Zee Bee & Bee Page 9

  A cat’s claw has been hiding under that hood all along. Who knew?

  “Get under the hood?” She said that to me once, that one night I tried this back in high school. And I made the mistake of saying, “Well, then it needs driven!” and she laughed at me for forgetting the “to be” in that sentence, a common grammatical mistake in and around the Pittsburgh area she would forever christen the “Hamlet” (just one of many crippling conditions afflicting a typical conversation-addled Yinzer Zombie). After that, I could do nothing right.

  My bride slides away from my mouth, and I take this as more evidence of life, and, for a crazy second, I consider putting some salt under her ass for traction, or for flavor. Of course, cat litter works just as well.

  You know, tonight reminds me of my most misguided attempt ever to prove I was worried about my girlfriend losing control if she ever got too drunk at a party. When she passed out on my birthday, I methodically, robotically fucked her while unconscious. The fact that I photographed myself holding a clipboard somehow made it even creepier even though I was sure I could excuse it all in the name of science. Nope. Bye!

  I’m telling you though, it’s a claw I’m chasing. It doesn’t just look like a claw, pop out, then retract like a claw. It is a claw. I know shit is weird out there in the world lately, but right now I’m sure it’s always been a claw under there. Push hard enough on any part of a girl and a claw might just come out and greet you.

  My sandpaper tongue starts working this shard of rock-hard flint. Do this long enough and it would have to ignite. No need to blow the gas pump for a climax of the movie.

  I knew someone once who had a cat with thumbs, which wasn’t that strange, she told me. But when she took a paw in her hand and pushed in all the secret spots, nine more claws curled out into her palm, making, what, about ninety claws total? I actually screamed. So did the cat. Then we both ran. She only went after the cat.

  Inspired by these memories, maybe more out of habit, I chase this claw around a tiny circle awhile. It does laps around my tongue, proving to me that even if she isn’t alive, this part of her has to be. I chase that claw around, feel the point sharpened to infinity stabbing hard into my sense of taste, feel my own blood mixing with hers, and I gasp as I swallow to keep up with the surge. The claw grows longer, and I flick and grind it harder with a human being’s only exposed and glistening muscle, ripping long lines like a gardener through any tastebuds that remain, right between sweet and sour, gouging out the last one that sensed bitterness for good.

  Cunnilingus on a corpse? Sure, that sounds nasty out loud. But only if you don’t know what a goddamn romantic coming-of-age moment this is.

  I want to bite. How can anyone not want to bite when they do this? Something this small, the way it slips behind your teeth? It fucking tries to get bit. Wanna bite. Can’t bite. Gotta bite. Don’t bite. Impossible.

  It’s like the oldest story in the world, “Boy Eats Girl.”

  It’s like the commercial for that cherry lollipop where the owl gets down to a tiny nub on the end of the stick. “One, two, three!” It’s like way, way, way past licking at that point. It is simply begging to detonate between your teeth.

  Cunnilinguscorpus? Ever been there? Fifty miles just outside of Corpus Christi.

  My tongue licked and leaped like fire. Yes, this is how they invented fire. I’m sure of it.

  Whoosh.

  But you know how I know she is alive? Because just like the other girl I tried this on back in high school, I know I will never get her off. Which is fine with me because it means I will never have to stop.

  Maybe we were always supposed to bite. Someone should have told me

  MY TONGUE is tracing a line of sweat and salt down her wrist, and I’m chasing and licking and flicking it up, up, up when three muffled gunshots upstairs stop us cold.

  There aren’t enough of us left, I realize. Or enough time.

  Then the Camel bursts in with the rifle and bounds down the stairs, taking them two at a time. When I see what he’s wearing, I suddenly understand that he’s been outside the whole time, even stumbling around in circles with us sometimes without anyone noticing. Once maybe pulling a symbolic fishhook from his lip and acting all wise. He’s been coming and going at will, which is the most disrespect for this kind of movie than I’ve ever seen. But it’s okay. I’m still smiling because the Pittsburgh Steelers football helmet finally fits someone perfect.

