The Loving Dead

by Amelia Beamer

  It had obviously been filmed on a handheld, probably a phone, and could have been subtitled “Vertigo” for the camera work. Kids were playing in the ball pit at a McDonald’s, screaming and laughing, swimming in brightly colored plastic balls. A toddler, maybe three years old, started wailing. The video quality was low, but the kid’s hand looked bloody. He might have been missing a few knuckles. There was a moan, higher than Kate had heard before. Little vocal cords. Kate felt cold.

  “This is it,” she said. “Can you see?”

  Trevin leaned closer. “Shit,” he said.

  The crying kid was pulled under the surface. The video ended.

  “I’m telling you, this is it,” Kate said. “And it’s not on the mainstream news. Probably they don’t want people to panic. Or they don’t think it’s real. This is the apocalypse that will only be covered by gonzo journalism. Forget the reporters in rain gear during Katrina, or Tom Brokaw embedded in Iraq—this’ll be about blogs and Twitter.” She’d put off getting a Twitter account, and now it was too late.

  “What’s Gonzo got to do with it?”

  The only Gonzo he knew was a muppet, she realized. It made her feel old. She was less than ten years ahead of him, but it made a difference when one of you was maybe still in middle school. “Gonzo journalism, like Hunter S. Thompson? Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? It’s a little before my time, let alone yours.”

  “So that’s who the muppet’s named after? The blue one with a nose like a hangy downy dick?”

  She laughed. “You’re all right, kiddo.”

  He was unconvinced. “So what do we do?”

  She put a hand over her mouth while she thought through all of the wrong things to say. “Do? I haven’t done anything yet,” she wanted to tell him. Maybe that had been the problem all along. She had to be proactive. Get out while there was still time. Boarding up the windows only led to hiding in the basement.

  She went and got her phone and the car keys from her jeans pockets. She found her lipstick as well, and the cash she’d taken from Walter. She counted it. Nearly three hundred, in twenties. She thought it’d be a bit more. She pocketed them. Walter had left his wet clothes, but taken his wallet. The tissue he’d blown his nose into was a wet lump in his pocket. She touched it before she figured out what it was. Kate wiped her hand on her jeans.

  “Well, you’ve seen zombie movies,” she said, shaking her car keys so Trevin would see them. “We can either hole up here, or try to go somewhere safer, if we can think of something. I don’t know.” She felt guilty. The house did feel safe. There was food and water. “I don’t have anywhere to go. I mean, not anywhere I need to go.” She blushed, realizing she hadn’t asked permission to stay. She’d assumed he would want her to. The social protocols of the zombie uprising were still new. “This place doesn’t have a basement, does it?” she asked, to change the subject. Unlike hers, this house was on relatively flat land. She wasn’t surprised when Trevin shook his head. Basements were rare in California.

  “Zombies, no shit,” he said. He glanced at Kate’s tits, covered now by the T-shirt, but braless.

  Kate wondered if she was wearing Trevin’s brother’s shirt, or Trevin’s. He was getting a kick out of it, either way. She decided to take it as a compliment. “We should figure out the safest place in the house, away from windows, behind a door that locks, if possible. Like during a tornado?”

  He gave her a blank look.

  “Right, you don’t know what that is. I’m from the Midwest, where the sky turns purple and green and houses are pulverized by wind.”

  “I do know, we just don’t have them out here. Sort of expected that they were made up.”

  Kate kept going. “Maybe the master bedroom? And we need to stockpile some food and water, a flashlight, radio, that sort of thing. You have an emergency kit, with first aid supplies and shit, right?”

  “I think my mom does, in her car. She drove it to L.A. She could fly, but it takes almost as long to go to the airport, and all that.”

  “That’s good for her. You should call her, and your brother.” Kate thought she might have sounded bossy. “Don’t you think?” she added.

  Trevin went for the cordless phone, which was buried in the couch cushions. Kate sat in the computer chair. She typed a comment to the video on BoingBoing. Zombies respond to whips. I don’t know why, they just do. Or the Indiana Jones iPhone application, which makes a whip noise. That done, she had the urge to check her email, for the last time, just in case anyone had said anything life-changing. It felt like everything she did was for the last time.

