Zombie Versus Fairy Featuring Albinos (4 page)

Here in “Fresh Meats,” you have your choice of free-range or farm-raised people. The free-range put up a fight
and
they’re delicious. That’s what most zombies want. So, of course, free-range people cost more. Farm-raised humans are annoyingly docile
and
they lack that free-range flavour. That’s the general consensus. Some zombies prefer the milder taste of the farm-raised people but most zombies want the free-range zest and tang. Of course, almost all zombies derive sexual pleasure from the fight put up by the free-range ones but it’s rarely discussed in polite society and zombie society is, if nothing else, polite.

“Pardon me.”

“Not at all. Entirely my fault.”

“You’re too kind.”

“I’m so glad we’re going to marriage counselling,” says Chi, directing the front of our cart into the path of an oncoming cart. We collide. “It’s the right thing to do. Everyone will agree. Your depression is a symptom of an underlying problem. You and I need to root around in all our pent-up resentment and unspoken bitterness until we figure out what’s wrong. Resurrecting all our petty arguments, reanimating the problems we never solved, giving new life to our differences and how incompatible we are is key.”

“I feel better already.”

“Oh yeah. We’re going to talk about your sarcasm
a lot
.”

The zombie into whose cart Chi directed ours has pulled hers back. She stands there for a moment, not thinking. Then she starts ramming her cart into ours, over and over, mindlessly. She wears a heavily stained tailored black pantsuit with no blouse. Her exposed skin is mottled grey-white. Her unbuttoned jacket reveals her bare breasts every once in a while when her cart crashes into ours. Her dirty blond hair is stuck up with every kind of filth unimaginable. Her white eyes see nothing. Everything is infuriating in them.

When she withdraws her cart to slam it into ours again, I move our cart to the side, safely out of the way, while she’s out of position. She propels her cart forward as if nothing has changed. When she fails to collide with anything and, instead, her cart moves forward easily, she loses her grip on it and it goes rattling away. She falls to the floor.

Chi and I move on.

Here in the “Fresh Meats” section, they, the naked free-range human beings, shake their cages and howl with animal rage. They curse and spit. They fornicate. To entertain themselves. They try to urinate on you and defecate on you. Like zombies care. Filth and wounds are signs of zombie prestige. In any event, when you pick a person you want to eat, you open their cage, reach in with the store-provided taser and you shock them.

When they’re incapacitated, you reach in, grab them with both hands, and pull them into your open cart. You close and lock the cage from which you got them, along with the gate on your cart. Then you move on. It doesn’t take long at all. Without the taser, it’d be hours of sweaty, bloody, screaming work, pulling out the free-range ones. The farm-raised ones, on the other hand, just climb into your cart when you open their cage. You can shock them if you want but there isn’t much point. It’s easier to just let them walk into your cart. If you shock them, you have to drag them into your cart. Some zombies shock them, wait for them to recover, shock them again, wait for them to recover again, over and over, mindlessly, and they wind up blocking the aisle.

Before she brought me home, Fairy_26 flew me to the sky and in the huge blueness there, behind small scattered white clouds that looked like freckles on his face, I saw Guy Boy Man, and with a thunderous sound, he spoke:

“You know what makes the world go around? It’s not love. It’s not money. It’s
unhappiness
. It’s
dissatisfaction
. Think about it. Misery is the reason for everything. The only reason to create anything, or, in the unusual case of God, everything, is because you’re dissatisfied. You don’t waste your time creating something else if you’re happy with what you already have, right?

