Zombie, Ohio

by Scott Kenemore

With a desperate hope that the matter was still somehow unresolved, I took away my hand and drew air into my lungs again. It did not make me feel any better or worse to do so.

  No pulse. No sensation. No breathing.

  I was dead.

  Except, of course, I wasn't. I was walking and talking and thinking (to some extent, anyway). I just wasn't remembering things so well. But I was. I existed. Didn't I?

  A line from my training in philosophy came to me: "I think, therefore I am." A Frenchman-not in), Frenchman, but another one-had said that. I was definitely thinking. So I definitely was.

  But what was I?

  Then another line, this time from Arthur Conan Doyle, running something like: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." (It's funny, you know, what you remember and what you don't. I can remember Conan Doyle, but not the last five presidents. You could bring in a photo of my grandparents right now, and I think the odds would only be about fifty-fifty that I'd recognize them. Other things-poetry, legal boilerplate, advertising jingles-I can sometimes recall with crystal clarity.)

  I stood facing that mirror, my mind racing to find other explanations-to find any explanation-in which these facts could combine such that I was not a "moving cadaver." Yet there seemed only one solution to the puzzle. When I eliminated all the other possibilities, only one conclusion made any sense. (If being a zombie can be said to "make sense" at all.)

  I began to feel like a lawyer with a bum case. The "My client's not a zombie" scenario felt less and less plausible. The evidence against him was mounting with each passing moment. It was my job to defend him, but Christ, he looked culpable.

  Since I had awakened from the accident, I had not felt any pain. I had not felt hunger or thirst. I had not felt tired. And (as the line of empty urinals to my left reminded me) I had certainly not had to go to the bathroom. Add that to not having a pulse and the top of my head being shorn off, and, well, it was hard to find another explanation. Very hard.

  After a while, it was impossible.

  This conclusion, however, was less devastating than confusing. It was like waking up one day and finding evidence that (despite whatever you did for pay the day before) you're actually a fireman. Terrifyingly, you realize you know almost nothing about fighting fires. You've seen fire trucks before (you always pull over for them), but you have no clue how it works when they actually get to the fire. You have a vague inkling that ladders and Dalmatians are involved, but you've only got a stepladder for changing lightbulbs, and your dog's a Corgi who wets himself when it thunders.

  But there's the protective yellow suit and fireman's hat staring back at you from the closet, and your name is printed on both.

  Zombies killed people and ate them, for heaven's sake! Did I want to eat people? To kill people?! I didn't feel as though I did. Eating somebody's brain was not an idea that had ever occurred to me.

  But as it happened, I was not to have long to consider my new vocation.

  "Pete!"

  Outside in the hallway, someone was calling my name.

  "Pete, are you there ... ?"

  It was Sam. I could hear his heavy footsteps getting closer. I hurriedly replaced my black knit cap and washed the blood from my face.

  "Pete," Sam called, very close. He opened the bathroom door right behind me.

  "Yo," I said, wiping my cheeks with a paper towel.

  "You okay?" he asked. "You were taking a while."

  "I'm fine," I said. "Had to make sure I cleaned off real good. That zombie out there was ... gross."

  Sam cocked his head a little, as if he found something suspicious. He looked me over closely. For a second, I was sure that he knew. That in the light from the flashlight behind me, he could see through the hat-see the unnatural outline of my sheared scalp. I felt certain I had betrayed my condition.

  But then all he said was: "You really look like hell, Pete. When we get to Vanessa's, maybe you should take a nap or something."

  "Yeah," I said. "Sounds good to me."

  I pulled down my hat and followed him out of the bathroom.

  Sam and I crossed back over the dark campus, heading for his house. I was in a kind of stunned silence, and struggled to maintain the same chatty curiosity I'd managed just minutes before. I listened to the gravel crunch under my feet as I searched for something to say. I was glad for the darkness, and hoped it concealed any hint Sam might have had as to my status as a member of the walking dead. I nervously adjusted my hat two or three times-then made a point to stop touching it entirely for fear of drawing Sam's attention to my head.

