The Zombie Manifesto

The Zombie Manifesto

A Novel

By James Peters

The voices in my head tell me the following story is true, and the voices never lie.

Dr. Fundament Fathom

Chief of Surgery

Dark Matter Corporation

Chapter 1

I am an unclean beast from the forest primeval. Uniquely qualified to explain how eating a live rat requires much faster attack skills than consuming more passive types of vermin. For one thing, they squirm like the dickens, and worse yet, quite often, they bite back. Eating an already dead rat is out of the question. After all, I’m not a barbarian for goodness sake. With larger beasts, I like to start at the genitals and savage my way into their warm entrails. A rat presents a different challenge. You’d never start on that end, never with their tiny boy parts and that slithery tail. My advice, grab a rodent firmly around the chest and neck and bite down swift and hard, not allowing their sharp incisors to attach to whatever soft flesh they might chomp in return, like your lips and tongue or the soft fleshy insides of your cheeks or the uvula at the back of your throat. Be a better biter. Chomp down hard, swift and sure. Spit out the head and suck the blood and guts straight from the squirming torso. Squeeze and inhale to enjoy every giblet before discarding the fur. The word I would use is devour. Devour the entrails. If you can find a more succulent creature, by all means, enjoy. When times are hard, eat whatever you can snatch. But for chomping on a live and writhing rodent, crunch clean and hard at the neck, severing the head in one go, enjoying the fount. It’s the only way.

Chapter 2

Cool white hands smoothed the tight black leather snugging my naked frame even though my second skins were smooth like me. With pleasure my hands pressed hard against my own female flesh. Feel me?

Chapter 3

I would never dream of imposing myself upon the attention of the reading public were it not for the importunities emanating from several of my closest friends. I should have otherwise remained silent concerning the particulars of my premature death. The passing of my erstwhile hearty companions also created a good deal of consternation, I know, and so I’ve determined to do the best I can to set people’s minds at ease by painting a happier hue over the sad and somber scenes I last related.

From the start one fact I feel most compelled to establish revolves around the circumstances of my own demise. A certain number of assiduous investigators will insist to the present day my death resulted from exposure to ultra violet rays mixed with industrial toxins including nuclear radiation seeping from the myriad dilapidated power plants falling into disrepair across the Deadland. Others with equal adamancy will maintain my poor dog’s body boiled within the furnace of the dying time and expelled its last breath resulting from extreme heat exhaustion and dehydration. What possible difference could it possibly make whether I passed on with a bang or a whimper when the one incontrovertible truth remains: I did in fact die.

The killer red sunlight grew brighter and hotter until shouts and cries arose from among the prostrate crowd lying elbow to elbow with me on the first floor of the hospice like some finny tribe stranded on a sand spit when the river runs dry causing their gills and mouths to pump in breathless agony. My mind went blank, my favorite part, and although I can’t recollect it, the part I’m most thankful for, the perfectly dark oblivion. I couldn’t have been happier. Nobody bothered to enquire whether or not I might actually want to be revived.

When I awoke into my new surroundings the first thing I understood was that I was naked. Cold and clammy lying on a stainless-steel operating table and only a loin cloth covering my middle zone and no covering at all over my chest fallen grotesquely flat. Every nerve ending in my body tingled with the urge to flex and stretch, yet without having to be told I kept my head still. Hands grasped my body at strategic points up and down my frame and though their faces were hidden behind surgical masks I immediately recognized them as Hater’s geek scientific buddies from the Nika and Nasty fan club.

I can’t believe she keeps waking up.

Hold still, Nika. Try to lie perfectly still and don’t move.

Oh, I tried to groan, how can I lie still when life is busy purging death from my limbs? I gurgled and howled like a newborn. Then I thought the better of my exertions. Was I fighting for or against life? The poetic line recurred to me about being half in love with easeful death. Relapsing into repose I beseeched the void to obliterate my consciousness and for a second time the void obliged.

