A Living Dead Love Story Series

by Rusty Fischer

  A chubby guy in Coke bottle glasses and a faded green Mega Movies golf shirt says, “Have a Mega Movie day,” as I walk in and a little electronic bell chimes over the front door. Veiled in my hoodie and dark sunglasses, I smile and wave a pale, unboiled hand before rapidly shoving it into my front pocket. I head straight for the horror section while he tidies up and gets ready for another dull Saturday morning shift.

  There are two full walls of horror: lots of sequels and prequels and dark, black covers with blood dripping red from titles like Death Derby 6, Monster Camp 3, and Bloodsuckers 2. Most are vampire movies; I skip those. (Frankly, I would have skipped those even before I became a zombie.) A few are about werewolves, ghosts, mummies, and the like; I skip those, too.

  The stuff on zombies—what little there is—is mostly old, ‘70s and ‘80s stuff with hordes of brain-dead flesh eaters crowding the DVD covers and body parts lying around at their stiff, dead feet. I grab a few random titles that don’t sound absolutely horrible—Zombie Invasion 3, Night of the Teenage Brain Suckers, Zombie Family Vacation Getaway—and ask the guy in the faded green shirt and thick glasses if he knows of any more that aren’t out on the shelves.

  “Zombies?” He scratches his head out of habit. Spotting my stack, he asks, skeptically, “What do you have already?” I show him my thin stash, and he pooh-poohs them all with a wave of his pudgy hand.

  “Listen,” he says, leaning in close even though I’m the only soul in the store. His breath smells of mint mouthwash but not quite enough mint mouthwash, if you know what I mean. “These are for amateurs. Keep them, if you want, but I hide the good stuff in the documentary section; you know, so they’re always in. Nobody ever goes back there.”

  He leads me to a dark corner of the store, dusty and stocked with a big cardboard box full of rolled movie posters and a handwritten sign that says, FREE! Take me home! On one wall, scattered amidst lots of serious-looking nonfiction films—many in black-and-white, most with subtitles, all dusty—is the mother lode of all zombie movies: six by the time he gets through cherry-picking them off the walls for me.

  “Now these,” he says with obvious relish, “are what zombie movies are meant to be.” He holds them close to his chest on the way back to the sales counter, as if a crowd of customers might storm the store at any moment and try to rent them away from me. Once we get to the register, he takes my other three, adds them to the pile, and studies me a little more closely.

  I have to keep reminding myself that I’m dressed like a circus freak, as if my black fingernail polish isn’t reminder enough when I hand my card over.

  “Let me guess,” he says, swiping my Mega Movies membership card, “you and your Goth friends are having a zombie watching party. You know, getting a jump on Halloween?”

  I shake my head. “Haven’t you heard? Goths have no friends.”

  He smiles anyway, hitting on another bright idea. “I got it: the new boyfriend’s a big zombie fan, and you’re trying to play catch up so it looks like you share the same interests?”

  Ha! I wish that (a) I had a boyfriend, (b) he liked zombie movies, and (c) he was down with dating one—indefinitely. I slowly shake my head. Not even close, pal.

  He grows visibly worried. “We don’t get many girls renting these,” he says with a grin, scanning each zombie flick slowly as if he’s suddenly having second thoughts about renting them to me in the first place.

  “Well,” I say matter-of-factly, “you do now.” “I mean, they’re pretty gross,” he says dramatically. “You sure you’re okay with the walking dead?” I am now. “Yup.”

  “Monsters chomping on raw brains?”

  I actually have personal experience with that one. “Sure thing.”

  “I warn you”—he finally hands them over—”they’ll keep you up at night.”

  “Not a problem,” I say on my way out the door. “I’m kind of …an …insomniac.”

  On the short drive home, I chuckle at the irony of it all: a real-life zombie renting zombie movies. Slipping through the front door and locking it behind me, as if one of the neighbors might see my towering stack of gore and suddenly put two and two together, I promptly load the top movie on the stack into the high-tech DVD player on Dad’s beloved big-screen TV and settle onto the couch with …no movie snacks.

