I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked It

by Adam Selzer

“And it would be so mean!” says Sadie, who I thought would be on my side. “Think how traumatized he must already be from dying!”

  “As a matter of fact, that’s what he died of,” says Peter. “Trauma to the head!”

  I grab Peter’s sandwich out of his hands and throw it across the room. It lands on a table of jocks in black.

  “Calm down, Gonk,” says Sadie. “Look, I know it’s a shock, but we’ll get through this.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” says Marie.

  “Easy for a necrophiliac to say,” I say to her. “And I thought you’d be on my side, Sadie!”

  “Well, sorry,” Sadie says. “I just don’t see how him being dead is any worse than him having a spastic colon, if he can still move around and talk and stuff. You’re moving away soon, anyway. The relationship has an expiration date.”

  “What the hell am I going to do?” I ask. “I mean, what if he gets all stalkerish? Do zombies have any weird powers, like invading people’s dreams and stuff?”

  “No,” says Marie. “They’re just like regular people. Only, well … you know.”

  “Most of their internal organs only sort of work,” says Ryan.

  “And they don’t age,” says Peter.

  I slump over and beat my head against the lunch table a little.

  “I can’t believe you don’t find this more romantic!” says Marie. “I mean, this boy came back from the dead for you!”

  “No he didn’t,” I say. “He came back from the dead to work at Megamart.”

  “Oh God, he was one of those?” asks Sadie. “That’s awful.”

  “I think so,” I say. “I know he gets free embalming fluid from them.”

  “Wow, that sucks,” says Trinity. “That must have been awful for him.”

  “Almost all of those zombies they brought back just let themselves crumble after they were freed,” says Sadie. “It hurts like hell to be alive, and they’re not even really alive, anyway. And that was, like, two years ago. He’s stayed alive for something. It must have been to fall in love with you!”

  “How can that be?” I ask. “He didn’t even know me until Friday!”

  “Still, he’s kissed you,” says Sadie.

  I nod a bit.

  “So,” she says, “he’ll go through mind-numbing pain just to kiss you. You are so lucky!”

  “Only you and Marie would think it was lucky to date a dead person, Sadie,” I say.

  “Well, me, Marie and practically every other girl in school,” says Sadie. “Remember, I’m going to a prom with a guy I know won’t kiss me.”

  “It’s nothing personal, you know,” says Peter. “Grow a beard and we’ll talk.”

  “So, what if I do stay with him?” I ask. “What’s going to happen? I mean, it’ll be okay for a while, then I’ll be that dork in college who’s dating a dead high school boy.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” says Sadie.

  “Then when I’m thirty and he’s seventeen I’ll be a cougar, and then I’ll get old and it’ll be like some kind of sick Harold and Maude thing.”

  “You guys can work it out,” says Trinity. “I mean, give it a chance!”

  “Why couldn’t he have just had a spastic colon?” I ask.

  I bury my head in my hands and try to keep from crying. Two hours ago, I felt like I had finally arrived. I was living at last! I was in love! In love with a boy who probably had some gross, explosive digestive disorder, but still.

  It all seems so obvious, now that I think about it. Of course he’s a zombie. Everything he said makes sense—he doesn’t have room for another person at his place because it’s probably a grave. A million little things like that … I’ve been so blindsided by love that I overlooked all of them.

  I mean, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, overlooking flaws, right? Everyone has flaws. Everyone’s broken.

  It’s like the chorus of one of those Leonard Cohen songs from the Alley playlist: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

  Maybe that was supposed to be a clue. I don’t know.

  There are some flaws you have to overlook in a boyfriend, like poor taste in shoes, occasional body odor, nose picking and the general cluelessness that all guys have. I mean, nobody’s perfect.

  But what about being dead? That’s something else altogether. You have to draw the line someplace.

  I gather my courage to send him a text—“I saw your Web page. You know which one.”

  A minute later, he texts back, “Please don’t hate me.”

