Girls Save the World in This One

by Ash Parsons

  “Yeah. She’s gonna be down there somewhere,” I say, but I don’t try to pick her out of the motley assortment of people standing or sitting behind the tables. For one, that doesn’t really feel like the right way to see one of your faves for the first time, just squinting at a legend from a cushy chair, for God’s sake. For another, I’d rather just not anticipate her until I’m standing right there.

  Janet O’Shea, scream queen extraordinaire, Mother of Zombies, and one of the original stars of the first, most iconic zombie movie of all time, and also the first zombie movie I ever saw: Fight the Dead.

  She’s here!

  Siggy flops into the chair next to Imani. “Why don’t you go get her autograph, and we’ll wait here.” She twists off the cap of her bottle.

  “Good idea,” Imani says. “I’m gonna send Tish a picture of her crown. She’s going to love me forever. What should I ask for in return?”

  “Less photo shoots?” Siggy offers, but we all know that Imani actually treasures their sister time together, helping Tishala get just the right image.

  “Maybe she’ll have to clean our bathroom for a month?” Imani says.

  “Bingo,” I say.

  “Where is Tishala, anyway?” Siggy asks Imani. “She didn’t try to tag along with you at the last minute?”

  Imani smiles. “Nope! Mom had my back. She offered to take Tish out on a ‘girls’ day.’ Lunch and pedicures.”

  “Oh, that’s sounds nice!” Siggy smiles brightly.

  Imani snorts. “Well, Tish turned it into a craft store spree instead of a pedicure, and driving around looking for new locations to take pictures rather than lunch.”

  “I’m guessing your mom doesn’t really mind,” I say, and Imani smiles and shakes her head.

  “That girl is a mess,” she says fondly.

  “Go on, June,” Siggy says to me. “We’ll stay here and I can check in with Mark. Win-win.”

  I would feel braver if my friends came with me, though.

  “Go ahead,” Siggy says, smiling. “You’re going to love her.”

  Which is a funny thing to say, but exactly right, because I already do love her. Even though her character is mostly the quintessential helpless-girl, and even though she doesn’t make it through the zombie apocalypse (none of them do, that’s the way it goes), she at least makes it through the night, holed up with a bunch of desperate strangers in a lonely gas station.

  And she’s one of the only female characters in early horror who isn’t a Madonna or a whore. And let’s not get me started on that horrible trope, which makes me so mad, and is a shortcut lazy storytellers take. As if a woman’s value is reduced to if she has sex or how often. Ugh.

  Which is another reason why I love Janet O’Shea in Fight the Dead so very, very much.

  She’s not a mother, not a lover, not a daughter. At the start of the movie she is shown on the phone, telling someone (presumably her boyfriend) that she’s not pregnant. It’s just a quick moment, but absolutely groundbreaking. After that, once the zombie apocalypse starts, she’s just a scared girl with big blonde helmet hair, looking out of her depth always, but holding in there somehow. Realistically. Authentically.

  And she’s one of the last ones to die. Which is pretty good if you’re trapped in the zombie apocalypse. It’s all you can hope for, really.

  Fight the Dead came out in 1968, when Janet was twenty-one. That makes her kind of old now; she’s in her seventies I guess, but in her pictures on the ZombieCon! website she looks spry. Or whatever word you use for a cute older lady. Like a fairy godmother. Except thin and with a cute pixie-cut hairstyle.

  I leave my girls lounging and looking at their phones, and I walk down the one-sided row—windows all on one side, tables on the other.

  If I’m being completely honest, I’m a little scared to go talk to Janet O’Shea by myself. It’s not that I think she’s going to bite me or anything (har!) and it’s not that I think she’ll be mean.

  It’s just . . . I feel safer. I feel stronger. I feel like a better person with my friends around me. Because they’re so awesome! And if they like me, it shows I’m all right, right?

  Or at least it camouflages how not-cool I actually am, comparatively.