“From the moment you’re conceived, you’re unhappy. You start dividing, trying to get away from yourself, trying to escape. You can’t. You scream your way into the world. As soon as you’re old enough to realize that unhappiness is your problem and crying isn’t going to get you everything you ever wanted, you start hoping, foolishly hoping, the miserable feeling will pass. Being a kid sucks so you spend all your time wishing you were grown up. You think you’ll be happy then. You believe it. You’re sure of it. When you can drive, everything will be great. But it isn’t. When you can leave home, everything will be great. Then it’s not. All of a sudden, you’re grown up and being a grown-up sucks too! Being a grown-up might even suck worse than being a kid! When you grow up or, more accurately, think you should have grown up by now, you start to panic a little. Why are you so
miserable
? Maybe it’s because you’re single. Being single sucks. So you try dating. Dating sucks so you try marriage. If you’re a woman, you probably
dreamed
about getting married and then you had kids because being married wasn’t as great as you thought it’d be and then you went back to school because having kids wasn’t that hot either and then you had an affair. If you’re a guy, you probably got married because you met a girl you were more afraid of losing than you were of getting married to and you had kids because your wife wouldn’t shut up about it and then you locked yourself in the office until you could have an affair. Maybe you’re gay, which I’ve got to believe is almost always ironic or you’re alone, which is great except for the loneliness.

“Nobody is happy. Nobody is satisfied. Basically you just stagger around your whole life, not knowing where you come from, not knowing who you really are, not knowing where you’re going and doing things you hate because you think you wanted to at some point or you think it’ll lead to something you want at some point. You didn’t and it won’t.”

Fairy_26 told me Guy Boy Man has a prayer:

“God,

The world sucks;

It’s a real mess;

Nobody can fix it;

It’s hopeless;

Thanks a lot;

Amen.”

“You know what we should talk about at marriage counselling?” I ask Chi, not confrontationally, but completely un- and disinterestedly. I’m not sticking up for myself anymore. I don’t have the strength or I don’t care. I can’t tell the difference. I’ll go to marriage counselling. It’s just another thing to feel miserable about. I’d add it to the list if I had the energy to make a list.

“This should be good,” says Chi, sarcastically. She tasers a plump naked young woman who was backed into the corner of her cage, holding out her hands like, “don’t.” “Okay, Buck, I’ll bite. What should we talk about at marriage counselling?” Chi opens the woman’s cage and drags her into the aisle. “Wait a minute,” says Chi, dropping the woman, straightening up, and looking down at her. “She’s dead.”

“Must have been the taser,” I observe.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” scolds my wife, looking at the corpse, expressionlessly. “Tasers have never been linked to any death conclusively.”

“You think all the deaths they’ve been linked to inconclusively were coincidences?”

“I
don’t
think, Buck. All right? You might want to give not thinking a shot. You’re a zombie. Not thinking would probably help a lot with your depression.”

I leave the back of the cart, lean down, pick up the plump girl and stick her back in her aisle cage. When I close the cage door, I notice everybody is looking at me. All the zombies pushing carts full of screaming people have stopped and are staring at me. I just cleaned up a mess. They’re shocked.

“It’s okay,” Chi assures them, holding up her hands. “He’s depressed. He knows what he’s doing. It’s not his fault.” I shuffle back behind the cart and get it moving again. Chi stumbles up beside me. “You have to be more careful,” she warns, telepathically.

“Marriage counselling isn’t what you really want, Chi,” I say.

“What do I want?”

“Something you can never have. Just like I do.”

Before Fairy_26 left me right outside my front door, she said I could visit her any time I wanted. I could call her, too. She gave me two tiny packets to summon her: one of sleeping butterflies, the other of the powder to wake them. She said she’d sense the disturbances the butterflies make in the air. She smiled. My rigid arms were outstretched toward her. She was holding my right hand and when she let go of it, slowly, I watched her amazing fingers pulling down the length of my disgusting ones until she ran out of me. I watched her fly away.

Outside the grocery store, in the parking lot, a balding man has just finished bashing out the brains of a zombie couple who’d wheeled their cart to the back of their vehicle. That couple could have been Chi and me. The balding man has a crowbar. Breathing heavy from his exertion, he spots us. He stares at us, murderously. Even though the day is warm, he’s dressed in layers, probably believing his clothes will offer some protection from zombie bites. He starts jogging toward us with anger on his face and fear in his eyes. He holds up his weapon, menacingly. With her arms outstretched, Chi staggers toward him, groaning, like a good zombie should. I stay behind. Two of the three people in the cart I’ve wheeled out shriek encouragement to the man making his way toward Chi. When he thinks he’s close enough, the balding man swings the crowbar at Chi’s head. He isn’t close enough. The crowbar whizzes by Chi. When the man is turned to the side from his enthusiastic swing, Chi wraps her arms around him. In a brutally violent kiss, she bites into the side of his face, pulling out a mouthful of flesh, which she begins to chew. Blood covers both their faces. The man screams and screams, shaking and twisting, trying to break free of Chi’s deadly hold. A small group of zombies exits the grocery store and stumbles toward me. “What happened?”

