Just Stop Eating People Already

 

“No. Stop. Don’t eat him.” I’ve been going at it for days now. It’s barely been one since the last group of victims. But here I go, still clawing, killing, maiming, munching.

I watch myself break a man’s arm with my teeth. The howls are more piercing than usual. If I weren’t a ghost floating behind my body, I might feel a yawn coming on.

I’ve been going at this for days now. Soon to be a week, soon to be months, soon to be forever until someone blows my brains out. That’s how long I have to follow behind myself and get an over-the-shoulder look at mindless, monotonous horror. That’s how long my body and my soul will be stuck together. ‘Til shotgun blast to the skull do us part.

“Come on. Do something else already.”

If I was able to leave, I’d be chilling in Hawaii with Elvis’s spirit.

After several long minutes the screaming ends in an instant. I start sucking his guts from the ground like spaghetti through a vacuum cleaner.

Even if I can’t drink margaritas with Jimmy Buffett on a Maui beach, being a ghost could have been fun: not having to pay rent for whatever house I live in, rearranging furniture in designs like Pink Floyd album covers, driving complete strangers out of their minds. I could have found new ways to confound and frighten people for ages to come. I could have seen if we ever get flying cars, and then figure out how to screw with those. There was room for change - something new and exciting.

Some bile drips on what used to be nice pants. I go on, not noticing anything, and it keeps staining my clothes.

I could be surfing on the backs of ghost sharks with Dennis Wilson.

I chew with my mouth open. “God, get some decency. Moan a little sorry before ripping someone in two.” A drop of drool emerges from my throat and taints the ground. That’s close enough to an answer for me.

When I first tried talking to my body I cried and pleaded, but I ignored myself and ate my father-in-law anyway. Then I prayed and beseeched, but I escaped Gus and Laura’s house and ate some random strangers anyway. Now I just do bored, flat, “yeah, if you could just stop doing that already, that’d be terrific” ordering, but I keep trudging and eating anyway. Oh darn. I was hoping my droll delivery would tug at my heartstrings. Maybe it could if I could hear myself. Or maybe it fell out when I wasn’t looking and I just don’t have one left.

With my meal only partly eaten, I walk on. If I were in a better mood, I would pretend I had listened. But really, that’s just the routine.

At least my body is impressive. I’ve been walking for days now, never sleeping, never slowing, only stopping to bite anything with a soul. Now that’s a routine. Last week I couldn’t last two minutes jogging on a treadmill without huffing and regretting. If my body wasn’t a decrepit and mushy corpse, I’d look so toned right now. I should have died years ago. A dumb joke - the kind Julie would make.

“Hey, look, another zombie. Go talk to him. He seems cute. Unhinged jaw. Missing eyeball. Tall, dark, and decomposing.” I steadily move towards him, but only because he was in my way. We collide and bounce off each other with the grace and vigor of molecules in a solid. “Was it good for you too?” I want his ghost to hear me, even if I can’t see or hear his.

Where’s Julie? She got out of her parents’ house so fast that she could be anywhere. Maybe she found survivors, or died, or turned like me. If our zombies find each other, would we bump and go? If one thing still holds up in this end of the world, it’s “til death do us part.” But I still have the ring on my finger. Sure, that finger split off a hundred miles back, but I can still feel it on me in the same way that amputees still sense their missing arms.

My fling was not alone. There were more where he came from: a whole herd of them probably numbering near a hundred. But I can’t see one ghost floating above any of them. At least I don’t feel alone, thanks to the thunderous collective groan of the hundred undead. I get tossed around enough that I join the shuffling mass, like a stray asteroid randomly getting caught in Jupiter’s orbit and becoming a fixed dot in the sky, visible only by telescope but still visible. That’s a nice thought. I’ll linger on it for a little while.

I wonder if Julie is somewhere in there. Maybe with enough shuffling, I’ll find myself right next to her. We could amble side by side, crossing the Pacific by walking along the ocean floor, seeing goblinfish and sunken treasure ships and the Marianas Trench, scaling the sea wall, and storming some obscure island, maybe even Japan or Australia. It doesn’t matter that I can’t see her ghost, as long as I know she’s with me. We’ll walk to the ends of the earth - ‘til second death do us part. How’s that for happily ever after? It’s happier than what my parents promised when I told them about us, and even if we sloppily devour flesh without end or reason, it’s happy enough for me.

I trip over on a rotted-off piece of zombie head like a banana peel. I don’t bother to reach my arms out. My nose breaks my fall. The rest don’t think to look.

The herd and I walk on, and after a few hours I get used to the volume of the moaning. In a strange and suspicious bit of luck, we don’t find anything with flesh. Now I don’t have to get used to the volume of their eating. But that means there’s nothing to watch. Days pass with no sign of life - only what used to have life. The horde keeps moving, directionless, down a long and winding road that will never disappear. Our gang grows in impressive numbers as wayward zombies find their way in. Some of them are missing massive chunks of flesh. One of them only exists from the torso upward and crawls on her arms.

Really, they’re just like a weaker version of people. None of these losers can think for themselves, and none of them know to stop when whole parts of decomposed limbs break off from their soft, mushy body. That’s not scary. That’s kinda pathetic - even a little funny. They’re like babies: helpless little things that need to take from everyone and can’t give anything back. I’m stunned that there’s this many of us at all. Maybe they were just taken by surprise when they tried to help someone who was bitten … like Gus and Laura were with me.

