Zombie Versus Fairy Featuring Albinos (12 page)

I’m back at Fairy_26’s tree-branch apartment. A housefly darts past the open wall. I see a couple of creatures I don’t recognize behind the controls; behind the compound eyes. All the passengers—the trolls, elves, and dwarves—are in seats in the fly’s body. The eyes and body must lose their transparency and gain an opaqueness when they pass into the real world. I lose sight of the housefly in the sun; it’s setting, brightly yellow, and pouring golden light over all Fairyland’s vibrant green and strong brown. The flower shops—the shops inside flowers—and the mushroom stores—the stores inside mushrooms—are doing a bustling business as most of the day draws to a close with the dawn of evening. Waiting for Fairy_26 to get changed out of her work clothes, I wonder where the housefly is taking its passengers. To work probably. To clean up after the zombie mess. The destruction starts again tomorrow.

“Buck?” calls Fairy_26, from her bedroom. “I’m feeling a little vulnerable right now. When I started getting dressed, I was completely confident but now I’m terrified. I thought I knew what I was doing. Wait. That’s not what I meant to say. I know what I’m doing. I just don’t know how you’re going to take it. I thought you were going to be happy but now I don’t know. I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”

I groan. It’s all I can do. Fairy_26 made another pill, using the formula provided by the albinos, but it didn’t work; nothing I say makes sense to her; everything I say still sounds like zombie moans.

“Okay,” calls Fairy_26. “I’m going to come out but if you don’t like it, just tell me. All right, yeah, I know. You can’t tell me. That was stupid. Sorry. I don’t know. If you don’t like it, groan twice. How about that? I can always get changed again and we can pretend this never happened.”

Timidly, and blushing pink, Fairy_26 walks out of her bedroom. Her perfect figure is hidden only by a green baby-doll. It’s so lustrous it looks almost liquid. Her feet are covered by sparkly blue high heels. The baby-doll matches her green hair, which is done up in curls, hanging, in suspense, around her head and just above her shoulders. Her blue shoes match her wide starry eyes, which are surrounded, waiting to learn their fate, by white eyeliner and smoky black shadow. Nervous, her wings are pressed together, tightly, behind her back. She stands just outside her bedroom door, leaning against the wall—the warm wood inside her tree-branch apartment—with her elegant hands poised above her shapely bare thighs, and with her fingertips touching them. Her shoulders are raised in embarrassment, waiting to hear what I think.

I can’t remember if I’m supposed to groan twice if I like it or if I’m supposed to groan twice if I don’t like it. It was twice, right? I can’t remember what feeling alive feels like but this feels like so much. It feels wonderful. I want to run to her or, at least, stagger and stumble with my arms outstretched. I want to kiss her lips, neck, and shoulders or, at least, not bite hunks of flesh from them. I want to be inside her without infecting her. I want to fly to her but I don’t have wings. I don’t even trust myself to stand. I just sit. I wait and hope. To feel her warm against my cold; her soft against my hard.

“I forgot something.” Fairy_26 disappears back inside her room and emerges, a moment later, with a silver-grey rope and a muzzle. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I do.” She walks toward me; her baby-doll moves in the breeze she creates; it slips between her legs and presses against the fronts of her thighs and against her breasts; it ripples out everywhere she isn’t. “It’s just. I heard, sometimes, when what I hope will happen between the two of us happens, people like you lose control and bite. I’m not scared of that but I know you and I know you would be so I got this.” She holds up the muzzle and moves close. Burying one of her knees, alive, in the sofa’s soft moss cushion she puts it over my undead head. “I got it from a friend. She’s more interesting than I thought.” The muzzle consists of thin stainless steel bars that bend; they arc over the tops of my ears and around the back of my head; they curve over my nose and under my chin; away from my cold lips, they spread and converge; there’s no opening big enough through which to fit even my gross blue-green tongue. When she’s done muzzling me, she uses the silver-grey rope to bind my outstretched wrists. “You’re very strong, too. You could hurt me, or worse, if you grabbed onto me, and as much as I like the idea of you grabbing onto me”—she smiles—“I know you wouldn’t want to take that chance so I got this rope.” When she’s done securing my hands, she steps back and admires her handiwork. “I think you’re safe.”

She does things like that. She muzzles and binds me and says, “I think you’re safe.” Doesn’t she mean she’s safe? It’s adorable.

She clasps her hands in front of herself and suddenly gets shy again. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to turn you on. I mean, I know you’re turned on. I can tell.”