Chapter 4

Time holds scant meaning for the patient emerging from ether. Darkness enveloped me when I next awoke but not the eternal type of sleep I longed for. Barely perceptible light from a mysterious source glinted off every metal surface and as the glow resolved my view I realized I lay not in the morgue but rather in an elaborate operating theater. The possibility I had undergone a radical double mastectomy passed through my mind. Maybe the medical establishment had allowed their students a little practice time. Bitter tears of resentment against those who presumed to hack away my extremities to preserve a life I’d already done with sprouted from the corners of my eyes. Afraid of what else I might find altered I cautiously investigated beneath the draped towel and to my astonishment took well in hand, as though I owned it myself, Hader Glascock’s prodigious male member.

Instead of bringing in the whole math club to greet my resurrection they chose three representative wise men who crept into the room and positioned themselves along one side of the operating table.

The lead boy stood the shortest of the three. His slick black hair flowed towards the front of his face before sweeping back again into a gorgeous pompadour. On the bridge of his nose leaned forward a thick pair of black plastic glasses with sharp angular edges resembling the fender clips on a late model Cadillac. With that pale cherubic face he would remain a teenager well into midlife. The second boy wore his reddish hair close cropped. At first I mistook him for a sadist until he spoke in a sweet thoughtful voice and I realized his sharp blue eyes and ginger freckles weren’t entirely his fault. The third boy turned out to be the real doosey. Owl glasses, bed head oblivious to comb or brush and the tactless expressions of a home-schooled retard. During the course of our interview I gained the impression he had forced his way into the operating theater uninvited.

How are you feeling, Nika? Flash Cadillac inquired, avoiding eye contact by examining my other suitors instead.

You should see the other guy, I said, and the three snickered and snorted as only nerds can do.

You’re recovering quite nicely, said Ginger Rogers, and his simple sincerity and compassion made him a welcome ambassador.

None of these pleasantries has anything to do with the matter at hand, though, do they?

One never knows, I said, straining my eyeballs to take in the disagreeable third member of this welcoming committee and catching sight of that hair and those goggles and the leering jaw full of crooked teeth I decided he wasn’t worth the effort and closed my eyes against that tone of voice.

How’s your head feel? Flash asked.

Opening my eyes I realized I may have slept a little. I found his head poised directly over mine.

I don’t feel like I can move it, I said.

No, don’t try to move. Lie still as you can. Remain stationary. He straightened up and turned to his colleagues. It does look good, though.

It’s healing quite nicely, Rogers said, and I realized they were no longer talking to me.

Must be really frustrating not to be able to move your head.

Be nice, Connor. You’re not even supposed to be in here.

Don’t patronize me. I can be in here if I want. I helped as much as anyone.

Don’t be mean. She’s waking up from major surgery.

I don’t remember when exactly the world was taken over by teenagers.

Nika, do me a favor and wiggle your fingers. Okay, good. Now wiggle your toes. Excellent. Can you open your eyes again?

I didn’t realize they were shut.

Keep your head still and follow my finger using only your eyes. Good. Any blurriness?

Yeah, everything’s blurry and double.

Pretty sure that will go away after a few days and you’ll be able to focus better. Any headache or nausea?

Nope.

No headache at all?

Nope. My brain feels cold, I said, closing my eyes again to escape the uncertain contours of the room.

Notice she said her brain feels cold, and not head, Connor said.

Rogers sighed with strained patience.

We had to put a copper plate in your head, Flash blurted out. We would have preferred titanium but copper was all we could find.

Why did you put a plate in my head? I don’t remember asking you to do that, or giving permission, I protested, trying not to panic.

We don’t need permission to save a life, Conner said. All life is sacred.

Just tell her, Rogers whispered. Explain what happened.

Yes, by all means, explain what happened, I said, in part to stop them from whispering as though I wasn’t lying right there and couldn’t hear every word they were saying.

Well, you died, Flash said. In that last heat wave. In the hospice. You boiled to death, basically. Along with everybody else. At least we think you did. We’re pretty sure you did. Your body was riddled with cancer. So it may have been that as well. We’re not sure. Not that it matters. We’d been collecting cadavers from that particular hospice for weeks. Naturally when we saw your body and recognized it was you we decided to do something about it. So we immediately put your body on ice and brought it back here.

Where’s here?

The research facility. You know, the one Glascock was living in when you came to fetch him.

The one that moron set fire to the morning you left, Connor explained.

I seem to remember something about that incident, I said. We were already on our way out when we heard the commotion.

You could call it a commotion alright, Connor snorted.

She just did, Rogers chided.