  “Hi, Mom?” Trevin said. He went into the hallway, probably going to his bedroom.

  She had no new email. She thought about composing a few notes, just to let people know what they’d meant to her. It felt too maudlin. A waste of time. She re-read the last email from Walter. She’d sent him an email full of jokes, describing a Giants game she’d gone to with Michael. He’d won tickets from a newsletter he subscribed to, from a science fiction bookstore in the Mission. They’d sat in the unseasonably hot sun for close to four hours, and Michael had explained about baseball while they sweated and drank iced lemonade. “So this is the seventh-inning stretch?” she’d asked. “When they make you stand up and sing about how great America is, and ‘Take Me Out To the Ballgame?’” Root, toot, toot for the Giants, and all that. They had screamed insults at the Mets outfielder, the closest player: “Sheffield, get your glove out of your mouth! This isn’t T-ball!” She’d asked Michael what was happening on the sidelines: “Are they warming up the catcher, or what?” Relaying all of this to Walter, Kate had thought she’d been reasonably entertaining. Walter had written back with a report on a book he’d read, and a Puccini opera he’d seen in San Francisco. Walter hadn’t said who he’d brought to the show with him. She hadn’t asked. It was always easier to talk about things than it was to talk about feelings. She missed Walter, despite herself.

  She logged out, then went to Facebook. She updated her “What are you doing now?” headline to “Fighting the zombie apocalypse with whips & gags. Seriously. They obey whips. Also the iPhone Indiana Jones app. Worth a dollar.” Her friends had status updates that involved studying, trying to find jobs, breaking their sunglasses, making pasta. She felt jealous of their tiny problems. She had an invite to join the group “Real friends kill friends who become zombies.” She accepted. Then she closed the browser.

  The ice cream spoon sat in a bowl of melted white soup. Ice cream wasn’t as good as beer, not in her book. She took the bowl to the kitchen and rinsed it out. Outside the kitchen window, the fire engine loomed. Just to have something to do, Kate found the dish sponge and washed her bowl and spoon, placing them in the drying rack next to the sink. She directed water over the cereal and the less-identifiable crust coating bowls and plates, setting them aside to soak while she washed glasses and spoons. Water could wash anything, given time.

  Her mind went to the thing she was most worried about, like a tongue to a sore tooth. She should really not be here. What would happen when she turned into a zombie? Not if, but when. Would this kid be able to take care of himself? Were there any guns here?

  Trevin came into the kitchen. “My mom says we do have an emergency kit in the house. Under the sink. But she thinks I’m joking. She asked me if I was high. She wasn’t joking. I’m lucky she’s miles away.”

  Kate dried her hands. The kid trusted her, she realized. “Sometimes it’s easier to lie and tell people what they’ll believe,” she said. “When you try to tell the truth, sometimes they just think you’re making it up.”

  Trevin watched the BoingBoing video again. Kate left him to it. In the cupboard under the kitchen sink was a plastic tub labeled Emergency Kit. She pulled it out and examined the contents. There was a box of cereal which had expired two years ago. Same with the rest of the food, PowerBars; cans of soup and what looked like dolmas. Also an expired bottle of Tylenol. She set those on the floor. Latex gloves, face masks, me
dical tape, gauze, a hand-crank flashlight. Duct tape. Toothpaste, and four toothbrushes. Why four? Maybe his mom used to have a live-in boyfriend, or girlfriend. There was also a kitchen sponge. The apocalypse is no excuse for a mess, she reasoned. She found fifty bucks in cash, which she pocketed. No weapons. No whips. No bottle of booze, which is what you really need for the apocalypse. She had a quart of Jim Beam in her emergency kit for herself and all of the friends she would make. But her kit was inside her house, melted, and in terms of food and first aid kit, not much better than this one.

