19
Creature Features

I HEAR THE SHOWER running in Dad’s room the next morning. Spotting his car keys on the foyer countertop, I breathe a sigh of relief. I hate it when he pulls these double, sometimes triple, shifts, given his line of employment. And especially now, given my new knowledge of the undead world. I mean, what’s to stop the next cadaver in his next body bag from popping up and taking a bite out of his neck?

To make up for his long night, I start the coffee brewing, toast up some of his favorite whole grain Eggos, and put on water to boil for his other favorite: hardboiled eggs (one of the few things I can make for him without screwing up).

I step out the front doorway and grab a daisy from his measly flower garden, find a little vase in one of the kitchen cupboards, fill it with water, pop the flower in, and set it between two place mats on the table in the breakfast nook.

By the time Dad’s dressed for work and sniffing around the coffeepot, I’ve got three eggs on boil, his frozen waffles buttered and syruped exactly the way he likes them—heavy on the butter, light on the syrup—and hand him a fresh cup of coffee in his favorite oversized Christmas mug.

“To what do I owe the honor of my daughter fixing me breakfast-almost-in-bed?” he quips, sitting down at his place setting and admiring the fresh flower in his improvised bud vase. His voice is vibrant, but his eyes are tired, and I know these late nights are catching up with him. (Tell me about it!)

I lean against the kitchen counter next to the oven. “Nothing, Dad. I just …hate to see you working such late shifts at, well, you know …” I let my voice trail off, but Dad is too sharp to let my unspoken message go unnoticed.

“You mean ‘to work such late hours at …my age’? Is that what you were going to say, dear?” He smiles even as he nails it. “I know you think your old man is ancient and decrepit, but you can stack six of those young whippersnappers they send my department fresh from the university every summer, and I’ll outwork them, out-think them, and outlast them every time.” His dander’s all up and his coffee’s half gone.

I top off his mug. “Whoa, pardner, I was just going to say I don’t like you working such late shifts and such odd hours, period. No ageism was implied, honest.”

He peers at me doubtfully, takes a sip of coffee, and looks at me again, more closely this time. “Tell me this.” He sighs, turning toward me. “Did Hazel approve this new …look …of yours?”

And that’s when I remember: today is Goth Ground Zero. I picture myself as I looked leaving my room only half an hour or so earlier: black duds from head to toe, two layers of white pancake makeup, plenty of mascara and eyeliner and, the pièce de résistance: maroon lipstick and black nail polish. Instant Goth.

“You’re not digging the Twilight look, Dad?”

“Maddy, you’re my daughter and I love you. And, let’s face it, you’d look gorgeous wearing a hoop skirt and a raincoat. You’re young; I figure I’ve had it pretty easy as far as fashion phases go. If this is as bad as it gets, well, color me happy.”

And that’s that: Dad in a nutshell. His daughter is a Goth; either I’ll grow out of it or he’ll get used to it. One way or the other, fighting about it isn’t going to do either of us any good. No screaming, no yelling, no judging—just tells you like it is and that’s that.

He yawns and gulps more coffee and slices off a square of perfectly toasted Eggo. After chewing it thoroughly and swallowing with pleasure, he says, “Aren’t you joining your old man for breakfast today?”

I look at my empty place setting self-consciously. “I’m trying to lose weight, Dad, you know …”

He has that little twinkle in his eye. “Oh, I know, for the Fall Formal.”

Not quite, Dad, but that’s one less excuse I have to make this morning. One less lie I have to tell.

When I don’t answer, he says, “Well, so, has your new guy asked you yet?”

I reach for a can of Mountain Dew from the fridge so it at least looks like I’m eating/drinking something. The fact that Dad doesn’t have a hissy fit over me drinking one of his nondiet sodas or, for that matter, notice that I’m not drinking diet for, like, the first time ever, is a testament to his ongoing quest to find me a boyfriend.

“He’s not ‘my guy,’ Dad and, for your information, no, he hasn’t asked me to the Fall Formal …yet. I just, you know, I want to look good in case he does.”

Around a mouthful of waffle, Dad says, “Well, he better not wait too long. Isn’t it this coming Friday?”