  As we neared the red-roofed home that Sam had indicated was his, a pair of expensive-looking blue headlights suddenly appeared in the darkness at the end of the street. A shiny luxury car, jet-black yet positively gleaming in the moonlight, eased gently toward us. Its tinted windows were utterly impenetrable in the darkness. Although the general look of the automobile was sinister, Sam's lips curled into a bemused simile as it approached, and he raised an aria to hail it.

  "Who is this?" I asked him.

  "Our boss, John Bleckner," Sam said. "We should say hello."

  We stepped to the side of the road as the mass of polished steel and chrome pulled to a stop beside us. The passenger-side window slowly lowered, but revealed only the shadowy silhouette of a fat man in a dress shirt, the outline of his neck bulging like a giant dollop of sour cream.

  "Gentlemen," said the figure. He addressed us in deep, sonorous tones.

  "John, good to see you," Sam said. "You heading out?"

  "Indeed I am," said' Bleckner. The shadowy man acknowledged my presence with a nod, but did not address me directly.

  "Headed north, was it?" Sam asked.

  "Yes," Bleckner said. "To my brother-in-law's. The two of you are going to stay here ... in this place?"

  "I am," Sam answered. "Pete's going to take his chances over at Dennisburg, actually."

  "They may have the better football team, but they don't have our hill," Bleckner said. "You sure you don't want to just hop in and come with me?"

  For a moment I flinched, afraid that I had been prompted to speak to this man whom I remembered not at all. (Was I jocular with him, as Sam was? Deferent, as to a supervisor? Self-effacing, perhaps?) Before I could reply, Bleckner put the car into drive and began rolling forward. I understood with great relief that he had been joking.

  "Take care, you two," Bleckner said, and pulled the luxury car away. The car reached the end of the street and turned right, heading down the college hill.

  "Bosses," said Sam. "Even in a zombie apocalypse, they're still dicks."

  I sat in the passenger seat of Sam's new Scion xB and looked out the window. He drove down the hill past the still-dark Kenton College welcome sign and out into the freezing Ohio countryside. The snow fell absently, still struggling to accumulate. Sam's heater worked well, but I felt no change in temperature inside the car. Mirroring him, I removed my jacket. The black knit hat stayed on.

  Now I had a secret to keep from my friend (who was strangely my new friend and my old friend at the same time). Also, we were going to my girlfriend's house at a neighboring college, about an hour's drive away, and I had no idea how I ought to be acting. Should I seem anxious? Excited? Pleased? It was harder and harder to think about how I ought to behave. I looked out the window at the dark, cold countryside and felt nothing.

  Maybe Sam was right. Maybe a nap was in order. I had no idea if I could sleep (I can't), but had the notion that if I let myself shut down for a few minutes, perhaps things would somehow be all right. Before I could find the lever to recline my seat, we passed the wreckage of my car.

  "Christ, Pete," Sam said as he slowed. "That looks pretty horrible. "

  "Uh, yeah," I told him.

  "Did you go through the windshield?"

  "I don't remember," I told him honestly. "But I think yes."

  "Clearly totaled," Sam said, speeding up again
. "If the cops come up to the college asking, I'll say they can just haul it off. Although something tells me they're not going to get to it for a while."

  "Likely not," I agreed.

  We drove on.

  The countryside surrounding Gant is hoary and wild. There are sections of old-growth forest where it can feel like midnight at noon. There are forgotten train trestles that cross empty riverbeds where water has not flowed for a generation. There are abandoned farms, crumbling silos, and unkempt enclaves of Amish that the rest of the world is never meant to see.

  In the right light, these things can look eldritch and terrible. This was the right light.

  As we crept along the rural two-lane highways and connecting roads, I said to Sam: "You haven't once suggested I call herVanessa. That just occurred to me."

  "You can try if you want to," he replied. "Most cell services have been down for a while, and the landlines are going too."

