Amazombia

  Chapter 8.

  Phoenix, AZ. August. Stifling heat. Phoenix is a concrete heat sink. It doesn't cool off at night, and the rumors of dry heat being somehow cooler then humid heat is really a grass being browner on the other side argument. It's hot. I'm standing in line at the Phoenix airport car rental center. This place is a zoo. Vegas is always a zoo. Phoenix is not normally the hoopla capitol of the world, but right now it is. Probably, every place is a zoo. A big zombie zoo. The old guy in front of me is arguing with the Alamo representative. The old guy is winning the argument because he counters every objection made by the rep with a loud "What?"

  "What? You don't have any Caddies? Why not? What? What do you mean on line reservation, I am on line! What? Standing here is not on line? Then what the hell is it? What? I'm telling you, I need to get to my wife today. Today. T. O. D. A. Y. What? Tonight? What time is it here? What?"

  The place is joyful, buzzing, edging towards controlled chaos. The Occupy Airports crowd is mostly young people. Much younger than myself, at least. I don’t know how to acknowledge them, so I give the Black Panther salute? I realized I got old the day I was driving in my car with Sissy and one of her young friends a few years ago. Her friend was fiddling with the radio, and she mocked my CD player. She starts talking about some singer I never heard of, Justin Fever or something. They debate about auto tune, so I point out my CD player doubles as a car radio, and will in fact auto tune into the next station. They look at me. Her friend goes back to fiddling with the radio. She finds a station, and I start snapping my fingers, enjoying the tunes. Sissy told me later, embarrassed like, that it wasn't music. I was driving with my blinker on for twenty miles. She had that same look on her face when she showed me the Paul Williams album cover. I was her cat, and she was cleaning my litter box, but at least I go in the same place every time. That kind of look.

  The Occupy Airport kids are happy because there are no more consequences. It's like the Zombie Apocalypse is programmed in our DNA. It somehow absolves us of our past sins, and we are reborn clean and pure. For the same reason salmon return to their spawning ground, so do people return from the bowels of hell.

  The crowd in zip lock hand cuffs chants "One Percent! One Percent!" Their raucous blathering drowns out the argument between the old guy and the rep. I have a vested interest in what transpires between the two. The old guy starts waving his arms like the rep let loose bad gas.

  "Up yours, Cracker Jack!" The old guy storms off. The rep looks straight ahead, right at me.

  My turn! I step up to the plate, and try to break the ice by looking off towards the old guy.

  "Fending off the Indians today, huh chief?"

  I look back at the rep. He just stares at me.

  I clear my throat. "You know, 'The Alamo'..."

  "Can I help you, sir?" He has a high pitched voice. Not like me and Spike Grindstone have, only more husky.

  "You sure can," I say looking down at the kid's name tag, "Mister...Thunderfoot?"

  The rep stares at me. For the first time, I get a good look at him. Or her. I may be balding, but my eyesight is perfect, or at least used to be. Anyhow, standing before me is an 'It.' Crew cut, smooth skin, fat head jammed into a button downed shirt housing giant flat boobs. Or moobs. I try to look down the rest of the body, what I can make out from above the high counter, anyway. I don’t see over counters all too good. It has sloping shoulders, and what I think is an egg shaped body. High cheekbones, bizarre name, tan skin. I'm in the southwest. I can't tell what it is, but it definitely looks Native American.

  "We're getting off on the wrong...foot." I grimace, I cringe. "Was it the chief comment, or the mister, or just now the foot?"

  "All," the rep deadpans. Even in all this chaos, I'm convinced Alamo will be the first to start hiring zombies (they weren't, of course. We all know that accolade goes to UPS).

  I scratch my head, "So you just go by..."

  "Thunderfoot."

  "Thunderfoot," I say, "gotchya chief. Anyhow, I'm trying to hotfoot it out of here, so I figure you with that funny name and me with my unfunny puns, we can work out a deal maybe?" I'm terrible at persuading people. It must be my face. People hate me on sight.

  "Do you have a reservation?"

  "Like, live on one? Oh, oh. That. Well, that's the thing. I did. Or do." I pause; fold my arms across my chest. "Depends on how you want to look at it."

  The rep licks at its lower teeth, jutting out a plump lower lip at me. I think it has an Adam's apple, and I can't help but stare. It has sparse stringy hairs on its chin, and thick black peach fuzz for a mustache.

  "What's your name?" the rep asks.

  I tell the rep my name. It punches into the computer.

  "We have nothing under that name. Do you have a different spelling?"

  "Different spelling?" I look at it dumbfounded. "There's only one way to spell that name."

