Zee Bee & Bee Read online

  But it isn’t a Camel that’s screaming. I can tell by the level of acting ability. And it can’t be Tom. Not yet. He should still be in his locked room, waiting to be discovered if and when they find the key in the bucket of nails under the sink. For now, he should simply be happily rustling his ball of aluminum foil, maybe scratching at the floor or door every so often, maybe making just enough noise for someone to start wondering what’s in there, a mouse or a monster.

  For a second, it’s silent. Then I hear that girl, that perfect girl, the newlywed, making her “tisk” noise at something that disgusts her. I heard her doing it an hour earlier when I was hiding in the bushes watching her new husband sign the waiver. I remember thinking that if there was some fine print in that contract that she’d missed earlier and was having second thoughts about it with all the mouth noises, it was too late now.

  I’ve always hated those kinds of insect noises, those impatient clicks and hisses people always make when they’re annoyed. I had a girlfriend once who ruined every movie by sucking her bottom lip and making a sharp snap! snap!, sorta like gum popping, whenever something remotely melodramatic happened on a screen. It was especially excruciating in the theater, and I found myself taking her to more comedies than I ever cared to see. And at a zombie movie, forget about it. She would “tisk” so many times that one nearby theatergoer actually asked if she was shuffling a deck of cards.

  I start thinking this blushing bride’s cute little noise might screw up our game, maybe make some other zombie out here in the yard, a zombie with less patience than myself, try just a little harder to make her stop, maybe by pulling her tongue out from the root slow and steady as a flower you don’t want to break off before you get it out of the ground.

  In my earpiece, I can hear the honeymooners talking very seriously about a shower curtain. They’re exchanging the kinds of details you’d guess should have already surfaced before their marriage.

  “...well, my dad used to flip out if we messed up the bathroom. With two boys, it got real messy real quick...”

  “I’m telling you it isn’t blood. Somebody dyed their hair in here recently, that’s all.”

  “...and then when my little sister came along, she was one of those vacation babies by the way, that’s why there’s our age gap, she’d trash the place and dad never said peep. In one night, she changed her hair from black to red to green and got it all over the walls, and he just sighed...”

  “This sure looks like blood though.”

  “...and when I tried to tell her how he used to lose his mind if we got one drop of urine behind the toilet seat, she wouldn’t believe us. I mean, a little yellow on the toilet is a lot more understandable than a rainbow crime-scene bathtub...”

  “You know what? If they try too hard to scare us, I might call their bluff.”

  Bad things happen sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. It comes with the territory when things really start rolling and those emotions spike. Overly aggressive behavior, minor theft and vandalism, a general disrespect for the situation. But to discourage these shenanigans, we discovered early on there were a few simple things we could do. We didn’t want to hurt anyone, but we did need to convince people we were really, really trying to get a grip on them.

  So Davey Jones told us to always go for the meat.

  “Avoid the bones,” he said. “If you look for spots that an actual zombie would prefer to bite into and grab this spot with your fingers, you will usually hit a part of their body less likely to inflict pain.”

  He was right. The skulls and elbows and knees were a lot of trouble in our hands and best avoided, just as they would likely disappoint a hungry mouth. And nothing caused as much trouble for us as an agitated Camel. Therefore, in the wavier, it clearly states that they can be expelled from the house by any staff or Camel (“For the sake of the human race!” our Plants would declare to the rest of the survivors if this became necessary) the precise moment they crossed that line into purposeful injury or, like the example described more explicitly in the contract, “catching a zombie’s finger under your hammer more than three times.”

