4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas (17 page)

“
The Dog of the Dead
.”

“Already been done.
Pet Semetary
. I’m saying that with an ‘S,’ by the way.”

“Hey, is
Weekend At Bernie’s
technically a zombie movie?”

“Nope!” Sour Towel Zombie is an inch away from Cowboy Zombie’s nose before he even closes his mouth.

“Well, he really was a zombie in the second one. Remember? The sequel with the voodoo music?”

I’m pulling back a strip of particle board to peek inside the house when I smell a sour towel breathing down my neck instead.

“You got your earphone in?” the Towel asks. “What’s going on in there?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “But they’re clearly having way too much fun. Look in there. Are they playing Twister or what?”

“Dude, zombies would dominate at Twister.”

Sour Towel Zombie stops breathing down necks and suddenly stands up straight.

“‘Perry, I’ve been keeping track of the lights,’” S.T.Z. tells us, voice cracking a bit as he attempts to be creepy. “‘The way I calculate it, when you turned off the upstairs light, that left the house completely dark.’”

No one looks at him. He’s done this before.

“Come on! Nobody? No one recognizes that?! It’s from the original home invasion story. No, no, no, not
Night of the Living Dead
, like everybody thinks, we’re talkin’
In Cold Blood
. That’s where it all began.”

“I’m sure there were plenty of home invasions or zombies before that one.”

“Sure. William Seabrook’s 1926 classic on Haiti,
The Magic Island,
had a chapter entitled, ‘Dead Men Working In The Cane Fields.’ They dug up some poor fuckers and resurrected their sorry asses for cheap labor.”

“Just like us!”

“Voodoo zombies shouldn’t count.”

“Stop. No one can deny our proud heritage began in 1932 with
White Zombie
.”

“Whoa, ‘white zombies?’ Fuckin’ racist …”

“Nope, sorry. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West: Reanimator” serial was written way earlier than Seabrook’s union-busting manifesto. It was completed at 5:37 a.m., six days before Christmas during the strangely warm winter of 1921. Approximately.”

“Speaking of racists, you ever read that thing …”

“Enough already!” Cigarette Zombie bellows. “The first zombie was, of course, Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s
monster,
I mean. 1818, bitches.”

“Don’t you mean,
Frankenstein (a.k.a. The Modern Polyphemus)?”

Someone sniffles.

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t the first, but it was sure the worst.”

I look around, suddenly worried. Whoever was wearing the football helmet has vanished into the dark, and the Bobbys suddenly remember they need to fight and go back to dramatically taking off their jackets again. But the skin of their forearms sloughs completely off with their sleeves this time, so they put them right back on.

If and when they open the upstairs closet door, if they’ve done things in a certain order, there will be a man hiding in there who is afraid to come out.

He might have a stash of beer and some delicious, honeymoon-type foods, or maybe some wine, cheese or fruit, or, hell, maybe even a vending machine bag of pork rinds and Sterno. It all depends on Mags’ profiling earlier in the week. But once they let him out, he’ll happily lead everyone through a hole in the attic, up onto the roof, and watch the sunrise while bouncing apple cores and beer cans off our heads below.

So when we stand back and look to the top of the B&B and see nothing but crows, we know the Camels are doing it wrong.

See, if they’ve done things in the wrong order, as we suspect they have tonight, the man inside that closet will have stuck the Hillbilly Heaven brand bubble-gum machine teeth into his mouth and milky contact lenses into his eyes and will proceed to scare the living shit out of them when they open the door. Yes, the living shit.

And if they’ve done things
really
wrong, or if Mags or Davey Jones are just feeling spiteful, the Plant in the closet will be wearing a police uniform. This is because everyone,
everyone
, even those with just a passing knowledge of the films, knows you never trust police, fireman, security guards, military (especially the military), or any authority figure for that matter, during a garden-variety siege of the undead.

But some people don’t know the movies at all, and most people don’t know them as well as they think they do. Just like that guy who played one of our first Plants ever. He insisted on yelling, “It’s the end of the world” with an exaggerated Irish accent, quoting the drunk in the diner from Hitchcock’s classic
The Birds
. Mags was like, “Dude, birds aren’t zombies. Even those birds.” Okay, it was an end of the world movie, sure, and maybe Tippi Hedren had a look in her eyes by the end that most corpses would find familiar and comforting, but come on. So, yeah, they had to start jamming fake rotten teeth in the Closet Plant’s mouth to discourage any more creativity.

