Zombie

by J. R. Angelella

  Zombie Survival Code #3: Forget the past.

  Mom exits off 83 North, cutting through the same suburban streets as Dad did the other day. She takes a corner a little too fast, knocking down a plastic trash can. I buckle my seatbelt. Mom approaches a double-parked car with flashing hazard lights and speeds up, passes it, swerving back into our lane.

  “For better or for worse,” she says, “you need to know something.”

  “Whatever it is,” I say, “I probably already know.”

  “Here it is then,” she says. “I failed as a mother.”

  “Is that an apology?” I ask.

  “It’s a confession,” she says.

  If my mother believes she has failed as a mother, what does that say about me?

  “You’re father used to be a better person too,” she says.

  We near Byron Hall.

  Mom slows down as she white knuckles past a speed-walking woman—the same Dad honked at. The woman runs with the traffic. She looks over at me. We’re only separated by a few inches. I’m close to her, damn near close enough to touch her if I roll down the window. Touch her beautiful, full lips. Touch her perfect breasts. I don’t touch though. I just stare. She looks away and laughs. She’s obviously flattered. I tap the glass for her to look back. Finally, she does, still laughing, and says, “Your nose.”

  Mom slaps my arm.

  “Jesus Christ, Jeremy, your nose is bleeding,” Mom says. She digs through her purse, pill bottles rattling. She finds a pack of tissues and tosses them into my lap.

  “I never get nosebleeds,” I say.

  “Things change,” she says.

  I zone out, staring at the identical houses and tiny lawns, each one sadly deteriorating and different only in color. Each one with the same stoop, same faded red brick, same square lawn. Men exit houses in suits and flannel shirts and ripped jeans and T-shirts, carrying bananas, newspapers, briefcases, and equipment bags. Women stand in doorways, waving goodbye, or exit houses in suits and heels, carrying children and coffee mugs. Mom slows to a stop in the middle of the street as one woman parallel parks. She’s dressed in all white—a nurse—probably getting home from the night shift at the hospital. She reminds me of Ana the Nurse in the opening to the remake of Dawn of the Dead.

  53

  Here is the story of Ana the Nurse. Ana the Nurse pulls into the driveway of her suburban house where she sees Vivian, the cute little girl next door, who has just learned to roller-skate backwards. Aw, how sweet!

  Ana moves inside and climbs into bed with her husband and they get it on, knock boots, bang it out. Oh yeah!

  The next morning, they wake to find the little shit Vivian standing in the doorway. She is in their house, in their bedroom, just staring. Vivian’s all fucked up. When the husband approaches her, she bites his ass like a rabid animal. Vivian’s the first zombie victim the audience is introduced to in the film—bam!—right off the bat—a child.

  What I’m saying is this: I see the nurse parallel parking, and the first thing I’m looking for is a goddamn little girl on roller skates. Cute zombie neighbor kid!

  And so that’s the story of Ana the Nurse.

  54

  We pass the empty football field. The sign out front reads: BYRON HALL CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL FOR BOYS and below it a new message has been added—BHC FALL DRAMA – A DOLL’S HOUSE – TICKETS ON SALE NOW. Mom stops the minivan at the top of the circle. No Christian Brothers. No Brother Lee. No douchebag blue jay. Even the faculty parking lot is vacant. Mom looks at the untied tie in my hands.

  “When I met your father he was dressed in a three piece wool suit and wore the biggest darned knot you’ve ever seen.” She rests her head against the window. “It was a bar. He was sitting by himself, so I went over to him and said only a moron wears a wool suit in summertime.” Mom laughs. “He’d come from play practice. He was in a play. He was an actor. Your father.” She looks at me. “That was the play he was in. Same one.”

  “My friend is the assistant director,” I say. I want to tell Mom all about Aimee, but Mom’s got frogeyes—glassy, fucked up, gone.

  “Torvald. Dressed in that darned wool suit. Said it helped him feel connected to the character. I saw him again almost a year later. Same bar. Except this time he wore this full Marine get-up.”

  “Uniform,” I say.

  “Sword and all. I just thought he was in another play.” She nods, bobbing over dope waves. “He’d been drafted. It was Vietnam. And you know what happens next.”

