I, Zombie

He used his palms to lift himself. Pushing down and then bending his elbows made him flop forward a few inches. There was hardly any pause before he did it again. Over and over. The flesh from both hands had been ripped away. Bone made clacking sounds on the pavement. Several of his fingers were bent back and pointed unnaturally toward the sky.

Groups of walkers passed him by now and then. They all grunted and groaned to some degree, weak sounds of agony from those dragging a broken leg or suffering a gaping wound. It was the accordion squeeze of organs like great bellows, wheezing and rattling as they chased down anyone still clinging and surviving, anyone with meat still worth taking.

A pregnant woman in a tattered green dress had made an especial racket. Her groans rose above the others, a noise among the inhuman sounds that stood out for being… human. Michael had watched her as she passed him by, the back of her dress torn open, her underwear riding up, half of her ass hanging out, skinny everywhere except for that bulge of a belly.

He had lost contact with the woman after a block or so. She had drifted uptown on some scent Michael couldn’t nose, moving faster with her waddling stagger than he could ever hope to on his belly. He had followed a different scent, one that pulled jostling masses down flights of stairs, into a station, nearer to hell with every painful pull and lunge forward.

And it wasn’t his addiction taking him there. He didn’t think any god would punish a man for being happy, for victimless crimes. No, he was on this inexorable crawl into the pits of hell for all the things his addiction made him forsake. It wasn’t eating his mother, the smear of her trailing behind him for blocks and city blocks, leaking out his cuffs in oozing trickles… it was the way he’d cared for her all the years before.

Michael finally understood this as he reached those subway steps and began dragging himself down, another finger popping up to point at the heavens. He finally understood as he slid on his belly and the birds swooped down, as flames rushed down the streets, his torment and fiery hell not eternal at all.

50 • Gloria

The darkness had a smell. It was the wet of rot, of cool air trapped and festering, the odor of mud, of standing water, accumulated waste, and damp fur. Piercing it all was the intoxicating scent of cooked flesh, a zombie perhaps who had fallen on the third rail back when it still had power. An impenetrable cluster of gnashing mouths worked on the remains of this accident in pure desperation. Hunger had driven those who’d stumbled underground to eat what on the surface would be less tempting. Gloria and the rest of the blind and groping column passed these pathetic souls by and followed the sounds of rats.

Their squeaking filled the dark subway tunnel. It reminded Gloria of birthday parties as a kid. It was the chirp of balloons rubbing together, short outbursts from tiny lungs, a jittery stampede beneath this much slower, plodding, and rotting one.

There were so many. Running over her feet, stepping on them, crushing some, them biting back with sharp and fearful teeth. Her blind legs marched forward, oblivious to the pain. Gloria’s head simply remained full of her silent screams, her prayers, other repeated nonsense, loops of songs from a far-gone life, all roaring noiselessly in the hemispheres of her small mind as her feet carried her along.

She could hear the others walking with her, the squish of dozens of feet in the mud and garbage, their wheezing and rattling, their miserable pleas. This grotesque and invisible mass trudged downward into the darkness. Water dripped from overhead, occasionally striking her scalp. Every nerve was heightened by the pitch black. There were splashes ahead that warned her of the flood, and the scents that drew them in began to grow weak.

Gloria bumped into those who circled back. The gathering seemed to mix aimlessly in the darkness, trapped by the eddy of odors. She was one of the few who followed a slender tendril onward, into the flooded tunnel that sloped down and down.

Her feet hit the water, ankles covered, then her calves, knees, thighs—and still her dumb body forged ahead, following a scent and then just the memory of a scent. Rats swam alongside, their tiny claws pawing at her, scampering up her back and around her neck, riding her shoulders, little teeth sampling her rotting flesh.

Deeper. Splashes in the darkness as others waded in different directions. All confused, now. Just moving in order to move. A tunnel sloping ever downward, no train station in what felt like forever, and Gloria knew what part of the line she was on. This was the way. Forward, forward, she urged the man at the tiller. Go.