The Loving Dead

by Amelia Beamer

  The app was still downloading. Christine guided Nora’s head back to her guts. The expression on Christine’s face said, I’m doing this for you. It wasn’t clear to Kate who Christine was doing it for. Nora obligingly bit into Christine’s small intestine, yanking out a length of it. It was very long. The woman contained multitudes. Christine screamed and passed out again. That was the difference between zombies and people, Kate realized. Zombies were all id and no ego; entirely focused on the pleasures of the flesh. People could plan for the future. But this was Christine’s plan?

  Walter vomited then, small yellow chunks that splattered the floor and the zombie. She didn’t notice. Kate held her breath, her stomach already rising.

  “Walter, we need to get them out of here,” she said. But how? Fingers scrabbled on the other side of the door. Even if they could get it open, how could they push the women out without letting others in? Probably everyone outside was a zombie by now. Walter heaved again. They were trapped.

  She screamed at her phone, ready to throw it. Finally the application finished downloading. She opened the app, praying out loud that she’d heard Michael correctly, and that this whip sound, if she could make it work, would actually do something. There were a lot of contingencies, but she was desperate. If there was anything she’d learned from zombie movies, it was that everyone was on their own. The cavalry wasn’t coming, or if it did they would kill you first and ask questions later.

  Christine’s eyes opened. They were white. She moaned. Nora dropped the intestine she was chewing on, as if it had gone bad. The goo draining from Christine’s gut was already slowing. She’d finished turning. That was fast.

  The two zombies turned and looked first at Walter, and then Kate, deciding who to eat first. Walter was closer, and they moved towards him almost in unison, each grabbing a trouser leg.

  Kate screamed. She brought her phone down to strike the closer zombie’s head, and right before the impact she heard a tinny whip sound. The zombies both held still. Kate brought the phone up and down again, hoping she hadn’t broken it by whacking the zombie. The whip sound was louder this time. The zombies looked at the phone.

  “Back up,” Kate said. “Back up, now.” If this didn’t work, she was dead.

  The zombies moved a tiny bit back. There wasn’t really anywhere they could go.

  Kate felt a rush of relief so strong she started laughing.

  “What the hell?” Walter said. He’d found his voice, though it sounded strangled.

  Kate couldn’t stop laughing. “Whip it,” she said between giggles. “Whip it good.”

  “Kate?”

  She bit her cheek, trying to collect herself. She took a small breath. The tiny room smelled of vomit and shit. Had one of them shit their pants, Kate wondered, or was it just the zombie’s intestines? Somehow that was funny, too. Old jokes came to mind unbidden. “What does the vegetarian zombie eat?” Kate said aloud. “Bran. Or maybe grains, I’m not sure.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “And who does the baby zombie eat while his mother’s at work? Gran.”

  “Get ahold of yourself, dear.” There was an edge of panic in his voice, but still he sounded calmer than before. A little patronizing, even. Almost back to normal.

  “It’s the whip,” she said, regaining control. “My friend Michael told me that zombies respond to the sound of a whip. I don’t know why, but I certainly don’t know why this otherwise perfectly normal couple turned into zombies in the first place. These are real zombies; there’s no reason why they’d behave like movie zombies. It isn’t like Romero invented zombies out of whole cloth. Or whole flesh, or whatever.”

  “Whip,” Walter echoed. “So there’s an iPhone app for fighting zombies. Interesting.” Usually when he said that something was interesting, he thought the opposite, or he didn’t understand it and didn’t want to say so. It was one of those words that could mean anything. “You have real chutzpah, Katie.”

  “Chutzpah?”

  “That’s the one about the kid who kills his mother and father, and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan. That’s chutzpah.” His thigh was warm against Kate’s.

  “That’s not a very good joke.”

  “I think it’s from the Bible.” Walter seemed to be recovering. He put his dick away and zipped his pants. They were loose around his waist. That gave Kate an idea. Both of the zombies wore belts. If she could secure their hands, that would at least slow them down. Who knew how long the whip would work. And if one of them bit her, it would all be over. Walter wouldn’t stand a chance, unless she could distract them long enough for him to escape, and there was nowhere to escape to. There was a steep valley below them, through the window, though they were progressing inland.

