[How you pronounce zombi:]
Zaahhhhnnnnnn-Beee.
You have to feel it in the roof your mouth, let it vibrate. Say it fast.
The “m” is silent. Sort of.
[How to make a zombi:]
You need a good reason, a very good reason.
You need a pufferfish, and a small sample of blood and hair from your chosen candidate.
Instructions: Kill the pufferfish. Don’t be squeamish. Extract the poison. Just find a way. Allow it to dry. Grind it with the blood and hair to create your
coup de poudre.
A good chemist can help. Blow the powder into the candidate’s face. Wait.
[A Love Story]
Micheline Bérnard always loved Lionel Desormeaux. Their parents were friends though that bonhomie had not quite carried on to the children. Micheline and Lionel went to primary and secondary school together, had known each other all their lives—when Lionel looked upon Micheline he was always overcome with the vague feeling he had seen her somewhere before while she was overcome with the precise knowledge that he was the man of her dreams. In truth, everyone loved Lionel Desormeaux. He was tall and brown with high cheekbones and full lips. His body was perfectly muscled and after a long day of swimming in the ocean, he would emerge from the salty water, glistening. Micheline would sit in a cabana, invisible. She would lick her lips and she would stare. She would think, “Look at me, Lionel,” but he never did. When Lionel walked, there was an air about him. He moved slowly but with deliberate steps and sometimes, when he walked, people swore they could hear the bass of a deep drum. His mother, who loved her only boy more than any other, always told him, “Lionel, you are the son of L’Ouverture.” He believed her. He believed everything his mother ever told him. Lionel always told his friends, “My father freed our people. I am his greatest son.”
In Port-au-Prince, there were too many women. Micheline knew competition for Lionel’s attention was fierce. She was attractive, petite. She wore her thick hair in a sensible bun. On weekends, she would let that hair down and when she walked by, men would shout, “Quelle belle paire de jambes,”
what beautiful legs,
and Micheline would savor the thrilling taste of their attention. Most Friday nights, Micheline and her friends would gather at Oasis, a popular nightclub on the edge of the Bel Air slum. She drank fruity drinks and smoked French cigarettes and wore skirts revealing just the right amount of leg. Lionel was always surrounded by a mob of adoring women. He let them buy him rum and Cokes and always sat at the center of the room wearing his pressed linen slacks and dark T-shirts that showed off his perfect, chiseled arms. At the end of the night, he would select one woman to take home, bed her thoroughly, and wish her well the following morning. The stone path to his front door was lined with the tears and soiled panties of the women Lionel had sexed then scorned.
On her birthday, Micheline decided she would be the woman Lionel took home. She wore a bright sundress, strapless. She dabbed perfume everywhere she wanted to feel Lionel’s lips. She wore high heels so high her brother had to help her into the nightclub. When Lionel arrived to hold court, Micheline made sure she was closest. She smiled widely and angled her shoulders just so and leaned in so he could see everything he wanted to see within her ample cleavage. At the end of the night, Lionel nodded in her direction. He said, “Tonight you will know the affections of L’Ouverture’s greatest son.”
In Lionel’s bed, Micheline fell deeper in love than she thought possible. Lionel knelt between her thighs, gently massaging her knees. He smiled luminously, casting a bright shaft of light across her body. Micheline reached for Lionel, her hands thrumming as she felt his skin. When he was inside her, she thought her heart might stop it seized so painfully. He whispered in her ear, his breath so hot it blistered her. He said, “Everything on this island is mine. You are mine.” Micheline moaned. She said, “I am your victory.” He said, “Yes, tonight you are.” As he fucked her, Micheline heard the bass of a deep drum.
The following morning, Lionel walked Micheline home. He kissed her chastely on the cheek. As he pulled away, Micheline grabbed his hand in hers, pressing a knuckle with her thumb. She said, “I will come to you tonight.” Lionel placed one finger over her lips and shook his head.
