Get Zombie: 8-Book Set (3 page)

The other Gotho’s and Depresso’s cheered.

As Barbara and I waved at them, I suggested that we
vamoose before mall security arrived.

She agreed.

Nine.

She said
that it was now time to see if I could handle
being her sidekick. After the typical interview process, which
involved a plethora of personal questions, she asked me to stand up.
Due to the intense fear accompanied with encountering a zombie, she
wanted to test if I could handle the stress of an attack.

She asked me to turn around. She didn’t want me
looking at her.

After about thirty minutes of just standing and staring
at an Edward Scissorhands calendar on a wall, she asked me to hold
out my arms and to fall back, on her cue. I assumed that this was a
kind of trust exercise and, on her word, fell back.

I hit the floor, hard.

Tears swelled up in my eyes. She was on the couch,
reading a
Victoria’s Secret
catalogue and doing yoga. Without apologizing, she said that I was a
fool, and explained that I should be laughing instead of crying –
that I was to embrace the pain. I tried to laugh as I cried, but I
sounded retarded and threw my hands over my mouth.

If the time came, I may have to take her life if ever
she were turned into a member of the living dead. She needed me to be
strong and cooperative.

In a surprising move, she got down on the floor and
cradled me in her arms as I wept.

Barbara said that she had fallen in love with me and
trusted me with her life – that she would eat whatever I
cooked.

When it was her turn to fall back into my arms, I let
her fall.

She looked up, crying, and said that I was a genius. She
would have no problem killing me if ever I were a zombie.

Barbara sounded a tad angry.

I was a man that day.

Ten.

We loaded
Barbara’s SUV with various supplies: 2
boxes of wooden stakes, 5 boxes of metal stakes, 1 gold-painted box
of gold-painted stakes, cans of spaghetti, baby food, SPAM, extra
clothing, an inflatable tent, chains, rope, 100 rolls of thick
fishing line, hooks of assorted sizes, swords, a chainsaw, a shotgun,
unsharpened poles, sharpened poles, paint, Halloween makeup, a cape,
and candy.

Once on the road, I asked her where we were going. She
didn’t answer for a long time. Thinking of this as another one
of her “tests,” I did not press the question.

Later, when we drove past the police station on
Beretania and drove up toward Tantalus, I asked again. She apologized
and said that she didn’t understand me the first time because I
mumble and that I should learn how to enunciate better.

I agreed. Mumbling had always been a problem of mine –
to this very day.

We
steered into the Hawaii Nature Center, a popular resort for hikers
and tourists. Many waved as we drove past. Barbara encouraged me to
wave back so as to not arouse suspicion. I asked why she wasn’t
waving back, and she complained that her hands were feverish. Later,
she said that she was lying to me and that she was just shy.

I
had been here many times to direct and act in various TV shows:
Twist, I Buried the Devil, and Sword Fighter: The Movie. I had missed
the place.

The gate said that the center closed at 6pm. It was
already 5:30. Barbara parked the SUV in a ditch, and we laced our
hiking boots and put on our backpacks. She taped a sign on the
windshield that read,
This vehicle is property
of the gas company. Please DO NOT tow or tamper with this vehicle in
any way or else you will be caught by the local Hawaiian mountain
police and be imprisoned forever. Love – The Gas Company.

I expressed my concern toward the letter’s
effectiveness. Barbara said she couldn’t understand what I was
saying and that I should enunciate clearly.

The center had closed. We couldn’t enter any of
the main hiking trails, so to avoid being seen by the center’s
staff, we hiked through the nearby woods, planning to make our way
around the center and its offices and thereby accessing the trails.

This took longer than expected.

To help us on our trek, Barbara picked up two long
sticks from off the mud and called them magic sticks, since they had
magic in them because it was nature’s way. I held my magical
hiking stick in my hands, and I’d be lying if I said that I
didn’t feel some kind of force go through me. Barbara smiled.

“
Do you feel it? Do you feel
it
?”

I nodded.

“
Yessm. An internal earthquake has just awoken my
aura!”

I kissed my magic stick, with tongue, and felt
wide-awake – like I could hike forever.

Seconds
later I began to feel sick. I was getting tired, falling asleep as I
walked. My legs were possessed with cramps, my hands were bumpy, my
back felt like my front, and I had head sweat.

I asked if we could stop for a few minutes so I could
use the bathroom. She agreed and proceeded to follow me behind a
tree. I inquired what she was doing. Barbara asked if she could watch
me defecate. I said no and that what she had just said greatly
disturbed me. Barbara brushed my cheek with the back of her hand and
whispered that we had to get over all fears if we were to be
successful on this hunt. I understood completely and agreed that she
could watch.

As I squatted under a looming tree, I asked her to
continuously shake a tree branch to help relax my bowels. What she
had said was brilliant – the bit about getting over our fears.
When I was done wiping myself clean with dry leaves, I asked Barbara
if I could then watch her use the bathroom.

She slapped me in the face with both hands and called me
a sick pervert. She commanded that I give her ten dollars for her
embarrassment. I apologized for my ignorance and gave her a twenty.
She walked off with it. I didn’t expect change.

After we had inflated the tent, we crawled under our
blankets and said nothing to each other for almost an hour. When she
said she had to leave to use the restroom, I hoped that she’d
ask me to watch her so I could get over my fear of watching someone
urinate.

She never asked.

Eleven.

Roughly 2,000 people
go missing in the United States
every day.

We had to keep moving to reach the hiking trails before
sun-up – before the center opened – so no one would see
us creeping around in the woods. It wasn’t long before Barbara
yelled out in joy and pointed down to a brown lump on a patch of wet
grass. I pointed my flashlight at it and stared.

