Love in the Time of Zombies

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Copyright © 2014 by Lynn Messina

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

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For zombie lovers everywhere

It all goes back to the moment a zombie catches fire in my living room.

The fire isn't my fault. It's Katya Yusenoff's. She's the one who wrote the article for
Zombopolitan
magazine called “Zombie Xanadu: 6 Tips for a Lively Date with the Living Dead,” which provides a few simple guidelines for the perfect evening. Among her recommendations: Light softly-scented candles. Put out flowers. Sauté cow's brains in an
herbes de Provence
sauce.

I followed every tip to the letter, and now the roses are wilted, my date is on fire, and I can't find my cat.

This disaster is entirely Katya's fault, but I really should have known better. Seventeen years after the H1Z1 virus turned 99.9999 percent of all human males into zombies, I know well enough that zombies aren't boyfriend material. They're putrefying lumps of rotting flesh that cause unnecessary traffic jams during the height of rush hour by lumbering into the street without looking both ways (or either way).

And yet. Katya's article had a winning, carefree tone that made dating a zombie seem like a madcap lark, a screwball comedy waiting for its Carole Lombard moment. She argued her case so well: Modern zombies
are
completely harmless to human females, they
are
widely available and they
aren't
afraid of commitment.

Okay, I thought. I'm an open-minded, empowered 23-year-old woman in the post-male era. I'm not afraid to try new things. Moreover, I'm a journalist. Trying new things is in my job description.

Well, this is certainly a new thing, I think, as the blaze sizzles up my zombie date's arm, and I stand there, trying to figure out what I should do first—put out the fire or find Twinkle Toes.

On paper, the former seems like the more pressing problem—obviously, I don't want my small Brooklyn apartment to go up in flames, especially with two pissy roommates. But given that H1Z1 zombies are moist lumps of decaying flesh, they are surprisingly hard to ignite. The fire is less a soaring conflagration than a slow smolder, which my date ignores as he continues to scrape cow's brain off herbed toast points, blissfully unaware of the potential risk to life and limb. His demeanor, of course, is the product of millions of dead neurons rotting in his brain rather than a composed approach to danger, but I still find the effect oddly comforting. He's like a gentleman drinking sherry on the deck of the
Titanic
while the ship takes on water.

Twinkle Toes, on the other hand, has millions of working neurons but uses only three or four at any given moment as a matter of principle. This makes her spectacularly stupid, and she showed not a speck of alarm at the putrid smell of my dining companion. Rather, she cozied up to Kaa the second I brought him home, wrapping herself around his legs and purring softly as if he were about to put down her food bowl.

Maybe she thought he
was
her food bowl.

Either way, she stayed by his side all through cocktail hour and at one point seemed poised to jump directly into his mouth.

Even she couldn't be that stupid. Still, I locked her in my bedroom just to be safe. But now the bedroom door is open, and Twinklie is nowhere to be seen, which is extremely unusual. She's usually the first to get underfoot when a crisis is occurring, either to be close to the action or to sabotage my efforts. (I like to think her motives are murky to her, too.)

It's impossible—well, extremely unlikely—that Kaa swallowed her whole while I was in the kitchen plating the
cervelle de boeuf Provençale
because I was gone for only a minute and zombies simply don't have the gross motor skills necessary for rapid movements. Furthermore, they're innately messy creatures. If Kaa had gobbled up Twinklie as an hors d'oeuvre, there would be incriminating cat hairs on his chin.

Kaa's arm crackles and sparks, and with a deep sigh, I reach for the flower vase and dump water on the smolder before the silk tablecloth catches fire. That was another one of Katya Useless's tips:
Don't stint on the table dressing. Use your finest china, silver, and linens exactly as you would for an unzombified human male so that you don't feel like dating a zombie is sloppy seconds. He might not notice the details, but you will.

Now my grandmother's damask tablecloth is entirely ruined—and not from the fire, either. No, it has oily bits of zombie flesh rubbed into its lovely pattern.

Thanks, Katya, I think as I get down on my hands and knees to look under the couch for Twinkle Toes.

Not there.

Goddamn it.

