My Zombie Honeymoon: Love in the Age of Zombies Book One (30 page)

I was very relieved, and saw Michelle’s eyes mist up.

“But let me reiterate: I don’t think he’s at
much
risk. Michelle, you’re going to want to monitor him for the next 48 hours. It’s possible the doctors were wrong, or the disease has mutated.”

“Will do,” she said.

“Meanwhile, if you have any antibiotic ointment, spread it on a couple times a day. Do you have any antibiotics by chance?”

“Yes, I have a full bottle of Amoxicillin.”

“That’s great. If you see any signs of infection—you know what to look for—start him on a one week regimen. And Kevin.” he said, “stay off your feet as much as you can. You don’t want to break those stitches.”

“Fine.” I said. By then my leg was throbbing and I was getting grumpy.

“Michelle, why don’t you and I have a little talk of our own? How about an hour from now?”

“I was thinking the same thing. I could use your advice.”

“Wait a minute,” I protested, “why do you two need to talk alone?”

“Kevin, he’s a doctor. I’m a nurse. He’s going to ask me a few more questions and answer a few of mine. I need medical advice, and you probably don’t want to hear the details. Besides, I think it’s time to give you a Lortab and let you sleep.”

“Fine,” I said again. I didn’t like being left out of the conversation.

“Doc, I’m going to go ahead and medicate him PRN unless you think he needs to QID. Talk to you at 2200.” Michelle said, slipping into nurse-speak. Doc wished us luck and signed off.

Inwardly, I was freaking out, although I did my best to hide it. I had just fallen in love; I wanted to live. I wanted to protect her, wanted a life together. I didn’t want to be a zombie. I didn’t want to eat her except in the Latin sense.

She brought me a Lortab a while ago. I was glad to get it, because my leg had started to ache. Now I’m getting sleepy. I don’t think I’ll be awake to see in the New Year.

January 3
rd

Michelle has been hovering over me the past couple of days. I stayed off my feet for the first day, but for crying out loud, it’s not a major wound. I only have a dozen or so stitches, and it’s not likely I’ll be ripping them out by over-exerting myself here in the basement.

I suspect Michelle and the doctor were discussing what to look for if I started to turn into a zombie. This is uncharted territory for all of us. But so far so good. Yesterday it started looking infected, but in a normal way—it was getting very red and hot. Michelle took my temperature and I had a low grade fever as well, so she broke out the Amoxicillin. We know we have to be very careful with the antibiotic—once it’s gone, as far as we know we’ll never have any more.

I could tell she was really worried about me turning. It seems like she checked on me every five minutes, and I caught her looking at me with a funny look in her eyes.

Would I be able to tell if I was turning, or would I feel fine one minute and then the next minute start thinking,
Gee, her thigh smells good. I wonder what it would taste like?

I finally had a talk with her. We were sitting together on the sofa, my leg propped up. “Look,” I said, “we might as well talk about it. There’s still a chance I could turn. I don’t know if I’ll be aware I’m turning—does it happen slowly, and you can feel it, or is it like falling asleep a man and waking up a zombie?”

“I don’t know,” Michelle admitted.

“But I think you would know if I was changing. I suspect you’d be able to tell the difference between me having an infection and me turning into a zombie. Michelle,” I said, bringing my fingers to her chin and turning her face up to look at me. “If I start to turn, I’ll have to be shot in the head. One of us will have to shoot me. You know I’m right.”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“You might have to do it. You’ll have to lure me upstairs and outside. And you’ll have to shoot me in the head. It would be far more loving of you to shoot me in the head than to let me turn. I can’t imagine how insanely horrible it would be for you to see me out there, shuffling along, making weird noises, knowing I’d attack you without hesitation and start eating you—“

“All right, Kevin, I get your point, you don’t have to be melodramatic about it,” Michelle said crossly.

