My mom is a country woman through and through. When she saved me, I had already turned into a zombie. But Mom didn't get it. My head was missing a chunk? She thought Grandma just let me sleep on one side too long as a baby. I only ate raw meat? She scolded me for being a picky eater. My face was blue and purple? She accused me of stealing her foundation. Later, Mom became the only person among the survivors who knew acupuncture. When they tried to drive me out, Mom stood in front of me, shielding me with her small body. "I can cure my baby girl! I swear it!" 1 When my mom, Sue, found me, I had been a zombie for three days. She had been working in the city for years and finally came back to our village. That day, the sun was scorching. Mom was carrying a bamboo basket to pick vegetables in the field when she saw me crouched under an old crooked tree, gnawing on a dead crow. A large chunk of my skull was missing from the back of my head. "Penny, why are you sleeping out here?" Mom rushed over in three steps. She grabbed me by the back of my collar. "Look how dirty the ground is. Get up." I made a guttural noise in my throat and turned to bite her. Mom was quick. She pulled a green onion from her basket and stuffed it into my mouth. "Snacking before dinner again? Let's go home and eat!" Mom dragged me home. I stumbled along behind her, half the green onion falling out of my mouth. Mrs. Zhang, passing by, screamed and ran away from ten meters out. Mom muttered, "What's wrong with that woman? Looking at my daughter like she's seen a ghost." Back home, Mom pressed me onto a stool and wiped my face with a wet towel. My skin was already turning a bruised purple. The whites of my eyes were a muddy yellow. "You little brat, did you steal my foundation again? You look like a corpse with all that makeup." Mom scrubbed my face hard, rubbing off a piece of rotten skin. "This cheap makeup is terrible. It's peeling off." I opened my mouth to bite her. Mom casually stuffed a piece of cured pork into my mouth. "Stop fussing. Let me comb your hair." She picked up a wooden comb. She paused when she touched the missing part of my skull. "This head shape... Your grandma really let you sleep flat on your back too much. The back of your head is practically caved in." She touched the depression. "But hey, city folks like this look now. They call it... high cranial top? A high-fashion face." At dinner, Mom stir-fried a plate of greens. I didn't touch it, focused only on gnawing raw meat. Mom slapped the table in anger. "Picky eater! Only eating meat and no veggies, just like your father." She fished a piece of salted pork out of the jar and threw it to me. "Eat up, eat up. You need to put on some weight." At night, I tried to sneak out to bite people. Mom chased me back with a broom. "Running out in the middle of the night? What if you get kidnapped?" She found a rope and tied me to the bedpost. "Sleep." Early the next morning, Uncle Li ran over, banging on the door. "Sue! It's bad! People in town have turned into man-eating monsters!" Mom was sewing a mask for me because I kept trying to bite her. She stitched three layers of cotton together and stuffed it with dried orange peel. "What nonsense. There are no monsters." She didn't even look up. "Did you watch too many horror movies again?" "I'm telling the truth! Hey! Penny, she..." Uncle Li pointed at me. I was snarling at him. Mom slapped the back of my head. "Where are your manners? Say hello to Uncle Li." I let out a roar. Uncle Li jumped back three steps. Mom kept nagging. "This kid is going through a rebellious phase. Bites everyone she sees. I made her a mask. Do you want one for your boy too?" Uncle Li ran for his life. Mom fed me Chinese medicine every day—ginseng, aconite, whatever she could find. She even gave me moxibustion therapy daily. Amazingly, it actually calmed me down. Seven days into the outbreak, our village was the only one with living people nearby. Mom went to the fields as usual, watering and fertilizing. I wandered around the fields with her, scaring off any zombies that tried to approach. They seemed afraid of me. "Penny, help Mom catch some bugs." Mom pointed at a green worm on a cabbage. I grabbed it and popped it into my mouth. Crunch. "Oh my god, spit it out!" Mom pried my mouth open. It was already gone. At lunch, Mom packed the stir-fry into a lunchbox and cut a plate of meat for me. "Eat slowly, don't choke." She sighed watching me wolf it down. "Look at you, a nice girl eating like a starving ghost." 