Zombie, Ohio

by Scott Kenemore

  I looked around for more targets, but there was nobody standing upright. In the morning haze I could only make out dark bodies on the grass. Were they dead, pretending to be dead, or just taking cover?

  A bullet ping!-ed on the van next to me. Then another. I scanned the tree line and saw a gunpowder flash as another shot ricocheted off the old Dodge.

  "Fuck that," I said, and took off lumbering for the trees. I did not head directly for the shooter, but rather for the start of the tree line, perhaps fifty yards from him. He shot at me twice more, hitting both times. Once, opening a hole in the center of my chest (with a great poof.T and once nicking my ear. (A tiny piece of earlobe fell away.)

  The positioning of this second shot-I considered as I jumped into the trees-might indicate that he had started aiming for my head. He might understand that I was undead. That was a serious concern.

  I fell to the ground amidst the trees, holding my ax to my chest. I remained perfectly still, listening. A few shots popped in the distance, but the shooter up the tree line had fallen silent.

  As quietly as I could, I began to crawl toward him. At one point, I put my hand on something fleshy and warm, and shrank back, thinking it was a living person. It was a person-a young man with corn rowed hair-but he was very dead. I crawled on, until I could look into the clearing and see the van I'd been standing near. I knew the shooter was close.

  Then-disaster!-I saw Vanessa skulk around the edge of the van. No sooner did I make her out than a gun fired. Someoneless than five feet from me, but utterly hidden by the underbrushshot at Vanessa. And connected. She spun and went down, right next to the van. I saw red. Literally.

  My vision changed. My body became focused in a way I'd never experienced. It wasn't a good thing. It was terrifying.

  I rose to my knees and raised the ax.

  The gunman in the grass was quick. He saw me and got off three shots before I buried the ax in his chest. He got off another before I pulled it out and put it back in again. (All of his shots missed, but still, his resolve was impressive.)

  I chopped him several times-his face, his chest, even his groinuntil I was sure he was very, very dead. Then I picked up his revolver and marched out across the misty morning field toward my girlfriend's body.

  Nothing moved. The guns had fallen silent. Dead people were all around on the ground like sacks.

  I got close and said: "Vanessa? It's Peter."

  She started upward-evidently still alive-and pointed her rifle at my face. She froze, breathing hard. Her face was pulled taut like a grotesque mask-all terror and teeth, bone-white in the cool light of dawn.

  I looked her over. The bullet had torn through her coat and grazed her arm. It did not look serious. I took a knee next to her, shielding her against the van with my back. "Can I see?" I said.

  She relaxed her gun and nodded.

  I removed her coat.

  "This doesn't look too bad," I said after an inspection. The bullet had skimmed down the side of her arm, plowing up a fold of flesh as it went. (Really, it was just one long scratch. Not that deep. Could've been much, much worse.)

  "I think you'll live," I told her. "Here, wrap your coat around it."

  She obeyed.

  I surveyed the battlefield where nothing moved. It was silent.

  I held her, seeking to give protection by wrapping my bulletproof zombie body around hers.

  We stayed like that for a long, long time.

  Dawn finally broke, and it became apparent that everyone was dead. Everyone but us. (Okay, technically, just Vanessa.) Dead or gone. Disappeared into the countryside.

  Vanessa winced a little when she moved her arm, but seemed to be adjusting. I thought it would probably be okay if it didn't get infected. The thing to do would be to get her to a doctor. Perhaps that Bowles fellow back at Kenton College would do.

  "How's it feeling?" I asked her.

  "Stings a little," she said.

  "I'm full of so many bullets, I'm surprised I don't clink when I walk," I said, to cheer her.

  "Yeah, well ... you're different," she replied quietly.

  "I think everybody is dead, or playing dead," I told her.

  "Yeah," she said.

  The response was curt and solemn. It made me wonder if I didn't possess a zombie's supernatural coldness-if some of my more tender emotions had not been sapped along with my heartbeat and brain waves. Here I was, joking and starting to think about next steps. Here, too, was Vanessa, in shock and afraid, and utterly devastated by the grim scene of murder all around us.

