Brains: A Zombie Memoir Read online

  I looked at Annabelle, who was delirious with fever, covered with vomit, and all-around sick as shit. Ros was pushing her cart, humming the theme song from Batman. I prayed Annabelle would be reborn as a Super Friend, with a superpower like us. Another mutant, another adaptation. The X-Men, Magneto and Wolverine. Masters of the Universe and the Powerpuff Girls. Spider-Man, Plastic Man, and Baby Plas. The Green Lantern. O mighty Isis!

  Odds were against her-they were against all of us-but I had faith. And if faith can move mountains, then keeping Annie smart would be a piece of cake.

  We slogged on down the highway; I thought of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth and I was comforted. I know heroes exist because I am one. Destiny, fate, Power Rangers, gods, they all exist.

  Zombie John Keats called the physical world the valley of soul-making, and I finally understood what he meant. Because I was walking through that valley. I felt it in my brain stem, my cortex, my goddamn pineal gland. He meant transcendence; he meant immortality.

  I believe in you, my soul. Through my earthly trials I am creating you.

  Holy blade of grass, Batman! Holy plateful of guts.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AS WE NEARED the chain-saw sculpture garden, we heard an ancient narrative unfolding: the childbearing wails of Eve. The birth of Isaac.

  “Ooooh,” Ros said. “Nasty.”

  I patted my pretend-pregnant belly, spread my knees, and guided a phantom baby out of my crotch.

  “Baby,” Ros said. “Zombie?”

  I nodded. Ros cooed.

  When we entered the Garden, Kapotas was sitting with his back leaning against the Tree of Knowledge, munching on Grandpa’s forearm. He turned and hunched over the limb when he saw us, protecting his prize, a dog with his bone. Joan had been busy: There was a boot attached to a short length of broomstick where his foot used to be.

  The screen door slammed. Guts ran out and threw his arms around me, pressing his cheek against my belt. He took my hand and led me into the house.

  Eve was on the living room floor, legs spread, knees high. Maternity jumper bunched around her waist. Joan sat on the love seat, nurse’s hat askew, ripping a sheet into strips. There was a large pile of sheet strips on the cushion next to her, as if she’d been at it for hours, caught in some loop. She stopped for a moment and blew me a kiss, the minx.

  It smelled like burning tires and burnt hair. A burnt-out toaster coil and burnt toast. The New Jersey Turnpike on a humid summer day. It smelled like sucking on a battery.

  It smelled like zombies.

  Kapotas’s living room was a cornucopia of Americana: porcelain angels, lace doilies, an afghan over the couch, family photos on every surface, “Footprints in the Sand” on the wall, Reader’s Digest on the coffee table, and a giant television presiding over it all like a judge.

  I knelt next to Eve. She was a wild animal trapped in this bourgeois cage-there was no rationality left in her eyes, just fear.

  “When you see only one set of footprints,” the Lord says in that famous poem, “it was then that I carried you.”

  Joan appeared to be out of commission. It was up to me to deliver our child.

  Ros popped his head in the door.

  “Annie,” he said. “Dead. Maybe.”

  Joan fluttered her hand to her bosom; her mouth opened in surprise at the talking zombie. She rubbed her knee. I motioned for her to attend to Annie and she did as she was told. A teakettle whistled. Guts ran into the kitchen and brought back a pan of hot water and towels.

  Towels! Water! What was this, 1956? And what were we, human?

  Reference Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. There has been a seismic paradigm shift. Like when humans realized the earth is not flat but round, and that it circles the sun, not the other way around. Or when Crick and Watson cracked the DNA code and our genetic secrets were revealed. Or when lonely Pluto got kicked out of the planet club.

  If death had finally, finally been conquered, how could babies be delivered in the time-honored way?

  I peered between Eve’s legs. She wasn’t dilated in the least, her pubic hair was crawling with crabs, and a small brown cockroach was perched on her thigh. Isaac’s palms pressed against her pelvis, his fingernails scratching to get out.

  I snatched up the roach and ate it; the shell crunched like popcorn and its antennae tickled the roof of my mouth. It tasted bland, like puffed rice.

  If I didn’t get that baby out soon, he’d punch a big hole in his mama, right through her stomach. A mess for Joan to sew back up.

  I made a cutting motion. Guts’s eyes bugged out and he shook his head.

