I, Zombie

Chiang saw a baseball bat by the cash register, the wide end of it painted and spattered red. It hadn’t been there before. She passed behind the counter where her father folded meat into sheets of brown paper, her head just barely poking above. Around the counter and into the store, she nearly bumped into the woman. Chiang saw how the lady’s body trembled and froze. The scream came a full breath later, but Chiang was already sinking her teeth into the woman’s hip, a mouthful of sweaty-salty shirt and the tender flesh beneath.

Canned goods spilled everywhere. The screaming was hurting Chiang’s ears. It stopped as she bit again, the woman going limp and collapsing to the ground, passing out.

A large man shouted. A cry of anguish. He skipped and slid through the piles of canned Chinese ingredients, around the tables and chairs, dashing for the cash register.

The bat. Chiang lumbered to intercept the man. The woman writhed and groaned on the floor like she was having bad dreams. There was a third shape moving in the dimness of the shop. More screaming.

Chiang felt afraid of these people. Maybe they had brought food to her, their untainted flesh. Maybe they had brought escape by shattering what she could not. But they had also brought a lasting death with them, the desire to end her. The man reached the counter and grabbed the bat. Chiang could smell his intentions, his rage and fear. She hurried through the spilled cans, her teeth clacking anxiously on the empty air, arms out in front of her as he reared the bat to the side.

It was a can of asparagus. One of Chiang’s senseless feet slipped on the can, shooting her legs out from underneath her, and the stained bat whistled through the air above her head. With a ferocious crack, the bat met the old cash register with its brass buttons and little tombstone prices. Chiang flailed to right herself. Inhuman screams came from the large man. His knees were wobbling like Chiang’s. The smell of rage on him grew to a stench. There were sobs behind her from a third person, a shadow. The bat screamed through the air again as Chiang stumbled toward her feet.

The blow grazed the side of her head and came down on her shoulder. Something snapped. Chiang felt her shoulder twist out of place. She kept moving forward. The man was holding half a bat, the splintered ends trembling in his fist. He tried to move backwards, slipped on a can of onions, and Chiang was on him, pulling herself with one good arm and another flashing in pain, the man’s hands scrambling to keep her off, until she reached his neck.

Countless days of hunger disappeared in a gushing instant. Blood jetted into her mouth as she tore open the man’s neck. It tasted just as her desperate cravings had led her to expect. Warm and vital. Like the sashimi her father would cut and feed her while she worked.

The man’s voice left his lips and emerged from his neck, gurgles and bubbles flooding around Chiang’s mouth. There was more here than she could eat in a week. She lapped hungrily at the gushing fountain, which gave of itself in throbbing spurts. The two powerful hands scrambling at her face seemed to fade. They pawed listlessly now as Chiang’s limbs found new purpose and strength.

A loud crack filled her ears, her head bobbing forward, the delayed sense that someone had struck her. Chiang rolled off the bleeding man to find a young boy standing over her, a white boy, maybe her age. He held the broken end of a bat in his trembling hands.

Chiang lunged forward. She watched as her arms tangled around the boy’s legs, his eyes opening in horror. The boy brought the short piece of wood back down on her head, mimicking his father. It bounced off her head and out of his hands. He shrieked as Chiang wrapped herself around his knees and toppled him. She pulled herself up his frail body, hands grabbing fistfuls of his rumpled and smelly clothes, blood spilling out of her mouth and down her chin, mouthfuls of blood from the neck of the boy’s father.

This boy’s father, Chiang thought. A boy. She pulled herself toward his more youthful neck while his hands beat uselessly against her cheeks. She thought of Shen, the cute boy with the jet black hair who sat across from her at school. Chiang wondered suddenly if he had made it home that day. Was he out there, breaking into stores with his parents, killing animals like her with baseball bats?

The white boy screamed and begged. He was pleading with her. Sobbing. As if she had any choice.

Chiang opened her mouth. The boy’s hands were on her face, covering her eyes, trying to push her away. He felt so thin. Like bones. Like a disappointing catch her father might curse as he cleaned for the salvageable scraps.

“No!” the boy screamed. His mother had fallen still. Chiang thought of all the flesh in the room. Weeks and weeks worth of flesh. The taste of the father was powerful on her lips.