The Living Dead

by John Joseph Adams

  Romero delivered some final instructions on how to walk like a zombie—he demonstrated by allowing his eyes to roll back in his head and his face to go slack—and then promised they’d be ready to roll on the first shot in a few minutes.

  Harriet pivoted on her heel, turned to face him, her fist on her hip, eyelids fluttering theatrically. He turned at the same time, and they almost bumped into each other. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. They were standing too close to each other, and the unexpected physical proximity seemed to throw her. He didn’t know what to say either, all thought suddenly wiped from his mind. She laughed, and shook her head, a reaction that struck him as artificial, an expression of anxiety, not happiness.

  “Let’s set, pardner,” she said. He remembered that when a skit wasn’t going well, and she got rattled, she sometimes slipped into a big drawling John Wayne impersonation on stage, a nervous habit he had hated then and that he found, in this moment, endearing.

  “Are we going to have something to do soon?” little Bob asked.

  “Soon,” she said. “Why don’t you practice being a zombie? Go on, lurch around for a while.”

  Bobby and Harriet sat down at the edge of the fountain again. Her hands were small, bony fists on her thighs. She stared into her lap, her eyes blank, gaze directed inward. She was digging the toes of one bare foot into the toes of the other again.

  He spoke. One of them had to say something.

  “I can’t believe you’re married and you have a kid!” he said, in the same tone of happy astonishment he reserved for friends who had just told him they had been cast in a part he himself had auditioned for. “I love this kid you’re dragging around with you. He’s so cute. But then, who can resist a little kid who looks half-rotted?”

  She seemed to come back from wherever she had been, smiled at him—almost shyly.

  He went on, “And you better be ready to tell me everything about this Dean guy.”

  “He’s coming by later. He’s going to take us out to lunch. You should come.”

  “That could be fun!” Bobby cried, and made a mental note to take his enthusiasm down a notch.

  “He can be really shy the first time he meets someone, so don’t expect too much.”

  Bobby waved a hand in the air: pish-posh. “It’s going to be great. We’ll have lots to talk about. I’ve always been fascinated with lumber yards and—plywood.”

  This was taking a chance, joshing her about the husband he didn’t know. But she smirked and said:

  “Everything you ever wanted to know about two-by-fours but were afraid to ask.”

  And for a moment they were both smiling, a little foolishly, knees almost touching. They had never really figured out how to talk to each other. They were always half-on-stage, trying to use whatever the other person said to set up the next punch-line. That much, anyway, hadn’t changed.

  “God I can’t believe running into you here,” she said. “I’ve wondered about you. I’ve thought about you a lot.”

  “You have?”

  “I figured you’d be famous by now,” she said.

  “Hey, that makes two of us,” Bobby said, and winked. Immediately he wished he could take the wink back. It was fake and he didn’t want to be fake with her. He hurried on, answering a question she hadn’t asked. “I’m settling in. Been back for three months. I’m staying with my parents for a while, kind of readapting to Monroeville.”

  She nodded, still regarding him steadily, with a seriousness that made him uncomfortable. “How’s it going?”

  “I’m making a life,” Bobby lied.

  In between set-ups, Bobby and Harriet and little Bob told stories about how they had died.

  “I was a comedian in New York City,” Bobby said, fingering his scalp wound. “Something tragic happened when I went on stage.”

  “Yeah,” Harriet said. “Your act.”

  “Something that had never happened before.”

  “What, people laughed?”

  “I was my usual brilliant self. People were rolling on the floor.”

  “Convulsions of agony.”

  “And then as I was taking my final bow—a terrible accident. A stagehand up in the rafters dropped a forty pound sandbag right on my head. But at least I died to the sound of applause.”

  “They were applauding the stagehand,” Harriet said.

  The little boy looked seriously up into Bobby’s face, and took his hand. “I’m sorry you got hit in the head.” His lips grazed Bobby’s knuckles with a dry kiss.

  Bobby stared down at him. His hand tingled where little Bob’s mouth had touched it.

