Chapter Eleven - Death Row Cooking

This chapter, and the entire rest of this story has already been made available on Zombie Lit.com, which is now also Zombie Literature.com, but for the sake of completeness, it's also going to live here.

To catch up on the action so far, remember what doesn't kill you...


The zombie bite sank into Lisa's left hand between the thumb and forefinger. She let go of the gun, but Speedy's teeth didn't let go of her.

Her heart sped up for the last time, and she fought the urge to yank her hand away, afraid at the thought of him tearing away a chunk of her flesh. She would die from this bite, and knowing that hurt more than the lacerating teeth her body would have done anything to get away from.

Speedy pulled back. Lisa made her arm go limp. It followed his mouth.

Speedy's teeth sank deeper, and Lisa's mind raced to size up the situation. Over his shoulder, she saw Kaveh coming for her. "Kaveh," she said, but she couldn't tell if that was recognition in his eyes or mindless hunger. He said nothing.

The gun was still in Speedy's grip, pressed against his chest, and Lisa made her move. She wrapped her free arm around Speedy and pulled the dead man closer.

The stock of the rifle slid down her stomach. Its muzzle moved over the bullet holes on Speedy's chest as it travelled upwards.

Lisa moved her left hand, and Speedy's mouth followed it until his chin was directly in the line of fire. They stood face to face. Her forehead burned. She groped for the trigger with her free hand.

That face had been Speedy, Fidel Gonzalez. She'd been to his house, seen the empty beds of his family members. She'd tried to keep him safe, but he'd become a monster, and he'd killed her. She found the trigger.

Speedy jerked his head, and part of Lisa's hand was ripped away. The pain and adrenaline tensed every muscle. She heard herself shout.

The rifle thundered.

Lisa's body hit the ground. She winced, ready for Speedy's blown out brains to rain down on her, but they didn't. She looked up, and Kaveh had his hand on his friend's shoulder, pulling him back. She'd missed.

Lisa steadied the shaking rifle with her infected left hand. If Kaveh had come to save her, he was too late.

Kaveh threw Speedy's body to the ground, stepped over him and came at Lisa, teeth bared like a monster. Lisa instinctively pulled her arms across her chest. The gun raised to point at Kaveh's head, and he stopped.

She looked up at him, her trigger finger frozen. "Do you understand me?" she said.

Kaveh shook his head that he didn't.

She vibrated the gun. "You understand this, don't you?" Her heart was still racing, and she felt a pain in her chest. Her tension erupted with a mixture of weeping and laughter. Kaveh didn't move.

Speedy started to get up, and Lisa spun the rifle in that direction. Kaveh kicked his friend back down and took another step towards her, but they both froze when she aimed the gun at him again.

What was he? Kaveh's pale face was peeling with layers of dead skin, but when Lisa looked closer, she thought she could still see part of the man she'd given the loan application to the day before, the man who'd laughed when she told him he would become a zombie. She remembered that laugh.

Her ass was sore on the pavement, and she rested the stock of the assault rifle in her lap. She was back to pointing a gun at Kaveh. "How many times have we done this?" she said, and she laughed, but the pain in her chest was worse. Circulation would be the first thing to go.

She'd spent so much of her life imagining what she would do if real zombies ever showed up. She'd actually been right to be afraid of them, but knowing that now didn't make her feel any better. She looked down, and her hands were getting pale. This was really happening.

Her breathing got shallower. The night air was cool, and for a few seconds, everything was still.

The silence was broken by moans from the dead end street, and Kaveh's eyes followed the new noise. Lisa turned too. The moaning intensified when the National Guard Humvee burst out from around the corner with three zombies clinging to its grill.

With a tight swerve and the screech of tires, it slammed into a wall across the street, smearing the three zombies across its windshield.

Corporal Lewis burst heroically out of the driver's side, a pistol in each hand, and faced down the group of zombies that were stumbling towards the car across the intersection.

