Zomburbia

by Adam Gallardo

  “That thing got a hold of you,” I said. The boys shifted their focus from me to her. “We need to look you over to make sure it didn’t scratch you or anything. If it did, we’ll have to take you to the hospital. Shit, we’ll probably all have to be quarantined.”

  Ken started to say that he could check her out. Crystal shook her head. “I want Courtney to do it.”

  “Okay,” I said, and stood up. My legs felt pretty rubbery, but I thought I could make it. Crystal followed me into the bathroom, and she closed and locked the door behind her.

  I sat on the toilet, and then she and I stared at each other for a second. It was starting to feel pretty awkward, when she suddenly stripped off her shirt. That didn’t really help with the awkward feeling. I just needed to do what I’d come in there to do. Crystal wore a black bikini top, though she probably could have gotten away without wearing anything up there. I was impressed with her stomach muscles. She had a definite six-pack going on. I concentrated on her arms, since that’s where the thing had grabbed her. I didn’t see any claw marks. I did see row after row of straight cuts running the length of her upper arms. Some were old and nearly faded, some were obviously fresh.

  I looked away from her arms and into her face. She didn’t blink, defiant. “Those aren’t from the zombie,” she said.

  “No,” I said, “I guessed that. Let me look at the other side.” She held up her arms. No marks of any kind on the backs of them. Maybe they were too hard to reach with a razor. I gave her torso and neck a quick once-over. The zombie hadn’t given her as much as a scratch.

  I stood up and she put her shirt back on, covering her arms.

  “You know, Crystal,” I said, fumbling for what to say, “if you ever want to talk . . .”

  “I appreciate that, Courtney. I won’t want to. Thanks, though.” She walked out of the bathroom and I followed. We found the boys lounging on the couch, not saying much.

  Crystal asked if we could go, and no one argued. We gathered up our things from the shore, packed them into the truck, and then climbed in ourselves and drove away. The ride back was mostly silent. Brandon played his mix CD quietly and everyone seemed locked in their own heads.

  When we passed through Aumsville, Brandon asked if we could stop at a Thai place he likes, and none of us could muster the strength to say no. The Drunken Noodles were great, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. I was sure I’d eat the leftovers the next day for lunch. We all got back in the truck after we were done eating—or after Brandon was done I guess I should say—and drove on home without stopping again.

  We dropped Crystal off first, and she got out of the car and left without saying good-bye. As we pulled away from her house, Ken sighed a huge theatrical sigh. “Not a great first date,” he said. I grimaced. It was a first date for him, too, and it was shitty to boot. We had so much in common.

  Ken lived in the same gated suburb as Crystal, so he got dropped off next. He and Brandon did a complicated handshake thing, which I’m sure they thought was very street, and then he left without saying good-bye to me. Maybe no one was going to acknowledge leaving my presence ever again.

  By the time we reached my hovel, it was nearly eight o’clock. The sky was darkening and a slim crescent moon already hung in the sky. Brandon parked right in front of the gate and shut the truck down. He turned to look at me and was Very Serious.

  “I’m really sorry about this afternoon, Courtney,” he said. “I feel like an ass for leaving the two of you alone like that.”

  “Well, don’t,” I said. “Everything turned out fine.”

  “Yeah. It’s just the thought of something happening to you . . .”

  “Honestly, Brandon,” I said, “don’t worry about it.”

  “I just don’t want you to hate me,” he said, and he looked so sincere and forlorn that it short-circuited my sarcasm response.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said, “honest. We should hang out again. No zombie-infested reservoir next time, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, “I promise.”

  “Great,” I said, “and now I need to go to bed and sleep for one million years.”

  “Sure, have a good night.”

  “You, too, Brandon,” I said, and I climbed out of the truck and through the gate. I heard him start up the truck and pull away as I walked into my house.