  “He’s always been the kissiest, huggiest kid you ever met,” Harriet said. “He’s got all this pent-up affection. At the slightest sign of weakness he’s ready to slobber on you.” As she said this she ruffled little Bobby’s hair. “What killed you, squirt?”

  He held up his hand, waggled his stumps. “My fingers got cut off on Dad’s table-saw and I bled to death.”

  Harriet went on smiling but her eyes seemed to film over slightly. She fished around in her pocket and found a quarter. “Go get a gumball, bud.”

  He snatched it and ran.

  “People must think we’re the most careless parents,” she said, staring expressionlessly after her son. “But it was no one’s fault about his fingers.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “The table saw was unplugged and he wasn’t even two. He never plugged anything in before. We didn’t know he knew how. Dean was right there with him. It just happened so fast. Do you know how many things had to go wrong, all at the same time for that to happen? Dean thinks the sound of the saw coming on scared him and he reached up to try and shut it off. He thought he’d be in trouble.” She was briefly silent, watching her son work the gumball machine, then said, “I always thought about my kid—this is the one part of my life I’m going to get right. No indiscriminate fuck-ups about this. I was planning how when he was fifteen he’d make love to the most beautiful girl in school. How’d he be able to play five instruments and he’d blow everyone away with all his talent. How’d he be the funny kid who seems to know everyone.” She paused again, and then added, “He’ll be the funny kid now. The funny kid always has something wrong with him. That’s why he’s funny—to shift people’s attention to something else.”

  In the silence that followed this statement, Bobby had several thoughts in rapid succession. The first was that he had been the funny kid when he was in school; did Harriet think there had been something wrong with him he had been covering for? Then he remembered they were both the funny kids, and thought: what was wrong with us?

  It had to be something, otherwise they’d be together now and the boy at the gumball machine would be theirs. The thought which crossed his mind next was that, if little Bobby was their little Bobby, he’d still have ten fingers. He felt a seething dislike of Dean the lumber man, an ignorant squarehead whose idea of spending together-time with his kid probably meant taking him to the fair to watch a truck-pull.

  An assistant director started clapping her hands and hollering down for the undead to get into their positions. Little Bob trotted back to them.

  “Mom,” he said, the gumball in his cheek. “You didn’t say how you died.” He was looking at her torn-off ear.

  “I know,” Bobby said. “She ran into this old friend at the mall and they got talking. You know, and I mean they really got talking. Hours of blab. Finally her old friend said, hey, I don’t want to chew your ear off here. And your mom said, aw, don’t worry about it…”

  “A great man once said, lend me your ears,” Harriet said. She smacked the palm of her hand hard against her forehead. “Why did I listen to him?”

  Except for the dark hair, Dean didn’t look anything like him. Dean was short. Bobby wasn’t prepared for how short. He was shorter than Harriet, who was herself not much over five and a half feet tall. When they kissed, Dean had to stretch his neck. He was compact, and solidly b
uilt, broad at the shoulders, deep through the chest, narrow at the hips. He wore thick glasses with gray plastic frames, the eyes behind them the color of unpolished pewter. They were shy eyes—his gaze met Bobby’s when Harriet introduced them, darted away, returned and darted away again—not to mention old; at the corners of them the skin was creased in a web of finely etched laugh lines. He was older than Harriet, maybe by as much as ten years.

  They had only just been introduced when Dean cried suddenly, “Oh you’re that Bobby! You’re funny Bobby. You know we almost didn’t name our kid Bobby because of you. I’ve had it drilled into me, if I ever run into you, I’m supposed to reassure you that naming him Bobby was my idea. Cause of Bobby Murcer. Ever since I was old enough to imagine having kids of my own I always thought—”

  “I’m funny!” Harriet’s son interrupted.

  Dean caught him under the armpits and lofted him into the air. “You sure are!”

  Bobby wasn’t positive he wanted to have lunch with them, but Harriet looped her arm through his and marched him toward the doors out to the parking lot, and her shoulder—warm and bare—was leaning against his, so there was really no choice.