Kaveh looked down at Lisa's gun and did nothing, but Speedy responded to the new moaning voices. He pulled himself to his feet and moaned back at them. Lewis noticed Speedy's moans, turned quickly and shot him in the head.

Lisa watched Speedy's body fall to the street, and a surge of anger flooded through her. She started to stand up, but the world spun around her, and she fell again.

Kaveh knelt over his twice dead friend. Lisa's head spun.

Lewis cleared the rest of the intersection of zombies and seemed to get larger as he came towards them.

"Get in the car," Lewis called out. "We're running now." He got close enough to see Kaveh's peeling face kneeling over Speedy. "What is this, zombies eating other zombies?" Kaveh wasn't eating. Lisa didn't know what he was doing or how much he understood, but Lewis raised his guns.

"No," said Lisa. "Don't come any closer." She held out her hands, dropping the rifle. She couldn't watch Kaveh get shot too.

Lewis stopped at the sight of her bleeding hand. He looked at his guns, and Lisa saw in his eyes again how tired he was. He said slowly, "You want me to," and he turned one of his guns to face her. He was going to do the humane thing.

Lisa's mind kept on spinning, and her head shook. She didn't want to die. "Not yet," she said. In a way, the situation hadn't changed. She had some time left, just not as much of it.

Lewis's eyes flicked back and forth between Lisa and Kaveh as he kept a gun on each of them. "Did he do this to you?" he asked.

Kaveh gave Lewis a blank stare. Lisa shook her head again and pointed at Speedy's body, sprawled out on the street with a hole in his head. "It was this one." There were tears in her voice.

"Speedy," yelled a woman, and a rear door opened on the Humvee. "Oh, crapsticks," said Farah as she climbed out of the car and ran over to Speedy's corpse. When she arrived, she saw her zombified brother for the first time. "Hi, Kevin. Honey, get out here," she yelled back at the car.

Doctor Neil climbed out of the same car door and walked up behind his wife.

"You think he's gonna be okay?" Farah asked. Neil shook his head. Kaveh moved towards them.

"Look out," shouted Lewis, and Farah stood up, her head between Kaveh and the gun.

"Relax," said Farah. "My little brother's a teddy bear. Isn't that right?" She turned to Kaveh with a smile. "So, what's it like to be a zombie?"

Kaveh grabbed her by the head, and she gasped.

Doctor Neil went in to pry them apart. Lewis took a step around her to get a clear shot.

Lisa picked up the rifle and fired into the air.

Kaveh stopped. "Did you understand that?" Lisa shouted. She aimed back at his head. "Let her go," she said, and he did.

Lisa looked at Lewis and spoke slowly, her old trick to keep people calm. "Stand down, soldier. Look, he's not like the rest of them. You saw my bite. You know what that means." Her voice broke with uncontrolled emotion. "This might be the last thing I ever do, but I can't just sit here and watch you shoot someone else right now." Lisa yelled, "You three still have a chance. Get in the car, all of you."

Moans came again from the dead end street, and Lewis spun to point his guns at the noise.

Helen appeared around the corner like a zombie, arms outstretched, feet shuffling, but her moans weren't quite right.

Lisa kept the rifle still. "Helen, no. Not now."

A wave of zombies too rampageous to count came around the corner, staggering after Helen with groping arms.

Helen shambled in the direction of the car. Turning to look at the humans, eyes wide with panic, she moaned, "Heeeeelp," and broke into a sprint.

The zombies kept swarming. Lewis shot them two at a time while sidestepping back to the Humvee, but there were too many of them.

Lisa finally turned the rifle and fired into the crowd with three round bursts at eye level. The force of the recoil against her shoulder felt like it would tear her arm off, but this was too important.

Her emotions had a voice, and she fought against a fear she could see, a fear that went down when she shot it. She'd never felt more alive.

That's when Kaveh killed Doctor Neil.

The crowd enveloped Farah as she ran towards the car. Her scream was high and short before it died.