I raise my can to my mouth just as he finishes asking so I don’t have to answer. Then I notice him waiting, expectantly, with his fork in one hand and his knife in the other over his empty plate. I’m thinking about telling him to do his own damn dishes when suddenly I remember the pot of boiling water next to me and his three overly hardboiled eggs.

Without thinking, I put down my can, reach for his plate, and one by one snatch the eggs out of the boiling water.

With.

My.

Bare.

Hands.

I think nothing of it because my hands are so cold and the water is so warm (hot, boiling, whatever) and, according to page 68 of The Guide, zombies don’t feel pain, so why not? I’m looking at Dad’s plate, smiling and thinking, Man, he’s going to love those eggs, and then my gaze travels up from his plate to his face and he. Is. Shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

“Maddy,” he shouts, leaping up from his chair to examine my hands with a practiced medical eye. “What were you thinking?”

“What?” I try to snatch my undamaged hands back, but his grip is too strong even for my extra-super zombie powers (at least, that is, according to page 32 of The Guide).

He’s got my hands out in front of me, flipping them over and over, back and forth, up and down, studying them from every angle, and they look as pale as they did before I stuck them in boiling water to scoop out his eggs. Not a splotch, not a mark, not a blister, not a sore, not even a glossy pink sheen.

“Incredible,” he says, as if he’s got some new species of germ under his microscope back at the coroner’s lab. “Not so much as a scratch.”

Then he looks into my eyes and asks, more calmly now, “Maddy, I’m serious now, whatever were you thinking?”

I rack my brain for something sensible that a scientist like Dad would buy. “I don’t know, really,” I blurt. “We were reading in Science how, if you move fast enough, you can put your hand in freezing ice water or, in this case, boiling water, and not get a scratch. I guess I wanted to see if that was true.”

He looks at me closely, like maybe he doesn’t believe me. “You could have just asked me, Maddy, and I would’ve told you: it isn’t true. By rights your hands should be severely burned right now, maybe second-even third-degree burns covering all the way up to your wrists. And yet you don’t have a scratch on you.”

“So the teacher’s theory was right, then.”

“No, in fact, far from it. It appears that my daughter is simply a freak of nature.” He tries to pass it off as a joke, but he’s clearly upset.

Inside I’m mentally kicking my brain cells. How could I be so stupid?

He sits down, stands up, sits back down, and then pushes away his plateful of uneaten eggs. “Well, Madison, it appears as if you’ve pulled off another impossible feat.”

“What’s that?” I hide my hands from view.

“You’ve made me lose my appetite for your specialty: hardboiled eggs.”

We make polite chitchat as he gets ready for work, me hiding my hands whenever possible, him scouring them for evidence of what he calls late-event trauma, which never quite develops. As he leaves, telling me how he’s got to pull another all-nighter, he’s still shaking his head—and I’m still feeling stupid.

But he’s not the only member of this family with an inquisitive nature, and now that my official zombie diagnosis has finally been confirmed, I have a little research of my own to do. But not in any library.

Mega Movies opens at 10 a.m. on Saturdays; I get there at 9:58, sharp. In the two minutes I’ve got before opening time, I haul out my cell and text Hazel: Up 4 a movie night l8r? That takes less than a minute to type and send, and I know Hazel (a) is already up, (b) has her phone on, (c) usually texts me back in six seconds or less, and (d) is now trying to punish me with the silent cell treatment. I sigh, check the dashboard clock—which now reads 10:01—and get out of the car.

A chubby guy in Coke bottle glasses and a faded green Mega Movies golf shirt says, “Have a Mega Movie day,” as I walk in and a little electronic bell chimes over the front door. Veiled in my hoodie and dark sunglasses, I smile and wave a pale, unboiled hand before rapidly shoving it into my front pocket. I head straight for the horror section while he tidies up and gets ready for another dull Saturday morning shift.

There are two full walls of horror: lots of sequels and prequels and dark, black covers with blood dripping red from titles like Death Derby 6, Monster Camp 3, and Bloodsuckers 2. Most are vampire movies; I skip those. (Frankly, I would have skipped those even before I became a zombie.) A few are about werewolves, ghosts, mummies, and the like; I skip those, too.

