Ophelia Immune: A Novel

by Mattson, Beth

  I could either wait until nightfall to go looking for heat – and risk freezing until Spring truly arrived – or I could risk a daylight sighting of my thieving, killable, green self. I moaned, too parched to gurgle. I needed water. Warm water. And hot rocks. Heated wool blankets. Propane to burn for hours on end. Coffee.

  Humans made coffee in the morning. During the day. They left hot coffee in unguarded pots near windowsills, purchased from places that I could find on my maps – Sumatra, Turkey, Chile. The radios talked about coffee from inside of store windows and truck depots that were open all night and reported that there were Colombian beans so aromatic that zombies would pace towards them from nine-hundred yards or more. Maybe I could find some. I needed them.

  I used my tailbone to push the desk away from the front door. Maybe one of the Squatters would have left something behind in an empty room. Maybe all of the Squatters slept during the day, just like me, and I could take their Propane stashes while they slumbered. Maybe they wouldn’t be in any better shape than me or wouldn’t even notice my green tinge or be able to bash my skull in anyway. Maybe they had some coffee already made for me.

  I pulled the door and slammed it open it into the apartment.

  “Hello?” a voice piped up from outside.

  I noticed that there was a bell attached to my doorknob. It jingled back and forth.

  “Hello?” the voice called again, closer this time.

  I hunched over and wrapped my blankets further around me. I tried to look harmless and commonplace, slouching like a drunk, timid Squatter.

  I felt a hand heavy on my blanket.

  “Hello? What is your name?” a young girl’s voice chirupped in my ear.

  I couldn’t move. I wished I could at least shiver, look normal somehow.

  She pulled the blanket from my face and touched my cheek.

  I tipped myself sideways, slammed my head into the wall, leaned there.

  “Don’t touch me,” I growled at her.

  “I know who you are,” she said quietly, “You are the Zombie Girl who saved me.”

  I looked up the best I could, through the film solidifying across my eyeballs. I could see the hazy outline of a young girl, maybe fifteen. Or eleven if she was from a Hiking Family. I couldn’t tell. She still didn’t run away. Or bash my head in.

  I couldn’t pick myself up away from the wall.

  “Water,” I said, “Hot water. Please.”

  Her footsteps receded and then returned. She poked some kind of tube inside of my mouth and a slow, Warm trickle began to run over my teeth. My tongue tingled, followed by my throat and chest. The hot water seeped its way down around my ribs and chest, finally draining to my legs and feet. When at last my throat gurgled fluidly, my knees unlocked and I slid down the wall into a pile on the floor. She patted me on top of my knotted yarn hat.

  I gazed up at her. There were four empty thermoses, three large pots and two plastic bowls around her crouched form. There were extra blankets wrapped around my shoulders.

  “I’m sorry if the bell I put on your door scared you,” she said.

  I squinted.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Swan.”

  I scowled from under my hats.

  “Aren’t you scared of me? Don’t you want to kill me?”

  “Nope,” she shook her head of heavy red curls, “You saved me. I’m sorry I followed you from the alleyway. I didn’t have anyplace to go. I have a room over there now. Everybody else stays clear of this floor.”

  She took a deep breath and continued.

  “I tried to check in on you and your arm. It looked pretty bad. But your door was all blocked and I could hear something shuffling around in there for a few days.”

  “How long was I in there?”

  “Fourteen days.”

  Fourteen days. I had slept for fourteen days. I left Juliet with one bowl of water for fourteen days. That’s an eternity for a cold zombie in the Early Spring. Especially when there is a Late Freeze. I wondered how many days she had been frozen solid. Poor thing.

  I struggled to my feet, using my head against the wall. I scraped a bit of my forehead off on the rough surface. I could see the black smudge of skin on the already dirty wallpaper. The floral pattern looked even more grotesque.

  Swan gasped.

  “Are you okay?”

  She clasped her fingers over her mouth.

  “I’m a zombie. I’m fine.”

  I tried to slam my door with me inside of the apartment, but one of my three blankets jammed in the door. I grumbled, rolled my warming eyes. Swan stood still behind me.

  “Do you want me to slam that for you?” she asked.