Lisa held the gun tighter with shaking hands and shot the zombies going after Helen, but they closed in, and Lisa lost sight of her old coworker, barely hearing Helen's familiar scream over the inhuman moans of the dead.

Lewis's guns stopped. Even he screamed as the zombies ripped him limb from limb.

Lisa stopped shooting. "They're dead," she cried.

She stood, but her limbs wouldn't work right. She used the rifle for support, staggering out a dozen steps in random directions before the gun fell out of her hand and she stumbled backwards, collapsing against a wall.

Her hands shook harder. She felt the life seeping out of her. She wouldn't get up again. A minute ago, she'd never felt more alive, but everything had been destroyed by one little bite.

She buried her face in her hands. Blood smeared across her forehead and down the left side of her face, mixing with the streams of her tears. "I'm the last, the last one," she sobbed. "Why did Helen listen to me?"

The edges of her mouth pulled downwards, and the corners of her eyes squeezed tight. Her face twisted itself into a mask of tragedy, and she was powerless to stop it.

The bite barely hurt anymore. She was losing feeling in her left hand. The wound had stopped bleeding, and it was pale, festering, turning into a zombie. As the infection spread, her body was less and less hers, and it became a monster. That frightened her more than anything else.

Every muscle in her body locked up, and her head convulsed with each sob as her lungs forced out loud H noises. She was going into a seizure.

She'd always lived in fear that a single attack of epilepsy would destroy her life, but it was too late for that. The zombies had already done it.

As Lisa lost the last control she had of her body, she remembered that when she'd been forced to admit her disease, when her secret had finally been revealed, nobody had cared.

With concentration, she forced the involuntary spasms of her chest into words, "Fu-uck it."

The seizure didn't matter. If she could have stopped herself from shaking, she wouldn't have. This was her only chance to feel anything, and for as long as it lasted, she wanted to feel more strongly than she could understand.

Kaveh pulled his face out of Doctor Neil's skull when he remembered he'd never liked his brother-in-law.

Neil's life flashed in front of his eyes as he digested, a childhood in this town, medical school, traveling, meeting Farah.

Kaveh remembered a lot of things. He remembered this person taking his sister and turning her into an American, wiping away everything that had made them family, but things were different in Neil's mind.

Kaveh reached into that skull and pulled out another handful of brains.

While sharing his own culture with Farah, Neil had been fascinated by where she'd come from, but she had chosen to fit in, to become more American than the Americans.

Kaveh took another bite. He remembered himself through Neil's eyes, and he understood for the first time that Neil had never disliked him back.

Kaveh had been his last link to that world, and Neil had wanted to understand and appreciate his culture again. He looked down at the carcass with its head ripped open. This could have been his friend.

The cultures this man had seen in his travels, the lives he'd taken in, Neil had savored the things that had made each unique, but none had been more important to him than his home. Kaveh could appreciate that.

"Fidel?" said Lisa's weak voice. Kaveh turned and saw her motionless body slumped against a wall not far from Speedy. She was looking at Kaveh. "He wasn't smart, was he?" Her raspy words were barely English.

The other zombies clustered around the bodies of his sister and what was left of the soldier, or else they wandered randomly into the night. Kaveh stood up and went towards her.

"You probably tried to feed him brains," she said, "but they didn't take. That's why he attacked me. You're the only one like you. I get it."

Kaveh went back and dragged Neil's body over to Lisa. He pointed and managed the words, "Will he come back?"

She grunted as she forced herself to lean forward and look down into Neil's almost empty skull. "Not anymore," she said.

Her body quivered, and Kaveh remembered her epilepsy. He ate more brains.

Lisa had a faraway look in her eye. "All that time ago, you weren't very nice to me when you came in for that loan." She didn't sound sad.

"Who cares?" Kaveh half moaned as he took the last handful of brains from Neil's head. "I can't be a chef." He was always hungry, but he couldn't enjoy food. He couldn't even digest it. He ran a finger along the hole in his stomach where his meals kept falling out. "I'm empty."