  I tie a full Windsor, pinching my knot at the base, tightening it up. An intoxicating honest urge consumes me and with complete satisfaction, I say, “Mom, you need to know something about me.” I say, “It’s not that you failed as mother. You’re just a fucking junkie.”

  55

  I make it to Algebra on time today. I suffer through Natural Science and World Civilization, and survive Christian Awareness. After, I rush down the hallway, dodging plaid fuck after plaid fuck, all the way to the gymnasium, but when I get there I see a note taped to the door. It says, Physical Education will be held at the pool today.

  Signed—Coach O’Bannon.

  Fuck.

  Physical Education during the day fucking sucks. Some kids have it as the last class of the day, which is awesome because they can go home right after and don’t have to change back into their sport coat and necktie monkey outfit. Others have it as the first class of the day, which totally blows. They come to school looking like the Incredible Hulk, their gym shirt and shorts on under their monkey clothes—bulky bitches. However, having it in the middle of the day is the assiest of all because I not only have to rush from class across campus to the gym, but then change into the required blue shorts and shirt and be on the bleachers in five minutes flat.

  Inside the pool, the air is heavy and sharp, chock full of chemicals.

  “Ladies,” O’Bannon says to a group of us walking in together, including Super Shy Kid and Dirtbag Boy from my English class. “What the Lord took so long?” Coach O’Bannon stands by the diving board, slapping a clipboard in a gray tracksuit with black stripes up the sides. He pauses, waiting for one of us to answer, I think, or just to make us squirm. “If I told you ladies that there was a harem down here giving away free BJs, you would’ve been lightning fast. Do you know what a harem is?” He points to me. “Little girl, do you know what a harem is?”

  “A group of whores, sir,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says. “A group of whores. Correct. I bet if I told you that Susie Rottencrotch was down here from that diseased, sister school Prudence High, you would’ve damn near broken the speed barrier to be down here.”

  “Do we have to swim?” Super Shy Kid asks, the fucking moron.

  “What did you say, Artsy Fartsy?” Coach O’Bannon’s words echo. “Artsy Fartsy, do you have a question?” Super Shy Kid nods yes and Coach says, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” He makes the Sign of the Cross.

  “I don’t have a bathing suit,” Super Shy Kid says.

  “News flash—you ballshwanks are getting wet like a pussy in heat. No one gets out. Unless you are on your period. Are any of you on your period?”

  No one answers.

  “Bathing suits are in the back.” He points to the locker rooms with the clipboard. “And don’t forget to shower before you come out. I don’t want any of that gel you ladies use in your perms getting in my pool water.”

  None of us move.

  He stops pacing. He grits his teeth. He winds back, aims, and follows through—his clipboard slicing the air like a throwing star, clearing our heads. It hits the back wall and crashes to the deck.

  All of us move. Some of us slip.

  56

  Waiting for us in the locker room are stacks of white towels and sealed plastic bags each with a Byron Hall Speedo—a blue jay on the ass—the bags with the word SMALL or MEDIUM or LARGE printed on the front in big white block letters. Kids throw the small bags around, teasing each other about a small dick size. The
jocks steal the large bags right away, missing the point of what large actually means.

  One jock rolls up his dress socks and stuffs them inside his Speedo, pumping the air in circles, so all can see. A short kid kicks him in the sock, which sends Sock Boy to the floor. Even I laugh at this. Sock Boy gets off the floor, twirls up a towel, and snaps it at Short Kid, who dodges the snap and locks Sock Boy up in a complex hold, before slamming him to the floor. Jocks jump in and separate them. They leap at each other like rabid dogs, calling each other creative names, but are kept apart. What Sock Boy didn’t know until now was that Short Kid is the only freshman on the Varsity Wrestling squad. Wrong plaid to towel snap.

  Undressing in the locker room is an art form. The idea is to stay covered at all times. I’m surprised to see how quickly even the jocks change out of their plaid costumes and into their large Speedos. Even they are ashamed of their dongs flopping around like uncooked sausage.

