Zombie Baseball Beatdown

by Paolo Bacigalupi

“What the…?”

  Mr. Cocoran’s head was smashed in, and his neck was snapped over, but that wasn’t stopping him. He dragged himself around, using his whole body to turn. His gaze fixed on us. Wide, hungry eyes rolled in their sockets.

  “I thought you said he was dead,” Miguel said, taking a farther step back.

  “I thought he was!”

  Mr. Cocoran hauled himself to his feet. He got one foot under him, then levered himself up until he could get his other foot set. He straightened and swayed in the hot sun.

  Blood dripped from his mouth. More blood leaked from his smashed head, trickling down the side of his face.

  He opened his mouth, showing ragged teeth and a gray tongue, slithery like a worm. He moaned and lurched toward us.

  “Braaaaaains!”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Run!”

  Miguel and I grabbed our bikes and tried to climb on, but you know how sometimes you jump on your bike too fast and you rack your nuts?

  I totally did that.

  It hurt so bad, I wanted to just curl up and puke, but with Mr. Cocoran coming after me, there was no time. I tried to get my feet on the pedals but I missed.

  “Brrraaaaaaains!” Mr. Cocoran moaned.

  Straddling my bike, I started hobbling down the road as fast as I could, while still trying to climb up onto my seat. I glanced back over my shoulder to see how close Mr. Cocoran was, and almost swerved off the road.

  He was right behind me.

  “Will you hurry up?” Miguel shouted as I almost crashed.

  “I’m trying!”

  My foot missed the pedal, and I scraped my shin. Mr. Cocoran took another swipe. I ducked and swerved, and his fingers whistled through my hair. Cocoran growled. He grabbed for my back tire. I swerved the other way, slipping and losing my pedals again.

  “Quit fooling around!” Miguel shouted.

  Finally—finally—my feet found the pedals.

  I started riding like crazy.

  I was going so fast, I shot past Miguel. I caught a glimpse of his surprised face as I went by, but I wasn’t slowing down—no way, no how. Miguel raced to catch up, pedaling like we were in the Tour de France.

  Behind us, Mr. Cocoran lost ground, but he was still reaching for us, and still moaning.

  “Braaaaaaaiiiiinsssssssss!” It came out as a sad, hungry howl.

  We didn’t stop.

  “What the heck was that all about?” Miguel shouted over the wind.

  I had no idea what had just happened, but for sure I wasn’t going back to figure it out. I just pedaled faster.

  “I thought I killed him!” Miguel shouted.

  “You did!”

  And all of sudden, I realized that I actually liked that idea better. Killing a grown-up almost seemed normal in comparison to what had just happened.

  This was worse.

  Way worse.

  If Miguel had beat Mr. Cocoran’s head in with a baseball bat and the guy had died, that meant the world still worked the way we all thought it should. Sure, Miguel and I would probably get sent to a supermax prison or something, but still, it meant that the world hadn’t just turned us upside down and shaken all the loose change out of our pockets.

  If Mr. Cocoran had just gone ahead and died, the world still had rules.

  But Mr. Cocoran hadn’t died when Miguel had beaten his head in.

  I guessed that was good in a way, because we weren’t murderers now. But that also meant you could smash someone’s head halfway in, and they could still stand up and try to bite your face again.

  For sure, that wasn’t right.

  CHAPTER 13

  “So, Rabi…” Miguel paused, as if he was trying to pick the right words. “What just happened back there?”

  We were both sitting on the curb outside the Casey’s convenience mart, sweating and exhausted, the sun beating down. I was yanking off layers and layers of clothing, trying to see my arm and desperate to cool off. My whole body was sticky and slimy. I wanted to go into the air-conditioning of the convenience mart, but I also wanted to be able to keep an eye on the road, just in case Mr. Cocoran came galloping down the centerline, yelling for our brains. I needed to be able to see him coming. I definitely needed to see him coming—

  “Rabi?”

  “I have no idea,” I said as I dragged another layer over my head.