Lisa propped herself on her elbows. Her skin was losing color, but she spoke more clearly. "You're talking to me. Isn't some part of what you were still in there?"

Kaveh had memories and habits left over from being alive, but that's all they were, leftovers. He looked at Neil's face and shook his head. "Just another meal." He put the last morsel of brain in his mouth and closed his eyes.

As the last of Neil's life crunched between his teeth, he remembered how many angry things he'd said over the years, like that time that even the kind Doctor Neil had called him a monster.

He opened his eyes again and saw Lisa's body going limp. "I'm sorry I was mean to you," he said. He'd been mean a lot.

Lisa lifted her head and smiled. "You can be nice when you're not so angry."

"I can't be either of those things now." He was as hungry as ever, and Neil's skull was empty.

He leaned forward. Lisa's brains were right in front of him. So were Speedy's. Kaveh tore off one of his brother-in-law's arms and kept eating.

He couldn't even miss Speedy. Between bites, he pointing Neil's hand at the dead sous chef. Speedy's brains had splattered across the street, and Kaveh smacked his lips at them. "All those good times we had together. They're dead too."

Lisa looked away from the body, her voice shaking. "No, he was already dead. That's the whole point. Zombies aren't the people they were when they were alive. That person was gone from the second he died." Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. "That's what's about to happen to me. Everything I am, everything I've ever felt or wished is about to disappear forever, no matter what I do afterwards."

"Tell me about your life," said Kaveh in a dead monotone as he bit off a thumb. "Maybe I'll remember, and something will survive."

"It's not gonna work, Kaveh," said Lisa. "We're already dead." A tear came down from her left eye and followed a path down her blood-smeared cheek by earlier tears. "Do you remember Speedy's life? Do you remember yours?"

Kaveh shook his head. The awareness he'd gotten from Neil's mind was already starting to fade. He tore off Neil's other arm and continued his meal.

Lisa watched him eat and whispered, "What happens to me when you're done with him?"

Kaveh counted Neil's two remaining limbs and spoke with his mouth full. "I'm never gonna stop being hungry."

"Eat slow," said Lisa. "Talk to me." She took two deep breaths with obvious effort, and she spoke, her words slow and calm.

"I heard the rumors, strange staggering groups on the edge of town. It was all so familiar, but I didn't say anything. I could have warned people. Maybe I could have prevented all this, but I didn't. I just kept going to work, minding my own business while everything fell apart. People stopped coming in for new loans. Maybe they knew, but you were different. You were trying to build something new. You were thinking about the future when I could barely see past my desk."

Kaveh nodded. He remembered, "I thought I could change the world. I don't hope for that anymore." He worked his way down the right arm.

"I'm sorry, too," said Lisa. "You should have gotten the loan. I was just so afraid to make those decisions, but I don't have to worry about that stuff now." She used the wall to straighten up her back. "I'm sure of something again. Everybody dies. I used to be paralyzed about when and how it would happen to me, but that stuff that scared us when we were alive isn't actually that big a deal. Now I really can't move."

"There's more to life than walking around, more than eating." Kaveh's words were losing meaning. Bones crunched in his mouth. He wanted to remember what it felt like to feel, but the closest he had were the chalky shards going down his throat. He spoke again with concentration. "Those things don't make me feel alive."

"Exactly," said Lisa, her pale face lighting up again. "I don't care that I lost my old life, because I was never really living. I had to take my medicine, stay so in control, and I never felt anything. It was totally different on top of that car, kill or be killed. When I got to shoot that gun at actual zombies, the fear of people knowing about my epilepsy was gone. Eating healthy, all those tiny things that terrified me every single day went away." She gave a glance at the dead all around her and spoke quieter but with just as much intensity. "I love that feeling. It was incredible. I can't explain to you how liberating it was to really feel alive. For a few seconds, this was the best night of my life, but even that was nothing next to the feeling I had in Farah's kitchen with you." Her smile was genuine. Her breathing was shallow.

