Consuming Flesh

They were burning bodies in the quad. I could smell it. A bit like barbeque, almost, though more sickly sweet. Some people were worried that inhaling the fumes would only spread the infection, but the post-doc students assured us that it was impossible. Fire killed it; the infection couldn’t take the heat.

Over in the park, they were still rounding up the bodies, wearing full-body isolation suits, dragging the corpses into piles. Sarah and I were taking a break. We sat on the steps of the architecture building, watching the work. Technically we were on patrol, but there really wasn’t any point anymore. Still, there was a watchman on top of the nearby Briggs dorm, rifle slung casually behind his back, so I guess normalcy was far from being achieved.

“This is it, huh?” It was more of a statement then a question, Sarah just kind of spoke, handing the bottle of water back to me.

“Mmm.”

“Twelve weeks. It’s the longest I’ve ever had a boyfriend.”

This was surprise: “Seriously?”

She had never looked like the type of girl who couldn’t hold onto a guy. She practically had to beat them off with a stick.

Then literally, with an axe.

This was how we met, in the French quarter, as I knocked off a guy’s head with a lead pipe, spraying her with brains.

“Oh,” was all she said, still holding her drink.

“He was a zombie.” I said.

“Oh,” she said again.

They were shambling down Bourbon, a massive grey heaving mob, unnoticed in the darkness of night until they started chomping on people. Now people were mostly screaming and running.

“We should go.”

“Yes.”

Now things were more calm. Relatively.

“I just think it’s time we see other people, you know?”

She started crying then. It was awkward. I’d seen this girl toss a grenade into a group of fleshy grey bodies, and now she was crying.

She had started teaching classes by week three on hand-to-hand, holding a combat knife and demonstrating on a CPR dummy we’d jacked from the college medical service.

“Stab through the eye, into the brain. If you get the right angle, you’ll go through the ocular nerve, miss the bone entirely and it’ll slide in easy, just like cutting open a potato!” It sounded like a cooking show. Bam! No more eye.

Friday of week two, after patrol, we’d had sex for the first time, and as we basked in the afterglow she’d whispered softly, “If you become a zombie, I’ll let you munch my brains.”

The pain was starting to intensify now, and I felt what the post-docs had described, the sort of searing lockjaw and stiffness that had pervaded my nightmares. I got up and started walking away, approaching the park. Running low on time as my vision flashed crimson.

One of the workers on disposal was starting to pour kerosene over the bodies, it was cheaper than gasoline.

“Excuse me; may I borrow your pistol?” I lifted up the sleeve of my jacket, where a tiny row of bite marks had begun to fester and consume my flesh.