by Isaac Marion
I listen to her breaths slow as she falls asleep. After a few hours, with her fear safely tucked away in dreams, she rolls over, removing most of the gap between us. She’s facing me now. Her faint breath tickles my ear. If she were to wake up right now, would she scream? Could I ever make her understand how safe she really is? I won’t deny that this proximity ignites more urges in me than the instinct to kill and eat. But although these new urges are there, some of them startling in their intensity, all I really want to do is lie next to her. In this moment, the most I’d ever hope for would be for her to lay her head on my chest, let out a warm, contented breath, and sleep.
Now here is an oddity. A question for the zombie philosophers. What does it mean that my past is a fog but my present is brilliant, bursting with sound and color? Since I became Dead I’ve recorded new memories with the fidelity of an old cassette deck, faint and muffled and ultimately forgettable. But I can recall every hour of the last few days in vivid detail, and the thought of losing a single one horrifies me. Where am I getting this focus? This clarity? I can trace a solid line from the moment I met Julie all the way to now, lying next to her in this sepulchral bedroom, and despite the millions of past moments I’ve lost or tossed away like highway trash, I know with a lockjawed certainty I’ll remember this one for the rest of my life.
• • •
Sometime in the predawn, as I lie there on my back with no real need to rest, a dream flickers on like a film reel behind my eyes. Except it’s not a dream, it’s a vision, far too crisp and bright for my lifeless brain to have rendered. Usually these secondhand memories are preceded by the taste of blood and neurons, but not tonight. Tonight I close my eyes and it just happens, a surprise midnight showing.
We open on a dinner scene. A long metal table laid out with a minimalist spread. Bowl of rice. Bowl of beans. Rectangle of flax bread.
“Thank you, Lord, for this food,” says the man at the head of the table, hands folded in front of him but eyes wide open. “Bless it to our bodies. Amen.”
Julie nudges the boy sitting next to her. He squeezes her thigh under the table. The boy is Perry Kelvin. I’m in Perry’s mind again. His brain is gone, his life evaporated and inhaled . . . yet he’s still here. Is this a chemical flashback? A trace of his brain still dissolving somewhere in my body? Or is it actually him? Still holding on somewhere, somehow, somewhy?
“So, Perry,” Julie’s dad says to him—to me. “Julie tells me you’re working for Agriculture now.”
I swallow my rice. “Yes, sir, General Grigio, I’m a—”
“This isn’t the mess hall, Perry, this is dinner. Mr. Grigio will be fine.”
“Okay. Yes, sir.”
There are four chairs at the table. Julie’s father sits at the head, and she and I sit next to each other on his right. The chair at the other end of the table is empty. What Julie tells me about her mother is this: “She left when I was twelve.” And though I’ve gently probed, she has never offered me more, not even while we’re lying naked in my twin bed, exhausted and happy and as vulnerable as any two people can be.
“I’m a planter right now,” I tell her father, “but I think I’m on track for a promotion. I’m shooting for harvest supervisor.”
“I see,” he says, nodding thoughtfully. “That isn’t a bad job . . . but I wonder why you don’t join your father in Construction. I’m sure he could use more young men working on that all-important corridor.”
“He’s asked me to, but, ah . . . I don’t know, I just don’t think Construction is the place for me right now. I really like working with plants.”
“Plants,” he repeats.
“I just feel like in this day and age there’s something meaningful about growing things. The soil’s so depleted it’s hard to get much out of it, but it’s pretty satisfying when you finally do see some green coming through that gray crust.”
Mr. Grigio stops chewing, blank-faced. Julie looks uneasy. “Remember that little shrub we had in our living room back east?” she says. “The one that looked like a skinny little tree?”
“Yes . . . ,” her dad says. “What about it?”
“You loved that thing. Don’t act like you don’t get gardening.”
“That was your mother’s plant.”
