The Loving Dead

by Amelia Beamer

  The zombie rolled onto her back and sat up. She shook out her pink hair.

  “If everyone could please be seated,” the flight attendant called. No one moved.

  “Really, the bathroom is the best option,” Kate said. “We need to contain her. She’s not in her right mind, and it’s not her fault. Something is really wrong. She will bite others. I’ve seen it happen, and it’ll happen to you, too, sir. That’s how it’s transmitted.” She could hear the pleading in her voice. She didn’t want to be the one in charge of dealing with the zombie. “And you’ll turn into what she is. Think of all of the other people that she’ll bite. They’ll all sue you, if they somehow don’t get sick themselves.”

  “Sure, in a bad movie,” he said. “Just leave her alone. I’ll help her.”

  Outside the window Kate could see the cranes in the Oakland port that had inspired the walker robots in Star Wars. The ship was over land now, at least, so if they crashed, they probably wouldn’t drown. The Oakland/Berkeley hills were in the distance, to the east. To calm herself, she looked for the hill where she lived. She could never tell which one it was. “We should call for an ambulance to meet us on the ground,” she said. “Until then, it won’t make a difference to her where she is, and it will make a difference to the rest of us. But I need help moving her.” She looked to the ground. Too far to jump.

  “Please sit,” the flight attendant said. “We can’t land until you’re all seated. Don’t make these good people wait.” A few people had seated themselves as far as they could get from the zombie. No one would meet Kate’s gaze.

  “If you could just sit, please, miss,” Matt the flight attendant said, leaning over the zombie. “In your seat, that is. I’ll call for an ambulance to meet us on the ground.”

  “Ground,” she said. He voice was dark as grave soil. The zombie smiled at Matt. She flicked her gray tongue over her lips, and raised her chin. She reached for him. He took a step back.

  Kate had a bad feeling about all of this. “Walter?” she said. He’d seated himself already, and beckoned to her.

  “Saved you a seat.”

  Kate stood.

  “Come along, honey,” the zombie’s father said. “Stand up, please, Rebecca.” The zombie kept gazing at the flight attendant. She let out a moan, huskier than before. The flight attendant blushed.

  The father went to untie the belt around his daughter. “We’ll just take this off,” he was saying. The cabin grew quiet.

  “Maybe you should leave it,” the attendant said.

  “Leave it,” a woman called from the back of the cabin. Several others joined her.

  “She can’t very well stand up with her hands tied,” the father said. Still, he paused. “We’ll just get you a seat near your mother, there,” he said softly. He pointed to his wife, and the woman shrunk in her chair. He brushed pink hair from his daughter’s face, tucking it behind her ears. Then he did it again, with a smile that did not reach his eyes. She bit his wrist. He screamed, wrenching his hand away.

  “Walter!” Kate hissed. She held out a hand towards him, and took a step towards the front of the cabin. Walter undid his safety belt and caught up with her.

  The zombie giggled. She opened her mouth for another bite. Her father screamed again, and backed away. He sat down hard on the floor. Abruptly, the zombie turned back to the flight attendant. She started to get to her feet, leaning on a hand still secured with Walter’s belt. There was a loud crack, as if she’d dislocated her shoulder, and she fell.

  The flight attendant called towards the cockpit, over the noise in the airship. “I can’t get them to sit. Can we still land? We’re going to need an ambulance; there’s a medical emergency.”

  The zombie crawled on her belly towards the flight attendant, inching her hips along the floor. One shoe came off, revealing a blue sock and a gray ankle. Whatever had happened to her injured arm had made it a few inches longer than the other; with her hands tied to her hips, one elbow stuck out. As she wormed along the floor, Walter’s belt was pushed down past her hips, onto her thighs. She dragged her hands behind her, one arm flopping. Then she noticed that she could move her arms. She braced her hands against the floor and raised her upper body. There was an audible crack as she pushed herself up. She looked to be doing yoga, the Cobra pose, but she was lopsided. She struggled to pull her legs under herself, and came up to kneeling. The flight attendant took a step back and bumped into the wall. The zombie smiled up at him, reaching for his trousers. She licked her lips. He screamed and twisted away.

