Zombie Mashup

by Robert Devereaux

  *****

  Travis felt so strange as Swami Apadravya spoke, as if he were hearing forbidden wisdom: not the content so much as what strange breath it was riding on. The light greenhouse feel of satsang was with him as always, but as well there was a dark tinge to it, a flair of ginger-root concentrate teasing the corners of the air.

  “In the Hindu tradition, holy men find control of the body a trivial matter. Sri Ramakrishna scorned to heal an illness he suffered, though he could easily have done so. He preferred to fix his mind on God rather than turn it to what he called this worthless cage of flesh. A yogi named Haridas had himself buried alive for six weeks, guarded by the skeptical, and came out of his hibernation unharmed in the presence of many witnesses. There are numerous other accounts, well documented, of the control of the physical body which comes with spiritual realization.” Again came that dead silence of no-breath as he paused. The insuck, obscene and oddly enthralling. “Why do I relate all this to you? To what revelation are these arcane citations the necessary prologue?”

  *****

  Startled upward. Broke the kiss: “It looks like the Angel is about to fall on us,” she said.

  Her boyfriend laughed. “Yes, and you make the earth move for me.” But the statue’s head jostled against wisps of cloud on black sky, and sharp screech of bronze protest on stone mixed with its swift stiff pivot and fall, a sick blast of cold on Huguette’s face as the huge dark head fell with a meaty thud upon Louis-Phillipe’s back. She heard a crack of bone, felt him press against her as if urged into the earth by a slab-hand. He swore from the pain, crying, a scared child. The square of the angel’s base had stayed on its pedestal as though hinged on one side. A dark form wangled out from behind the squarish base, seemingly loath to show itself. Mute, muscular, all shadow as if a shamed retard. Had the dumb thing pushed the statue? But that’d have taken ten strong men. “Help us,” she said, “please.”

  The shadow-head turned as if alerted to something. A crack like an icicle separating from an eave; then another more distant, then a series closer in, invisible houses in every direction letting ice crack and fall but never land. A vision came to her, pinned there: the sprung latches of meat lockers opening in the earth.

  Then the stench came on, writhing in ravels along the snow, twisted lanyards of decay and rot. Two more bobbing heads joined their shy tormentor-savior, moved past him, a draw for him to follow; and then the moon lit them so that if Louis-Phillipe’s crushing weight had not prevented her, she would have screamed. One found his left arm and arced it upward slowly so that Louis-Phillipe’s coat wrinkled in elephant shift and his arm snapped free of its ball joint, skin tearing like an uncooked turkey leg but with blood in his cries; while it was still partway attached, the thing sank its teeth into his hand. Another knelt, grabbing her boyfriend’s long hair so that his anguished face came away from her breast. The thing peered close at her, then the head craned to peer at Louis-Phillipe, and slowly it came in to sink a kiss deep into his cheek, tearing away flesh and beard like the marshmallow batting on a Sno-Ball; but what was exposed was not dark cake, but something wet and red, tongue fluttering in a shuddering mouth. Blood fell steaming on her, then cooled, chilling.

  Sirens rose in the distance.

  The two turned at the sound, mouths closed upon meat. Huguette could almost see the wheels turning: memory, the walking trove, a surround of life. They haltingly joined others, dark nightmarish shapes of stench staggering down the slope. Louis-Phillipe breathed his last. She tried to tug free, worried they might return or that other new-hatched monstrosities would pause to feed on her, but all her attempts came to nothing but pointless exertion. The winter air touched her, touched her, kept touching her.

  *****

  “You have heard, perhaps, that I died, that by some miracle of resurrection I was restored to life.”

  My God, thought Travis, he’s going to say it. It was one thing to see him up this close, a veneer of shockingly beautiful holiness animating his corpse as it maintained a mindful hold over a dynamo of mindless need behind; it was quite another to hear the man confess it aloud.

  “I did not resurrect,” Apadravya said, slight headbob like a dummy on a stick, eyes in useless blink. “Nor have I been restored to life.” Laura’s grip tightened and some tight fear let escape a far faint air-brake from her lips. “Those of you who have touched me understand. Those whose eyes are brought close know what I am: I died. I was put in the ground. I came out of the ground. I remain dead.”

