By Stabz

The line for the food bank is longer today. It’s a quarter to six and the windows aren’t even open yet, but there are already a good forty, fifty people ahead of us, and I can’t begin to guess how many behind. I heard the trucks last night, dropping off another load of needy fuckers. They don’t even turn off their engines anymore – it’s just pull up, idle while the gates roll back, and peel out as fast as possible once the last feet hit the ground.

You’d think they’re afraid of us.

Beside me, Janie whimpers, hugging her chest. I know she’s hoping we’ll get a donor meal today. It’s been a while since we’ve had one. They’ve never been easy to come by, but these days, it’s just as likely the bank’ll run out before we even get to the window as that they won’t have any at all.

The fence rattles and a spray of snow hits my sleeve. When I turn to look, there are a pair of boys parked on the other side, their bikes teetering dangerously as they scoop up another handful of the white stuff. Ten? Twelve? It’s hard to tell. They’re bundled up. One cocks an arm, ready to let his arsenal fly, while the other leers and jeers.

“Get a job, ya zom-bums!”

Janie grits her teeth. I start to tell her it’s not worth it, but then I realize that’s not worth it, either. They’re old enough to know better, but still young enough to blindly repeat what they’ve heard their parents say. Lazy, draining our resources, a plague on society; a plague, a plague, a plague. But what do they expect?

Zombies aren’t allowed to work.

I don’t know who first started calling us that, but I guess it makes sense. What do zombies do? Shamble around mindlessly looking for brains. And what do we do?

Well, it depends on when you got infected, and where you are in the course of the disease.

The idea of a zombie virus has been around forever, but not quite like this. For one, we’re not dead – and when we do die? We stay dead. We’re still infectious, though, which is why no one gets buried anymore – no one can prove without a shadow of a doubt that they’re clean, even if they’re not showing symptoms, so it’s straight to the crematorium. No autopsies, no embalming, no funerals. If you’re still on the outside, you might get a memorial service with a portrait and some pretty flowers, though probably not an urn. But in here? No one remembers you. No one wants to remember you, because no one knows what to do.

It’s a prion disorder. The same as mad cow or chronic wasting disease. All it takes is for one protein in your brain to fold the wrong way – the rest copy it like rich girls with new purses, and that’s it. Your grey matter turns to sponge and your sponge turns to mush. But there’s a period in there where some deep animal instinct takes over, screaming brains brains brains, gotta have some brains. As best anyone can figure, it’s like a cat eating grass or a horse licking salt – your body knows it needs something even if your conscious mind doesn’t. In this case, it’s healthy prions, and they’re not even a cure – all they do is stave off the inevitable end that much longer. But when a twitching, staggering lunatic grabs you by the neck and starts trying to pop off your head so they can scoop out your skull like a Saturday morning cereal bowl, well – What are most people going to think?

You don’t have to be bitten to contract it, either. All you need is to come into contact with someone who’s shedding those misfolded prions. That’s the reason for the camps – to keep the sickies separated from the rest of the populace. But it only does so much good. You don’t start showing symptoms right away, and by the time you realize you’ve got a craving for cranium, it’s too late.

There’s a groan from the head of the line, and Janie sobs into her mittens. No donor meals today – it’ll be the canned stuff, sheep or pork or even beef. You wouldn’t find beef brains on anyone else’s plate now, for fear of mad cow, but for us? It doesn’t matter. We’re already there.

It’s not as good, though – and I’m not talking about the taste; I’m talking sheer nutrition. That’s what makes donor meals so important. A human brain needs human prions. It’s no different than any other organ that has to be replaced – sure, you can rig a pig heart or a dialysis machine to get you by for a while, but in the end, you need a transplant from your own kind. The longer you have to go without, the faster you go downhill. So there’s a new box you can tick off when you go to renew your driver’s license – Donate Heart? Lungs? Kidneys? Brain? It’s been harder for people to come to terms with, though, because the brain is so strongly associated with all the things that make you you. It’s one thing to know you’re giving away a lump of cells that’s going to save a life. It’s another to imagine someone shoving your very being into their mouth, knowing that in the long run, it won’t even do any good.

I know, because I didn’t check that box.

It wouldn’t make a difference now if I had.

Janie needs it more than I do, because she’s had the disease longer than I have. It gets a little more obvious every day – a little hollower in the cheeks, a little more white around the eyes; the twitch in your hands that turns them into claws, and the wobble that means you’re finally breaking down. And then it’s just the madness – the blind rage that has you lashing out at everything within reach and some things that aren’t, tearing into whatever your hands hit first, feasting on anything with the slightest scent of blood and meat. After that, they drag you to the heart of the camps, where you and everyone else in the final stages can rip each other apart. They can’t put you down, see, because zombie or not, you’re not an animal. You’re still human, in the most base and pathetic way. So they’ll let you die in your own way, your own time, because somehow that’s more dignified.

Fuck that. Give me a bullet right between the eyes, the way all those good old horror flicks taught you.

We reach the window, where they’re handing out already opened cans for the victims who can’t manage a pop-top anymore, and Janie’s shaking so badly she can barely take hold. What’s in the cans is pale, gelatinous, floating in a grey-tinged soup, and I know that Janie’s going to gag on it, because she does every day. It’s worse when she brings it all the way back up and has to choke it down again because there’s not enough for second servings, though. It’s not even that it’s brains – it’s that it’s an animal’s brain, and she was a goddamn vegan before all this started. She actually does better with the donor meals, because she knows whoever gave it, gave it willingly.

Me, I grew up southern and poor. Momma fed us feet and gizzards and tongue and tripe, and when we had a pig for butchering at the family reunion, someone would whip up liver’n’lights, and to the old folks, that was a feast fit for a king. I guess I ought to be grateful, because the dis- has come right off and now I’ve just got an advantage.

I gotta tell you, though, I envy the vampires down at the blood bank something fierce. Those anemic bastards get a donor meal every damn day.