“She’ll be sick soon,” Ros said, a piece of intestine hanging out of his mouth.

Annabelle turned green and vomited. I moved her head to the side so she wouldn’t choke and dragged her to the grass. She curled up like the sweetheart she was. Her ass had clotted just as it should. I stroked her golden pigtails, fighting the urge to bite her face off.

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. Guts turned onto the frontage road and ran down the alley behind Best Buy and Old Navy. He looked small and alone, like a homeless street kid pushing a shopping cart full of marbleized meat, clogged arteries, a worn liver, two shrinking kidneys, and one glorious brain.

I didn’t know who to pray to for his safety. Nobody was watching us; everything was permitted. So I prayed to the only god I could count on:

Oh, Jack Barnes, who art myself, please allow Guts safe passage to the Garden of Eden with our meat alive and intact. This is a world without end. Amen.

ROS AND I took turns pushing the feverish Annabelle up I-39. We saw no humans along the way and the zombies left us alone. They were as clueless as chickens, stumbling pea-brained through cornfields, hay bales, and fences. One zombie walked into a tree and became stuck with his face pressed against the bark, unable to negotiate the obstacle, like a wind-up toy against a wall.

The undead don’t avoid bodies of water like the living do. We walk right in, navigating the bottom like catfish, shuffling over the sand and rocks and getting snagged on broken bottles and lost lures. I watched one enter a stock pond, disappear, then reemerge on the opposite bank like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. As miraculous as Chauncey Gardiner.

I felt the urge to preach: “Stop your wandering, my zombie children, and follow me to the Promised Land. The second coming has arrived. The Undead Diaspora is reunited and your suffering has not been in vain. Join us! Together we will meet our maker and fight for a homeland.”

“Waaaaaah,” is what I said. And they ignored me.

I prayed Saint Joan would save a few pieces of Grandpa for me and Ros. Like Napoleon, I knew that an army marches on its stomach.

If Jesus fed the five thousand with two lousy fish, why couldn’t I do the same with one old man?

The truth is, people long for miracles. They want to believe.

“Brains,” Ros mumbled. “I like brains.” He reached down and petted Annabelle. “One of us,” he said. “Soon.”

“ Worms in my mouth,” Annabelle said, slapping at Ros’s hand. “Two tons of concrete. Billy, get off me!”

We approached a billboard advertising the Garden of Eden. Take the next exit, the sign said, and turn right. Paradise is one mile down the road, behind the BP. At our pitifully slow pace, it could take us several hours, but I wasn’t tired, not in the least. Although we are incapable of rapid locomotion, the walking dead don’t need to rest. We can shuffle along forever, circling the globe a hundred times, under oceans, over tundra, crossing deserts.

Except for Guts. He could run. And I can write; Joan could heal and Ros could talk. Blessed are we, the new race, each of us granted one amazing ability. Separately, we are incomplete. Working together, we form a whole.

To paraphrase the Bible, the Gospel according to John: A living grain of wheat remains alone, a single seed; but when it falls into the earth and dies, it bears much fruit.

I looked at Annabelle, who was delirious with fever, covered with vomit, and all-around sick as shit. Ros was pushing her cart, humming the theme song from Batman. I prayed Annabelle would be reborn as a Super Friend, with a superpower like us. Another mutant, another adaptation. The X-Men, Magneto and Wolverine. Masters of the Universe and the Powerpuff Girls. Spider-Man, Plastic Man, and Baby Plas. The Green Lantern. O mighty Isis!

Odds were against her-they were against all of us-but I had faith. And if faith can move mountains, then keeping Annie smart would be a piece of cake.

We slogged on down the highway; I thought of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth and I was comforted. I know heroes exist because I am one. Destiny, fate, Power Rangers, gods, they all exist.

Zombie John Keats called the physical world the valley of soul-making, and I finally understood what he meant. Because I was walking through that valley. I felt it in my brain stem, my cortex, my goddamn pineal gland. He meant transcendence; he meant immortality.

I believe in you, my soul. Through my earthly trials I am creating you.

Holy blade of grass, Batman! Holy plateful of guts.