Part 21 (2/2)

WE STAY ONE more night. We stay up late and my husband says, Maybe the threat will blow over.

Blow over. We all laugh, drinking the wine from the grapes that grow among the lilies. Then we talk movies, all the same ones we have seen as if together.

We really came to see you, I say. Does it matter if we flee if you are here?

IN THE MORNING they tell us they do not write, they will not. No letters.

Consider them written, says my husband.

We take the next bus, a dark cave filled with more miners abandoning mines. The settlers we leave behind, such settlers as they are, wearing our clothes nearly exactly, franchise for franchise, who wave as our bus burrs off past the lilies, the big waves behind them lapping and reaching.

THESE ZOMBIES ARE NOT.

A METAPHOR.

Jeff Goldberg.

WHEN THE FULL-SCALE zombie outbreak finally occurred I was the only one prepared. I don't mean with supplies and weapons and secure shelter-though, yes, that is a part of what I mean-but, more importantly, I had the proper mental fortification.

Baxter said to me, ”These zombies are a metaphorical scourge upon the Earth. They represent all that is evil in humankind.” Then he went outside, got bitten, and turned into one of them.

I held a meeting with the rest of my housemates. ”Let's be very clear,” I said. ”These zombies are not a metaphorical scourge upon the Earth. These zombies are an actual scourge upon the Earth.” I pointed out the window. We could see the hordes of walking dead in the streets, tearing into the flesh of the living. ”These zombies do not represent all that is evil in humankind. They do not represent anything except zombies.”

Yes, yes, Manny and Jeannine nodded at me, blank affirmative stares, eager for leaders.h.i.+p in the uncertainty of the world's end.

A half-decayed, blood-smeared face smashed itself up against my metal-barred bulletproof gla.s.s window. I flipped a switch and activated the electric current. ”Not an allegory, an a.n.a.logy, or an allusion,” I said. ”This is not the foreshadowing of the downfall of man. This is the downfall itself.”

Yes, yes, my housemates all nodded. But they didn't understand. With the apocalypse upon us, the human race appeared unequipped to process the bad news. So these few survivors were both my wards and my prisoners. I couldn't let them out of my sight for a moment or they'd shut down the defenses, wander outside.

I turned my back to work on the water purification system and Jeannine started fumbling with the locks on the front door. As I pulled her away she said she just wanted to pop out for some Starbucks. ”Starbucks is gone,” I said to her, ”There is no more Starbucks.”

She lowered her head. ”Reliance on foreign investors puts American corporations at risk in the global marketplace.”

That was when I started locking them in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

I'd go down to give them meals and sometimes play a round or two of bridge. It got boring single-handedly holding off the zombie mult.i.tude.

Zombie Baxter turned up a few days later. His gray, withered skin; his barren, pus-filled eyes; the shreds of human flesh in his teeth: good old Baxter. I wouldn't have recognized him except he started banging on the front door and shouting ”It's me, Zombie Baxter!” I eyed him through the peephole, one hand poised on the switch to activate the electric current.

”I didn't know zombies could talk,” I said through the safety of my steel-reinforced door.

”What's there to say, really?”

”I'm not letting you in,” I said.

”Come on, I want to eat your brains.”

”No.”

”What about Jeannine?”

”No.”

”Manny?”

I said, ”No,” but he sensed my hesitation.

”Just give me Manny,” he said, ”Please.”

”I'm going to activate the electric perimeter now.”

”Go ahead,” Baxter said, ”We've built up a resistance to electricity.”

”Really?” I asked.

”No,” he admitted, ”But our best zombie scientists are working on it. It's only a matter of time.”

I flipped the switch and Baxter jolted away from the front door, then lurched off down the street. Either he flipped me the bird or his pointer and ring fingers were missing.

He was right: it was only a matter of time. But that was the point. I didn't expect to survive; I just wanted to hold out as long as possible.

Down in the bas.e.m.e.nt Manny and Jeannine had managed to use their teeth and nails to pry the wooden boards away from the one small window. Now the room was crawling with zombies. I couldn't tell if the moaning, undead horde staggering around the former rec room included my housemates. No one seemed to be in a talking mood.

I ran a hose from the kitchen sink, stuck it under the door and started filling the bas.e.m.e.nt with water.

THE RAPID ADVANCE.

OF SORROW.

Theodora Goss.

I SIT IN one of the cafes in Szent Endre, writing this letter to you, Istvan, not knowing if I will be alive tomorrow, not knowing if this cafe will be here, with its circular green chairs and cups of espresso. By the Danube, children are playing, their knees bare below school uniforms. Widows are knitting shapeless sweaters. A cat sleeps beside a geranium in the cafe window.

If you see her, will you tell me? I still remember how she appeared at the University, just off the train from Debrecen, a country girl with badly-cut hair and clothes sewn by her mother. That year, I was smoking French cigarettes and reading forbidden literature. ”Have you read D.H. Lawrence?” I asked her. ”He is the only modern writer who convincingly expresses the desires of the human body.” She blushed and turned away. She probably still had her Young Pioneers badge, hidden among her underwear.

”Ilona is a beautiful name,” I said. ”It is the most beautiful name in our language.” I saw her smile, although she was trying to avoid me. Her face was plump from country sausage and egg bread, and dimples formed at the corners of her mouth, two on each side.

She had dimples on her b.u.t.tocks, as I found out later. I remember them, like craters on two moons, above the tops of her stockings.

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