  "Well we don't have anything, and all our cars are already reserved."

  "No. No. No...wait," I plead. "You see, the thing is, I don't know if you're aware or not-"

  "I'm aware."

  I try to use some sneaky reverse logic; it always seemed to work when Spock and Kirk tricked all them evil computers on Star Trek. I figure this rep is about as robotic as they come.

  "Oh? Aware of what?" I say with authority, eyebrow cocked. But it ain't cocked. I've practiced in the mirror enough to know it looks like I'm just giving a weak evil eye.

  "What?!"

  "That's right," I say smugly, "What? What is it that you are so acutely aware of?"

  "That you don't have a reservation?"

  "Aha!" I shout a little too loud. Some of the Occupy kids stop chanting, and look over at us. "Aha," I say more subdued, "I don't have a reservation. No wait, that's not what I wanted to say-"

  I'm pushed aside. A mob of uptight soccer moms, yuppies, and a good sampling of One Percenters besieges Thunderfoot. All saying the same thing I start babbling about.

  "Zombies! The zombies are going to get us! I need a car! A car!!!"

  I'm too late. I forget that Kirk and Spock always had that ability to cut to commercial right before the computer fizzled and smoked. Thunderfoot does neither. Thunderfoot is infallible. Thunderfoot is St. Peter, opening the pearly gates of the automatic doors adjacent to the counter, leading out to stifling, hellish heat and bestowing keys of chariots for the chosen few to drive away in...or whatever it is they drive around up in heaven. Keys to the harp just don’t make sense. I'll stick with chariots. I need a chariot.

  I wait around a little more and watch how effortlessly the yuppies rent cars. I laugh at the sign that reads, "All car rentals must be accompanied by ticket from plane, train, or cruise ship." I cringe at the thought of anyone taking a cruise ship out of Phoenix, and the idiot at Alamo who requires that sign to be hanging. I stop hanging around.

  I call Dodge. I dial his number. I am met with a buzzing sound. Not even a recording. I try dialing again. Same buzzing sound. I look around me. The scene went from 99% rejoicing, to about half rejoicing as cell phones get passed around, and confused looks and heads shaking "No" get returned.

  I scratch my head, and am pushed aside as a big guy muscles in to use the phone. "Have at it, Dummy," I think. Spike will know what to do, if he hasn't become a zombie yet.

  I go out towards the loading and unloading area. Not a cab in sight. Cars are zipping in and out, but nobody is willing to give me a lift. I walk the three miles to the convention center where the pigeon convention is being held. It takes me about an hour to get to the place. People are mostly oblivious. It's like when we go to war, only the people with relatives overseas...the ones with skin in the game; they're the only ones paying attention. I always thought it would be like in the movies, like Godzilla stomping Tokyo, Japanese people running all around. People are acting like the zombie situation is far off, dead rising in some distant land they can't find on a map and mispronounce when reading it aloud from a newspaper.

  I make i
t to the convention center. A tall mirrored glass building reflects the lights of the city, giving it a celestial look. The place is barren. Water drips from black veins poking through sharp red gravel, feeding rows of oleander. The parking lots across the street from the convention center are empty. I walk through a parking lot, cross the street and walk around a large beige building. That fake adobe looking type, windows recessed, rounded corners. It's still hot, at night it feels even hotter. I cut across another parking lot, filled with cars. A guy is smoking a cigarette and looks at me suspiciously. I walk across the street to the Radisson. It's where Spike usually stays. I made it. The AC is welcome relief. For such a big hotel on the outside, they have an awfully small lobby. The place is large enough, though, to carry an echo, as my squeaky sneakers chirp across the white marble tile. I sound like a basketball player in a big gym.

  There's a few people milling about, checking in. A family. Mother with two ugly looking kids. I'm thinking to myself, "Man, these kids would make some ugly zombies."

  The mother is no looker, either. Eggplant shaped head, turnip colored lips, she even smells purple. A man comes in the glass doors behind me, carrying some mismatched luggage. The ugly kids start watching TV, and the mom pushes them away as she bellies up to the bar that is the lobby counter. The man stands next to her, nudges her aside. He’s the father, ugly looking Neanderthal.

  Three clerks, a frumpy red head girl with a ski slope nose, and two young guys. The guys are watching the lobby TV too, transfixed. It's showing the same zombie clip from before. The kids eyes are lighting up, mouths open, looking at each other, back once or twice towards their parents at the counter for approval, then back to the plasma TV.

