I grabbed Mom at the waist and flung her over my shoulder, fireman-style. She weighed next to nothing, but her struggles to get at the walking dinners cowering behind the foliage belied her mass. It was like holding a bag of badgers. As quickly as I could I walked around the building and into the desert beyond. Soon her floundering quieted, Rowan and Rhodes outside the realm of her senses. I put her down and led her away, docile as a cow.
We walked ten minutes, until the institute was only a few spots of light on a dark horizon.
I said nothing.
I thought nothing.
Not true.
I thought of my father. Lying in his coffin, his eyes closed, his skin unblemished, white, whiter than it had ever been in life. His hair, moussed, neatly parted, but on the left side, the wrong side; Dad had always parted his hair on the right, fighting the natural fall of his hairline, giving his head a lopsided, messy look as the follicles struggled to realign themselves. My twelve-year-old self looked down at him, dressed in his Sunday best, enveloped in silk and oak, my hands itching to poke his cheek and wake him up. That’s all it would take, I was sure, just one touch and the joke would be over. I thought then as I thought now,
Is this it?
What a fucking joke. This is all there is to it?
I brought Mom to a halt, and took one last look into her eyes.
“Eileen?”
Nothing.
The monster gawked at me. Its bowels screamed their emptiness into the blackness.
I rested the barrel of the gun on the bridge of its nose.
“Mom?”
. . . shelley . . .
I pulled the trigger. I emptied the other four rounds into what was left scattered in the dirt.
I yelled then. I bawled nonsense vowels into the night, the metal of the hammer snapping as I put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger over and over. The sand rippled in sympathy. The moon hid behind a wayward cloud to avoid my gaze.
I left the flashlight as a marker and walked back. My handlers stood by mutely as I dug a can of gasoline out of the Humvee. Rowan tossed me her lighter as I walked back past.
I doused the remains with the fuel, soaking the sand underneath. The heap flared into life and I watched as the zombie charred into dust, trying not to hear the pop of leftover liquids boiling and bursting through its skin. When the flames began to die down, I fed them with nearby shrubbery.
I waited until the last ember turned dark, and then shoveled dirt over what was left with my hands.
“So.”
As good a start to a conversation as any. So. My favorite adverb. Full of promise. Foreboding.
I nodded, patting my hands on the sides of my thighs as I sat there, forcing nonchalance into my posture.
“So,” I echoed.
“So. Zombie, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“One of the ‘undead.’”
“The size of it.”
“Huh. That’s . . . that’s really weird.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re looking good. I mean, you know. Considering.”
“Thanks.”
“Is that okay? Calling you a zombie? Do you have, is there a different—”
“No, zombie’s fine. That, or Sheldon.”
“Sheldon, right. Not Gary anymore. Takes some getting use to.”
“Or Shel. You can call me Shel.”
“Shel.”
For connoisseurs of awkward pauses, this must have been a buffet of delights.
“I hope,” I started again. “I hope you don’t think I was. Avoiding you.”
“No, no.”
“Because I wasn’t.”
“No. I mean, it crossed my mind, at first. I know you acted weird and all, but I thought . . . I thought you didn’t like—”
“No, no. It wasn’t you. I had a great time that night. In other circumstances . . . it just wasn’t safe. For either of us. It’s . . . it’s me, really.”
“Ha. No shit.”
“Sorry.”
“. . . Not your fault, I guess.”
“Thanks.”
“You mind my standing way over here?”
“No, I get that a lot.”
Duane hadn’t moved closer than a dozen feet since he entered the room. He orbited the area by the door of my office, wandering from the wall to the closet, fingering the coat rack, toying with the sleeves of his leather jacket, eyeing me. Just behind the door in the hallway, I knew, lurked the fearsome Iris Sleiger, my bodyguard/keeper, hand curled tightly around the knob, listening attentively for unusual noises.