  I found Dad and Bev snuggling on the couch watching TV when I entered. Just great, as if I hadn’t seen enough horrors for one day. Dad had his arm around her shoulders and she had her legs thrown over his. They both turned and smiled at me.

  “Hey, you’re home earlier than I expected,” Dad said. “How was hanging out?”

  “Not great,” I said, “but we’re going to give it another shot sometime.”

  “Atta girl,” Bev chimed in. “You’ve got to keep on trying.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?” Dad asked.

  “No,” I said, “right now I just want to clean up and go to bed.”

  I headed down the hall toward safety, and my dad called out after me.

  “Say, did William get a hold of you?”

  I stopped dead, an icy ball in the pit of my stomach. “Willie called?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Dad said, “a few times. You should call him in the morning.”

  Willie had been calling me all day while I frolicked with Brandon. Right then I wished I had been eaten by those stupid shufflers because at least then I wouldn’t have to call Willie and apologize for standing him up for dinner.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Rictus Smile

  Willie wasn’t online anywhere. Facebook, Gmail, Tumblr, none of the weird message boards he frequents. He didn’t have a cell phone—I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t have a cell phone?—and it was too late to call his house. If I tried it, all I’d get would be his mom screeching into the phone demanding to know if I knew what time it was—and his dad in the background yelling at her to stop yelling for God’s sake. It was already ten o’clock because, okay, I’d put off trying to contact him until it was too late to call. I had to admit that I sucked. The only way I could get ahold of him would be on the Internet, and he was definitely off line. Dammit, he was never off line. I guessed he was doing to me right now what I’d done to Sherri earlier. Made himself unavailable so I couldn’t reach out and apologize to him. He wanted to stew.

  I looked at my bag for a while. Tried to gird myself for listening to his messages. Damn. Damn. Damn. Why did I have to turn off my stupid phone? If I’d left it on, I’d have remembered to go to his place and none of that zombie crap would have happened.

  I turned it back on and it buzzed a bunch of times as new messages loaded. I noticed that they were all from Willie; Sherri still hadn’t tried to contact me. I gritted my teeth and hit the button to play my voice mails.

  It was worse than I thought it would be. In the first message Willie sounded all cheery, reminding me about dinner and making some dumb joke about not bringing anything with me but my appetite, ha ha ha! He called back during the afternoon, wondering why I hadn’t called back. He was still trying to sound upbeat and not managing it very well. In the third message, left right after Willie had come over to the house and knocked on the door, he sounded depressed as all get out. He hoped everything was okay, wondered where I was, and asked me to call when I got in. I could still come over and eat if I wanted.

  The last message was left just about a half-hour before I came home. I could hear his mom yelling something at him in the background. His voice barely registered. “Hey,” he said, “so I guess you’re not gonna come over tonight. I wish you’d called me . . .” He said something I couldn’t catch. “Anyway, yeah, I’ll talk to you later, or something . . .” And he hung up.

  Looking at the phone, I saw that he’d called about ten times besides the four times he left a message. I threw the phone away and slumped into the bed. I couldn’t believe I’d done that to Willie. Just yesterday I was thinking how I wanted to be better to him. Why d
id I suck so much? In the morning I would have to call and beg him to forgive me. Maybe make him some baked goods? Buy him some porn? I didn’t know. I needed to think of something.

  I turned off the light. I hadn’t washed my face or brushed my teeth and I didn’t care. I just wanted to go to sleep and make this day be over. I’d screwed it up so bad that I had to do a better job of things tomorrow, right?

  I dreamed I was talking to one of the zombies from that afternoon. The bikini-girl, the one I shot in the head. She wasn’t dead in the dream. She was alive, tanned and bright-eyed and plump, which really worked for her in that suit. She looked really good, actually, except for the pair of holes in her head. She had a small, star-shaped hole in her right temple where I shot her—a small line of blood trickled from it. A crater about the size of a fist was on the other side of her head. Despite that, she smiled at me.

