Zombies in Love (4 page)

Or maybe he would just turn into Jack.  Wouldn’t that serve him right?

He was putting off the inevitable.  "Honey," he said.  "I'm going to have to take a business trip."

"Ohh," she whined.  "Why?"  And whined was the word.  She sounded like an unhappy lapdog.

He smiled reassuringly.  "Just family business."

“Penny for your thoughts,” said Sarah, as she shifted her ancient Datsun into second gear with a whirring thud.

“I’m trying not to think,” said Ian.

“We don’t have to go to the cemetery.  We don’t really need any more.  We still have Uncle Fester.”

There were a whole lot of things Ian didn’t want to think about.  But the worst at the moment was what was happening to Uncle Fester, who was rotting and stinking but still moving.  He spent all day rocking back and forth in his cage, and whenever he heard Ian and Sarah come in the room, he screamed and threw lumps of his decaying flesh at them.

“Are you going to go in his cage?” asked Ian.

“No.”  She pulled into the parking space.  The car wheezed to a stop.  “I feel like such an idiot.  Are you ready?”

#

              Mount Auburn Cemetery dates from the late nineteenth century, when Americans decided that instead of being gloomy, cemeteries should be park-like, friendly-- the sort of place you could bring your family for a picnic, if you had that kind of family.  Possibly its most impressive monument is the large stone rotunda for Mary Baker Eddy, which is where the Boston Zombie Support Group met every Wednesday, because it was so distinctive that even its most rotted-brain members could find it. 

Dead people
, thought Jack,
shouldn’t have to sit through Powerpoint presentations.
  But here he was, sitting on the damp grass, getting his good jeans all soggy, watching Arturo click through a series of slides projected against the side of a mausoleum. 

“Here is what we know about how we died,” said Arturo, aiming a laser pointer at the makeshift screen.  “Six heart attacks, five car accidents...”  He was reading everything he said directly off the slides. 

What a depressing crowd, sitting and slurping over their food like they’d forgotten everything their mothers had taught them.  Grey skin, loose skin, arms rotting off, eyeballs dropping out.  Even now that he was dead, Jack could tell he took better care of himself than the average guy.  You had to get out in the cemetery every night.  No excuses.  Otherwise you were going to rot, and you had only yourself to blame. 

Take the guy to his left crunching his way through a skull like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.  He was so excited that he kept chewing off his own thumb. 
Lazy and sloppy.

Thumb guy finished his skull, sniffed the air, and grinned at Lisa like a big, happy dog.  “You smell fantastic,” he said.

Maybe he’d get the chance to beat the crap out of someone tonight.  That would be a nice change.  “She’s with me,” smiled Jack.

“No problem,” said Thumb Guy.  “Totally fine with that.”  He got up and limped to the other side of the group.

Too easy
, Jack thought, rubbing his forehead.  Lisa looked amused.  She could laugh now, but there was no way in
hell
he was ever doing this again.
 

And she did smell fantastic.

Arturo pitched his voice louder to cover the slurping noises.  “So if you put it all together, you end up with one final question.”  He clicked to a new page and read, “How can this group make our lives better?”

“It can’t,” mumbled Jack.

“Excuse me?” said Arturo. 

Oops.  Zombie hearing. 
“Look, you’ve obviously worked very hard on this.  You’ve done a very nice Powerpoint presentation-- you’ve even got pie charts.”

“And you can do better, smartass?” Arturo aimed the laser pointer so a red dot appeared on Jack’s chest.

Now everyone was staring at him. 
Is there something you’d like to share with the rest of the class, Mr. Kershaw?  Shit.
  He stood up.

“The best thing we can do is stay invisible.  And that means no support groups.  No giant meetings in historic cemeteries!”

“What are you so afraid of?” said a weedy brunette.

“If anyone finds out we exist-- you’ve seen the movies, right? ‘Oh, you’re a zombie?’ Ka-blam!  Shotgun blast to the head!”

Arturo shook his head.  “Okay, I love George Romero, but I think you’re overreacting.”

“Overreacting?  Have you ever been shot in the head?  Do you know what it feels like having your skull fuse back together?  Ever make a candy apple with your own brain?" 

Now Lisa looked embarrassed. 
Too much
, thought Jack.  “Let's stay underground.”

There was a moment of silence from the audience.  "You mean literally?" asked Thumb Guy.

"No!" said Jack.  "It's a metaphor, people!  We all should go home, lead quiet lives, try not to get noticed."

“And then what happens?” asked Lisa.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you planning to live this way forever?”

Forever?
  What a strange thought.  But he felt like a healthy guy, except for the ever-present hunger for human flesh.  And he’d already died once.  There was no sign he was going to do it again anytime soon. 
Forever? 
What if it were forever?  And did he want to live this way forever? 