The stuff on zombies—what little there is—is mostly old, ‘70s and ‘80s stuff with hordes of brain-dead flesh eaters crowding the DVD covers and body parts lying around at their stiff, dead feet. I grab a few random titles that don’t sound absolutely horrible—Zombie Invasion 3, Night of the Teenage Brain Suckers, Zombie Family Vacation Getaway—and ask the guy in the faded green shirt and thick glasses if he knows of any more that aren’t out on the shelves.

“Zombies?” He scratches his head out of habit. Spotting my stack, he asks, skeptically, “What do you have already?” I show him my thin stash, and he pooh-poohs them all with a wave of his pudgy hand.

“Listen,” he says, leaning in close even though I’m the only soul in the store. His breath smells of mint mouthwash but not quite enough mint mouthwash, if you know what I mean. “These are for amateurs. Keep them, if you want, but I hide the good stuff in the documentary section; you know, so they’re always in. Nobody ever goes back there.”

He leads me to a dark corner of the store, dusty and stocked with a big cardboard box full of rolled movie posters and a handwritten sign that says, FREE! Take me home! On one wall, scattered amidst lots of serious-looking nonfiction films—many in black-and-white, most with subtitles, all dusty—is the mother lode of all zombie movies: six by the time he gets through cherry-picking them off the walls for me.

“Now these,” he says with obvious relish, “are what zombie movies are meant to be.” He holds them close to his chest on the way back to the sales counter, as if a crowd of customers might storm the store at any moment and try to rent them away from me. Once we get to the register, he takes my other three, adds them to the pile, and studies me a little more closely.

I have to keep reminding myself that I’m dressed like a circus freak, as if my black fingernail polish isn’t reminder enough when I hand my card over.

“Let me guess,” he says, swiping my Mega Movies membership card, “you and your Goth friends are having a zombie watching party. You know, getting a jump on Halloween?”

I shake my head. “Haven’t you heard? Goths have no friends.”

He smiles anyway, hitting on another bright idea. “I got it: the new boyfriend’s a big zombie fan, and you’re trying to play catch up so it looks like you share the same interests?”

Ha! I wish that (a) I had a boyfriend, (b) he liked zombie movies, and (c) he was down with dating one—indefinitely. I slowly shake my head. Not even close, pal.

He grows visibly worried. “We don’t get many girls renting these,” he says with a grin, scanning each zombie flick slowly as if he’s suddenly having second thoughts about renting them to me in the first place.

“Well,” I say matter-of-factly, “you do now.” “I mean, they’re pretty gross,” he says dramatically. “You sure you’re okay with the walking dead?” I am now. “Yup.”

“Monsters chomping on raw brains?”

I actually have personal experience with that one. “Sure thing.”

“I warn you”—he finally hands them over—”they’ll keep you up at night.”

“Not a problem,” I say on my way out the door. “I’m kind of …an …insomniac.”

On the short drive home, I chuckle at the irony of it all: a real-life zombie renting zombie movies. Slipping through the front door and locking it behind me, as if one of the neighbors might see my towering stack of gore and suddenly put two and two together, I promptly load the top movie on the stack into the high-tech DVD player on Dad’s beloved big-screen TV and settle onto the couch with …no movie snacks.

I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever left Mega Movies without an armful of Twizzlers, microwave popcorn, Raisinets, and Goobers in addition to my pile of movies. It’s weird. Not only am I not hungry at all (best diet ever); I just …don’t crave those things anymore, at all. I wonder, will watching movies be the same without movie snacks? Only one way to find out, I guess. I push play on …what is it again?

Oh yeah, get this: Zombie Homecoming. Catchy, huh?

As the opening credits roll over a black-and-white screen that looks, cleverly enough, like a formal homecoming invitation on a silver platter, I check out the box it came in. The zombie on the cover is a mostly skeletal girl in a tattered red homecoming dress, a crooked tiara resting on her flat green forehead (so …what, I’m going to turn green now? That’s my future?), and a black sash hiding a thick gash in her throat, where you can almost, just barely, see the exposed vocal cords. (Nice. You stay classy, Zombie Homecoming filmmakers.) She looks all kinds of dead, not very attractive—or fun, for that matter—and about as lifelike as a dollar store Halloween mask on a half-price mannequin.

