by Anthology
When the students took their seats, Land called for Paul to come sit with him by the aisle. He’d wished he could have done this more subtly––Paul didn’t need to be a teacher’s pet on top of a zombie-lover––however, he did agree to sit with the boy. As the other students chatted away, he asked Paul: “What do you think of all this?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “I’ve never been anywhere like this before.”
“Your parents didn’t want you to come here,” Land said. “You know that.”
“But they made you get me.”
Land nodded. “The military thinks it’s important that you be here.”
“Why?”
The question caught Land by surprise. It was a good question––why? Why did one child deserve all this special attention? He stammered, searching for an answer, before one was provided.
“Because someday you’ll be called to the service, and we think it’s best you know what it’s all about.” Sgt. Hazelwood stood in the aisle, grinning down on them both. She had changed from her green field outfit into a brown dress uniform that accentuated her curves.
That’s not a real answer, Land though, but he couldn’t say anything here.
“Got room for one more?” Hazelwood asked.
Land looked at the empty seat next to him and tried to think of an excuse to keep her from sitting there, but could not. “Sure,” he said. “Have a seat.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You sit there, and I’ll sit on the other side of Paul.”
Land wanted to protest but thought better of it. He stood, and as she slipped past he felt her body against his, her holstered pistol rubbing against his thigh.
She took her place next to the boy and smiled at him. “Your parents don’t let you have a TV, do they?” she asked.
Paul shook his head.
“Then you don’t know who Zombie Bob is?”
“Well, I know who he is because the other kids…”
“Oh good,” she said. “It just so happens that I’m a friend of Bob’s, and after the show I could take you to meet him backstage.”
“Well,” said Paul, “I don’t really know if…”
“Just you, out of all these kids.” She gestured at the thousands of schoolchildren around them. “That could really help you could make friends, Paul. They’ll want to know you for sure after that.”
Land shot her a disapproving look, but she only grinned. Fortunately, the lights began to dim. He heard Hazelwood whisper “We’ll talk about this later” as a hush settled over the Saddledome.
A spotlight sprang into life, illuminating a lone figure on the platform. It was a silver-haired man in a brown dress uniform, metals dangling at his pocket. His image appeared a thousand times larger on the Jumbotron above.
“Howdy, kids,” he said. “I’m Colonel Patrick Simonds. I recently got back from directing the troops on the coast, and the top brass said to me, ‘Pat, you’ve done such a great job in Vancouver. When you get back, just you name it and it’s yours.’ And I said, ‘I want to be the one who talks to the kids at the Saddledome.”
Simonds wore a politician’s smile he was never seen without. Affable and grandfatherly, he was just the kind of public face the military needed as it pressed its endless, costly war against an enemy that neither thought nor planned.
“Yup,” Simonds, went on, “that’s my favorite duty, because it’s so important for the future. Once we recapture Vancouver and Toronto the real challenges will be open to us. New York, Lost Angeles…” he paused briefly as some of the audience chuckled at the popular pun, “maybe even London, Tokyo. That’s where you kids will be fighting the zombies. You should think of this day like a ‘thank you’ in advance. I think the very least we can do is show you how to do it.”
Another spotlight suddenly cut through the darkness, lighting the black drape at the opposite side of the arena. Out stumbled a putrescent walking corpse, flailing its arms and awkwardly making its way forward. Its jaw was slack, its tongue lolling out in anticipation of its next meal. A collective sigh filled the arena.
“Look at it,” Simonds said. “I bet this is the first zombie most of you kids have ever seen. That says something about how far we’ve come. It’s hard to imagine, but there was a time when zombies even walked the streets of Calgary. But thanks to the vaccine, developed right here in Canada, none of us will ever be zombies. Remember that: kill a zombie, and that’s one closer to killing them all.
“That disgusting creature you’re looking at was somebody’s brother, father or son once. I’m not going to lie to you about that. But he isn’t no more; in fact, he’s not a he at all, but an it!”