“
Fecal matter?”

“
Yessm! This be not the dog’s or the
buffalo’s – or the child’s! Are you listening to
me?! This matter that is fecal belongs to the
dead
.
Are you even listening to me?”

“
Yessm.”

“
Hrmm. You are listening to me.”

She
put it in a plastic bag and ordered that I sniff its stuffing. I was
appalled, to say the least. She clarified that the hunter must not
sniff for danger of injuring their nostrils – that when she was
a sidekick she had to go through the exact same thing. It was a
learning experience. She promised.

Hugging myself, I shoved my face into the bag and
breathed in the stench. I told her that it was still very much fresh.
I was slightly disturbed by the fact that I didn’t throw up my
stomach’s contents. Barbara smiled, then sealed the bag and
labeled it
“Smiles”.

The sun rose at 7am.

When we reached one of the hiking trails many early-bird
hikers walked past us, smiling, which we returned in kind. I was so
nervous that they’d report us.

I was walking ahead of Barbara when she pulled on my
hair and said, “Shhhhh!”

She pointed up a hill, where the rising sun gave
silhouette to a line of pine trees and a lumbering figure.

Twelve.

Barbara kissed
me on the cheek and whispered, “This
be zombie, O’child.” And then she kissed me on the hand
and said, “What thou shall see, thou shall learn.” And
then she kissed me on the belly and said, “Power.” I
wondered if she was going to kiss me on the mouth next, but she
didn’t.

She proceeded to creep up the hill, reaching into her
bag and pulling out a blanket. I did NOT follow. I stood my ground,
shaking, urinating a little, later pacing back and forth while biting
my nails and scratching my belly. Something told me NOT to go, NOT to
go up with her. I didn’t want to die. But what if she were in
need of help?
This is what I’m here for,
isn’t it? To help?

The hunched silhouette staggered…and paused,
sniffing the air.

Had it sensed Barbara drawing near?

My
face cringing, I pulled out a wooden stake and followed Barbara, who
was already tiptoeing behind the stranger. I began to worry. What if
this was just some poor, lost fool? Murder was frowned upon in this
country. I didn’t have the proper orifices to be in prison.

She
threw the blanket over the person.

He
YELLED out something to the effect of “Drawersss-blahhhrgezg230f!”
and tried desperately to get the blanket off. He speed walked into
trees and yet did not fall.

Barbara
whipped out a stake.

Before I could yell out in protest –
Barbara
jumped on this person’s back.

He was inarticulate in his screaming and his sentences
were madly fractured. He danced about in a circle with angry hops,
swaying Barbara here and there and everywhere – her legs
swinging past me with a thick WOOSH each time.

The man pulled the blanket off, and for the first time I
got a good look at him.

This “man” looked funny.

His face was missing – nothing but a giant mass of
hair. The man slipped and fell. His torso turned
completely
around.
His back was now literally his front.
Barbara was trying to drive the stake into his brain, but he wouldn’t
stop shaking his head and spitting in her face. Barbara yelled out in
frustration and punched the man in the chest a few times.

He pulled on her hair and she yanked
out
his arm. An amazing stream of gore flew out and would’ve soaked
her face hadn’t she ducked as quickly as she did. I was
startled by the man’s reaction – he did not scream out
from pain. He proceeded to tug on Barbara’s hair with the other
arm, which she also pulled off at the shoulder. Now both his arms
were shooting red in a loud SHHHHHHHHH – fountains that never
wanted to stop. I was paralyzed with weirdness.

My eyes were larger than usual – staring –
my hands were clamps and my thighs were having seizures.

Then I did the unthinkable. As if possessed by some kind
of heroic, idiot-ghost, I screeched a battle cry,
“Aiiiiiiiiiiyaaaaaa!” and ran toward them with my stake
held high in both hands.

They both looked up at me in horror as I jumped into the
air and landed on the zombie’s chest – my stake in its
right eye.

As I pulled it out, Barbara slapped her hands over my
facial holes to protect them from the strong, warm splatter of gore.

I
stood up for some reason and said something like, “He has
disturbed my intestines! Let us not forget to form a team,
female-woman, and put threatening bruises onto these zombies with the
vicious action in our karate feet.”

And then I fainted.

Somewhere, a baby cried.

Thirteen.

I awoke to
Barbara’s shining face. I asked her a
very important question, “Am I losing the wisdom of my
thoughts?” She patted my head and fed me a cracker and said,
“Thoughts accompanied by sounds are fetal compositions. Give
birth.”

“
That's true.”

I smiled and hugged her.

She picked me up and carried me on her shoulder and then
stood me in front of the zombie, which was bound to a tree by ropes.
Apparently, I hadn’t killed it to death.

Barbara wanted me to examine the beast – to
analyze its movements and scrutinize its rabid odors.

The thing was slow.

I told Barbara that I was angry at the zombie for almost
getting her killed and asked if I could yell at it. Barbara said,
“Zombies are like babies. You have to spank them with your
mouth.”

I nodded and yelled at the beast with, “You’re
a louse!”

That helped calm me down a tad.

The zombie’s extreme facial hair made me want to
be sick. Did it have no eyes? No nose? No eating hole? Hrmm…but
it must!

I asked Barbara if I could cut its hairs, but she said
no, for I would not be satisfied by what I might find. Of course this
only fired my intrigue further.

That night, as Barbara snored in her tent, I crept out
with a pair of tiny barber scissors and sneaked toward the zombie.
The moon reflected against the silver scissors. The creature saw me
(I think), but didn’t seem to mind.