A Zombie Story

ATTENTION: This story was written by a good friend of mine, Bill Purkayastha, also the author of Rainbow's End. He's an excellent story writer of almost any genre and also an extremely intelligent analyst of current affairs. He wrote this zombie story especially for me and told me to post it wherever I liked. So here I go!

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This story was written specifically for my old friend Priya D'Souza, who fell in love with zombies after I wrote about them. Here you go.

(Original Title: PROBABLY THE LAST ZOMBIE STORY I’LL WRITE (sic))
As we walked up from the old fountain by the square, I got jostled and pushed down a flight of steps, rolling all the way to the bottom. I ended up with my face pushed into a pile of drifted leaves, discarded chocolate wrappers and associated garbage. It didn’t, of course, hurt me, but when I pushed myself up again some of the gunk had entered my nostrils and had choked my olfactory system.


The sun was flooding down, but I scarcely felt its heat. Squinting, I brushed some of the dirt away from my eyes, so I could see again, and turned to go back upstairs.

The rest of us were still flooding past the head of the stairs, so I climbed up back to them, working my way, with some difficulty, back into the stream. More than once I almost got jostled back down, and there seemed to be something wrong with my right leg. The knee buckled whenever I put any pressure on it.

I stepped on someone who was dragging himself along the ground, his back broken so that his hips and legs were twisted at an angle. He growled at me angrily, snapping at me with grey teeth, but I managed to take a long enough step that he couldn’t connect.

I no longer knew where we were headed, since my sense of smell was almost completely destroyed with the muck inside my nose. I could only follow the flow, and hope we were going somewhere there was food.

Food! My body craved it.

How long was it since I’d eaten? I had no memory, even, of my last meal. Hunger was a constant, gnawing ache, much greater than any other urge I’d ever had. Much greater than sex.

Sex? A random memory came to me with that word. I had a vague impression, blurry, of a dear and familiar face, and warm lips on mine. Who was that man? When was he? I ran my hands over my face, pausing to look down at the grease and dirt caked into my palms. One fingernail was gone completely, the rest broken and ragged. He had loved to kiss my fingers and tell me he loved them. I thought of that and felt a once-familiar sensation, an urge in the pit of my stomach and between my legs. Who, I thought, was I?

Some other vague memories. Wasn’t there a time when I used to run through this park on our right, giggling at the sensation of grass on my bare feet? The concrete under my feet now was cracked and chipped, but the sensation barely registered. I was barefoot, but might as well be walking in thick boots.

I touched my face with my fingers, again, and could hardly feel anything. In a sudden urge, I stabbed at my cheek, scraping my broken nails through the skin. There was a faint feeling of the skin stretching and tearing, but no pain.

My knee was finally bearing up again by the time we turned the corner at the crossroads where the big old statue used to stand. Some kind of accident had taken place, and the figure had toppled over, crushing the truck which had struck its pedestal. I could see an arm hanging out of the squashed window of the vehicle, waving around aimlessly. The crowd streamed by it, not looking, not bothering. Ergo, it was not food.

Up ahead, finally, I could see the building where we were all headed. Ramps led up from both sides of the entrance to the door, which was guarded by steel shutters. Many of the crowd were banging on the shutters with their hands, howling with the hunger I felt in me, too. The press was so great that try as I might, I couldn’t get to the door.

Something cracked past my ear, and someone just behind me went sprawling over backward, taking two or three others down with him. I looked up and saw a silhouette, scrambling over the roof. Again I heard the cracking sound, and someone else fell. But I no longer cared about the cracking. My attention was fixed on the figure on the roof, which had been joined by a couple more. Food.

My hunger was a burning fire in me now, so intense that I almost staggered. The food were running from one side of the roof to another, raising their…guns?...and shooting down at the crowd. Many were falling, but it made no difference to the other, and certainly not to me.

A space opened up on my left, suddenly, and I slipped round the corner of the building, A tree branch caught my longhair, pulling my head back. With an indifferent wrench, I pulled myself free. There was hardly any pain.

I was in a narrow space between the building and a wall, so narrow that I had to turn myself slightly sideways to pass. Any of the food from above might have thrown something heavy on me here, but nobody seemed to notice me. I was quite alone, walking steadily and silently towards the back of the building. Turning, I got round the back and stood, looking up at the edifice.

There was no way in that I could find, but I could sense them now, the food, hardly the thickness of a wall away. I moaned slightly in my throat, the noise a quiet whimper.

And another memory, a scrap of it, came to me. I’d come home from somewhere – was there something about work? – and found him home already, in the middle of the afternoon, lying in bed. I wasn’t that surprised, because he’d said that morning that he wasn’t feeling too good. Undressing, I’d slipped naked into bed beside him, and reached out to hug him close, intending to warm him with a session of passionate lovemaking.

Ah, I remember that word. The pressure of that urge again between my legs…

My mind blacked out at that point, but I had a vague feeling that he’d turned towards me, and held me tight, his mouth reaching for my breasts. But instead of the soft kisses on my nipples that I’d expected, there was a sharp pain…and then nothing more.

