by Michael Cart
The days pass. Kate informs us that a guy in Maryland was arrested for eating his roommate’s heart and brains. Then weeks go by. The Herald reports that only marijuana was found in Rudy Eugene’s system. Kate says that proves he was a real zombie. Dad says it just proves drugs are bad.
I volunteer for the Obama campaign at school, and people sort of forget that I’m supposed to be a Second Amendment nut. Sort of.
One day, we’re sitting in a Young Democrats meeting, talking about how to get out the vote. Brendan actually saved a seat for me, which is huge. Ashley walked in ahead of me, and I heard her ask if the seat was taken. Then he said it was saved and called me over.
Yeah.
“Anyone have any other suggestions?” Jorge Casas, the president of the club, asks.
Ashley raises her hand. “We could reach out to other groups we’re involved with. Like maybe Melanie could contact the NRA.”
Everyone stares at me. The National Rifle Association. Cute.
“What are you talking about?” Brendan asks.
“Don’t act stupid,” Ashley says. “We all know Melanie’s a gun nut.”
“I heard she was a Second Amendment freak,” someone else says.
Everyone laughs, and I want to leave. To fly. But I can’t. Not with everyone staring at me, already thinking that me and my family are complete idiots. I can’t fly.
So I fight.
“Yeah, that’s it, Ashley. I’m a Second Amendment freak. I’m not in the NRA, but I am a card-carrying member of two different gun ranges. So what? I like to shoot paper targets—ooh, scary. And what if I am a Second Amendment freak, anyway? Isn’t the Second Amendment part of the Constitution—as valid as the First or the Fifth or the Fourteenth? Doesn’t it protect our right to bear arms? Aren’t Young Democrats for the Constitution?” I stop to breathe and look at everyone. They’re silent.
I continue. “Not everyone who likes to shoot or even hunt is a crazy who wants to own Uzis or doesn’t believe in background checks. Not everyone thinks the framers of the Constitution were talking about machine guns. There are plenty of responsible gun owners like my dad—like me—who shoot targets as a sport, because it releases tension, tension caused by dealing with idiots.”
I look at Ashley, to let her know exactly who I mean.
“I don’t happen to believe that all my ideas need to come from the same place,” I finish.
And then, I fly. Or, at least, I stomp off in a hurry, leaving everyone gaping.
That night, Brendan texts me, asking if I want to hang out at the mall Saturday.
I say yes.
School ends. Brendan and I become sort of a thing. “I like a woman who speaks her mind,” he says. Kate reads World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide and researches signs of the zombie apocalypse. (According to her, there are none.) The Associated Press reports on a Canadian porn actor who dismembered his victim and mailed body parts to people. In late June, the Center for Disease Control issues a statement that there are no zombies. A spokesman says, “The CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead.” It’s in the Huffington Post.
I still don’t go shooting with Dad. Instead, Brendan and I start going biking on Saturdays. We plan a big ride at Shark Valley, to make up for the nature walk I missed, but it’s summer and the mosquitoes are bad, so for now, we just ride to the park and the little beach near my house.
We’re on our way back from the beach Saturday, riding through my neighborhood. I love riding. It’s so peaceful. Brendan’s ahead of me, which I like because I can admire his legs. Still, it seems eerily quiet as we ride past Coral Reef Park. Then, I hear sirens in the distance. I wonder what that is.
Probably nothing. I move my gaze up to Brendan’s butt.
He says something I don’t hear.
“What?” Reluctantly I stand up on my bike and pedal hard to catch up with him.
“I said that’s weird!” he yells. “There’s no one in the park. Usually on a Saturday, there’d be tons of people, kids playing baseball and stuff.”
It’s true. There’s no one there. No one on the fields, not even on the playground.
Then, I see it, a strange, hulking shape on the ground. It looks like an animal, crouched over its prey.
As we get closer, I see it’s human.
Or maybe not human anymore.
Oh. My. God.
It’s a man—a zombie—eating another man.
It lifts its head, sniffing the air.
“Come on!” I scream at Brendan.
