“They were always here,” she explains as her foster family of werewolves slowly rises up behind her. “I just unlocked the door, and it’s that time of the month.”
Hearing this theory, Davey Jones grabbed Sour Towel Zombie by his damp, wrinkled collar, the maddest we’d seen him up till then, which was no joke. Must have had something to do with that dog we had. Always the dog.
“You’re not werewolves, fuckface,” he spat. “You can never change back.”
But before those basement debates begin, there’s the TV. One time, I saw a scowling newlywed click past our fake news and click on the real news instead. Just for a second, right before a Plant slapped his hand away, but long enough to catch the real news anchor sniffling:
“They’re calling it the end of …”
You could see the question in his eyes. The end of what? The end of something, anything. That’s all he needed to know.
Then the show was back on my dad in the anchor seat, reading his script in his best solemn smirk, but accidentally correcting the real news he also couldn’t help but sneakily watch off-camera, “Actually, they’re calling it Judgment Day, not to be confused with Judgment Night, a fine film and cautionary tale about a siege on a mobile home …”
That particular night, I slumped down by the gas meter to giggle through our break, and one of the dead, I thought it was Cowboy Zombie at the time (although later he denied the entire conversation), plopped down wearily next to me. He was wearing the Pittsburgh Steelers football helmet, which was crushing his ten-gallon hat (a direct violation of the “one characteristic” rule) that shadowed his face more than usual. I noticed he had one of his shoes off and a bloody fish hook stuck in the ball of his foot.
He wiggled it free and held it up in the moonlight.
“Can you imagine what this must look like to one of them?” he asked me in a voice unfamiliar. “That wiggling bait with the line stretching up to infinity, catching the sun every so often like a lightning bolt. If you were swimming by, you would know something was wrong, but there is just no way you could resist taking a bite.”
* * * *
The puzzle is called “The Executioner and the Four Hats,” and it’s new this year. Apparently, Mags got it from a kids’ book, a bush-league knockoff of the Encyclopedia Brown Mysteries series called Dictionary Blue’s Bafflers. A day earlier, Mags and Davey Jones had us all get together for a brainstorming session on how to apply it to our job. We started the meeting in the house on the loosely-screwed, breakaway dining room table, but we all felt so creatively stagnant in there that we moved the meeting to our home away from home away from home, the Joshua Bush.
Our bosses told us they wanted to “kick things up a notch” because the state of the world had them worried this might be the last season. At the table, Mags had ineffectually tried to explain this complicated puzzle with a pen, paper, and a saltshaker, but we’d just stared at her, mouths agape, of course, but more agape than usual. But outside huddled around the Bush, when Davey Jones tried acting everything out with some Halfway Homeys (imitations of the popular but racially-insensitive Hispanic bubblegum machine toys, costing half as much as the actual Homeys and coming with feedingand-caring instructions for when the child took one into their home, a.k.a. their “Halfway House”), that was when the puzzle finally made sense. At least we closed our mouths a little. “See, we got three little dudes in a line and a fourth one behind a wall no one can see.”
Luckily, he used the bigger Halfway Homeys (the ones from the 75-cent machines, almost a Whole Homey) for his demonstration or class would have been ridiculous. According to the boss, Halfway Homeys represented the infiltration of the fake Hispanic gang members into the giant, beautiful mall of the ’78 film, the actors’ faces spray-painted brown instead of blue, making them a much more serious threat to the heroes. Or something.
“Now, look close,” he went on. “They’re all wearing a hat …”
“Uh, no they’re not,” someone laughed.
“Well, the salt shaker is. Sort of,” someone added.
“Just bear with me,” Davey Jones grinned as he patted a dusty back. “In the puzzle, the ‘prisoners,’ they’re all wearing a hat. Here, if you look real close, you’ll notice I’ve grass-stained two of the Halfway Homeys green but left the other two brown. The green prisoners represent zombies, or ‘red hats.’ The brown prisoners, just pretend they have blue hats on for now. On the other side of this wall, or ‘pine cone,’ is the salt shaker, which is actually another prisoner wearing a blue hat, even though it’s silver.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Yeah, when did they become prisoners?”
