Zombie Attack! Rise of the Horde (16 page)

That's the “patient zero” theory any way.

Most people believe that it spread first among the homeless
population in California. So many transients flock here to escape bad winter
weather and they are virtually unprotected out on the streets; forgotten and
abandoned. The city of Los Angeles had a 'no questions asked' bus-out program to
ship homeless people from skid row to the Las Vegas Strip on a one way ticket.
It wasn't really legal but it wasn't quite illegal either. With the economy
taking a crash, there were too many needy people who actually wanted help and
not enough shelters. No one on the City council thought they would be shipping
the zombie virus to a tourist destination. It hit Vegas after it hit
California, then spread like wildfire all over the Midwest and eventually the
East Coast.

It's funny,
I thought.
In every major movie the
end of the world always starts in New York City. But in reality it all began on
the West Coast, in California.
Seems kinda ironic.

People don't talk about it much but the truth is, the virus
went haywire south of the border even before it hit Vegas. Migrant workers
carried it with them back to their homes in Mexico. Once it got in, it was
impossible to stop. It spread down to Mexico City almost overnight, then out to
the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. People in Florida could see the black
smoke out over the sea from fires burning in the lost island of Cuba long
before Vegas was lost.

One of the last acts of Congress was to place travel
restrictions on Europe, stopping foreigners from coming in and banning visits
to or from Mexico, along with a halt on all imported products. The fact that
they thought this would stop it, after years of poor border enforcement, only
underscored just how screwed up our political system was in the end. By then it
was too late. It spread up into Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in less than a
month. After that, well, we just don't know what happened. No one does. The
whole world went off line.

The tape ran out with the final licks of
Dyer's Eve,
the frenetic, unrelenting drum track chasing the lightning fast thrash guitar
to the end, like a galloping horse. I reached up and shut off the radio before
the cassette could flip again.

“You don't like Metallica?” Benji turned to me surprised.

“Who doesn't love
Metallica
?” I answered. “I just
thought we could use a break is all. We've played it straight through now
twice.”

“I used to play them nonstop before
Ever Rest
came
out.” Benji said it like a confession. “I forgot how good they are, how much I
love them.”

“You a big fan of Jax?” I asked.

“The biggest,” he said.

“So did you buy the album the minute it came out on iTunes,
or just download it from the Pirate Bay?”

“When that first album came out, I was like six,” Benji
said. “I was barely getting over
The Wiggles,
you know? I got into metal
a little over a year ago. Listened to everything I could get my hands on. A lot
of it on Youtube at first. I didn't want to pay for stuff I didn't like.”

“Piracy never occurred to you?” I said. “You know, test
drive it and if you like it buy it later?”

“I didn't trust it,” he said. “You never know what you're
really getting when you download a torrent. One time my friend Craig
accidentally got some real nasty stuff.”

“You mean like a virus?”

“He got one of those,” Benji said. “Eventually. Wiped out
his whole hard drive. I'm talking about illegal stuff, the kind of stuff that
would get you sent away, before Z-day.”

“Ah,” I said, not wanting to push.

“Really gross stuff with kids.”

“Got it,” I said, trying hard to change the subject. Even
after everything I'd seen the thought of coming across some horrible image from
the dark side of the deep web just made me super uncomfortable. There were
plenty of sick people in the world before Z-Day. They just weren't as easy to
spot is all.

“He wasn't even looking for it,” Benji said. “That's the worst
part. It was hidden in a download labeled as music. After I heard that, I lost
all interest in downloading.”

“So what kinds of bands did you get into?”

“At first it was like
Van Halen
and
Motley Crue
.
I dabbled in
Alice in Chains
for a bit.”

“They are good,” I agreed. “You gotta be in the right mood.
Like
Soundgarden
or
Rage Against the Machine
.”

“I tried harder and harder music, like
Pantera
and
Slayer
and
Helloween
,” Benji said. “I used to think they were the greatest
bands in the history of music.”

“Yeah? What happened?”

