Zombie

by J. R. Angelella

  A wall of deep and heavy male voices responds, “Yes.”

  An electric buzzing begins. A power tool. Far away. In a single tone. Then, it changes. The buzzing changes.

  “Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity.”

  The men respond, “Yes.”

  The buzzing now screeches—slowing for a moment, before speeding up, ripping through something. I want to press pause and stop this whole thing, but my fingers don’t move or can’t move. The buzzing screeches and screams, ripping and ripping. Silence again. And an uneven breathing, which becomes a wall of whispers.

  A new voice, almost invisible, speaks to himself. The man’s voice sounds fragile, frozen, and far closer to the speakers than the other man.

  “Jesus Christ, no. I—no—I. I have to—no. Shit. No, no, no.” The man stops talking, but his breath picks back up—fast, heavy, and hard.

  Silence resumes, which forces me to search the black screen for something, anything, and then I see it—a thin circle of light at the edges. I touch my finger to the screen and a blue spark shocks me. I trace my finger along the light.

  The main voice continues, “Things finally come down to the business itself, to the act of revenge itself.” Footsteps. Walking. Shoes. Crunching of plastic underfoot. The man’s voice moves closer to the camera now. His tone changes, no longer reciting words, but rather taking registration. “Month—August. Day—Twenty-Nine. Sublimation one—Ralph Andersen.”

  There is a dark void of silence. Until an avalanche of sound comes crashing down—a collective primal scream. Who knows how many people are involved, or what it means. The microphone pops and cuts between silence and the communal scream. A reverberating echo pounds the speakers, the screen still black.

  A new voice close to the camera says, “Are you a fucking virgin at this? Take the damn cap off.”

  Cap. Camera. Someone has forgotten to remove it.

  The circle of light disappears as the cap pops off and a hot, bright, white light crashes into the lens, causing the camera to shuffle and refocus, shocking it into disorientation. The communal primal scream now filters through mechanical camera adjustments. Everything blurs and nothing is clear. The scream stops. Choking is all that remains. The choking is violent. Maybe better described as gagging. Like someone having chopsticks shoved down their throat. The robotic sound of the camera autofocusing stops and the white light settles and the white emptiness looks like what I imagine Heaven to be.

  The aggressive white rushes away from the camera as color descends. An image comes through in flashes. A man. A man’s body. Thick, industrial plastic covers him like a blurry blanket. Monitors and machines run wires into him, slipping under the plastic; his eyes taped shut; a clear tube stuffed down his throat, chocking him. He is awake. His body twitches. His neck turns, pulling away, gagging, chocking. A seizure, maybe. The way he thrashes under the plastic and the plastic begins to move and slide and gains speed and clears away from the body completely and the anonymous head finally becomes a head with a body and arms and legs.

  The man is restrained to the bed. Long, leather straps cross his chest, his stomach, and his knees. The man is fully naked, his junk exposed and all. The body extends out of the frame of the camera, chopping him off at his knees. No one is on camera at all except for the man—only this man in pain.

  Two men dressed in pale green surgical scrubs and caps and masks covering their faces poke around the monitors and plunge a syringe into the IV bag. They talk to each other, checking vitals, but their voices are inaudible. They finally exit off screen—doctors of some kind.

  The main man’s voice returns. “Oh, absurdity of absurdities!”

  Snuff film—is this what I am watching? Is that what this is? No. Snuff films are not this. They are where some dude fucks a chick and then kills her on film for serious pervs to get off on, but this isn’t that. I don’t know what this is. This is something else altogether. I lean forward, lean closer, look closer.

  The camera pitches again—autofocusing—and I see them. A crowd stands in front of the man strapped to the bed and the bed is centered on a slightly raised stage. I see them and think it’s a trick of light. I see them, all of them, standing. I hear the man’s voice again.

  “… that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper’s trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.”

  The man strapped to the bed gags.

  In real life, Dog leaves the living room, sleepy, moving away in a slow walk. I wish I could follow.

  The surgical tape over one of the man’s eyes snaps loose, so that one eye remains taped shut while the other is open wide, seeking, searching the room. The eye finds the camera. I tilt my head like people tilt their heads in horror movies, all cliché-like and shit. I try and see the man’s face, like I might know him, like I might be able to identify him for the police or something.

  I see them there. Others. Men. Their heads are covered in black masks, like executioners. Some of the men are shirtless. Some in suits. They stand in front of the stage with the bed. They just watch, doing nothing, except for a few that rub their dicks or suck on their fingers.

  The main man, the leader says, “This is what redemption looks like, gentlemen. This is the real Ralph Anderson.”

  The man in the bed gives up, stops fighting, breathing shallow breaths, and I keep breathing, breathing for him. He closes his one eye and breathes through the tube down his throat and then exhales and opens his one eye. A surge blasts from his chest as he throws everything into a final fight, twisting his body, seizure-like. The doctors rush back into frame, holding him down. The movement startles the crowd as they shift like current away from the stage and collide with the camera. The tripod with the camera crashes to the ground, the camera still filming, but only filming legs and the heavy plastic covering the floor and the crunching of feet stepping on the plastic. Then the audio goes silent as legs moves past the camera and the screen cuts to black.