  “No, but do you know how to sew?”

  Swan scampered upstairs to borrow some thread from an old woman who was huddled four flights up. I closed the door to my apartment and sat in the hallway. I didn’t want Juliet catching more of a draft. Or to have Swan seeing her.

  When she returned, I dropped the blankets down around my waist and let her sew the sleeves back onto my shirts and then my jacket. I also let her point a Propane fan at my feet and I let my pant legs catch on fire a few times before I stamped them out and then moved closer again. When the Propane ran out and she was finished mending, I wrapped the blankets back around my arms.

  “Who were those men going to sell you to?” I asked, remembering how we had met.

  “Bait Buyers. Brothel. A husband. Whatever.”

  She looked grimly at the floor and then up at me.

  “Some men are taking as many Wives as they can.” she rambled, “To have as Bait in the Markets or to give them babies. I mean, everybody goes all stumble-y eventually, right? Might as well pop out as many kids as you can before you Turn, I guess, they figure,” she said, “The youngest and least favorite Wives have to go to the Markets unarmed to get food and supplies until they pop out some babies. You saved me.”

  “I think we’re even,” I said patting my sleeve before successfully opening and successfully slamming my door behind me.

  I covered Juliet with one of my blankets. I didn’t unlock my front door again until after dark. When I reopened it, Swan was sitting there, a pathetic leggy pretzel holding a candle. She lit it and looked up at me. I imagined how I glowed in that light. She didn’t run or grimace.

  “What’s your name?” Swan asked, getting to her feet.

  “Ophelia,” I said stomping past her on my way down the stairs.

  She made to follow me.

  “No,” I said.

  She took two stairs behind me. I stopped.

  “What do you think you are doing?” I asked.

  “Coming with you.”

  “Do you have a weapon?” I asked.

  “No.”

  She stood up straighter and pushed her shoulder further back,and took another step down the stairs after me. I ground my teeth so hard that they wobbled in my gums.

  “Do you have any idea where I’m going?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever stolen a thing in your life?” I asked.

  “No. But like I said, I don’t have any other … ”

  “You better stay close then.”

  I continued down the stairs and out into the night. She followed me into the horrendous wind, her orange ribbons of hair bobbing out from underneath her hat, her slight frame whipping in the gusts. There was frost on all of the windows and railings. In my absence the world had gone from Humans wearing t-shirts to flatteningly cold with icicles pointing at us from the gutters. Climate change was real.

  Swan stood on her tiptoes. She looked up with wonder and caught a snowflake on her tongue. She danced. She spun in circles with her arms outstretched, following me.

  “I love an April snow,” she sang softly.

  “I’m looking for Propane,” I told her.

  “There’s a store that sells it down over this way, I think” she said, and pointed a flushed, peach finger around the corner to the
West.

  “We’re not buying it. Unless you have some cash you’ve been hiding.”

  “Oh. No.”

  She trudged more slowly behind me. I paced down our street, hunching my back against the chill. I’d steal more down or fleece if I could find it. For me. For Juliet. For Swan.

  The dumpsters on our street were full of rubbish – things that couldn’t be burned, that nobody else wanted, that were left in the pockets of headless torsos: empty Propane tanks, broken plastic pieces, dead batteries, bloody clothes. I climbed up and into each one, avoiding the bloated and decapitated torsos. Only one of the Propane tanks that I picked up and shook had anything left in it, and it wasn’t much. But it was something, so I gave it to Swan to carry. She tucked the cold metal under her arm.

  I pocketed an almost empty lighter and found a wool sock with a huge hole in it. It fit my wrist as an arm warmer. I offered to pierce Swan’s ear with an earring that we found loose with no scabs, but she declined, so we walked a few blocks in silence, until we reached some wealthier buildings. We could tell that they had some money because there were rickety gates instead of broken furniture for front doors.

  The first fire escape that I climbed up was no good. The apartment contained dogs. Dogs could smell me a mile away. They barked loudly, ruining the whole side of the complex.

