I do.
Zombies love babies. “She’s beautiful.” “He’s so cute.” I don’t do that. I don’t judge babies on their appearances. I judge babies on their merits. I want to know what any given baby can do. The answer is usually, and sadly, the same: nothing. Babies are good for nothing. Unless you need someone to sleep prodigiously, eat voraciously, have remarkable difficulty belching, but absolutely no problem screaming, crying, and soiling him or herself, babies are essentially useless. But only to the untrained eye. The trained eye sees (a nice light snack or) future zombies.
All these writhing masses of selfishness can be taught, trained, and turned into future zombies. They must learn restraint, patience, and selflessness. (Babies are communists! They think everything should be done for them! “I’m hungry! Get over here!” “My diaper is wet! Change me!”) They must learn to be zombies (or unlearn to be human). The zombie doesn’t only think of itself. The zombie also thinks of what (it’s told) is good for all. When it does something resembling an expression of self-interest, like eating, it’s really just keeping its strength up so it can keep being a zombie—so it can keep creating more zombies.
Every once in a while, a baby doesn’t quite make it into the back of a pickup. It falls on the ground. It bounces, limbs flailing, and rolls up against a tire, or under a truck. Or it slams into the side of the truck’s box and drops straight down to the ground. The sound of baby on metal makes a memorable sound. It’s a cross between a clang and a thump. A small group of my followers has a brief baby fight. They throw babies at each other. They fling the things by their arms and legs. They hold them by their heads and spin around and launch them. One of them sees me working, not playing, and watching them. A baby bangs into her chest, knocking her back a step. The baby falls to the ground in front of her. She picks it up, throws it into the back of a truck, and gets back to work. Crouched down, sticking my first and middle fingers into their eyeballs, I pick up two babies at the same time, one from a row on either side of me, and pull their bodies, dropping dirt, from the ground. I launch one at the girl who resumed working. It hits her square in the side of the head and knocks her down. I hold up my arms in victory: my free arm and the one holding the limp body of the unborn. “I win!”
Nearby, my raven perches on a fencepost, turning its head back and forth, observing everything through one black eye, and then the other. Sometimes it tips its head to the side, listening.
There’s something satisfying about all this. There’s something (non-intellectually) rewarding about working before the sun does. There’s something (irrationally) pleasing about working after the sun quits for the day. (The sun never rises or sets; it only looks like it does.) Is it the dirt under my fingernails? Is it the sweat on my brow? Is it (not me personally) making something? Taking a seed, planting it, helping it grow, watching it, waiting for it, and then picking the fruits of labour? Is it eating it? Tasting what was grown? Is it selling it? The (not really) free exchange of goods among (not really) equals? Is it knowing so many are dependent on these efforts? Those suit-wearing, expensivecar-driving, city types. Is it knowing something they don’t? Is it being certain that no matter what big ideas they have, what remarkable thoughts, they couldn’t consider anything other than these efforts if these efforts were to suddenly stop? Could they get in a crop to save their lives?
This land is your land? No. This land is my land.
A half hour into pirating someone’s crop, I stop, take off my pirated Pope’s pirate hat, and wipe my forehead with the back of my forearm. In one hand, I hold the Pope’s hat. In my other hand, I hold a baby. I hold it by its head. Eyes closed, silent, limp, it dangles. Knowing nothing. Not even wondering.
As we drive off in twelve pickup trucks, a few babies drop off there and here in the rear view mirrors—we piled them too high—and they shoot backwards, limbs flailing, on the dirt road and get run over by the truck following. The bodies are too small. The bones are too soft. When you run one over, you don’t even feel it.
We take the newly plucked to a big pit we dug in another field earlier in the evening. We unload. Afterward, when the gasoline is poured, the match is struck, and the pit burns hot and orange and bright and high into the night sky, reflecting back down off the clouds, I turn to one of my followers and say, “Did you know that vegetables are made of exactly the same things as people?”
