Notes from a Necrophobe

by T. C. Armstrong

  I do see something. There’s another girl like me, and she’s awake too! She’s staring right back and she’s mouthing something to me. I take my earplugs out to hear her, but she’s still just mouthing the words, she’s not making any sound.

  “I don’t think anyone can hear you,” I whisper. “All the grownups are sleeping and they’re wearing earplugs too.”

  “Oh yeah!” she says brightly. “So was that your dog and cat that the guards took away?”

  “The cat isn’t ours. He’s Martin’s…well, I guess he’s ours now.” I don’t want to think about Martin. It makes me unhappy. “His name is ‘Killer,’” I add.

  “Is that because he’s a mean kitty?”

  “No, he’s real nice to everyone, but if you think he has a funny name, you should hear our dog’s…it’s ‘Naked.’”

  “You think dogs should wear clothes?”

  “No! Well, sometimes if it makes them look cuter, but she’s Naked because that’s her name.”

  She starts to giggle. “So does that mean you used to walk Naked down the street?”

  “That’s right, we used to walk Naked all around our neighborhood! We also got Naked in the shower when she was dirty and sometimes we even got Naked in the car because she likes to go for rides.”

  More giggles. I’m really enjoying this; it’s why I tell everyone my dog’s name.

  “So what’s your name? Is that your whole family that you came in with?”

  “I’m Jessica or Jesse or Jess or sometimes Messy-Jesse and I’m nine. My dad is working overseas. He’s working hard so we can get in one of those compound apartments. You know, the ones with swimming pools and tennis courts and glass ceilings so we can go and play outside again. That’s my mom and my brother and my sister and the one that’s still awake is our new neighbor, Ghost. Well, he was our new neighbor when we had a house. Maybe he’ll be part of our family now!”

  “Is Ghost really his name? If it is, that’s the coolest name I’ve heard.”

  I look over at Ghost to see if he’ll tell us his real name, but he’s pretending to be asleep. He may look like he’s sleeping to other people, but he can’t fool me. I know what it’s like to pretend to be asleep. I do it all the time. I turn back to my new friend. “What’s your name? Is your family here with you?”

  “I’m Sara and I’m ten. I don’t know where my parents are. Our house burned down, and we ran out and joined our neighbors in the street. Those things were all around us. My mom and dad yelled at me to run as fast as I can, run fast and don’t look back and they would catch up with me and meet me at the refugee center. I was so scared that I ran faster than I ever did in my whole life and I didn’t slow down till I saw all them people. I asked where they were going and they said, ‘To the Refugee Center; come with us.’ It got slippery when it started to rain, but I didn’t let myself slip; not even once, though I almost tripped on my raincoat because it’s so long. It’s long because it once belonged to my big sister, but she never came home on the Lost Day, so now it’s mine. My parents cried all the time over that, but I think my big sister probably went home with one of her friends and her phone battery is always dying so she can’t call us yet and not everyone has a computer right?”

  “Everyone has a computer!” I say in my head but I keep that thought to myself because my new friend already looks sad and I don’t want to make her feel worse. I learned not to do that from those times I asked Mom when Dad was coming home. I wonder where her parents could be. If they’re not here and all the houses in the neighborhood are getting burned down then where are they? I have all these questions buzzing around in my head like those gnats that get all up in your face in the summer, and just like those nasty bugs you can’t get rid of them. But I don’t ask her those questions; instead I ask, “Do you know anyone here?”

  “I know one person, but I wasn’t sure I knew him right away. He looks way different. He’s Mr. Cromwell, my big sister’s teacher. Normally he’s all neat and tidy and he didn’t have a beard before and when he’s not at school you always see him with his family. I didn’t see any of his kids or his wife. He’s also covered in mud like he fell down lots of times. He looked right at me while we were in the hallway, but it was like he was looking through me. He acted like he didn’t know where he was. He’s over there.”

  She points over at a scraggly looking man with cocoa skin who doesn’t seem to be sleeping either. He’s like Ghost was earlier, looking up at the ceiling like he could see straight up to the skies. He looks homeless. He looks lost.