The fire gutted the inside of the facility that day, which in the long run wasn’t all bad, Flash said.

Yeah, it drove the priests away. A major improvement. They left the premises soon after troopers, Conner added.

Their leaving freed us up to do a lot more of our own original research. Without any more outside interference our work has progressed rapidly, Flash said.

They lost their funding. So my Dad said he’d fund their research if I got to help.

And you do get to help, but you’re not in charge, Ginger hissed between clenched teeth.

I know I’m not in charge. Who said anything about being in charge? I said I get to help.

You’re not helping right now.

Nobody asked you, Rogers.

Your father must be a real Powersby, funding medical research, I offered to intercede.

Ya Think?

The shock wave of his response made me grimace.

Look what you did! Ginger whispered fiercely.

I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to.

Your voice was a tad loud just then.

Are you feeling sensitive to noise? Flash didn’t appear to be embroiled in the bickering going on between the other two.

No, just that particular noise then.

I said I was sorry. What more do you want?

Not exactly knocking me out with your sincerity, dude. I rotated my eyeballs in Flash’s direction so he would know I wasn’t addressing him, and struggling to concentrate, I closed my eyes. So you brought me here to your reconstituted lab under new management. Care to explain to me what’s the deal with my body?

Your old body was no good anymore. Like I said, full of cancer, so we found you a new body and performed a brain transplant.

A brain transplant, I repeated, the way you do when you can’t believe you heard someone correctly the first time. And whose body am I in now?

Your old friend’s: Hader Glascock.

You took my old brain out and you transplanted it into Hater’s body?

Yes we did. Isn’t that great? After his untimely demise… He shot himself… We know, Connor… After that we thought, what a perfect match. His body was on ice already. Yours came in soon afterward. What a great opportunity, a ravaged body with an above average brain, and the brainless corpse belonging to our lifelong friend and mentor.

Did it never occur to you to put my brain into the body of another woman? I knew my annoyance was pointless but sometimes the emotions hold sway.

An embarrassed silence ensued for a few moments before Flash finally spoke up. Actually, it did. We considered putting your brain into the body of your other friend, the lovely Nadezhda, but her system had been too poisoned by toxins. Unscheduled abortions can be ugly. Whereas Hater’s body was in mint condition.

Not counting the gaping hole in the back of his cranium, of course.

For goodness’ sake, Conner.

What? It’s true. That’s where the copper plate came in handy, and I supplied the copper, by the way.

But you didn’t fashion it.

It didn’t occur to any of you bright young fellows to search for another female body? You had a whole hospice full of dead and dying people. Didn’t it occur to you I might actually like being a woman?

But you were a lesbian before. You liked women. So now you can like women all you want.

I enjoyed being a woman who likes other women.

Don’t listen to him, Nika, Flash interposed, Your sexual orientation had nothing to do with our final decision. Hater’s cadaver proved optimal. We found out about his death almost right away and froze it before hardly any deterioration had taken place. A day had gone by before we managed to take custody of poor Nadezhda’s body, and as far as the cadavers from the hospice go, well, there weren’t any good ones to choose from. Not after the hunger and the heat got to them.

Not like Hater’s.

No, none like his. And gee, I don’t know, we did it for old time’s sake, ya know? Hater would have wanted it this way.

Hater says to tell you you’re a meddling fool, Connor. I used his name though we’d never been formally introduced.

He does? Flash leaned in closer. How do you know?

He’s in here with me, I said, squeezing my eyes shut again to block out so much disagreeable input.

A technical discussion followed mostly between Ginger and Flash with Conner making the occasional unwanted interjection and I found myself unable and hence disinterested in following the arguments surrounding the possible vegetable origin of the voices in my head. From what I could gather they transplanted my brain into the bone cavern Hater’s brain had recently vacated in such haste and they saw no reason to scrape clean the pumpkin’s insides clear down to the skull but instead left the remaining portions after the rest took flight to act as a kind of cushion for my own grey matter to rest on like the Queen of Reason upon her throne having no way of knowing this type of skullduggery would eventually lead to a mind meld resurrecting of Hater’s consciousness as a junior partner.

Their colloquy came to an end and they turned their attentions my way once more and Conner blurted out what the other two in the kindness and decency of their bedside manner had avoided, She could also be plain-old crazy.

