“Hypothetically. Why?”
“No reason.”
“Hey, you work in Reproduction Section, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to make your quota?”
“Easily.”
“Good.”
Precariously, I get up. For a minute, I just stand there, wondering what I’d do right now if I weren’t depressed. Then I pick up my chair and hurl it at a filing cabinet.
“That’s it, Buck,” says the doctor. “That’s the spirit.”
When I weave my way out of the doctor’s office, I walk unevenly past all the other zombies, sitting there dumbly, staring emptily, dripping drool from the corners of their mouths. One has a machete embedded in his side, spilling white sausage from the wound. Another holds her own severed leg, dangling purple ground meat from her stump. The others reach their stiff arms out for something: death maybe, for death to return; that briefest of moments when we died, when we passed from living, actually being alive, really alive, truly alive, to just being undead. In disorganized chairs, nonaligned chairs, in chairs purposefully arranged haphazardly, in the waiting room, all the zombies sit with nearly straight bodies.
I walk outside and keep going. I walk and walk. After an hour or so, I end up on a dead-end street. There’s a chain-link fence keeping me from going any farther. Beyond the fence and through it, I see a group of living teenagers hanging out behind a strip-mall where all the deliveries are made to the backs of stores. The teenagers are gathered among big dumpsters where the day’s waste is brought out, taken away, and turned into energy to make more waste.
The teenagers are skateboarding. They’re practicing tricks on the pavement. They’re making use of the curbs, the railings, and all the other unnatural obstacles: jumping them, sliding down them, riding up, turning around, and gliding back down them. I stick my fingers into the metal diamonds and stare at the teenagers—at the life in them—through the chain-link fence. I think about their DNA. The teenagers are made of chains but they still think they’re free. Free from what? Their looks? Their brains? Their environment? The strange age into which they were born? Free to do what? Become a zombie? It’s so sad. Is there anything sadder than a slave who believes he or she is free? I don’t know. Until they get blurry in my eyes from the tears that don’t come from staring and wouldn’t come at all if I were normal, I watch the teenagers.
Finally, I pull my fingers free from the double helixes in the chain-link fence and stumble away. After staggering around for a while, I find a drugstore. I pull open the door and amble carefully through the orderly aisles. I try not to knock anything off the organized shelves. It’s atypical zombie behaviour but I can’t bring myself to wreck anything. I like the clean. I like the bright and inviting products standing in rows. I like the smell of the perfume in the makeup section. In the back of the drugstore, I find a fairy.
Some humans think medicine is science but it’s not. It’s part art but it’s mostly magic. Pills, for example, are a hundred percent fairy dust.
The pharmacist fairy is a short, slender, green-haired girl. Her tiny wings stick through slits in the back of her uniform, fluttering nervously. She’s gorgeous. All fairies are gorgeous but this one is especially gorgeous. It makes me feel worse. It reminds of what I am now, what I was then, and what I can never be again. I know I wouldn’t be able to see her for what she really is if I were still alive but it doesn’t make me feel any better. I stare at her wings. They’re delicate; transparent. Black lines segment them, like veins in leaves. It’s hard to imagine those flimsy things lifting her off the ground, even though she’s so slight. There’s a rectangular white badge pinned to her white uniform. There are black letters on the badge: Fairy_26.
Disgusted by myself on her behalf, acutely aware of my grossness, and self-conscious of my gnarled, senseless, grey-green hand, I push the crumpled prescription across the counter to her.
“You want me to fill this?” she stammers. Her supple hand darts out, grabs the prescription, and jerks it away.
I grunt and nod.
“Okay, you want me to fill your prescription,” she says, nodding rapidly, trying to be brave. “It’ll take a while. You can have a seat over there.” She points in a fluid but quick way at a couple of chairs arranged side-by-side at the end of a nearby aisle. She drops her hand so she’s holding both arms tight against her sides. “If you want, I mean.”
