Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie

by Jeff Norton

  If I was ever going to come clean about my state of undeadness, I’d want to be on a nationally televised talk show with at least a twenty rating.

  Jeez, what do you take me for!

  The newscaster continued fabricating the news. ‘… who is clearly distraught about her brother’s final moments. Grief, dear, works in mysterious ways.’

  ‘Can you make me famous?’ I heard Amanda ask.

  Beside me, Corina sat back down, clearly bored by the media circus.

  I joined her, dangling my legs off the ledge. It was surprisingly freeing to have nothing but thirty feet of air under your feet. ‘I see why you like it up here.’

  Nesto settled in on my left, surveying the scene below. ‘Yeah, we get a lot of attention. Think they could fling me a hot dog up here?’

  ‘That worm didn’t fill you up?’ I asked.

  ‘Unwanted attention.’ Corina sighed. ‘Look guys.’

  She pointed to the school parking lot. A black hearse drove in, screeching its tyres in full violation of the school board’s ten-miles-per-hour campus speed limit.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Nesto. ‘They really can’t wait to bury us.’

  ‘In a matter of speaking,’ said Corina. ‘That … is my mother.’

  Mrs Parker drove the hearse up on the curb, nearly hitting the gaggle of students and pushing the hot dog vendor out of the way as she flung open the door. Pink wieners spilled all over the tarmac and Nesto called out, ‘Ten-second rule!’†

  Corina’s mother, dressed all in black and wearing a veil that obscured most of her face, snapped open a black parasol. She glided towards the principal and held out her black-gloved hand. For a man descended from Viking stock, Mr Eriksen surrendered surprisingly quickly. He handed over the megaphone and skulked off to the side to lift a hot dog from the ground, still with about three seconds to go before Nesto’s ten-second rule expired.

  ‘Fly down here at once!’ she screeched.

  ‘Ah, no, no!’ called Mr Limpman, our guidance counsellor, who was rushing across the parking lot, heaving his heft as fast as he could.

  ‘Mother,’ said Corina. ‘Do not make a scene.’

  Mrs Parker scanned the hundreds of students, teachers, and emergency service professionals assembled, and sarcastically bit back, ‘A little too late for that dar-ling.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Corina.

  She flew to her feet and stood with her steel-toed boots lurching over the edge.

  The crowd gasped.

  ‘Corina,’ I said. ‘I think we ought to go back inside.’

  ‘But I’m having fun,’ chirped Ernesto.

  ‘C’mon guys,’ I urged. ‘Let’s go before anyone does anything stupid.’

  ‘Like call my mother?’ said Corina.

  ‘It could be worse,’ I offered, knowing that for Corina Parker it probably was already worse. ‘Let’s just meet up tonight. My backyard?’

  ‘Yeah, suppose,’ Corina said with a huff, stepping back from the ledge. ‘But don’t expect me to keep supplying you boys with Pop Rocks. You gotta bring your own stash if you want to keep having three-a.m. rendezvous.’‡

  ‘Noted,’ I said with a nod.

  I really did want to keep having three-a.m. meet-ups with Corina Parker, so I made a mental note to find a reliable bulk supplier of fizzy candy.

  We shuffled back towards the door in the roof and back inside the air-conditioned comfort of publicly funded education.

  When we descended the ladder into the hallway, Mr Limpman greeted us with open arms.

  He had giant sweat circles under the armpits of his short-sleeved collared shirt.

  I’m not going anywhere near those, I thought.

  ‘You made the right choice, kids,’ he said. ‘And just know that I’m always here for you to tackle any problems you may be facing.’

  Just then the school bell rang.

  The last school bell of seventh grade.

  ‘But not until after Labor Day,’ he added. ‘My holidays start now. Have a great summer and remember to choose life.’

  We walked outside into the crowd and Corina’s mother grabbed her arm and snatched her away.

  ‘You pull a stunt like that,’ she snapped, ‘and just before the big convention. I’d hoped you’d be mature enough to attend this year, but after that—’

  ‘Adam,’ interrupted my sister, ‘I’m glad you didn’t die.’

  And she leaned in, whispering to my ear, ‘Again.’

  I was touched by Amanda’s sentiment, but mostly curious about what Mrs Parker was talking about.

