Hungry Bob

Outside, the walking dead are eating people's brains, and me, I haven't had a decent meal in days. Not just brains, they're eating anything, if it's on a living person. Arms, toes, guts. Even eyeballs. It's a disgusting, horrifying thing. If they don't finish you, you end up dead, anyway: from blood loss or infection. Human bites are poisonous, did you know that? And then you become one of them. It's a feeding frenzy out there, but I'm starving. That gnawing in my stomach isn't the worst. It's the headaches. You don't eat, your blood sugars drop, and you get headaches.

The whole house is a reeking mess, but it's boarded up so tightly, no one can get in or out. I guess I should have thought about some sort of escape route, but what was most important when it all happened some three or four weeks ago, was to make sure no one could get in. The power's out. There is no internet. There's so little sunlight that comes in, I can't tell whether it's day or night. I'd have to go upstairs to get a decent idea, but I only go upstairs when it rains to catch rainwater. I hate the upstairs.

There's trash all over the place. At first, the trash bags kept piling up in the kitchen. Now the trash is spread all over the floor. It's spilled over into the den and the living room, and I have to be careful when I walk, or I could cut myself on a piece of glass, or a tin can lid. After I used up all the food in my fridge and kitchen cabinets, well, there was the trash. I said to myself, bums do it and some of them are pretty chunky, so why not me? Get hungry enough, and you can find some real treasures. The first day or two I got the worst diarrhea. Cramps you couldn't imagine. After that I was okay. But it's all gone now. I could kill for a week old chicken wing. I really could.

***

Who in Hell could have imagined a thing like this ever happening? I mean, actually happening? And when it happened, they came up with all sorts of explanations, none of which made any sense. Some said it was radiation from the dirty bomb that the terrorists set off in Atlanta. And others said it was a mutation of the bird flu. And then there were the evangelists, who said it was God's punishment. Jerry Randolph, the big televangelist in South Carolina told everyone it was a good time to get saved.

" Repent and be delivered from the undead plague!"

People called in with record pledges.

Three days later, CNN showed footage of him pulling the entrails out of his producer's belly '" like a bloody string of sausages '" and stuffing them into his pasty white face. It was awful. The producer was lying on his back screaming, trying to push him away, but Jerry Randolph reached right into the man's abdominal cavity for more. There were blood and gristle smeared all over his chin and cheeks and his white suit. That was the last time I watched TV. Ever.

Of course he was full of shit, but he made as much sense as anybody else.

Nothing could stop it, no one could explain it away.

What do I think? I think, with all these genocides going on in the Middle East, in Africa, the ethnic cleansings flaring up again all over Europe, and the Watchmen patrolling the Mexican border with shoot-to-kill licenses and bag limits, and no one giving a damn about all this death and killing '" I think the line between life and death just slowly got blurred.

Until it was completely gone.

***

Every time I open the kitchen cabinets and find nothing in them, I close them again. And then I open them again later when I scrounge for some more food. We play the most terrible mindgames with ourselves. When I open the fridge, I pull my shirt over my nose, because the stink of rotten lettuce and mold always hits me like a two by four. Right in the face. I'm starting to get used to it, though. There isn't much in the house that smells a whole lot worse than me, really. The water's been off for weeks, so I don't get to shower.

No phone. No power. No TV. No trash pickup. And no sewage service. I still take a crap three times a day, so I'm sure you can imagine what it's like in here.

You get used to it after a while. I can get used to just about anything. Except the damned moaning '" and the pounding on the walls, and doors. These zombies never sleep, and they never stop.

***

When it first happened, no one even believed it. There are 365 days in the year, and the government decided to broadcast its emergency announcements on April 1.

Just imagine it, two guys and a girl hanging out in a sports bar, having a couple of drinks, watching the game. And the guys are calculating their chances of hooking up with the girl. It's getting later and later in the evening, so the place is starting to empty out. Baseball or whatever has long stopped playing, and now it's trampoline basketball or roller derby or UFC, the sort of stuff that starts playing around last call.

