Love Makes You Grow Flesh and Blood

A peasant mother’s epic struggle to protect her son during the zombie apocalypse. When her sixteen-year-old son Lele contracts the virus and his pupils turn yellow, the whole village sees him as a monster. Hongmei stuffs cured meat into his mouth when he tries to bite people and uses mugwort smoke to chase away the deathly stench clinging to him. “My boy’s just a picky eater, like his father.”

She leads her son out to work in the fields, a rope tied around him, and discovers by chance that he can scare zombies away. From then on, mother and son become the village’s unlikely guardians: two pounds of cured meat buys one peaceful night. When the survivors roar, “Hand over the zombie!” Hongmei stands in front of her son with a rusty kitchen knife. The moment the acupuncture needle goes in, her zombie son forces out a muffled, “M... Mom...”

The long journey in search of a doctor leaves a trail of dark red blood. An elderly traditional doctor discovers that Lele’s blood contains antibodies that could heal the world, but the price is weekly blood draws, forever. Hongmei trembles as she chooses between her son’s sleeping face and the survival of humanity. Moonlight illuminates her graying temples. “He’s my son first, and the world’s savior second.”

Zombies may tear at flesh and mothers may grow old, but some love is more stubborn than any virus. Every mother’s love carries something divine. Some gods just have to give twenty milliliters of blood every week. It hurts, but they aren’t afraid.