Reanimated Readz

by Rusty Fischer

  “What gives, dude?” asks Chip, hovering protectively around Angela.

  “The experiment’s over,” I say, eyeing the Thugs’ cage. They sense something is up, something is changing, and watch me warily.

  My former cage mates all speak at once:

  “What experiment?”

  “The hell?”

  “Experiment?”

  “We’re not zombies,” I say, fingering the key in my hand, the one I know fits into the lock that keeps the Thugs in—and me out. “We never were. That’s what Creed took me away to tell me. That’s what we’ve been doing here, for two weeks—proving to the government that real kids will kill for brains if you just tell them they’re zombies and keep them hungry for long enough.”

  “But the drugs,” Angela says. “The infestation. We saw—”

  “Look!” I shout, cutting her off. Her eyes, already bleak, look positively wounded. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have a lot of time. If you don’t believe me, head out those doors, turn to the left and replay the video in the conference room. You’ll see all you need to know, and then some.”

  Chip looks at me, at the other two, then splits, sneakers squeaking as he runs out the warehouse doors and down the long, green hallway. Garrett looks uncertainly at Angela, who still looks at me. Then he follows Chip.

  I can hear their shoes as they slap on the green tile that leads to the conference room, the door swinging open, then I hear Chip going, “Gross,” probably as he spies Creed’s body on the floor.

  “Go,” I say, sliding the key into the Thugs cage. “Get out of here, before it’s too late.”

  “W-w-what about you?” she asks, watching me as I pause with the key still in the lock.

  “I’ve acted like a zombie for two weeks, Angela. I’ve killed, I dunno, six, seven people? I’m basically a cannibal now. I can’t just walk outside and go back home and start playing Xbox again, you know? I can’t just tell my story to reporters and write a tell-all book and make a million. I’m a murderer, a killer. I—”

  “But it wasn’t your fault,” she says. “They tricked us, right? So, so, I mean….”

  Then her voice trails off as it hits her, all of it, all of a sudden. The brains, the bodies, the people we called “Fugs” just to make it easier to kill them. What we’ve done, how we’ve done it, who we’ve done it to. how much we’ve…enjoyed…it.

  As her face crumples, as she drops to her knees, I slip inside the Thugs’ cage, lock it from the inside and toss the keys back through the door.

  “No!” she cries, but her heart’s not in it. She falls on her backside, crawling away and watching as the Thugs circle me closely.

  They sniff, and paw, and tear, my shirt falling to the floor, the first drops of blood springing to my skin. There is no time for goodbyes, no long speeches. They are on me in seconds, tearing, gnawing, and whatever drugs made my heart beat more slowly are long, long gone.

  I feel every tear, every claw, every tooth, and I’m smiling, even as the sound of my own skull cracking fills my ears.

  And I wonder, as they take me down, what it will feel like if I live again. If I’ll remember any of this, or just stare through the bars of the cage, wondering where I am.

  And I can’t tell which I’d prefer….

  Private EyeZ

  The Zombie Detective Agency

  A Reanimated Readz Story

  By

  Rusty Fischer

  I finger the three hundred-dollar bills and look across my desk at Brock Thornton. “You’re paying me in full? In advance?”

  Brock looks like his name sounds: tall, dark, and lazy. To prove it, he’s just handed me three hundred dollars to stalk his girlfriend.

  “My dad says it’s good to motivate your employees.”

  Brock’s dad being Brock Thornton Senior, he of the Thornton Auto Mall out on Route 6. And the Thornton Auto Store off Highway 16. And the Thornton Auto…well, you get the picture.

  Brock’s eyes are so dull he doesn’t even realize he’s just insulted me. Then again, it’s hard to insult a non-human. At least, according to folks like Brock. And in a little town like Beaver Falls, North Carolina, there are a lot of people like Brock.

  He looks around my office, which is small and cramped but clean and professional. It’s got the desk, the three chairs—two on his side, one on mine—and my (still drying) certificate of graduation from the Allied Security School on the wall. Above the certificate is my freshly printed business license for the Private EyeZ Detective Agency. In case you’re wondering, the giant, all-caps “Z” stands for Zombie.