  ‘Thanks, sis,’ I said. ‘But you’re still in my room.’

  ‘I’m in high school now,’ she said with a smile. ‘Just four years until college … then it’s all yours.’

  * Sharks don’t actually laugh. But in NinjaMan issue #1193, NinjaMan in the Sharkstorm, they sure did. And it was pretty cool.

  † The ‘ten-second rule’, for how long a piece of food may remain on the floor before becoming inedible, is more like a guideline than a rule. In my view, anything that touches the floor should be off limits.

  ‡ It’s a fancy French word for ‘meet up’.

  3

  In Which I Find Myself Homeless

  ‘Your mother and I have some wonderful news,’ announced my dad. He looked at mom with a knowing smile. The kitchen table was covered in a white tablecloth and I noticed that instead of IKEA plates, my oddly giddy parents had opted for the good china. Ordinarily, I’d welcome the formal stuff, but tonight I couldn’t shake the feeling that something strange was going on.

  I glanced at Amanda, whose jaw hung open with a half-eaten stick of red liquorice drooling from her mouth. She rocked ever so slowly back and forth on her chair, gripped in shock. I raised my eyebrows (feeling my grey forehead skin crack – note to self: double up on face moisturiser) to catch her attention. Amanda placed her hand over her tummy and mimed a baby bump.

  Now it was my turn to do some jaw dropping. I knew she’d been hoping to fit into high school, but I figured she’d go for cheerleading, not teenage pregnancy.

  ‘Not me, you idiot,’ she scoffed. Amanda pointed her half-eaten, habit-forming liquorice at our mother.

  I looked at Mom dishing out the veggie lasagne. She was positively glowing. Dad was even looking at her affectionately as he poured golden, bubbling liquid into tall, thin glasses that looked too fancy for anything but … oh, no …

  … it was champagne.

  As Corina would say: Oh. My. Count. They were having a baby!

  My afterlife flashed before my eyes – a terrifying future filled with vomit and poo and indentured* babysitting. Amanda actually started to convulse, ever so slightly, but Mom and Dad were too absorbed in pre-baby bliss to notice.

  They had already stopped paying attention to us. My entire world was crumbling around me. I had to take charge of this apocalypse.†

  ‘You can’t have a baby!’ I declared. ‘I’m your baby!’

  Dad dropped his champagne. The glass shattered on the china plate and I watched in slow motion as the bubbly liquid doused the tablecloth.

  Mom stared at me. It reminded me of the first time she’d seen me in zombie form. There was fear, but there was also love.

  ‘First of all,’ she said. ‘I’ll get some paper towels.’ She rose from the table carefully and backed herself up to the kitchen counter. ‘Second, you are not a baby. And third, most importantly, I’m not having a baby. I am too busy for a baby.’

  But Amanda kept rocking herself back and forth muttering something about life being over.

  ‘You’re worrying me, Amanda,’ said Dad.

  ‘We’re the ones who should be worried,’ she said.

  ‘She has a point,’ I said, hating to agree with her. ‘Look at the evidence: tablecloth, Grandma’s fine china, champagne, you two making googly eyes at each other. The signs are clear.’

  My parents just laughed.

  They laughed and laughed … and laughed.

>   Mom poured herself a glass of the bubbles and downed it in one gulp.

  ‘No, Adam,’ she said with a smile, ‘we’re celebrating because this summer there’s a big convention of dentists coming to town.’

  ‘And they need rooms to stay in,’ added my dad. ‘So we’ve rented out your bedrooms.’

  ‘Huh?’ grunted Amanda.

  ‘And with the money we’ll get,’ said Mom with a grin, ‘we’re sending you kids away to camp.’

  ‘So, no road trip?’ I asked.

  Dad shook his head. ‘We know you kids don’t really like the Meltzer family road trip. But camp, wow, you’re going to love it!’

  This was almost too much to process. In the breath of about one minute, I went from being an uncle, to an older brother, to a refugee from my own home.

  ‘Amanda, dear,’ said Mom, mopping up Dad’s bubbles with a puff of paper towel. ‘Chew your liquorice.’

  Dad picked little bits of glass off the table and placed them in what was left of his champagne flute.