  And for just a second, I do hate him. He led me on! He let me basically fall in love with him and dream about a future with him, and all the while it’s only drinking six shots of embalming fluid a day that’s keeping him from crumbling into dust. What a jerk!

  I’m breaking up with him, all right.

  I send him a text asking for directions to his place and telling him to meet me there after school. We have to talk.

  8

  I have always considered myself smart. Everyone considers me smart, in fact. My whole image, the whole persona of Alley Rhodes, Ice Queen of the Vicious Circle, is based on the notion that I’m smarter than most of the people in school—especially most of the guys who hit on me. How in the hell could I have been so stupid that I didn’t even realize Doug was dead?

  Maybe it was because he doesn’t act much like I imagined zombies would act. I don’t think I’ve ever met one before, and I guess I think of them as creatures that lurch around going, “Brrrrraaaaaaiiiinnns.”

  But from what I’ve learned after spending half of the rest of the day online, that’s just a temporary state for zombies. When someone performs the operation to “create” a zombie, the corpse stays dead for a while, then goes into a “frenzy” that allows them to break through the coffin and climb up through the dirt and out of the grave. They’re senseless, super-strong brain-eating monsters for a few hours, but then they settle down. The ones who had time to decompose probably won’t ever get any brighter, since their brains have rotted away, but people who were made into zombies within a week or so of dying maintain a pretty high level of functionality. Doug must have been made into a zombie pretty early on.

  That’s the impression I get, anyway, from piecing information together. No two sources seem to say the same thing about zombies. Creating them is totally illegal, after all, and the government doesn’t let too much information about them get out.

  At the end of the day, Mrs. Smollet, the vampire guidance counselor, corners me in the hall.

  “My office, Miss Rhodes,” she says. “Now.”

  I really, really want to hurry on my way out to the grave yard, but I follow her into her office, where she directs me to sit in a chair in front of her desk. She stares at me for a second.

  “Well played, Rhodes,” she says. “You always were too smart for your own good.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

  “I have girls in here every week asking if I can write to the council and get them permission to become post-humans. I always turn them down, except for that little moron, Michelle, after she managed to snag herself a date with Friedrich. I do not approve of mixed relationships.”

  “Because you don’t want humans to be pressured to convert?” I ask.

  “Mixed relationships are simply not … traditional,” she says. “I’ve learned to live with Friedrich and Michelle, since she signed a letter of intent to convert when she’s eighteen. But you’re eighteen already, so I’m going to file the paperwork for you. Happy?”

  “I’m not converting!” I say.

  “Nonsense,” says Mrs. Smollet. “You think you’re that much more mature than every other girl in school?”

  “Yeah, kinda,” I say.

  “The paperwork is on its way to Europe already,” she says. “I don’t want to hear any more about you dating post-humans until you are one.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I say. “You’re practically orderi
ng me to die. What kind of guidance counselor are you?”

  “I’m a very traditional one, Miss Rhodes,” she says. “One who does not approve of mixing species.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry,” I say. “I’m breaking up with Doug this afternoon.”

  “See that you do,” she says. “If you’re going to chicken out from converting but don’t break things off with the zombie, there will be consequences.”

  I sigh and excuse myself from her office. I have too much to worry about without having to give a rat’s ass what Mrs. Smollet thinks about me and Doug. I’m half tempted to stay with him just to spite her.

  But I can’t do that.

  I mean, a lot of people don’t approve of teenagers dating post-humans because they always want to “convert,” which I guess makes sense. But Smollet apparently doesn’t want teenagers dating post-humans because they might not convert. What a maniac.

  I walk home, borrow my dad’s car without telling him and drive out to the graveyard, riding along a lot of the same routes that Doug and I have driven over in the past few days. I drive right by the malt shop.