I lift the curtains, check the bathtub, and open the kitchen cabinets. Twinklie isn't in any of her usual hiding spots, and what just moments before seemed extremely unlikely inches its way up to somewhat possible.

“Fucking hell,” I mutter as my eyes settle on the cover of
Zombopolitan,
its bright, bold, and simple teaser “You + Zombie = Bliss” mocking me from the coffee table.

Stupid, clueless article. Clearly the writer has never dated a zombie in her entire life. Otherwise, she wouldn't tell you to take out your favorite things. And that cover image! A zombie frolicking in the ocean surf with his girlfriend! That's a complete fabrication by the art department. Everyone knows zombies don't take direction. Even with the new behavioral-modification drugs that improve zombie brain function, you can't get one to cradle a woman in his arms.

Even if you did, his arms would likely fall off.

I look under the bed, behind the door and in the dresser. As I pull apart my closet, I mentally compose my own list of tips for zombie-dating bliss:

One: Ditch the fancy duds. When having a zombie over for dinner, use easy-to-clean aluminum chairs so you don't get zombie guts on your furniture. Worried about comfort? Don't be. Comfort is in the mind of the beholder and zombies don't have minds.

Two: Can the silver. All flatware—even seemingly harmless spoons—are deadly weapons in the uncoordinated grip of a zombie. Serve finger food.

Three: Skip the mood lighting. Zombies love playing with fire. Literally. They think the flickering flame is actually a toy. If you must have a romantic atmosphere, use a flashlight.

Four: Keep it simple. Zombies eat brains. Any brain. Any time. You don't have to fancy them up with exotic spices. If you have an uncontrollable desire to Julia Child some toast points, invite your friends over for a girls' night in.

Five: Weed the garden. The putrescence released during decarboxylation wilts most flowers within an hour, so save those beautiful buds for a proper dinner party with your beautiful buds. If a centerpiece is an absolute must, arrange some dandelions in a clear plastic cup.

Six: Ignore tips one through five. Why the fuck should you date a zombie? You're a smart, funny, beautiful woman, not a mound of rotting flesh. Sure, there are only 344,923 or so healthy human males left on the planet, which makes them elusive and tricky to find. Many of them are movie stars or paid companions. But think about it: They're human and they're male. Without question, finding one is worth a little bit of effort. Maybe you're intimidated by the relentlessly negative statistics fed to us by the media—like the one we always hear that says a woman is more likely to get hijacked by a terrorist, staked to a bamboo pole in the Heilongjiang Province of Inner Mongolia, and have her spleen eaten by a saber-toothed tiger than meet a man. Don't be. That study used a restricted demographic, ignored several significant sociological developments, and severely overestimated the number of saber-toothed tigers in Inner Mongolia.

Thoroughly frustrated, I slam the closet doors and march into the living room. Kaa is gone. His chair is on its side and his napkin is in the middle of the floor. I follow the trail of arm ash to the kitchen to find my zombie date trying to open the microwave door, where a second serving of the
cervelle
is cooling. Twinkle Toes is on his left shoulder, trying to help.

The relief I feel is so intense, it's immediately supplanted with an equally strong sense of embarrassment and shame. I can't believe I actually brought a zombie to my house for dinner. I cooked for a rotting, smelly, decaying clump of flesh. No, not just cooked—slaved over the stove for this less-than-human being. Then I spent the rest of the evening worrying that he ate my cat.

Other people might be up for this but not me. Hattie Cross is too good to date an animated dead thing, even if it does mean achieving a long-held life goal of publishing a piece in Whirligig, the fun, irreverent, internationally famous section of
The
Xombie Review.

Hmmm.

Well, when you break it down like that—Whirligig, published, life goal—it doesn't seem like an entirely dismal proposition. Twinkle Toes is fine, so no harm done there, and I've learned vital information about myself: namely, that I will never date a zombie.

Calmer, I grab my phone and take a few selfies with Kaa and my cat. Then I shoot two dozen pics of the carnage wrought by following Katya Yusenoff's useless advice. I get a particularly good shot of Twinkle Toes licking the ash off Kaa's arm. The image roils my stomach, but I know good photojournalism when it makes me gag.