“But you’re the one who loved it.” She turns to me. “So Dad used to be quite the interior designer, believe it or not; he had our old house decked out like an IKEA showroom, all this modern glass and metal stuff, which my mom couldn’t stand—she wanted everything earthy and natural, all hemp fiber and sustainable hardwoods . . .”
Mr. Grigio’s face looks tight. Julie either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
“. . . so to fight back, she buys this lush, bright green shrub, puts it in a huge wicker pot, and sticks it right in the middle of Dad’s perfect white and silver living room.”
“It wasn’t my living room, Julie,” he interjects. “As I recall we took a vote on every piece of furniture, and you always sided with me.”
“I was like eight, Dad, I probably liked pretending I lived in a spaceship. Anyway, Mom buys this plant and they argue about it for a week—Dad says it’s ‘incongruous,’ Mom says either the plant stays or she goes—” She hesitates momentarily. Her father’s face gets tighter. “That, um, that went on for a while,” she continues, “but then Mom being Mom, she got obsessed with something else and quit watering the plant. So when it started dying, guess who adopted the poor thing?”
“I wasn’t going to have a dead shrub as our living room’s centerpiece. Someone had to take care of it.”
“You watered it every day, Dad. You gave it plant food and pruned it.”
“Yes, Julie, that’s how you keep a plant alive.”
“Why can’t you say you loved the stupid plant, Dad?” She regards him with a mixture of amazement and frustration. “I don’t get it, what is so wrong with that?”
“Because it’s absurd,” he snaps, and the mood of the room suddenly shifts. “You can water and prune a plant but you cannot ‘love’ a plant.”
Julie opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it.
“It’s a meaningless decoration. It sits there consuming time and resources, and then one day it decides to die, no matter how much you watered it. It’s absurd to attach an emotion to something so brief and pointless.”
There are a few long seconds of silence. Julie breaks away from her father’s stare and pokes at her rice. “Anyway,” she mumbles, “my point was, Perry . . . that Dad used to be a gardener. So you should share gardening stories.”
“I’m interested in a lot more than gardening,” I offer, racing to change the subject.
“Oh?” Mr. Grigio says.
“Yeah, ah . . . motorcycles? I salvaged a BMW R 1200 a while ago and I’ve been working on bulletproofing it, getting it combat-ready just in case.”
“You have mechanical experience, then. That’s good. We have a shortage of mechanics in the Armory right now.”
Julie rolls her eyes and shovels beans into her mouth.
“I’m also spending a lot of time on my marksmanship. I’ve been requesting extra assignments from school and I’ve gotten pretty good with the M40.”
“Hey Perry,” Julie says, “why don’t you tell Dad about your other plans? Like how you’ve always wanted to—”
I step on her foot. She glares at me.
“Always wanted to what?” her father asks.
“I don’t—I’m not really . . .” I take a drink of water. “I’m not really sure yet, sir, to be honest. I’m not sure what I want to do with my life. But I’m almost sixteen; I know I’ll have it figured out soon.”
What were you going to say? R wonders aloud, interrupting the scene again, and I feel a lurch as we swap places. Perry glances up at him—at me—frowning.
“Come on, corpse, not now. This is the first time I met Julie’s father and it’s not going well. I need to focus.”
“It’s going fine,” Julie tells Perry. “T
his is my dad these days; I warned you about him.”
“You better pay attention,” Perry says to me. “You might have to meet him someday, too, and you’re going to have a much harder time winning his approval than I did.”
Julie runs a hand through Perry’s hair. “Aw, babe, don’t talk about the present. It makes me feel left out.”
He sighs. “Yeah, okay. These were better times anyway. I turned into a real neutron star when I grew up.”
I’m sorry I killed you, Perry. It’s not that I wanted to, it’s just—
“Forget it, corpse, I understand. Seems by that point I wanted out anyway.”
“I bet I’ll always miss you when I think back to these days,” Julie says wistfully. “You were pretty cool before Dad got his claws into you.”
“Take care of her, will you?” Perry whispers up to me. “She’s been through some hard stuff. Keep her safe.”
I will.
