Zombies: More Recent Dead

Rocket Man Stephen Graham Jones

The dead aren’t exactly known for their baseball skills, but still, if you’re a player short some afternoon, just need a body to prop up out in left field—it all comes down to how bad you want to play, really. Or, in our case—where you can understand that by “our” I mean “my,” in that I promised off four of my dad’s cigarettes, one of my big brother’s magazines, and one sleepover lie—how bad you want to impress Amber Watson on the walk back from the community pool, her lifeguard eyes already focused on everything at once.

Last week, I’d actually smacked the ball so hard that Rory at shortstop called time, to show how the cover’d rolled half back, the red stitching popped.

“You scalped it,” he said, kind of curling his lip in awe.

I should mention I’m Indian, except everybody’s always doing that for me.

The plan that day we pulled a zombie in (it had used to be Michael T from over on Oak Circle, but you’re not supposed to call zombies by their people names), my plan was to hit that same ball—I’d been saving it—even harder, so that there’d just be a cork center twirling up over our diamond, trailing leather and thread. Amber Watson would track back from that cracking sound to me, still holding my follow-through like I was posing for a trophy. And then of course I’d look through the chain link, kind of nod to her that this was me, yeah, this was who I really am, she’s just never seen it, and she’d smile and look away, and things in the halls at school would be different between us then. More awkward. She might even start timing her walks to coincide with some guess at my spot in the batting order.

Anyway, it wasn’t like there was anything else I could ever possibly do that might have a chance of impressing her.

But first, of course, we needed that body to prop up out in left field. Which, I know you’re thinking “right, right field,” these are sixth graders, they never wait, they always step out, slap the ball early, and, I mean, maybe the kids from Chesterton or Memphis City do, I don’t know. But around here, we’ve been taught to wait, to time it out, to let that ball kind of hover in the pocket before we launch it into orbit. Kids from Chesterton? None of them are ever going pro. Not like us.

It’s why we fail the spelling test each Friday, why we blow the math quiz if we’re not sitting by somebody smart. You don’t need to know how to spell “homerun” to hit one. You don’t have to add up runners in your head, so long as you knock them all in. Easy as that.

As for Michael T, none of us had had much to do with him since he got bit, started playing for the other team. There were the lunges from behind the fence on the way to school, there was that shape kind of scuffling around when you took the trash out some nights, but that could have been any zombie. It didn’t have to be Michael T. And, pulling him in that day to just stand there, let the flies buzz in and out of his mouth—it’s not like that’s not what he did before he was dead. You only picked Michael T if he was the only one to pick, I’m saying. You wouldn’t think that either, him being a year older than us and all, but he’d always just been our size, too. Most kids like that, a grade up but not taller, they’d at least be fast, or be able to fling the ball home all the way from the center fence. Not Michael T. Michael T—the best way to explain him, I guess, it’s that his big brother used to pin him down to the ground at recess, drop a line of spit down almost to his face, the rest of us looking but not looking. Glad just not to be him.

That day, though, with Amber Watson approaching on my radar, barefoot the way she usually was, her shoes hooked over her shoulder like a rich lady’s purse, that day, it was either Michael T or nobody. Or, at first it was nobody, but then, just joking around, Theodore said he’d seen Michael T shuffling around down by the rocket park anyway.

“Michael T?” I asked.

“He still can’t catch,” Theodore said.

“That was all the way before lunch, though, yeah?” Rory said, socking the ball into his glove for punctuation.

It was nearly three, now.

“Can you track him?” Les said, falling in as we rounded the backstop.

“Your nose not work?” I asked him back.

Just another perfect summer afternoon.

We kicked a lopsided rock nearly all the way to where Michael T was supposed to have been, and then we turned to Theodore. He shrugged, was ready to fight any of us, even tried some of the words he’d learned from spying on his uncles in the garage. He wasn’t lying, though. Splatted all over the bench were the crab apples him and Jefferson Banks had been zinging Michael T with.

“Jefferson,” I said, “what about him?”

“Said he had to go home,” Theodore shrugged, half-embarrassed for Jefferson. “His mom.”