“No.”
“Even soy beans. Same as people.”
“Wow.”
“We’re all cannibals.” I walk over to a truck. “You have to kill something to live,” I call back. I pull open the door, climb in, and shut the door behind me. I stare at the inferno in front of me. What is. I stare at the hell before me. What was. I stare at what I hope will be.
My raven lands on the hood of the truck. It stands there for a moment, looking at me. I like where its feathers end and its legs begin; it looks like it’s wearing pirate breeches. My raven walks to the edge of the hood. It craps white on the pickup truck in the night.
I close my eyes and try not to think about it. About us. The monsters, the future monsters, and the monster food: The (sometimes) living, breathing, walking (occasionally coherently) talking, gene machines that want little more than to avoid negative stimuli and find positive stimuli and then blindly reproduce so only a paltry half of their genes survive in an eternal dwindling, which will ultimately lead to only one truly successful set of genes, or to a group of mutations that are smart enough and strong enough to enslave everyone, gather the lion’s share of positive stimuli, and keep it for themselves, even though they can’t possibly use it all, and then simply store it, luxuriating in just a small portion of it, while all the others starve but blindly reproduce anyway. I try not to think about us eating ourselves alive until there’s nothing left but waste. The waste of waste.
My raven caws in warning.
I hear the pickup truck’s driver’s side door open. When I open my eyes, I see Sweetie Honey climbing in with me. My shoulders fall. I should’ve known better than to trust intelligence! This was a trap!
The raven stands on the edge of the truck’s hood, watching as my death nears. The raven is ready to take flight when my death arrives.
Sweetie is dressed in his dark red ninja outfit. His sword is unsheathed and he’s holding it. I wonder if he’s smiling under his ninja hood.
“Why’d you just steal a bunch of lettuce and burn it?” asks Sweetie, settling into the driver’s seat, closing the door behind him.
“It wasn’t lettuce,” I sigh, turning and looking straight ahead through the windshield at the hell before me and, juxtaposed against it, the raven. “It was babies.”
Sweetie looks at the side of my face for a long time. Then he says, “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to kill you now.” “All right. Just make it quick.”
He pauses. “Someplace you need to be?”
“No. I just don’t want a slow, painful death.” “Oh. Okay.”
I close my eyes, scrunch up my face, and wait for it, not knowing what I’m waiting for or if I’ll recognize it when it arrives. Then, dramatically, all of a sudden, totally out of nowhere, and to my utter astonishment, absolutely nothing happens.
“Are you going to do it?” I ask, with my eyes still closed and my face still scrunched.
“I can’t,” says Sweetie Honey.
“Because you’re a little bitch?” I open one eye and look over at him.
“No.”
“Just checking.” I relax.
“I can’t kill you because I love you, Man.” He’s staring at me very intently. “When I thought I’d decapitated you in the stadium, I was filled with a tremendous sense of loss and remorse. Not because, instead of killing you, I killed a poor, innocent actor. I was filled with a tremendous sense of remorse and loss because I thought I killed you. I love you, Guy Boy Man. I love you in a very gay way.” In his mask, I see his eyes. In his eyes, I see a plea.
I don’t say anything right away. I just take
it in. Not like that. No. I just think about what he’s said. Everything makes sense now. Well, not everything. But the pictures of shirtless hunks in his locker make sense. And it makes sense he wasn’t tempted by the four Eastern European girls.
“Jeez. I’m flattered, Honey. I’m sorry, though. I’ve chosen to be heterosexual.”
Sweetie’s shoulders fall. He turns away, staring out into the night. “I understand.”
“Do you want to be my homoerotic sidekick?” “I guess.” Sweetie is unmistakeably dejected.
I put my hand on his shoulder and give him an encouraging little shake. “Come on, Honey. I could really use your help.”
“I can’t stand the idea of being away from you,” sighs Sweetie. “So I will assist you. And every once in a while, I’ll look at you longingly.”