He sees it, too. We both begin to pedal, faster, harder, looking away from what we can’t, don’t, want to see. But there are more, more, a child crouched over a woman, a woman eating a man, and as we pedal away, one begins to pursue us. I don’t look back.
Brendan yells at me, but his words get lost in the sound of thundering footsteps and the whirring of pedals against road.
Then I hear him.
“Do you have any guns at your house?”
“Damn right I do!”
We pedal hard, hard enough that the tromping footsteps behind us fade to a dim echo. Yet, I know it’s not over.
We’ve lost the zombie by the time we reach my house. Still, we abandon our bikes on the driveway, not wanting to take the time to put them in the garage. We may need them again, for speed. But first, we need power.
Power.
I find my keys and open the door with trembling fingers. No one’s home. Where are they? No time. I lock the door.
“Come on!” I tell Brendan. I run to my parents’ bedroom, find the gun safe, open it.
My .22 is there, unused.
I look in Dad’s drawer and find what I’m looking for, Mr. Angelo’s homemade ammo.
I load the magazine.
I hear Brendan breathing beside me. He’s never been close to a gun before, but what we just saw was scarier. I turn and look at him. He’s totally freaked out, mouth open, eyes wide.
He doesn’t speak for a moment, but when he does, he says, “So . . . you’re gonna . . . shoot . . . ah . . . zombies with that?”
I’ve been all adrenaline up until now. Up until now, it hasn’t hit me. There are zombies. In Miami. At the park. Eating people. Like Kate’s crazy, obsessive thing isn’t actually crazy.
Where is Kate, anyway?
To Brendan, I say, “I’d rather not. I’m low on bullets, and we don’t know how many are out there.”
And I don’t want to go outside and see my neighbors getting eaten.
“Good point,” Brendan says. “We’ll hide in here. Maybe we should put on the news.”
We do. It’s on every station. Zombie apocalypse. This is not a drill.
Where is Kate? And Dad? And Mom?
I call Dad. It goes straight to voice mail. I bet he’s at the range, in the middle of the Glades with no reception. My mom is visiting my grandmother in the assisted living facility, far west of us.
Hopefully they’re safe.
Brendan’s parents answer. They’re at his house, safe, but they think he should stay inside.
I try Kate. No answer.
Oh, shit. Why no answer? I try again. Kate is big on not answering the phone. I text her.
The news reporter is in a helicopter, the camera panning empty beaches and streets filled with charging zombies.
And then, I hear a squeal of brakes in the driveway.
I fly to the front window. It’s Kate’s Prius. There’s something on the hood.
A man.
A zombie. She hit him with the car.
But it’s moving. It’s standing, and as it does, I see Kate, running for the door.
I dash to meet her, opening it just as she reaches it.
The zombie’s right behind her, bigger than my zombie target and so much scarier. It still looks human, except for the wild look in its eyes. There’s no blood. It hasn’t fed yet.
I raise the gun I’m still holding, and I shoot.
In the head, then the h
eart.
It pitches forward.
I shoot two more bullets into it.
Power.
Then I slam the door.
I throw my arms around Kate. We’re trembling.
I’m in the bedroom, reloading, when I get a text from Dad. Meet him and Mom at the Angelos.
Mr. Angelo may have been wrong about the reason. He may be wrong about a lot of things. But he was right about being prepared.
I go to the living room where Kate and Brendan are watching the carnage on TV.
“Come on,” I tell them.
“Where?” Brendan asks. Behind him, on our big TV, there’s a helicopter view of hundreds of zombies swarming over the Seven Mile Bridge from Key West. They look like they’re coming straight for us.
“I know someone who can help us,” I say. “Friend of the family.”
I take my gun, and we run for the car.
CERTIFIED DEACTIVATED
Chris Lynch
It was somehow more humiliating when she tried to make me feel better. Pristine, my girlfriend, who should’ve been my wife by then. She was behind me, leaning into me tight, while I gripped the top rail of the lower deck of the ass end of the ferry, slurping back to Lundy Lee from the Big Island. My hands were on the underside of the rail, shoulder height, like I was a weight lifter halfway through a clean and jerk that would raise the boat right up off the water. Her hands were on the topside of that same rail, like she was pushing me back down. I’m not tall. But I am clean. You do what you can. Clean jerk.