Mr. Grigio clears his throat. “I would start planning now if I were you, Perry. With your skill set, you should really consider training for Security. Green shoots coming through the dirt are all well and good but we don’t strictly need all these fruits and vegetables. You can live on nothing but Carbtein for almost a year before cell fatigue is even measurable. The most important thing is keeping us all alive.”
Julie tugs on Perry’s arm. “Come on, do we have to sit through this again?”
“Nah,” Perry says. “This isn’t worth reliving. Let’s go somewhere nice.”
• • •
We’re on a beach. Not a real beach, carved over the millennia by the master craft of the ocean—those are all underwater now. We’re on the young shore of a recently flooded city port. Small patches of sand appear between broken slabs of sidewalk. Barnacled streetlamps rise out of the surf, a few of them still flickering on in the evening gloom, casting circles of orange light on the waves.
“Okay guys,” Julie says, throwing a stick into the water. “Quiz time. What do you want to do with your life?”
“Oh hi Mr. Grigio,” I mutter, sitting next to Julie on a driftwood log that was once a telephone pole.
She ignores me. “Nora, you go first. And I don’t mean what do you think you will end up doing, I mean what do you want to do.”
Nora is sitting in the sand in front of the log, playing with some pebbles and pinching a smoldering joint between her middle finger and half a ring finger, missing past the first knuckle. Her eyes are earth brown; her skin is creamy coffee. “Maybe nursing?” she says. “Healing people, saving lives . . . maybe working on a cure? I could get into that.”
“Nurse Nora,” Julie says with a smile. “Sounds like a kids’ TV show.”
“Why a nurse?” I ask. “Why not go for doctor?”
Nora scoffs. “Oh, yeah, seven years of college? I doubt civilization’s gonna last that long.”
“Yes it will,” Julie says. “Don’t talk like that. But there’s nothing wrong with being a nurse. Nurses are sexy!”
Nora smiles and pulls idly at her thick black curls. She looks at me. “Why a doctor, Pear? Is that your target?”
I shake my head emphatically. “I’ve already seen enough blood and viscera for one lifetime, thanks.”
“Then what?”
“I like writing,” I say like a confession. “So . . . I guess I want to be a writer.”
Julie smiles. Nora tilts her head. “Really? Do people still do that?”
“What? Write?”
“I mean is there still like . . . a book industry?”
I shrug. “Well . . . no. Not really. Good point, Nora.”
“Sorry, I was just—”
“No, I know, but you’re right, it’s dumb even for a fantasy. Colonel Rosso says only about thirty percent of the world’s cities are still functioning, so unless the zombies are learning how to read . . . not a great time to get into the literary arts. I’ll probably just end up in Security.”
“Shut the fuck up, Perry,” Julie says, punching me in the shoulder. “People still read.”
“Do they?” Nora asks.
“Well I do. Who cares if there’s an industry behind it? If everyone’s too busy building things and shooting things to bother feeding their souls, screw them. Just write it on a notepad and give it to me. I’ll read it.”
“A whole book for just one person,” Nora says, looking at me. “Could that ever be worth it?”
Julie answers for me. “At least his thoughts would get out of his head, right? At least someone would get to see them. I think it’d be beautiful. It’d be like owning a little piece of his brain.” She looks at me intently. “Give me a piece of your brain, Perry. I want to taste it.”
“Oh my,” Nora laughs. “Should I leave you two alone?”
I put my arm around Julie and smile the worldweary smile I’ve recently perfected. “Oh my little girl,” I say, and squeeze her. She frowns.
“What about you, Jules?” Nora says. “What’s your pipe dream?”
“I want to be a teacher.” She takes a deep breath. “And a painter, and a singer, and a poet. And a pilot.”
Nora smiles. I secretly roll my eyes. Nora passes the joint to Julie, who takes a small puff and offers it to me. I shake my head, older than Julie and wiser than Nora. We all gaze out at the glittering water, three kids on the same log watching the same sunset, thinking very different thoughts while white gulls fill the air with mournful calls.