Micheline was unable to rise from her bed for a long while. She could only remember Lionel’s touch, his words, how the inside of her body had molded itself to him. Her parents sent for a doctor, then a priest, and finally a mambo which they were hesitant to do because they were a good, Catholic family but the sight of their youngest daughter lying in bed, perfectly still, not speaking, not eating, was too much to bear. The mambo sat on the edge of the bed and clucked. She held Micheline’s limp wrist. She said, “Love,” and Micheline nodded. The mambo shooed the girl’s parents out of the room and they left, overjoyed that the child had finally moved. The mambo leaned down, got so close, Micheline could feel the old woman’s dry lips against her ear.
When the mambo left, Micheline bathed, dabbed herself everywhere she wanted to feel Lionel’s lips. She went to Oasis and found Lionel at the center of the room holding a pale, young thing in his lap. Micheline pushed the girl out of Lionel’s lap and took her place. She said, “Just one more night,” and Lionel remembered her dark moans and the strength of her thighs and how she looked at him like the conquering hero he knew himself to be.
They made love that night, and Micheline was possessed. She dug her fingernails in his back until he bled. She locked her ankles in the small of Lionel’s back, and sank her teeth into his strong shoulder. There were no sweet words between them. Micheline walked herself home before he woke. She went to the kitchen and filled a mortar and pestle with blood from beneath her fingernails and between her teeth. She added a few strands of Lionel’s hair and a powder the mambo had given her. She ground these things together and put the
coup de poudre
as it was called into a silk sachet. She ran back to Lionel’s, where he was still sleeping, opened her sachet, paused. She traced the edge of his face, kissed his forehead, then blew her precious powder into his face. Lionel coughed in his sleep, then stilled. Micheline undressed and stretched herself along his body, sliding her arm beneath his. As his body grew cooler, she kissed the back of his neck.
They slept entwined for three days. Lionel’s skin grew clammy and gray. His eyes hollowed. He began to smell like soil and salt wind. When Micheline woke, she whispered, “Turn and look at me.” Lionel slowly turned and stared at Micheline, his eyes wide open, unblinking. She gasped at his appearance, how his body had changed. She said, “Touch me,” and Lionel reached for her with a heavy hand, pawing at her until she said, “Touch me gently.” She said, “Sit up.” Lionel slowly sat up, listing from side to side until Micheline steadied him. She kissed Lionel’s thinned lips, his fingertips. His cold body filled her with a sadness she could hardly bear. She said, “Smile,” and his lips stretched tightly into something that resembled what she knew of a smile. Micheline thought about the second silk sachet, the one hidden beneath her pillow between the pages of her Bible, the sachet with a powder containing the power to make Lionel the man he once was—tall, vibrant, the greatest son of L’Ouverture, a man who filled the air with the bass of a deep drum when he walked. She made herself forget about that power; instead, she would always remember that man. She pressed her hand against the sharpness of Lionel’s cheekbone. She said, “Love me.”
Carrie Ryan
The first time I saw the apartment building I thought it looked like a bunker; it never occurred to me that we’d end up using it as one. Nicky’s the one who actually lived there—or at least she and her dad moved in there when her mom kicked them out. She was the one who suggested we take shelter there. It’s not like we had a lot of other options and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
But isn’t that always the case? The ideas that seem so good in the moment turn out to be the worst when everything is said and done?
The Overlook—that’s the name of the apartment building—was a massive chunk of a structure that sat just outside the interstate loop circling Uptown. (How pretentious does a city have to be to call it “Uptown” rather than “Downtown?”) It was made of concrete and half dug into a hill so that three sides had a long, thick foundation and the fourth faced the road.
Most importantly, though, it was the closest place we could think to run when the outbreak began raging through the city. We’d been on a senior class field trip to Discovery Place when it happened. I’d just stepped outside with Nicky and I was thinking about how hard I’d worked to make sure I ended up partnered with her for this project and then
BAM!
Nicky didn’t know what made the sound and at first, neither did I. I couldn’t place it—it was loud but not a gunshot, solid but not familiar. I was still trying to figure it out when I saw the body lying broken on the ground. Nicky hadn’t seen it yet and I tried to keep her turned away. Then there was another
BAM!
and she started screaming.
