I, Zombie Read Online Free Page B

was
glued to its televisions, watching in amazement, the elderly covering their
mouths in shock, the young calling their friends and making jokes, saying how
cool this shit was, could you believe it?
    The helicopter lights moved against stars impossibly far
away. All the lights were far away and out of reach. Jennifer remembered what a
boyfriend had once told her about the stars, how they could be long gone but
still shining. They could have burned out a thousand years ago, and their light
would just now be reaching Earth. Gone and yet still there. Dead and seen at
the same time.
    Trash rustled in the darkness and stirred against Jennifer’s
ankles. There was no one left to come and sweep it away. It flew out from
busted windows when the wind gusted. It gathered against the stoops and in the
gutters. There was the smell of a fire somewhere, the distant whisper of
conspiring flames, and Jennifer wondered what the rest of the world was doing.
Were they succumbing to the same disease as her shuffle? Or did they watch,
glued to their televisions once again as her city burned, as it all came
crumbling down into streets of staggering ruin? Was this nothing more than
another story for gaping jaws and wide eyes? Or would the soldiers in those
faraway helicopters and the politicians in their chambers find some way to shut
it down, to turn it off, to do anything more for her than change the fucking
channel—?

 
     
    7 • Michael Lane
     
    Michael ate his mother until his stomach burst. He could
feel it rupture, could feel the organ stretch to bloating as he ate and kept on
eating—and then it popped. His insides seemed to rearrange themselves as
hastily swallowed mouthfuls of her flesh sagged down inside his own guts. Small
bits of sinew and fat remained stuck between his teeth like roast beef.
    One craving had been sated. Michael thought again of the
little black kit on top of the fridge, the spoon with its heat-warped patina, a
plastic orange lighter low on fluid, a needle that had dipped into his arm a
thousand times, depositing its nectar like a honeybee, leaving him there on the
sofa, head lolling in rapture, his mother drooling on herself in the next room
as she filled a clear bag with frothing yellow piss.
    From the neck up, she still looked the same. She was just as
dead to him, just as eerily alive. Eyes open, she stared at an empty patch of
floor. Her jaw was slack, her lips parted, as if she might finally say
something, might finally snap out of it and fucking say something.
    Michael felt the strain of her flesh inside his belly. The
cat and his mother felt heavy in his abdomen, taut from taking in too much.
Greedy. Always greedy.
    He moved away from her, numb and disgusted with himself. Her
chest stood open. Blood dripped from Michael’s face, and contented grunts came
from somewhere. Before him, his mother’s belly was a gory pit, her ribs like
pink fingers, like two open hands cradling nothing. Michael imagined crawling
inside those glistening palms. He felt himself shrinking down, time zipping backwards,
until he could fit inside her belly, could pull the flaps of loose skin over
him like a blanket and return to the womb in which he had gestated. Maybe he
could be born again, not like those assholes at NA but really born
again. He wouldn’t be a monster this time. He’d be someone who takes care of
his mother. Someone who takes better care of himself.
    A scent from the streets wafted in and filled the decrepit
apartment, nicotine-stained curtains flapping in the breeze. Michael turned,
his nose following the smell of the living, his guts full of his mother’s guts
but already thinking of the next fix. One more bite, like that bee sinking its stinger
into his arm, filling him with its nectar.
    He stood and staggered toward the window. He craved a
cigarette. Michael always craved a smoke after a meal. A clay pot on the sill
used to hold flowers when his sister was still coming around, before she’d
given up on