Then again, maybe this here novella has just come out and you're one of the faithful who've been following Keaton all along. In that case, I'd like to think you read that potentially brash statement above and thought, "No shit, Sherlock!" After all, this is just another date in your love affair with his peculiar body of work, right? Probably you came across one of his early stories and realised that here was something special, something new, something you'd need to see through until its end, however much of your life that happened to eat up.
I hope so. I know I did.
I first came across Keaton's fiction in an anthology we both had stories in, a collection of crime and horror fiction named The Death Panel. It was a great book, all told, with nary a bad story within its pages. But one piece stuck out like a sore and badly mangled thumb. Keaton's “Nine Cops Killed For a Goldfish Cracker” was something else altogether. Not only was it great, it was unique. I'd literally never read a thing like it.
Which was pretty amazing, first because I read a fair bit and second because, although the small press often throws up excellent work, the one thing you never really expect to find there is the unique. You don't expect to have your mind crowbarred wide open and its contents smeared across the ceiling. You don't expect to have your perspective on the world kicked over like a tower of puppies. Yet there it was, larger than life and at least five times as ugly - a true original.
“Nine Cops” was funny as all fuck. It was sharp, weird and vicious, and it was clever too. Word-clever, sure, in the way it toyed with language like a cat with a dying bird, but also genuinely-smart-clever, in how it shouldered its way through the usual rules of narrative to make its own path, one more digressive and yet unexpectedly, impossibly, straighter and more true.
But more than all of those things, it was humane. I think Keaton might just hate me for saying this, but it's that quality that makes me love his work, more than the wit and the cleverness and the sly melding of pop and highbrow culture. It's superb writing about flawed people. Because however much he might want you to think otherwise, Keaton cares about this people stuff. He writes characters you can believe in and even fall in love with for a little while, even when it's clear they don't entirely deserve it. His work never lacks for a heart, even when said heart is black as the blackest pitch.
Which brings us to Zee Bee & Bee – a.k.a., in case you hadn't noticed, Propeller Hats for the Dead.
You might think at first glance that in this case, that heart isn't only black, it's stopped beating altogether. But put your ear a little closer and really listen. Somewhere amidst that barrage of pop culture references and sharp verbiage, head-spinning wordplay and bone-crunching violence, you'll hear the unmistakable throb of a pulse. For in the midst of death we are in life, and the best zombie fiction has nothing whatever to do with the deceased. Who are these characters who shamble through the darkness spouting movie quotes and tearing strips - both literal and metaphorical - off of each other? Who are these losers, these crazies, these no-hopers who can no longer tell life from death, game from reality, sex from violence?
As the spiritual godfather of this novella would no doubt point out - and as Sour Towel Zombie would be the first to reiterate - "They're us."
The first time I read it, as much as I was thrilled and fascinated by it, I didn't fully understand Zee Bee & Bee. I don't immediately understand a lot of what Keaton does. I'm okay admitting that. I don't understand gravity, but I'm glad as hell it's there and that I get to enjoy its benefits. Anything that stops my plummeting into space is all right by me. Likewise for anything that pops my brain out and dropkicks it far past my comfort zone.
In this case, though, I'm glad I got the opportunity to come back - to reread this Frankenstein's Monster crafted from four decades of zombie culture and Keaton's own strange headspace. It deserves it. Like a great album, it lets up its deepest revelations only under close attention. Like a great lover, it intrigues you and scares you the more you get to know it. Like a great zombie movie, it suckers you in before it starts painting the walls with intestinal tract.
So if you're reading this in the future, you should have gathered by now that you're in for something special. And if you're a Keaton regular coming back for another dose then, hey, good call.
Either way - welcome to the Z B & B.
This is where the world ends every weekend. Look busy.
“Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”
-Matt 8:22-23 p.m.
WE AREN’T SUPPOSED TO START MOANING and pounding on the house until the sun goes down, but we’re taking our jobs real serious these days. Over by the fake gas pump, I can see a shadow crouching down, and I know it’s really going to shit in the football helmet. I can just make out the logo as I watch its jeans roll down and fill it up like unholy ice cream to the ear holes. There is no chance of the helmet being worn after this, even if it’s hosed out again.
Another shadow takes a swat at the one squatting, but the first shadow just hunches down and concentrates hard, kind of like a cat still trying to get the ham off someone’s sandwich after it’s been busted red-handed. The shadow just gets lower and lower and lower with each blow, belt buckle jangling, but never moves to pull up its pants. I hear the second shadow demanding an explanation, and I sigh. I don’t have to see their faces to know who they are. We’ve played this game too many times already.
It’s my love letter to the city that gave birth to us,” the first shadow explains, finally deciding it’s a good time to run. “Love ‘n’ hate letter, I mean.”
Our instructions were always to display precisely one character trait. This, we were told, was because it is both the most efficient way to make a memory in the allotted time, and because it was so hysterical in Dawn of the Dead when they wandered over the hill inexplicably wearing baseball uniforms, ballerina outfits, and Santa suits. Most of the boys usually just want to wear their favorite team jersey though, and that means there’s almost always too many sports fans bumping shoulders among our small band of the undead.
