I can do that, right?
***
Maisie
We lay facing each other on the bed as I try to process everything.
My husband died, but then he came back. It’s him, but he’s not the same. And neither am I. I’m still in love with him, but in some ways, I feel like he’s a stranger.
But maybe he’s not a stranger, exactly. Maybe he’s just strange, and I’ve sensed that all along.
My husband’s a zombie, and he’s lying beside me instead of in his grave. It’s still throwing me for a loop, though he seems much calmer about it.
Nothing ever prepared me for this. All the begging, all the prayers, all the promises I made to God if He would just bring him back to me, never prepared me for this.
A thought strikes me, and I stop stroking his chest.
“How long have you known?” He looks down at me, eyebrows raising. “How long have you known you were...undead?” The term seems much more preferable to “zombie”.
He looks off to the side. “Not that long. But I’ve suspected since my flashback when we drove past my work.”
He gets that look. That hollow, haunted look. I now recognize it as being the look of someone who recalls their own traumatic death.
I rest my chin on the hand touching his chest. “I wondered why you believed Ms. Josephine so quickly. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
His eyes roll all the way up and over until he’s looking at me again. “And how I was I supposed to do that? Would you have believed me then? You wouldn’t even believe me when I said I’d died and come back, much less that I was...” He gestures up and down his body.
He’s right. I shake my head. I’d known something was off, wrong, but I wouldn’t have believed him if he’d told me he thought he was a zombie. That’s not something someone could tell you. It’s something you have to come to believe yourself. It took watching him eat raw meat before I could put everything together, before I could believe it.
“I’m not even sure I really do believe it yet,” I say, finishing my thought out loud.
“I still have trouble with it sometimes. It shouldn’t be possible, shouldn’t be real. But I’m living proof.”
I chew on my lip, trying not to say what is on the tip of my tongue. But in the end, I can’t resist. Humor’s a coping mechanism. Or at least it had been before grief drained all the lighter parts of me away. “Well, not living proof. Undead proof.”
He huffs out a laugh and brushes my hair back in a familiar gesture that used to mean he was about to kiss me. “Right. Undead proof.” Then he pulls back slightly. No kiss. “Besides. I wasn’t sure you could accept it, accept me, even if you did believe me. It’s a lot. It’s unnatural.” He looks away. “I thought you might run away again, for good.”
His voice is tight with pain, and a little bit of fear, as if he’s still worried I might.
I don’t know what to say, because I did run before. And it’s pretty reasonable to think most people would, if confronted with the same situation. I say the only thing I can. “I’m not running away. Not now, and not ever.”
“I know. Thank you.” He strokes my hair back again, staring. He wants to kiss me.
And I want to kiss him back. But maybe I shouldn’t. He’s a zombie, for goodness sake. The fact just keeps circling back to the front of my mind.
It helps to know he is not an animated corpse, not dead, but ‘undead’, which is another thing entirely. Like the vampires in books and movies. A supernatural being, rather than the walking dead.
The distinction matters, because he is also my husband. He smells like my husband, feels like my husband. The sprinkling of hair on his chest feels the same to my fingers as I rub his chest. His chest is warm, and rising and falling in a normal pattern, if a slow one. His heartbeat beneath my palm is also pretty slow. Sluggish, as if he were sound asleep rather than awake and staring at me.
He’s my husband in every way, and I’ve missed him. I’ve starved for his touch, cried at the desperate need for him to hold me, touch me again.
And here he is, beside me now. And yet...
What did it say about me if I didn’t quite feel safe lying in bed with him? That I’m afraid of what him being a zombie means? Is he going to bite me? Eat me? Turn me into one?
Can I really love him and be a little afraid of him at the same time? Is it real love if I don’t trust him completely?
What did it say about me if I didn’t want to kiss him or sleep with him, or for him to touch me?
And what did it say about me if I did?
I run a fingertip across his lips. They’re warm and soft, and the same lips I’ve kissed a thousand times.
I’d kissed him in the bathroom earlier, but that had been in an overwhelming rush of pain, fear, and love. If I kiss him now, it will be because I want to. Because I want him.
And so help me God, I do.
I raise my mouth to his and give him a gentle kiss. He responds timidly, tenderly.
I deepen the kiss slightly.
With my eyes closed, it feels exactly the same. It feels like the night he didn’t come home never happened. Like his funeral and burial never happened. Like everything since he came back hasn’t happened.
This is my husband, and I love him with all my heart and soul and mind, and I do trust him, even in this state.
I pull back and open my eyes, staring into his warm brown ones. “I love you so much.” I can’t help the tears that prick my eyes when I say that, because I’d once mourned that I’d never be able to say it to him again, and yet this is the first time I’ve said it to him since he came back.
He grabs my hand in his own and brings it up to his lips and kisses it fervently. “I know. And I love you too. I couldn’t leave you. Ms. Josephine may have resurrected me, but it’s our love that made me want to live.”
I give him another quick kiss and lay my head back on his chest to blink away tears as he threads his fingers through my hair.
