by Isaac Marion
“Job? School?” My tone shifts from query to accusation. “Movie? Song?” It bubbles out of me like oil from a punctured pipeline. “Book?” I shout at her. “Food? Family? Name?”
My wife turns and spits at me. Actually spits on my shirt, snarling like an animal. But the look in her eyes instantly cools my eruption. She’s . . . frightened. Her lips quiver. What am I doing?
I look at the floor. We stand in silence for several minutes. Then she resumes walking, and I follow her, trying to shake off this strange black cloud that’s settled over me.
• • •
She leads me to a gutted gift shop and lets out an emphatic groan. Our kids emerge from behind an overturned bookcase full of bestsellers that will never be read. They’re each gnawing a human forearm, slightly brown at the stumps, not exactly fresh.
“Where did . . . get those?” I ask them. They shrug. I turn to my wife. “Need . . . better.”
She frowns and points at me. She grunts angrily, and I avert my eyes, duly chastised. It’s true, I haven’t been the most involved parent. Is it possible to have a midlife crisis if you have no idea how old you are? I could be in my early thirties or late teens. I could be younger than Julie.
My wife grunts at the kids and gestures down the hall. They hang their heads and make a wheezy whining noise, but they follow us. We are taking them to their first day of school.
• • •
Some of us, maybe the same industrious Dead who built the Boneys’ stair church, have built a “classroom” in the food court by stacking heavy luggage into high walls. As my family and I approach, we hear groans and screams from inside this arena. There is a line of youngsters in front of the entryway, waiting their turn. My wife and I lead our kids to the back of the line and watch the lesson now in progress.
Five Dead youth are circling a skinny, middle-aged Living man. The man backs up against the luggage, looking frantically left and right, his empty hands balled into fists. Two of the youths dive at him and try to hold his arms down, but he shakes them off. The third one nips a tiny bite in his shoulder and the man screams as if he’s been mortally wounded, because in effect, he has. From zombie bites to starvation to good old-fashioned age and disease, there are so many options for dying in this new world. So many ways for the Living to stop. But with just a few debrained exceptions, all roads lead to us, the Dead, and our very unglamorous immortality.
The man’s pending conversion seems to have numbed him. One of the youths latches her teeth onto his thigh and he doesn’t even flinch, he just bends over and starts pummeling her head with both fists until her skull dents and her neck snaps audibly. She stumbles away from him, scowling, her head tilting at a severe angle.
“Wrong!” their teacher roars. “Get . . . throat!”
The children back away and watch the man warily.
“Throat!” the teacher repeats. He and his assistant lumber into the arena and tackle the man, forcing him to the ground. The teacher kills him and stands up, blood streaming down his chin. “Throat,” he says again, pointing to the body.
The five children exit shamefaced, and the next five in line are prodded inside. My kids look up at me anxiously. I pat their heads.
We watch as the dead man is hauled off to be eaten and the next one is dragged into the classroom. This one is old and gray haired, but he’s big, probably a Security officer at one time in his life. He requires three of our males to haul him in safely. They throw him into a corner and quickly return to guard the entryway.
The five youths inside are nervous, but the teacher shouts at them and they begin to move in. When they get close enough they all five lunge at the same time, two grabbing for each arm and the fifth going for the throat. But the old man is shockingly strong. He twists around and flings two of them hard against the wall of luggage. The impact shakes the wall and a sturdy metal briefcase topples down from the top. The man grabs it by the handle, raises it high, and smashes it down on one of the youths’ heads. The youth’s skull caves in and his brain squishes out. He doesn’t scream or twitch or quiver, he just abruptly collapses into a heap of limbs, flat and flush with the floor as if he’s been dead for months already. Death takes hold of him with retroactive finality.
The whole school goes silent. The remaining four children back out of the arena. No one really pays attention as the adults rush inside to deal with the man. We all gaze at the youth’s crumpled corpse with sad resignation. We can’t tell which of the gathered adults might be his parents, since all our expressions are about the same. Whoever they are, they will forget their loss soon enough. By tomorrow the Boneys will show up with another boy or girl to replace this one. We allow a few uncomfortable seconds of silence for the killed child, then school resumes. A few parents glance at each other, maybe wondering what to think, wondering what this all means, this bent, inverted cycle of life. Or maybe that’s just me.
