pedal. He was still unsure what the other pedal did, assuming his first assumption that it did “nothing” was incorrect. It wouldn’t be there if it did nothing. This vehicle had the shifter level in the middle, next to the wheel, and Tim slipped it down one position. The van started slowly rolling backwards. He slipped it down one more position and it rolled to a halt, the engine still running.

OK, progress. Stupid zombie learns to drive a car. Take 3.

Tim was about to slip the thing down into the next position when he heard something outside.

Squealers, walking toward him, waving their arms and shouting.

Tim froze, his hand still on the shift lever about to move it down a click. Why were they doing this? This was no squealer squad; it was just two people — looked like another couple, a man and a woman maybe a little younger than lunch at the house. Yet they continued to walk toward the van, waving, yelling.

Believing we’re squealers ourselves because Zees don’t drive cars.

The sudden realization sent something resembling a thrill through Tim’s body. More rusty gears started turning again: He put the thing in drive, mashed the accelerator down and ran over the two squealers — nailing them both dead center, bumping over their bodies and continuing on quite a ways at high speed before he ran the van into a rock wall along the highway.

This time, airbags deployed and Tim didn’t have to take another steering column to the chest. Marilyn, however, was still lying in the back, and her body came flying forward and right through the windshield, hitting the rock wall like a missile and landing on the crumpled hood of the car.

The car was making a lot of strange noises, steam was coming out of the front of it and there was a cloud of fine, white dust in the air when Tim heard himself speak again, a new phrase:

“You OK?”

Pushing the airbag out of the way, he looked at Marilyn draped across the hood of the car, her arms over her head and her eyes wide open – still wrapped in the bright yellow blanket. Tim struggled out of the hole left by the windshield, clambered over Marilyn, grabbed onto her ankles and pulled her onto the ground. Remarkably, she stood, her yellow blanket falling to her feet. She looked no worse for wear, even if her face was rather cut up.

Tim was all about the double-squealer meal he’d just prepared for them, and he gestured to Marilyn to hurry as he spazzed his way back from where they came. Marilyn was moving at her usual glacial pace — slowed down even more by the blanket she was now holding onto and which was dragging in the dirt behind her. But as soon as she got a whiff of the fresh kill, she grunted and started shimmying forward at an accelerated pace.

One of them, the young woman, was still alive — her eyes darting, scared and her breath coming in gulps. When Tim’s ghastly face appeared above her, she screwed up her face to scream, but he clapped his filthy hand over her mouth. Tim put her out of her misery quickly with that first, savory bite to the neck and reeled as her hot blood gushed and pumped into his mouth. Marilyn was performing the same maneuver on the man, and for the next hour they hovered over the bodies, sating themselves with their favorite parts and occasionally making eye contact with each other. Tim wanted to believe Marilyn was somehow saying “thanks” with her looks, but mostly he figured she was making sure he was sticking to his corpse and not wanting to horn in on hers.

It was odd, Tim thought, that given a choice they went for the opposite sex. If he had to think about it, though, as he sat there chewing yet another fresh (if somewhat smallish) breast, he’d much rather eat a female. Seemed, somehow, more natural.

In a world like this, finding things that at least appeared natural was, he guessed, a good thing.

Chapter 12. Luxury

Covered in blood and gore and feeling quite content after their meal, Tim and Marilyn stood almost simultaneously and looked up the road. They started walking, and Tim knew she had the same idea as him: This car thing was a good deal; they needed to find another.

It didn’t take long. The next key-equipped and unlocked vehicle they found was a big, black station wagon — obviously some kind of a luxury vehicle. It had softer seats than the minivan, lots of room in the back for Marilyn to stretch out and a great many more buttons and other doo-dads for Tim to confront than any of the other cars.

When the car loomed out of the haze, Tim turned and waved Marilyn on. Although her hunger was sated, she was still hobbling from the car crash, and Tim wondered how much longer she could go. Her bad hip looked like it was acting up again, and her gait was that of a drunken ape. Amazingly, however, she’d ascertained that her blanket was of a style that could be worn — with a hole for the head and long sleeves. Marilyn had, all on her own, worked it over her broken body, and she now had all but her hideous mask of a fucked-up face covered by the bright yellow fleece with the word “WEEZER” emblazoned on the front. Getting into the back seat of the car, she gave what sounded like a satisfied sigh and went into pause mode while Tim sat in the driver’s seat and contemplated the dizzying array of controls in front of him.

They could go another couple of days without eating after that feast, but “south” was still on Tim’s agenda. So far as he could tell, they were still pointing in that direction. But how far could he make it as a driver? Up until now, a couple hundred yards was about the limit of his range before crashing. He had to figure this car thing out a little better if it killed him. And maybe it would. How much blunt-force trauma can a Zee withstand before it just can’t be sentient or ambulatory any more?

If Marilyn was any indication, quite a lot.

She takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.

Tim frowned at the useless tidbit of human memory. He needed something more substantial, like who he was, where he was going. Why … why anything.

“It’s quiet” he said in an angry snarl, grabbing the key and turning it. The engine in this thing was so quiet he wasn’t sure it had even turned on, but it made a terrible sound when he tried the key again, and things were lit up and moving on the display in front of him. Once again, he clicked the main lever down one position and noted that made it roll backwards. The next position seemed to be some sort of “pause” mode, which he immediately dubbed in his mind the “Marilyn position.” It was the third click that made the thing go forward, and even without touching the foot thing Tim observed that the vehicle moved — if ever so slowly.

Maybe this was it: Forget all about the foot pedal for speed (unless there’s game out there) and just creep along. He wanted to move quickly, but maybe going slow and not crashing every car would be a better plan. He gripped the wheel with his hands and moseyed down the road, making long, deliberate curves with the wheel and successfully negotiating the vehicle around an overturned truck. He discovered he could apply very light pressure on the go pedal to move it a bit faster, but he kept it at little more than a walking pace.

Another one of those “south” signs appeared, so he kept it moving, ever so slowly. Tim found it took every ounce of his concentration and limited brain power to pilot the wagon down the road at 3 mph. He knew they weren’t going much faster than they could walk, but to him it felt like he was in a high-speed race. Even enormous obstacles like jack-knifed 18-wheelers, which he could see coming a mile away, presented themselves as sudden obstacles he had to negotiate with split-second timing. Still, he wound up bumping and scraping the beautiful black car against things as they went by.

But they kept moving. They saw nothing else that day on the road other than one big, fat cracker of a squealer who trundled out of the woods and slapped against the windshield so suddenly that Tim let out a girlish scream. He didn’t know what to do, so he just let the fat Zee hang on the windshield wipers for a couple of miles until, finally, he slithered off onto the ground. Tim thought about circling back and running him over for good measure, but thought better of it.

He didn’t want to fuck up his nice Mercedes.

When night came, Tim pulled the car onto the shoulder and turned it off. He’d found the switch for the headlights, but thought driving at night would present too many difficulties. It also occurred to him that they’d be easier to spot that way, and he was keenly aware that there simply had to be some more squealer squads out there. The one from the playground couldn’t be that far away, and it stood to reason that other groups had formed, banded together.

But where the hell was everyone? He knew lots of people had died. Some had risen to join the Zees, others were still fighting to remain human and plenty more had been simply eaten entirely. But still, that left a lot unaccounted for. They were driving past a lot of open, uninhabited and heavily forested land, but every now and again they’d come across a town — a place more or less identical to the last. First would come the signs for McDonald’s, Best Western, Taco Bell and Conoco, then the outlying exits. Then Tim would watch as a microcosm of civilization floated by at low speed outside the windows: houses, schools, churches, office buildings. Each town bore the signs of the Zee plague, and each seemed entirely stripped of life — zombie or otherwise.

The towns — and they’d passed three of them that day — made for some tricky driving, and there’d been several times when Tim thought they might have to abandon the Mercedes and switch cars. But each time he’d been able to navigate his way past the obstruction of junked cars, burned bodies or, in one case, a pile of boxed television sets that had been ejected from an overturned semi. Whenever he started bumping into things and using the gas pedal to blast through, Marilyn would stir from the back and get up to see what was going on.

And when they parked for the night and Tim shifted over to the passenger seat for some rest, Marilyn got all perky, opened the door (she’d learned to do that) and scuttled slowly into the woods. There’d been a time not too long ago that Tim would’ve followed her to make sure she was staying safe, but he’d come to think she more or less knew what she was doing. There was also the fact that, no matter what happened, Marilyn’s time had to be coming close to an end. So accident prone, for starters, it was only a matter of time before she had her head chopped off or caught fire or stopped a bullet or something. And how long could they go without eating if the supply of fresh human flesh dried up?

He didn’t know for sure, but it wasn’t long. They’d already seen their share of starved Zees. Sad cases, sitting or lying there unable to move, their eyes wide open and staring skyward. You couldn’t tell if they were fully dead or still in suspended Zee mode unless you gave them a little kick. They’d either topple over silently or with a groan; either way more part of another world than this one anymore — and better off, Tim couldn’t help but think.

He tried to sleep, knowing he wouldn’t, and then did. Sitting there staring at the backs of his eyelids, Tim slid down into something greatly resembling a nap. He woke after a few minutes, startled but also aware of having rested completely for the first time as a Zee. It was still dark out, Marilyn still gone, and the area around the car utterly quiet on a moonless night. Tim closed his eyes again, wondering if he could re-create the nap.

He slept until dawn. And he dreamed, dreamed of things he used to know but couldn’t place in any context. There were the same recurring faces: a pretty woman with dark hair, a pair of children who came up to his knees; guys in white coats in some other place, hovering over computers, glass vials of liquid and machines that displayed different colored bars and lines. It was as if they were floating just beyond reach under the surface of a clear and still pond: fuzzy and indistinct at first, but then growing in shape and definition and with words starting to cling to the images, like snowflakes gathering on a leaf:

Wife, Kids … followed by

Janet, Madison, Monroe … and, finally

Meridian.

What the hell was meridian? The answer was just over the horizon in his dream, and he was driving toward it in the black station wagon — very, very slowly. Marilyn was on the hood, clinging to the windshield wipers, staring at him with those eyes. Maybe he was going slowly so she wouldn’t fall off, but he burned to stamp down on the gas pedal and make it over the rise to meridian.

This was a good dream.

The first bullet penetrated the windshield and struck the headrest about an inch from his left ear. Tim’s eyes shot open, the dream vanished in a puff and there was Marilyn, on the hood, clinging to the windshield wipers as a small group of men in black approached with weapons at the ready. One of them took another shot and hit Marilyn in the back; the bullet passed right through her and the windshield and landed, spent, on the dashboard.

These guys have no idea there’s a driving zombie in this car.

Tim slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key, pulled the gear lever into the “D” position and hit the gas.

Chapter 13. The city

The guys in the squealer squad scattered, jumping out of the way as Tim roared past in the wagon. He saw them run fruitlessly behind for a short time, then start trotting off in another direction — probably to get their own vehicle. Tim stopped the car and got Marilyn back inside, where she huddled down in the back seat with the Snuggie over her head.

Yeah, I’d like to do that too, sister.

Tim knew they had very little time. He had to drive somewhere where they could get out and hide before those guys showed up — probably in another big pickup, racing engine, yelling, gunshots. It wouldn’t last long, and then he and Marilyn would just be another two whacked Zees — another mini triumph for the squad. Maybe they’d have gasoline poured on them, a match thrown and everything they ever were would be reduced to a charred smudge on the frozen ground.

“Fuck that!” Tim managed to say aloud, although it came out sounding like “fuhghaaa.” Still, only Marilyn was available for critique, and she didn’t weigh in from her position in back.

Tim pushed the black wagon as fast as he felt possible without crashing it. He was still heading south, and abandoned and wrecked cars and trucks were becoming more plentiful on the road. He’d have to slow down to thread the wagon among them, and he noticed some of them looked more “fresh.” Steam still issued from some of the hoods, and some of the gore on the ground looked like it was from more recent kills. There was something else as well, something off in the distance just beginning to resolve itself out of the morning haze:

A city.

Tim felt something akin to panic hit him in the midsection (wow, more real feelings) as he quickly calculated what a city meant. More people both human and Zee, more places to hide, possibly more targets to feed upon but certainly more squealer squads or whatever their urban equivalent was. There was probably some organized squealer resistance, a crude government that oversaw things like shelter, food gathering and, yeah, Zee whacking.

Probably. From this distance, the city looked quiet if not abandoned. But Tim was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. And maybe this explained why the countryside had looked so deserted: Everyone was making their way here, to the city. Like they always did, historically: the urban center, land of opportunity — or a meaty squealer, if nothing else.

As they drew closer to the larger buildings, the going got slower and slower until finally Tim had to stop — bumping the front of the black wagon gently into the overturned carcass of a cement truck. The cessation of movement caused Marilyn to pop up from the back seat like an expectant Labrador. Seen in the rear-view mirror, her just-up-from-a-nap visage presented a particularly frightening picture, and she came close to making Tim scream again.

He opened his door and, with a grunt and a gesture, got Marilyn to join him. Together, they looked at the city, growing more distinct as the sun slowly appeared and the mist began to clear. Tim pointed at it and grunted again, then started shuffling toward the conglomeration of buildings as Marilyn huffed behind him.

That last shot had apparently penetrated one of her lungs, so now Marilyn issued a peculiar whistling sound when she moved. To keep his increasingly busy mind occupied, Tim thought about trying to list all of his and her wounds since they’d met, but behind them he heard the squealer squad they’d just encountered hurrying through the wreckage to their abandoned black wagon. One of them tried a ranging shot that struck a billboard 10 feet from them.

Although hurrying wasn’t generally in Marilyn’s nature, she got the idea and started shuffling faster. She looked ludicrous, in her yellow Snuggie with her arms, hips and legs gyrating wildly underneath, like puppies wrapped in a blanket. They’d managed to put some more vehicles between themselves and the Zee hunters, and then Tim saw an exit off the road and followed it. He figured they had, at best, half a minute to find a safe place before the hunters came in range, and he looked around frantically as they descended the ramp, which culminated in a traffic light hanging upside down from a mess of wires.

There were cars and buildings, some with windows blasted out. He didn’t want to duck into the first one, though — that’d be too obvious. He led Marilyn down a side street that soon opened onto a wider boulevard full of store fronts. The scene told the story of what had gone on in the city: burned buildings and cars, gore smears all over the sidewalks and even walls, a complete absence of light or electricity and water bubbling up from the street drains and manholes — so much so that they were up to their knees in it in the street. Tim grabbed Marilyn’s arm and guided her onto the sidewalk and then through the shattered opening of a store full of beds and other furniture.

As soon as they were inside, they could hear the hunters enter the street, yelling directions (some of which Tim was starting to understand). He pulled Marilyn over to the back of the store and looked around for a place to stow her.

One of the beds on display had a large drawer underneath it, which was in the open position. He recognized it as an extra place for a bed, but there was no mattress in it: perfect for a hiding zombie. Marilyn complained, but he managed to get her to lie down on the slats and then shoved the drawer shut, giving her the “keep quiet” gesture before her tortured face slid out of sight. He stood still for a moment to listen for her whistling lung. Yep, there it was, but so long as no one got within a few feet, they shouldn’t be able to hear it.

Nearby was a kids’ section, and Tim chose a loft bed made to look like a pirate ship. He climbed the spiral staircase into the top, which was covered in a swath of fabric made to look like sails.

And he waited. The sheets smelled very new, and the mattress, he reflected, was thin and not nearly as comfortable and plush as the one at the house where they’d eaten Belly and Thong. But it felt good to lie down for a moment — at least until the danger was either past or … no longer relevant. The image of his and Marilyn’s bodies burning out on the sidewalk, next to the street-river, produced in him an involuntary shudder.

Two of them came in and gave the furniture showroom a good, 20-second blast of automatic weapon fire. Then, they stomped around, kicking things over and, Tim could imagine, looking under beds and around corners. Tim lay perfectly still on his back, his arms folded across his chest like a vampire as he peered into the leering face of a pirate — Blackbeard, perhaps, woven into the fabric of the bed’s canopy.

When the men left, he stayed where he was, took one last look at Blackbeard and closed his eyes. Being in something akin to a child’s bedroom was prompting more memories of his human life, and he was hoping to capture some of them before they drifted away. Marilyn, he knew, would remain right where she was until he came to get her.

She was that kind of patient Zee.

First, he went down the list of things he’d heard from the men that he’d understood. “In here!” “Fuck” and “fucking” (which the squealer-squad guys used as liberally as their bullets), and “Hit it!” This one just before they sprayed the place with their weapons.

It occurred to Tim that, had the men taken just a little more time to do a thorough search, they would most certainly have found him and Marilyn. So they were lazy, or stupid, or they just didn’t care that much about Zees in hiding.

Because soon enough they would either die where they hid or come out seeking flesh and get whacked in the process.

Tim tried to remember the last time they’d had anything to eat. Time was still a fuzzy concept for him, but he was starting to get some semblance of day and night counting back. It must’ve been two days ago that he’d run over the young man and woman, and they’d been able to linger over the kills for quite some time to fill their bellies. He could feel a bit of an empty space in his gut now, which meant Marilyn would be even hungrier. But the last thing he wanted to do right now was roam the streets of an unknown city while squealer squads were afoot. Better to at least wait until dark. He also wondered about the furniture store — why no one was in here already? It was close to the highway, had a wide-open door and plenty of comfy beds. If he and Marilyn had found it so easily, did it not stand to reason that someone else might? Someone with a pulse?

They were rare among Zees, he knew, when it came to their willingness to use the trappings of humans — beds, cars and the like. It was unlikely any other Zees would wander in here, but it might be worth waiting a few hours to see if dinner walked in the door.

Clambering down out of his pirate ship, Tim went to get Marilyn. It was a pretty big store, and it took him a long time to find the bed that contained her. But then he got close enough to hear her punctured lung whistling. It sounded like a distant teapot. He slid the drawer open to reveal her comatose eyes staring straight up, like she’d been reading recipes written on the underside of the bed. She cocked her head about a micron, looked at Tim and freed one hand from her Snuggie to hold out to him.

Since Marilyn was still all Zee, her first instinct was to wobble through the smashed entryway onto the street and make herself available to be shot. Through the rudimentary communication system they’d established — grunts, gestures and the occasional shove — he got her to hunker down with him behind a large buffet near the front of the store. He pantomimed as best he could some people walking in, followed by their attack and consumption. Marilyn gave him a slightly less blank look, which he took for comprehension. At least she wasn’t trying to walk out the door again.

Their stakeout so close to the smashed front windows enabled Tim to listen to the sounds of the city. In the background was the constant sound of moving water as the myriad burst pipes of the city gushed their contents onto the street. He wondered if, at some point, the level would rise past the sidewalk and into the ground floors of the buildings. A concern for another day, he figured.