Rowan insisted on a bodyguard, doubly so since Senator Kud’s unambiguous promise of holy retribution for her highly public shaming. Iris had worked as a personal guard in the entertainment industry for years and came highly recommended. There were rumors she was part of the Seal team that had stormed Abbottabad and executed bin Laden, but I never confirmed this. She sold me on her qualities when her shoulders entered the room seconds before the rest of her. Her training impelled her to follow instructions, and she left wordlessly when I asked to be left alone with Duane. However, the mercenary in Iris kept her alert and suspicious, and she patted the bulge at her waist as she left. Her weaponry, always at the ready — not for Duane, but for me.
The taser couldn’t possibly hurt me, but sustained electrical charges wreaked mayhem with my nervous system for a few moments, more than enough time for Iris to cattle-rope my limbs together and clamp a ball gag on me. Unlike the taser, the gun was never to be used on me, instead serving two other purposes — protection and extermination. It was large enough to dissuade on sight all but the most fervent of lunatics. And should Iris be slow on the draw and I manage to bite someone, the gun would remove any threat of contagion transmission by efficiently eliminating the infected. Iris was unnervingly at peace with the possibility of killing otherwise innocent people whose only crime was getting in the way of my appetite, which made her an ideal candidate for the job.
I sat behind my desk and made no move to stand.
Duane had called to see if he could get in to visit me. Rowan immediately vetoed the idea — not a good plan, too dangerous, too soon, Duane who, hardly an A-lister — but she relented after I promised to do the town with a Grammy winner of her choosing and full paparazzi accompaniment. I’d be whomever’s evening companion for the catwalk unveiling of some fashionista’s latest display of contempt for the female form, plus drinks and dancing afterward. This would be a perfect opportunity, Rowan said, to relocate myself out of the headlines and into the public sphere, to start blurring the lines between media sensation and misunderstood, sympathetic being with a right to a private life. After all, Rowan reminded me, I couldn’t expect to attend the Oscars, hobnob with the Nicholsons and Bridges and Paltrows, if I didn’t start living the life of a celebrity. She never fully confirmed that plan, but the message was clear; get out and shake your moneymaker. I had already turned down further daytime talk show appearances, and if I wasn’t careful the public’s attention might turn to more recent sensations.
Strange that the unprecedented supernatural phenomenon of a reanimated, talking corpse could only be expected, by itself, to hold someone’s attention for a few weeks. A viral video of a squirrel trapped in a submarine was already the next big thing, with a movie adaptation in the works.
I had been on the cover of People and Us for three weeks running, never mind the more upscale features in Time and Newsweek. I had even done a special interview with Oprah, a gratifyingly less-strenuous experience than Speaking Frankly. Far more tears, way more hugging. She had done the show unwillingly as a favor (under duress) to several entertainment interests. But the show had been a smash, a coming-out party for the ages, measurably improving her network’s shaky ratings. Clips of her examining my gizzards on an operating table had been a sta
ple of news programs ever since. When she had declared that I had clawed my way out of the grave and straight into her heart, I let myself hope that it could all be as simple as she made it out to be.
That hope did not last more than five minutes. When the show ended its taping, Oprah promptly vomited over her dress. That didn’t make the news. But as omens went, a solid B-plus. She apologized immediately afterward, which I thought sporting.
Ever since, the offers had been surging in: speaking engagements, awards ceremonies, magazine covers, recording and/or modeling contracts, sitcom cameos, my own line of action figures, a proposal by the WWE to fight any horror movie icon I might consider in a mid-budget movie (Sheldon vs. Dracula!) — and those were only the reputable propositions from entertainment industry professionals. Lower down the entertainment hierarchy were mall openings, a suggestion to host my own graveyard-themed Las Vegas variety show, an offer to battle Chuck Norris in a pay-per-view Ultimate Fighting event (in the octagon!), and a full script for the first in a series of “high-quality pornographic horror movies” (Night of the Living Whores? Schlong of the Dead?). There were also myriad proposals along a more scientific bent — offers to dissect discrete portions of my anatomy, pleas for access and samples, one suggestion to spin me in a high-grade centrifuge (at no financial cost to me) to fully separate and scrutinize all elements of my substance.
