Mom would have stuffed Zaley into her womb and started all over again were it possible, reaching back as desperately as Zaley was reaching forward. There was a term for that she’d found online, infantilization, and Mom had it bad. Every inch of independence Zaley took was a hard slap to her mother’s face. Once Zaley asked Corbin’s mother if she missed little Corbin and wanted him back, and she said that she did miss him being small, but she also wanted to see the man he’d become. Zaley cried in the bathroom. Her mother wanted only the little girl, and she was gone.
Her tears upset Corbin, who stood outside wanting to know what was wrong. How could she explain to someone who was growing up normally? It was so shaming. Mom called her baby since that was what she wanted Zaley to be. When Zaley had Sombra B, or was home with any illness and confined to bed, Mom was happy.
Mom had been happy when the letter from the district came on the twenty-seventh of August cancelling school until further notice. She’d come into Zaley’s room waving it, like this was good news and Zaley would be thrilled, even with the calendar a dreary march of red X’s between them. It was because of the Traehmer Forks incident, no doubt, the year-round school in Oregon in which one special education student with Sombra C went on a rampage and attacked his classmates and teacher. Six of the students tested positive, and all had to be removed to their local confinement point. The government was seizing buildings to use for that and the National Guard was summoned to stand outside them with guns. The only ones who got out without being shot were personnel and body bags. Dad said the Sombra C virus was a good way to clean the population of its low-lifes, the drug users and prostitutes, those with piercings and tattoos, and he didn’t say anything about the poor ten-year-olds of Traehmer Forks, the entire population of Kingdom Come in Oklahoma, or of the innocent babies who went into confinement because they were infected by their mothers through breastfeeding.
Most people took one month from initial infection to reach death, with some on the fast track going through the cycle in half that time and others on the slow track taking five to six weeks. So far, no one had lived beyond that. Nor would anyone want to. The newscasters waved their pointers daily at the stages and symptoms. Infection presented with fever, lethargy, and decreased appetite. It was often so mild that people did not even realize they were ill. In one of thirty cases, the fever was so high that the person fell unconscious for up to seventy-two hours. The average person shook it off in a matter of days without trouble, unaware that the virus had been replicating at a furious pace all along.
A week or so after exposure, they began to feel a little under the weather. He can’t find his keys, the newscasters said. She can’t remember what she needed at the store. A child forgets how to catch a ball. That stage was called mental degradation. The state of mind decayed from there in the second week, losing words and abilities, and the growing incompetence at going about daily activities was sometimes joined by emotional volatility. It was common for a slight paralysis to set in due to damage in the motor neurons toward the end of the week. Walking with a lurching gait, the person might occasionally drool and have difficulty swallowing as his facial and throat muscles seized. Like the initial infection, these could be extremely subtle differences and easy to overlook. Who didn’t swallow wrong sometimes? Who couldn’t recall a word now and then? How frustrating! Oh, that knee’s just aching. Must be about to rain! In many people, the paralysis might appear in the third week rather than the second. They also began to be troubled by bright light.
In week three, the average person was growing much more confused and agitated as the brain succumbed to the virus. They lost their language entirely, and some gave strange animal-like calls instead. And then they became dangerous. Hyperactive to external stimuli, the confinement point buildings were kept in dim lighting in hopes to keep them calm, although even dim lighting could be too much for some. The infected could become violent at the slightest provocation. The student at Traehmer Forks had bit and clawed his victims viciously. This stage of delirium went on until death, the skin decaying right off their bodies toward the end, and the newscasters warned that should one find a body on a road or in a field, not to go anywhere near it. The virus was still active in those fluids for hours after expiration, and eager for a new host.
Receiving the diagnosis of Sombra C was a death sentence. Zaley knew that, she saw the fear in the news, the maps of the world with lines shooting out like comets from Colorado of where the virus had gone, the mounting death toll. But she still wanted to go to school. No one in Cloudy Valley had gotten it, although there was a confinement point miles north in San Francisco. Oakland was a disaster with riots and looting, and the airport was temporarily closed. The confinement points went up too slowly there, letting people rampage around freely in the last weeks before death with the hospitals overwhelmed. The rate of infection was one of the highest in the state. The roads leading out were closed, and people wanting to leave had to prove they weren’t infected first. Portions of Los Angeles and San Diego were in chaos, and Dad chuckled evilly whenever the news reported what was going on in Mexico and Africa.