  Eve thrashed on the garish Turkish rug, which was an arabesque of magenta, black, and gold. I made the cutting motion again, this time with a stern look on my rotten face, and Guts ran to the kitchen. Eve grabbed at the end table and pulled on its doily. A picture of Kapotas on his wedding day came tumbling down.

  He and his bride were cutting the cake. It looked like the 1970s-Kapotas had muttonchops and a powder-blue tuxedo with ruffles; his wife’s long black hair was ironed straight and parted down the middle; her wedding dress was a miniskirt.

  Oh, the signs that delineate our decades! Our cultural symbols and codes: Beehives and housedresses. Duck tails and bowling shirts. Handlebar mustaches and corsets. Fringed suede boots and tie-dyed T-shirts. Chaps, holsters, and cap guns.

  Pop culture and fashion, the British Romantics and deconstruction-it was all I had in life and I clung to it like religion. It used to be enough, but it meant nothing to me now. Dust in the wind.

  Like Charlie Manson said: Now is the only thing that’s real.

  When Guts returned-scissors and butcher knife in hand-I bent over the prostrate Eve. If I had any breath, I would’ve held it.

  Guts handed me the scissors and I held them poised over Eve’s abdomen. Ros sauntered back in and began to sing-croak: “Clowns to the left of me; jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”

  Reference Reservoir Dogs. The ear-cutting torture scene. Ros was smarter than he looked. Too bad it sounded like he was at the bottom of a well. Like Baby Jessica, but singing, not sobbing.

  I made a tiny cut at the bottom of Eve’s beach ball of a belly, stuck my pointer finger in, and wiggled it.

  Isaac grabbed it with his fist. Grabbed it tight and pulled. He was a strong baby, a regular monster. My finger came off.

  I only had nine digits left-at least until Joan could put me back together again. If she was all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, then I was Humpty Dumpty. All of us, cracked carnivorous eggs.

  I pulled my finger out and looked at the stump. Ros put his hand over his mouth and stifled a giggle. I shook my fist at him à la Ralph Kramden: One of these days, Alice. Pow! Right in the kisser.

  Guts scampered to the kitchen and came back with a pair of barbecue tongs.

  “Nurse,” Ros said, and I nodded. We would need Joan after all.

  Oh, the stench of that birth. A million midnight farts underneath the covers. A fish kill, catfish and musky and gar washed ashore, bellies gleaming in the sun-sparkled shallows.

  Joan led Annabelle into the delivery room. What a glorious name, recalling Poe’s dead maiden in her tomb by the ocean:

  And neither the angels in heaven above,

  Nor the demons down under the sea,

  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

  She stood erect in the corner, as if waiting for a military inspection. She was still armed, the crossbow draped over her shoulder, guns tucked on either side of her pink rhinestone Hello Kitty belt buckle. I was afraid to meet her eyes, afraid that if I rapped on the metaphorical windows to her soul, no one would answer.

  I left the writhing Eve and approached cautiously. Annie lowered her head like a nervous schoolgirl. I put my hands on her shoulders and grunted as gently as possible. She peered up at me through long lashes, and I became a father
for the first time that day. Because someone was home. Our Annie was alive. I kissed her once on each cheek, welcoming her to the fold.

  “One of us!” Ros said, and jumped up and down, his fringe of golden hair bouncing. He had a mock friar’s haircut, a perfect bowl shape, only the top wasn’t bald but gone completely. So empty a yarmulke would have fallen right in.

  “Aaaaaaiii,” said Annie, nodding.

  “OOOOOH! AAHMMPPH!” cried Eve.

  I took off my tweed jacket, picked up the tongs, and turned my attention back to Eve. I rolled up my shirt sleeves-figuratively. Literally, the sleeves were in tatters. Joan was next to me, hot towel at the ready. Guts positioned himself on the other side of the young mother, caressing her bite site with his finger, which was no bigger than a baby carrot. Eve flailed and her stump whacked me in the chin. I looked up at the ceiling and said a silent prayer before plunging the utensils in.

  Feeling around in her insides, I grabbed hold of something solid and pulled it out.

  In the Zombie Apocalypse, it’s always opposite day. Afterbirth is prebirth. Death is life. I put the placenta on the Turkish rug and sat back on my heels. It looked like a giant grape jellybean.

