Zombie, Ohio

by Scott Kenemore

  "A watch?" I asked in a gravelly voice. "What do you do when you ... I mean, have you ... seen anything?"

  Sam nodded, and began to light another cigarette.

  As we walked across the darkened campus, I felt twinges of familiarity come and go with every other building. There were small cottages, stern academic buildings, a neo-Gothic dining hall that looked like a castle. At times, I would sense a strong association with a particular building or house, but I was never able to say exactly what it was.

  "You can kill them," Sam said. "All you have to do is destroy the head-blow it apart or cut it off. And for some reason, the government isn't telling people this. I think they want to keep the army in charge, but you can't keep a secret with the Internet. So, yeah, you can kill them, and everybody pretty much knows it. We've had to kill three so far-two from the graveyard, and one that just walked into town from who-knows-where."

  I "I saw, on the TV, that they're calling them `moving I noted.

  "Yeah, well ... ," Sam said, taking a long drag, "remember, that's coming from the same people who want you to call global warming `climate change' or a barracks full of sleeping soldiers a `target-rich environment.' Call 'em whatever you want. They are what they are."

  "Can I say it?" I asked.

  "Sure you can," Sam replied.

  "Zombies," I said. "We're under attack by fucking zombies. The dead are rising from the grave and eating people! ... they are eating people, right?"

  "Oh yeah," Sam said.

  "Zombies are fucking eating people!" I shouted to the quiet Ohio town. My voice echoed across the empty campus.

  "Feel better?" Sam asked.

  "Not at all," I told him.

  "Neither did any of us," responded Sam. "It's like ... It's like war or something-not that I've ever been to war. But all your life you wonder what it'd be like-standing there in the trenches, shooting and getting shot at-and it's kind of interesting and almost romantic in a sick, weird way. Then you get there and you find out: `Oh, so this is what it's like ... It fucking sucks.' "

  "You've thought about zombies happening before?" I asked him.

  "Yeah," he said. "Didn't you ever?"

  "I dunno," I told him. "I can't remember."

  We turned down a connecting street and passed rows of tiny homes. Their uniform appearance extended beyond their clapboard construction and uninspired architecture. Everything looked shuttered, dark, dead.

  "Do you remember any of this?" Sam asked.

  I shrugged and shook my head.

  "How about my house-the one on the left there?" Sam tried. "The one with the red roof?"

  "No," I said. "Hell, I had to use my driver's license just to find my house. This is all foreign to me."

  We crossed into an area of campus that appeared to be entirely composed of academic buildings. One of them, a large L-shaped structure with prominent columns, was being lit from behind by lights on a stand. I thought it looked like a roadwork site at night, without the pavement or steamrollers. As we neared, I realized that what was being illuminated was a small-town graveyard.

  Perhaps a hundred headstones, most of them very old, jutted out of the ground like crooked teeth. Many of the monuments, too, stood at odd angles. Two or three modern mausoleums huddled like hunkers in the graveyard's center. At least one grave looked disturbed, as though something had pushed up and out of it. At the very hack, against the far tree line, a row of cameras on tripods pointed back in toward the graves, their power lights shining like rows of red eyes.

  In front of the graveyard, three men in heavy coats and winter hats sat together on cheap lawn chairs. Large guns rested at their feet. They chatted quietly and idly, like fishermen on a riverbank. One of them was the guard with whom I had spoken previously. One, a thin and intense-looking man, held a laptop that was plugged into a generator. There was an open case of beer on the ground next to them.

  "Do you remember these guys?" Sam asked me softly. "Just be honest."

  "No," I said. "I saw the guard before."

  "Starks; his name is Starks," Sam whispered. "The one with the laptop is Professor Puckett from the music department. The other man is Dr. Bowles, from campus health services."

  "Thanks," I said. "They feel familiar, but I appreciate the refresher."

  We drew closer, crunching leaves and frost underfoot.

  "How's the hunting, fellas?" Sam called.

  The men turned and two of them smiled. Puckett did not look up from his laptop.