In addition to the water, there was the occasional gunshot and what sounded like a car being dropped from a great height every minute or so. After the sound occurred several times, Tim started to realize it was on some kind of schedule, but he couldn’t imagine a reason for it. Was it some kind of Zee trap? Maybe a manufacturing plant still running somehow, yet gone haywire? Some squealer squad creating noise or distraction for some unknown purpose?

Wham/Crash! Wait … Wham/Crash! Wait … Wham/Crash! Wait …

What the hell IS that?

It was pretty far away, Tim reckoned, but he couldn’t help but listen for it, his body tensing more and more as the water-silence prepared to be broken by the wham/crash. By the time the 10th iteration of the sound came around, he could focus on little else — which is why he didn’t notice the enormously fat woman who walked, with extraordinary stealth for a woman of her size, right into there here-and-now.

Chapter 14. The fat lady

Marilyn saw her, though, and with a horrific shriek she was on her in a flash. Marilyn could move like a rocket ship when dinner was involved, and in this case she moved so fast the fat lady only had time to raise the pistol in her hand about halfway before Marilyn was tearing into her neck with savage abandon.

After his double take, Tim watched in awe as Marilyn dispatched her prey, tore the tent-like dress from her body and tucked into the massive reservoirs of fat this woman had been storing — apparently just for them — lo these many years. Her breasts alone represented more meat than you’d get off an average, full-grown man, and her ass could no doubt fortify a Zee family of six for a week or more. She was, in short, a tremendous windfall, and Tim lunged forward to tear off her brassiere and behold the apricot-sized nipples quivering atop tits the size of volleyballs. He soon had both apricots in his mouth, happily chewing away, before his somewhat-higher brain kicked in again:

What was she doing in here, all alone?

He stood up and looked toward the entrance where she’d come in. No one there. Walking over, he peered out, half expecting to get the crown of his head blown off, as he’d seen happen to so many Zees. It was coming on twilight, and the sidewalks appeared empty as the water rushed by in the street.

He was about to turn around and back to their fabulous meal when he noticed it, bobbing right in front of him: a small, flat-bottomed boat tied to a fire hydrant. Was this what the fat lady came in? It hardly seemed possible that someone of her girth could’ve fit in the tiny craft, much less get far in it without sinking.

On closer inspection, though, it appeared the boat was being used simply as a water-borne wagon of sorts. In it were boxes and bags full of food, water, weapons and other supplies. Pushing his brain hard to make sense of it, Tim guessed the fat lady walked along the sidewalk towing her little boat of stuff. Alone, apparently, and now very much not in need of her craft. Tim eyed the craft and wondered whether it would support him and Marilyn, and if it made any sense whatsoever to get in it and float down the street. Where would it lead them? And wouldn’t they just make great targets, sitting there in the middle of the main drag?

Perhaps, but not so much at night. Looking up and down the street, working hard to remember where the highway was and which way south lay, Tim came to the uncertain but alluring conclusion that the street-river flowed south as well — south, toward Meridian. If they could float on this current under cover of darkness, they could get far – a lot farther than they could on foot.

Struck by the idea, Tim started emptying the boat, tossing the boxes and bags of stuff into the running water. His idea was to see how high it would float, then try to guess if his and Marilyn’s combined weight would swamp it. He stepped into the street and observed the water was almost up to his knees. Once the boat was empty — save a machete, a couple of guns and a box of Slim Jims (he had an idea for those) — his poor brain clattered to the conclusion that it just might work. They could float in comfort down this urban river, munching on one of the fat lady’s legs and ass cheeks they’d bring along as provisions, and shooting at anyone who tried to shoot at them. Assuming, of course, Tim could figure out how to make a gun shoot.

Hell, I drove a car, I can shoot a gun.

There was, of course, the small matter of disengaging Marilyn from the meal-of-the-century and convincing her to get in a rickety little boat. No doubt it’d be easier to do in a day or two, after they’d had their fill of the fat lady. But Tim somehow doubted the boat would be so patient. He could also imagine it being something of a signpost out front of their story, encouraging squealers to wonder who the sailor was and what he was doing in the furniture store. On top of all that was his growing sense of urgency: south, Meridian, those people — clues to his former existence and some kind of key to the future. Maybe even a cure. And somehow he knew the clock was ticking. He could feel more pain in his body, a growing sense that he was morphing toward become more squealer than Zee.

No, it had to be tonight. With the sun just setting, he had a couple of hours to get ready. That meant cutting some hunks of flesh off the fat lady with the machete, loading the boat with Marilyn and the meat and, perhaps most difficult, untying the knot that held the little aluminum boat in place.

Returning to the kill, which was right next to a little girl’s fanciful unicorns-and-mermaid bed, Tim observed Marilyn efficiently inserting the easiest, choice bits of fat lady into her horrible maw. Not ready to arouse suspicion, he dug into some of his own favorite parts, and the two of them noisily fed for an hour or more, reducing the woman from a person to a pile of indiscernible flesh, bones and blood in no time. As he ate, Tim also managed to save some selects, sawing them off with the machete and tucking them under the wings of a large, stuffed pink dragon. Marilyn didn’t seem to notice, gnawing intently on a gelatinous forearm as Tim shoved a 10-pound roll of belly fat under the dragon’s wings.

When Marilyn finally sat back on her haunches — her Snuggie now looking like a butcher’s apron and a dazed, sated look on her face — Tim started to put his plan into action. He shoved the bloody fat-lady bits into a pillowcase and, standing up, started for the door while gesturing to Marilyn to follow.

She didn’t, which was no surprise. Marilyn was in a meat coma, and he knew from experience she liked to just sit stupidly for hours following a feed like that. But the sun had now been down a couple of hours and it was a moonless night, raining lightly. There wasn’t a better time to go, and if it came down to it, he’d leave without her.

The thought made him sad, as he tossed the dripping, bloody pillowcase into the boat. He’d known Marilyn almost as long as he’d been a Zee — which was to say his whole life, in effect — and felt they pretty much needed each other. He needed someone to watch out for, and Marilyn needed him to keep her out of trouble. Or so he thought. Ultimately, he knew it made little difference, that they were both doomed. At best they might survive another week or two, and what kind of life was this? But, then, who ever know how long they had? A squealer at the top of the world could get hit by a bus tomorrow, he knew. For Zees, it was even more sketchy. You could be hobbling along minding your own business when some asshole with a long-range rifle could blow off the top of your head without a second thought. Talk about fate … and karma. It wasn’t like creatures like Tim and Marilyn could expect sympathy from any humans. They were the scourge of the earth, murdering ghouls without a single redeeming characteristic. If Tim had any sense of decency left, he’d figure out one of those guns tout de suite and pop himself before he murdered again.

He leaned against the building, looking at the bobbing boat and thinking about that. How was he any different from, say, a leopard, which survived by murdering antelopes? There were even fish and other critters, he recalled, that ate each other — much as the Zees fed on squealers. If there was a god — and Tim was pretty sure at this point there wasn’t — would he split hairs between leopard-on-antelope and Zee-on-squealer killing? What was the difference, other than brain capacity, underwear cleanliness and bank balances?

All this philosophical thinking literally made Tim dizzy, and he sat down, back against the wall and closed his eyes. He was increasingly aware of the growing part of his mind that wasn’t all Zee, that wasn’t solely concerned with where the next bit of live human flesh and fresh blood was coming from. He had the words in his grasp: Janet, Madison, Monroe … and Meridian. The first three words were connected to people, people he cared about — or at least used to care about. That fourth was … a place. It was the place in the south, the place he was looking for. If he could get there, he somehow knew, something good would happen. Questions would be answered. He’d get to see Janet and … the kids. Maybe they could fix him, help him …

Cure him.

It seemed unlikely; he seemed far beyond help. All these bullet wounds, if he turned back into a human, could he even survive? Marilyn, he was pretty sure, was even deader than your average Zee, and with no discernible human part left. Still, he would take her with him, and when he was cured, perhaps they could keep her out in the yard as a pet.

Tim felt the corners of his mouth twitch slightly upward as the thought of Marilyn tied to a stake in the backyard amused him. And then, speak of the devil woman, he heard her whistling chest approaching. He opened his eye and there she was, scuffling past in her blood-soaked Snuggie carrying a dripping Harry Potter pillowcase which, Tim would learn shortly, contained a substantial rump roast from the fat lady.

She stopped and looked to Tim for further instructions and, in that moment, he felt something like … well, he wasn’t sure what, but it was something just ever so slightly warm and charitable towards Marilyn. He pointed at the faerie pillowcase, and she tossed her own on top of it. Tim then took her hand, guided her to step into the boat and motioned for her to sit.

So far, so good. The boat was sitting lower in the water, but it seemed like it would continue to float with him in as well. He turned his attention to the rope and quickly discovered there was no knot at all; it was simply looped over the fire hydrant. He pulled it over the top, flopped into the boat and they took off down the river-street at what seemed a breakneck pace.

Look Marilyn! We’re Tom and Huck heading off down the mighty Mississippi! Goddamn!

What actually came out was a barfy-sounding “Huck,” which drew a scowl from Marilyn. She now had her pillowcase in her lap and was soon ducking her head into the opening from time to time, emerging with gobs of flesh.

That’s my girl, thought Tim. That’s my girl.

Chapter 15: The River

The boat ride wasn’t as much fun as it might have been — not that zombies are looking for fun. In fact, it pretty much sucked. They couldn’t move in it, as the slightest shift in weight would cause the craft to tilt crazily and threaten to buck them out. The river in the street was shallow, and they often bumped and scraped along the bottom. On several occasions, Tim had to take the paddle and push off at the bottom to get moving again. Still, it was moving them at a good clip, and the rain had increased, making it even more unlikely anyone would spot them from “the shore.”

After what he guessed was roughly midnight, the current slowed enough that Tim could sit back and stop worrying they were about to capsize. Marilyn had gone into her happy place, and Tim watched as the street widened, the storefronts grew fewer and farther between and the rain began to slacken. Sitting back against the side of the boat, he pulled out one of the Slim Jims and regarded it.

It had occurred to Tim that, if he had any chance whatsoever of regaining normalcy some day, he’d have to give up the eating-people thing. That would entail the consumption of people food rather than people, and the sterile, highly processed meat substance of a Slim Jim seemed like a good place to start. Somewhere in his submerged memory, Tim had a vague recollection of a guilty fondness for Slim Jims, and though it took him nearly half an hour to get the package open, he beheld its salty, cylindrical form with both wonder and warmth. Placing it slowly between his teeth — which still needed a good flossing from the fat lady feast — he bit down slowly with the expectation of savoring every morsel while noting he wasn’t sure what happened to a zombie when it tried people food. Would he be like a dog, who soon learned he much preferred it? Or would it cause some sort of negative, physiological reaction – an allergic fit, anaphylactic shock perhaps, or terrible hives or boils?

None of that happened. The Slim Jim brought a rush of memories with it — something about childhood, a candy store on the corner, strawberry soda. Although he wasn’t at all hungry, Tim ate it, then peeled another and ate it as well. It pleased him immensely, and he imagined weaning himself off people starting with Slim Jims and other jerky products, then perhaps moving onto raw hamburger meat, steaks and the like before he rounded it out with the full cornucopia of human foods: bread, pastries, cereal and Pop Tarts; oranges, spinach, water chestnuts and Twizzlers.

Well, one thing at a time, Tim old boy.

Lost in reverie over the bright future just revealed to him, it took a moment for Tim to notice the boat had slowed and finally stopped, its bow lodged in a mass of trash piled against a curb. The water had faded down to a trickle here, and it appeared to be the end of the line for the boat ride. Waiting at the river’s terminus was a gaggle of Zees who, Tim guessed, had yielded good squealer meals this way more than once in the past.

They were on top of the boat, looming over Tim, before he even realized it. One of them dove at Tim’s neck, and he shifted just in time to have the ghoul’s teeth rip a chunk from his shoulder instead.

Marilyn snapped out of her coma immediately, jumping up and pushing at the Zees while gargling her terrible sounds. Tim had jumped out of the boat and onto a patch of dirt, where he stood nursing his wounded shoulder. He glowered at the Zee who’d done it, and watched with disgust as she chewed quickly then swallowed.

“You stupid fuckers!” he yelled. And it actually came out pretty clear. He stood there with the machete, ready to lop off the arm or head of any Zee approaching him.

Marilyn echoed him in her own barf-gargle language, stamping her feet and waving her arms.

The five Zees looked her over and dismissed her – her Zee-ness apparently beyond question. But Tim, they circled, sniffing and making occasional threatening lunges at him. They “consulted” with the Zee who’d sampled his arm, trying to discern, Tim imagined, if he tasted like human or Zee. Once she realized all eyes were on her, the girl — a goth-looking teen who’d had much of her hair and scalp ripped off — made some odd smacking noises, waving her hand near her mouth as if to recall Tim’s relative meatiness in advance of assigning it a grade.

The standoff was quickly rendered moot when one of them discovered the pillowcases full of fresh meat in the boat and started making a commotion about it. All five of them were on it in a flash, with Marilyn right in the thick of it, angling for her share.

Tim recognized an exit opportunity when he saw one and, after delivering a sharp kick to Marilyn’s ass, took off in the direction the river had been flowing. She was alongside momentarily, a good-sized hunk of fat lady in her hands. It was nearing dawn, and cold, but at least there wasn’t any of the creepy mist of recent days — and the rain had stopped altogether. Tim reflected on the fact that, when they’d been back at the farmhouse, it had looked like winter was just upon them. But things had swung back around, apparently, giving a lot of stupid Zees an extra lease on the half-lives they had. Walking along next to Marilyn, he felt gratitude for her actions, but could think of no way to express it. He might offer her a Slim Jim, but he’d left them back in the boat. A pity, really, because he’d wanted to see what her reaction would be to people food. Would she even try it? Marilyn struck him as something of a purist, very much down with the fresh human flesh thing. But who knew? Maybe Slim Jims were the way out of the darkness for Zees.

And what about him? Would she start to sense what the other Zees back there had — that Tim was human enough to be Zee-feed? Was his confederate turning into a potential enemy, and would their time together and odd affection for each other mean a thing if hunger got the better of her? Tim had slipped the smaller of the handguns he found in the boat in his pocket, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it on Marilyn. Of course, that was assuming A) it had any bullets in it, B) he could figure out how to shoot it and C) he hit her in the head. Anywhere else would just piss her off, and the last thing Tim wanted was to be on the receiving end of Marilyn’s flesh-frenzied attack.

Concerns for later. Now, they were at the time of day when he was looking for some shelter. They appeared to be in another suburb, although a more run-down one with shabby single-family homes and trailers. Again, the place looked abandoned, signs of Zee-squealer battles all around, but by now Tim knew the landscape: They were out there, or in there, but hiding. Waiting for opportunity. To whack or feed, depending on their status with the human race.

An open door, signs of a Zee-won battle that might suggest an empty house — that’s what Tim was looking for. He soon found one with a wide-open door propped open, as usual, by a dead Zee. It was a simple, two-story house faded yellow with a weather vane up top that creaked in the breeze. Tim looked up at it a moment and tried to figure out what direction the wind was blowing, then decided it didn’t much matter. He was just slightly impressed he was able to remember what the thing was and did, and to assign it its proper name: weather vane.

He and Marilyn stepped over the body and entered. It reminded him of his grandmother’s house: full of doilies and dried flowers, several cat bowls on the kitchen floor and pictures of grandchildren on the refrigerator. The house had several large windows in the main living area, which he moved to get away from: He didn’t want some stupid squealer squadder popping them from the street. He led Marilyn to a set of stairs leading upstairs, and they slowly ascended. The stairs creaked magnificently, alerting Tim to the possibility that any scared squealer hunkered down with a 12 gauge was listening, waiting.

But the house was empty. They found just two bedrooms upstairs, and after dismissing the first as too girlishly similar to the last one they’d spent time in, they picked grandma’s room. The old woman who’d lived here was a smear of blood and tattered clothes on the carpet; even her bones had been carried off by the busy Zees. The bed was fresh-made, however, with a lovely granny-square comforter, fancy shams and framed embroideries on the wall containing what Tim was able to identify as folksy writings.

“Bless this home” read one, and Tim read it, understood it and rejoiced. The other was a longer piece titled “A knitter’s prayer,” but Tim gave up after the first line or two. It was enough to know he was able to read anything.

He sat on the side of the bed, thought for a moment, then allowed the rest of his body to fall into the ultra-soft bedding. After bumping around a little bit, Marilyn joined him, and they both stared up at the ceiling.

They were close, Tim thought, close to Meridian. This particular neighborhood didn’t look right to him, but perhaps it was just a little bit further … south. He closed his eyes and let the incomplete images of Janet, Madison, Monroe and Meridian crowd his consciousness, then fell into a deep, dream-riddled sleep.

In his dreams, Tim discovered it all. His subconscious mind filled in most of the blanks: Where he’d come from, his family, his work, the events that led him to the world of Zees and the path he needed to take to get back. All of it was condensed into one, perfect and tight narrative that would enable him to act quickly, as soon as he woke up. But he had to wake up gradually, naturally, so that the diaphanous mask of his dreams could coalesce into something solid and memorable.

Instead, Tim was awakened suddenly, frightfully, by Marilyn, who was gnawing on his shoulder. She was trying to be coy, gently working the ragged edges of the wound inflicted by the goth Zee earlier that morning. But even though she’d traded her usual blitzkrieg style of dining for a dainty sampling, there was no doubt about what she was up to.

Tim lurched upright, then fell sideways onto the floor. He clambered to his feet and regarded his friend, his traveling companion, his protégé, undead paramour … whatever she was. A cat with a canary in its mouth had nothing on Marilyn, who, Tim realized, now had a mind-boggling decision to make about whether to spit out or swallow the piece of Tim she’d just bitten off.

“Eat it, you stupid bitch! Go ahead! You know you want it! Might as well not let it go to waste!”

Almost seeming to understand, Marilyn swallowed, then hung her head. Tim reached for the gun in his pocket and, in the course of pulling it out, shot off his left big toe. She didn’t even look up as he jumped around on one leg, howling guttural obscenities.

If this were a marriage, this would be the scene where we decide to get divorced.

It was clear pain sensation was coming back, along with his ability read things like “The Knitter’s Prayer.” A week ago, you could’ve shot off all of Tim’s toes and he would just have looked annoyed before lunging for your arteries. Now, it was real pain, and it shot up from his toe to permeate his whole body, making stops at all of his older wounds to remind him that they, too, should hurt like fuck.

