Unexpected Effects of the Zombie Apocalypse
Right at the outset, the narrator informs the reader without providing immediate context that part of the zombie apocalypse is—surprisingly—the loss of names. He, for instance, is know simply as “R” because. Why would there be a link between names and zombie life? Because, apparently, they:
“lose them like car keys, forget them like anniversaries.”
It’s a strange simile; perhaps having to do with the zombie state itself. After all, even if you lose car keys, you do not simply forget about them. In fact, just the opposite.
This is Your Brain on Death
The zombie narrator provides extensive insight into the peculiarities of life as he knows it. Some of that information is doubtlessly new to those following the genre.
“As the brain dies, the life inside clarifies and distils. It ages like a fine wine.”
Still, one may feel compelled to argue that if the brain gets so clear and precise after death, maybe it is at the expense of creativity. The simile here, after all, is not exactly the most original ever conceived.
Julie
Eating brains gives the zombie a chance to briefly inhabit the life of the person to whom it belonged. It is by eating Perry’s brain that the narrator comes to recognize the qualities of Julie. Those qualities burst into his consciousness as metaphor:
“She is immense, cosmic. She is the world. The world smiles down on me, and when she speaks it’s the voice of God, vast and resonant with meaning, but words unknowable, ringing gibberish in my blank white mind.”
Zombie Hunger
Zombies eat brains. Everybody knows that, of course. But what is hunger like for zombies as single-mindedly devote themselves to predatory hunting of the living?
“We feel it everywhere equally, a sinking, sagging sensation, as if our cells are deflating.”
Death by Zombie
Meanwhile, the narrator does use metaphorical imagery to make death at the hands of a zombie attack almost seem downright desirable:
“The sparkle of life sprays out of his cells like citrus mist from an orange peel, and I suck it in.”
