Better Off Undead

by James Preller

  Dane bit into his burger. A trickle of grease rolled down his chin, shimmering in the light. “I didn’t know people could eat hamburger meat without cooking it.”

  “Don’t tell Mom, okay? I don’t want her to get more freaked out than she already is.”

  Dane nodded.

  “Remember to put the dishes in the sink when you’re done,” I reminded him. “I’m going up to my room.”

  I trudged up the stairs, head spinning. What was happening to me?

  * * *

  That night an explosive storm shook the trees. Jagged lightning bolts slashed the sky like silvery swords swung by Greek gods. The rain was hard and relentless, pelting the windows like thrown gravel. I wondered if it was all connected somehow—a giant tapestry of connect-the-dots. I was a reanimated corpse, alone in the world, but I also sensed that maybe I was part of something larger.

  The bats and the bees and the fish in the seas.

  And me?

  I slipped downstairs to finish off the rest of the hamburger meat.

  It was delicious.

  What was going on with my taste buds?

  When I returned to my room, Dane was sitting on my bed, arms curled tight around his knees. The wind roared outside, and a tree limb fell nearby.

  “What’s up, Dane? Can’t sleep?”

  Dane’s sweet face was troubled. He looked at me and trembled, just a scared kid in action-hero pajamas, not even two thousand days old. He said in an urgent whisper, as if delivering a forbidden secret, “The world is falling apart.”

  “There, there,” I said lamely, sitting down next to him. “Now, now.” I rubbed his back, touched his hair, tried to reassure him.

  “I’m scared,” he said.

  “I know. I’m glad you came to find me,” I said. “To tell you the truth, I was scared, too. Superstorms are like that. When we’re together it’s not so bad, right?”

  Dane’s eyes flickered. He nodded. “If you’ll let me stay, we can be brave together.”

  I pulled out a sleeping bag from the hall closet. “You get the floor. Just don’t snore.” I threw a pillow at his head.

  Dane laughed. Ever squirmy, he kicked and wriggled and rolled around in the bag, as relaxed as a cat in a burlap sack. He eventually settled down. I lay on my bed, blinking at the blank space above my head. “Hey, Dane,” I whispered. “You still awake?”

  “Mmmm,” he answered dreamily.

  “You don’t care that I’m a zombie, do you?”

  Dane was quiet for a long moment, and I wondered if he’d finally fallen asleep. Then he said in a soft voice, “Not really. Some people say things, but I don’t care. I guess everybody’s different, and nobody’s perfect. I just want you to be happy again.”

  Smart kid, that little brother of mine. And I’ll say this: If I was a little bit squishier, if I had a drop more moistness in my dusty innards, I might have squeezed out a tear or two. I felt a shadowy fist, clenching and unclenching, where my heart used to beat. “Come up here,” I said, sliding over to make room. “There’s plenty of space for both of us.”

  TALAL MIRWANI, PRIVATE EYE

  Word had gotten around school about my encounter with Daryl, a brawling bully who, let’s face it, was probably even less popular than me. I’m not saying I was suddenly the tightest guy shuffling down the halls. It was just that every once in a while somebody might say, “Oh, that’s so great you were reanimated,” and compliment me on how my limp wasn’t so bad. I got friendly nods from strangers and fist bumps out of the blue, as if I’d just pitched a no-hitter.

  It was nice to catch a break. Even so, I could tell that most kids were still mildly uneasy. I guess I couldn’t blame them. Half of my nose actually fell off during science class on Tuesday—my nose!—and I had to slap it back on with glue from the art room. Talk about embarrassing. I started wearing hoodies pulled down low over my face like an unholy monk. I guess I was just an oddity on the school grounds, like a piece of furniture that didn’t look right in any room. Nobody actively bothered me anymore.

  I even stopped having to worry about Daryl. I’d see him in P.E., of course, but he steered away from me, not even bothering to glance in my direction. It was as if I’d scared away a bear at a campsite by banging on pots and pans. It worked for now, but I wondered if that bear might come back someday.

  In the cafeteria on Wednesday, Zander and I discussed the desperate state of his fish tank. Actually, he talked—and talked, and talked—while I listened.

