Zombie Nights

image came along with that, of long grass freshly cut and smelling like heaven. He concentrated but the memories were vague and came rarely. It was troubling. After awhile he stood up, approached the tv and pushed enough buttons until the thing came alive. The screen was small, perhaps eleven inches, and the display was very fuzzy but there were people on it, and voices, and Dave sat back to observe.

  The people were sitting around a table and chatting, two men and three women discussing anonymous personal problems. Someone was too fat and didn't like herself. Someone was afraid to tell somebody something. Another person had trouble with her teenage daughter. Now and then the audience was shown, a chorus of random people sitting in happy judgment. The stories were obscure to Dave, and he couldn't follow the details. He noted that every one had something to complain about and was looking for reassurance. They relaxed when they got that.

  The act of speaking drew his attention, and now that he was alone he felt more confident to give it a try. He wanted to say to the people on the television, 'everything is going to be all right', but all he could manage, at first, was to push out a sound.

  'Uh'.

  That was progress. He had made the noise through his mouth, up from his throat. He repeated the steps he had taken until he could produce, as short bursts of exhalations a series of sounds. His body was struggling and the effort was intense. He felt, for the first time since awakening, some weariness, but that faded when he made the discovery of closing his lips while forcing out the noise, making the "p" sound.

  He sounded like an infant babbling but as he sat observing the people on the tv he noticed the different sounds they were making and watched their lips move and after an hour or so was able to make words come out that sounded close to what they should, and this gave him a good feeling. The exercise of speaking was also teaching the muscles around his mouth how to move again. He could change the expression on his face a little bit more. Not much, but it was something. When he saw Ray again, he would be able to communicate better.

  Ray came home in the middle of the afternoon, bearing his bundles, which he proudly unpacked in the downstairs room, handing each item over to Dave while explaining its purpose and his reasoning. He helped bandage up the wound, and showed Dave how to put the clothes on. He applied a little of the make-up to Dave's cheek and all the while Dave managed to grunt and make sounds and even a few words, such as "k" for okay, "ga" for "got it," and "no" for "no" in response to Ray's questions about food and water and whether he wanted any.

  Soon Dave was looking almost human. The hand-me-down clothes from the thrift store suited him well enough. His face and hands were free of blood and dirt. The patches where his skin flaked off were covered up. Ray'd even thought to pick up an old fedora hat which didn't really go with anything Dave was wearing but covered up the spots on his head where a few clumps of hair had fallen out. Dave sat back on the couch and turned his head towards Ray and thought he wanted to say something but didn't know what that was. Ray just stood there nodding.

  "I don't know what it's all about" Ray said. "You being here, coming back like you say and all. Must be for some reason but darned if I know. You got any notion?"

  "No," Dave replied in a rough exhalation. He shook his head and repeated the word.

  "None of my business, I suppose," Ray went on. "You're a full grown man and all. I was thinking maybe you should see a doctor. What do you think?"

  "No. Doc," Dave pushed out.

  "No. Poy," he continued. Ray took that to mean "no point" and agreed.

  "Not much they could do for you I guess. I mean, what could they do? Check your pulse? Wait, that gives me an idea," he said, and came back closer to Dave, grabbed his wrist and held his thumb over the artery there.

  "Very weak," he said after a time, "Maybe twenty pulses a minute. Hardly a thing."

  "Should've got some deodorant," he continued. "I forgot how bad you smell. Almost getting used to it, though. Still, you're going to need some if you ever go anywhere. You can use mine for now. Remind me."

  He let go of Dave's hand and took a step back.

  "Holy mackerel!," he declared. "You ain't hardly breathing are you? I mean, are you breathing?"

  He came closer again and put his face up to Dave's.

  "No, I guess you're not."

  He clucked his tongue and backed away again.

  "Not hardly human," he concluded. "Something else again. Like you were once a man, but now you're something else, the way a caterpillar become a moth."

  Ray took a seat on the other chair in the room. The television was still on, but now it was showing some news program. A man was sitting behind a desk telling incomprehensible tales about far off places where events were ostensibly occurring.