  That part was easiest to remember. Three fingers and they were out. And it wasn’t fun to get bounced. Since they would have already turned in their car keys, they’d quickly understand this meant they could either sit in a ditch all night and watch their new husband or wife have all the fun or they could allow themselves to be gently steered along the well-worn path of our very reasonable and ultimately satisfying story line. However, if they were really ornery (like that little fucker last fall with the cherry bombs we ejected headfirst), they would be held down and forced to take a slathering of blue paint to the face and, if they wanted to participate at all, start attacking the house with the rest of our staff. We called these blue paint-brush smacks in the cheeks “getting bit,” and it always surprised us how many of these assholes decided to join in with us on the pounding. I guess it was the choice between punching a door like you meant it or walking aimlessly around the woods all night. Two things a real zombie would probably be doing with his Saturday night anyway, but it was really no contest.

  “...and why the need to give everyone advice all the time?” a petulant voice sneeered. “You get that from your uncle, I swear...”

  “Just trying to help you make the most of those nails. And why bring my uncle into...”

  “Uh-huh. Why don’t you tell us the advice he gave you the first time you got on the bus to Kindergarten.”

  “He said, ‘Be careful.’”

  “Mm-hmm. Right. What else did he say? Tell them.”

  “Yeah, tell us.” Camels.

  “He might have said something like, ‘If you stick your hand down a girl’s pants and it feels like you’re feeding a horse, you’re in trouble.’”

  Between laughter, hammer strikes, and another “tisk,” I finally recognize the voices of our Plants. It’s our Irritable Couple Hiding In The Basement, Jeff and Amy. Apparently, they were forced to join the game early since the other Plants already opened their doors. They seemed to be ad-libbing a little more than usual to fill the gaps and expected questions, so I cup my ear tight to listen to the banter. The rest of the zombies would be doing the same thing as me. And after another couple seconds of monitoring the progress of our script, we could safely assume the couples haven’t seen the injured daughter yet and we should stick to the plan.

  Up until a couple seasons ago, this particular stage of the game would have been alerted by barking because the injured daughter had actually been an injured Blue Labrador (more hairless than “blue” really) for good awhile instead, a wonderfully irritating, half-domesticated, very snappy little monster we referred to as “shark dog.”

  So we had to get these earphones to synchronize the plot without the barking as our markers. It worked out okay though. Davey Jones found a whole box of them at a going-out-of-business sale, he told us. Marked way, way, way down.

  But animals are sorely missed. Having one around changed the way everyone acted. Critters and all their energy, they never doubted the sincerity of our acting, not for one second. But any twist on the timeless Zombie Attack tale usually turned out to be a mistake, and this was no exception. There was a reason they kept dogs out of most of those movies. And you saw what happened in the Dawn of the Dead remake when they got too attached.

  But what happened to our dog was something we zombies rarely talk about. And, as always, we worried Amy would bring up the incident by the end of the night. She always did.

  I’m pulling at a window frame when someone nicks some skin off the side of my thumb with the claw end of the hammer. It’s the same set of worried eyes from earlier.

  I frown and count “strike two” in my head.

  At least Jeff is laughing tonight, having more fun. That’s something. See, back in the day, Jeff used to date Amy. Davey Jones encouraged this, thinking it would be great motivation since he’d swell up a little more around her, show a little extra plumage, and
maybe that would help sell his role to the Camels. Back then, Davey even let them keep their real names to help stay in character.

  It worked for awhile.

  The problem was that it quickly made emotions bleed over into real life in increasingly dangerous ways. It didn’t help that one ugly season when Amy cheated on Jeff with Jerry, a.k.a. Baseball Zombie. The infidelity made Jeff target the big number 3 on Jerry’s back a bit too aggressively some nights. And during one seemingly endless barrage, Jeff broke character and mercilessly ridiculed Amy for liking “fucking athletes,” even though Jerry had never thrown a pitch or hit a ball in his life, even Nerf. This, in return, caused Jerry to punch one Camel in the face last year (“barely a swat,” he finally admitted after Davey Jones’ terrifying two-hour interrogation), a very solid and un-undead-looking right hook that plowed through that Camel’s bottom teeth like the Garden Weasel and cost the equivalent of a dozen of those tools, plus shipping and handling, to settle out of court (the fuckers weren’t cheap, as we regularly used one after each weekend attack to fix our landscaping).