  He checks out the magazines on the coffee table—The Reanimated Reader, if you must know—the fake plant on the window-unit air conditioner, the dusty fedora on the coat rack by the door, then circles back to me. “This what you do since they kicked you out of school?”

  “What else can I do?” I ask him.

  Brock shrugs. He’s not big on answering questions. “I dunno. I see your zombie buddy Jim Phillips bagging groceries at Greenbriar’s Grocers on Main. That seems pretty steady.”

  “Did you say anything to him?” I ask.

  His face wrinkles like a centipede just tickled his you-know-what. “What for?”

  “Because he was the best wide receiver you ever had, Brock, remember?”

  “So?”

  “Because you drove to school together for two years straight. Because he was your friend.”

  Brock runs a big hand through his feathery blond hair. “Look, just because the law says I have to let zombies bag my groceries doesn’t mean I have to be nice to them while they’re doing it, okay? No matter how many touchdowns they scored for the Beaver Falls Bearcats.”

  I nod; he’s right. It doesn’t.

  “So why are you being nice to me, then?”

  “Am I?” He snorts.

  I shrug. “Not really.”

  He stands, wiping his hands off as if just sitting in my chair makes him feel dirty. “So, you clear on what I need?”

  I look down at my desk blotter to the notes I didn’t take. “Round-the-clock surveillance of Brandy Hutchins for the next three days, right?”

  He smiles as if I deserve a gold star or something. There’s a letterman’s jacket under the fedora on the coat rack. He looks at it, smiles wistfully, and brushes a bruised knuckle against the worn white leather of the nearest sleeve.

  “Too bad you don’t exist anymore, bro,” he says in a way that, I suppose, he thinks sounds friendly. “You were the best center a quarterback could wish for.”

  He looks back at me, over his shoulder, frowning. As if it’s my fault I wound up this way. As if his family hadn’t had the only zombie-proof shelter in Catchacan County, he might’ve ended up this way, too.

  I follow him to the door, forcing myself not to slam it on him as he walks out. Scratch that. Saunters out.

  “Brock?” I ask, just to make him stop, mid-stride.

  He does then turns. “Yeah?”

  “Do you really think Brand’s cheating on you?”

  He smirks. “I doubt it, but…I still want to know what she’s up to when I’m not around.”

  “Why?”

  Then he gives that Brock Thornton smile. “Because I can.”

  I wait until he’s down the hall, down the stairs, and starting his car to shut my door behind me and lock it tight. It’s early evening now, too early for Brandy to be home but not too early for me to take a spin by where she works and see what I can see while I can see it.

  The Bagel Barn is across town, but I walk anyway because believe it or not, a driving zombie draws a lot more attention than one just walking down the street. True story.

  It’s a pleasant evening, nearly dusk, and I have three hundred-dollar bills in my wallet. I smile, wishing I could still eat human food because whenever I got a wad of cash in my Before Life, the first thing I would always do was buy something to eat.

  The only thing I can hold down now is soda, the sugarier the bett
er, but I want to keep my hands free since I’m on the job. So I pass by the convenience stores and smoothie shops and pizza parlors and just keep strolling.

  People look at me funny. But then, they always do. At last count, there were one hundred twenty-nine zombies—legally we’re referred to as “Reanimated Persons,” but let’s be real—in Beaver Falls. So it’s not like I’m so unique that people are running away screaming, but it’s still enough of a novelty that folks are mostly like, “Hmmm, there’s one of those guys again.”

  Plus, lots of people when they’re seeing me, they’re seeing the zombie who ate their mom, their dad, their little sister or girlfriend or cousin or neighbor, so I’m not exactly Mr. Popular. Not that I did any of those things, mind you, but to them, a zombie is a zombie. I can’t say I blame them. I’m no fan of the zombies who ate my family, either.

  They’re not allowed to touch me, thanks to the Reanimated Persons Safety Act of 2019, but that doesn’t stop them from assassinating the hell out of me with their eyeballs, that’s for sure. I find the Bagel Barn tucked in between the Smoothie Shop and the Yogurt Shack and go inside.