She giggles. “And I’m glad. Believe me. I’m very, very glad. But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to turn you on so, so much, you can almost feel again. I know you can’t, ever, really, feel again but I like you so much, I spent time thinking about how to try. I thought I could clean my apartment in front of you.”

The thought almost makes me cry out in emotional pain, in tortured mental anguish; I could never imagine anything so beautiful.

“After that I thought maybe I could give you a nice long bath and get you good and clean.”

It’s strange how close sex is to suffering. I’m suffering more than ever, thinking of feeling better than ever.

“But then I thought, no. I just want to do it with him. As soon as possible.”

Before I know it, it’s happening: everything I wanted, and fought, uselessly, not to want. On top of me, with her head between my bound arms, her big blue eyes get bigger than ever; in their black and white makeup frames, they’re so brilliantly bright. Her soft shiny green curls bounce like they want to uncurl, but can’t. She doesn’t take off her baby-doll. I don’t know why but I’m glad. The glimpses of her are better than the whole truth could ever be. It reminds me of my wife.

Before we became zombies—before we got married—Chi and I walked from city to city, looking for other living humans with whom we could band. There were quite a few but they were all like we were: desperate to survive; unscrupulously intent on eating, sleeping, and feeling as safe as possible. You couldn’t trust any of them. Chi and I would hole up in some abandoned house, eat canned food in the dark, cut strategic holes, and have sex with our clothes on. We had to. If a group of zombies stumbles onto your position, you don’t want to be caught with your pants down. Chi was a feral cat back then. Her nails; her teeth. She hurt me as much as she made me feel better. She was skinny with hunger and taut from cracking zombie skulls. She’d grab me and make me forget about zombies for a while; first, I had to survive her. She hurt me, physically, in ways I didn’t mind remembering.

It was so dark at night. There were no candles; no campfires. If you were lucky—and you never were—you found electricity but you were too scared to use it. Zombies are just as attracted to the light as we are. We couldn’t turn on anything but each other. Every sound we heard was a threat. Every noise we made was dangerous. We learned how to be quiet. We didn’t moan. We didn’t call on God and Jesus. We didn’t affirm our actions with yeses, oh yeses. We didn’t swear out loud. If it was windy or we were near the ocean, we’d let our bodies collide and clap, and maybe, afterwards, allow ourselves a contented sigh.

Chi was smart. I would’ve followed her anywhere. I did. I followed her right here. Here, where I am now, with a gorgeous green-haired fairy using her fluttering wings to lift herself up on me, and to die, falling down on me, is all because of Chi. We were in whatever city we were in—they all look the same in the evening, when the zombies have torn down everything they can and burnt everything they can and all that’s left is broken and smoking—and Chi had been there before. She knew I loved her. I’d told her. I’d told her even before I meant it but then, not long after, I started meaning it. She loved me, too. I’d like to express some doubt about it but, in whatever conscience I ever had and have left now, I can’t. She loved me, too.

That’s why I still can’t understand what she did.

Afterwards, she said she didn’t know. She insisted she didn’t know. She swore. I didn’t believe her then. I still don’t. You can be sure she knew. I am.

I forgave her. I forgive her. Forgiveness never stops.

“Do you feel as good as I do?” whimpers Fairy_26.

I groan.

She led me straight into a trap. I don’t know if it’s because she was tired, of running, trying, fighting, struggling for everything, with everything, against everything. If she was, I couldn’t blame her. I was tired. I just wasn’t ready to give up. I guess I’m still not. If I was, I could be happy being a zombie but I can’t. I can’t be happy.

She was a little ways ahead of me. I don’t know why I was lagging behind. I can’t remember. If I’d been doing something important, I’d remember but I must not have been because I can’t. She climbed a chain-link fence. On the other side, a few moments later, zombies staggered, ambled, and stumbled toward her from all directions. She screamed. It was a real scream. It’s only natural to scream when you’re surrounded by the undead even if you know they’re there and they’re going to eat you or infect you and she did. She screamed and screamed.

“Oh God! Oh God!”

I don’t know when I decided. They say we choose what we do and we have to live with the consequences. Well, I don’t remember having the time to consider my options, their pros and cons, taking into account my genetics, upbringing, and current brain chemistry, and how those factors were affecting my perception of my options and their up- and down-sides. And I don’t have to live with the consequences of this so-called choice, this ostensible decision, this result I brought about, purportedly, of my own free, quote unquote, will. I have to un-live with it. As a zombie. You know. One of the undead.

