Zombies: More Recent Dead

The Death and Life of Bob William Jablonsky

Bob Jarmush is dead.

We do not even notice Bob’s empty chair until Marlene tells us, just after eight, when we are all settled in. It happened early Saturday morning, she says, her thin face devoid of its usual condescending smile. Bob collapsed while pruning his hedges, and by the time the paramedics arrived it was too late.

His funeral is on Thursday; Marlene and her executive assistant Cayla will make a brief, dignified appearance. We may also attend if we wish.

We set about erasing Bob from the office. Jeremy, the IT kid, clears his password from the system; Cayla slides the Star Wars statuettes, R2D2 pencil sharpener, and framed picture with Mark Hamill into an empty office-paper box. Bob has no family, so there will be no awkward, somber-faced presentation of the box of junk at his front door. For this, we are thankful.

His voicemail has forty-seven messages on it—deranged school board members complaining that our science textbooks teach evolution, or that our history texts have too few white people. We decide to leave them to his replacement, whoever that may be.

When we are finished, Cayla bows her head low, says a prayer for Bob. We do not listen; our gaze drifts to the newly embroidered pattern on her brown corduroy skirt—ivy, perhaps, or a giant green centipede—we cannot tell. Her fashion transgressions are many and we have given up trying to decipher them.

She says, “Amen,” and we’re done.

We stare at Cayla’s skirt some more, attempting to make sense of the embroidery before it haunts our dreams.

As we hang our coats on the rack, we hear a piercing scream from outside. We run to the window, thinking we are about to look upon a mugging, or a rape. Nothing so exciting has happened here since Roger’s ex-wife caught him with Charlotte and chased him down the street with a Ginsu knife. But when we reach the window, we see only Cayla on her knees in an empty parking space, an entire tray of her dry, flavorless poppy seed muffins scattered on the blacktop. Someone probably ought to help, but this would require speaking to her.

When we turn around, Bob is standing in the doorway, silent, his face devoid of expression.

His eyes are dull, recessed and deflated in their sockets, lips dry and cracking, skin an indefinable pinkish-bluish-gray. His face sags from his skull as if the skin is detaching from his hairline; his dingy iron-gray mustache clings to his face, and beneath his kelly-green oxford shirt is the shadow of a stapled Y-incision.

For a few seconds, we muse that he doesn’t look that different. Then it hits us, and we stand paralyzed at our desks. He lopes toward us across the 60s-era gold diamond rug. Our bodies tense: at the first guttural moan it’ll be every man for himself.

Instead, Bob’s blank expression explodes into a big sheepish smile.

“Morning, kids,” he says, his voice a low raspy whisper. “How was your weekend?”

Someone in the first row of cubicles passes wet gas—probably Roger, who has colitis—and a smell like rotten pork fills the office.

Bob tosses his threadbare tan touring cap and windbreaker on the rack, sits down at his desk, stares at the empty desktop like it’s alien for the first time in eighteen years. His eyes are still clouded over, and when he looks up, we cannot bear them upon us. “Anybody know where my stuff is?”

We say nothing; Roger gets up and runs to the bathroom.

“Hello?” Bob says again.

The tense silence is broken when Cayla comes inside, clutching her silver crucifix, her skirt covered in muffin crumbs and parking-lot dirt. She tiptoes up to Bob, as if that will escape his notice; hand quivering, she reaches out and touches Bob’s shoulder with one fingertip.

He smiles again. “Good morning, Cayla.” She crumples into a ball on the floor, spewing gibberish. (Cayla goes to the church that used to be a Sav-A-Lot, where they speak in tongues, so no one is surprised.)

Finally—because he is the only one who can move—Jeremy runs down the narrow aisle to Marlene’s office.

We can only see them through her window—Jeremy’s arms flailing, Marlene stoic in her big leather chair, as if she thinks he’s just taken a hit of meth. Then she looks, and her eyes go wide. After a long, deep breath, she wills herself to her feet.

Marlene tosses her long, layered, salt-and-pepper locks, pushes her spectacles up her nose. She is beautiful, imperious, more like a museum curator than a textbook sales rep. It is clear that she is the only one capable of handling this.

