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I woke up dead again.

The sun is too bright. It hurts my eyes like someone shoved shards of glass inside of them, forcing me to squint through ragged slits in my eyelids. Or maybe it is just rot. It is hard to tell anymore.

Something smells sweet. Sweet like meat. I try to remember what meat is. But the memory slides around in my rotting brain like fish in oil, too slippery to catch. I used to know a lot of things. I knew words, faces, laughter. Oh yes--laughter. That memory sparks in the very back of my skull for a moment but then it’s gone.

I know only hunger now. And hunger is always screaming.

I stagger to my feet, one bone-white ankle cracking sideways because my foot is barely hanging on. It doesn’t matter. I move forward anyway dragging the bad leg through the mud, dirt and grass. Every step I take feels wrong, too loose, like my body is a costume I never learned how to wear properly.

The others are like me.

We don’t talk.

Sometimes we make sounds. We make rattling groan noises. They aren’t words. The wind speaks more than we do, pushing its cold fingers through my empty rib cage and whistling through my broken teeth. I used to have words. I can almost taste them sometimes like I can taste the smoke in the air after the fire.

The sweet smell grows stronger. I follow it. The others follow too.

We find the things that smell sweet. It runs on two legs like I do but faster and smoother. Its eyes are wide and wet. Its mouth moving too quickly for me to understand. It throws noise at us. A high sharp noise. I think maybe this noise is words but my ears don’t know anymore.

The thing trips.

The sweet smell explodes when it hits the ground.

We fall on it.

Teeth tear. Bones crack.

I chew but my jaw doesn’t work like it should. Half of the time I miss my mouth. Fingers, arms, pieces of my face, none of it tastes the way I remember food tasting but it fills the scream inside of me for a moment.

When it stops moving we stop eating. Not because we want to because it wasn’t warm anymore. And warm tastes better.

I stare down at what’s left. I tilted my head to one side. Something about the curve of its cheekbone, the line of its jaw was familiar.

Then no. My brain pushes the thought, slow but dull like rotting gears turning underwater. But then it slips away and I am empty.

Always empty.

Night comes.

I don’t sleep.

The others don’t sleep either. We stand in a field full of crickets, broken fences and the bones of things that once moved. I try to remember why I move at all. Sometimes my legs just work without me asking. They drag me through mud, dirt, grass, rocks and ash. They drag me past cars with their doors open like broken mouths, past windows staring back with blank eyes.

We move because hunger tells us too. But what if there was no hunger? Would we just fall down and stop?

I wanted to ask the others but they would not answer. They don’t like that.

Maybe I don’t either.

One night a different thing finds us. It doesn’t run. It rides on wheels, lights blazing, a loud metal voice which is coughing smoke into the sky. There are so many warm things inside. They point sticks at us that roar like thunder. Some of us fall.

I don’t fall.

I move toward the noise. I move slow and steady even as the fire crackles in the air all around me. Something tears through my side. But the pain feels like nothing now. It feels like just pressure. Just the distance between what I was and what I am. The warm things shout to each other. One of them sees me.

He freezes. I freeze too. Because of his face. I know that face.

The memory hits me like lightning splitting a tree branch in half. His name was David. I had a name once too. I had a life. I had a house painted yellow and white. I had a kitchen which smelled like coffee and banana muffins. I see all of it for a second before the wind blows and takes it out again leaving only smoke.

“Mom?” The warm thing says.

His voice cracks and breaks open.

Mom.

The word is like a knife sliding into something that is deep inside of me. I want to answer him. I want to tell him that I am here and that it is cold inside my head and that I did not mean to leave the stove on that day. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But my mouth only makes that rattling sound.

“Mom.” He says again, softer this time. His stick drops to the hard ground. The others yell at him to point the stick and pull but he does not move.

Neither do I.

We stand there in the ruined field. Both mother and son. Both of us were shaking. The distance between us is bigger than the dark sky above our heads. I try to step closer. He lifts his hands like he might catch me if I fall. Then the thunder roars again. Not from him. But from the others.

Fire through my chest. I felt it through my throat and the place where my name used to be. The world went sideways and then I fell.

The hunger goes quiet for the first time since the sky felt like it fell down and the world burned. Before the screaming began. The hunger is not there. I thought that I would feel free. I thought that I would feel different. But all I feel is cold. Very cold. And then I feel something else.

I feel a hand on mine, small and warm. It was David’s hand. It felt like when he was little and used to crawl in my bed after he would have a nightmare. I can almost smell the shampoo in his hair, and hear the soft whisper of his voice when the thunder shook the windows.

The hand squeezes mine. Maybe it is the memory. Maybe it is him. I don’t know anymore. But for a moment I am not a thing that eats, walks and rots. I am just a mother.

And then the dark takes me.