  When he reaches the bottom, the Camel targets me again. The firing pin clicks. And clicks. Empty. Clicks again. Still empty. He drops the rifle and scrubs his palms against his pants.

  I drop the bride’s ankles and stand, smile all red. Then I walk towards him and gently put my hand on his back. He’s cold, colder than us. And not because he’s dead. He’s cold because he’s been sneaking outside all night, listening to our conversations, discovering our weaknesses, or, at least, our shitty taste in movies. He’s been cheating, is my point. Just like Cigarette Zombie at that dance after the 8th grade football game where she pulled aside some girl and tried to get her to confide about her ex-boyfriend after he’d gone outside to sneak a smoke in his car. Yeah, just like that. She tells me stuff. And this is something he has been doing all night.

  And I’m telling the Camel all about her 8-grade dance as I tell you.

  “She told me that she was planning on snaking him away from her, and Cigarette Zombie denied everything until the girl put her hand on her back and felt the cold still stuck to her skin. Right then, she knew that Cigarette Zombie had been following him to his car and then tip-toeing back in darker door at the end of the gymnasium...”

  “Huh?”

  I’m still telling him these things when he stops listening and turns my arm around at least three times before he starts to pull it free from my shoulder.

  But Bobby B is crashing down the stairs now, too, with Bobby Z clomping close behind. The Camel quickly and correctly recognizes two assholes united as a more significant threat than me, and he lets me go. Bobby B leaps very unzombie-like, and the Camel catches him in mid-flight just off the second-to-last step and takes him down hard to the concrete floor, ribs popping in both of them like knuckles under a desk. The Camel begins to punch Bobby B like a jackhammer, just like Dirty Harry did to that motorcycle cop in Magnum Force, something that usually happened to Cop Zombie at least once during our games. “It’s the only way to punch someone,” according to Davey Jones’ dad, Barney, a.k.a. “Barnaby,” a.k.a. “Basketball” Jones, or so he was told.

  So it’s looking bad for Bobby B, at least until Bobby Z catches the Camel’s fist between punches in a very cinematic pose and then wrestles him onto his back instead. I step closer to the dogpile, (we have more dog piles than dog’s breakfasts these days) and I don’t know how I ever thought the Camel was cold. I can now feel the heat coming off him in waves as he struggles for his life. I decide Bobby B must feel this, too, as I watch him crawl towards the pile of flailing fists, elbows, and “motherfuckers!” as if it’s a bonfire, his palms out to soak up the warmth.

  Bobby B actually looks up at Bobby Z in gratitude, and I’m glad I was there to see it. But glancing from one filthy mug to the other, I can no longer tell them apart. And it’s not just the decay or the old purple paint still smeared on their faces. There's other colors, too.

  For a couple tense seasons, before Davey Jones outlawed it, the Bobbys used to alternate painting their faces black as a shout-out to the racial overtones of the original trilogy, more likely a misguided guarantee of their own survival because of the previous political climate. Tonight, I hate to think about the possibility, but there's a very good chance a Bobby shit in our community football helmet as a way of painting a face brown and trying to claim one of the leadership roles the minorities usually dominated in zombie films.

  Clearly, they didn't remember the end of the first movie very well.

  And a lot like the black cat I used to own, every day was a Bobby’s first day on Earth.


  “Bobby...Bobby,” I say, and I have the attention of both of them for the first time in our short lives. I try not to waste it. “Like she said outside, you two are brothers, you know?”

  Everyone stops the killing for now, so I keep trying to make this count.

  “Okay, you know how doctors ask everyone first thing when you get to your appointment if there’s a history of cancer in the family? There’s a good reason. It’s not just because bad shit and diseases are more likely for you if your uncle had one. It is because you are actually the same creature. Your mother? Your father? Everything you are came from them. You are not just a relative. You are another one of them. That is what you are. Everyone knows this but you. And you. And you.”

  They both look at each other, then down to where the Camel’s shirt has been yanked up.

