“Aaaaarrrggh!”

“Aaarrgh?”

“Yeah, but with more of a kind of guttural thing in the middle. Aaaaarrrggh!”

“That’s it?”

 “Yeah, it’s edgy, it’s kicky it’s fun.”

“What does it mean?”

“Uh… well, you know. ‘I want to feast on the flesh of the living!’ Or something.”

“Jesus. You have two months to come up with a campaign, and you bring me this? Christ, how about ‘Flesh! It’s fresh!’ or ‘The human meat I want to eat!’ I mean, I’m just spitballing here, just throwing stuff out and it’s better than ‘Aaargh.’”

“More like ‘Aaaaarrrggh!’ You know. Kind of raspy.”

“That’s not the fucking point. The point is that some weird moan is not an advertising tag line. ‘Warm meat! Let’s eat!’ Now that is an advertising tag line.”

“Tremendous stuff, Rob. Brilliant. We really lost a major talent when they kicked you upstairs. Really, really great. But here’s the thing: we don’t really know if they understand English anymore. It’s pretty much all moans and lurching slowly about. To be honest …”

“What? Spit it out.”

“Some of us are wondering if this is a market segment we should really pursue.”

“Are you crazy? Are you out of your fucking minds? Have you seen the numbers? I have spreadsheets that will blow your eyes out of the backs of your heads. The Post-Living market is just exploding. It is the single fastest-growing demographic in the country right now. And you’re telling me that you don’t want to pursue it?”

“Well, first there is the ethical…”

“Gray area. It’s a gray area.”

“Yes, the idea of selling human flesh to zombies is something of a gray area ethically. But beyond that, we just don’t know very much about them. They don’t seem to spend money or engage in leisure activities. They aren’t interested in sex at all, and that takes a lot of bullets out of the gun, marketing-wise. Aside from an obvious attraction to eating… uh, the rest of us, we really don’t know how to incentivize them. And so far, the focus groups have not gone well. Really, really badly, in fact.”

“Bullshit. You’re all on a fucking failure safari here. Let me bottom line it for you: I want this. It’s the most exciting emerging market I have ever seen. We are going to own it. We are going to tear it a new asshole. And this team is going to find a way or you’re going to find new jobs. Thomson! You’ve been awfully quiet today. You’re the executive on this account. Any sage words? Do you suppose we can get one single pearl of wisdom out of your overpaid mouth?”

“Sorry Rob. It’s just that… well, my wife, uh, transitioned last night…”

“She transitioned! Thomson, that is excellent news!”

“Not really. She, well…”

“No, don’t you see? You’ve got an in! You’ve got a courtside seat at the hottest game in town. Tremendous. This changes everything. I want you get inside her head. Find out what makes her tick. Take her apart and put her back together again. Crawl up inside her and root around.”

“Well, that’s the thing. She, you know, she, she attacked my son, and there was a bit of a struggle, and in the end I had to pin her up against the wall with one of the dining room chairs while my son hit her over and over and over again with a baseball bat. And she just wouldn’t quit, and he hit her and hit her, and there were these awful kind of crunching and squishing sounds where he was pulverizing her skull. And her head flattened on the side that he was hitting her but she was still so strong, and I think some of her brains got in my hair and there was this awful stench, this terrible smell of rotting flesh and death and fresh blood. And then the chair shattered and she grabbed my son and was slowly pulling him toward her mouth, except that half of her jaw was gone and she couldn’t really get a good bite. And finally I took the leg of the broken chair, it had a sharp end, and I drove it through her shattered skull and held her like that, and she was clawing at me with her rotting fingers, reaching for me, trying to pull me closer and pieces of her flesh were rubbing off on my clothes and my face, and finally my son brought the sledgehammer from the basement and I pinned her there, impaled my wife against the dining room wall with that chair leg, and I think she’s still there. I mean, I really, really hope she’s still there, because otherwise I don’t know where she would be, and that would be so much worse…”

“Is she dead?”

“Oh God, I hope so. But they kind of start out that way, so it’s really hard to tell for sure.”

“Damn! That’s a missed opportunity. Well, did you get a chance to talk to her? Did she say anything?”

“Just sort of made noises. ‘Mmmmurrggh.’ Like that.”

“Mmmmurgh?”

“Mmmmuuuuugrrgh!”

“Nice. That’s actually got a really nice feel to it. Mmmmuuurrgrgrgrrgh!”

“Mmmmmmmmuuuuuurggh! That’s great, Rob. You have a real talent for getting outside the box.”

“Mmmmmuuuuuuuugrgrggh! I love it. It’s got energy. It’s got kind of a hip-hop feel, doesn’t it? Gentlemen, call the art department. They’re going to be working late tonight. I feel good about this. We are going to eat this market alive.”