Or else it had to be. It was determined: preordained; fate; albinos were behind it.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” cries Fairy_26.

I moan.

I don’t remember when I started running. I only remember realizing I was. I wasn’t running away: that’s what I would’ve done if I’d been conscious of what I was doing. I was running toward her. I was running toward Chi. I’d found a revolver and two shells. Like an idiot, I’d set down my reliable wooden staff, forsaking it for the glamourous killing extension afforded by the revolver. I had it drawn. I wasn’t pointing it at the zombies. I was running. I wasn’t going to waste either of my two shots by firing in fear and fury. I was going to get close enough. Then I was going to blast out the brains of two of them. There were more than two, though. There were so many more than two. I was running to certain death. Or worse. To becoming a zombie. I was running to Chi.

Throwing back her head, Fairy_26 screams, “You feel so good, Buck!”

Do I?

I didn’t have wings but I flew over that fence. I grabbed one of the zombies clutching Chi, biting her, infecting her and, with Chi’s blood spray misting my face, I wheeled the zombie around, stuck the revolver’s muzzle right against his cheek, and squeezed the trigger. There was the sound and the zombie’s head jerked back. But then the zombie’s head rolled back down. With Chi’s life-force smeared over its lips, cheeks, and chin, the zombie looked at me, blankly, still undead. I shot again. The zombie’s head snapped back again. He looked at me again. I started beating his skull with the butt end of the revolver. Then another zombie grabbed me from behind. I felt its teeth sinking into my thick skin so easily.

“I’m just about! I’m almost!”

“Thank you,” laughed Barry Graves, telepathically. He was the zombie that bit Chi, infecting her. He was the zombie I spun around and shot in the face. Twice. “Now I’m going to get a ton of ass. And you should’ve seen yourself,” laughed Barry Graves, telepathically. I aimed right at the top of his head. Even as a zombie, I remember thinking, “This guy must have no brain whatsoever.”

Undead now, Chi walked up to me. “I’m sorry, Buck,” she said, telepathically. “I didn’t know.”

I knew she was lying. I saw where we were: City Hall. Wherever you go, it doesn’t matter; whatever city you’re in, City Hall is pretty much Zombie Central. It didn’t matter. I knew when I was running to her. I didn’t care. That’s how dumb I was. That’s how dumb love made me. Diminished capacity? What about none whatsoever? “Look at it this way, Buck,” said Chi, from her mind to mine, smiling slyly but not slyly enough to hide it. “We can be together forever now.”

When I was running to Chi, carrying that stupid revolver with only two stupid bullets into a swarm of undead monsters, I remember yelling and yelling.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!”

The whole time I have sex with Fairy_26, I fantasize about my wife.

Away from Fairyland, back in the real world, I stumble around, not knowing what to do. I want to be with Fairy_26. I want to call her. Right now. With butterflies. I want to see her. I want to hear her. I want to be happy but I’m scared of getting what I want because I might be wrong and I don’t want to hurt Chi. As little as we get along and as much as we fight, the thought of hurting Chi makes me miserable. How can the thought of doing what it takes to be happy make me miserable? I join a group of zombies going into a mall. I leave the ones who are actually just going into the outside of the mall, over and over, non-thinking that’s a way to enter. I go with the ones smashing through the glass doors. We’re inside now, past the sparkling shards, shuffling on the, supernaturally, shiny floors, ambling past the, supernaturally, unbroken windows through which we, if we were looking, could see, supernaturally, well-organized and well-stocked shelves. Living people scream, drop the few things they’ve managed to stuff into reusable cloth shopping bags, and run in orderly chaos. Desperation gets most of the living. They leave the safety of the night for the danger of the day. They need or think they do. The living always approach malls, warily. They can’t see any zombies. There aren’t any zombies around. Sometimes only one living person is foolish enough to risk it. He or she dashes inside as soon as the doors open and he or she darts around, quickly abandoning his or her plans. There are bargains. Specials. What began as a trip to acquire lightweight well-built essentials and, maybe, a few exotic items to trade, quickly becomes a crazed attempt to get everything this person has ever wanted, no matter what the costs: in terms of needing to move farther from escape routes, being loaded down by the unnecessary, and having no weapon in hand. When I used to, regularly, eat people in malls, I remembering cornering a pretty young blonde. She was filthy: her dress, legs, face, hair. She was holding a bottle of shampoo. Can you imagine? Shampoo! I remember, thoughtlessly, thinking, you don’t need shampoo! You need a weapon! Ideally, a good wooden staff! I grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted her, kicking, off the ground. As she held onto my forearm with both hands over her head, I looked at her, incuriously, like she was a familiar toy and I was a bored child. Then I brought her closer and bit off her lower lip. Her screams; her eyes. Her flesh pulled away from her; it slipped into me. It was sexual. Every time we eat or infect someone, it’s sexual. It’s how we spread, the undead, our strain. I realize now it was the albinos, working through us when we outlawed abortions, when we outlawed birth control, and when we started baby farms.