“I hate to say it like this, but you’ll do it if you love me. You won’t let me turn. And I won’t let you turn either.”
Although if it was her, and I had to shoot her, I’d shoot myself too,
I thought. “The best and only way we could honor each other, and honor our love, would be for us to not let the other turn.”

Michelle abruptly got up without so much as a glance in my direction and went upstairs, terminating our conversation.

What does a zombie get when he shows up late to the dinner party? The cold shoulder. That’s what I got the rest of the night.

January 4
th

Today my fever is gone and the wound looks a little better—more pink than red. She’s still watching me pretty closely, but I actually made her laugh today. Tonight she put on her flannel pajamas again. If she doesn’t
come
to bed naked, she probably won’t be
getting
naked.

Even so, I’m going to finish this entry and see if I can get in her pants. They probably won’t fit.

January 6
th

It appears I won’t live out my all-American boyhood dream of being a zombie. The Amoxicillin has knocked out the infection and the gash is healing nicely. It really wasn’t such a big deal, I don’t know why they over-reacted like they did. Michelle and the doctor keep having these private conversations, and I must admit the crazy part of me keeps whispering in my ear, wondering what’s up.

I finally did the smart thing and point blank asked her, “What is it you and Doc keep talking about?”

“You really wouldn’t want to know, Kevin. It’s a woman thing.” That’s the code women use for having plumbing issues and, truthfully, men really
don’t
want to hear about it.

At one point in the past, I was the sole male in an office filled with females. I swore I’d never work with women again. They were constantly going on about cramps, and bloating, and how heavy the flow was, and getting a D&C (whatever that is!), boob jobs and labiaplasty. I can’t tell you the number of times I left the room, embarrassed. So I suppose she’s right, I don’t want to know any more detail than she gave me.

Michelle mentioned something today I hadn’t thought of. We’d left all those zombie bodies upstairs, and the ones we destroyed are still all over the lawn and in the street. I’d say there’s at least forty of them.

The problem is, if we leave them there, it’s going to really stink upstairs. I’d rather not have to put up with the smell of rotting zombies. And once it gets warm, we’ll have flies and who knows what kind of rodents and disease.

But the real problem isn’t inside, it’s outside. We can’t leave all those bodies just lying there. We have to get rid of them, and we’d better do it while they’re still frozen. If for no other reason, having all those dead zombies in front of our house is a sure-fire way to let someone know the house is occupied.

She checked my wound and was visibly pleased. She said I could pretty much do anything I want, so I reached out and cupped her breasts in my hands. She slapped them away. “That’s not what I meant.” Can’t blame a guy for trying!

Since there’s no sign of infection, we agreed to go upstairs and take a look around. We looked at the bodies in the house and the bodies outside, then talked about where we should take them. The best place to get rid of them is in one of the ruins of a burned house. There are several on our block. Realistically, we can’t take them much further, since we’ll be hauling them by hand and they can be very heavy.

I’m glad it’s as cold as it is—they were already smelling pretty bad. I can’t imagine how they would smell come spring or summer. Having them frozen also helped keep the bodies intact. It would be gross to have one fall apart while we’re hauling it, and then have to pick up the rotting pieces.

We got a couple of large cardboard boxes from Michelle’s house and figured out how to rig them together so we could haul the zombies across the snow. It worked for the most part, but even so, it was quite a task to pull three hundred and fifty pounds (give or take) down the street, and find a place to dump them. We made six trips today and got rid of 13 bodies. This will take a number of days. It’s disgusting work, so gross to have to dig them out of the snow.

When we were finished, my leg hurt. It still looked fine and I didn’t let on I was in pain, but I could tell I’d done enough for one day. Tomorrow we’ll do more. I figure it will take another three days minimum. My shoulder is aching as well. I suppose I should get used to these aches and pains.