Then, suddenly all TV screens turn blue, and there's this piercing beep that's just a few Hz away from breaking glass.

And the faceless voice reads the words you can follow along on the screen, "This is the federal emergency channel. This is not a drill. Stay inside and keep your doors locked until further instructions are given. It appears the dead are walking the streets, eating the living. A curfew has been imposed '""

Just imagine that.

At that point, the bigger of the two guys says to the bartender something like, "Hey what the fuck, we're watching roller derby!"

The girl says, "Change it back, man."

The bartender, who really just wants to go home by now, shouts back, "I didn't change the channel."

And the smaller guy says, "Well, change it, dude. This shit ain't even funny."

So the bartender does, but it's the same thing on every channel.

Then the door opens, and he wants to say, "Last call, guys."

But instead he just stands there, and all he can do is scream.

The next morning, the bartender, the girl, and the skinny guy are making a meal of the big guy, who no longer feels any pain. He just lays there, twitching on the floor among broken beer mugs and knocked over bar stools. When his eyes glaze over, the others lose their appetite. Then he rises. The four brand new zombies join the army of the walking dead that is now in control of the streets.

Just like that.

***

It's been at least a week since I've had a real meal. That was a can of bread crumbs and some rain water. Food, that's the problem. Not water. I don't like to go upstairs, but when it rains, that's where I put out my buckets to catch drinking water. It keeps for a couple of days, and when it gets too smelly, and I get really desperate there are other means to get your hydration. Urine doesn't taste so bad after a while.

But who am I even telling all this? As far as I know, I'm the last living man. There are photos on my laqcuered pine coffee table in the living room. When I bought it five years ago, it was a pretty decent looking piece of furniture. Now it's scratched up, and the legs wobble. I look at these photos whenever I feel particularly lonely, or angry. Or bored. There isn't much to do here, really, except hunt for food, which is becoming rarer and rarer.

This is my girlfriend Mindy. She's pretty, isn't she? Those big blue eyes and that lavish blond hair, pretty damn hot for a thirty-something. I love that slightly upturned nose, and that smile. Not much into personality, am I? I wonder right now, if there's much of a personality left in her. I do hope she's all right. I dream about it all the time. The two of us living safely in our boarded up houses getting older and older as the years go by. Sometimes, in my dreams, we manage to find each other. Sometimes, we just grow old and die alone. And sometimes, we don't even get to grow old.

But it's also possible that she is now crouching in some street tearing huge chunks of meat out of some poor schmuck's calf with her teeth. I can see it in my mind's eye, her big blue bunny eyes now glazed over, showing no emotion at all as the flesh makes ripping sounds each time she takes a new bite.

I used to call her "Bunny-Eyes".

That's my ex-wife. We were married seven years, and then the life we'd built together just blew up in our faces. Oh well, it happens 52% of the time. This picture was taken on our honeymoon. Yes, I know. She never was a really happy person. She always rolled her eyes like this, and she never smiled. We were divorced long before I met Mindy. I'm not that kind of guy.

In the movies you can shoot a zombie in the head, and then it dies for good. That never made sense to me, and now that the dead are actually walking the streets, a headshot won't kill them. They just keep on walking. I could have told them.

This is Jake, my roommate, a very sensitive musician type. He played guitar, and he was going to be a podcast star. You know, podcasting, the latest incarnation of internet radio. It was going to be huge. And Jake was part of this brand new phenomenon. Every day, he'd sit in his basement studio and speak into his computer mike and upload his mp3s. But he never had a real job.

He couldn't handle the dead walking and all this end-of-the-world stuff; he decided to end it all, commit suicide. Big mistake, if you ask me. Now he's hanging there in his room, his neck broken and his windpipe crushed, his lips and tongue all black and slimy. One hand is caught in the noose. He must have changed his mind as he was dying. And now he's undead.

" Thanks for listenting to the podcast with Jake," he used to say, and play a few chords on his guitar. "Talk at cha next week."

