Jim and Dave shuffled down the street in the hot summer sun.  Occasionally they would encounter an obstacle, such as a shopping cart, corpse, pile of trash, or burned out car. Depending on the size and nature of the obstacle, their zombie intellect would kick over into high gear, and a conversation such as this might ensue:

“Braaaaaaaaaaains….”

“Rains!  Rains!  Raaaaaaaains¹….”

“Brains….”

If the object was large, such as a chunk of flaming airplane wreckage, Jim and Dave would do the Zombie Shuffle around its perimeter, sometimes bumping into each other and the obstacle itself.  On rare occasions, the not-quite-cooperative maneuvering deflected them from their original direction of movement, which was entirely random anyway.

If the obstacle was small or spread out (like the 2000 individually-wrapped packages of toilet paper they’d encountered yesterday, rolling and skittering before their tattered feet) they would attempt to plod onwards, sometimes falling down and flopping around spastically with skills only accomplished zombies possess.

Burned out cars, low walls, windows, shrubbery – these all warranted a direct assault, with much grunting, punching, grabbing, and climbing.

It need not be said what happened when either Jim or Dave encountered a human being, living, dead, or in between.

And thus Jim and Dave shambled and climbed and crawled and otherwise made their way across the ruined city.  They were in good company: the city still held millions of undead in various stages of starvation and final death, all the delicious warm living brains having been chased down and consumed within the first few weeks of the zombie apocalypse.  

Lately there had been a rash of fresh human sightings, probably survivalists running low on supplies and creeping about the city looking for more.  The last one Jim and Dave saw had been from a distance – a 30 foot wall of writhing zombie flesh, a colossal pile-up precipitated by a lone human boy carrying a rifle.   The boy (and his delicious braaaaaains) had been long ripped apart and consumed, yet his scent lingered on, a faintly delectable sweetness that caused Jim’s leg muscles to twitch in anticipation of a lunge.  Many of the worse-off starving creatures simply could not stop and feasted on their fellows, an unsatisfying (and ultimately) self-defeating move.

Luckily the blood-scent was faint enough now to cause Jim and Dave’s course to vary only slightly, and as stupid luck would have it, in the right direction.

For, you see, Jim and Dave have a destiny.  Or, at least Jim does.

--

“Rainnnnnnnnnnns…” Dave gestured futilely at the stairs, the horrible, horrible concrete steps that led downwards, into the light.  Stairs that would trip them, break them, trap them.  Zombies are not great tacticians, but the smarter ones can recognize danger.

“Brains, brains, braaaaains.  Brains,”  Jim acknowledged sadly, but expressed his belief again that the stairs were the only way forward, to continue their journey.

“Rrrrrains,” Dave agreed with a half-shrug².  He pushed Jim down the stairs.  Jim grabbed Dave’s boney wrist and yanked him along, and together they tumbled.

At the bottom of the stairs they climbed slowly to their feet, grunting and whistling³ but no worse for the beating.  But now a new dilemma presented itself, in the form of a locked steel door.  The only way out was back up the stairs, and sadly, Jim and Dave’s current state of health wasn’t going to let that happen.

“Brains,” Jim grunted, and Dave reluctantly agreed.

And so, they stood there in front of the metal door, with the patience of the undead.

Three days passed, though they neither reckoned it nor cared.  They gradually became weaker, the simple act of standing and swaying and emitting an occasional fart drawing down their energy reserves.  On the fourth day Dave sat down with a clatter; Jim followed six hours later.

On the fifth day, a miracle happened.

Dave’s crusty, sunken eyes were closed but Jim saw it happen: the metal door began to open.  He was too exhausted to do anything about it, but he watched as the door thumped, hissed, then slowly withdrew sideways into its recess.  A human would have noted with interest that the door’s leading edge was a thick black rubber gasket, providing a hermetic seal when closed.  Jim simply stared dumbly, not aware of any real desires or motivations, his zombie operating system tuned to the scent of wonderful fresh brains.  A puff of suspiciously cool, clean air wafted out over the zombies… somebody still had air conditioning.  But no brains.

A full ten minutes passed without event.  It could have been ten thousand years as far as Jim cared; he only had hours of “life” left to him.

But on the eleventh minute, another miracle happened.  Brains!

“…B..B…”  Jim croaked with near hysteria, his limbs spasming with feeble movements.  Beneath him Dave stirred – he smelled it too.  Delicious, warm, fresh, drippy, sticky, chewey brains were approaching.  The zombies came as close as possible to expressing emotion when the brains actually moved into Jim’s line of sight: the delectable snack was encased in the skull of a living human woman!  And she didn’t have a weapon!  Jim popped open his mouth and hoped the woman would help him out by sticking her brains in there for him.  Or maybe even just a finger…

He watched as she sidled up to him, a textbook illustration for caution.  Were he a living human he would have noticed many things about her: how clean she smelled, the deep lines etched into too-young of a face, the bruise on her cheek, the 9mm pistol weighing-down one pocket of her lab coat, the flask of straw-colored fluid she carried carefully, as if it was the most important thing she had ever held.