“Cool.”
A few moments pass in uncomfortable silence.
Finally, Sweetie says, “Since we’re no longer enemies, I feel obliged to tell you I never had sexual relations with Baby Doll15. The only physical contact she and I ever had was that phony kiss we shared in front of my locker in the hallway of Scare City High that day, in hopes of making you crazy with jealousy.”
I feel like I’m spinning, like I’m on a spinning planet spinning around a star spinning around the centre of a galaxy, which I am, obviously, but I feel it, and I feel it all of a sudden. I put my hands up on the roof of the truck, trying to keep from falling up into the dark sky.
Is everything lost between Baby Doll15 and I, or have we merely been separated because of a ninja’s (presumably recompensed) treachery? Are we still separated now merely due to a series of unfortunate miscommunications? Is there hope for us? Can we be together again? Can we be together again as we never were before? Forever?
No. I still can’t tell her I love her. Or I’ll lose all my money. Plus I ruined everything. I thought Sweetie Honey was having sex with Baby Doll15, so I had sex with Sweetie Honey’s mom a bunch of times. Now it turns out Sweetie Honey wasn’t having sex with Baby Doll15, but I still had sex with his mom a bunch of times. Then, to make matters worse, which doesn’t seem possible, I showed Baby Doll15 a recording of all the sex I had with Sweetie Honey’s mom.
“You should talk to her,” advises Sweetie. “Not my mom. You should never talk to, see, or in any way have any contact with my mother. You should talk to Baby Doll15.”
“I can’t. My life is a mess. I want better for her.”
“What about what she wants?”
“Just let it go, Sweetie.” I stick my hands in my crazy hair and pull. Then I say, “Hey. Where’s my hat?”
“What hat?” says Sweetie.
“Funny.” I open one hand between Sweetie and me, and wave my fingers toward myself a few times like, let’s have it.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sweetie crosses his arms. He turns away.
“Sweetie, are you the Pope’s homoerotic sidekick or mine?”
Sweetie just sits there for a while.
Then, reluctantly, Sweetie sticks his hand down the front of his pants and pulls out my hat. He passes it over to me, without looking at me. I put it back on.
I notice the crowd of hot young girls standing around the truck, staring at Sweetie and me, terrified. “It’s okay!” I call out to them through the window, waving at them through the windshield. “I’m not dead!”
One of them calls back, “We didn’t know what to do! We saw Sweetie get in the truck! We were so scared! One of us remembered seeing animals at a nearby farm so we ran over there and sacrificed a goat for you!”
“Good thinking!” I holler.
“The farmer saw us so we had to run like hell!”
“Okay!” I call, waving again.
“It might’ve been a dog!” calls one of them.
I don’t know what to say, so I just wave some more. “What do you want to do?” asks Sweetie.
I flop my head back against the headrest and glance over at him. Then I lazily look out the windshield at my hot young female followers comforting each other. “Are you any good as a detective?” I ask.
“I’m a ninja detective,” says Sweetie, and snorts.
“No, I know. And you’re an excellent ninja. I’ve seen your work. But I don’t know if you’re any good as a detective.”
Sweetie turns to me and explains, patiently, “Okay, see, when I said I was a ‘ninja detective’ just then I was using ‘ninja’ in that instance as an adjective to suggest that, as a detective, I’m incredibly good, even though I’m a ninja too.”
“As a detective, you’re ninja good?”
“Exactly,” says Sweetie.
“So let me get this straight.” I roll my head to the side. I stare at Sweetie. “Please, don’t think I’m doubting you or anything. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page: you’re a real detective. You bag evidence, follow up on leads, bust perps, and that kind of thing?”
“Clues,” says Sweetie, nodding. “I’m always on the lookout.”