I sigh, watch the opening scene where the homecoming queen somehow takes a detour past the high school gym (why?), where it’s clearly homecoming (I can tell by the big Homecoming banner over the double gym doors), and straight to the nuclear plant, presumably to make out with her boyfriend, who, uhhm …works there?

Late at night?

Even though he’s still in high school?

And it’s …homecoming?

What, he couldn’t get the night off?

It goes downhill from there. (But then, what did I expect?) In the first 10 minutes of the movie, our plucky heroine (a) parks her car next to a stack of rusty yellow canisters with a red toxic waste symbol plastered all over them, even though two inches away there’s clearly an empty parking lot full of much better spaces, (b) trips, twice, for no apparent reason, (c) finds her boyfriend in the Porta-John (???), (c) makes out with him (in the Porta-John, no less—grossness), (d) follows him back to her car, where (e) he leaves her without saying good-bye (rude), and (f) the toxic canisters magically open up and drown her in her car with a toxic green goop (that looks suspiciously like gallons of neon mint jelly). By minute 11, she’s become a great green ogre, her toes falling off as her clueless date slips on her size-10 dress shoes on the way into the homecoming dance; hilarity ensues.

I turn it off shortly after that and stick in Zombie Groom next. Wow. Just, wow. At least Zombie Homecoming had a little charm; Zombie Groom is just gross. And not only gross but single-minded, charmless, and gross.

One minute the lead character is this semihand-some groom (look, we’re not talking A-list stars here) who steps outside his wedding reception for a quick smoke; the next minute, some random zombie walks—sorry, stumbles—over, bites him on the neck, and suddenly he’s …drumroll, please …Zombie Groom.

Zombie Groom is a lot hungrier than Zombie Homecoming Queen, who took at least five minutes to chomp her first victim after catching the Z-disease; Zombie Groom goes in for the kill almost immediately, biting his best man on the arm—right before he tears it off and gnaws on the elbow bone (elbone?) like it’s a giant chicken leg. Then his best man, with only one arm, bites the caterer in the neck, blood gushes all over the pigs-in-a-blanket and, once again, hilarity ensues.

I watch for a few minutes more as the zombies get grayer and grayer, hungrier and hungrier, and less …human …by the minute. Half an hour into each of the first two flicks (or about as long as I can stand each one) the zombies have dragging arms, missing teeth, shrunken eyes, hanging jaws, blood-soaked chins, and they’re eating small intestines for appetizers and human thighs for dessert.

I suffer through a few more—Zombie Picnic, Zombie Cheerleader 4, Zombie Biker Gang 2—until I’ve had about all the standard zombie dialogue I can take: “Brains, eat! Eat brains!” Then I slide the last disc out, put it back in its box, and spread the cases out, side by side, on the coffee table.

You know, kind of like a zombie lineup.

I stare at my future—rotting skin, sunken eyeholes, bad skin (gray or green seem to be the prevailing choices), holes in my clothes, bad prom dresses, torn sashes, grave dust in my hair, intestines like sausages hanging out of my mouth—and wonder, Is this what I have to look forward to?

I mean, when did the world decide vampires were the sexy undead? In the movies they could fly, flirt, seduce, sparkle, transform, kick butt, and look good doing it. Even werewolves got to look human 29 days a month, right? Could go out in the sun, enjoy a fresh burger, play Frisbee with their buds with no one the wiser?

But zombies? I haven’t seen one zombie, anywhere, ever, that looks even remotely …human. They are dismal, dead, dying, and gray (or green, whatevs); dead eyes, dead mouths, dead brains, dead souls.

They don’t say anything (except “Brains!” or, occasionally, “Eat brains!” or, once in awhile, “Brains, eat!”), don’t do anything, don’t …feel …anything.

So how come I can feel everything?

And just how long will it last?