  The difference between us felt wider than ever. And still, something in my DNA, my dying cells, my silent heart, knew that this was someone I had once deeply loved, and still did, in my own way. Despite her emotionality (and complicity in my being tied to a fucking tree), she offered direction and meaning in a world of chaos and disappointment. I was ready to serve her, emotional or not. I had abandoned her before. I would not do it again.

  Still hesitant to make myself a target, I surveyed all that I could from my side of the van. Still, nothing moved. Bodies decorated the grass like forgotten parcels.

  "Do you think you could walk if you had to?" I whispered to Vanessa. "I mean, not right now, but maybe later?"

  She looked displeased at the idea, but managed to nod.

  "Okay," I said. "Look, I'm going to scout around for a second. We need to get out of here."

  While Vanessa hid against the van, I began to pick my way around the battlefield. I don't mean to be dramatic, using that word-or, you know, to denigrate real battles-but that was the only word for it.

  When the humans-these same humans who were now dead all around me-had shot and flambeed my zombie battalion, that had been a massacre, not a "battle." (I think for something to be a battle, both sides have to fight, at least a little bit.) But this had been a battle. Men, women, and even a few children were dead all around me. And they had fought and killed one another.

  Some had fled, but more than half of Vanessa's group was clearly dead. I didn't know how many people had composed the attacking gang, but I counted a good ten of them dead too. (Some from this group had likely also slipped away when things had gotten too hairy.)

  Once, I called "Hello?" as loud as I could, just to see if anything moved. But there was nothing. I returned to Vanessa. She looked up at me wonderingly, but I just shook my head and shrugged. She understood.

  Later in the morning, we started talking about what to do. For a second time, I was stymied by a shot-up radio. It turned out that Vanessa's group had had just one radio to connect them to the army and the other group of friendly humans. We found it blown to pieces by a shotgun, a few feet from its owner, who had met a similar end. Next, we tried to start the van, and found that this, too, would be an impossibility. Several rounds had hit the aging Dodge, and colored fluids now pooled below it. I found the keys, but couldn't even get the engine to turn over.

  "I don't know what's wrong with it," I told Vanessa.

  "Looks like it could be about twenty things," she said.

  Soon, we began noticing a strong gasoline smell, and decided it would be dangerous to try anything further. Wherever we were going next, we were walking.

  "So the other group of humans-the one with your sister and kids-they're all headed for Kenton, too, to rendezvous with the military?" I asked Vanessa.

  "As far as I know, they still are," she said. "Unless they come here looking for us. They might do that if they've suddenly lost radio contact. The other group knew where we were. God, this is so fucked up ..."

  "It feels to me like we've got two options," I said. "We can either wait here and see if your friends come after us, or we can head for Kenton College."

  Vanessa grew skeptical.

  "And what if we get to Kenton and they're not there?" she asked. "I'm not leaving Knox County without my girls, even if it is a fucked-up murder land."

  "Wait," I said. "Let's think this through. I'm your ticket out, right? So if your s
ister and your kids get to Kenton but I'm not there, then the whole deal's queered. No sense trusting the military to let your people on their helicopters anyway."

  "You're right," Vanessa said. (I was glad she saw my point.) "We have to go to the college. They might send somebody here to check up on us, but it wouldn't be the women and children. We'll have to leave a note or something. Say we went to Kenton."

  "Good thinking," I said.

  We scrounged around the back of the van and found a Bic. I ripped the cover off the van's owner's manual and used the flip side to write on. We left the note in a conspicuous place, but made the missive's content general enough that a hostile couldn't use it to follow us. (We were attacked, but survivors are headed to the aforementioned place, to do the aforementioned thing. The aforementioned zombie is still with us.)

  Before we set off, I shouted as loud as I could one last time, and so did Vanessa. We shot our guns into the air as well. Gave any survivors (friend or foe) the opportunity to cone out of hiding in the forest and join us on our pilgrimage. None did. There was no response.

