Authors: Jess Walter

Don’t Eat Cat (3 page)

“You have pictures of your wife?” Dina said again, her voice just betraying the slightest hint of hypo-ETE gravel.

“My girlfriend,” I said.

She nodded and smiled warmly at me.

I pulled out my iVice and fumbled with it. “I don’t know if she’s … I mean … you don’t think Marci is …” I glanced around at the zombie prostitutes all around us. One of them took a man by the hand and led him away.

Dina, the zombie madam, reached out and steadied my hands. “It’s okay. Relax.”

Finally, I found a holo of Marci and me in our apartment—it was when she had short hair, but it was a great picture: her bemused chestnut eyes, long lashes, high cheekbones. The 3-D holo appeared blurry rising from my iVice, but then I realized it was my eyes. I wiped the tears. Dina smiled. “She’s so pretty.”

I nodded and pulled the image back into my iVice.

“How
long ago?”

“Two years. She left … two years ago.”

Dina nodded again. She took my hand. I looked down at our hands, her white skin against my sun-scarred hand. She led me across the darkened room. I felt the breath go out of me. I was terrified I might see Marci here—and terrified I might not.

We arrived at one of the couches, in the corner of the lounge, where
a short-haired zombie girl was sitting, staring off blankly. On the table in front of her was a hypodermic syringe with a needle, and a bag of powder. “Is that—” I pointed at the drugs on the table.

Dina said, “It makes some men feel better to know what it’s like.”

“Oh, no,” I said, “I don’t want that.” Then I looked closely at the girl on the couch, her brown hair and eyes,
her high cheekbones. I reached out, tilted her chin up. “You know that’s not Marci,” I said.

“Of course it is.”

“No, it’s not even close. This girl’s ten years younger than Marci … at least three inches shorter.”

“Marci,” Dina said, and the zombie on the couch looked up at me.

“See. It’s her.”

The zombie girl looked back down again.

“Joe,” I said, and the girl on the couch looked up again.

Dina looked upset with me. She turned to face me, cocked her head, and took me in with those clear, translucent eyes. There was a hum to her, a vibration—like a dropped guitar. “What is it you want?”

“I told you. I want to find my girlfriend.”

She smiled patiently. She reached out and took my hand again
in hers. “No. What do you
want
?”

“What?” My throat felt raw from the radiation. “I just want to talk to her.”

“About what?”

“I’m sick,” I said, and at that moment, the burning in my chest was overwhelming. “Cancer. I just found out a few weeks ago. Ozone sickness—third stage. My application for gene therapy was turned down, so they don’t know how much
time … I wanted to see Marci and …” I couldn’t continue.

Dina stroked my hand with her slick white hand. “Apologize,” she said.

“What?” I felt the air go out of me.

“You wanted to apologize? It’s been two years, and this is the first time you’ve come here,” the black-haired woman said. And as she said it, I knew it was true, and I wasn’t sure anymore that the burning
in my chest was coming from the radiation.

“You didn’t even look for her,” Dina continued, her voice entirely without judgment. “In fact, when she left, you were sort of … relieved. Weren’t you? Relieved that she left before it got bad.”

I tried to say no, but I couldn’t speak.

“You would never have said it out loud, but you knew where it was going and you didn’t
know if you could do it. Take care of someone so … sick.”

The room swirled as the pale woman spoke.

“Your anger was useful. You told yourself that she
wanted
this; that she
chose
this; that she
chose
to throw her life away.”

I nodded weakly.

“But now you know … don’t you?”

I could barely see her through my teary eyes.

“Now … you know what we know.” Her voice went even lower. “That nobody
chooses
. That we’re all sick. We’re all here.”

“I …” I looked at the ground. “I just wanted to tell her …”

“Tell her what?” Dina asked patiently.

I wept into my hands.

“Tell her what?” Dina whispered as she rubbed my shoulder. Finally she turned to the other girl, sitting
on the couch. “Marci?”

The zombie girl stood and grabbed the drugs off the table. “Tell her what?” Dina whispered.

“I’m here,” I managed to say to the short-haired girl.

Dina nodded and smiled at me. Then she gently took my hand
and pressed it into the other girl’s pale hand. And Marci led me away.

About the Author

Jess Walter
was a finalist for the National Book Award for
The Zero
and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for
Citizen Vince.
His books have been translated into twenty-two languages, and his short fiction has appeared in
Harper’s, Playboy,

McSweeney’s,
and the upcoming
Best American Short Stories 2012.
His sixth novel,
Beautiful Ruins
, will be
published by HarperCollins in June, and first short-story collection,
The New Frontier,
is forthcoming in March 2013. A former journalist, he lives with his family in Spokane, Washington
. Don't Eat Cat
is his first zombie story.

Photograph by
Hannah Assouline

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