My kids are next in line. They watch the current lesson intently, sometimes standing on tiptoes to see, but they aren’t afraid. They are younger than the rest and will probably be matched against someone too frail to put up a fight, but they don’t know this, and it’s not why they’re unafraid. When the entire world is built on death and horror, when existence is a constant state of panic, it’s hard to get worked up about any one thing. Specific fears have become irrelevant. We’ve replaced them with a smothering blanket far worse.
• • •
I pace outside the 747 boarding tunnel for about an hour before going in. I open the jet’s door quietly. Julie is curled up in business class, sleeping. She has wrapped herself in a quilt made of cut-up jeans that I brought back as a souvenir a few weeks ago. The morning sun makes a halo in her yellow hair, sainting her.
“Julie,” I whisper.
Her eyes slide open a crack. This time she doesn’t jolt upright or edge away from me. She just looks at me with tired, puffy eyes. “What,” she mumbles.
“How . . . are . . . ?”
“How do you think I am.” She puts her back to me and wraps the blanket around her shoulders.
I watch her for a moment. Her posture is a brick wall. I lower my head and turn to go. But as I step through the doorway she says, “Wait.”
I turn around. She is sitting up, the blanket piled on her lap. “I’m hungry,” she says.
I look at her blankly. Hungry? Does she want an arm or leg? Hot blood, meat and life? She’s Living . . . does she want to eat herself? Then I remember what being hungry used to mean. I remember beefsteaks and pancakes, grains and fruits and vegetables, that quaint little food pyramid. Sometimes I miss savoring taste and texture instead of just swallowing energy, but I try not to dwell on it. The old food does nothing to satisfy us anymore. Even bright red meat from a freshly killed rabbit or deer is beneath our culinary standards; its energy is simply incompatible, like trying to run a computer on diesel. There is no easy way out for us, no humane alternative for the fashionably moral. The new hunger demands sacrifice. It demands human suffering as the price for our pleasures, meager and cheap as they are.
“You know, food?” Julie prompts. She mimes the act of taking a bite. “Sandwiches? Pizza? Stuff that doesn’t involve killing people?”
I nod. “I’ll . . . get.”
I start to leave but she stops me again.
“Just let me go,” she says. “What are you doing? Why are you keeping me here?”
I think for a moment. I step to her window and point to the runways below. She sees the church service in progress. The congregation of the Dead, swaying and groaning. The skeletons rattling back and forth, voiceless but somehow charismatic, gnashing their splintered teeth. There are dozens of them down there, swarming.
“Keep you . . . safe.”
She looks up at me from her chair with an expression I can’t read. Her eyes are narrowed and her lips are tight, but it’s not exactly rage. “How do you know my name?” she demands.
There it is. It had to come eventually.
“In that building. You said my name, I remember it. How the fuck do you know my name?”
I make no attempt to answer. No way to explain what I know and how I know it, not with my kindergarten vocabulary and special ed speech impediments. So I simply retreat, exiting the plane and trudging up the boarding tunnel, feeling more acutely than ever the limitations of what I am.
As I stand in Gate 12 considering where to go from here, I feel a touch on my shoulder. Julie is standing behind me. She stuffs her hands into the pockets of her tight black jeans, looking uncertain. “Just let me get out and walk around a little,” she says. “I’m going crazy in that plane.”
I don’t answer. I look around the hallways.
“Come on,” she says. “I walked in here and nobody ate me. Let me go with you to get food. You don’t know what I like.”
This is . . . not entirely true. I know she loves pad thai. I know she drools over sushi. I know she has a weakness for greasy cheese-burgers, despite the stadium’s rigorous fitness routines. But that knowledge is not mine to use. That knowledge is stolen.