  Kate had once written a poem about the apocalypse, for school. The point of it was that she fully expected to die in the first wave of whatever it was. Bioterrorism. A dirty bomb. An earthquake, or a fire. Those were real crises, something you could get behind. And localized; you could get away. Being outside of an urban area was probably a really smart idea. She and Trevin could take a car and drive inland, away from the heavily populated Bay Area. Maybe find a cheap hotel off of interstate five, or maybe just keep driving. She could give Trevin the keys. Warn him that when the power goes out, the pumps at gas stations won’t work. Give him the cash, on the assumption that even during the apocalypse, cash would be worth something. Maybe she could just walk away when the kid wasn’t paying attention, like an old cave dude sneaking off into the woods when winter grew too long and there wasn’t enough food to go around. Kill herself quickly; there would be a hill or a deck she could jump from. The question would be how she would know when she was turning. What that might feel like, and whether she would have any control over it. She doubted her ability to resist.

  Kate’s phone rang. She wondered for an instant which of her friends were calling, and felt the loss all over again.

  chapter twelve

  There was a crowd pounding on the sliding glass door of the hospital. Michael waved to get their attention. He saw the guy who’d been by himself in the emergency room. Michael gestured, as if he was holding a whip.

  The guy repeated the gesture, a puzzled look on his face.

  Michael mimed a zombie walk, his arms out and his face blank. Then gestured with the whip. He switched back to the zombie character, and lowered his arms.

  The guy pointed towards the door, his face twisted in anger. Enough charades, his expression said. Let us out.

  Michael didn’t have keys for the ambulance parked in front of the door. He didn’t have keys for the door. There were no bricks on the ground to throw through the glass. He stood rooted, unable to help and unable to run. “Find a fire exit,” he called.

  Something touched his hand. He jumped, snatching his hand away before he saw that it was Audrey.

  “Time to cut and runny, honey,” she said. “We can take a bus, but it won’t go all the way up to the house.” She pronounced “house” as “huss.”

  “We’re not going there,” Michael said. He let her pull him away from the door. Away from the look that guy was giving him.

  “But my purse is. I mean, not that it’s going there. Like it had little wings! It’s there already. That’s the last place I saw it. Unless it’s in your car.”

  “So’s my wallet. And my phone. Fuck. I can’t believe this is happening. You got any change to make a call? If there are any payphones left, that is?” Kate would have to come get them. He slapped his pockets. Nothing there.

  “It has no pocketses,” she said. “It is a black man who has asked the country for change, and yet it has no pocketses.” Now she was being careful to step on all of the cracks in the sidewalk.

  “You’re getting Obama mixed up with Gollum,” Michael said. He tried to believe that this meant she did not have a head injury. A hospital full of people who were about to be turned into zombies, and his car gets towed. He supposed it was a matter of information. Of course the tow trucks would be in service, since those guys didn’t know what was happening. Still, that meant there weren’t many zombies running around. If there were, people would be reacting. Wouldn’t they?

  He looked for the woman who’d tried to sell them the street newspaper. Surely she’d have some change. He wished he smoked, so that he would have something to barter. Cigarettes, chocolate, lipstick, and nylons, that’s what soldiers had in their parachute packs during World War II. Regardless of the actual currency of where they landed, they could make some friends. Now he had nothing but his personality. Plus the homeless woman was gone.

  Michael had come to a conclusion that he didn’t like. The closest place where he could find friends and supplies was Trader Joe’s. He wanted to reject it out of hand; who’d go to a grocery store during the zombie uprising? That was way too Dawn of the Dead. Still, it was less than two miles away. And Kate was there. He had to get to her. Together, they could figure out what to do. She was the only one who would understand.

  He turned on MacArthur. It went underneath the freeway, to the bad side. Audrey stayed quiet, which he was thankful for. Michael wondered if he could look like a pimp. An off-duty pimp, out on a date with one of his bitches. He wished he still had his hoody. He didn’t want to be approached.

  Dudes walked by, and women. Even a few moms with strollers. They avoided eye contact, or they gave him the friendly upward chin-bob that meant “What up?” He wanted to warn them, but kept his mouth closed. Better not to draw attention. He kept Audrey close, scanning the landscape for places they could run and hide, if they had to. Doorways to apartment buildings. Alleys. Cars that they could climb on top of. He looked for weapons. He’d expected there would be sticks, cinderblocks, something, but the street was remarkably clean. He sweated in the afternoon sun. Approaching Lake Merritt, he turned left on Grand. The Trader Joe’s was on Lakeshore, a few blocks away. They arrived.

