by Guy James
The vegan nodded again. He sat up and rested his elbows on his knees, and his head in his hands.
“There’s no need to be depressed about it, Randy, it’s just a precaution while we have our discussion. I will let you go…after that. I have no need to cause you harm. There is no point in that.”
“Okay,” the vegan said, certain that Vladimir would not let him leave this bunker alive.
“Good, very good.” Dr. Zamirsky turned to the sink again and blew his nose. He coughed up some phlegm and spat into the sink. “I’m sorry, Randy. Please excuse me. I have this ridiculous cold, it’s embarrassing, really. The engineer of the last plague, sick with a cold…absurd.”
“Have you tried vegetable broth?” the vegan asked. “That always helps me when I’m under the weather. Not that I’m really ever under the weather anymore. I haven’t gotten sick once since I’ve been vegan.”
Dr. Zamirsky frowned. “Vegan? What is vegan?”
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“It means,” the vegan with the handlebar moustache said, “that I don’t eat any animal products: no meat, no dairy, no fish, no eggs, no honey. Most of my calorie intake comes from fruits and vegetables. I focus on fatty fruits like avocado and tubers like sweet potatoes to keep my weight up.”
“Ah, yes,” Dr. Zamirsky said, nodding enthusiastically and smiling. “I have heard of such mental conditions. They are becoming a real problem in first world countries. Or rather, I should say they were becoming a real problem, before today. Now I think even the vegans have found themselves with a hunger for meat, human meat, anyway. Wait a second, human meat isn’t vegan, is it?”
“Right…” the vegan said, and then tilted his head to one side. “Well, actually, there isn’t clear guidance on that, because it is so clearly against the tenets of veganism to eat human meat, but the consensus is that human meat is certainly not vegan.”
“The consensus? Are you vegans governed by committee?”
“No, nothing like that. There are different groups with different beliefs. I haven’t heard of a single group that declares human meat vegan, except as a joke. Not a lot of people know this, because they haven’t been exposed to it, but veganism actually has a lot of sects and sub-sects with belief systems that are very different.”
Dr. Zamirsky raised his eyebrows. “How much variability can there be? You all don’t eat animal products, what more is left to exclude?”
“A lot, actually. There are groups that eat a mix of raw and cooked food, groups that only eat raw food, groups that only eat fruits and berries, groups that only eat fruits and roots, groups that only eat leaves and nuts, and all kinds of other combinations.”
“So there is every possible permutation of dietary restriction. I see.”
The vegan shrugged. “I guess you could put it that way. Even I think some of the vegan belief systems out there are strange. The strangest ones always revolve around some kind of fruit worship. For a number of reasons, fruit has a mystique for vegans because we look at it as sustenance that is being offered up to us by the plant. And that’s exactly what fruit is—the plant is giving us something healthy and tasty so that we eat it and spread the seeds of the plant. Some vegans who focus on fruit believe that it is specially designed by plants to make the people and animals who eat it very active, so that we run around and spread the seeds of the plant all over, like the plants controlling us in a way. Some vegans expand on this notion and call themselves “re-incarnaters.” They believe that their purpose for being on this planet is to propagate fruit trees.”
“Those are the ones you find strange?”
“No,” the vegan said. “I find fruitarians to be strange, the ones who only eat fruit. I don’t believe that it is wrong to eat roots and tubers, which the plant isn’t necessarily offering up for us to eat. The propagation theory goes beyond fruits, because if we value the tubers or leaves of a plant, we plant more of it and ensure its continued survival, even if we eat parts of it that affect its ability to survive on an individual plant basis. I don’t believe that it is wrong to eat parts of a plant beyond its fruit, but many fruitarians disagree with that, and they can be aggressive.”
“Probably a nutrient deficiency. Which of these groups do you subscribe to?”