  Sublimation goes back to Dad’s closet like a fucking bullet. Fucking leave that bullshit behind. I wish I had never found it. I wish I could make myself forget it.

  This is the savage animal ripping through my body at this very moment.

  27

  I throw open the door to the basement and, instead of hiding behind it, I charge down the stairs, making as much noise as possible. A zombie killer. Noise, noise, noise—bounding down the stairs in heavy strides. Here I come. If this were a zombie film, I’d be making a major faux pas and would most likely be dead in a matter of minutes. However, in this instance, I break my Zombie Survival Code Number Two—keep quiet—and embrace the chaos and calamity of my shitfuck life.

  I pass antiques, wrapped in plastic, stacked in corners. I pass bicycles hung from the ceiling. I pass Dad’s toolshed. I pass luggage. I pass Dog’s cage. If this were back in the day, the basement would have been the jungle. It would be the shit. I would be in the shit. Dad says that in the Marines, they were told to scream kill, kill, kill or ooh rah. I say neither in the basement. In the basement, I say neither. In the back, I find the trunk where Dad keeps all of our sports equipment, collected together from over the years—deflated soccer balls and footballs; stiff, leather baseball gloves; chipped lacrosse sticks; three sets of used golf clubs that Dad bought for us but that we never used; camping equipment from when Jackson tried to be a boy scout but got kicked out because he kept getting caught fucking around with some girl scout or fighting with another boy scout in his troop; broken lawn furniture; soft seat cushions used for Orioles and Raven
s games; Byron Hall Blue Jay water bottles; and wrap-around protective eyewear. All of this means nothing to me. All of this is exactly where it is supposed to be—out of sight and at the bottom of our lives. None of these things connect to us anymore.

  Jackson—moved out.

  Mom—moved out.

  Dad—moved on.

  Jeremy—still here.

  What I want is still down here—an old, rubber kitchen trash can next to the trunk, filled with my big, bad, beautiful bastards—baseball bats. Covered in cobwebs, I slap them away. These are my zombie weapons. I’m the American version of Shaun in Shaun of the Dead. If they made a version based on me it’d be Jeremy of the Dead. Instead of a cricket mallet or pool cues to smash the living dead to goo, I’d simply substitute a baseball bat. If Shaun could whack them, so can I.

  I grab the handle on the side of the trash can and drag it, like a dead body, across the cement floor of the basement, making an amazing scratching sound that would raise the dead. I lift the trash can and its contents up the basement stairs one step at a time, dropping it occasionally to rest, each drop making a tremendous thud that thunders throughout the house with great reverberating echoes. Every time I drop the fucker, wooden and aluminum bats thwark and ping against eachother. I drag that fucker across the hardwood of the first floor, scraping the fuck out of it. I pass Dog, who could give a shit what any of us do in this house so long as she is fed and walked. I rest in the foyer, catching my breath, looking outside to the street. Nothing. Only the shadows under the street lamp, but nothing real. I lift the trash can up to the second flight of stairs without stopping once and hustle through my bedroom door with a 28 Days Later poster tacked to the front, the contagious symbol warning all who enter to beware.

  In the zombie film 28 Days Later, the main character, Jim, wakes in an abandoned hospital room, still attached to saline bags and shit. He is alone. There are no doctors. There are no nurses. No staff of any kind. No patients. Everyone is gone, disappeared, dead. If not, then they are rage-infected zombies. Jim learns this sad fact as he wanders the looted and lost streets of London. He survives off of vending machine food—candy and soda. He keeps to himself until he meets up with other survivors, like himself, and finds a reason to continue to carry on and fight—for humanity. But in the beginning, when he wakes in that hospital room, by himself, he has nothing except fear.

  I kick my bedroom door closed and set the trash can lovingly next to my bed.

  Lights off, I lay in bed, fully dressed and on top of the covers, cooling off and calming down. I hate that fucking basement, but now I have what I need and don’t need anything else. Anyone else. Not Dad. Not Mr. Rembrandt. I close my eyes and see the man in the Sublimation DVD again—strapped to the bed, held down, stuffed full of tubes and liquids, one eye taped shut. I hear the bodiless man reciting philosophy like prayers or commandments.

  Mybads. Oh, my beautiful bastards! I pull one and hold it across my chest. Sleep closes down on me. Fuck you, Sleep. I’m packing aluminum and wooden heat. Barefoot again at my window, Tricia’s blinds are closed, even though her light is on. I wish I could see her and make sure she was okay. I wish I could see if she needed me to save her. I can save people. Just like Shaun.

  Who needs pills, Mom?

  Who needs sex, Jackson?

  Who needs tongues, Dad?

  Zombie Survival Code Number Four—lock and fucking load. I just have to remember to choke that bastard up.

  IV

  I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE

  (Release Date: April 30, 1943)

  Directed by Jacques Tourneur

  Story by Inez Wallace

  Written by Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray

  28

  The morning sun sneaking through my blinds reminds me of two things:

  First thing. I have a sick fuck for a father. I can set a clock by him, but not literally, just usually. He arrives home, evasive and different, after some night out doing God knows what. I see the morning sun and I am reminded of my fucking father, coming home. From being with Liza? I call bullshit. Notes from Underground, Ballentine.