  "Never had a child of my own," Ray told him. "Of course you know that, or at least you did. Married. Long time. But no kids. Now it seems I got me a grown up alien baby to look after."

  Dave glanced up from the tv and tried to force his face into a smile.

  "Da," he said.

  Five

  Over the next few days, Clayton Jeffries kept pestering Ray about when Davey'd come around to visit. He was uneasy, worried that Ray's nephew was up to no good, and might bring trouble around his old friend. Partly this was Ray's fault, for he had a history of hinting about his nephew and the sort of people he ran around with. A lot of gossip concerning the boy had rattled about the barbershop for a number of years already.

  There was the matter of whether young Dave would finish high school, and after that, whether he would ever go on to college. There were stories about girlfriends and parental disapproval of same. There were a few scrapes with the law that got mentioned, and re-mentioned, even though they generally concerned people Dave had known, and not the kid himself. There were general concerns about his limited career choices, given his basic lack of smarts and qualifications. It didn't help how his parents had passed on, medical bills chewing up what little savings they'd ever scraped together, leaving nothing at all for their son after both of them had gone. Dave had been removed from his childhood by the bank upon foreclosure.

  And yet, he survived. He had stuff, even a car, and the old men in the shop spared no pains in gossiping as to how that was even possible. He had to be mixed up in something. There had to be unsavory characters. The truth was, they knew nothing about his circumstances. Even before his parents had died, his contact with his Uncle Ray and Aunt Melba had been sparse, sporadic and superficial. When Melba had gone on, Dave hadn't even bothered to come to the funeral, which had hurt Ray's feelings. The two of them were now all that was left of the family. Dave's life became a mystery to Ray, and maybe it would always remain that way.

  Dave was spending his days in front of the television, practicing speech and trying to sort out the images and sounds it fed him. He made rapid improvement and by the weekend was able to talk in brief sentences, but he still didn't have much to say. As he told his uncle, it seemed to him that his very existence had only begun with that awakening underground. As to his seeking out Ray's house, it was as if his body had held on to certain memories, but these were disconnected, haphazard, and made no sense to him. He could not explain anything. He only knew that here he was, and that he was what he was, whatever that was.

  At night he felt compelled to go out. As soon as the sunset completed, he felt it throughout his body, like an alarm had gone off, and his attention turned to the external world. He rose, moved up the stairs, through the front room and out the front door, down the steps and into the street. He did not feel the weather; warm or cold made no impression on him. He wore the jacket Ray had brought him, but he wore it all day and all night, without distinction. The same was true for the old felt hat. He sprayed on enough of Ray's barbershop cologne to cover up his scent, mostly.

  Out in the world he followed rules he didn't think about. To avoid being seen. To stay away from light, whether streetlights or houselights. To avoid staring at things. To keep moving, to move at an even pace.
To show no hesitation, no uncertainty. To walk upright, steady and calm. At any sudden movement, he would slide into the most darkness at hand, as smooth as a paranoid cat.

  The first nights he stayed close to the waterfront, wandering around the abandoned warehouses, the old train depot, the empty shipyard. This area felt familiar, but the occasional truck roaring through startled him with its beams of light and clouds of exhaust. His instincts pushed him towards the hill, back up and into the park. He spent most of those times in the woods, getting to know his way around them, but for all of that exploring it didn't interest him to return to the place he'd arisen, nor would he have recognized it if he happened to stumble across it. That night was already gone. He was alert in the moment, and sometimes only the moment. In the middle of those zombie nights he was only aware of the dark and the noises around him and it felt as if nothing else had ever existed or ever would again.

  The nights contrasted completely with the days; the utter lack of humanity versus the glut of it on the television screen. There he witnessed an appalling and endless scene of hustle and nerves, intensity and alarm, shrill self-importance and earnest pushiness. Perhaps if he had watched another channel, but he didn't know there was one; he saw the morning gossip shows, the local news and then the live