  There was another moan. The zombie’s father. He sat on the floor, holding his injured wrist. He shook it, making his fingers flop against the floor. The movement created a tinny sound, echoing throughout the airship. It must hurt, the way he was bashing his hand, but the puzzled look on his face suggested that perhaps it didn’t.

  The flight attendant screamed again. He looked to Kate, beseeching.

  It was hard to turn away. Kate led Walter to the bathroom. She shut the door behind them, then turned the lock. She could at least save him. It was cramped inside; they both had to stand, but there was a large window, and a high ceiling. Their faces were close. They were both sweating. Inexplicably, he had a hard-on.

  “Honey,” he said. “I’d love to join the Mile High Club, but do you really think this is the time?” He kissed her neck anyway, and hugged her close. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Shh,” Kate said. She looked out the window. They were still too high to jump, even if they could get the window open. “They’re all going to be zombies soon, and so are we unless the pilots manage to land this thing. And we’re not a mile up, my heart. Not in a Zeppelin. Not even close. There are some things I need to tell you.”

  “That girl—” he said.

  Kate put a finger to his lips. “Shut up,” she said. She pressed her ear to the thin door. Through it she heard the girl zombie moan. Her father moaned. A voice screamed. Then another. Kate watched the ground below, wishing it were closer. This couldn’t possibly be real. Maybe it was a dream, or a hallucination. She pinched herself. Her fingernails left a mark.

  Someone started giggling. Then screaming. “Something’s happening,” a male voice said.

  “What’s happening?” Walter asked. “Don’t fuck with me, Kate. This is surreal.”

  There was a knock at the bathroom door, fast and frantic. Walter reached for the handle. Kate grabbed his hand.

  “We can’t,” she said.

  “Help!” a woman’s voice squeaked. She was breathing fast. “Let me the fuck in,” she whispered. “They’re biting!” She knocked again. A thud followed, as if she were hitting something soft yet solid. Then more screams.

  Kate reached for the door handle. She couldn’t let this happen to everyone. Walter grabbed her hand.

  “I changed my mind,” Kate said. “We have to let her in.”

  “She won’t fit,” Walter said. Already the two of them barely had room to stand.

  “She’s going to turn into one of them if we don’t let her in.”

  Walter pushed Kate onto the toilet. There was no lid. “Honey, you had better start explaining.”

  Kate glared at him. “You are alive because of me. Just remember that.” She stood. “Jesus, I wish there was a portal on this door.”

  “You mean a porthole? Portal means door.”

  “I mean a viewfinder hole, like in apartments. Damn it. Damn you. We could fit one more in here.” Kate opened the door, pulling in a woman, the first unbloodied limb she could grab. Walter was pushed onto the toilet. Kate shoved the woman towards Walter, then leaned on the door to close it.

  “Let me in,” a man’s panicked voice said. Four fingers scrabbled inches from Kate’s face. The skin was unbroken, not gray or bloody. But there was no room.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate said. She closed the door on the fingers, again and again until their owner retracted them. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. She locked the door, and turned to t
he woman. Fortunately, she was small. Still, the three of them barely fit. Walter had to stand on the toilet; they were lucky that the ceiling was high. It wasn’t like the sloped ceiling in an airplane bathroom; they were in a gondola.

  “Are you bitten?” Kate demanded. “Did any of them bite you?”

  The woman was breathing fast. “No, nobody bit me. But my partner is out there,” she said. “You have to help me. That guy who was yammering earlier, there’s something wrong with him. He was coming after me, like a zombie. And the flight attendant is down. The girl is,” she shuddered and then pulled Kate into a hug.

  Kate realized that the woman wasn’t going to say, “The girl is eating him.” She patted the woman’s back, trying to make her let go. The counter pressed against Kate’s hip, and the grab bar pushed into her side. The room was so very small, so very full.

  There was a loud knocking at the door. Then a scream, close by, and a moan further away.

  “Let me in,” a female voice said from the other side of the door. “Christine! Let me the hell in.”

