I, Zombie

Caveman shit.

Like eating raw meat. Dennis had never eaten raw meat before, not even sushi. This was his last pre-monster thought as he wrestled his girlfriend’s arm to his lips, jaws parting, teeth bared, the anger in her shouts sliding to full-on panic.

She shrieked piercing wails, and Lisa knew. She had to know as he bit down on her forearm, a patch of skin he used to kiss, that creamy white with a single mar of a mole that she insisted was a freckle. When his tongue hit her flesh, there was a familiar taste, the salt from weeks of running and not bathing, the hot skin like a day on the beach, the same flavors that tinted their lovemaking. His girlfriend tasted the exact same on the surface.

It was the unfamiliar that lay beneath.

Dennis felt an eruption in his brain like an orgasm. Better. Better than an orgasm. This was what he was wired for. His teeth came together, and Lisa’s arm jerked. Desperation. There was desperation in both of them. Panic and starvation were at odds with each other. The desire to eat and to not be eaten. Dennis thought of make-up sex they’d had once, the rough sex. He thought of that first time, when she’d said she didn’t want to, but he had convinced her. They were both drunk. He was too far along to turn back. Both naked and willing to do so much, but then him wanted more. More than she did. The drive in him to eat was like that drive to fuck. He would’ve insisted it was something containable until he’d actually felt it, until he’d gone that far. That far, and you were going all the way. He couldn’t stop. Too weak.

Dennis also thought, as he bit down, that teeth were meant for this, just not his. He never would’ve guessed that they could rip flesh. Not his teeth. Maybe those of another monster but not his. The flesh of Lisa’s arm gave way, his jaw clenching on the softness, and then her skin stopped moving, became tight, could stretch no more, and with a pop, with a sudden orgasmic burst of power, his bottom teeth met his top teeth, a chunk of her arm in his mouth, him chewing.

There wasn’t a product on the supermarket shelves as delicious as this. Lisa’s safety receded from his mind. What he was doing faded; what he had become made the rest of him cower in fear. Lisa gurgled in pain and staggered backwards, and Dennis latched onto her like a rabid dog. He slid forward, cans bouncing, and emerged from the shelves a different thing than what had entered. He and Lisa were on the ground, rolling around like they used to wrestle, Dennis pulling his way up her body even as he chewed this first glorious taste and swallowed it down.

He wanted her neck. She was yelling for him to stop, begging. The sample in his mouth drove him forward, craving more. This was why he shied away from anything he knew he’d like. One try, and it was over for him. There was nothing for Dennis in moderation.

Lisa cried out for help. She prayed to a god he knew she didn’t believe in. Panting for air, yelling for Matt and Sarah, Dennis felt just a hint of guilt. The old him was still in there, sad that shit had gone bad like this. He remembered, even drunk that one night, knowing that he was doing something wrong, that he should stop. But he had driven forward until screams and moans couldn’t be told apart, until cries and gasps were the same, until he could convince himself that she was enjoying it too, that she would forgive him, that they would never talk about it, try not to think about it, forget that she had ever begged him to stop.

That was the old him in there, feeling sorry. The rest of him wanted a second hit of this new drug. The rest of him wanted Lisa to shut the fuck up. And as he pulled himself up her chest, he found a way to do both, to get a taste and to silence her. And it amazed him, again, that teeth were meant for this. It was some caveman shit, he thought, as his jaw opened a gushing and hissing hole in his girlfriend’s throat. It was some caveman shit as her cries for help were silenced, as her body fell into reluctant submission, he on top of her, getting his way.

21 • Chiang Xian

Chiang was in the back of the meat shop, cornering a rat in her slow and clumsy steps, when the strangers broke in. It was the fifth day of her terrible hunger, the countless day of her imprisonment, and the third time she’d chased after the same rat. It cowered under the old radiator in the back room while someone shattered the glass door at the front of the shop.

Chiang could smell the tiny animal under there. The last two times she’d seen this morsel of brown meat scurry across the floor, her starving body and senseless mind had charged directly after the thing. She had been forced to watch, mad with hunger, as it disappeared into its home behind the cupboard.