  “Randall?” Brandy asks right away, giving my long-dead, atrophied heart a little flutter. Then she kills it by saying, “But, wait…I didn’t think zombies ate bagels.” Then she flutters it again, two times maybe, by blushing all over. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. Did I offend you? I offended you, didn’t I? I used the Z-word, that’s why. I knew it the minute it flew out of my big, fat mouth—”

  “Brandy, really, it’s fine. I’m used to it. I know you didn’t mean anything by it and, actually, you’re right. We can’t eat bagels. But can I get a raspberry Slushee?”

  She looks at the machine, then back at me. Brandy has thick, black hair, and cherub-y cheeks with dimples and olive skin and a figure that even makes her red and black polyester Bagel Barn uniform look like something Victoria’s Secret would put on their catalog cover every year.

  “You sure?”

  She’s so earnest, I have to chuckle. “Yeah, trust me, it’s fine. The only thing that might happen is a permanent brain freeze….”

  It’s a little thing I do, with the brain jokes. Most people get them, but most people aren’t Brandy Hutchins. She ignores me and pours the bright blue Slushee to the brim. I thank her and pay with a twenty, not one of her boyfriend’s hundred-dollar bills. Because, you know, that would just be too ironic. And, actually, a little bit cruel.

  She hands me the change and I tip her five bucks, just because—this week anyway—I can. She smiles sweetly and tries pulling it out of the plastic fish barrel next to the cash register with a handwritten “Tips” sign. “No, Randall, honestly…that’s too much.”

  I go to still her hand but I know what she’ll do when my ice-cold flesh touches hers, so I don’t. Instead I just back away and say, “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t mean it, Brandy.”

  She looks at it a little greedily. “Okay then.” But she pockets it instead of returning it to the otherwise empty tip jar. I smile and sit at a tall two-top table near the metal bins full of bagels.

  They smell a little yeasty, which can be overpowering to my zombie sense of smell, but I keep my head buried in the big blue Slushee and hope for the best. Brandy saunters out from behind the counter, a moist rag in hand, and wipes the table next to me just for something to do.

  “How’s school?” I ask her, not as a private detective but just because I’m curious. It’s been three months since Local Order 90671, which precluded all Reanimated Persons from attending public school. I never thought I’d miss slamming lockers and number two pencils and rubber chicken cutlets under neon yellow gravy, but…I do.

  “School’s school,” she says, inching her ripe derriere onto the barstool across from me and picking at the threads of the rag with bitten-down nails. “I finally made the cheerleading squad.”

  “Awesome,” I say, with genuine enthusiasm.

  Then she frowns. “Yeah, well, they were pretty much begging for warm bodies once the top seven cheerleaders got infected last year. I mean, it was pretty hard not to make the team after that.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” I say, the sweet Slushee causing my dry mouth to tingle.

  “How are you holding up?” she asks, avoiding my eyes.

  I wonder, in that moment, if she knows I had a thing for her all along, or if she just isn’t very comfortable sitting knee-to-knee with a zombie.

  “I’m fine,” I say, and she sighs.

  “Is it fun working here?” I ask, hoping for a few clues. It may seem unorthodox to talk to the subject of an open investigation, but we in the biz call it “hiding in plain sight.”

  Besides, I’m probably the last person—sorry, the last reanimated person—Brandy would ever think was checking up on her. And, if you hadn’t noticed, she’s not exactly the brightest bulb in the box.

  “It’s all right, I guess. I wish more people from school would stop by. Everybody’s so busy these days. You remember Ryan Fletcher?”

  I perk up. Maybe she’s going to tell me they’re dating and I’ll earn my money while still taking the next two days off. “Yeah?”

  “He got a job with the Reanimation Patrol. First in our class to get hired under the new law. He’s pretty stoked. Didn’t you guys used to pal around?”

  I think of Ryan and his short blond hair that always stayed spiky, even under his helmet. “Sure, before…well, before.”

  Her eyes get a little sad, and I think maybe she’s not so slow after all. “Yeah, you and Ryan and Brock and Jim Phillips used to be pretty tight.” She flicks her eyes my way. “Before, I mean.”