The colonel pulled his service pistol from its holster and carefully aimed at the brightly lit target, before firing. It sounded little more potent than a cap gun, but Paul twitched in his seat anyway. The bullet struck the zombie’s shoulder, and it barely even noticed as it kept shambling forward.
“Ah, I didn’t quite get him, did I?” Simonds said. “I’ve seen zombies lose all their limbs and keep on going. Their brain and their hunger drives them forward. They want to eat our flesh. That’s all they want. And they never hesitate before they strike.”
The zombie lurched steadily forward, having made it almost halfway to the podium. Many children clenched their teeth with the tension, but Land knew it would take a minor miracle for that zombie to actually reach the colonel.
“Now,” said Simonds, “some people say, because these things were once our loved ones we shouldn’t kill them. We all know people like this. These zombie-lovers think zombies are trainable––maybe we can toss them the odd steak to keep them happy, and teach them to fetch our slippers. But I challenge anyone to look in the eyes of the dead and see anything worth saving. Fellas, can we focus in on that?”
The Jumbotron zoomed in until the zombie’s twisted, drooling face filled the screen.
“No life. No intelligence. In humans we see some kind of spark of life; I don’t know what it is, but it’s always there. You don’t see that in zombies. That’s what zombies are: humans minus a certain spark, and that’s what makes them a perversion in the face of God. There’s only one thing to do to them!”
Simonds fired again. This time it struck the zombie square in the head, a perfect killshot. There was a splash of bright red blood, and the creature fell. The Saddledome erupted with cheers and shrill whistles.
The house lights came up. “Pretty cool, eh?” Sgt. Hazelwood whispered to Paul.
“Now before I bring out a very special friend of mine,” Simonds said, “we should all rise for the singing of our national anthem.” An organ started up with O Canada; as they stood Land extended his arm behind Paul’s back and nudged Hazelwood.
“Sergeant,” he whispered. “We need to share a word outside.”
“But Mr. Land, it’s disrespectful…”
“Now,” he said, just a little too loud, and he started away from the arena. She placed her drink at her feet and stomped after him. He led her outside, right onto the Saddledome’s front steps, and there she began to snap at him.
“Who do you think you are that you can––”
“Who do you think you are to mess with my student like that?” Land shouted back at her. “God, a military pick-up, you hanging over his shoulder… Do you think this isn’t hard enough for him anyway? The other kids will never let him hear the end of this.”
“Good,” Hazelwood said. “I don’t want him to forget today. I want him to be traumatized as hell. He’ll thank us for it later.”
“When? When will he thank us?”
“When he’s been dropped in some hellhole and told to kill.” There was an absolute conviction in her voice.
“He’ll be a man then, and better equipped to handle it than these kids are,” Land argued. “Listen to them: they’re whistling and cheering! It’s just a show for them. That’s just how you want them. They don’t consider things. They don’t think about things. The militar
y doesn’t want them to. I don’t know who’s more brain-dead, zombies or soldiers.”
“How dare you!” Hazelwood cried, her throat hoarsening. “This isn’t our world any more! It’s theirs! We let our guard down, and they tear our throats out! Society must be prepared, prepared in every way, for war! It is the only way!”
Land shrunk back at the force of her argument. “Do you remember,” he said, his voice cracking, “when they used to say that watching violent movies was desensitizing, and that was a bad thing?”
For a long time there was silence, and then Hazelwood said, “You’ve been wondering why there’s so much special treatment for this one kid? What makes him so important?”
Land nodded.
“That was my idea. When I heard about Paul from your school’s liaison office, I thought about the way I was before the zombies: a quiet, rural life. No TV. I’d never even witnessed violence. Then I watched a zombie tear my father’s head off while he was working the fields. You know what I did? I didn’t run, I didn’t scream––I just shut off. The shock almost killed me. But that made me who I am.”
