Zombie

by J. R. Angelella

  Then I come to one name I recognize. A new name. I dial and can’t believe I am dialing. The phone rings and doesn’t go right to voicemail like I want it to and expect it to and my alarm clock says it’s recently 2 A.M., but I keep the call going anyway, until she picks up.

  “Please don’t hang up,” I say.

  “Jeremy,” Aimee says. “Are you okay?” She sounds like she was asleep. I wonder what she’s wearing. Tits. Why am I thinking about tits right now? Jesus.

  “I didn’t know,” I say.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. “This isn’t a perverted phone call, is it? Because you’re breathing heavy like maybe you’re being perverted.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called.”

  “You couldn’t wait three days?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think girls don’t know about boys waiting three days to call a girl? We know. BTW, girls don’t all want serious relationships either.”

  “I was going to call tomorrow.”

  “Some of us never pick up a phone unless we want to. Some of us just let it ring.”

  “I was going to call tomorrow and make plans. For dinner. You want to go to dinner?”

  “How about tea? You like tea?” she asks.

  “Tea sounds good.”

  “Call me tomorrow, like you planned, and we’ll pick a place. And for God sakes, calm down—you’re going to hyperventilate if you keep breathing so fast.”

  I hang up and hear another moan and move to my closet and pull down a board game box. I grab a bunch of magazines and toss them into a backpack along with my phone. From the trash can, I pull an aluminum baseball bat. Time to sweep the house.

  Zombie Survival Code #4: Lock-and-Load.

  The house is a ghost, empty and moaning. The stairs creak under my steps. Dog hears me and trots to the front door, wagging her tail, waiting for me. She follows me as Dad moans some more and I walk to the basement door, my bat up off my shoulders, ready to swing. I choke up on the handle for good measure.

  He speaks softly now, saying, “One, two three. One, two three. One, two three.” Another moan, louder still. He stops, no longer counting, but quiet. He appears at the bottom of the stairs with dead eyes, looking up at me.

  I grab the leash from Dad’s office and snap it on Dog’s collar. She walks figure eights behind me. Dad’s closet door is open. So is his box of war. Like a magnet I am drawn to it. I approach and tip up on my toes to peek into its gut. The maps and photos and canteen are all still there. And so is the gun. I grab it and hold it in my hand, reintroducing myself to its texture and weight. This is Dad—the gun. His defense. Not me. I have my bat. I drop the gun back into the box, kick the closet closed and leave the house.

  Dog trots next to me in the street as we make our way to the light rail station, under the cover of night, anonymous and alone.

  Like Ballantine in Vietnam.

  Like Dog and Jeremy in Baltonam.

  73

  The light rail barrels downtown like a gigantic snake, rolling along tracks through the concrete jungle of 83 South. I imagine it swallowing every car on the highway, sucking each down its throat for all of eternity. The train cuts through the new office buildings and fancy underground parking garages of Centre City, pulling into the station outside of Camden Yards.

  Dog sits on the floor at my feet, waiting until it’s time to move. She looks like the Sphinx. There’s no one on the train except for a man sleeping across several seats, snoring. I keep the aluminum bat in my hand. The train doors open to blackness. The baseball stadium is dark and empty.

  Dad used to take me to Orioles games every weekend. We would ride the light rail downtown together. At Camden Yards, Dad would buy hot dogs and fountain sodas and bags of unsalted peanuts. We’d sit in the upper deck and watch the players who looked like spiders crawling over the dirt and grass. Jackson would insult the other team. Dad would watch us both cheer when the O’s would score a run. He’d high-five us. On our way home, we’d wait on the platform for the northbound light rail train and push our way to the front to get seats. Jackson and Dad would sit next to each other and I would lie across their laps, the speed of the train rocking me to sleep.

  The moon crawls into the corner of the sky, pouring pale light over a parking lot full of cars. All of the surrounding office buildings are empty with only a few windows lit with light from a cleaning crew, working their way down a hallway.

  Dog pulls me like a sled.