  The lady clerk is thirty-something. Plump cheeks, straw thin tinted red hair, forced smile. She attends to the parents, but there’s an air about her. Like she’s going above and beyond the call of duty, and she wants her coworkers to know how hard she works. She over emphasizes every gesture, like a magician’s helper. Anyway, it's a reservation deal going on with the parents. I'm not too inclined to listen in, though; I just need to get the room number of Spike's.

  I walk over to the other end of the counter. One of the two guys looks up at me. He's got a lazy eye, so it's like he's looking at me and watching the TV at the same time. Maybe he's just part chameleon, not for the color changing ability, but for the multi-directional eye thing he's got going on.

  "You guys think I can use the phone?" I ask.

  Funny eyes turns the phone around so the numbers are facing me.

  "Do I have to dial anything first to go out?" I ask again.

  Nothing. They're both transfixed to the TV. As the plump girl talks to the parents, she comes over and presses "9" as I pick up the receiver. She goes back to the parents. I mutter "Thanks," to no one in particular.

  I dial Dodge again. The line just buzzes, like an electric signal, a humming buzz, a big fat lazy wasp on the other end. One of those big bright black and yellow ones that buzz so loud and are so conspicuous they dare to be messed with. At a picnic, you go to grab a soda can covered in wasps, they all scatter. This one sits there sipping your soda. That’s the buzz, him sitting on the can buzzing his wings in anger.

  How I wish I could be a wasp, or even a hornet. I’d even settle for a fuzzy bumble bee, cute and slow, but still have the potential to sting. Alas, I'm a gnat.

  "Hey," I say to the plump girl clerk, "I uh...the lines were down at the airport-"

  "The phones are down," the chameleon chirps, inflecting the 'down' so it sounds more like he's asking me a question. Like, 'the phones are down?'

  "Yeah, that's what I said."

  "I heard you? There's no need to be rude? Gosh." He looks at his friend, who gives him a knowing look.

  "Oh, I'm not being rude. I just thought you were…never mind. Can I have the room that Spike Grindstone is staying at?"

  The chameleon focuses both eyes on me for a moment, and then they go back to the TV. His buddy mumbles something to him, and they both snicker.

  "Something funny?" I ask.

  They both laugh. My face turns red. The dad Neanderthal reaches a burly arm across me and swings the phone over to him. I'm about to say that I'm using it, but I remember: The phones are down. He dials a number, listens for a moment. Puts down the receiver, and pushes the phone back to me. He brushes his big arm against me and I stumble back a bit. I sigh.

  "Sigh.” I squint at the chameleon. "So can you tell me where Spike Grindstone's room is at?"

  They both laugh, and the plump girl comes over.

  "Something I can help you with, sir?"

  "Yeah. Listen, I know I sound exactly like Spike Grindstone and all, but in all seriousness, this is no shtick. I need to find the man. I’m not doing a comedy sketch here, you know. I just need a room number."

  "I'm sorry, sir, but Radisson policy does not allow us to give out that information. If you like, I can let Mr. Grindstone know you are waiting in the lobby for him." She smiles at me, and gestures toward the couch. Her voice has a condescending, over exaggerated placating tone to it.

  I sigh again, and puff my cheeks up and blow out my frustration. This is all very annoying stuff. My anarchist is nowhere to be found, there are zombies afoot, and I need to stop Spike Grindstone from killing himself.

  "Sure, let him know. I'll be waiting over here," I point towards the couch facing the TV. I sit down and watch for a little bit. The two ugly kids get up as I sit down, and follow their parents down the hall to the elevator. One of them begs for money for the vending machine. The ugly mom doesn't relent, neither does the Neanderthal dad. The couch is stiff, thick industrial strength corduroy, black and tan, like the counter. The coffee table is thick beveled glass, with black and gold legs. There's a O for Oprah magazine sitting on the table. I pick it up and read about the women's advancement movement and potpourri.

  I wait about twenty minutes. Every now and then one of the clerks gets up and looks over at me. Eventually the clerks migrate to a little room behind the counter. They're all laughing. I go up to the counter after another ten minutes or so. It's 8:30pm.

  The plump girl comes out, and she's fiddling with the fax machine.

  "Oh! So you think the phones are up now?" I ask, and spin the phone around to me.

  "No," she sighs. "I'm just getting this ready for when they are. Oh, Mr. Grindstone is not in his room."

  “So the inside phone lines-“

  “Work, yes,” she says.

  "Pretty unusual stuff going on, wouldn't you say, miss?"

  "I guess?" She's got that upward inflection thing going on, just like the chameleon.

