The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  We have to be twice as good to be liked half as much in this world!

  Fuck that. Micah’s life wasn’t going to revolve around how much the world liked her. She got A’s since she was smart, not for trying to impress anyone. She attended class even when she was sick because it was stupid to say sick children should stay home, but then factor their attendance into their valedictorian chances. Happy to infect everyone, Micah barfed in the restrooms in her freshman year and passed out at her desk in her junior with a fever of one hundred and three. Fuck you, Cloudy Valley High.

  She joined Welcome Mat for no reason other than the popular crowd bored her with their posturing and since everyone expected her to be popular. Her mill marks would have to be sanded down, the dents and gouges eliminated, she’d done it in junior high and it grew dull. So she did Welcome Mat instead. She floated around in the enormous room over the course of the years, helping with the building projects or sitting at the tutoring table to assist some lost dope at studies, but mostly she was on the movie side since sometimes they had interesting discussions about representation in media. The blowout between Austin and Dale about black and white had been one of the most fantastic things she’d ever seen. Had Austin been straight, Micah would have hauled him home and thrown him in her bed again. That turned her on, how Austin wouldn’t give an inch to the idiocy that was Dale Summit. Not a centimeter, not a nanometer, not the width of an electron. You seriously wanted to debate whether black men or white men were more unfairly represented in the media? You thought white men had the greater grievance? Austin decimated him. He called Micah that night and said I guess today I played the part of an angry black man.

  You’re beautiful, Micah said. He was, in so many ways. He’d cried so hard after sex. His body had been with her but his head somewhere else. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and that she wasn’t hurt turned his tears back to himself. Even now he gave her flowers and took the sweetest care of her, feeling badly that the loss of her virginity (which had not been important to her in either its presence or absence) was unaccompanied by a romantic dinner and candles, sweet little poems and heartfelt passion. The night should have been magical, this was a conviction he held down to his soul, and he had cheated her of what should have been one of the richest experiences of her life. She laughed until she cried. Sex was interesting and interesting was satisfying. It went no deeper than that. All the rest of it was what Austin wanted for himself; those things were silly to Micah.

  She laughed until she cried and he cried until he laughed when he saw how funny this was to her. He kissed the midpoint of her forehead and said you have one screw just the slightest bit loose, and it’s right there. I love that loose screw. He made sure to give her the flowers in front of people at school to bolster his reputation as a player among the ladies. That made all three of them laugh, Austin supposedly cheating on Elania with Micah, and it provided much drama for people who had nothing better to think about in their sorry little lives. Elania would never agree to a staged catfight with Micah over him, but a rumor of a fight was as good as the real thing.

  Austin was one of the few reasons she showed up for the spit test in order to go back to school. They didn’t work enough shifts together at the Cool Spoon. She loved him so much that she’d even confessed her real name, which she did away with in exchange for Micah in third grade when they moved from Penger to Cloudy Valley. Uma supported the change, feeling that Micah was finding herself; Tuma was upset at how the name they chose for her was rejected. Shalom considered her own unusual name a gift and she loved it, but Micah was tired of her name being singled out as special on top of her family being singled out as special when they weren’t special, and her name was something she could change. Micah. She wouldn’t get lost in a sea of Micahs, not like the Ashleys and Emmas and Jennifers, yet she wouldn’t stand out the way she did with her given name of Jubilee. Jubilee Eclipse Camborne.

  The first name was because they thought she was smiling in the ultrasound (and in which Micah couldn’t tell her head from her ass, let alone a smile in the blotchy gray shapes in the picture) and Eclipse as she arrived during one. The attention her name received from adults! How sweet! How darling! You must love it! She hated it, being singled out for something special that she hadn’t done herself. The teasing was relentless from kids, who called her Joobie-Boobie. Tuma still slipped and called her by the old nickname Joob. Micah thought the slipping was on purpose, passive-aggressively. The rejection of the name was a slap to Tuma, and she was subconsciously slapping back. Micah would always be Jubilee to her mother.