You’re going to do those things, R murmurs down to Julie, and he and I swap places again. Julie looks up at me, the corpse in the clouds, floating over the ocean like a restless spirit. She gives me a radiant smile, and I know it’s not really her, I know nothing I say here will ever escape the confines of my own skull, but I say it anyway. You’re going to be strong and beautiful and brilliant, and you’re going to live forever. You’re going to change the world.
“Thanks, R,” she says. “You’re so sweet. Do you think you’ll be able to let me go when the time comes? Do you think you’ll be able to say good-bye?”
I swallow hard. Will I really have to?
Julie shrugs, smiling innocently, and whispers, “Shrug.”
• • •
In the morning the storm has passed. I am lying on my back in a bed next to Julie. A sharp beam of sunlight cuts through the dust in the air and makes a hot white pool on her huddled form. She is still wrapped tightly in the blankets. I get up and step out onto the front porch. The spring sun bleaches the neighborhood white, and the only sound is rusty backyard swing sets creaking in the breeze. The dream’s cold question echoes in my head. I don’t want to face it, but I realize that very soon this will be over. I will return her to her daddy’s porch by nine, and that will be it. The door will boom shut, and I’ll skulk away home. Will I be able to let her go? I’ve never asked a harder question. A month ago there was nothing on Earth I missed, enjoyed, or longed for. I knew I could lose everything and not feel anything, and I rested easy in that knowledge. But I’m growing tired of easy things.
• • •
When I go back inside, Julie is sitting on the edge of the bed. She looks groggy, still half-asleep. Her hair is a natural disaster, post-hurricane palm trees.
“Good morning,” I say.
She groans. I try valiantly not to stare at her as she arches her back and stretches, adjusting her bra strap and letting out a little whimper. I can see every muscle and vertebra, and since she’s already half-naked I imagine her without skin. I know from grim experience that there is a beauty to her inner layers, too. Marvels of symmetry and craftsmanship sealed away inside her like the jeweled movements of a timepiece, fine works of art never meant to be seen.
“What are we doing for breakfast,” she mutters. “I’m starving.”
I hesitate. “Can probably . . . get to . . . stadium . . . in hour. Going to . . . need gas . . . though. For Mercey.”
She rubs her eyes. She begins to pull her still-damp clothes back on. Once again I try not to stare. Her bod
y wiggles and bounces in ways Dead flesh doesn’t.
Her eyes suddenly flash alert. “Shit. You know what? I need to call my dad.”
She picks up the corded phone, and I’m surprised to hear a dial tone. I guess her people would have made it a priority to keep the phone lines running. Anything digital or satellite based probably died long ago, but the physical lines, real connections between real objects that need no fragile magic to exist . . . those might endure a little longer.
Julie dials. She waits, tensed. Then relief floods her face. “Dad! It’s Julie.”
There is a loud burst of exclamations from the other end. Julie pulls the phone away from her ear and gives me a look that says, Here we go. “Yeah Dad, I’m okay, I’m okay. Alive and intact. Nora told you what happened, right?” More noise from the other end. “Yeah, I knew you’d be looking, but you were way off. It was that small hive at Oran Airport. They put me in this room with all these dead people, like a food locker or something, but after a few days . . . I guess they just forgot about me. I walked right out, found a car and drove off. I’m on my way back now, I just stopped to call you.” A pause. She glances at me. “No, um, don’t send anyone, okay? I’m in the suburbs down south, I’m almost—” She waits. “I don’t know, somewhere close to the freeway, but Dad—” She freezes, and her face changes. “What?” She takes a deep breath. “Dad, why are you talking about Mom right now? No, why are you talking about her, this is nothing like that. I’m on my way back, I just—Dad! Wait, will you listen to me? Don’t send anyone, I’m coming home, okay? I have a car, I’m on my way, just—Dad!” There is silence from the earpiece. “Dad?” Silence. She bites her lip and looks at the floor. She hangs up.
