Cordyceps unilateralis, the zombie ant fungus, is spread by spores. An infected ant becomes obsessed — not eating, not sleeping, leaving its treetop home, all to find the perfect place to spread its spores. 

 

Human zombievirus is spread sexually. And infected humans become obsessed. When you’re infected, sex feels amazing. Better than heroin, junkies say. 

 

5 AM. It’s my turn on watch. I perch by the fifth-floor window with a shotgun, my eyes on the bombed-out street below. The sun is barely showing, and the zombies are already lining up in their weird wavy lines up and down the block. They barely sleep. They'll start dancing soon, and I'll need to avert my eyes to keep from knowing the steps too well, to keep from getting curious.

 

Zombies keep their human intelligence. They keep some amount of their personality, even. They know their names. They’ve just found a purpose. That stuff doesn’t matter anymore.

 

Another truck burned overnight — someone crazy enough to come downtown for food without knowing where the roadblocks are. I can see the smoke drifting up over the buildings. Over the next few days, they’ll tear it apart, with their hands if they have to, or with tools if any still run, and bend it into the shapes of letters. Once, on an ammo run, I saw their tower in Washington Square Park. Ten stories tall. They have an architect and a construction crew. They don’t use it for anything — not reconnaissance, not communication, nothing but a giant billboard. FUCK YOUR FACE, it says, in huge metal letters, FUCK YOUR ASS FUCK YOUR CUNT FUCK YOUR WIFE FUCK YOUR EYES FUCK YOUR THROAT FUCK YOUR on and on and on, in letters made from cars, gas pipes, subway rails, anything they can pry loose. Some letters have heads impaled on them. They seem to prefer cops and firefighters. Nothing in the city runs anymore.

 

At the start of the outbreak, they just fucked. There were fliers everywhere for sex parties, and if nobody showed up, the hosts would fuck each other, nonstop for hours. They’d fuck each other to death. (But the city was still alive, the trains still ran, and weirdly, people showed up. It was a rare party where someone wasn’t turned.)

 

Now the virus evolves. They don’t fuck each other to death as quickly anymore. They survive longer. They just tear the city up instead. 

I guess what they have is foreplay — weird, alien, virus-powered foreplay, and it keeps them alive long enough for their minds to warp beyond recognition. When someone can get a zombie’s attention for long enough to ask, the zombie says the evil towers and the weird line dances are foreplay. They feel the same mounting passion when they do those things together that we feel when we start kissing and groping on a couch with someone new — but the buildup can last weeks, even months, before they fall into each other’s arms, and every moment (they tell us, if we can distract them from a safe distance for long enough to ask) is pure rapture. 

 

And food is running out, and the water is filth, and they tear out gas lines for metal and laugh at the explosions. And people still show up.

 

The virus would spread even if we didn’t. Zombies will still rape you if they catch you. But some people don’t need to be caught. Every day, somewhere in the city, dozens of people ask themselves what it’s like for a regular construction job or a weird winding line dance to feel as good as sex. And some of those people decide to find out.

 

This morning, I’m wondering the same thing. But in this building we’ve got a few weeks’ worth of food, shells for the shotgun, books to read. Some of us love each other. I don’t need to know. Not yet.