“All that went out the window when I heard
Ever Rest
,”
he said. “Jax did things with a guitar I didn't know were possible. It was like
hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time or Randi Rhodes. Amazing. I stopped
listening to anything else.”

“A real fan huh?” I said. “I remember that feeling.”

“Did you feel like that when you first heard Jackson?” Benji
pried.

“Well no,” I confessed. Benji looked disappointed. “Don't
get me wrong, I love his music. He's like Slash in a lot of ways, but more
moody and complex.”

“Exactly,” Benji said. “So who made you feel that way?”

“Rob Zombie,” I blurted out. Benji gave me a confused look.
“You never forget your first love. My brother tells me his was
Foreigner
.
Says he fell in love when he heard the song
Jukebox Hero
on 45.”

“What's a 45?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Some kind of recording they used to
use to listen to music, I think.”

“What's the story with your brother anyway?” Benji turned
his attention to me.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know,” Benji shrugged. “You talk about him all the
time but I still don't know a thing about him.”

“Where do I start? I don't want to bore you to death with it
all.”

“It's not like we have a whole lot else going on right now.”

“Except being in the middle of a zombie apocalypse fleeing
for our lives?”

“After the last few days I could use some boring
conversation,” Benji admitted. “I'm starting to feel like I will never see
normal again.”

“I understand. Well I told you he is a Corporal in the
Marines, or at least he was before Z-day. Now that all the armed forces are
working together, I don't really know how ranks work anymore.”

“Yeah you told me that,” Benji said, suddenly taking a big
interest in my family life. “Is that his real name? Moto?”

“No,” I laughed. “It's kind of a joke, but it isn't at the
same time. They used to have those commercials for Motorola cell phones on
television all the time, you know . . . the one where the guy’s voice goes all
high pitched? He says 'Hello Moto!'”

“I remember,” he said. “Did he have that phone or something?
Why did that stick?”

“You don't understand,” I told him. “His real last name is
Ishimoto.”

“I thought your last name was Macnamara?”

“It is,” I said. “My dad was stationed in Japan when he was
in the Marines. He was married to his first wife, Jane. I never met her.”

“Isn't that weird?” Benji asked. “Thinking that someone else
could have been your mom? I never really got that.”

“Stay focused,” I interjected. “This story gets a little
complicated and I don't like telling it all that much so I really don't want to
have to repeat it.”

“Sorry,” Benji said.

“It's fine,” I went on. “Now where was I?”

“Jane?”

“Right,” I said, picking up my train of thought where I had
left off. I hadn't told the story in a while so I was trying to remember the
best way to tell it without confusing him.

“So I guess Jane got tired of waiting for my dad to come
back from Japan. She sent him a letter saying she wanted a divorce and that she
had found another guy—like some traveling businessman, I swear I'm not
kidding, to run off with.”

“Wow,” he said. “Harsh.”

“They were high school sweethearts, the way my dad tells
it,” I continued. “He was devastated. He started drinking more than he should
have and running around bars in Tokyo. That's where he met Aiko, Moto's mom. I
never understood if she was a singer at the bar he went to or if it was just
karaoke.”

“So what happened?”

“I guess they started running around together. Dad said she
really helped him turn things around when he was in a bad place. I asked why he
didn't stay in touch with her after he was transferred to Germany. All he told
me was that she was busy with her singing career.”

Benji was completely absorbed in my family history.

“I wish I would have asked him more questions,” I said.
“It's too late now. There are so many things I would have liked to know. When
you're a kid they tell you what they want you to believe and you never think to
pick apart the answers, not until later you're older. By then it's old news.”

Benji nodded.

“My dad met my mom when he got out of the service. She was a
car service girl on roller skates at one of those retro hamburger stands. He
said he used to go there all the time. He'd brag about the amazing onion rings
and how thick they were, but now I think he just went there to check out the
girls in short skirts.”

“I don't get it,” Benji said.