  Anyone else had said such a thing, a ripple of laughs would have swept the hall. Instead, a brief murmur fanned the air, punched the gut of elation and left it foundering in dismay. Swami Apadravya did not lie—it had been alien to him in life; it was so now. Hackles stood at the back of Travis’s neck, a feeling both harrowing and fulfilling.

  “I am the first of many,” he told them. “Others will come, and soon—others mired in samsara during their lives who will therefore be subject to unthinking appetites when they return. This eventuality cannot be prepared for, and yet you must prepare. Many in this room will be turned by them and will turn others. That is why I begin satsang in my beloved Montreal and carry it throughout this continent and beyond if I am able. It has not been given to me, the knowledge of when this upheaval will begin; but it will be soon, and I am here to witness and warn.”

  Travis was filled with dread. He’d seen a news photo once that had brought a similar horror: the close-up shot of a man’s face, the caption saying that so-and-so watched helpless as his family and all his worldly goods burned up in the trapped inferno of his home. Travis flashed on his parents down in Florida, his brothers in Colorado and New York, Laura and Jenny and Marcie. What if it was starting right now? What if the streets were teeming right now, an army of corpses with the same thick hunger (but unchecked) he read now in Apadravya’s eyes, pushing their way through his door, attacking Marcie and the baby?

  *****

  Marcie reared back at the pungency of the stench, an oh-no sounding in her head: too close in the room, window shut tight, space heater roaring, and the sting of ammonia wrinkling the air.

  Flooding the room with light, she rushed to the baby. No movement. No blinkback of brightness. Just stillness and a bloody froth coming from Jenny’s nostrils and mouth. Panic rising, Marcie scooped up the lifeless child, sog to the sleepsuit, and hurried her to the changing table. A box of tissues, whip-whip-whip, three in her hand, wiping the froth away, gentle but quick. Then her mouth went to the baby’s nose and mouth, grasping at vague CPR memories. A sour taste there. Think! What was different about CPR on an infant. You could blow out their lungs if you tried too hard. But how much was hard enough? Dead hand lay on baby Jenny’s chest, its tiny fingernails tinged with blue. “Come on, come on,” she pleaded, then back into mouth-to-mouth, preventing herself the luxury of sobbing, damage to the brain with each moment it missed oxygen, fingering the tiny cold palm.

  Then came an abrupt clamp on her fingers. And before she could straighten to assess, the baby-head jerked up to her departing mouth and sank sudden ferret teeth deep into her lower lip, vicious and wild. The eyes were pooled and open and dead, but the teeth chewed and stung and the hand squeezed her fingers in a deathgrip and wouldn’t be shaken loose. Her lip felt as if it had been snagged in a sewing machine gone out of control.

  Behind her, a tremendous startle of shattering glass as she turned herself and her nemesis about to feel grave-stench and winter chill and to see (double disbelief, was she half-mad already and had she now gone completely over the edge?) what lurching horrors had ushered them in.

  *****

  Marcie snapped on the overhead light and ran to the bassinet, an oh-no heating her thoughts as surely as the space heater was overheating the room. She’d read about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome a few years back, realizing now, with a why-didn’t-I-see-it rising inside, how prime a candidate little Jenny had been.

  Blinking back the brightness. Listless, sopping, b
ut okay. Lifting her free of the miasma of ammonia, carrying her to the changing table, Marcie comforted, “There there, little Jenny. We’ll get you out of these wet things, give you warm dry diapers, open the window a tiny bit, I don’t care what crap your mommy gives me for it, you and me, we know what’s best for baby, don’t we?” The sleepsuit felt like an unwrung washcloth. She draped it over the wicker basket for non-stinky refuse, noting it would need a rinse in the kitchen sink when she was done here. Ruffle-soaked plastic pants joined them. Then the diaper, a damp runway of streaked brown as she unpinned and hourglassed it open: free it came, and she diaper-wiped the baby’s bottom until it was clean enough for tickle cream; then a fresh new one efficiently pinned, and a t-shirt, and the green oversized sleepsuit, a lecture at once serious and funny bubbling in her head to deliver when Travis and Laura came home.

  Behind her, the window gave a sharp rattle.