One strange thing happened today that played right into my paranoia. We finished hauling for the day, and Michelle headed downstairs. I figured I’d check the dishwasher to see if we’d left any trash in there we should also haul off. When I opened it I found a bunch of photos of Wayne and Michelle along with the notes from the CDs, stacked neatly. I felt compelled to look at them all, and again they made me very uncomfortable. Half jealous, half mad. The paranoid part of me said,
She hid these up here so she could look at them without you noticing!
But the sane part of me said,
No, she put them up here because this is where the trash goes.
Honestly, I believe she threw them away, but I’m not completely able to silence the other voice.

I was still on edge when I went downstairs, so I grabbed a growler of beer and put it outside, right next to the door. In a little while I’ll retrieve it, once it’s cold. I drank one pint when it was still warm.

I haven’t brewed any beer in a long time. Truth is, I’m still trying to finish off the last batch I made. It tasted great, but I just haven’t been into alcohol as much as I was a few months back. That’s probably a good sign, right?

Dear Tammy,

My friend Rich, when I was undergoing “cognitive therapy” with him, once advised me to write letters to people who had positively or negatively affected my life, and with all my confusing emotions right now, I figured maybe I should write to you.

First off, Tammy, I miss you. Last night I dreamt I was sitting comfortably in the upstairs living room when you came bursting through the door, weeping. You ran over to me, put your hands on either side of my face, and smothered me with kisses.

“I love you, I love you, I miss you so much!” you whispered, then jumped up and ran back out of the room, still weeping. When I tried to follow you I discovered the door was locked. It wouldn’t open no matter how hard I tried.

When I woke up, my cheeks were wet.

I miss you so Goddamn much.

Most things in the house are exactly as you left them. I never redecorated, got new furniture, or painted the walls. Every framed picture you hung is still in the same spot, even the Rothko print over the sofa. I never told you I don’t like it, and yet there it hangs a decade later. Leaving things the way you left them feels like you’re still here in a small way.

The Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet comes to mind frequently, the one that begins “Time does not bring relief; you all have lied” and ends with

And entering with relief some quiet place

Where never fell his foot or shone his face

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”

And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

You’re not the only woman I’ve loved in my life. There were a few before you, and now there’s one after you, but you and I loved each other when we were the strongest and healthiest we would ever be, and we had (we believed) the best parts of our life ahead of us. We had energy, we made time for sex, we were excited about the future. The times I loved women before you seemed even then like dress rehearsals.

Before you left me, we used to reminisce about our first dates and our wedding and honeymoon, and all the sexual escapades we had. Now I rarely let myself remember those times. If I were a better man, I’d find a way to salvage the good memories despite how things ended. But the bitterness of your leaving sometimes outweighs the sweetness we had. I wish I knew how to change that, because we had some wonderful times I hate to forget.

It’s funny, the things I’ve already forgotten. I remember our first kiss—but not our second. I remember the first time we made love—but not the first time you had a climax. Was it during sex? Or during foreplay before we had sex?

I remember when you first told me you love me—but I don’t remember the last time you told me.

Friends of mine—I guess I should say
late friends of mine
—used to tell me I could take solace in being reunited with you in heaven. And though I didn’t argue with them, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe in grand reunions on
the other side.
If there is an
other side
, a beautiful paradise with no sorrow, why would we waste time waiting to welcome our friends and spouses and children and parents to show up? Paying attention to our former existence? It would be as if an adult dragonfly focused its attention on the life it lived as a larvae. 

Maybe life as we know it is briefly center stage, but ultimately unimportant. Like extras in a movie. To the extras, their scenes are
the scenes
of the movie, but nobody else hardly notices them. They’re just part of the scenary.

It would be quite comforting to believe one day I’ll look into your eyes again, hold your hand again, kiss your lips again. But I’m afraid to believe it. It hurts too much to believe it’s true, and it hurts more to believe it’s not true.