  “ ’Cause if I didn’t know any better, I’d say Mr. Cocoran was a zombie.”

  I didn’t want to agree, but my own impressions were adding up the same way.

  “He did say ‘brains’ when he was trying to bite me,” I said.

  I checked my arm. I’d been chomped so hard, a purple half-moon showed where his teeth had sunk in. I could actually see individual teeth impressions. I poked my finger into the dent an incisor had left.

  At least I wasn’t bleeding.

  We both looked back toward where Mr. Cocoran was probably still wandering back and forth on the road, moaning for our brains. I kind of hoped a car would hit him.

  And then I felt bad about it.

  But then again, he really did try to bite my face off.

  I decided I still hoped a car would run him over.

  Had he really gotten up after Miguel whacked him? Had that all really happened? I looked at the three sweatshirts that I’d been wearing. Two of them were actually torn all the way through where Mr. Cocoran had ripped into them with his teeth. One less layer, and he would have gobbled a chunk of my arm, for sure.

  “Zombies are impossible,” Miguel said.

  “I sure thought they were.” I massaged my arm. “Then again, Mr. Cocoran did just stand up after getting walloped in the head. Check out what he did to my skin.”

  Miguel winced at the sight of the bruises. “Sooo… if he’s a real zombie, that’s kind of…”

  “Bad?” I finished for him.

  “Yeah. If it was for real, I mean.”

  “You know who we should ask about zombies?”

  Miguel looked over, his eyes widening with the same thought.

  “Joe!” we both said.

  “He’s the one who reads about this stuff all the time.”

  “Total zombie expert!”

  I pulled on all of my ripped layers again, and we jumped on our bikes and rode over to Joe’s house. When we got there, Joe was mowing his lawn, shirtless and sweating buckets in the sun.

  “Hey, Joe,” Miguel called. “You got to come with us. We got something you got to see.”

  “What’s that?” Joe looked up, and started to laugh. “You guys look like a couple of dorks!”

  I looked down at all my layers, then over at Miguel. We really did look like Stay Puft Marshmallow Men.

  “Go ahead and laugh,” I said. “It’s armor.”

  “You’re wearing, like, fifty shirts! In the summer!”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you know about zombies?” I asked.

  “Zombies?”

  “From all the stuff you read. What do you know about zombies?”

  Joe rolled his eyes. “They eat brains for snacks. Now quit messing with me. I got to finish this before my dad gets home.” He turned back to the lawn mower and gave a yank on the starter. The mower coughed but didn’t start up.

  “We think we saw one,” I said.

  “One what?”

  “A zombie!” Miguel said.

  Joe stopped trying to start the mower and gave us a disgusted look. “Come on.”

  “No, man, seriously. For real. Mr. Cocoran’s a zombie.”

  “News flash.”

  “Seriously! Miguel beat his head in with a baseball bat, and he still tried to bite me.”

  That got Joe’s attention.

  “You hit Mr. Cocoran with a baseball bat?” He looked impressed. “I always wanted to do that.”

  “Well, Miguel did.”

  “No way.”

  Miguel grinned. Then he tried to look sorry. Then he just kind of shrugged. It was hard to decide what to think about i
t, except that I was glad Miguel had whacked Mr. Cocoran when he did. Because if he hadn’t, I was pretty sure Mr. Cocoran would have chowed on my brains.

  “Yeah. He really did it.” I mimed Miguel’s move. “Bam! Out of the park, snapped Cocoran’s neck around, bent his head, everything.”

  “You’re not kidding?” Joe was looking at us like we were crazy now. “You mean you killed him?”

  I said, “That’s the thing, though! It didn’t kill him. It just bent him up a little. You got to see it. He isn’t dead. Not a bit.”

  Joe looked like he couldn’t decide if we were pulling his leg, or homicidal, or telling the truth.

  Finally he said, “That’s great, guys. Funny joke. Ha ha.”

  “It’s not a joke!”

  “Then why the heck would I go with you? I’d have to be stupid to go near a zombie. They’re bad news.”