  Ros picked it up and smelled it. “Blech,” he said. “Sour.”

  Wasting no time, Joan tugged hard on the umbilical cord. And Isaac tumbled out of the slit in Eve’s belly, rolling over and landing bottoms-up at my knees.

  I turned the infant over.

  “A boy!” Ros said.

  Joan handed me the towel. Isaac was covered in muck-dried blood and crusty pus, bits of sunflower yellow and mustard yellow and dead-grass yellow; army green and lime green and forest green and booger green. I picked him up and wiped him off.

  He was a big baby-the size of a yearling-and hairless as they come; the whites of his eyes were red; already he had teeth and they were sharp. His tiny nails were pointed.

  He was a devil baby. Our zomboy. No wonder the military had wanted to examine Eve. Isaac’s prenatal development was unprecedented. A marvel.

  I stood up and held him aloft for all to see. Surrounded by my family-Saint Joan, Guts, Ros, Annie, and Eve at my feet-I felt lucky, soulful, alive. On the front lawn, Kapotas shuffled into the birdbath, knocking it over.

  The baby cried and I cradled him in my arms. From my Dockers pocket I took out a brain bit and fed him. He ate it in one gulp. Like all newborns, he was ravenous.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MY FEAR: WHAT if Isaac doesn’t grow?

  My other fear: What if he does?

  Logic said he would only decay, but logic had been thrown out the window, along with death, taxes, and the social contract. The Age of Reason was long over. Defying modern medicine, Isaac became massive in the womb. Against all likelihood, Annie escaped the dull fate of our brothers. We were in uncharted territory, and without certainties, without a map, I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

  Sigh. I felt like a teenage goth mall rat stuck in a middle-aged zombie body. A survival plan was not going to emerge from the ether; no Hollywood hero was coming to save the day, no tablets from Mount Sinai to teach us how to behave.

  I was a future ancient. A post-culture primitive. None of the zombie movies or the Max Brooks and Dr. Phil books could help me. La Chupacabra, Hook Man, the Man with the Golden Arm, Satan, Ed Gein, Dracula-they couldn’t help me.

  We were alone. My barbaric yawp fell on deaf ears.

  My greatest fear: The moral right is on the humans’ side. In the history books, assuming there’s a future, zombies will be portrayed as the enemy, the terrorists. The mujahideen and the Janjaweed.

  But we only want to survive. We are only obeying our biological imperative.

  On the second floor of Kapotas’s house, thumbtacked to the walls of his study, were postcards and letters from around the world, all of them thanking Kapotas for creating the chain-saw Garden of Eden. The sculptures touched us, the people wrote. They renewed our faith in Jesus Christ. Thank you, they scribbled, danke schön, gracias, for creating such an inspired masterpiece.

  Those shortsighted fools. What good does it do now? What is the function of art in the apocalypse? Of religion?

  Looking out the window, I watched Guts play with Isaac, trying to teach the zombaby how to run. So far Isaac hadn’t grown a whit and he was not a quick study. His chubby legs whirled in an imitation of Guts, his long spiked toenails clicking on the concrete, but when he fell down, he didn’t pick himself back up.

  Leaves swirled around the two boys. Autumn in the Midwest. Unbroken by clouds, the sky was the color of a frozen corpse.

  As soon as I could get everyone stitched up, trained, and stocked with essentials, we’d head for Chicago. Once we demonstrated our sentience to Stein and the other authorities, they’d grant us our civil rights, agree to a compromise. They’d have no choice; we’d eat them if they refused.

  AT THIS POINT, get out of your chair, bed, or beanbag; if you’re outside, go inside; if you’re on the beach, insert your ear-buds and shuffle your iPod. Put on some inspiring music. The theme from Rocky would work, or some house or techno, anything with uplifting horns, a rousing beat, and no vocals.

  What follows is a montage:

  A maple leaf dropping from an almost bare tree. It catches in a wind eddy, circles in a vortex, then wafts to the ground.

  Saint Joan fastening a metal plate to Ros’s head with screws and hinges; Ros knocking on it to demonstrate its durability.

  Guts and Isaac running through the Garden of Eden, Isaac hiding behind the Ten Commandments. Guts finding him and picking him up, swinging our zomboy in a joyful circle.

  Annie shooting her gun at a scarecrow-and hitting the head or the heart every time. Ros at her side, giving the thumbs-up, his metal head reflecting the sun.