  “What a disaster,” he moaned. “My temperature regulator broke last night, but I didn’t realize it until the morning—twenty minutes before I was supposed to leave for school. With tropical fish, that’s not a major deal. But I’ve got a saltwater tank, so even minor fluctuations of temperature can amount to an environmental catastrophe.

  “So I’m, like, stressing, thinking I’m going to lose the whole tank if I don’t fix this right now, and meanwhile my mother is screaming from downstairs: ‘Zander! Come down here and eat your breakfast!’

  “So I screamed back at her, ‘I’m not going to school, Ma!’”

  “I bet she didn’t like that,” I said, just to squeeze a few words into the conversation.

  “She was like, ‘Oh yes you are, mister,’ and I was like, ‘Nuh-uh, these fish depend on me, Ma!’”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I was stressed exponentially, okay, to the tenth power, you understand that, right? I’m sweating buckets. But I took a deep breath and explained to my mother that I was like God to these fish. I’d created their entire world. I’d placed every plant and rock and piece of coral in that aquarium. I was the one who’d installed the purification system. If I couldn’t get the temp and pH level fixed right away, I’d return home from school to an environmental disaster like one of those oil spills off the coast. My clown fish already looked green around the gills.”

  A slight kid walked up, wearing a fedora and a long brown raincoat. He had black hair and light brown skin. The boy placed a hand on the back of an empty chair and asked, “You gents mind?”

  “It’s all yours, no one’s sitting there,” I said, expecting him to drag the chair to another table. But to my surprise, he sat down with us.

  Zander stopped talking and paused to stare at our uninvited guest. The look on Zander’s face was basically: What the what?

  “The name’s Talal”—he pronounced it slowly, tah-LAHL, so we got it right—“but you can call me Tal. That’s easier for most people,” he said in a soothing voice. Talal rested an elbow on the back of the chair. He folded an ankle across a knee. “And you are the zombie guy,” he added, turning to address me.

  “That’s me,” I said. “The zombie guy.

  “Why are you here?” Zander asked. “We’re not bothering anybody.”

  “I’m a detective,” Talal replied. “You could say that I’m working on a case.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “I prefer the term gumshoe,” Talal continued, “except nobody knows what it means anymore. So, sure, I’m a private eye.”

  I decided to play along. “How can we help you, gumshoe?”

  “Call me Tal. It’s simpler.”

  “Okay, detective,” I replied.

  Zander glanced in my direction. He clearly didn’t trust this new kid at our table. But as far as I could tell, Talal seemed harmless. Besides, I was curious.

  Talal lifted the fedora off his head and placed it, ever so gently, on the table. He clawed his hand through his hair, as if scratching the back of an appreciative Labrador retriever.

  “What makes you a detective?” Zander asked.

  “What do you mean?” Talal asked.

  Zander looked annoyed. His voice rose a notch in volume. “I mean, big deal, you say you’re a detective. Anybody could say that. Saying so doesn’t make it true.”

  Talal stared long and patiently. He slow-blinked once, twice, with all the urgency of a three-toed sloth. Then he fished in the depths of his tre
nch coat pocket and produced a business card. He ran his thumb across the edge of it and, flicking two fingers, sent it spinning across the table and into my lap.

  TALAL MIRWANI

  Detective

  NO CASE TOO LARGE OR SMALL

  Talal turned to Zander. “Believe whatever you like. I’m what the card says I am.”

  Zander smiled. “And I’m a horned toad. There, I said it. Does that make it true?”

  Talal was amused. “No, big guy, the saying doesn’t make it so. It’s the believing that matters. You don’t really think you’re a toad, do you?”

  Zander didn’t answer.

  “It’s the believing in things that counts,” Talal repeated for emphasis, “as long as you’re asking.”

  “Like in Santa Claus?” Zander teased.

  “Like in anything,” Talal replied. “The tooth fairy, dinosaurs, zombies, kindness, whatever floats your boat.” Talal returned the hat to the top of his head and deftly zipped a pointed index finger across the front brim. “I didn’t come here to philosophize. You have my card.”