He’d bought the boards after the news reported a breakout from a confinement point in Tallahassee, and a break-in northeast in Sacramento. In the latter instance, two boys had been bitten at a park and were swiftly remanded to confinement along with the perpetrator; their father shot his way past security to take his sons home for faith healing. One hundred infected people escaped to a busy road in broad daylight, the father was taken apart in his attempt to liberate his children, and the mother of the boys in the getaway car rescued one and vanished. Sacramento was on lock-down, no schools, no stores, no services, and the Guard paced the empty streets. Gunfire rattled through the air as the on-site reporter spoke into the microphone. He got into his news van hastily after the camera swung to the side, showing a man lurching around the corner, and a woman cried, “Bill! Someone’s moving out there!”
Zaley did not think a rejection letter from a college could hurt as much as the one from the Cloudy Valley district cancelling school. Days later and it was still a raw wound. School had been her saving grace all along, from Mrs. Coyne insisting Zaley learn how to tie her shoes in third grade to Mr. Tran just a year ago demanding that she do a science experiment without asking him to check on every step. You are an intelligent young woman, Rosalie Mattazollo. An intelligent young woman follows the directions and does her work, assuming that it is going correctly. She alerts her teacher when it goes wrong, not for constant reassurance that it is going right. Most teachers along the way had been happy that she was so eager to get an assignment to perfection and please them; Mr. Tran pushed her beyond it for independence. You are an intelligent young woman, Rosalie Mattazollo. Not a girl, not a child, not a baby. A young woman who was capable of more than she was delivering, and Zaley was determined to deliver. Mom wanted her to crawl and Mr. Tran demanded she fly.
An intelligent young woman could use the toilet at a restaurant without her mother assuming that she needed help. (Help with what? Peeing? Wiping? Pulling up her panties? Zaley never asked, out of sheer humiliation.) An intelligent young woman cut the meat on her plate by herself and did a science experiment with confidence in her abilities. An intelligent young woman did not have to accept her mother’s Join The Party request on HomeBase, and that young woman was understandably annoyed that her mother’s own HomeBase page had an avatar of her daughter instead of herself.
Zaley shuddered to imagine herself without school. Every time a teacher refused to save her from a problem, she grew. That wasn’t possible at home. It had felt mean at the time, Mrs. Coyne demonstrating on her own shoes and making Zaley miss recess to practice. Mom stormed in to accuse the teacher of cruelty, bought shoes with Velcro straps and fought with the principal to transfer Zaley to another classroom with a kinder teacher. But it wasn’t mean at all. Zaley understood that when a classmate said in derision, “I could tie my shoes when I was five.” Mrs. Coyne was h
elping Zaley to catch up!
Since then, she had studied her fellow students intensely to gauge how far behind she was, and adjusted as far as she could within the limits of her family. Once she sighed at lunch in high school, having inadvertently scratched herself with untrimmed nails, and said that she’d have her mother cut them as soon as she got home. Elania looked at her with such horror that Zaley knew at once she had said something very wrong. At least Micah hadn’t been there to hear, or it would have been even more shameful. Zaley never asked Mom to do her nails again, and fumbled with the clippers until she got it right. An intelligent young woman trimmed her own nails, for God’s sake. But Mom never suggested that Zaley do it on her own, and it had not occurred to Zaley that it was something she should be doing. She wondered if her friends popped their own pimples, too, or if their mothers swooped in and said hold still before doing it.
Corbin had introduced her to the workings of the washing machine and how to heat soup; Micah taught her to drive in the V-6; Austin showed her an R-rated movie and told her to forget the curse words. It was a beautiful modern-day urban fantasy adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and what was important was how the tale had cleaved so well to its fantastical surroundings, staying true to the spirit of the original play and look at the brilliance of the cinematography! The costumes! The CGI! The music! The singular shit and brace of damns were not the point, nor the fleeting nudity. Austin was an intense guy, darling but highly passionate in his interests and opinions, and Zaley being scandalized at a movie for swearing and a millisecond of bare boobies would have made him lose all respect for her.