“Stop saying that,” she said just as we hit that moment when the ship’s engines powered way down, signaling the invisible line crossed between the wild of open water and the hard rules and boundaries of harbor. “You are not a jerk, you are a romantic.”
“Same thing,” I said.
“Stop it now, I mean it,” Pristine said, but how much could she mean it? She was laughing and squeezing me harder as if I was a little kid needing restraining. “It was our day out, baby, and nobody else’s. God was just pissed off because we weren’t doing it in a church and so he wasn’t invited. He ruins everything, especially weddings, which is why you never find him at anything even remotely fun.”
I had never been to a wedding, so this and a lot more was news to me.
Usually I loved this ferry. It was one of the true special things about Lundy Lee and the place I came to whenever I had time and nice weather and an unclear head. The Lucky Buoy, it’s called, and I hopped on and traveled out to the Big Island and back whenever . . . you know, just whenever. And every time, I returned somehow and somewhat better for it. Met Pristine on one of those very trips, the one time when I came back not only somehow better, but way how better. We were gonna be married, me and Pristine, so in my book the Lucky Buoy could sink tomorrow and still be the luckiest buoy I ever grabbed on to.
“Well, there was no wedding, anyway, was there, Pristine? So we can’t even blame him for ruining it.”
“There wasn’t, no. But who cares? Just the fact that you believed it was even possible, and that you could pull the whole thing off without consulting not one single other person on planet Earth makes the day more special for me than any ol’ wedding ever could be.”
“I consulted you, though, Pristine, and that’s all that really matters after all.”
“Except that no, actually, you didn’t.”
“Except I did. Remember, we talked about it that time after I warned you that a corn dog was not seafaring food and you got one, anyway, and were throwing up over the side? I told you then, he’s a captain, for shit’s sake. Did I make that up? Captains of boats have the power to marry people when they are out at sea, everybody knows that. Everybody has always known that, even the stupidest people know it. It’s tradition, and it’s custom, and it’s famous. One of those famous things that everybody is supposed to understand. It’s historical, is what it is, and everybody should understand historical, and one of the main things that drew me to a place like Lundy Lee in the first place was that this was one of those places, those places, where historical isn’t dead at all. It matters. It works. And this should have worked just the way it was supposed to even if I had overlooked advance planning and licenses and all that crap that isn’t even romantic at all. Boat, plus captain, is supposed to equal married, that’s all I know.”
Pristine was not talking now, even though I had left the space open for that. Still squeezing, however, and probably harder than I had ever been squeezed before.
“You, ya daffy duck, are the only thing I have ever met that works the way it’s supposed to. And nothing I know of is supposed to work the way you do. Not in real life.”
See, and that was it. Why this lady here deserved everything and more than I could ever give her, but still I had to give it everything I’d got. And this, this was not good enough.
It was humiliating. Pristine rated so much better than this. And eventually she would find what she deserved, and she would get what she deserved.
The moments when I accidentally remembered that it probably would not include me, those were bad moments. My eyes squibbled laser-fast side to side. I had to close them tight and grab on to something or I’d fall flat on my nose. It sounds funny, but it was really sore when it happened.
“That’s why it’s not gonna be real life, honey,” I said. “Not for us. Not ever. It’s gonna be so much better than real life.”
It had to be. It seriously had to be.