  I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever left Mega Movies without an armful of Twizzlers, microwave popcorn, Raisinets, and Goobers in addition to my pile of movies. It’s weird. Not only am I not hungry at all (best diet ever); I just …don’t crave those things anymore, at all. I wonder, will watching movies be the same without movie snacks? Only one way to find out, I guess. I push play on …what is it again?

  Oh yeah, get this: Zombie Homecoming. Catchy, huh?

  As the opening credits roll over a black-and-white screen that looks, cleverly enough, like a formal homecoming invitation on a silver platter, I check out the box it came in. The zombie on the cover is a mostly skeletal girl in a tattered red homecoming dress, a crooked tiara resting on her flat green forehead (so …what, I’m going to turn green now? That’s my future?), and a black sash hiding a thick gash in her throat, where you can almost, just barely, see the exposed vocal cords. (Nice. You stay classy, Zombie Homecoming filmmakers.) She looks all kinds of dead, not very attractive—or fun, for that matter—and about as lifelike as a dollar store Halloween mask on a half-price mannequin.

  I sigh, watch the opening scene where the homecoming queen somehow takes a detour past the high school gym (why?), where it’s clearly homecoming (I can tell by the big Homecoming banner over the double gym doors), and straight to the nuclear plant, presumably to make out with her boyfriend, who, uhhm …works there?

  Late at night?

  Even though he’s still in high school?

  And it’s …homecoming?

  What, he couldn’t get the night off?

  It goes downhill from there. (But then, what did I expect?) In the first 10 minutes of the movie, our plucky heroine (a) parks her car next to a stack of rusty yellow canisters with a red toxic waste symbol plastered all over them, even though two inches away there’s clearly an empty parking lot full of much better spaces, (b) trips, twice, for no apparent reason, (c) finds her boyfriend in the Porta-John (???), (c) makes out with him (in the Porta-John, no less—grossness), (d) follows him back to her car, where (e) he leaves her without saying good-bye (rude), and (f) the toxic canisters magically open up and drown her in her car with a toxic green goop (that looks suspiciously like gallons of neon mint jelly). By minute 11, she’s become a great green ogre, her toes falling off as her clueless date slips on her size-10 dress shoes on the way into the homecoming dance; hilarity ensues.

  I turn it off shortly after that and stick in Zombie Groom next. Wow. Just, wow. At least Zombie Homecoming had a little charm; Zombie Groom is just gross. And not only gross but single-minded, charmless, and gross.

  One minute the lead character is this semihand-some groom (look, we’re not talking A-list stars here) who steps outside his wedding reception for a quick smoke; the next minute, some random zombie walks—sorry, stumbles—over, bites him on the neck, and suddenly he’s …drumroll, please …Zombie Groom.

  Zombie Groom is a lot hungrier than Zombie Homecoming Queen, who took at least five minutes to chomp her first victim after catching the Z-disease; Zombie Groom goes in for the kill almost immediately, biting his best man on the arm—right before he tears it off and gnaws on the elbow bone (elbone?) like it’s a giant chicken leg. Then his best man, with only one arm, bites the caterer in the neck, blood gushes all over the pigs-in-a-blanket and, once again, hilarity ensues.

  I watch for a few minutes more as the zombies get grayer and grayer, hungrier and hungrier, and less …human …by the minute. Half an hour into each of the first two flicks (or about as long as I can stand each one) the zombies have dragging arms, missing teeth, shrunken eyes, hanging jaws, blood-soaked chins, and they’re eating small intestines for appetizers and hu
man thighs for dessert.

  I suffer through a few more—Zombie Picnic, Zombie Cheerleader 4, Zombie Biker Gang 2—until I’ve had about all the standard zombie dialogue I can take: “Brains, eat! Eat brains!” Then I slide the last disc out, put it back in its box, and spread the cases out, side by side, on the coffee table.

  You know, kind of like a zombie lineup.

  I stare at my future—rotting skin, sunken eyeholes, bad skin (gray or green seem to be the prevailing choices), holes in my clothes, bad prom dresses, torn sashes, grave dust in my hair, intestines like sausages hanging out of my mouth—and wonder, Is this what I have to look forward to?

  I mean, when did the world decide vampires were the sexy undead? In the movies they could fly, flirt, seduce, sparkle, transform, kick butt, and look good doing it. Even werewolves got to look human 29 days a month, right? Could go out in the sun, enjoy a fresh burger, play Frisbee with their buds with no one the wiser?