  I shrugged and took out the unfamiliar phone.

  "I don't see her name," I said, scrolling through the choices.

  "Your nickname for her is jeeps," Sam told me.

  "Oh," I said. It was the first choice. But when I pressed call, the phone didn't even ring. Eventually, it flashed a NO SERVICE message.

  "Told ya," said Sam.

  "Are all the utilities like this?" I asked.

  "They come and go," he said. "Water and sewer have been fine. I wouldn't count on trash collection anytime soon, though."

  We drove on, and I kept thinking about how dark it was. Even along country roads-roads where there are no streetlights or traffic lights to speak of-you could usually count on seeing lights in houses or security lights near farm sheds. On this night, however, there was just nothing. It was like everybody had decided to use darkness as a camouflage, or like the countryside itself was hiding. It was so very dark. Only the trees along the sides of the road reached up out of the blackness to greet us.

  "I never noticed how much light there was before," I told Sam.

  He nodded, but made no answer. It wasn't nice to think about so much dark.

  Then, after about twenty minutes, I did see electric lights in the distance as we drew near the intersection of two country highways. A pair of still-functioning streetlights that marked the crossing cast a bright and welcoming illumination. Then, when we got closer, I saw that there was more.

  At one corner of this intersection, a long-shuttered gas station sat quietly. Diagonally across from it was a small, bunker-like country bar. The Labatt Blue and Budweiser neon signs were switched off, but a dim light from deeper inside showed that-although the dingy paper sign said CLOSED-there still might be inhabitants within. Although there was no other traffic to be seen, Sam carefully slowed the Scion as he prepared to carry us across the intersection. Then he slowed more, and came to a stop. He put the car into reverse and we began creeping backward.

  "What're you-

  "I think there's something going on behind that bar," Sam said to me, quiet and intense, like a concerned father. I craned my neck and tried to see.

  "There," Sam said. Then, after a moment, added: "Oh, fuck . . . "

  I looked into the darkness. Sam had been right; there was definitely something going on. I followed his gaze. In the shadows behind the tiny country tavern, two skeletal figures crouched over another, lying facedown on the pavement. The crouching figures were eating the body on the ground, carefully and methodically pulling flesh from its back.

  "Christ," I said. "Should we do something?"

  "That guy is already dead-got to be," Sam said.

  We sat and watched, unsure of what to do.

  I rolled down my window. This seemed to concern Sam. He looked hard at me, but I just kept pressing the button until it was entirely down. I could hear the sound of them eating, and it transfixed me. It put a deep, profound longing in my soul. Or perhaps the longing had always been there, and I had only just noticed it.

  What can I compare it to? A symphony? No. It was nothing so ordered. A couple making love? It was exciting, but not in that way. If anything, it made me recall childhood memories of walking to play tackle football with my friends in the park. Hearing them there ahead of me, already playing as I approached, and knowing that soon I would be joining in the game. I could hear the flesh being pulled from the body. I could hear smacking and chewing and methodical swallowing down a throat that did not need to breathe.

  "Can you turn the car, so we can see them with the headlights?" I asked intensely.

  "What?" Sam said. "You want them to come after us or something?"

  "They won't cone after us," I said. "We're safe in here." I had, of course, no authority to know that this was the case.

  "The headlights won't scare them off," Sam said, turning the car.

  "I don't want to scare them off," I said. "I want to see them better."

  Sam reluctantly backed up and turned the Scion until the beams hit the zombies square in their faces. (They looked up, but only for a second. We were a momentary distraction, like flies at a picnic. The creatures returned almost instantly to their food.)

  I will remember those zombies forever. What a sight! One was an older man, dressed like a trucker in jeans and suspenders. His face was gaunt from rot, but he'd clearly been husky before passing away. While he ate, gore dribbled down his white beard like sloppy Joe. The other zombie was a younger, hale looking man. In life he might have been a high school quarterback. He wore a dark suit and black shoes-certainly the clothes he had been buried in. The victim beneath the zombies was nearly torn apart, making it almost impossible for me to guess what he (or, I suppose, she) had once been.