And so she does. Walks right up to Bob, who is busy trying to log on to the computer. Marlene taps Cayla on the shoulder. “Back to your desk, Cayla,” she says. “It’s all right.” But we can all tell she has steeled herself for the worst. As Cayla creeps away, Marlene and Bob share a long, silent stare.

“Bob?” she says, apprehension in her lilty voice. “This is very unusual.”

Bob lifts himself out of his chair, raises his arms; Marlene stands her ground. We are certain he is about to seize her and sink his mangled teeth into the soft flesh of her shoulder. We will certainly leave her to die, but in the aftermath we will speak of her with reverence.

But Bob does not eat her.

Instead he smiles, big and broad, puts his doughy arms around Marlene and hugs her tight.

“It’s good to see you again,” he says. He looks over her shoulder at all of us on the sales floor. “It’s so good to be back.”

Marlene gently extricates herself from Bob’s embrace. “I’m sure we’re all glad to see you alive and well, Bob. But as I said, this is a little unusual.”

His dingy gray eyebrows jut upward. “Oh. You’ve hired someone already?”

“Well, no,” Marlene says, disarmed. “But, Bob, you passed away. You were dead.”

Bob shrugs. “I came back,” he says. “Can’t blame you for being nervous, though. Couldn’t we just chalk it up to sick leave?”

Marlene looks around the room, then back at Bob, her face relaxing as she exits crisis mode. “Let’s talk about it in my office,” she says. “Everyone else, back to work.”

We stare through Marlene’s office window trying to discern what is happening. Both are smiling, with an occasional laugh, and after a few minutes he hoists himself out of the faux-leather chair and they shake hands. Stan the accountant, who is partially deaf, reads her lips as Bob gets up: “Welcome back,” Marlene says. “To everything.”

Bob lumbers back, sits down at his desk like nothing happened at all. When he sees us staring, he gives us a quick wink.

We hear a burbling sound, hear poor Roger whisper, “Not again.”

Bob’s fingers move slowly over the dial buttons as he answers his voicemail—not so much like a zombie lacking fine motor control, but stiffly just the same. We watch his doughy torso to see if he is still breathing. He is. We wonder if his heart is still beating, and email Jeremy to see if he has the stones to check. He does not. Cayla comes over only once, empties the box of knickknacks and Star Wars statuettes on Bob’s desk, scurries back to her cubicle with a little cry. She does not speak all day, and for this we are grateful.

He goes to the breakroom at lunchtime; we try not to look at him, pretend to follow the tiny cracks in the yellow plaster wall, take far too long selecting chips and soda from the vending machines. He pulls out a vintage Darth Vader lunchbox—one of the old metal kind we all had in grade school—and a plastic bag. We expect something gray and spongy, but instead he unwraps a cheese and tomato sandwich on an Asiago roll. We watch his teeth as he takes his first bite: a bit yellow, but normal, not jagged and rotten. He chews, slowly.

He sees that we are watching. “Mmmmmm,” he moans. “Braaaiiiinnns.”

Our jaws drop. Charlotte, the telemarketer, drops her soda on the speckled gray linoleum. Cayla’s hands flutter around her face and she runs away. For thirty seconds the breakroom is quiet as death. Then Jeremy starts to laugh—a muffled giggle he tries to control, but he fails and gives in to a full belly laugh.

“You are one sick motherfucker,” he says.

Bob salutes. “At your service.”

Then everyone laughs, and suddenly we feel better.

Bob looks better this morning, his hue more pink, less like a deflated blue balloon, his movements fluid and normal. Not at all like an undead thing.

At lunchtime, as he plays with his laptop in the breakroom, he sips coffee out of a Yoda-head mug, closing his eyes as if it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. He watches the screen for a minute, then launches into a wheezing laugh.

We try not to look. We really do.

“Hey kids,” he says. “Want to see something really cool?”

Of course we do, but the adults are not bold enough to say yes. Fortunately, Jeremy is there. “Hell yeah, man!”

Bob hits the mouse pad, turns his laptop toward us. We pull up plastic chairs and gather round like children.