  Bobby didn’t notice the other people in the diner staring at them, and forgot they were in makeup until the waitress approached. She was hardly out of her teens, with a head of frizzy yellow hair that bounced as she walked.

  “We’re dead,” little Bobby announced.

  “Gotcha,” the girl said, nodding and pointing her ball-point pen at them. “I’m guessing you either all work on the horror movie, or you already tried the special, which is it?”

  Dean laughed, dry, bawling laughter. Dean was as easy a laugh as Bobby had ever met. Dean laughed at almost everything Harriet said, and most of what Bobby himself said. Sometimes he laughed so hard, the people at the next table started in alarm. Once he had control of himself, he would apologize with unmistakable earnestness, his face flushed a delicate shade of rose, eyes gleaming and wet. That was when Bobby began to see at least one possible answer to the question that had been on his mind ever since learning she was married to Dean who-owned-his-own-lumber-yard: why him? Well—he was a willing audience, there was that.

  “So I thought you were acting in New York City,” Dean said, at last. “What brings you back?”

  “Failure,” Bobby said.

  “Oh—I’m sorry to hear that. What are you up to now? Are you doing some comedy locally?”

  “You could say that. Only around here they call it substitute teaching.”

  “Oh! You’re teaching! How do you like it?”

  “It’s great. I always planned to work either in film or television or junior high. That I should finally make it so big subbing eighth grade gym—it’s a dream come true.”

  Dean laughed, and chunks of pulverized chicken-fried steak flew out of his mouth.

  “I’m sorry. This is awful,” he said. “Food everywhere. You must think I’m a total pig.”

  “No, it’s okay. Can I have the waitress bring you something? A glass of water? A trough?”

  Dean bent so his forehead was almost touching his plate, his laughter wheezy, asthmatic. “Stop. Really.”

  Bobby stopped, but not because Dean said. For the first time he had noticed Harriet’s knee was knocking his under the table. He wondered if this was intentional, and the first chance he got he leaned back and looked. No, not intentional. She had kicked her sandals off and was digging the toes of one foot into the other, so fiercely that sometimes her right knee swung out and banged his.

  “Wow, I would’ve loved to have a teacher like you. Someone who can make kids laugh.” Dean said.

  Bobby chewed and chewed, but couldn’t tell what he was eating. It didn’t have any taste.

  Dean let out a shaky sigh, wiped the corners of his eyes again. “Of course, I’m not funny. I can’t even remember knock-knock jokes. I’m not good for much else except working. And Harriet is so funny. Sometimes she puts on shows for Bobby and me, with these dirty socks on her hands, we get laughing so hard we can’t breathe. She calls it the trailer park muppet show. Sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon.” He started laughing and thumping the table again. Harriet stared intently into her lap. Dean said, “I’d love to see her do that on Carson. This is—what do you call them, routines?—this could be a classic routine.”

  “Sure sounds it.” Bobby said. “I’m surprised Ed McMahon hasn’t already called to see if she’s available.”

  When Dean dropped them back at the mall and left for the lumber yard, the mood was different. Harriet seemed distant, it was hard to draw her into any kind of conversation—not that Bobby felt like trying very hard. He was suddenly irritable. All the fun seemed to have gone out of playing a dead person for the day. It was mostly waiting—waiting for the gaffers to get the lights just so, for Tom Savini to touch up a wound that was starting to look a little too much like Latex, not enough like ragged flesh—and Bobby was sick of it. The sight of other people having a good time annoyed him. Several zombies stood in a group, playing hacky-sack with a quivering red spleen, and laughing. It made a juicy splat every time it hit the floor. Bobby wanted to snarl at them for being so merry. Hadn’t any of them heard of method acting, Stanislavsky? They should all be sitting apart from one another, moaning unhappily and fondling giblets. He heard himself moan aloud, an angry frustrated sound, and little Bobby asked what was wrong. He said he was just practicing. Little Bob went to watch the hacky-sack game.