  I don’t know why but I start to cry. I just realized that we’re homeless too. I mean, I’m glad to be here with most of my family. I’m excited to make new friends and have new things to look at and do, but I also feel lost. I’ve lost my home and my toys, and I’m afraid we may lose Naked. It’s been so long since I’ve seen my dad or talked to him that I’m scared I might lose him like Sara lost her mom and dad. Now we can’t ever go back to the Life Before because we don’t have anything left from it. Well, except for our split kits, and what if we don’t get those back? There’s a picture of my dad in there! And I’ve got the best collection of Littlest Pet Shop, so maybe the guards won’t want to give those back either.

  Sara’s crying too. We look at each other, but we’ve run out of stuff to talk about for now. We just nod and turn over in our cots and cry ourselves to sleep.

  HOUSTON

  Our bags are waiting for us by the time we wake up. I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize that they’ve also returned Naked. KC appears to be happy to have Martin’s cat Killer back as well. We all dive for our kits and rifle through them to make sure that everything’s still there which it isn’t, not by a long shot. The disappointed “Awwww!” and the frustrated “What?” heard round the room prove that I’m not the only one missing stuff. I hear a lot of “Hey, where’s my IPod?” and “Where’s my cell phone?” and even “Where’s my gun?” That last one sounded like my mother. I turn to look at her and at the same time I hear KC sputter angrily “Hey! Where’s my watch?”

  “Are you missing anything else?” I ask curiously.

  “Yeah! My phone, my iPod, and my pocketknife are gone too.”

  “Did they take your watch when they removed the rest of the stuff from your bag?” I ask. And then, after a moment of thought I add “Why did you put your watch in your bag?”

  “I didn’t!” KC says indignantly. “It was taken right off my wrist! Look at your own wrist, yours is gone too.”

  Huh, she’s right. I look around at the others in the room, and I can see that none of them are wearing watches either. That would have been kind of normal before our little zombie apocalypse; most of my friends didn’t wear a watch. We just used our cell phones. But without reliable power to keep our electronics juiced up we had to go retro and wear watches again. I look around me and see that we’re camped out in what used to be the photography room. I look up where the ugly hospital-white clock used to be. It’s gone too.

  “Do you think one of the refugees stole our watches and stuff while we were sleeping?” KC asks. I can see she’s so angry at losing her things she’s ready to blow.

  “I don’t think so.” Ghost says quickly. “I mean, that was my first thought too, but where would they fence our watches? And why would the clocks be missing? Did anyone notice that there were no clocks in the hallways we walked through them on the way here?”

  “Well, no,” KC snaps. “I was still trying to catch my breath from our fun-run with the zombies in the rain.”

  Ghost ignores her, and Mom carries on for him. “There’s a recurring theme to what’s missing from our split kits.” She looks around to see if anyone else in the room is paying attention and finds that everyone is listening. “Does anyone here still have their weapons?” A chorus of shaking heads says “no.”

  “Does anybody else here have a watch or some kind of timepiece?” Again her eyes are met with a silent “no.”

  “What about anyth
ing electronic, anything that can store data or track time? Any diaries of any sort?” This time I hear a staggered interchange of “No,” “Nope,” and even a snooty “Nothing of the sort.”

  “I can understand why the soldiers would remove our weapons in the interest of security…” my mom says, looking perturbed.

  “Because we won’t need our weapons now that we have people to guard and protect us!” interrupts a middle-aged woman. She’s got enough braids and scarves to make her the quintessential-hippy-of-the-year. I look at her dreamy expression and have a hard time imagining her wielding a weapon of any type. She’s got that glassy-eyed look of the artificially happy. I wonder how long she can keep that up.

  KC gives this woman one of her “Whatever” looks and says “If the soldiers are behind this, I want to know why they’ve taken away all means of communication.”

  “And I want to know why they want us to lose track of time,” adds Ghost.