  It's the dialect of the southwest, imported from the insecurity of Californians. Any time I see CA or AZ plates when I'm parking cars back home, they always request, "Take good care of her? And there will be a good tip? When you return her?" (Only thing is, there's never a good tip. Also, I always make sure to adjust all the mirrors whenever they ask me that. This way, if they do give me a tip, I make a big show of saying, "Wait a minute, let me make sure your mirrors are ok" and I put them back. This rarely happens, so I smirk when they get in and have to sit there and adjust everything. Again, I'm a jerk.)

  "Well miss," I confide, "it's not like...it's not exactly like you see zombies every day."

  "Oh, I know? But my friends? They're always dressing up like zombies? You know. ‘Occupy! Occupy!’ So I'm just burned out by the whole thing already?"

  "I was flying down from Vegas and haven't really been following the news. But uh, sheesh. I didn't hear nothing since this afternoon. How long has this been going on with the zombies, miss?"

  "Oh, just today? But I mean, with my friends always dressing up like them? You know. Years now. Just makes you numb?"

  "Yeah, yeah I guess. Only, of course…this is the real thing." I pick up the phone and dial Dodge. Buzzing.

  I hang up the phone. I clear my throat, "Excuse me, miss?"

  "I'm still right here," she sq
ueaks out annoyed, and quickly smiles at me. "Can't get too far beyond this counter."

  "I know, but I was gunna ask, you know, given the circumstances and all. Time is running short for me."

  "What makes you say that?" she smiles again.

  "Oh, just, you know...the way the movies always play out," I say.

  She's got a friendly smile and a button nose, but when she turns to the side, her head looks like a giant pineapple. Then when she faces me again, she's not too bad looking. Pretty blue eyes, too. Her chin is pointy, and she got a lot of scabs on it, like she picks at her chin while waiting behind this counter all night. Sure enough, she catches me looking at her chin, and she goes right to fidgeting with it. I hate making people self-conscious, I automatically go to rubbing my head.

  "You really think so?" she asks, waking me from my stupor.

  "Huh? Oh. Sure, sure. I'm a big fan of the genre. Zombies and me, we go way back. Back before 'Night of the Living Dead.' Back when they were drugged out workers on that sugar cane farm in that one movie-"

  "White Zombie," she interrupts.

  "The rock band from the 80's?" I ask.

  "No, that's White Snake. White Zombie," she says, self-consciously scratching at her chin again. She picks something off, and I see her discretely rolling the scab around between her thumb and index finger. She gives the Knicks a run for their money with this pick and roll. Whatever she flicks hits the ground with an audible ‘clunk.’

  I wake up, "The rock guy from the 90's. Right?" I’m floundering in the deep waters of pop culture.

  "No, that's Rob Zombie. White Zombie is the first zombie movie, Bela Lugosi starred in it." She looks at me quizzically.

  "That's right," I fail to recover.

  "I thought you said you were a fan of the genre?" The condescension in her voice is thick as honey. She smiles a big toothy grin like a werewolf.

  "Oh, I am. I am. I just forget the particulars. I'm terrible with names, to be totally honest. But I did know the gist of the movie!" I look at her with my cocked eyebrow. She takes it as my evil eye. It's too weak to intimidate. It doesn't faze her.

  "So you know then that as the genre developed, most movies play down the facts of how it all came to pass," she says.

  "Right. Wait, what?" I feel like the old guy at the airport. I'm the getting old guy in the hotel lobby.

  "The Zombie Apocalypse, in the movies, or the books. You know. How it all materializes. And by having a character briefly mention, 'The Outbreak' or 'The Event', or they get all clinical about how the bird flu mutated and infected everyone, totally glossing over the true beginnings of the," she uses air quotes, "Zombie Plague."

  "Uh, right?"

  "So then you're aware that by ignoring that one fact, that holy grail of plot holes, they can sell their make believe story to the masses."

  "Oh, I'm aware. I'm aware. As a matter of fact, I was saying just the same thing to someone just earlier today how aware I am." I prepare to use my Spock Kirk logic mind tricks on her. She thwarts me, though, before I can even beam up.

  "So you wouldn't mind telling me, then. Your opinion," she says with nostrils flared.

  "Tell you what, miss?"

  "How this will all blow over by morning," she rests her chubby elbows on the counter, cradling her arms over the phone.

  "Miss, I think I mislead you. I'm not such a zombie movie buff after all, at least not as much as you, apparently."

  "I never said I was!"

  "But you just-"

  "Were you paying any attention? I said my friends were!" She wheels around and fiddles with the fax machine.

  Women. I can never figure out what makes them tick. I go to dial Dodge again, then stop and think.

  "So what is the plot hole, miss?"

  She wheels back around, literally ducks the question I just asked, like I’m throwing a piece of china at her in some sort of domestic dispute between an old married couple.