“Don't worry,” I said. “You will soon enough. He said it was
love at first sight. They were married in under a year. He spent a good chunk
of his military money on a house and a new car. He used to joke he spent more
time in the car cruising than he did at home before he met my mom. She hung up
the skates when I came along.”

“Where is your mom?”

“She passed long before Z-day,” I said bitterly. “Cancer.”

“I'm sorry,” Benji sympathized. “I didn't know.”

“It's not your fault. It's not anybody’s fault really,
except maybe God. Funny thing is, my dad got all religious after that. Then one
day out of the blue there was a knock on the door and there was Moto. He'd
tracked my dad down and come to confront him for leaving his mom.”

“I thought you said he was transferred?”

“That's not what Aiko told him,” I explained. “She was
ashamed of getting into trouble, especially by an American. In her culture
there are strong prohibitions against being with foreigners so she tried to say
Moto's father was this older Japanese guy who owned a factory a couple of towns
over. The only problem was that Moto was clearly part white. The other kids
teased him mercilessly, growing up. He says they called him a half-breed and a
mongrel. He says he used to get beaten up every day walking home from school.
Still his mom wouldn't tell him the truth.”

“That's terrible,” Benji said.

“That's what I said,” I agreed. “Moto says it made him
stronger though. He says he finally confronted his mother one day and she told
him the truth—except the way she told it, my dad had taken advantage of
her and left her in trouble. Moto was mad. He wanted to track down his father
and challenge him to a fight. He wanted to restore his mother's honor.”

“Did they fight?”

“No,” I laughed. “Once my dad explained everything to him
there was no reason to scrap. Moto believed him right away. The truth has a
certain ring to it. I guess his mother had lied to him about a lot of things to
him growing up. My dad told him he could stay with us if he liked. He was like
fifteen years old at the time and didn't speak much English. We got him a tutor
and he did really well. He always was a fast learner. We adopted him on his
sixteenth birthday and made it official.”

“Were you happy to have a big brother?”

“I was a little weirded out at first,” I confessed. “My
friends kept giving me a hard time about him. He was kinda odd the first year,
but I guess that was just a cultural issue.”

“What turned things around?”

“He saved me from getting beaten up one day after school,” I
said.

“Like the way you saved me back on the base?”

“Pretty much,” I said nodding my head. “He didn't have any
friends in his own grade so he used to follow me around. He said he was
practicing his ninja stealth skills.”

“Cool,” Benji smiled.

“I didn't think so at the time,” I admitted. “Then I got
jumped by these older kids from middle school one day. He came out of nowhere.
It was like he literally appeared out of thin air. One minute I was getting
pummeled and the next he was there, fists moving so fast I couldn't keep track
of them. After that we got along much better.”

“So you started training with him?”

“Believe it or not, I didn't,” I confessed. “It wasn't until
later when I got older that I realized what a valuable resource he was. I guess
part of being a kid is taking things for granted.”

“Did everyone call him Moto or is that your nickname for
him?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I almost forgot the point of this story.
So his name was Yasho Ishimoto when he came to live with us. My dad had it
legally changed to Patrick Macnamara when we adopted him, but by then I had
gotten used to calling him Moto. He liked the nickname. He said it allowed him
to keep a part of his identity. He was proud to take his father's last name,
but he didn't want to lose who he was in doing it. My dad was so happy to have
him as a son. We hadn't been doing too well since my mom died. Moto changed all
that. Suddenly my dad was like a new man, not just to Moto but to me as well.”

“Why?” Benji asked.

“I think he saw a lot of my mom in me,” I said. “He never
said it, but that's my guess. He loved her so much that just looking at me hurt
him. When Moto came, it gave us a chance to be a family again. Instead of
focusing on what he lost in life, on Jane or Aiko or my mom, he could put all
his energies into us. Suddenly we were going camping and hunting and to big
sporting events. Moto gave him an excuse to do all that stuff, you know —
to show him how Americans lived, but I think my dad loved getting a second
chance.”