This is to say nothing of overtures of a less stable-minded bent, by far the largest of the piles and another reason for Iris’ presence — offers of marriage; appeals for my insights into the geography of Hell; scads of non-sequential bills tidily laundered and bundled to persuade me to kill certain individuals, no questions asked because why would I care anyway, what with my lacking a soul and all. A Saudi oil prince put in an offer of five million to acquire my personage for his personal zoo of endangered animals, claiming I was the one purchase that could make his menagerie complete, then upped the sum to ten, then twenty. There were more than a few sexual invitations from corpsers, those lonely individuals seeking a romantic night of consensual grave robbing; my official legal status was still up in the air, and until a new definition of “person” could be agreed upon, there was every possibility that I would still be technically dead in the eyes of the law, adding a distinct scent of the boneyard to the process of lovemaking that some found intoxicating. A few missing person reports arrived in the mail (thankfully none concerning my actual victims), packaged with heartfelt accusations of my obvious involvement in their deaths and appeals to turn myself in and offer the poor families some closure.
And (with no irony detected) death threats galore.
I was an abomination.
I was obscene.
Evil.
The death of good.
The antichrist.
That sort of thing.
And so it goes. Hi ho.
“Hey, is that Sofa?” Duane asked. He pointed at the prodigious ball of auburn-striped lethargy making itself comfortable on the cat-tree in the corner.
I shambled to my feet and picked the cat up off her perch, getting an annoyed protest from her as she awoke, feeling her vibrate lazily in my arms as she quickly acquiesced to the interruption of her seventeenth nap of the day. “You remember her name?” I asked. Duane shrugged, smiling. “Would you like to hold her?”
I took a quick few steps toward him, not thinking, holding Sofa up for a cuddle. Duane staggered back in fright, knocking the coat rack over with a loud clatter of wood and metal.
The door exploded inward and Iris hero-rolled into the room, knocking Duane off his feet, her taser withdrawn and aimed at my torso. I started to shout a Don’t! but was cut off when silver electrodes penetrated my shirt and jolted me with fifty thousand volts, milliseconds after I had released my grip on Sofa to let her fall. I stiffened in my tracks as the current flowed through me and into the floor, filling the room with the stench of burnt carpet. Sofa leapt away to her tree, hissing as she flew to the safety of its highest perch.
I held my pose for a few seconds as Iris assessed the situation, and then brushed the electrodes from my chest as she straightened up and retracted the taser’s wires. We both watched Duane stumble back to his feet. “That wasn’t necessary, Iris,” I said.
She grumbled an answer, something about not being paid enough for such bullshit, and left the room, giving me the evil eye and leaving the door wide open. Down the hall, I could hear Rowan’s shrill voice demanding details on the commotion. Iris told her to shut the fuck up and to let her do her job, everything was fine.
Duane and I stood there, both of us embarrassed as the women argued in the corridor. Shouts of anger filled the emptiness between us.
Duane made the first move, stooping to pick up the rack, keeping me in his periphery as he tidied up. I gave Sofa a conciliatory back scratch and carefully walked back behind the desk.
“I’m sorry,” Duane said after I had sat back down. His skin was ruddy with discomfort, and perspiration burst through the skin of his forehead. “That wasn’t, I shouldn’t have—”
“Happens all the time,” I assured him. I slid open a drawer and fingered out a quick niblet of meat to quench the sudden compulsion to launch myself over the desk and take a closer look at Duane’s inner workings. They were another Rhodes innovation, hardened chunks of synthomeat with an edible resin made primarily of bone marrow and wrapped in cellophane, lending them the appearance of cough drops. It was far less off-putting for the public to see me suck on a hard bonbon than eating a synthetic flesh pulled-pork sandwich.
I said, “An aide of Pat Robertson’s—”
“Who?”
