‘So what are we gonna do with him, guys?’ Ben held his hand in front of his face and tried to wave away the smell of dead man. Like that was even possible.
‘Don’t do too much until I get back, okay?’ Jack ran to the top of the creaking wooden stairs.
‘Where are you going?’ Tom asked.
Jack smiled. ‘Grampa Murphy has air fresheners in the house. He likes to hide his farts.’
Tom smiled and nodded his approval. ‘Sweet.’ Jack started to close one of the doors to the shelter but stopped when Tom called out. ‘Hey.’
‘Yeah?’
Tom jerked his chin toward their new toy. ‘Think you can get a knife or two?’ Jack licked his lips and thought about it. ‘Maybe.’
‘Cool.’
He managed to confiscate two cans of air freshener, a box of matches, a bar of soap, and a small jar of peanut butter.
He got the knives the next day.
That night Steve called from Baghdad. He sounded very tired but glad to hear their voices. There were only two phones in the house, so Jack only got to listen in for a couple of minutes and talked to his big brother for even less time.
‘Hey, Steve?’ He waited to ask his questions until Mom had run to the kitchen to get the hamburgers off the stove and into the oven to stay warm, and until he knew his Dad had run to the bathroom.
‘Yeah, bud?’ His brother’s voice sounded forever away, tinny and static and still so very wonderful.
‘Are the dead people moving out where you are?’
There was a pause for a few seconds, and he could almost see Steve looking around to make sure no one heard him. ‘Yeah. Some of them are. But we don’t talk about that, okay? Not ever.’
‘Are they different than prisoners of war?’
‘Of course.’
‘How come?’
‘Prisoners of war are still alive, Jack. They’re still people.’
Before he could respond any further, his mom was back on the line, and so he just listened and basked in the voice of his older brother, the hero.
He was glad zombies weren’t people any more. He’d been a little worried about that.
‘Where do they come from?’ That was José, who was always asking a billion questions.
Charlie just shrugged. Jack didn’t know either, but just lately he’d taken to watching the news a lot more closely. ‘Maybe it’s a virus. I hear if they bite you, you become a zombie, too.’
Tom snorted. ‘My dad says they aren’t zombies. He says they’re the undead.’
‘Doesn’t that mean the same thing?’ José again.
Jack shook his head. ‘No. Undead is vampires. I saw it on that Dracula movie.’
‘The movie’s wrong.’ Tom shook his head and practically dared Jack to contradict him again. ‘My dad knows better than Hollywood.’
‘Whatever.’ Jack dismissed the attitude. You had to make exceptions when you were with Tom. He could really be a dick. But mostly he was cool.
Ben had managed to get out of the house again. Sometimes you had to break the rules, and a zombie was worth the risks. ‘I heard it was the water in Mexico. It’s so full of shit that it kills you and makes you a zombie.’
That made a little sense. Mexico was a big place, and both California and Texas were connected to it. ‘No. My brother Steve says they’ve got zombies over there too.’
Ben frowned and shook his head, genuinely puzzled. ‘Maybe the zombies over there are Mexican?’
‘Do they have Mexican soldiers?’ Charlie sniffed. His allergies were back with a vengeance. Maybe he was allergic to zombies too. He was allergic to almost everything else.
Billy nodded. ‘Yeah. José could join the army if he wanted. You know, when he’s old enough.’
‘I’m an American. I was born here.’
‘Yeah, but your folks are Mexican, right?’
‘Well, yeah, of course.’
‘See? You could be a soldier.’ Billy had a good head on his shoulders, as Dad liked to say.
‘I think it’s demons.’ That was Tom, who had walked back over to their pet zombie. The thing snarled and thrashed. Jack didn’t know how smart it really was, but the zombie always got more active when Tom got near it. Tom used the knives and sticks the most while the others watched. Maybe it knew how to tell them apart, even though Tom had poked out one of the eyes.
‘Demons? Like in the movies?’
‘Like in the Bible. Jesus fought demons.’
‘It didn’t react when you put a cross around its neck.’
Billy again, who was normally the only other person who would stand up to Tom.
Tom looked at the zombie for a minute and then backed away as it tried to lunge for him.
‘So. Maybe it’s a Jewish zombie and doesn’t know any better.’ Jack didn’t know enough about Jews and all the other religions, so he kept his opinions to himself.
Tom stepped away from the zombie, and Ben took that as a sign that he could play. He picked up a long steel post he’d found and poked it into the dead man’s thigh. The meaty spot squelched, and the point drove a good inch and a half into the cold dead meat.
Jack frowned as the zombie hissed and dislodged a maggot from its upper lip.
‘Do you think he can feel anything, guys?’
No one had a definitive answer.
Tom stared hard at the thing on the ground and got that look on his face, the one that said he’d come up with a really cool idea and he wanted to be the one to do something first. He grabbed the carving knife Jack had snuck from the old set that was half buried in his grandfather’s kitchen cabinets, and slipped past Ben.
Tom made sure everyone was looking at him. ‘Let’s find out. Let’s see if this fucker feels anything.’ He drove the tip of the knife through the dead man’s wrist and held on as it jumped and tried to snap at him.