I groan. I stagger away. I fall into a smooth plastic chair.
Nowadays, zombies work in conjunction with supernatural creatures, like the fairies, with whom they’ve struck an uneasy alliance. The war between zombies and supernatural creatures occurred several thousand years ago. It’s still a sore point with supernatural creatures, though, all of whom love human beings and hate what zombies do to them. In fact, it’s rumoured there are factions of supernatural creature revolutionary groups intent on overthrowing zombies but I don’t know anything about that.
An elf saunters in as I wait for my prescription to be filled with fairy dust. The elf is dressed in a skinny black suit with an extremely tall black top hat. Without seeing me, he goes to the pharmacy counter and puts his arms on it, stretching out the back of his jacket and making it shiny. “Hey, Fairy_26,” he calls.
“Get lost,” she whispers. She’s standing partially obscured by shelves of different sized pill bottles. I can see half of her. Her head is down and she’s pouring my pink happiness onto a blue tray where she can measure it out in daily doses.
“Come on, Fair. I want to talk to you.”
She pauses. When she speaks again, it’s like she’s forgotten I’m here. “Well, I don’t want to talk to you. And besides, we don’t have anything to talk about.”
“I think we do.”
“It’s over,” she says. “Get it through your head.”
“Fairy_26.” He says her name like he’s saying, “I know you don’t mean that.” Then he says, “Come here. Please.”
Fairy_26 walks up to the counter. She glances over at me.
“Come closer, Fair. Jeez. I’m not going to bite you.”
Fairy_26 looks down, shyly, and leans closer.
The elf reaches across the counter with both hands, grabs Fairy_26 by the back of the head and pulls her to him, trying to kiss her. Both hands on his chest, Fairy_26 struggles to get away. I moan, get up, and stumble toward the elf.
He sees me, lets go of Fairy_26, and staggers away. He backs into a display. He tumbles to the ground like the bottles he knocks down and scatters across the floor. His tall black top hat falls off. Staring at me, wide-eyed, he scrambles, gets back on his feet, grabs his hat (half-crushing it in the process) and runs out of the pharmacy.
After he leaves, I make my rigid-legged and arms-outstretched way back to my chair and tumble into its smooth curved plastic.
“I’m sorry about that,” says Fairy_26.
I groan in a way that conveys it wasn’t a problem.
Even though it’s perfect, she tries to fix her bright green hair with her fingers. I stare at her warm pink-orange hands: the ease with which they bend and flex. I look at her fingernails, how flawless they are: unbroken from clawing, fighting, and killing; tearing flesh from people, eating it, loving it.
“He’s such a jerk,” she says, going back to work. “I don’t know why it took me so long to figure it out.”
I moan, sympathetically.
“He cheated on me and he can’t figure out why I won’t take him back,” she scoffs. “I deserve better than that. I think more highly of myself than that, you know? I’m not some brain-dead bimbo with zero self-esteem.”
I nod, encouragingly.
“Listen to me ramble on,” she says. “What do you care? You have problems of your own.”
She goes back to counting pills.
When she stops talking, something happens to me. Something physical. I feel it: a sense of loss.
It takes me a minute to figure out what it is: her voice. I miss her voice. Like being alive. I took it for granted when it was happening. When it disappeared, I realized how significant it was. Not necessarily good or right or true. Just significant.
Clumsily, I get up and go to the counter. Turned away and busy, Fairy_26 fails to notice. I bang my stiff hand down onto the shiny silver bell. It scoots across the counter and falls on the floor on the other side of the counter. I curse myself for my awkwardness but at least the noise gets her attention.
“Do you need something?” she asks, not afraid anymore or, at least, less afraid now.
I put my hand to my mouth and wave my fingers there.
“Oh my God,” she says, horrified. “You’re hungry?”
I shake my head emphatically. I point at her; at her mouth. I point to myself; my ears. I gesture from her mouth to my ears, from her mouth to my ears.
She frowns. “You want me to talk some more?”