  We reach the strip of land between the Inner Harbor and Fell’s Point, which reminds me of a war zone. Burned out buildings and abandoned cars abound. Empty parking lots, padlocked and wrapped in a barbed wire fence. Graffiti-laden yellow school buses. Broken glass glitters up from the uneven sidewalks and pot-holed pavement, reflecting street lamplights as they buzz—a broken rainbow. A breeze blows in off the harbor and smells of a fire. Redbrick sidewalks and cobblestone streets replace the cracked streets. I approach the empty police station across from Jackson’s apartment. Jimmy’s is empty. Rain drizzles down again, tapping over everything. A whip of fall wind blows in off the harbor and smells of an approaching storm, swirling in the distance.

  A woman on the corner in a vinyl miniskirt tries to flag a taxi that doesn’t stop. She asks me if I can spare money for the bus.

  “If you need money for a bus, how were you going to pay for a cab?” I ask.

  “I would have found a way,” she says.

  Ladies and Gentleman, this is Baltimore.

  74

  I pound on Jackson’s door, but he doesn’t answer.

  Dog sniffs the floor, searching for the source of that God-awful rank smell that hangs in the hallway. I pretend it is some kind of chemical warfare attack, that if I don’t gain access to the mother ship in T-minus 15 seconds it will melt my insides and make my eyes pop like water balloons. No one wants to be a Goo Baby.

  “Fuck off,” Jackson says and throws something at the door. “I’m not home.”

  “Jackson,” I say. “It’s me. Open up. We have to talk. It’s about Dad.” I bang a bunch more, this time using my bat like a battering ram, before something heavier hits the door. Glass shatters. Dog flinches and looks at me like a question, What are you going to do? I step back, ready to kick the door in like some kind of badass cop when Franny opens her door behind me.

  “Jackson?” Franny asks, squinting under the hallway light.

  “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” I ask. “I didn’t mean to be so loud.”

  “You didn’t wake me,” she says. “I was pretending more than anything.”

  “I wish I was pretending,” I say, scratching Dog’s head.

  “You brought your dog,” she says. She crouches and pets Dog between her ears.

  “Her name is Dog.”

  “That’s a funny name,” Franny says, petting her. “She is beautiful.”

  Franny is beautiful. She is a wedding dress away from being a beautiful bride. She wears black sweat pants and a green tank top, showing curvaceous cleavage. How about that SAT word—curvaceous! I want her to hug me and never let go. I touch my nose, but I am not bleeding.

  She stands. “It’s amazing how much you look like your brother,” she says.

  I make a face.

  “It’s a compliment,” she says. “Trust me.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “You’re a smartass like your brother.”

  Franny leans against the door—her bare feet on the linoleum floor, her hair back in a ponytail. I take a breath and feel a burn in my lungs and I gasp for another, hoarsely. Franny holds me at my shoulders, inspecting me, then brings me in for a hug.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Does he know you are here?” she asks.

  “He won’t open the door.”

  She tips my face up to hers. “You can wait for Jackson, if you like,” she says, opening her door. “I’m not going to send you away.”

&nb
sp; “Can Dog come too?”

  “Dog can come too.”

  75

  A copper kettle whistles on the stove. Steam shoots out from the nose. The tea attempts to cover the rank smell but doesn’t even come close. Franny slides the kettle from the burner and pours three cups of tea.

  “I have to take this into Sherman,” Franny says, lifting a cup with all the care in the world, moving cautiously across the room and around a corner.

  Dog sniffs everything, searching, finally sitting by the door, waiting, wanting to leave.

  The living room is littered with books and loose papers. A bookshelf covers one entire wall from floor to ceiling, books jammed in every possible way. The spines faded and covered in dust or ash. Two brown leather recliners sit at the edge of an all-glass coffee table. A pile of pillows and blankets sit stacked neatly in the corner. The room looks like it hasn’t been lived in for years. Various Van Gogh self-portraits hang from the walls, including the famous one with the bandage wrapped around his head. He looks crazy, but in a harmless way that makes me feel sorry for him.

