Brains: a zombie memoir by Becker

Author:Becker [Becker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humour
ISBN: 9780061974052
Published: 2010-05-25T07:00:00+00:00

BY THE TIME we finished Grandma, good to the last scrap of rubbery aged meat, Grandpa had regained consciousness and Annabelle was morphing; she was sick and feverish, murmuring Dashboard Confessional lyrics and rolling her head from side to side.

Grandpa’s left side wasn’t functioning; apparently he’d had a stroke. Which was lucky for us—he was compliant and docile. We tied him up with Dumpstered twine and lined a Wal-Mart shopping cart with flattened cardboard boxes. We did the same for Annabelle and started back to the Garden of Eden with our groceries.

Cavemen returning home with a mastodon and a woman for the clan.

We had to protect our harvest. The living dead have a sixth sense when it comes to fresh meat and although Grandpa wasn’t exactly steak tartare, he was at least alive. Annabelle, on the other hand, was already unpalatable: She smelled like spoiled beans, rotten chicken, and that stuff the janitor sprinkles on puke in grade school.

The best plan was to avoid zombies altogether, which, once we reached the front of the superstore, proved impossible. The crowd of corpses pounding at the double doors moved in our direction, noses in the air like prairie dogs. My shoulder twitched, my bite site tingled, and the urge to join them seized me.

We zombies are a collective, a writhing mass: ants carrying pupae across a puddle, bees working a hive, a pack of wild dogs hunting, humans assembling cars in a factory. The impulse to lose one’s self in the swarm, to abandon individuality for group identity, is strong.

Flash mobs, soccer hooligans, Nazism.

The greatest good for the greatest number…

We couldn’t give in to it.

I grabbed Guts by the elbow and positioned his hands on Grandpa’s cart. I simulated running and pointed in the direction of the Garden, giving Guts an encouraging push on his back.

“Wait,” Ros said, and picked Guts’s guts off the ground, sticking them in the waistband of the young zombie’s pants. “Now,” he warbled. “Run!”

Guts looked up at me; his eyes widened and I again rejoiced. I loved looking in his eyes. They were yellow and full of pus, like all of us, but the light of understanding was in them. I knelt down and hugged him. His raw guts pressed against me. Never in life had I felt that way for a child. In fact, I’d never felt that way at all, not even for Lucy.

Cry your hearts out, ladies, and hand me the tissues while you’re at it. I’m watching Saving Private Ryan, Brian’s Song, Love Story, and Steel Magnolias with you. I’m saying good-bye to cynicism and ironic detachment and hello to love. Because this is important. This is a matter of life and death.

Or what passes for life and death in postapocalyptic America.

Of course, the apocalypse label adds weight to everything.

Guts watched the approaching horde with longing, but like the good zombie he was, he set his narrow shoulders, thrust out his scabbed jaw, and took off running with our dinner.

“Good kid,” Ros gurgled. “Make it?”

I shrugged.

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