  I leave my button down shirt and tie on while I take off my pants and put on my Speedo—medium. (I got lucky and grabbed a medium when the smalls were being whipped around.)

  A line forms in the communal shower. The jocks drench themselves in the shower first and, lovingly, turn the water to completely cold for the next person. As they pass the rest of us in line, they shake the water from their bodies like a dog after a bath. The fucks.

  57

  Coach O’Bannon gives the color commentary over the aquatics intercom, depicting how we each look in our Speedos.

  “Big dick, Randall. I bet your Susie Rottencrotch is a well-satisfied lady. Jeremy Barker, sporting the medium—not quite big, not quite small—the Goldilocks of dicks.” When Super Shy Kid and Dirtbag Boy come out, the last two to change, Coach O’Bannon really opens up the vents. “Looks like we got everyone’s favorite duo, Fatman and Robin. You ladies help each other get dressed?”

  Dirtbag Boy clearly needed a large, but must have only been left with a small, his gut hanging over the front of his Speedo, the elastic waist cutting into his skin.

  “St. John Baptist de La Salle,” Coach says.

  Everyone says, “Pray for us.”

  “Live Jesus in our hearts,” Coach says.

  Everyone says, “Forever.”

  “You two ballshwanks,” he says to Dirtbag Boy and Super Shy Kid. “You’re going to demonstrate the proper techniques for diving.”

  The two kids climb the diving board while the class laughs, and I laugh too, but as I watch them climb to the high dive, I pray hard for a Zombie Apocalypse to strike.

  If zombies came crashing through the aquatics door, blathering blood from the mouth, I would jump into the water and stay in the middle, treading water, because zombies can’t swim. Their eyesight is already blurry from being dead, so the chlorine would only make it worse. The best part of a Zombie Apocalypse, if it happened right now? Coach O’Bannon would be the first to go. They’d fucking feast on his belly, tear out his white hair, bathe in his blood, and beat the ground with his bones. I think that’s, like, Jesse Eisenberg’s first rule in Zombieland—cardio. That all the fatties died first in the early days of the Zombie Apocalypse because they couldn’t outrun the undead.

  Coach O’Bannon blows a whistle. “Get to the end,” he says, nodding at Super Shy kid.

  Super Shy Kid steps to the edge of the board.

  “Be a pencil. Just like your dick,” Coach says.

  The class laughs again.

  “Stiff back. Arms above your head. Bend the knees. Bounce and launch. Feet at the edge, goddamnit.” When Coach blows the whistle again, Super Shy Kid finally goes for it, not so much a dive as a standing long jump. His splash is big and ugly. His arms and legs flail and fight to keep him afloat.

  “Don’t move. Stay out there,” Coach says. “Fatman, you’re next—same thing. Go.”

  “Coach, I don’t know how to swim,” Dirtbag Boy says.

  “Don’t care. Show me that you’re not some artsy fartsy ballshwank. Show me you got a pair of stones. Now dive.”

  Dirtbag Boy looks to his friend in the water still treading and edges close to the diving board. He bounces up, barely, arms up, before launching himself forward. He executes the largest bellyflop I’ve ever seen. The class erupts into a collective groan. Dirtbag Boy pops up to the surface, fighting the water. He gulps for air, choking on chlorinated pool water. I look at Coach and my classmates and everyone is laughing. Dirtbag Boy’s face turns red. He goes under. Coach isn’t doing shit.

  I dive from the side of the pool into the water. Perfect dive! My heartbeat thumps. I frogkick my legs under water and open my eyes and am hit with an overwhelming amount of chlorine that burns like holy fuck. I crash up through the surface of the pool and slide my arm around Dirtbag Boy and ferry him over to the side of the pool.

  “I got you,” I say. “Stop fighting it. I got you.”

  He chokes on water, coughing and spitting. His arms flail and flap at the surface. He reminds me of the man on the DVD in Dad’s office. We reach the side and Dirtbag Boy pushes me away; pulling himself out of the water, dry heaving on the deck.

  “I didn’t need your help,” he says. “Stay the fuck away from me.”

  “You okay?” Super Shy Kid asks, still in the pool.

  Dirtbag Boy spits and says, “Yes.” Then to me, “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck me?” I struggle to catch my own breath. “Fuck you.”