“I don’t consider myself to be part of any group, not really. I found something that works really well for my mind and body, so I stay with it. I function best on a combination of fruits and roots, with roughly half of my diet coming from fat in the form of avocados, olive oil, and coconut, and the rest of my diet coming from fruits, roots, and tubers. It’s a low toxin diet. One of my favorite meals is a baked tuber—a potato or a sweet potato, for example—with a whole, fresh avocado and some homemade tomato sauce over it. You really can’t beat that, at least for me. It’s got everything I need and desire in food.” The vegan chuckled, surprising himself. “Now, of course, now that I’m infected, there’s an added wrinkle…with the sudden cravings for human flesh.”
“Good thing you’ve been able to stave those cravings off. Otherwise you might find yourself in a crisis of dietary ideology. What would you do then?” Dr. Zamirsky snickered.
“I don’t know,” the vegan said. “I hope it never gets to that point.”
“Okay, very interesting. Very good. So you think this diet has been good for you, for your immune system and health?”
“I’ve been eating like this for the better part of my life now. I used to be sort of sickly, but I haven’t been sick once since I started eating this way. I have a lot of energy all the time, my mind is clear, I’m calm, and I feel happy.”
“That’s very interesting. I wonder if the way you eat has anything to do with the way that Desi reacted with your biology. What I do know is that I could never try such a diet, but it is very interesting anyway. Speaking about this with you makes me hungry for steak tartar…we are polarizing entities, it seems.”
“I understand that it isn’t for everyone, but it’s perfect for me. It changed my whole worldview.”
“Certainly not for everyone.” Dr. Zamirsky turned his palms up and shrugged. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to belittle any of the beliefs that you hold or the behaviors in which you may indulge.” Dr. Zamirsky winked. “I know what you really are. I can see it, and I know that you know that I can see it. You process information differently from other humans. Very differently. You see things in places where others see nothing, and you see these things very clearly. Concepts that are inconceivable to others gravitate toward you and pop into your mind as easily as the concept of flesh consumption pops into the minds of those who Desi now controls.”
The vegan’s eyes shone with a brilliant light as he stared at Dr. Zamirsky.
Dr. Zamirsky laughed and shifted from foot to foot. “I could never hold onto it the way that you do. For me—” Dr. Zamirsky sighed, “—there have only been fleeting glimpse of that place.”
Dr. Zamirsky shrugged again, pulled a chair from the table, and set it across from the vegan, right at the point where the vegan estimated his death-grid lay.
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The vegan inspected his chest.
Dr. Zamirsky pointed to the vegan’s ribcage. “I removed the bullet…more out of courtesy than concern. I understand that such mere things as bullets to the chest do not trouble those in your condition.”
“Thank you, anyway. I like it better not having a bullet lodged in my chest.”
“You’re very, very welcome, Randy.” Dr. Zamirsky shook his head, smiling. “You Southerners are so extremely polite. Well, let’s get down to business. I want to know how your worldview has been affected by your exposure to the virus that I created. Right now, I want to know how you feel. You’re a carrier, and it wasn’t until this morning that I deduced that carriers must exist. I want to know all about your experience. Will you tell me, Randy?”
“Yes,” the vegan said. “I’ll tell you.” The vegan knew that Vladimir was the ultimate enemy, and yet the vegan was enjoying their conversation. H
e was surprised to see that he wanted to learn more about the virus that had taken hold of him, and he wanted to learn even more about the mind of the man who had developed it. “And I hope you’ll tell me more about yourself, how you developed the virus, and why.”
“I will, I will. We have plenty of time for that. But you are my guest here, so I beg of you to go first.”
“Alright, Vladimir,” the vegan said. “May I call you Vladimir?”
Dr. Zamirsky shrugged. “No one does, but why not? It is the apocalypse.” He chuckled.
“Well, it all began when I was delivering a shipment of avocados in Virginia—that was my job at the time, avocado delivery. It was the morning of the outbreak, and, well, you know a lot of the rest of what happened that day. I left my friend—who was infected—behind in the avocado truck and tried to find a place to hide. I didn’t have any run-ins with the zombies, but I did get injured in a confrontation with a man at a gas station.” The vegan shook his head. “It was over nothing.”
