Zombies: The Recent Dead (58 page)

Coco put her hand to her mouth as if she were about to chew on what was left of her nails, then thought better of it and folded her hands tightly in her plaid-skirted lap. She looked out at the sunny fall day. The leaves of the tree outside my window looked like they were on fire. I didn’t know what kind of tree it was. I wondered why Coco was here and not at some mall with her friends or something.

She took some crumpled bills out of her sweatshirt pocket and put them on the table.

“That’s all I have,” she said. “But I’ll get more.”

“And you want me to do what exactly?”

“Oh. Uh. Sorry.” She hesitated. “Do you believe in zombies?” she said, finally.

Fuck.

Sorry but I am not going to pretend to you that I am normal. I am not normal in any way. Yes I shop at Trader Joe’s and watch CNN, get my hair cut on a regular basis, shower, and use deodorant. I wear my dark hair scraped back in a tight bun like I did on the force, and dress in flat-front black trousers and white-stretch button down shirts from the Limited and black heels or flats or boots from Macy’s and lightweight trench coats. But that’s the only normal stuff.

First of all I am a female P.I. Second of all I live in a silver Airstream trailer in my ex-husband’s backyard in Mar Vista. I walk or bike everywhere because I’m afraid that even driving a little will make more holes in the ozone. I wear black Converse and keep my heels in my backpack. I smoke cigarettes even though I know they are bad for me but I take vitamins and won’t eat anything with hydrogenated oils or wash my hair with shampoo that has sodium laurel sulfate because I heard it is a carcinogen. I don’t know why I really care; it must be left over from being a mom and the thing that happened—although I don’t believe that was really the cause.

I have a dog named David who is like my son. When spell check tells me to write “that” instead of “who” while referring to my dog I get angry. He is a mutt and he likes to roam the neighborhood and bring back presents. Sometimes he brings me pigeons and I thank him but then I scold him. Once on Easter he came to the door of the trailer holding a fully cooked ham proudly in his jaws. I didn’t scold him for that although some nice family must have had a gaping hole in their dinner menu. David likes me to hold him like a baby with his round tummy sticking out and his front paws draped over my arm like little hands. Sometimes I forget that he is a dog.

I had a real son once. His name was Max. Now he’s gone but I don’t want to talk about it. I was a cop and I got kicked off the force after what happened. I had what they call a breakdown and Max’s dad who is also a cop divorced me and married a kickboxing instructor named Kimmy. When I got out of the hospital they let me live in the trailer in the backyard of what used to be my home. I can see my old house through the trailer window. It is a long, low structure painted avocado green. My ex and I were always planning on repainting it but we never got around to that. Then Kimmy came and picked the green. It looks nasty, even monstrous in certain lights. I planted the roses in the garden but I’ve stopped trying to take care of them. Once Kimmy came out while I was watering and weeding. I said, “Sorry,” and scuttled back into my trailer. The roses remind me.

At night I stay up watching the windows of my old bedroom until the lights go out.

I went into this work because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought it would help me forget to get up every day and go to my little office on Washington. It helps me forget that I was ever Max’s mom but it makes me remember the hospital and the doctor’s face, as I sit here waiting for someone who really needs me to come in.

I mostly just follow cheating husbands and wives. Once I followed a woman who was engaged to two men at the same time. The guy who hired me was so upset he started crying in my office. Then he wanted me to dress up like her and fuck him. That was the most eventful case I’d handled so far. But the thing that happened with Max made me open to the possibility of stuff that wasn’t so easy to understand.

Coco told me that her father had been behaving very strangely. She’d seen him eating flesh in big, gross, salivating bites and it didn’t look like cow, pig, goat, lamb, chicken, or turkey. Let’s just say that. And he never spoke anymore. After his stroke he shambled around the house with these heavy steps just staring at the floor. He grumbled and grimaced and that was all. His skin was a weird shade of greenish white and once when he was asleep she’d felt for a pulse and there wasn’t one there. He smelled bad, too.

I said, “Sorry but I have to ask you something. What makes you think he’s one of the undead though? I mean, how do you think this could have happened?”