  “We don’t need it,” Zander said.

  “Maybe not you, but I think he might,” Talal said, jerking a thumb in my direction. “And I bet he knows it, too.”

  “I’m not going to hire a detective,” I protested.

  “It’s already been handled,” Talal replied. “Your friend paid for my services.”

  “My friend?” I couldn’t think of anybody.

  “A tall and angular girl,” he intoned, “the angel looking over your shoulder. Cash in advance. Consider yourself lucky.”

  “Gia?”

  Talal shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “She said trouble’s coming your way, and figured I might be able to steer you clear.”

  I struggled to process the information. My unlife was getting weirder by the minute. It felt like Gia had some sort of plan for me, but I had no idea what it was. Still, there was something oddly reassuring about Talal. He was a character, for certain, but I guess I heard Dane’s voice in my ear: Everybody’s different, and nobody’s perfect.

  Who was I to say that Talal wasn’t good enough to sit at our table? There was plenty of room.

  Zander, on the other hand, acted protective. “How are you going to help Adrian? All I see is a kid in a trench coat who talks tough, like you just stepped out of some old black-and-white movie. What do you know?”

  Talal leaned back in his chair, calmly tented his fingers together. “What do I know? I’ll tell you what I know…”

  He spoke the next part in rapid pitter-pat style: “I know you had a rough time this morning. You barely had a minute to wolf down a bowl of Rice Krispies. You missed the bus, but that’s no problem, because Mommy drives you anyway.”

  “Hold on,” Zander said. “How did you know—?”

  Talal explained. “There’s a trace of shampoo in your right ear, your socks don’t match, and there’s a dried Rice Krispie kernel stuck to your shirt. Judging by the mud splatter on the cuffs of your jeans, I’d bet ten balloons you tried to jump the puddle by the curb at the student drop-off. You didn’t quite make it. Don’t feel too bad, champ—it’s probably because of the extra twenty pounds of books you lug around in your backpack, because you are exactly the kind of kid who carries his books everywhere. I’d bet another ten balloons you make the honor roll every semester. You’re smart and you work hard. That’s a good thing, congratulations.” Talal flicked a finger. “I can also see the pink edge of a late pass poking out of your shirt pocket. What else do I know? You’re a little sloppy, but it doesn’t take a detective to figure that out. More importantly, you are not the kind of guy who spends time in front of a mirror. Either you don’t care how you look, or you care too much. So much that maybe it hurts. Hard for me to say, we’ve only just met, but I know this: Everybody cares, we just hide it in different ways.”

  Zander didn’t need to hear any more. He squirmed in uncomfortable silence, like a living butterfly pinned to a wall. Talal turned out to be a pretty sharp detective after all.

  DRONE ABOVE

  Talal proved useful the very next day.

  I never liked the trapped, shut-in feeling of a hundred sardines in a smelly tin, so I preferred walking home from school to taking the bus. Today Gia joined Zander and me, and Talal tagged along, too. We were an unusual group of misfits, but it felt okay. We didn’t belong anywhere except with each other.

  “Look at these green lawns,” Gia sneered. She had recently dyed her hair a brilliant shade of purple. “It’s such a waste.”

  “What do you mean? The lawns look fine to me,” I said.

  “Don’t you know that it’s against the law to water your lawn in some states?”

  Zander shrugged, “Out west, yeah. Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada. Those places have a drought, water is scarce, but we’re okay.”

  “For now,” Gia said. “But in the future—

  “Oh, don’t start about the future,” Zander scoffed. “You act as if you know what’s going to happen, like you can see into the future, but you don’t know. Nobody does.”

  It looked as if Gia was about speak—her mouth opened, a flame reached her eyes—but she appeared to decide against it. She simply muttered, “Don’t be an ostrich, Zander. Head buried in the sand.”

  “I read, I know plenty,” Zander rebuffed.

  Talal didn’t engage in the debate. He walked along without talking, dreamily gazing up into the autumn leaves.