Kaveh tried to remember the kitchen, but his mind faded, his thoughts overshadowed by something as he finished eating the second arm. "I wanted to eat you," he barely said. He took a step closer and chewed. If he ate her now, maybe he could get something back that he'd lost. Or was it something he'd wanted when he was alive? He was confused.

"You won't have to wait much longer," said Lisa. "I'm so tired." Her eyelids drooped, but she spoke with emphasis, like every word might be her last. "I told Helen, be consistent, methodical. Stay focused. Let them bunch up and get close but not too close, the rules. They were just words after I saw what you were."

The body of Kaveh's sister was gone, and five different zombies wandered closer to the body of Doctor Neil. Lisa's leg jostled in the direction of the gun just out of her reach.

Kaveh stood, grabbed one last organ from inside Neil and threw the rest of him at the advancing monsters. The other zombies crouched and started eating.

"My guardian angel," said Lisa.

Kaveh took a bite of Neil's final organ. "I know what I am," he said. He remembered what an angry person he'd been. Maybe Doctor Neil had been right, that he'd already been a kind of monster.

"No, I know what you are." Lisa's rough voice came out with a gasping sound. "I used to be empty. I didn't think for myself. I didn't feel. I was living then like the monster you are now." She made an easy smile. "I was never afraid of you, Kaveh. Inf fact, when I'm with you, I feel something I never felt before. It's better than killing zombies. I think it could be love." She lifted her good hand and patted her chest. "I don't want to lose this," she said.

Kaveh stared into Lisa's eyes. There was something behind those eyes that he couldn't quite grasp, and he really wanted to. "I have this desire," he said. He wanted to grab her and fill the emptiness he had inside. "I know it's only hunger. The only thing that stopped me was that gun."

"What's stopping you now?" Lisa pouted her lips. There was something she wanted.

He wanted to want it too, but he knew he couldn't. "I wish I could feel something for you," he said with a frown.

"I won't be a zombie again." She nodded resolutely. "When I die, pick up that gun and shoot me in the head. Then I'll be just another meal."

Kaveh took another bite of Neil, and the words came more easily. "I don't think I can."

Her glanced lowered, and her lips pouted again. "But you're a heartless monster, remember?"

He clutched stiffly at the air. "No fine motor control."

It took real effort for her to breathe now, but her eyes were fearless. "Okay, wait until I'm dead, and just eat me. I'll be gone. I won't feel it, and I won't come back like them. Can you do that for me, please?"

"That sounds delicious," said Kaveh. "Speedy didn't come back for an hour. I'll have time."

Lisa shook her head. "Zombies don't follow rules. You should know that better than anybody." She chuckled, and it made her cough.

The other zombies were almost done with the rest of Neil's remains. With his last bite, Kaveh noticed which organ he'd been eating. It was his brother-in-law's heart.

Lisa barely breathed. Her eyes darted back and forth, and she smiled. "You know what? I'm really hungry." She laughed, and her throat gurgled with the sound of death.

Kaveh swallowed. "Me too."

Lisa stopped breathing. Her eyes moved more slowly. With the air still in her lungs, she exhaled, "I just want one last..."

Her mouth hung open. Kaveh watched her eyes go dead. He had nothing to give her. If it was a last meal she wanted, it was too late for her to eat human food. Her condition was beyond the help of chicken soup. If she became a zombie, he could help feed her only cravings, but he knew she would always be empty.

Lisa's mouth twitched with one more tiny breath.

He leaned closer. "One last what?"

His face pressed almost against hers as he watched her lips for any indication of words. With her last breath, she pushed through a single syllable, "Kiss."

With that, Lisa died.

Kaveh's remaining mind struggled to bring back a memory from a long time before, something he'd forgotten even when he was alive. The most beautiful thing he'd ever seen was on the edge of his mind, on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't piece it together anymore. It was gone.


The End.

Alright, one final chapter...

