Here's a plan for you: After the bomb drops, live securely in your shelter with enough canned food for a century-but, oops, no can opener! Or be the last man on earth, finally alone with your precious books-and, oops, break your gla.s.ses!

This world was an episode of The Twilight Zone The Twilight Zone.

The plan, my dear Ros, was simple: Walk around in circles, drooling and moaning, until we stumble upon some hapless human to devour.

Or decay until we're nothing but walking, chattering bones.

Or shoot each other in the brains and end our misery.

The real plan, the ultimate plan, was to wake from this eternal nightmare, cozy in bed with Lucy beside me, and drink a hot cup of coffee while reading the morning paper. After a breakfast of eggs and toast, the plan was to walk to the university and deliver a ninety-minute lecture deconstructing Britney Spears's new haircut.

Ros, Joan, and I shuffled into the lobby. Ros turned on the radio. "Chin up," he said. "Soldier on."

Guts was playing with Isaac in the circular drive outside, tossing the baby up high and catching him. I considered stopping them-what if Guts missed?-but Isaac's mouth was open as if laughing and besides, we were invincible. Almost.

If ever there was a time for an old-fashioned wooden deus ex machina...

I waited for it to descend from the sky. I looked out the window. Guts threw Isaac up in the air and wandered off, distracted by something. The baby splatted on the ground, rolling like a burrito. A grub worm. Olive Oyl's Sweet Pea all bundled in his blue blanket.

Ros fiddled with the dial. Nothing. No ghost in that machine. No savior.

We had to save ourselves.

"And then I carried my son upstairs," a woman's voice said, bursting out of the radio, "and locked him in his room."

"How old is he?" asked another woman.

"Ten."

"Where is he now?"

"He's still in there. He's moaning, banging on the door."

"Here's what you do, here's what you have to do."

The mother sobbed. "I know what I have to do! The problem is I can't do it."

"Gwen," the woman said, "calm down and listen to me..."

"What if they discover a cure? What if he's alive in there somewhere? He's my baby. My only son."

Ros rolled his eyes. "Cry me a river," he said.

But Joan put her hands over her bosom. The old broad was touched.

"You're a survivor, Gwen," the woman on the radio said. "You've made it this far. You are strong. You can do this!"

"Kids?" Ros asked Joan.

Joan held up three fingers.

"One of each," Ros said.

So I'd been wrong about Joan and her spinsterhood, as I'd been wrong about everything so far: Eve. Stein. Our future. Even Stephen King. What other lies had I told myself? What lies do I continue to believe?

"Is there a man about the house?" the woman asked Gwen.

"Not anymore," Gwen said. "s.h.i.t, shooting that b.a.s.t.a.r.d was easy. Right between the eyes."

The women laughed. Ros switched off the radio.

"Things have changed," he said.

He was right. If there was talk radio...

"Miss my girlfriend," he said.

And I didn't even know Ros's real name.

"We met in high school," he gurgled. "Drama club. We were doing Grease Grease-Becky played Frenchie. I built sets, moved stuff around. Grunt work. What I'm good at."

Frenchie. The Beauty School Dropout. I gestured for Ros to go on.

"Becky wasn't the most beautiful girl in town," he continued. "But she was mine and I loved her."

Ros wheezed and pressed his diaphragm. It was the most I'd heard him say at once and it appeared to give him pain.

"Ooorrmmph," said Joan.

"Wonder where she is now." Ros rested his chin in his hand. His fingers disappeared into his cheek. "Dead or undead." His skin was raw, splotched with lesions and pus. "You made me this way," he said, looking at me.

I shrugged my shoulders. Guilty as charged.

Ros walked over. He opened his arms and embraced me. "I'm glad," he said. "Brothers. You and me."

I extended an arm to Joan and she joined us.

"Group hug," Ros said, resting his metal head on my fortified shoulder. "Feels good."

IN THE LOBBY, we gave up. We sat around and s...o...b..red, our eyes vacant and weeping yellow. Until we heard a gunshot outside. Then another and another. we gave up. We sat around and s...o...b..red, our eyes vacant and weeping yellow. Until we heard a gunshot outside. Then another and another.

"Annie," Ros said.

It took minutes to get off the couch. Long minutes to walk to the door. More minutes to open it. Isaac was still stuck on the circular drive. We left him there, a caterpillar in his coc.o.o.n.

There was a cl.u.s.ter of undead advancing on Annie, zeroing in on Pete's room. Annie was holding them off, blowing their brains out, but the moans and shots would attract more. Behind the door, I could hear Pete moving furniture.

"Stay in there," Ros yelled. "Not safe."

Pete opened the door anyway, armed with the metal towel rack from the bathroom, some straightened wire hangers, and a chair. Clever man looked like a lion tamer.

There were five zombies left, not counting us. Pete raced to the closest, and-wham!-whacked her upside the head with the towel rack. The fixture broke in half-cheap motel s.h.i.t-and the zombette kept coming. Pete jammed the clothes hanger in her eye, pushing it in and twisting. The eye popped out and she fell.

"Aww," Ros said. "She looked like a nice girl."

Annie took care of the remaining undead lickety-split. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Surely she was running out of bullets.

Screaming like a television Indian chief, sneaky Pete lunged for Annie and plunged the coat hanger into her neck, thrusting it up under her helmet and into her head. But he must've missed her brain stem, because nothing happened.

Annie rammed the gun into Pete's stomach. The trigger clicked. Empty.