The man landed not five feet away, one leg completely shattered underneath him from the fall. Another hit right after that, and I swear to God it seemed like it was raining bodies.
(Later, Felipe would start singing “It’s Raining Men” whenever Nicky brought this up. It took her a while, but eventually she started laughing at the joke—what else could you do?).
Nicky had already jumped back under the Discovery Place awning, but like a moron I just stood there. “Jonah!” she screamed at me. “What are you doing?”
I was never able to explain it to her in a way she understood, but I couldn’t stop staring at that first body. Later I’d realize that bits of his shattered leg had sprayed across my pants. But in that moment I just kept thinking that there are two hundred six bones in the adult human body and I wondered how many of them were broken in the fall and from which story of the skyscraper he’d plummeted.
There was something impossibly beautiful about the moment. All at once I grasped that the man had lived his life and in an instant it was gone—and I’d been there to see it happen. How many people get the experience of watching the moment someone dies? The switch from “something is there” to “something is not?”
I guess now that’s kind of a moot question; at the time, though, I remember being awed.
It was looking up that shocked me out of my reverie. There were more of them coming, tumbling through the air like acrobats. I stumbled back and Nicky grabbed my arm and pulled me to safety. No lie—two seconds later a body hit right where I’d been standing.
He was the first to start moving. He was so broken up it was impossible to tell where he’d been bitten, but it was the only explanation. The only way someone who’d just been dead could suddenly be not-dead.
When the first dead guy came back to life—not that guy on the sidewalk, but a man from the West Coast who’d ended up on the news weeks before—we all should have run. That’s what I know now.
But when the president goes on TV and tells you that everything’s under control, that the disease has been contained, and the best thing you can do is not panic and try to live your life as normally as possible—that’s when you’re in trouble. That’s when your parents send you off to school when they should be packing you up and raiding the grocery store.
That’s why your teacher still insists on the senior trip to the Discovery Place: because that’s what normal means. And since Uptown was packed with armed reservists and the outbreak hadn’t even touched the East Coast, the principal and most of our parents figured we’d be safe.
As it turned out, we weren’t.
Half of our class was stuck in the bowels of Discovery Place when the panic began, but Nicky and I were outside with Beatrice, Felipe, and Gregor right behind us. We could hear screams coming from down the block.
The air stank of blood and Felipe had to shout over the sound of the reservists’ gunshots. “We should go back in—get to the buses through the rear entrance!”
The guy who’d landed in front of me was so broken there was no way he’d ever be able to stand, but even so, he twitched his fingers against the concrete, splitting his nails as he tried to drag himself closer.
Beatrice began hyperventilating and Nicky’s cheeks shone with tears. I hated the indecision of that moment. Even now I wish I could go back there and stop time and just give myself a minute to think.
All around us, people were giving up on their cars, not even bothering to turn them off or to shut their doors after abandoning them in the middle of the road. The streets were gridlocked, horns blaring. We knew then that we’d never get far.
We’d never get home.
That’s when Beatrice said: “I want to go home.”
I’m pretty sure that’s what made Nicky say, “My dad’s apartment—it’s in the Overlook.” And then we started running.
We were like a hive mind—no discussion, no coordination. One of us thought it and so it became. We ran through through the city like a pack, desperate to escape. We learned quickly to stay in the middle of the road—those on the outside were the easiest targets.
Everywhere was madness. Or so I thought. Maybe I didn’t truly understand madness yet, because I still felt the compulsion to steady those who stumbled. To pull them free of clawing hands.
I still tried to help.
There were only two entrances to the Overlook: the leasing office, its windows already shattered, and the underground garage, which had a massive, jail-like gate stretched across the ramp.
Nicky pulled a remote from her purse and pointed it at a black box. Slowly, slowly, with a lot of creaking, the gate began to roll open. She was the first through, and then Beatrice and Felipe. They sprinted through the garage for the bank of elevators. I was the one to hold Gregor back.
“It’s every man for himself, right?” I asked him.
He didn’t get what I was saying.