Bob talks with his mouth full of bagel. “Hospital sent me this yesterday with a big settlement check, just for a laugh,” he says. “Not for the faint of heart.”

He clicks Play, and a moment later, there he is, blue-gray on a metal table, his floppy bits hanging out in the open. (We should be offended, but this is too fascinating for propriety.) Next thing we know, a young Asian woman in a white coat and facemask is cutting a deep “Y” into his torso. Just as she inserts the rib-spreader, Bob’s limp hand goes stiff, juts out and grabs her by the wrist. She screams, drops the ribspreader. Then Bob’s eyes snap open and he too begins to scream, like a lion being stabbed in the gut. He rolls off the table and, for the next two minutes, runs naked and bellowing around the morgue, chest gaping open, chasing away anyone who gets close. Finally a group of orderlies wrestle him to the ground and drape a white sheet over him, and the recording ends.

It is the most spectacular thing we have ever seen.

Bob smiles. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Did it hurt?” Charlotte asks, pointing toward Bob’s chest. (It occurs to us that this is the most any of us have said to Bob in years.)

“Not really,” Bob says. “Didn’t feel much of anything. Itches like crazy now, though.”

“Can we see?” Jeremy asks, giddy.

Bob shrugs, untucks his brown polo, pulls it up over his pudgy body. And there it is: the Y-shaped line of staples running down his entire torso.

Incredible.

“Staples will be out in a few days,” he says.

Cayla, standing in the doorway, interrupts our trance. “When you died,” she says, saccharine in her smile, “Did you see loved ones? Your family?”

A long silence follows—Cayla is clearly expecting him to say his dear old granddad showed up to lead him to the Pearly Gates. But Bob shakes his head.

“Sorry, kiddo,” he says. “One minute I was falling face-first into the hedges, the next I was splayed open on that table. Nothing in between.”

Cayla’s smile goes taut, like it’s been carved into her face. “Well, that can’t be,” she says. “You weren’t really dead.”

“As a doornail,” Bob replies. “No pulse, no brain activity, nothing.”

“Then you must not be Christian,” Cayla huffs.

“Catholic, born and raised,” Bob says.

Cayla’s entire face scrunches up so tight we think it will implode. “I’m confused,” she says. “Of all people, why you?”

Bob shrugs. “Couldn’t tell you, kiddo. Just glad to be back.” He reaches out to pat her shoulder, but she recoils.

“Don’t touch me,” Cayla whispers, and turns to leave, her frilly, multilayered pink skirt bouncing with each step.

Bob takes another long sip of coffee. “Tell you what, kids—being dead sure does make you appreciate things like a good cup o’Joe.”

We nod, suddenly craving coffee. That ancient Bunn churns out a sludge that tastes like it’s been squeezed from a wet dishrag, but as the hot liquid touches our lips, it seems richer somehow.

For most of the day we stare at Bob, smiling as he takes his calls, waving or winking at us when he senses our eyes on him. The deep lines that etched his face before he died are beginning to disappear, though we can still see pronounced veins on his forehead and forearms. We are almost used to him being back, so much so that on occasion our eyes wander back to Cayla, in her lime-green tunic and skirt and a medallion twice the size of her fist, with a cannon and a cross and the caption, IN THE ARMY OF THE LORD. When she has paperwork for Bob she tries to pass it to one of us to hand him; we pretend to be busy just to watch her slink up to Bob’s desk, set the papers on the very edge, and tiptoe away as if he doesn’t see.

It is our tradition to do karaoke night at Big Mike’s on Thursdays after work, and for the first time since any of us has been here, we invite Bob, who thinks about it for a minute, shrugs, and says, “Don’t mind if I do.”

Big Mike’s is a bar and grill next to the office, built like an oversized Airstream trailer with a little plank for a dance floor and miniature juke boxes at each table. Bob looks around the place as we go in, joy in his eyes. “This place has been here for nine years and I’ve never even been inside,” he says. “Imagine that.” We are pleased with ourselves for introducing him to such a treasure, even if a bit late.

