10-6-18

Saturday October 6th, 2018

PART I- ADAM

I don't want to go to grampa's.  He's boring and he smells like dry farts."

Adam, be nice!  Your father and I are going on a two week cruise to Alaska and grampa was kind enough to take you in so you don't throw a party and burn down the house.  Besides, you love it there!  He has a great dog.  You remember Barney, don't you?  He used to take you all around the property, to the pond.  Remember the pond?  You're going to have a great time!

"I was seven, mom!  I'm thirteen now!  It's gonna suck, really suck!  Suck donkey balls!"

"Adam, language!"

"I'm sorry, mom.  But I don't want to go!"

"Well dear, you are going and I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised how fun your grampa can be... and all his friends...

...The woman trailed off or the boy stopped paying attention.  Soon after he heard the old pickup truck motoring inefficiently toward the apartment.  The old man cut the engine but it refused to die, sputtering and hitching and billowing raw exhaust out into the already smoggy air.  The old man got out, walked around to the front of the yellow Ford and slammed his fist on the hood.  "Die, Goddamn you!"  And it did.

A half hour later the old man and his grandson were leaving the city in the ancient, grease-smelling truck.  They passed a hitchhiker.  He looked very dirty and had a bad limp.

"Grampa, what's he doing?"

"He's hitchhiking."

"What's that mean?"

"If you don't have a car you can just put out your thumb and someone will stop and give you a ride."

"You mean like Uber?"

"What the hell is Uber?"

"I'ts just like hitchhiking except you press a app on your phone and an Uber comes to pick you up."

"First off, I don't know what you're talking about.  Second, as far as those little glass TVs everyone's carrying around, can't stand 'em.  I've seen enough of people trying to get run over for not paying attention to their own damned survival.  Idiots are everywhere, shuffling around, staring down like a bunch of mindless...."

"Zombies?"

"Zombies?!  What's that?  Another one of your apps?"

Never mind, grampa."

"Anyways, I had your mom take your phone out of your luggage before we took off, so.."

"Wait!  What?!  Grampa, wait!  We need to turn around now!"

"The hell we do!  Jesus, Adam!  Look at you.  You're almost shaking.  It's like a doctor pulled a parasite out of you and now you're begging to have it put back!  Now let's just relax.  We've got a ways to go.  Why don't you open the glove box and pick out some music."

"What does music even look like?  All I see are these plastic boxes."

"Those, my boy, are 8-tracks.  Finest audio quality that has, or ever will, exist.  Put it in the slot."

"I don't know.  This doesn't sound too high quality.  It's kinda... wobbly."

"Well, it's old.  You have to expect it to stretch out a bit."

"Why did that song just stop in the middle?"

"Not to worry.  It's at the end of the tape.  It just has to flip sides and then... there you are!  Right back into the song.  Like nothing ever happened."

"I miss my phone."

PART II- BOB

His name was Bob, but he no longer remembered that.  Bob had a wife named Julia and he did not remember eating her.  Julia returned to life soon after and he did not remember her, nor did he recall fight with her over a buzzard-picked corpse by the river.  Bob had won the and Julia had drifted down the slow river current like a bloody sack of forgotten hopes and dreams.

Bob had no hopes, no ambitions, only discomfort.  He did have dreams, though.  At night Bob would find a small, dark place to hide as not to be mistaken for the living.  It is a modern falsehood that zombies can immediately tell their own kind from the living.  Bob remembered that.  From both sides.  Bad enough was it to wake up to an itching feeling and discover it to be someone chewing on your thigh before spitting it out in ghoulish disgust.  But even worse, perhaps THE worst thing about his state of discomfort, hunger and confusion over who to eat, was the taste of the dead!  Not the naturally dead.  They were delicious and a lot less work that the pesky, quick living.  The un-naturally dead, the ones that kept on motoring after their hearts stopped, the ones that sometimes sat still just long enough for bob to forget.  That taste!  If poison were also a beating to the face, an electric shock!  if poison were also sorrow, rage, guilt and blue-balls as well as being poison, that's what mistakenly eating the un-dead tasted and felt like.

And so Bob, who did remember the taste, also remembered to find a safe place to sleep.  To be alone and untempted.  And there he would dream.  

In his dreams Bob was comfortable.  Not simply without discomfort, but comfortable.  Actively receiving and appreciating comfort.  The temperature was always 72 degrees with a piece of tape on the thermostat warning against tampering.  The lights were not too bright nor too dim to do the crossword.  In his dreams, those around him were not in competition for food, for there was plenty.  And served on trays instead of running around trying to survive.  in his dreams there was a comforting predictability to things.  A schedule of shows to watch.  Monday was split-pea soup day.  Tuesday, chicken noodle.  Comfortable.  Predictable and comfortable.

