Dark pools like water at the base of the hill. The creek shivers by and a cricket chir-squeaks and I spook, drop the flashlight before I realize that it’s only Lion who’s caught my other hand. “Don’t do that.”
He’s not listening. He’s staring hard into the night, into the shadows under the trees. We could see every star if it wasn’t cloudy, but this is Illinois and it’s always cloudy here when you could use a little light. Night washes the color out of Lion’s face, out of his bright hair and his red shirt. He could already be dead.
If Lion were a zombie, how would I know?
Someone locks the cemetery gates at night. I don’t know who. It doesn’t matter; the fence is barely waist-high and we hop it, iron slick under sweaty palms as we lift ourselves across. Lion steps deftly around headstones that I can’t even see. I thump a knee twice into stone, fall back and follow instead.
The grass is on the long side of short: tended, but ambivalently, so it hides rocks and holes and things to trip me up. I keep one eye on Lion, one on the ground. I reach out as we skirt the headstone, where the grey of grass gives way to the grey of turned-over earth, and dip the tips of my fingers into the carven E.
“Lion,” I say. “Do you think she’s scared?”
He stops, abrupt, and we almost collide. I skip sideways, sinking my shoes into the soft heavy soil of Emily’s grave. I imagine the shiver of bodies moving, the strong twiggy fingerbone grasp on my ankle. But this patch of ground is already disturbed and not only by worms. The zombies can’t grab you if the zombies have already gone.
“When you’re a zombie,” Lion says, “you shouldn’t have to be scared.”
I don’t think of Lion as scared. He’s too steady, too serious, Lion, my friend. He’s braver about dead things than anyone I know. I guess he’d have to be.
You don’t have to run from zombies. You just have to walk at a brisk pace, and maybe zigzag once in a while. You don’t have to run to catch them either. They’re not that fast. But Lion isn’t waiting, or even walking. I’ve never seen him like this.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve chased a zombie. I keep a list in a notebook that lives in my backpack, and Lion keeps one in his head. We can’t be sure that every disturbed grave has a zombie in it. Probably there are ghouls and ghosts and skeletons, like he said. Probably there are vampires. Possibly there are mummies, too. You’d have to go out of your way to mummify anyone, here, which isn’t to say that it couldn’t be done.
But most of them are zombies if they’re anything at all. You can tell from the prints, from the shuffling gait. You can tell from the town. If we were mostly beset by vampires, I think we’d be paler, colder, lonelier. Instead we move slow and try not to think.
I never thought Lion cared. He’s a smart kid, reads a lot, might have been skipped up a grade if he hadn’t missed so much school. But he’s never seemed to mind the town or to mind not leaving it. He thinks the zombies are kind of neat, but he’s only ever chased them because I do.
But tonight I’m not so much chasing as stumbling along behind as he tracks like a hound. We splash through the creek, no time for stepping stones or for taking off shoes. The bank on the other side is steep. The hill above is steeper. I grab onto slender trees for balance and to pull myself up. I lunge and my right shoelace swings with my stride, sticks soggy to my ankle.
At the top it levels out and opens up. The ditch is filled with fireflies and there’s the highway, empty except when the semis pass, swallowing the miles and spitting out exhaust. They say it runs clear to Colorado, two lanes each direction with reflectors in the stripes. I’ve ridden along it going into the city, or with Lion to see a movie or a band, or going to see my mom’s new place in the city, by the new high school that’s supposed to be mine. I’ve ridden along it, up until now, back again.
This is where we lost her trail before. Tonight he doesn’t pause. He lopes across the highway, crashing into the cornfield and I lose him, hear stalks bending, breaking, but the wind is in the corn, and so am I.
I stop. I can see where the corn’s been pushed down where Lion passed, or the zombie girl, or a deer. I can hear the rattle of the stalks and a weird no-cricket stillness and then the wind as it kicks up again. I step deeper into the field and flattened stalks crunch underfoot like so many bones. I’d left my backpack in the cemetery; I hadn’t expected we’d just take off like this. What would I do, if I found the zombie or if the zombie found me? I could, I think, just walk slowly, carefully, back to town.
But I have to be sure that I don’t get grabbed. In this field, in the dark, I can’t know where she is, or if she’s still here at all. Something moves, off to my left, heavier than the wind, and I whisper, “Lion?” because it didn’t matter. If it’s the zombie, she probably already knows that I’m here. I hold my breath.
And let it out, explosive yelp, as Lion yells, more like a scream, ragged and sharp. I turn blindly into the corn, plow through to the tractor path between fields and, “Lion!” I yell. Another creek ahead, path of least resistance and you can’t see color in the dark, but movement, yes. I run. I stop at the top of the bank, Lion in a heap below and behind me a sound, a staggering heavy tread and a retreating break of corn. I gather myself to turn, to chase, and then I don’t. I couldn’t leave Lion behind.
Endings may not be better with zombies. You can’t have a happy ending and zombies both. Even if the hero survives. Even if her friends do, and let’s face it: they don’t. I skid down the bank on stones and loose dirt, catching an old tree to halt my slide. It’s cooler down here. Heat rises. Fog settles in low-slung spots. And Lion shivers, hands around a twisted ankle, dirty face streaked and smudged. Not that he’d admit to tears. Not that I want him to. But I know I can’t ask, “Are you okay?” and so try, “Did you see her?” instead.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t seem to hear. Also, did she see him? She shambled away and left us here. I don’t know what that means. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who could follow a trail. Maybe the zombie girl could, too. Then things would change. There’d be riots. Martial law. Boarded-up doors and baseball bats. I’d have to stay. They’d need me here.
But that’s the other problem about endings with zombies: you only win if you cheat. You can run away if there’s only one. You can dodge around two or smash them with a bat. But there are never just one or two zombies. Instead there’s three, or four, or lots, shambling in cornfields or down the street, and it never really works, holing up and hiding out. I wouldn’t bet against a zombie. Not on my life.
Only, it’s a long walk back and an ankle’s a bad thing to hurt and so even if we get that far, Lion won’t be able to bike. “Did she bite you?” I ask, and he shakes his head, “Not yet,” without any more tears, just that sidekick’s resolve in his eye. I swallow hard. I pull him to his feet and I hug him, fierce, say into his chest, “I’m going to miss you.”
Zombies pretend to be about how there are worse things than death. It isn’t true. Being one is an in-between state, and the way out is pretty much what you’d expect. Zombies are about how there are worse things than life.
Lion’s taller than I am and heavier still, but he leans on my shoulder and limps, more than usual, until we’re back by the highway again. We know where we’re going, have purpose and brains. I think we beat the zombie girl there. I break a low branch from a tree at the edge of the fields and Lion takes it from my hands. It’s the best that we can do. He tries a few practice swings, and maybe baseball players know about zombies, too: you don’t drop the bat unless you’re going to run.