Figured. The one time I can impress Amber Watson and Jefferson’s cleaning out all the ashtrays in the house then reading romance novels to his mom while she tans in the backyard.

“Who then?” Les asked, shading his eyes from the sun, squinting across all the glinty metal of the old playground.

None of us came to this one anymore. It was for kids.

“He’s got to be around,” Theodore said. “My dad said they like beef jerky.” I seconded this, had heard it as well.

You could lure a zombie anywhere if you had a twist of dried meat on a long string. It was supposed to be getting bad enough with the high schoolers that the stores in town had put a limit on beef jerky, two per customer.

I kicked at another rock that was there by the bench. It wasn’t our lopsided one, was probably one Jefferson and Theodore had tried on Michael T. There was still a little bit of blood on it. All the ants were loving the crab apple leftovers, but, for them, there was a force field around where that rock had been. Until the next rain, anyway.

“She’s never going to see me,” I said, just out loud.

“Who?” Theodore asked, studying the park like Amber Watson could possibly be walking through it.

I shook my head no, never mind, and, turning away, half-planning to set a mirror up in right field, let Gerald just stand kind of by it, so it would seem like we had a full team, I caught a flash of cloth all the way in the top of the rocket.

“It’s not over yet,” I said, pointing up there with my chin.

Somebody was up there, right at the top where the astronauts would sit if it were a real rocket. The capsule part. And they were moving.

“Jefferson?” Theodore asked, looking to us for support.

Like monkeys, Les and Rory crawled up the outside of the rocket, high enough that their moms had to be having heart attacks in their kitchens.

When they got there, Rory had to turn to the side to throw up. It took that loogey of puke forever to make it to the ground. We laughed because it was throw-up, then tracked back up to the top of the rocket.

“It’s Michael T!” Les called down, waving his hand like there was anywhere else in the whole world we might be looking.

“What’s he doing?” I asked, not really loud enough, my eyes kind of pre-squinted, because this might be going to mess our game up.

“It’s Jefferson,” Theodore filled in, standing right beside me, and he was right.

Instead of going home like his mom wanted, Jefferson had spiraled up into the top of the rocket, probably to check if his name was still there, and never guessed Michael T might still be lurking around. Even a first grader can outrun or outsmart a zombie, but, in a tight place like that, and especially if you’re in a panic, are freaking out, then it’s a different kind of game altogether.

“Shouldn’t have thrown those horse apples at him,” Gerald said, shaking his head.

“Shouldn’t have been stupid, more like,” I said, and slapped my glove into Gerald’s chest, for him to hold.

Ten minutes later, Les and Rory using cigarettes from the outside of the rocket to herd him away from his meal, Michael T lumbered down onto the playground, stood in that crooked, hurt way zombies do.

“Hunh,” Theodore said.

He was right.

In the year since Michael T had been bitten, he hadn’t grown any. He was shorter than all us now. Rotted away, Jefferson’s gore all drooled down his front side, some bones showing through the back of his hand, but still, that we’d outgrown him this past year. It felt like we’d cheated.

It was exhilarating.

One of us laughed and the rest fell in, and, using a piece of a sandwich Les finally volunteered to open his elbow scab on—we didn’t have any beef jerky—we were able to lure Michael T back to the baseball diamond.

After everybody’d crossed the road, I studied up and down it, to be sure Amber Watson hadn’t passed yet.

I didn’t think so.

Not on an afternoon this perfect.

So then it was the big vote: whose glove was Michael T going to wear, probably try to gnaw on? When I got tired of it all, I just threw mine into his chest, glared all around.

“Warpath, chief,” Les said, picking the glove up gingerly, watching Michael T the whole time.

“Scalp your dumb ass,” I said, and turned around, didn’t watch the complicated maneuver of getting the glove on Michael T’s left hand, and only casually kept track of the stupid way he kept breaking position. Finally Timmy found a dead squirrel in the weeds, stuffed it into the school backpack that had kind of become part of Michael T’s back. The smell kept him in place better than a spike through his foot. He kept kind of spinning around in his zombie way, tasting the air, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

And then—this because my whole body was tuned into it, because the whole summer had been pointing at it—the adult swim whistle went off down at the community pool. Or maybe I was tuned into the groan from all the swimmers. Either way, this was always when the lifeguards would change chairs, was always when, if somebody was going off-shift, they would go.