2 Until one day. A group of survivors passed through our village. Their leader, Dr. Lin, turned pale when he saw me. "Ma'am, your daughter is a zombie." Mom scoffed. "Zombie? What's that?" "Her eyes are yellow!" "It's jaundice. She just needs some herbal tea." "She's drooling!" "Kids do that when they're teething." Dr. Lin ran out of patience and tried to tie me up. Mom grabbed a rake and charged. "Who dares touch my daughter!" She chased those grown men off like chickens. The survivors had no choice but to camp at the village entrance. They discovered Mom's greenhouse was the only source of fresh vegetables for miles. It became even harder to chase them away. They came every day to trade. Mom traded cabbage for salt. Radishes for matches. Chives for a half-empty jar of chili sauce. The chili sauce wasn't essential, but Mom traded for it anyway because she realized I liked spicy food. It was one of the few tastes I could still register. Dr. Lin tried to reason with her. "Sue, your daughter has really turned. She's dangerous." Mom stuffed a piece of ginger candy into my mouth. "Nonsense. Would a zombie eat candy out of my hand? Why hasn't she bitten me?" "But..." Mom glared. "But nothing. My girl is so good. She can't be a zombie." Life went on like this until one day, a young guy from the survivors tried to steal vegetables from our house and I scratched him. More than twenty people surrounded our house with hoes and shovels. "Hand her over! Or we'll beat you too!" They shouted. Mom shielded me behind her, gripping the kitchen knife she'd used for ten years. "This is my daughter! She doesn't bite. If you drive her away, I go too!" "She's a zombie, lady!" "Bullshit." Mom was shaking with anger. "My girl isn't some monster like you say! She's just picky, just rebellious, just... just..." She stammered and turned to look at me. I was squatting on the ground, guarding the vegetables I had just saved, indifferent to the commotion. Everyone fell silent for a moment. Mom pulled a handful of mugwort from her pocket, lit it, and waved the smoke around me. "See? You say monsters are afraid of mugwort? My daughter isn't!" The thick smoke made me sneeze, but I didn't move. Dr. Lin pushed up his glasses. "Ma'am, mugwort repels zombies, but that's just something we discovered by accident. There's no scientific proof it works on all of them. Maybe your daughter is an exception. Look at her! Is that human? Stop lying to yourself..." "Shut up." Mom pulled out a few silver needles and stuck them into my head, desperate to prove I wouldn't bite. "This is my family's ancestral acupuncture. I can definitely cure her." Strangely enough, after those needles went in, my cloudy eyes cleared for a second. I opened my mouth and let out a garbled sound: "Mom..." Mom froze, then burst into tears. "Did you hear that? My daughter called me Mom. Do zombies call their moms?" The survivors looked at each other. Finally, they sighed and dispersed in twos and threes. Before leaving, Dr. Lin secretly slipped a notebook to Mom. "Ma'am, your daughter is a miracle." "If you insist on keeping her, help me record her daily life." Mom threw the notebook back. "I won't. Don't know many words." He was completely defeated. That night, Mom gave me a bath and changed me into new clothes. "Baby, I don't care if you're human or ghost. You're my flesh and blood." She said while sewing up the clothes I had torn during the day. I mumbled in response, playing with the rag doll Mom made to comfort me—even though I had already chewed off half its body. The apocalyptic moon was big and round. Mom hummed an off-key tune as she sewed. "Sleep now. Mom will make braised ribs tomorrow." I tilted my broken head and leaned on Mom's warm shoulder. In this world overrun by zombies, only my mom thought her daughter was just a little picky, a little rebellious, and a little different. 3 Ever since Mom "cured" me with mugwort and needles, she became even more convinced that the zombie virus was a hoax. "What zombie? It's just what young people call 'sub-health'." She chatted with Mrs. Zhang, who came to trade for cabbage, while rubbing medicinal oil on my forehead. "Look at my Penny. A few needles and she's fine. She even eats vegetables now." I was squatting in the corner gnawing on a corn cob—cob and all. Mrs. Zhang's eyelid twitched. "Sue, her teeth... is that normal?" "Takes after her dad. He used to chew pig trotters like that." A few months later, more refugees arrived. They walked around me in wide circles. Until someone discovered I could scare away other zombies. One night, three zombies were clawing at Old Xu's window. His wife came running to our door, crying and screaming. "Sue! Lend