Falling back on an ancient love seat in the corner, Tim held his foot in one hand while he contemplated Marilyn. How much of a threat had she become – or had the proximity to his nice, fresh wound just been too much for her to resist? After all, you might understand and forgive a dog who’d jumped on a steak that had fallen to the floor. Now, Marilyn looked like she was going to cry or something; she certainly didn’t look dangerous. Just her usual pathetic fucked-upedness: the brilliantly blank staring eyes below the receding but still visible Dodge Ram symbol. Most of her body’s wounds and infirmities were hidden beneath the bloody smock of her Snuggie, and Tim wondered, once again, how long she had — even if someone didn’t find her noggin with a .470 slug.

When his screaming body settled down to a slightly quieter agony, he approached Marilyn, put his hand on her shoulder and nodded his head as if to say “It’s OK.” Then, what the hell, he pulled her to him in an outright hug, nearly recoiling as the multiple foul odors of her zombie body wafted into his newly awakening smell receptors.

And then she bit him. Again. In the same spot. When he pushed her away, she had only about half the sheepish look on her face, and Tim knew it was over.

“Owwww! Fuck!” He grabbed a lamp and bashed her on the head hard enough to get her to fall, then lurched out of the room, falling down the stairs and coming to rest against an umbrella stand. One of these he grabbed as a potential weapon, and he stood and backed out of the house, half expecting blitzkrieg Marilyn to come tearing after him.

But she didn’t. As he walked slowly away from the little house, Tim kept turning back for signs of movement and saw nothing. Which, in a way, broke his heart. Somewhere in her dead zombie heart, he knew, Marilyn was feeling bad about what she’d done.

But there was no doubt it was beyond the point where Tim could hang out with zombies. He was getting tasty. It was almost rather flattering to consider – and terrifying. He still looked, smelled and walked like a Zee, making him an obvious target for any armed squealer. And if he was starting to smell and act more like a human, any hungry Zee wasn’t going to scruple over his Zee-like appearance.

The world, dangerous as it was already, had just gotten even more perilous. There was only one thing for it: Meridian. There, Tim felt sure, he would find safety, the rest of the cure, and a gaggle of people who cared about him. He just had to get there without being shot or eaten. But how far was it?

Chapter 16. The Wild Man

The day had dawned cold, with a loud sun making its way up over the dead winter trees. Tim didn’t like walking around in daylight, but he was also sick of creepy houses where weird shit happened. Still headed in the direction he was pretty sure represented south, he found himself in a pine forest that, he hoped, was simply a buffer between this old residential neighborhood and some kind of technology park on the other side — home of Meridian. It was some kind of lab, he believed, judging from his memories of himself and others — with clipboards, in white coats, acting all smart.

Being in the trees was a lot more comfortable than walking up the middle of endless Washingtons, Mains and Broadways. The place was unnaturally quiet – not even any birds making noises – which suggested either a great deal of death or a whole lot of hiding. Tim suspected the latter, and cleared out of rifle shot of the houses as soon as he could. Once in the trees, he relaxed somewhat but kept an eye out as he quickened his pace to a rapid, jerky shamble. His shoulder was killing him almost as much as his toe now, and he longed to sit. He kept going as long as he could through the trees. It was a well-worn forest, with plenty of paths and evidence of use by humans. There was trash, initials carved in bark, the occasional sign with an arrow pointing in one direction or another. Tim didn’t think he’d find Meridian at “The Pond” or “The Overlook,” so he kept in a more or less straight direction, doing his best not to moan too much, step on noisy leaves and twigs or otherwise betray his presence.

Finally, he could move no longer and sat heavily on a decomposing log just off the trail. Once he stopped moving, he felt the river of pain throughout his body, emanating primarily from his shoulder and toe but also, once again, finding and highlighting all those places he’d been shot: the slug in the shoulder from the farmhouse; the pistol shots from his first kill, also at the farmhouse; his right ear and left arm from when he and Marilyn finally left the farmhouse … not to mention his face, cut up from having My Little Pony plates hurled at him. He reflected upon the fact that having decorative plates hurled at one’s head represented a fairly benign act compared to being shot at. But it still rather sucked.

Tim felt the urge to tip his head back and bray something to the sky — a wolf-like lament to tell the universe how he felt. And he was just on the verge of doing it when he heard behind him the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being pumped.

“Say something,” said a drawling voice. Authoritative, but not unkind.

“This … fucking … hurts,” Tim said, in his best English.

The man stepped in front of him, gun lowered. Upon seeing Tim’s face, though, he quickly pushed the barrel into the side of Tim’s head.

“What the fuck are you? I ain’t never seen a stinker what can talk, but you don’t look like no freshie.”

Tim sluggishly processed the lingo: “Stinkers” were Zees; “Freshies” were squealers.

“I’m a stinker … who’s turning back into a freshie,” he said, being careful not to move his head, or any other part of his body. Tim was also relieved to note another step in his evolution: The kind of fear that comes from having a shotgun barrel against one’s head was doing a major Rosetta Stone job on his English.

“Bullshit. You’re a lyin’ stinker who learned to talk. Don’t ask me how.”

The man made a terrible face.

“An’ you sure as fuck smell like a stinker. Goddamn, boy! You smell like …” — the man thought a moment — “Like a landfill, a septic tank and a 5-day-old deer carcass all wrapped in one — with fresh piss on top.”

“Thank you,” was all Tim could think to say. He was aware of his olfactory deficiencies. What could he do?

Since it seemed clear he wasn’t immediately going to get his head blown off, Tim allowed his eyes to roll slowly upward at the man. He was a hairy thing, a matted beard, mostly gray behind the particle mask he wore, and bright, blue eyes behind a pair of clear safety goggles. His many layers of clothing and overall appearance suggested he was a homeless man, or maybe just a lone forest dweller who figured he was safer out here than anywhere else. A survivalist. He did not, Tim thought, appear to be of the nastier caste of squealer squad — the types who whacked Zees for fun and compared notes at the end of the day over beers. He decided to take a chance, focusing intently on his burgeoning ability to speak English:

“I’m an experiment. Infected, something happened, I got lost. Have to get back … place called Meridian. They need my blood … find cure.”

It was the contents of his forgotten dream, rushing back to him with the shotgun adrenaline aid.

“I’m pretty sure,” Tim added.

The man was quiet for a moment, but Tim did feel the pressure from the gun barrel come off just a bit.

“No fucking shit,” the man said at last. He said it thoughtfully, like a man who’d just discovered his PBR can had a prize inside.

“Yeah,” Tim said. “Meridian. Heard of it?”

“What, Meridian? Nope. However …” He pulled his mask down around his neck. “I did hear there’s some science folks over at Caswell. Heard it from a guy who was stinker-bit and come from that direction. Sat with him till he died and come back, then shot him in the head like he asked me to. Not like I would’t’ve anyway.”

“What’s Caswell?”

“Caswell? It’s the fucking state pen 20, 30 miles from here. Spent the better part of my 30s there. I can tell you one thing, Mr. Talking Stinker, there’s a whole lotta bad food being served there, a lot of bored motherfuckers drillin’ each other in the ass and a lotta asshole guards tellin’ you what to do. All that shit you heard goes on in prisons, pretty much. But it’s a long way through stinker-infested territory — at least for a guy in your shape. An’ it’s a long shot, just a rumor, really.”

Tim didn’t know what to say to that. His memory of Meridian was growing to where he could picture some of the labs and rooms they worked in. Some of the stuff could have been moved to another location, like a prison. But why would they have left Meridian?

The wild man was warming more to the topic.

“Course, well, prison’s empty now. When all this plague shit hit six months ago, they opened the doors and most of those motherfuckers got ate, or became stinkers, then dead stinkers, within a couple of days. Whacked a few of them myself, right here in my woods. So who’s to say some folks didn’t pick the empty prison to work on their research.”

“Uhhh …” Tim began.

“Fuck, I’ll take you there and we’ll see. If there’s a chance of getting any of this crazy shit turned back to normal, I’m all over it. So get up, Mr. Talking Stinker, and walk ahead of me on that path. Don’t do nothin’ funny or your brains will become part of the scenery.”

They walked for five minutes in silence until the man said, rather suddenly: “Name’s Stacey. Like the girl. Laugh an’ I’ll shoot your dick off. What’s your’n?”

Tim had to think about that for a moment, but he came up with it. It’d been some time since he’d said his own name, and the single syllable sounded odd coming out of his mouth. Like a badge of humanity, the simply introduction hurtled him a few evolutionary steps beyond the nameless Zee he was not too long ago.

“Tim, eh? That’s a pretty funny fucking name for a zombie,” Stacey said. Then he let ring peals of laughter that reverberated through the early morning woods like cannon fire. “Hey hoo! Tim the fucking zombie! Watch out! He’ll eat yer fuckin’ balls off, he gets mad enough! An lookee: He’s hungry, that Tim the zombie!”

Tim said nothing, walking in silence until they came to a place where Stacey had his ‘70s vintage F-150 hidden under a pile of branches. Still laughing, he gestured for Tim to hop up into the bed, and they were off down a dirt road that eventually bumped them out onto a highway.

Peering up over the side, Tim watched the ruined world with a growing sense of doom. What if he could get cured and it could spread to the others still alive (or alive-ish)? Was it even worth it anymore? He could see the city in the distance where they’d spent the night in the furniture store, plumes of smoke still rising in many different parts of it. Out here, there were fields punctuated by various large buildings. More prisons?

The sliding window on the door came open and Stacey yelled at him.

“Get yer fucking head down ya dumb shit! There’s a put-down squad headin’ this way! Pull some-a that shit back there over you.”

He was right. What Tim called a squealer squad — a mean-looking pickup truck full of heavily armed assholes — was fast approaching. He dropped to the floor of the pickup bed and pulled a broken piece of drywall over his head and chest. But the put-down squad didn’t stop; they just raced past, and Stacey continued on his way, driving slowly south on the wreckage-strewn highway for another hour or so with no further comments directed through the slider. Tim stayed where he was, feeling the truck maneuver slowly around the road’s obstacles as Tim himself grew faint from pain and, now, hunger. Lying still made his wounds throb incessantly, and he felt himself losing consciousness even as more details of his human life drifted in and out of his mind. He could hang onto nothing; the memories were strands passing over him like clouds — taking recognizable shapes, then morphing into abstract blobs, meaningless packets. Finally the only image on the screen was a dark shade being drawn down over him, which he recognized as death, long delayed, coming to visit him with a decided finality. He rose to it, longed to embrace it and felt it start to wrap around his being like a warm, wet sweater.

The wet was real, at least: His descent into that dark tunnel was interrupted by a great mass of water being poured on him by Stacey. He saw his furry face looming above him.

“Wake up! Don’t fuckin’ die on me yet, you stupid motherfucker. Come on now! Open yer eyes!”

Water had gone up Tim’s nose and into his mouth, and he sat up spluttering, gasping for air — to Stacey’s great mirth.

“Ha! That worked like a fucking charm!”

Behind Stacey came the unmistakable sound of a zombie screech.

“Oh shit. Damn, that didn’t take long.”

Tim let his head fall back to the bed of the pickup as he heard Stacey dispatch what sounded like at least a dozen Zees. In between shotgun blasts and the report of the 9mm, Tim heard Stacey’s running commentary addressed to the Zees approaching him.

“OK motherfucker, here you go! (Blam!) You want summa this? (Blam) Ouch, that’s gotta hurt, getting’ the top of your head blowed off like that. Ha! (Blam!) Oh, sorry dear, did that hurt, the slug in your forehead? Looks like I got you right ‘tween the eyes. Nice shootin’, Stacey. Whoa, Hey Timmy, this guy here’s nekkid, an’ looks like he got his dick chewed off. Ow, buddy. Let me put you outta yer misery …”

After what seemed like a very long time to Tim, Stacey reached over and poked him with the barrel of the shotgun.

“Hey Stinky, wake up! This is gettin’ bad out here. We got stinkers comin’ from the east over there, and to the south there’s a whole herd of ‘em cloggin’ up the road. I’d need a fuckin’ mini gun to get through ‘em all, so we’re gonna have to hole up somewheres. Goddamn zombie convention goin’ on out here, I tell you what. So stay put, don’t die. I’m-a look for a house or some shit.”

Tim blacked out again as the truck began moving. When he came to, he was looking at a set of stairs receding behind him. He was being carried by Stacey, who’d flung him over his shoulder and brought him into what looked like some kind of office building. At the top of the stairs, Stacey gently set him down against a desk and sat down heavily beside him.

“Fuck,” was all he said. After a few moments, Stacey got up and moved to the other side of the room.

“No offense, boy, but … damn!”

“I know,” mumbled Tim. “I stink.”

“You stink …” here, Stacey paused for a moment to think of some more good stuff … “like a friggin’ garbage truck that’s loaded with vulture vomit and’s been sittin’ inside a locked warehouse on a hot day.”

“Thanks … for bringing me up here. Not sure why.”

“Why is cuz for whatever stupid fuckin’ reason I believe your bullshit story about a cure, an’ I got nothin’ better to do, ‘cept whack stinkers. We gotta hole up here til dawn when the stinkers start to settle down, then we’ll head back toward Caswell. Although damn if I’m not breakin’ my promise to never set eyes on that fucking place ever again.”

“Well,” said Tim, now whispering, “It’s probably much nicer if you’re just visiting.”

Stacey laughed. “Yeah, right. A real nice place. How you feelin’?”

“Close to death,” Tim said. “Really.”

“Don’t close your eyes. I guess we gotta keep you up all night. Just as well: I don’t want to fall asleep in here with all that stinker activity goin’ on out there tonight. Something’s got ‘em stirred up. Full moon — who the fuck knows. So we got like 10 hours or so before daylight, so you gotta listen to me ramble on about all kinds of shit until then, OK?”

“OK.”

He started at the beginning, his earliest memories. It was nothing unusual: running around some Texas suburb with other kids, recollections of dogs, siblings, bullies and teachers. He spoke in a quiet voice, and his edge and choice of words softened — except for when he saw Tim nodding off.

“Wake the fuck up! Open yer goddamned eyes, motherfucker!”

And then he’d resume the soft voice, telling about his third-grade teacher, or a baby bird he’d found that had fallen out of the nest.

Occasionally, Tim would manage a question. When it seemed like Stacey was going to gloss over the reason he’d spent so much time in Caswell, he croaked, then spoke.

“How’d you end up in prison?”

Stacey let the question hang in the air for half a minute before he spoke.

“There are only three reasons a man winds up in the pen, and I know from being in there a long time that this is true. And those reasons are alcohol, money or pussy — or some mix of the three. Violence, that’s just a symptom. It’s those other three that cause everything.”

Another pause.

“For me, I guess it was all three, but mostly it was the last one. June, that was my wife (the fuckin’ bitch), we were getting’ divorced and we had a kid, Peter was his name.”

Here, Stacey stopped and didn’t speak again for a minute or two. Tim didn’t say anything, struggling to stay awake while remarking to himself, over and over again, how much pain he was in, and how it was so far beyond endurable as to defy credibility. How could a person be alive and be in so much pain at the same time? But listening to Stacey helped, if ever so slightly, take his mind off it. So he tried a prompt.

“Peter, your son?”

Stacey had gotten up and crossed to a window. He held up a hand to Tim.

“Hold on a sec. Somethin’s goin’ on down there. Looks like stinkers found themselves some dinner. What were those stupid fucks doing out there? Looks like three of ‘em, and a dozen stinkers. Shit, they ain’t even got any guns!”

Stacey decided to skip the story of his troubled marriage to offer Tim a blow-by-blow account of the Zee feeding unfolding in the street.

“OK, here goes the first one down. Woman in a dress. Dress is off like a prom dress — heh-heh — pretty nice titties, she’s got three stinkers on her and there’s the first neck bite. He’s got a gusher, holdin’ on good while the others are chewin’ on her tits an’ arms an’ her gut. And there’s the intestines already! You know it’s over when your guts are on the ground. Blech. I’ll never get used to that. There’s a reason people got skin all over ‘em.

“OK, they got the other guy. All’s I can see is his legs, which are twitchin’ all over the place and … OK, now they’re still. He’s zombie food. Third one is a young gal, trying to climb over a fence. She might actually make it. You go, girl! Uh-oh. Nope, one of ‘em’s got her leg and here comes two more, pullin’ her down. Oh, she’s got a scream. You hear that, Timmy? Breaks your fuckin’ heart.”

He turned away from the window and put the palms of his hands on a desk, standing there with his head down as if he’d just walked up a steep flight of stairs.

“I jump in a lot, Timmy. Savin’ people an’ shit. But I can’t get to ‘em all.”

He turned his watery blue eyes toward Tim.

“I’m no hero. Not by a long shot. I only wade in when it’s safe — when I know I can get in and get out without getting my own ass in a wringer. Sometimes I feel like a pussy, like now, watchin’ people die. But I figure I wouldn’t be much good to anyone dead, or as a fucking zombie. So I help who I can, and the rest, well … that’s just the way of the world these days, ain’t it? The way of the fuckin’ world.”

Now, Stacey sat in a chair and talked directly at Tim, like a doctor addressing a patient.

“And maybe that’s the way it’s always been, hey? Just some different players right now. Hell, a year ago we were all worried about, whatever, Goldman Sachs comin’ in an’ taking all our shit, rippin’ out our financial guts. Once it was the fucking Nazis, or the Soviets or the goddamn al Qaeda Taliban motherfucker terrorist assholes. Zombies, well, they’ve just traded all those bad guys for their action, an’ it makes those Nazis in a way not seem so bad, right?”

“It’s different,” Tim managed to croak. “Zees don’t know what they’re doing.”

Stacey gave him a penetrating look.

“Well, maybe. But the upshot’s the same: regular folks get fucked.”

Tim couldn’t argue with that, but he wasn’t going to be able to contribute any more to the conversation. His throat felt like it was closing up, and his breath was coming in tighter and tighter gasps. It didn’t seem like he’d be able to make it another five minutes, much less the rest of the night.

But make it he did. Stacey, after he ran out of autobiographical information, poked around the office and found some reports and other business documents to read from.

“This one here’s something about marketing for some new shit, looks like software. Called ‘Ellipsis one-point-oh.’ Supposed to solve all your accounts receivables problems.”

He read some of the executive summary and then tossed the binder aside.

“Ain’t nobody going to be needin’ that shit anymore, hey?”

He rummaged in another desk.

“What do we have here? Pair of runnin’ shoes, some panty hose an’ a box-a tampons. Wonder where this gal is now? Alive somewheres, livin’ in a basement or a cave eatin’ rats for dinner. Or is she dead, chewed up an’ shit out by some stupid fucking zombie?”

He looked over at Tim.

“No offense.”

“None taken,” he managed to gasp.

