Mr. Elkins and the Zombies of Elbert County (2 page)

Getting back to Cecelia’s drawing, Mrs. Peevey intervened when a lively critique of the art piece erupted in class. By Cecelia’s account, Oscar, the boy next to her, told her that either her family worshipped Satan or her dad was lying about seeing zombies. Then Katherine, who sits in front of Cecelia, told her she was going to be expelled for celebrating Halloween in school.

Well, Cecelia would hear none of it. She’s not a boastful girl, but she won’t back down either, not to her brothers or anyone, if she believes she’s right. To hear her tell it, Cecelia hunkered down with her arms crossed across her chest and muttered something about Philip Season, a neighbor boy of ours, being a zombie because he sleep walks. (This is a well-known fact—not that Philip Season is a zombie, but that he sleepwalks with some regularity. On one Boy Scout outing, when he was sharing a tent with our son, Michael, he apparently got up out of his tent in the middle of the night to relieve himself, only to do so on the side of the tent, then went running through the woods barefoot in his underwear, stubbed his toe on a protruding tree root, made his way back to his sleeping bag, and woke up the next morning with a mighty painful gash on his right big toe, and the smell of stale urine permeating the tent, much to Michael’s annoyance.) Philip’s mother, a good humored, loud sort of mom, told of his recent exploits at the corner store, almost as if to hush the rumor mill. Growing up with a mother who shared his midnight exploits as readily as she discussed the price of pork had soon wizened Philip to the reality that personal privacy was not a commodity that he had a chance of harboring. So he sort of laughed about his adventures with everyone else, and even took to bragging about them. But no one, not once, had ever suggested that Philip Season was a zombie. That was a rough equation worked out in Cecelia’s mind—Philip moved around at night, not really in his body: therefore he must be a zombie.

Needless to say, Mrs. Peevey had more on her hands than she had bargained for, and asked to speak to Cecelia after class.

“She said she’d call you tonight, Daddy,” said Cecelia.

When her teacher did call, I reluctantly told her the truth. There was a long silence on the other end.

“You’re telling me that you actually saw zombies coming through your yard at night?” she asked in disbelief.

“That’s correct.”

She laughed, first a short snort of a laugh, as if the pressure in her head suddenly found a way to escape. There was a pause. Then she chuckled in a deep, throaty way.

“Mr. Bell, I don’t know you very well, apparently. You seem very quiet and serious, but there’s a real trickster inside of you. Very funny! Oh, you got me! You are a real comic.” She laughed again.

“Mrs. Peevey,” I reassured her in as straightforward a tone as possible, “I’m not joking. It sounds fantastic, I know, and I regret that you had to be the first to learn of this, but the simple fact is that we have zombie problem.”

“A zombie problem?” she broke in. “Mr. Bell, I…I…you…this can’t be true!”

“There’s many things science has difficulty explaining, Mrs. Peevey. How bats evolved? Why cicadas stay underground for 17 years? What is Life? Add zombies to the list of puzzlers. They’re here, we’ve seen them, and we don’t know why. What Cecelia drew is as true as the dawn. It’s something that may have happened only a few times, and will never happen again. Or it could be a problem we’ve got on our hands.”

There was a long silence and I could tell that she was trying to get her head around this new reality. Her nostril made a “hushing” sound every time she breathed.

“Mr. Bell,” she finally answered, “I’m going to have to tell the principal about this, if he hasn’t heard already heard from some of the other parents. Oh!… This is the last thing I want to be associated with. We’re supposed to be
disassociating
October from Halloween, not celebrating it. And here I’ve got a zombie scandal in my own classroom. It will be all over the front page of the newspaper. I’ll be the laughing stock…the butt of jokes on late night TV…all over the trade journals… And I was supposed to get tenure this year!”

“Now, Mrs. Peevey… Mrs. Peevey…” I tried to think of something to say. Ruth caught my attention and motioned for me to give her the phone, which I readily gave up.

