Reanimated Readz (5 page)

They still clamor inside, looking to one another. I shrug and turn toward the next cage over. Chip Wailing watches me warily, Garrett Evans picks his nose, and Angela Chase drums her fingers on the steel bars.

“Took you long enough,” she says, voice as grim as mine.

“Yeah, where were you for so long?” asks Garrett Evans, studying his booger.

“Eating Creed’s brain.” I burp, opening the cage door. They eye it, and me, cautiously.

“Get out. Come on, let’s go,” I urge, yanking Angela out by the arm.

“Hey,” she shrieks, yanking it back violently. I let her.

“What gives, dude?” asks Chip, hovering protectively around Angela.

“The experiment’s over,” I say, eyeing the Thugs’ cage. They sense something is up, something is changing, and watch me warily.

My former cage mates all speak at once:

“What experiment?”

“The hell?”

“Experiment?”

“We’re not zombies,” I say, fingering the key in my hand, the one I know fits into the lock that keeps the Thugs in—and me out. “We never were. That’s what Creed took me away to tell me. That’s what we’ve been doing here, for two weeks—proving to the government that real kids will kill for brains if you just tell them they’re zombies and keep them hungry for long enough.”

“But the drugs,” Angela says. “The infestation. We saw—”

“Look!” I shout, cutting her off. Her eyes, already bleak, look positively wounded. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have a lot of time. If you don’t believe me, head out those doors, turn to the left and replay the video in the conference room. You’ll see all you need to know, and then some.”

Chip looks at me, at the other two, then splits, sneakers squeaking as he runs out the warehouse doors and down the long, green hallway. Garrett looks uncertainly at Angela, who still looks at me. Then he follows Chip.

I can hear their shoes as they slap on the green tile that leads to the conference room, the door swinging open, then I hear Chip going, “Gross,” probably as he spies Creed’s body on the floor.

“Go,” I say, sliding the key into the Thugs cage. “Get out of here, before it’s too late.”

“W-w-what about you?” she asks, watching me as I pause with the key still in the lock.

“I’ve acted like a zombie for two weeks, Angela. I’ve killed, I dunno, six, seven people? I’m basically a cannibal now. I can’t just walk outside and go back home and start playing Xbox again, you know? I can’t just tell my story to reporters and write a tell-all book and make a million. I’m a murderer, a killer. I—”

“But it wasn’t your fault,” she says. “They tricked us, right? So, so, I mean….”

Then her voice trails off as it hits her, all of it, all of a sudden. The brains, the bodies, the people we called “Fugs” just to make it easier to kill them. What we’ve done, how we’ve done it, who we’ve done it to. how much we’ve…enjoyed…it.

As her face crumples, as she drops to her knees, I slip inside the Thugs’ cage, lock it from the inside and toss the keys back through the door.

“No!” she cries, but her heart’s not in it. She falls on her backside, crawling away and watching as the Thugs circle me closely.

They sniff, and paw, and tear, my shirt falling to the floor, the first drops of blood springing to my skin. There is no time for goodbyes, no long speeches. They are on me in seconds, tearing, gnawing, and whatever drugs made my heart beat more slowly are long, long gone.

I feel every tear, every claw, every tooth, and I’m smiling, even as the sound of my own skull cracking fills my ears.

And I wonder, as they take me down, what it will feel like if I live again. If I’ll remember any of this, or just stare through the bars of the cage, wondering where I am.

And I can’t tell which I’d prefer….

The Zombie Detective Agency

A Reanimated Readz Story

By

Rusty Fischer

I finger the three hundred-dollar bills and look across my desk at Brock Thornton. “You’re paying me in full? In advance?”

Brock looks like his name sounds: tall, dark, and lazy. To prove it, he’s just handed me three hundred dollars to stalk his girlfriend.

“My dad says it’s good to motivate your employees.”

Brock’s dad being Brock Thornton Senior, he of the Thornton Auto Mall out on Route 6. And the Thornton Auto Store off Highway 16. And the Thornton Auto…well, you get the picture.

