I, Zombie

Lumbering around the desk, she lost the view and stared at a wall, a calendar of appointments, a clock that still ticked on its little batteries. What did that glimpse of the far shore tell her? No movement. And what still moved anymore? Only the dead.

So Jersey must be alive, Carmen decided. Or was that simply what she wanted to believe? It was counterintuitive, this idea that stillness meant life and that movement across the water would just signify more shuffling and unthinking souls. This could be her wishful thinking, but she truly believed Jersey was alive for being able to remain quiet, able to hold its breath, to fall still. Jersey, and perhaps the rest of the country. Carmen thought it was just Manhattan that had succumbed. This is what she had pieced together with that occasional view. The rest were pulling back, keeping their distance, still able to choose where to go and choosing to go away.

Two days.

That’s how long, and she would’ve been there pulling back with them, clutching her precious baby, reading the headlines, wondering what horrible things her friends were going through, feeling guilty perhaps for leaving work, for leaving them behind to have a baby she always said she never wanted.

But no. She was here. And her legs were sticky with the guts of a friend. Her dress was a bib of gore. The flesh on her one hand was rotting away, charred black where Rhonda had gotten her through the door and the others had left her to become something else. And in her belly, in her belly, something stirred. A nameless baby moved.

It moved, she was sure of that now. And what still moved? What moved anymore in that wretched place?

It was counterintuitive, she knew. Or maybe it was just her fears. Carmen asked herself this question over and over as she lumbered around the island of cubicles once more, bumping into her coworkers, all of them dead just like her. Dead, and still moving. The only things that moved anymore.

34 • Rhoda Shay

clack. clack. thwump.

Central Park was covered in frost. Overgrown and unruly grass let off steam as the ground warmed, the sun slanting through trees oblivious to the ruin of the city all around this green patch. The trees stood as motionless sentinels in the calm air of daybreak, dark shapes flitting between their boughs, birds calling to one another, still thinking about sex and territory and food while monsters roamed below.

clack. thump.

Fallen and crisp leaves rustled with squirrels. Inured as ever to the presence of people, they sat on their haunches, cheeks twitching, and watched Rhoda stumble by. Desperately hungry, she occasionally lurched toward them when they ranged too close, but the squirrels could bolt out of reach in an instant. Her body felt as mindless and ineffectual as a dog, always thinking the next try would nab the impossible. Around a thick tree, two squirrels chased one another in furry spirals of clicking and scratching claws, a much more even match. Too even. They would never catch each other or truly get away.

clack. clack.

The joggers were the only thing missing. The joggers and those early risers who found the time to sit on park benches with coffees and newspapers and bagels, their suits and dresses lending them the air of the gainfully employed. Rhoda guessed it was between six and eight. The sun normally rose while she was slapping the snooze button or waking up in the shower. Of all the many and new powerless things, not knowing the time was just another. No cell phone to glance at. No one to ask. In ancient times, she imagined people just knew how far along the day was. One glance at the spinning constellations, and it was time to plant or harvest or head south.

Rhoda’s constellations had vanished. She didn’t even know they were there until they were gone. There were the joggers in the morning that let her know she would be early to work, kids being walked to school by their parents or older siblings, trucks squeaking to a stop by curbs so burly men could unload boxes of food and cases of beer. There were the subways full of people hurrying for trains, the express packed so full that the last ones in had to laugh, their skirts flapping between the rubber seals as the conductor—after four or five tries to get the doors together—finally zipped them away from the station.

thump.

There were the nighttime stars that gave her the hour as well. The crush that spread from Times Square when the shows let out. The boys and girls in tight jeans flowing to and from Brooklyn in the wee hours, looking for somewhere hip to hang out. The city changed by the hour. It changed by the day. The flower district seemed to explode more lushly on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The streets fell quiet on the weekends, the cabs thinning to a yellow trickle for much of the morning. Time. Taken for granted. Everything changing until it didn’t, until the sameness stirred memories of the way things used to be.