Zombies: More Recent Dead (30 page)

“I do not think so.” The Hunter raised his sword. “Tell me what you are.”

“Too strong for the likes of you.”

The zombie lurched forward, hands outstretched, and the Hunter spun. The young woman screamed as his blade shot out, as the zombie fell, headless. The old woman was laughing again, hand in her bag. She withdrew a single, white stone.

“Don’t let her—!” The young woman shouted.

Chase jumped forward, aimed at the small, old woman, and pulled the trigger. The derringer clicked, hollow and empty, and Chase realized he had never reloaded it. He just hadn’t remembered.

The Hunter gave a gargling cry as his sword turned back in toward his own, living, neck.

I watch David fall; watch his head hit the ground a moment before his body. Even under all that laughing, I can hear it “splat” against the floor.

I need to go to him. I need to hold him and know that he is truly dead. I hope that he has, perhaps, found a kind of peace now. After I denied it to him.

But I can’t. I shout as the old woman pulls a stone from her bag, as the man’s solid face breaks into shock. She will not make me responsible for his death too.

The porcelain shard is sharp, it cuts my hand. But as the man slices at his own neck with his long, strange sword, I don’t care. I grip it tightly, I feel the blood, and I bring it down into the old woman’s shoulder.

Her laughter becomes a shrill scream. The man’s sword clatters to the ground and he staggers backward. I cut her again. And again. Until her fingers release the small, white stone, and she doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t move.

When she is dead she, thankfully, doesn’t rise in my presence. I guess she thought I had learnt my lesson after all.

Standing is too hard, so I shuffle over to David’s body. He doesn’t look right without his head. I arrange it as best I can.

“Who are you?” The man is also on the ground, leaning against the wall while a teenage boy hovers at his side. The boy’s face is pale, his eyes terrified, but he doesn’t say a word.

“Jane.” Not really an explanation.

The man holds a white cloth up to his neck. There is a small nick there, just enough to bleed. I stare down at his discarded sword. So close. “I am the Hunter.” He nods to the boy. “My reluctant apprentice.”

The boy grimaces.

“We have been tracking you. It was you, wasn’t it? Raising the dead.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” I had only wanted to raise one. Just one. That’s okay, isn’t it?

The Hunter looks meaningfully at the old woman. “Stone witch, wasn’t she?”

I shake my head. I’m not really sure. She was the crazy old woman down the street when we were kids, the one we called a witch. When we grew up she had changed in our eyes, become eccentric and a little sad. But you don’t forget those childhood fears, those stories you tell yourself.

And at the worst point in my life, she was there. Door open. Bag of stones in her hand.

“She is. Powerful creatures, much stronger than a Necromancer.” He clears his throat, carefully. “I’m not too sure on them myself. Those stones are supposed to be lives, I heard. The younger the better. At any rate, they are not an easy kill.” The Hunter is staring at me. Grimly, I meet his gaze. His eyes are hard, but thoughtful. “Pretty good for a first kill. Think you’d like some more?”

I frown. “More?”

“You know what it’s like. Seen it first hand now, I’ll warrant. You know why the dead should stay dead, why those who raise them should be brought to justice.”

I picture the petrol-station worker, backed up against the window as the zombies fed. I only looked back that once. Slowly, I nod. “Yes. I do.”

The Hunter smiles. Wrinkles crinkle beneath his stubble, his dark, serious eyes are almost friendly. The boy has gained some color in his cheeks and looks relieved.

“Tell me.” The Hunter catches his sword with the tip of his boot and drags it closer. With a wince, he picks it up, turns it around, and holds the handle toward me. “Have you ever held one of these?”

William Jablonsky

Bob Jarmush is dead.

We do not even notice Bob’s empty chair until Marlene tells us, just after eight, when we are all settled in. It happened early Saturday morning, she says, her thin face devoid of its usual condescending smile. Bob collapsed while pruning his hedges, and by the time the paramedics arrived it was too late.

His funeral is on Thursday; Marlene and her executive assistant Cayla will make a brief, dignified appearance. We may also attend if we wish.

We set about erasing Bob from the office. Jeremy, the IT kid, clears his password from the system; Cayla slides the Star Wars statuettes, R2D2 pencil sharpener, and framed picture with Mark Hamill into an empty office-paper box. Bob has no family, so there will be no awkward, somber-faced presentation of the box of junk at his front door. For this, we are thankful.

