The Living Dead

This is what Hell really looks like. We have to walk through the city in the land of the corpses. A long time ago, there was something known as ki and fighters could use it to levitate, above the air, but now the gravity weighs down on every inch of my body. You don't really complain. We have to save our energy. Our staccato footsteps form a dull beat as we trudge through the dust. Our bellies rumble like the thunder in the distance.

The good old days are in my head alone. The grass is dead, the water's gone.

"This must've been what the Saiya-Jin planet looked like," you remark, wiping the sweat from your brow. You're always trying to break the silences that I have worked so hard to create. You, you mean so well. And you're just a boy. I grunt.

It's not. And the Saiya-Jin planet had a name, Vegeta was his name. This is all his fault. As per usual. Thanks, Vegeta! The sky is opaque. The air is a thick, gritty collection of dust and death. The tan sky melts into the dirt. On Vegeta, the skies were red.

You don't know too much about Vegeta. You don't know too much about anything; I guess that's why we've got to stick together.

The sun slopes towards the horizon. It's time to find shelter. They come to feed at night, the living dead.

The buildings are piles of run-down concrete and metal. That's where they wait until the sun goes down and their hunger piques. The road is cracked and yet it's safest to stay in the light.

"We need to head west," I say, decision made. Your toes squirm. You're squeamish and I have no time for that, kid. I press forward. You hesitate. I haven't got time for this. You haven't got time for this. They're coming. A second, two, I count heartbeats until we're several paces apart. "Trunks!"

You're standing there in Gohan's old jeans and jacket. Your long, lavender hair does not mask those steely eyes. You are holding a space-ship, a trinket we found passing through earlier. You insisted on keeping something, I said we ought to travel light. You're just a kid, but you look so much like your father that sometimes it frightens me. And then you soften, and I see your mother's cheery demeanor.

The bark bites you in the butt, and you begin to follow. "Capsule Corporations are to the west. We can make it there in an hour if we make good time through the city. I can sense them now, swaying together in the shadows as they search for something to feed on.

I hear you huffing from behind me. "You said I'd never have to go back there again." You stop again.

I keep going this time, "I lied."

The truth is I've been waiting a long time for you to be old enough to return to your mother's lab, to finish her work, to end this. The truth is I can't control you, so sometimes I just tell you what you want to hear. The truth is, I didn't know what else to tell you when I promised you that you'd never have to risk seeing your mother or grandparents as the living dead ever again.

"Goku!" Your pleas do not fall on deaf ears. I have not always been so callous, but we do not have time for this.

I ran through these streets gleefully as a child. I loved your mother and our friends in this city all of our lives. You are the last part of me that is still me. You are the one whom I was left here to protect. I wonder if Vegeta would have left you here, if he knew you were his son. You are the last human, and you are not even a full human.

You call my name again.

"You are the one who wanted to travel to the city. It's too late to make it back to the mountains before they come."

You pick up your pace. I should tell you to slow down; you're not going to make it. You haven't eaten in days. I have not eaten in ten days. Even you are starting to look tasty, but I conserve my energy and you waste it away wearing at my thoughts.

"But Mother-" You lift a hand to protest. Your hands and cheeks and thighs used to be chubby with youth. Now, as a young Saiya-Jin with little nurturing, you are thin and small. Smaller than Gohan was at your age.

I growl. You are silenced. Finally, silence.

CAPSULE CORPORATIONS:

The dead have sunken eyes and decaying skin. It's gray and tastes sour. Eat too much of it, vomit all night. And yet fresh food is not exactly in abundant supply. While my strength dwindles under the gnawing pain in my gut, I still see their movements between the buildings as they scamper through what was once the most affluent part of town. I am just as much food to them as they are to me.

But we do not seek them out. We seek out processed foods, canned goods. Once, we found a rabbit. You were so hungry, you nearly ate it alive. You sank to your knees, letting it slip off into the brush. I didn't even scold you for it. We just hoped the creature made it home, trying to digest our humanity when our stomachs demanded flesh.

I can see that your mother tried at first to bolt the doors of the mansion. She tried to protect you. Then, she let me in, just like she let your father in. After the outbreak, this place was the safest place in the world. The machines that once protected the living bodies have been torn apart by the dead. There are bite-marks on everything, as if the living dead are willing to make anything into a meal.