“He means us, I think.”
“It’s the salt shaker that’s fucking me up. I’ve never gotten past it.”
“Now, if it was the original puzzle,” explained Davey Jones, ignoring the grumblings, “then you’d say, ‘An executioner is gonna shoot all four of them unless a prisoner can declare with certainty what color hat he’s wearing … ’”
“What hat? There’s no hats!”
“Bobby, please, get your head out of your ass,” Mags sneered. “He just told you that the green ones represent red hats, and the brown and silver hats are actually blue. So, one more time, how do they know what color hat they’re wearing?”
“You mean the hat on their own head?”
“Yes. Sort of. All the hats, really.”
“You could just take off your hat and look.”
“No. They’re tied up.”
“I’d just shout out ‘blue’ or ‘red.’ You got a 50/50 chance.”
“That’s not an option.”
“I’m confused. That salt shaker mocks me …”
“Can they talk to each other?”
“No.”
“Why can’t they look around?”
“They’re tied up.”
“That one isn’t tied up.” A finger flicked over a Halfway Homey holding a bundle of oranges. “It’s selling tiny fruit at intersections to support its tiny crack habit. Look.”
“Fuck it.”
“Please don’t screw the lid on that salt shaker anymore. The grinding of salt in metal makes me crazy.”
“We give up.”
“Okay. The answer is the guy second from the end because he knows that if the guy behind him doesn’t say anything, then that means that he sees one of each color hat on the guys in front of him and therefore knows by the process of elimination that his own hat is the opposite of the one he can see.”
“Uh … okay?” someone said through a lip-flapping sigh, representing all of us.
“So, here’s the million-dollar question. How can we play this same game with zombies instead?”
“We can’t,” Cigarette Zombie said, standing up tall in the light of her matchbook. “You’d still need something like a hat. That’s the only reason the puzzle works. A hat or, at the very least, something that you can see on the others but they can’t see on themselves. Like that poker game where you stick one card to your forehead.”
“Maybe if everyone had been bitten?” Sour Towel Zombie offered, standing up too. “Like they’re zombies but don’t know it? But, like, the others know?
Pause.
“Never mind. This shit makes no sense.”
“What if one of the guys in the line was blind?” asked Baseball Zombie.
“Yeah! Wait, no. That doesn’t work either,” Davey Jones said, clicking his teeth impatiently.
“You only need one prisoner or zombie or whatever tied up, right?” Cowboy Zombie asked as he tipped the first Halfway Homey, the one with the tiny spray can and skateboard, so its face was in the dirt. “The first one can be a corpse or a zombie. Only the one with the answer, the Camel, or the prisoner, would need to be immobilized.”
“I got it!” shouted Bobby B. “Bury them up to their necks!”
“In the house?” asked Mags, eyebrow up.
“Maybe,” Bobby Z went o
n for him, snickering now, too. “What if we rig the floor so that they fall in up to their chests and can’t turn around.”
“What if one of them was mute instead?” European Indian Zombie asked, quite sincerely. “You know, so they could see who’s a zombie but can’t say anything?” She reached down to make a Halfway Homey jump up and down like it had something urgent to say. It was palming a tiny basketball.
“No, no, no, then there’s no puzzle!” Davey Jones clicked his teeth harder. “The last Camel in the line has to be unable to answer the question because he or she sees one of each, zombie and human.”
“Maybe we should just stick with hats,” Bobby Z laughed. “Have ones that say ‘zombie’ on them or some shit.”
“That’s a horrible idea,” Cigarette Zombie scoffed. More like coughed. “Why not just give everyone propellers instead?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, scoffing nervously with her.
“Maybe it’s just not gonna …” Mags started to say.