  But the name Micah was hers, her own creation. When people said that’s pretty, which happened only now and then compared to the weekly comments evoked by Jubilee, Micah was the one who deserved the credit. Tuma thought Jubilee was unique and memorable and beautiful, but Micah wanted to control what she was remembered for. The streaks of color she put in her hair bothered Tuma, too. Uma thought she was expressing herself.

  Austin knew what Micah did at night, and it made him angry to think of her wandering the streets. The day she told him about it, he pressed her to the freezer in the back of the Cool Spoon and said, “Don’t give me this shit, that it’s the only time this world is yours! That world belongs just as much to rapists and freaks!”

  When she laughed, he hissed, “Jubilee,” into her ear to piss her off, and she wrestled with him. He wouldn’t let go, whispering Jubilee Jubilee Jubilee and she hated that he was stronger, she loved that he was stronger, her heart pounded at how she had lost control of him. She was brilliant and lovely and control came so easily, over boys, over her grades, over her teachers, over her parents, but not with Austin who didn’t respect her intelligence and wasn’t attracted to her body.

  They wrestled silently so that Mr. Yates would not be alerted. Once Micah was dizzy from exertion and elation, even more trapped now with her arms crossed over her chest and so tightly in his grip that she could only breathe, he hissed in her ear, “You text me when you get back home. You text me so I know you’re still alive.”

  She did, sometimes. And she took more precautions after that. She dressed in black with her hood up, so that no one could see she was a girl. At a height of five-eleven and with a broad-shouldered build, it was easy to pass. Her stride had purpose, even if her mind usually did not. She didn’t wear a backpack to offer temptation to a thief; she didn’t even take her wallet. She had nothing but a dog, and sometimes a dildo. They came from an online sex store called Dirty Kisses. She received email notifications every time there was a toy sale. Which parent would have been more upset about what she did with them was an internal debate she carried on while gluing them to Dale’s locker.

  As to the dog, an elderly and disheveled spaniel of some sort named Harbo, it came from the neighbors. He lived in the backyard day after lonely day with only a pat at mealtimes. Nearly every midnight, Micah opened the gate between their properties and called to him. An unused leash was on his shingled doghouse, and then they were two on the dark, quiet roads of Cloudy Valley and the neighboring cities of Penger and Blue Hill. Harbo thought Micah shat dog treats. All of the love he saved up during his forgotten days he lavished upon her in wiggles and affection. Micah was his best friend with the leash and whispered coos, who invited him along for adventures and companionship. He especially loved dildo nights, since Cloudy Valley High was full of such interesting smells and he found leftover lunches hidden in corners and under lockers. Every time she attached the leash to his collar and showed him the dildo, he practically pulled her all the way to the high school.

  It was her world, this secret way she knew her community.

  A green Feemer was always parked in the lot outside Cornie’s Bar in downtown Cloudy Valley, every single night. Once she realized that it must have been the tenth time she was seeing it there, she sat across the street on a bus bench by the television store and watched. People came out of Cornie’s in ones and twos, getting into other cars and driving away. T
hose people and those cars were not always the same, but this junky old Feemer was. The bar closed at two, and the owner of the car was the last one out the front door. He wobbled to the Feemer and drove out of the lot, traveling over the centerline before jerking back into the correct lane. Almost immediately, he put on his blinker and pulled into a driveway of an apartment building. Micah counted. He lived eight driveways down from Cornie’s Bar, an easy distance to walk, yet he drove drunk.

  She and Harbo followed him the next time, down those driveways and to the apartment building. He lived on the second floor and his steps on the stairs were ponderous. The door opened and closed, a light went on and off, and then there was silence. The following night, the Feemer was back at Cornie’s. Micah loved that she knew this about her city, something she had no reason to know. The man’s apartment was labeled 2B, and Micah searched the mailboxes below. Richard Bowdon. The box was packed, and he had a second notice on one of his utility bills. Harbo waited patiently at her side.