  Alone together, we moved off toward Kenton College and a meeting with the U.S. military.

  It would not be a long walk to Gant, so far as I could tell. With luck, and if we kept a good pace, we might make it there by late afternoon. The maps put it more or less straight south, but it would mean a march across farniland and through forests.

  I was inexhaustible and accustomed to this kind of travel. Vanessa, in contrast, was wounded and sleep-starved and scared. The trick would be helping her keep up with me.

  We carried maps, a compass, and food and water for Vanessa. Also guns. I'd plucked as many as I could carry from corpses on the battlefield. Which was a lot.

  "You look like a walking bomb," Vanessa said at one point. It was a lousy analogy. (Yeah, I thought, I'm carrying a lot of guns ... Just like a bomb. [Still, I took the essence of her point. It u'as a lot of firepower.])

  The morning was beautiful. No gray sky, only blue. The wind whipped up smells of trees with new buds and moisture and birds. Change. It smelled like change. The scent made me smile. (Not that the cold bothered me, or that the warmer wind would feel any better on my zombie skin, but it said that some things were older and stronger than even a zombie apocalypse. There were seasons. There was the Earth. There was the unstoppable cycle of snow and rain and water. Animals would still breed. Bears would still awaken from hibernation. Zombies were a force to be reckoned with, true, but we were nothing compared to spring.)

  As we walked on through the sparkling morning, I stopped short of thinking to myself- "This too shall pass." The fact of its being spring did not change my status as a member of the walking dead. I was still technically dead, and with little idea as to what exactly the future held for me. I was a zombie, was a zombie, was a zombie. Full stop. I still had no heartbeat. I was decaying. And, boy oh boy, did I enjoy eating people's brains.

  And yet there were changes-lesser changes, but ones that I could not deny. For one, there was the fact that whatever force had been reanimating the dead seemed to have stopped. When people died now, they just stayed dead. (None of Vanessa's friends-or their attackers-had risen from the battlefield.) There were still zombies, but there were no new zombies.

  And if that could change, then what else might? I had noticed no lessening of my own zombie-prowess. I was still as brain-thirsty as I'd ever been. But if there was a sea change afoot, who was to say what the next manifestation was to be? Perhaps whatever force or spell had caused the dead to rise would likewise cease to function soon. Zombies everywhere might suddenly stop, falling down deadagain in our tracks. Yet that could just as easily be incorrect; we might also "live" for another ten thousand years.

  This was new territory for everyone. Nobody knew what lay around the next bend, or what would ensue over the coming months and years.

  As I strode through the forest next to Vanessa, I considered that it was only she who would have a chance at having a normal, human life after this. Humans had families, and societies, and they could reproduce and pass on who they were and what they stood for. They were something through which life-force and culture flowed-from their ancestors to them, and through them into their own children (and also into friends and other people they touched).

  Zombies were different. We did not improve or nurture one another. We were ... something else. I couldn't remember anything about Mama and Papa Mellor, or what they might have instilled in me, but it seemed like a zombie was largely his own man. Only recent events ruled my mind and my world.

  And while I wasn't one of the humans, I was still something.

  I was a thinking thing.

  I was.

  In conducting Vanessa safely to Gant, Ohio, I hoped that in some small way, I was making a contribution to a chain of humanity that would last.

  It may well have been delusion or wishful thinking, and I understood that-then as I do now. I was a dead thing, and Vanessa was alive. However much I wished or hoped, whatever I did to help her along, nothing could change my status. In a way, I may have been angling only to betray my kind for better treatment. (Did I dream of becoming some sort of "house zombie," regarded as "one of the good ones?") I thought about it, and the answer was no. I had no wish to be elevated in the sight of humans, or to be adjudged separate from the rest of the zombie community. I was just a zombie who liked this woman, Vanessa. A zombie in love, but still a zombie.

  The more I thought about it all, the less I cared, frankly. Whether I fell into one category or another. Whether I was accepted by humans or by zombies. Whatever.