I can hear him moan and growl upstairs in his room. It's all he can do now, just hang there on his rope, kick his legs and grab at the air with his free hand. That taught me a lesson about suicide.

I hate the upstairs.

I really hope the rope doesn't break.

All sorts of vermin has moved in: rats and mice and cockroaches. They're always eating. I can hear them nibble and chew. I can't sit in my armchair for five minutes and close my eyes, because their chewing and gnawing keeps me from falling asleep. But what are they chewing? Why is everyone except me in this rotten world invited to the smorgasboard? They're impossible to catch. I've tried everything from badminton rackets to colunders to baseball bats. But they're too damned fast, and it's too dark to see them.

Some bugs taste just like shrimp when you cook them. Right now, a big plate of steaming roaches would hit the spot. Roaches with cocktail sauce, maybe over rice, or potatoes. You mix ketchup with horseradish, and that's how you get cocktail sauce.

The problem with cockroaches is that they make themselves rare once they understand you're not their meal ticket anymore, and they are the ones who're on the menu.

So what I've been eating is anything I can find, pieces of old gum under the chair, old potato chips behind the couch, fragments of bread crust under the table. But whatever I've been eating, there's less and less of it in the house.

I wonder if Jake has any food in his room. The fucker is always stuffing his face with something. I know he's got something stashed away under the bed or in his little fridge. I hate going upstairs. For one, Jake is still in his room, hanging from his rope, and he won't shut up and he wopn't stop squirming. To get to the staircase, I have to get past the front door. Those zombies outside that have been crowding around the house know when when I get within five feet of that damned door. They never shut up, but when I get close to that door, they work themselves into a frenzy. Yes, it's boarded up so securely, you'd need a tank to get inside. Still, it's like trying to get past one of those fences with a barking dog '" one of those psychotic German shepherds. You've been a kid once. You know what that's like. Except these zombies really do want to eat me.

But if I don't eat something soon then I'll die anyway, and I hear dying from hunger is the worst way to go. I'm halfway there. And I agree.

So, up the pitch black staircase it is, past the frenzied zombies. Jake has heard me, too. I can hear him howl. It doesn't make sense; his windpipe is crushed, and he can still howl. But I've seen zombies be perfectly aware of where they were going, even though they had no eyes in their black sockets. I can hear the rope creak as he kicks his legs and gropes around with with free arm. That's why I haven't been in his room for all this time. I'd rather starve, I thought, than go back to his room, ever. But who can blame me for changing my mind?

I don't want to open the door. It feels like sacrilege, and it's dark in there. Just like. the rest of this house. Deep breaths. I have to remember to breathe. Slow down. That's better. Now open the door very carefully.

Oh my God, he's looking right at me! How can he do that? His eyes are covered over with slime. How can he even see anything with them? There he is, hanging from the ceiling. The fingers on his right hand are caught in the noose, but that's not stopping him from trying to wriggle them out.

He's stretching out his hand, reaching for me, like a drowning man grasping at a piece of driftwood; reaching, grasping, gasping '" and saliva running down his chin. He is staring at me with his dead-fish eyes, opening his black lips. For a moment I could swear he is trying to tell me something, like he's still in there, like there's still a human soul deep inside.

Let me down, and I won't harm you. I swear it.

It's the same mind trip every time, and the fact that I know better doesn't make it any easier. Every time it's the same freaky shit. That's why I hate the upstairs.

Jesus Christ, he's taking a swing at me. He barely misses me. That's because I dive for the floor. I can feel the wind rush past the back of my head, but the rage that's in that swing is much more palpable. I crawl across the floor on my belly, like a snake. Above, he kicks and punches, snarls and howls.

I reach the far side of his bed. Then I'm out of steam. Every last bit of courage leaves me. I can't move another inch, just lie on the floor between Jake's bed and guitar stand, my hand half a foot away from the night stand where I know he keeps his secret stash. I just lie there and bawl like I haven't in a long, long time.