  “Kind of like you and Amy Brennerman,” I remind her. Amy is a reanimated person, too. I see her from time to time at the County Brain Bank, where we stand in line to get our twice-weekly feeding.

  Sad eyes again. She gets up, takes the rag with her. “I miss Amy,” she says in a small voice.

  I finish my Slushee, wait for her to say something about Brock. She doesn’t.

  “Well,” I say, getting up and tossing my half-finished drink in the trash. “Thanks for the Slushee. Good luck with cheerleading.”

  But she’s snickering, laughing, and I pause at the door to look down at my flannel shirt to see if I’ve spilled some blue juice from the drink.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  She makes a squishy face and says, “I just got your joke from earlier. About the brain freeze. I didn’t know zombies could be so…funny.”

  ***

  Brandy lives in a run-down apartment building near the Beaver Falls water tower. There’s a patch of oak trees across the street, and I’ve been sitting in one for about two hours when she finally rides up on a rusty blue bike that I can hear squeaking for two city blocks.

  She locks it to the gate outside her front door, then goes inside. She’s still in her uniform from work, and the ride home in that polyester can’t have been too comfortable. The kitchen window is open, and I hear her laugh at something her mother says. Her mom’s at the sink, washing a pan from dinner, and I can see a fresh beer bottle on the windowsill. By my count, it’s number three of the evening.

  They sit at a little table in the dining room, which also seems to function as the living room, since a flickering TV is not three or four feet away on an end table, and the mom watches while Brandy eats some type of yellow casserole with potato chips crumbled on top. She washes it down with iced tea, and I’d bet my spiffy new three hundred-dollar bills it’s sweet versus un-sweet.

  They both disappear from view for a minute, then Mom goes to the fridge for beer number four, and Brandy pops up in a bedroom window upstairs. It’s dark now, the lights are on, and I watch as Brandy slips out of her uniform. She wears a black bra and pink panties and is pretty much spilling out of both. Hubba-hubba.

  There’s no window in the bathroom—not that I would have watched her anyway. Seriously. For real. I mean it. Come on—but when she comes back into her bedroom,
her hair is up in a towel, and she’s wearing a ratty yellow robe you know she’s had since three Christmases ago.

  I keep waiting for Brock to show up and take her out. It’s Saturday, after all, but when she slips into a pink baby-doll T-shirt that says “It’s all about me” and a pair of sweatpants cut off at the knees, I figure she’s in for the night.

  So what are those cars I hear approaching?

  Sure, it’s not exactly four in the morning but it’s a little late for pickup truck traffic on this side of town. As far as I can tell, there’s not much near the water tower but this apartment complex, a scruffy public park, and a body shop that’s closed for the night. I turn in my tree, leaves scattering in my wake, and spot a familiar four-wheeler complete with spotlights on the roof. They shine right into my eyes.

  I raise a hand to cover them and lose my grip on the branch, falling onto the hood of the car that’s just pulled up to the tree, blocking any easy escape. I land with a thud, denting the shiny blue hood, and tumble over—and off—onto the ground. It doesn’t hurt, but it looks stupid and…what the hell?

  “Get him, Ryan!” Brock shouts from his truck, pretty face turned pretty ugly as his beady eyes narrow and his full lips grow thin.

  “I am, Brock! Hold on a sec!”

  Ryan Fletcher steps out of his car in a rent-a-cop uniform. I’m still sitting on the ground and I notice the magnetic signs on his door panel. Official Representative of the Reanimation Patrol.

  Yeah, very official.

  “Get up, Randall,” he says, his voice at once recognizable yet strange. There is a look in his eyes, the same look Brock gave me in my office earlier that day. It’s a look I’ve seen pretty much daily since I got infected last year: fear mixed with anger mixed with rage, plus a little sadness and familiarity thrown in as well. But more with the anger and the rage.

  “Fine, fine, Ryan, but…you have no reason to arrest me.”

  “Sure, he does.” Brock spits, getting out of his truck. “You were out here, peeping on my girlfriend. Look, you still have the binoculars around your throat.”