I nod slowly and point at her. “Dead,” I pronounce. I click my teeth and do an exaggerated zombie shuffle.
“Okay,” she says.
I lumber around in a circle with slow, shaky steps, letting out an occasional groan.
“Got it.”
I take her by the wrist and lead her out into the hallway. I gesture in each direction, indicating the small cliques of zombies wandering in the dim morning shadows. I look her straight in the eyes. “Don’t . . . run.”
She crosses her heart. “Promise.”
Standing so close to her, I find that I can smell her again. She has wiped much of the black blood off her skin, and through the gaps I can detect traces of her life energy. It bubbles out and sparkles like champagne, igniting flashes deep in the back of my sinuses. Still holding her gaze, I rub my palm into a recent gash on my forearm, and although it’s nearly dry now, I manage to collect a thin smear of blood. I slowly spread this ink on her cheek and down her neck. She shudders, but doesn’t pull away. She is, at the bottom of everything, a very smart girl.
“Okay?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, cringes at the smell of my fluids, then nods. “Okay.”
I walk and she follows, stumbling along behind me and groaning every three or four steps. She is overdoing it, overacting like high school Shakespeare, but she will pass. We bump through crowds of Dead, large hunting parties shambling past us on both sides, and no one glances at us. To my amazement, Julie’s fear seems to be diminishing as we walk, despite the obvious peril of her situation. At a few points I catch her fighting a smile after letting out a particularly hammy moan. I feel an unfamiliar but pleasant sensation in my lips, tugging them upward.
This is . . . new.
I TAKE JULIE to the food court, and she gives me an odd look when I immediately start moving toward the Thai restaurant. As we get closer she cringes and covers her nose. “Oh God,” she moans. The warming bins in front are frothing with dried-up rot, dead maggots, and mold. I’m pretty much impervious to odor by now, but judging by Julie’s expression, it’s foul. We dig around in the back room for a while, but the airport’s intermittent power means the freezers only work part-time, so everything inside is rancid. I head toward the burger joint. Julie gives me that quizzical look again and follows me. In the walk-in freezer we find a few burger patties that are currently cold but have clearly been thawed and refrozen many times. Dead flies speckle the white freezer floor.
Julie sighs. “Well?”
I look off into the distance, thinking. The airport does have a sushi bar . . . but I remember a little about sushi, and if a few hours can spoil a fresh hamachi fillet, I don’t want to see what years can do.
“God,” Julie says as I stand there deliberating, “you really know how to plan a dinner date.” She opens a few boxes of moldy buns, wrinkles up her nose. “You’ve never done this before, have you? Taken a human home alive?”
I shake my head apologetically, but I wince at her use of the word “human.” I’ve never liked that differentiation. She is Living and I’m Dead, but I’d like to believe we’re both human. Call me an idealist.
I raise a finger as if to stall her. “One . . . more place.”
We walk to an unmarked side area of the food court. Several doors later, we’re in the airport’s central storage area. I pry open a freezer door and a cloud of icy air billows out. I hide my relief. This was starting to get awkward. We step inside and stand among shelves stacked high with in-flight meal trays.
“What have we here . . . ,” Julie says, and starts digging through the low shelves, inspecting the Salisbury steaks and processed potatoes. Thanks to whatever glorious preservatives they contain, the meals appear to be edible.
Julie scans the labels on the upper shelves she can’t reach and suddenly beams, showing rows of white teeth that childhood braces made perfect. “Look, pad thai! I love . . .” She trails off, looking at me uneasily. She points to the shelf. “I’ll have that.”
I stretch over her head and grab a tray of frozen pad thai. I don’t want any of the Dead to see Julie eating this lifeless waste, these empty calories, so I lead her to a table hidden behind some collapsed postcard kiosks. I try to steer her as far away from the school as possible, but we can still hear the wretched screams echoing down the halls. Julie keeps her face utterly placid during even the shrillest wails, doing everything short of whistling a tune to show that she doesn’t notice the carnage. Is this for my benefit or hers?
We sit down at the café table and I set the meal tray in front of her. “En . . . joy,” I say.
