Robin Becker: Brains: A Zombie Memoir

So words mean nothing: Freedom is the same as chair is the same as love is the same as Fruity Pebbles is the same as justice.

There’s only one word with any meaning and I willed myself to say it:

“Braaaaaains!” I howled, and the effort hurt-my diaphragm, my throat, my stopped and broken heart.

From behind me, as if resurrected by my miraculous utterance, there was a banshee yell, a war cry, and Annie, dear undead Annie, came charging up the little hill of the half-sunken Maria Sangria.

Their bullet had entered her forehead and come out the other side, blowing her top off, exposing and cracking her skull like a pistachio. But her brain was intact and her aim was true. She shot the soldier closest to me in the neck and another in the eye. Two down, three to go.

The gunfight raged around me, but the soldiers were focused on Annie. I climbed onto the ledge of the boat and jumped, flying through the air like Superman.

I landed on Stein and we rolled on the bottom of the boat. The soldiers were yelling who knows what. Their sounds were as meaningful as birdsongs. A third fell dead into the lake.

Stein and I were in the missionary position with me on top, drooling contamination into his beard. I placed my hands over his ears and looked into his eyes. I imagined I was hypnotizing him like Dracula; I imagined Stein fell in love with me.

“I’ll help you, Jack,” he said. “There’s a cure. Please. You can be human again!”

A cure? I don’t need a cure. I’m perfect as I am. As God made me. As you made me, Dr. Stein. I am more than the sum of my parts, more than my hunger and the meat inside me. My soul is large; it contains multitudes.

Saint Joan’s suicide taught me: I have a choice.

And I choose brains.

I opened my mouth wide, my breath filled with the stench of the grave. My bottom teeth sank into Stein’s eyeball and my incisors punctured his brow. I bit down, shaking my head from side to side like a dog with a chew toy, working my way through the bone until I freed a chunk of his forehead. Then I sat back on my heels and chewed. And then I did it again. And again. Next to me, Annie was chomping on a soldier, her guns holstered.

The sky was lightening. A vulture landed on Maria Sangria and others circled overhead. I took another bite of Stein, eating his godhead, savoring the divine flavor.

It wasn’t the Last Supper for Annie and me; it was the first.

ANNIE AND I-our bellies full for the time being, content, the top of her brain glistening like Jell-O in the dawn’s early light-together we figured out how to start up the touring boat, and we hauled ass out of Chicago. Any minute, they’d come looking for Stein, but they wouldn’t find him. He’s in me. He’s in you, too, if you accept him. He’s in all of us.

We traveled north just as Ros had broadcast from the Garden of Eden, a couple of fresh corpses in the boat with us for snacks. Stein said there were others like Annie and me, and I believed him.

Professor Zombie finally had a viable plan: Find the others and work together to build a community. A resistance movement. A zombie underground in the cold, where it was dry as a morgue, where we’d be preserved.

I imagined we might travel to the desert one day, after the war was officially over and the humans felt safe again. After we ran out of food up in Canada or Alaska. I liked the sound of Death Valley, drier than dust. We could go anywhere we wanted. Once you accept your destiny, once you make peace with your nature, anything is possible.

Annie grabbed my arm and pointed to the east. Something was bobbing on top of the water and we headed for it, following a sun-beam. As we drew closer my heart swelled, almost started beating again; hope lodged in my throat like a large intestine.

It was Isaac, of course. The little Moses, floating on top of the lake like a rubber duck. We fished him out and unwrapped his waterproof covering and he was perfect, no worse for the wear, intact from head to toe. Like all babies, he was a tiny miracle. He squealed, gurgled, cooed. I brought him to my chest and Annie danced with her guns like Yosemite Sam.

I placed Isaac on one of the bodies and he dug in, using his sharp teeth and nails to peel back the skin. He must have been starving; he opened up the soldier’s stomach and crawled in, then ate his way out like a maggot.

Annie took the wheel and redirected us north. I put my arm around her and with my other hand made a fist and raised it over my head, sounding my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The fish answered. And Annie and Isaac and the vultures and the flies, all of God’s creatures together in one mad, inarticulate cry: brains.

THANKS TO LAUREN Rosenfield, who came up with the title one hot night when Brains was just an idea, and Ted Frushour, who discussed key plot points and a variety of endings with me, none of which made it into the final draft. Special gratitude goes out to Truman State University’s Sigma Tau Delta chapter for asking me to be their keynote speaker one spring and for agreeing to my lecture, “The Ontology of Zombies.” Preparing for that talk crystallized my research and ideas, and I was encouraged by all the zombie-loving kids who attended the event.

Kenton DeAngeli whipped the manuscript into shape, forcing me to think big-picture hero cycle. I am forever indebted to Janet Reid, the funniest and sharpest agent on the planet, plus she eats brains for lunch. Thanks to Gabe Robinson for loving all things zombie and for curbing my bloody, gross, pun-loving side.

Special love to Sparky Romine for shopping, talking, rocking, and drinking. You are the best BFF a girl could ask for and I don’t deserve your continued support. But I’ll take it.

Finally, the best for last, my genius of a husband, Mark Spitzer, who taught me how to write by example…every day. Thanks for watching all those zombie movies with me, honey. You are a star.

ROBIN BECKER is waiting for the Zombie Apocalypse. In the meantime, she plays guitar, fishes with her husband, and teaches writing at the University of Central Arkansas. This is her first novel. Visit her at www.robinzbecker.com.