  Harriet said, without looking at him, “That was a good lunch, wasn’t it?”

  “Sen-sational,” Bobby said, thinking better be careful. He was restless, charged with an energy he didn’t know how to displace. “I feel like I really hit it off with Dean. He reminds me of my grandfather. I had this great grandfather who could wiggle his ears and who thought my name was Evan. He’d give me a quarter to stack wood for him, fifty cents if I’d do it with my shirt off. Say, how old is Dean?”

  They had been walking together. Now Harriet stiffened, stopped. Her head swiveled in his direction, but her hair was in front of her eyes, making it hard to read the expression in them. “He’s nine years older than me. So what?”

  “So nothing. I’m just glad you’re happy.”

  “I am happy,” Harriet said, her voice a half-octave too high.

  “Did he get down on one knee when he proposed?”

  Harriet nodded, her mouth crimped, suspicious.

  “Did you have to help him up afterwards?” Bobby asked. His own voice was sounding a little off-key, too, and he thought stop now. It was like a cartoon, he saw Wile E. Coyote strapped to the front of a steam engine, jamming his feet down on the rails to try to brake the train, smoke boiling up from his heels, feet swelling, glowing red.

  “Oh you prick,” she said.

  “I’m sorry!” he grinned, holding his hands palms-up in front of him. “Kidding, kidding. Funny Bobby, you know. I can’t help myself.” She hesitated—had been about to turn away—not sure whether she should believe him or not. Bobby wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. “So we know what you do to make Dean laugh. What’s he do to make you laugh? Oh that’s right, he isn’t funny. Well what’s he do to make your heart race? Besides kiss you with his dentures out?”

  “Leave me alone, Bobby,” she said. She turned away, but he came around to get back in front of her, keep her from walking off.

  “No.”

  “Stop.”

  “Can’t,” he said, and suddenly he understood he was angry with her. “If he isn’t funny he must be something. I need to know what.”

  “Patient,” she said.

  “Patient,” Bobby repeated. It stunned him—that this could be her answer.

  “With me.”

  “With you,” he said.

  “With Robert.”

  “Patient,” Bobby said. Then he couldn’t say anything more for a moment because he was out-of-breath. He felt suddenly that his makeup was itching on his face. He wished that when
he started to press she had just walked away from him, or told him to fuck off, or hit him even, wished she had responded with anything but patient. He swallowed. “That’s not good enough.” Knowing he couldn’t stop now, the train was going into the canyon, Wile E. Coyote’s eyes bugging three feet out of his head in terror. “I wanted to meet whoever you were with and feel sick with jealousy, but instead I just feel sick. I wanted you to fall in love with someone good-looking and creative and brilliant, a novelist, a playwright, someone with a sense of humor and a fourteen-inch dong. Not a guy with a buzz cut and a lumber yard, who thinks erotic massage involves a tube of Ben Gay.”

  She smeared at the tears dribbling down her face with the backs of her hands. “I knew you’d hate him, but I didn’t think you’d be mean.”

  “It’s not that I hate him. What’s to hate? He’s not doing anything any other guy in his position wouldn’t do. If I was two feet tall and geriatric, I’d leap at the chance to have a piece of ass like you. You bet he’s patient. He better be. He ought to be down on his fucking knees every night, bathing your feet in sacramental oils, that you’d give him the time of day.”

  “You had your chance,” she said. She was struggling not to let her crying slip out of control. The muscles in her face quivered with the effort, pulling her expression into a grimace.

  “It’s not about what chances I had. It’s about what chances you had.”

  This time when she pivoted away from him, he let her go. She put her hands over her face. Her shoulders were jerking and she was making choked little sounds as she went. He watched her walk to the wall around the fountain where they had met earlier in the day. Then he remembered the boy and turned to look, his heart drumming hard, wondering what little Bobby might’ve seen or heard. But the kid was running down the broad concourse, kicking the spleen in front of him, which had now collected a mass of dust bunnies around it. Two other dead children were trying to kick it away from him.