There are times when I’m able to believe there truly is life after death, that you ascend to Paradise after death. Times when I picture you waking up in that new existence, or traveling down a tunnel toward the light of the new existence. I picture you waking up to a body made whole, a perfect body, with no flaws and no disease and no age. It’s still one-hundred percent Tammy, but a Tammy with a perfect body. Perfect teeth, perfect skin, perfect laugh. Quite unlike the last Tammy body I saw, a body eaten alive by cancer and ravaged by chemotherapy. And I imagine you discovering your new body, and how you’d respond. I picture you running and jumping and reveling in your strength and agility, delighted at what your body can do. I imagine you happy in that new life, freed from the diseased body you were shackled to, and my joy for you is so great it causes me to weep. I wouldn’t want you to turn back and focus on me, living here in this existence you just graduated from. Stop looking at this dingy old life here and go live your new life with your new perfect body and shining sun and amber waves of grain. And then I spend fifteen minutes or so struggling not to cry, because I miss you so much and wish so badly we were together somehow, and usually end up reaching for the bottle of bourbon.

The day of your funeral, before they closed the casket, I leaned over and kissed your lips. They were cold, they were lifeless, but they were your lips, never to touch my lips again, and so I kissed them one last time forever.

There’s never a second chance to do the things we could and should have done. We only get one chance to be the person we want to be, to do the things we long to do, one chance to love someone the way they deserve, one chance to be worthy of their love in return. My chance with you is over. Any impact I had on your life is a thing of the past. Your impact lingers on, as you still make a difference in my life.

After you left, my wedding ring burned my finger like fire. I developed a rash. Eventually I took it off and put it in a small box in my dresser, under the photo of us on our wedding day. At some point I put it back on, but I don’t remember when or why.

I know it’s stupid, and I know it’s wrong, but I’m royally pissed at you for leaving. I know it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything to cause your sickness, you didn’t give up. You fought hard. But you lost.

So even though it makes no sense, there have been nights, often but not always alcohol-induced, when I was so fucking angry with you I had to turn your framed photo face down. Seeing you looking at me, smiling so beautifully, so young and healthy . . . it angered me. I start to wish I’d never met you and so was never hurt by you. How I felt reminds me of part of a Carl Sandburg poem:

I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and a white dress

My love for you, my anger and pain at your leaving, is causing me problems now. I was thrown together with a woman named Michelle, and we hit it off and are now living together by circumstance and by choice. But I don’t trust her never to leave me. I don’t trust her not to hurt me. And I’ve started suspecting her of loving someone else, even though there is no one else alive. Intellectually I know she can’t be in love with someone else, yet my heart remains unconvinced.

What would have happened if Jason hadn’t died? Would you still have left? Did his dying make you sick? Or were you already a ticking time-bomb, and the cancer would have slow-motion detonated inside you anyhow? If he hadn’t died, would we have raised him together? Or would something bad have happened? Would we have stayed married or gotten divorced? Would one of us cheated on the other? Would we have gotten tired of each other?

In my heart, I believe we would have weathered any storm—and we would have had our share. Financial, physical, spiritual—there would have been rough patches, of course. There would have been dark days and high and mighty days. Days of wine and roses and days of stale bread and sour milk.

But even if Jason hadn’t died, we might not have made it. We know, or rather we
knew
more couples who didn’t make it than couples who did. You can love each other with a consuming love, and it might not be enough. The Beatles said “All You Need is Love” and then they broke up.

There have been a few nights steeped in bourbon when I agonized over what may have happened and why. Knowing we could have drifted apart even if you survived your cancer begged the question: what would have caused it? A weakness in my character? A flaw in yours? Which of us was more likely to struggle with fidelity? A few times I fell asleep filled with remorse, suspecting in our alternate universe I’d betrayed you, and equally hurt to think it may have been you who betrayed me. Those nights usually preceded mornings filled with a less emotional and more physical remorse at the amount of bourbon I’d consumed.

Despite what I said earlier about not believing in grand reunions, I believe in something probably just as—if not more—ludicrous. I choose to believe that somehow, somewhere there is a version of reality where Jason didn’t die and you and I stayed in love until the day we died together of old age. My belief in such a universe comforts me. Somewhere you are still alive, Jason is now a happy grown man, and we’re looking forward to retirement with each other and with nary a thought of cancer or the undead.