  I jumped down to the asphalt and lead Swan around to the other side of the building. I demonstrated again how to turn a trashcan upside down and stand on it to jump up to the fire escape. The first floor was vacant, and the second floor windows were blocked by cases of drawers, but the third floor was dimly lit by the screen of one of those little machines with dozens of buttons that needs electricity. I wouldn’t mind robbing these folks. They could just buy more stuff.

  I looked down at Swan, standing in the alley below. She seemed alright. Nothing was stumbling towards her. All the zombies but me were probably frozen again in this storm. Even Juliet. Poor Juliet. I wasn’t taking care of her.

  I punched in the glass pane standing between me and the protected air of the apartment, waited and watched. A woman sprang to the edge of her bedroom, braced herself in the doorway, nightgown swirling around her ankles. A puppy and a small boy peered around her legs. I moaned as loudly as I could. A gurgle in my throat followed it. I felt Swan jump even from below in the alleyway.

  The woman pushed her little ones back into the bedroom and latched the door. The sound of furniture being dragged across the floor covered my footsteps as I entered her apartment. There was a large chair blocking the inside of the front door, telling me that nobody else was expected home that night. I let another moan resound from my jaws, stepping into the kitchen. The lady pushed more furniture against the bedroom door to keep me out. I smiled.

  I ransacked the apartment for heating supplies and food that Swan might like. Because she was Human, she still needed to eat. I lifted a whole jar of peanut butter and two full Propane canisters. Under my arm, I tucked a rippled, red, aluminum can of coffee that I found in the freezer. It probably wasn’t high quality, but certainly the quantity would make up for it. Hardly any of it was gone. I opened the plastic lid, inhaled deeply, stuck my finger into the grounds, and licked them off. Bitter and divine.

  A bit of black iron caught my eye. The fireplace tools swung gently in their stand, their wrought, curly handles begging to be gripped. I turned one over in my hand. It was hefty and longer than the unwieldy rolling pin that Swan had swung in the alleyway. She was going to need a better weapon, and this Family had plenty to spare.

  I set all of the loot out on the metal fire escape. I made sure to let each item make light clanging noises – the sound of a zombie clambering out of a house to chase after something else. I took the earring out of my pocket and dropped it on top of the device that blinked at me. I couldn’t very well walk into a pawn shop and sell it, and Swan didn’t want it. Might as well leave them a little extra gift for the items I was taking.

  I stood on the fire escape and moaned loudly as I jumped down with the goods in my hands – the sound of a zombie falling out of a window to chase something below. They wouldn’t risk coming out to realize they had been robbed for at least an hour.

  Swan helped me up to my feet. I shook her off and handed her the wrought iron fire poker. She swung it ineffectually a few times, her arm a wet noodle.

  “No, no. Like this.”

  I showed her how to stand with it held up above her right ear and how to swing it cleanly down to her left hip. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. And she was going to need a lock for her door in our building. She confessed that she had just been leaving it open.

  While she twirled in unsteady circles, her new poker outstretched in her flailing arms, I kicked my foot into the solid front door of a Renter’s building with no Human security guard. I kicked it until it gave way and swung inwards. A startled boy wearing glasses jumped and fell backwards onto the hallway’s scuffed tile floor. He scrambled to his feet, flung the contents of his pockets at me and fled up the stairs as fast as his legs would carry him. I gave the tarnished coins to Swan and pried the door from its hinges, complete with it’s three combination deadbolts.

  I replaced her gaping apartment doorway with the sturdy stolen door. I tightened the fasteners until the door swung freely and held my ear against the locks while I turned the knobs and listened to the clicks. Having memorized the combinations, I locked us inside of her apartment with a satisfying trio of snaps and pops. Her rooms were the mirror image of mine, everything a little backwards.

  “Alright,” I poised my fist over the backward wooden molding, “This will be our security knock. When you use it, I will know that it is you.”

  Knock, thud-thud-thud, knock.

  “Ok, like this?” She tried it.

  Thud, knock-knock-knock, thud.

  “No, like this.” I demonstrated again. Knock, thud-thud-thud, knock.

  “Ok,” I got it she said and rapped her fist against the plaster wall. Knock, thud-thud-thud, thud.

  “No, no, no,” I gritted my teeth.