All of a sudden, Sour Towel Zombie is grumbling and sputtering like he’s never done before. He’s showing a level of commitment to his role that we’ve never seen, and some of us are getting nervous. Bobby Z starts putting his jacket on again, more skin flaking off his arms, leaving a nasty pink halo around his shoes. If he does this one more time, I’m convinced his arms will stay in the sleeves forever.

“What’s up, Halfway Homey?” Bobby Z belches. “You trying for an Oscar?”

Bobby B lurches closer to get a better look, too, and his eyes widen.

“Hey, I think he’s really hurt.”

We all stumble over and suddenly notice a red dot over his fluttering left eye.

“Uh, I think he’s been shot.”

“What?”

“Are you serious?”

“I didn’t hear nothin’. What the fuck.”

As we watch, Sour Towel Zombie begins to wind down, creaky foot over foot over foot like a weary toy robot. Then one knee is on the ground. Then the other. Then he’s clutching a handful of grass like it’s the answer. I remember something Cigarette Zombie said once when she was sticking up for him. That his nonstop movie references were just his way of hanging on by his fingernails to a world long gone. Maybe she was right, and we all did it, too. But no one ever seemed to need a savage headlock as often as he did.

He looks up to us all one last time, his left eye now closed completely, the other one dilated 8-ball black, as red fingers of brain and burger spiderweb down the side of his neck. He points up to his beloved European Indian Zombie to quote one final movie before his arms hang limp like balloon strings a week after your birthday.

“It should have been you,” he croaks.

His face hits the ground so hard it disappears up to the ears.

“Our hearts have stopped,” the news anchor sighs. “But our brains just keep going.”

Right before we break through all the half-ass defenses and into the house for good, I hear a strange voice on the television. One I’m not related to. A Camel must have found the real news broadcast and left it on. They would have already known that hearts were stopping everywhere, of course, as most of theirs had, too. But seeing the real news, hearing it out loud, as well as all of us pounding on each other instead of the walls, must have empowered them to accept everything as real enough to finally fight for the house.

But I am still convinced that one of the Camels has a pulse, that one of them came into our game alive as hell. I’m sure of this. The towel he dropped when he compulsively avoided the door handle was my first clue. And now, judging by the gasping and bubbling in my ear, this man is probably upstairs with Underwater Zombie’s head in the toilet, trying in vain to drown him.

I already miss Sour Towel Zombie. At a moment like this, he would name-drop the Nazi Zombie movie
Shock Wave
s again. Just like I did. We loved that flick to death though, huge fans of the tasteless ending where hapless victims were forced to hide in ovens to escape.

To my right, Bobby Z has broken into the living room, and now he’s choking out one of the other Camels who’s trying desperately to warn his new bride through coughs and sputters. When his eyes roll back, Bobby Z helpfully moves the Camel’s mouth and plays ventriloquist as the bridge gets low and tries to hide.

“Hey, baby!” Bobby Z shouts. “Ain’t got no heart, but I love you! You ever hear that song that goes ‘Stars are dying in my chest until I see you again?’ That’s our song! Wait, where are you going?”

Bobby Z gets the Camel down and out for good with a knee in his windpipe, cartilage crackling kinda like bubble wrap, but maybe a little more satisfying, judging by Bobby’s smile. And popping bubble wrap was pretty goddamn satisfying for our crew, especially when we got big orders of fake teeth and barbecue sauce.

Then Bobby starts turning over furniture to find the bride. When he gives the Camel a heel to the temple as an afterthought, I hear a “Tisk!” from the corner and suddenly remember that newlywed’s familiar but annoying habit. Bobby Z seems ready to find her with the next chair he’ll flip, but he’s having a lot of trouble with one of his hands, now flapping alarmingly at the wrist. If Sour Towel Zombie was here, he’d tell him:

“It’s just like Dr. Frankenstein said in
Day of the Dead
, ‘We are them, just functioning less perfectly.’”

