Mishmash

Stumbling forward and dragging one dislocated leg behind him, the creature woke from its viral-infused fugue. Its first thoughts upon waking were, where… how… what… and also, where’s dinner?

It looked around. Gray concrete lined every surface. In front of it, a gray wall rose far above. The creature’s eyes traced the wall up twenty feet or so, and saw dozens of people standing there behind a black railing under an awning. Then, it looked down and saw a moat between them and it. It tried hard to think of where it had seen something like that before, until finally, the image of a zoo popped into its head. He, and yes, it now remembered it was a he, couldn’t fathom why he would be in a zoo. Especially since he seemed to be inside of a pen.

He leaned down and dunked his hand in the water, testing the temperature, but felt no change. It occurred to him; that he felt nothing at all. Looking up, he opened his mouth to ask the people above where he was, but all that came out was a long low moan of “Misssssshhhhhhmassshhh.”

“Wow! It talks, Daddy?” asked a little girl in the pink dress with twin pigtails standing above Mishmash with the crowd.

“Well, zombies can’t talk. Not anymore. They’re too stupid. All they want to do is eat,” said the man, whose long beard hung over his bib overalls.

“Oh.” she paused for a moment and then said, “But it said Mishmash. Isn’t that a word?” asked the daughter. “It sounds like a word.”

“Well, maybe that’s its name. Maybe that’s all it remembers of being human,” replied the father.

“But if it remembers its name, then doesn’t that mean it’s not stupid?”

Changing the subject, the father said, “I don’t know. Do you want to feed it, princess?” 

“Yeah!” shouted the little girl.

Mishmash searched the crowd above for the father and the little girl. As he did, he saw motion above him. Something was falling from the sky. He tried to focus his eyes, but they didn’t work quite the way they used to. Then he saw it, a severed arm twirling through the air, and the moment he identified it, the arm smacked him right in the center of his face before it fell limp to the ground before him. He stumbled backward, his dislocated leg twisting, and he fell on his ass.

The girl squealed with laughter. “Bullseye Daddy!”

The man chuckled and pulled up on the straps of his overalls. “You sure got him good, princess.”

She clapped her hands. “Oh, I can’t wait to watch him eat it! It’s so gross when they eat. I love it!”

Her father laughed again. “Well, remember, if you’re too grossed out, we can leave. You don’t have to watch.”  

“Don’t worry, I won’t be! I told you I watched the zoo livestream feeding the zombies on YouTube all the time!” She giggled and continued, “I like it when they eat heads. It’s so weird to watch them try to bite it like an apple.” The little girl sighed and then pouted. “I wish I could get two hundred million views on my YouTube videos.”

“Me too, princess, me too. Too bad they won’t let us have our phones here or we could have recorded your bullseye. I bet a lot of people would have laughed at that.”

Confused and listening, Mishmash looked down at the arm. Then he looked up at the little girl who had thrown it. She stood at the top of a rail, a good twenty feet above, standing in the middle of the crowd. Her pink dress flapped in the gentle breeze. He scanned the crowd looking past the father in overalls and at the other spectators. Other people in the crowd wore everything from yoga pants to their Sunday best. It was a whole general mishmash of people from all walks of life.

Mishmash picked himself up, stumbling to his feet. Angry, he shook his fist and shouted at the little girl and said, “Mishhhhhhmassshhhh” He thought to himself that people really let their kids get away with anything these days. He wasn’t wrong. Imagine, reader, how you would feel in Mishmash’s situation.  

Many members of the crowd standing behind the railing above held severed limbs and assorted body parts of their own. Mishmash thought he saw one young boy holding what had to be a coiled ball of intestines. Before Mishmash could say or do anything, a shower of body parts rained down around him. He dove to the ground, covering his head as organs and limbs made squishing and splatting noises on the concrete of the enclosure.

Puzzled at the assault, Mishmash stood up again and dusted himself off. He turned and saw that, to his surprise, zombies were all around him. Terrified, he stepped back to the edge of the moat, feeling his panic rise. They ignored him.

Each creature headed toward the closest body part. He looked back down at the arm lying there in front of him. Then he looked back up at the crowd, and then, back at the Zombies. They didn’t seem very interested in him, and certainly, if they were zombies, wouldn’t they want to eat him?

With a sinking feeling, Mishmash looked down at his hands. He turned them over back and forth. They were a strange grayish color, though there were splotches of normal skin here and there. He thought, Oh no. Oh no no no no no. How had this happened? He couldn’t be a Zombie, could he? Zombies weren’t supposed to think. Something was wrong here, but he couldn’t quite remember what.

