"Hunter, Jesus-You're creepin' me out," I'd say when he lingered too long in this latter category. Sometimes that worked and he shut up. Other times, it didn't, and he just wailed on.
In case I need to remind you, neither of us slept. In our first twenty-four hours of walking, we covered several miles. We just went and went. We were walking machines.
As dawn broke in the woods near some fauns, we encountered a "dead" zombie, shot through the forehead and lying in a snowy puddle by the edge of the tree line. It had been a young man wearing only a hospital gown. I prodded it a bit with my foot. Hunter failed to notice our fallen compatriot at all.
Less than an hour later, we saw the humans that had likely put down the zombie: a teenage girl with a ponytail and an older man whose gait was sickly and slow. They both wore plaid shirts and carried rifles. Neither looked to be in a very good mood. They were walking away from us, heading south, and I intended to let them go. With considerable difficulty, I made Hunter sit down on a snowy log as we waited for them to move off.
Eventually, I got my courage up and peeked out at the nearby farmland. There was no sign of them-or of anybody-hut that didn't mean we were alone. We sat there for eight hours, continuing only when the moon had risen.
A few days later, Hunter and I met up with another pair of wandering zombies. They were knee-deep in unharvested corn, in a field out past Coshocton. Both had been male. One was tall, wore a leather jacket, and had long black hair and neck tattoos like a heavy-metal singer. The other was short and pudgy with a mustache-Italian-looking-and wore expensive grave clothes.
Hunter and I approached them cautiously. I waved my hands above my head to get their attention, and they began moving in our direction. Like cats, they seemed to notice movement before anything else. When they got close and I stopped waving, I could tell it was sort of a letdown for them. They had been hoping for something to eat.
I tried making conversation. "What's up, friends?" I asked. "I'm Peter ... or I used to be. This guy, I'm calling Hunter. Would you like to join us?" I knew that they couldn't understand me (and wouldn't respond), but introductions still felt like the right thing to do. The Italian remained motionless. The taller one in leather drooled some goo from the corner of his mouth. Hunter moaned, as if in assent.
"Looks like you're in," I said. "I'm calling you Rock Star," I said to the tall, tattooed one. "And you can be Mario," I said to the other. "Hang around long enough, and maybe we'll find you a Luigi." (Nintendo games! It was astounding. I could remember fucking Nintendo games, but not my girlfriend's last name! Ahh, the ticks and tricks of a zombie's memory ...)
We continued through the corn as a group of four. Hunter stuck close to me and moaned. At first, Rock Star and Mario trailed at a distance, but trailed nonetheless. After a couple of hours they seemed to get the idea, and joined us in a tight formation.
The land became hilly and steep. The only humans we saw that day were in an SUV that sped past in the distance along a dirt road. I didn't think there was any way they could have seen us, but I still halted our little party for the good part of an hour before continuing.
The fields and forests began to feel familiar. At first, I couldn't put my finger on it. Lots of forest looked like lots of other forest. That was how forest looked. You couldn't see it for the trees. (Or rather, you could see it, but it all looked identical.) This forest, however, was uncannily close to a memory. Of that, I felt sure. Perhaps this was an area I'd visited in life. I'd picnicked here with Sam, or perhaps with Vanessa.
Vanessa ... and her sister Kate. Yes! That was it! My zombie band had wandered back near Vanessa's sister's environmentally friendly house. That was where I had seen these woods before. We stopped walking. My compatriots gathered near me, looking around absently. I realized I had some considering to do. Should I take them back there, my little zombie band? Could I even talk to Vanessa about what I was? Did she already suspect-or know-that I was a zombie? I nervously pulled down my Cedar Rapids Kernels hat and tried to guess what Vanessa might have concluded from the circumstances surrounding my Judge Crater-like departure.
And then I had these zombies who were following me-I certainly couldn't trust them to behave. I closed my eyes and tried to think.