  We stood on the shore of the reservoir. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to keep warm. Bikini-girl didn’t seem to notice. She told me a long story about what happened to her after she was turned into a zombie. After a while I realized I couldn’t understand what she said to me. I strained to hear. Nothing was overpowering her voice; it was just that I couldn’t make out the words.

  I kept leaning closer and closer to her, trying to catch what she said. I knew it was really important. I finally got so close that I could feel her breath on my neck. I wrinkled my nose at the smell—rotten meat, garbage, turned peaches.

  She finally said something I could understand: “Courtney.”

  I turned to glance at her and she was a zombie again—eyes glassy with cataracts, lips pulled back in a rictus smile. She opened her mouth impossibly wide and I just stood there, waiting, as she slowly pulled me closer.

  I woke up, my heart racing, my legs tangled in my sheet and blankets. What the hell was that all about? More than likely it was the fault of that talk show with the zombie whisperer. I could tell him what the result would have been yesterday if I’d tried to open lines of communication with those shufflers on the reservoir.

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes and scratched my head. Tried to get the cobwebs out. I picked up my phone and looked at the time. 9:30. Why was I up so early? I put the phone back on my bedside table.

  The phone. Oh, hell. There’s nothing worse than that moment after you wake up, when your brain spins up to speed and you remember what happened the day before and you face the crushing realization that you’re a shit.

  I started thinking of all the things I could do right now instead of call Willie’s house. I could clean my room, do my accounting before I went to meet my dealer, read ahead in my homework, clean my pistol, slit my F’ing wrists. Ugh. I just needed to cowboy up and call him.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I picked up my phone, flipped it open, and hit the speed-dial for Willie’s place. He’s number 2 right after Sherri.

  Three rings and I started to have hope that no one would pick up. Maybe they’d gone out to breakfast or something, and I could just leave a message and I’d be off the hook!

  “Hello,” said Willie’s mom on the other end. Suck.

  “Hello, Mrs. Luunder,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said brightly, setting my nerves on end, “it’s the amazing disappearing girl! No, wait, I’m wrong—you would have to show up first to be able to disappear.”

  “I’m sorry about last night, Mrs. Luunder,” I said lamely.

  “Well, I’m sure you have a good reason for making my son mope around the house like the world’s biggest infant.” Jesus, this was worse than taking shit from one of my friends. I decided not to play along.

  “Is Willie home, ma’am?” I asked.

  “I’m sure he is, Courtney” she said, “since he’s been waiting since about four in the afternoon yesterday for you to call. Just a moment.”

  There was a pause and then I heard her bellow out, “William, it’s your so-called friend on the line. She deigned to call you.” I heard her husband yell something but couldn’t make out what.

  I listened to the hiss of the empty phone line and then heard a muffled clumping sound as Willie walked to the phone. There was a conversation as Willie’s mom handed it over. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I did hear her rising voice, shrill even though he must have had his hand over the mouthpiece.

  I knew he was on the line because I heard a huge Charlie-Brown sigh. “Hey, Courtney,” he said.

  “Hi, Willie,” I said. “I’m really sorry about last night. I’m a total douche.”

  “No,” he said, “that’s okay . . .” At this I heard his mom in the background calling him the human welcome mat.

  “Can I make it up to you?” I asked, trying to speak over her. “Let’s get together for lunch—my treat!” I could afford to dip into my second income to make Willie feel better. “And I’ll tell you about what happened to me yesterday.” I’d just need to figure out a way to leave out any mention of Brandon.

  “I don’t know if I can,” Willie said. “I have a bunch of chores to do today.”

  “And you should get to them,” his mom said. She sounded like she was standing right over his shoulder. Which she probably was. “You left all that fish out last night—you know, the fish we made for dinner? Now it stinks to high heaven.”

  “But it’s a great story,” I said. “It involves nearly being eaten by a zombie and everything!”

  “Oh, who were you out with?” he asked, and my heart sank. It was bad enough that I ditched him; hearing that I was out with Brandon would kill him.