  *****

  Travis was walking along cleared mounded sidewalks, the sound of sirens echoing one another from two distant parts of the city. It’d gotten to be too much—the dead holy man not ten feet away—and he’d mumbled some excuse to Laura, something about needing water. She’d be safe. He’d just pop home to reassure himself about baby Jenny and about Marcie, unspook himself from all this palaver about cemeteries disgorging their dead.

  As he approached his building, he felt not a little foolish and decided that maybe the walk had been enough. He wouldn’t disturb Marcie—or more to the point, he’d be damned if he’d give Marcie and Laura something to razz him about for weeks to come. But one peek through the window at baby Jenny sounded appealing. And the bathroom window was just this side of it: Maybe he’d catch Marcie, seized by an urge to luxuriate in a bubble bath, toweling herself off, her breasts bunched over terrycloth like buoyant pink balloons tipped with giving.

  Dream on, he thought.

  His boots were loud and scrunchy on the sanded press of snow underfoot, but he was halfway there and slowed to soften the noise. Odd. Jenny’s room was bright. He came closer, saw the bassinet empty, saw Marcie at the changing table, solidly sveltely female, her red sheen of hair in a fetching chopcut that brought Tinkerbell to mind. Window was . . . hmm, yes it was, it was unlatched and open, the width of a swizzle stick. Christ, what an urge! What was the worst that could happen? He’d scare the shit out of her. She’d never speak to him again. She’d think he was one blasted dumbfuck and cool toward him from this moment on.

  And the best? What the heck. He fingertipped under the sash. The window gave a rattle and Marcie turned her head. Game up. As he lifted the damned thing and slipped in, Marcie said, “Jesus, Travis, what are you up to?”

  “Stay right where you are,” he said, the authority of winter chill in his voice. “Keep changing the baby.” He brought the window down all the way, latched it.

  “Crazy fucker,” she muttered. “Where’s Laura?”

  “Don’t talk,” he said, surprised at his boldness. He freed his hands, flopped his gloves like dead trout to the floor, undid his coat and stepped out of it. Coming right up to her, he set his left hand high on her hip and found, under her skirt with his right, the hot inside of her left leg just above the knee. No stockings. Firm warm flesh.

  “You’re insane.” It was a whisper. There was a hint of admiration there, a turn-on.

  “Shhh.” Hand upward, soft muscled widening grippable inner thigh, Marcie not moving to stop him. Expecting the breechable barrier of panty elastic, he found sheer smooth undelineated flesh and then the moist archaic vulval pouch in lip-receptive mode. He thought of a one-handed unbelt, unclasp, unzip, a comical jog-dance behind her getting his pants and jockeys down past his dick. Uncool. Just a zip then, deft twist of the white cotton slit, up and over head and shaft, so he sprang out, zipper-teeth down by the balls like dead shark mouth. Up under her skirt like a silent-movie photographer, baby Jenny nonjudgmental over Marcie’s shoulder, Marcie bending and widening to receive him, her ready vagina fisting him amazingly in, her bent-neck gasp as her hands knuckled protectively about his daughter.

  Behind them, suddenly, the window exploded inward.

  *****

  Baby’s room smelled sweet if too close and warm. She felt along moonlight to the bassinet. Poor darling’s lips weakly probed thumbward, her brow a wrinkle, then relax.

  Marcie slowly zipped down the sleepsuit far enough to sneak fingers inside. Smooth plastic; beneath, still dry. Wonder baby, hundred-percent absorbent bladder and bowels. She hushed the zipper back upward, led the long red thumb back into the mouth where it stayed in renewed suck.

  Too damned hot in here. She set the space heater two notches lower and the thing shut off. Then, yes, Laura be damned, she unlatched the window and tugged it open not so wide as a pencil. One more glance around the room and she headed for the door. The moment it closed behind her, the baby’s forehead wrinkled sharply up. But her poop blurted out in great profusion and the tinkle flooded from her and her face eased into relieved sleep.

  *****

  Travis was walking along cleared mounded sidewalks of snow one moment. The next, Laura was nudging him and the hall came back up around him. He was grateful, realizing he’d been simultaneously drawn into the dead guru’s stare and impelled by revulsion into a desperate psychic escape, something involving Marcie and baby Jenny and a zip-gutted woman dragging her nude booted body over shards of jagged window glass to reach them.

