Zombie Pulp (10 page)

“Emily!”
Mother said, slapping the carton from her cold white hands. “You can’t eat that! It’s yucky! It’s full of germs!”

“I’m hungry,” Emily said.

And then she heard footsteps coming down the stairs and knew it was George. She could smell his cologne and it was disgusting. But there was a good, yummy odor there as well. Some reeking juice, perhaps, from thawing meat he had dripped on his sock. Just a speck, no doubt, but Emily could smell it and it made her mouth water.

Mother heard George’s approach, but too late to do much about it. Her eyes wide and frightened, she looked over at Emily. “Hide!” she whispered. “Get in the pantry.”

So Emily did.

George entered the kitchen. “Christ, Liz, where have you been? You had me worried sick.”

“There was some shopping to do,” Mother said.

“At this hour?”

Emily could sense Mother’s apprehension. She could smell the sweat that ran down the back of her neck, hear the steady tom-tom beat of her heart. “Some places are open twenty-four hours,” Mother said, thinking quickly.

Like cemeteries,
Emily thought.

George grumbled a bit. “What’s that smell in here?” he asked. “Smells like something died.”

Emily giggled under her breath.

“It’s…it’s the garbage,” Mother said. “I was just going to take it out.”

Oh, Mother’s juices were running hot now, her nerves jangling with electricity. Her palms were sweaty and her lips quivering. George had her very upset. Emily thought it was funny. It was a game Mother was playing, a gag she was playing on George.

George did not seem to like it.

He stepped farther into the kitchen. Emily could see him from the darkness of the pantry, hidden there as she was amongst the shelves of canned goods and dried pasta, the bags of potatoes and onions that smelled very sharp, though not unpleasant.

“Are you all right, Liz? You don’t look so good. Do you feel all right? You know what the doctor said. You’ve been through an awful lot, you need your rest.”

“I’m fine,” Mother told him. “Why wouldn’t I be just fine?”

Emily grinned from her hiding place. Though the pantry was pungent with the odors of dried food and vegetables, she was smelling that drop of juice on George’s sock. It was intoxicating.

“Liz…c’mon, honey, let’s talk, okay? Tell me what’s on your mind. Is it Emily? Let’s talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Mother told him, her voice growing cross.

George went over to her. “Honey, please. She’s gone. We have to accept that, we have to get on with—”

“She’s not gone!”
Mother said, her eyes filled with tears, her head shaking from side to side. “She’s not gone at all!”

“Liz…”

Mother was right and George was wrong, but he didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand any of it because it was part of the game. Emily decided it was time to teach him the game, so then he, too, would know. She stepped out of the pantry, her eyes huge and her pale mouth grinning. “Peekaboo!” she said.

George literally jumped and swung his head around. He looked and his eyes widened and his mouth opened and his head began to thrash violently back and forth. His ruddy complexion bleached to the color of new bone. In the split second that realization settled in, he began to breathe very fast, in and out, as if he could get no air.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no! Oh, dear God, no! It can’t be! IT CANNOT FUCKING BE! IT CAN’T—”

He was scared and Emily knew it.

Just scared out of his mind, his heart racing and his lungs rasping, a sharp and foul odor of fear-sweat coming off him. Something Emily could smell just as a wild animal can. She did not know, though, if he was really afraid or just pretending like they did with their yearly Halloween games.

So she jumped out at him and hissed, baring her teeth and making her fingers into claws.

George screamed and fell into Mother who kept trying to explain it all, crying and choking, her voice wavering and completely mad.
This is what they’d both wanted, wasn’t it? This is what they’d both needed…Emily back with them. And now she was. And wasn’t that wonderful? Wasn’t that an absolute miracle?
WELL, WASN’T IT?
These were the things Mother kept saying…or trying to…but George was not hearing her. He was only trying to get away as Mother held onto him, shouting louder and louder about what a miracle it all was. And then they were fighting. George was out of his mind and Mother was trying to hold him and he was hitting her, calling her names and she was crying and shaking and it was an ugly scene.
“This isn’t normal! This isn’t natural! Look at that fucking thing! That’s not your daughter! That’s not Emily! It’s a thing from a fucking grave!”

They fell to the floor fighting and Emily did not like their fighting. George was going to be trouble. So Emily pulled a metal tenderizing mallet from the cupboard and brought it down on his head, loving the pulpy sound his skull made. She brought it down again and again and again, blood spattering against her face and standing out in sharp contrast against her white, seamed skin.

“No, Emily!” Mother cried out.
“No, no, no! Stop that! Stop it!”

So Emily stopped and George’s body just lay there, very still and quiet. Emily stared down at it, liking him better this way. Now he wasn’t causing trouble. Now he was happy. Emily looked at the end of the mallet. There was blood dripping from it, brain globs, strands of hair. She brought it to her mouth and pressed her tongue against it. It tasted good, so she began licking the stuff off and spitting out the hairs. It was tasty…though much too warm to be truly delicious.

“Emily! Emily! Emily!” Mother cried, afraid again. Angry, maybe, and unhappy. “Don’t do that! Don’t do that!
Do you hear me?”