  All of us hunched over a human, tearing her limb from limb, then retreating to our separate corners to gnaw on the bones, savor the viscera.

  Me sitting at a desk in Kapotas’s office, pen in hand, surrounded by reference books, composing the document that would save us.

  Ros turning on the TV-nothing but static on every station.

  Joan, Ros, Annie, and I ransacking the Kapotases’ closets and drawers for clothes; Annie trying on vintage 1970s hip-huggers, me a double-breasted suit too short in the sleeves and legs.

  Joan and I removing Eve’s filthy maternity jumper and dressing her in a navy-blue velour sweat suit. It’s like dressing a baby.

  Kapotas and Eve drooling, doing the zombie shuffle, walking into totem poles. Guts holding Isaac out for Eve and Eve marching right on by, not even seeing her son.

  Pitch-black night, and Ros, Annie, and I lying on our backs with our heads touching, pointing at the constellations.

  All of us gathered in the living room, sitting on the embroidered chairs and colonial couch, Ros standing in the center, talking and gesturing, telling the story of our future, our liberty and success.

  Me fiddling with the radio. Over the montage music you can hear preachers shouting “rapture,” “end times,” “sinner,” and dragging the Lord’s name out to two syllables: law-word.

  Pan out the window: The trees are bare, snow is falling. It’s winter.

  IN HONOR OF the weather, Ros put on a Christmas album and he, Joan, and Annie danced to “Jingle Bell Rock.” Oh, what graceless zombies, dancing St. Vitus’s dance, delirium tremens, worse than Day of the Dead skeletons or tripping hippies.

  I surveyed the troops from a rocking chair: Joan had cleaned her nurse’s uniform and was wearing it, although she’d discarded the stockings; her yellow legs were bare except for the suede patch at her knee, but she looked tough enough for the long march ahead.

  Soldier-boy Ros was dressed for war with his combat boots, flak jacket, bulletproof vest, and metal head.

  And Annie, cute as an undead button in her 1970s jeans and matching vest, her teenage body still nubile-she hadn’t been shot yet and had only been bitten three times-Annie was shaking her ass like there was
no tomorrow. The pants sagged where the bottom half of her cheek should have been.

  Guts whirled in like the Tasmanian Devil. He tossed Isaac on the couch and turned a cartwheel, raring to go.

  If Chicago was a bust, if the meeting with Stein turned ugly and my treatise was dismissed, we would continue north. The best way to stave off decay is to stay dry. Ask any Egyptian mummy or frozen Neanderthal. Our choices were desert or tundra. Like Frankenstein’s creature, I chose the cold.

  We could prolong our living death that way; we might even approach immortality. Assuming we survived the battle.

  ONE LAST RADIO scan before we left: “Comfortably Numb” was still playing on DJ Smoke-a-J’s station. It’d been on repeat since he was eaten one windy fall day. His demise was broadcast live; we all gathered round the radio like they had in the 1940s, listening.

  “They’re at the gates,” DJ Smoke had said. “The monsters are at the gates! I’m surrounded. Hello, is there anybody out there? Can anybody hear me? If you’re listening, if there are any humans left, I just wanna say…” He paused and took a shaky breath. “Aw, fuck it. It’s for the best, actually. Humanity pretty much sucked, didn’t it? Yeah. War, greed, murder, genocide, rape, starvation, child molestation, envy, sloth…all those deadly sins from that Brad Pitt movie. Spoiler alert: That’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in the box! Hell, Hollywood ’s tame compared to reality.

  “I’ma go open the doors. Why not let the demons in? At least I know them-they’re my neighbors, my family, even my boss is out there. Like it or not, those zombies are us, our true selves. The veil has been stripped away and underneath we are cannibals. Fine Young Cannibals. I never liked that band.

  “And those are my parting words in this life-an unsupported opinion of a band no one’s cared about since 1990. How banal and trivial. How fitting.

  “Here goes nothing. Bye-bye, cruel world.”

  “Comfortably Numb” came on, doomed to repeat for eternity-or until the signal is interrupted, whichever comes first. DJ Smoke left the mic on, and underneath the strains of Pink Floyd, we heard his screams, along with the slurps, rips, moans, and gurgles of a feed. It made us envious and greedy, gluttonous and lustful.