“I’m just saying,” the first shadow laughs as it backpedals and falls down under a steady rain of backhands and elbows, “If we already have a Baseball Zombie, we probably don’t need a Football Zombie. But we definitely don’t need two Football Zombies.”
“Said the Football Zombie.”
“You’re not even supposed to be on a team. That’s not why we got you that shirt...”
The fight escalates, and someone hustles them behind the shed and out of sight. Tonight, everyone’s already tired of them, but I have to admit one thing. The first shadow was right. Pittsburgh was the city that started it all, and it was the reason we were here, if you got right down to it. But I had to agree with the second shadow’s violent reaction. It was hard to see any “love” in that gesture, and it wasn’t even my Steelers helmet that was defiled.
And as handy as one might be during an apocalyptic onslaught, two helmets were obviously one helmet too many.
“Why would that fucker be wearing a catcher’s mitt?” we used to complain during our end-of-season, zombie-movie marathon, “Come on, did he get bit during a game?”
But our previous Baseball Zombie was always ready to defend any criticism.
“It’s not that complicated, man. It put the glove on later, just like me, after he died. It’s just pretend.”
“Then why can’t I have a catcher’s mitt and roller skates, too?”
Well, we were told very sternly by our employers never to mix and match. You couldn’t wear a cowboy hat and carry a hockey stick, for example. You couldn’t wear a Hawaiian shirt and a magician’s top hat. You couldn’t fumble around with a book while wearing a KKK cloak, not just because books are like Kryptonite to the Klan, but because, obviously, what would the poor Library Zombie wield? And you couldn’t stand outside a window slowly and comically figuring out how to aim a gun all over again if you were a Face-Painted Big Game Zombie. Yes, it would be hard anyway with a giant foam finger,
but that was the Cop Zombie’s job. Always would be. This rule was particularly hard to follow for our latest Cop Zombie, since it was always so tempting for him to make fun of my nervous cough, something I’ve been afflicted with all my life, but also a trait that makes little sense to him or me. Especially me, the Truck Zombie.
“Shouldn’t it be ‘Hit-By-A-Truck Zombie?’” they always ask.
At one morning meeting, I tried to explain that it was a result of the grill impact of that imaginary 18-wheeler that crushed my chest. I even showed them the cookie-cutter impression of a Jesus on the cross that I’d pressed deep into my skin to simulate a hood ornament. But everyone just scoffed and said that the coughing was for the Cigarette Zombie, not me, and I should just continue to hold mine in. As if I could.
So I suppress my first one of the day as my earphone informs me that the second couple is already heading for the basement. This means that they will be confronting our first “plant,” the hysterical yet tyrannical businessman, followed soon after by a reveal of his wife and their injured daughter. This is about an hour ahead of schedule. The sun isn’t even down yet.
I pound harder, furious that they’ve never seen Night of the Living Dead, or even the hundreds of imitators like us, or they’d know that running to the basement always means doom. At the very least, they should remember that the trip to the basement comes at the end of the goddamn movie. Even Day of the Dead, despite that deceptive title, only displays about nine minutes and seventeen seconds of total sunlight throughout its entire running time. Almost the whole movie takes place in a basement. It’s no accident that their bunker is considered the logical end and tombstone of the series.
It’s also no accident that most survivors in the remakes end up on the water. It reminds people of being safe, if only for a moment, like being in the sky.
Tonight, I let my legs give out, start crawling toward the next open window, then I snap back up. Sometimes I play it like my legs are broken. Sometimes I even put my pants and shoes on backwards to look like my body has been turned around completely below the waist from some sort of massive impact. But tonight I decide my backwards shoes won’t be enough of a hindrance, so I spin them back around when no one is looking.
Okay, here’s some trivia. I actually knew the actor who got hit by the truck in the ‘90s remake of Night of the Living Dead. Okay, he was a friend of a friend, but I heard that he was sort of a real, live mutant with no sweat glands and, legend has it, had to smear ChapStick all over his head if he was stuck out in the sun too long during filming. Often I wish he could play this game with us, because, with that kind of dedication, I know he would probably take it just as seriously as I do, maybe even shame me into turning my shoes around for good.
I punch through the window, and everyone squints as glass showers sweaty faces, forearms, and chests. Cowboy Zombie stops moaning for a second to hold the eyeball up off his cheek and glare at me. Then he flicks a glass shard from behind a sticky blue ear and starts to pound again, face slack, all business. Baseball Zombie shakes his head, brushes his jersey with his catcher’s mitt, and waits patiently for me to notice him. Then he gives me a shrug under his perpetual slouch, jaw still swinging, but the siege momentarily forgotten. I shrug back, then turn away to grab a pink and panicked hand before the wood covers the hole and a deafening burst of panicky hammering finally displays the proper respect for their situation.
Beyond the hand, I catch a glimpse of some weary eyes inside the house, and I’m glad to see that they are finally realizing how long this game might last.