Hunger pain rose in his belly and his eyes drew to the severed arm sitting there just before him. Without thinking, he kneeled on the ground with his good leg, picked up the arm, and drew it toward his mouth. It was cold as if recently stored in a meat locker or a morgue. But that didn’t matter. He was so hungry he could barely stand it.

Mishmash opened his jaw wide so that he could bite off the biggest chunk possible, then stopped. He remembered himself, paused, and dropped the arm. It occurred to him that he really shouldn’t be doing this. It was a human arm, and he was… what? Well, obviously, not exactly human. Were zombies human? What did it mean to be human?

For a moment, dear reader, he felt tempted to go down a philosophical rabbit hole about that question, but opted instead, to examine his circumstances. He was after all a scientist. That’s right! He remembered now, he, Mishmash, was a scientist, at least in the before times.

He abandoned the arm, walking around the pen and observing the others eating their fill. Despite his desperate hunger, he felt a wave of revulsion. It was a noisy business, their hungry mouths munching and tearing at flesh and tendon. Nor did it smell much better. Zombies, he decided, smelled terrible. He sniffed himself and wondered if the moat was available for bathing. Did they provide zombies with soap here? He doubted it.  

Mishmash looked back down at his hands again and something, some fragment of memory, stirred in him. He remembered the bite. He looked down at his right hand and noticed, under the graying skin, teeth marks.  

Stumbling, he fell and remembered his dislocated leg. There was no pain. He looked down at his knee, bent at an odd angle, reached down, and straightened it with a pop. Apparently, the only discomfort he could feel was hunger. He stood, with his leg adjusted, but far from perfect, he walked back to the moat where the abandoned limb lay. It was then more memories flooded back.

“What’s it doing? What didn’t it eat the arm?” said the little girl.  

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s full?” said the father.

Another person, who Mishmash couldn’t see, said, “Zombies don’t get full, you idiot. They eat and eat and eat.”

The father said, “Then you explain what it’s doing.”

Mishmash lost the tenor of the conversation to his own thoughts.

Everything was so clear now. His name wasn’t Mishmash, it was Dr.… Dr.… well, he couldn’t remember his name, but he remembered the viral outbreak. Because the virus took a long time to transform you, the military contained the disease in a few cities. With the worst possible outcome avoided, Mishmash and his lab assistant had begun research on a vaccine to prevent future outbreaks.

He looked around again, and his heart sank. This was the pen he used to conduct his research. This was where they kept the handful of Zombies they hadn’t torched. He was in the Bronx Zoo. The body parts were from cadavers because it turned out that Zombies were picky eaters. They only liked human flesh, and you couldn’t very well have your test subjects starve to death. Funny enough, they had discovered Zombies could starve to death. However, the only other way they could die was by destroying the brain. Somehow the virus kept the rest of the flesh up and running regardless of its condition.

The virus had something to do with… immortality research? Yes, that was it. Well, here it was, basic immortality, as long as you ate people and gave up your mind. But then, why did he have a mind? There was a reason, but he couldn’t quite remember. But first things first, Mishmash had to get out of here. He clearly didn’t belong anymore.

He prepared a plea, a cry for help. And reader, I promise you he was trying his absolute best. It was just that, well, his mouth didn’t quite work the same anymore. He moaned, “Miiissssshhhhhhmassssshhhh.”

Someone above said, “Is it trying to talk to us?”

Hope filled Mishmash. They were listening. He was so damn hungry… but someone was listening! He could get out of here. Maybe they would let him go back into his lab and find a full cure. Then he could eat. Perhaps they could provide him with a snack on the way?

Something else flashed in his memory… the exposure… it wasn’t an accident. Someone had undone the restraints on the Zombies bed, just as he was injecting it with the test vaccine. He had been so close. There was something about… the zoo… ticket prices… money? The memory was incomplete. But he remembered that just before the disease spread to his brain, he had given himself a dose of the vaccine. Apparently, it hadn’t entirely worked, but now, here he was, and he was back… well, his mind anyway.  

He tried to think of anything else but the arm and ignore the ravenous hunger, and yes, his eyes kept drawing back to that arm. He didn’t want to eat it, but also, he really did. Could anyone blame him? The cadavers came from bodies donated to science. So it wasn’t like anyone was getting hurt. Dr. Mishmash, as he now thought of himself, had a disease, a virus that made you ravenous. He must have eaten human flesh before or else he wouldn’t have survived this long. He licked his lips and reached for the arm.