“All right.” I roll my head away. “I’ve been having a hard time discerning the whereabouts of my arch enemy The Principal. To be honest, I haven’t tried that hard, assuming the task would be herculean, since herculean tasks are the only kind I take on, because I’m a lot like Hercules. Anyway. The only thing I have to go on is that someone hired you to derail my plans. Who?”
“I don’t know,” says Sweetie, starting the truck. “But I know where we can find out.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
The Ninja agency
Sweetie stops the truck in front of an inauspicious looking office building. He puts it in park. He turns off the engine. “TNA,” he says, leaning forward and looking through the windshield at the building stretching up into the dark. “The Ninja Agency. Not TNA: The Ninja Academy.” I check out the building too. “She’s not much of a looker.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about ninjas,” says Sweetie, snidely, “but we don’t like to stick out.” He opens the door and puts a foot down on the ground, silently. “Things that stick out have a tendency to get cut off.”
I frown, thinking about that. Then I open the door and get out.
Sweetie walks toward the building.
“It’s the middle of the night,” I say to Sweetie, catching up to him at the building’s front. “It won’t be open, will it?” I reach my hand out to try the door.
Sweetie grabs my wrist, stopping me. He holds it for a long time, looking at me in a way I consider curious.
He lets go of my wrist. He puts one finger over my lips.
Yes. It’s weird.
I don’t remember locks being picked. I don’t remember doors being opened. I don’t remember going inside. All I know is, I’m inside now, with my back pressed flat against the wall. (I have a faint recollection of something I thought should click but that didn’t.) I move my eyeballs in their sockets as quietly as I can. There’s no one in here, as far as I can tell, which means, obviously, the place is crawling with ninjas! Of course! It’s the middle of the night! When do ninjas do stuff? In the middle of the night!
The next thing I know, I’m facing the floor, about eight feet off the ground. I don’t look over my shoulder (in case my neck cracks) but I know Sweetie Honey has his back almost pressed to the ceiling (not actually touching it because the fabric of his outfit might brush against it); he’s doing the splits so his feet are flat on both sides of the hall’s walls, near the top; his hands are flat on the walls too; and he’s found some way to attach our bodies so we’re both facing the same direction. I don’t know if I’d rather be in this position, or face-to-face with him, in such close proximity. (I’m cool with it and everything; I just want it to be over soon.)
Our journey is neither fast nor slow. It stops and starts. We’re near the ceiling in a hallway one moment, hanging there for no apparent reason, and then, the next moment, we’re in a darkened custodial closet and Sweetie is peering through the crack he’s opened th
e door. One second he’s dragging me as he climbs an elevator cable; the next second we’re in an air duct, waiting for some danger I can’t see to pass.
We finally slip into a dark office on (what I guess is) the top floor. Sweetie replaces the ceiling tile.
Suddenly a male voice in the dark asks, “Why are you in my office?”
“That’s a valid question and I’m going to be completely honest with you,” I say. “I don’t know why I’m in your office”—I start thinking about it—“if this is, in fact, your office! As you claim! Okay. I realize that sounds a little paranoid. I’m sorry. That wasn’t very polite of me. I’m sure this is your office. I just. I have trust issues when it comes to dealing with ninjas.”
“It isn’t my office,” admits the male voice. “It’s my secretary’s office. I have to pass through it on the way to my office and I sensed your presence before I even entered.”
“Right on.”
“I said it was my office to keep you off balance.”
“Nice.”
“So what can I do you for?”
“Can we turn on the lights or something?”
“No.”
“Okay. Well, I’m here with Sweetie Honey. I don’t know why he’s being so quiet. That was stupid. He’s being so quiet because he’s a ninja. I just thought, since this is The Ninja Agency, he’d take the lead in any conversations, and I find myself a little unprepared for this high-level talk. The darkness is also kind of messing with me. Sweetie?”
“You double-booked the stadium,” says Sweetie, annoyed.
“You weren’t supposed to be at the stadium,” says the male voice in the dark. “That was personal on your part. Besides, Sweetie. We double-book all the time. You know that.”
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