We grow our own food now. Since abortions occur naturally and abortions have been outlawed, we force a certain high number of volunteers—young men and women—to breed for us. We select them from maturity section: school. In exchange for the volunteers’ services, we don’t eat or infect them. At least not right away. We make sure the girls take care of themselves when they’re pregnant. We make sure they come to term. When they have their baby or, preferably, babies and come to terms with it, or them, being taken away and moved to maturity section where the young are schooled in routine, monotony, and destruction, the girl who recently gave birth is introduced to new males from whom she can take her pick or is happily reunited with an old favourite! Everyone is happy! Lately, with the help of modern fertility medications, our breeders have been having up to eight babies at once! If, despite our best efforts, a girl has a naturally occurring abortion, she’s deemed a murderer and eaten.

With albinos guiding us, and supernatural creatures rebuilding everything we wreck, cleaning everything we despoil, we, the zombies, grow in the numbers every day. We spread to new areas all the time. It won’t be long until the world is ours. Sometimes it seems like it already is. Sometimes it seems like it always was.

Now, as I amble through the mall, watching zombies slowly, awkwardly, pursuing their screaming, panicking prey who empty their eco-friendly shopping bags, throwing their biodegradable products at us, uselessly, I wonder if there’s a grand scheme; a master plan; I wonder if this is leading somewhere, anywhere, or if the albinos are just seeing how far things will go before the balance is upset between zombie and supernatural.

I’m looking for a way out.

I feel like I’m falling. Whenever I’m not with Fairy_26, I feel like I’m falling. I’m plummeting to certain doom. When I’m with Fairy_26, I feel like I’m flying. She’s carrying me through the sky. I’m safe. I’m better than safe: I’m happy, excited, eager to learn what will happen next. With the warm wind in my face, with the bright flowers beneath me, in her hands, in her eyes, I’m alive. I don’t know when I decided this, if I decided this, or if or when the albinos informed me this is what’s meant to happen or why. I’m leaving Chi. I’m not taking the anti-depressants. I’m not going to marriage counselling. I don’t want to explain why I’m so angry: Chi is the reason I’m a zombie. Trap or no trap, I’d be alive right now if it weren’t for Chi, if it weren’t for my love for her. My love for her was my downfall. Will my feelings for Fairy_26 end any better? I doubt it but for some irrational reason, I really want to find out or, rather, I want to experience all the good parts before, and or in between, any difficulties we run into, laughing, holding hands.

I wonder if Fairy_26 will have me. I wonder if I’m more than an exotic diversion for her. Am I just a source of information to help Guy Boy Man? Does she really like me? As crazy as it sounds, seems, and would have to be, I think she does. I actually think she likes me. Either there’s something wrong with her or I’m not so bad. If it weren’t today, if it were any other day, and I hadn’t just worn a muzzle, had my wrists bound, and had sex with a green-haired pharmacist fairy, I’d think she was dangerously maladjusted.

But on this turn toward the sun, I think maybe I’m on the good side of bad.

I have to tell Chi and I can’t just call her. I’m not sure I owe it to her to tell her in zombie I’m leaving her but my new, better view of myself requires me to tell her in zombie.

I find my way out. Behind me, the zombies feast on the warm bodies of all those foolish enough to risk going inside the mall. Maybe a few managed to sneak away if they had a plan, stuck to it, and fought off temptation. It’s the only way to survive. I was tempted away from my reliable wooden staff by a stupid revolver for which I only had two stupid bullets. I blame albinos but it could’ve been stupidity just as easily, perhaps more easily. Everybody makes mistakes but when you’re trying to stay alive in a zombie-infested dystopia, you can’t afford them. It’s why the wild ones, typically, don’t last long.

