I gathered my family and bestowed the general’s helmet on Eve, securing the straps underneath her weak chin. Only Guts was left unprotected.

The reinforcements were almost upon us. The Queen stepped between us and them, waving her arms like Vishnu, the poles still attached. Destroyer. Preserver. She stopped them in their tracks.

“Holy shit, bro, is that who I think it is?”

She swung those steel octopus arms and knocked a few soldiers down.

They shot her in the head, and she fell to the ground.

Even the great tumble.

As for us, we ran, shambled, hobbled away. A bullet pinged off my helmet but did no damage. We looked at the road ahead of us. We didn’t dare turn around and look back.

CHAPTER TEN

AT A REST stop near DeKalb, we spotted two young humans looting a Kum and Go. I felt sorry for the critters; they couldn’t have been more than ten and they were completely vulnerable. The easiest of prey, they might as well have been wrapped in plastic in the meat department of your local grocery store. No weapons, no strength, no adult protection; it’s a wonder they were still alive. The girl clutched a package of Zingers; the boy held a Twinkie.

No bell dinged as we entered the store; the electricity was out. Joan locked the door behind us. The kids tried to run, but we circled them like cavemen; on my signal, we attacked.

I watched Guts closely but discerned no negative effects from eating someone his own size, a child he might identify with. Joan and Eve displayed a lack of sympathy as well. Each bit, slurped, and bit again with relish.

There was no reason to feel guilty, I rationalized. Jesus served his own flesh and called it communion. What is the transubstantiation if not cannibalism? The raising of Lazarus and Jesus’s own resurrection: ancient zombie activity.

And the guy who started it all, YHWH, god of the Old Testament, He lived to smite the enemies of Israel, demanded the sacrifice of lambs and rams, and turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt just for fun. Righteous, vengeful, and jealous as all hell, He asked fathers to murder their sons and ate firstborns for dinner. Just as we did.

I caught a glimpse of our gang in the round security mirror as we sat on the bloody floor, hunched over body parts. A swatch of stone-washed denim clung to the human girl’s thigh. A rack with Bubble Yum, Cheetos, and other brightly packaged junk food loomed over us. Eve’s stomach was huge.

Clearly, the Lord was on our side; we were made in His image.

I made sure there were leftovers, putting a few toes, ligaments, a stomach lining, and an ear in Ziploc bags before hitting the road.

Isaac, I decided, patting Eve’s belly and feeling all biblical. Boy or girl, the baby would be called Isaac.

AFTER WALKING NORTH for days, we came upon a sculpture garden of chain-saw art created by a human-turned-zombie named George Kapotas. Chicago was less than a hundred miles to the east.

Kapotas had been a religious man, and the bulk of his own private Eden depicted the life of Jesus: the virgin birth in the manger attended by wise men and camels; Jesus, suddenly an adult, preaching the word and petting a lamb; the Last Supper as imagined by da Vinci; and the pièce de résistance, the crucifixion, with all three crosses and the wound in His side.

Jesus Christ Superzombie, the whole Passion Play, chainsawed out of trees.

In addition to his devotional work, Kapotas carved bears, raccoons, and American Indians with his chain saw. Woodland creatures were scattered among the religious tableaux, making for a peculiar vision of the Holy Land. There’s Jesus healing the lepers and behind him, climbing a tree, is a koala bear. And Jesus chilling with John the Baptist, both of them leaning against totem poles.

When we stumbled in, George Kapotas’s chain saw lay impotent at his side, and his head was inside the torso of a small child, sucking the last specks of meat from its rib cage.

I pulled an ear out of my professor pocket and bit into the cartilage, studying the grunting, moaning folk artist. We would hide out in the Garden of Eden until Isaac was born. I signaled as much to my comrades and they made themselves at home.

BESIDES BEING A chain-saw sculptor and religious nut, Kapotas had been a ham radio operator. Guts and I found a modest setup in the garage while exploring and securing our fortress.

First signal I picked up, we heard this: “Moooaaaan. Ohhhhnhnn.” Silence. Then, “Mooohhanaa.”

Radio Free Zombie.

Guts turned the dial and picked up some joker out in Lawrence, Kansas, calling himself DJ Smoke-a-J and spinning Roky Erikson’s “I Walked with a Zombie” as well as songs by Rob Zombie-solo and with White Zombie-the Cramps, the Misfits, Ghostface Killah, and My Chemical Romance. Even that old standby “The Monster Mash.”

In life, I would’ve written an article about the fool and his broadcast. Postapocalyptic stoned DJ waxes postmodern with songs that spit cynically in the face of his life-or-death situation. The title would be: “The Living Death of Irony: How Pop Culture Illuminates and Comments on the Current Zombie Crisis.”

If only DJ Smoke-a-J weren’t so goddamn pathetic. He introduced the oldies classic “She’s Not There” by the Zombies with this: “I feel bad and I’ll never forgive myself, never fuckin’ ever, not in a million years, but I hid in the closet and listened to zombies eat my baby girl. She was only two years old. Meagan. And…and…God, I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but one of the zombies doing the eating was her mother. I tell myself I had no choice in the matter. It was the baby or me. And I chose me. Sweet Jesus, I chose me.”

DJ Smoke sobbed for a bit and Guts grinned in a way that was evil, if an adorable zombie urchin can be evil. Finally Smoke took a big breath and continued, “So…I guess Meagan’s not there either. And neither is her mother. I mean, they are in that they exist, sorta, but they’re not really there. Like their minds aren’t there. Just like the girl in the song.”

Cue music. It was enough to make a flesh-eating zombie weep.

Guts started to break-dance and wiggle when the chorus rang out: Let me tell you ’bout the way she looks. The way she acts and the color of her hair. He was bouncing around the garage, kicking his legs high in the air, throwing his hands up like he just didn’t care. He snapped his fingers-and a chunk of his thumb flew off. I picked it up and handed it to him, signaling that he should go visit Saint Joan by making pointy breasts with my hands and simulating sewing the top part of the thumb back on. He gave me the thumbs-up-his poor digit only half there, the tissue moldy green and coagulated with black blood-and skipped out.

I was glad to give Joan something to do. And glad to be alone.

Finding Stein suddenly seemed impossible, a needle in a haystack, a wild goose chase. I needed information, Stein’s exact location; I needed Google and MapQuest. I needed a reliable search engine and the glut of the Internet.

I wanted my MTV. I wanted CNN and Larry King Live. And there was only the radio; Kapotas didn’t even have dial-up-no desktop in sight. When I turned on his television, there was nothing. Not a test pattern or the bleat of the Emergency Broadcast System.

I still didn’t know who was winning the war, but with mass communication down, I suspected it was a draw. And as anarchic as World War III.

There had to be other zombies like us, small groups of them scattered across the country, challenging the hegemony of the humans. Drawing their own escape plans and fighting for their existence with intelligence and forethought.

The big question was: Where were they?

I turned the dial: “The rapture is here, brothers and sisters! Hallelujah! Those who have sinned against God-the homosexuals, the abortionists, the atheists and rapists-they are the living dead. They walk among you, eating your children. God is punishing us for our wickedness. These creatures are demons and sinners, and they want to drag you down to the fires of hell with them. They want you to decay and rot and cannibalize your own family. But Jesus will protect you, hallelujah. Those who accept Him into their heart, those who truly believe in Him, will be spared. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for the Lord is with me.”