Not really zombies.

          Not like in the movies, anyway. They’re alive, to begin with. And they don’t eat their victims. They’ll rape you, rob you, murder you, sure, but not eat you.

          The rest of it’s the same, though.

          They stagger around looking dead. They smell dead. Boils, abscesses, old infected injuries—they all do their part in approximating putrefaction. Sometimes, a murmuring haze of flies will surround their eyes and mouths. They look like skeletons in leather sheets. Their knee joints have a bigger circumference than their thighs. Starvation and malnutrition are the norm. But their crippled movements and disoriented moaning can be deceptive. Step into the street with your head elsewhere and they’ll swarm you.

          Afterwards, your corpse will look like it’s been eaten.

          But they don’t eat you. Just…tear you up.

          I’ve seen it happen too many times. Some family in a station wagon, just passing through, gets lost, doesn’t see the roadblocks. College kids looking for a gag. Survivalists, testing their mettle, and failing. I even watched them get an Ohio state trooper once. But usually those guys know better.

          This is the sixth year I’ve been coming to what used to be Gatling, Ohio. Like most of the small towns in America’s midsection, Gatling was abandoned after the Meth Rebellion of 2017, given over to the meth zombies who now wander its streets and sleep in the doorways of its uninspired, post-WWII architecture. The buildings are falling apart. Few of the windows remain unbroken. Insulation hangs from the ceilings. Lath is visible through the walls. Now the only life here is that which feeds off meth and wanders the streets, moaning like something out of a Romero film, looking for the high that will take them through the coming night.

          Luckily, the little second floor dentist office that I’ve taken over as my observation point has escaped the depravations. During the day, when the meth zombies are the most active, I can sit at the window and get film footage or dictate notes, whatever I feel like doing. At night, I sit in the old patient’s chair and read Jack Finney novels and drink gin. It’s diligent field work—don’t get me wrong—but I enjoy my summers here in Gatling just the same.

          Gene Northrop, a chemistry professor from Texas A&M, has a similar setup across town in the old New Life Baptist church. I’ve seen him around some. He’s working on a paper on aboriginal techniques for methamphetamine production in the post-industrial ruins of abandoned America. Sometimes, late at night, I’ll hear a building explode at the edge of town, and I think to myself, Ah, one of Gene’s grad students just scored himself a paper. Some night soon I’m going to visit him. Maybe we can compare notes.

          In the meantime, I’ve been working on a paper on the mating habits of the female meth—

          Okay, I need to change gears for a second.

          There was a noise outside the door just a bit ago and I had to make sure it wasn’t a wrecking party. The males can be dangerous when they’re scavenging for a high. I had to shoot a few of them earlier this month. I hated doing it, but I have to preserve this observation post.

          Luckily, it was only Susan.

          She started coming here, to my office, two years ago. She’s a white female, early 30s, which means she was in her teens when the Rebellion happened. The meth has charred most of her mind to cinders, but her survival instincts are still strong.

          She caught me off guard the first time she came here. It was late at night. I had gone through a lot of gin. I got up from my dentist’s chair to jot down some notes on something I’d seen that day, forgetting the front door was still open. I heard a floorboard creak and turned around. She was squatting in the middle of the floor, dressed in rags, her long brown hair a frizzled, shaggy mass around her dirty face, nicks and cuts all over her hands and arms.

          You ever been watched by a squirrel? Same look I got from her.

          I tried to speak, but she scrambled toward the door. She didn’t make it far, though. She was hungry, dehydrated, her body weak.

          I gave her some clean water and let her sleep on my couch. When she woke the next morning, she was going through withdrawal. She looked at the clean clothes I’d dressed her in, touched her face that was now clean, and panicked. Residual feelings of violation? I wondered. I just watched her from my desk. I put a military MRE on the floor. She snatched it up and backed toward the open door. I didn’t make a move to stop her, just went on smiling.

          I was delighted when she came back the next night.

          We developed a routine. I’d leave the door cracked at night, a little food and water on the chair next to my bed. Though she never talked, she could still communicate, with her eyes and her body language.

          She seemed grateful. I know I was.

          I started calling her Susan, after this girl I used to dream of dating back in my grad school days. I don’t think my meth girl minded. It seemed to comfort her, just as she became a comfort to me, a bulwark against the loneliness that used to overwhelm me here at night in the Methlands.

          I’ve been back in Gatling for three days now. That first night, when I was still getting settled, she came to me. She had something to show me, a memento of our last night together in August.

          Now I’m sitting here at my desk, watching her rub her belly, wondering about the baby in her womb. Will it be born without a soul, I wonder, or will it lose it along the way.

          Like its father?

Joe McKinney is a homicide detective for the San Antonio Police Department with a Master's Degree in English Literature from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the author of the novels Dead City and Quarantined and more than thirty short stories. He has received extensive professional training in disaster mitigation, forensics, and homicide investigation techniques. His upcoming novels include Apocalypse of the Dead, The Zombie King, Inheritance (forthcoming from Kensington), and Lost Girl of the Lake (Bad Moon Books). For additional information, visit: joemckinney.wordpress.com/