  “Oh, like this?”

  She tap-danced across the wooden floor. Tap tap tap, shuffle-shuffle, stomp stomp, tap tap tap. She fell down giggling next to her burner.

  I handed her a full canister of Propane.

  “No, this is serious. It’s so that you’ll know I’m not a zombie when I knock.”

  “You are a zombie,” she tittered as she struck a match against the fly of her pants and set the gas under the burner aflame.

  When I gave her the peanut butter, she leapt up and down on her toes before settling onto the floor to rip the foil seal from the lid. She stuck a filthy finger into the rich cream and spread it across her tongue. She dragged the extra smears off of her finger between her teeth and smacked her lips happily. Her scarlet hair puffed out around her face, but not even her big sweater and wool blankets could make the rest of her look bulky.

  “Do you get cold?” I asked.

  She shook her head and pointed to a pan full of ashes next to her burner.

  “There was lots of stuff in here to burn.”

  She walked over to a shelf. She pulled off a stack of Books. I knew that they weren’t important maps, but when she held the corner of one to the Propane flame, I grabbed her wrist roughly. She jumped.

  “Don’t burn those,” I said, taking the cloth volume from her grasp and staring at my cold, dead fingers wrapped around her peachy, thin skin. A dried, black fleck of my blood, from when I had broken the glass window, fell onto her arm.

  “Aaaaa! Get it off of you!” I huffed and puffed and blew the Infected speck off of her bare, flimsy skin, spattering her with spittle that I thrashed to wipe off of her with my sleeve.

  I leapt away from her Warm, skinny body, waiting to see if I had ruined her life with my blood and drool. I jumped all the way to the bookshelf, wrapping my arms around the Book I had taken from her. She rubbed her wrist where I had grabbed it, and frowned, but just went back
to working the peanut butter around her teeth.

  “Woah. Geez. You need to relax. I’m not that fragile,” she grumbled, “I’m fine, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t even read those Books. They’re more useful for fuel than anything else.”

  I set the gingham-bound volume that I had rescued back on the overflowing bookshelf. A large, deep brown spine caught my eye. I stroked it. It was massive and covered in taut leather. I pulled it off of the plank and into my arms. I opened it. There weren’t very many pictures. Just a few line drawings of birds and roses and swords. I ran my fingers across the squiggles that I couldn’t read. I liked it.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “I think Books are nice.”

  “I guess I wish I could read signs,” she agreed and looked down at the peanut butter jar, “S-s-scoopy. Scoopy Peanut Butter. I can read a little.”

  “Can I take this with me?” I asked of the huge, brown tome.

  “Sure,” she curled into her sloppy blanket nest in the middle of the floor.

  “Don’t burn the rest,” I instructed.

  “Will I see you tomorrow?” she flopped her head onto her rag pillow.

  “Sure you will. Good morning. Sleep well,” I closed her door behind me.

  “Good morning,” she sighed, rustling deeper into her ratty quilts, “Sweet dreams, Ophelia.”

  The Defrosting

  When I defrosted Juliet, I burned a chair into cinders to get my stones hot enough to line the blankets that I wrapped around her. Smoke gathered along the ceiling. It made the room Warm, so I didn’t fan it away. I crouched near the floor, where I could still see, and waited. When I peeked at Juliet after an hour, a small trickle of black fluid was starting to run from the corner of her immobile mouth. She was beginning to thaw. I wrenched her hands away from her face and peered closely into the crack between her lips. Her tongue wiggled ever so slightly. It was time for hot water.

  When the spoonfuls stopped pooling in her mouth and ran, steaming and gurgling down her throat, I put one end of old refrigerator tubing into a full pot, the other end in my mouth. I sucked lightly, and enjoyed the tingling hot water, but as soon as it was flowing without any suction from myself, I slipped the tube into the back of Juliet’s mouth and let it siphon there. Her throat overflowed with draining water and soaked the blankets. Her tongue wagged; her lips began to wrap around it. Her jaw creaked and popped into place around the long, hot straw. Her hand leapt to my forearm and gripped it like a vice while she suckled. I stroked the hair away from her forehead and whispered her encouraging words.