Brock’s eyes are so dull he doesn’t even realize he’s just insulted me. Then again, it’s hard to insult a non-human. At least, according to folks like Brock. And in a little town like Beaver Falls, North Carolina, there are a lot of people like Brock.

He looks around my office, which is small and cramped but clean and professional. It’s got the desk, the three chairs—two on his side, one on mine—and my (still drying) certificate of graduation from the Allied Security School on the wall. Above the certificate is my freshly printed business license for the Private EyeZ Detective Agency. In case you’re wondering, the giant, all-caps “Z” stands for Zombie.

He checks out the magazines on the coffee table—
The Reanimated Reader
, if you must know—the fake plant on the window-unit air conditioner, the dusty fedora on the coat rack by the door, then circles back to me. “This what you do since they kicked you out of school?”

“What else
can
I do?” I ask him.

Brock shrugs. He’s not big on answering questions. “I dunno. I see your zombie buddy Jim Phillips bagging groceries at Greenbriar’s Grocers on Main. That seems pretty steady.”

“Did you say anything to him?” I ask.

His face wrinkles like a centipede just tickled his you-know-what. “What for?”

“Because he was the best wide receiver you ever had, Brock, remember?”

“So?”

“Because you drove to school together for two years straight. Because he was your friend.”

Brock runs a big hand through his feathery blond hair. “Look, just because the law says I have to let zombies bag my groceries doesn’t mean I have to be nice to them while they’re doing it, okay? No matter how many touchdowns they scored for the Beaver Falls Bearcats.”

I nod; he’s right. It doesn’t.

“So why are you being nice to me, then?”

“Am I?” He snorts.

I shrug. “Not really.”

He stands, wiping his hands off as if just sitting in my chair makes him feel dirty. “So, you clear on what I need?”

I look down at my desk blotter to the notes I didn’t take. “Round-the-clock surveillance of Brandy Hutchins for the next three days, right?”

He smiles as if I deserve a gold star or something. There’s a letterman’s jacket under the fedora on the coat rack. He looks at it, smiles wistfully, and brushes a bruised knuckle against the worn white leather of the nearest sleeve.

“Too bad you don’t exist anymore, bro,” he says in a way that, I suppose, he thinks sounds friendly. “You were the best center a quarterback could wish for.”

He looks back at me, over his shoulder, frowning. As if it’s my fault I wound up this way. As if his family hadn’t had the only zombie-proof shelter in Catchacan County, he might’ve ended up this way, too.

I follow him to the door, forcing myself not to slam it on him as he walks out. Scratch that.
Saunters
out.

“Brock?” I ask, just to make him stop, mid-stride.

He does then turns. “Yeah?”

“Do you really think Brand’s cheating on you?”

He smirks. “I doubt it, but…I still want to know what she’s up to when I’m not around.”

“Why?”

Then he gives that Brock Thornton smile. “Because I can.”

I wait until he’s down the hall, down the stairs, and starting his car to shut my door behind me and lock it tight. It’s early evening now, too early for Brandy to be home but not too early for me to take a spin by where she works and see what I can see while I can see it.

The Bagel Barn is across town, but I walk anyway because believe it or not, a driving zombie draws a lot more attention than one just walking down the street. True story.

It’s a pleasant evening, nearly dusk, and I have three hundred-dollar bills in my wallet. I smile, wishing I could still eat human food because whenever I got a wad of cash in my Before Life, the first thing I would always do was buy something to eat.

The only thing I can hold down now is soda, the sugarier the better, but I want to keep my hands free since I’m on the job. So I pass by the convenience stores and smoothie shops and pizza parlors and just keep strolling.

People look at me funny. But then, they always do. At last count, there were one hundred twenty-nine zombies—legally we’re referred to as “Reanimated Persons,” but let’s be real—in Beaver Falls. So it’s not like I’m so unique that people are running away screaming, but it’s still enough of a novelty that folks are mostly like, “Hmmm, there’s one of
those
guys again.”