“Amber,” I said to myself, tossing my ragged, lucky ball to Les then tapping my bat across home plate, waiting for him to wind up.

“Am-what?” Theodore asked from behind the catcher’s mask his mom insisted on.

I shook my head no, nothing, and, because I was looking down the street, down that tunnel of trees, Les slipped the first pitch by me.

“That one’s free,” I called out to him, tapping my bat again. Licking my lips.

Les wound up, leaned back, and I stepped up like I was already going to swing. He cued into it, that I was ahead of him here, and it threw him off enough that he flung the ball over Theodore’s mitt, rattled the backstop with it.

“That one’s free too,” he called out to me, and I smiled, took it.

Just wait, I was saying inside, sneaking a look up the road again, and, just like in the movies, the whole afternoon slowed almost to a stop right there.

It was her. I smiled, nodded, my own breath loud in my ears, and slit my eyes back to Les.

He drove one right into the pocket, and if I’d wanted I could have shoveled it over all of their heads, dropped it out past the fence, into no man’s land.

Except it was too early.

After it slapped home, I spun out of the box, spit into the dirt, hammered my bat into the fence two times.

And it was definitely her. Shoes over her shoulder, gum going in her mouth, nose still zinced, jean shorts over her one-piece, the whole deal.

I timed it perfect, getting back to the box, was wound up to launch this ball just at the point when she’d be closest to me.

So of course Les threw it high.

I could see it coming a mile away, how he’d tried to knuckle it, had lost it on the downsling like he always did, so there was maybe even a little arc to the ball’s path. Not that it mattered, it was too high to swing at, but still—now or never, right? This is what all my planning had come down to.

I stepped back, crowding Theodore, who was already leaned forward to catch the ball when it dropped, and I swung at a ball that was higher than my shoulders, a ball my dad would have already been turning away from in disgust, and knew the instant my bat cracked into it that there wasn’t going to be any lift, that it was a line drive, an arrow I was shooting out, blind. One I was going to have to run faster than, somehow.

Still, even though I didn’t scoop under it like I would have liked, and even though I was making contact with it earlier than I would have wanted, I gave it every last thing I had, gave it everything I’d learned, everything I had to gamble.

And it worked. The cover flapping behind it just like a comet tail, it was a thing of beauty.

Les being Les, of course he bit the dirt to get out of the way, and Gerald and Rory—second and short—nearly hit each other, diving for what they knew was a two-run hit. A ball that wasn’t even going to skip grass until—

Until left field, yeah.

Until Michael T.

And, if you’re thinking he raised his glove here, that some long-forgotten reflex surfaced in his zombie brain for an instant, then guess again.

Dead or alive, he would have done the same thing: just stood there like the dunce he was.

Only, now, his face was kind of spongy, I guess.

The ball splatted into his left eye socket, sucked into place, stayed there, some kind of dark juice burping from his ears, trickling down along his jaw, the cover of the ball pasted to his cheek.

For a long moment we were all quiet, all holding our breaths—this was like hitting a pigeon with a pop-fly—and then, of everybody, I was the only one to hear Amber Watson stop on the sidewalk, look from the ball back to me, exactly like I’d planned.

I smiled, kind of shrugged, and then Gerald called it in his best umpire voice: “Out!”

I turned to him, my face going cold, and everybody in the infield was kind of shrugging that, yeah, the ball definitely hadn’t hit the ground. No need to burn up the baseline.

“But, but,” I said, pointing out to Michael T with my bat, to show how obvious it was that that wasn’t a catch, that it didn’t really count, and then Rory and Theodore and Les all started nodding that Gerald was right. Worse, now the outfield was chanting: “Mi-chael, Mi-cheal, Mi-chael.” And then my own dugout fell in, clapping some Indian whoops from their mouths to memorialize what had happened here, today. How I was the only one who could have done it.