Maybe it was the smell of the woods. Maybe it was the feel of the ground underfoot. Maybe it was the memory of Vanessa's voice that came tumbling back into my brain. But, for whatever reason, the answer hit me like a ton of bricks.
Of course, it said.
Of course you go. This is a woman who loves you. Every positive memory or association you still have up there involves her in some way.
Maybe it'll work out, and maybe it won't, but you won't know that until you try. You've thought about trying to be someone's helpful zombie, right? Well, this sure looks like your chance.
So you go.
You damn-straight go.
It was a pretty persuasive voice.
No sooner was I thus resolved than I chanced to remember Matilda-first as the rude neighbor on the porch, and then as the defender wearing the improvised body armor and stalking me with a gun. Had she seen that I was a zombie? I couldn't be sure. And who knew what she might have told Vanessa.
Despite all of this, going back to the house was a chance I wanted to take.
I led my party of zombies through the snowy woods toward my girlfriend's sister's home. I kept us close to the roads, so as not to lose my bearings, but always stayed a few feet into the underbrush. It was a tricky act, sighting the road out of the corner of my eye and trying to keep level with it. We took a couple of wrong turns, but before long I had us back to the gravel driveway entrance where I'd fought the man on the ATV. It was mid-morning, and the tunnel of trees was more welcoming than forbidding this time.
I pulled my hat low over my forehead and started cautiously down the drive. My band followed after me. I knew there was no way I was going to get them to stay and wait. Instead, I hoped to alert anyone at the house that we were friendly and not dangerous. (Well, at least I was. Perhaps the other zombies could be left clawing at the front door whilst I slipped in through the side laundry-room entrance.)
"Hello! We're friendly!" I called out, quickly realizing my voice sounded terrifyingly hoarse and sickly when I tried to shout. I kneeled down by a puddle of melting snow and drank. The other zombies looked at me oddly.
"Hello!" I tried again. It was a bit better with the moisture. A little more human-sounding.
We made our way down the long drive with me halloo-ing all the way. Around every bend, I waited to see Matilda, poised with a shotgun at the ready. But we saw and heard no one. Just the quiet trees. Soon, the house came into view.
I could see that something was wrong, even from a distance. The windows of the energy-efficient home were broken, and the front door was off its hinges. It also looked as though someone or something had sprayed mud or sawdust across the house. I took a few steps closer, then stopped.
That wasn't sawdust and mud. Those were bullet holes. A great gun battle had happened here.
"Hello, Vanessa?" I called into the ruin. "Anybody?" There was no sound or movement. The place was dead. Confident that we were alone, I ceased my shouting and walked directly into the clearing and up to the house. It had been subjected to an incredible amount of firepower. That much was visible from the exterior. Even the environmentally friendly greenhouse in the back had had its glass smashed and plants uprooted.
On the ground by the side of the home, near where I'd found my hat, was a body. It was an older man with tattoos and a saltand-pepper beard. He'd been shot clean through the forehead, probably as he'd crouched behind a tree. He wore an ancient leather jacket and had a pair of jeans awkwardly belted around a fifty-inch waist. I kicked him over until I could read the lettering on the back of his jacket. "The Frogs" was all it said.
It took me a while to get up my nerve to look inside the shotup house. The other zombies showed no interest at all, leading me to conclude that no li
ving person remained. (At one point Hunter shuffled inside through the wreckage of the front door, but shuffled back outside again a moment later with the same bored look on his face.)
I entered the house not through the front, but through a slidingglass door in the back. I went through it literally-the panes had been knocked away, the glass shards mixed with the snow. The inside was a mess of bullet holes and a little blood. Surprisingly though, there was only one body. It was Matilda, and she still wore her riot helmet. She had been shot several times through the chest, and she lay slumped beneath a window. A pool of spent shells was at her feet.
"At least you got one of them," I said softly.
Then, an unexpected movement right next to me. I started, and turned to see a fat raccoon sitting on the kitchen countertop, reveling among the ruins of a loaf of bread. I raised my hand threateningly. The raccoon hissed and scampered out of the house, a slice of bread still in its mouth.
