“No,” she said. The driver looked at her
incredulously. “I paid for this seat, I sat in the section you told
me to sit in, and my ankle is sprained. I won’t be able to stand.
I’m not moving.”
“You will move, or I’ll make you move,” the bus
driver said. Before he could get on the radio, another of the
living passengers had already called the police.
The cops boarded the bus and cuffed and dragged
Daisy away, charging her with civil disobedience. She spent the
night in jail.
This small act of protest paved the way for
zombie rights. The next week, the zombies staged a bus boycott,
refusing to ride and passively disallowing living on the buses as
well.
Daisy Plazas was also one of the founding
members of the National Association for the Advancement of
Zombies.
****
Zombie Auto Werks
Death was exactly what Simon had needed.
He had been lackluster and uninterested in high
school. He often skipped classes and his grades were just good
enough to get him a diploma. Staying after school for any
extracurricular activities was out entirely.
It wasn’t that he was stupid. In fact, it was
quite the opposite, his IQ was just as high as the IQs of the top
students in his class, if not higher. He just didn’t care. School
bored him.
What he did care about was his car. He earned
money doing odd jobs to get his first car when he was 15.
Well, using the words “earned” and “odd jobs” is
misleading. First he went over to Mrs. Taylor’s house in the middle
of the day when her husband was gone and someone else’s car was in
the driveway. When she came to the door with flushed cheeks, he
simply asked if he could wash the car for some spare change. She
handed him a twenty dollar bill and asked him not to mention the
car to anyone.
Then he went next door to Mr. Smith’s, who was
home during the day. He took the mail from the mailbox up to the
door, including an envelope from the Social Security Administration
with Mr. Smith’s deceased mother’s name on it. He said to the man
when he opened the door, “Here, I got your mail for you! I was
wondering if you would like to buy a newspaper subscription.”
Instead, Mr. Smith handed him a twenty and asked him not to mention
the envelope to anyone.
Everyone in the neighborhood hated the college
boys across the street because they often had loud parties. Even
during the day, they always had visitors. Simon picked some catnip
from the crazy cat lady’s yard, put it in a baggie, rolled it up,
and went to the young men’s house. When they answered the door, a
bit of smoke from the house wafted outside. He asked them if they
would like to buy some catnip. They gave him fifty dollars, took
the bag, and slammed the door.
And so on until he saved up five hundred
dollars. He bought his first car on his fifteenth birthday, an old
Cadillac that had recently been in an accident, for $300. He
hammered out the dents, used a polyester resin to fill in the gaps,
and painted the car with cheap paint. He sold it for $3000.
Then he bought a Ford that was about 15 years
old. He figured out how to get under the hood and change the
odometer. He told the buyers it had belonged to a little old lady
who drove it to the grocery store and church.
After a few more upsells, he started building
his own car. He was proud of his souped-up 1973 Chevy Nova. That
car won him many street races, even the ones he didn’t sabotage or
cheat at. Racing became his major source of income. But after so
many unpaid speeding, reckless driving, street racing, and many
other traffic infractions, he would’ve been jailed without even
considering the high speed chase he led the cops on.
After getting his beloved car impounded, when he
got out of jail, he had nothing. A high school diploma and no work
history for a twenty year old felon didn’t open up a lot of job
prospects for him. And he had never spent any time making
friends.
He took an entire bottle of pills before calling
the suicide hotline.
The man on the other end of the phone was very
convincing and finally persuaded Simon that life was worth living.
Suddenly Simon cried over the phone, “I don’t want to die!” When
asked, Simon told the operator that he had already taken the pills.
“Oh god man, save me,” he begged.
“Okay, okay, I can save you,” the man said.
“Where do you live? I’ll be right over.”
The man didn’t get there in time. Simon was dead
before he kicked in the door. It didn’t affect the man’s plan any,
in fact, he was counting on Simon to have already passed. With a
few rituals and a bit of time, he was able to bring Simon back to
life as a zombie.
The experience changed Simon. Instead of conning
people, he channeled his intellect into starting his own mechanic
shop. It was the most popular shop in town. When no one else could
fix their cars, drivers would go to Simon’s Zombie Auto Werks. Not
only did he save many cars from the junkyard, and many people from
being ripped off my dishonest mechanics, he showed the community
how much they could benefit from differently animated small
business owners.
A heart surgeon lauded Simon’s expertise when he
came to pick up his car from the shop one afternoon. Before the
surgeon got back in his car to drive off, Simon remarked, “You
know, the work we do is so similar, I’m surprised at the difference
in pay scales.”
“What do you mean?” asked the heart surgeon.
“Think about it,” said Simon. “I check how a
car’s running, open it up, take a look at the engine, its most
vital organ, fix the valves, check the flow, fix it and put it all
back together like it’s running like new. That’s really not all
that different from open heart surgery, is it?”
The surgeon thought for a moment, then said,
“Try to do it with the engine running.”
“Touché, doctor.”
****
Scholarship
Gordon Hopkins was at the top of his class of 562
students in his junior year of Washington Central High School. He
was class president, head of their National Honors Society
meetings, and active in the community. He was instrumental in the
community project for a baseball program for inner city and at risk
kids.
Normally, these accomplishments would be
remarkable for even a higher than average functioning high school
student. What made them unbelievable for Gordon was the fact that
he had a disability.
Gordon Hopkins had been dead for two years. In
the summer before his freshman year of high school, he had
succumbed to the Rhabdoviridae Orthomyxoviridate virus.