  "No action just yet," said Starks, the security guard, indicating the motionless graveyard with a sweep of his hand.

  "Can we trouble you for a moment, Doc?" Sam said.

  Dr. Bowles-an athletic-looking man with a round face and small glasses-nodded and set down his Coors.

  "Pete's run his car off the road," Sam said. "He looks fine, but he's having a bit of memory loss. I thought you should take a look. Could be amnesia."

  Bowles smiled and wrinkled his nose, as if amused by this amateur diagnosis.

  "Memory loss, huh?" Bowles said, rising a little unevenly. (I saw that there were more than a few empty Coors under the chair.)

  "Yes," I said seriously. "I hit a tree on my way out of town. I feel basically okay just got a few cuts on my hands and stuff-but my memory is ... dodgy. I can't seem to place things."

  "Well, you made it back here," Bowles said dismissively.

  I nodded.

  "A little memory loss can happen when you go smacking your head into things," the doctor said. "Here, follow my finger with your eyes.

  I watched the tip of his gloved finger as it moved up and down, then left and right.

  "Good," he said. "Now do it again without moving your head."

  "Oh," I said. "Sorry."

  I followed his finger again as he repeated the motions.

  "Looks good," he said. "You're probably a little concussed." He gripped my arm, fiddling with my coat around the wrist to take my pulse. Then Professor Puckett dropped his laptop and started shouting at the top of his lungs.

  "One in the back!" he called. "One in the back! Behind the Andrews crypt! Quickly-get the light!"

  Everyone sprang into action. Puckett picked up a shotgun with one hand and a rusty sledgehammer with the other. He bounded lithely into the field of graves. Lights on stands were hastily moved in the direction of a crypt in the center of the graveyard. Next to me, Sam cocked his shotgun. I drew the blue metal revolver from my trousers. Together, we cautiously followed the other men.

  Once the lights were placed near, it was easy to see what the camera had shown Professor Puckett. Behind a large marble crypt reading Andrews, the earth was moving. It was a plain-looking headstone, relatively new. The lettering announced that the inhumed man was named John Gypsum Beard, and that he had died at the age of fifty-six. All five of us crowded around, watching the patch of earth slowly move up and down.

  "Beard!" said the doctor, with a laugh. "That old devil! He was the groundskeeper when I started here-used to drink himself insensible every night. I told him it was no way to live, but there was just no getting through to him. You remember Beard, right Starks?"

  "Oh yeah," agreed the guard. "He's the one who ran the new plower into the side of the cafeteria. I was surprised they didn't let him go just for that."

  "Shhh," said the intense music professor. He turned and made a hand-lowering motion, as if quieting a choir at rehearsal.

  Starks rolled his eyes, but fell silent. All we could hear was the shifting of earth and a horrible scratching.

  Then-penetrating obscenity!-a ghostly white finger poked its way up through the soil like an evil worm. I started, pointing my gun wildly in the direction of the single wiggling digit.

  "Whoa there," said Dr. Bowles. "Not yet, Pete. You've got to wait for the head."

  I lowered my weapon and tried to relax. We stood around the grave in a semicircle, stroking our chins thoughtfully like zookeepers watching an animal give birth. We didn't have to wait long.
Soon an entire hand was out, grasping gently at the cool winter air. Then a wrist. Then half of a meaty white forearm.

  It was hard to believe I was seeing it, but there it was.

  "Wow ... they usually take much longer," the doctor said. "This one is coming along nicely. No complications."

  "The trick is to get them when they've just come up," said Puckett, still holding both the sledgehammer and the firearm. "At first, they're clumsy. They'll stumble and fall down a lot, like a newborn horse. But if you let 'em work things out for a little bit-get their sea legs, or whatever-then they get focused. And mean. That's when they decide to come after you."

  I looked again at the pudgy white limb as it groped the empty air. The wrist bobbed and the fingers pinched, like the hand of a puppeteer who had lost his Punch or Judy. It was almost more comical than ominous. Almost.

  Bowles walked away and returned with his half-full Coors.

  "I'm impressed with the strength of this one," he said, taking a sip.

