CHAPTER FIVE

WE REDUCED LOVER to his essence, a pile of bones and puddles of blood, then I struggled into the El Dorado. In spite of all I knew about zombies-the myths and realities, our limitations-it struck me that I might be able to drive to Chicago. If any cadaver could do it, I could.

The keys were lying on top of the dashboard, the gas tank was full, but I just sat there staring at the speedometer like a crash-test dummy. Behind the wheel, I was incompetent, as confused as an Alzheimer’s patient puzzling over how to make a ham sandwich.

Disappointed, I got out of the car, and Eve and I shuffled to I-80 on foot. Soon enough we found ourselves in the middle of a herd of five hundred moaning, groaning corpses. A band of zombies is louder than you think. We gurgle, like giant rotting babies. An occasional limb hit the ground with a dull thud but everyone just shambled right over it. Zombies with broken backs dragged themselves across the blacktop, leaving trails of spinal fluid. The runts of the litter, those crips are lucky if they get to suck the bones of a kill.

I-80 was a junkyard. Vehicles with open doors and steaming engines. Bloody piles of clothes. The odd washing machine or Big Wheel. A stuffed Pink Panther. A desktop. A coffeepot. A dirty diaper. An algebra textbook and a Game Boy. The remains of Western civilization. No cars passed us for an eternity. Eve walked in circles, bumping into other zombies. No one said excuse me.

As a human, I hadn’t cultivated any sort of group affiliation or identification. In fact, I’d carefully avoided it. Being a lone wolf and an observer, an outsider with a melancholic disposition, suited my ideology and career. As an academic and cultural critic, I interpreted popular phenomena like NASCAR or reality television, but I certainly didn’t consider myself a fan.

That’s why my feelings surprised me: I felt a kinship with the creatures as we ambled down the road. I had sympathy for their hunger, compassion for their unquenchable thirst, sorrow when I looked at their maimed corpses. And I was worried about the future. Our collective ontology concerned me.

I practiced speaking as we walked, but I must have coughed up my vocal cords, if that’s possible, and my tongue was a black and useless thing, a limp and charred sausage.

How could I discuss our survival with Stein if I couldn’t even say goo-goo-ga-ga? For all I knew, Stein had become a zombie too. Just a slob like one of us. Crying for brains and covered with wounds that don’t heal or weep.

“Eeeeeee,” I said. Vowel sounds I could handle; consonants made me gnash my teeth.

The ground rumbled and shook. I pulled on the rope and brought Eve to me, inserting the tip of my finger into her wrist, which seemed to calm her. The unmistakable whir of a chopper filled the air.

Behind us, a military convoy crested the horizon. The American flag flew on the first tank, Old Glory waving in the wind.

This was why Eisenhower built these highways in the first place: to mobilize the military and evacuate citizens during an atomic attack. Black asphalt crisscrossing the contiguous forty-eight like bondage gear.

Never mind that most Americans took the highways to visit Disney World or dying grandmothers, not escape giant mushroom clouds and Russians. The roads brought us purple dinosaurs and snake farms. All-night diners and oil refineries. Buicks and monster trucks. The world’s largest ball of twine. Cold War dreams turned millennial nightmare.

Better dead than red.

But better undead than dead.

Over fifty years after its construction, the System of Interstate and Defense Highways had finally fulfilled its original function. Mission accomplished.

Zombie Ike must be proud.

The tanks were accompanied by foot soldiers equipped with hand grenades, rocket launchers, submachine guns, pistols, flamethrowers, MREs, cigarettes, porn. And sharpshooters who went for the head.

Civilization hadn’t completely broken down yet if the military was killing to the tune of “Walk This Way”-the Run-DMC version.

Doesn’t anyone slaughter to “Ride of the Valkyries” anymore?

The soldiers opened fire. They were marching in unison, to the beat. They were, in fact, walking “this way,” if “this way” meant the wholesale and rhythmic massacre of innocent American zombies.

I crooked my finger deeper inside Eve’s wrist, hooked it around a bone, and pulled her closer. The other zombies were walking directly into the bullets. They simply couldn’t comprehend the danger-they looked at the soldiers and saw only breakfast, dinner, a light snack.

My tribe is a stupid tribe, and that’s precisely why I wanted to save them. To teach and lead them. But I couldn’t do it if they wouldn’t let me. It’s like convincing your alcoholic girlfriend not to drink: It ain’t gonna happen. Booze or brains, it’s all the same. The addict has to want to change.

A nearby zombie’s head exploded and a piece of his brains splattered on my glasses. His teeth flew out of his mouth and chattered down the highway. Eve took a hit to her swanlike neck, the chunk of flesh whizzing behind us so fast it whistled. My bride was falling to pieces under my care. I tugged hard on her rope and we took cover behind a Toyota Tercel.

THE CONVOY WAS easily a mile long, the middle guard a ragtag battalion of soldiers and civilians, Hondas and Beetles, motorcycles and skateboards. A young mother carried her baby in one arm and a machine gun in the other; a blond moppet of a boy skipped hand-in-hand with a cornrowed African-American girl, both throwing grenades into the zombie multitude. Humanity was finally united against a common enemy: us. Me.

This was genocide in front of my eyes and I couldn’t stop it; my people were being extinguished like all the powerless masses of the world. Oppressed, dispossessed, hated. History teaches us that humans kill what they fear.

“Immigrant Song” came on at a lower volume than the Run-DMC, and the convoy stopped. In front of us was a giant cage on wheels, like the lion’s cage at the circus, only bigger and pulled by a Hummer. There were zombies trapped inside, dozens of them at least, bumping into each other and clamoring at the bars. A small troop of battle-dressed soldiers walked alongside the corral, two of them on the side facing the Tercel.

I named them Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Here was the greatest tragedy of the twenty-first century. A viral outbreak and the military’s bumbling response. Something was rotten in the state of Iowa. Or were we already in Illinois?

And was Britney Spears a zombie? Was the Dalai Lama?

The hammer of the gods.

Next to me, Eve thrashed around, foaming with desire. It was all I could do to keep her tethered; it was all I could do to keep from joining her in mad brain-lust.

Because just one bullet to the head and Jack Barnes would be dead.

“Don’t even think about it,” Rosencrantz (hereafter Ros) yelled as he rifle-butted a zombie poking his head through the bars.

“God, it stinks in there,” Guildenstern (hereafter Guil) said.

“Fuckin’ stenches,” Ros said, and stumbled forward, moaning and pretending to bite Guil’s shoulder.

“Cut it out, dude. You could get yourself killed.”

“No one would take me for one of them,” Ros said, and stood at attention, drawing himself up to his full six feet and squaring his shoulders.

“I meant by one of them, not us.”

“Any soldier who can’t successfully combat a zombie is a retard and deserves to be eaten.”

Oh, how I wished I could bound forward like Bruce Willis, utter a snazzy one-liner, and devour the cocky bastard. Clearly that hubristic line signaled his demise. Anyone familiar with the grammar of film-not to mention Greek and Elizabethan tragedies-knows that.