He had been in the middle of the high school
junior varsity baseball preseason training at the time. Although he
was by far the best player on the JV team, the coach was reluctant
to let him go straight to varsity. The coach thought Gordon would
get more on field time with kids his own age. He was the most
promising student athlete, and the coach was grooming him for an
athletic scholarship, even though his grades weren’t the best.
When Gordon entered the unlife, the coach
dropped him from the team. He wanted to try to convince the coach
he could still play, but his parents persuaded him otherwise. They
explained to him that if he got injured, he would never heal. With
their encouragement, he turned his focus to his studies
instead.
Staying at home with his nose in a book wasn’t
Gordon’s style however. He needed to channel his energy somewhere,
so he decided that he should give kids the chances that he had
always taken for granted. Without anyone’s help, he started
teaching kids too poor to even own a baseball how to play the
game.
These kids looked up to him and gave him the
confidence to succeed, regardless of how society viewed him. He
strove to be the best in everything he did.
One thing he struggled with was getting his
driver’s license. It’s not that he wouldn’t have the intelligence
or inability to drive a car, but that it was not yet legal for
zombies to drive. Gordon fought for zombie rights as well, and he
was going to take his stand with allowing zombies to drive.
Although illegal, his friends and family had no
problem teaching him how to drive. The driving instructor at school
even let him take the written test, which he got a perfect score
on. His next plan of offense was to convince the Bureau of Motor
Vehicles to let him take the driving test.
He finally wore them down, and they agreed. He
would arrive at the License Branch an hour before they opened, and
an employee would accompany him for the driving test.
As everyone that knew Gordon expected, he was
driving perfectly. The test giver had marked every area as above
average, and they were headed back to the branch. They were sitting
at a stoplight. The light turned green. Gordon looked both ways and
proceeded to go through. The driver of large delivery truck nearing
the red light suddenly had a stroke, and his foot slammed down on
the gas pedal. The front of the truck hit the side of Gordon’s car
in full force.
In the accident, a large portion of the truck’s
windshield slid down the front of the truck into Gordon’s car,
beheading him and killing him immediately.
The entire school was saddened by the loss of
such an amazing classmate. His parents started a scholarship fund
in his name which has grown more popular every year.
Now, recipients of the Gordon Hopkins
Scholarship for Outstanding High School Zombies have their
post-secondary education costs provided for them, and can usually
go to any school of their choosing.
****
True Bravery
Garrett was the hero of all of his friends. They
thought he was so brave with all the daredevil stunts he did.
He was the best at parkour because it seemed
like he had no fear. He could easily scale the sides of tall
buildings, and he jumped the furthest from building to
building.
People hired Garrett to walk their pit bulls and
rottweilers. He owned poisonous snakes that no one dared touch. His
friends would dare him to eat the spiciest foods without water.
The quietest of his friends was a zombie named
Quinn. Quinn rarely talked and seemed meek and reserved. The ladies
didn’t faun over him, and he didn’t have any other friends outside
of their small group.
On a dark, stormy night, Garrett and Quinn were
walking home through a back alley when they were jumped from
behind. A mugger held a gun up to them and demanded their
wallets.
Quinn handed his wallet to the crook, but
Garrett refused to cooperate. Acting irrationally, he charged at
their attacker. The man shot, and Garrett fell to the ground.
With his patient, quiet style, Quinn approached
the mugger without fear. Although he was shot in the ensuing
struggle, since he was a zombie, the wound wasn’t fatal. He was
able to get the gun from the robber and call the police. Calmly, he
applied pressure to Garrett’s wound while waiting for help to
arrive.
Because of Quinn’s quick thinking, Garrett got
the help he needed, and the wound healed completely without any
lasting damage.
From that day on, all of Garrett’s friends had a
new respect for Quinn’s bravery.
****
The Triathlon
There was once a prestigious Olympic swimmer
named Eric who had won several gold medals. One day he was attacked
by a mugger, and as a result, he died and became a zombie.
Where he had been a celebrity in real life, no
one wanted anything to do with him in real life. All of his
swimming friends abandoned him. So he moved away to a new town, but
still no one wanted anything to do with him.
In an effort to prove that he was the same
person he used to be, he started entering local races. An athlete
named Estevan was the local champion and somewhat of a hero in that
little town.
On the morning of the first race, when the
runners were warming up, Estevan saw Eric and laughed. “A zombie?
In a race? What a laugh! His foot will probably fall off before he
reaches the finish line.”
Eric ignored him and focused on the race.
Estevan won, as expected, and Eric finished in the back of the
pack.
Before the next race, Estevan said, “Hey zombie,
you survived the last race? Do you have enough life to finish this
one?” Of course, Estevan won again, and Eric found himself closer
to last place.
Eric started to think, “Maybe he’s right. Maybe
I don’t have the same physical strength I had in life.” He
considered dropping out of the next race.
Several days before the race, word reached him
that the local bookies were slating him to win. A lot of money was
on his victory. He was confused and wanted to avoid the
embarrassment, but when race day came, he found the courage to show
up.
Again, Estevan said, “Wow, you haven’t given up
yet zombie? Break a leg!”
The meeting point was on the edge of a large
lake. The organizers pointed to a flag in the distance, directly
across the lake, and told the participants that was the finish
line. Estevan went pale, whiter than Eric. Eric was smiling from
ear to ear.
The emcee fired the gun, and the racers were
off, swimming across the lake. Eric easily pulled into the lead and
got to the finish line well before anyone else.
The last person across the lake was Estevan.
When he got to the other side, Eric was waiting for him. He helped
him up out of the water and said, “Great job. Did you know how to
swim?”
“Not before today,” Estevan said.
“Would you like some lessons?” asked Eric.
From that day on, the two of them trained
together and started finishing races side by side, both on land and
in water.