“Fuckin’ forget it.” Davey Jones gathered up his toys, stood up over everyone a second, then stomped away.
“Whoa, O.G.Z.,” someone snickered. “Chill.”
“He should understand that if there’s a chance of something happening, no matter how remote, then it has already happened to someone else,” European Indian Zombie said to us all, palms out and all wise. “And if you think you have a great idea, someone is already doing it somewhere.”
“Did Zombie Rama tell you that?” asked Bobby B, kicking dirt in her direction.
“Zombie-O-Rama. Get it straight.”
We all got up and followed Davey Jones up to the house. Inside, he was pouting cross-legged in front of the TV, staring at the Emergency Broadcast graphic. Seeing us, he turned off the television in disgust and stomped to the refrigerator.
“You guys don’t get it!” he practically shouted. “Any of you ever see the movie Things Change? Well, things change.”
“Uh, isn’t that a movie about a shoe shiner for the mob?” asked Sour Towel Zombie.
“What’s your point?” Davey said, opening up some orange juice.
“I don’t see how that applies to us. I mean, the title is cool and all, and I get what you’re trying to say, but …”
The ’fridge door slammed, and that shut him up. Our boss said this “Things Change” line a lot. In fact, he said it so much we expected to see it on a T-shirt some day soon. He tipped his juice toward all of us like a disappointed dad.
“Pulpier, people, that’s the key. Like this,” he said, holding up his O.J. “This? See this? This is us. If there’s gonna be zombies everywhere playing this game like us, we’re gonna have to step it up. We’re gonna have to do it with more pulp.”
“What’s us?” Bobby Z laughed. “That? That missing kid on the side of the carton?”
“Exactly!” Bobby B agreed. It was the happiest we’d ever seen them, both smiling at the same time.
“But orange juice is hell on us zombies to drink,” one of them went on. “Maybe it’s the fake zombie’s diet of cold barbecue to stain our faces, but the heartburn is ridiculous.”
“Totally!”
“Maybe we just need weapons again,” Davey Jones said ominously. “Like the old days.”
The room got quiet. We used to have Laser Tag gear on our chests, then some gear on our heads. Then we moved to paintball for awhile. Then after the incident forever referred to as “The Blinding of Zombie Seventeen, a.k.a. Gamblers Anonymous Zombie” we got everybody goggles. We looked just like those Underwater Nazi Corps in Shockwave, according to Sour Towel Zombie.
“Wasn’t that called Deadcorps?”
“What? Like Dead Corpse? Kinda redundant, home boy.”
“No, ‘corps,’ like the military.”
“Never heard of it. There’s lots where they come up slow-mo out of the water though.”
“Or like the movie Zombie,” someone made the mistake of suggesting.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, that scene with the splinter through that chick’s eyeball?”
“It’s Zombi with an ‘I,’ not Zombie with an ‘I-E’” Sour Towel Zombie shouted.
“How do you know I wasn’t saying it with an ‘I’?” whoever it was asked him.
“And it’s Zombi 2, not Zombie.”
“With an ‘I,’ right?” Bobby Z taunted him. “I mean, I hate to bring it up, but you forgot to say it with the ‘I’ just now.”
“I was saying it with an ‘eye.’ Get it?”
“I can’t wait to kill you.”
“Hey, remember that cute eyeball finger monster the mad scientists made in Bride of Re-Animator?” I smiled, playing peacemaker. More like pacemaker.
“Don’t remember.”
“Didn’t your dad take us both to see it in Junior High?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby Z snapped. “I’m not my dad’s mom.”
And with a statement as confusing as that, the subject of eye injuries and bush-league Italian George Romero imitators was dropped for good.
But there were more problems than that with the Laser Tag Days.
For example, in the fog, it took away all the suspense of aiming at anything. You’d just line up the red line until it was touching their face, like you were slowly stretching out a tape measure to see how long you could get it before it finally collapses (the record being 23 feet, by the way), so we abandoned the whole “shooting Zombies in the head” thing forever. Plus, it made us seem more like zombies from Return of the Living Dead instead of the original movies.