  A lot of “dead baby mama drama,” Mags called it.

  These days, Tom, our military Plant, and part of our locked-room mystery during the climax, was very quick to freestyle through the awkwardness of any embarrassing broken noses by coming up with his own stories off the cuff, usually about their platoon reporting zombies imitating what they’d seen on the screen at a drive-in Rocky festival.

  “Could happen,” he’d shrug. “Fist fights were instinctual, even when Rocky was alive.”

  Then he’d stand there humming nervously in a dogpile of corpses, covertly kicking at them to break it up and act like dead men, as he held a toy phone over his head desperately searching for a signal.

  But besides that recent love triangle, this year there was a new power struggle in our ranks. The two Bobbys, Bobby Z and Bobby B (stay tuned, lots more about them later), had both developed a strange impulse to lead us on our attacks at all times. Each of them wanted to be the head zombie, standing on point, the first to snarl, the first to break the window, the first to use tools, sort of like the Gas character at the end of Land of the Dead.

  But not at the end. Like all the time.

  You know, leading assaults, making decisions, very slowly, at least. But it all became quite a nuisance, more and more important to each of them during every Blitzkrieg. It made for low, slurring but serious arguments over cold barbecue chicken, about who broke what window first. And even though we all guessed it was mostly because they had the bad luck of both being named “Bobby,” there was also some talk about one of them wanting to be the first zombie to drive a Camel’s car. This was inexcusable. Not just because it wasn’t in the contract, but because this would be a scene that wasn’t in any of the movies, endless remakes included.

  But tonight they are just fighting about that helmet nonstop. You’d think taking a dump in it would have been the last word on the subject.

  “I don’t know why you even like the Steelers. It goes against our philosophy.”

  “The fuck you talking about?”

  “That Polamalu-malu-lu or whatever his name is. His girly-ass hair would be a serious liability during a zombie uprising. I can’t believe none of the announcers ever bring it up, to be honest.”

  “Nah, he’s way too fast to get caught.”

  “Maybe with a ball in his hands. Without it, he’s lunch. In fact, I once saw him take a hit so hard the ref yelled, ‘Fatality!’ instead of ‘Offsides’...”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I saw him get hit so hard he left his multiplication tables on the 50-yard line, along with memories of three Christmases ago...”

  “Never happened.”

  “...so hard his helmet rolled into the end zone and his head was still in it.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “I was there, man. And I couldn’t believe they played such an inappropriate song on the speakers while they gathered up the pieces. If he ever did wake up, he’d have thought he was the lead singer of Maroon 5...”

  “A level of exaggeration I’ve sadly grown accustomed to.”

  “Shhh!” Another zombie tries to get them to keep it down.

  “You owe me a helmet, asshole,” a Bobby whispers.

  “Yes, my asshole owes you a helmet.”

  “You guys keep forgetting your roles,” I interrupt. “Mags gave you two those shirts to represent the Army and Navy football teams for a different reason entirely, and…”

  “Fuck off,” they tell me in stereo. Then the weight goes out of their arms as they get into character. Just in time, too, as the second couple comes bounding up the driveway, laughing and zigzagging past the Bobbys as they make half-ass swipes at their shoulders. I’m closest to the house and the only one who sees what the Camel drops near the front door.

  It’s a paper towel. My heart would have jumped if it still pumped. As the brother of a child with OCD, I suddenly suspect this might change some things, like everything.

  A guest like this might not be ready for prime time, not ready for the trials and tribulations of our particular game, not ready to fiddle while Rome burns. This might be one of those guys who doesn’t want to get dirty enough to convince himself it’s really happening. Well, then he shouldn’t have signed up, should he? This should make me angry, even angrier than the Bobbys’ constant nonsense, but for the first time since I started shuffling up the driveway tonight, this Truck Zombie is scared.

  “I Bite,” someone says.