Micah called it Project Baby Zaley last spring when teaching how to drive, and that stung. Yet Zaley was still impatient to get back to the project, both despite of and because of Micah’s criticism, and Sombra C was standing in her way. The driving lessons had been embarrassing yet glorious. She hadn’t known what an emergency brake was, or how to fill the gas tank or even turn on the radio. She also hadn’t expected the first lesson, Micah driving her to an abandoned mall’s parking lot and saying that if Zaley had any dignity, she’d stop fretting about getting in trouble without parental permission and a qualified instructor, and get in the goddamned driver’s seat.
Elania was a comforting friendship, both girls strong and weak in the same subjects at school, holding similar opinions and studious natures, and Micah was a challenging one. Zaley needed both, and it was the challenging friendship that she had to have for the car. Micah was not a gentle teacher, her instructions peppered with cursing in place of encouragement, but Zaley was so afraid of driving that that was necessary. Elania would have understood the fear and backed off; Micah rode roughshod over Zaley’s emotions and pressed forward. By the end of the lesson Zaley was swearing right back, and seeing that Micah had updated everyone on Project Baby Zaley with a text, called her a dirty motherfucker. Micah just laughed and asked which one.
Even though Micah was white, rich, straight, and headed for school valedictorian, on the surface everything that would find approval with Dad, Zaley didn’t bring her in to meet the family. Micah had two mothers and dyed locks of her long brown hair with blue, purple, or green streaks depending on her mood. Had Micah wanted to meet the Mattazollo parents, Zaley would have had to suggest that she not mention her parental situation. But that was rude, really, really rude, like Micah had to lie to gain admission to a club that no one wanted to be in. And Micah wouldn’t lie. When Dale Summit at school made fun of her mothers and claimed it was okay for him to be hateful because he was Christian and religious expression was protected under the law, Micah threw a brick through his car window and claimed that it was okay because she’d had a seizure and disabilities were protected under the law. Her grades were why she’d earn valedictorian, last year’s hooliganism was why she’d lose it. She had had to pay for the damage to Dale’s car, her mothers forcing her to work behind the counter at the Cool Spoon serving ice cream. Austin got her the job. Once the debt was paid off, she continued to work there because she disliked it so much. That didn’t make sense to Zaley.
She wondered what Micah would do if her mothers boarded over her windows. Kick them out, do the exact opposite of Zaley lying in bed and watching the light be blotted out piece by piece. The food and toilet paper hoard, the gun, the boards, it was only getting crazier and crazier at the Mattazollo home. Zaley did not know why Dad felt so threatened when nothing had happened in Cloudy Valley, or in the communities surrounding them. All Sombra C had done to them was raise gas prices. An ill woman in Penger had been sent north to the San Francisco confinement point, and she hadn’t infected her family. But Dad watched the reporter talk about the vigilante Shepherd squad sweeping the streets of San Diego, and he said, “That’s what we need here.” He wanted to be out there with them, a Shepherd holding his gun. Zaley could see it in his eyes, the hunger to be one of those people taking back their streets from the zombies. A woman being interviewed said that her mother was not a zombie, she was a retired teacher who volunteered at the health clinic and was now a victim of Sombra C, and Dad taunted the sobbing woman on the screen. Zombie zombie zombie.
More light disappeared from her room. She just watched, having nothing else to do. The first of September and Zaley had not seen her friends except in bits and pieces since the last day of school in June. She was so lonely that a text or email caused her heart to jump. They could not come over to hang out, and whenever she made plans to go to them, Mom announced that she had something fun planned for the day and guilted Zaley into staying. Flag cookies for the Fourth and Zaley could frost her own! A G-rated movie about a unicorn! The only times Zaley got out was when she did it with a one-second warning, so Mom did not have enough time to think of a craft or activity. Usually it wasn’t worth the effort to leave, to deal with her mother’s eyes welling with tears of rejection. Mom only existed because Zaley did.