Did he want to spend forever earning minimum wage, living in an apartment that smelled like mice, and buying his clothes from Goodwill?  No.

So what did he want?

And at the same time he realized that once again, Lisa had said something that surprised him.  He’d underestimated her.

She was still waiting for his answer, but before he could respond he could hear footsteps running towards the group.

#

“I’m getting a definite safrole reading,” said Sarah, adjusting the dials on her portable spectroscope.  “A really high one.”  She pointed ahead into the shadowy dark of the graveyard.

“Fester Two awaits,” said Ian, and ran where she’d been pointing.  Sarah thumped after him.

He was not prepared for what he saw.  A whole bunch of zombies, sitting sprawled around a tomb.  And one of them had a gun in his hand! 

“I don’t think we’ve seen you two here before,” said the one with the gun.

Ian aimed his tranquilizer gun at the armed zombie.  But then he saw movement to his right, and without even thinking a moment, he fired. 
Pop!  Zombie down! 

Only about forty to go...
 

Ian realized two things at nearly the same time.  First, he had no way to reload.  Second, Sarah was
gone
.

Run!

The day a girl gets chased through a cemetery by a pack of angry zombies is the day she begins seriously reconsidering her life. 
Would it really be that bad
, thought Sarah
, to leave Winthrop immediately?  Like today? 

No one at Winthrop-- not even Ian-- knew about the phone call Sarah had made the day Prof. Leschke demanded the old lab book back.  Her undergraduate advisor, Prof. Parquette, had taken her phone call right away.

“I want to come home,” she had said.  “You were right.  Prof. Leschke’s a total nutcase.  I want to finish my PhD back at Stanford.”

“That’s great,” Parquette had said, “and I’d take you today, but I can’t give you any money until September.”

She was silent. 
But it’s March
, she’d thought.

“Any chance you can support yourself until then?”

“In Palo Alto? Only if I sleep in the Quad.”  Move in with her parents in Daly City?  Her bed had long since been turned over to whatever sad-sack immigrant relative was currently giving California a try.  She'd be in her Care Bears sleeping bag under the TV in the living room, and Auntie Yin watched the Style Network all the freaking time. 
Not a chance.

“Well, then, here’s what you should do.  Keep your head down and don’t do anything to jeopardize your fellowship until the school year’s over.  Then thank Prof. Leschke nicely, shake his hand, say you’re coming back to the West Coast for family reasons, and get the hell out of there.”

It was good advice, and it sounded awfully reasonable, but in the real world Sarah had just broken a zombie’s nose with her syringe kit.  “Ian!” she yelled.  “Move your lardy ass!”

Ian huffed and puffed after her.  “Why is this cemetery so big?  Why are there so many dead people in Boston?”

“I don’t know, Ian.  Why did you charge right into a group of zombies?”

“Are you mad at me?”

Mad?  Oh no.  I don’t have to outrun the zombies, I just have to outrun you. 

Finally they were at the parking lot.  Her rusty old Datsun had never looked so beautiful.  She fumbled with the key, unlocked the door, and jumped in.

There was a zombie holding a laser pointer (a laser pointer?) right behind Ian, reaching for her friend.  “Get in!  Get in!” she yelled, starting the engine.

Ian ran around the car, jumped in, and slammed the door shut.

The Datsun peeled away just as the zombie reached the curb.  Ian rolled down the window and puked all over the side of the car.

#

Lisa thought it was creepy seeing Jack out cold like this-- he looked dead, and he felt heavy and boneless at the same time, like her dad after his stroke.  Lisa put her jacket under Jack’s head and fought the impulse to cross his arms over his chest.

He’d told her he hadn’t slept since he died.  Maybe he needed the rest.  He looked very peaceful.  Still, she was kind of worried.  Though she really shouldn’t be.  He’d survived a gunshot to the head.  What was a tranquilizer dart in comparison?

She felt something wet press against her armpit and turned around.  Mr. You Smell Good gave her a little wave and waggled his tongue at her.

Maybe it was time to rush things along a little.

She rubbed her palms together until she felt the heat build and then set her hand on Jack’s forehead.  Jack’s eyes snapped open like someone had flipped a switch.  Totally awake.  He picked up the dart that she’d set on his chest.  “What the hell was that?”

“Tranquilizer dart,” said Lisa.  She took it from his hands and looked at it.  Who knew, maybe it said the owner’s name on the side.

“Did you catch them?  Who were they?” asked Jack, sitting up.

Arturo shook his head.  “All I know is they were driving a Datsun.  Blue book value, about fifty bucks.”

Jack reached for the dart that Lisa was holding.