The shock and consternation of the other two and Conner’s subsequent banishment from the operating theater belied a sense of panic on their part greater than mere concern over the delicacy of my invalid state, as though a truth too horrible to name, a possibility too revolting to digest, had been uttered.

They harried the villain out of my room and then those two Percivals returned to my bedside and resumed their vigil. At that point the noise and confusion had about worn me down to a frazzle and I begged their leave to rest my mind for a while in private repose. To my request they immediately acquiesced. They weren’t fooling anybody, though. I could tell they were themselves dreadfully anxious to know the answer to the indelicate question Honor Bright had posed. For the time being and for reasons obvious I decided not to give them satisfaction yet concerning the subject of my sanity. Keeping mum seemed the circumspect move until I might better collect my thoughts. Hater agreed I shouldn’t say anything more right away.

Left to my own vices I lay for a while doing my best to hold my head perfectly still. Considering the number of tubes plugged into my body, or my new body, Hater’s old one, I didn’t have a whole lot of room to maneuver. Sleep overtook me unawares and I drifted through a garden landscape where I wandered naked and unashamed sporting a strap on equipped with a unicorn horn. The flowers in the magic garden opened their petals desirous of penetration but for some reason I was loathe to accommodate them. When I awoke I experienced a sense of longing and regret, which was odd, considering it was only a dream. What was the sense in regretting the instant replay button pushed on my history? My whole life passed before my eyes and yet I wasn’t terribly interested.

At some point in every convalescence the patient realizes the crisis has passed and she is going to recover. For me the moment came when I could no longer lie still. I had to get up and move around or I would indeed go insane. I was sick and tired of the feeder tubes glucose saline morphine drip stuck with needles into my arm. Hater explained how to pop the feeder tubes apart while leaving the needles imbedded. Following his instructions I uncorked myself and raised up on my elbows. My neck strained to support the egghead weight of my reconstituted cranium. Rather than wait to gauge the full extent of my fragility I fought inertia’s opposition and sat up by swinging my legs over the side of the bed and clenching my teeth against swooning. Hater chattered half a dozen admonitions along the lines of ‘hold steady’ and ‘be careful’ and the like until I lost patience and told him to keep still. He mumbled a remark I didn’t catch the meaning of, although the tone told me I’d wounded his feelings. I suppose he felt unnerved being along for the voyage without having any hand in the actual navigation.

Let me sit here a minute and get my equilibrium, I pleaded, gripping the edge of the mattress and squeezing my eyes shut while I balanced my head, carefully poised.

You’d think they could have found a better metal than copper, Hater said.

You weren’t there to supervise them, I responded, trying to make up for any hurt I may have caused. He was my best friend after all.

You’re steady enough now. Try standing up.

Sliding toes first to the icy parquet floor I regained my claim to bipedalism.

Baby’s first steps, I said, in a lame attempt at humor to bolster my own spirits.

Know where you’re going?

I was thinking the bathroom might prove an ennobling goal.

Good call. It’s through the door on the left over there.

Soreness of nerve and muscle radiated from every fiber of my frame. About half way to my intended destination queasiness erupted and a bile gob flopped passed my lips producing a yellow splotch splattering on the floor.

That was ugly, I said aloud, trying to catch my breath.

No argument here.

The door to the latrine opened outward requiring awkward maneuvering. Without falling over I managed to enter the bathroom where I received an awful fright by catching sight of my reflection in a full length mirror. The confrontation with my own image caused a major crisis of identity. When I looked down in the general blur I saw a man’s appendage hanging pendulous, stomach and chest both flat. When I blinked and looked again I saw my old self, the girls firm and perky, the round hips, the soft slight belly. No matter how much I pondered and examined my physiology I couldn’t resolve the disparity between what I saw and how I felt.

The greatest shock came from the alteration in the appearance of my physiognomy. The eyes had turned lewd green, the nose less bulbous more aquiline. Smiling revealed my teeth had turned pearl white with the tint of silver that hue implies and they appeared larger because the gum line had receded and turned black. A squirming red devil of a tongue much larger than I remembered belonging to either Hater or me flickered forth so maniacally I embarrassed myself by opening my mouth as wide as it would go and waggled her about in midair. You could cause a lot of pleasurable discomfort with a rotator as long as this wiggle worm. The front of my head bespoke Venus; the rearview summoned Mars. Those boys hadn’t been joking about the copper plate. This replacement felt snug as a skullcap as though I had been the one to blow my stack. My deranged black hair grew from my head swooping up and back like a triceratops shield and then it dropped and hung loosely down my back in lengths longer than it had ever reached before. I preferred the memory image to the downward glance, though you may take me as you wish. Mighty Hermaphrodite. Hater laughed and told me I was crazy.