If he could have, Tim would have said he wasn’t going to be a Zee for much longer anyway. He’d either be all the way dead or cured, somehow. At the moment, the former seemed the most likely, but in the back of his mind lurked the suspicion there was more in store for him. How could he have made it this far only to die in some anonymous office park? Why would he have met Stacey — a man who should’ve shot him on sight but, rather, took him under his wing and was trying to help him? The hand of fate was intervening here, for whatever reason.

If he could only just keep breathing a little while longer.

Chapter 17. Meridian

As soon as the sun poked up, Stacey had Tim over his shoulder again and down into the truck bed, where he covered him over with the piece of drywall and told him to keep his eyes open.

“We’re close. Don’t die.”

Tim gave him a feeble thumbs-up and focused all his attention on staying alive, breathing … being. The truck started moving, with Stacey calling out the sights through the slider. Tim was touched by his attempts to keep him awake and alive, despite the content of the running dialog.

“Looks like it was a busy night all over. Blood slicks everywhere, here’s a put-down squad that got put down itself, stupid fuckers. Tell you one thing, half the time those guys are so drunk they shoot themselves. Or they get sloppy. I stay as far away from them as possible. Shit, they’re almost as bad as the fucking stinkers, terms-a how dangerous they are.”

Despite Stacey’s best efforts, Tim fell into a shallow, troubled sleep. Bits of life from his past, present and possibly future — it was hard to tell — flew in and out of his mind like broken pieces of glass. There was no more leisurely exploration of old memories; the bouncing of the truck mirrored the scattered detritus of his soul welling up once again as he approached death. Again, he was ready to welcome it, at the same time a small portion of him clung to the notion that, if Stacey could get him there pretty soon, maybe he’d hang on.

And Stacey delivered, the truck rolling to a stop, doors slamming, tailgate being dropped with a noisy bang.

“Well, this is it, stinky. Caswell State Penitentiary. Home-a Meridian an’ the miracle zombie cure! Ha ha ha!”

Tim felt hands grasp his ankles and drag him forward a few inches.

“You still alive, boy?”

For an answer, Tim managed to push the drywall off his face and offer a wan smile.

“There you go! You’re a fuckin’ trooper, is what. I don’t know how you’re still breathin’ with all that lead in you. But I always knowed the fuckin’ zombies are tough. Tough an’ weak at the same time. Hard to kill, that’s for sure. But listen up: There’s no gate open, an’ the one place with a guard greeted me with a slug through my windshield. So we’re going to have take a more direct approach. So hold onto your zombie nuts, we’re goin’ through. An’ just hope these assholes are in here with some kinda doctor, cuz you ain’t long for this world.”

Stacey slammed the tailgate shut again and got behind the wheel. Tim shut his eyes in preparation for the jolt ahead and promptly blacked out again.

He didn’t come to until Stacey, blasting through a weak spot he identified in the fence, spun sideways and came to a halt. Tim flew out the back of the pickup and landed in a heap on the asphalt of a basketball court. And then Stacey was standing over him, grinning.

“Don’t worry, you can’t be much worse! Ha ha ha! Look: There’s some cars over there, so I’m thinking this is our best bet. Now we just need to figger out how to get inside …”

But by this time, some doors had burst open and several heavily armed men were approaching. Stacey dropped his shotgun in the face of the overwhelming firepower and put his hands behind his head.

“Uh, look, this stinker here talks, name’s Tim, an’ he told me he needed to get here. He thinks it’s some place called Meridian, with some folks working on a cure. Y’all want him? He’s in pretty rough shape.”

Other than to train their weapons on Stacey, they ignored him. One of them got on a walkie-talkie.

“Mark, this is Craig, over.”

The radio crackled. “Go ahead Craig.”

“Believe it or not, looks like someone delivered the package you’ve been looking for. He’s … he’s a mess. Needs Linda, like now.”

Within a few minutes, the doors opened again and some others in haz-mat suits emerged.

They were pushing a gurney, and they scooped Tim up and disappeared inside, followed by the guards. One of them paused long enough to look at Stacey and say: “Thanks for fucking up our fence, asshole.”

“Don’t thank ol’ Stacey or anything, you fuckers! I just saved humanity an’ all, that’s all. Shit.”

Stacey climbed back into his truck, drove slowly through the hole he’d just made in the fence and went back to his woods. If Tim was right about a cure, he hoped he’d hear about it some day so he could stop whacking zombies and go back to … whatever.

When Tim awoke next, he appeared to be in a hospital room. His arms were restrained, he had tubes in his mouth and up his nose and lines coming out of his chest and arms. He heard the sounds — the beeps, the chuffing of some oxygen machine — but outside, none of the hustle of a hospital. There was no TV in the room, no window, no drapes. The walls were painted concrete, and there was nobody around.

Tim found he couldn’t speak with the thing in his mouth, which he guessed was doing his breathing for him. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what was happening. Or what had happened. The original Meridian research facility where he’d worked had been located on a hospital campus, not inside a prison. But when the plague hit, yes, hospitals became ground zero as newly infected stinkers were brought in to be helped. He could imagine how the Meridian crew had made the decision to relocate to a more secure location, and a recently emptied prison probably seemed as good a place as any. Later, most of this would be corroborated.

Before long, someone came in and touched his arm. He opened his eyes and the woman started, stepping back a few feet. At least he thought it was a woman: She was in a full-fledged haz-mat suit with mask and respirator. She touched a button on her wrist and spoke through a tinny contraption.

“It’s OK Mr. Lipton. You’re OK here. We’re trying to help you. Let me get Dr. Besson.”

She left, returning in a moment with another guy in another suit. Dr. Mark Besson was one of Tim’s research partners. Together they’d worked to develop an antiviral agent to combat the plague. But now Tim was a Zee – how did that happen? He tried to communicate the question with his eyes to Mark.

Mark pulled up a chair and sat down, looking at Tim through his mask.

“I know you’ve got a ton of questions, Tim, and I’ve got a lot for you. But here’s the quick story: You remember we worked together?”

Tim nodded.

“And that we were working on the Ho-Ho-Kus Plague?”

Yes, that was the name of it. From the town in New Jersey where it was first identified. Such a funny name for such a serious thing.

“And we had a plan at Meridian, and you volunteered. Infect you with a small amount of a mutated form of the virus, let it incubate long enough for us to get a viable blood sample to create an antivirus, administer it to you, then replicate it for the general population.”

Tim nodded again as the memory came flooding back.

“So we infected you alright, but before we got to the rest, the facility was overrun by infected — zombies, whatever you want to call them. You got separated from us and we didn’t see you again. Until three days ago.”

Mark sat back and placed his hands flat on his thighs. “I can’t believe you’re alive, Tim. How did you avoid getting shot or eaten? You’re like a walking target for both groups out there.”

Tim tried to shrug with his eyes.

“Long story, I know. And we’ll hear it soon. So back to my story: Those survivors from Meridian — me, King, Foster, Singh, Kavari and Jost — were able to gather up enough material to start a new Meridian here in this prison. That’s the simple version, but it was a hellish couple of weeks, make no mistake. This place was also overrun and then abandoned, and we got here about three weeks ago, right after you disappeared.”

Three weeks, that was all?

“We pretty much had the conditions reestablished for the experiment we were doing with you, but without a subject. We were getting ready to, to … I don’t know, Tim. Draw straws? Find some other schmuck? I just don’t know. And then you showed up. It’s amazing, a miracle — there’s no other way to describe it.”

Mark paused and leaned forward.

“But Tim, you’re no good. I mean, the virus took over your system too completely, and even though that mutation allowed your body to fight back to being almost human, well …”

Tim widened his eyes. Well what?

“I don’t know much of this you’ll remember or understand, but basically that 492 protein we identified, we can’t disable it anymore at this stage in the cycle. Most of the other mutation disables we cooked up worked on you, Tim, which is why you got as far as you did, but …”

Tim felt a wave of anguish wash over him as the reality sunk in. Unless Mark could figure out a way to disable the 492 protein, Tim would stay in this netherworld, neither human nor zee, until either his wounds finished him or he was healed well enough to … go home. Go to some kind of zoo might be more like it.

Or be mercy-whacked.

“But listen, Tim: I haven’t given up yet. It’s only been three days since you’ve been back, and most of that time has been spent stabilizing you physically. You are all messed up, buddy, as you know. But Dr. Linda, who was just in here, we saved her and some equipment from the hospital on our way out, and she’s amazing at critical care – one of the best in the country. So you’re getting better, and we started more trials on your blood just this morning. All we need now is some stinker to wander by for some fresh samples. Funny thing is, this area’s been almost cleaned out by the put-down squads, so they’re out now, our guards, ranging a little farther afield. Shouldn’t be long.”

The female doctor came back in, and Mark looked up.

“How are we looking here, Linda?”

She looked down at Tim and recited a litany of things that were wrong with him she’d been working to fix. The ventilator could probably come out of his mouth in the next 24-48 hours, and he should be able to speak before long.

“The infected have extraordinary powers of self-healing, so you could be up and about in just days.”

She turned to Mark, then back to Tim.

“But …” she said.

Mark finished her thought.

“But … you’re still enough of a Ho-Ho-Kus zombie that we can’t trust you, Tim.”

“We have a really nice cell picked out for you, though,” Linda said, with a tiny laugh.

There it was. He was not one of them. Not human.

“There is one other thing,” Linda said.

Mark turned to her; Tim tried to prick up his eyebrows.

“He’s taking goat’s blood. Not rejecting it like the other things we’ve tried to feed him.”

Mark looked at Tim. “That’s good, man. It’s the tube in your nose, runs into your stomach. You’re incredibly malnourished, but the other things Linda tried in the nastrogastric tube caused complications.”

“Fevers, convulsions, extreme agitation, for starters,” Linda said. “But this prison had a goat farm, and a dairy. So I thought it’d be worth a try. Some blood, that is.”

“Tim, we’ve done some experiments with live Ho Ho Kus patients, trying to ascertain whether they can live on anything other than human flesh — or blood, actually. That’s what you’re really after. You were around for some of those, so you may recall the answer is ‘not much.’ Zees can only gain nourishment through human hemoglobin, for reasons we’ve never entirely figured out.”

Note to self, thought Tim: Tell them about Slim Jims.

Mark turned again to Linda.

“Whatever goat and human hemoglobin have in common — that’s something we need to know. That could be huge.”

Now, he put his hand out and gripped Tim’s arm.

“Tim, there’s not much government left, but we are in touch with CDC in Atlanta. We use a ham radio, believe it or not. They’ve got a plan in place that’s in four parts: A) finding a cure; B) distributing a cure; C)managing the remaining zees; and D) reviving and protecting the human population. One of the things they’ve been looking for is something to feed the damn zombies instead of, you know, people. If this goat blood thing works, well …”

Linda said: “We’d need a lot of goats.”

“Yes, a lot of goats. But first, Tim … Ah, he’s asleep.”

He was, mostly. But he was conscious enough to hear them talk gently over him for another few minutes. Despite the pain and the drowsiness, he could feel the nourishment of the goat blood in his body. It wasn’t anything like the huge rush of energy from a gushing human aorta, but it was better than nothing. Already he couldn’t remember the last meal he’d had — the last person he’d killed. If he had to guess, he’d say he was at least 80 percent human and only 20 percent Zee anymore. But they were right not to trust him, to keep him locked up. Dr. Linda might be saving his life, but Tim could offer no guarantees that, given the chance, he wouldn’t rip her tits off and eat them in front of her dying eyes.

But how to get to 100 percent? As he went back under, the answer — something about combining proteins and another forced mutation — floated up to him … and was then replaced with the form of Marilyn’s leering, hideous face.

Or was she part of the solution …?

It actually took closer to a week for Dr. Linda to get the ventilator off him. Something about a collapsed lung, pneumonia, some other shit. Tim was so surprised to still be alive that no alarming details of his condition or treatment could faze him. It took another four days before he could form words and sentences, and his first question to Mark was the one that had been consuming him every waking hour — and in his dreams.

“Where’s my family?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“But probably dead?”

“I don’t know, Tim. All I know is that Janet and the girls didn’t … they didn’t make it out of Meridian with us.”

“They were there. With me. How?”

“When the compound was breached, it was the middle of the night. We were in the secure lab, the hardest part to get to. Those in the residence area … I don’t know. We never saw them again.”

“You left.”

“We fled. We ran for our lives. We didn’t come back for days, and there was no one.”

“You left me.”

“You couldn’t keep up. We couldn’t carry you. And you were mid-transition: We didn’t know if you were … if you were friend or foe, so to speak. We took off your restraints and ran. I’m sorry, I really am.”

Tim was lying on a gurney in a locked cell, Mark sitting in a chair on the other side of the bars. They’d determined he was no longer contagious enough to warrant the hazmat suits, but still they weren’t taking chances by getting too close to his mouth. Tim’s tubes and pinging machines were down to just a few, and he was drinking goat blood by the tumbler now. It wasn’t bad — reminded Tim of a particularly strong Bloody Mary. In handcuffs, leg irons and what looked like a lacrosse helmet, he was being slowly shuffled up and down the hallways for exercise a couple of times daily by Dr. Linda. A guy with a gun rolled the IV stand behind him. She’d asked him that morning, on their walk, what it was like — the eating people bit.

“Exciting, revolting. A bit like being a rapist, I would imagine.”

“How so?” she asked.

“Well, you know you shouldn’t do it, you know it’s a terribly selfish thing that will harm someone …”

“Harm? You could say that.”

“… but you have to do it. This terrible thing. You can’t stop yourself.”

Dr. Linda suggested that Zees, to some extent, were better than rapists because they had no choice — no more than the cheetah that chases down an antelope.

“It’s not an exact comparison. But the attacking part, once that’s initiated and you have no choice but to follow through … I don’t know.”

“Did they ever beg … like for their lives?”

“No. Mostly they just screamed a bit and then gurgled as you tore into their necks. That’s the sweet spot, you see. I always figured it was about the blood.”

Now Mark was telling him his family was gone. But also that there were refugee camps, soldiers protecting, some who got away. No way to contact anyone, though. No cell phones, Internet, TV. A little bit of radio here and there, but anything that was part of a grid or a network, forget about it.

Dr. Linda cleared her throat and asked what Tim took for a question that she’d been meaning to ask but had to work up the nerve.

“Do you want me?”

“You mean do I want to eat you or fuck you?”

He laughed. “Just kidding. No, I don’t. I’m not hungry, for starters. Goat blood and all. And my mind is cleared up, mostly. I’ve lost that killer instinct.”

She was silent for a bit, and then: “What about the other? Sex, I mean. Zees demonstrate no inclinations in that area, and so far as we’ve observed the males are incapable of erection. But what about you now? Any libido to speak of?”

“No,” he said. “But morning wood has returned. I guess that’s a good sign.”

“It is,” she said. “In the future, though, you might skip the zombie stint in your online dating profile.”

He managed a small laugh.

“But you know, the eating people thing: It’s not devoid of sexual content.”

And then he told her about Marilyn.

Chapter 18. The Plan

Even though Meridian now was technically a prison, it started to feel like a country club to Tim. No more running, killing, wondering what was going to happen. He just had to get better, do his therapy, drink his blood. They’d even found him a few Slim Jims, and Mark was eagerly testing them to assess their zombie nutritional merit. Occasionally Dr. Linda would try to introduce something else: a hamburger, a pork chop, even vegetables. Tim couldn’t gag down any of it. He simply wasn’t done yet. He knew they all knew: None of the others came anywhere near him. It was just Dr. Linda, a guard or two and Mark. And although large chunks of memory still remained missing, much of what Tim knew about viral research was coming back. He spent a great deal of time with Mark, the bars still separating them, going over lab results, chasing theories, looking over all his own blood work. Until one day — about a month after he’d arrived back at Meridian — he looked up at Mark and said “We have to find Marilyn.”

Mark peered at him over his reading glasses.

“Why? She’s just a Zee. They’re a dime a dozen out there.”

“She bit me.”

“Really? I thought you were sorta friends?”

“She couldn’t resist, as I was becoming more human. A smell, a feel … I don’t know. She just sensed I was, um …”

“Tasty?”

“I suppose. But, more to the point: She has my mutated 492 protein in her. Combined with her full-Zee hemoglobin …”

Mark nodded, then slapped his clipboard against his leg.

“Holy shit, Tim! That could be it …”

It was a bit of a long shot. First, whether her blood really held promise as a cure, but mostly whether they could even find her. Tim knew Marilyn liked to wander off, but she also stuck pretty close to him. However unlikely, it was worth going to the last place he saw her: that little house — the place where she’d bitten him. He had no idea where it was other than it was close enough to where he’d first encountered Stacey.

“The guy who brought me here, the wild man, Stacey …”

“What about him?”

“If we can find him, there’s a chance I can find the last place I saw Marilyn. I don’t know for sure, but there’s a chance she’d stick around that house we were in; use it as a base. If not, then, hell if I know. She’s probably dead anyway. It’s been a month.”

“I’m positive she’s dead,” Mark said. “Question is the degree of her deadness.”

Off Tim’s withering look, Mark said “OK” and turned to the guard at the door.

“Craig, I need you and a team to go out and find someone in the wasteland.”

Craig sort of grunted.

“I heard you. The Wild Man, I know him. I can find him. Might take a couple days. Guy roams a lot, whackin’ Zees and hunting for food.”

“Do it,” Mark said.

He turned back to Tim. “Talk about a long shot on top of a long shot. But in this world, it’s the equivalent of a ray of sunshine.”

The next few days were busy, with Mark and Tim working out what, exactly, they would do with Marilyn’s blood. At this point, it seemed clear the Ho Ho Kus virus was a blood-borne virus and nothing else. That seemingly obvious conclusion nonetheless represented months of research to eliminate other possibilities such as genetic abnormalities, neurological mutations and other nervous system disorders they could only guess at.

With Craig gone, Tim had more one-on-one time with Dr. Linda. He was the guard assigned to her, and with few of them left to cover in his absence, Mark decided Tim was safe enough to be alone with her — provided he still wore the shackles and helmet. (“Please don’t kill her and eat her,” he’d said to Tim, with a nervous laugh.)

Dr. Linda was an early riser, and she’d be in his cell first thing in the morning to check his vitals and do whatever else it was she did. He would lie there, strapped to the bed, as she went about her business chatting merrily. She sure seemed chipper for someone in … this world. Everyone had lost someone — many their entire families. Watching Dr. Linda, though, you’d think she’d just graduated from med school and was optimistic about her future. But this was it, at least for now: one patient, a half-zee, who was mostly healthy despite some obvious issues regarding his state of humanity.

She was curious about his erections, which he reported as a daily occurrence.

“I’ve got one now,” he said matter-of-factly one morning. “A rager.”