  They followed police cars to parties being broken up, to fender benders and domestic violence calls, to the all-night diner On a Platter. Once they landed on an accident, a real accident in the intersection of Sixth and Cherry. It was a head-on collision between two minivans. Crumpled fronts, doors no longer attached at the top, the hood of one car had slid over the other, making it look like the second car was being eaten by the first. A fender was pulled high like an eyebrow arching in surprise over the eye of the wheel. In the morning, the accident was in the news. But Micah had known first.

  They watched fuel prices being changed, only going higher from station to station every week, and learned that despite its name, Gas-O Cheap-O never had the lowest prices. Neither did the major chains of Royal Fuel and Comanico dotting the main thoroughfares. Now Micah knew to fill her V-6 at the We Got Gas on rundown Yerba Street. It was a tiny, family-owned chain that only existed locally and ten cents cheaper than Gas-O Cheap-O. Until her nights spent roving, she never even knew it was there.

  In Blue Hill at another bar, Micah saw three children waiting in the back seat of a car in the parking lot. Two were asleep, little towheads pressed to the windows, and the third was turned around in the seat to stare at the bar. Micah sat at the town square across the street and waited with them, since it did not seem right for a bunch of kids in grade school to be alone like that after midnight. It was half past one when a couple came out of the door and broke apart to circle the car. Slowly, slowly it crawled from the lot. Micah jogged after it to see where they lived. She and Harbo lost the car at Hearth Street.

  People went drinking and left their children in the back of the car! Micah had not known this, and it was fascinating. Her mothers never would have done that with their daughters. Micah and Shalom would have been home with a babysitter, and by this time at night, tucked in bed and fast asleep. How strange to think that this wasn’t common sense to everyone, and lucky that Micah was present that night to serve as an unofficial babysitter for those neglected children. Someone could have kidnapped them while their parents were busy getting hammered. Those kids deserved a witness. On the walk home from Hearth Street, she tried to picture herself saying to a young son or daughter get in the car. Mommy needs a beer! Her imagination wouldn’t stretch that far. Her hand went automatically to the phone to dial up the babysitter, just as her mothers’ hands had always done when they wanted to go out for some adult time.

  People spent all of their money on booze instead of the overdue utility bill. That was also fascinating, someone being so out of control that alcohol won over electricity. What would he do when his lights didn’t work? Would he pay it then? Would he rework his budget? Did it have to go to that extreme? Perhaps it did. A letter was easier to ignore than a switch that did nothing.

  When cops had gone into On a Platter, a man in an apron slipped out the back door and ran into the darkness while Micah watched. Stories did not belong only to the day, nor did lessons. She thought about this while walking around, noting the homes of people stubbornly ignoring the conservation rule and watering their lawns in the cover of night. Last winter’s rains had been minimal, this winter was forecast to be another dry one, and some fires up north had wiped out dozens of homes and a lot of woodland. But as long as you had an emerald green lawn, who cared, right? She crept onto the lawns and turned the sprinklers off, liking herself enormously for performing these small, sneaky acts of heroism.

  Micah and Harbo saw the boards over the windows of Zaley’s house one night, and on another they stopped to visit with Corbin and Bleu Cheese. Corbin was sleepy, his pit bull taking a piddle on the grass. When she finished, she ran to Harbo and rocked back on her hind legs. Her front legs came down with a merry stamp, because she wanted to play. They unleashed the dogs and Corbin threw a Frisbee down the street. Yawning, he said, “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  “I don’t,” Micah said. The Frisbee touched down and skidded over the cement.

  “Micah! You’ll get in trouble!” Corbin said as Bleu Cheese beat Harbo to the Frisbee. She grabbed it up in her jaws to bring it back, the Frisbee flipped up over her face. Then she ran straight past them since she couldn’t see, and into a waste bin waiting for the morning pick-up.

  Micah searched her brain for pockets of concern as they picked up the spilled trash, and she found none. Officer, the neighbor girl walks my dog at night. Does she hurt the dog? No, but- Do you walk your dog yourself? No, but- She’s doing you a favor. Have you ever heard of Sombra C? We’re busy!