  “In life, there were many desires: Attentiveness and constant observation, appreciating them in their totality, in every articulated detail, led to their dying away. But in death, this death you see in me, there is but one clear and burning desire: to chew the red root of life in hopes that it will wake the palate, slide down the dead throat, revitalize the cold silent organs, and trick the walking shell of life into thickening inwardly even unto the cold core. As my words come forth, my witness is ever on that desire. There is no ‘I’ to control it, but only the fact of witnessing, the lifetime of making that my craft, which keeps me detached from that desire.” Apadravya’s teaching was, to Travis’s astonishment, a strange mingle of comfort and terror. His thoughts went again to their child and to their upstairs neighbor.

  But then, the auditorium doors let out a high squeal. Down the right aisle, people craning in their seats to see her, strode a woman, calling, “Rajib, save our son!” From under a knit cap, her short blond hair arched over a face of anguish. At her right shoulder, she held a slumbering child, blanket swaying as she came.

  *****

  Huguette shivered fiercely under her dead boyfriend, a cold hoarseness in the throat she’d screamed silent. Warm numb tingling in her fingers and ears frightened her most, a first sign of frostbite setting in. She’d die here, the dark hump of the Black Angel’s wingtops filling her vision and the incessant whine of sirens scouring her ears.

  Then a miracle: Louis-Phillipe stirred.

  No shuddered intake of breath, no pained groan at his mutilations. His intact cheek moved on her breast, stuck frozen in bloodpool, and she felt a surge of power stream through his body. “Louis-Phillipe?” she said, every sound but empty gasp gone. And then instead of lifting his eyes to her, his mouth found her nipple. Through the torn gape in his cheek, she saw him shred it, suffering the ravaging outrage of pain even as she denied it. Rousing blood, his teeth mauled her. She tried to shove him away, but he was as unmoving as the statue—and yet, under her boyfriend’s exertions, the Black Angel now bobbled. Zagging greedily down her body, he took huge bites as he went, and the top of the Angel’s head gouged a raw furrow up his back. When he began scavenging the soft pit of her belly, the scandal of it put her into a merciful faint and then to death.

  Louis-Phillipe’s teeth furrowed lower.

  *****

  “No, do not stop her.”

  The yoga instructor had risen to intercept her, had followed her onto the stage, but he backed away to sit in uncertainty, cross-legged on the stage edge, watching from a distance. Stepping onto
the oriental rug, she unwrapped the blanket from about her son, letting him fall-flop into her arms. Only then, Travis saw, did the woman register what Apadravya had become. She flinched back, but almost immediately resumed her mission, the boy clearly not sleeping at all.

  “Is he—?” Laura whispered.

  Travis cut her off with a nod.

  “This is my dear Aysha,” said the guru. “And this is our son.”

  “He died this afternoon, Rajib.” The woman’s voice, unamplified and thrown upstage, only carried a few rows, but Travis and Laura were close enough to hear. “You can bring him back. You’ve been there. You have the power, I know you do.”

  “Oh my Aysha,” said the holy man, and the way he said it touched Travis to the heart, “I have no such powers nor would I want them. He is well quit of the world. It were best he did not come back.”

  Travis saw a shaving of slush fall from her boot-heel onto the carpet. She swayed forward and laid the dead boy in the guru’s lap. Then she knelt wordlessly, raising her hands in prayer.

  Apadravya watched her. A sleeved left arm prevented the boy from twirling senselessly off his lap. He raised his right hand, training his attention on the child as his dead fingers rested on dead eyelids, thumb and pinkie upon the hinges of the boy’s jawbone.

  The eyelids eased open. Travis saw that. Glisten of dark pupils, motionless and glazed. Then the swami’s hand cupped to one side of the neck, and at once the small body convulsed violently, the nostrils flared and subsided, the limbs flexed. He came to as one sick and enfeebled, fixed on the dead eyes of his savior, whined for his mother, who crushed him in an embrace that seemed never ending. Sweep of murmur ran through the crowd.

  And that’s when the guru lost it entirely and leaped upon mother and child in a feeding frenzy so swift and so voracious it froze Travis and Laura in their seats even as it parabola’d them in hot freshets of blood.