  “Nora!” the woman shouted into Kate’s ear. She tried to move Kate away from the door, but Kate stood her ground, hating herself for doing it. If they opened the door, they might not get it closed again.

  “Please!” the voice said again. “If you love me, you’ll open this door. Now!”

  “My wife’s out there,” the woman said. “We have to make room.”

  Of course, Kate thought. No one came on a Zeppelin ride alone.

  “There’s no more room,” Walter said. “Like you said before, when there wasn’t any room. There’s still no more room, in fact, there’s less room now than there was when there was no room before. The foot’s really on the other shit, now, huh, Katie? Gonna change your mind again?” His voice was dead serious, and Kate saw that he could kick her out if he wanted to.

  Her back to the door, Kate could feel someone pounding on it. The plastic was so thin.

  “Move aside,” the woman said softly. “Please. I’ll ask once.”

  Kate shook her head, hating herself. This close, she could see the crow’s feet around the woman’s eyes, and the remains of maroon lipstick feathered over her lips. She had a strange impulse to kiss the woman.

  “Sorry,” the woman said. She slapped Kate, surprisingly hard. Then again, on the same cheek. Kate lost her balance from the force of it. Time slowed. Her face stung. It had been years since anyone had hit her, and padded weapons and bamboo swords didn’t count. She’d never been slapped on the face. She put a hand to her cheek, trying to understand why she was so turned on.

  The tiny bathroom was a bedlam of bodies. Kate was lifted onto the toilet, and Walter took her arm to steady her. Kate held her cheek. It was hard to think.

  The woman opened the door. Hands reached into the bathroom. It was loud outside.

  “Nora?” the woman shouted. One of the hands waved. The woman clasped it and pulled. The hand was followed by sleeves, and a shoulder, then a head, torso, and another arm. In her other hand Nora held a fire extinguisher. The bottom end of it was coated in blood.

  “Make room!” Nora said. She was fortyish or fiftyish, and slender.

  “Let me in,” someone else said. “Let me in! Bastards!”

  Kate was pressed against the wall. She was trying not to step into the toilet bowl. She found Walter’s hand and held it. He squeezed her fingers. She watched Nora use the fire extinguisher to beat the hands reaching into the bathroom. Their owners screamed and begged. Blood ran down the door. A small and selfish part of Kate was grateful that she was trapped, and not the one beating back the hands. It wouldn’t be Kate’s fault if the other people pushed their way in.

  Finally the two women pushed the door shut, and locked it. Then they embraced, the fire extinguisher between them. After a moment, Nora pulled back and slapped Christine, leaving a bloody handprint. Kate understood where Christine had learned to slap like that.

  “Don’t ever leave me again,” Nora said. She rinsed her bloody hands in the sink. It was impossible to see whether she’d been bitten. They were crammed into the room back to back, belly to belly.

  “I’m sorry,” Christine said. “I got scared.”

  Nora cupped Christine’s face. She tried to wipe away the blood but only smeared it. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Look at you.” She hugged Christine close, then kissed her. Christine returned the kiss, opening her mouth. Nora worked one hand under Christine’s shirt. She let go of the fire extinguisher, which landed with a thud on the floor.

  The screams from the cabin grew louder, and more frequent. So did the moans.

  “What now? Kate?” Walter whispered.

  “We drift,” Kate whispered back.

  “Drift?”

  “Until we land. Maybe there’s an autopilot, or the pilots can fend them off. But we should come to ground eventually; we’ve been losing altitude.”

  “That’s your plan?” he asked. “The wind’s inland, east. We could wind up in Lake Tahoe.”

  “Gives a whole new meaning to Donner Pass,” Kate said. She tightened her grip on Walter’s hand. “We’re only a few hundred feet up. We’ll probably land in the Oakland hills.”

  “So long as the wind doesn’t change.”

