Maps and half-assed cures

My best friend is sort of mad at me but can’t blame me so he has to just suck it up, as my husband says.

“When I literally had broken bones last time we did this—- we still carried on. We don’t even know what’s going on with you, Bex…” Hudson grips, looking at all the laid out papers that Jack left me.

“We will be home soon. I promise. My feelings are telling me to slow down, though. To really understand this. These papers,” I sign in a frantic way, holding up science extracts then putting it down neatly, “Are my origins. My people.”

Hudson takes my hand, looking at me softly. Some of the scientific extracts that I tried to pick up again fall to the grass. I never realized the itchy, dry sort of softness grass had. It makes me itchy.

I scratch my head and then my stomach, making Hudson look at me carefully. Well, look at my stomach.

Suddenly he’s closer to me, next to my stomach. He seems to be contemplating something as he nods shortly.

“Hudson, what are you doing?” I sign to him, smiling questioningly at his brisk movements.

“You’re gonna have a baby, Bex. I can just tell. And I need to apologize to you because I swore to Stan as his friend and brother that I’d protect you. But, I’ve been a jerk. An asshole. And my reckless behavior can’t be tolerated just because of the fact that my husband is in a coma…”

I stop him from talking by placing a finger over his mouth. He laughs.

“Hudson, you’re my brother too. I want to be here for you, too. But, yeah, you have been an asshole!” I sign, making Hudson laugh harder.

“Yeah. I have been a huge asshole. I’m so worried about our friends too,” he places his hand on his temples, sighing.

“I wonder how the meeting with the elites went,” I sign and he nods appreciatively.

“Well, I doubt your people would do anything rash. Even during the Bloodletter raids, they kept things relatively contained.”

It is a quiet place where we decided to take a rest but I seriously needed it. Looking at Hudson gave me such an emotional feeling of relief, a missing feeling that I lost my home but with him there’s a piece that was found here in our talk. I feel so tired all the time and for a zombie to never understand or even know the feeling of tired to all of a sudden immediately feeling aches, pains, hunger and fatigue… it feels overwhelming. A hush runs through these woods as we map out our journey. It’s sobering to hear silence in the wild. The minute sounds of even a single chirp, a cricket call or a chittering animal make the silence feel more natural. Sounds I couldn’t hear as naturally as a zombie.

But what am I now? Am I still a zombie but pregnant? I feel like a sick zombie that isn’t working right when I have human tendencies like hunger, tiredness and anxiety.

All I really know is that I want to make it back to my true home, my husband Stan. I love my friends as my family.

In the silence, Hudson is reading over all the documents that Uncle Jack gave me. I feel so inadequate and out of my element with anything scientific or medical. I feel better with a paintbrush and a pen on paper.

“Rest in peace, Uncle Jack, but honestly, Bex… I honestly think he was either very misguided or just not really paying attention to what happened to the first zombies. You know, the story we read?” Hudson begins saying with a concerned, thoughtful look. I nod, sighing for him to continue.

“I think there was definitely something in that story that we’re all missing. When we all stayed at Uncle Jack’s lab in the beginning, he gave us medicine that only masked symptoms but never got to the root of the issue. Maybe it was beyond his ability to treat this once it was too far gone. I don’t know. Either way, I hope we can make better sense of these things. I sure as shit can’t.”

I frown, signing interestedly, “So it was just a half-assed cure,” making Hudson laugh sadly.

“He was just trying to delay the inevitable. Like with his own end, but through other people’s eyes. Or something. I don’t know,” he yawns, “I’m going to take a nap. You should too.”

He closes his eyes but I don’t, looking at the story once again of the two first zombies ever recorded by name on paper. Maybe this story could be a map to bridge the gap of the half-assed cures that Uncle Jack started.

I just need to make a list to make sure the map won’t lead us to destruction. I know that was the most human thing I did as a zombie, making lists.

I wrote down another list. It was about the life growing inside my undead body.

1. Months, days, weeks? How long am I holding this life in my stomach?

2. How can I know for sure? Is there a test?

3. How can I protect myself to protect the baby?

I close my eyes to dream of the world with life and death no longer being at odds with another.