  "Impressed?" I asked.

  "Sure," said the doctor. "He had to go all the way through the coffin, then negotiate six feet of dirt. He's recently deceased, more or less, and modern coffins are heavy and strong."

  "The Beard funeral was a charity case, I heard," Puckett responded, swinging his giant hammer like a batter in an on-deck circle. "The college paid for that nice headstone because he was an employee. When it came to the casket, though-something nobody'd see-I heard they gave him the same cardboard box they give all the vagrants who die in Knox County."

  "Cardboard ... ," the doctor said, stroking his chin. "Yeah, I could see him getting through that a little easier."

  I looked back down. Now the hand was slowly attempting excavation-intentionally moving earth, widening the hole.

  "Won't be long now," Starks said. "Let's all move back a little."

  We stepped back as a second hand emerged from the grave. It, like the first, began clearing dirt away. The process was interminably slow. (At times, I had the impulse to go over and help the ghostly hands with their work, just to get it over with ... Eventually, however, the thing did it on its own, and we began to see the top of a bald pate emerging from the hole.

  "Okay," said Puckett, excitedly raising his rifle.

  "Wait for it," said the doctor.

  We all readied our guns. Sam turned to me. He opened his mouth and winced, as though about to bring up something awkward.

  "Peter, why don't you sit this one out," Sam eventually said. "You've never shot at one before, and you've just had a big blow to the head."

  The other men looked over at me doubtfully as I stood there with my enormous revolver.

  "Oh, okay," I said, lowering the gun. "Sure thing. You guys go on ahead."

  "No worries, Pete," said Puckett, who clearly relished what was about to occur. "We got this. We got it just f ne ...

  In that instant, a horrible low moan came from the opening grave. It was subterranean and more animal than man, but it was still the moan of something aware.

  I saw movement. The head struggled to free itself.

  "I'm calling it," said Puckett, sighting the emerging pate. "This one is officially fair game."

  They all took aim, but did not fire. Two arms awkwardly flailed above the top of a head. (It reminded me of a man trying to put on a turtleneck.) Then, suddenly, the body shifted and the head stuck out all the way up to the mouth. A heavy, flabby face turned toward us. The eyes opened and saw. The thing was looking at us. I had just a moment to meet those eyes before they were blown apart by Puckett's gun.

  At the moment of impact, the face exploded completely and the head jerked backward violently. Then the other men began to let fly, and the rest of the head began to deteriorate. The noise of the firearms was deafening (although it did not, in any sense of the word, "hurt" my ears). The zombie's arms fell awkwardly, and the body stopped moving. All that was left protruding up from the grave was a jawbone and some spinal cord. The hands flopped once, then ceased all movement.

  The men lowered their guns. Puckett picked up the sledgehammer and stalked over to the now-headless cadaver. He regarded the bloody stump thoughtfully, like a painter trying to decide if a canvas required one final brushstroke. Then he hefted the hammer high and struck like a man swinging to ring the bell at a carnival. Blood and brain matter splattered out and up. Part of the frothy spray hit me right in the face.

  "Bastards," pronounced Puckett, spitting out the word.

  "Pffft," I said, wiping blood from my mouth and nose.

  "Dammit, Puckett," Sam said. "You got Pete right in the face."

  "It's okay," I told him, more startled than disgusted.

  "Davin, you got coated," said Starks, looking me over.

  "Yeah, you should probably go wash that off," said Bowles, ejecting a shell from his weapon. "Nobody's turned into a zombie from eating zombie blood, but you probably don't want that stuff around your eyes and mouth."

  "What the fuck, Puckett?" Sam said, still angry at the music professor.

  "Sorry," Puckett said. "I'm just, you know, making sure."

  "I'm fine, really," I insisted. "Don't make so much of it."

  The doctor handed me a heavy flashlight with plastic sides that glowed.

  "The music building's unlocked," he said. "Go into the men's room and have a rinse-off."

  "Yeah, then we'll get you over to Vanessa's," Sam said.