Hazelwood was trembling slightly. She clenched her fists where she stood to steady herself. “Maybe you’re a zombie-lover too, but you earned that right by fighting for your country up in Alaska. Mr. and Mrs. March never served, but their son will have to. Maybe it was noble once to be a conscientious objector, but now it’s lunacy. The more they shelter Paul, the more they try to protect him, the more harm they do.
“I know you have stories like mine. We all do. We are the traumatized generation. A bit older and maybe we could have been better prepared for what was happening. A bit younger and we’d never have known a world without the zombies. If we are to spare the new generation what we went through, they must grow up impervious to trauma. Understand me. I value innocence. That’s what Paul is. But in this world of ours, innocence kills.” There were tears in her eyes. “It seems wrong, I know. Sometimes I spend whole nights crying into my pillow. But it’s the only way. Let them cheer when zombies die. Better they cheer than scream.”
Land turned away from Hazelwood and gazed at the skyscrapers of downtown Calgary, built so many decades ago, standing there like silent memorials to a dead world. “I wasn’t made for these times,” he said.
“None of us were,” she answered.
Land wiped his eyes and turned back to face her. “They’ve probably brought out Zombie Bob by now. We should get back to Paul.”
“Yes,” Hazelwood agreed. “He needs our support.”
Inside, the Saddledome pulsed with rock music. Land recognized the Doors’ “Peace Frog,” which, thanks to the tastes of a certain general, became something of a military anthem. To its steady beat Zombie Bob, dressed in full western garb with a white Stetson, wove his way between ten or so zombies, a roaring chainsaw in his hand.
It was part of Zombie Bob’s appeal that it seemed like he could die at any moment.
Colonel Simonds was still on the platform, now protected by a half-dozen guards with submachine guns, offering commentary as Bob played the clown, always making it look like the zombies were just about to get him, before getting them instead.
“Careful Bob, there’s another deadhead behind you,” said Simonds. Bob did a cartoon-like double-take and slid the saw around to his back. Then he slid backwards on the dirt, driving the saw through the hapless zombie’s midsection. Bob did a pirouette, slicing the zombie mostly in two before slamming his weapon right through its neck. A thick plume of blood shot out.
Land winced at the display. No one he had known in Alaska would attempt anything remotely like Zombie Bob’s antics. He and Hazelwood slid back into their seats on either side of Paul, and Land asked the boy, “How are you doing?”
Paul March sat there in wide-eyed, stunned silence. “I uh…” was the best answer he could manage.
“Remember,” Hazelwood whispered, “there’s glass between you and the zombies. They can’t get you.”
Zombie Bob’s opponents seemed selected for maximum diversity: an old granny, a slender college girl, a middle-aged Chinese man, and so on. All that was missing was a child zombie. The media always shied clear of those.
“Wow, look at that, kids,” Simonds said. “Remember, you can see Zombie Bob’s adventures every Wednesday at 3 p.m. on CBC.”
“Peace Frog” ended and the music switched gears to a whimsical country waltz. Bob took a while to forget the zombies and offer a few dance steps, tipping the white hat now splattered with blood. Bob pulled away from zombies for a moment to wave to the crowd, eliciting laughter as the zombies lurched up on him from behind. Then he sprang into motion, running circles around the zombies, causing them to bump into each other, trip over each other, fall down. The crowd roared with laughter.
Paul made fists of his hands, squeezing until his knuckles were white. He was trembling hard, unstoppably. Land put a hand on his shoulder, trying to steady him, and he felt the reverberations through to his bones.
In this confusion Bob rushed forward with his chainsaw swinging at chest level. He caught two zombies right next to each other and forced the saw through bone and flesh, slicing both of them. Their legs collapsed, useless, but their upper torsos were not dead and pulled across the dirt with their strong arms. Bob moved away, ignoring them for the time.
“Two at once, Bob!” Simonds declared. “You’ve outclassed yourself this time. I don’t see how you can top that.”
The crowd went mad, screaming, whistling, stomping their feet, and the sounds echoed through the Saddledome’s steel rafters. For a moment Land felt like he was a kid again, listening to a crowd cheering for a wrestling match, or a fight in a hockey game. Paul started making noises like little yelps. Land and Hazelwood looked at each other.