  Second thing. The morning sun rises up and sneaks in, serving me an acknowledgement to the sad fucking fact that nothing in my bedroom is my own. In many ways, this second thing is really, like, six things packed tightly into an explosion of things. Much of my room is a reminder of Mom, or a memory of Mom I’d rather forget.

  The walls are painted midnight. The carpet that industrial gray. Two armless wicker chairs bookend a wood end table with a vase of red marbles and fake red flowers stuck inside. These are my Mom.

  The only aspect of my room that is inherently my own is my zombie ceiling—every classic zombie poster imaginable stuck to the ceiling, covering every inch of the ceiling. Overlapping, crisscrossing, coming down on the room. Every George A. Romero Living Dead movie poster, Planet Terror, Dawn of the Dead the original, Dawn of the Dead the remake, I Walked with a Zombie, Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland. Mom hated that I put them up there. She preferred I get them framed and properly hung on the wall with a drill and a hook, not tacked into the ceiling. The Night of the Living Dead poster, the one with the little girl, the black-and-white one where she looks fucking demonic as shit is the focal point. But it’s not just U.S. film posters. I collect internationally, yo. American movies released abroad and international horror released internationally and international horror released in the States, too. British. Chinese. German. Icelandic. Dutch. Russian. African. French. Hell, even Canadian. Whatever I can get my hands on. But why do I put them on my ceiling? Simple. Because when a stranger doesn’t know your ceiling is tricked out in zombie paraphernalia and they eventually look up, holy crap, it will scare the living shit out of them in a way that is simply indescribable. That and because it keeps the demon shadows off the ceiling, just like the “Thriller” poster did, way back when, kick-starting this whole thing. That story will come later.

  Dad bangs around downstairs. He’s home. Just before 6 A.M. Right on time.

  Baseball bat in hand—wooden—I pretend to be blind with my sight taken from me by a combination of illness and freak accident. In order to survive and get along in the world, I must hone my hearing. Not my listening skills, but my hearing. My limbs are paralyzed too. It was a bad accident. And I can’t move at all. I am fully functioning otherwise. I close my eyes and embrace the darkness—tracking the movement of the living dead beneath me, choking up on the warm wood. A chair scrapes against the floor. The refrigerator door slams shut. Dog’s collar jingles. Dad coughs. He’ll come hunting for me soon. To give me my Ritalin. Keep me normal. He’s louder than usual this morning, actually, slamming all kinds of shit. I wonder if he had fun doing whatever it was he did last night. Whoever it was he did. Like Liza. I wonder if he’s watched that fucking crazyass DVD yet or if he’ll notice my beautiful bastards by my bed. I wonder if he knows what sublimation means.

  Then I remember—today is a Mom day, which means that Mom is driving me to school, and on Mom days when she drives me to school, Mom is always early because Mom always wants to go to breakfast before I go to school.

  Shitfuck.

  Dicktroll.

  I strip off my clothes, kicking them into a pile by the door and open my closet and pick up the Scrabble box when I hear Dad running up the stairs, then pounding down the hallway. I close the lid of the box and step out from the closet, still holding it. The door swings wide without a knock, revealing my whole damn self in the center of my room, naked, totally nude, but at least my closet door is closed. I cover my junk with the Scrabble box. Just as I’m naked, Dad’s in a pair of white boxers and white tank top.

  “Dad,” I say, “you didn’t knock.”

  “Fathers don’t need to knock,” he says, pinching the pill in his fingers, and aiming it toward my mouth—Ritalin. “Open.” The pill hits my teeth and rattles around my mouth like a silver ball in a pinball machine. My tongue knocks it to the back of my throat as I swallow without water. “Is it down?
” he asks.

  I show him the emptiness in my mouth. Even make a noise like at a dentist.

  “Better get dressed,” he says. “She’ll be here soon. Don’t be like your brother. Your brother never wears any clothes. And he has emotional problems. Don’t be like him. Be better than him.” Dad walks away, stops, and turns back to me. “When we see him tonight, don’t tell him I said that.” He finally notices the board game strategically placed over myself. “Why are you holding a Scrabble box?” All I want to do is call him out about Liza again and tell him I watched the video, but can’t get up the nerve.

  “I thought we could play later.”

  “You know I hate that game.”

  “When did she say she’d be here?” I ask, putting the box on my bed, shuffling sideways.

  “Early,” he says. “Be on the street when she arrives. I don’t want to hear her horn. And you know she is going to ask you to spend the night over there, so be ready for it this time.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Do what you want. If you want to go, then go.”

  “I want you to be okay.”

  “I’ll be fine, so long as I don’t hear that fucking horn honk outside. I’ll be in the living room,” he says.

  “Where did you go last night?” I ask, the words leaking out. “I just want to know you’re okay.”

  “Jeremy,” Dad says, his back to me, his hand resting on the doorknob. He looks at the wall in front of him. “For better or worse, she’s still your mother.” He leaves without closing the door, pounding down the hallway, then descending the stairs.