His voicemail has forty-seven messages on it—deranged school board members complaining that our science textbooks teach evolution, or that our history texts have too few white people. We decide to leave them to his replacement, whoever that may be.

When we are finished, Cayla bows her head low, says a prayer for Bob. We do not listen; our gaze drifts to the newly embroidered pattern on her brown corduroy skirt—ivy, perhaps, or a giant green centipede—we cannot tell. Her fashion transgressions are many and we have given up trying to decipher them.

She says, “Amen,” and we’re done.

We stare at Cayla’s skirt some more, attempting to make sense of the embroidery before it haunts our dreams.

Tuesday

As we hang our coats on the rack, we hear a piercing scream from outside. We run to the window, thinking we are about to look upon a mugging, or a rape. Nothing so exciting has happened here since Roger’s ex-wife caught him with Charlotte and chased him down the street with a Ginsu knife. But when we reach the window, we see only Cayla on her knees in an empty parking space, an entire tray of her dry, flavorless poppy seed muffins scattered on the blacktop. Someone probably ought to help, but this would require speaking to her.

When we turn around, Bob is standing in the doorway, silent, his face devoid of expression.

His eyes are dull, recessed and deflated in their sockets, lips dry and cracking, skin an indefinable pinkish-bluish-gray. His face sags from his skull as if the skin is detaching from his hairline; his dingy iron-gray mustache clings to his face, and beneath his kelly-green oxford shirt is the shadow of a stapled Y-incision.

For a few seconds, we muse that he doesn’t look that different. Then it hits us, and we stand paralyzed at our desks. He lopes toward us across the 60s-era gold diamond rug. Our bodies tense: at the first guttural moan it’ll be every man for himself.

Instead, Bob’s blank expression explodes into a big sheepish smile.

“Morning, kids,” he says, his voice a low raspy whisper. “How was your weekend?”

Someone in the first row of cubicles passes wet gas—probably Roger, who has colitis—and a smell like rotten pork fills the office.

Bob tosses his threadbare tan touring cap and windbreaker on the rack, sits down at his desk, stares at the empty desktop like it’s alien for the first time in eighteen years. His eyes are still clouded over, and when he looks up, we cannot bear them upon us. “Anybody know where my stuff is?”

We say nothing; Roger gets up and runs to the bathroom.

“Hello?” Bob says again.

The tense silence is broken when Cayla comes inside, clutching her silver crucifix, her skirt covered in muffin crumbs and parking-lot dirt. She tiptoes up to Bob, as if that will escape his notice; hand quivering, she reaches out and touches Bob’s shoulder with one fingertip.

He smiles again. “Good morning, Cayla.” She crumples into a ball on the floor, spewing gibberish. (Cayla goes to the church that used to be a Sav-A-Lot, where they speak in tongues, so no one is surprised.)

Finally—because he is the only one who can move—Jeremy runs down the narrow aisle to Marlene’s office.

We can only see them through her window—Jeremy’s arms flailing, Marlene stoic in her big leather chair, as if she thinks he’s just taken a hit of meth. Then she looks, and her eyes go wide. After a long, deep breath, she wills herself to her feet.

Marlene tosses her long, layered, salt-and-pepper locks, pushes her spectacles up her nose. She is beautiful, imperious, more like a museum curator than a textbook sales rep. It is clear that she is the only one capable of handling this.

And so she does. Walks right up to Bob, who is busy trying to log on to the computer. Marlene taps Cayla on the shoulder. “Back to your desk, Cayla,” she says. “It’s all right.” But we can all tell she has steeled herself for the worst. As Cayla creeps away, Marlene and Bob share a long, silent stare.

“Bob?” she says, apprehension in her lilty voice. “This is very unusual.”

Bob lifts himself out of his chair, raises his arms; Marlene stands her ground. We are certain he is about to seize her and sink his mangled teeth into the soft flesh of her shoulder. We will certainly leave her to die, but in the aftermath we will speak of her with reverence.

But Bob does not eat her.

Instead he smiles, big and broad, puts his doughy arms around Marlene and hugs her tight.

“It’s good to see you again,” he says. He looks over her shoulder at all of us on the sales floor. “It’s so good to be back.”

Marlene gently extricates herself from Bob’s embrace. “I’m sure we’re all glad to see you alive and well, Bob. But as I said, this is a little unusual.”

