As for me, the patriarch, I sat at the head of the table. Pete’s hair stuck to the roof of my mouth and in between my teeth like corn silk. I cracked his skull like a pecan. Sweet nut of the brain underneath. Baby Isaac wailed from the circular drive in front of the motel, but we all ignored him. It was a zombie-eat-human world; charity was for the weak. And any second, another wave of the undead might show up and take our booty.

We ate all of Pete. He deserved it, the Judas. Betrayer. We took our time, savoring him like a seven-course meal. The sun went down and came up at least once, but we barely noticed. Pete’s blood kept us from freezing. Annie paused occasionally to reload and pick off approaching zombies. At some point, Guts retrieved Isaac and set him next to the body so the baby could take suck. Isaac whined and nestled against Pete’s chest.

Afterward we lay around Pete’s hair, bones, teeth, and ball cap, his skeleton picked clean, a Thanksgiving turkey carcass. Hardly enough left for soup.

“Could use floss,” Ros said.

The sun was setting. I wanted to get up and move to the hotel, but Pete’s meat weighed me down. I rolled onto my back; the sky was purple; Venus was visible. The stars were popping out like fireflies. A plane whooshed by, flying low.

A plane?

“Captain,” Ros said, “that’s a bomber.”

There was a human struggle in this war. I often forgot them. The other side. Enemy mine. How many of them were fighting for their lives that very minute? Scavenging for food and protecting their Isaacs. How many of them were looking up at those same stars-in Illinois, New York, Mexico, Iraq?

It began to snow. It began to sleet. In the distance, an explosion. The stars disappeared.

“They’re bombing Milwaukee,” Ros said.

The humans’ retreat was over. War was back on.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THEY BOMBED ALL night: firebombs, cluster bombs, smart bombs, cherry bombs, bang and boom, shock and awe. We loafed in the parking lot at our ease, observing the display. It was the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve rolled into one. It was a song of destruction. The heat from the blasts kept us from turning into slushies.

“Any undead in there are toast,” Ros said.

It was just as well. What would they have done? Build cities? Design furniture? Form governments? Make pottery?

Zombies are not creators. Zombies don’t manipulate and control the environment. We don’t organize day laborers or deplete the ozone layer. We don’t build dams or run for city council. We don’t play softball or pinball. We are Zen masters. Like a Venus flytrap, just give us meat and more meat.

Feed me, Seymour!

“Barely remember being human anymore,” Ros said. “I remember stuff that happened, but like in a movie.”

Joan patted his shoulder. Her face was melted wax, her breasts pale shadows of their former stand-at-attention glory. She had fed three children with those dugs and they were rotting now, the worst kind of cancer.

“I was in Baghdad,” Ros continued, “and one day, they were like, you’re going home, soldier. Bigger fish to fry in the States. I was glad to get out of the desert. Felt lucky to be alive and going home to Becky.”

Annie rolled onto her stomach. Her pigtails were stained red and stiff with blood and guts. She looked like a girl the Ramones might have sung about.

“But home was way worse than al-Qaeda,” Ros said. “Everyone dead or undead.”

Used to be you were either alive or dead. Pregnant or not pregnant. Not anymore. Now everybody’s liminal. Everyone’s a transsexual.

Annie made an hourglass figure with her hands and pointed to Ros. “Burrawwheee?” she asked.

“Never found her,” he said.

The bombing stopped, the ground rumbled. In the distance, an engine roared.

“Tank,” Ros said.

“Come and get us, scum suckers!” a voice yelled.

My bite site tingled. The army was advancing, clanging a bell, making a racket. Their plan was obvious: Flush us out and shoot us.

I pantomimed a vague plan of escape, anchored around this basic premise: Must Get Away Now! Guts gathered up Isaac and zoomed ahead. The rest of us picked our sorry selves off the ground and followed.

Joan, Ros, Annie, and I plodded along, bringing pestilence, war, famine, and death-but at a glacial pace, the velocity of slugs. Call us the Four Retarded Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It might take us a while, but eventually we’ll kill and eat you. Relax while you wait-have a cannoli.

Zombies emerged from houses and basements, from underneath piles of wood and rubble. Lured by the promise of human flesh, they headed straight into the military’s trap. We passed them on the street and I tried to look as many as possible in the eye, searching for a glimmer of light, anything brighter than the dirty yellow film that blinded them.

There was nothing. No one home. They were deader than dead. At least they would keep the army occupied while we escaped. To where or what was another question.

WE CONTINUED NORTH, away from the tanks. It was still snowing. Annie slipped and fell on the ice and it took all of us to get her up. Guts stayed a few blocks ahead, scouting locations, searching for humans, military or civilian, to either chomp on or avoid.

We were in a state of nature now: kill or be killed.

We passed a frozen zombie on the side of the road. Joan paused to examine it-the gender was indeterminate, the creature decayed to not much more than patches of skin and tendons clinging to a skeleton.

More planes flew overhead. Leaflets dropped from one of them. ATTENTION, it read. THE OUTBREAK IS UNDER CONTROL. THE VIRUS IS CONTAINED. THE ENEMY IS BEING ISOLATED AND ELIMINATED. FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION, STAY AWAY FROM URBAN AREAS. THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS SET UP BASES IN MOST STATES. TURN ON YOUR RADIO TO FIND THE ONE NEAREST YOU AND MAKE YOUR WAY THERE IMMEDIATELY. STAY IN OPEN AREAS AND BE ALERT AT ALL TIMES!

At the bottom was a graphic of a stick-figure human running from a gang of zombies. The caption read: DO NOT APPROACH THE ENEMY. IF YOU CAN AVOID A CONFRONTATION BY RUNNING AWAY, THEN RUN AWAY. IF YOU ARE CORNERED, DESTROY THE ENEMY’S BRAIN BY SHOOTING, STABBING, BLUDGEONING, OR BURNING.

“What’s it say?” Ros asked.

I shook my head. It was too complicated and depressing to explain that we were a virus.

“We’re losing,” Ros said.

I nodded. We shuffled on, but it was becoming harder and harder to move. The wind felt like a wall and there was an inch of snow piled on my shoulder. We caught up to Guts and he handed me Isaac. The baby was frozen solid. An ice puck. I tossed him to Joan, who put him in her doctor’s bag.

“Wait,” Ros said. We stopped. Annie swayed like a pine in the harsh winter wind. If we stayed still much longer, we’d freeze in the middle of the highway, and it was dawning on me that freezing was not our best option. At least not out in the open, where the army would eventually find us and blow our brains out.

The best laid plans of zombies and men…

Ros pointed east. “The lake,” he said. “Jump in the lake.”

It was a good idea. Winter at the bottom of the lake, then walk into the sunshine come spring. Primordial creatures crawling out of the slime.

We turned right and headed for Lake Michigan. We were survivors, refugees, and just desperate enough to take the Polar Bear Plunge.

DOWNTOWN MANITOWOC WAS lovely. It’s on the lake, with a courthouse and a park with swings and a gazebo, plus a museum and marinas. It was white with snow, pure as a sno-globe winter scene. Stores lined the street: Urban Outfitters, Starbucks, the Gap, Williams-Sonoma, all of them with their windows broken and doors wide open. Money strewn on the floors. The credit card machines and cash registers silenced.