...and automatic doors that recognized him.

But dreams for the dead are just as they are for the living.  Easily forgettable.  And Bob easily forgot them in the morning just as he forgot everything else.  Everything but the taste.  And mornings were just an extension of evenings as if nothing special had happened in between.  The hunger was still there, as was the constant, maddening discomfort.  Nothing in the world to ease it!  At least the hunger abated during the actual act of eating.  It came back almost immediately but it had a momentary release.  Discomfort, pain, crushing effects of all the world's phobias stuffed inside one rotten body, they never, even for a moment, relented!  Not that Bob could remember anyway.

PART III- THE HITCHHIKER

Bob had found himself on the side of a four-lane freeway when the loud yellow pickup swooped by, scraping and pounding at his sensitive ears.  He raised his arm and put his thumb in hes ear and the sound softened.  That was when he saw the boy, so young and unscarred.  You do not need a memory or a personal chef to tell you that, in all species, the young are the ones to eat.

The truck drove on and left him there, hungry and hurting.  In frustration, he raised his arm above his head, pulling the thumb from his ear, still extended from his fist.  Seemingly unrelated, another truck pulled over several yards up the road and an arm swung out of the side window.  It seemed to be beckoning him.  As Bob approached, the man swung his delicious bald head partially out the window saying something he couldn't understand and motioning to the high-paneled bed of the truck.  Bob was about to eat that succulent green-grape of a head when he saw the caged chickens in the bed.

Painfully and with no elegance, he shimmied into the bed.  There was no window into the cab.  Just three walls and around twenty snack-sized chickens.  Good decision.  Much easier than killing the living and causing a scene.  For whatever reasen, the truck drove off with Bob still in it.  The jolting caused him to bite off the end of his thumb along with the chicken's foot.  he had to admit, chicken did make un-dead flesh more bearable.  Not good, but definitely better.

PART IV- THEY'RE OLD PEOPLE, NOT ZOMBIES

"What's that, grampa?"

"Looks like an accident.  We'll just pull around it.  Looks like the cops are already here."

The boy craned his neck to see.  Three police officers were leaning in the broken windows of the tan sedan and seemed to be eating the frantic occupants alive.  He screamed.

"What is it, boy?"

"Those cops were eating them!"

"Eating what?"

"The people in the car!  I think they're zombies!"

"Is this about that phone app?  Listen, I'm sorry but I just didn't want you disappearing into that thing the whole time I had you.  I want to spend time with my grandson, not some... some.."

"Zombie?!"

"For the last time, I don't know anything about Uber or Zombie.  I just want to get back to the home and Barney.  He doesn't like to be alone too long.  He's old like me and has a tiny bladder,"

"Look!  There's more in the woods, shuffling around!"

"Good God!  Why the hell would people want to go hiking if all the're gonna do is stare into their phones.  I swear!  It's the end of the world!"

A few miles down the road the yellow ford pulled into a drive past a sign reading:

PLEASANTRY HILL RETIREMENT COMMUNITY

And directly behind them was a paneled truck which veered off to the receiving  docks.  Heavy rain began to pour from the skies immediately forming small rivers at the curbs.

Dozens of slouched, grey figures shuffled aimlessly as young, blue-smocked orderlies ran through the rain after them.

"My God, grampa!  It's gonna be a slaughter!  There are zombies everywhere!"

"They're old people, Adam!  Have some respect!  That's Charles.  He was in the war.  he limps because he's more shot up that a practice target.  Promise me you're not going to be freaking out about these people.  They're my friends."

"Sorry grampa.  i think I got carried away.  I can't be totally sure the cops were eating those people but it sure did look like it."

"You're thirteen, Adam.  You're allowed to have an imagination.  Those people were probably resisting arrest.  Cops'll put a severe beat-down on that kind of disobedience.  I remember seeing coverage of the WTO protests in the late '90s.  Hippies were running around burning dumpsters and looting.  Cops were NOT having it.  They had shields and tanks and some were even riding war-horses.  One cop, I remember he was riding a horse and he had on a cape.  A god damned cape!  Long black collar sticking up and everything.  I'll tell you what.  those cops get a big old boner out of beating up hippies."

"Do you think the people in the car were hippies?"

"Musta been.  Now let's go let Barney out before he pisses the carpet.  And don't call any of my friends zombies, OK?"

"OK, grampa."

.....TO BE CONTINUED ANOTHER SPOOKY OCTOBER MORNING...