  Gia said, “These people run their sprinklers practically every day. They don’t care if there’s a water shortage. And why do they do it? For a bunch of grass we can’t even eat. Lawns are so stupid.”

  “Goats like lawns,” Talal commented. “The pale green shoots are tender to eat.”

  “People like lawns, too,” I said. “My mom’s in real estate. She says a good lawn adds value to a house. Curb appeal or something like that. It doesn’t mean that—”

  “Shhh.” Talal held up his hand.

  We stopped while Talal scanned the trees. “What is it?” Zander asked.

  “Adrian,” Talal said in a calm, measured voice, “do me a favor. Keep walking straight ahead. Zander and Gia, stay here with me.”

  “What? I don’t—”

  “Please, just do it.”

  The tone of Talal’s voice told me he wasn’t fooling around. So I did what he asked. As I walked, I glanced back at the others. Talal pointed up to the trees above my head and spoke quietly to Gia. After I’d walked about a hundred feet, Talal signaled for me to return.

  Before I could ask questions, Talal explained, “I’m conducting an experiment.” He gestured for Gia and Zander to walk ahead, then split apart in different directions. As they walked, Talal squinted and searched the sky. “Interesting,” he murmured. Talal cast his eyes over the ground and settled on a stone that was about the size of a golf ball. He picked it up and thoughtfully weighed its heft in his hand. “Now, Adrian, you go the other way,” he said, pointing in the opposite direction.

  I looked at him. “Seriously? What’s the big mystery, Talal?”

  “Go,” he said, scarcely speaking the word out loud.

  So go I did, walking up the road from where we came. I felt like an idiot. I turned in time to see Talal rear back to fire a rock into the branches twenty feet above my head. Thwack. A small brown bird fell at my feet, hitting the street with a tragic thunk.

  “Why did you do that, Tal?” I screamed. “You can’t go around stoning birds.”

  Talal raced forward. He bent down to examine the fallen creature.

  “Nice shot,” Zander said. “Is it what you thought it was?”

  “Yes,” Talal replied, tilting back the front of his hat with a thumb. “It’s a drone.”

  “A drone?” I repeated.

  “A drone,” he said, now holding the mechanical object in his hands. It was about the size and general shape of a sparrow. Talal mused, “Could be a government model, or maybe Corporate. It’s hard to tell
the difference anymore. I’ll have to take it apart in my workshop to know for sure.”

  I still didn’t understand. “What’s a drone doing here?”

  Talal glanced at the others. “Don’t you get it? You’re being followed.”

  “Followed?”

  “It’s a spy drone,” Talal said. “That’s the easy part. The big question is, who is spying on Adrian Lazarus?”

  “And why?” Zander added.

  “Can you find out?” I asked.

  Talal gently nestled the drone in his roomy coat pocket, as if he were cradling a delicate bird. “I know a few people I can trust,” he said. “Computer geeks, hackers. I’ll take this problem to them. Good thing I tagged along with you guys today. Who knows how long that thing’s been following you.”

  MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS

  On top of everything else, our principal was losing his mind. Maybe it was the job, I don’t know. There were days when our school felt like a madhouse—and the students weren’t the loony ones. Take today’s morning announcement for example, which began as usual with an ear-piercing buzz:

  Kkccchh. “Is this on?” Kkccchh. Tap-tap, TAP-TAP. “Miss Shen? Is this thing”—whirr—“hey-ho, ouch!—What the…? Good mooooorningggg, Nixon Middle School! This is your principal, Mr. Rouster!”

  From my seat in a back corner of my homeroom class, I watched as everyone turned to the loudspeaker in listless silence.

  The substitute teacher, Mrs. Perez, never looked up from her smartphone. Principal Rouster crowed. “All righty, then! I’ve got some good news, some bad news, and some really bad news. First, the good news! Our school recently received a large federal grant involving enormous sums of taxpayers’ money. I’m pleased to announce that there will be construction going on throughout the school. You may be inconvenienced by the occasional disruption.”

  On cue, a series of loud noises—banging, chiseling, and the vibrating cacophony of a jackhammer—erupted out in the hallway. Next came a calamitous crash, a thud, and a muffled “Oops.”