“However, at least one of the writers of that particular parody was involved in the making of the original classic,” Sour Towel Zombie reminded us. “So maybe a shot to the brain not being enough to stop them was always part of a plan.”
Right then, Davey Jones kicked open the door and stepped outside onto the porch. He had the orange juice in one hand and a very real Spencer repeating rifle in the other. Later we would always mistakenly remember this weapon as an “AKA-47.”
“Whoa, boss,” Bobby B said. “You ever see Do The Right Thing?”
“You guys better start taking this a little more seriously.”
He let this sink in.
“Because I’m gonna hide this gun in the house. And tomorrow, if someone can find it, it’ll be fair game.”
“Uh, that is not a ‘fair game,’” Bobby B said.
But Davey Jones was done talking. He stood ominously in the background, sulking and sipping his orange juice, glaring at us occasionally, while Mags handed out paychecks and W-2s and told us not to be late tomorrow. Which is today.
Before the meeting officially adjourned, I decided to climb the antenna and check the roof for loose tiles, figuring it was safer up there anyway. The object of the game was, will be, and always has been to be on the roof come sunrise. Just like Dawn of the Dead, the roof was life. Never shopping malls, like reviewers, film students, and historians insist. They have always made the mistake of thinking more about those movies than the writers did. Or the zombies.
* * * *
There are always some Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the game. We changed them around sometimes, but one staple is always the footlocker stenciled “U.S. Army” (my sister did the decoupage) that rattles nice and provocative, as if it contains some sort of answer. There’s just a broken TV remote inside, however, if they do manage to get it open.
Right then, we hear Amy, our Plant, in our earphones, steering them back to the subject at hand. Looking for the key.
“Remember that embarrassing night when some Camel’s kid found the porn stash in the mirror,” Cowboy Zombie whispers in my other ear.
“Found what?”
“There was a hidden recess behind an old mirror in there that had a ratty pile of old Super-8 John Holmes videos and Oui magazines.”
“Oh, I thought you meant porn ‘stache,’ in the mirror.” Cigarette Zombie snickers. “Like a giant mustache in the kid’s reflection
? That would have scared the shit out of anybody.”
“I found my dad’s snuff porn and rape movies once,” I offer. “Mom flipped out on him.”
“What did he say?” Cowboy Zombie asks, taking the bait.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry, I hide the rough stuff much better than those, baby.’”
We’re suddenly distracted by another scuffle behind us. It’s the Bobbys, of course. One of them is yelling something about a difference in the paychecks we got the night before. Cowboy Zombie doesn’t even bother to break them up anymore, but Cigarette Zombie always always tries real hard to make the peace, especially when a certain Swaggering Cowboy Zombie was watching her, sometimes a Baseball Zombie, often just a Forearm Flexing Zombie.
Not necessarily a Nervous Cough Zombie like myself, of course. Sounds like a lot of zombies, doesn’t it? It is.
“See, you Bobbys are frustrated because, back home somewhere, you each have a brother who acts just like the other Bobby,” she explains, eyes uncharacteristically wide. Arms, too.
“One more time, Psychoanalysis Zombie?” Bobby B mutters, back-peddling from Bobby Z.
“Hey, one semester of psychology is no joke. But it’s just like my step-brother situation,” Cigarette Zombie goes on. “I’m the same age as the one that acts like my older brother, my blood brother, and he’s the same age as a step-brother that acts just like me. But we were forced to pair off because of our age, and we always wished we could switch until we realized, guess what, it makes perfect sense.”
“What’s your point?” Bobby Z asks, five fingers now around Bobby B’s throat, the other five fluttering near his mouth, still adding up taxes deducted from his check.
“It’s because you’re brothers,” Cigarette Zombie huffs. “You were meant to argue like this. Think about it, stupid.”
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