  Imani and Siggy, and Blair, too, before everything happened; they all hated it if I’d say that sort of thought out loud.

  But it’s the way I feel.

  Ugh, next year is going to suck so hard. How am I supposed to just start over? Sixth grade was bad enough, when we were split into different teams, and somehow I was the only one who got on the Cool Cats team, and they all got Flamingos.

  My feet keep walking, and I’m going down the aisle, and even though there are other people here, well, it’s just not that crowded, and I start to feel bad for walking past these other actors. It’s like they’re animals in cages, on display. And when I make the mistake of glancing their way, I get glimpses of friendly smiles and tables with headshots and Sharpies, and these floor-to-ceiling banners telling you who they are and why they’re important to the horror movie world.

  I start saying hi and giving these little apologetic waves, which I hope sort of encapsulate that I think they’re all awesome but I’m just a kid and don’t have enough money for all their autographs.

  There she is. No one is waiting at her table. Janet O’Shea stands behind it, cute white-and-gray hair in a Peter Pan cut, and a smile that reaches her eyes. She’s tiny! She’s sweet, I can just tell. A booth-wide banner hangs behind her, with her black-and-white picture from Fight the Dead looking out from her most famous scene: when she first sees the zombies in the park. And her obnoxious brother makes fun of her fears; when she sees this shambling form coming toward them, he tells her it’s a wino. He makes fun of her! Saying, “There’s no stopping them, Vivian!” and then CRUNCH he gets bit.

  Serves him right. Listen to your little sister’s gut, am I right? Women have more of a sense of self-preservation. Our Spidey senses are just attuned to these things. To danger.

  A loud bang draws my eyes to the end of the hall and the emergency exit. A skinny white man in a T-shirt and jeans is messing with the two solid aluminum doors. The doors are the kind with the long horizontal metal crash bars in the middle that you push to get the door to open.

  The man works at the bar of one door with a screwdriver. At his feet a shabby backpack with a large Mickey Mouse patch spills other tools onto the floor. He’s not in a uniform, but he must be a maintenance guy.

  Or something.

  “Hello, dear,” a woman’s British voice says, and I look back at the table.

  Janet O’Shea is smiling right at me.

  I still turn around to look behind myself, like a fool. Ugh. Be cool, June.

  Janet O’Shea’s eyes are lively, like they actually sparkle.

  “You’re Janet O’Shea,” I say.

  She knows who she is, June.

  I wish the earth would just open up and take me down into sweet oblivion.

  “You know you’re Janet O’Shea, of course,” I say quickly, waving my hand.

  Oh God, did that make it sound like I think she has dementia or something?

  Janet O’Shea laughs.

  “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “I love Vivian,” I say. “I love Fight the Dead.”

  “Oh good, me too.” Janet O’Shea leans forward. “I don’t understand it, but there’s always been a faction of people who simply can’t stand Vivian. They find fault with everything she does in the movie.”

  “I bet mostly they’re men, right?” I say.

  “Yes.”

  Honestly, who would have a problem with Vivian? She’s just a girl doing her best, and she has the pragmatism to kill the jerk who gets bit at the window.

  Well, okay, so jerks might take an issue with her, back in the day. Just like they did wit
h the other lead—a black man in the sixties.

  Racism and sexism, still here, still the same ugly story.

  Some people just can’t stand it if anyone else ever gets to be the hero.

  “Well, screw them.” My voice comes out firmer than I intended.

  Janet laughs, and it just lights up her whole face.

  Actors are something special, man. I think I finally understand what charisma is. I mean, I know Imani has it, but I also remember how she used to pick her nose in first grade when she thought no one was looking, so she has that to overcome, there.

  “Screw them indeed,” Janet says.

  With her posh accent, it actually sounds like a pleasantry. A bit of chitchat. Like Hello, good day. Cheerio, pip pip. Screw them indeed.

  The guy at the end of the hall is checking one of the doors, jumping at the crash bar. It won’t open. He starts working on the other one.