  Jake stood in the entryway, wearing his black security uniform.

  “Sup?” Michael said. Audrey smiled.

  Jake nodded. He was a big guy. He always reminded Michael of the guy at Walmart that had been trodden to death a few Christmases ago. The guy had been sent up front to hold the doors against the crowd eager for early-bird sales. The crowd had broken down the door before the store was scheduled to open. Surely no one had intended to hurt the dude, but they knocked him down and trampled him to death.

  Michael entered the store. There were two sets of sliding glass doors in the vestibule. If they had to, they could lock the doors and roll down the metal wall over one of them. But it wasn’t the most defensible place. The store was full of people with shopping carts and baskets.

  It felt normal. Cashiers working away, occasionally ringing the bells that sent employees running up front for price checks or to help a customer outside. He nodded and waved at a few people. Kate wasn’t working up front. He headed for the wine aisle; if she wasn’t cashiering, that was where she usually was. But she wasn’t there. He had a sinking feeling. Maybe Audrey was right, and Kate had lied to him. He went to the employee area, which was full of head-tall stacks of plastic yellow interlocking shelves on wheels, loaded with bread and produce and boxes.

  “And I was going to call in sick today,” Audrey said, trailing him. “You’re not even on the schedule.”

  Michael didn’t answer her implicit question. They were there to get help. In the employee area, someone had opened a bottle of lemonade and left it on the free food table with paper cups and an open bag of house brand chips. Usually there was more food than this: manufacturer’s samples, unopened returns that they couldn’t sell, or merchandise that had been damaged but wasn’t worth throwing out. Sometimes the free food was all he ate on a given day at work. The best was Odwalla Day, when the Odwalla driver came in with new product and took all of the soon-to-expire juice and smoothies off the shelf. Michael poured two cups of the lemonade and handed one to Audrey. It wasn’t very cold, but it was at least wet. He helped himself to a handful of chips. He was aware that he hadn’t yet eaten that day.

  He went into the office, expecting Kate would be there. The only person in the room was their captain, TJ’s parlance for manager. Da
rren sat with his feet on the desk, talking into the phone. The employee schedule usually hung above the aging copy machine, inside the office life preserver, but it wasn’t there. Michael hadn’t noticed, until he’d started work there, that TJ’s had a nautical theme: captains, first mates, bells, life preservers and oars on the walls, even the Hawaiian shirts. Michael lifted the lid on the copy machine, and found the schedule, face down.

  Kate wasn’t scheduled, just as Audrey had said. She had lied. Or maybe she’d been mistaken. Where was she, then? Cameron was supposed to work this afternoon, too; Audrey was right. Michael ducked out before Darren could notice him. Privately, the crew called him Fearless Leader. Michael had come up with the name, a Rocky & Bullwinkle reference. He’d grown up watching the show on videocassette. Some of his coworkers were old enough that they’d seen it the first time around.

  Michael drank from his cup and then refilled it, realizing he was thirsty. He itched to get somewhere safe. Somewhere defensible. If only someone he knew owned guns. With the waiting period in California, you couldn’t buy one the same day. He supposed he could go to a shooting range and steal one. He suspected that the guys who ran a shooting range would be armed, and that would therefore be a bad idea. The closest range he knew of was in Marin. It would take an hour or more to get there, even if he could get a car. He felt defenseless. Shopping carts wouldn’t be much of a weapon once the zombies came.

  People bustled in and out of the swinging doors, moving stuff around just like a normal day. He ought to tell them. But tell them what? Michael looked for someone to approach. Jordan was pricing supplements on a flat-top cart. He was a cool guy, well muscled. Audrey was already flirting with Jordan, one hand on her hip.

  “Baby, what it do?” Jordan said. “Aren’t you early?”

  “NGNCNF, what up?” Audrey said. “At least someone around here keeps track of my comings and goings. New Guy, Not Cool, Not Funny, you are my friend.”