They stumble up, shoulder to shoulder, crisp dollar bills clutched in their hands. I roll my eyes, which isn’t smart because I’ve heard that some zombies get stuck that way and, well, it’s bad enough shuffling around with grayish-green skin and Corn Pops yellow teeth without your eyes pointing in different directions like some cartoon character who’s just been bonked on the head with a rubber mallet.
I see their “PRESS” badges right away, but they’re bundled up against the cold in thick, black jackets with floppy hats and sunglasses, which is pretty standard fare since most chicks don’t want their significant others, or pretty much anyone else, for that matter, to know they trudged all the way out to the State Fair to… kiss a zombie.
Yeah, I was a little shocked to hear about this new “zombie kissing” trend, too. I mean, when the sign went up at Reanimation Reform School for volunteers to travel around the country and occupy Living Dead Lip Lock booths, I thought it was a joke.
But when my best new friend Benjy signed on, he was pretty adamant I should follow. “What,” he nudged, shoving his extra hoodie and Army boots in his backpack. “You want to sit around here reading kids’ books all day and eating brain smoothies? Let’s get back out in the world. If crazy chicks want to kiss us because it’s the hot new thing, let’s suck the afterlife out before they remember we’re scuzzed out dead guys!”
His logic was hard to deny, and so here I am, three weeks later, standing in the Living Dead Lip Locks booth in my powder blue tuxedo with the frilly white shirt. No, I didn’t pick it and, yes, the carnies who run the joint thought it would be funny to do a kind of “zombie prom” thing because, as we all know, every zombie movie ends at a high school dance.
The girls giggle and cover their mouths, looking around at the crowd. It’s the typical state fair scene; lots of bundled up folks eating kettle corn and candy apples and cotton candy and elephant ears slathered in chocolate pudding.
I watch them with a bittersweet gaze. While the smells of human food are vile to me, I remember the sensation of caramel sticking to my teeth, of the sweet drizzle of hot dog grease down the back of my tongue, of the fizzy fuzz of cotton candy before it melted on my tongue.
“Girls!” barks Mr. Zane, the manager of the Living Dead Lip Locks booth. “Now, the zombies might live forever but they don’t have all day. Hurry up and give him a smooch, why don’t you? If you’ve got cold feet, there are plenty more lucky ladies in line to take your place.”
The girls blush and inch forward. Now that they’re closer, I squint to read their PRESS badges. One is named “Val” and the other “Harmony”. I smirk; under each name it says, “Blogger.”
I smile, then groan, giving them the whole experience. They flinch a bit, but that’s normal. Ever since the New Government passed the Reanimation Reform Act of 2017, letting us back into society, everyone wants to get next to a zombie these days.
Town after town, booth after booth, the ladies line up; big ones, small ones, short ones, tall ones, old, young and everything in between. I’ve never been so popular before!
Then again, I’m one of the few living dead who actually improved over my “living” version. Pale and frail, I was a bookish type, 120-pounds soaking wet and fond of the very last cubby in the library, where I’d hide from the bullies behind thick sci-fi books almost as heavy as me.
That is, until that day the library got overrun in the second outbreak, making me what I am today; six-feet something of lean, gray muscle, a slab of tight, dried flesh without an ounce of fat and grinning under his thick, black sunglasses.
Bloggers, huh? I know the type; I used to be one! They’re probably here sniffing out a story, and will take a peck at my cold, dry lips and then run back and write all about it on their blog. What’s the name? I inch even closer, smelling their shampoo and creamy maroon lip gloss. “Zombies Don’t Blog”? Is that what it says under their names? Hmm, pretty cool, actually.
I stand up straight, lean in closer until I notice the little matching pink and black skull and cross bone stickers they’ve plastered all over their PRESS badges. “Come on girls,” I snarl. “I won’t bite!”
Wait. What? Did I just say that out loud? The girls stumble back, eyebrows arching over their private detective shades. Benjy stands next to me, gaping jaw even lower than usual and Mr. Zane, old and wise beyond his years, snaps his fingers and alerts two of the Sentinel guards the government insists accompany us on this cross-country venture.
I’m whisked away by the zombie soldiers, pulled from the booth as the two bloggers hold their hands over their mouths and watch me go with something bordering on… concern.