The last escape had been between the gun purchase and the school cancellation. At the Cool Spoon, Micah gave Zaley a look when her phone vibrated with the constant texts to check on her. How are you, do you need money, what a funny commercial is on the television, what time will you be back, thinking of you, you’re my best girl, it went on and on and on. She did not know what to do because Mom worried if Zaley didn’t write back and was encouraged to communicate more when Zaley did. It was unbearable with Micah there, that cool look in her blue-green eyes at the circus of interruptions. Micah was everything that Zaley was not, tall and beautiful and confident, and her own phone hadn’t vibrated once with a text from her parents. Micah was a month younger than Zaley, so she was the best guideline of where Zaley should be. That cool look meant that this wasn’t normal, not at all. Hating to come up short against this scornful yardstick that Micah embodied, grateful that she existed to do so, Zaley sent a tart message that she was fine and she was not going to answer any more since she wanted to be with her friends. Let Mom be mad or sad, and deal with it that night.
An intelligent young woman could go out for ice cream by herself! She could order a double scoop without her mother’s naughty giggle so big do you think you can eat all that and she could wipe off her own chin. Elania met them there and for two hours, it was bliss. Free sundaes, a comparison of SAT scores, they listed movies for Welcome Mat and discussed the winter party, Elania complained about her brothers and Micah complained about her boss and Sombra C was bitched about since it pushed everything else out of the news. The world had gone crazy with Shepherds and zombies and confinement points, and they were tired of hearing about it.
“The worst, well, not the worst, but what’s bizarre is using the word zombie at all,” Elania said. Since she was a writer, she liked to be accurate with language. “Dad and I talked about that, letting it roll off the tongue like it isn’t something from a horror movie, just a normal part of our lives.”
“If we sat here talking about vampires or fairies the same way, we’d be carted off in straightjackets,” Micah said, adding, “Vampire!” loudly
and looking around in hope that someone would react. Zaley shushed her, giggling.
“It’s crossed the divide from fantasy to reality,” Elania said. “The only time I turn on the news and it’s not zombies, it’s the upcoming election and Mr. Conservative Candidate pounding his fist on a podium and calling the president incompetent for his response to the Sombra C crisis. Notice that? There is literally nothing else happening on this entire planet.”
“News is never on at my house,” Micah said.
“Always on at mine,” Zaley said. They moved on to more interesting matters like sex and Zaley felt so deliciously, deliriously, addictively adult. People walking by would never think her room was filled with preschool furniture; they’d see three young women at a table laughing and talking and self-sufficient. She never wanted to leave the Cool Spoon. Austin came in for his shift, bopping happily to music through his earphones and hugging all three of them without a word. He added a kiss to the top of Micah’s head though he and Elania were dating, and to Zaley this was a scandal. Elania was oblivious to that quick press of lips. He brought them paper cups of water, still dancing about to his music, and went into the back to work.
Then Zaley’s heart fell to see her mother stepping through the doors. Mom wouldn’t mention to Dad that Zaley had been sitting with a black girl and a white girl with green-streaked hair, but Mom said brightly, “Oh, don’t mind me!” and sat at the very next table with her vanilla cone and a book she opened but whose pages she never turned. The conversation about Austin’s spanking kink ended right there, and Zaley was crushed by the invisible weight of her mother’s presence.
On the drive home, Mom announced that she didn’t see color. Everyone saw color, and it was one of the issues they discussed in Welcome Mat. Corbin and Zaley had come up with the idea for the club in ninth grade, and Elania organized them into action. Mr. Tran donated his classroom at lunch while he sat in his attached office learning Vietnamese from a computer program. Zaley had never mentioned the precise nature of the club to Mom, wanting to have something of her own, and that was why she did not respond to her mother’s comment about color. But she felt guilty, like she hadn’t stuck up for her friends. When someone looked at Elania, they saw a young black woman. That was what she was, and that was not the problem. The problem was what they assumed about her from that one simple observation. And as far as her mother not seeing color went, Zaley didn’t think her blindness would have extended to the sight of her daughter being hugged by a six-foot-three black guy.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 2