Her eyebrows went up.

“Really? How intense, say on a scale of 1 to 10?”

“11.”

To his surprise, she reached under the bedding and grabbed his rock-hard cock. She quickly withdrew her hand and returned to making notes on her clipboard, albeit color rising in her cheeks.

“Well?” Tim said. “What’s your assessment … doctor?”

She looked up at him.

“I’d say a 12.”

“Maybe I’m not completely dead.”

“I’d say not.”

“But really, doc, what’s the relevance? We know I’ve returned to mostly human functions. Shouldn’t be a surprise that my dick works. And I will say it sucks having my hands tied down.”

Dr. Linda sat down in the chair next to the bed and sighed.

“There’s no relevance, Tim. No medical reason I should have touched you there. I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK.”

“Look Tim, I’m a healthy, 32-year-old woman who hasn’t gotten laid in over a year because of this stupid fucking plague. Oh, unless you count being raped a couple of times in the aftermath by a couple of gallant survivors. Mark is gay, and I wouldn’t touch any of these guards with a ten-foot pole. Although believe me, don’t think they haven’t suggested it a few times. Especially Craig, who follows me around like a puppy dog. So that leaves … you. A married, fucked-up half-zombie dude …”

And then she looked away.

He didn’t know what to say, although his hard-on pushed against the sheets with renewed urgency as he noticed, for the first time, that Dr. Linda was showing just a hint of décolletage beneath her lab coat this morning. Or was it like that every day? He hadn’t really paid much attention to her physical being, but she wasn’t a bad looking woman. Again, none of those thoughts made it past his lips.

Not hearing anything from him, she rose abruptly and opened the cell door.

“I’ll be back later,” she said in a choked voice.

“I’ll be here.”

Chapter 19. Dr. Linda

The next morning, Dr. Linda came in early as usual and did her stuff around Tim without a word. Tim wondered if he’d offended her somehow, but the notion of doing so was something of an abstraction: He didn’t really care. Emotions like empathy, embarrassment or shame were alien to him any more — part of the reason he suspected his memories of his wife, children, family and friends were so spotty, so thin. He might be able to walk and talk like a man, but at his core he was still a Zee.

As he was pondering whether the procedure Mark and he had in mind would result in the return of his emotional memory, he couldn’t help but notice that, having completed her exam, Dr. Linda had dropped her lab coat, flung his sheets off and was climbing, naked, on top of him. She pulled a condom on him and slid herself onto his erection. Tim noticed she was already quite wet and ready to go.

“Oh geez, more tests?” he said. And that was another interesting thing: He still had a sense of humor. That should be gone with the rest of the emotions, shouldn’t it? He made a mental note to discuss it with Mark, although neither of them was any expert in brain matters.

Men are familiar with the phenomenon that the morning-wood erection can often feel devoid of the sexual energy that comes from an erection created in the heat of passion. In his case, the erections were more nuisance than pleasure, and as Linda bounced up and down on top of him, he tried to focus on any sense of pleasure in the act. The best he could say, though, was that it didn’t hurt; nor did he feel like he was going to ejaculate anytime soon.

Linda, on the other hand, was having a fine time of it, appearing to climax half a dozen times in the 15 or so minutes she rode him. She paid him no attention, focusing only on the needs his dick was providing. Wisely, she stayed away from his mouth and did not undo his restraints. She said nothing, eyes closed, breasts swinging wildly (they were nice ones, Tim noted rather clinically, big and round) and making very little noise. Tim found his attention wandering as she kept going. He thought of Marilyn, out there alone; her formerly perfect ass and her tiny breasts, revealed after the fake ones were shot away. He thought of her horrible face, her leering grin after a kill, strips of flesh hanging from her teeth, blood everywhere. And her Snuggie, coated in dried blood and hiding her terribly misused body.

This last thought caused a flicker of a smile to cross his face, and finally Dr. Linda spoke.

“Are you ever going to come?”

Tim opened his eyes and looked up at her. She was an animal there atop him, hair matted and wild, sweat glistening on her brow and between her breasts, breathing labored, chest heaving. She’d been having quite a workout. She did slow down a bit as she awaited his response. Tim tried to focus all his mental energy on his penis: Was it going to ejaculate? It sure didn’t feel like it, but, then, he couldn’t quite recall what it felt like to have an orgasm anyway — to come. But, then, what was the reason for this biological event in the first place — to reproduce. There was no possible evolutionary reason for a Zee to reproduce. They were meant, he figured, to die as soon as possible. They had no future, no history, no reason for being other than to destroy. And, he reckoned, Zees reproduced in a different way: by biting humans. Of course, most of the bitten were promptly eaten, so there was little chance they’d ever get to become Zees. But Mark had told him of numerous cases where humans with bites had escaped, only to die and then undergo the horrific transformation into Zee within as little as 30 seconds.

Some plague!

Dr. Linda’s voice intruded into his thoughts again.

“Tim! Did you hear me? Are you ever going to come?”

“No. No, I don’t think so Linda.”

“Is it the condom? Because I’m not taking it off.”

Tim laughed.

“Really, don’t worry about it. Have your fun, I’m fine.”

“Holy shit, I’m done, are you kidding? I came like 10 times.”

“Good,” Tim said. “Good for you.”

Dr. Linda pulled herself off and scrambled back into her lab coat. She pulled the condom off Tim and regarded his still impressive phallus.

“Look at you: You’re good to go another couple of hours.”

“I guess so.”

“It’s weird, though,” she said, now the doctor again. She took his testicles between her fingers and examined them closely. “Normally you’d have some pretty swollen balls by now, and the skin of the scrotum would be very tight as everything tenses for ejaculation. But your testicles are more like in the at-rest state, scrotal skin loose. But penis still very hard. Makes no sense.”

Tim told her his thoughts on Zee reproduction as she covered him back up.

“Well,” she said, “That makes as much sense as anything in this … this crazy fucked-up world. It could be your testes are no longer producing sperm in the first place, in which case maybe the body has an override command: You know, “no sperm, don’t bother to ejaculate.”

“I think, also, that a guy needs sexual passion to do it,” Tim said. “There has to be that biological imperative, whether you know it or not. And for me, it’s just not there.”

Dr. Linda looked at him, one eyebrow arched.

“So that wasn’t anything for you?”

It was not just a scientific question, and Tim remembered the amount of concern that could be wrapped up in sexual performance. Apart from not ejaculating and with the limitations of not being able to use hands or tongue, he figured his performance was pretty decent. But Dr. Linda did OK, too: She got good and wet, had the stamina to fuck him heartily for a good 15 minutes, and climaxed numerous times. Strictly from the standpoint of a female mammal, she was an all-star fornicator.

“It was interesting, I’d say.”

“Interesting, huh?” She sounded just slightly hurt.

“I mean, uh, no offense doc, you were great and all but … I’m not exactly your typical guy. You can’t expect much beyond what you might get from a really good dildo.”

“Oh, I’ve got a really good dildo,” she said. “Several of them. You’re much better than that.”

“Well,” he said, “There you go. Can we talk about something else?”

“You’re a real romantic, Timothy Lipton, anyone ever tell you that?”

“Oh, all the time, all the time.”

Tim didn’t tell Mark about the morning’s events, figuring he’d disapprove. For all their conversation and collaboration, Mark was deeply uneasy around Tim. He was careful never to get very close to him, and Tim just figured it had to do with the fact that everyone Mark knew and loved had been murdered and eaten by Zees.

Some things are hard to forget.

But as they waited for Craig to return with news of the Wild Man, he and Mark worked out the details of what they were going to do with the blood of Marilyn once they got their hands on it. If they got their hands on it.

And Dr. Linda made morning-wood fuck sessions a regular part of her rounds. For three days, she arrived in his cell and ravaged him. Satiating herself over and over, she then became determined to try to make Tim’s very hard but very bored penis do what it was supposed to do. She slathered K-Y Jelly on it and gave him a hand job until she thought her arm was going to fall off. She inserted one of her dildos up his ass while she fucked him, and then put his dick in her ass and fucked him briefly (“Not my favorite thing,” she’d said, “And you’re kinda big.”) She put a cock ring around his balls and fucked him for an hour straight. She sucked him mightily, but acknowledged it wasn’t “the full effect” since she still refused to take off the condom.

And on the fourth day, she took off his restraints.

“C’mon Tim,” she said, wiggling her breasts at him. “Grab them, squeeze them, touch me, get involved.”

She started moving up and down again on his sore shaft, and he reached up for her breasts. He brought a large, hard nipple into his mouth and could feel the blood pulsing underneath. There was no way he couldn’t …

She started to scream as he tore away the top of her right breast, but he quickly silenced her with the deadly Zee bite to the artery. As her arterial blood gushed into his mouth, finally he felt himself ejaculate, and he lay there spent, the dead woman atop him pumping the remains of her life into his awful maw.

Hearing no sounds of running feet, Tim finished his draught from Dr. Linda’s neck and pushed the corpse off of him onto the floor. He wiped off his face and chest with a bed sheet, pulled on some clothes and looked down at Linda, his friend and lover.

Or was she? He tried to conjure up some guilt or sadness over what had just transpired, but he felt no more remorse than he might for a fish he’d just eaten. This was what he was, and she was a fool for thinking otherwise.

Even so, he resisted the temptation to feast on her and left her where she lay, her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. He wasn’t sure if he had enough of the plague virus left in him to cause her to reanimate as a Zee, but as he closed and locked the cell door behind her, he knew the guards would take care of her if and when she did.

And then they’d finally get to see her naked.

Chapter 20. Back in the Wasteland

Thrumming with the energy that came from Dr. Linda’s blood, Tim was out of the prison and into one of the patrol trucks in minutes. He took care of the unsuspecting front-gate guard with the shotgun he found in the truck, hit the button to open the gate and was out, back in the Wasteland for the next fucked-up chapter of what now passed for his life.

Tim didn’t know how long he had before they came after him, so he pushed the truck as fast as he dared. He was heading toward the woods on the outskirts of the city where he’d first met the Wild Man, and he could only hope he didn’t run into any gaggles of Zees or put-down squads out for a morning shoot.

If Tim was on the fence before, he was even more so now — at least for the Zees, who would view him without question as a viable target. Meridian folks aside, he could pass for human with ease, which meant feeding should be easy for him. As for what he would mean to Marilyn … would she even remember him? Would she lunge for his balls without a second thought, or pause and give him some kind of deep, meaningful look before … before she lunged for his balls?

What did it matter? The chances of him finding her again out there were ridiculously long. And now the goal of capturing her and using her blood to create a cure was dashed as well, with the Meridian gang no doubt ready to kill him on sight. Or would Mark try to stay their hands, knowing as he did that the fusion of Tim and Marilyn’s blood represented the best chance for any kind of future for this world?

“You’ll have to do some fast talking, Mark,” Tim said aloud to the windshield. He was on the highway now, weaving slowly through the usual collection of overturned cars, burned-out semis and kill sites.

There was something oddly appealing about the notion of finding Marilyn and revealing himself as more or less cured — a twisted take on the old “Honey, I’m home!” scenario. He wondered if she’d still have that execrable Snuggie on, or if she’d been shot any more times. He’d been at Meridian for two or three weeks — long enough for her to be long dead. Or was he flattering himself that she couldn’t “survive” without him?

Craig had told them the Wild Man lived in a place called Huntington Barrens, and it took Tim the better part of the day to find the place. There was a shitty little playground on one end, which he vaguely remembered from a few weeks ago. The Barrens themselves represented a thinly wooded pine forest that looked as if it might be recovering from a fire in the not-too-distant past. There was a road of sorts running through the middle, and according to the map in the truck the place was only a few miles wide. Even so, by the time the sun was setting, Tim was no closer to seeing anything that resembled the area where he’d first met Stacey, so he found a nook between a couple of slightly larger trees and parked for the night.

He didn’t like it. The truck would attract attention from both Zees and humans — although the latter generally didn’t travel much at night. The alternative of trying to find a house was even less appealing, since the Barrens were a good ways away from the larger housing areas, and he had no interest in trying to navigate the Wasteland in the dark.

Fortunately, the Meridian guards were no strangers to being stuck in the Wasteland. The truck’s covered rear area had a cot, some food and enough weaponry to fend off a substantial Zee incursion. Tim found several boxes of shells for the shotgun as well as a brace of pistols and a hunting rifle. There was also a box with some smoke grenades, flares and a few other items he couldn’t identify.

Turning off the lights, Tim lay in the dark in the back of the truck and thought about Marilyn, then about Dr. Linda. For a man who could feel little, he couldn’t help but reflect that the moment where he killed her and climaxed simultaneously was really quite incredible — enjoyable, even. It was unlikely he’d ever have that opportunity again, so he tried to savor it: the feeling, the sounds and smells as she moved atop him, then the rush of blood into his mouth as ejaculate rushed out. Amazing. And all without any modicum of guilt. Perhaps he really was a monster, even more so now since he could pass for human.

But he couldn’t savor the memory for long. Marilyn’s ghoulish visage would crowd back in, her shark-like eyes peering at him from recent memory and her hapless and comic ways reminding him of the time they’d spent together. And here was a woman (of sorts) he could neither fuck nor kill and eat, compared to the amazingly tasty and sexually athletic Dr. Linda. Why would he focus on Marilyn?

If not entirely alive, he reckoned, she was still a potentially viable partner, whereas Dr. Linda was (probably) dead. He tried to imagine the scene when Mark or one of the guards came across her body in the blood-spattered cell. They’d know immediately what had happened, and the trail would quickly lead to the missing truck and the dead guard at the gate. A search party would be dispatched, led by Craig, whose fury at the death of Dr. Linda would be potent and unbridled. A hard-ass guy with the mannerisms of a Hun, Craig had a soft spot for the zaftig doctor, and she’d told Tim she’d had to rebuff his advances on many occasions.

“He’s not a bad guy,” she’d told him. “Just too testosterone-y for me. Plus, he’s one of those guys who loves whacking Zees more than anything, and I find that a little disturbing.”

What, Tim wondered, were the chances that they’d conclude Tim was heading back to where they’d found him? That was pretty much the plan all along, and in retrospect it was pretty fucking stupid of him to have come here. Craig might be along any minute — maybe even out there now, watching and waiting. Or, more likely, he’d arrived here hours ago as Tim flailed around looking for the place, and they were slowly patrolling the place, looking for their missing truck. Tim had kept the CB radio in the truck on, trying different channels, but they were being smart and staying quiet. If and when they did find him, he wouldn’t stand much chance in a shoot-out with these guys. Tim knew how to shoot a gun from a couple of hunting trips with his father as a teenager, but he was no great shot — especially with the handguns.

Who would find him first, he wondered? Zees or Craig and his gang?

He didn’t have to wait long for the answer. The first thud against the truck occurred about an hour after sundown, as Tim lay there thinking, unhelpfully, about what it would feel like to get shot in the head. Probably just a quick “Oh, shit!” he figured, followed quickly by blackness rushing in. Or would you even get in that “Oh, shit!”? But all the way dead might actually better than where he was now, in between …

Thud

The sound of two palms against the truck topper’s window. The guards had tacked up some sheets as makeshift curtains, and Tim peered carefully out to have a look at his visitor. It was a large, muscular black man, covered in tattoos, wearing only a pair of baggy swim trunks … and missing half his face. After his initial slap at the truck, he’d backed off a few yards, as if to see what effect his effort had. He looked emaciated, as if he hadn’t fed in weeks, and Tim wondered how he’d made it this far.

Should he hop out and shoot him, or stay put, stay quiet and hope the Zee moved on? Gunshots most certainly attracted Zee attention, and even just being outside could alert them to his presence. Mark and Linda both believed Zees had a keen sense of smell, specifically tuned for living flesh and blood. They’d queried Tim about it ad nauseum, but he’d simply told them again and again that he’d never had the opportunity to test his sense of smell to identify prey: It’d always just pretty much shown up.

The black dude was the only Zee out there at the moment, but Tim knew one Zee focused on something quickly attracted more. A dead Zee, on the other hand, was just that. He made the decision to whack this one, partly for protection and partly because the idea of whacking a Zee seemed so delightfully ironic.

The moment Tim opened the door and dropped to the ground with the shotgun, the Zee turned and made a lumbering beeline for him. Tim waited until it was a few yards away and blew its head off. Almost before the nearly headless Zee hit the ground, Tim was back inside the truck, locking the door and scrambling back into the bed.

The enormous sound of the shotgun in the quiet woods had startled him, and he cursed himself for giving away his location. How many Zees might have heard that? What about Craig and his thugs?

Too late now. Only a few minutes passed before the next Zee was pounding on the truck, and it was soon joined by several more. Tim lay there in the back of the truck clutching the shotgun and wondering if he stayed completely still … would they go away eventually? It seemed unlikely they could claw their way into the vehicle, but Tim knew the tenacity of Zees, and it might just be a matter of time. They had time on their side, decent strength and that burning hunger that would drive them until they could go no more. What they lacked, at least so far as Tim knew, was the brains to do something like pick up a rock and smash the truck’s windows.

Peering through the curtains, Tim saw at least half a dozen Zees out there — and that was just one side of the truck. He could drive away, but unless he could find a garage or something for protection, he’d just be repeating all this somewhere else in the Barrens.

Inadvertently, he caught the dead eye of a Zee in a track suit. The guy was pristine, hardly looked like a Zee at all save the ghostly pallor. They both froze as their eyes met, and Tim saw the Zee change from that look of bland persistence Zees had most of the time to an expression of savage hunger. He slapped his palms against the window and started gnawing at the glass.

Transfixed, Tim didn’t whip the curtains shut as he should have but looked in amazement at the Zee’s frenzied actions. Then, the guy’s entire face disappeared as a shot rang out. The Zee dropped like a bag of sand, and more followed in quick succession. In under a minute, all the Zees around the truck were lying on the ground, their atrophied brains scattered in the dirt and pine duff.

Tim had to assume it was Craig and his buddies, which meant he needed to get the fuck out of there pronto. He climbed into the front seat and started the truck at about the same time the Wild Man popped out from behind a tree holding his rifle.

“Hello!”

Tim breathed a sigh of relief and turned off the motor. Stepping out of the truck, he called “Hi Stacey! Thanks for the assist!”

Stacey responded by putting a slug in the ground a few inches from Tim’s feet.

“Shut up! Who the fuck are you?”

“Well, do you want me to shut up or tell you who I am?”

“Don’t be a wiseass. Speak up.”

“It’s me, Stacey, Tim. The recovering Zee you dropped off at Caswell a few weeks ago. All better now.” Mostly.

Stacey had warily been getting closer, and now he came within a few feet of Tim. He’d lowered his rifle but was now holding a pistol on him.