“Are you all right, Paul?” Land asked, looking into the boy’s eyes. They were beginning to look glossy. Paul grasped hard onto his forearm and squeezed. Land cried out.
Zombie Bob slipped among his remaining foes, so that they lurched at him from every side. Most weeks on his show, he performed some variant of this, positioning himself directly in the densest collection of zombies and fighting his way out. It was a crowd-pleaser with any weapon, and the chainsaw was best of all. He swung it at the zombie in front of him, smoothly slitting it through the middle. On the Jumbotron they could see smoke billowing out of the chainsaw. As he retrieved, it seemed to sputter and die.
The camera caught the expression on Bob’s face. It was real panic. This was not that unusual; the TV cameras often found Zombie Bob running for his life.
“Uh-oh,” said Colonel Simonds. “Looks like ol’ Bob’s got himself in trouble again.”
Somebody cut out the music just in time for everyone to hear Bob release a stream of profanity. He threw the dead chainsaw in the face of the closest zombie and dove past it, his Stetson tumbling off his bald head in the process. He kicked up dust as he raced away from the remaining zombies, but had the misfortune of tripped over something, landing face-first in the dirt. Before he could run, a strong zombie hand clamped down on one of his legs. He looked back to see a half-zombie, one of those he’d sliced in two earlier, its entrails dragging through the dirt behind it. It squeezed tighter on his leg, shattering bone and pulling away a handful of flesh. Bob’s scream hit the steel roof and resonated through the Saddledome’s every corner.
“Fuck!” shouted Simonds into his microphone. There was no doubt now––this was not part of the show.
The smell of fresh blood spurred the other zombies on to greater speed. Zombie Bob tried to pull himself to his feet, but they were on him in no time, ripping, tearing at his clothes and his flesh. The entire Saddledome could hear his screams. Piece by piece they devoured him, stuffing human meat by the handful into their mouths. So here it was at last, the death of Robert Smith Harding. Everyone knew he’d die violently, himself most of all. But nobody expected that it would be witnessed by ten thousand schoolchildren.
This would be re
membered as the great trauma of a generation. They weren’t screaming in excitement now. They were screaming in terror.
Land felt Paul’s hand go limp on his arm.
“Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!” Colonel Simonds shouted the command like a mantra, and his bodyguards loosed a hail of bullets into the mass of zombies. Many of the bullets struck their targets, but those that didn’t impacted the bulletproof glass, ricocheting through the arena and off into the crowd. One of these stray bullets caught Simonds in the chest and he collapsed on stage, barely noticed amid all the pandemonium.
Children and adults alike crawled over each other, fueled by the most primal surge of adrenalin, frantically seeking to escape the danger. Bodies swamped the exits and fell from balconies. Land grabbed Paul, ready to carry him out of the Saddledome, but found him limp and cold. He reached for Paul’s jugular but felt no pulse.
He has a weak heart, Mrs. March had told him. She must have meant it. This shock must been too much for poor sensitive Paul, and his little heart gave out. Hazelwood looked at him open-jawed, and amid all this chaos noise and chaos everything suddenly seemed so still and calm.
Then Paul’s eyes jumped open.
Thank God I was wrong, Land thought first, but then he saw his eyes. He could never explain this to anyone who hadn’t seen it for themselves, but the eyes of the dead were different. Simonds was right; they lacked spark, life. This was true even of the freshest zombies.
Paul sank his teeth into Sgt. Hazelwood’s forearm, biting down hard. Her legs kicked involuntarily, knocking against the seat in front of her. Her mouth opened to scream, but no noise came out as her eyes glossed over and she sank back into her chair, growing increasingly inert as Paul gnawed through to raw bone. Land grabbed Paul by the hair and yanked back, but even a child zombie possessed inhuman strength, and Paul wouldn’t release his grasp on his prize.