  I knew that I was a thinking thing, with feelings and hopes. (Often, I felt like eating brains, and I hoped humans would get confused and run into a corner so I could just take them out with a sword.) But right now, all my emotions wanted this woman who'd been my lover in another life to get to where she was going, and get there safe.

  At mid-morning we stopped so Vanessa could rest and eat. I kept an eye out for anything that looked like movement. Besides just being generally wary, I feared reciprocity from survivors from the gang that had attacked us. (On the other hand, survivors from Vanessa's party might be able to help us if we ran into them-or at least increase our number.)

  We kept walking-through fields and little strips of forest. The air stayed crisp. The sun stayed warm.

  A little before noon, we encountered two lonely zombies near a toolshed on the edge of a farm. They had pale, sad moon-faces, and were picking idly at a clump of bones and rags that might have once been a human skeleton. I shot them both through the forehead with a revolver.

  "You're an equal-opportunity killer," Vanessa observed as we walked past their motionless bodies.

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  "You kill humans and zombies," she said.

  "Yeah," I told her. "That's the gig."

  "It's weird," she said.

  "I dunno," I rasped. "People kill people all the time. Why can't a zombie kill a zombie now and then?"

  "Fair enough, I guess," Vanessa answered.

  She smiled at me.

  And God, it was still a beautiful smile.

  As midday neared, we slowed our pace to a crawl and Vanessa ate a candy bar. We edged onto a muddy dirt road surrounded by trees. I looked at the needle on my compass frequently, and checked what landmarks there were against a hyper-detailed map of Knox County that Vanessa had in her pocket. It was during one of these moments of map-checking distraction that Vanessa saw the van.

  "Peter," she said, candy bar still in her cheeks, "wouldya look at that!"

  Ahead of us, down a fork in the little dirt road, sat an old Dodge minivan. As I looked closer, I thought it might be the first Dodge minivan. A Caravan from around 1984. Light blue, with wood trim. It looked in surprisingly good shape for something so old. Somebody had kept it in a garage and hadn't driven it much.

  Vanessa and I looked at each other.

  "You suppose it still runs?" she ask
ed. "I'm more than tired of walking."

  I had to grant, it was a tempting idea. Steal a car and drive the rest of the way to Kenton. Get there early.

  I looked closer and saw something.

  "Are those ... are those keys?" I asked.

  "What?" Vanessa said. "Where?"

  "On the side-view mirror," I said. "Dangling there in the sunlight-it looks like a ring of keys."

  "That's totally a ring of keys," she said excitedly.

  It was too good to be true. I didn't like it. Who would park a van in the middle of a dirt road like this, and with the keys on the flicking side-view mirror, of all places?

  Vanessa began to walk toward it.

  "Wait ... just wait a second," I said. I readied my revolvers and advanced.

  "Did you see something?" she asked.

  "No," I said. "It just feels a little too easy. I'm getting had vibes." I crept nearer to the minivan. My eyes were not on the van, but along the trees. I searched for any sign of an assailant or ambush, but saw nothing but bark and branches. Then an unexpected sound from behind made me jump.

  It went Gobblegobblegobble!

  I turned around, scanned until I found the source, and smiled a bewildered smile. Back at the fork in the road, coming up the path we had not taken, was a wild turkey-ugly and jet-black. And very familiar-looking. "Hey, stranger," I called. "What's up?"

  The turkey approached us. I waited patiently as it toddled over. Vanessa's jaw dropped.

  "Peter, what is that?" Vanessa asked.

  "An old friend ... I think," I told her.

  The turkey approached to within ten feet. It looked at me-I mean, right at me. Right into my undead eyes.

  "Creepy," Vanessa said.

  "I know, right?" I told her. "I wonder what he wants this time."

  "This time?" Vanessa asked.

  Vanessa slowly walked around the turkey, examining it. It showed no fear-ruffling its tail feathers only once as she leaned in close. Vanessa made an entire circuit of the bird. "Creepy," she said again.