“No fucking shit? I thought you were dead meat. So you come through?”

“Yep. What happened was …”

“Stow that shit for now. We’ve gotta get the fuck outta here. This is a major stinker hangout. Believe it or not, there’s a cave just over that rise, and a fuckload a-them live in it, like bats.”

Stacey had Tim drive them out of there in the Meridian truck back to his place in the woods — which was less than a half-mile away.

“Well, shit, I was close,” Tim told him as they rolled to a stop. “I was looking for you.”

“Fuck for?”

Tim explained the plan as best he could, leaving out the part about Dr. Linda that morning.

“Well, you wouldn’t-a found me anyway. That asshole Craig’s been out here. I seen him, drivin’ around, scarin’ off the game and calling my name out of his stupid fucking PA system. I don’t want nothin’ to do with prison guards or cops or anything like.”

So that could mean Craig was still out here — or had he given up for the night? Either way, Tim felt, at least for the moment, that he’d landed in the right camp. With Stacey on his side, he could perhaps get something accomplished without getting a bullet in his brain too soon. It stood to reason, though, that as soon as Stacey was made aware of what had transpired in that cell, Tim would have no friends on the human side. But for now, the Wild Man was demonstrably excited about the potential for a cure. After they got to the place where Tim had seen him uncover his pickup truck weeks before, Stacey took out a bright flashlight and shone it in Tim’s face.

“Just stand still. I wanna look at you real close.”

The visual inspection was accompanied by some heavy sniffing, which almost caused Tim to break out laughing. Satisfied that Tim was no longer any part Zee, Stacey led him to a rock face against a hillside and located a good sized boulder. Putting his shoulder against it, Stacey shoved and the boulder rolled aside. Tim noticed it appeared to be on some kind of track, and it glided out of the way easily.

“See, I live in a cave too,” Stacey said with a laugh. “Like a fucking bat.”

After entering and rolling the boulder back in place, Stacey pointed the flashlight down a short corridor that led to a wider chamber. He located something on the ground and some lights glowed to life.

“Home sweet home.”

Tim looked around as his eyes adjusted. There was the basic stuff of life: a pallet bed, a table with one chair, a battered recliner next to a shelf full of books, and a pantry next to what looked like a fire pit.

“It’s an old mine,” Stacey said. “Zinc they pulled outta this place, especially back around World War II. If you look up, you’ll see there’s a shaft that goes up, all the way to the top. That’s what lets me build fires in her so’s I can cook.”

“This is … great,” Tim said, taking a seat at the table.

“Shut the fuck up. It’s a shithole. Gotta live like a goddamned animal these days cuz of those stupid fucking stinkers everywhere.”

Stacey put up his guns on a rack full of weapons and sat down heavily in the recliner.

“I’m sick of it. Sick to fucking death of it. Which is why I’m gonna help you … if I can.”

He turned his head to look at Tim.

“You really think you guys can cure this shit?”

“We’ve got a decent shot. We think we have it figured out. If we can just get this other piece of the puzzle.”

Stacey snorted and leaned back, closing his eyes.

“Marilyn Monroe the zombie, eh? Wearing a fucking yellow Snuggie. That is truly excellent.”

He opened his eyes. “And weird, too. I ain’t never heard-a no stinker changing clothes, puttin’ anything else on like that. Those fuckers’ll walk around naked or in a goddamned wedding gown or a scuba outfit, complete with flippers. I seen it all.”

“Me too,” Tim said. “Marilyn, I think from being with me, picked up some habits that were pretty non-stinker. I mean, she was still a total zombie — she loved a pair of fresh balls more than anything — but she maybe had, I don’t know, 5 percent of her that was just a little bit human.”

Stacey was quiet for a moment.

“Well, I’m fucking beat. Let’s get some sleep, an’ we’ll go out in the morning. It’s a fucking needle in a haystack, but if it’s the only shot we got, I guess we better take it.”

Stacey located a couple of blankets and handed them to Tim.

“You can sleep over there,” he said, pointing to a dark corner. “I sleep very lightly and I will have my sidearm under my pillow, so if you come anywhere near me I will shoot you. Just so we understand: You look pretty cured to me, but I don’t trust you 100 percent. I probably never will, seein’s how you was once a stinker. Ain’t nothing personal, but this is how I’ve stayed alive through this whole mess. I pretty much just assume the worst and guard against it. Savvy?”

“Got it,” said Tim. “Got a bathroom?”

Stacey laughed and pointed to an even darker corner while holding out a flashlight.

Chapter 21. Stringtown

It was a long night. Stacey snored like a freight train and talked in his sleep. The ground was hard, the air damp and cold. Tim had no watch or phone, and in the pitch-black cave, there was no way of telling when dawn would arrive. When it finally did — signaled by the thinnest ribbon of light emanating from the air shaft — Stacey sat up abruptly and called out “rise and shine!”

“I’ve been shining all night, Stacey.”

“Really?” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I slept like a fucking rock.”

He looked over at Tim.

“I guess you’re OK. If’n you had any stinker left in you, you probably coulda chewed my whole leg off before I noticed.”

Tim laughed.

“You wouldn’t have been my type anyway. I liked the ladies. A pair of 38-D’s man, that’s a feast.”

“No shit? So you liked to chew off their titties, eh? Did they taste better than the rest or what?”

Tim hadn’t actually considered it much, but he told Stacey it went without saying that breasts were boneless, devoid of other annoying things like tendons or hair and were easily accessible right out front.

“But let’s talk about something else,” he said.

Stacey shrugged.

“Sure. But I’ve spent so much time whacking stinkers, it’s pretty fucking amazing to get to talk to one. Uh, a former one, anyways. Hell, if I can — how do they say it? — ‘get into the mind of my foe’ — I could be the greatest Zee whacker of them all.”

Stacey’s words sent a chill down Tim’s spine. He didn’t often feel scared anymore, having literally been to hell and back, but being mostly human gave one a higher sense of self-preservation. As a Zee, it was all pretty hopeless, and he’d been ready for permanent death whenever it came. Now, thinking about how quickly Stacey would dispatch him if he showed his Zee colors …

“I bet you already are the greatest, Stacey. Shit, the way you knocked out that gang around my truck last night. How many were there, like 10?”

“Thirteen,” Stacey said. “Which brings my lifetime total up to, lessee, nine-hunnert an’ eighty-five.”

“Wow, and never bitten once I guess.”

“Nope. Come close lotsa times, that’s for sure. Especially in the early days before I had it down. Now, I know how Zees move to a T. I know the sounds they make and can hear ’em a mile away. An’ I can smell ’em first. I know just where to put a bullet to stop ’em good. Right here,” he said, pointing to his left temple. “I don’t know why, but any other spot on the head, it’ll still kill ’em but doesn’t drop ’em as fast like one in the side here. An’ that’s the key, you know. You gotta stop ’em as quick as possible, especially when they’s in a gang. Cuz if you don’t, they’ll group up on you quicker’n snot. You gotta be able to shoot ’em from far away, like I done last night, but you also gotta know your close combat when you’re in a pack of ’em. That’s why it’s important to wear your goggles and your filter mask when you’re doin’ close work like that. That stinker blood an’ shit flies everywhere when you’re puttin’ ’em down, and as you know, it only takes one drop in your mouth or even your eye before you’re changin’ teams.”

Stacey stood up and walked back to the lavatory area. He kept up the narrative as he pissed.

“Course, ideally you don’t wanna do any close work at all. There ain’t no honor involved in this kinda warfare, an’ I do 99 percent of my work from 20 yards away or more. Back-a the head’s as good as anything with a good rifle. But shit, I’ve killed nearly a thousand of them fuckers, an’ they still keep comin’, thick as fleas on a hound. When’s it gonna end is what I wanna know. Cuz man, the Wild Man is tired.”

Tim and Mark had spent some time theorizing on just that question. He’d told Mark about the starved and frozen Zees he’d seen, and they’d concluded that any Zees outside of urban areas where fresh meat would be more available shouldn’t be able to survive more than a few months at best. But the plague had been going on for six, almost seven months now, and there were plenty of Zees everywhere.

He told Stacey about all this as they readied to leave.

“It sure as shit don’t make sense for these Barren Stinkers livin’ up in that cave,” he said. “What the hell are they feedin’ off-a?”

“Beats me,” Tim said. “Bats?”

He told Stacey about the goats and wondered aloud of bats might be another non-human food source for Zees.

They were taking Stacey’s truck. Tim had convinced him that, if they wanted to steer clear of guard or police types, they’d best not use the guards’ truck, which was sure to attract attention. His explanation about why he was the only one out looking for Marilyn was that he stood a better chance alone than in a large, heavily armed group. As a former Zee, Tim knew how to avoid them. Once he found Marilyn, he’d just get her tied up and bring her back to Meridian.

They covered up the guard truck with branches in the spot where Stacey’s truck was and set off toward the city. Picking the conversation about the cure back up, Stacey behind the wheel once again brought up something Tim hadn’t spent much time thinking about.

“Well, even if you do find the cure and you figger out a way to give it to all these stinkers, there’s still gonna be some lapse between when they all get it. I mean, they’re still gonna be comin’ after us. An’ shit, there’s a lotta them you need to treat. What’ll you do it with, a shot or something? I tell you what, an’ you know this, Tim: If you’re close enough to give one-a these fuckers a shot in the arm, you’re close enough for him to chew your goddamned face off. Unless you whack ‘em, and then what’s the point in a cure?”

“I honestly don’t know, Stacey. It’s not my area of expertise. In fact, I don’t know that it’s anyone’s area of expertise: weaponizing a vaccine? Maybe it’s some kind of rig like those tranquilizer guns they use for wild animals. Maybe it’s some kind of aerosol you can spread in the air, through the clouds or something. Or you can get it in the water somehow — although Zees drink out of rivers and lakes, not out of the faucet. When they drink, that is — stupid fuckers.”

Once the cure got to them, Tim knew most of the Zees out there would soon thereafter anyway. They almost all had terrible wounds and other health issues being masked by the plague and its odd way of tricking the body into keeping going — even when it should be dead.

“I guess we’ll worry about that later, Stacey. First we have to get another couple of impossible things out of the way.”

Tim described the last place he’d seen Marilyn, and the route they’d taken to get there down the main drag of the city that had turned into a river.

“That ain’t much to go on, but I do maybe know that store, the kid’s furniture store you was in. Bought a few things there myself back when …. Which could mean you floated down Major Boulevard, which is Route 85, and all the way to Stringtown, which is where all the Mexicans live. Or lived. Did you see any Mexican zombies?”

Tim shook his head. “Not that I noticed.”

“Well, for now that sounds like our best bet. You’re Marilyn Monroe zombie chick is holed up in some Mexican’s house. That’s pretty funny, I don’t know why.”

“Me neither,” said Tim, hoping he wouldn’t hear some right-wing diatribe from Stacey about illegal immigration. A moot problem now, like so many others, it occurred to Tim that Zees were sort of the ultimate in unwanted guests. What they wouldn’t all give for a few million Mexican gardeners and sheet-rockers in their place.

Or would they? Living amid the plague did have its advantages, did it not? Stacey told him it’d take them an hour or so to drive to Stringtown, so he broached the topic.

“Have you ever thought, in some ways, this world is kind of appealing in its simplicity?”

Stacey turned and looked at him.

“Fuck that shit. There’s nothing ‘appealing’ about fightin’ for your life every day against all these stinky, fucked-up motherfuckers. Man, what I’d give to be bored for just one day. To go the supermarket for food. To take a hot shower.”

“I know all that, what I mean is we traded in a shitload of other problems for just this one: the zombies. No more mortgages, credit cards, politicians, cops, rules — all that shit that took up our time in the old life, made us anxious and unhappy.”

Tim leaned back. “I don’t know Stacey, sometimes I think there’s a lot to like about this new Zee-land.”

Stacey was quiet for a moment. They were on a country road of sorts and it was relatively clear of debris. Tim saw the occasional farmhouse or roadside gas station, but not much else. Like so many other things, his memory hadn’t returned many details of his former life, and geography he should have known well (Mark told him he’d lived in this area for over 10 years) was all new territory. At first it’d been frustrating, but as it became clear this information was not going to return, Tim had gotten to rather like it. His almost-blank slate of a mind made every day a series of brand-new experiences and surprises while he still had the context in place (he knew what a gas station was, for instance, he just didn’t remember any particular one. Where had he gassed up his car, he wondered? And what kind of car was it? He had no idea and had never thought to ask Mark. What possible difference could it make?)

“No,” said Stacey. “I hear what you’re saying, an’ I agree it’s nice not to have to worry about some of that shit. But I’d take it all back, hell I’d even go back to prison if it meant the only things walkin’ around on two legs were human fuckin’ bein’s. An’ I don’t know about you, but I had a wife an’ two kids who are dead, probably, an’ I sure as shit miss ’em.”

“Yeah,” said Tim, wondering again why he didn’t miss his wife and kids. He kept forgetting their names, only vaguely remembering their faces. It’d been something Linda and Mark had hounded him about: They figured it was key to his recovery to give a shit about his family, remember them. But he couldn’t find it anywhere inside him. And if they were dead — which was almost certainly the case — wouldn’t it be better not to remember them at all? Anger and grief drove Stacey to spend his days killing the creatures that had destroyed his family, but what sort of life was this? Living in a cave, eating squirrel meat, looking like a goddamned orangutan.

They were quiet for the rest of the trip. When they started coming into some buildings, Stacey announced they were on the edge of Stringtown.

“Time to look sharp. You see anything looks familiar, sing out.”

Nothing looked familiar. When he was last here, if this was even the place, it’d been dark, and Tim had been distraught over his split with Marilyn. He remembered the inside of the home with the “Knitter’s Prayer” that he’d read, but he recalled nothing about the exterior of the house or the neighborhood.

“Pull up one of these streets and I guess just start driving up and down,” Tim said. “Hopefully I’ll see something looks familiar.”

Dead lawns, rusted cars and lonely swing sets passed by slowly as Tim strained his eyes at every shitty little house, trying to remember. The place looked abandoned, not a Zee or a human in sight. But then on the third street they drove down, a child Zee came shrieking out of some bushes and rushed for the truck. Stacey stopped, shoved it into “Park” and quickly opened the door in the Zee kid’s face as she lunged at the truck. He stepped out and, using a silenced pistol, put it out of its misery.

“Nine-hunnert an’ eighty-six,” he said, almost under his breath.

“Nice,” said Tim.

“Sometimes silence is golden,” Stacey said as he got back in. “Situation like this, sound of a gunshot’s like ringin’ the dinner bell. Who knows how many of them are around here, waitin’ for any freshies dumb enough to come around.”

Tim was about to make a crack about being the dumb freshies when something stopped him cold.

“Holy shit, that’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“That house, the yellow one. It’s got a weathervane on top. That’s fucking it.”

Stacey pulled up slowly and stopped, killing the engine.

“How you wanna handle this?” Stacey asked. “If she’s even in there, of course. I don’t think she’s gonna throw herself in your arms or any shit like that. She most definitely will be interested in usin’ your dick like a hot dog, an’ she won’t need no bun or relish.”

Tim knew Stacey was right. Whatever had existed before between him and Marilyn was gone, replaced by simple Zee-squealer dynamics: She would want to kill and eat him, and he’d be compelled to defend himself. How, then, to capture her without killing her?

“Get the rope ready to tie her up and wait just outside the front door,” Tim said, opening the truck door and stepping down. “Let me just see if she’s even here first.”

Stacey nodded.

“OK chief, just watch yer package.”

He handed Tim the pistol with the silencer on it. “Just in case.”

The dead Zee was still in the doorway, and Tim stepped over it into the hall. He knew that, if for some reason Marilyn had stuck around, she’d be using the bedroom they’d slept in together. Somehow, he had to get up those stairs without alerting her — or anyone or anything else — to his presence. Slowly, with each step producing a creak that sounded like a gunshot to Tim, he made his way up the stairs and down the hall. Pushing open the door to the old lady’s room with the barrel of the gun, he peered inside — half expecting Marilyn to come at him like she’d been launched out of a cannon.

But there she was still, lying in the bed staring up at the ceiling. Was she already gone, her eyes still open?

He coughed, ready to slam the door shut if she came flying at him. But she only turned her head slightly and looked at him through eyes that could, he knew, see very little anymore.

Tim came within a few feet of the bed and regarded what was left of Marilyn. Her cheeks sunken in, her tongue dry and her eyes mostly dead, he guessed she hadn’t left the room since their last encounter.

“Oh, Marilyn,” he said in a near-whisper, “Look at you. You’re a mess.”

He called down to Stacey, who joined him in the room. He looked at Marilyn and poked her in the ribs with his shotgun. She didn’t move.

“She’s all fucked up,” he said.

“No shit,” said Tim. “How the hell are we going to get her out of here?”

The decided to just roll her up in the bedding and carry her down that way, and when they got through the door with her, they had company.

It was Craig and about a dozen guards. Three Meridian patrol trucks were pulled up around Stacey’s Ford, and Tim figured they’d just been following him the whole time. And doing a good job of it; he’d never seen or suspected anything. Craig was holding a shotgun, and while he didn’t point it at Tim, he knew the man would be happy to use it on him given the slightest provocation.

“That her?” Craig said, gesturing at the package he and Stacey were carrying.

“Yes, but she hasn’t got long,” Tim said. “We’ve got to get her to Meridian as soon as possible.”

“Well that’s what we’re here for,” Craig said. “Just get in and drive. We’ll lead and follow.”

Craig’s eyes told Tim he hated his guts, but his words made it clear his instructions from Mark were to focus on the task at hand. They loaded Marilyn in the back of the pickup, shoved a spare tire and a piece of wood against her to keep her from rolling around, and set off.

“What the fuck?” said Stacey, jamming the truck into gear and pulling away from the curb. “Did you know they were following us? Man, those guys are good.”

“No, I didn’t know, but I guess I should’ve figured since we hadn’t seen them. They probably put a tracker beacon on your truck last night while we were sleeping or something.”

Tim sighed.

“It’s probably just as well.”

Stacey gave him a curious look but said nothing. Tim contemplated telling him about Dr. Linda, but why complicate matters? He’d know soon enough. As it was, the time it would take to get back to Meridian was, Tim figured, the last he’d ever spend as a free man. If the blood synthesizing did work, neither he nor Marilyn would be needed anymore, and they could get rid of both of them. He could assume Mark would give Marilyn a humanitarian dose of something like Seconal. For Tim, would he just be turned over to the guards? Maybe put out in the field for target practice.

Once they got to the fence outside Meridian, they stopped the convoy and transferred Marilyn to a gurney in one of the patrol trucks. Tim was handcuffed and thrown in the back of another while they told Stacey to get lost.

