Feeling around in her insides, I grabbed hold of something solid and pulled it out.

In the Zombie Apocalypse, it’s always opposite day. Afterbirth is prebirth. Death is life. I put the placenta on the Turkish rug and sat back on my heels. It looked like a giant grape jellybean.

Ros picked it up and smelled it. “Blech,” he said. “Sour.”

Wasting no time, Joan tugged hard on the umbilical cord. And Isaac tumbled out of the slit in Eve’s belly, rolling over and landing bottoms-up at my knees.

I turned the infant over.

“A boy!” Ros said.

Joan handed me the towel. Isaac was covered in muck-dried blood and crusty pus, bits of sunflower yellow and mustard yellow and dead-grass yellow; army green and lime green and forest green and booger green. I picked him up and wiped him off.

He was a big baby-the size of a yearling-and hairless as they come; the whites of his eyes were red; already he had teeth and they were sharp. His tiny nails were pointed.

He was a devil baby. Our zomboy. No wonder the military had wanted to examine Eve. Isaac’s prenatal development was unprecedented. A marvel.

I stood up and held him aloft for all to see. Surrounded by my family-Saint Joan, Guts, Ros, Annie, and Eve at my feet-I felt lucky, soulful, alive. On the front lawn, Kapotas shuffled into the birdbath, knocking it over.

The baby cried and I cradled him in my arms. From my Dockers pocket I took out a brain bit and fed him. He ate it in one gulp. Like all newborns, he was ravenous.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MY FEAR: WHAT if Isaac doesn’t grow?

My other fear: What if he does?

Logic said he would only decay, but logic had been thrown out the window, along with death, taxes, and the social contract. The Age of Reason was long over. Defying modern medicine, Isaac became massive in the womb. Against all likelihood, Annie escaped the dull fate of our brothers. We were in uncharted territory, and without certainties, without a map, I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

Sigh. I felt like a teenage goth mall rat stuck in a middle-aged zombie body. A survival plan was not going to emerge from the ether; no Hollywood hero was coming to save the day, no tablets from Mount Sinai to teach us how to behave.

I was a future ancient. A post-culture primitive. None of the zombie movies or the Max Brooks and Dr. Phil books could help me. La Chupacabra, Hook Man, the Man with the Golden Arm, Satan, Ed Gein, Dracula-they couldn’t help me.

We were alone. My barbaric yawp fell on deaf ears.

My greatest fear: The moral right is on the humans’ side. In the history books, assuming there’s a future, zombies will be portrayed as the enemy, the terrorists. The mujahideen and the Janjaweed.

But we only want to survive. We are only obeying our biological imperative.

On the second floor of Kapotas’s house, thumbtacked to the walls of his study, were postcards and letters from around the world, all of them thanking Kapotas for creating the chain-saw Garden of Eden. The sculptures touched us, the people wrote. They renewed our faith in Jesus Christ. Thank you, they scribbled, danke schön, gracias, for creating such an inspired masterpiece.

Those shortsighted fools. What good does it do now? What is the function of art in the apocalypse? Of religion?

Looking out the window, I watched Guts play with Isaac, trying to teach the zombaby how to run. So far Isaac hadn’t grown a whit and he was not a quick study. His chubby legs whirled in an imitation of Guts, his long spiked toenails clicking on the concrete, but when he fell down, he didn’t pick himself back up.

Leaves swirled around the two boys. Autumn in the Midwest. Unbroken by clouds, the sky was the color of a frozen corpse.

As soon as I could get everyone stitched up, trained, and stocked with essentials, we’d head for Chicago. Once we demonstrated our sentience to Stein and the other authorities, they’d grant us our civil rights, agree to a compromise. They’d have no choice; we’d eat them if they refused.

AT THIS POINT, get out of your chair, bed, or beanbag; if you’re outside, go inside; if you’re on the beach, insert your ear-buds and shuffle your iPod. Put on some inspiring music. The theme from Rocky would work, or some house or techno, anything with uplifting horns, a rousing beat, and no vocals.

What follows is a montage:

A maple leaf dropping from an almost bare tree. It catches in a wind eddy, circles in a vortex, then wafts to the ground.

Saint Joan fastening a metal plate to Ros’s head with screws and hinges; Ros knocking on it to demonstrate its durability.

Guts and Isaac running through the Garden of Eden, Isaac hiding behind the Ten Commandments. Guts finding him and picking him up, swinging our zomboy in a joyful circle.

Annie shooting her gun at a scarecrow-and hitting the head or the heart every time. Ros at her side, giving the thumbs-up, his metal head reflecting the sun.

All of us hunched over a human, tearing her limb from limb, then retreating to our separate corners to gnaw on the bones, savor the viscera.

Me sitting at a desk in Kapotas’s office, pen in hand, surrounded by reference books, composing the document that would save us.

Ros turning on the TV-nothing but static on every station.

Joan, Ros, Annie, and I ransacking the Kapotases’ closets and drawers for clothes; Annie trying on vintage 1970s hip-huggers, me a double-breasted suit too short in the sleeves and legs.

Joan and I removing Eve’s filthy maternity jumper and dressing her in a navy-blue velour sweat suit. It’s like dressing a baby.

Kapotas and Eve drooling, doing the zombie shuffle, walking into totem poles. Guts holding Isaac out for Eve and Eve marching right on by, not even seeing her son.

Pitch-black night, and Ros, Annie, and I lying on our backs with our heads touching, pointing at the constellations.

All of us gathered in the living room, sitting on the embroidered chairs and colonial couch, Ros standing in the center, talking and gesturing, telling the story of our future, our liberty and success.

Me fiddling with the radio. Over the montage music you can hear preachers shouting “rapture,” “end times,” “sinner,” and dragging the Lord’s name out to two syllables: law-word.

Pan out the window: The trees are bare, snow is falling. It’s winter.

IN HONOR OF the weather, Ros put on a Christmas album and he, Joan, and Annie danced to “Jingle Bell Rock.” Oh, what graceless zombies, dancing St. Vitus’s dance, delirium tremens, worse than Day of the Dead skeletons or tripping hippies.

I surveyed the troops from a rocking chair: Joan had cleaned her nurse’s uniform and was wearing it, although she’d discarded the stockings; her yellow legs were bare except for the suede patch at her knee, but she looked tough enough for the long march ahead.

Soldier-boy Ros was dressed for war with his combat boots, flak jacket, bulletproof vest, and metal head.

And Annie, cute as an undead button in her 1970s jeans and matching vest, her teenage body still nubile-she hadn’t been shot yet and had only been bitten three times-Annie was shaking her ass like there was no tomorrow. The pants sagged where the bottom half of her cheek should have been.

Guts whirled in like the Tasmanian Devil. He tossed Isaac on the couch and turned a cartwheel, raring to go.

If Chicago was a bust, if the meeting with Stein turned ugly and my treatise was dismissed, we would continue north. The best way to stave off decay is to stay dry. Ask any Egyptian mummy or frozen Neanderthal. Our choices were desert or tundra. Like Frankenstein’s creature, I chose the cold.

We could prolong our living death that way; we might even approach immortality. Assuming we survived the battle.