Dr. Zamirsky nodded. “Confrontations usually are. Was he infected?”
“No.” The vegan smiled wryly. “I was getting cigarettes at the gas station, without paying. The man took issue with that. I figured that given the events that were taking place, it was understandable that I might need to take some cigarettes. I would’ve paid under normal circumstances, but I’d forgotten my wallet in the avocado truck, which was miles away at that point.”
“I don’t think you were wrong to take the cigarettes.”
“I didn’t think so either, but the man disagreed. He got at me with a tire iron, and hurt my leg. I got away, and I went on, just limping up the road, looking for somewhere to hide. I had a place in mind, and I made it there eventually.”
“Where did you go?” Dr. Zamirsky asked.
The vegan’s face took on a pained look. “It was a Wegmans, the supermarket.”
Dr. Zamirsky’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me,” he said, and smiled, “you were at the same Wegmans where Sven was?”
“That’s right,” the vegan said, nodding. “Sven, Jane, Lorie, and there were two others then…oh, and Sven’s cat, Ivan.”
“Ivan? Right, right, Ivan,” Dr. Zamirsky said, amused. “The Russian Blue, my fellow country-cat. I’ve read about him.” Dr. Zamirsky shook his head. “I’m sorry, I just realized I’m being an awful host. Would you like something to drink? I need some tea, and I’m sure you could use some kind of hydration.”
“Yes,” the vegan said, “I do need something.”
Dr. Zamirsky nodded and stood up. “Tell me about the other two, Randy. I didn’t know there were others with Sven, Jane, Lorie…and Ivan. What happened to them…the obvious?”
“Yes. More or less. Well, before the two others there was a boy—Evan. He was Lorie’s classmate, I think. He was already dead when I got to the Wegmans, and I met Sven when Sven was burying him.”
Dr. Zamirsky moved in front of the stove, and, turning his back on the vegan, picked up a pot and carried it to the sink. He rinsed the pot, filled it with water, and set it on the stove. Then he lit a burner under the pot. He took a metal cup down from a shelf above the stove, filled it with water at the sink, and put it on the floor a few feet in front of the vegan. “You can take that, Randy. It is well within your boundary.”
“Thank you.” The vegan got up, picked up the cup and drank the water desperately. He put the empty cup back where Dr. Zamirsky had placed it and sat down. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome. More?”
“Yes,” the vegan said hopefully, “please.”
Dr. Zamirsky refilled the cup and placed it in front of the vegan again, and the two of them repeated the dance until the vegan had had his fill—six cups.
“I really appreciate that,” the vegan said. “I was starting to feel really out of it.”
“You’re my guest,” Dr. Zamirsky said, just as the kettle began to whistle, “it’s my duty to make sure you are as comfortable as the situation allows.” He turned off the burner beneath the kettle and made himself some tea. He made a second cup, and offered it to the vegan.
“Thank you,” the vegan said. He took it and tasted it. “This is very good, and smells very good.”
“And it’s vegan, too,” Dr. Zamirsky said, smiling. He resumed his position in the chair across from the vegan. “Where were we?”
“I was telling you about the Wegmans.”
“Oh right, right. The boy was dead when you got there. What were Sven and Jane and Lorie like…in real life? I’ve seen them on TV, of course, and read about them, but I think you know what they’re really like, having been in…in that kind of situation with them.”
The vegan thought for a moment. “They’re tough. They’re very tough. Jane almost shot me when I got there. I can’t blame her though. She just wanted to make sure I wasn’t a threat, and I guess I caught her off guard.”
Dr. Zamirsky took a sip of his tea, and the vegan followed suit.
“I know they’re tough,” Dr. Zamirsky said. “But do you think they’re tough enough to live through this outbreak?”
“I don’t know, but I hope so.”
“You hope so?”
“I do.”