  ‘Ouchy,’ he yelped, pulling his finger away. ‘Cut myself.’

  He held up his index finger and blood trickled down his digit.

  Knockity-knock-knock.

  I looked over at the window and spotted Corina floating outside. Her eyes were wide, fixated on Dad’s bloody finger. She licked her lip gloss. I shook my head frantically. I did not want her vamping out on my dad. She landed on her two feet and stood there, waiting. I tried to shoo her away but she didn’t move.

  ‘Adam, what are you—?’ asked my mom. ‘Oh, it’s your little friend, Corina.’

  ‘Adam’s-got-a-girlfriend,’ teased Amanda.

  ‘She’s not my girl—’

  Then Mom waved her in. ‘Come on in, dear, if you don’t mind the chaos.’

  ‘Whoa,’ I protested. ‘You can’t invite her in.’‡

  ‘Lovers’ quarrel?’ my sister pestered.

  ‘Don’t be rude, Adam,’ said my Dad, trying to stem the bleeding by pressing his finger against his lips.

  ‘Are you hungry, dear?’ Mom asked, before turning to me. ‘She looks too thin to me – do you think she eats enough, Adam?’

  I had no idea how to respond to that one.

  Corina stepped in through the screen door on the downstairs landing and bounded up with a stricken look on her pale face.

  ‘Don’t mind the Meltzers,’ said Dad, now sucking his bleeding finger. ‘Just a bit of family insanity here.’

  Corina stared at Dad’s cut. Her mouth gaped opened and I swear her incisors grew.

  ‘Corina was just going home,’ I said, rising to escort her out the front door and as far away from my bleeding father as I could.

  ‘I don’t have a home any more,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘My parents gave away my room and even my cof—my cosy bed to my relatives coming to the convention.’

  ‘Lots of dentists in your family then?’ asked my dad.

  ‘It’s in the blood,’ Corina explained.

  ‘We were just telling the kids the good news,’ explained my mom. ‘We’ve rented out their rooms to dentists and with the extortionate§ rent we’re able to charge, we’re sending them away to camp.’

  Camp. The very word filled me with fear. A place filled with mosquitos but void of basic plumbing. Like the Dark Ages.

  ‘And they leave tomorrow!’ my dad said with a smile.

  He raised his new glass of bubbles and clinked glasses with mom, sealing my fate.

  ‘Wait,’ I said to Corina, pulling her into the front hallway. ‘Did she just say “dentists”?’

  ‘That’s what I was coming over to tell you,’ Corina whispered, before reinstating normal volume to avoid suspicion. ‘About all of the “dentists” coming to town.’

  ‘And by dentists,’ I said softly, ‘what you really mean is …’

  With her back to my family, she shot me a smile. Her incisors had grown into bloodsucking fangs. Then she closed her mouth to cover up her secret.

  ‘… vampires.’

  * Indentured is like work that’s against your will. It usually has nothing to do with dentures. Fun fact: my favourite Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, was actually indentured as a boy, forced to work for his older brother, though I have no idea if that job included cleaning his dentures.

  † Apocalypse (sounds like: a-pock-a-lips) is a big word that means the end of the world. It’s a big thing in the Bible and in pretty much every zombie movie, which tend to be about ‘the zombie apocalypse’, which survivors tend to think is a bad thing.

  ‡ In vampire lore, a vampire must be invited inside in order to enter someone’s home. They may be bloodsucking creatures from an ancient evil, but I respect that they have manners.

  § Extortionate. It means, like, really high, as in expensive. Like the NinjaCave playset (complete with the Nin-jet!) that I told Mom I wanted for my birth (and death) day but that she said was ‘ridiculously extortionate’.

  4

  In Which I Face My Fate

  That night, at three in the morning, I woke in the darkness of the basement to the sound of buzzing. It was Adamini, the zombee who’d killed me. But I don’t hold a grudge and this pigeon-sized bee had actually become something between a friend and a pet. After all, it wasn’t his fault he was the product of an evil science experiment.

  He buzzed over my head and nudged me out of my lumpy cot bed. Turns out that genetically modified, death-defying bees are very reliable alarm clocks.