  But zombies? I haven’t seen one zombie, anywhere, ever, that looks even remotely …human. They are dismal, dead, dying, and gray (or green, whatevs); dead eyes, dead mouths, dead brains, dead souls.

  They don’t say anything (except “Brains!” or, occasionally, “Eat brains!” or, once in awhile, “Brains, eat!”), don’t do anything, don’t …feel …anything.

  So how come I can feel everything?

  And just how long will it last?

  20

  Batter Up!

  HAZEL SHOWS UP later that night as I’m watching the last of the zombie movies. (I can’t help it; if I rent nine movies, I’ve got to watch all nine—even if they are degrading to zombies, in general and me, in particular).

  She doesn’t knock on the door, doesn’t rap on the glass by the door, just uses her key and walks right in. “Break and enter much?” I say from the den, mostly so she’ll know where I am. (As if the screaming victims running from the dead-eyed zombies wouldn’t clue her in.) “Bitch much?”

  I snort out some of the Mountain Dew I’ve been sipping.

  She flops down on the couch and grabs the cup from me and takes a sip. “Eewwww, where’s the diet?” she asks, a wrinkle in her nose and a gag in her voice.

  “I’m not buying diet anymore.” I’m little-white-lying easily now that I’ve done it so often. “All that fake sugar is bad for you. My dad read a study where—”

  “Really?” She interrupts, putting the cup down like it contains radioactive waste. “Well, tell him to read the study where high school girls who quit drinking diet soda get fat, lonely, and unpopular. I think he’ll find it highly interesting. Maybe he’ll even share it with you.”

  “Hmm.” I sigh, glad to have Hazel back, on my couch, in my life, riding my ass. “And what respected scientific journal would that be in? Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire? Or maybe it’s in volume 8 of I Don’t Know Jack; I’m Just Making All This Up?”

  “Uh, yeah, you’ll actually find it in Common Sense for Loser Girls, volume 1.”

  “Touché.” I giggle and, at last, she joins me.

  We sit comfortably for a minute.

  She leans back and turns her head my way. “I’m sorry, Maddy.”

  I look back, still smiling. “Sorry for what, Hazel? The part about accusing me of lying to you?” And even as I say the words, I kind of feel guilty for giving her grief when, actually, I totally am lying to her. “Yes.” She groans.

  “Or the part about you stiffing me in Home Ec?” “Yes.” She groans again.

  “Well, wait, I wasn’t finished yet. Or the part about you not texting me for the last 24 hours?”

  “Yes, yes, and whatever else you’ve got stored up for me, yes, I’m sorry for that, too. Maddy, I’m sorry; it’s just—”

  “Whoops, just one more. Or the part about you interrupting Stamp when I think, think, he was going to ask me to the Fall Formal?”

  “What? You didn’t tell me that. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Uhhm, I did say something—with my eyes. I believe it was, ‘If you don’t get the hell out of here, I will poison your dog, if you ever get one,’ or something along those lines.”

  Hazel is rocking back and forth, laughing, “God, I’m so stupid. I really thought I was doing you a favor.”

  “What? How? By getting Stamp to not ask me to the Fall Formal?”

  “By getting Stamp involved in the Fall Formal. I figured, you know, that way I’d have his ear more than his stupid football friends and, you know, could talk you up.”

  “Hmm.” I sigh, shaking my head at Hazel’s circular logic. “So let me get this straight: rather than letting a half-naked hottie ask me to the Fall Formal on the spot, you figured you’d interrupt me, blow me off, send me away, and lure him onto the Fall Formal Decorating Committee so you could convince him to do sometime next week what he was already willing to do yesterday? That is really awesome, Haze; thank you so much.”

  She’s giggling so hard she almost—almost—for-gets to notice my new Goth style. But she wouldn’t be Hazel without quietly—and then not so quietly—judging me, so eventually she notices and gives me the proper best friend once-over.

  Making sure I notice every eye roll, tongue click, and sigh of desperation over her best friend’s fashion faux pas, she gradually works her way up from my black sneakers past my black sweats to my black hoodie and beyond to my pale face and dark eyeliner and maroon lipstick.