  The graveyard is actually pretty close to downtown, near the river. My great-uncle Joey is buried here, so we used to come here every Memorial Day. I never knew Uncle Joey—he died in Vietnam—but I’d play around and climb the gravestones and stuff while my family stood around at the grave. I’d collect pinecones, if I remember right. I wasn’t old enough to understand what was really going on, of course.

  But I haven’t been in a graveyard at all since I was a little kid. There aren’t many of them in town. Cornersville Trace is pretty new; not enough people have died there even to fill up the little cemetery on Bartleby.

  So it’s weird to be in one, especially since it really doesn’t feel any different from just walking through a park. It’s not scary at all. It’s just … weird. I’ve always wanted to live a surprising, unpredictable life, but I sure never saw something like this coming. Especially not in Iowa. Nothing like this ever happens around here.

  I spot Doug’s grave right away—it’s the empty one in front of a stone that looks massive from a distance. As I get closer, I can see that he actually started out with a modest gravestone, but some additions have been built. There’s a small stone on the ground with Doug’s name and date of birth and date of death, which was about four years ago. But then, behind it, there are stones stacked up and cemented together into a big, like, sculpture of Doug. Or a sculpture of a person, anyway, that I guess resembles him as much as any pile of rocks could. It’s kind of beautiful.

  Then, down in the hole, I can see that he’s really tricked out his grave. There’s an open coffin, which would be kind of creepy except that it just looks like a bed in a box. He’s got a little mattress in there, plus a pillow and an electric blanket. There’s a ladder to get in and out, and a generator for electricity, a stash of embalming fluid … even one of those little handheld video players. All the comforts of home, except for a bathroom. I guess he doesn’t need one of those, since he doesn’t really have a spastic colon.

  Doug is nowhere to be seen.

  I’m breaking things off with him for sure, but if he stands me up, I’m never even talking to him again. And he can forget about me producing his music or promoting his career more than I already have.

  Suddenly, I hear a rustle coming from a few graves away.

  I turn, thinking it’s Doug, but instead, it’s another zombie!

  And this time there’s no mistaking—this is not the kind of zombie that could pass for a living person, like Doug. It’s rotting and gray and disgusting. It looks like it used to be a middle-aged fat guy, but it’s so decomposed that I can’t even be sure. And it’s looking right at me, lumbering slowly toward me.

  “Brrraaaaaaiiiiinnnsss!” it says.

  I scream like a girl in a bad horror movie and run like hell away from the grave. Over my shoulder I can see the zombie following me, but not exactly at a pace that would let it keep up. I’m just thinking I’m in the clear when another zombie—an old woman, from what I can tell based on the parts of her that haven’t rotted away—crawls out from behind a tombstone.

  “Brains!” she growls.

  I scream again and keep on running, but two more zombies jump out into the path! I turn around. There’s another one standing next to the woman now, and the fat guy is starting to catch up to them. They’ve got me surrounded!

  “Brraiiinnsss,” they’re groaning.

  I turn to my left, but it looks like some others are coming up on me from that side!

  They’re closing in on me.

  “Get away!” I shout. “Shoo!”

  Well, what do you shout at zombies?

  Maybe their eardrums are too rotten for them to hear, or more likely they just don’t care. They’re still coming. A zombie in a flannel shirt with a bushy mustache (God, what kind of hick buries a loved one dressed like that?) is moving faster than the rest—I turn, but if I ran, I’d be running right into more zombies!

  This is it, I think as they move in on me. I’m going to die.

  I’ve never thought much about how I would die, but I certainly never thought I’d die of being torn apart by a zombie who looks like he used to be that lumberjack guy in the paper towel commercials.

  Then, another voice.

  “Gonk!”

  It’s not loud—more like a theater whisper. But there’s no mistaking it.

  “Doug!” I shout back. “Help!”

  I am the kind of girl who can take care of herself. I can open doors and pop cans with no help from anyone. I can even kick a little ass, if necessary. But I am not equipped to deal with brain-eaters.

  Doug comes lurching into the center of the circle of zombies closing in around me.