us your Penny!" Mom was cutting my nails. "It's the middle of the night. My girl needs her sleep." She hid me behind her back. Mrs. Xu was desperate. "Two pounds of cured meat!" "Deal." Mom put my homemade protective gear on me. "Go help your Auntie Xu, baby." I roared and charged out. The three zombies turned and fled. Mrs. Xu watched through the crack in the door, dumbfounded. "It's a miracle..." The next day, the whole village knew I could repel zombies. Dr. Lin, being a man of science, came to see Mom. "Sue, this might be due to pheromones." Mom didn't understand his western medicine theories. "What mones?" "No, I mean..." "Two pounds of cured meat per visit." Mom held up a finger. "Discount for a monthly subscription." Just like that, I became the village's alternative security guard. During the day, I was tied by the vegetable patch to scare away sparrows (and secretly eat them). At night, I patrolled for zombies. Once, I accidentally ate Auntie Li's guard dog. Mom compensated her with twenty eggs and bandaged the dog herself. Back home, she scolded me. "That's a guard dog! You can't just eat it!" She stuffed a handful of bitter wormwood into my mouth. "Remember this lesson." It was so bitter I stuck out my tongue and yelled. Mom stared at me and noticed something. "Baby, your tongue turned red? It was purple a few days ago." She pried my mouth open to check. Dr. Lin heard about it and ran over that night to collect a saliva sample. Mom didn't want him touching me but reluctantly agreed for half a pound of sugar. "A miracle. The virus activity is decreasing." He held the test tube up to the light. "The child just has too much internal heat. Once the heat goes down, she'll be fine. You city doctors make a fuss about everything." Mom didn't believe a word he said. But Dr. Lin's propaganda worked. He said I still had a bit of brain left. My IQ was now roughly equivalent to a puppy. The villagers weren't as afraid of me anymore. Children got curious and threw stones at me from afar. Until I broke the rope Mom tied me with and chased them for a mile. After that, they switched to giving me gifts. Silkworm pupae, grasshoppers with missing legs, fat cicadas. Mom accepted them on my behalf and gave back handfuls of fresh vegetables. "Courtesy demands reciprocity. We must be generous." She taught me. Even though I wasn't strictly "human" anymore. 4 A man in a suit arrived in the village. He claimed to be an official from the city shelter. He nearly wet his pants when he saw me. "Th-that's a zombie!" He screamed, hiding behind Dr. Lin. Mom was drying sweet potatoes. She frowned. "Sir, watch your mouth." She broke a piece of dried potato and stuffed it into my mouth. "She bites!" "Whose kid doesn't bite? It's normal to fight." Mom pointed at the bratty kids chasing each other in the distance. "Look at them. Last month they knocked out Grandma Liu's dentures." The official was stumped. He said they needed a meeting to decide my fate. Mom was unhappy. "Just because he wears a suit, he thinks he can give orders? Why should we listen to him?" She combed my hair as she spoke. "Baby, if they chase us out tomorrow, Mom will take you to the back mountain." The comb scraped against the gap in my skull. She touched it gently. "We have a melon shed there. It's okay. As long as Mom is here, we have nothing to fear." The meeting the next day was chaotic. Old Xu led the group supporting me for my service in protecting the village. Auntie Li led the opposition, saying I was a ticking time bomb. She definitely held a grudge about her dog. Mom sat in the corner, silent, weaving a grasshopper cage for me. In the middle of the argument, the village alarm sounded. A massive horde of zombies, attracted by the smell of humans, had arrived. A black mass, at least twenty of them. The official dove under the table immediately. "Hand over the zombie girl! Now!" Mom grabbed me. "Over my dead body!" Suddenly. I broke free from Mom's grip. Howling, I charged into the horde. Old Xu described the scene later as "a hungry wolf entering a flock of sheep." Except the sheep were zombies. I tore them apart one by one. Intestines dragged all over the ground. By the time Mom arrived with the villagers, brandishing rakes and sickles... They only saw me sitting on a pile of corpses. Gnawing on half an arm. "Penny!" She roared. My hand shook, and the arm dropped to the ground. "How many times have I told you? Don't eat that dirty stuff." Mom grabbed my ear and dragged me back, pretending not to see the pile of limbs at my feet.
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