  She stood outside Austin’s apartment complex, thinking about him sleeping inside, that long, hard body too big for his twin bed. She wanted to snuggle in beside him even though there was no room left. She could not control him with her brain or her breasts, he was a fully separate entity forever out of her reach and she wanted to be in that presence. That night she didn’t write him once back on the sidewalk of her own block to say that she was alive, since she was a fully separate entity and he did not control her either. Instead, Micah checked the neighbors’ mailboxes for misplaced Camborne mail, as the new hires for the post office who serviced their block never got it right. Then she let the dog into his yard. He lapped up water from his bowl and collapsed happily into his little house with the shingles.

  No one bothered Micah on her nights, and she adored the freedom. Uma and Tuma never suspected she was gone. With school starting on the thirtieth, she wouldn’t be able to stay out as long. Midnight to two rather than four, and that allowed enough time for sleep. It cut out her farther adventuring to other cities, but Cloudy Valley was still hers. Since she wanted one more long rove, she planned it for Friday night.

  At dinner, Tuma said, “I hope there won’t be any more problems with Dale.”

  “Oh, I’m sure there won’t be!” Uma exclaimed anxiously.

  Micah hoped there would be. She had twenty dildos in her closet. His locker had been the laughingstock of the school from April to June, and the sight of him tugging fruitlessly at fake dicks before first period was immortalized on so many HomeBase pages. Pink ones, black ones, purple ones with blue swirls, one with veins and a pair of balls the last day of school in June . . . While watching him throttle the veined one in a desperate handjob, the balls wiggling around, Micah was taken back into Austin’s arms. He giggled softly and viciously into her ear. Fuck you, Dale.

  God, did she hope Dale prayed for her again this year.

  Even her sister didn’t know about the dildos, Micah unsure if Shalom would scold or laugh. She might do both, and she wouldn’t feel comfortable keeping it a secret from their mothers. Shalom was off at Yale, their school year starting a little late as well so that precautionary measures for Sombra C could be put in place. She’d been sending Micah texts and emails about the changes. In order to continue their studies, students had to report to spit tests there, too. Those contracting the Sombra C virus would be placed in off-campus housing, and given a stipend to handle their own meals rather than eat communally with the student bo
dy. One grocery store in that area had outright banned anyone with a stamp from coming inside. Other stores made the stamped put on disposable gloves upon entry, and some added facemasks on top of it. Ordering online was easier for everyone, with delivery to the stoop.

  As for campus, Sombra C students had separate water fountains. Should any personal fluid be spilled, it was to be reported without delay so that a sterilization crew could be called in. In addition, they were not allowed to wear scarves or turtlenecks, high collars or cosmetics, anything that covered up the stamp on their necks. Micah had seen a picture online of the massive, circular red stamp on a young man’s neck. Slashed through the circle were the words SOMBRA C – 11%.

  That number was everything. Mental degradation did not start until the infection reached thirty percent. The 11% man was dangerous in his fluids and what he chose to do with them, not because his brain was so riddled with the virus that he’d lost control of his behavior. Three students at Yale had stamps, Shalom reported, a 9%, a 15%, and a 25%.

  They were given a wide berth, and the girlfriend of the 9% guy had broken up with him. All it took was one sleepy use of the wrong toothbrush, one broken condom, one wet kiss and she could get it. After any class those three students attended, in which they sat upon chairs wrapped in plastic and separated from the other students, the plastic was taken away by a gloved janitor to be burned. They had to hand in their work by email, not paper. They were not allowed to use the library unless they wore gloves and a facemask, and were forbidden to use the restrooms. The risk of contraction was so high that any student having Sombra C, even with the virus held in abeyance by Zyllevir, was banned from sports altogether.

  Shalom had a class with the 25% guy. When he sneezed during a lecture, everyone fled the room in hysterics. Waiting outside as the room was cleaned, she could hear him crying. A vocal and growing minority of students and staff were pressing to have the three Sombra C students expelled altogether. A petition was going around. Shalom had signed it, although she felt badly for doing so. She just didn’t feel safe having the virus so close. Some people were so upset that Sombra C students were allowed on campus at all that they hadn’t returned to Yale for the fall semester.