His dingy gray eyebrows jut upward. “Oh. You’ve hired someone already?”

“Well, no,” Marlene says, disarmed. “But, Bob, you passed away. You were dead.”

Bob shrugs. “I came back,” he says. “Can’t blame you for being nervous, though. Couldn’t we just chalk it up to sick leave?”

Marlene looks around the room, then back at Bob, her face relaxing as she exits crisis mode. “Let’s talk about it in my office,” she says. “Everyone else, back to work.”

We stare through Marlene’s office window trying to discern what is happening. Both are smiling, with an occasional laugh, and after a few minutes he hoists himself out of the faux-leather chair and they shake hands. Stan the accountant, who is partially deaf, reads her lips as Bob gets up: “Welcome back,” Marlene says. “To everything.”

Bob lumbers back, sits down at his desk like nothing happened at all. When he sees us staring, he gives us a quick wink.

We hear a burbling sound, hear poor Roger whisper, “Not again.”

Bob’s fingers move slowly over the dial buttons as he answers his voicemail—not so much like a zombie lacking fine motor control, but stiffly just the same. We watch his doughy torso to see if he is still breathing. He is. We wonder if his heart is still beating, and email Jeremy to see if he has the stones to check. He does not. Cayla comes over only once, empties the box of knickknacks and Star Wars statuettes on Bob’s desk, scurries back to her cubicle with a little cry. She does not speak all day, and for this we are grateful.

He goes to the breakroom at lunchtime; we try not to look at him, pretend to follow the tiny cracks in the yellow plaster wall, take far too long selecting chips and soda from the vending machines. He pulls out a vintage Darth Vader lunchbox—one of the old metal kind we all had in grade school—and a plastic bag. We expect something gray and spongy, but instead he unwraps a cheese and tomato sandwich on an Asiago roll. We watch his teeth as he takes his first bite: a bit yellow, but normal, not jagged and rotten. He chews, slowly.

He sees that we are watching. “Mmmmmm,” he moans. “Braaaiiiinnns.”

Our jaws drop. Charlotte, the telemarketer, drops her soda on the speckled gray linoleum. Cayla’s hands flutter around her face and she runs away. For thirty seconds the breakroom is quiet as death. Then Jeremy starts to laugh—a muffled giggle he tries to control, but he fails and gives in to a full belly laugh.

“You are one sick motherfucker,” he says.

Bob salutes. “At your service.”

Then everyone laughs, and suddenly we feel better.

Wednesday

Bob looks better this morning, his hue more pink, less like a deflated blue balloon, his movements fluid and normal. Not at all like an undead thing.

At lunchtime, as he plays with his laptop in the breakroom, he sips coffee out of a Yoda-head mug, closing his eyes as if it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. He watches the screen for a minute, then launches into a wheezing laugh.

We try not to look. We really do.

“Hey kids,” he says. “Want to see something really cool?”

Of course we do, but the adults are not bold enough to say yes. Fortunately, Jeremy is there. “Hell yeah, man!”

Bob hits the mouse pad, turns his laptop toward us. We pull up plastic chairs and gather round like children.

Bob talks with his mouth full of bagel. “Hospital sent me this yesterday with a big settlement check, just for a laugh,” he says. “Not for the faint of heart.”

He clicks
Play,
and a moment later, there he is, blue-gray on a metal table, his floppy bits hanging out in the open. (We should be offended, but this is too fascinating for propriety.) Next thing we know, a young Asian woman in a white coat and facemask is cutting a deep “Y” into his torso. Just as she inserts the rib-spreader, Bob’s limp hand goes stiff, juts out and grabs her by the wrist. She screams, drops the ribspreader. Then Bob’s eyes snap open and he too begins to scream, like a lion being stabbed in the gut. He rolls off the table and, for the next two minutes, runs naked and bellowing around the morgue, chest gaping open, chasing away anyone who gets close. Finally a group of orderlies wrestle him to the ground and drape a white sheet over him, and the recording ends.

It is the most spectacular thing we have ever seen.

Bob smiles. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Did it hurt?” Charlotte asks, pointing toward Bob’s chest. (It occurs to us that this is the most any of us have said to Bob in years.)

“Not really,” Bob says. “Didn’t feel much of anything. Itches like crazy now, though.”