“Big religious mucky-muck,” I said as I unwrapped the brown spheroid and popped it into my mouth. The resin softened immediately and juices flowed down my gullet. “An aide of his came by last week. See if I’d debate him on. Teevee over the” I air-quoted “‘ecclesiastical consequences of my existence.’ There was a fly in the room. Landed on the desk there. Dimwit was so scared of me. He fainted when I swatted at it. Iris broke the door off its hinges at the noise.”
Duane chuckled at that. He looked at me and took a breath, steeling himself. His bare arms rippled with gooseflesh. “May I try again?” he asked, motioning toward Sofa.
“Only if you’re sure.”
He walked with measured steps to the structure and cautiously scooped the cat up in his arms. She flexed her paws, gave his arm a quick squeeze with her claws to make sure Duane knew his place in the arrangement, and then let herself be seduced.
“I think she likes me.” Duane scratched her below her chin and got an enormous purr of contentment from the walking throw cushion.
“She abides you,” I corrected. “I don’t think cats like anyone. They’re only biding time until they evolve thumbs. Then we’re probably doomed. I’ve been watching her lately. Trying to take life lessons from her. Just go with the flow. Take what comes. Evolve and adapt to circumstances. A very zen state of mind.” Duane frowned at that. “Very calming,” I explained.
He let Sofa slinky out of his arms and to the desktop, where she busied herself with rearranging pens. “So, uh.” He sniffed a laugh. “How’ve you been?”
“Good. Surprisingly good. Considering all . . .” I pointed at myself, traveling the length of my body with my fingers “. . . all this. Not bad. Better than most, in my position.”
“I’ve seen you on television. You look good. Very professional.” I thanked him. “So, what are your plans?”
“My schedule is free tonight,” I said quickly, too quickly. Dammit. “I mean, if you want. Dinner or something, I could. Find the time.”
“Oh.” He blushed, and I quickly unwrapped another meat treat.
“You weren’t going. To ask that, were you?”
“No. I meant, what’re your plans, overall. Where are you heading with this? I mean, yeah, dinner, that would be . . . dinner . . .
maybe . . . you . . . me . . .” The silent interludes between Duane’s words stretched longer and longer with each successive syllable. His mouth opened and closed impotently around theories of sentences he could not verbalize. Since coming out, I have learned that a common side effect of my condition is inadvertent tongue-twistedness in others.
Duane suddenly took his bomber jacket off the rack and began putting it on. “You know, maybe this was a bad idea. I don’t know why I came here. I thought—”
“Duane, please,” I said, rising. I walked around the desk and stood before him. He admirably controlled his instinct to bolt. “Duane, I don’t blame you for being scared.”
“Scared? Gary, I’m—”
“Please call me Sheldon.”
“. . . Sheldon, I’m not scared, I’m mad. Well, I am scared, but still. You took off, and I never heard from you again. You abandoned the movie, you left us all hanging, then the director tells us you’ve come down with cancer or something and can’t work anymore, we’ll just shoot the rest without you. I try to call, no one knows where you are. Then, you’re everywhere. Sure, you have excuses. I think, okay, he’s going through some pretty heavy shit lately, can’t blame him for flaking out a bit. But not one call? No email, nothing? It’s been four months. And look.” He held out his hand, palm down, steady in the space between us. “No shit, I have not had one snort since you left. I’m clean, drug-wise. Put myself up in rehab and everything. Your whole ‘disease’ thing, your breathing, the cancer, all the lies, put stuff in perspective for me, I thought. I cleaned up for you. I thought if you would call, I could come and help. I thought we, I don’t know, connected or something. But nothing?”
I stood there, abashed and somewhat peckish. “I had no idea,” I managed to say. It took two times; I forgot to breathe the first time. “Duane, I’m. I’m sorry.”
Duane sniffed, shrugged, faux tough-guy cool. He seemed to shrink, becoming ensconced in the folds of his jacket, an innocent child clad in big boy clothes. It was adorable. “No biggie. Like I said, I get it, you had other things on your mind.”
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