u/CursedandHaunted

The cellar was cold and creaky. Wood-paneled walls were slowly rotting, the elements turned against them after long years and pointed neglect. There were plans to fill the floor with concrete, small pikes and bits of colored tape still jutting out of it, but no such renovation ever took place. The door at the top of the stairs opened with rusted protest. A blade of light cut into the pitch black space.

The sound of jingling chains punctuated steps down moldered, aching stairs as Alan made his way to the bottom. A tall and thin man, Alan wore a long brown duster, had a ginger beard shaped like a seaweed cluster, and carried a double-barreled shotgun. In his other hand, a lantern casted a dull, candle yellow. 

The cellar was bare. There were racks for barrels of wine, but the barrels were either gone, broken, or long empty. There were shelves that once contained canned and jarred goods. Pickling equipment lay in disuse on a stained desk. 

At the far end of the room, there was a man shackled to the wall. He had been pushing against his chains as soon as he heard Alan open the door. Each slow step of Alan’s methodical pacing was accompanied by a relentless clanging of metal on metal as the man tried to free himself. Large manacles bound his wrists, ankles, and neck. The man was thoroughly imprisoned; though the wall he was attached to was old wood and the floor beneath him nothing but dirt, Alan had made adjustments to ensure the bindings would hold. Metal reinforcements and cinder blocks. Still, Alan held the shotgun with a strong and sturdy grip.

Alan grabbed a fold-out chair and set it ten feet in front of the man. He took a seat, set the shotgun across his lap, and placed the lantern on the soft ground next to him. The man offered something like a growl.

Alan was tired. His eyes were swathed in puffy, red tissue, the skin drooping from them in search of a resting place. His mouth, somewhat obscured by the hedge-like tangle of his facial hair, pulled downward so hard the bottom half of his face warped into a wrinkled arch. He took a deep breath. 

“Hey there, Bobby,” Alan said.

“Fuck you, Alan,” Bobby replied. His voice was raspy, the kind of sound you might expect after someone blew their voice out screaming at a concert. 

Bobby was a middle-aged man, slightly bulbous around the midsection. He had a flat tuft of black hair atop his head. His complexion was a pallid mix of blues and reds underneath a sea of fatty yellow-white. Bobby was breathing heavily, obviously exhausted from his escape attempts. 

Black veins crept up the side of Bobby’s neck. His eyes were so bloodshot the whites were almost gone entirely. On his thigh - clearly visible, as Bobby was wearing only soiled briefs - was a bite mark. The tooth pattern looked like a human mouth. The wound was festering, pus bleeding from the indents, scabs taking up residence in the divots of flesh. Alan stroked the barrel of his shotgun gently. The two stared at each other.

“I had to do it, Bobby.”

“You didn’t have to do shit. You still don’t. Look man - just let me out, come on. I won’t do anything crazy.”

“You ate Luna.”

“I didn’t…! Listen, it was a mistake, man! I was fucking starving, we all are! I got delusional, and I’m sorry. I’ve apologized, didn’t I? I already apologized!”

Alan nodded toward Bobby’s thigh.

“You got bit. You didn’t tell any of us. And then you ate my dog.”

“Fuck your stupid fucking dog!” Bobby said, suddenly jumping to a semi-standing position, straining his chains. The restraints groaned but held fast. Bobby coughed up a wad of blood and let it trickle down his chin. He was thrashing his vocal chords… or, maybe, they were rotting within him, Alan thought. Bobby caught his breath and sat back down.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, okay?” Bobby said. He wiped his chin. “It’s hard lately. I can’t always think straight. And I’m so fucking hungry I can’t stand it. Did you bring down any food?”

“I just gave you dinner an hour ago.”

“That? That wasn’t nearly enough, man, come on. You know that. I’m starving down here.”

“It’s the same amount everyone gets. And the rest of them say I should stop feeding you, anyway. Say it’s a waste.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure. Just throw crazy Bobby to the fucking wolves. They can all go to hell.”

Alan let the words ring in the air. He had hardly blinked the entire time he was down in the cellar. Bobby fidgeted and pulled at the cuffs. His wrists were bruised black. Bobby bit his lip until a curl of blood trickled between his teeth, then gave up with a grunt and sat back against the wall.

“So, what did you come down here for, then? Just to fucking taunt me? Make me apologize again? I said I’m sorry.”

“No,” Alan said, pulling a pocket watch out and looking at the time. “I came because it’s been two days since we noticed the bite. If you got bit on the last outing like we think, then…”

Alan didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to. Bobby’s brow pressed downward so hard his eyes were nearly swallowed by it. He bared his teeth, splashed with speckles of red.