His sweet words both soothe me and sting me. I should tell him about the baby, right now.
But I can’t.
There really couldn’t be a worse time. He’s caught somewhere between life and death, I’m caught between mourning and hope, and we’re both just trying to cope with one impossible situation stacked on top of another, trying to grasp at happiness while we can. Would knowing about the baby make things better, or worse?
I would have been nervous about telling him in normal circumstances. The news of a baby can be stressful for anyone. But these aren’t normal circumstances, and now I’m downright terrified.
I still need more time and space to get all my emotions together before I add his to the mix.
So instead I just focus on having him in my arms again, having him beside me on the bed again.
Him coming back could have been a nightmare, but here in bed with him, I can’t see it as anything but a blessing.
He didn’t leave me. He didn’t cheat on me. He wasn’t involved in anything shady. He didn’t fake his death. He is the same good, honest man I’ve always known.
And soon, we’d be one step closer to finding out who took him away from me.
Which reminds me. I should tell Ms. Josephine thank you. I’d made some awful conclusions about her at first, unable to consider what she’d been saying as truth. I need to apologize and to thank her, because she’s given my husband back his life, and me my heart.
“Hey, are you an optimist or a pessimist?” I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this question, but I ask him anyway.
“I’m an optimist I suppose,” he replies. “Why?”
The corner of my mouth twitches. “I’m just wondering if you consider yourself a ‘half alive’ or a ‘half dead’ person.”
It’s not that funny, but we both laugh, his chest bouncing beneath my head.
I haven’t been able to laugh in so long. I haven’t felt joy, or pleasure, or comfort, and if ever I came close to feeling any of those in the last
few weeks, irrational guilt for feeling them in the first place had drained them away.
Now I want to feel them all. Now I can feel them all. I have permission from the universe because my life, my love, is back with me. Forever.
Chapter Thirteen
Grady
Maisie has to work today. After spending so much time together, it feels weird. But there are a few things I need to take care of anyway, and she shouldn’t be here for one of them. Especially if it goes badly.
“What are you going to do while I’m gone?” she asks, gathering her keys and purse.
“I need to find something to eat,” I say, apologetic. The urge to drop my eyes in guilt is strong, but I don’t, because I need her to understand what I mean, and I need her to accept it.
“Oh.” She blinks several times and I can see her processing what I’ve said, what it means. “Right. Okay.”
I’ve been eating raw meat from the grocery store as much as I can, but its not great, and it’s not enough. I’m getting pretty hungry and I figure that as long as I stay on top of the hunger, I won’t do anything stupid or harmful. And I really don’t want Maisie around while I do it.
“How are you... Where are you going to find...” She looks a little pale.
“The woods.” I stand and walk to her, then put my arms loosely around her. “Ms. Josephine told me that it’s no different than anyone else hunting for food. Maybe if you think about it that way, it’ll help you, too.” The carnage from last time flashes through my mind, but I push it away. This time will be different. This time I will stay in control. “I’m just going hunting, something I’ve done a few times with my dad, remember? I’m going to get some venison.” I stroke her cheek, focusing on the softness of it, the acceptance entering her eyes, instead of the way my heartbeat suddenly increases at the thought of hunting, killing. Of eating.
“Okay,” she agrees, color coming back to her face.
“You have your cell phone?” I ask, changing the subject. She nods and holds it up. She’d bought another phone for me and added it to her plan this morning. So if she needs to call me from Travis’s house, she can. We both feel better about that.
This time when Maisie leaves, I take my time. I need to be prepared and think things through. I change into a black T-shirt and black jeans to hide any stains, just in case. But I’m hoping there won’t be any this time. I grab my black windbreaker and tie it around my waist.
I grab my pocketknife from the dresser shrine. It’s strange, but neither of us have taken it down completely yet. I just keep taking things back piece by piece.
The blade isn’t very big, but I figure it’ll be more effective and more humane than trying to do things with my hands.
Everything I’d told Maisie had been true. Things were going to be different this time. I’m just going hunting.
The mantra repeats in my head as I leave the house in disguise, and walk towards the woods, eyes willfully avoiding our neighbor’s yard.
I’m going in the woods to find something to eat, just like our ancestors have for generations. Like farmers still do sometimes. Just like Ms. Josephine killed the chicken for both our dinners.
The only difference is mine won’t be cooked. It’ll be like sushi. Land sushi. Yeah.
I enter the woods and veer off in a different direction than I did last time.
Last time I smelled the deer before I ate it. That must be one of my ‘perks’ for being a zombie. Maybe it will work again. Recalling the smell of the deer in my mind, I sniff the breeze. I don’t smell anything at first.
But then I smell a warmer scent, hear a swift, faint heartbeat in my ears. When the dry leaves above me rustle, I look up.
A squirrel sits on a branch, turning a nut between his little paws and nibbling on it.
I huff out a laugh, because besides the logistical problem of getting to him, it would probably take several of those to fill me up.