“Some guy with a crowbar was attacking zombies.”

“Terrible. This used to be such a safe neighbourhood.”

A minute later, when the group of zombies has joined in the parking lot feast, Chi, covered in blood and bits of flesh, ambles back to me. She pushes past me, to our car. She opens the passenger-side door and falls into the seat.

Without looking at me, she says, “Thanks for your help, Buck.” Then she slams the door.

On the way home from the grocery store in our brand new eco-friendly vehicle, with one naked caged male in the back, fists clenched around the bars, white-knuckled shaking them, spitting threats, one naked female screaming at the top of her lungs, and one naked young woman sitting silently, holding her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth, trying not to look at the cuts of human meat lying all around her—the loose arms and legs, the plastic-wrap-covered hearts and livers in white-plastic trays—it seems Chi and I aren’t talking anymore. Even though we’re speeding dangerously, destined to crash, only to have a brand new eco-friendly vehicle waiting for us in the morning, courtesy of the supernatural creatures with whom we, the zombies, have an arrangement, I see it close-up, in perfect detail, as I race past: an abandoned stuffed animal in the gutter. A lion. It’s been there for a long time. It’s been exposed to the elements. It’s dry now but it’s been waterlogged so many times it’ll never look dry again. I feel like that. The strange thing is, I don’t want to go back for it. I want to leave it there. It’s where it belongs.

What am I going to do? Give it a good home? I don’t have one.

All human children are born of zombies. Of course, the children don’t know their parents are zombies. Children can’t see us for what we are. The supernatural creatures hide us, how we look and sound, from the young, to protect their developing brains from the brutal and hopeless reality of their existence in our non-care. Supernatural creatures enable our young to understand our words so we can lie to them. We tell our children everything will be all right. We tell them stories about supernatural beings and we tell them they’re lies. We tell them lies about the world and tell them they’re the truth.

There are two reasons: we need the workforce to help us destroy and we need the food to help us spread the destruction. Zombies are expansionists. We don’t know where we’re expanding and we don’t know why. We just know we are. Should we be?

Why do the supernatural creatures help us do this to our children? The truth is, we don’t really know. We
believe
it’s because of their love for human children who don’t become zombies; human children who grow up to be mentally ill prisoners, unsuccessful artists, and that kind of thing.

Earlier, when Fairy_26 told me Guy Boy Man killed forty zombie teens, almost singlehandedly, at his high school this morning, I knew exactly what she was talking about: the riot in maturity section. Barry Graves told me about it this morning at work. He said heads were rolling. I wasn’t interested then. I wasn’t interested in anything then.

I’m interested now.

After I crash into the neighbour’s front porch, get out, wave to them through the front window and Chi and I get the groceries inside, she asks me a question I’ve been dreading since Fairy_26 brought me back to her: “What do you want for supper, Buck?”

Constance, the cat, slinks up to me. She moves so easily. I can tell she takes her effortlessness for granted. She doesn’t think about it. She doesn’t thank God for it. Her speed and agility will always be there when she calls upon them. She doesn’t fret. About anything. She doesn’t wonder if she’s loveable. She rubs against my leg and expects to be petted. She stands there—so poised, elegant, and confident—looking up at me, expectantly. When she finally realizes I’m not going to bend over for her, she walks away. Then she stops, turns back, and glares at me. I hate that cat.

“Buck, what do you want for supper?” Chi asks again.

I don’t know why I’m not hungry. The thought of eating nauseates me. Is it because I’m depressed? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just sick of all the arguments over meals.