THEY GOT THE IDEA by trying to be the last bed & breakfast in the phone book. Mags came up with the name “Z B & B” specifically to trump Youngstown’s Country Inn (and a particularly idiotic driving instructor’s ad with a zebra for the mascot). And it was this name and the meaningless “Z” that started her boyfriend, now husband, Davey Jones, thinking about zombies, nonstop. And soon after, as a bit of an experiment, they were involved in an altercation at an Italian dinner theater/fake wedding combo that was touring the Midwest, “Tony Baloney’s Reception.” It was a gimmick that Mags called, “vaguely racist bullshit,” although she did eventually admit that getting shoved into a ten-tier cake while Mafioso caricatures staged a fist fight might be a good story to share at a party after enough time had passed.
“Tragedy plus time equals comedy and all that,” she reminded her husband the morning after his crowd-pleasing, Pete Rose buttercream slide.
“But wait!” he exploded over corn flakes, bloody twist of toilet paper popping from his nostril. “What if zombies were trashing the shit out of that wedding reception? Would you pay to see that? I’d pay to see that! Hell, I’d pay to do that.” And pow! they suddenly found themselves with an untapped gold mine of couples who would rather spend the night of their honeymoons pretending they were hiding from zombies instead of tapping glasses with forks to encourage some failed actors to stage a kiss.
“Zee Bee & Bee?” Davey Jones mumbled. “Sounds German.”
“More like Bee Bee & Bee!” Mags laughed. “You know? Bed Bath & Beyond? I know that’s where I’d want to be trapped when the brains hit the fan. Easy cleaning.”
So, whether it was a new groom wanting to puff out his chest and protect his woman during a life-threatening emergency or the blushing bride hoping to demonstrate how she would, much to his surprise, bloom in an end-of-the-world crisis, business was excellent right out of the gate. And when they hired me (their second cousin and tireless initiator of years of Sunday night zombie film festivals) to eagerly amp up the threat level of the scenario, word spread fast. I helped hand-pick a crew, and by the next fall, we had everything up and running.
Oddly enough, two full years after we’d started making enough money to think about our first 4:00 a.m. commercial spot, a low-budget flick popped up in the video stores called Dead and Breakfast that sounded a little too close to home. Everyone panicked a little. But, luckily, it bore no resemblance to our original idea of staging an attack for fun and profit. This movie was just another attack on a house, and it took the situation more seriously, even for a supposed comedy, as their storyline treated everything as if it was actually happening, something even the occasional survivalist couples that stopped by rarely considered for long. Clever title though, we all had to admit.
And if that wasn’t suspicious enough, a jazz/calypso fusion song about zombies partying it up at a bed and breakfast was released the same summer we flicked on our “vacancy” sign. It was called "The Zombie and B,” but, thank Christ, it had two inherent problems that quickly relegated it to our bosses’ pay-no-mind list. One, it hit the radio a full 48 hours after the story of this story was first transcribed by a banker where we got our loan, (which, of course, seems like an impossible claim with the state of the union and the fact that you’re reading about all of this at exactly same time). And two, unless you say that title out loud, stressing the second syllable of "zombie," you don't get the gag at all. You'd just think it was another love song.
And that was our job. We were the last love song you’d hear.
But while we’re keeping score, it was definitely my idea to have the evening start with Mags and Davey Jones meeting two couples at the bottom of the long driveway leading up to the house. This is where they would sign the waiver. And it was also my brainstorm (“Brainstorm! Delicious,” was our second-worst zombie joke) for the two couples to arrive about an hour apart. This gave one couple a chance to get settled and locked in before the other couple came banging on the door. See, now this door was their door, just because of that extra hour. And there was always only one bed split between the two couples to encourage competition and arguments, another good reason to keep their arrivals staggered. It was surprising how much controversy was caused by one couple getting an unfair opportunity to toss a suitcase onto a bed and claim it.
Mags chalked it up to the sad influence of reality television.
She eventually started profiling them carefull
y to decide which couple was most likely to not want to give up that sacred bed without a fight. We were never sure how she figured this out. There was talk of Mags going through trash cans and peeking through windows of potential applicants. But damn if she didn’t always seemed to pick the right couple to go into the house first.
Sometimes, I pretended she picked me.
“WHAT’S GOING ON?! Where did you come from?!”
Inside the house, someone is screaming, and I don’t need my earphone to hear it. It’s a Plant, not a Camel. That’s what we called the guests, “Camels.” Cigarette Zombie sort of made it up. Something about the title of Albert Camus’ short story “The Guest” being a translation of the French word “L’Hôte,” meaning both guest and host. According to her, this was “precisely” what we were asking them to be. She tried to get us to call them this nonsense for awhile, but we couldn’t pronounce it and we really had no idea what the hell she was talking about. But they did become “Camus” for awhile, and that made her smile (at least that’s what somebody told me. I’ve never actually seen her smile myself). Then the term got changed to “Camels” for good, and she’s scowled ever since. Even though we tried to convince her it was based on an Aesop’s Fable about “familiarity breeding contempt,” that one where the Arabs first see a camel and are all terrified but by the third sighting they’re putting saddles on it (because, hey, wasn’t that “precisely” what we were doing?), it didn’t matter. She never got on board with the new moniker.
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