  Nora moaned. Christine moaned.

  “Shush,” Kate said without thinking, and flicked the phone towards them, producing a satisfying, if tinny, whapeesh. Their cloudy eyes were wet with desire, but they closed their mouths.

  “Stand up. Hands up,” she said, using the whip again. They obeyed, looking for all the world like sheepish arrestees already thinking about their phone call. A friend of hers had called his grandmother, after he’d been arrested. What an awkward conversation that must have been. With both of the women standing, there was a tiny bit more space in the bathroom.

  “Here,” Kate handed Walter the phone. “Just do what I did, if they get excited. I’ll get their belts first.” She wanted to hurry, before the zombies moved again. She leaned forward, inadvertently elbowing Walter.

  “If you say so. You’re driving this bus,” Walter said. He looked at the phone in wonder. Shock, Kate realized. He must be in shock. Which meant that she must be, too, but she didn’t have time to worry about it. Except maybe it meant that her decision-making was clouded, and that moving towards the zombies wasn’t the right thing to do. But she was already doing it. And it was easier than she thought, even with trembling fingers. Once she had the belts, she wanted to back away, but there wasn’t really anywhere to go.

  “Give me the phone.” She held out her hand, afraid to look away from the zombies. “Hands down,” she told them. Whapeesh. The zombies obeyed, getting tangled in one another as they brought their arms down.

  Kate made Walter hold the phone again while she leashed the belts, one at a time, around the zombies’ waists, tying down their arms. They both moaned as she touched them, but they didn’t move. Kate worked through the fear. Maybe if they survived this, she would take Walter up on that offer of a spa treatment. What else was there to do, if everyone she knew was dead? Probably she wouldn’t take the massage, though. She didn’t want anyone to touch her.

  After she had tied both zombies, she wiped the blood from her hands onto her jeans. The sink was behind the zombies, and she wished she could wash her hands. Probably these women had been perfectly healthy, but you could never be too careful with strangers’ blood.

  “Now what, MacGyver?” Walter asked.

  It must have been his tone, weary and sarcastic. Kate snatched her phone back from him, saying, “Well, now I’ll create a steam-powered time machine using only spit and a bicycle, and use that to take us back through time until before I ever met you.”

  His face fell, and Kate regretted her words. “You got any spit?” she offered, trying to smooth him over.

  He nodded, then licked his lips. “Spitful and fancy free.”

  She kissed his forehead. She would have wrapped her arms around him but didn’t want to mess up his suit.

  “I’m glad you’re here with me, Kate.”

  She meant it when she said, “Me, too.” She knew they weren’t exclusive, but she didn’t want to think of what would have happened to him, if he’d taken some other girl.

  “If I live through this, the first thing I’m doing is going to my chiropractor,” Walter said. He wasn’t a large man, but he was in an awkward space, standing on half of the toilet, pressed against the wall.

  “Do yo
u want to switch positions?”

  “What, you want to be on top?”

  “Touché.” She had to smile at that one. If they could keep a sense of humor, they might survive. “I meant that we could try to sit the zombies on the toilet, and we could stand. I don’t know. I guess we could pull their teeth out,” Kate said. “But we don’t know that this is irreversible, and besides, that’s a lot of work.”

  “And the only thing worse than being bitten to death is being gummed to death.”

  “Gran,” Kate moaned. The zombies watched them, swaying as they stood, hands tied to their sides.

  “We could call 911,” Walter suggested.

  “Not on my phone,” Kate said. “I need that. Use yours.”

  Walter put his hand in his pocket and fished around for his phone. Then the room turned sideways, and she fell against the wall. Kate and Walter both screamed. Her phone went flying. There was a scraping sound, as if the Zeppelin itself was in pain. Kate looked out the window. They were landing.

  chapter eight

  Michael tried calling Kate again, but it didn’t even ring this time. He hung up without leaving a message. Then he called back. “Kate, um, call me when you get this. I’m kind of in a situation here, and I could use you. They’re all zombies. We need to talk.” He hung up.