The Sentinels toss me in the cage they keep us in overnight. It’s like a horse trailer, you know, with the metal walls but bars for windows. I see the setting sun outside as I pace.
Mr. Zane stumbles in, gray goatee trembling with rage. “You fool!” he barked, waving his fake cane. “You know you’re not supposed to talk in front of the Normals.”
“I know, I know, I forgot.”
He growls, paces, waves the cane around but he doesn’t frighten me. Nobody frightens me anymore. I’m dead, remember? What’s he gonna do? Kill me again?
He rants and raves, talks about “damage control” and “spinning this,” but in a way I’m kind of glad my secret is out. I was startled, the first time I talked. I’d seen all the zombie movies. We’re not supposed to talk, right?
But there I was, yapping away one day. The other zombies quickly warned me that, if humans knew we could talk, that’d be it; they’d be yanking brains out of our heads instead of the other way around, trying to figure us out.
Now, who knows? Let’s just hope no one had a cell phone camera going! I pace and pace, back and forth, my own Army boots heavy on the hollow floor of the trailer.
I hear the slump-shuffle of Mr. Zane as he returns and flinch, ready for another tirade. But when he undoes the padlock on the back door, I’m surprised to see the two bloggers in hand. “There you go, girls!” he grunts, shoving them inside and slamming the door. Through the bars he says, “Have a nice afterlife!”
The girls are smaller this close, or maybe they’ve just shrunk into themselves with fear. I wave a hand and say, “It’s okay, I’ve already eaten this week. You’re safe, at least for a few more days.”
It’s a joke, but I have to remember my gravelly voice and dead vocal chords don’t exactly make me sound like a choirboy these days.
One of them, I can’t tell which because they both clutch their coats around their throats, smushing up their PRESS badges, says, “How… how can you talk?”
“I don’t know,” I joke. “How can you?”
They look at each other, faces pale and lips trembling. I pace a little while they cower by the door, frozen in place. If Mr. Zane put them in the trailer with me, then he must expect one thing: me to eat them.
From the looks on their faces, they must expect the same thing! I grin and move a sleeping bag from a wedge of floor Benjy and I kicked out weeks ago. It slides in and out of place; we use it to sneak out at night, raiding the local fields for stray squirrel and chipmunk brains. Okay, okay, so they’re cute and I’m not proud of it, but… zombie cannot live on brain smoothies alone, you know?
I wedge it up from the floor and slide it over; it’s heavy, but not for me. The girls look at it, then me, faces daring to look hopeful. “Go, get out of here before he comes back,” I say.
They inch forward, slowly, until I’m forced to say, “It’s not a trap, for real! You can’t stay here, he may come back any minute. Honestly, I’ve never seen two slower bloggers in my life!”
They look at each other and then, the taller one looks back at me. “How… how did you know?”
“I can read too, you know?”
They gasp, but don’t stick around to test me on it. One by one they slide through the hole in the floor, about the same size as a ceiling tile in your typical classroom.
“What now?” one asks, look
ing up at me from the crouching position as they kneel beneath the horse trailer.
“Leave me one of your hats, and a press badge,” I say.
They look protective, and I can’t tell whether it’s of the hat or the press badge! “Why?”
“So it looks like I ate you, that’s why!”
They look doubtful. One of them says, “Will that work? I mean, wouldn’t there be more blood?”
I nod. “Well, I wasn’t going to ask but… if one of you would be so kind?”
They argue a bit, back and forth, until finally one takes off a pink and green zombie button -- oh, the irony! -- and sticks her thumb. She wipes blood on the PRESS badge, smears it around, smiling.
I tell her that’s enough, more harshly than I wanted to, because the smell is making me hungry. I take the hat, a pair of sunglasses and the badge. They turn around before leaving, start to say something, then tear out of there before I can change my mind.
I slide the panel back into the floor, crush the sunglasses under my feet, tear up the hat and toss the PRESS badge into the corner. It won’t be enough, not nearly, but at least the girls won’t have to worry about what Mr. Zane and the Sentinels might do to me when they come back.
After all, it’s not their fault I wanted to talk just to impress them…
Zombies Don’t Read: 25 YA Short Stories Page 32