Plus, lots of people when they’re seeing me, they’re seeing the zombie who ate their mom, their dad, their little sister or girlfriend or cousin or neighbor, so I’m not exactly Mr. Popular. Not that I did any of those things, mind you, but to them, a zombie is a zombie. I can’t say I blame them. I’m no fan of the zombies who ate my family, either.

They’re not allowed to touch me, thanks to the Reanimated Persons Safety Act of 2019, but that doesn’t stop them from assassinating the hell out of me with their eyeballs, that’s for sure. I find the Bagel Barn tucked in between the Smoothie Shop and the Yogurt Shack and go inside.

“Randall?” Brandy asks right away, giving my long-dead, atrophied heart a little flutter. Then she kills it by saying, “But, wait…I didn’t think zombies ate bagels.” Then she flutters it again, two times maybe, by blushing all over. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. Did I offend you? I offended you, didn’t I? I used the Z-word, that’s why. I knew it the minute it flew out of my big, fat mouth—”

“Brandy, really, it’s fine. I’m used to it. I know you didn’t mean anything by it and, actually, you’re right. We can’t eat bagels. But can I get a raspberry Slushee?”

She looks at the machine, then back at me. Brandy has thick, black hair, and cherub-y cheeks with dimples and olive skin and a figure that even makes her red and black polyester Bagel Barn uniform look like something Victoria’s Secret would put on their catalog cover every year.

“You sure?”

She’s so earnest, I have to chuckle. “Yeah, trust me, it’s fine. The only thing that might happen is a permanent brain freeze….”

It’s a little thing I do, with the brain jokes. Most people get them, but most people aren’t Brandy Hutchins. She ignores me and pours the bright blue Slushee to the brim. I thank her and pay with a twenty, not one of her boyfriend’s hundred-dollar bills. Because, you know, that would just be too ironic. And, actually, a little bit cruel.

She hands me the change and I tip her five bucks, just because—this week anyway—I can. She smiles sweetly and tries pulling it out of the plastic fish barrel next to the cash register with a handwritten “Tips” sign. “No, Randall, honestly…that’s too much.”

I go to still her hand but I know what she’ll do when my ice-cold flesh touches hers, so I don’t. Instead I just back away and say, “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t mean it, Brandy.”

She looks at it a little greedily. “Okay then.” But she pockets it instead of returning it to the otherwise empty tip jar. I smile and sit at a tall two-top table near the metal bins full of bagels.

They smell a little yeasty, which can be overpowering to my zombie sense of smell, but I keep my head buried in the big blue Slushee and hope for the best. Brandy saunters out from behind the counter, a moist rag in hand, and wipes the table next to me just for something to do.

“How’s school?” I ask her, not as a private detective but just because I’m curious. It’s been three months since Local Order 90671, which precluded all Reanimated Persons from attending public school. I never thought I’d miss slamming lockers and number two pencils and rubber chicken cutlets under neon yellow gravy, but…I do.

“School’s school,” she says, inching her ripe derriere onto the barstool across from me and picking at the threads of the rag with bitten-down nails. “I finally made the cheerleading squad.”

“Awesome,” I say, with genuine enthusiasm.

Then she frowns. “Yeah, well, they were pretty much begging for warm bodies once the top seven cheerleaders got infected last year. I mean, it was pretty hard
not
to make the team after that.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” I say, the sweet Slushee causing my dry mouth to tingle.

“How are you holding up?” she asks, avoiding my eyes.

I wonder, in that moment, if she knows I had a thing for her all along, or if she just isn’t very comfortable sitting knee-to-knee with a zombie.

“I’m fine,” I say, and she sighs.

“Is it fun working here?” I ask, hoping for a few clues. It may seem unorthodox to talk to the subject of an open investigation, but we in the biz call it “hiding in plain sight.”