  “Hmmm.” She finally sighs, staring me in the eye. “Seriously? We’re seriously doing this Goth thing? In public and everything?”

  I wince. “Well, not permanently, Hazel. I mean, only until I figure out what this …sickness …I’ve come down with is and get back to normal. Once I’m feeling like myself, when total strangers aren’t stopping me in the halls and asking me how long I have to live, yeah, I’ll go back to khakis and white linen, but for now …like it or lump it.”

  She rolls her eyes and notices my hands on the back of the couch. “The black nail polish is a classy touch. Very eighth grade; so retro.”

  “Thank you.” I laugh.

  Just like that, Hazel is back: bigger, stronger, happier, sadder, funnier, and more judgmental than ever.

  After a few more minutes of busting my balls over the new Goth look, she looks away from me and toward the TV screen. Before I can react and hit the pause button, she sits up, eyes wide. “What are you watching?”

  I was so happy to see Hazel, I forgot all about the TV. I look at the screen to see the star of Zombie Gardener 3 using his trimming shears to slice off the toes of his latest victim. At that precise moment, his mouth opens, and black, oozing goo pours out all over the floor of his nursery.

  “N-n-nothing, just …some old movie that was on. Saturday night, you know. What’s really on?”

  But Hazel is smart and sees the stack of zombie movies towering on the coffee table right next to the clicker. “This isn’t on TV right now, Maddy; you actually rented this crap. Like, actually left the house to go and pick these titles out, specifically.”

  She reaches over and sees the zombie titles. “Zombie Gardener 3? Who knew there was a Zombie Gardner 1 and 2? Zombie Biker Babes on Spring Break? Maddy, what’s gotten into you? I ditch you for one measly day and you resort to this—”

  A knock on the door interrupts her tirade. What’s left of my decaying heart flickers, but she smiles to beat the band and says, “Oh, yes. Please tell me I got here before Stamp was supposed to come over and take you out on a date. Please let that be my reward for saying ‘I’m sorry’ first this time.”

  I get up and go to the door to prove her wrong, dead wrong, but naturally she’s there before me by a half second (damn her warm and fleshy human muscles) and whips open the door. The doorstep is empty; no one is there—but, no, that’s not quite right, either.

  I’m getting ready to shut the door when Hazel stops me and points to the middle of the deserted street, where two figures stand under a streetlamp. One is petite, dressed fashionably; the other is tall, dressed ridiculously—Dah
lia and Bones.

  “What the—?” Hazel stands stock-still, her hand still on the doorknob. “Aren’t those the creeps from Home Ec? What are they doing prank knocking you on a Saturday night?”

  I feel her pain. It’s not exactly that I’m surprised to see them that’s giving me the willies. I mean, after all, they did promise to get me alone and I suppose, in a way, I’ve been waiting for this moment ever since they bushwhacked me, Dane, and Chloe on the way back from our little late-night visit to the Council of Elders. It’s the way they’re standing there just so, stock-still, in the middle of the street, under that streetlight.

  Creepy?

  Creepy doesn’t even begin to describe it.

  I leave Hazel in the doorway for two seconds and reach into the hallway closet, where Dad keeps his weekend softball uniform. Resting underneath it is an aluminum bat. I grab it and walk past Hazel straight out to the driveway. She goes to follow me, and I say, “Hazel, lock the door and call the cops.”

  She does neither, following me out to the street instead.

  “My, my,” says Bones, not moving, not smiling, his lips barely fluttering as he watches Hazel’s red pigtails bounce behind her. “Looks like we hit the jackpot tonight, Dahlia. We came here looking for Victim Number 4 and found Victim Number 5, too.”

  “What are they talking about, Maddy?” Hazel asks, her always minty breath stale and hot on my shoulder as she crowds next to me for safety.

  “Nothing,” I shout, as if her ear isn’t two inches from my lips. “These fools are just talking nonsense, as usual.”

  “That’s right, Hazel,” says Dahlia, dressed in sleek, formfitting black from head to toe. She’s done up her eyes and nails to match. “We’re just fools, talking nonsense. Nothing to worry about here.”

  “N-n-no, no,” Hazel stammers, sounding for the first time in, I think, her whole life somewhat less than confident. “You said something about victims. What were you talking about?”