Out of somewhere, out of nowhere, out of the very ether, Guts raced up, hunched low like a football player, and bit Pete in the ankle.

How I loved that ankle biter, the crumb crusher. Our adorable imp.

Pete collapsed. There was no turning back now. We pounced on our driver, peeling him open like an orange. He screamed like no orange I've ever heard.

It was a Sunday family dinner: Joan gripping Pete's glistening something or other in her hands like a racc.o.o.n, blood dripping down her chin; Guts pulling out yards and yards of guts, rolling around in them, biting them; Ros holding Pete's lungs aloft like Lady Justice; and Annie, sweet young thing, Annie had captured his heart, which looked fake, like an anatomical gummi heart-gelatinous, chewy, and chock-full of high-fructose corn syrup.

As for me, the patriarch, I sat at the head of the table. Pete's hair stuck to the roof of my mouth and in between my teeth like corn silk. I cracked his skull like a pecan. Sweet nut of the brain underneath. Baby Isaac wailed from the circular drive in front of the motel, but we all ignored him. It was a zombie-eat-human world; charity was for the weak. And any second, another wave of the undead might show up and take our booty.

We ate all of Pete. He deserved it, the Judas. Betrayer. We took our time, savoring him like a seven-course meal. The sun went down and came up at least once, but we barely noticed. Pete's blood kept us from freezing. Annie paused occasionally to reload and pick off approaching zombies. At some point, Guts retrieved Isaac and set him next to the body so the baby could take suck. Isaac whined and nestled against Pete's chest.

Afterward we lay around Pete's hair, bones, teeth, and ball cap, his skeleton picked clean, a Thanksgiving turkey carca.s.s. Hardly enough left for soup.

"Could use floss," Ros said.

The sun was setting. I wanted to get up and move to the hotel, but Pete's meat weighed me down. I rolled onto my back; the sky was purple; Venus was visible. The stars were popping out like fireflies. A plane whooshed by, flying low.

A plane?

"Captain," Ros said, "that's a bomber."

There was a human struggle in this war. I often forgot them. The other side. Enemy mine. How many of them were fighting for their lives that very minute? Scavenging for food and protecting their Isaacs. How many of them were looking up at those same stars-in Illinois, New York, Mexico, Iraq?

It began to snow. It began to sleet. In the distance, an explosion. The stars disappeared.

"They're bombing Milwaukee," Ros said.

The humans' retreat was over. War was back on.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THEY BOMBED ALL night: firebombs, cl.u.s.ter bombs, smart bombs, cherry bombs, bang and boom, shock and awe. We loafed in the parking lot at our ease, observing the display. It was the Fourth of July and New Year's Eve rolled into one. It was a song of destruction. The heat from the blasts kept us from turning into slushies. night: firebombs, cl.u.s.ter bombs, smart bombs, cherry bombs, bang and boom, shock and awe. We loafed in the parking lot at our ease, observing the display. It was the Fourth of July and New Year's Eve rolled into one. It was a song of destruction. The heat from the blasts kept us from turning into slushies.

"Any undead in there are toast," Ros said.

It was just as well. What would they have done? Build cities? Design furniture? Form governments? Make pottery?

Zombies are not creators. Zombies don't manipulate and control the environment. We don't organize day laborers or deplete the ozone layer. We don't build dams or run for city council. We don't play softball or pinball. We are Zen masters. Like a Venus flytrap, just give us meat and more meat.

Feed me, Seymour!

"Barely remember being human anymore," Ros said. "I remember stuff that happened, but like in a movie."

Joan patted his shoulder. Her face was melted wax, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pale shadows of their former stand-at-attention glory. She had fed three children with those dugs and they were rotting now, the worst kind of cancer.

"I was in Baghdad," Ros continued, "and one day, they were like, you're going home, soldier. Bigger fish to fry in the States. I was glad to get out of the desert. Felt lucky to be alive and going home to Becky."

Annie rolled onto her stomach. Her pigtails were stained red and stiff with blood and guts. She looked like a girl the Ramones might have sung about.

"But home was way worse than al-Qaeda," Ros said. "Everyone dead or undead."

Used to be you were either alive or dead. Pregnant or not pregnant. Not anymore. Now everybody's liminal. Everyone's a transs.e.xual.

Annie made an hourgla.s.s figure with her hands and pointed to Ros. "Burrawwheee?" she asked.

"Never found her," he said.

The bombing stopped, the ground rumbled. In the distance, an engine roared.

"Tank," Ros said.

"Come and get us, sc.u.m suckers!" a voice yelled.

My bite site tingled. The army was advancing, clanging a bell, making a racket. Their plan was obvious: Flush us out and shoot us.

I pantomimed a vague plan of escape, anch.o.r.ed around this basic premise: Must Get Away Now! Guts gathered up Isaac and zoomed ahead. The rest of us picked our sorry selves off the ground and followed.

Joan, Ros, Annie, and I plodded along, bringing pestilence, war, famine, and death-but at a glacial pace, the velocity of slugs. Call us the Four r.e.t.a.r.ded Hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse. It might take us a while, but eventually we'll kill and eat you. Relax while you wait-have a cannoli.

Zombies emerged from houses and bas.e.m.e.nts, from underneath piles of wood and rubble. Lured by the promise of human flesh, they headed straight into the military's trap. We pa.s.sed them on the street and I tried to look as many as possible in the eye, searching for a glimmer of light, anything brighter than the dirty yellow film that blinded them.

There was nothing. No one home. They were deader than dead. At least they would keep the army occupied while we escaped. To where or what was another question.