When I realized I was not quite dead and tore apart Gus … “Dad” … I wanted to scream for all time. For the first few hours of my new state of existence, that’s all I did. All Gus and Laura wanted was to take care of me. Even before this zombie crap they were “Dad and Mom.” Julie’s parents. Then, when my real ones kicked me out of the house and their lives, mine.

“You know it’s your fault, right, you stupid stiff? It’s all your fault!” If I couldn’t hear me before, I will now. “They brought you to their home when everything came down on you, and this is how you repaid them? For all the patching up, all the ‘It’ll be alright’s and ‘Things will get better in time’s, this is what you did for them?! Can’t you feel the least bit sorry? Can’t you feel anything?!”

I don’t respond - just keep walking, with grey eyes wide open, seeing ahead and taking in nothing.

My hands and arms flail through my body, touching nothing. I try to knock my burdensome head clean off my shoulders. I try to show this idiot that I’m still here. I try to make this lifeless monster feel some remorse for what she did. To Gus and Laura, for taking everything and doing nothing. To Julie, for driving her away. To me, for driving her away.

Where are you? I don’t care if you’re dead or undead or a freaking radioactive superheroine. In a world as crazy as this, I just want to see you again in one way or another. I need that closure. Even thoughl I want to just die already and stay dead, I couldn’t do it without seeing you first, and if that means walking a hundred years and ten thousand miles, and watching myself eat and fall over and make a mess of everything, only to see your skeleton … darn it, that’s good enough for me.

I’d do anything to see you … even if you couldn’t see me. Even if I can’t stroke your cheek or run my fingers down your hair. Even if you couldn’t hear me tell you how much you mean to me and how awful I feel for ruining your life.

Where are you …

Where did that explosion come from?!

Zombies are spontaneously combusting all around me. Body parts are scattering through the air. The guy next to me lost his foot and his footing from blowback alone. Is that shrapnel on my shoulder?! Idiot, I’m still moving like nothing is happening! My expression is completely neutral and fixedly gazing dead ahead. My pace is a monotonous and stale march amidst fire and raining bodies like an action hero without the coolness. I don’t even notice let alone react to the sudden swirling vortex of terror all around me as the black oily blood of the damned gushes from my wound. I can hear shouting - actual shouting, of commands, not cries for help - coming from the sides. It’s an ambush … That’s our thing!

The zombies around me, the few survivors of what might have been landmines?, are slipping to their knees, metal harpoons bursting through their bottomless stomachs like the alien from Alien. The prey is organized and fighting back, and I can barely handle the suspense. My pulse would be pounding if I still had a heart beat. How long will my guy last? A good chunk of us, maybe half of us, were wiped out in almost an instant, and now our horde is getting decimated. It’s a miracle that I’m largely unharmed. It’s annoying.

The dust has cleared enough that I can vaguely make out what’s up ahead. A tiny gang of people - actual living people fighting back! - are retracting the harpoons for another round, using a busted convertible as makeshift cover. Their clothes are ragged and their faces and necks are covered by riot police masks to keep off mobs like mine. They tighten their black-tinted goggles as they aim. I cover my eyes. I keep walking, only sensing something that must be killed.

Their commander yells fire.

I peek and witness myself slip on a puddle of one zombie’s pitch-black blood and fall flat on my stupid face, breaking my nose even more than the last time. A harpoon sails through my incorporeal form and decapitates my “fling” directly behind me. When the firing stops, my body on the ground is the only one still “living” out of the gaggle. Happy coincidences.

Sensing little danger from a zombie on the floor, three of these avengers assemble in front of me and aim their spearguns at me. What are they waiting for? I could snap at any moment and bite their legs, which is all it would take for them to end up in the same hell as me! “Do it already, goddammit!”

“Wait! Don’t shoot!”

Everyone freezes. Including me. I think even my body stopped.

“That’s my wife ..”

Julie.

The commander interrupts. “Remember what we were taught, Europa.” Ooh, how formal, using her full name, please go away. “She may look like a loved one, but she’s one of them and needs to be destroyed for -”

“I know, I know. But …”

But.

I feel my heart beat faster.

She takes out her speargun as the others disappear. A glint of light reflects off the gold around her finger. The world shrinks to the three of us: Europa, me, and my self.

“I know you can’t hear me, Cayla, but I still want to say: I don’t forgive you for what happened to my parents. I don’t forgive you because I don’t have to. When you turned, your spirit was lost. The thing that … that killed my parents wasn’t you.” Oh my god. She knows. She doesn’t know she knows, but she does.

“Every night since you turned and ran off, I would look to the moon before sleeping and dream only of you … I’m so glad I got to see you one last time. That’s all I wanted.”

She aims her gun at my head, shutting one eye as the other sheds a tear. My body is sitting up, as if at attention.

“I’ll always love you, Julie.”

“I’ll always love you too, Cayla.”

The head is ripped clean off the body. True love saves the day.

I glance down and see my ethereal essence dissipating bit by bit, fading out of this world and into the unknown. There is no pain … no wailing … only feeling myself disintegrate. It’s a feeling like water evaporating into the air, a painless metamorphosis into purest lightness. It’s a feeling like waking up in spring refreshed from hibernation. I look back to my heroine, my savior, my world, and don’t care that she can’t see or hear me. It doesn’t matter.

“Thank you - for everything.”