  Maybe he has to lock them both and then unlock them. To get them to open right or fix whatever the problem is.

  “Would you like an autograph?” Janet O’Shea asks.

  “Yes!” I yelp, and she laughs, this beautiful rich laugh like a Disney villain, except it’s nice, and I think she’s probably my favorite actress ever, now that I’ve met her.

  I pull my autograph book out of my bag, and I dig out the autograph fee (less than James Cooper’s but still, it’s a service and she’s got to pay for this booth). As I reach out to hand it to Janet, this white lady just barges up from the table next to us and pushes in front of me.

  Her backpack bumps into me, knocking the bills out of my hand.

  My autograph book falls open to the ground, crunching two of the pages.

  “Janet O’Shea!” the woman says, but she’s reading the banner and pretending to know who it is. Her lips are shiny, like they’re coated in grease, not gloss, and her whole look is a bit brittle, like her demeanor.

  Janet smiles. “Hello, excuse me, but I was about to autograph for . . .” She holds her hand out at me, but I step back, shaking my head so my hair falls in front of my eyes.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Go ahead.” I bend to pick up my book.

  The woman turns her chicken-grease smile at me. “Thanks!” Then she’s pulling out about five collectible figurines, miniature Vivians in unopened, plastic packaging.

  She slaps money on the table to cover the cost as Janet O’Shea signs her name on each.

  The woman picks up the memorabilia and moves down to the next table. Without saying thanks. Or goodbye.

  Janet shakes her head at me.

  “She’s going to sell them online. I guess that’s her prerogative, but she’s not really here as a fan, you see.”

  “That’s cool, though, that your autograph sells the figurine better.”

  “I used to ask if they wanted anything inscribed, but now I just try to get it over with,” Janet says. “Listen to me, I sound awful. She paid for my autograph, she got my autograph.”

  But I think I understand her anyway, or at least I know why I wouldn’t like it. Something about it just felt gross, just a transaction, with no humans underneath.

  As the autograph lady makes her way down the line, you can see that some of the actors know the drill. They don’t even stop talking to each other, just take the money, count the items, sign the items.

  The guy at the double doors is packing up his tools. He’s dressed in a faded Nike T-shirt that shouts JUST DO IT. There are pronounced circles under his eyes, and he’s unshaven; not in a deliberate way but more like he’s been working too hard, and is too harried.

  He doesn’t really strike me as a maintenance guy, actually. He just seems . . . ill at ease. Jumpy, somehow. Hurried.

  The guy drops his Mickey Mouse patch backpack, spilling screwdrivers and a water bottle, a massive sheaf of paper bound in black binder clips, and a wide, double-sided breathing mask—the kind with two filters set at either side of the mouth.

  He stoops to shove his things back in his bag and then he looks up, and sees me watching him.

  He makes this strange expression at me, partway between a wince and a smile, almost like an apology.

  Or like guilt.

  What’s he doing with the doors, anyway?

  “Well, she’s gone now, and it’s just us Vivian fans again,” Janet says in a bright voice.

  I turn back to Janet and smile. She helps me smooth the crunched pages of my autograph book on the table and then she signs it, remarking over the collage of Vivian. Then she asks about me, what grade I’m in, what my favorite subject is.

  I love her even more, because she doesn’t ask what my plans are after graduation, like everyone else does these days.

  Then, because she is so cool, she offers to take a selfie with me, and doesn’t even charge me for it. Then she gives me a hug.

  “Do you know the thing I always loved about Vivian?” she asks. “She wasn’t a badass. She was just a girl in this world. But she trusted herself, when it came down to it.”

  Janet O’Shea puts her forefinger under my chin, giving it a little lift, and I don’t even mind. I feel like a little kid, and I’m fine with it.

  “You’ve got to trust yourself, all right? Trust yourself.”