  Sometimes during our film festivals, there will be a few grumblings about zombie movies and how easily they always seem to tear apart a human body, how hard that would really be and how zombies should never have some kind of super strength (and not just because they’re dead, either). Now, I would agree with this. Up to a point. Because what zombie scholars have never understood until recently is that it is relatively easy to reach into a man’s stomach and turn him inside out, even easier when a group of us are pulling in all directions, and easiest of all when there’s simply one more pair of hands to help push in the place you are pulling.

  Bobby B punches deep into the Camel’s gut, and Bobby Z’s fist follows right behind. They both open their hands to fan their fingers at the same time, and of course the skin splits and stretches like taffy just like we always knew it would and they tumble forward and they’re suddenly swimming in that shit and blowing bubbles and heads darting under like ducks in a pond. No. More like brothers in a tub.

  I rub my eyes, watching them splash around, looking eagerly for the red that never comes.

  Turns out our name for them was perfect. Everyone knows camels are full of water.

  “I believe it. They could really be camels!” a dripping, sputtering Bobby says from the soup. “Even crime scene investigators are confused between a dead man’s and a dead monkey’s blood. At least for a day. You ever watch them scratch their heads bald when there’s a murder at a zoo? We’re all brothers...”

  “Please, don’t let us dine in vain!” my brother laughs.

  THE THREE OF US ARE BACK OUTSIDE and rounding the shed when a Bobby’s head opens up like a Thanksgiving turkey and a gunshot echo swirls around the sky. I fall backwards, then look over to see, amazingly, Cigarette Zombie stumbling with the rifle rocking on her small shoulder, broken glasses back but askew on a broken nose. She’s talking to herself and seems to be finishing a debate with someone from earlier in the night, probably with one of those Super Bowl fans that sometimes wandered over from a neighboring motel, The Whole Year Inn, a.k.a. The Hole You’re In (third to last in the phone book), a joint that was under attack daily instead of just on weekends.

  “...something about girls in football jerseys disgusts me...I mean, I’m all for subverting gender norms but…I just don’t buy that she actually likes football...maybe should have called them ‘The Stealers’ instead of…huh?

  He looks over her glasses then under them.

  “No, really, that’s what spell checker wants to do with the name Pittsburg Steelers every time you type it...”

  Then she flicks the cigarette to ignite the fake cardboard gas pump, sorta the climax to our show when it goes right. Our zombies might not be afraid of imaginary fire, but they’re certainly afraid of not being afraid of shit they’re supposed to.

  So Third Stage Zombie steps up, sighs, and accept his role as Inevitable Head Torch Zombie.

  The Bobby that remains can’t help but smile, and I wonder if he started that jersey argument when he was wearing his helmet. No one is sure which Bobby it is left standing or where their Army or Navy T-shirts have gone. These things don’t matter anymore. Never did.

  However, I do recognize the grin as likely belonging to Cloverfield, a.k.a. Bobby B, since this zombie apparently has the balls to bust out the forbidden Steelers number 22 tonight, black home jersey of cornerback William Gay and official NFL gear. I couldn’t tell he was wearing it down in the basement. Plus he’s lost a good foot of his freakish height on some busted shins.

  For the record, the jersey was a very passive-aggressive engagement present from his best friend years ago when they were still best friends, Bobby Z, who brought with it the unspoken dare that even the most rabid football fan might not have the guts to wear a “Gay” jersey in public. But whichever Bobby this is that’s smiling at me now, I think it’s telling that he waited until the end of the world to finally put on the uniform. Pussy.

  I reach out with my good hand to see if Cigarette Zombie will accept it. Once, she showed me her chapped, flaking fingers and told me about a problem that followed her all her life, not just since she’d been dead. She said that her knuckles started to crack and bleed in kindergarten, and that her mom made her wear oven mitts filled with Vaseline to school sometimes. Before the glasses, I shuddered. “It’s a good thing kids aren’t cruel or anything,” she had scoffed.

  I try to move slowly towards her, but I’m sure, to the untrained eye, it must seem like the desperate lurch of a monstrosity, arms out, fingers flexing as it growls, “Remember the mittens?” I ask her as she prepares to run, something terrible leaking and bubbling around her torso.

  “Where are you going? I know how you feel! Trying to build a house of cards, you must have crushed everything you loved!”