  She glares at me, I insulted her.

  "Plot hole? Plot hole? Are you that thick?" as she says 'thick', she reaches across the counter and smacks me on the forehead. Then she laughs.

  She talks to me like she's addressing an audience of learned colleagues. Her two goons from the little room come out. I feel eyes staring at me from behind, and sure enough, a group of people have been standing behind me in the lobby. For some time, apparently, one of them holds the Oprah magazine, and another is stretched out on the couch. There's luggage scattered all across the white floor. The lobby feels even smaller now. But the plump girl is as big as a mountain as she addresses the group.

  "A show of hands," she says in a booming ringleader voice. "Show of hands. How many of you have played QWOP?"

  I'm confused. A bunch of hands shoot up from the twenty or so people standing behind me. I'm confused and out of the loop, so nothing is new, and I begin to feel comfortable again.

  She looks at me. "You're telling me you're the only one here who has not played QWOP."

  I shake my head no and shrug.

  She disappears into the small room and reemerges carrying a large iPad thingie. She fiddles with it a bit, and a small group of people press me up against the counter. She spins the computer around, and there's a black guy standing in the middle of the screen.

  She looks at me and says, "OK, I want you to make this guy run to the finish line. Q-W-O-P on the keyboard moves his thighs and calves around. No time limit, just get him to the finish line."

  "Just get him to the finish line? Any jumps or anything? Any flying barrels?" (I have played Donkey Kong, I'm not that illiterate with the computer games, but on my meager salary, I can't even afford a cell phone, much less one of these smart phones.)

  "No barrels, but uh...one jump." Her lackeys laugh when she says this, and a bunch of people around me nod knowingly.

  So I try to make the guy move, and I fail. Miserably. He's doing splits, he's doing pirouettes, and he’s doing every damn thing under the sun except running. He's not even walking; he's floundering on the ground. Every. Single. Time.

  "What the hell's the point of this damn thing, lady? I just want the room number for my friend Mr. Grindstone!"

  "My point," she says, "is that you cannot even walk." She turns the computer pad around, and makes the black guy run. He runs stiff, like a zombie, only he's supposed to be some sort of Olympic runner. She makes him jump a hurdle, then he does a long jump and crosses the finish line. Some of the people around me clap. The pump girl takes a bow.

  "Miss, I don't know what the hell you're driving at."

  "That's what the movies want you to accept. Just like this game. You know how to walk, right? Yet you can't use four simple keys in a game, not without practice. Well, a movie can't," she uses the air quotes again, "'Make you practice.' The movies make QWOP run. The movies assume that we all know that the zombies take over. There's not even folklore about it. It's all less than one hundred years old. How are we to believe in all the rules of zombies when the genre is less than one hundred years old?"

  "How do you know all of this? What makes you an authority?" a voice behind me says. It's a nerdy looking guy. Bad body odor. He's wearing one of those fedoras that are back in fashion these days, and he looks a bit like a press man.

  The plump girl looks back at her two goons, and shrugs. "I'm not an expert."

  The crowd starts to disperse, they mumble about reservations and ice machines. She tries to reel them back in, but like everything else these days, the attention span of people is like gnats. At least, this is one gnat that has an attention span. So while her two goons deal with the crowd of lobby dwellers, I pull her aside.

  "So what's the big secret, miss? Are you saying the zombies can't walk or something?"

  She looks at me, and starts picking at her chin, searching for an answer that doesn't come too easy. Then her blue eyes flash brilliant, "No. I'm not saying that at all? You know. I'm just saying that people take walking for granted, and movie makers take the inception of zombi
e plagues for granted, but there's more to it."

  "Like salmon," I say sage like.

  "Yeah!" She smiles bright, and for the first time, it ain't a phony smile. If she didn't have such a weird profile, I could almost be attracted to her. She's no Riley though. That pointy pock marked chin is a boner killer. Way too short.

  She looks beyond me, like she's talking to the crowd again, "Like salmon. Like, we know what to expect."

  We both say the words together, "The shuffling...the brain eating...shooting them in the head."

  That's about where our kindred spirits diverged, sadly. Because she goes on to say, "If only for that gaping plot hole..."

  I want to ask what she keeps coming back to; only my mind keeps coming back to Spike Grindstone sitting up in one of these rooms with a gun to his head.

  "That room number, miss? Can I have it now?"

  She shakes her head no, and swings the phone around, and dials '9-390' real deliberate like.

  "Still no answer," she says.

  "Thanks miss." I bolt past the milling crowd. I race past the people waiting for the elevator, and dash up the stairs.

  I gotta save Spike Grindstone from himself.