And it could be. It was possible. A lot of things folks said were just “dream droolings,” even I knew that. But this was not that, mostly because of the money. I was practically wealthy, because of the job I got at the spit-shiny new-built factory eight miles outside Lundy Lee. I worked there for pretty much the premier natural-edible-collagen-sausage-casing company in the world. They had a great reputation if you knew the gristle-and-guts side of the business of making smelly, disgusting beasts into quality savory main dishes and snack foods. Which, I happened to know, because of the time I spent mostly hosing blood off the walls of Carlton’s small abattoir back home. It was the only job I ever had before this one, and Carlton only let me work because he owed my mom some serious favor. Because, she said, he killed my father with Dad’s own vintage Colt Hammer thirty-two-inch twelve gauge and she testified that it was an accident. They were all friends. The Colt Hammer was so beautiful, all blue and sleek, and I used to sneak to the gun closet at night just to stroke on it. I wasn’t allowed in the daytime. Licked it from time to time and I always expected it to taste and feel like a blueberry Popsicle though it never did. I wasn’t disappointed just the same.
I never had any idea how much truth was in the details of all that, but there were at least three large-caliber firearms I had seen in Carlton’s office. And with all the blood and flesh and chopping up of carcasses going on, there never seemed quite the right time to bring it up. And we never talked. But there was no uncertainty in the fact that even though Carlton employed me, it was not because he wanted to.
Then he found out, through industry connections, that there was a job at a plant at a location far away. How would I like to earn three times the salary, he asked, making the premier natural edible sausage casings in the world? Because wouldn’t you just know there was some guy out there who owed him a big favor. I couldn’t even imagine what horrible thing that guy had done, but I wound up working second shift with a pay differential that provided a standard of living that I gathered was above average for the region around my new adopted home.
So now I had the standard. Living was going to have to be up to me.
“Because whoever came to a place like Lundy Lee looking for real life, anyway? Nobody, is who,” said the Reverend St. Paul, loudly answering his own loud question. He waved us over to his table where he sat eating a hoisin chicken ciabatta that was without question built from ice-cream scoops of the same fatty play-dough fraud of a sandwich I was splitting with Pristine.
I had seen him a few times on the
ferry, just as I had seen a number of other folks regularly making use of the reasonably priced, highly salted air and food and fantasy offered by the Lucky Buoy. He was a waver, a friendly, smiley waver-on-the-waves, the kind that people tell you to watch out for. But he never seemed diddle-prone or on the prowl to me in any of his greetings, and I oughtta have known.
Because while I have never been regular handsome, I have always been small, and my arms and legs move like they’re rusted inside, from the stupid arthritis and the congenital-heart-defect shit God brought me for my first birthday. Jesus, imagine what he would have brought for a wedding present. And so with all that, mostly I’ve always been on my own. Mostly isolated, mostly drifting, except for the three months I was imprisoned at Carlton’s for eight hours a day. Unwatched by anybody you’d love to have watching you. Mesmerizing to the other ones, the bullies, creeps, and freaks.
Watchers love the Unwatched the way cheetahs love three-legged antelope, that I have learned. And the Unwatched get the sense eventually, and can feel the heat from a fair distance away.
One would expect this guy to be one of them, opportunist types. But he didn’t watch like that. He watched me like he watched the cook chopping green peppers and red onions, and like he watched the unmanned lighthouse, and the minke whale that breached one time and definitely laughed at everybody on board the Lucky Buoy before disappearing again.
And even if the Reverend St. Paul was one of them he wouldn’t be doing that kind of watching now, perving on the sad-sexy gimp, because I had a lady on my stiff little arm, and now he could see. Everyone would see, one by one by one, and it wouldn’t even get old. I was not alone now and I was never gonna be alone again, either.
We were on the return ferry, back from the Big Island and the stupid wedding that wasn’t, on this steely, squally Saturday late afternoon when there were only very few and very surly passengers making the trip. The sky and the sea and the cafeteria ladies were all just about the exact same gray lumpy mass. And sorry, but I felt the need to point out to this lady that my food had been falsely advertised. The “pulled pork” in the sandwich she had just shuffleboarded across the counter at me had no way been pulled at anytime between when the poor pig was yanked backward out of his mother’s unthinkable behind and when he was extracted from the wrong end of an industrial meat-rending machine. I know from experience there is no right end of such a machine. Okay, so I was at fault there in terms of strict logic, but management should have conceded my point and my refund immediately. It had to be the king shit of wedding days, it really did.