  "That sounds like a good plan," I told him, and took the flashlight.

  So anyhow.

  I don't have to tell you that there are moments that change you forever-that blast apart your old world, and leave you trembling and alone in a new one. There are metaphorical doors through which you walk (hardly noticing at the time that they are doors at all) that nonetheless quickly close behind you, forever preventing a return.

  There are accidents. There are tragedies. There are ill-considered tattoos and piercings. There are things we replay in our minds thousands of times, thinking of all the ways they could have been avoided or delayed.

  But there are also first loves. Moments of self-discovery and moments of bliss. There are religious revelations. There are Eureka! moments in research. There are inspired performances that make you suddenly know you want to be a dancer, or a singer, or a didgeridoo player. These also have a way of shattering you and what you used to be, and replacing you with a new version. A "You 2.0."

  In my case, one of those important doors-the most important door, in fact-turned out to be the one that led to the filthy student men's room in the darkened bowels of the Kenton College music building.

  As I shuffled inside that cavernous, 1960s-style washroom and set the heavy plastic flashlight on a metal lip above the sink, my only thought was cleaning zombie goo off my face. The flashlight beam shone straight up, but the glowing plastic sides were bright and gave me a pretty good view of myself in the mirror.

  Head to toe, I looked terrible. On a scale of one to ten, I was a .5 and sinking. The skin on my face hung flabbily. It was pale. Sallow. The circles under my eyes looked especially pronounced in the reflected glow of the flashlight. On the upside, there were only a few flecks of gore from the "moving cadaver" on my lips and chin. I turned on the faucet and leaned over to splash water on my face. That was when my hat fell off and I noticed that the top of my head was missing.

  There is, frankly, no other way to describe what I saw.

  Most of my head, clearly, was still there. My head and forehead were the same as they had always been. But the top was another matter. It had been removed by an almost surgical slice-a clean cut off of the topmost part. It was like a case of male-pattern baldness, except that my "bald spot" was now a "skull and top-of-brain spot."

  When I had kneeled down to gaze into the side-view mirror of my wrecked car, I had been very, very close and had only seen my facial features. But now, in this large bathroom mirror, I could see my entire head. And my entire head was not entirely there.

  I looked into t
hat bathroom mirror for a long time, studying the ridges in my brain, and thought: "Is that the top of my brain? That's not the top of my brain ... is it? It can't be. There's no way. But wait-is that the top of my brain?"

  It was. It did not seem possible, but it was. Then I wondered: "How? How can I be seeing my own brain? How is that possible?"

  It took only a few moments to hit me.

  "Maybe I can see my own brain because I'm dead."

  My hand shot to my throat. It tightened, and then tightened some more. Nothing. No pulse at all. I squeezed as hard as I could. I couldn't even choke myself. That reflex was also gone. No gagging, no matter how hard I gripped.

  I tried my wrist next, where the doctor had been about to take my pulse. Once more, nothing. I reached my hand underneath my coat and shirt, feeling desperately for any movement in my chest. I placed my hand over my heart and waited. The answer was the same: Zero beats per minute, with a blood pressure of zero over zero.

  What about breathing? It seemed to me that I drew breathwhen I spoke, and so forth-but did I need to?

  There was an easy way to find out. I took a deep breath and held it. Then I clicked the button on the side of the Timex Indiglo on my wrist and the hands became incandescent. I watched the second hand as it made a full circle of the dial, and then another.

  When five minutes had passed and I felt nothing, I decided I must be cheating-unconsciously breathing through my nose somehow, or taking little sips of air with my lips. I pinched my nose and mouth closed like a cannonballer jumping into a pool. Still, the hands on the watch moved, and still I felt no impulse to aspirate. How long were you supposed to be able to not breathe, I wondered? How long had that flamboyant magician held his breath in the disappointing television special? I couldn't seem to remember. (But I did remember the disappointing television special, which was kind of cheering in a way ...)

  As I neared the fifteen-minute mark, I decided that this was some kind of world record. I was the new champion breath-holder guy. Or else ...

  Or else I did not need to breathe.