It's eerily quiet in here. Our footsteps follow us everywhere we go, and our shadows, and you are tense. The furniture is still over-turned. Papers coat the floor. Wires. A little shoe. Trunk's shoe. Bulma locked herself in her palace with her precious son, trying to find the cure to a magical illness.

"Maybe we can find something in the upstairs kitchen," you say, ever the optimist. You're putting a face on. Your eyes betray your emotions. I do not have time for that. They will smell you, they will come for you. I am listening for the inevitable sound of the living dead stirring. I am fastening the bolts on the door. I am trying to protect you from the outside. I am hoping that there is no one left here in the inside. We can be secure for the evening, we can rest well.

You don't look happy at all to be back here. You recall that evening too, when your mother suddenly turned into one of the living dead. You tried so hard to talk to her, to reason with something that ceases to be capable of reasoning. Sounds escaped her throat that weren't words. She lunged at you and I punched her. You shouted at me, to not hurt her. You said she said I'd never do anything to hurt her.

The living dead only want to eat to continue to exist. She was going to kill you, and you don't care. You ask me all the time what the point of being alive is. I've grown weary of the question. The point is that you are alive. The years passed and you have lived in fear. Your childhood is not so very different from your father's, I don't think. Even when I carried you as a toddler away from your growling mother, I muttered promises to her that I would protect you. I shut the doors, I locked her in there and we hid in the Gravity Chamber until it was safe to take you to the mountains.

"After we eat, we can find the lab."

You flinch when I say that. You don't want to go through your mother's old books. You saw her die once, along with your grandparents and most of your childhood friends.

"Goku, I don't know anything about what my mother did-"

"You're going to have to learn real quick, then."

You are the only one who can try to make this right.

Your mother was such a beautiful, sexy woman. You are very like her. You are bright and articulate and passionate. When she comes charging at us in the huge entrance, your eyes open in shock. You were hoping she wouldn't still be here. She's looking a little emaciated herself, wandering the halls of the old mansion. Her transformation might have been slow. She might have tried to stop it with her science for a while. This is the magic of the dragon. This cannot be undone. And without Bulma to create a new dragon radar, I can only hope that you will one day be able to bring life back to this dead planet.

Her skin isn't gray so much as a soft white. She's a walking ghost, and her skin looks tender, as if it has not been so very long since it belonged to a living woman.

She's coming at me, black eyes and sharpened teeth. It is the hunger that drives them to such madness. I swallow, turning my face from Bulma briefly. It pains me to see that this is what has become of her. But your eyes well with tears, and love, for your mother. She's still in the ragged lab coat she was wearing the day she turned. You won't fight her, you won't even defend yourself against her. We don't have time for this, for your hesitation or your sentimentality or your self-restraint. I'd rather fight one Bulma than a city of the living dead.

I've got to summon some strength. I've got to protect you.

A MEMORY:

ChiChi and Gohan were laughing over dinner when he came, glaring darkly and yet he remained quiet until I left them to their jokes. I will always remember their happiness in those last moments because they were laughing at me. I ate too quickly. "You're going to eat all of the food in the world, and then what are we going to do?" She asked. She looked like a doll when she was younger. Every now and again, I long for her warm, caring touch. Vegeta showed up. He demanded to talk.

We stepped outside after a few tense moments at the dinner table.

"I have come to give you one last chance."

"Oh?" I asked, scratching my head a little. I squinted at Vegeta. "What's up?"

"Come with me."

I grinned at him, "Alright, sure, but not until after Gohan gets his bath, okay?"

"You do not understand. I do not have the patience for this. We do not have the time for this."

"Where do you want me to go, Vegeta?" I asked, getting a little more serious.

He smirks at me and says, "You are a warrior, are you not? Come with me to Vegeta, we will build a new kingdom and rule every planet in this side of the galaxy."

"Vegeta, we've got to prepare for the Androids. I need your help here, to protect the Earth and then you can try to rebuild Vegeta or not."

Vegeta's fists are pulled tightly together. His rage forms little spikes of electricity about his body. I raise my ki, to let him know I'm serious about putting him away, once and for all.