With some extra effort he upends the couch, and there she is tucked behind it, deep under some red cushions, burrowing like a tick. More like a “tisk.” I watch her reach out to her husband on the floor, fingers tickling the knee-shaped crater in his throat, seemingly trying to coax it to inflate. Some air hisses from him as if her fingernail finds a tire valve, and over a gurgle he points a quivering wedding ring toward her.

I suddenly remember that sinking feeling you always get when you find out a girl you’re into has a boyfriend, that feeling when you can tell something changed her mind about having the best conversation with you, and they decide to bring up their relationship out of the blue with a sneaky, off-hand comment like, “Yeah, my boyfriend likes cold chicken and barbecue sauce, too.” A feeling that spent most of your adolescence hidden in your stomach under your shirt like a dead animal you were trying to sneak into the house.

When I say I “remember” this feeling rather than feeling it, it’s because, without a pulse, I’m long past actually feeling anything.

Then a dripping Camel starts stomping down the stairs, rifle slung over his shoulder, dragging another dead bride behind him, her head tracing her path like the train on her wedding dress probably did the night before. I’m not sure what he just did to Underwater Zombie, but it’s clear we’re losing staff quickly. Right as I begin to suspect I’m being watched, I suddenly notice Davey Jones sitting in the one upright chair, watching us all in amusement. He’s clapping his hands slow and sarcastic.

“You guys did awesome,” he laughs. “By that, I mean you
died
awesome.”

Fuck him, always playing disappointed dad. How many times can you disappoint someone before you begin to look forward to doing it? About nine.

Davey Jones hands me an orange juice to snap me out of it. Always an orange juice with him with alcohol being recently outlawed. For awhile, we had even tried one of those popular Zombie Cliché Drinking Games (was that really Third Stage Zombie’s idea?), but we won’t be doing that again any time soon. Among the complications of such a game when applied to our production …

First off, “Do A Shot When Arm Reaches Through Window” was problematic because it made lightweights hesitate to push through when needed. Next, “Knock Drink Out Of Nearest Gnarly Hand If Martyrdom Slows Down Flick” caused too many instances of fights, brooding, then more fights, not to mention wasted alcohol. Oh, yeah, “Shotgun Beer If/When Motherfucker in Uniform Pulls Double-Cross, Shotgun Two If Motherfucker Is Carrying Shotgun.” That included Army and Navy T-shirts, so we were faced as soon as the Bobbys punched the time clock. And, of course, “Claim Beer of Closest Corpse if Character Shows Confusion About Living or Dead Status Of Approaching Loved One” just caused severe depression as we pondered our own situation.

Oh, yeah, it was “Drink Ninety Beers If Hero Displays Cowardice Or Pussy Saves The Day,” but no one ever did, so don’t worry. Because crazy shit like that only happened in the movies.

And who knew we were asking for trouble with the staple “Drink Nonstop For Duration of Tom Savini Cameos?” Well, try it when the man himself visits one weekend with a cease-and-desist order about copyright infringement.

We were so hammered after chugging until he stumbled off that we almost had to change everyone’s name to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Zombie in the morning.

Me and Cigarette Zombie still watch one together every night. In front of our own TVs though, miles apart. Synchronized start times are exactly 9:00. Even though, as of today, it was likely we had finally seen them all, I was hoping we could start at the beginning of the pile all over again. It was the perfect way to watch them, hundreds of videotapes we’d stockpiled from every dusty, out-of-business video store in the state, cover art bleached white by decades of sunlight cooking them through the windows, not a single title left to read. We didn’t have to talk about the movie before, during, or after either. It was enough just to know she was watching the movie at the same time I was so that I could imagine what parts would make her laugh. I was sure she laughed a lot when there was no one there to verify it.

Still weaving my way through corpses, I see a zombie wearing the brown, crusty football helmet again, stiff-arming everyone in its path. Picking up speed, it lowers a shoulder and puts American Indian Zombie backwards through a boarded-up window before he can react. Then it dips his head, crashes through a door and is gone, leaving a piece of shredded tube sock and skin in the teeth of the door frame left behind.

Suddenly surrounded by unfamiliar faces, pink and blue alike, I recklessly reach to grab someone even though I know this would break the rules and end the game. Mags sits next to Davey Jones, and I notice both her feet are facing the wrong way and think, “Hey, that’s
my
job!” She’s singing the Rolling Stones and giggling.