The smell of fresh brains overwhelmed him and Jim sprang to the attack.  Or actually, shuddered violently as overstressed and dying sinews tried to comply with the launch order.  The woman moved closer, stood over him.  The look in her eyes was unreadable, even for a human.

In his final moments he realized he was not getting any brains, as the straw-colored liquid sluiced over him.  

--

Jim’s first thought upon awakening was, “Brains”.  His next thought was the realization that he had a thought, which led to the next one, which rapidly led to that wonderful state we call self-awareness.

He croaked out a shout, “Grawwwwwwk!” which sounded nothing like “Brains”, and became so excited that he thrashed and fell off the padded table.  White tile floor rushed up to impact his face, and he felt wonderful, wonderful pain.

Then he heard the hurried steps, felt a tugging in his back, and then—

--

Jim came to full consciousness all at once, like the flip of a switch.  He was nude, his ruined body strapped into a metal chair, wrists pinned down by thick plastic straps.  An IV line snaked into the back of one hand, a steady stream of straw-colored fluid dripping into him.

With consciousness came memory, and horror, and recoil.  He remembered… things.  He recognized his gag reflex only after a thin gruel of greenish fluid gushed from his throat, into his mouth and onto his lap.  Stunned, he simply sat, remembering.  Thinking.

“Hello.”

The voice – a woman’s voice – snapped him back.  He turned his head towards the grille embedded in the wall, source of the sound.

“Imagine how bad you’d feel if I hadn’t pumped you full of narcotics, antidepressants, and mood stabilizers.  But go ahead and remember… you will anyway, and it’s best to get it over with.”

Jim tried to speak but the best he could manage was a croak.

“Don’t bother speaking; your fluid levels are not there yet.  You need a steady flow of saliva to talk.  Just… sit.  And remember.”

Jim wanted to tell her his name, to thank her for her efforts, and ask her to kill him.  But he gathered he’d have strength to do that soon enough.


The tenth awakening went better.  Remembering without vomiting, and oddly enough he felt… excited?  Interested.  He wanted to move on to the next step.

He was still strapped in his chair, the IV line was still plugged in and had been joined by a second, thicker, cable.  He seemed looser, more coordinated.  He felt like he could stand up if he wanted to.

“Doctor,” he croaked.  This was the signal she needed to begin interacting with him, what she waited for to indicate he was ready for the next session.

“Jim,” she replied.  “Today I have a surprise for you.  Let’s get you out of that  chair.”

He grunted ascent, and without preamble the IV line and cable popped loose and hissed for a second as they disengaged and fell to the floor.  A trickle of straw-colored fluid welled from his hand but stopped within seconds.  Next, the plastic bands went snick and whipped back into the slots on the chair.  Similar bands released his ankles and he was free.  With a mighty push he heaved himself out of the chair and… sat back down again, legs twitching.

“Hmm, thought that might happen.  Hold on.”

Above him Jim heard an electric motor whir to life, felt himself lifted straight out of the chair as if he were a puppet.  He grasped upwards, feeling the shredded wreckage of his exposed cranium and found the eye-bolt she had threaded into his skull.  Reaching higher, he touched the braided steel cable fastened to the bolt, felt it thrum with vibration as the motor reeled him erect then stopped.  His toes dangled above the floor as the gantry above his head carried him across the room like a slab of beef.  A glass door hissed open in front of him and he sailed through, stopping before his next personal hell: a full-length mirror, floor to ceiling.

At the sight of his body, Jim was shocked immobile again.  The old horror squeezed his chest with moist black fingers, threatening to throttle his sanity.  He remembered his training and tried to focus only on one small aspect of the horror at a time.  Even so, he suspected the only thing stopping him from strangling himself dead was the ridiculous soup of psyche drugs pumping through his veins.

His scalp was gone, revealing a landscape of smooth cranium and jagged edges beyond which pinkish-grey membranes peeped within.  His forehead had a dent in it on one side and a bulge on the other, one eyelid was torn, but both eyes were an intact, clear blue… as human as anyone’s.  He glanced briefly into his own eyes but dared not linger.  Nose gone, empty black slit instead.  Lips intact, but horribly chapped.  He was afraid to open his mouth and examine his teeth.  But his tongue appeared to work.