I really haven’t felt much of anything after that.

When I finally got up from the bed, he was gone. Still naked, I wandered out of the house, and down to the street. My nudity meant nothing to me. Nothing meant anything to me, really. At that time I didn’t even have the scraps of memory I’m recovering now.

I’d been wandering ever since.

Suddenly, I saw something. At first it didn’t quite register, and then I realised I was looking up at a window which had been left partly open. It was on the first floor, so the food had probably imagined it was safe. But there was a way up. If you were indifferent to personal safety, and invulnerable to pan, there was a way up, not to the window, maybe, but to the ledge below it.

Again I had a flash of memory, so strong that I had to pause a moment. Hadn’t I once climbed trees, rough bark under my hands, leaves in my face? Hadn’t I stood in the fork of two great branches, and looked at the world through a green curtain? Surely I had.

But there were no trees here.

Careless of the roughness of the wall that scraped and cut at my naked body, I flattened myself against the wall and began to creep up, my fingers and toes jamming into the crevices. Thrice I slipped and fell back partly, and on the fourth attempt I got my fingertips over the ledge.

After that it was a fairly simple thing to pull myself up on to the ledge. I crouched, as low to the ledge as I could, and began creeping along the wall towards the window. It was just above my head, and I could hear voices inside, murmuring, and the smell of food, so strong that even my blocked nose registered it.

Without waiting any longer, I pushed myself up, thrust the window open, and rolled over the windowsill into the room.

I’d barely touched the floor when something soft and enveloping fell all over me…

“Got her,” I heard someone say. The smell, the nearness, of food was so strong that I could no longer think about anything else. I tried to lunge upright, clawing…and could not.

It was like fighting cobwebs. The more I tried to get free, the more I was entangled. Suddenly, something struck me behind the knees, and knocked me back down to the floor. I felt ropes being twisted around me, and something hard and long rolled me over in my back. Helpless, snarling my fury, I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling.

Three of them stood over me; two man-foods, and a woman-food. I could hear noises as another one shut the window, but I couldn’t see it. The older of the man-foods was talking.

“There, you see,” hesaid, “my trap worked. Now we have a specimen to work on.”

“I knew you’d do it, Professor,” the female food said in an adoring voice. I looked at her and wanted desperately to eat her. I could almost taste her soft flesh.

“Yeah, well.” The younger man-food made a face. “Pity she’s such a good looking one though. Why do you suppose she’s naked?”

“It’s not a she, any longer,” the older food said. “It’s an it. Think of it as an object and you’ve got the right idea. It can’t even think anymore, or have any sense of being. As to why it’s naked, who cares? It’s no more than a lab rat we can use to test for antidotes.” He gestured to someone I couldn’t see. “Get the thing up, will you?”

I felt hands dragging me up, pushing me to my feet, and thrusting me against a wall. The two younger man-food I’d seen came closer to look at me. I saw his eyes straying down to my breasts, between my legs. His face was pink with the blood surging through it.

The female food came and slapped his shoulder. “Stop ogling its boobs,” she said.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” he whined. “She just looks lonely and...scared.”

“Stop calling it she,” the female food snapped. “You heard the Professor. It’s just a...lump of meat.” She glared at me with acute dislike. “In a week it’s going to be all used up, anyway, if I know the Professor. Won’t be nothing more than skin and bones. And good riddance, too.”

“You’re cruel,” the man food told her, glancing at me again over his shoulder as she led him away. She replied something, but I couldn’t hear it.

And this is how I’m in this cage, in this tiny room, with the food gesturing and gibbering at me. They feed me scraps, and poke at me with needles, and with wires that make me shudder when they touch me. Burning right through the numbness. Sometimes they put themselves just out of my reach, and when I try to get at them, they laugh and hit me with the burning wires.

And, the longer I am here, oh god, the more I’m starting to remember. I can remember warm spring days in the park, and picnics up in the hills. I can remember the taste of ice cream in my mouth on a summer day, and cappuccino when the frost lay heavy outside. I can remember dancing, on the sand of the beach, whirling round and round until sun and sky and sea and sand merged in one yellow-blue blur. I can remember so much, and I am beginning to realise what I’ve lost. And that’s the cruellest part of all.

Can you understand me? I could almost think you can.

For a food, you look kind. I can see the tears in your eyes as you look at me. I know you want to help. I can tell you what to do.

Oh, nothing crass, like releasing me, nothing as drastic as that. Just…take that gun on the wall, there, the one kept for emergencies. Take it, bring it over here, and shoot me. I won’t move, I promise you. Shoot me and put me out of my misery. Please.

I’ve had enough of the pain, and the hunger. And the memories. Most especially the memories. I don’t want to remember what I was.

Kill me. It would be the greatest kindness.

Kill me, please.



Copyright Biswapriya Purkayastha 2011

Read more of Bill's writings here.