Emily heard her. “But I like to,” she said.

That made something snap inside of Mother.

She pressed herself up against the refrigerator, sobbing and trembling and a funny look came over her. She began to talk to herself, staring but not blinking at all. Laughing sometimes so Emily knew things were all right. Mother was just going crazy again like she had when Emily had first come out of the grave. Poor Mother. If Emily had been capable of compassion, she might have felt sorry for her. Mother just sat there, that terrible look on her face like part of her mind, probably an important part, had been sucked down into some black, bottomless gulf.

“Watch me,” Emily told her and went on her knees next to George’s corpse.

George’s head was open and things were leaking out, clear things and red things and gray things and clumping things. Emily dipped her fingers into his open skull like it was a fondue pot, the kind they’d had at her seventh birthday party last year. She dipped her fingers and licked them off. Everything was tasty. Her hunger was so severe that finger-licking was not enough. She gripped George’s skull and broke it apart with her fingers, licking at the sweet red jelly inside, sucking up strands of tissue and the buttery soft folds of gray matter.

Mother just stared off into space, her mouth moving but no words coming out.

Emily cleaned out the skull until she was full. Inside, it was clean and sparkling and white like a freshly-washed pot. There was more good stuff, but Emily was full. For now.

Her bloodless face smeared with gore, Emily just stood over Mother, smiling at her.

Finally, Mother’s eyes began to focus. “Oh, Emily,” she said, her teeth chattering. “You can’t…you can’t
eat the dead.”

“Yes, I can,” Emily told her. “I like the taste.”

*

Mother did not like to do what she did next, but she did it because she had to. She had to protect Emily and she would do whatever that took. She loved Emily so much and she kept telling her that. But it was lost on Emily, because whenever she thought of people like Mother, there was only coldness inside her, ice crystals and graveyard earth, nothing more…except hunger.

“George did not understand, Emily,” Mother said as she dragged the body to the back door. “I wanted him to understand, but he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t understand how wonderful this all is. And we’ll miss him, but we can’t have him causing trouble, now can we?”

Emily shook her head. Already she understood that she did not like people who caused trouble.

Mother took care of everything.

She dragged George’s body out into the backyard and dug a deep hole in the flower garden and then put him in it. It was a nice hole, Emily thought, there in the rich black soil beneath the spreading limbs of the old oak tree where Emily’s tree swing still hung. She wanted to lie down in there with George, be buried with him. All that dirt would be nice, but Mother said no.

Then Mother locked Emily in her room and went to her own.

Emily sat on the floor, thinking of cold things, marble stones and wilting funeral sprays, dead leaves blown through churchyards and secret buried boxes filled with good things to eat. Other than that, she just looked around her room in the darkness. Mother needed lights and Emily used to, but now she saw very good in the dark. Just like a cat. She looked at her toys and her games and none of those things interested her anymore. She had other interests now.

It took Mother a long time to fall asleep that night and Emily could hear her crying and talking to herself. While Emily waited she looked at some of her books in the moonlight coming through the rain-spattered windowpane. She had lots of picture books. Princesses and cuddly animals and little girls running and playing. She liked the pictures of the little girls. They made her hungry.

When Mother was asleep, Emily slipped out her window and went out into garden. The air was chilly and moist and she liked it. On her hands and knees, she dug George up and he was nice and cold. And very yummy. Especially the meat of his throat and all the stuff inside his belly. When she was done, Emily covered him back up because she understood that certain things—like lunch and supper and breakfast—had to be kept secret.

Emily liked secrets.

She knew lots of things other people didn’t.

But she would never tell.

*

The next few days, Emily and Mother settled into their new life together. It was not exactly like it was before. But Emily did not mind. She liked to watch Mother and her craziness. The way she talked when there was no one in the room and the way she sometimes cried. Her eyes were very red and her hands shook. Sometimes she would look at Emily like she was disgusted and other times she would look at her like she was afraid of her. Emily did not mind, because Mother kept telling her that she loved her and Emily believed her.

Mother took a lot of pills and drank from one of George’s bottles of whiskey. She had quit smoking last year because Emily had asked her to, because smoking could kill you, they said at school. At the time, Emily did not want Mother to die, but now that did not seem like a bad thing. It was a fun thing, really. Regardless, Mother was smoking again. She smoked one cigarette after the other and when the phone rang, she sometimes cried out. She would answer it, but her voice was always very funny. Emily went to answer it once herself, but Mother stopped her just in time.

Still, there were fun games to play.

Mother told Emily that if someone came to the door, she was to go hide down in the cellar. Emily had never liked the cellar. Especially the old coal bin with its dirt floor and dank smell and stone walls threaded with spider webs. But the new Emily liked it just fine. She spent a lot of time in the coal bin. The door was big and heavy and it creaked when you opened it. Just like a crypt. Emily liked to play down there. She liked to pretend that it was her tomb. She would lay on the dirt floor and cross her arms over her chest just like dead people on TV. She dug herself a grave and sometimes she laid in it. She took her old dolls down there and buried them too.