The eye-bolt and cable that dangled him was no more disturbing than the length of steel pipe (now sealed) somebody had jammed through his chest.  The flesh around the puncture wound looked torn and frayed, without any hint of healing.  Stark grey rib bones poked out in three places, one with distinct teeth marks.  His arms hung loosely from slumped shoulders.  Aside from scratches and bullet holes they appeared mostly intact.

Each hand was a ruin.  All fingernails gone, three out of ten fingers missing.  Tendons and knuckles emerged from jagged valleys of ripped flesh, curiously bloodless.

His relief at discovering his penis and testicles were still there was ridiculous.  Like, what was he going to do with that?

His feet and toes were okay, having been protected by decent shoes 24/7 for the duration of the emergency.  Why no debilitating toe fungus or rot?  

Ah, because zombies don’t perspire.

“Is it the drugs that keep me from feeling pain?”

The Doctor’s voice answered from a nearby grille.  “Actually, no.  In the beginning I used narcotics but it turns out to be a waste – your pain centers were burned out early in the course of the disease.”

“How is it… I’m alive?  Am I alive?”


A minute passed.  Jim swayed gently on his cable as he waited.  “Doctor?”

“Let’s talk.”

Before him the mirror tinted black and became clear, revealing a white tiled room on the other side.  The Doctor stood before him in her signature white coat, remote control held loosely in one hand.  A 9mm handgun weighed one pocket heavily, he remembered.  He remembered.  That last night, the flask…

“Where’s Dave?” he finally asked.

She smiled tightly and clicked the remote.  The glass/mirror wall slid up smoothly before him and suddenly he was in the same space, breathing the same air.  Quarantine over?

“We have a limited amount of time, so I am cutting corners.  Call it an acceptable risk.  Your… companion… you knew him?”  

“Yeah, we were friends.  Regulars at the local pub.  I was best man at his first wedding.  Is he… saved?”

She smiled her quirky little smile again.  “I stay away from questions of religion.   But if you mean is he like you are, then yes.  You can see him in a bit.  But first we have to get a few things straightened out.”

“Ah, I doubt this is covered by my HMO.”

She waved a hand dismissively.  “You might be mistaken; if what I’m doing works in a broader sense, it’ll fuck the course of medicine more thoroughly than that time that guy whatsisname discovered germs.”

“You don’t sound like the doctors I know.”

She actually laughed.  “Thank you.  I’m not.  Or rather, I’m a lab technician with access to a few billion dollars worth of medical equipment and motivation from hell.”  She paused, gestured with the remote.  “Care to sit down?”

“Please.”

Jim sailed into the room and was lowered into a black exam chair.  The Doctor (he still called her that) reached above him and unhooked the cable – the first time she’d actually touched him, so far as he knew.  She smelled like soap and bleach.

“Now then,” she began, “I need to update you on what we’re doing here and why, and then you can ask questions.  It’ll probably go faster that way.  Ok?”

“Ok.”

“When was the first that you learned of… the, uh, event?”

“I was sitting in the pub watching a CNN report.  Bird flu epidemic, everybody wearing masks, but I wanted a beer.  Naturally Dave was there waiting for me.  He was sweaty and acting pissed… I mean, angry, not drunk.  He bit me.”

“I imagine the rest of it is… kind of lost?”

Jim ransacked his memories but the rest of that evening wasn’t coming back to him.  “I assume it wasn’t Avian flu, then.”

She snorted.  “You walked out of there a zombie.  No telling how many people were carriers then; the delta for infection was amazing.  Closest we can figure is that unlike traditional flu, this one is more infectious when you first catch it. Real flu incubates for a time then becomes contagious.  Anyway, just a guess.  The original stuff is long gone.”

“So it was flu?”

“In the beginning, perhaps.  The bug they released to kill the flu is a whole nother thing.  Untested nano-shit.  I mean, the monkey trials hadn’t even begun yet because we couldn’t keep the rats alive… like that.”

“And you were part of it?”

“I was the head bottle washer and centrifuge polisher.  I took out the trash and cleaned the cages.  But in this place, you need a PhD before they’ll let you handle a toilet brush, and I have two.  Degrees, not toilet brushes.”

“Who else is—“

“Look, let me finish then you can hammer me with questions.  What we thought was an Avian H-class virus first showed up in two American airports, Houston and L.A.  Both airports service flights from China, which is where we suspect the thing started, but by that time the Chinese were spooked and not communicating very well – total blackout in fact.  I heard the FOX and CNN personnel over there were executed.

“Over here 65% of the general populous – a full 200 million people – were infected within six days.  The White House declared martial law on the 7th day.  Nukes were set off in six American cities before somebody found that asshole and killed him; by that time all the 3-letter agencies were fighting each other for control and I have no idea how it all worked out in the end, who won.  As if it matters.