  “Michael, you okay?” Audrey called.

  “Fine, be right there,” he said. If only the bathroom had a window. There was only a tiny opening on the ceiling for the exhaust fan. It was probably about as large as the ventilation ducts in the cells at Alcatraz that those prisoners had escaped through, except that they’d had months to chip away at the surrounding concrete, which had softened from years of damp sea air. Looking up, Michael was vaguely jealous of the Alcatraz escapees. Sure, they had probably died, but maybe they hadn’t, and at least they’d escaped. He was stuck here with Audrey, and now doubted whether she was stable enough to trust, despite her apologies. If she’d known their friends were zombies, and lied about it, that might really be unforgivable. She might not let him leave, though; she could just attack him with her zombie, which wasn’t even really her zombie, it was their friend Cameron, but Audrey had always been possessive. But he didn’t have to walk past her. He could escape by way of the deck, through the master bedroom, and climb the wall to the street.

  Michael weighed his options: try to leave, go get Kate and find somewhere safe, or stay to confront Audrey. The moral dilemma wasn’t so much that she’d hidden them, even, because that’s what you do with zombies if you didn’t want to—or couldn’t—bash their heads in, but that she hadn’t said anything about them. She was pushing to get medical treatment for Cameron, but she didn’t seem to care about their other friends. Maybe she was in shock; maybe she’d lost it. Not so much that she’d forgotten the other zombies, but had been unable to process their existence. Still, he couldn’t leave her. She was the only one who seemed to be able to hold her own against the zombies.

  In the mirror Michael’s reflection still had traces of makeup from last night. He’d been Charles Dickens, but only the white pancake remained. The Victorians never got much sun, what with the smog. He washed his face. Then again. Drying his face with a towel that smelled musty, like it had been used too many times, he thought about whether he could reasonably put on enough makeup to pass for a zombie. Give Audrey some of her own medicine. Probably it wouldn’t be that hard; he had enough stage makeup. But the eyes would be a problem. He didn’t have the right contacts. And it would take too long.

  The smoke detector went off. Michael smelled something burning. He cursed. The zombie’s cigarette. He grabbed a bath towel from under the sink, and his whip. He touched Kate’s bedroom door to test it for heat. It was still cool, so he opened it. A patch of carpet was smoldering, but it was still small. The zombie was lying in Kate’s bed, and had pulled the covers up over herself. Only the ends of her hair were visible. Michael toweled the carpet until the flames were out, then went back to the bathroom and ran the blackened towel under the tap. The wet towel sizzled as he threw it on the burned carpet. He stamped it down, trying to make sure he got all of the embers. The room smelled of damp burning.

  “You OK?” he asked the zombie. He knew it was pointless.

  She didn’t reply, but that was fine, too. As long as she stayed under the covers. Michael threw the window open. Then he brought a chair into the hallway and stood on it to remove the battery from the smoke detector. Hoping that the smoke would dissipate quickly, he closed the bedroom door with the naked zombie safely inside. He wedged the chair under the doorknob, just in case.

  Audrey stood in the hallway, with Cameron behind her. “You all right in there? What’s going on?”

  “Zombie smoking in bed,” Michael said, although that wasn’t entirely true. “Terrible for your health.”

  “You’re going to leave her in there?”

  “I opened a window. The fire’s out. It was only a little one.” He still wanted to throw more water on it, and went back to the bathroom to get a bucket. There was one under the sink, filled with cleaning products. He dumped the bucket out on the counter. Mostly spray cleaners – could those be used as weapons? He set down his whip and picked up a bottle, looking for the warning label. It was all natural, procured from Trader Joe’s, like everything else in the house, and it was made of crap like corn and soy and ash. Great if you had kids or pets that liked to lick the floors, but useless against zombies. He did have a container of Comet, which always reminded him of that childhood song: Comet, it makes you vomit, so get some Comet, and vomit, today! But that was powder, and impossible to throw without getting it everywhere. And zombies seemed pretty insensate to pain, anyway. He gave up on that line of inquiry.