I open the microwave door and take out the
cervelle,
which is now soggy and starting to separate. Luckily, Kaa is no discerning gourmand and he eagerly, if lumberingly, follows me to the apartment door, down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. I place the dish on the garbage can near the corner and walk away without a backward glance.

As far as exit strategies go, it's pure improvisation, which I'm forced to do because Katya doesn't provide tips on how to end your zombie date gracefully. In her perfect little zombified world, your new rottie stays forever. You + Zombie + Dinner = Mated for Life.

I can't think of anything worse.

The Xombie Review
is the high-minded magazine you wish you had time to read. It arrives in your mailbox every Monday and sits on your dining room table or kitchen counter staring up at you, its colorful cartoon cover a rebuke to your inability to properly manage your time. Honestly, all you need is another 153 minutes a week and you'd be set.

You do, however, have the 20 minutes required to whip through Whirligig, with its arch tales of New York City life—and so do half a million other women. For this reason, getting an item in Whirligig is a hugely massive deal. It won't earn you gobs of money (or even any money, if you're an intern like me), but it will score you bragging rights and the attention of every editor and agent in town.

If you want to be a respected journalist, there's no better place to start.

Because I aspire to nothing more than respected journalist, I stop at Claudette's on the way into the office to pick up a dozen haute-cuisine doughnuts for Mehta Goldberg, senior editor and Whirligig gatekeeper.

In the month I've been interning at
The Xombie Review,
I've gotten almost two dozen doughnuts for Mehta. Every morning around 11 a.m., the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner craves a round of fried chocolate dough. It happens every day like clockwork, but Mehta doesn't recognize the pattern. Each time the yen overtakes her, it's as if it's the very first time it's ever happened. She'll buzz me on the intercom and say, “You know what I could really go for, Ms. Cross? A doughnut. Can you possibly scare one up?”

Both questions are rhetorical, but the latter drives me crazy because it implies that it's okay if I
can't
actually scare one up, that my best effort is all that's required to meet her expectations. In reality, however, even a global doughnut shortage would be no excuse for failure. I'd be expected to grow the wheat, separate it from the chaff, pound it into flour, and bake the doughnut myself, all within a 15-to-20-minute window. Luckily, the global zombie pandemic has yet to affect doughnut production, so I've had no trouble securing one daily—the coffee shop downstairs serves a decent, if a little mealy, variety. Sometimes, though, her requests are more esoteric. Last week she asked for a white panther cub for a photo shoot and tickets to the sold-out Duckbill Platypussies show at Radio City. I managed to get both, but it took the entire day and I may or may not have sold my mother into slavery.

It's hardly the writing experience I signed up for when I got the super-competitive internship.

Yet even with all the running, fetching, and mother enslaving, I know I'm extremely lucky to have this gig. Mehta Goldberg, for all her petty tyranny, is the best at what she does. She's the gold standard for journalism, and I'm her hand-picked protégé. She will mold me.

The only problem is, Mehta doesn't quite see our relationship as mentor-mentee. To her, it's more like editrix extraordinaire and random gopher assigned by a flunky in human resources. The hoops I had to jump through to impress the head of HR don't register on her radar at all.

But that's all about to change.

Eagerly, I sit down at my desk to begin my daily routine of filing, sorting, photocopying, scheduling, transcribing, and emailing. My to-do list is three Post-Its long and I try to cross off items with my usual efficiency, but I'm too busy watching the clock. Mehta isn't even here yet.

I shouldn't be here yet. My day doesn't officially start until 9:30,, but I was too excited to sleep.

Ordering myself to focus on a task to make time go faster, I pull up an email from Mehta with an interview she did with a harbor patrolwoman from Staten Island who runs seal-spotting trips on her days off. Mehta is writing about the return of seals to New York Harbor for an upcoming special issue. Wildlife is thriving in the waters all around Manhattan, a boon attributed to the H1Z1 plague, which had the simultaneous affect of reducing the world's population by almost half and effectively galvanizing the remaining 52.4 percent to actually address the issue of climate change. Carbon emissions are down to pre-1930s levels and continuing to drop.