“Do you want me to gnaw off a thigh for you, Buck?”

“I can look after myself, Chi. Thanks.”

“What are you going to have?”

“What does it matter?”

“I want to know what
I
can eat.”

“Eat whatever you want.”

“I don’t want to eat something you’re going to want later.”

“I’ll eat whatever is left.”

We’re having this conversation wordlessly, facing each other, standing in the locked and padded room where we keep the people we’re going to eat. The screaming woman is screaming. The catatonic girl is huddled in the corner. The angry male is punching me as hard as he can. I can’t feel it.

“You’re such a martyr, Buck. Just tell me what you want.”

“I don’t want anything right now, Chi. I’m not hungry.”

“What do you think you’ll want when you
are
hungry?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“That’s a big help, Buck. Thanks.”

“Why does it matter so much?”

“Why? I’ll tell you why. You know what’s going to happen? I’m going to eat the last heart. Half an hour from now, you’re going to ask me if I ate the last heart.”

“So? So what if I do? So what if you did?”

“You really don’t get it, do you, Buck?”

“No, I don’t, Chi. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

“If you don’t get it, I don’t think I can explain it to you.”

The angry male quits punching me. He takes my head in both hands to crash it into his knee, to try to bash out my brains. I stop him. I push him away, easily. I watch him fall. I look at him as he slips, slides, and finally gets up off the blood, excrement, and urine covered floor. He stares at me, breathing hard, with his fists clenched. I don’t know if he truly wants to kill me or if he just wants to live. Is there a difference? I don’t know. For a reason I hate and don’t understand, I don’t let him end my torment.

“Don’t eat the last heart,” I tell Chi. “Problem solved.”

“It isn’t about the last heart, Buck. We have lots of heart. It’s about
consideration
. It’s about
respect
. It’s about
give and take
. It’s about
communication
.”

“Tell me what you
don’t
want. That’s what I’ll have.”

“I don’t want that. I want to know what
you
want.”

“I don’t
know
what I want, Chi.”

“Just don’t think about it for a minute.”

“I want this conversation to be over. That’s what I want.”

“Just tell me what you want!”

The angry male falls to his knees, crying big clean saltwater tears. He weeps, knowing there’s no hope, there’s nothing he can do, he’s a prisoner, he’s going to live this nightmare until he dies as nobly as he can.

“I want the catatonic female,” I tell Chi.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I was going to have the catatonic female.”

“Fine. Have her. I’ll have the screamer.”

“No. I’ll have the angry male. You have the catatonic female.”

“It doesn’t matter to me, Chi.”

“You haven’t been eating properly. I want you to have whatever you think you can stomach.”

“Now who’s being the martyr?”

“I’m not doing it because I feel sorry for myself. I’m doing it because I care.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. Thanks, Chi.”

“After I eat, do you want to make love in front of the two horrified survivors?”

I don’t. I really, really don’t. But I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about
why
I don’t want to, nor when I think I
might
want to, nor what I think my not wanting to
means
, both about my physical unwell-being and in terms of my relationship with Chi. I don’t want to talk about how it makes
me
feel, how it makes
her
feel, and how we aren’t
discussing
it properly.

“Sure, Chi,” I say. “Sounds good.”

I don’t know how or why at the beginning of our relationship, when I wanted sex and she didn’t, there was something wrong with me. I was some sort of horny weirdo. Now, when she wants it and I don’t, it doesn’t mean she’s a libidinous freak. It means I don’t love her. It
says
something. About us. Our relationship. I don’t care enough to point out the inconsistency. If I did, she’d just talk, talk, and talk until I agree with whatever she’s saying, however she’s saying it. “You have it wrong, Buck,” she’d say, even though I don’t. But I don’t have the strength, energy, or the patience to stick up for myself. I don’t want to talk anymore. I’ll do anything. I just don’t want to talk about it. As Chi staggers toward the hopeless male and the screaming woman screams louder than ever and the catatonic girl goes away somewhere even farther in her mind, I try to leave the room. Even after I leave the room, I try to leave the room.