Aside from any pilfering that animals had done, the kitchen looked remarkably untouched. I cautiously made my way through the rest of the house. It was odd. Nothing had been touched. Aside from the damage caused by the bullets, the home and its contents were mostly unmolested. I opened every door and every closet. There was no sign of anybody else.
I walked out the front of the house and sat down on the steps. I put my head in my hands.
"Woooagh?" Hunter asked, coming up next to me.
"Be quiet," I told him. "I'm trying to think."
And that was when I really lost it.
I mean, I "lost it" by your standards-by your human standards. A zombie might say that it was the moment when I really came into being ... when I became my real and true zombie self. Vanessa and my half-memories of her were the strongest things left tying me to something like humanity. And now she was gone. Killed or taken. Probably by a biker gang called the Frogs. (Stupid fucking name. Union, rural Ohio rednecks. Was that really the best you could do? Awww, what? Was "The Barely Literate Bearded Fatasses" already taken? Fuckers ...) Her sister and all their kids had been killed or taken, too. Or worse. And even if they weren't dead, how would I ever hope to find them again?
So, yeah, I "lost it." And another thing I lost was my desire to connect with whatever my humanity had been. Seeing the ruined, bloody house, I had been instantaneously relieved of any further curiosity about Peter Mellor. I no longer cared about who he had been before I woke up in his body by the side of the road near Gant. What were his likes and dislikes? What were his loves? His hates? His strengths and weaknesses? I no longer fucking cared at all.
Those things were theory and speculation. They were all in the past. But I'd been shown a new world of delight that I could have right now. So what if it involved eating someone's brain? Eating brains felt wonderful. It felt better than anything I could recall. Better than sex. Better than drugs. Damn straight better than rock and roll.
You know how sentimental people say that their job or whatever is "what they're supposed to be doing"? Well, it was dawning on me that maybe eating people's brains was what I was supposed to be doing. There was some pretty fucking strong evidence for that position-not the least being that brains tasted incredibly awesome to nie.
When I stood up from my seat on the porch, I was a new man. A new undead man. I was a zombie-ready to be a zombie, and to do the things that zombies did.
"All right, guys!" I announced. Hunter looked up. Mario and Rock Star wandered over from beside the biker's body. I looked them over seriously, like a general reviewing his troops.
"Gentlemen," I said sternly, "let's go eat some brains."
It's an unfortunate truth that sometimes the more you want something, the harder you make it for yourself to get.
When you're unemployed and a month behind on your credit cards, you drip desperation and smarmy, false alacrity at the job interview. People can smell it on you, and it poisons your chances to get the gig. When you're already pulling down six figures and you just won a big industry award, you nail that shit-projecting confidence, competence, and general awesomeness.
And when you're a twenty-year-old virgin who obsesses day and night about getting laid, then that's going to come through when you try to play it cool at the beach bonfire or the fiat party. But if you're some sort of Casanova who's got bitches throwing themselves at you all day, then yeah, you're gonna come across as a little more relaxed and natural when you're trying to talk to girls.
When I decided to give in to my zombish impulses-to allow myself to eat all the brains I wanted-I found myself no less subject to this law.
For days now, my entire object had been to avoid humans. I hid from them whenever possible. I skedaddled generally whenever they approached. I avoided towns and settlements. But now I'd made this little "mental changeover." I was, physically, still the same zombie. I had the same abilities and handicaps. But what had changed were my desires. And wouldn't you know it ... Now that eiicouiteriiig humans was number one on my to-do list, they were suddenly nowhere to be found.
My zombie band departed the gunshot-strewn energy-efficient home and headed directly for the first neighboring residence. We found a farmhouse covered in flaking blue paint, padlocked and empty. Hinges rusted. Windows broken.