I nod and nod.
“That makes you the first person I’ve ever met who wants me to talk some more,” she says, turning away, going back to work with the pills. “Most people say I never shut up. I go on and on. Normally I do it when I’m nervous but I’m nervous all the time so I go on and on all the time. That’s just the way I am. I don’t think it’s that bad but it sure annoys some people. You wouldn’t believe how upset they get when there isn’t enough silence. I don’t know what it is about the quiet they like. Maybe it’s calm like that in their minds. My mind isn’t like that. Sometimes I wish it was. Sometimes I’m glad it isn’t. I think it’d get boring. I’m sorry. I know it’s none of my business and I’m not supposed to do this but can I ask you why you’re getting this medication? Are you really depressed?” She looks at me, over her shoulder.
On the other side of the counter, I shrug.
“I thought only humans got depressed. Living humans, I mean.”
I bang my twisted hand into my chest like, “Me, too.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like being a zombie?”
I shake my head.
“Huh,” she says. She turns back to her tallying. “I always thought zombies liked being zombies. Don’t feel bad. I mean, of course you feel bad if you’re depressed, but if it makes you feel any better, and it probably won’t now that I think about it, but not all human beings like the way they are either. And supernatural creatures are no different. Mostly I like the way I am but I get pretty sad too sometimes. Sometimes I just cry and cry. I’m one of those girls. I wouldn’t say I’m depressed or anything but I’m definitely a crier. I bawl my eyes out constantly. It doesn’t take much to get me going either. Do you wish you were a human being?” She glances at me. “An alive human being?”
I nod and nod.
“Why?”
I lift my chin at my arms stuck out in front of me. I walk around in a circle with my unbending legs.
“The stiffness?”
I nod. Then I walk toward her, mock menacingly.
She freezes.
I stop and open my crooked hands as much as I can like, “don’t worry.”
“You don’t like being scary, either, huh?”
I shake my head.
“Sounds like you’re pretty down, all right.” After she fills the bottle with the right number of pills, she stuffs it in a bag, prints up the instructions and price tag, staples it to the bag, and puts the whole thing on the counter.
I give her money. She gives me change.
“I hope it helps,” she says.
I turn to go.
“Wait. Hold on.” She grabs her purse. “I think I’m going to take the rest of the day off because of the stress of you.”
My shoulders fall.
“No, that’s just my excuse,” she assures me. “I was scared at first but I didn’t know you then. I’m not scared of you anymore.” She rethinks. “Is that dumb? You’re not going to eat my brain or try to turn me into a zombie or anything, are you?
I shake my head.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m not scared of you anymore. You want to go somewhere and hang out? I don’t have any zombie friends. Do you have any fairy friends?”
I shake my head.
“Do you want a fairy friend?”
I shrug.
“Not overly enthusiastic but I’ll take it.” She smiles. She puts her hand on my outstretched arm. She looks at the point where we meet, where we touch, and then she looks up at me, happily. “Shall we?”
We walk out of the store. As soon as we turn to go down the sidewalk, I get shot in the back with an arrow.
Shocked, outraged, infuriated, Fairy_26 spins around, searching for the source. I turn, too. Fairy_26 spots him behind us, standing in front of a sporting goods store, holding a lowered bow. It’s a centaur. He has the upper half of a man and the body of a horse. His upper half, the man half, is shirtless and muscular. His lower half, the horse half, is palomino: golden-tan. “Centaur111,” yells Fairy_26. “What are you doing? You can’t go around shooting people with arrows!”
“He’s a zombie,” says Centaur111, calmly.
“So what?”
“It’s okay to shoot zombies with arrows.”
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody had to tell me that. It’s common knowledge.”
I look down at the tip of the arrow. It’s poking out of my chest. It doesn’t hurt. Zombies don’t feel much of anything, especially not physically. I yank the stick straight through my chest and drop it on the ground.