He stopped. No, there was no time for eating now. Mishmash focused and knew what he needed to do. He needed to escape. In order to do that, he needed to be as eloquent as possible. Yes, if he could only express himself properly, then he could escape and perhaps continue his research… and eat. He would definitely eat.

Mishmash raised one finger as if to make a pronouncement and win his freedom from the enclosure. He would tell them that his body had fought off the disease, and that he could think clearly again. He would say that, now that I’ve been through the gauntlet and out the other side, a cure was inevitable. They must trust the science.

He opened his mouth and said. “Missssssssssshhhmash. Mishmash. Mish. Mish. Mash. MMMMMMMish. Mish mash mash mash mash mish. MISH MASH!

Then he sat, exhausted. Hopefully, they understood. There were a lot of mishes and mashes there, but he was certain that he had belabored the point.

He looked up, expectant of his liberty. Knowing that any minute now, surely someone would come down and get him out of here. It would be tricky, because the other zombies were around and he certainly wouldn’t anyone to get… bitten…. He licked his lips. Unless… well, maybe he could have just a nibble. That man in the overalls was plump. Perhaps, just a taste?

No one moved. Nothing happened except for silence. Well, okay, it wasn’t silent, because behind him, he could hear his fellows munching away at their… lunch? Dinner? Did it really matter? It wasn’t like you decided, oh, arms are for breakfast and legs are for dinner. Either would be fine for any meal. His eyes drew back to that arm, still sitting there where he’d left it.

He made himself focus. It was just a matter of time till someone rescued him. Mishmash waited. His stomach rumbled. He waited some more.

Then he stood back up and tried to say something again.

“Miiiiissshh mash mash mash mish.”

Still no response. He knew it was difficult to understand his decaying vocal cords, but his tongue was working just fine. Surely they had understood some of the words he had said?

Another zombie walked up next to him. It was a woman. He looked at her lovely face and recognized his lab assistant, though he couldn’t seem to recall her name. She turned her face toward him, and he saw, with only, light horror, considering what he now understood about himself, that the cheek on her right side was entirely missing. He could see her teeth through her face.

She grabbed him by the hand, and all at once, he realized she, too, had woken from the long slumber of the zombie fugue. The test subject bit them both at the same time and Mishmash had injected her with the vaccine as well, in hopes they would both avoid the exact fate they were currently experiencing. So here it was the proof that his vaccine worked, sort of. With a little refinement, Mishmash was confident they would both find a cure and win a Nobel prize for their efforts. Also, she looked really cute standing there, with part of her face missing. Good enough to eat almost.

She said, “Maaaaagooooorrrr Magor magor…”

He nodded in agreement. The humans above didn’t seem to understand but somehow he did. Were they psychically linked somehow? Another interesting element to research. He asked her, in what he was increasingly certain was their own distinct zombie language, how long she had been… awake.

She replied, a few days, and that another, the one who had bitten them after they had given it the vaccine, had woken up as well. Unfortunately, after an attempt at a hunger strike to try to get the attention of someone, anyone, that she was no longer mindless, Magor had gone mad with hunger and eaten the only other zombie who woke from the fugue.

In Zombie, Mishmash said, “Well, at least there are still two of us, and were cured!”  

In the zombie language, which outwardly sounded like Magor Gor Mag Magggggooorr Magor magor, she said, “Well, I wouldn’t say we’re cured just yet would you Dr.? I can’t stop craving human flesh.”

“No, Dr. Magor,” replied Mishmash, “I don’t suppose we are. We will need to get back to the lab and further refine our treatment. But I’m confident we can find the cure.”

From above, the little girl said, "What are they doing, Daddy?"

“I don’t know, princess. Maybe they’re talking to one another.”

The third person, who was still not visible to either Mishmash or Magor, said, “Zombies don’t talk stupid. They just eat. Maybe they're about to eat each other!”

“Oooo,” said the little girl. “Do they do that, Daddy?”

“I don’t know princess, they might if they’re hungry enough.”

Magor picked up the severed arm that had hit Mishmash in the face and said, “Are you gonna eat this?”

“Yes.” Said Mishmash, “I suppose I should. I must keep my mind clear.”

She handed over the arm. She was only a little hungry since she had just eaten.

Mishmash gave into his hunger.

Don’t be grossed out, reader. You would do the same thing in his situation. Just let Mishmash eat in peace. Then, maybe, he can find a way out of this.

Maybe.