“Anyway, most of the country was dying of flu, medical centers overwhelmed and running out of supplies, infrastructure breaking down.  That’s when my bosses decided to do something heroic: they released an untested antidote into the general population, which appears to have caused more trouble than the original sickness.”

“Zombies.”

“Zombies.  In some sense it worked, I guess.  Incredibly hard to kill a zombie...”

Jim suspected he knew the answer, but forged ahead anyway.  “You’re the only one here, aren’t you?”

The Doctor looked away for a long moment, then nodded.  “Aside from the occasional… patient, yeah.  Long story.  Suffice it to say… the idiots who unleashed the cure paid handsomely for their sins.  If you’re good, someday I’ll tell you the whole story.  Now,” she stood up and began pacing, “about you…

“You’re not really alive, but you’re not dead, and you’re not a zombie any more.  Whatever brain matter you have left is still functional, your body still has nutritional needs (which we shall discuss in a moment) but aside from that…”  she leaned in close suddenly, looked Jim square in the eyes, “you are pretty much immortal.”

“Immortal.”

“Uh huh.  Too much brain damage and you’ll stop thinking, but the body will continue.  Starvation or dehydration just puts you into a coma, not unlike hibernation… theoretically you could ‘sleep’ for dozens of years. Since you have no metabolism as such, you’re not living, so you’re not dying either.  But since you have no metabolism, you don’t heal either.  Eventually, your body will simply wear out and fall apart.  I have no idea how long that would take, but with care…”

“Immortal.  No.  Not like this…”

She laughed suddenly, a bitter awful thing.  “Oh honey, you’d rather be out there feasting on braaaaaaaaains?”

He wanted to cry but couldn’t.  “No.  But you said… there is a way out.  I can blow my head off, right?”

She laughed again and reached into her pocket, lifted out the gun, placed it on the table next to him, winked.  “Just do me the courtesy of waiting until I leave the room – no ear protection.”  He eyed the gun and realized she was serious, but also realized he couldn’t do it.  Not yet.

“How’d you do this?  What’s the process for… curing… zombies?”

“Ah,” she sighed, “that’s the interesting part.  The original Avian flu and the synthetic phage both continue to exist within the… host, you.  Once established, they need each other in a cooperative way I don’t understand.  Kill the phage and the flu resumes its attack on the respiratory system, fatal within hours.  However, kill the flu and the phage simply stops working, goes inert.  Leaving… you.”

“Ah.”

“And guess how I killed the flu?”

“Tell me.”

“I irradiated you.  Took the shielding off an x-ray machine and gave you a lifetime’s worth of full-body x-rays in five minutes.  You’re cleaner inside than I am now.”

He digested this silently.  “So I really am cured?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

The answer was long in coming, but clearly she’d thought about it a lot.  “There was nothing else to do.  I had to do something, anything, rather than sit here.  Alone.”

Minutes passed while they listened to the drone of air conditioning, link to a past neither of them could have any more.  So much lost.

“I wish the process were easier,” she said finally.  “If it was something I could aerosolize and release… but no, each treatment is time intensive and dangerous.  I considered contacting others… other places like this, if they still exist.  But I’m more afraid of the living now than the walking dead.”

He considered.  “So… what do we do now?  Rebuild?”

“You mean save the human race, one shambling hulk at a time?  Raise an army of construction workers and fix everything?  To what end?”  She shook her head, no.  “Futile.  What’s worth saving anyway?  If I could rewind things to the way they were before I’m not sure I would save it.”

Another long, awkward pause.  Finally he spoke.

“I believe…”

A thousand memories and thoughts jostled for position within his mind, pain laid atop pain.  “What’s your name?”

She frowned, as if remembering.  “Erin.”

“Erin… I need a break.  Got any movies to watch?”

She stared at him for a full five seconds then laughed, a hard barking noise.  “We do, we do.  An impressive DVD collection in fact.  Let’s go see.”

She held out her hand and after a brief hesitation he laid his gnarled paw within her cool fingers.  She helped him stand.  Together they moved slowly to the door.

“We’ll have to work on your walk,” he said.

She laughed again, and this time it was real.










--
FootNotes

¹ Dave’s lower jaw had been blown off with a shotgun a few weeks back, thus his inability to manage hard consonants.

² He was missing most of his left shoulder.

³ A length of metal pipe protruded 3 inches from Jim’s chest, the other end lodged firmly in his spine.  The pipe sometimes leaked fluids, but during times of exertion emitted a kind of whistling or sighing noise as Jim’s chest expanded and collapsed around it in a hideous parody of respiration.