“You piece of shit! If you’re gonna kill me, just fucking kill me, then!” 

Alan held a finger up to his lips.

“Shh. There will be people trying to sleep soon.”

“I don’t give a -”

“Bobby. I’m not here to torment you.”

Something in the way Alan said the phrase made Bobby hesitate. It was as if the room had shifted temperature, only one or two degrees, but enough to be noticeable. Like they were on a ship and it listed just slightly to one side. Bobby eyed Alan suspiciously but didn’t say anything. He nodded at the man sitting before him. Alan nodded back.

“I loved Luna, of course. I can’t say I have come to terms with what you did. But I forgive Bobby. I know it wasn’t him that did it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you think a human is?”

Bobby opened his mouth but only a defeated huff came out. He shook his head, resting it eventually against the cold, soft wood behind him.

“Like you, or me.”

“Right. But what makes you or me a human?”

“I don’t know. That we aren’t animals? That we have two feet, two eyes, a brain, a dick or pussy?”

“Someone famous once tried that argument. A shit-caked, vagrant madman ran into the philosopher’s circle and held up a plucked chicken. Hairless, featherless, biped. He announced, ‘behold, a man!’”

“Who let the fucker in? Sounds like some homeless junkie.”

“They say he liked to masturbate in public, too.”

“Okay, maybe I do like the guy after all.”

Alan cracked a smile. He leaned forward on his knees. Bobby wasn’t just settling down because Alan had placated him. He could see Bobby was sweating profusely. The muted tones underneath his skin had faded even more now, the tarp stretched across his bones a green-gray, and his wound oozed even further. Bobby was beginning to shiver. His teeth clacked rhythmically.

“Let me rephrase the question,” Alan said. “Do you think you could still be a human without a body?”

“No?” Bobby said, but he inflected it as if it was rhetorical. “What is a human without a body?”

“Okay, good. So a human is someone with a body. What about a brain? Could you be a human without a brain?”

Bobby stared at the floor. He blinked a couple of times as the saline converged and blotted off from his forehead to the dirt. He put one hand to the side of his head to support his neck.

“Uhh… you’d be dead, I guess, so no. You’d be a corpse.”

“Put a pin in that,” Alan said. His voice was getting a little quicker. “What if someone is in a coma, or has lost all major brain function? Like a terrible accident. They can’t think anymore. Are they still human?”

“A coma patient…” Bobby said, his words slurring. His head bobbed around as he now rested on his elbows. “You gotta choose whether to keep them on life support or not. Some people do, some people don’t. So I dunno. Maybe fifty percent human.”

“Nice try. You have to choose one or the other.”

“I don’t know.”

“No one really does. But for the sake of argument, let’s think of the corpse again. Dead as a doornail, but a full, normal body and brain. Are they human?”

“They were human,” Bobby said. His voice was quiet like he was half-asleep. “They’re gone now, though.”

“Even though they still have their brain? So the essence of a ‘human’ is something outside of the body entirely?”

Bobby sat up. He stared at Alan through squinted lids. Purple-ish fluid was leaking from Bobby’s eyes. His sclera were so filled with ruptured blood vessels they were near black. Bobby chattered his teeth and they pressed against each other like the molded planks of the cellar, soft, dead gums threatening to evict them with every bite. Alan looked at Bobby’s leg. The bite was raised a full inch off of Bobby’s thigh, inflamed to all hell, bright and red and angry as the devil himself.

“I don’t know, Alan. I don’t know. I’m scared.”

“It’s okay not to know, Bobby.”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“I want to know when it’s okay to kill you.”

Bobby’s eyes widened and his mouth hung ajar. It looked like he was trying to speak. The black veins had crawled across most of his body now, and his heart was pumping so hard Alan could see the motion of his hairy chest slamming up and down. Bobby gasped several hard, sharp breaths, trying not to drown in the open air. As his body spasmed and seized, Alan checked the slugs in the shotgun and continued to speak.

“If you kill a healthy, normal person, you’re a murderer. It’s a horrible thing to do. If you kill a medical vegetable, it could be seen as a mercy, or at least a chance for the family to get some relief. If you shoot a corpse, people would be upset. Maybe more upset than the coma patient? But then, the method is different. People probably wouldn’t much like a coma patient getting shot.”

Bobby’s body stiffened and froze in place. His eyes darted to Alan, then around the ceiling. His locked joints creaked and jittered. Foam bubbled at the corners of his mouth.

A long, wheezing rattle escaped Bobby’s lips. His body fell slack against the chains. He swayed back and forth, looking like he was hanged by the manacle around his neck.

“This is my least favorite part,” Alan said. “It’s like a jack-in-the-box.”