And when I pull myself together again, I reach forward and open the drawer. His check book is in there. And his wallet. It contains two hundred dollars. What good does that do me now? I open the door underneath. There are some of his CDs, sheets of loose leaf paper, notebooks. But no food.

Maybe his little dorm fridge.

Jake is turning on his rope. He rages and grabs at the air everytime he faces my direction. But the rope is holding, and my nerves are back, my attention focused again on the task. I rise to my feet, and open his little fridge. But all that's there is one can of beer. One miserable can of warm beer. The guy had two hundred bucks in his wallet, and no food in the fridge.

Oh, I'll show the little fucker! I will. See how he'll like it if I take all of his money and drink his last beer. Right in front of him.

How do you like that, Jake, huh? Does it piss you off? Well, just come down and tell me how you really feel, buddy!

It's useless. I drink the damned beer so fast, it goes down the wrong pipe. When I cough, it comes out through my nose. I run out of the room, barely missing his grasp, and run downstairs.

Sitting on my couch, I see a rat nibbling on something. Maybe it's a really big mouse. Who really cares? There's a big stick just in reach. Slowly, I have to move slowly, or it will know what I'm up to. Move slowly and strike hard when the moment is there. Now! The stick slams onto the armrest, dust flies. Something breaks. The rat is gone, and I look at the broken stick.

This must be some big, cruel, cosmic joke. I've made it this far, and now I'm starving.

***

Ever heard of the Donner Party? Even those guys were better off than me. Snowed in for months, these settlers went ghoul. They resorted to cannibalism. I can picture it in my mind right now. There they are, Sam, Joe, and Bill in their coon skin caps and trapper outfits. They're stuck somewhere in the mountains, sitting in some log cabin, while the blizzard howls; there's just no end in sight.

So Bill throws the last stick of furniture into the fire, and the says, "Jesus Christ, I am so goddamn hungry. What are we gonna eat now?"

And Sam looks at Joe, and Joe looks back at Sam with this expression that says Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Then Bill turns around, and he doesn't like the way they are staring at him, licking their lips.

But next day, there are pieces of Bill turning on a spit.

***

But what am I going to do, eat Jake? That's disgusting.

I can feel rain in the air. Better put out the water jars while I still have the strength and the will.

Four jelly jars and a few buckets, some glasses and coffee mugs, all must go out on the balcony. The walking dead are crowded around the house. They know I'm here. They know I'm food. Will they go away when I finally starve to death? Will they get me out and induce me into some mysterious undead society?

A female zombie with black stringy hair and a huge chuck of neck missing raises her head and looks at me with her milky eyes. She is wearing a tattered goth outfit with now rusty chains hanging from her pants. As if to tell the others, she raises her arm, points at me. She opens her mouth revealing her long, yellow teeth. Then a huge black bird lands on her head and picks her left eye right out of the socket. It flies off before the zombie even realizes what has happened, then perches in a tree and eats.

There's no point in trying to fight my revulsion. I lean over the balcony and retch. But there's nothing to throw up. And after dry-heaving for what seems to be forever, I sink to the floor, exhausted. And I fall asleep.

With sleep comes clarity. And an idea. If birds can do it, why can't I? I know there's a hatchet somewhere in the basement.

***

I ate the last bit of Jake in February, everything except the head. Hard to believe, it's still alive, if you can call it that. I do feel sorry for him. Ever since I ate his other arm. There he was, an undead guitar player, and his arms were gone. So I put the head in a macrame plant hanger and hung it off the balcony, where I place my water jars when it rains. When I go there to put jars out, or to pick them up, I say hi. He rolls is white eyes at me, opens his yellow-toothed mouth and moans. Maybe he really is trying to tell me something. That's what I'd like to believe. At least, I don't have to worry about starving anymore. I have one zombie cut up and salted in the attic, and another one is hanging in a tree. There's a strange kind of beauty of it all. The dead eat the living, and the living eat the dead.

Someone should write a book about it.

***

This story is one of nine pieces published in my book Bedtime Stories for the Faint of Heart.