  Coach O’Bannon is gone. I look for him but don’t see him anywhere. I stand and walk away from the fuck when I find Coach. He stands between us and the locker room, a bull kicking dirt behind him.

  “Fatman and Robin. You’re done. Get changed. Get gone.” Coach lets them pass by, but he keeps his sights set on me. “You like to be a hero? Make you feel real good?”

  “He was drowning,” I say. I wipe wet hair away from my face.

  “You really think I am going to let a student drown? You really think I am going to kill a student in my class? Have you lost your fucking mind?”

  “He was drowning.” I have no fight left. O’Bannon wants my blood.

  Coach tells the rest of the class to swim thirty laps, width-wise, across the pool. He says that diving will pick up another day. He approaches me and speaks low as kids crash into the water. “Show me how a hero treads water without using his hands for forty minutes.” He grabs my shoulder and pushes me into the deep end of the pool where I raise my arms over my head and tread water. I swallow so much chlorine water that when I get out of the pool at the end of class, I throw up on my walk back to the locker room.

  58

  In the locker room, there’s a war of jocks snapping wet towels. Legs are covered in welts the size of basketballs. Kids stand around watching, dressed in various stages—pants, no shirt; shirt and tie, no pants; tie, no shirt or pants. I open my locker and see my clothes hung neatly inside, my shoes tucked away with my secret combination piece of paper still there. My Windsor hangs in my locker like a bastion of strength. I pull on my pants, button up my shirt, and loop my Windsor over my head, sliding up the knot.

  Towels continue to snap. Kids push each other. Someone brandishes a tube of toothpaste from his bag, uncaps it, and tries to shove it up another kid’s asshole. It becomes a thing. A group quickly forms, kill or be killed, and tries to pin this kid down so they can squeeze toothpaste up his ass. The Victim breaks free from hands and runs at Toothpaste Boy and wraps his arm around Toothpaste’s head and slams him into the lockers, swinging his fists, sometimes hitting body. The hard-packing sound of naked bodies has become a familiar one in only a few short days of this place. Towels turn their chaotic attack into a uniformed one and aim at the two assholes, whipping them with loud, wet cracks.

  An aluminum bat leans against the wall in the corner, my Zombie Apocalypse weapon of choice. It’s an Easton. I grab the rest of my shit and move to the bench next to the bat and finish getting dressed, turning sideways—one eye on the fuckers fighting and one eye on the bat. One swing, that’s all it would take. Just
one swing. I will fucking do it. Velocity. Torque. One badass motherfucker with an aluminum bat.

  But the morons with toothpaste and towels don’t do a damn thing.

  Everyone stops snapping and fighting and punching. They get dressed and leave.

  59

  After Phys Ed, I go to the cafe, which is quiet for deep afternoon, most of the tables empty.

  Dirtbag Boy and Super Shy Kid sit across from each other. No one else is there; their table is theirs—empty and alone. They are of the group of kids that don’t fit into a group. Their members live underground, afraid to show themselves, embracing ghost qualities. So they sit by themselves, each on a cell phone, neither speaking to the other. Dirtbag Boy’s face is flush, splotching with red patches. Super Shy Kid sees me, but quickly averts his eyes and avoids further eye contact. Maybe he has his own version of the Survival Code. I sit at the head of the table between them. They don’t look up from their phones.

  “I know you guys probably don’t want to talk to me. Think I’m some kind of jerkoff.” I give them a moment to disagree and tell me that, in fact, they don’t think I’m a jerkoff, but they don’t say shit and keep dicking around on their phones. “I’m only here to say that I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” I say. “I didn’t mean to make the situation any worse.”

  They say nothing—zip.

  “Fuck you both in the ear then. I don’t need this shit. I’m trying really fucking hard to be your friend here and apologize.” I rifle through my book. “This is my last attempt because I’m already a fucking target. I don’t need to be more of one by hanging out with you two fuck-ups.” I slap the Zombie Strippers! DVD on the table. “I saw a movie last night that I think you both might like. It’s a Zombie Apocalypse movie and it stars Jenna Jameson.”