  “You chicken?” Miguel asked.

  “I’m not chicken of something that doesn’t exist! I got work to do! I’m in trouble enough on my own, without you guys getting me in more.”

  “Look, Joe,” I said. “I swear there’s a zombie running around in the cornfields. And you know more about zombies than anyone. So what are we supposed to do? How do you turn a zombie back into a person? Or kill it, or… You know… What are we supposed to do?”

  “Well…” Joe shrugged. “Mostly they say you’re supposed to shoot them in the head a couple of times. Double-tap to the head. That’ll do it.”

  “We don’t have guns.”

  “Bummer. And my dad keeps his locked up.” Joe pulled his lip, considering. “I guess you could hit ’em like a baby seal until they stop flopping, then.”

  I could tell he wasn’t taking us seriously.

  “Fine,” I said. “Don’t believe us—you’ll just never see it. We’re going to catch a zombie and be heroes, and you’re going to be the guy that could’ve seen the whole thing…”

  “… except he decided to stay home and mow the lawn like a good little boy,” Miguel finished.

  Joe gave us a dirty look.

  “Come on, Joe,” I said. “You know you want to see this.”

  “I don’t have time! I got to mow the lawn. My dad’s going to whip me if I don’t do it. Mom found out about my Amazon buy. I’m grounded again, and she took all my Transmetropolitans.”

  “This is better than a comic! It’s a zombie! Don’t you want to see a real live zombie?”

  “Zombies aren’t alive. They’re undead.”

  “You see? That’s why we need you! You know this stuff!”

  Joe was looking from his house to the mower, and then to us. Wistful. Trying to decide. Wanting to do the crazy thing, but knowing it was wrong.

  The cool thing about Joe is that when it comes to crazy…

  “Lemme get my bike,” Joe said.

  … he can’t resist.

  “Get your bat, too!” I called out. “And don’t forget some armor!”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Are you sure this is the right spot?” Joe asked.

  We were riding slowly up and down the road, but there wasn’t any sign of Mr. Cocoran.

  “Pretty sure. It was just before the rise.”

  Joe looked at us with disgust. “Did you make this up?”

  “No!” we both said at the same time. “He was right here.”

  We scanned the cornfields. I even got down on the road, looking for bloodstains. Maybe some piece of brain or something from his head. Nothing. It was like he’d never been there, and it had never happened.

  “You jerks,” Joe said. “My dad’s going to whip my butt when I get home.”

  “But it happened!” I said.

  “So where’s Cocoran?”

  Miguel was looking at the cornfields. “You think he went back into the corn?”

  We all looked at the impenetrable jungle of cornstalks. No visibility. Thick and close. Hot.

  “No way,” I said. “No way am I going in there. That’s definitely how people get killed in the movies. You go in, and you don’t come out.”

  “I thought you said you wanted to show me the zombie,” Joe goaded.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t want to get bit again.”

  “You don’t want to get bit again?” Joe looked at me with horror and started backing away.

  “Just my arm, you sissy. It didn’t break the skin. I was wearing all these shirts, so he didn’t get through.”

  I rolled up my sleeve to show him, but Joe wouldn’t come close.

  “Come here, you baby,” I said. “I’m not turning into a stupid zombie any more than you are.”

  “Sure,” Joe muttered. “That’s what everyone says in the movies, and the next thing you know, everyone’s running and screaming, and their brains are popping out of their eyes, and there’s blood all over the walls, and it’s all because someone said they didn’t get scratched.”

  Miguel and I exchanged glances. Joe sure watched some wacky movies.

  “Well, I didn’t get scratched, and you can take a look. And anyway, this isn’t a movie. This is real life.”

  Joe snickered at that. “So where’s your real-life zombie?”

  The cornfields were probably where Cocoran had gone. But boy, I sure didn’t want to go in there. If Cocoran jumped on us from behind or something…

  On the other hand, I really, really didn’t want Joe telling everyone that we were a couple of liars for bringing him out here for nothing.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go in. But we’re taking our bats.”