  The sink wasn’t quite big enough to fit the bucket under the tap. He cursed. He turned on the bathtub and placed the bucket under the faucet. “Audrey?” he said, poking his head into the hallway. “Is there anything you wanted to tell me?”

  “I don’t smoke?” she said. She’d found the clothes Michael had dropped on the floor, and was shrugging on a T-shirt over her vinyl dress. He wasn’t sure how she was going to deal with the jeans. Michael turned his back and went into the bathroom to give her privacy. That was just like Audrey. She probably thought her lack of modesty was charming.

  The sound of water was calming as the bucket filled. He called over his shoulder, “I mean, about what happened this morning? Anything you maybe left out? By the way, we need to put Kate’s friend into some clothes before we take her anywhere. Maybe you should do that. It would be less perverted if a girl did it. Although if she’s a lesbian, then that doesn’t totally make sense.” He turned his attention back to the water. When the bucket was nearly full, Audrey let out a surprised shriek, and then a real scream.

  “Audrey?”

  “Michael!”

  His whip was gone. He cursed, then picked up the bucket, which he could at least use to slow down a zombie. It was heavier than he’d expected, and water sloshed from it as he took it into the hallway.

  Cameron was humping Audrey, his hips to her ass, his arms locked around her waist. She was trying to pry them off, and elbowing Cameron in the ribs. He didn’t seem to notice. Cameron also didn’t seem to notice that he was still wearing pants, and wasn’t actually having sex. He did seem to be enjoying himself. He leaned forward and kissed Audrey’s shoulder with his mangled mouth.

  Audrey pitched her upper body forward as far as she could. “Michael, help!” Audrey screamed. “If he bites me!”

  Michael threw the water at them. Most of it hit Audrey. She and Cameron both screamed, nearly a perfect octave apart. Audrey’s T-shirt, now wet, clung to her erect nipples. Her hair hung over her face. She’d managed to put on the jeans under her dress, not that they seemed to help.

  “Sorry!” Michael said. Desperate, he put the bucket on Cameron’s head, thinking that at least he could stop him from biting. Cameron humped harder. He was moving pretty quickly for a zombie, or at
least the real kind of zombies, not the rager kind you see in movies. Audrey’s struggling grew wilder. She kicked and elbowed at Cameron. Apparently he liked it rough.

  “Michael, do something!”

  Michael charged, knocking both Audrey and Cameron over. Audrey’s head hit the wall as she fell. She landed in a soggy pile, but at least Cameron was down. Michael wanted to hit him, knock him into submission, but he still wore the bucket on his head. Michael was struggling to stay calm. He sat on Cameron, pinning his arms. “Audrey,” he said. “Audrey?”

  She didn’t answer. Maybe she was playing another trick on him, but Michael had to deal with Cameron first. Cameron kept humping; either he didn’t know or he didn’t care who he was fucking. Michael wished he had handcuffs, or some rope. Cameron’s arms were badly scratched from Audrey’s nails, and Michael didn’t like the thought of touching Cameron’s blood. It was still red, which gave him pause. Maybe the zombies really weren’t dead. Maybe they could still be saved. In the movies, zombies were always dead, but in the original Haitian sense, they were most definitely alive, sort of. He took off his hoody and used that to tie Cameron’s hands. It wouldn’t hold for very long, but it was something.

  “Audrey?” he said. She lay still. Michael felt close to panic. He didn’t want to risk hurting Audrey by moving her, but he didn’t have a choice. He stood up from Cameron and picked her up, trying to keep from jostling her spine. He dragged her along the floor down the hallway, carefully, the way you were supposed to move people if you suspected an injury. Cameron growled and sat up. He used his tied hands to knock the bucket from his head. What was left of his lips had started bleeding again. He stood.