  Adamini jumped on my shoulder and I lumbered upstairs to meet up with Nesto and Corina in the backyard. It had become our nightly ritual – a space to be friends, a place to be unnatural. Since my death and unexpected (though not unwelcome) return, I’d come to cherish these night-time hang-outs with the only two ‘people’ who knew what it felt like to be completely different from their families.

  Nesto jumped over the back fence in full chupa mode. His body was lizard-like and slimy. He blinked his big black eyes at me and asked, ‘Have you heard the news?’

  Now, ever since I’d discovered Croxton’s collection of supernatural beings and uncovered an evil plot at the university to turn the townsfolk into zombies, I have to admit that the local ‘news’, which only seemed to focus on house fires and traffic accidents, held little appeal. But I suspected Nesto was talking about the Great Summer Camp Evacuation.

  ‘I just got back and they’re kicking me out,’ I said.

  ‘It’ll be great,’ hissed Ernesto. ‘I can’t wait to let loose in the wild.’

  *

  Adamini buzzed into the air and swarmed around Nesto, who jumped around the backyard after the playful zombee.

  I glanced up at Corina’s house, two doors down, and spotted her floating down to join us.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m being cleared out of Croxton,’ she complained as she made a perfect landing.

  ‘We all are,’ I said.

  ‘Even my room’s been rented,’ Nesto said, ‘and you can’t even see the floor for all my underwear.’

  ‘Our parents have been bought,’ I said with a sigh. ‘And they can’t wait to get rid of us. Doctor Mom says the bus picks us up first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Mother thinks I’m not mature enough to join the convention,’ moaned Corina.

  ‘You actually want to be a dentist?’ asked Nesto.

  Corina recoiled. ‘The human mouth disgusts me.’

  I loved that we had that in common.

  ‘Nesto,’ I explained, ‘the dentists are just a front for Corina’s kind.’

  ‘Vegans?’ he asked.

  ‘Vampires,’ she clarified. ‘The convention is a gathering of vampires from every country around the world, held every four years—’

  ‘Like the Olympics,’ chirped Ernesto, excitedly.

  ‘Just like,’ snapped Corina. ‘If the Olympics included events like human sacrifice, flying races, competitive coffin building, skull tossing—’

  �
�Not catching?’ asked Ernesto. ‘That’d be way funner to watch.’

  ‘Funner is not a real word,’ I clarified.

  ‘I don’t want to go to their stupid convention anyway,’ sulked Corina, but I’m pretty sure she was lying.

  ‘Human sacrifice, really?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she admitted. ‘My dad used to tell me about the conventions as coffin-time stories, but I never really knew what to believe. They probably talk big but just stay up late watching the Twilight movies.’*

  Ernesto put a claw on her leather-clad shoulder and said, ‘Camp will be great, and we’ll all be together. What’s funner than that?’

  Corina sneered at the chupa claw. ‘Do you want to be a candidate for human sacrifice?’

  ‘Good thing I’m not human,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure exceptions can be made,’ she said.

  I motioned to Nesto to remove the claw from her Prada jacket. He slipped his claw off the leather and Corina smiled. ‘You’re right, Ernesto. At least we’ll be together.’

  * I wasn’t sure if this was a form of entertainment or torture.

  5

  In Which I Catch the Bus of Doom

  Morning arrived with the scent of slightly burned pancakes, tempting me upstairs to the land of the living. Adamini was already up, buzzing around the basement and eager to get out and stretch his wings.

  I rolled off Lumpy Cot and carefully made my bed, complete with hospital corners (not that I’d ever willingly spend any time in a hospital – they are just full of sick people). Adamini buzzed straight at me, tugging at my NinjaMan PJs. I was pretty sure the bee needed to pee.

  I opened the back door on the landing and reminded him to keep a low profile while he did his beesness. He nodded and buzzed off.

  I think he understood.

  Upstairs, Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table, smiling at one another. Amanda gorged on a triple stack of pancakes topped with red liquorice bits.

  ‘Good morning, camper!’ boomed Dad. ‘Way to be up and Adam!’

  He actually slapped his knee, laughing to himself. The proper phrase is ‘up and at ’em’. I think he actually named me Adam just so he’d have a recurring joke.