Dude, we need to talk. I mean, of all things, suicide?

I prefer to think of it as euthanasia. Nasty was gone. You were on your way out. I didn’t see the point of waiting around by myself for my own slow and painful death. I took the Roman way.

I think euthanasia is Greek.

Don’t be smarty. You know what I mean.

Yes. I understand. Well, here we are again, my friend.

Never in my life had I presumed to adopt the title of Proper Lady. Personally, I never thought it a label worth striving for, considering the way men wielded it with such a proprietary air. Approaching the stall the reproach or admonition ‘a lady always sits down’ recurred to me; although I can hardly be criticized for my curiosity now aroused at the prospect of standing up while making water.

I positioned and repositioned my feet on either side of the commode. Hands on hips awaiting impatiently one event when another stream made its debut and between these two streams of consciousness I didn’t know which to believe. As though with a mind of its own the constant companion let loose a torrent cascading into the bowl churning a frothy slip of chemical bubbles. For a moment the streams’ cessation made me think the shows over but like one of those Beatles’ songs from days of old fading out completely only to reprise the tune a moment later the peckerwood had an afterthought of sorts. Then and only then was the job complete. As a precaution I waited in case another encore hovered in the wings. A tight spasm gave the clearest indication the show was over. Wanting to take pride in ownership I availed myself of a few squares of course grey paper for blotting the quill. Hater’s spirit, aghast I would perform an ablution so unmanly, trembled with a force shaking my frame.

Stop doing that, I grumbled, shuffling away without flushing because I didn’t trust my sense of balance well enough to bend over and depress the handle. Hater had never taken my minor moody emotional outbursts seriously before and now with my brain resting on top of what was left of his brain his genial spirit hadn’t changed. Of course, when we first started hanging out he could be a real brat. Once he started on the knowledge uploads though his demeanor softened and then more often than not he would respond to one of my minor tirades by putting his arm around me, a tactile move never failing in its comforting effect. Hater said I should go lie down before I fell down and I obeyed his injunction.

Easing myself onto the bed proved as dicey as leveraging myself out of it. The fancy headrest cushioned my cranium once more and I lay very still with my eyes closed and concentrated on breathing evenly to dispel the dizziness. A little while later a gargantuan male nurse arrived and his breezy air of affable care and concern turned to a fussy consternation when he saw how I’d disconnected myself. Immediately he went about plugging me in again. As he reached across me to work on my other arm I caught a whiff of his warm skin sliding about beneath his white smock and a curious thing happened. My stomach gurgled, and I realized I was famished. When he saw my vomit on the floor he was scandalized at the audacity of my getting out of bed without the doctor’s permission. I responded by letting him know I was hungry. Care beset his frown and he carried both expressions with him as he left the room. Not long afterward he returned carrying a metal cafeteria tray with plops of food resting in each separate compartment.

Are you a real nurse? I asked, as he raised the bed and positioned the tray in front of me on a table he wheeled before me.

As real as they come, he said, smiling with his lips but not his eyes.

Real education and training? I didn’t think they did that anymore. I contemplated the blobs of green and brown sequestered in the separate sections of my plate.

Sure they do, he said, and I could tell by the way he said it he thought I was some poor white Deadlander while I shoveled spoonful’s of multicolored goop into my mouth. Taking me for a rube made it easier for him to forgive me. Is everything to your liking?

Not especially. I can barely taste it. What is this stuff, anyway?

Vegetable matter, mostly.

I need meat! I said, but as I spoke the words turned into a dog bark, taking us both aback. After a moment of awkward silence during which my own sounds echoed in my ears and died away, I said, Okay… that was weird.

That was weird, the male nurse agreed. Pause. Do you want to see the doctor?

Not really, I said, shoving the tray and table away. I used to like vegetables. The mess under my