But in the meantime, what do I do about Michelle? Who can blame her for getting upset when I accuse her of something she didn’t do, when I try to catch her doing things I know she isn’t doing.

I love Michelle, I really do. But my love for her is not the same as my love for you. There’s no innocence, no faith in the future, no complete and utter willingness to face whatever happens. I’m just too scared, Tammy. I don’t have it in me.

I wonder what advice you would give me now? I used to love how you responded when I asked you for serious advice. You were thoughtful and sensitive and gave intelligent counsel. I had a dream a few months ago where you told me to
give her the stars
. At first I thought you wanted me to paint stars on the ceiling, but later I thought perhaps the stars were more like actions I could do to create pinpricks of light in the darkness of her trials, allowing light to stream in like God-rays. In his song
Lovers in a Dangerous
Time Bruce Cockburn sang “gotta kick at the darkness ‘till it bleeds daylight.” Maybe you meant for me to break up her dark times with little spots of light. Lord knows we’re lovers in a dangerous time.

You know I don’t believe in time travel. If time travel ever became possible, we’d know it now because we’d have time-traveling tourists from the future coming to watch important historical events. Having no visitors from the future proves time travel will never happen. But if time travel did exist, if we could revisit our younger selves, I would travel back in time to give you one more kiss, hold your hand one more time, spend another hour with you, or another day, or week, or year. Just to lay my eyes on you one more time, to hear your laugh, to hear you cry, to hear your sighs of passion. And when our kiss, our hour, was over I think I’d choose to end everything. I’ve heard the secret to a long life is knowing when it’s time to go. Maybe I should have left when you did.

So there you have it, Tammy. I know you’re never coming back. I know I’ll never hear your laugh, or feel your hand in mine, never even get the chance to irritate you by leaving all the cabinet doors open after I’ve been cooking. You’re never coming back, and I can’t bring myself to spend time remembering the time we had together. It just hurts too damn much.

I miss you so much. I think it’s time I got drunk. Or drunker.

All my love forever,

Kevin

January 9th

Last night I couldn't sleep. Sometimes wine messes up my sleep and gives me strange dreams. I dreamt about Tammy. Again. When I woke up, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I got out of bed, fixed a glass of bourbon, and wrote her a letter.

When I was finished, I was pretty upset. So I refilled my glass of bourbon and went upstairs. I peeked out the window. It was a gorgeous night. Several inches of fresh snow had fallen, and there was a full moon. I checked the thermometer and saw it was in the upper twenties—cold enough to slow the zombies down, but not cold enough to render them harmless.

I hadn't bothered to put any clothes on, and it probably wasn't the brightest thing to do (I blame the bourbon), but I decided to go outside. I put on a pair of shoes I keep by the side door, checked the peep hole, threw back the bolt and stepped outside.

As I looked to my right, toward the road, I saw five deer ghosting through the neighbor's yard across the street. The light reflected off their flanks, and their shadows were cast to the east. I must have made a little bit of noise, because suddenly they all looked at me, ears up, and then bolted away, between houses and out of sight. I walked through the crunchy snow to the corner of the house by the back yard.

The landscape was silvery and luminous. The half-moon was already in the west, and shadows were cast on the virginal snow. There was no wind, no noise, no lights. Despite the moon, I could clearly see stars, especially in the north and east. The moon itself was so brilliant it almost hurt my eyes. I heard a couple of owls hooting somewhere in the near distance. In the snow I could see tracks of animals—deer, rabbits, mice, birds. A mile or so away I heard the high call of a coyote.

The snow softened the shapes of everything, making the landscape look like a Christmas card. Only the footprints of small animals and deer broke the surface of the virginal snow. I haven’t seen any bear tracks yet, but I’ll bet I will in time.