I keep walking, sniffing the air. I start to pick out birds and mice, whose heartbeats are even faster and who have even less meat. A single rabbit skitters out of the underbrush and takes off as I walk by, it’s heart hammering. I take note of the direction it went. It’s a fat one.
I’m getting frustrated. I could probably eat all of them and be full, but that would mean killing all of them. And maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t want to have to kill more than one animal today if I don’t have to. However, I’m getting hungrier by the moment.
One last sniff to the air, and the biggest animal I smell is the rabbit. Okay then, rabbit it is.
I follow the scent to where it’s hiding as stealthily as I can, knife at the ready.
It’s munching on some sticks, mouth twitching. Every time I make the slightest noise, it freezes, resuming after several long seconds of me being silent.
This is going to be harder than I thought. Why didn’t I think of bringing a gun? Or even making a trap? This average suburbanite guy has no idea how to catch a rabbit with his bare hands.
Obviously the other side of me would have more luck, but I’m not willing to give over to the monster.
I’m just hunting, I tell myself again.
Maybe if I use my windbreaker, I can throw it over the rabbit and trap it that way.
The rabbit scampers off at the crinkling sound of the polyester coming off my waist, and the next half hour is spent getting almost in range before it takes off again.
I’m frustrated as all hell, hungry, and getting impatient. But I sit down at the bottom of a tree and just breathe, trying to center myself before I lose control. That way lies disaster.
I’m focusing on the long blank space between each of my own heartbeats, eyes closed, when the leaves rustle nearby. I open my eyes and meet those of the rabbit, who forgot about me in my unnatural stillness and came closer to munch on some twigs.
It’s unquestionably cute. But it’s also lunch.
Before I can think much about it, before I know I’ve even done it, I jump and dive, covering the rabbit in the windbreaker.
It struggles beneath it, panicked, looking for a way out, while I hold on.
It stills, the heartbeat beneath my hands and in my ears still racing in alarm.
Now what?
With it contained under the coat in one arm, I grab my knife and open it and take aim at where I think the jugular is. It’s the coward’s way out, but I don’t think I can stare into its cute little eyes as I do this.
And I need to eat. I have to eat. Blackness pulses at the edge of my vision with every sluggish heartbeat.
I stab through the jacket, the blade sinking in easier than I thought it would, then pull the knife out. I can barely see the slice through the fabric, except where a dark stain is quickly spreading.
I pull the coat away and the rabbit falls to its side, twitching but silent, the blood spurting out onto dried leaves in the rhythm of its heartbeat. And then everything is still.
My hands are shaking but I’m still here, still present. And the hard part is done.
I make little slits around the feet and neck, and then slice shallowly through the skin around the feet, careful not to cut into the guts. Then I jerk the skin down, and it peels off like a tight latex glove. Some silverskin is left behind that I trim off.
With the guts removed, I cut up the rabbit into portions. It’s a bit similar to butchering a deer, but harder than cutting up a chicken, which is probably why you don’t find rabbit in the grocery store. It’s more difficult too, with a bloody, slippery knife and hands and nothing to hold the other end of the rabbit.
But it’s done. I’m queasy about what I’ve just done, but I’m not sure why. It was more humane than before, more humane than what factory-farmed animals go through. And while vegetarianism was a valid option for some people...it’s not for me.
Right here is where a normal person would take the portions and throw them into a pot with some vegetables and herbs, maybe a little white wine.
But I eat the stringy meat uncooked, crou
ching in the leaves, staring at the bright blue sky, trying to make sure it stays blue instead of turning black.
It’s not warm since it’s taken me so long and there’s a breeze, but it tastes rich and wild and nutty and I lick my fingers of their macabre sauce when all the meat is gone.
And then I sniff around for more. I’ve proved I can do it, and now I want to make sure I’m not hungry for awhile.
I eat twice more, guilt and nervousness dissipating each time, leaving the remains for scavengers to take care of.
Then satiated, proud, energized, I wash my hands and knife in a creek and head home.
***
Grady-1
I’m showered and my clothes are in the dryer before I sit down at my computer. This is the other task I have on my mind—finding out what was in the soil I was buried in. Ms. Josephine’s theory is that I would have come back a zombie, even without her interference. Especially without it.
The fragments of my memories drive me to the internet looking for something, anything, to go on. I know I’ve seen that black and yellow symbol on the red barrels before, but where? I search ‘radioactive symbol’, but it’s not the right one. Scrolling through the images though, I see the one I’m looking for. With a click, I find that it’s meant for hazardous medical waste. It’s the biohazard symbol.
I flop back against my seat. Biohazard.
So the barrels I remember were biohazardous waste. What kinds of things get that symbol put on them? What kinds of places have that kind of waste? Where could it have come from? Why was it at our work site?
Digging through definitions and Wiki pages leads me down a rabbit hole to biotechnology.
Okay, so I’m pretty sure I’m looking for a biotechnology company nearby.
And there’s just one—Anima-gene Industries.
They are described as being a ‘red’ biotech company, meaning the use of biotechnology in the medical and pharmaceutical industry.
A Cursed All Hallows' Eve Page 25