  They fell silent. The two women had gone way beyond the kiss of reunited lovers. Nora was unzipping Christine’s pants. She knelt, and Christine gasped, bracing herself on the metal handrail. Kate couldn’t stop watching them. She found herself thinking of Jamie, how wet she’d been. The feel of her own cheek sliding lubricated against Jamie’s thigh. The likelihood that the Zeppelin would land safely and that they would get out alive seemed distant. If they were going to get eaten, or turned into zombies, there were worse things to do with their last few minutes.

  Kate reached for Walter’s crotch. She traced the outline. It wasn’t like him to be hard again so soon. He brought her other hand to his mouth, and put two of her fingers in. She could feel his hard palate under her fingertips, his tongue against her fingernails. She leaned against the wall, trying to keep her balance.

  There was a thud at the door, then another. “Let me in,” a male voice was saying over the screams and moans. The man hit the door, then again. The impact was visible. Kate tried to ignore it. There was nothing they could do. The door rattled, but held. Finally the man screamed, and the pounding ceased.

  Christine’s pants were around her ankles. Nora was using both hands and her mouth. This close, Kate could smell the woman. It was strangely intoxicating. Walter’s hand was on her thigh, moving upward.

  “Something’s happening,” Nora said.

  chapter six

  Traffic wasn’t too bad as Michael made his way home, using a shortcut through Emeryville to avoid the maze where the 80 and 580 and 980 freeways messed around with each other like a high school group of friends, everyone hooking up with everyone else. He debated whether he should call or text someone at home. Maybe Audrey. Or Henry. Probably not Natalie. Just to see how things were going. Only the three of them had stayed over, he was pretty sure. Not counting the zombies. He wondered if he should even go home. He had half a tank of gas, and a five-dollar bill in the glove compartment. Not like he’d get far. He’d been stupid to leave in the first place; he could blame it on making decisions before he’d had any coffee, but he knew that it was just Kate who’d made him leave. He’d done what she wanted, even though they both knew that it had been wrong.

  He turned on the radio. Flipped through hip hop, old hip hop, and that morning talk show on the rock station that seemed mostly to be about embarrassing things that could happen during sex. People called in from all over to confess. Now, though, the girl was reading the sports update. Funny, in the Bay Area, it was always girls and gay guys who did the sports. Michael listened for a while, then changed it to NPR during the commercial break. It was a pledge drive. The gift this hour was a wine-tasting for four people.

  Michael flipped through the channels again, disgusted. He
expected at least NPR to understand the zombie uprising. That phrase was taking shape in his head. It was silly: to call it “the zombie uprising” made it sound like a civil rights rally. As if the zombies were storming the capital chanting “Power to the People!” Everyone knew zombies couldn’t chant. They’d be moaning “Brains!” on the Capitol steps, and that would be a different statement entirely. As a fan of zombie movies, Michael had always planned on having a plan for when the zombies came. He didn’t own any firearms. Still, he fancied himself smarter than the average dude in a zombie movie. He wouldn’t go spastic. He could board up the doors and windows, except there were too many of them at his house, even if he could find enough wood. Why did houses in zombie movies always have lots of plywood lying around? Maybe it was because the zombies always hit in the country; people actually built things in the country, since IKEA was too far. Michael decided that he had to get his friends out of the house, and go somewhere defensible.

  He stepped on the gas. Again he thought of calling someone at home, but didn’t want to wake them if they weren’t already up. There were no signs of zombies as he drove, which should have been calming. But he knew what he’d seen.

  His neighborhood was quiet. Parked cars crowded the street and the driveways, just like normal. Michael parked his car, nearly forgetting to set the parking brake against the hill. Still, he looked around before getting out. Cameron’s car was parked in front. He hurried to his front door, finding it unlocked.

  “Hello?” Michael called softly. He turned the knob and let the door swing inward, not wanting to lean in without a sight line and get his face torn off by a zombie. If they’d gotten loose. That was a big if.

  “Hello?” he called. “Guys? Morning.”

  A low moan answered. Michael was flooded with guilt. He couldn’t have been gone for more than half an hour. His friends had been fine when he left, sleeping like angels with hangovers. They probably got curious, and had to investigate the zombies they’d so carefully contained last night. Had they learned nothing from the movies?