The Long Slow Death of the Undead American Dream

Everyone thought it'd be different.

Nightmares painted in gore. Cities burning. Survival-of-the-fittest porn on every channel. But when the world ends, it's a whimper. Zombies are just as disappointing dead as they were alive. They stagger. Moan. Get winded going up stairs. Their knees pop like bubble wrap when they stand.

Thursday. Late afternoon light the color of old teeth. Zeke sits in his minivan in the Costco parking lot. The Honda still smells like Katie's apple juice boxes. He lights a Marlboro.

The dead wear their death like business casual: rumpled but trying. A woman in Lululemon does downward dog in the intersection, her spine showing through her sports bra. White bone. Pink meat. She holds the pose for thirty seconds, then forgets she's dead and folds into a low moan.

Mall cops use cattle prods now. Gentle taps. The dead file into chain-link pens behind the Costco, swaying like Black Friday shoppers who forgot what they came for.

"Line forms on the left, people," Zeke says to no one. To them. "Come on, buddy. Pick up the pace."

The Taco Bell sign glows. Half the letters dead. T CO B LL.

A zombie in pinstripes stumbles past, Wells Fargo lanyard around its neck. Senior Vice President of Something. It catches a foot on the curb. Spends the better part of a minute getting vertical.

Zeke flicks his cigarette. It bounces off the thing's forehead.

"We had you on a pedestal," Zeke says. "Corner office. Reserved parking. The whole deal." He watches the thing sway. "Now look at you."

It moans. Sounds like a dial-up modem in hospice.

"Yeah," Zeke says. "I get it."

This is how the world ends. This is how the world ends. With a wheeze.

Behind him: click-drag. Click-drag.

Small feet. Patent leather on asphalt.

Zeke's hands go still on the wheel.

"Daddy?"

Katie's voice. But Katie died eight months ago, two months before the world caught up. Leukemia ate her from the inside out. The hospital smelled like industrial pine, like Christmas in a petri dish.

The thing wearing his daughter's face stands in her Easter dress. Purple flowers on white cotton. She picked it herself, the last normal Saturday.

Gray skin. Eyes like fogged windows.

"I'm hungry."

Her lips work wrong, like she's learning them again. The dress carries new stains, brown and red and colors that live past their names.

Zeke's knees lock against the door frame. The parking lot tilts.

"Hey, baby." Same voice he used on the Wells Fargo zombie. Same voice he used on the Lululemon woman. "You need something?"

She tilts her head the way she did when asking for one more story. "Take me home?"

The Wells Fargo zombie stops swaying. Turns. Others turn too. The Lululemon woman unfolds from her pose.

Katie's hand reaches up. Small fingers. Nail polish chipped but still pink. She painted them the night before the last hospital visit.

Zeke takes her hand. Cold the way a glass of water is cold, cold in a way that has nothing to do with temperature.

"Okay."

Click-drag. Click-drag. Her Mary Janes keep time.

They walk past the Petco where the dogs died first. Past the Subway where someone wrote STILL ALIVE in mustard on the window. Past the Dick's Sporting Goods, picked clean months ago.

The late sun stretches their shadows into something taller and thinner than either of them ever was, and Zeke's shadow holds Katie's shadow by the hand.

Behind them: shuffling. The Wells Fargo zombie. The Lululemon woman. A teenager in a Fortnite hoodie, jawless, making sounds through the open bottom of his face. An accountant clutching a dead phone. A silent parade following Katie like she alone knows where the dead are supposed to go.

She squeezes his hand once, the way she did during scary movies.

"Katie?" His voice cracks.

She keeps walking, leading him, leading all of them, and Zeke fills the silence the way he always does now.

"It's okay," he tells her. Tells the street, the mailboxes, the fire hydrants. "We're almost home. Left on Maple. Fourth house. The one with the blue door. You picked that color."

The neighborhood opens around them, every house a variation of beige, the lawns still perfect. HOA regulations survive everything.

Katie turns at Maple Street. Fourth house on the left. Blue door. Cosmic Cobalt. She'd held the paint chip up to her face and said it matched her eyes. It didn't match her eyes. He bought four gallons.

The spare key sits under the ceramic frog.

Katie opens the door and walks inside. The others stop at the property line. The Wells Fargo zombie straightens his tie. Still late for something.

Inside: Katie's drawings on the fridge, stick figures under a yellow sun. The dishes in the sink from eight months ago wear green fuzz, growing new ecosystems on old cereal bowls.

Katie opens the fridge. The light still works.

"Hungry," she says.

Zeke opens the freezer. Hot Pockets. Pepperoni. The freezer hums on, stubborn and faithful and dumb.

"You want one of these? You'd burn the roof of your mouth every single time, and every single time you'd act surprised."

She turns. Looks at him. Through him.

"You," she says.

This is how it ends.

Katie tilts her head.

"But not yet," she says. Clearer now, like language is coming back to her in pieces and the wrong pieces arrived first. "Not yet, Daddy."

She takes a Hot Pocket. Bites through the frozen center. Ice crystals on her lips, nail polish still pink against the gray of her fingers. She chews. Swallows. Takes another bite.

Outside, the others drift away. Back to their patterns. Their loops.

Zeke sits at the kitchen table, same chair, same view of the neighbor's lawn. Mr. Peterson, still mowing twice a week. The apocalypse is no excuse for crabgrass.

Katie eats. One Hot Pocket gone. Then another. Another.

"When?" Zeke asks.

She looks at him the way the living look at the dying, which is the wrong direction for this, and the look holds for long enough that Zeke can see the girl she was and the thing she is and the space between them, which is the same space, which is the kitchen, which is Tuesday afternoon in a dead world that keeps its porch lights on.

"Soon," she says. "When I'm not hungry anymore."

The refrigerator hums. Katie chews. The ceramic frog guards the door.

Outside, the sun goes down. The porch light comes on because Zeke set it to a timer three years ago, because the world keeps doing what you told it to do long after you stop caring.

This is how it ends.

This is how it begins.