Robin Becker: Brains: A Zombie Memoir

Brian Williams was on the television mounted near the ceiling, his voice calm and professional. “We are coming to you live from our studios in Chicago,” he said, “Ground Zero of this horrific outbreak, where Dr. Howard Stein, the scientist responsible for the virus, lives and works. Sources reveal Stein is working with government officials on a cure or a mutation, pursuing any avenue that might slow the spreading, control the infected, and spare precious lives. In the meantime, you are advised to stay indoors and avoid contact with anyone who has been bitten…”

I was listening to Brian’s report and stuffing my maw when the zombie cluster caught up with me a few minutes later. I stood up and waved my arms, yelling, “Moaaaggh!”

The masses stopped; they bumped into each other like kindergarteners forming a line for candy. “Moaaaggh!” I repeated, and stepped aside to let the mindless demons feed.

I HAVEN’T SHAT since my transformation. The phenomenology of feces. How come I haven’t expelled the flesh I’ve eaten? What kind of chemical reaction takes place within me? How is it I extract strength from the meat I eat? I become skinnier, rottener, deader, by the hour.

After eating A. J., I headed to Chicago to look for Howard Stein. Like the Oracle at Delphi, Stein would answer my questions, prophesy my future, provide valuable information. He might even be aware of my condition. Any decent scientist would have planned for the contingency, perhaps even hoped for it. Any decent creator would love and protect his best creation.

In my tweed jacket pocket, I carried the tools necessary to record what I could: my pen and notebook. What more did I need? Posterity would thank me.

As I passed the university, I joined the zombies wandering around the quad, aimless as human students waiting for Intro to World Religions to begin. I stumbled through the fountain and walked over the rosebushes, not even feeling the thorns. I was shuffling, favoring my bitten shoulder, the arm attached to it hanging limp, the stuff-sack tourniquet long gone.

All at once I smelled it, wafting on a warm breeze. My shoulder sang with it. Sweet as summer corn. Sweeter than Lucy’s sweet-scented snatch. The sweet sweet smell of human flesh.

The student zombies smelled it too. Every undead head perked up and we moved as one toward the fragrance.

Oh, he was easy to find. Silly human. He’d barricaded himself in his office; a gray metal filing cabinet containing twenty-five years of teacher evaluations blocked our entrance. A group of us pawed at the door until it opened; the filing cabinet toppled and reams of useless paper covered the floor.

Professor Barnes made me cry, one student had written.

This class was a waste of time, opined another.

I knew the human: Dr. Ernst Welk, chair of the English department, hair white as snow, belly like Santa Claus. He could have easily evaded and outrun us-we move as if through sludge-but he panicked. The scene was a parody of every clichéd horror movie from White Zombie to Friday the 13th Part Million: Geriatric Jason. The slow but relentless killer walks without a care in the world, confident he’ll get his prey if he simply stays the course. And the stupid victim, looking back as she runs, trips over a tree limb or her own high heels.

I felt a line of monsters behind me as I advanced on Dr. Welk. My ancestors: Count Dracula, the Wolfman, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, the Red Death in his mask and vestments. Every party has a pooper; that’s why we invited the Boogeyman.

Ernst ran out of the office and made it halfway down the hall before he tripped and fell over a chair, the kind with the attached desk. He was wearing a suit and tie. He must be crazy, I thought. Why is he here? And in those clothes? Did he return for some document or has he been here from the start? And just how long has that been?

I was the first ghoul to reach him. The others were slower, a good twenty feet behind me.

“Barnes,” he said, “can you hear me? Are you in there?”

“Mmmpph,” I said. “Uuuhhhh!”

Heaven forgive me, but I wanted him. Bad. I was a nymphomaniac for his hot flesh. He was portly and succulent, lying there on the circa-1970s purple carpet with his hands in front of his face like a gay pinup from the golden age of porn.

“Jack,” he began, “about your sabbatical…”

I ached; my soul ached. I was junk-sick and hungry for booze, pills, McDonald’s, sex, cars, chewing gum, crank, crack, Diet Coke, laudanum, Internet porn, video games-all of it. Take every weak human addiction and multiply it by the living, the dead, and the living dead, from George Washington to Saddam Hussein, from Homer to Bono, and that might come close to describing the magnitude of my hunger.

I desired, very much, to eat him.

“You deserved a semester off,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Ernst was flat on his back like an overturned beetle. One of his stubby legs was twisted around the chrome leg of the chair; the desk was poking him in the rib cage. He struggled to free himself, but every time he reached down to pull on his thigh, the desk dug deeper into his side. The man was weak from a lifetime of sitting; his arms were roly-poly, with no visible biceps, triceps, or delts. His suit was wrinkled and stained. He had been a competent administrator, and that’s not saying much.

“Damn it, Jack,” he said, trying to drag both his body and the desk away from me and wincing from the pain. “Have you no humanity left?”

I got down on my hands and knees next to him: my boss, my colleague, my savior, my lamb. Appeaser of the beast in me. I took a bite. The memory is as clear as Wordsworth’s claim for poetry: emotion recollected in tranquility.

I started with his stomach and received a mouthful of poly-cotton blend. I spit it out and with the next bite hit pay dirt. His skin tasted like baby powder and musk. There was a thick layer of fat surrounding the muscle; it was gristly and responded to the teeth with an al dente spring. I heard the pack gathering behind me, moaning for stink. Ernst raised himself on one elbow, screamed, and kicked his leg like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“You always were an asshole,” he said.

Tell me something I don’t know. Meal ticket.

IN THE MIDDLE of Iowa I was chased by a group of men in orange vests and waders. I was running through the corn, Ernst’s broken femur jammed in the back pocket of my Dockers.

There were zombie hunters everywhere. Shotgun-wielding rednecks who aimed for the head.

“There’s one now!” a man yelled.

“Holy shit,” said another. “That one’s running.”

“Impossible. The shits don’t know how to run.”

“Sure looks like he’s running.”

Someone laughed. “You call that running, Bobby? Now I know why you wasn’t much of a ball player in school. The thing’s legs are barely lifting off the ground. He’s a shuffler, all right. Running. Shit, them things can’t run.”

“I think Bobby’s right, sheriff. Whether or not he’s got the skill, he’s got the will. Looks like he’s trying to get away from us.”

I didn’t stop moving.

“Damnedest thing,” the sheriff said. “He does appear to have a plan.”

The sheriff gave me too much credit; I didn’t have a plan. I had one thought: Survive. And that meant protecting my brain.

Since I was-and am-a corpse, a fleeing, decaying corpse, I leave body parts behind when I run through vegetation. Little chunks of falling-off flesh cling to tall grass, raspberry vines, or brambles, making me easy to track.

I felt a stinging in my back and lurched forward.

“Got ’im!”

“You slowed him down, son, but you don’t have him, not ’til you hit him in the head and he’s flat on the ground.”