For the first half-hour no one steps up—it takes a few beers to lose enough inhibition—but finally Bob gets up from his seat next to Charlotte. He fiddles with the karaoke machine for a minute, presses the button. Horns blast over the PA; Bob seizes the microphone stand like he’s about to swing it, and belts out the lyrics to “Mack the Knife” in a velvet baritone you’d never expect to come out of his dumpy body. And he’s good.

None of us knew Bob could sing.

When Bob is finished, the half-drunk crowd bursts into applause; he takes a bow and returns to us.

“That was fucking awesome!” Jeremy slurs, slapping Bob on the shoulder.

Later, when Roger gets up to do a spastic rendition of Barbara Mandrell’s “Sleepin’ Single in a Double Bed,” we watch in awe as Bob takes Charlotte’s hand and leads her to the little wooden pallet of a dance floor. At first it’s ridiculous, Bob’s thin arms flailing about his pudgy torso like no human thing, and it takes every bit of Charlotte’s will not to laugh. A few people at the tables near us do, but Bob doesn’t care. After a minute or two, he loosens up and starts whipping her all over the floor. When the song ends, he twirls her under his arm; dour, anorexic, alcoholic Charlotte is laughing, but there’s no mockery in it, and once she stops twirling she plants a kiss on his neck, right below his ear.

At ten, when we’re dried out and tired, we stumble back to the office parking lot. Spent as we are, we still notice Charlotte climbing into Bob’s old hatchback, and we smile.

When we arrive at work, Charlotte’s blue Volvo is still in the same space as last night, far from the building near the railroad tracks, and we believe in miracles.

Then we notice the red spray paint on the front door: GOD HATES ZOMBIES.

Of course Marlene asks, and of course Cayla denies it.

Bob and Charlotte arrive together: Bob first, Charlotte thirty seconds later, acting like nothing has happened.

“You old dog,” Jeremy says, punching Bob in the shoulder. Bob merely winks and whispers, “Shhh.”

It takes Cayla a moment to comprehend the meaning of it, but when she does she cups her hand over her mouth like she’s holding in vomit.

Bob actually looks good, better than before he died: eyes full, skin bright and peachy, posture straight and tall. Even his clothes are better: a form-fitting charcoal blazer and smoky gray slacks in place of his usual sagging Henleys and khakis. For most of the morning he softly whistles the synthesizer line from Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” which gets stuck in our heads for the rest of the day. We should be annoyed, but Bob has never seemed so happy—no, alive—and we feel strangely elated. Even Charlotte is in a good mood, slapping Bob’s flat ass whenever he passes.

But Cayla is here, so there must be drama. Just after ten, she sends Bob the wrong form via Roger. Bob gets up, shuffles over to her little gray cubby near Marlene’s office, taps her on the shoulder. When she realizes it’s him she pulls back so hard she falls out of her chair and scrapes her face on a cubicle wall. Bob reaches out to help her up, but she grunts like a frightened animal and does a sort of crabwalk out of the cubicle, all the way to the ladies’ room. We hear her mad scrubbing under the faucet, her voice murmuring a prayer in tongues.

Bob finally knocks on Marlene’s door. “I think something’s wrong with Cayla,” he says, and she glides across the office floor to the restroom.

We can’t make out what they’re saying, other than, “Are you all right?” and Cayla’s tearful, “I can’t work with that thing around here. You have to fire him.” The rest is a low mumble. Finally Cayla bursts out in tears, and before we know it she is out the front door.

Marlene emerges a few seconds later, her face red but expressionless. “Let’s get back to work,” she says. “Everything’s fine.”

Over lunch, Bob tells us what he plans to do with the hefty settlement check from the hospital—we are awed that he still comes to work, but he says it gives him a reason to get up in the morning—when Cayla returns with a tall gray-skinned old man in a black camp shirt and white collar, Bible clutched under one arm, cane in the other. He moves slowly, the thin cane barely enough to support him, and she practically drags him to the breakroom.

“That’s him, Reverend,” she says, pointing at Bob.

“All right,” the old man says. “Let’s get this over with.” He looks around at all of us. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like everyone to join hands.” We look to Bob, not knowing what to do. He nods, and we go along with it.

