The LONELY WALK-A Zombie Notebook by Billie Sue Mosiman Page B
Authors: Billie Sue Mosiman
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the flesh of my kind. Why should I doubt my good fortune, why check my pulse, feel for my heartbeat? I would not tempt fate, never again. I would get up and hurry back to my home, there to stay behind the walls until the army told us it was all right to come out. If it took two more years of waiting---the time minimum we'd been promised before there was a vaccine available--I didn't care, I'd never venture out again.
I could move a little, though the creaks and cracklings of my bones sent small thrills of worry through my brain. My clothes were torn and there was a nasty rippling series of bites on my legs and arms, even one on the back of my neck, and I could see congealed blood, but I wouldn't think about the infection. I thought I must be immune.
The only immune man in all the world because I was alive, surely I was alive for I felt alive. Dead wasn't just a numbness and a watering of the eyes and a few ligament strains, was it? Wouldn't my soul have fled had I really died? Wouldn't I be traveling through a tunnel toward light and peac€e and find those who had gone before me--my mother, my father, my two brothers, my grandparents?
Death could not be so simple as this.
Yet it was. It was.
But I didn't know that--or admit the possibility--for most of Saturday and Saturday night.
June 6
I crept to my house today. It was the first time I'd been back since my death. For days I couldn't do anything, but hide in shadows and dribble and beat the palms of my hands against my forehead. Once at my house, I joined the others at the door and stood there patting, patting at the wood, pressing my cold face there, moaning, trying to cry.
I cannot cry. I would weep all the time if I could. My eyes won't water anymore. My nose is dry. My juices are building inside, that's all I can think. Seeping all together inside, commingling, organs and blood coming together in one wet soggy mass.
Oh sweet Jesus.
I could not bear to speak, to tell Carrie inside that it was me, that I had joined in the ranks of the dead and that I could never again be with her or see my daughter's face. Because she wouldn't have me. Though I'd never hurt them! I have noticed a hunger awakening, but I intend to ignore it. It's a small hunger, a marble-size coal in my belly, and a sizzling in my brain. But I will ignore it forever. I hope never to sink so low as to feel a compulsion to betray my own kind, to cannibalize them. But there's no way for Carrie to know that or to trust me.
I had thought--let me tell you--I had thought the zombies created by the infection that took their lives yet let the bodies walk and terrorize the rest of us...I had thought there must be a soul and their souls had left them. I am not so sure now. I think there must not be a soul since there is no God, there is no hereafter, no tunnel of light, no meeting with dead loved ones, and no reward, good or bad. There seems to be nothing, but this aching, this wondering horror at what it has all come down to, this sad, unconquerable impetus to go on no matter what. And this gently gnawing hunger for the taste of blood on my tongue.
There was real death and darkness before the virus that has devastated the world and now there is walking death that has taken its place. But there is no soul.
I wish I didn't have to tell you this.
I wish it were not true.
I would die forever and enter that darkness except there is something that causes me to nurse the wish to survive. At all costs. Even though I am cold and numb, I can't cry and I can't find joy again. I still want to go on with this tired old beaten body for as long as I can. You see, I have this hope. A small one, but it keeps me out of the soldiers' line of fire and away from the depots where they congregate in platoons readying for search-and-destroy missions. My hope is that there might be another zombie like me. Somewhere. One who understands that he or she is dead and what it means. If there is just one more of us, it might
I could move a little, though the creaks and cracklings of my bones sent small thrills of worry through my brain. My clothes were torn and there was a nasty rippling series of bites on my legs and arms, even one on the back of my neck, and I could see congealed blood, but I wouldn't think about the infection. I thought I must be immune.
The only immune man in all the world because I was alive, surely I was alive for I felt alive. Dead wasn't just a numbness and a watering of the eyes and a few ligament strains, was it? Wouldn't my soul have fled had I really died? Wouldn't I be traveling through a tunnel toward light and peac€e and find those who had gone before me--my mother, my father, my two brothers, my grandparents?
Death could not be so simple as this.
Yet it was. It was.
But I didn't know that--or admit the possibility--for most of Saturday and Saturday night.
June 6
I crept to my house today. It was the first time I'd been back since my death. For days I couldn't do anything, but hide in shadows and dribble and beat the palms of my hands against my forehead. Once at my house, I joined the others at the door and stood there patting, patting at the wood, pressing my cold face there, moaning, trying to cry.
I cannot cry. I would weep all the time if I could. My eyes won't water anymore. My nose is dry. My juices are building inside, that's all I can think. Seeping all together inside, commingling, organs and blood coming together in one wet soggy mass.
Oh sweet Jesus.
I could not bear to speak, to tell Carrie inside that it was me, that I had joined in the ranks of the dead and that I could never again be with her or see my daughter's face. Because she wouldn't have me. Though I'd never hurt them! I have noticed a hunger awakening, but I intend to ignore it. It's a small hunger, a marble-size coal in my belly, and a sizzling in my brain. But I will ignore it forever. I hope never to sink so low as to feel a compulsion to betray my own kind, to cannibalize them. But there's no way for Carrie to know that or to trust me.
I had thought--let me tell you--I had thought the zombies created by the infection that took their lives yet let the bodies walk and terrorize the rest of us...I had thought there must be a soul and their souls had left them. I am not so sure now. I think there must not be a soul since there is no God, there is no hereafter, no tunnel of light, no meeting with dead loved ones, and no reward, good or bad. There seems to be nothing, but this aching, this wondering horror at what it has all come down to, this sad, unconquerable impetus to go on no matter what. And this gently gnawing hunger for the taste of blood on my tongue.
There was real death and darkness before the virus that has devastated the world and now there is walking death that has taken its place. But there is no soul.
I wish I didn't have to tell you this.
I wish it were not true.
I would die forever and enter that darkness except there is something that causes me to nurse the wish to survive. At all costs. Even though I am cold and numb, I can't cry and I can't find joy again. I still want to go on with this tired old beaten body for as long as I can. You see, I have this hope. A small one, but it keeps me out of the soldiers' line of fire and away from the depots where they congregate in platoons readying for search-and-destroy missions. My hope is that there might be another zombie like me. Somewhere. One who understands that he or she is dead and what it means. If there is just one more of us, it might
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