  “Which side of the road?”

  “He came from that side when we ran into him. Maybe he went back the way he came.”

  “This is nuts,” Miguel said. “We’re not going to find him. There’s miles and miles of corn out here. It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

  “A zombie in a cornfield,” Joe said.

  “Cornfield zombies,” I said.

  “Corn-fed zombies,” Miguel said.

  “Zombies in the corn,” Joe said.

  We all started to laugh. “That would make a pretty good video game,” I said. “Zombies in the Corn.”

  “Left 4 Dead already did it.”

  “Not with corn.”

  “Because it would be corny,” Joe said.

  “Ha ha.” I got my bat. “You guys ready?”

  But Joe and Miguel didn’t move.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Well… who’s going in first?” Miguel asked.

  “Not me,” Joe said. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe us,” I said.

  “I thought you said there was a zombie in the corn.”

  Standoff.

  “Okay, I’ll go first,” I said finally.

  I didn’t like it, but it made for good strategy. “You guys are stronger hitters than me, anyway. I’ll go in first and be the bait. When I smoke out the zombie, you guys whack him before he chews my brains out.”

  But that didn’t mean I was going in unprepared.

  “Gimme your shirts,” I said. “All of them. If I’m going first, I’m taking all the armor.”

  Miguel and Joe stripped off their extra layers, and I put them on. Lots and lots and lots of layers. Stay-Puft-Marshmallow-Michelin-Man zombie bait. But at least there was no way Cocoran’s teeth were going to bite through that much fabric. At least I hoped.

  I grabbed my bat. “If Cocoran jumps me, you guys better hit the bejesus out of him. I don’t know how much biting these shirts can take.”

  “Right,” Joe said. “Hit the bejesus out of him.”

  “Hit him in the head,” Miguel advised. “That got his attention the last time.”

  “Yup. The head. No problem.”

  You could tell Joe still didn’t believe us. I wondered if I was crazy to be trusting my life to someone as goofy as Joe. He couldn’t even take things seriously when it was life or death.

  “Pay attention, Joe,” I s
aid. “If Cocoran tries to grab me, you got to get him off me fast. Hit him in the head, like Miguel says.”

  “And try not to hit Rabi,” Miguel added.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Joe asked.

  Miguel shrugged. “Sometimes, you swing wild.”

  “I do not.”

  “You miss more than you hit.”

  “I think I can hit a guy’s head,” Joe groused. “It’s a heck of a lot bigger than a baseball.”

  We headed into the corn.

  CHAPTER 15

  Green corn whipped our faces as we shoved through. The air trapped between the dense rows was hot and still and humid, like a jungle. It wasn’t exactly a stealth operation; stalks crackled and snapped, announcing our every step.

  We all had our baseball bats up and ready to swing, but Mr. Cocoran didn’t show.

  I stopped in the middle of the corn. A second later, Miguel and Joe forced their way through to where I was. Corn silk and green leafy bits stuck to their flushed necks and faces.

  “We’re doing this wrong,” I said. “Let’s go back to the road.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if Cocoran went in, we don’t want to search for him, we want to track him.”

  That made sense to everyone, so we returned to the open road and started walking up and down the pavement’s edge.

  “Look for broken plants. Maybe some blood. He wasn’t walking too good, so he probably smashed into some things.”

  After a while, Joe called, “Got it!”

  He was farther up the road than I expected, but he was standing beside some bashed-down cornstalks. And on the road, there were a couple of big bloodstains, turned sticky on the pavement, with flies buzzing in the goo.

  “Now do you believe us?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Could have been a raccoon for all I know.”

  “A raccoon that knocks down corn?” I rolled my eyes. “Let’s go.”

  We started into the corn again, bats up. It wasn’t a great trail, but it was enough. The corn was so dense that you couldn’t go through the thick walls of it without breaking at least some stalks. The biggest problem with tracking Mr. Cocoran was that he also wasn’t supergood at going in a straight line. He went around in circles, he doubled back. He zigged and zagged and staggered.