Confused and facing overwhelming firepower, Stacey slowly pulled away while yelling out his window, “Let me know if it works!”

Inside, Mark took command. He didn’t look Tim in the eye, but had him securely strapped onto the bed. They did the same with Marilyn, despite the fact she needed no restraints.

Taking no chances. Who can blame them?

Mark drew so much blood that Tim passed out. And when he came to, his wife, Janet, was sitting in a chair beside him.

Chapter 22. The Cure

“Hi Janet,” he said, a wave of recognition and memory flowing in now that he could finally see her face.

Janet did not smile, did not jump up and joyfully cover him in kisses. She sat there, prim in a checked shirt and jeans, and eyed him evenly.

“Mark tells me … you’ve been a very naughty boy,” she said.

He looked at her closely a moment, remembering those eyes, the mouth, the dark hair she spent an hour on every morning.

“Well, Janet, I’ve been a zombie, more or less, and we’re an unpredictable bunch as you may have noticed.”

She looked down.

“You fucked that doctor, and then you killed her, and then you ate her?”

Now, she looked back up.

“How the hell am I supposed to, supposed to assimilate that information into, you know, our marriage?”

Tim considered a possible response. Correcting the sequence of events with Dr. Linda would likely get him nowhere. Really honey, I only had like a small bit of breast and some blood. And she was fucking me. Practically raped me. Should he tell her he was as good as dead anyway, that their marriage was over? Or go with something safer?

“How are the kids?”

“Dead, Tim. They’re dead.”

And she told him the story of her life since they’d been separated all those months ago. Their two little girls, Madison and Monroe (Janet was a history teacher before the plague) didn’t last a day once they were on the outside. Janet tried her best to keep them moving, but they fell behind and were taken at the same time Janet was being hustled away from her girls by the National Guard members trying to preserve as many lives as possible. She was in a herd of several hundred people being moved to what was supposed to be another secure facility, but the Zees descended on them in a terrible swarm, picking off people from the flanks while Janet did her best to stay in the center. Finally, they made it to the safe house — another jail nearby, in fact, where she’d been since yesterday. It was through the ham radio network that she’d learned of some scientist who’d returned to Meridian and that a cure was in the works. She figured it was Tim.

“I had no wish to live anymore, Tim. The girls gone, you gone, I figured what was the point? But there were some other little kids there, kids whose parents had been killed, and they needed someone. That’s the only thing that kept me just a little bit sane — taking care of those kids. There were about a dozen of them, all devastated, terrified, confused. Just like me.”

She paused and the room grew quiet. Again, Tim could think of nothing to say to all this. The loss of their children was awful, the worst news imaginable, but his Zee heart couldn’t contain it; nor could he remember much of the girls save the barest recollection of their being: dark hair, giggles … not much else.

Janet’s sad voice turned back into the sound of a chainsaw.

“And here you were, fucking bimbos and chewing their tits off. Jesus, Tim, how …?”

More possible responses rose to his lips, more explanations, maybe even an apology. None of it mattered, though, and in the end he chose silence, which she took badly. Janet stood, fetched him a good, hard slap on the cheek and stormed out of the room.

And this was exactly what he was talking to Stacey about the day before: Life is just less complicated when you’re out in the field, out in the Wasteland. He did wonder, though, if Janet’s previous love for him, their bond, was strong enough to help him out of the current pickle. It would take something of a charm offensive — something he was pretty sure he was incapable of mounting.

But he had to try, didn’t he? And he had to start by trying to get his head around one simple fact: What bothered Janet wasn’t so much the murder of Dr. Linda, it was the adultery that preceded it.

As they’d planned together, Mark was growing a few hundred different cultures in the lab to see which one might prove to be a true cure. Rats were easy to come by, and he tested each one on individual specimens and recorded their daily behavior and vital signs. A week went by before he came to see Tim, which Tim regarded as inevitable. His own expertise was in the synthesizing of viruses into agents that would work as anti-virals, and he knew Mark would need his help.

He came in quietly and stood in the corner, slowly outlining his needs and taking notes as Tim talked. When he had what he needed, he started to leave but Tim stopped him.

“Mark, look …”

“Forget about it, Tim. Whatever apology you may want to issue is … irrelevant.”

“I wasn’t going to apologize. Just explain.”

“I don’t need it. I understand. You couldn’t help yourself. But I still hate your fucking guts, and as soon as I’m sure I don’t need any more samples or information from you, I’m going to tell Craig we’re done with you. What happens then is up to him, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be pleasant. Linda couldn’t stand him and he knew it, but he was in love with her all the same. I adored Linda, like a sister. To see her lying there, violated in a way beyond comprehension …”

He left, and Tim felt a shiver run up his spine. He’d known what was coming, but hearing it spelled out by Mark was a whole different thing. It was also the first time he’d ever heard him use such strong language, and it frightened him. The notion of being utterly and completely alone and facing a painful death caused him to think endlessly on the simple question of whether he wanted to live at all and, if so, what his options might be to do so. It kept coming back to Janet, who’d also been avoiding him like, well, the plague. But, the fact remained that she was here. She’d come here, left the kids she was mothering, presumably to see him. Of course, she hadn’t known until she got to Meridian that her husband was an evil zombie sex fiend kinda dude, but still …

Tim had a lot of time to think, lying there strapped to the bed. Mark told him Marilyn was still alive, responding well to a goat blood diet and to the treatment of her many wounds. There was no doctor, but they had a good nurse who’d trained with Linda who was doing what she could.

He imagined her lying there, eyes staring at the ceiling, her mind blank as an IV full of goat blood kept her from starving. What would she be like, he wondered, as a person — a human female? As he lay there, day after day with his absurd and useless hard-on straining against the sheets, he fantasized about a future where they both went off together into some ridiculous sunset. They’d find an empty house, go upstairs and find another one of those nice, neat bedrooms. He’d lie down, she’d climb on top of him, she wouldn’t try to eat him …

The next time Mark came in for more advice, Tim asked him about distribution of the cure, assuming it was discovered. That was someone else’s job, Mark told him. The CDC was working with the remains of the military — something like that.

“Come on Mark, throw me a bone. You must know more than that.”

Mark looked at him with a mixture of disgust and familiarity. They’d worked together for so long, and now they found themselves on either side of some weird, emotional gulf. He sighed and sat down.

“They have several things in the works, Tim. Normal injections for restrained Zees, tranquillizer gun cartridges, some kind of aerosol that will be distributed via aircraft into the clouds, a model for introducing it into lakes and streams. It’s not one thing, it’s a bunch, and the estimate to treat all of the U.S. is … it’s not an overnight kind of deal.”

“How long do they think,” Tim asked, genuinely curious. Who knows, maybe he’d be around to try to live through it.

“Eighteen months at least, and probably up to five years to really stamp it out the way, say, polio was eradicated. And then of course the vaccine would need to be introduced as a requirement for every newborn from now ‘til eternity.”

“Wow,” Tim said. “Five more years of this shit. That sucks.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Tim,” Mark said, leaving.

You never know, Tim thought, looking up at the ceiling at the tiles he’d grown to know so well. Zees — maybe even ex-Zees — have a funny way of skewing expectations and making the seemingly inevitable morph into chaos.

He remembered this the next morning when Janet came to visit him again, very early. She was in a bathrobe, and she carried a roll of duct tape in one hand. She sat down and looked at him, saying nothing. So Tim spoke:

“If you’re here to tell me what an awful person I am, I just want to issue a blanket statement first: I don’t care what you think, I have no sense of remorse for fucking, killing and eating Dr. Linda, although I will add that I only had a little of her, and she was yummy — wish I’d had time for more. I don’t really remember you very well and I don’t give a shit about our marriage. I’m sorry I don’t really remember our kids, but I won’t lose any sleep over it. I’ll be dead soon anyway, but I do have this hard-on all the time, so if you want to make yourself useful, you can …”

Janet stood abruptly, pulled off a section of the duct tape and covered his mouth with it. The robe fell to the floor and she whipped off his sheets to reveal his diamond-hard prick. With his restraints on and his mouth taped shut, Tim could only communicate his surprise with his eyes as his wife slid her very wet and ready self onto him and started moving slowly up and down, talking to him throughout in a quiet, rather sinister voice.

“Mark told me about your little problem and I’ve been thinking about it all week, you piece of shit. Sometimes I used to think your dick was the only thing about you I liked, and to think of it in here hard as a rock all the time with your hands all tied … I’ve been faithful to you all these months, Tim, and don’t think for a second every swinging dick in that safe house wasn’t after me. Actually, that whole place was on fire with sex, everyone who could was fucking each other day and night, no matter about marriages or age differences or whatever. It was like everyone figured they would die soon and somehow this was a way to forget. Or maybe it was some biological imperative to maintain the human race in the face of our extermination. I don’t know. But I never gave up the idea that you were alive, so I was the nun in there, Tim, listening to the sound of fucking all day and all night from the cells up and down that green painted hallway all the fucking time …”

Then she came, quietly, in several waves, which finally shut her up. She hung on for another round and, without waiting for Tim to come, she slid off, threw on her robe and left after tossing the sheet back over his straining poll with a little laugh and a malevolent grin. A few seconds later she reappeared, tore the duct tape off his mouth and left again — after promising to be back the next morning.

Lying around a prison cell all tied up is working well for my sex life, Tim thought. What other horny female might pop by for a ride on his amazing stick? Funny thing was, he still couldn’t decide whether he was enjoying sex or not. The not coming didn’t really even bother him much, and the act itself, while pleasant enough, didn’t mean nearly as much as he remembered it used to. What was all the fuss about, in the old world, he wondered? Certainly the biological imperative to reproduce had a lot to do with it, and perhaps that was what was missing from his own scenario. Of course, Janet knew he’d had a vasectomy, so she was hardly in the hunt for another kid. She hadn’t bothered with a condom, he’d noticed, which, strictly speaking, was a careless error on her part. When she appeared again the next morning, he blurted out “Wear a condom!” before she taped his mouth shut again and repeated, to the orgasm, her actions of the previous day.

“I don’t need a condom, Tim. I don’t care if I catch your disease, or anything else. We’re all as good as dead. This place is surrounded by Zees now, everyone’s freaking out. They think they have it all sealed up, but they’ll find a way. They always find a way.”

She paused for an orgasm and continued talking and fucking.

“Even if Mark finds a cure, no one’s getting out of here alive. I’m dead anyway, I’ve been dead since that day. And look at me, fucking a zombie as the only way to feel just a little bit alive. How pathetic.”

With his eyes, Tim tried to say “I’m only a little bit zombie!” But mostly he watched, amused, as her tits bounced up and down and her hips gyrated against his. He closed his eyes and willed himself to come, focusing with all his energy on his dick, imagining it shooting plumes of jism into his wife’s — his wife’s! — vagina.

But it was not to be. Once again she slid off and left him hanging, stiff and unsatisfied, and she repeated her conjugal visit day after day, never once making the mistake of forgetting the tape or releasing his arms.

These carnal mornings aside, the remainder of Tim’s days were filled with exactly nothing. There was no television, of course, nothing to read, no one to talk to, not so much as a painting on the wall to look at. He slept as much as he could, but mostly he just lay there and, in between trying not to think and make his mind blank, thinking about the past, the present and the future. His past pretty much started on the day he came to outside that farmhouse. Halloween it was, or the day after. His life before that, his childhood, college, getting married, having kids and all that, it was like trying to remember being 5 years old. Fuzzy images and a few select, partial memories were about all he could muster, and it was bizarre to be around Janet, who remembered it all. During their sessions (Tim couldn’t bring himself to call it “lovemaking” or even “sex,” really — it was more like masturbation for Janet, with Tim in the role of the dildo), Janet found it amusing to relate selected memories to him. Whether it enhanced her pleasure to remember him as a real person or whether she thought it might help him climb back out of the abyss of ambivalence he didn’t know. But there she was, sitting atop him one morning after completing her own series of orgasms, telling him about their wedding day.

“It rained, you know, and it was supposed to be an outside wedding at Meadow Creek Park. And there was a room in case that happened, but it sucked, it wasn’t the same. And you and me, we were like ‘whatever,’ just happy to be there with all our friends and our families, but my mom was freaking out. Wouldn’t stop crying. Fucked up the whole day for me.”

Janet moved her hips and took a last few slow thrusts with him inside her, then pulled off of him and slipped into her robe.

“And you were great. For the first few years of our time together, up until Madison was born, really, you were Mr. Romantic. We had sex every day, Tim.” She laughed. “Like now, only you were there. And I wasn’t always on top. You loved fucking me from behind, more than anything.”

She pulled off his duct tape, a little more gently than usual.

“Happy to do that again for you, Janet.”

She laughed again.

“Not a chance.”

She put her hands on her breasts and gave them a little heft.

“So long as I’m alive, I want my girls to stay attached to my chest.”

“Understandable,” he said. “They do look quite yummy, and I don’t know if I could resist.”

“That’s just creepy, Tim. And so not funny.”

On her way out, she bumped into Mark, who gave her a stern look. He said nothing, only his eyebrows asking the question: “Am I mistaken or is Janet sporting that freshly fucked look?”

“What can I tell you, Mark? The ladies dig the recovering Zees. Maybe it’s the helpless thing, or the potential danger. I don’t know.”

Off Mark’s sour look he added: “She duct-tapes my mouth shut, Mark. And she doesn’t take off these fucking restraints. And, you know, she is my wife.”

“Well, that aside, I have news. Good and bad, in fact.”

“Give me the bad first,” Tim said.

“Zees are getting into the prison, we can’t figure out how. So far Craig and his men have been able to keep on top of it, but there’s more every day.”

“Weird,” Tim said. “But they do have a way of insinuating themselves into any situation. What’s the good?”

“I think we found something, something that’s working.”

“Do tell.”

“On the 14th, about a week ago, I noticed this one subject responding with reduced aggression, near-normal pupil dilation and reduced heart rate, among other things.”

“That’s great,” Tim said, wondering why Mark hadn’t mentioned it before. “Which one was it?”

They talked for a few moments about the various configurations of the anti-viral they’d been experimenting with, until Mark stopped and gave Tim a pointed look.

“There’s something else too, which you should know. When I first saw the results in 314, the rat, I was encouraged to try it on a human subject, and so … I gave it to Marilyn. I figured she was a lot further gone than you, and if it killed her, well, I still had you.”

“OK,” Tim said. “A little impetuous for you, Mark, but this isn’t exactly a normal time to be practicing procedurally precise medical science. Which one was it?”

He meant which version of the anti-viral attempts. They were up over the 200 mark.

“ZAV-237. The one with the added Glycyrrhizin. The licorice root, of all things.”

“ZAV” was Mark’s cute acronym for the cure versions. It simply meant “zombie anti-viral.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, it worked. She’s on her way back. Sitting up, starting to eat regular food, saying a few words, not lunging for my neck.”

Tim took a moment to let this sink in. Marilyn … talking? Marilyn as a human? He’d never truly thought he’d see the day. And she would be the first, at least that they knew of — the first full Zee to come back from the dead. Or whatever they were. Tim figured he didn’t really count since he’d never been full Zee in the first place. But Marilyn? She was deep in it, a full-on, flesh-eating zombie-movie ghoul of the first order.

“Wow,” he said finally. “She’s talking? What does she say?”

“Not much, yet,” Mark said. “Her speech skills are, I don’t know, the equivalent of an autistic 8 year old or thereabouts. But she’s progressing quickly. I mean, two days ago all she could do was grunt. Now she says things like ‘water’ or ‘home.’ We still have her restraints on, but I think she’s not a threat anymore. She’s out of the woods.”

“Give it to me, Mark.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

“Of course I’d fucking say that, Mark. Give it to me. I want it. Now.”

“Two more days. Just give me two more days to observe Marilyn and make sure there aren’t any bad reactions. It could still go south on her, Tim, you know that.”

No amount of reasoned begging would make him change his mind, leading Tim to finally ask:

“Why do you care, Mark? What happens to me? You’ve got the cure, you know I’m dead as soon as that asshole Craig gets the word from you. Just give me a little time to be completely human before … whatever.”

“I don’t know that I have the cure yet, Tim. Christ, you should know you can’t go off a week’s worth of observation. There’s still plenty of opportunity for this thing to mutate again, get worse, who knows?”

“Why do you care?”

“I care because if it doesn’t work on Marilyn, then I need you to try new strains on — once they pass muster on the rats. And to be honest, I don’t want to be the one to kill you. I don’t hold you responsible for Linda’s death, I really don’t. I’m in there trying to cure Marilyn — whose real name is Marta, by the way — and god knows how many people she’s murdered. Marta is not Marilyn. She probably doesn’t even remember any of her Zee days.”

Marta? What the fuck kind of name was that?

His thoughts were interrupted by a shout and several gunshots. Mark ran to the door and looked.

“Hell! Two more!”

He left, and Tim could hear him talking to the guards — them telling him the prison was completely surrounded. That was bad news, since the guards needed to hunt for deer, rabbit and squirrel to keep Meridian in fresh meat. For Tim, it didn’t matter so much as long as the supply of goat blood was OK.

Mark reappeared.

“More bad news. Your goats — they’re gone.”

“Those fuckers. Why can’t they just stick to yummy people?”

“They didn’t eat them, they just broke into their pen and let them escape. So there’s your food supply. Now, there’s a couple of pints in storage, that’s it. And we need it for Marta as well. She’s eating real food, but she still needs the hemoglobin from the goat blood to keep from getting jaundiced.”

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want that.”

“Anyway, we may need to accelerate things. Craig is of the opinion we’ll have to abandon Meridian, perhaps as soon as next week. It’s overrun. We can keep out the bulk of them, but if we can’t get out for hunting and other foraging, we’re doomed here.”

Zombies: They didn’t really worry Tim. He felt he had an edge when it came to avoiding them, and now that he’d killed one himself, he felt ready to live out there. Maybe it’d only be a week, or maybe he’d make it to the new world, where the plague was completely gone. It didn’t matter. ‘Doom’ was a relative term. We’re all doomed, it was just a matter of timing. And, he supposed, the degree of unpleasantness that accompanied the end. Maybe that’s why zombies were so unpopular. But, then, was that so bad compare to languishing on life support in some hospital for six months or more?

“Let me see Marta, when she can walk. Send her over.”

“Want to go over old times, huh?”

“Yeah Mark, we had some good kills together. I wouldn’t want her to forget anything.”

“She’s pretty sensitive right now, emotionally — I mean, she’s a wreck. Just imagine waking up from that all of the sudden. You did it more gradually.”

Mark stepped outside the cell and slid the door shut.