  “Stay here and I’ll find out,” Mom says as she stands up. But just as she’s about to walk into the hallway, she finds her way is blocked by Braden. He stands directly in the doorway, his hands clenched on both sides of its frame. He looks directly at my mom and says in a grim voice “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mrs. Macfarlane.” My mother stares right back and surprisingly, doesn’t move. There’s something in Braden’s look that tells her he’s got a good reason to be blocking that door, and in my head I can hear those first few words of last night: “Welcome to hell.”

  “Why not?” she asks, her brow furrowed with frustration.

  “Because the soldiers can do what they want, take what they want, and if you push them too hard you’ll find yourself back on the outside.”

  Everyone in the room gasps at this. We came here looking for protection! Now it seems there’s a price to pay for it. Problem is, we don’t have room to complain about the conditions. It’s not like we have anywhere to go. I find myself wishing Dad would hurry up and get back in the country so he can pick us up and take us somewhere, anywhere else.

  My mom must be thinking the same thing because she puts her hand on Braden’s shoulder and pointedly asks, “Then can you move aside so I can go to the computer lab and contact my husband?” A bunch of other people get up at this, like they just remembered that they too should let their friends and family know what happened to them and where they are. Braden gets the second gasp of the day when he says, “There’s no Internet. There hasn’t been a signal here from day one.”

  Several baffled refugees sit back down heavily on their cots. No means of contact? How will people find us? No way of telling what day it is or what time it is? How will we stay sane if we can’t mark time? No way of defending ourselves? Can we really trust that the walls can keep the dead out? And thinking of my iPod and phone and Mom’s iPad, how are we to keep from going crazy if there’s no way of entertaining ourselves? I better keep that last thought to myself. If I say it aloud my mother will give me a lecture about all the stuff they did in the old days before there were laptops and Internet.

  One little voice rises above the dejected sighs and mumbles of disappointment. It’s a tiny voice that sounds like a little bell, but it’s not the voice of a child. It’s the voice of an elfin creature about KC’s age. “Well those soldiers must have some way to contact the outside world, and when I tell them who my father is, they’ll get a hold of him right away!” She stamps her diminutive foot and pouts. “Why I bet my dad could make those soldiers give back all our stuff!”

  Braden’s whole body relaxes at the tiny voice. If my mother had talked like this he’d be pushing her back through the door, but Braden is a sucker for pretty little things. All his attention is focused on the cute girl as she weaves her way through the freshly displaced on her way to the door. He leaves his perch to meet up with the bird and turn on the charm, but before either of them moves we hear another “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” as someone else protectively covers the doorway.

  I like this door cover much better than the Braden one. This one is a willowy dark blonde with sleek hair that flows over her shoulders and down her back. She has this fresh-face look without the naiveté and a hint of humor in her brown eyes. She appears too put-together in her clingy Gap dress to look like a refugee, but I just know she’s not with those soldiers either. I’m having a hard time imagining her running away from zombies through the mud in a dress like that. Is that the kind of outfit women cram into their split kits? It’s certainly not something my sisters would consider to be emergency clothes. And why am I even thinking about her dress? She’s Braden’s type anyways, the kind he loses his head over.

  But he’s not interested in this girl; he’s still obsessing over his new find. In fact, he seems to openly dislike the willowy blonde. He scowls at her and balls his hands into fists like he wants to hit the wall. I don’t think he likes to be upstaged in front of the new girl. But Willowy Blonde pays Braden no attention. “Hi, I’m Lisl,” she says to Braden’s new crush.

  “I don’t care,” Cute Girl says in a voice she might use to dismiss a servant. So, Miss Tiny Voice has a big ego. That makes her a little less attractive. She reminds me of my first ex-girlfriend. I’ll have to remember to give her a wide berth the next time I’m around her.

  Lisl’s not fazed. She pretends she didn’t hear Cute Girl’s insulting tone and carries on with her warning. “What you say and do here affects everybody.” She looks around to make sure we’re all paying attention and drops her voice. “It’s like one of those celebrity rants on Twitter: your comments don’t biodegrade, in the end everyone ends up dealing with your trash.”

