Robin Becker: Brains: A Zombie Memoir

WHAT YOU HOLD in your hands is a zombie memoir, the touching postlife story of a walking corpse and his journey toward self-acceptance and knowledge, told honestly and in the first person, straight from his skeletal hand to your plump one.

What you hold in your hands I wrote and left on top of the desk in my hideout, a log cabin in the northern wilds of Canada. It is nothing short of revolutionary. Revisionist historians, prepare to revise.

In life, I was an English professor at a small college in rural Missouri. My mind retained information like a steel trap: No one played six degrees of Bacon better than I. No one knew more about Walt Whitman, the New Testament, or B movies from the 1950s. In conversation, I relentlessly sought the upper hand, whether discussing the best method for making flaky piecrusts (use Crisco, not butter) or the cultural importance of Freud (as massive as his cigar).

In death, I am a flesh-eating zombie with a messianic complex and these superpowers: I can think and I can write.

My name is Jack Barnes and I am a survivor. This is my story.

BRAINS. AFTER I was resurrected, my first thought was, Brains. I want brains. Give me brains!

The imperative seemed to come from outside of my body; it rang in my head like the voice of a god I had no choice but to obey. Brains: I heard it clearly, simply, plainly. Brains! And I immediately set out to procure some.

Now that I have analyzed this hunger, this twisted form of cannibalism, I realize it does not reside in my stomach, the typical seat of appetite; it stems from a deeper place, my divine core, what some might call the soul.

It is a small price to pay for immortality.

Brains. More dear to me than my wife. More precious than my intellect and education, my Volvo and credit rating-all that mattered in “life” now pales in comparison to this infinite urge. Even now, as I write these words, my lips quiver and a drop of saliva-tinged crimson-falls onto the paper, resulting in a brain-shaped stain.

Stain, brain, rain, brain, pain, brain, sustain, brain, wane, brain, refrain, brain, cocaine, brain, main, brain, brain, brain, brains!

Oh, how I love them.

THE VIRUS HIT the world like a terrorist attack.

Lucy and I-both still warmly human-were holed up in the living room watching news reports of the zombie invasion. It wasn’t confined to the Midwest, as they originally thought, but had spread all over the United States. Indeed, all over the world. And it happened in a matter of hours.

Brian Williams looked wan, scared, a little boy in a grown-up suit, the endearing humor in the corners of his eyes lost forever. Lucy clicked over to Fox. I always suspected my wife of secret conservatism, but I said nothing. Because there was Geraldo Rivera, out in the street, interviewing a she-zombie. A zombette.

“Why are you doing this?” Geraldo asked the creature. “Can you even talk? Everyone thinks you’re a monster.”

The zombie groaned and grabbed the reporter’s cheeks as if to move in for a kiss.

“That zombie must’ve been an athlete in life,” I said. “She’s quicker than some of the others I’ve seen.”

“The poor dear,” Lucy said.

Geraldo bludgeoned the zombette with his microphone, but to no effect. The mic merely sank into the undead’s head, disappearing like a baby thrown into quicksand. Geraldo wrestled it out and the camera zoomed in; the mic was covered with tufts of hair and bits of gore. Geraldo shook it like a rattle and the zombie struck, biting his hand. Geraldo shrieked-high-pitched, girlish-and Fox cut back to the newsroom, where a generic blonde warned viewers of the dangers of conversing with corpses.

“Now that’s the kind of reporting I expect from Fox,” I said. “Stating the obvious with bimbotic style.”

“Do you think they could be here?” Lucy asked, her eyes darting around the room. “In our town?”

“Of course not,” I said. “We’re in the middle of the middle of nowhere. The flyover zone. No one comes here if they don’t have to, not even dead people.”

I heard a noise, as if Hook Man were scratching at our roof. I turned off the idiot box and threw open the drapes.

Lucy and I were surrounded; there were zombies at the windows, zombies at the doors, zombies coming down the chimney like Santa Claus. It was just like the movies.

That’s the genius of George Romero. His initial trilogy-Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead-was prescient in the grand tradition of science fiction becoming fact. First you have to imagine a man on the moon, then you can put one there. Imagine an atom-splitting bomb, and then build one. Imagine a virus that turns corpses into the walking dead, and someone, somewhere, will develop that virus.

And now let us bow our heads in honor of Dr. Howard Stein, my creator. Our father. Mad Scientist Extraordinaire. God in the Garden of Evil. Daddy of the Undead. Cue maniacal laughter.

There was a crashing sound as zombies broke the living room picture window and stumbled in. I threw the remote at them. Nothing. Then the TV Guide. Nothing. A vintage 1950s kidney-shaped ashtray bounced off of one like a rubber ball. Finally, my copy of the The Da Vinci Code, never read. The ghouls kept coming.

“Their heads,” Lucy yelled. “The news said you have to injure their heads!”

“You think I don’t know that? It’s a trope of the genre.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m one of your students, Jack. It’s demeaning.”

As I bickered with my wife, my neighbor reached me. He was in his bathrobe and boxers and his feet were bare, the veins and bones bulging. The whites of his eyes were yellow and watery, and his arms were open wide for a hug. He leaned forward as if to tell me a secret.

And bit me. Just like that. Right on top of my shoulder, deep in the muscle.

It felt like a hot poker on my flesh, a rabid squirrel attack, the blinding light of a comet. It felt, in short, like sharp human teeth ripping me apart. How’s that for metaphor? Nothing like the real thing.

He chewed on my shoulder, working through the muscle like a dog chewing gristle. I kneed him in the groin and shoved him off me; a chunk of my shoulder remained in his mouth like a meatball.

More zombies streamed in. Lucy fought them off with our Peruvian rain stick, the annoying rain sound harmonizing with the living dead’s moans until the stick broke and dried beans spilled onto the hardwood floor. Lucy grabbed my elbow and pulled me down to the basement, where we were safe, at least temporarily. There was only one entrance, through the kitchen. We locked the deadbolt behind us, dragged flattened cardboard boxes up the stairs, and duct-taped them over the doorway.

It was classic victim behavior, actually, seen in dozens of horror movies: Grab whatever you can, stupid humans, and throw it at the door. Hell, use a solid granite tombstone if you’ve got it. Doesn’t matter. If you lock yourself in a room, eventually the monsters will get in.

Lucy and I huddled between a giant plastic Santa and the LL Bean tent we used just once-and then in the backyard. Now we’d never go to Yosemite.

“What should I do?” I asked her, gripping my shoulder.

“What are your options?”

“As I see it, suicide or zombification.”