You, Zombie

Darkness falls, and the city is lit by warm yellow light. Your pineal gland, no longer suppressed by blue rays from the wide-spectrum light of the sun, begins to produce melatonin. You walk down the street towards your apartment building, become slightly, almost imperceptibly drowsy.

Out of the shadows a figure emerges. A homeless person, dressed in filthy rags, looking for a hand out. You try to ignore him as he shuffles closer. Suddenly he’s upon you, grabbing your arm. He shoves his face in, teeth bared, and bites. But your heart is racing in fear, your adrenal glands pumping, producing a burst of energy and pain-suppression, along with an (unhealthy) dose of cortisol. Still, you can see blood, the homeless guy’s bitten clean through the sleeve if your jacket. You manage to push him off and run down the street.

At the corner you stop to catch your breath, pain finally starting to ooze into your arm. You look back—he actually doesn’t look very homeless. He’s wearing suit, albeit a stained and torn one. He’s still shuffling toward you, and that’s your blood dripping from his mouth. You turn the corner and run home.

Inside you strip off your jacket to look at the wound. It’s not a very big bite, but in the poor lighting of your bathroom the edges look a little green. You pour hydrogen peroxide over it, wash it as best as you can, wrap it in gauze. Jesus Christ, what the hell was that all about.

You grab some leftovers from the refrigerator, sit down in front of the TV. Inside your brain, a virus attacks and annihilates your pineal gland. All serotonin productions shuts down. You are wide awake. You watch one, two, three hours of TV. Soon it’s midnight. Then three in the morning. Then six. You haven’t slept a wink. And something happened to you last night, what was it? There’s red and green-stained gauze on your arm. Did that have something to do with it?

Your hippocampus is no longer in communications with your visual cortex. You see things, but they don’t have any meaning. Your adrenal glands are producing a steady supply of adrenaline and cortisol, further eroding your hippocampus and your amygdala. Your metabolism has been ramped up, and you’re running a fever. Free radicals built up inside your brain are taking out neurons in your speech and fine motor areas.

There’s a stirring in your belly. You’re hungry. You know you need to eat. You know you need protein, meat, as fresh and free of decay as possible. You stumble out your door. Your olfactory senses are no longer distracted by emotion or memory. You can smell food in the door across the hall. You move towards the door, but it’s closed. You pound on it, and hear movement inside. This makes you hungrier. Food inside. Pound on the door.

The door opens and you lurch forward. Food. Hair and eyes and skin and food. She screams. You grab her arm, and she kicks you away, runs down a hall, slams a door. You follow the food. Your throat is convulsing, swallowing in anticipation. Your gums are bleeding as they recede and rot, your teeth protruding. You move towards the door. It opens, and she’s standing there. There a bright flash and a loud noise, and you’re pushed back. Five more noisy flashes, all on top of one another, and you fall down.

Hydrostatic shock has stopped your heart. There’s a hole in your shoulder, your leg, your stomach. Your brain, starved for oxygen, starts to shut down. But the cancer eating your brain is feeding your adrenal glands. Free radicals mutate and collide, exciting nerve endings, telling your arms to move, your legs to move. You stand up. You are dead, no heart beat, adrenaline and cortisol washing through your body like blood soaking through a sponge. You’re rapidly deteriorating but the food still standing in front of you and moaning, “no, no, no!” has protein, her own store of adrenaline, and maybe a few drops of that sweet sweet melatonin.

Your lurch towards her. She falls back, blocks the door. You’re on top of her, sinking your teeth into her neck. She screams, but your grip is too powerful, pinning her as your rip out her throat. The eating is everything. Healthy meat, clean meat, peristalsis uninterrupted by breathing.

But it’s not enough. Finally you stand, your guts, unnoticed, spilling out of the gaping wound in your belly. There’s more food in this building. You can hear it. You can smell it.



You can feel it. It’s the only thing you can feel.