  “Sherman used to teach literature at Johns Hopkins,” she says, back at my side. Her hand grazes my own and I feel my pecker shiver a bit. “Would you still like some tea?”

  Dog watches, still not entering the room.

  “I would love a spot of tea,” I say in a British accent. I say, “I don’t know why I just spoke like that.”

  She hands me my cup and plops down in one of the leather chairs. I take the other. I slurp the tea and burn my tongue.

  We are silent for a bit, then she asks me why I’m down here. She asks if I’m in trouble.

  I think about all the lies I could conjure up and all of the people I could blame and all of the wild stories I could tell, but in the end I tell Franny the truth. I tell her the truth about almost everything. About the surgery video and Mr. Rembrandt and Dad in the basement and the blood and his disappearing. Then, I tell her about my mother. I tell her that she’s a pillhead junky, who’s been whacked out on dope for as long as I can remember. I tell her that Jackson is some kind of sex addicted, tweaked out fuck-up and that the only real friend I have at school is Zink, but I don’t tell her that he’s gay. Like I said, I tell her the truth about almost everything.

  Franny doesn’t say anything. She just listens and occasionally agrees with a nod. I grow tired of talking, and eventually ask if she is Sherman’s nurse or daughter or lover or something, and this makes her laugh. She explains that she’s a former student, yes, but also his main caregiver. I ask her why he is sick and she says he has an incurable disease. I’m no moron and can pretty much guess which of the very few incurable diseases he has but don’t press the issue as I can see it in her eyes—whatever is physically killing him is killing a part of her too.

  “Franny, I want to ask you a question about a girl,” I say.

  “I’d like to help you with that very much,” she says.

  We both perk up and sit at the edges of our seats.

  “I like this girl. Her name is Aimee. And tonight I finally got the nerve to ask for her number and I did and she gave it to me.”

  “That’s lovely, Jeremy,” Franny says.

  “My friend told me I was supposed to wait three days to call her, but I called her when I got home. I woke her up.”

  “Everyone wants to be pursued,” she says. “Besides, so few people actually give a shit that when someone like you comes along, it’s a unique thing. Did she mind it when you woke her up?” Franny asks.

  “Yes, but she made plans to meet me tomorrow night for tea.”

  “She likes you,” Franny says. “No doubt about it. And tea date is much better than a dinner and movie date. You can’t force a connection with people. You have to lay back and let it happen naturally. It has to click.”

  “Click?” I ask.

  “Click,” she says.

  “Like a gun?” I ask.

  “Like a seatbelt,” she says.

  76

  Sherman’s bathroom is goddamn yellow. Everything’s goddamn yellow—shower curtain, tiled floor, bath mat, liquid hand soap, hand towels, waste basket, and wallpaper. I sit on the yellow toilet seat to pee. Next to the toilet is a yellow basket holding a stack of magazines. They’re all men’s magazines with half-naked women and cars on the covers. I think about flipping through to see if I want to steal any but decide that stealing from Sherman would be a pretty terrible thing to do.

  I wash my hands in the yellow sink. The door swings opens and an overwhelming stench of rotting flowers fills the room. A man stands in front of me, a middle-aged man wearing a plaid robe. His hair is damp and slicked back, his eyes bloodshot. He doesn’t look all that bad. I would never say that to the man’s face or even to Franny, but if I passed him on the street I would have had no idea he was even terminal.

  Dog barks from the living room.

  “Your dog doesn’t seem to like me and she’s a guest in my own house,” Sherman says.

  “I’m a friend of Franny’s. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” I extend my hand to him and he looks at my hand and back at Dog and then to my hand again, before refusing to shake.

  “Whatever it is—it’s bad,” Sherman says, pushing past me, entering the goddamn yellow bathroom. “You’re a smart young man. I can see it in you. But whatever you’re chasing, leave it alone.”

  I look down the hall for Franny, pissed that she talked to Sherman about all of this. I don’t even know the dude. I smile and tell him that I will leave whatever I’m chasing alone.