“I’ll tell her you’re here, OK? If she even remembers you …”

Chapter 23. Tim & Janet’s 10th Anniversary

Janet didn’t come by the next two mornings, leaving Tim and his woody all by their lonesome. Other than the poor orderly who came in to change his bedpan, Tim saw no one for three days. They were busy out there, the guards. He heard Zee incursions several times a day in his wing of the prison. The yells, the Zee screeches, followed by the gun shots and the murmuring as they cleaned up afterwards.

On the afternoon of the third day, after just such an episode was winding down, a woman appeared at the door of his cell and looked in at him. Tim had never seen her before but assumed she was some general staffer at Meridian since she didn’t have on a lab coat or scrubs.

“Hello,” he said. “Come to look at the scary zombie in his cage?”

“Sumding lob dat,” she said, pulling the cell door open. They were all on electronic locking system that no longer worked, so when they slammed his cell door shut on their way out, it was really just an act.

Short and slight, pale as flour and appearing extremely weak, the woman slowly padded into the cell and stood by his side. It was Marilyn, of course, which caused Tim to feel a series of emotions all at once — something he hadn’t experienced since before the plague. Relief at seeing her alive was coupled with something approaching joy. There was dread as well, as he parsed this slip of a woman with the fierce predator he’d known in the Wasteland. Mixed in with all that was lust: Women coming into his cell had turned out to be a good deal for him in the past few weeks.

“Marilyn,” Tim said. “I’m sorry — Marta. It’s you. Look at you, all human and everything.”

How much did she remember? Mark had said she didn’t remember anything. But then why was she here?

Marta put her hand on his and squeezed it. And answered his unstated question.

“Ah rememba you.”

“That’s good, Marta,” he said, looking into her eyes. They were blue — no longer the dead-shark gray of a Zee. Marta was a pretty woman — or at least would be once she got her weight and strength back. With her clipped brown hair, sharp little nose and rather pointy chin, she was elfin to the extreme, which made Tim wonder why she’d chosen Marilyn Monroe as a Halloween costume. He remembered her chewed-up ass and wondered how she felt about that.

He squeezed her hand back, looked into her eyes and felt himself go almost misty.

“Damn, it’s good to see you … like this. Cured, wow. I never thought I’d get to see you, you know, talking and all like this. How do you feel?”

Marta looked at him with a puzzled expression and took a moment to think.

“O-gay, ah guess. Confoosed, a libble scared. Tired all ba time. Supa weak.”

Tim nodded.

“And how much do you remember of, of our time together?”

Again the puzzled look, which Tim attributed to her latent brain functions still coming back to life. It couldn’t be easy to go from Zee to a human capable of carrying on a conversation.

“All a-bit.”

“Wow, really?”

“Sowy ah bit you.”

“That’s OK,” Tim said, realizing how ridiculous that sounded. “That was Marilyn, not you. Not Marta.”

Noises in the hallway indicated a patrol approaching.

“Ah’ll be bock,” she said.

She skimmed out of the cell like a ghost, leaving the door open behind her.

“Holy shit” said Tim, quietly to his ceiling as the enormity of Marta’s presence here washed over him. “Holy fucking shit.”

The patrol was led by Craig, who Tim hadn’t seen since the day they found Marilyn. He popped his head into Tim’s cell.

“Hey asshole,” said Craig.

“What is it, asshole?” said Tim.

“I’m fucking your wife.”

“Good. Whatever.”

Craig laughed and gestured at the pistol in his hand.

“And soon, you’re getting’ a divorce. An’ don’t worry about the paperwork or lawyers or nothin’.”

He laughed, and he was joined by the other guys in the patrol as they walked away.

If Tim hadn’t been tied down, he’d have kicked himself for that terrible comeback. “Good, whatever?” That sucked, and he lay there the rest of the day coming up with much better ones. At one point, it occurred to him that, as the cuckold, he should be angry and planning revenge, but he really didn’t care about Janet — especially now that Marta was here. And who could blame her for aligning herself with a heavily armed soldier, what with zombies at the gates? Tim certainly wasn’t in any position to protect her, and no doubt Janet guessed that, even if he could, he may well choose not to in order to save his own skin.

Not Marta, though. Tim would protect her to the end. After what they’d been through, the notion of spending even a few hours together — as humans, maybe even lovers — was immensely appealing. If somehow they made it through to the new world, they could laugh over some of those memories. But the image of Marilyn chewing off some fat guy’s dick came to the fore, and Tim thought … “Or not.” Some skeletons may best be left in their collective closet.

It was maddening to lie there hoping people would show up to tell him things. Even a face as unwelcome as Craig’s was at least a break in the boredom. He was eager to see Marta again, wondering if she was well enough to have a real conversation. Or would that be too much to hope for — especially with her speech impediment? It struck him that, for as much as he cared about Marta, he knew almost nothing about her. All of his feelings for her related to his time with her doppelganger Marilyn — the utterly moronic, cold-blooded cannibal zombie woman who smelled like a cesspool and never knew to wipe her face after a meal. The woman who’d just visited him, who was she? Sure, they say people who’ve been through traumatic experiences or adventures together form a bond, and perhaps that’s where he and Marta were at. Janet used to tell him that, since he’d stuck around after seeing her “at her worst” — whether it was as a raging, PMS’ing bitch or with all modesty dashed during childbirth — that there was some kind of prize in there as well. Certainly that was the case with Marta, although it may well be that wiping those memories from his mind would be necessary to see her as the loving, compassionate woman he hoped she’d turn out to be.

As Tim lay sorting this all out in his mind, Mark finally appeared again, this time pushing a wheelchair and carrying a small steel tray containing a needle and a 9mm pistol.

This can’t be good.

“Hey doc, is the gun to make sure my HMO pays the bill or what?”

Mark, as usual, was all business.

“Look Tim, I’m just going to give you the vaccine now and hope for the best. The wheels are coming off this thing, the place is overrun and it’d be an exaggeration to say I have any control over Craig anymore.”

He stuck the needle in Tim’s hip and depressed the plunger.

“If you’re still alive, you should see results in 24 hours or so, which in your case would hopefully be a pretty quick diminishing of your remaining symptoms: the erections, the bloodlust and the inability to eat regular food.”

“Thanks,” Tim said. “And the gun?”

“That’s for me if I decide to release your restraints, which I haven’t decided yet.”

“What? You’re going to release me then shoot me?”

“No,” Mark said with a sigh. “I’m going to release you, then hold a gun on you until I get away — in case you try to eat me.”

“That hurts, Mark. After all we’ve been through, I’d never do that. Plus, I’m full of goat blood … mmmm! And besides, so long as you don’t dangle something tasty in front of me like Dr. Linda did, I think I can control myself.”

Mark reached over and undid one of the restraints.

“Don’t worry, you’re not my type. And besides, I’m wearing a Kevlar jockstrap.”

Tim laughed, genuinely. Mark was not prone to cracking jokes.

“That’s good Mark, lighten up,” Tim said, hurriedly reaching for the other restraints before Mark changed his mind or the asshole Craig showed up. Tim swung his legs over the bed and immediately fell face-down on the floor. This time it was Mark’s turn to laugh.

“In the real world, you’d probably need a month or two of physical therapy to recover from a prolonged period of bed rest like that.”

“Yeah, point me to the spa, would you? Shit. Help me up, Mark.”

With Mark’s help, Tim was soon sitting in the wheelchair next to his bed. He was about to ask about more of the vaccine when Mark answered his question by producing a small parcel from his lab coat.

“Look Tim, I’m giving these to everyone. We have to abandon Meridian, and who knows who’ll make it out alive. In here are a few hundred doses of ZAV-237. There’s also instructions on how to reproduce it as well as some of the ham radio frequencies we’ve been corresponding on: the CDC, some military outposts and that lab in Texas. Any of those are good places to head to, but I’m trying for the CDC in Atlanta. It’s like 900 miles, but they’re the ones with the plan for mass distribution.”

There was another commotion in the hallway, more gunshots, running and shouting. Tim heard the unmistakable voice of Craig, and he grabbed the 9mm off the tray and pointed it at Mark’s belly.

“Don’t move.”

“What the fuck Tim?”

The sound of a shotgun being pumped resonated behind Mark’s back, and Craig called out:

“Outta the way Dr. Besson! We’ve gotta go, but there’s one little piece of business to take care of.”

“Not yet, Craig,” Mark said without turning his head. “I don’t know if we’ve got it for sure yet, and we may need him.”

“Too late, doc. This shit’s falling apart and we’re pulling out. It doesn’t matter anymore, and no way I’m letting this asshole live — even if it’s just for five minutes before the real fucking Zees get him.”

Tim looked up at Mark and mouthed “now.”

Mark stepped to the side. It took a half second for Craig to notice the gun in Tim’s hand, but by then it was already too late. He was no expert with a pistol, but Craig was only 5 feet away, and Tim was able to hit him with three of the five shots he fired. Of those, two hit him in the body armor he was wearing, but the third had caught him in the neck.

Mark slumped against the wall, his hands over his ears following the deafening sound of the shots. He looked at Craig dispassionately, the wound gushing blood. “You hit his jugular.”

“I see that.”

Tim shoved himself out of the wheelchair and scrambled over to Craig, putting his mouth over the pulsing wound and drinking deep. He wasn’t cured yet, and who knew when and where his next meal would come from.

“Oh, gross!” Mark said, fetching Tim a kick in the ass. “Stop that!”

Tim pulled away. “Hey, a man’s gotta eat!”

“Man’s gotta die, too.”

It was Janet, now standing outside the cell with her own gun — a small .20 gauge, which she pumped emphatically and pointed at Tim’s head as he tried to bring up his own gun.

“You suck, Tim.”

But the next gun to go off belonged to neither of the Liptons who, in happier times would have been celebrating their 10th anniversary this day. Marta hit Janet in the chest with her own shotgun, and Tim’s wife dropped, cut almost in half by the blast.

“Ib yer gomma shoot, shoot. Dome tawk,” she said.

Even among the chaos in the cell, Tim felt a warm wave of love as he recognized the Clint Eastwood allusion.

Mark looked around frantically, from the corpses of Craig and Janet to the bloody face of Tim to the slight figure of Marta, the recovered zombie standing before them with the smoking shotgun.

“Holy fucking shit! What is wrong with you people?!”

“Nothing wrong, Mark,” said Tim, wiping his face off with a towel. “This is normal for 2014, don’tcha think?”

Tim looked over at Marta, who was now crying.

“Thanks baby, you did great. What’s wrong?”

“Whub wawng? Nebba kibbed amybubby befaw. Ibs fubbed up.”

Tim let that one go.

“Look, we’ve gotta go. Before Craig’s buddies find him, before more goddamned Zees make it into this wing. Mark, you with us?”

Mark looked stricken, and Tim was afraid he was going to start crying as well. But the man hadn’t made it this far in the time of the plague without some hard choices of his own, and it was clear his right-hand man and bodyguard wasn’t going to be in whatever the next chapter held.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go. To the tunnel.”

In addition to providing security for Meridian, Craig and his men had been charged with one other major task over the past six months: Digging an escape tunnel from the prison’s basement all the way past the outer fence. Mark had told them they always needed to prepare for the worst, even as Craig had insisted Meridian was impregnable. Once in the basement, Mark led them to a locked door. Inside was a room that contained a row of lockers and the entrance to the tunnel. Most of the locker doors stood open. Mark found a locked one with his name on it.

He spun some numbers on the combination lock and retrieved a duffel bag, a flashlight, a rifle and a pistol in a holster.

Off Tim’s look, Mark explained:

“Everyone has a bag with supplies, some food, first aid stuff, water, ammo. Plus a couple of guns. We kept them in lockers so that if anyone went crazy or anything, well, they couldn’t take anyone else’s stuff.”

He gestured at all the open lockers.

“Looks like just about everyone else is gone. Except Craig, of course.”

“Where’s my locker?” Tim said, only half serious.

“Come on,” Mark said, ducking into the tunnel. “We’ve got 200 yards to crawl, so save your breath.”

Marta helped Tim up out of his wheelchair and he found that, while still weak, he was able to stand and walk. It must’ve just been that first step, he figured. It took them nearly an hour to crawl the length of the tunnel, Mark pushing his duffel bag ahead of him. When finally they reached the ladder with the shaft leading to the top, they stopped and caught their breath.

Tim looked up at the slim bit of sunlight reaching them from above.

“I wonder what kind of fucked-up shit is waiting for us up there.”

“It could hardly be any more fucked up than the shit we just left behind,” Mark said, pointing his flashlight into Tim’s eyes. “Who are you now, Tim? Friend or foe? Are we in this together, or are you going to attack me — or Marta — first chance you get?”

“No,” said Tim. “I’m good, really.”

How to explain that he had more control than that? That the sight of his enemy’s death wound gushing essential nourishment was more than he could resist — the same way Dr. Linda dangling a warm breast in his face was simply too much temptation? That the cure was now in him, and soon he’d be done with human flesh and blood — just give him 24 hours. That Mark was like a brother, and Marta his … his what? Was “soul mate” too strong?

“I won’t, Mark. And I’ll be cured soon. If you want to keep an eye on me for that 24 hours, fine.”

“I don’t have that luxury, Tim. We’re going to need all our eyes for the Zees up here. Look, I know you can’t promise anything because you probably don’t know yourself. But just know that until I see you eat something normal and keep it down, Marta and I are going to stand watches, and we’ll shoot you at the first sign of, of naughtiness. Right, Marta?”

He shone the light in her face. Tim saw a scared woman faced with a tough choice.

“Ribe,” she said. “Ib dat’s O-gay wib you, Tim?”

“I’m fine with it. I’ll be cured soon, 100 percent tomorrow. And I’m not hungry now anyway, so …”

Mark cut him off.

“Alright then. I’ll go up first. There should be a jeep for us, but I wouldn’t count on it. Most of the Zees should be out of the way since they’re all over Meridian now. Everyone ready?”

They nodded and began the climb to the top. Metaphorically, Tim thought, it was appropriate to be going up a narrow, birth canal-like shaft, moving from dark to light. Their old lives — or at least the chapter immediately preceding — were now behind them, and who knew what was next? Death could be right on the other side of the trap door at the top of the shaft, but they couldn’t stay where they were and they certainly couldn’t go back. Whatever happened, Tim imagined the last vestiges of Zee still left inside him were leaving his body, wafting back down that tunnel into the Zee-filled halls of Meridian.

Mark was now at the door, his palm on the handle ready to push it open.

“OK, here we go. Get ready to move fast.”

Chapter 24. Southbound again

Atlanta was the destination, and Tim and Marta had told Mark they’d accompany him.

“Nothing better to do than save the human race, I guess,” Tim said.

They were in the jeep which, remarkably, was still parked on the other side of the tunnel. It helped that Mark had the key in his duffel bag. There were no Zees in the area immediately surrounding the tunnel’s opening, but they could look easily enough at Meridian to see and hear the bulk of the area’s zombies busy looking for a meal inside the prison. Tim imagined them polishing off the remains of Craig and Janet, and the thought filled him with nothing more than satisfaction that he wasn’t part of that particular tableau.

Mark already had a map open, and he was plotting their route.

“Just one thing before we leave,” Tim said.

The other two looked at him.

“Stacey. We need to find him, take him with us. We need the extra man if we’re going to make it all that way.”

Tim took some time to explain who Stacey was, why he was a good man to have on a trip across a countryside filled with zombies, and how they wouldn’t last long without his guns and experience in the Wasteland. Reluctantly, Mark agreed it was a good idea, and Marta just shrugged.

With daylight fading, they determined the best course of action would be to find a place to hole up for the night, find Stacey in the morning and, assuming he was willing to join them, head south for Atlanta.

In an upscale neighborhood a few miles from the prison they found a large home that appeared not to have been broken into. Marta found the side door of the garage unlocked, and they were in. After exploring the house and making sure no Zees or squealers were lying in wait, they convened in the kitchen. In the remaining light, they supped together on canned fruit, crackers and anchovies — Tim gagging some down as a show to Mark. After one more tour of the house, they headed off to bed.

Without a word, Marta followed Tim’s bouncing flashlight beam upstairs and into one of the two master bedrooms. As they had as Zees, they both lay on their backs on the big bed and looked up.

“Dibbrent, huh?” she said.

“Yeah. Very.”

They lay there silently, listening to a clock on the nightstand tick.

“Whub’s going ta habben, Tim?”

Tim turned on his side and propped his head up with his hand as he looked at Marta. In the fading light, she was beautiful, her scarred face of no consequence as he remembered all she’d been through. He reached out and touched her cheek.

“I don’t know. We’ll make it to Atlanta, I’m pretty sure. Maybe there’s like a big protected area where everyone at the CDC lives, and we can be there, safe. And then they’ll get this cure out, across the world. While we wait and do … whatever.”

“Sounds bawing.”

“I could use a little boring for a change.”

Marta didn’t say anything to this, but after a few moments she said:

“You woobn’t ebba …? Ah mean, ah know yaw hobefubby going to respond to the cure. Bub dey tobe me bout what you did to that doctaw. I awbost laughed when dey tobe me, cuz I know how much you lub da titties and I could so see how you coubn’t resist.”

“I couldn’t, that’s for sure.”

“So I’m safe? I didn’t go through awb dis shit to end up with some guy who’s going to … you know.”

“You’re safe,” he said, finding her hand and lacing his fingers into hers. “Always with me, you’ll be safe. We have to trust each other completely, is all. And I’d starve before I touched your perfect breasts.”

Marta laughed.

“Well I hobe you touch dem, at some point. Just dome fubbin’ eat dem!”

“Right. But the cure … I shouldn’t even be tempted, after tomorrow I guess.”

“An I dome know about perbect. I’m no Marilyn Monroe, you know.”

“True. You’re better. I never liked blondes.”

Marta sighed, then rolled over and folded herself into Tim, throwing an arm across his chest and saying but one thing before falling asleep:

“I’m glad I’m wib you … glad we found each other again.”

“Me too, Marta. Me too.”

###

About the Author

T. Alex Miller is a graduate of the University of Colorado-Boulder creative writing program. His writing career has been spent mostly in community newspapers, although he also worked for a year in Hollywood (in development at the Sci-Fi Channel) and edited a magazine in Los Angeles (LA Family). He is currently the editor of the Summit Daily News, a newspaper in Frisco, CO.

In addition to his career in journalism, Miller has been active in theatre as an actor, director and playwright. His plays have been produced locally as well as in conjunction with the state theatre festival. They include 5 Gears in Reverse, The Adjudicators, Velociraptors and Outrageous Claims. His first novel, Ohiowa, is also available on Kindle.

Miller lives in Frisco, Colorado with his wife, Jen, and their children.

Contact him at talex10@gmail.com.

Connect with me online:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/talexmiller

My newspaper website: www.summitdaily.com

Cover design: Julie Watson