I exit the mall through a service door, stumbling out behind the backs of the stores where supernatural creatures make their deliveries. I’m among the dumpsters with the day’s garbage where I probably belong. I spot a group of teenagers crouched around big duffel bags. They’re examining items they managed to grab before zombies could grab them. Their eyes are wide with excitement, having survived their close-call and having been successful in their dangerous venture. Their chests are rising and falling, quickly: an effect of their exertion and their adrenalin. One of them stands admiring a baseball bat and notices me. He doesn’t move. He stares, in terror, for a moment. Then he taps his friend on the shoulder, watching me the whole time.

His friend looks up from the duffel bag and spots me. “We should get out of here.” He starts stuffing things back into his duffel bag.

“I’m going to bash out its brains,” says the one with the baseball bat, braver now. “Stinking zombie.” He slaps the baseball bat against his open palm a couple of times, menacingly.

I shouldn’t have ventured out alone like this. It was stupid. I’m going to die: re-die; disappear. And for the first time in a long time, I have something I want to do: I want to court Fairy_26. I want to shower, brush my broken teeth, put on a new suit, buy some flowers, and knock on her door. I’ll still be a zombie. I’ll always be a zombie. But I want to look good for her. I want to take her out to movies. I want to take her dancing. Dinners might be awkward. I’ll figure out something. I want to be with Fairy_26. Maybe I can’t. Maybe it’s impossible. But I want to try. I’m not going to give up now that I don’t want to give up anymore. I’ll fight. I’ll infect all these teenagers if I have to. I groan as menacingly as I can. As I’d hoped, they all take a few steps back, reaching out for each other, for support, or so they can orient themselves without taking their eyes off me.

“It’s my dad,” says one of them.

It’s Francis Bacon. I didn’t see him before, among them.

“Hi, Son,” I call to him, relieved. “Do you mind telling your friends not to bash out my brains? Oh and while you’re here. I’m sorry to tell you like this when you’re among your peers, desperately clinging to survival in a broken cityscape filled with zombies but I’m leaving your mother. Recently I met a fairy and I think I’m falling in love with her but she’s not the only reason I’m leaving. As you probably know, your mother and I have had marital problems for some time now, culminating, rather unfortunately, in my eating your cat. I know all of this must be difficult for you to hear, especially following on the heels of the whole zombie revelation but I think with time . . .”

“I can’t understand you,” Francis Bacon calls to me. “I can’t understand him anymore,” he tells his friends. “All I hear is that terrible groaning sound they make.”

I forgot. I keep forgetting what’s important. They can’t understand us. We don’t make sense to them: the wild.

“It’s okay,” says a cute girl, putting her hand on Francis Bacon’s shoulder. “That’s what happens. Let’s just get out of here. Okay?”

“I’m sorry, Francis Bacon. I didn’t know it was your dad.” The young man with the baseball bat isn’t slapping it against his open palm anymore. Now it hangs at his side, peacefully. “I wouldn’t bash out your dad’s brains.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Francis Bacon, holding out his hand. “Let’s see that bat.”

The guy with the baseball bat hands it over.

Francis Bacon walks toward me, purposefully. He stops right in front of me. He fixes his grip on the bat. It’s a good bat. It’s wood. You don’t want an aluminium bat. Sure, aluminium bats are strong. And yes, they’re silvery. Everybody likes silvery stuff. But think about it. When you’re being surrounded by zombies in the winter, do you want to be holding a freezing piece of metal in your hands? No. And do you want to be holding something really shiny when zombies are looking for something to eat? I don’t think so.

When you’re trying to hide, you don’t yell out, “Hey, over here, zombies!”

Francis Bacon holds the bat back, ready to swing, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t think he can. Do I want him to bash out my brainless brains? I don’t think. I don’t think so. So I don’t want him to destroy me but I don’t know why because I can’t think. I guess. I guess I want to live but I can’t live and I can’t think so I guess and I guess I just don’t want to be destroyed. Completely. Finally. It has to work out, doesn’t it? Somehow? In the end? No. It doesn’t. I don’t think, so I don’t think so, so I certainly don’t know but I have this feeling. Is it my depression? Is it irrational to feel everything is going to end badly? Isn’t that what every sense-impression leads me to believe?

My son stands in front of me with a wooden baseball bat poised over his shoulder. With hate, courage, fear, and love deeply planted in his furrowed brow, he stares at me. I understand perfectly. I don’t understand, either.

Silently, tears climb under his lower eyelids, slip over the edges, and rappel down his cheeks, like soldiers who want into his mouth for words that might be there. I reach out to him: to hug him, to hold him. It must look threatening because, all of a sudden, he swings the bat as hard as he can.