  “What the hell is happening?” I ask.

  “They’re in frenzy mode,” he says. “Just crawled up. I don’t want to have to fight them, but I will if I have to.”

  “Fight them!” I shout.

  Doug pulls a switchblade—the kind tough kids in the 1950s had—from his pocket, walks up to the guy in the flannel and starts slashing near his mustache. I turn away. I can’t imagine watching anyone get stabbed. Not even a dead person.

  There’s an awful crack, and the guy’s head starts wobbling around on his neck. Then Doug smacks the fat guy and the one that was standing next to the woman.

  “Run!” he says to me. “Get in my grave! They won’t get into another person’s grave.”

  I run like hell back to Doug’s grave and climb down the ladder and onto the mattress in the open coffin. It’s more spacious down here than you’d think. He’s really made it pretty homey.

  I don’t dare to look, but I can hear the sound of a pretty good fight going on above me. Doug is shouting out threats, and the zombies (well, the other zombies) are still going, “Brrrraaaaiiinnnns.”

  Finally, there’s silence. A minute later, I look up and Doug is standing over the grave, looking down. There’s gunk on his knife.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  He looks exhausted.

  I nod. “Are they gone?

  “Yeah,” he croaks. “I’m gonna have to drag the bodies back to their graves later. That’s gonna be a pain in the ass. Don’t look. They’re in pieces.”

  “What the hell was that?” I ask. “I thought it was illegal to make new zombies.”

  “It is,” he says. “But someone apparently made a bunch more in the graveyard recently.”

  “Someone’s making new ones?” I ask.

  “If I had to guess,” he says, “I’d say someone went around casting the zombie rites over a whole bunch of graves in one night. It’s not that hard—you just mix stuff into the soil and wave some sticks around to stir up the energies. Every few nights, a few more of them have been waking up. That’s why I got this knife.”

  He kneels down, groaning with pain, like he’s really stiff and sore, to wipe the knife off on the grass.

  �
��Why didn’t they all rise up at once?” I ask. “Isn’t that how it works? You cast the rites and they rise in a few days or something?”

  “Depends,” he says. “Some of them rise up in just a couple of days. Lutherans, especially, for some reason. Others take longer. Like, up to a month. And the longer it takes, the stronger they get.” His voice is trailing off. It’s barely a whisper now.

  “Were those ones strong?”

  “Yeah. But they had all decomposed enough that they came apart pretty easily.” He shudders a bit. “Whoever made them did it wrong. They’re supposed to have just enough energy in frenzy mode to break through the coffin and climb up, then be worn out.”

  We just stare at each other for a second. It’s the first awkward silence we’ve really had.

  Finally, he says, “You want to talk?”

  I nod.

  “Okay,” he says. “But don’t come up. Let me come down there. It’s pretty ugly out here.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask. “You look like it really hurts to move.”

  “I’ll be comfortable down there.”

  He climbs slowly down the ladder—I can tell that it hurts him like hell. I sit up on the mattress and he sits next to me. We have another long, uncomfortable silence while I look him over. He drinks a big swig of embalming fluid.

  God, he’s so attractive. Even now that I know that he’s dead.

  And he just got in a fight for me. I know it’s kind of a cavewoman thing to be flattered that a guy fights for you, but I can’t help it. It’s hot. He didn’t just fight for me, he saved me from having my brain eaten by a mustached zombie in flannel.

  There’s no way I can break up with him. Especially not right now, after he’s just saved my ass.

  “Nice place you got here,” I say.

  “I live in the car, mostly,” he says. “It’s, like, my indoor place. This is the outdoor one.”

  “You make the statue yourself?”

  He leans back against the dirt and takes a second swig of fluid.

  “Yeah,” he answers. “Like I said. Sometimes, I just have to build. It’s one of those instincts that doesn’t even go away when you die. Sometimes I wake up at three to take my fluid and there’s just this voice inside me that says, ‘You have to build!’”