"I will give you one last chance to rule the universe with me. We will wish for our planet back and start over again. We can create an empire, Kakarotto, we can conquer them all."

"You mean kill and enslave them all!"

His teeth scintillate in the darkness, "You're telling me that you're not just another animal of prey? That you don't belong out there in the cosmos with me, unhindered by these base humans and their weaknesses?"

"I would never contribute to the destruction of innocent people!" I shouted. Once, a long time ago, I said that with certainty and pride and yes, even pleasure. Because I needed to be the nice guy, because I believed in heroism, I was the light. "And I belong here on Earth. This is my home, and I need to be its protector."

I didn't know he'd found the Dragonballs. I knew he'd slept with Bulma but I didn't know he'd stolen the radar. And when he slipped away that night, I noticed the four-star ball missing, and yet I assumed my son had misplaced it. I didn't think to wonder why he was so quiet when he waited for me to finish eating and speak to him outside. ChiChi's cold uncertainty focused on him, and yet I told her that things would be just fine. I told her to relax.

Before he left, Vegeta controlled his rage and tried one last time to recruit me: "If you do not come with me, I will make you suffer. I will show you what it is like to watch that which you love die over and over and over again before your very eyes. I will make it your fault. I will make you responsible for their suffering."

But I did not hear his threats. I did not know. Incensed, I shouted, "You're the pride-less monkey here! You're the one who has no honor! You try to blackmail me into becoming your minion! Leave now, Vegeta, or I will be forced to stop you no matter what your plan is."

And he did leave. I was surprised. I thought to follow him. In a moment of bad judgment, I ignored it. I wanted to trust Vegeta. At the heart of it all, the interaction was flattering in a way. He invited me to be a part of a mission that, although gruesome, was his personal objective. I thought, if anything, it meant that he was struggling fighting on the side of good with me, so he wanted me to turn around and leave Earth in its moment of need to serve his aims.

Later that evening, the sky went black slowly after on an island far away. The Old Kai called out to me, he told me to fly.

I did fly. I never saw Vegeta again. I think I heard him laughing, probably back all the way to the new planet he ordered up. Or gloating over his immortality or infinite power. He could've asked for all of those things and left us alone. He could have stayed here and raised his son and become my friend.

I always believed that if we did share a connection, as the last of the Saiya-Jins, it would stem from our mutual love of the battlefield. And I had never imagined how cruel Vegeta could be, how he could reduce my home and my world to a cemetery and leave me to crumble. I had at least expected that it would mean enough for the prince to dominate me, that he would return one day to kill me.

And yet, nothing. Day in and out, Trunks and I look for a place to eat and a place to sleep. He doesn't know that this is all my fault. He doesn't know that I failed to stop Vegeta. He doesn't know that underneath these ragged clothes is the first heart to have been infected with the rotting flesh disease, to have become one of the living dead.

And I had to eat.

NIGHT

With a grunt, I ripped off Bulma's arm. Brute force tends to work against these things, if you can stay away from the teeth. The corpse that so perfectly resembles my dear, old friend shrieked. The blood spurts out of the wound in awkward goops. It's not red, it's brown. She runs away, grasping at the wound through the bleeding fabric of her lab coat. She's off to try to sew herself up perhaps, or maybe try to die. It depends on how much she can remember. It depends on how well she can think through that fog. Best of luck to her. This is the land of the dead now. They won't trouble us anymore for the night, I don't think, but we can't stay here forever.

If we could just get something to eat, we could probably finish barricading the place up. Long enough for you to hit the books, to figure out how to find the Dragonballs. I haven't heard the voice of the Kai since the night Vegeta took off. I have no ki. I have no life-force.

Mostly, we lived in the mountains. I found food in the forest, you could be alone in the peace and quiet. But the disease spread all over the world in our absence, and the land turned barren and the animals died. When you asked to go to the city, I had come to love you. I really thought for the first few years that I could feed at night when you were asleep, and that you could be safe forever. But it was your tenth birthday! And it is time. You just wanted to play at a toystore in the mall. You picked out a space-ship. It was a final memory, and I promised that even if the living dead came out, we would not return to this place of loss.