  “I do. And when I don’t, I will.” And like everything I want to say, it comes out a mess, with the jumbled-up syntax of a Martian. But it makes sense to me.

  And I’m going to trust that it makes sense to Janet O’Shea, too.

  9

  When she sees me walking back up from meeting Janet O’Shea, Siggy stands and does a little victory dance for me, pretending to spike a football on the ground, waving her knees in and out, holding up a number one finger and making a crowd-goes-wild cheering noise.

  She rushes up to me, pretending to be speaking into a microphone.

  “June Blue! You’ve just met one of your favorite actresses of all time,” she says.

  “Correction: my favorite actress,” I say. “She’s my favorite actress.”

  “You’ve just met your favorite actress ever! What are you going to do now?”

  Imani butts her head over the pretend microphone.

  “We’re going to Disney World!” she cheers.

  “If by ‘going to Disney World’ you mean going to another session and then a podcast, then yes,” I say. “Because that’s next on the schedule.”

  As we meander back into the exhibit hall, I show Siggy and Imani the selfie I took with Janet, post the selfie, and show them my autograph book. Siggy says Mark was asleep when she called but happy to hear her voice (they’re such dorks), and Imani says Tishala is completely in love with the crown, showed their mom the photo, and they’ve already started building a “look” around it.

  The live podcast we want to see, The Undead Listen, is going to be on fifteen minutes after Scott’s. If we time it right, we probably won’t even see him.

  Which is how I want it. Today isn’t about Scott. It’s about Human Wasteland. And zombies. And why we love to be scared by them.

  I’ve read some articles online that say that horror trends reflect our fears as a society. How the scary movies and stories that take hold in popular culture show us something about what we are afraid of or are grappling with.

  Some people say that zombies represent our fear of “the other.” That zombies represent xenophobia, fear of the outside world, of being overrun by a horde intent on taking everything we have, even our lives, even our meat.

  But I don’t think zombies ever meant that. Or just that. Because look at the movies. I mean, just look at Fight the Dead.

  It was made in the late sixties, in a time of huge social upheaval, and the heroes are a timid white girl and a strong black man. The dead keep coming, they have been fundamentally changed, and the two heroes hole up in an abandoned gas station with other people—an
d in that moment, in trying to survive the night, they have to confront each other, confront prejudice, fight to even have a say about what they should do in a life-or-death circumstance.

  In the end, death doesn’t even come from the zombies.

  And this is what I think Human Wasteland understands about zombies, and about horror. What do zombies stand for? They’re not even human anymore.

  That’s what zombies are: a loss. A loss of someone you thought you knew. More than that, a death. And then a transformation.

  Into a monster.

  I don’t know. Looking at the world sometimes, zombies make more sense than people.

  We slowly walk through the aisles of the exhibit hall, passing countless tables of merchandise, and specialty shops. There’s an honest-to-God tattooist giving horror hounds tattoos; his book is impressive and I can’t say I’m not tempted, but my mom would kill me.

  But maybe I could get my nose pierced?

  We keep going and in the next aisle we see the zombie couple again. They’ve gathered a small crowd outside a specialty makeup booth.

  The booth sells all kinds of makeup, but obviously the big hit is the various bite wounds and zombie effects.

  The zombie couple are clumsily dabbing makeup on each other, rough swipes of neutral tan that look ridiculous, like the worst mortician in the world just gave up on making their corpses presentable.

  The booth owner, a middle-aged white woman with dyed-bright magenta hair, good-naturedly takes the makeup out of their hands, gently turns and pushes them away.

  “Go on,” she laughs, shooing them.

  The man zombie winks at me as the woman zombie grabs his arm and together they careen to the next booth.

  The crowd that had gathered starts to disperse.

  Imani examines the makeup artist’s photobook, exclaiming over the beautiful-but-scary evil queen makeup, ominous threaded silver veins edging up her neck and onto her jaw under dark skin, special-effects red-iris contacts, the hint of blood edging the model’s mouth.