Coco’s father was a car salesman in Van Nuys. He’d done pretty well for himself selling SUVs until people stopped being able to afford gas at almost five dollars a gallon. The stress was too much for him. While waiting for the electric car to return he’d had a stroke and almost died. Well, according to Coco there was no “almost” involved.

“When he came back from the hospital,” Coco said. “He just wasn’t the same.”

“What was he like before?” I asked.

“Well, kind of like now. Except I recognized the meat he ate and he had better skin tone and a pulse. And . . . sorry, but . . . he didn’t smell so bad.”

I tried not to say, “Ouch. Harsh.” I was trying to behave with some decorum.

“You sound very angry at your father,” I said, recalling a psych class I’d taken in junior college.

“Sorry. My father is all right. Well, he was. Before he turned into a monster. I mean, he’s a Republican. He voted for George W. And he’s against women’s right to choose. He still supports the war. But he’d never lay a hand on me, you know. But I’m worried about what he’s doing to other people. Where he like, gets his dinner and that kind of thing.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” I asked.”

“Um, I think you know why. Sorry . . .”

“So you came to me.”

“Well,” she said, “Not everyone’s kid gets stolen by zombies. I mean, I saw it on YouTube.”

Okay, sorry it’s true. The thing I’m known for is about Max and the zombies. I wasn’t really interviewed by the local news. I made a video for YouTube and posted it talking about what happened. That’s how Coco had found me. Not the guy whose fiancée was cheating on him; he got my name out of the phone book.

See, people think my kid got sick and died but I know better. No one wants to talk about it because they’re afraid everyone will think they are crazy. Or maybe because they’re afraid of even worse consequences.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked Coco.

“Would you please pretend you’re a customer and check him out?” she asked. “They have really good deals on Escalades now,” she added.

“I ride a bike.”

I borrowed Daniel’s car and went to the car dealership where Coco’s dad worked. They hired him back part time after the stroke. It was night and the cars glowed surreally in the fluorescent lights. The air smelled obscenely of flowers and motor oil.

Mr. Hart lumbered out toward me, tucking his shirt into his pants. He had a large belly and stiff legs and arms. His skin did have an unhealthy sheen to it.

“How can I help you, young lady?” he groaned. A foul, sulfur smell emitted itself from his body. “We have some great deals on SUVs tonight. What are you driving?”

“A bike,” I said.

He looked at me dully. “Thinking of upgrading then?”

“You don’t sell any electric cars?” I asked.

“No. Why? You do a lot of driving?”

“Not so much. I’m concerned about the environment.”

“Global warming? Sweetheart, that’s a myth they created to scare you, believe me. No such thing. God knows what He’s doing.”

I smoothed back my hair. It was unnaturally hot for an October evening. There was something hellish about that kind of heat this time of year. I thought of the ice floes melting at the North pole and the polar bears dying. I was sweating uncomfortably and I was afraid I might be staining my white blouse. I used deodorant but I had stopped wearing antiperspirant because of the link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s. Not that I cared. Alzheimer’s might actually be all right. You stagger around in a state of detachment and forgetting.

There are certain things I can’t forget, no matter how hard I try. No matter how many photographs I hide or how much zombie research I do. They pop into my mind when I least expect them.

Max used to ask me, “Mommy, when is the Earth going to explode? When is the sun going to burn us up?” Once he said, “Mommy will you hold me from the time the Earth was made until it ends?”

“Yes, honey,” I said. “I will hold you forever.”

He curled up into my arms, his delicately boned, dusty brown feet tucked up on my lap. His eyes were big and brown with eyelashes that all the nurses in the hospital said they wanted.

“It’s not fair,” they cooed.

Of course, it was more than fair. The other stuff was what wasn’t fair.

“How about a Prius?” I asked Mr. Hart.

“How about a Hummer? Owned by a little old lady from Pasadena. Almost no mileage.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Sorry,” I said. And left.

There is a proliferation of zombies around lately, let me tell you.