Dr. Zamirsky shrugged. “I apologize. I keep interrupting you. Please go on…you said there was someone else there, besides Sven, Jane, and Lorie…and the cat?”
“Right—two people. One named Milt—” the vegan shuddered, “—and one named Brian. I think Brian was Sven’s friend from somewhere, but I don’t know about Milt. I’m not sure how they all ended up at the Wegmans together. I guess they were just hiding out together. When I got there, I think everyone was a little anxious about letting me in, but they let me stay. They locked the entrances and exits, and we all settled on a watch that would be kept in shifts. I didn’t have a shift that first night. I wasn’t going to have one at all, as it turned out. The last thing that I remember happening inside the supermarket was getting ready for bed. I found a vegan snack in the organic section of the store, ate it, and then I found a spot to sleep away from all the others. It was in the outdoor supplies section or something…I remember it being close to the firewood.”
“You didn’t want to stay with the others?”
“No, I guess I kind of wanted to be off on my own. I also wanted to smoke, and I didn’t want to make anyone else breathe my smoke second-hand. I figured I would have plenty of time to get to know my new friends…and it’s not like they were particularly interested in having a heart-to-heart right then, so I left them alone and found a spot to myself. I sat down and smoked for a while, then found some blankets, made a nest, and got ready for bed.” The vegan shook his head. “I thought I had finally found a safe place to ride out whatever was happening. I thought that with the people who were there, I would be okay.”
“Things were not as they seemed?”
“Far from it. The next thing I knew, I was falling from the Wegmans roof, having been thrown off of it by Milt. Can you imagine something like that? Another one of the survivors who was hiding from the outbreak threw me off the roof. I can’t blame him, of course, given the state he was in—the state that we were all in. I assume he thought I was infected, and maybe he was right. Not that it mattered at that point. Whether I was infected then or not, the ghouls made sure to pass along the virus to me.”
“Ghouls? You mean the zombies…the infected…Desi’s wondrous robots?”
“Right, I used to think of them as…that doesn’t matter.”
“He threw you down to the zombies…to your ghouls?”
“Yeah, right into their outstretched arms.”
“I know, Randy, I know. But it was nice to hear it from you, in your own words.” Dr. Zamirsky gave the vegan a close-mouthed smile. “I was there, but I’ll get to that in a few moments. What do you remember after that?”
“Not a whole lot. I don’t even remember if I was bitten or not. I must have lost consciousness soon after Milt threw me off the roof
. The next thing I remember was waking up in the woods, alone.”
Dr. Zamirsky stood, coughed violently, and spat into the sink. He ran some water, and then sat back down. He rubbed at his moustache with the back of one hand. “Excuse me. Please go on.”
“Not at all. So I woke up, feeling incredibly thirsty, and at first I didn’t remember what had happened. I didn’t even remember who I was. All I knew was that I was incredibly thirsty, and I had a strange hunger for…well…human flesh.”
“That must have been something,” Dr. Zamirsky said, shaking his head, “a vegan waking up to cannibalistic urges.”
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The vegan nodded. “It would’ve been, if I’d even been able to remember that I was a vegan. It was hours before all of that came back to me and I remembered who I was…and the outbreak. I crawled around looking for something to drink. I think I chewed on leaves and twigs and anything else I could find. Eventually, once I remembered who I was and where I lived, I made it back home…and began on my long road to recovery and understanding how to live with this disease.”
“That’s very admirable. How did you manage it? What were the symptoms that you had to manage?”
“There are really only two symptoms: the unbearable thirst, and the hunger. One of the first things I did when I got back home was drink from the faucet. I must have drank for hours. I drank and drank but couldn’t get my fill. Eventually, I felt better, and some of the thirst subsided. I found that if I soaked in the tub or put my feet in water while I sat, that the thirst wasn’t as bad. When I did that, my body would soak up all the water, so I had to refill the water over and over again. It was a little unsettling, but I got by.”
“Admirable,” Dr. Zamirsky said.