The old pastor sets down his cane, draws from his breast pocket a small plastic crucifix, and holds it and the Bible at arm’s length, inches from Bob’s face. “Everybody repeat after me.” His voice is a crackly whisper. “Away, undead thing! Back to the grave!”

We repeat his words. Nothing happens.

The old man sighs. “I said, away!” He lunges a little too far the second time, and drops his Bible at Bob’s feet. Bob leans over, picks it up, dusts it off, and hands it back.

“Thank you, my boy,” the old man says. Then he turns to Cayla. “I don’t think it’s working, dear. You might need a Catholic for this sort of thing.”

Cayla grunts. “You’re the only one who’d agree to do this.”

“Well, I’m sorry, sweetie,” he says as Bob helps him into a chair. “Guess I don’t have it like I used to.”

Bob hands the old pastor a cup of coffee. “Here you go, Reverend,” he says. “Guys,” he says to all of us, “Can you give us a minute? Cayla, you stay.”

We file out, though those whose desks are near enough listen for any tidbit we can pick up.

After about ten minutes, Bob and the reverend emerge. The old man reaches out and shakes Bob’s hand. “You’re truly a miracle, son,” he says. “Best of luck in your new life.”

Bob asks Jeremy to drive the old man back to his retirement home, then turns back to the breakroom. Cayla is sitting in a corner, hands tightly folded in her lap. She stands when Bob enters.

“Stay away.” Her voice is mousey.

He approaches her like some creature in a bad movie. For a minute we think he’s regressed, and might just dig his teeth into her skull and eat her brain. Not that she’d be much of a meal. Bob stops a few feet from her, just out of arm’s reach. She goes rigid.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Cayla. I promise.” Bob’s voice is soft. Tender.

“You’re a monster.”

This is too much; a few of us shout back at her, “You’re the monster!” But Bob raises his left hand and we fall silent.

“No, Cayla. I’m just Bob. Same as ever. Maybe a little better.” He holds his hand out to her, and her face seems to soften. “How ’bout we start over?”

“Okay.” She reaches out slowly, shakes his hand, but quickly pulls it back.

“Your hand’s cold.”

“Cayla . . . ” Bob starts to say, and steps closer.

Cayla screams like she’s being stabbed in the liver, so loud it echoes in the metal beams of the building.

Marlene rushes in to save the day, of course. She points to Cayla and summons her into her office, then closes the door.

Five minutes later Cayla comes out sobbing, walking in slow motion to her desk and clearing off the crucifixes and Jesus statuettes. On her way out, she stops before Bob’s desk and glares.

“I’m sorry, Cayla,” Bob says.

She pulls a book of matches from the box, lights one, throws it at Bob. It goes out before touching him.

She lights another, flings it. He catches it gracefully, snuffs it out in his closed palm. Then Max, the security guard, steps up behind her and ushers her out.

Cayla stops once more at the door. “You people are in league with the devil!” she shouts, just as Max gives her a little shove, and then she’s gone.

The air smells faintly of smoke as we pull into the parking lot. It is early May, too soon to burn leaves, but we think nothing of it.

When Bob arrives with Charlotte on his arm, he looks like a million bucks: electric blue pinstripe suit with a black button-up shirt and no tie, hair trimmed neatly up around his ears, handlebar mustache close-cropped and sleek, bags gone from under his eyes. There is no sign of the Y-incision scar beneath his collar, as if his transformation into a new man is complete. Charlotte is giddy as she clings to his arm, the smile practically glued in place—a rarity that usually causes us unease, but this time it’s . . . nice. Comforting.

By 9:30, we hear chanting in the parking lot. We pay no attention, fixated as we are on Charlotte using her phone-sex voice on sales calls, until Roger finally gets up to investigate.

“Um, guys,” he says, peering out the glass door. “You’d better take a look.”

Outside on the sidewalk is a crowd of fifty or more, holding homemade signs that read, GOD HATES THE UNDEAD, and ZOMBIE, GO BACK TO THE GRAVE. A few hold makeshift torches—broom handles and baseball bats with flaming rags attached to them. When Bob comes over to see, they shrink back a little, point their torches like spears.