We stalked on, and found another just like it. Then another. Then another still. All were empty. Some of the houses had obviously been pillaged, and others merely shuttered. Some appeared to have been destroyed by the residents themselves. But there was no sign of life in any of them.
It was enough to make me laugh. We had spent the last few days taking these great pains to avoid people. (The humans we had seen, even at a distance, had terrified me.) And now that I'd decided that they were the prey-and I was the predator-there was nobody around.
I began to realize that most of a zombie's day is spent in fruitless search; it was an endless hunting trip where you searched for animals that were hiding and smarter than you. Viewed one way, this was ... well, boring. Horrible, boring tedium. It was lots and lots of walking-slow walking-between generously spaced houses, all of which proved bereft of life.
But I began to notice that there was a thoughtful-almost Zenacceptance of these grim prospects in the silence of my traveling companions. House after house proved empty or abandoned. Distant movement that looked hopeful would turn out to be a curtain blowing in a broken window, or a barn door banging in the wind. It was like opening gaily wrapped packages and finding only empty boxes inside. Yet these failures never fazed my companions. There was apparently no zombie equivalent of "Awww, nuts."
I tried to learn from my companions. I felt sure that it was my own anxious nerves that were jinxing us. That I was moving us too quickly, and expecting too much to happen. That I was somehow still thinking "like a human," and not like a zombie.
Then, as dawn broke one morning, Rock Star and Mario became excited by a doubtful-looking dirt footpath on the outskirts of some farms. I tried to redirect them at first-there appeared to be nothing down there-but they were insistent. I gave in and decided to see how it played out. I could hear, see, and smell nothing. Possibly, it was a path used to move farm equipment. I collected Hunter, who had veered off in yet another direction, and we followed Rock Star and Mario.
The dirt path wound down the side of a gently sloping hill that seemed to separate two farms. The underbrush near the trail had been recently removed-hacked away with machetes, it looked like to me. The trees and bushes around it were thick, and this clearingaway had taken no small amount of deliberate work. The path beneath our feet also appeared recently traveled. There were footsized indentations in the muddy snow that belonged to neither Mario nor Rock Star.
Looking up ahead of them, I spied a small blue box-like a car battery-perched beside the path. It looked ... out of place. Alarms went off in my head.
"Hang on guys," I shouted, pushing my way to the front. I put a hand on Rock Star's chest to stay him. Then, keeping my compatriots at hay with one hand, I swiveled my neck to examine the blu
e box.
It took no great powers of inspection to spot the trip wire that extended from the box and terminated around the base of a tree on the other side of the path. A trap. It was some kind of trap. Something that a human would see right away-it was bright fucking blue, after all-but something into which a zombie would obliviously stumble. Rock Star almost had. Was it a bomb? Was it an alarm? I had no way of knowing, and didn't want to hazard a guess.
There was a thin opening in the underbrush adjacent to the tree to which the trip wire was tied. This opening was just wide enough for a person to shimmy past. I carefully pushed my intractable companions through, one by one. Mario was a little thick around the middle, but I braced myself and kicked him in the back, and sure enough, he squeezed out the other side. He stumbled and moaned, but the blow kept him clear of the wire.
"You don't even know I just did you a favor," I said with a smile.
Ahead of me, the zombies continued to lope down the path. They were obviously aware of something up ahead of us. Something good.
I kept an eye out for additional traps, but found none. At the bottom of the hill, the path terminated and the forest opened into a clearing. On the far side was a barren farmer's field with recentlooking tire ruts leading away. In the center of the clearing was a huge American-made SUV. Next to this was a stone well with a metal bucket, and next to the well was what I can only describe as an improvised bunker-a pair of storm-cellar doors that opened into a concrete foundation in the ground. My compatriots were very interested in the bunker.
It was instantly clear to me: There must be people inside, holding out. Not an entirely bad place, I reflected. Water, transportation, and a way to batten down the hatches if unfriendly elements arrive. These humans were well hidden from the forest side, and could presumably make a getaway into the farmer's field if the need arose.
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