She jabs at the frozen-solid noodles with a plastic fork. She looks at me. “You really don’t remember much, do you? How long has it been since you ate real food?”
I shrug.
“How long has it been since you . . . died or whatever?”
I tap a finger against my temple and shake my head.
She looks me over. “Well, it can’t have been very long. You look pretty good for a corpse.”
I wince again at her language, but I realize she can’t possibly know the sensitive cultural connotations of the word “corpse.” M uses it sometimes as a rough joke, and I use it myself in some of my darker moments, but coming from an outsider it ignites a defensive indignation she wouldn’t understand. I breathe deep and let it go.
“Anyway, I can’t eat it like this,” she says, pushing her plastic fork into the food until one of the tines snaps. “I’m going to go find a microwave. Hold on.”
She gets up and wanders into one of the empty restaurants. She has forgotten her shamble, and her hips sway rhythmically. It’s risky, but I find myself not caring.
“Here we go,” she says when she comes back, taking a deep whiff of spicy steam. “Mmm. I haven’t had Thai in forever. We don’t do real food at the stadium anymore, just basic nutrition and Carbtein. Carbtein tablets, Carbtein powder, Carbtein juice. Jesus H. Gross.” She sits down and takes a bite of freezer-burned tofu. “Oh wow. That’s almost tasty.”
I sit there and watch her eat. I notice she seems to be having trouble getting the clumpy, congealed noodles down her throat. I fetch a lukewarm bottle of beer from the restaurant’s cooler and set it on the table.
Julie stops eating and looks at the bottle. She looks at me and smiles. “Why, Mr. Zombie. You read my mind.” She twists off the cap and takes a long drink. “I haven’t had beer in a while, either. No mind-altering substances allowed in the stadium. Have to stay alert at all times, stay vigilant, blah blah blah.” She takes another drink and gives me an appraising look laced with sarcasm. “Maybe you’re not such a monster, Mr. Zombie. I mean, anyone who appreciates a good beer is halfway okay in my book.”
I look at her and hold a hand to my chest. “My . . . name . . . ,” I wheeze, but can’t think how to continue.
She sets the beer down and leans forward a li
ttle. “You have a name?”
I nod.
Her lip curls in an amused half smile. “What’s your name?”
I close my eyes and think hard, trying to pull it out of the void, but I’ve tried this so many times before. “Rrr,” I say, trying to pronounce it.
“Rur? Your name is Rur?”
I shake my head. “Rrrrr . . .”
“Rrr? It starts with ‘R’?”
I nod.
“Robert?”
I shake my head.
“Rick? Rodney?”
I shake my head.
“Uh . . . Rambo?”
I let out a sigh and look at the table.
“How about I just call you ‘R’? That’s a start, right?”
My eyes dart to hers. “R.” I feel that upward sensation in my lips again. A slow smile—the first I can remember—creeps across my face.
“Hi, R,” she says. “I’m Julie. But you knew that already, didn’t you. Guess I’m a fucking celebrity.” She nudges the beer toward me. “Have a drink.”
I eye the bottle for a second, feeling a strange kind of nausea at the thought of what’s inside. Dark amber emptiness. Lifeless piss. But I don’t want to ruin this improbably warm moment with my stupid undead hangups. I accept the beer and take a long pull. I can feel it trickling through tiny perforations in my stomach and dampening my shirt. And to my amazement, I can feel a slight buzz spreading through my brain. This isn’t possible, of course, since I have no bloodstream for the alcohol to enter, but I feel it anyway. Is it psychosomatic? Maybe a distant memory of the drinking experience left over from my old life? If so, apparently I was a lightweight.
Julie grins at my stupefied expression. “Drink up,” she says. “I’m actually more of a wine girl anyway.”
I take another pull. I can taste her raspberry lip gloss on the rim. I find myself imagining her dolled up for a concert, her neck-length hair swept and styled, her small body radiant in a red party dress, and me kissing her, the lipstick smearing onto my mouth, spreading bright rouge onto my gray lips . . .