Coming soon to ZombieLit.com

What doesn't kill you...

The world was ending. Zombies were apparently all that was left of the once quiet mountain town, quiet once again except for the moaning voices of those who had once been alive there.

Lisa faced down the almost certain doom of being surrounded by zombies down a dead end street, but she was armed with the knowledge she'd built up through years of irrationally fearing these exact creatures. She knew one bite would turn her into what she most feared, and she had herself an assault rifle.

She was gratefully reunited with Kaveh, who she recognized for being the only intelligent zombie, unaware that he had stopped eating brains and was descending back into mindlessness.

Lisa made a successful imitation of undead behavior and escaped her certain death, meeting up along the way with the undead Speedy, once Kaveh's closest friend.

The three of them left the horde behind, but Lisa made a crucial mistake. She thought that Speedy might share the same self-awareness that Kaveh had attained, and her uncertainty brought just enough hesitation that Speedy got in close, grabbed her gun and bit her hand...

Death Row Cooking

New Website

The book is almost over, and so is this blog, but its content has a new home, the new website I built at www.zombielit.com, the internet's leading home for literary works involving zombies.

Well, I guess it's not leading anything... yet. It could. Watch out, Jane Austen. You're next, Max Brooks. There's a new force in the world of zombie literature, and he's apparently the first person who thought of buying that particular domain name. Update your bookmarks. Yeah!

Zombies Don't Follow Rules

Chapter Eleven is almost done. I've been busy with something else... but I did find the time to join a zombie flash mob again yesterday in pursuit of my job as a reporter, and this one attended an advance screening of Zombieland.

On one level, this is the movie I've been waiting for. Building off the precedent set by Shawn of the Dead, but with a little more of an American, Tarantino-esque tone, the movie vindicates those who were ready.

The people who know the rules of fighting zombies and live by them are the ones who continue to live by anything. As someone who's done the undead research, I felt great, but then I remembered, zombies don't follow rules.

There's no authoritative descripition of their properties. Even their diet varies from source to source. They're an embodiment of modern chaos, and there's a reason zombies are like that.

When George Romero and John Russo combined inspirations like The Last Man on Earth and Invasion of the Body Snatchers with elements of Haitian voodoo, a topic already barely understood and inconsistantly used for decades by pulpy horror writers, they made a simple mistake that changed the course of zombie history, they didn't copywrite their work properly.

With the success of Night of the Living Dead and its accidental early version of open sourcing, a slew of imitators and remakes appeared, none of which were bound to follow any set conventions.

Even Romero and Russo disagreed what they should do with the monster they had unleashed on the world. Russo decided to have them eat only brains, a rule Romero never followed. In turn, Romero abandoned the word "living" from his titles, leaving them simply "of the dead." Since then, all new kinds of zombies have appeared, like zombies who run, further confusing the issue.

People who try to put the genie back in the bottle, who claim to know what zombies "are," are like lone survivors in some little farmhouse, trying to make their chaotic world make sense again.

The zombie apocolypse isn't supposed to conform to expectations. It's terrifying because it doesn't follow any logic, and because once it reaches critical mass, it can't be controlled, and it can't be stopped.

Sleep tight.

Zombio and Juliet

Be Still My Formerly Beating Heart is the story of two houses, nothing alike in dignity. Human blood makes zombie hands unclean, in the small mountain town where we make our scene. From forth the fatal strife of these two foes, a pair of star-cross'd lovers take their share of other's lives.

A man, a zombie bereft of feelings, has an overpowering hunger for a human woman, particularly her brains. She has feelings for him, which she has to fight against when she gets the chance to shoot him in the head. Every relationship has obstacles, but these two crazy kids are gonna have a tough time making it work.

I guess you could say there's a little R&J to this story, but I'm not the only one to use the same combination of elements. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies can't have all the fun adding zombies to the classics, so I present to you Romeo & Juliet vs. The Living Dead.



"Oh, happy chainsaw." Awesome.