But I wasn’t out.

Michael T wasn’t even a real player, was just a body we’d propped up out there.

I looked back to Amber Watson and could tell she was just waiting to see what I was going to do here, waiting to see what was going to happen.

So I showed her.

I charged the mound, and, when Les sidestepped, holding his hands up and out like a bullfighter, I kept going, bat in hand, held low behind me, Rory and Gerald each giving me room as well, so that by the time I got out to left field I was running.

“You didn’t catch it!” I yelled to Michael T, singlehandedly trying to ruin my whole summer, wreck my love life, trash my reputation—“Even a zombie can get him out”—and I swung for the ball a second time.

Instead of driving it off the T his head was supposed to be, I thunked it deeper, into his brain, I think, so that the rest of him kind of spasmed in a brainstemmy way, the bat shivering out of my hands so I had to let it go. And, because I hadn’t planned ahead—charging out of the box isn’t exactly about thinking everything through, even my dad would cop to this—the follow-through of my swing, it wrapped me up into Michael T’s dead arms, and we fell together, me first.

And, like everything else since Les’s failed knuckle ball, it took forever to happen. Long enough for me to hear that little lopsided plastic ball rattling in Amber Watson’s whistle right before she set her feet and blew it. Long enough for me to see the legs of a single fly, following us down. Long enough for me to hear my chanted name stop in the middle.

This wasn’t just a freak thing happening, anymore.

We were stepping over into legend, now.

Because the town was always on alert these days, Amber Watson’s whistle was going to line the fence with people in under five minutes, and now everybody on the field and in the dugout, they were going to be witness to this, were each going to have their own better vantage point to tell the story from.

Meaning, instead of me being the star, everybody else would be.

And, Amber Watson.

It hurt to even think about.

We were going to have a special bond, now, sure, but not the kind where I was ever going to get to buy her a spirit ribbon. Not the kind where she’d ever tell me to quit smoking, because it was bad for me.

If I even got to live that long, I mean. If the yearbook staff wasn’t already working my class photo onto the casualties page.

I wasn’t there yet, though.

This wasn’t the top of a rocket, I mean.

Sure, I was on my back in left field, and Michael T was over me, pinning me down by accident, the slobber and blood and brain juice stringing down from his lips, swinging right in front of my face so that I wanted to scream, but I could still kick him away, right? Lock my arms against his chest, keep my mouth closed so nothing dripped in it.

All of which would have happened, too.

Except for Les.

He’d picked up the bat that I guess I’d dragged through the chalk between second and third, so that, when he slapped it into the side of Michael T’s head, a puff of white kind of breathed up. At first I thought it was bone, powdered skull—the whole top of Michael T’s rotted-out head was coming off—but then there was sunlight above me again, and Les was hauling me up, and, on the sidewalk, Amber Watson was just staring at me, her whistle still in her mouth, her hair still wet enough to have left a dark patch on the canvas of the sneakers looped over her shoulder.

I put two of my fingers to my eyebrow like I’d seen my dad do, launched them off in salute to her, and in return she shook her head in disappointment. At the kid I still obviously was. So, yeah, if you want to know what it’s like living with zombies, this is it, pretty much: they mess everything up. And if you want to know why I never went pro, it’s because I got in the habit of charging the mound too much, like I had all this momentum from that day, all this unfairness built up inside. And if you want to know about Amber Watson, ask Les Moore—that’s his real, stupid name, yeah. After that day he saved my life, after Les became the real Indian because he’d been the one to scalp Michael T, he stopped coming to the diamond so much, started spending more time at the pool, his hair bleaching in the sun, his reflexes gone, always thirty-five cents in his trunks to buy a lifeguard a lemonade if she wanted.

And she did, she does.

And, me? Some nights I still go to the old park, spiral up to the top of the rocket with a “Bury the Tomahawk” or “Circle the Wagons” spirit ribbon, and I let it flutter a bit through the grimy bars before letting it go, down through space, down to the planet I used to know, miles and miles from here.