Marlene locks the door. “I’m calling the police.” She calls from Roger’s phone, then waits.

“I don’t think it is a peaceful protest,” she says. Another pause. “No, I don’t think it can wait until later.” She sighs, slams the phone down. “They’ll send someone when they can.”

A shrill, familiar voice outside echoes through a megaphone. “You know what we want,” Cayla shrieks. “Send out the zombie or we torch the building.”

Stupid Cayla, we think. This building is made of brick. Then two of her minions lay torches in front of the glass door. The clear pane blackens, then cracks, and black smoke starts seeping in under the door.

The old gold-diamond carpet begins to singe.

“Okay,” Marlene says. “Everyone out the back. Calmly.”

We rush en masse to the back exit, a metal double-door with a rusty frame and peeling brown paint, nearly trampling one another. All but Bob and Charlotte, that is, who calmly follow Marlene. But when we get there the door is hot, the smell of smoke and kerosene hanging in the air.

We panic. Anyone would.

Our eyes wander to Bob, hanging back behind the throng, holding Charlotte’s hand.

Marlene notices. “Absolutely not,” she says, voice raised just enough to cut through the noise. “We’re not sending Bob out there.”

Our shaky chatter stops. Of course not. We have a genuine miracle in our presence.

“I’m calling nine-one-one,” Marlene says, and runs to her office.

This, we know, will solve the problem. Sooner or later the firemen and cops will arrive, douse the flames, disperse the mob.

Five minutes later, they have yet to arrive—one of the drawbacks to working in a business park ten minutes outside of town.

“Maybe I should go out and talk to them,” Bob says.

“That sounds like a very bad idea, Bob,” Marlene says. She is, of course, correct.

Then someone lays a couple more torches by the front door, and the glass goes completely black. In a minute it will shatter, the mob will enter, and the whole place will burn.

Because of the smoke and the panic, it’s not clear who is the first to seize Bob. But someone does, and then we all grab hold, and we hoist him over our shoulders and begin to carry him toward the window.

He does not struggle or even object. Charlotte does, screaming and swatting at us from behind. “Stop!” Marlene shouts over and over. We barely hear her.

Someone opens the window and pops the screen, and out he goes.

We close the window and watch.

Bob picks himself up off the ground and limps around to the front of the building, creeping toward the mob with his arms raised, and for a few seconds they just stare. He says something to them. We can’t hear, but it’s working—people lower their torches and signs, and we swear a few of them smile. Then Cayla grabs a torch from someone and sets him ablaze. His suit goes up like flash paper.

Only Jeremy has the fortitude to watch further, reporting what he sees: the rest of the mob, horrified, like they didn’t really expect her to do it; Cayla staring blankly as Bob writhes on the asphalt, as if she doesn’t understand what’s happened; a state trooper tackling her. The rest is chaos: the parking lot full of squad cars, fire engines, and flashing lights.

Bob isn’t moving by the time they put him out. We stare at the smoldering heap until the EMTs zip him into a plastic sack and drive away. Then, we think, when Bob comes back tomorrow he’ll have quite the story to tell.

We show up to work uneasy and fretting, though we make no mention of the reason.

Marlene is locked in her office, lights out, head in hands in the shadow of her computer screen. The contractors have already put in a new glass door, and by the time we step over the threshold, two men from Karpet King have almost finished laying down the new rug, a dark jewel-blue number with a bubble pattern. It is, we agree, one hell of a nice carpet. This is what we discuss as we pour our coffee and prepare for the day.

At 7:55, we all look up at the clock. No Bob. No Charlotte, either, though she usually takes her sweet time. For all we know they’ll come in together, Charlotte laughing as she drapes her arm over Bob’s, singed bits peeling off as they go. We will take comfort in this and forget yesterday’s unpleasantness.

By a quarter after, we are still waiting. It is unlike him to be late. Our eyes drift toward the new glass door that Bob will eventually walk through, then down to the new carpet, glistening like a sapphire in the morning sun. We have to remind ourselves to exhale. And we keep thinking, as the seconds tick away, it really is a fine carpet.