  Wow, now I’m really depressed. I don’t even know why. It’s not like I’m the kind to speak up and say things that’ll get us into trouble—that’s KC and Jesse’s thing. KC gets noticed for the wrong reasons because she voices her feelings and doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Jesse gets noticed because, well, she just doesn’t seem to know how to be quiet and inconspicuous. I look around the room and see nothing but weary faces. It’s a “Now what?” atmosphere and it’s bringing me down. Lisl seems to take this all in and brightens her tone. “Hey, you know what we do with new arrivals?” she says in a chirpy voice. “We play a game called ‘What’s In My Bag?’ You get to know each other really well by what you thought was important enough to carry around while you’re on the run. Come on, who wants to go first?”

  “I’m not playing!” says Little Miss Tiny Voice. She stomps out of the room with Braden right behind her. Lisl makes no move to stop them. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she’s looking forward to them getting into trouble. The rest of us don’t seem to care what’s going on. We just sit there on our cots looking dazed, unable to take in everything we’ve just heard. Lisl glides over to us and seats herself next to Ghost on his cot. She gives him a warm smile and says “Of course, if you don’t want to share, you can lock your bag in the footlocker at the end of your cot. Just make sure you keep the key safe. I keep my key around my neck, see?” She pulls a necklace out of her cleavage in one fluid movement, something that makes Ghost blush and look away and makes KC narrow her eyes. I don’t think anything’s going to make KC share with this girl. I know that look on KC’s face; she’s decided she doesn’t like her. I don’t know why, she seemed fine with her till she started talking to Ghost. Now she looks Lisl over like she’s trying to find something to fight about. Fortunately she doesn’t get a chance to do that because her two friends, Anna and Claire have come bounding into the room, squealing with delight at the sight of KC. I can tell she’s just as excited to see that they’re still alive, and relieved that she has friends in this place.

  “Well, I can see that you’re busy,” Lisl says suddenly, rising up from the cot. “I’m going to find Braden and torture him over his new crush. Why don’t you guys finish up playing ‘What’s In My Bag’?”

  Personally I think it would be more fun to torture Braden, but I feel like I’m supposed to stay here with my fam
ily and take part in this refugee center tradition. I’m kind of curious about the stuff people brought with them. Ghost goes first like he wants to get this out of the way, and he’s clearly not sharing much. He just shows his flashlight and some protein bars when I bet he’s got all sorts of gadgets stowed away in there. Once he’s done “sharing,” he puts his bag in his footlocker and locks it, placing the key on a shoelace he pulled out of his bag and tucking it under his shirt.

  I went next because I also want to get this over with. It’s not like I have much. I’ve got a little framed picture of my family on a keychain with a key to a house I’ll never see again. I’ve got some of my favorite guitar picks, the only thing left from my collection of electric guitars that are now just ash on the ground. I’ve got the book F in Exams that makes me smile no matter how many times I read it and I’ve got the T-shirts from the last two concerts I went to: Aerosmith and Noel Gallagher. I once had a bunch of treats like Hershey’s kisses and Skittles, but I can see that the soldiers removed those too. KC notices the missing sweets and sourly comments, “It was probably in the interests of security, right?” Claire and Anna go quiet at this. I don’t think they have anything good to say about that.

  KC has her sketchpads and pencils, as well as her Sherlock Holmes and Pride, Prejudice and Zombies which makes Anna gasp and KC say, “What? I think it’s funny!” She doesn’t seem willing to share anything more after that.

  I’m dimly aware that others are comparing what’s in each other’s bags, but I’m no longer interested. I’m starting to feel a bit uneasy about this place. It’s not that I’m ungrateful—if we were still out there we’d be dead. Yet part of me wishes we bypassed Mclean High School and kept on driving. The Jeep was gassed up and ready to go. It was waterproof, and I’m sure we would have found something to hole up in if we kept on going. This can’t be the only refugee center for miles and miles, can it? Why couldn’t we have found one that had Internet connection?