military. I’m just a cop. I enforce the law, I don’t make it.”
“But that’s not really true, is it?” He turned to me and pushed his glasses back in place. It made him look like a fat little cherub. “As a cop, you’re on the front lines of morality. The really important details, the freedoms we have, or had, as Americans, are decided in the blink of an eye by men and women like you on every street in the country. When you’re called to act, you do it based on your training, sure, but you also act on your own personal standard of what’s right and wrong. I hope you live through this, Eddie, I really do. I hope your family lives through this. And I hope you realize that what you do in the next few days and weeks will go beyond mundane legal issues like search and seizure. It’s going to be about life and death. About humanity, as you put it.”
“You really like talking about this stuff, don’t you?”
“Of course,” he said. “And what better vehicle for it than the zombie? Imagine it, a being caught between life and death, deciding issues of life and death for the rest of us. There’s a sort of poetic symmetry in that, don’t you think?”
As he was talking I watched a man pull a woman’s leg off her body with his teeth and start to eat on the thigh. I looked for the poetic symmetry.
He didn’t notice though. He was on a roll.
“There’s more, of course, than just the philosophical side of it. I think a virus is causing this, like I told you, and that means we have to ask how it’s spread. Transmission of bodily fluids is the most likely culprit. Blood, for example. But, obviously, a bite will do it too. Maybe even a scratch, if the fingernail doing the scratching has the virus on it.”
“But how do you suppose it got out of Houston? From what it looked like on the TV, this is happening in a lot of places.”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “That’s something to look into later, for sure. But there are precedents, you know. The Black Death was spread by fleas on rats, and Typhoid Mary showed how a single infected person could start an epidemic. Maybe it’s fleas, or ticks, or a combination of insects. Fleas and mosquitoes, maybe.”
That didn’t sit well with me. I could shoot a zombie if I had to. Hell, I could shoot a whole army of them if I had to. But I couldn’t shoot a flea.
“Any idea on why it formed? The virus, I mean.”
“Well, that’s the question of the day, isn’t it? Could be any number of factors. Unsanitary conditions in the wake of the Houston hurricanes probably. Who knows, though? Maybe it’s not even a virus. Maybe it’s a bacteria. A super bacterium brought on by doctors over-prescribing antibiotics.”
“So what you’re saying is, you have absolutely no clue.”
“Basically, yeah. This is just me talking. One of the things that might help us though is the issue of cross-species contamination.”
“Like zombie cats and dogs?”
“Exactly!” He said it triumphantly, like he’d just won a convert to his cause, whatever that was. “Although I was going to come back to the issue of consciousness. Suppose it’s a virus that somehow thrives on the complex functions of the human mind. Another way of looking at it would be that it eats the mind away.”
“Like Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Unfortunately, yes. Only this virus would work much faster. In hours instead of years. And when it’s done with the mind, it eats the body.”
“Can a virus do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll be able to say more if there are incidents of cross-species contamination. That would tell us how much of a mind you have to have in order to lose it. Are there zombie dolphins out in the Gulf of Mexico? Are there zombie chimps in the zoo or zombie killer whales in SeaWorld?”
“That would be something,” I said. “I wonder if a zombie whale would remember to come up for air.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Definitely food for thought.”
I saw a
“But that’s not really true, is it?” He turned to me and pushed his glasses back in place. It made him look like a fat little cherub. “As a cop, you’re on the front lines of morality. The really important details, the freedoms we have, or had, as Americans, are decided in the blink of an eye by men and women like you on every street in the country. When you’re called to act, you do it based on your training, sure, but you also act on your own personal standard of what’s right and wrong. I hope you live through this, Eddie, I really do. I hope your family lives through this. And I hope you realize that what you do in the next few days and weeks will go beyond mundane legal issues like search and seizure. It’s going to be about life and death. About humanity, as you put it.”
“You really like talking about this stuff, don’t you?”
“Of course,” he said. “And what better vehicle for it than the zombie? Imagine it, a being caught between life and death, deciding issues of life and death for the rest of us. There’s a sort of poetic symmetry in that, don’t you think?”
As he was talking I watched a man pull a woman’s leg off her body with his teeth and start to eat on the thigh. I looked for the poetic symmetry.
He didn’t notice though. He was on a roll.
“There’s more, of course, than just the philosophical side of it. I think a virus is causing this, like I told you, and that means we have to ask how it’s spread. Transmission of bodily fluids is the most likely culprit. Blood, for example. But, obviously, a bite will do it too. Maybe even a scratch, if the fingernail doing the scratching has the virus on it.”
“But how do you suppose it got out of Houston? From what it looked like on the TV, this is happening in a lot of places.”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “That’s something to look into later, for sure. But there are precedents, you know. The Black Death was spread by fleas on rats, and Typhoid Mary showed how a single infected person could start an epidemic. Maybe it’s fleas, or ticks, or a combination of insects. Fleas and mosquitoes, maybe.”
That didn’t sit well with me. I could shoot a zombie if I had to. Hell, I could shoot a whole army of them if I had to. But I couldn’t shoot a flea.
“Any idea on why it formed? The virus, I mean.”
“Well, that’s the question of the day, isn’t it? Could be any number of factors. Unsanitary conditions in the wake of the Houston hurricanes probably. Who knows, though? Maybe it’s not even a virus. Maybe it’s a bacteria. A super bacterium brought on by doctors over-prescribing antibiotics.”
“So what you’re saying is, you have absolutely no clue.”
“Basically, yeah. This is just me talking. One of the things that might help us though is the issue of cross-species contamination.”
“Like zombie cats and dogs?”
“Exactly!” He said it triumphantly, like he’d just won a convert to his cause, whatever that was. “Although I was going to come back to the issue of consciousness. Suppose it’s a virus that somehow thrives on the complex functions of the human mind. Another way of looking at it would be that it eats the mind away.”
“Like Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Unfortunately, yes. Only this virus would work much faster. In hours instead of years. And when it’s done with the mind, it eats the body.”
“Can a virus do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll be able to say more if there are incidents of cross-species contamination. That would tell us how much of a mind you have to have in order to lose it. Are there zombie dolphins out in the Gulf of Mexico? Are there zombie chimps in the zoo or zombie killer whales in SeaWorld?”
“That would be something,” I said. “I wonder if a zombie whale would remember to come up for air.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Definitely food for thought.”
I saw a
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