Stubborn Rooster and the Zombie Girl

Pancsi was the most beautiful zombie girl on Saw Street. Her blonde hair showed only traces of graying here and there, and it didn’t fall in ugly clumps like the other undead. Her pale, faded skin was only occasionally covered in greenish, decaying spots, and best of all: she had all her limbs intact.

Without a doubt, Pancsi was the most beautiful zombie girl not only on Saw Street but in the entire district of Zugló.

Not that she knew what beauty was, or what kind of street she was on, or even how big Zugló itself was, because like all proper zombies, she didn’t have higher brain functions. She could only walk around clumsily, swaying, and eat. She did that constantly, until she was stuffed.

She was always hungry, which was not surprising since the only feeling left in zombies was hunger, and it took the place of all the others and tortured them with multiplied strength, non-stop. She felt hunger instead of everything else. If she was cold, she became hungry, and if she was hot, too. If beautiful music played somewhere, hunger immediately gnawed at her, just like when scary noises came from the basement and didn’t let her sleep. If she thought of an old schoolmate from before her zombification, she would have loved to bite into them out of nostalgia, and if she thought of her recently deceased puppy, Fifi, she would have killed for a bite of her in her sadness. Only hunger existed for her.

However, in the neighborhood, all the food had long been consumed, since eating was the favorite pastime of the zombie neighbors, just like Pancsi. They searched the streets in groups for something to eat, whether sweet or salty, bitter or sour, living or dead. They forgot about everything else and didn’t care about anything else.

Poor orphan Pancsi was no exception.

She had been left to her own devices for a long time now, as her father lay lifeless on the comfortable couch in the living room with a sports newspaper in his lap, and instead of the lottery results in his incomplete head, the pellets fired from last week’s zombie hunter soldier’s gun rattled. Her mother was still there for her, but she accidentally turned into a faulty zombie, and instead of feeling hunger, the desire to iron filled all her thoughts. Day and night, she was in the kitchen, her skeleton-thin body bent over the ironing board.

So the zombie girl had to take care of herself.

After all the food had run out of the pantry and refrigerator, she had to look for another source of nutrition. For a while, she eyed her mother’s pipe-thin leg, but since there was no meat left on it by then, she started munching on her father instead. The fatherly sustenance didn’t last very long, at least not the parts she could reach, so she began to search the apartment hungrily again.

It was only by chance that her eyes began to wander in that direction, and she saw the Rooster on top of the living room cabinet.

The rooster was dead. Very dead, but this didn’t bother Pancsi, the little zombie girl, in the slightest. She wobbled in the middle of the living room and stared intently, licking the corners of her mouth. The rooster was up high, and Pancsi was just a small zombie girl, not exactly tall. Somehow, she still had to get it down or climb up to it, at least within biting distance. She started to think. Or rather, pretended to think since she didn’t have much to think with. After recognizing this – again, it’s not clear how – she decided to switch to the subjunctive mode.

‘If I had a brain, I could think of something,’ she thought, and with the help of the subjunctive mode, she immediately figured out how to get to the Rooster. If she had a brain, she could speak too.

‘Come down!’ she would have shouted at the Rooster, who, being very dead, couldn’t answer, but the subjunctive mode helped a little here too.

‘Why should I?’ the Rooster would have shouted down, of course only if roosters could speak and if it hadn’t been very dead at the moment.

‘So I can eat you, you fool!’ Pancsi would have protested indignantly. ‘Can’t you see I’m a zombie girl?’

Then, thinking she was too loud and not wanting to anger her dead father and ironing mother with imaginary chatter, she would have continued more quietly.

‘Don’t worry, it won’t hurt!’

‘Are you sure?’ the Rooster would have asked with no small amount of uncertainty in its voice. It wouldn’t have trusted the zombie girl, even if it were alive.

‘Yes, I’m sure! Come down!’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m dead, you dummy! Besides, I can’t feel my legs or wings. They’re probably gone,’ the Rooster would have said timidly, not even realizing it couldn’t feel anything.

‘Then I’ll have to think of something,’ Pancsi would have said and got to work.

She went to the television, which had been on for weeks because the family loved watching the regular half-hour news since the appearance of the zombie phenomenon. These news broadcasts were initially alarming, but after a certain point, they merely provided pleasant background noise for the zombified family’s life. Or death.

During the news break, they broadcast the only show that still had high ratings during the zombie crisis: the light version of the Wheel of Fortune, a TV quiz show modified for the crisis. Pancsika plopped down in front of this and began to stare intently.

‘We’re looking for a five-letter object, the first letter is L, the last is A, and we can climb it to reach higher places. What is it?’ asked Kasza Tibi.

‘Ladder!’ answered the Correct Solver.

‘Ladder!’ the zombie girl would have echoed and remembered the device leaning against the wardrobe that her mother used to hang and unhang curtains before and after ironing. After a brief struggle to get up, she wobbled towards the ladder.

‘What are you doing now?’ the Rooster would have asked from the top of the wardrobe with a worried but completely glassy-eyed gaze.

‘Well, if the zombie doesn’t go to the Moss Mountain, then I’ll go to the Necked Rooster!’ the zombie girl would have recited the peculiarly adapted proverb, which was, of course, a completely absurd assumption from a brain-dead eating machine.

A few moments later, she was already climbing up the ladder toward the Rooster, saliva flowing like a thick stream from the corners of her mouth.

‘Help!’ the Rooster would have cried. ‘A nasty zombie wants to eat me!’

‘You’re already dead, so be quiet!’ Pancsi would have snapped, which frightened the subjunctive mode so much that it no longer supported the story.

The zombie girl reached the top of the wardrobe, grabbed the Necked Rooster’s slippery, glass-like hardened body, and yanked it down along with some other decorative and useful items that noisily clattered to the ground next to the ladder. Paying no attention to anything else, Pancsi plopped down onto the wreckage and began to ferociously tear apart the Rooster. First, she peeled off the rattling, cellophane-like dried thin layer of skin from its head, then plunged a sharp spine she found into the flat skull’s center and eagerly began to twist it around the spine’s axis, causing cold but sweet blood to gush forth like a fountain.

Pancsi, the zombie girl, sucked the dead Rooster’s bodily fluids like a terrifying monster, making satisfied gurgling noises as she did.

‘What’s that horrible sound? I really hope you didn’t break anything, girl! Oh my God, what’s going on here! Damn it! Can’t you stay quiet for half an hour? I just stepped out of the room ten minutes ago, and you’ve already turned the apartment into a battlefield! Jesus! Look at yourself! What’s this green stuff on you? Grease paint? Yuck! This is yesterday’s spinach! Your hair is filthy! Now get in the bath before I give you a good spanking! What’s that in your hand? Jesus, your father will kill you when he sees what you’ve done to his cherished bottle of wine! Did you drink from it too? Pancsi, you’re only seven years old, for goodness sake! Hey! What are you doing? Don’t bite, you little devil! I’ll slap you so hard your head will fall off! You were sneaking around again while your father was watching horror movies! Now get out of my sight and into the garden! Gabor! Wake up, damn it! You should be more careful when you watch your stupid movies! Can you hear what I’m saying? Oh, you half-witted jailer! I wish you’d never been born. Just look at yourself! How can you sleep so deeply that you don’t notice this! She even smeared your leg with mustard! Wake up already!’

Pancsi, the Zombie Girl, eyed the little puppy sniffing peacefully at the end of the garden with hunger.

‘Come here, let me eat you,’ she would have said to the dog.

‘You’re stupiiiiiiid…’ the dog would have barked back, but instead, it leaped over the fence and ran far away.