  I continued to struggle with the sensation awakening as I watched them. What more can I compare it to?

  Do you remember your first sexual experience? You do? Then go earlier. Try to think of your first sexual inkling at all. The first time it occurred to you that maybe what was between your legs was, kinda, sorta, what it was all about. The first time you understood why the adults around you got so quiet and uptight when it came to fucking. Try to remember the moment when you understood why women were coy and men were brutes. Think about how your world changed.

  Have you ever been addicted to a drug? Good. Then skip ahead to that part where you were really in the throes of it. When you stopped caring whether or not it was fucking up your family or your friends or your body. Go to that point where it was so incredibly good that your mind would find any way to rationalize it. Not that you ever thought doing smack or snorting blow was good for you ... just that it was acceptable. And even as your friends left you and your health deteriorated before your eyes, remember how you still found a way to decide that it was acceptable? Then think about eating dead people's brains, and think about how good it would have to feel for you to start rationalizing that.

  Have you ever "found yourself'? Like, have you moved to a new place (maybe Manhattan, New York; maybe Manhattan, Kansas), and thought to yourself. "So this is who I am. Shit! So this is how I always should have been living."

  Have you?

  Because it was something like that.

  Watching those zombies eat that raw red flesh, I understood that I'd encountered a thing that was going to be important to me for the rest of my days. I understood that I was feeling something that was going to change what and who I was forever.

  It was me.

  All the anger and fear that had filled me as I had looked into my own head in the music building bathroom began, somehow, to dissipate. I felt no fear or shame at all. Any trepidation was replaced by the excitement of being a part of something illicit and exciting, like a conspiracy. There were tinges of glee and delight. I was looking at something that was delightful. I felt delighted. These new feelings helped the hole in my head to "make sense" in some strange, unfathomable way.

  At the same time, I had the sense of being overwhelmed. I was not completely ready for these feelings. Not yet. Not all at once. (But soon, I felt sure ... soon. Yes.
It would come sooner rather than later, I would be able to be a part of it. This world would also be my world.)

  I began to feel a little sick to my stomach-a little pained all over. The sickness of the inchoate. The adolescent stickiness of strange new feelings. The sickness of one who is using new muscles for the first time. (I call it a sickness, but I trust I've made clear that I can in no way become sick.)

  By the time Sam pulled the car away, I was shaking with excitement.

  "Sorry, Pete," he said, mistaking my vibrations for tremors of terror. "I forgot you hadn't seen them eating before. We've all been inundated with it on TV for going on three weeks now. We're kind of immune."

  He pulled the Scion across the empty intersecting highways and we left the zombies alone in the quietly drifting snow.

  The village surrounding Dennisburg College looked remarkably like the village surrounding Kenton. Pleasant lawns and well-kept churches and academic buildings. Modest homes for professors. (And what was clearly an art professor's house-structurally like all the others, but painted ten colors and with a bunch of statues and shit out in the yard.) Dogs and cats were the only moving things. Sam had to slow the car as they darted across the road like squirrels. But they weren't squirrels. Many still wore collars and tags. It was clear that quite a few house pets had simply been released by their owners when the zombies had set in.

  Sam said: "Not long now. Vanessa lives on the far side of town. Is this familiar to you, Pete? Any of this?"

  I looked around at the night-washed buildings. They were utterly alien.

  "Ehh, maybe a little," I told him.

  "It'll come back," he said reassuringly. "Seeing Vanessa will help you remember. I'm sure of that."

  "So here's a question . . . ," I said, clearing my throat. "These zombies ... Has anybody, like, gotten better from it?"

  "Gotten better?" Sam said, looking at me askance.

  "Yeah," I said. "Maybe, like, they became a zombie and then they ... got better again? Somehow?"

  Sam shook his head.

  "Not that I've heard," he told me. "I don't think zombies `get' better. I think they get you-or you get them."