I don't go after Bulma, we just secure off the door she ran into. You gawk at the trail of blood. You kneel down by it, letting your young tears flow.

I am exhausted. You do not see how hard this is for both of us. You lose your head over everything and yet I stick my neck out for you time and again. You look a little dizzy, you start to stumble. I toss the arm at you, still bearing his mother's dainty, manicured nails. "Eat it."

Silence. Your eyes are wide.

"Eat."

"You can't be serious."

"You think there's any food here? Or maybe you just want to go try to take those beasts on again?" I glowered at him, but Bulma's haggard breaths echoed in the walls.

"Mother!" You cried. It is too late. Do not call to her, she does not know you. I remember when I saw Chi-Chi. I remember when I saw Gohan. I know that you won't make it if they devour you. You will become one of them. You are the last of the good things. Your father left you here for me, for safe-keeping.

I locked them in crates. I dragged their howling, flailing limbs for miles until there was enough distance between us that I would never have to look into their sunken eyes again and see in it my own reflection.

Then, I went looking for survivors. I found you.

You found some crackers and tried to share them. No, no that's not what I can eat these days. You glare at me as I chew on the only meat that has been supplied to us. My stomach churns at the thought of processing the putrid stuff. You seem to be glowing over there, hating me in the corner for desecrating something beautiful to you.

"She's gone, Trunks. It's not her anymore."

"You don't know that. She… she hesitated when she saw me. She wasn't going to hurt me."

Absently, I took another bite. Just having something to chew on produced such an exquisite sensation.

"Stop doing that!" You shout. Angrily, I toss the arm to the side. I cross my arms over each other, watching you from the corner.

You're looking good enough to eat, boy.

He's asleep now, nuzzling against my chest as if I were his mother. I am all he has left. Even if I eat his mother, he loves me. No one knows what Vegeta wished for on that fateful night so many years ago. I can still hear him chuckle, "So you want to protect the Earth, do you?" and off he went. I believed he would do well. I believed I could stop him. I believed I wouldn't have to.

Where did he go, really? And how many of his three wishes did he use to curse me? The day after the sky went black, I felt intensely hungry. So hungry that without thinking of it, I leaned forward and bit my wife. I didn't know, how could I know? How could I know what venom had been placed there? How could I have known what Vegeta would do to me? I thought it was a playful bite. A momentary instinct. I didn't know... I didn't know...

Then, later, my son. Within the week, she had bitten half the city. Gohan's appetite was even more voracious. And then, there was my own.

Why did I go to Bulma's?

Why did she let me in?

The same reason she allowed Vegeta in, I'm sure. And so the world went about infecting itself. No one knew that the hero from the mountains brought starvation and death upon the people. No one knew where it started. And by the time I realized what I'd done, I'd killed or infected half of the human population.

It wasn't until I saw him, so young with his father's eyes and his mother's heart. I took him in, I lied to him. I told him that his father started this all but not that, as promised, I had become the weapon. I wanted to change back. I needed the boy to believe that I was normal in order to be normal again. I told him that his father cursed our planet and took off to another one. The boy asks questions every day about what Planet Vegeta is like. In the most chilling of ways, Vegeta is both his hero and his villain.

In the most chilling of ways, I am both the hero and the villain.

Perhaps Vegeta will return one day to gloat or colonize the planet. Or, I can get you to focus and change me back. Make me good again. Take this all away. I am a spiritless monster. Perhaps Trunks can go back in time as another version of him once did. He can save us all, if only I can keep him alive long enough to come up with some brilliant invention that will help us bring back the world.

I am determined and yet Trunks' spirit wavers. He grew up in this chaos, and at just ten years old, he has seen a lifetime of gore. And we are running out of food. I just need to survive the night without sinking my teeth into his supple flesh and tasting his fresh, vibrant blood. ChiChi's laughter haunts me. My wife, my love, my first victim.

"You're going to eat all of the food in the world, and then what are we going to do?"

And now, among the living dead, I stare at Vegeta's beautiful son and I resist the urge to eat his delicate flesh. Infected with death, just different enough to be sentient, just different enough to abstain from the pulsating desire to take apart the last beautiful thing.

GB