  “Nice work. Hold on. What?” someone asks.

  “Bite who?” someone else wants to know.

  “No, I’m just saying that would be the perfect name for a zombie movie. It’s even better than I, Zombie because it’s like the shortest sentence in the goddamn history of the English language.”

  “I thought that was ‘Fleas: Adam Had ‘Em.’”

  “No, that’s the shortest poem in the goddamn history of the English language.”

  “You bite, eh? Hmm, I like it.”

  “Yeah, ‘I admire its purity,’ as the man once said.”

  “‘As the robot once said,’ you mean.”

  “Actually, ‘I bite’ is not the shortest possible sentence. ‘I am’ will always hold that title.”

  “I Bite Therefore I Am!”

  “You sound like Dr. Seuss.”

  “Not a real physician, by the way, but the world can use all the doctors they can get.”

  I stop. I think about the Camels discussing that blood in the tub. How something like that would scare us more than it would scare them.

  Turning back to our mob, I see her.

  She’s keeping to the rear, head down further than anyone else’s. At some point tonight, I will have to tell her how I feel. It is expected, of course, end-of-the-world confessions are almost required. But this isn’t why. I was inspired earlier today by the perfect advice I’d heard her giving another zombie about something entirely inconsequential. Whether to eat or throw some expired eggs was the original subject of their conversation, but her answer was universal.

  “If not now, when?” she said.

  THE SMOKE BREAK WAS PROBABLY HER IDEA, our precious Cigarette Zombie (a.k.a Coffee And Cigarettes Zombie, a.k.a. Term-Paper-Grading Zombie), a creature whose assigned character trait was, once she broke into the house, to try and desperately smoke every butt and drink as much coffee as she could. But also to do it really, really slow. This was all a result of trying to relive her previous existence as a grad student, according to Mags. I never thought it was fair that she was the only one claiming to be a Grad Student Zombie as we were all, without exception, University of Pittsburgh drop-outs, kicked-outs, and failed-outs, every cursed one of us.

  We usually took the smoke break behind “The Joshua Bush,” the squat and lonely shrub in the middle of the field near the fake gas pump. This was where most of our debates occurred. It was not named after the U2 album like you might think. You’ll see.

&nb
sp; The break was usually scheduled right after the reveal of the Plants in the basement, since that surprise should occupy all the Camels for a good half hour. But the timing was off tonight, and the second couple had just arrived, so we decided to eat lunch as fast as we could.

  We were always tired of barbecue chicken and entrails by the end of the evening (Romero was right that it was always the best meat to simulate zombie feasts), so most of us usually stuck to fruit or vegetables to balance our diets. Ever see a zombie with rickets? It’s not pretty. Looks just like me actually.

  Since we are out of earshot, we don’t have to whisper or moan anymore. And after passing around the box of fig bars, our discussion turns to the word “zombie” and how hard it is to not acknowledge exactly what we are every time we play the game. It seems impossible, but the existence of zombies should be a new discovery every single time, just like my peanut-brained feline used to think every waking day was its first day on Earth.

  I might agree, but I don’t say so. The topic makes me uncomfortable. It’s usually taboo to even say the word “zombie” out loud, a strict rule that the British comedy Shaun of the Dead mocked quite effectively. But contrary to popular belief, the much revered 1978 Dawn of the Dead was actually the first movie to break this law. But the worst infraction was, of course, in the later installment, Land of the Dead, where a visibly bored Dennis Hopper seemed to be speaking not just directly to the audience, but directly to the movie’s fucking trailer, “Zombies, man, they creep me out,” he shuddered. Everyone did, too. Shit, I still cringe thinking about it. You’d think he would have been thankful to have a script written for his complete comfort and indifference and try a little harder. He had to be the only villain, zombie movie or otherwise, to ever spend 90% of his screen time in a luxury hotel sipping whiskey. He probably thought he was doing a buddy-cop flick the whole time.