Bobby remained still for another sixty or seventy seconds, then his every muscle sprang back to life, hurling themselves toward Alan. The cinder blocks actually moved a couple of centimeters, and one of the nails came loose on the metal couplings. Alan had steeled himself, but still startled a bit. He knew the restraints would hold for a while longer. He just hoped it was long enough.

“What are you now?” Alan asked. “You have a human body. A human brain. And you are capable of movement and action. You can’t talk - or at least, I’ve never heard a zombie speak before - but you can do a whole lot else.”

Bobby growled and roared in response, gnashing his teeth and biting through the sides of his cheeks. Soon blood streamed down Bobby’s mouth like rain down a windowpane.

“If I let you live, you will surely kill us. So you’re kind of like a murderer. Some states used to have death penalties, some not. You know the whole painless execution thing was a lie? No method ever developed reliably spared the subject from pain. Electric chair failed multiple times and would often require two or three shocks. Firing squad can always miss or not hit something vital. Lethal injection caused immense pain as it killed, a far cry from the sedated, humane send-off it was billed as. The guillotine… well, actually, it seems like the guillotine might have been one of the more gentle methods, as it pretty reliably killed the victim in three to seven seconds as long as the blade was well-maintained.”

The zombie’s head whipped around the room, looking frantically in every direction, the saccades of its eyes difficult to follow. It sniffed the air. Seemingly having come to a decision, it began to gnaw at its own finger, easily tearing one off of its right hand and gnawing on it. Alan cocked the shotgun.

“Anyway. The point is, people have always struggled with killing even the most heinous of criminals. You know that old saying, if you kill a murderer, the amount of murderers in the world stays the same? So some, maybe even most, tend to favor locking someone up in prison for the rest of their lives instead of putting them down. What do you think, Bobby?”

The zombie had gone to work on the second finger. The first one was gone, consumed, bone and all. Alan drummed his fingers on the handle of the shotgun.

“Just a little longer, bud. Just bear with me a little longer,” Alan said. “So. We have this disease or curse or whatever happened to the world that turns people into mindless, undead cannibals. Like you. Zombies. We aren’t going to dance around the word like those stupid television shows. We saw them in movies, read them in books. No one could have imagined it actually happening. But here we are. It would be like aliens invading and everybody insisting on calling them ‘spacers’ or ‘shiplings.’ It’s just kind of silly.”

The zombie had choked on the second finger bone. It was lodged sideways in the thing’s throat, bulging prominently like a second, thin Adam's apple. Alan winced, but the creature didn’t seem to notice as it went for its thumb. Uh oh, Alan thought. Crunch time.

“Phase one, the bite. Then three days of incubation. On the third day, without fail, you turn. First the disease kills you and then it brings you back right after. Though, sometimes you fuckers will play dead and get the drop on us.” Alan paused, some color returning to his cheeks. “I mean, not you, Bobby, sorry. Other zombies. Not sure how they’re even smart enough to do that.”

Halfway through the thumb.

“The thing is, you’re obviously thinking. Something is driving you. You have a body and a brain. You’re a murderer, certainly, or you’d become one as soon as possible. But does that mean you’re not human? Were Ted Bundy and Ed Gein not humans? Or were they just sick, sick individuals? Could they have been helped if someone noticed, intervened? If not, is killing them the right thing to do?”

Almost down to the knuckle…

“If we are supposed to kill zombies, should we kill them as soon as you’re bitten? Right after you die? Only after you reanimate and prove that you are a murderer, putting all of our lives at risk as well? Should we try to keep you locked up, in case a cure comes around? A cure for serial killing?”

The zombie wrenched its hand through the manacle, now missing two fingers and a thumb, but a sheet of skin still ripped off the back of its hand, caught on the metal. It immediately flung its hand forward, a sheet of blood droplets flying toward Alan. In one practiced motion, Alan stood up and turned around, all of the blood peppering his long coat harmlessly, sounding like rain.

Alan turned around, took two steps back, and fired both slugs. The zombie’s head exploded, bone and brain and tissue and tendon erupting onto the sodden wood. The body thumped to the ground, the thrashed stub of a neck now free of the manacle.

Alan quickly checked all his exposed skin. No blood drops on him, though his shirt had some gray matter on it. He would have to burn it. As far as he knew, the disease or whatever would only transmit through open wounds or soft tissue, but he wasn’t about to risk it. Torch the clothes, then nearly scald himself in a long, hot shower. Thank God they still had hot water.

Alan stared at the body in front of him.

“Goodbye Bobby. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it less painful.” Alan turned to leave, but stopped and took one last look at the zombie.

“But maybe killing killers should hurt.”