“Mrs. Peevey?” she asked in her sweet, reassuring voice. We could hear the sputtering sobs at the other end. “Mrs. Peevey, this is Ruth Bell. I know this seems like a lot to deal with, but trust me, it’s not your problem. It’s our problem. Just like some families have a history of diabetes, and some families’ crops got the blight, this is our family’s problem, not yours. The zombies walked through our yard, not your classroom.”

“Oh, thank goodness!” Mrs. Peevey exalted.

“And we’re still grasping with it ourselves. If you could see those poor souls, their clothes in tatters, their eyes glossed over like dead trout—it’s disturbing.”

“Please, Mrs. Bell! I can’t imagine. I don’t
want
to imagine!”

“It’s not a matter of imagining, Mrs. Peevey. This is reality,” Ruth stated firmly. “And you can’t help feeling sorry for them. In terms of dealing with the other parents and your principal, you just tell Principal Mortly and the others to speak with us, and we’ll straighten the whole thing out.”

“Mrs. Bell,” she asserted, “I don’t think you grasp the gravity of the situation I’m in. I will be seen as a teacher of loose morals and poor control over my classroom by allowing this discussion to fester among my students. I’ll be deemed too great a risk for the school district to keep around. They’ll drop me at the end of my contract and I’ll have to look for work elsewhere, and I just signed a mortgage agreement to buy a house here. And when prospective employers call Mr. Mortly to check my references, they’ll learn about my little zombie issue, if they don’t already know it from watching
Good Morning America
, and that’ll be the end of it. I won’t even be able to return to doing daycare out of my home like I was before, or get my realtors license, which was supposed to be my summer job,
because nobody will want to buy a house with the ZOMBIE LADY!
”

“I understand, Mrs. Peevey,” Ruth answered solemnly. “I’m sorry that this may have created some problems for you. What I can offer is for us to come to school first thing in the morning to speak with Principal Mortly, and hope that our discussion shifts the attention from you to us, where it rightfully belongs.”

We heard a tap on the back door and saw Seth motioning for us to come outside.

“I’ve got to go, Mrs. Peevey,” said Ruth. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

Ruth and I hurried out to the back porch, and looked to the southwest corner of the yard.

Two of them came, not entirely together. They shuffled, one a few steps ahead of the other, but you got the sense that they weren’t really aware of one another, merely there by coincidence. Like the zombies on the previous night, they headed toward the northeast corner of the yard. The first one, a tall, thin man zombie, tripped over the strings Ruth had just re-stretched earlier in the day. The second one, a short formerly large woman zombie, walked past him, apparently unaware of the man, who had picked himself up and was continuing on. Though we stood in plain view beneath the porch light, neither seemed to notice us as they traipsed across the yard.

“Where do you think they come from?” wondered Ruth quietly.

“Dunno. Castle Rock, maybe,” I replied.

“Larkspur?” suggested Seth.

“Too far and a highway to cross,” rebutted Ruth.

“Deer and coyotes do it,” replied Seth.

“Deer and coyotes are quick and the slow ones are hit by cars,” I reminded him. “Zombies wouldn’t have a chance.”

“Why now?” asked Ruth.

“Severe electrical activity,” stated Seth. “That’s what got them started in the movie.”

“It’s been a dry fall,” Ruth countered.

“Where do you think they’re headed?” Seth wondered. We looked to the northeast corner of the yard. Beyond that, across the road was a field of alfalfa, then the pine trees of the Black Forest. I just shook my head.

The zombies turned slightly and headed up our gravel driveway on the east side of our house when suddenly their faces started glowing an eerie red. They stopped. We heard the crunching gravel of footsteps. A bobbing light illuminated the zombies’ ragged clothes and sullen faces. The footsteps stopped, and there was a metallic click I recognized as the cock of a pistol.

Instinctively, we raced off the porch to the corner of the house and into the flashlight’s beam.

“Stop!” I yelled, waving my hands in the air. A shot fired and I looked at the zombies, expecting to see a corpse recoil from the impact of the bullet, but neither did.

We heard another click.

Seth raced up the driveway. Ruth and I stood there, waving our hands yelling “Stop!” Another shot rang out. I swung my head, again fearing the worst. Again, nothing happened.

“Mr. Yarson, stop!” I heard Seth yell.