“Hey,” she said, handing it to him.  “I saw you get between me and that guy.  Thanks.” 

He grinned at her, and his handsome face lit up like the Fourth of July. 
No, Lisa,
she thought. 
No, no, no.

Over a century earlier, a group of Winthrop alums had asked themselves the important question, how best to memorialize the men who had been lost in the Civil War?  Their answer: to erect a building that reflected all of the great ages of European architecture in one place.  Gothic arches like a medieval cathedral!  Shakespeare’s Globe Theater as a lecture hall!  Greek columns!  And the whole thing should be covered in multicolored brick!

Surmounted by a fifteen-story high tower on the north-facing end, Memorial Hall loomed over campus like an gaudy gargoyle, giving rise to rumors among the freshman that its iron-fenced rooftops were home to enormous bats that had been inadvertently mutated during the Manhattan Project.  And maybe if a young frosh happened to visit the Hong Kong and drink a couple of Scorpion Bowls all by himself, and happened to fall asleep with a window open that faced Memorial Hall, then all his roommates would hear was the flapping of great wings and his screech Dopplering away into the distance, and the only thing that would be left behind was the overpowering stench of guano.

The reality was much worse.

What, in fact, made Winthrop the most powerful university in America?  The quality of its leadership.  Not the student government, of course.  Not the faculty, who were, in general, disengaged from questions of management until their own privileges were threatened.  Not even the president, who was typically a person so intelligent in a specialized area that he was incapable of understanding that he was an idiot to have taken the job, that his role was to serve as a sacrificial lamb any time a serious scandal touched the university, whether or not he had been involved, and to resign in disgrace, slinking back to whatever backwater university would have him, his research years out of date, his chance at a Nobel or a Pulitzer gone for good, his ties to Winthrop causing him endless embarrassment at cocktail parties.

No, the university’s real power centered on the Board of Overseers, a group of men selected for their loyalty to Winthrop, and cemented together by their understanding of the truth of what had really happened to John Winthrop, who had never actually left campus, and whose final resting place was, in fact, just at the base of Memorial Hall's great tower. 

If you ever visit campus, you can easily find the spot: it's covered in slate tiles and surrounded by a cast-iron fence, and no grass ever grows inside.

Whatever you do, don't jump the fence.

#

             
Lisa might not know
who
the two people were who shot her employee, but she knew
what
they were: graduate students.  They were in their twenties, they had very expensive-looking equipment, but they were dressed like crap.  QED.  So all she had to do was walk over to Winthrop before work and see if she could find them, so she could ask them what exactly they'd been up to before Jack got all paranoid about zombie hunters or something ridiculous like that.  There were probably plenty of good solid scientific reasons for them to be hanging out in a cemetery in the middle of the night, even if she couldn't think of any at the moment.

              She hadn't realized, until she got to Winthrop, how
big
the place was, or how many people worked there.  It seemed like once she crossed into campus, everything was much farther apart than it looked-- like Winthrop was bigger on the inside than on the outside.  Of course, that was impossible.  She was probably just tired after her late night in the cemetery.  So she sat on the stone steps of Memorial Hall, right next to a big toothy three-headed gargoyle, and watched people go by until she realized how dumb her idea had been.  She'd seen two people running in the dark.  How as she supposed to pick them out of a crowd the next day? 

              But the steps were a good place to sit, so Lisa lit a cigarette and let her mind wander, back to where it always wandered these days: her steady and unshakable attraction to Jack.  He might have grey skin, and he might smell like root beer, and he might be six inches shorter than she was, but my God was he growing on her.  And honestly, the weirdness was a big part of the attraction.  Even if his body didn't work exactly the way it used to, she bet they could figure out how to have a lot of fun.

              If he was even capable of being interested-- and wow, that wasn't a conversation she wanted to have-- and if he wasn't her employee, and a guy who didn't have a lot of other work options.  No matter what he thought about her, he would have a hard time telling her no.

              But every time she tried to tell herself to stop thinking about it, he'd send her upstairs to sleep while he spent an hour unclogging the sink.  Or he'd clean the walk-in fridge so well you could serve a meal off the floor.  And he'd stand there in his undershirt and jeans and grin at her.

              A good-looking man who loved to clean.  Was that every woman's fantasy or what?

              Not quite her fantasy.  Her dream man was a guy who she could trust to operate the restaurant when she wasn't there.  Her parents had always impressed on her-- never take time off.  Your customers might not come back when you do.  So she hadn't, not for years, not since her last aunt died and she had to go to the funeral.