  “I wish,” she laughs, finally recognizing me after all. Right before she falls. It’s the first time she has ever laughed, I swear. If I told you she did before this, I was lying.

  The Last Bobby is carrying the radio. It still holds a charge. There’s nothing but static popping the speakers, and I think of Sour Towel Zombie overanalyzing his thirteenth favorite zombie movie, The Beyond. In that film, it was a static from some giant red radio that first called the ants. Then the monsters. Then us.

  “Brains!” someone screams in the distance.

  “Wrong movie, cocksucker!” The Last Bobby screams back.

  There’s no denying that we all miss the bastard. We’re sounding just like him. Yeah, we’ll miss him right up until he stands back up.

  One time when I was a boy, I brought a record to Show And Tell, an authentic vinyl 45 I got from my aunt, and I played Sweet’s song “Fox on the Run” in its entirety for a roomful of 3rd graders. And watching their eyes when the guitars kicked in made this the single most triumphant moment of my life. Then the next kid unveiled a toy shark based on the movie Jaws where you stacked body parts in its rubber-band-hinged lower jaw and gently tried to pull them off until it snapped up and bit your hand. As we gathered around to play with it, they’d already forgotten about my song. And so did I. But later, I knew exactly why they ignored me that day.

  It was because they wanted to be scared, not sing. That’s why we always keep the radio between stations. I turn up the static as loud as it goes, our dog whistle to call everyone together for the last scene.

  THE SUN IS COMING UP, and The Executioner And The Four Hats is being acted out by whoever’s left. We are seven zombies now, unrecognizable from each other in voice and appearance, with no discerning characteristics, except maybe for the cowboy hat that’s still being passed around when someone falls.

  We used to slather on a bit of latex paint, mostly greens and blues, finally settled on purple. But at some point, we switched over to oil-based, then to spray paint, which, in the paint world, is painful and pretty much means “forever.” But why not?

  Forever just got a lot fucking shorter, and it smells delicious. That's one part of our brain we never lost. Part of our nose, I mean. Who cares.

  And now there’s five of us. Nope, back to six. Whoops, back to five. Nope, back to six…

  I think it’s Cop Zombie who is now getting his dome unce
remoniously bashed into Brunswick stew when he turns his back on us one too many times. “Friendly fire,” they call this. We’re gonna have to change his name to Fratricide Zombie, if and when he reassembles the purple puzzle that is his skull. Cop Zombies get it worst every time.

  Speaking of puzzles, we got the perfect number now, so I set it up as accurately as I can remember. I drag a corpse in the closet, another corpse onto the floor in front of that one, and two more corpses into kitchen chairs to be securely strapped, hair affectionately ruffled if they got any left.

  I hold the rifle to its stone-cold forehead and whisper that it has ten seconds to live unless it can tell me whether it’s alive or not. Someone behind me protests that we never found a way to make this game actually work. So I explain, mostly to myself, that the solution is written on our faces. I tap the words I’ve scrawled in blood, soot, and magic marker above the eyes of these three bodies to illustrate my point:

  “Zombie,” “Not Zombie,” and “Propeller.”

  But with everyone dead, there’s no answer to my question, of course. This has happened before, and we’ve always played through it. The dead can talk about movies, sign waivers, do their taxes, take smoke breaks, even need glasses to glare over and under sometimes. But you might have to move their hands for them, you know?

  See that? Watch me do it right now. Oh, yeah, remember before how I said we were all unrecognizable? That’s true. Except for the smell.

  I make Sour Towel Zombie wave goodbye to the body hog-tied in front of him, then I click the gun against his ear. He doesn’t blink. I study his fingers. Dry as bone. That’s because they are bone. I remember how excited he was when this all started happening. He said that being dead was a blessing because it meant no more oil on his fingers, which, in turn meant fewer fingerprints on his precious DVD collection. He was also excited that this calamity occurred before Blu-Rays really took off, negating a need to replace all his movies a third time. But he still had plenty of videotapes waiting to be upgraded when his heart first stopped, and he mercifully let me and Cigarette Zombie add them to our stacks.