“Well, you can’t go around shooting people with arrows,” insists Fairy_26.
“You can if they’re zombies,” assures Centaur111.
“Zombies used to be human beings!”
“But they’re not anymore. That’s kind of my point.”
“So what if they aren’t anymore? So what?”
“Zombies eat people,” says Centaur111. “For food,” he clarifies.
“They have to. Otherwise they’ll starve to death and die.”
“You mean they’ll die again. Zombies are already dead.”
“They’re undead.”
“It’s okay to shoot dead people with arrows. Okay, not all dead people,” he admits. “But if they get up and walk around after they die, then it’s okay to shoot them with arrows. Definitely.”
“You can’t shoot the undead with arrows!”
“Sure you can. Ask anybody. You can even shoot them with a rifle. Here. I’ll show you.” He trots off into the sporting goods store to get a rifle.
“We’d better get out of here,” says Fairy_26, getting in front of me, taking both my hands in hers. “You’re safe with me.” She says it in that reassuring voice your parents used when they told you everything was going to be okay and you believed them. Then she lifts me into the sky. In the sudden rush of wind, acceleration, and surprise, I feel so good I could die. Even though I can’t. Even though I’m not. I feel alive.
CHAPTER
TWO
A If My Wife Wasn’t Already Dead,
I’d Probably Kill Her
I, Buck Burger, depressed zombie, unhappy husband and failed father, hereby resolve and vow to never harm Fairy_26. In addition, I swear to protect her from those who would and could do her harm, specifically in the form of turning her from what she is now, an incredibly beautiful, kind, and carefree winged sprite, into an entirely earthbound, plodding, inflexibly self-interested zombie such as I, unfortunately, and eternally, am. Right now, Fairy_26 is holding my undead claw of a hand and pulling me—looking ahead and then back at me—happily, through the hall, leading to her apartment in a branch of a tree in downtown Fairyland.
I don’t know how we got to Fairyland. It was a blur. I was so excited. We were moving so fast. Knowing how to get to Fairyland would be invaluable to zombies. Zombies would mount an attack, hoping to massacre all the supernatural creat
ures, even though we’d never be able to. Supernatural creatures outmatch us in every way except one: they’re compassionate. Compassion is a terrible weakness. It’s what we, the zombies, exploit to survive.
Supernatural creatures love living people. They play tricks on them sometimes but they love them. I understand why they love them now. I didn’t before I became depressed, but now that I do, I never want to forget.
Love of living people is what led to the tentative truce between zombies and supernatural creatures. The tentative truce continues to this day, in the form of an uneasy alliance. We, the zombies, only infect living people who, unmistakeably, embrace the zombie life. In exchange, supernatural creatures hide zombies—until it’s too late—from, it should be said, most living people, as well as most signs of zombie behaviour, including but not limited to, concert hall massacres, shopping mall massacres, airport massacres—all your conventional massacres—along with general destructive behaviour on both the small personal scale and the large institutional scale. I say supernatural creatures hide zombies and signs of zombie behaviour from most living people because there’s a small percentage of living people who learn or recognize the horrible truth and can, thereafter, see us for what we, unfortunately, are. These living people are few and far between and, I’m afraid, very afraid.
Reportedly, there was a time when the vast majority of the living embraced the supernatural creature life over the zombie life. That time, it seems, has passed. These days, almost all our young become zombies.
Some blame the education system; others organized religion. A few don’t see the difference.
In any event, now supernatural creatures do the hard work of cleaning up after zombie rampages: they fix what we break, pick up what knock down, and organize what we disorder. They usually get most of the blood. They keep us from completely destroying ourselves. We, the zombies, tell ourselves, telepathically, supernatural creatures do it because we’re so much more powerful than they are and we control them. But we know, down deep inside, that they only do it because they love people: non-undead people. They want to hide the horror from them. They hate us: zombies. Or so I mindlessly thought.
Zombie Versus Fairy Featuring Albinos Page 2