My ex Daniel’s girlfriend Kimmy is not behaving at all normally, even for a stressed out, middle-aged, hyperactive kickboxing instructor dame. She drones on and on about herself and is unable to ask anyone questions about how they are doing. She wears the same rapacious grin frozen on her face at all times, even when she is angry. She talks loudly and proudly at all social gatherings about how she had tumors in her uterus and can no longer have any more children. (I know Daniel finds this perversely comforting; no chance of any more children means no chance of any more tragedies for him). She never lets anyone see her eat, not even Daniel. (He told me this; I think even he is worried). While she cooks his dinner she tells him she caught a bite at the gym and that she doesn’t digest food well after four
pm
. She walks with jerky movements and snaps her gum spastically and calls everyone “dude.” Do you see?

In addition there is that presidential candidate and his running mate. I believe they have been bitten. Look at their glassy eyes. Listen to their hollow voices—hers more shrill but hollow still. Read about their policies to destroy nature and take away women’s rights, gay rights. I can just imagine them hunting people out of helicopters and gnawing on someone’s thighbone with gristle between their teeth.

I remember that doctor at the hospital where Max was. He strolled out into the waiting room and tried to take my hand but I wouldn’t let him touch me. His skin was greenish white under the fluorescence and his legs and arms were stiff.

When I saw him I knew. I thought it was going to be like on TV where they say, “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t want to hear those words from him. So I said them first.

“I’m sorry!” I screamed. I fell to my knees. “I’m so so sorry.”

Zombies are reanimated corpses. I looked it up online. It said that if there is an invasion find a shopping mall or grocery store and barricade yourself inside. Then you will have plenty of supplies until you can come up with a plan.

I called Coco.

“Yes, I think you’re right.”

“What?”

“He seems to be what you say he is.”

“Thanks for . . . Sorry . . . Um. What should we do about it?”

“Come meet me,” I said. “But try not to say ‘sorry’ so much.”

“Sorry. I mean . . . ”

“It’s okay. I do it too. You’re very polite. Most people in L.A. don’t say ‘thank you’ so much either.”

“Oh. Sorry. We’re from Florida.”

I should be the one saying “sorry.”

Okay, so I’m not a legitimate P.I. My ex, Daniel, rented this office for me. It’s on Washington next to a store that sells knives and other exotic weaponry. The rent was cheap. Daniel thought it might help me after what happened with Max. He thought it would be good for me to have some place to go to every day, something to get dressed for. Kind of like playing office when you’re a kid. Okay, so I hadn’t really had any clients except for Coco, but hell, at least I had her. The guy with the cheating fiancée—I made him up. But not Coco. Not the zombie father. I would never lie to you about zombies.

Coco came in wearing a pair of skinny jeans, black-and-white checked Van’s slip-on sneakers and the same oversized sweatshirt with the sleeves pulled down over her hands. She looked like a typical teenager except that her face had a very serious expression. She kept the sleeves of her sweatshirt bunched in her hand while she gnawed on her fingers. She wasn’t even pretending that she didn’t bite her nails this time.

“Thank you for looking into this.”

“You’re welcome.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked me. “What did you do before?”

“You can’t panic,” I said. “But at the same time you must be vigilant not to get bitten.”

She nodded. “He hasn’t tried that.”

“What precautionary actions are you taking?” I asked her.

“I have a secret hideaway stashed with water and food supplies,” she told me.

“That’s good.”

“And I sleep with my door locked.”

“Good.”

Then she said, “Can I ask you something?”

I knew what was coming.

“Would you write on my arm?” She shoved up her sweatshirt sleeve and stuck out her bare forearm. There were raised white scars running horizontally just above her wrists.

I was wrong. I hadn’t expected that question nor had I expected the scars. It took me a moment to talk. “What do you mean? I asked.

“With a Sharpie. I think it will help me to be brave. If you write a message.”

I had no idea what to write but I took the Sharpie she handed me and opened it. It smelled like chemicals. It smelled like back-to-school and summer sports camp when I had to write Max’s name on his baseball hat and backpack and lunch box. A bunch of lunchboxes were recalled because of lead content. I wondered what other dangerous substances lurked in products for children. There were carcinogens in things that seemed perfectly innocuous, like bubble bath and hot dogs.