  Sherman grabs my hand and presses his palm into mine. I don’t feel anything odd, like an electric charge or heat or ice or anything like that, but Sherman squeezes my hand hard and says, “Your father needs to enter alone. Your father no longer needs his son. Do not follow him. There is nothing you can do.”

  I step out of the bathroom and he closes the door. I can see into the bedroom that must be his. The blinds are closed and lights off, but the hallway light touches a few things. I can see a bed with the outline of a body in the sheets. A large cross above his bed with Jesus nailed to it. A statue of the Virgin Mary praying from the nightstand.

  On my way out of the apartment, I ask Franny one more question.

  “Did you ever, you know,” I say, raising my eyebrows, “with Jackson?”

  “Absolutely never,” she says.

  “I knew it,” I say. “I just knew it.”

  77

  I walk back to the light rail as thunder rolls off the black harbor. Black rain falls at a slant, filling the space between the cobblestones in the street. The street lamps buzz blue in the downpour like bug zappers. All signs of life have moved inside to wait for dawn or until it is dry again. No fucking zombies out tonight. I swing my bat with my free hand, holding Dog’s leash in the other.

  I am umbrella-less and don’t care. I am careless.

  I spontaneously do the “Thriller” zombie shuffle and shoulder jerk dance. I imagine forty dancers dressed up as zombies popping and locking in the middle of the rain-soaked streets with me to the soundtrack of “Thriller.” I dance until I’m completely drenched and can’t dance anymore from my sagging clothes, not to mention that the last thing I need is for some random person to tell the police I am bugging out on crystal meth or something.

  Dog keeps looking behind us. She growls, then barks, snapping her jaw.

  The woman I met earlier in a vinyl miniskirt steps out from the backseat of a car. Inside, the car is littered with trash and piled with blankets, aluminum cans, and plastic bottles. There is no one else with her.

  “I need money. Can you spare any?” she asks.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “Can you keep him back?” she asks. “She’s a girl.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Not money,” I say. “I have to catch my train now.”

  “The last light rail north left over an hour ago.”

  “How do you know?” I ask.


  “What else is in the bag?” she asks.

  “I said I don’t have any money.” I choke up on my grip of the bat. Exposing it under the blue lamp-lit street, showing her its length and girth like a jeweler holding a diamond ring. I point the tip of the bat at the woman and she steps back.

  “A little old to be playing tee ball,” she says.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I say.

  She steps back and I lower my bastard.

  “Get back in your car.”

  The woman gets into her car, packed with blankets and paper bags filled with aluminum cans and plastic bottles.

  I pull on Dog’s leash and move into the center of the street. The light rail is far away, but I will be there soon. The rain eases up but never disappears completely, dwindling to a fine mist.

  I think of Franny and Sherman and say a quiet prayer for them in my head—a hybrid of a Hail Mary, an Our Father, and something about the essence of life.

  Or some shit like that.

  78

  Our house sounds different at dawn. Everything is quiet and empty. Like 28 Days Later when the main character wakes in the hospital room alone. Maybe a bird chirps. Maybe there’s a squeak, like a door. Sun pulls itself up over a coast of trees at the end of the street. Last man standing. Little noises crackle like cereal in milk. The refrigerator clicks on and buzzes in the kitchen. A soft, electrical hum travels inside the walls, vibrating a current of power like veins running blood through a heart. Water flushes through pipes buried beneath the hardwood floors. Artificial sounds. None of them Dad.

  I unclick Dog from her leash as she scrambles to the kitchen, slurping at her water bowl. Dad’s office is locked up again—no trespassing. I climb the stairs to my room. One step at a time. Carefully, methodically, intentionally keeping the wood from bending and creaking, carrying my bat out in front of me, aimed and ready to strike. No lights on. No doors open. No clothes on the floor. No blood splattered along the railing. No broken glass. No busted furniture. No bodies. No gauze. No yellow police tape. No nothing. Everything normal.