  “Just some people,” I said. “Ken Leung, Crystal Beals.”

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Brandon Ikaros, too.”

  There was a long silence on Willie’s end of the phone. Long enough to make me wonder if he had hung up or just left the phone to dangle on its cord on the kitchen wall. “Willie?” I asked.

  “Brandon Ikaros?” he asked, and there was something in his voice that scared me.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound casual about it, dismissive. “It was totally not a big deal. He called me spur of the moment . . .”

  “Do you like him?” Willie asked. I could hear his mom in the background again, harping on him about the fish and how it wasn’t going to throw itself away.

  “I guess I like him,” I said, and then added quickly, “but, hey, I like you, too, buddy!”

  “But you don’t like me the same way you like him, right?” he asked.

  I really thought about what to say to him next. I could lie, but that wouldn’t be fair. I could tell him I didn’t have any feelings for Brandon, which I didn’t think was true. Or I could tell him that I liked him in the same way as I liked Brandon—I was confused is all. I knew that it was going to hurt him to tell him the truth. Telling him anything else would hurt even worse.

  “I’m not exactly sure how I feel about Brandon yet, Willie,” I said. “I know that I like you as a friend. One of my best friends.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, and then there was a long pause. I could hear his parents still yelling in the background. God, why wouldn’t they just shut the hell up? Then his mom must have walked closer to the phone because I heard her say, plain as day, “Are you crying?” Oh, man, this was going from bad to worse. Willie screamed at her to get out of there, and she demanded to know what I had said to him and to hand her the phone—which Willie did not, thank God.

  By this time, I was crying; my cheeks were wet with tears because I was breaking the heart of this big, dumb guy who was stupid enough to have a crush on me.

  “Willie.” I tried calling to him. I knew that he couldn’t hear me over him and his mom yelling.

  He finally put the phone to his ear long enough to say in a voice choked with tears, “I have to go, Courtney. I don’t blame you, you know. It’s not your fault.” And still his mom yelled on and on. Then there was silence from his end of the line.

  I chucked the phone away from m
e and buried my head in my pillow and sobbed. Why did Willie have to have such a horrible mom? Why did he have to like me? And why couldn’t I like him back in return? None of it seemed fair, and none of it made sense.

  The one person in the world I never wished any harm was Willie, and here I’d just taken a huge dump all over his heart.

  Someone sat beside me on the bed and started to stroke my hair and back. I hadn’t heard anyone come in. I looked up long enough to see my dad sitting there, looking down at me wearing his worried face. He made a soft shushing noise as he petted me. My first reaction was to pull away from him, to give in to the misery I felt and deny myself the chance to feel better, and my dad’s efforts to help. Instead, I made myself scoot closer to him and wrapped my body around him like a cat. My sobs slackened, but I was still crying. He didn’t say anything, didn’t ask what was wrong—he just sat there for a long time and tried his best to comfort me. Maybe he sensed that trying to get me to talk about it would drive me away. Maybe he was smarter and better at his job than I ever gave him credit for.

  After a while, even the tears ebbed away and I lay there against my dad, completely limp from the exertion.

  He brushed the hair from my face. I heard someone else creep in, Bev, and then creep out again. Dad pressed a cool cloth to my face and started to wipe it along my cheeks and over my eyes. Bev must have brought him that cloth without being asked. God, why was I such a bitch? Had I misjudged every single person in my life?

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Dad asked.

  “No,” I said, and I hated the whine in my voice.

  “Maybe later?”

  I nodded. Right then all I wanted was to stay curled around him and have him pet me. I felt like I was eight years old again and he was trying to explain to me why my mom wasn’t home anymore. He let me stay there. It was maybe twenty or thirty minutes later before I sat up and sat away from him, my back against the wall. I wiped my eyes and my nose on my shirt. Dad winced at that, but he didn’t say anything.