Tom took the time to look each of the boys in the eye before he started sawing at the mutilated wrist, straining and grunting as he fought the blade between the small bones. The thing’s arms were still tied in place around the chest, but the rope was fraying now, soggy with the black nastiness that passed for blood. The zombie let out a warbling noise and struggled, thrashed, its teeth snapping again and again as it tried to reach Tom.
Tom was smarter than that. He stayed away from the head of the thing.
Long after the hand had been cut away, the zombie struggled against its bonds and let out low keening noises.
Jack couldn’t be sure. He thought maybe the zombie felt something, but whether or not it really qualified as pain, he couldn’t say.
After a while Tom got tired of chopping digits away from the fingers that curled and uncurled like spider legs. The stump of the wrist didn’t bleed any more, but Jack could see the muscles and bones left there trying to move the hand that was no longer where it had always been. The motion was almost hypnotic.
Jack watched the news after dinner and heard the rumors that the dead were coming back in greater numbers. According to somebody in the governor’s office, the problem was getting so big in Dallas and Houston that people were rioting and trying to get out of the cities before the situation could get any worse. The only pictures they showed were of traffic jams, cars trying to move and going nowhere fast on the roads away from the cities. Police had to work longer hours, and the National Guard was coming in to help.
They were just rumors, of course. There was no proof. No real evidence, as his dad said. There’d been pictures a couple of times, but no one wanted to show them any more. Or maybe they weren’t allowed to. That was what Ben said. His dad worked for the local paper, and Ben said the government wasn’t allowing anyone to take pictures and show them on the TV or even put them in newspapers. His mom and dad didn’t let him go online except when they were in the room, and they wouldn’t even talk about the zombies in front of him. He was too young, as far as they were concerned. If they knew he’d seen one, touched one, poked holes in one, they’d have tanned his hide for him.
When the news anchor started talking about the possibility of mandatory cremation - he thought that was when they burned the bodies, but he wasn’t completely sure - Mom screamed at Dad and made him change the channel to
Wheel of Fortune
.
After that the atmosphere in the house grew cold and awkward. Later, after he’d been sent to bed even though he wasn’t tired, he heard his parents talking in their bedroom. Mom was worried. Dad tried to calm her down and swore he wouldn’t let any of them come back from the dead if something bad happened.
Ben was happy about that. He didn’t know how his dad would stop them from being zombies, but he had faith in the man. His dad was young and could still do pretty much anything. Ben knew it in his heart.
He drifted to sleep, only vaguely aware of his mom crying through the wall.
His dad would make it right. That was all that mattered, wasn’t it?
‘What? You going pussy on us?’ Tom’s voice held more than the usual menace. He looked at the bigger boy and felt his brow pull lower over his eyes. Maybe Skunk was scared of Tom, but Jack never had been.
‘I’m not going pussy. I just don’t want to touch that thing.’ Tom had taken his carving skills to the next level. He hadn’t actually cut the left leg off the zombie, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. The pants had been cut away, and a length of rope had been used to tie the leg in place. Two tent posts from Tom’s old tent had been hammered into the ground and anchored the ankle firmly. The rope had already cut deep into rotting flesh, and even in the permanent semidarkness of the storm cellar he could see the bone under the rope. Tom had peeled off most of the skin, and the muscles - grey and black and rotting in the summer heat - shifted and twitched every time the dead man tried to get away from the, well, from whatever passed for pain in its ruined head. Tom still wasn’t sure about that part.
Ben wasn’t there, but everyone else was. Half of them were looking away, finding something else to stare at as the confrontation started, but Billy and José were looking on with expressions that held an edge of anticipation. The zombie was starting to grow old, as toys go, and the heat was taking a toll on the rotting flesh. Most of the experiments that could be done at this point were the sort that made a bigger mess, and it was harder to get that crap off their clothes. Tom had come up with the idea of garbage bags, and he’d used two of them to make himself a sort of raincoat against the foul substances he’d spilled as he carved and hacked at the ruined leg.
Now he held the knife that Jack himself had confiscated for them and waved the bloodied, slicked mess in front of him. ‘Everyone else did it, Jack. What makes you so special?’ There was an edge to his voice, an implied threat:
Either you’re one of us or you aren’t
.
‘You were supposed to wait for everyone, Tom. What makes
you
so special?’ He crossed his arms over his chest and stared hard.
Tom blinked and shook his head, barely believing that anyone would speak out against him. And Jack allowed himself a small smile as the heads of their mutual friends turned to look at Tom with unspoken accusation.
Tom still didn’t understand well enough: yes, he was bigger; he might even be a better fighter than any of the others - well, except for Billy - but he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.
The zombie leaned forward and let out a series of grunting noises as it lunged for Tom’s leg. Tom moved out of the way and swung the knife angrily, opening a slash across the monster’s cheek and nose. It recoiled and barked furiously.
Sometimes Jack worried about Tom. Not often, of course, but every now and then.
Billy broke the tension. ‘It’s too hot for this. Let’s go swimming.’
That seemed like a fine idea to Jack. In no time they were back at the scene of the crime, and he glanced over at the spot where they’d found the dead man again and again as they goofed around and cooled off their bodies and their tempers.