              What she dreamed about was leaving the restaurant in someone else's hands and taking a long trip.  Waking up in Morocco, the sunlight gleaming off the ice-white buildings as she sat on the balcony of her hotel, watching the city move below her like a drowsy hive.  She'd make friends with a local woman, get invited home for mint tea and a tagine, laugh and chat with the family all night.  Different lives, nothing like the people she'd grown up with.

              It was a dream.  And the thing about dreams is that they never really came true.  Reality never, every measured up.  If she ever went to Morocco, she'd wander around like a homesick idiot, getting cheated by the cabbies and the shop clerks, too shy or too confused to talk to anyone.  The way to be happy in life was to want real things, like owning your own home and having work you could be proud of. 

              She wasn't a naturally contented person.  Patience was a virtue she'd had to learn.  "At least I know I left you with some security," her mom used to say at the end, and Lisa would feel her back hairs bristle as she tried to smile and look grateful, because she loved her mom.  She'd been so kind, naturally kind, in a way Lisa could never hope to match.  Blind to the faults of the people she loved, so you spent your life trying to measure up.  Her father had been the cynic, but so funny about it that you laughed even when it was directed at you, until the stroke essentially killed him, too early, too young.

              Alioto's Pizza was their legacy.  The building, the restaurant-- she couldn't take them for granted.  Her parents had always said so, and they'd been right.  She knew enough people who'd gotten lost along the way, who would have given anything for some security like she had. 

              But being good every day sometimes seemed like the hardest thing in the world.  Because that was the thing about restaurants-- you couldn't coast.  You had to make your best product every day, and then you had to throw away the waste, and do it all over again.  Every day.  Every single goddamned day.

              There had been times when it had all made her feel angry and trapped.  Especially when she'd broken up with her last serious boyfriend, about five years earlier, a bass player with actual curly blond hair, like a cherub, and an actual adorable dimple.  He was a sweet guy, but slowly but surely, she felt herself change around him into something she didn't like.  He'd show up with his laundry, because utilities weren't included at his apartment, and that was okay, until he started to ask her to do his laundry for him.  She didn't want to be his mama, and he was a good guy, but he'd never be a grownup.

              It still made her angry to think about it, she thought, puffing on her cigarette.  Maybe she was turning into an angry person in general, just under the surface.  Or just a little crazy, just a little wild, like the girl she used to be, before life made her into something else.

              Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her pocket.  Tina had texted her again: CALL ME, URGENT.  She turned the phone off and put it away.

#

             
"Professor Ian?" said the voice on Ian's cell phone.  "It's me, Sloane."

              Ian looked at his clock radio, squinting to read the date.  Yes, tomorrow was the day he was supposed to give her the midterm.  It never failed, they always called up the night before, asking for help.  And what was he supposed to do?  Fly around the earth so quickly that he reversed its rotation and, therefore, time itself?  Or just say,
don't worry, little undergrad!  All the other students need to take the midterm, but you, you're so special, you don't need to? 
"How can I help you, Sloane?"

              "I've got a little problem.  I was at my sister's wedding, and--" Sloane sniffled and stopped short.

              He could almost hear her blinking back the tears.  He sat up straight in bed.  "What's wrong?"

              "Grammy had a heart attack.  They don't think she's going to make it, and, I know I had the midterm tomorrow, but my dad says I should stay here, in case, you know..."

             
Poor kid. 
"Stay as long as you need, Sloane.  We'll talk when you get back."

              He could hear her sniffle again.  "You're a nice guy, Professor Ian."

#

             
Sloane carefully dried under her eyes with her handkerchief and checked herself in the mirror.  Perfect. 

              Sloane Pannapacker had grown up in Edina, a posh suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota.  But Sloane hadn't lived in one of the mansions in the Country Club subdivision.  Sloane had lived in an apartment building near the highway.  And comparing what her family had to what her friends had inspired in young Sloane a simple goal: to make so much money that she would never have to think about money.  To be so rich that she could spend like other people breathed air.

              Obviously she needed the right job.  Her first plan, to become an investment banker, lost its appeal while she was still in high school.  Real-estate investor wasn't going to work anymore, either.  At the moment, she was still thinking of going to medical school to become a dermatologist or plastic surgeon-- a career where her natural good looks could delude people into thinking she could make them look just like her (plus delay her own slide into old age and general ickiness).  But apparently times were no longer sweet for doctors, either.  Something about giant medical-school debts and insurance companies. 

              It was frustrating, but Sloane had discovered the real secret to becoming rich: hanging out with other rich people, and doing exactly what they were doing.  Not as a hanger-on, of course: making them think you were one of them.  Keeping an active social schedule, which is why she was treating a group of friends to dinner and drinks at Locke-Ober the night before her chemistry midterm.  Her former chemistry midterm.

              She was lucky that Ian had been so flexible!  She couldn't let her classes get in the way of her education.