Dwight Yarson. The school custodian. I always had the impression that there was a lot of boy still in Dwight. At school, he’d entertain the children with his stories of tracking bears, mountain lions, and even skunks in the surrounding area as part of his volunteer work with the Department of Wildlife. Around the men, he’d puff out his chest and talk about the latest update on the police scanner, which he kept on in his truck. His father had been a well-regarded taxidermist, and Dwight had tried that as well, except that with each mount he had difficulty getting the eyes just right so that the stuffed deer and lynx on his walls, and even the porcupine on his living room coffee table, had a wandering eye. A few years back, when Seth and I came back from a hunting trip with a four-point buck, Dwight came over to us at the Loaf ’N Jug in town.

“Wow! A four-pointer! That’s pretty good shooting. That’ll make a fine mount. I can give you a fair price on that, if you’d like.”

I stared into the restful face of the buck and imagined him up over my fireplace with one lazy eye staring out into the dining room.

“Why, thank you, Dwight. That’s swell of you to offer. Ruth’s brother, Simon, up in Weld County, has a taxidermy shop and I promised him the work.”

“Well, you let me know if I can be of any assistance, in case he gets too backed up. My dad was a taxidermist, you know. Been a family business for generations.”

I wondered to myself as we drove off, if his father lamented the end of the line, knowing all too well his son’s disposition for lazy-eyed mounts.

And here he was in my driveway, a red flashing light on the roof of his truck, trying to kill something that was already dead and standing as still as a tree ten paces in front of him. When I got to the top of the driveway, there he stood, flashlight held in his armpit, both hands shaking, trying to pull back the hammer for a third time. It was no wonder his shot had gone wide. Then again, Dwight was renowned as a notoriously bad shot, having accidentally fired a tranquilizer into the buttocks of his D.O.W. superior, which was the last time he went on stray bear detail.

“Stand back!” he stammered. “They eat brains!”

“Hold it there, Dwight!” I urged.

“I’ve seen it in the movies. The only way to kill ’em is a shot to the head. Or a blow with a blunt, heavy object. Ya got a baseball bat?”

“Dwight Yarson, you put that gun down right now!” There’s something about Ruth’s no-nonsense voice that will cause any person to halt in his or her tracks. Dwight’s hands stilled, and the gun lowered slowly to his side. His eyes flickered back and forth between the zombies staring blankly at him from the bottom of the driveway and Ruth’s furrowed stare on his right.

“Now,” Ruth continued, “you holster that weapon and leave it there.” Dwight did as she commanded. “And for Pete’s sake, please turn off that hideous flashing light.” Dwight backed up to his truck, his eyes always on the zombies, reached inside and switched off the light.

Then, in a softer voice, “It’s okay, Dwight. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, turn off your flashlight.” The beam went out. Ruth took him by the arm and walked him to the side of the house, shadowed from the porch light’s glow. Seth and I joined them. I laid a calming hand on his shoulder. As if on cue, the zombies resumed shuffling up the driveway. Dwight stood there, mouth slightly agape. It took a while for them to pass us, and for the first time we caught a drift of their scent on the dying wind. I realized just how fortuitous the wind had been on the previous nights. The pungent stench of rotting flesh was steeped in the earthy fragrance one associates with rich, well-composted soil. My eyes squinted, and it was all I could do to hold my breath. As the short female passed by, I thought I spied an earthworm wriggling in her dirt-filled ear.

Dwight’s quick breaths rattled out a rhythm as the zombies disappeared over the road into the darkness. He turned slowly to look at me, his expression riddled with question.

“There’s a mystery afoot here,” I said. “God only knows what’s going on.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” added Ruth.

“How long has this been goin’ on?” he asked.

“From what I can figure, a couple of weeks now, but we’ve only seen them for the past three nights.”

“But don’t they eat people, ya know, like in the movies?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” I replied, peering off into the darkness. “No one here yet.”

“They’re not like in the movies,” explained Seth. “I mean, they look the same, but…worse. And they smell. That’s something movies haven’t gotten around to including, thankfully. And in the movies, they always attack people, without provocation. Just killing and eating their victims.”