Zombieboy

Night fell, the stars came out. The boy once called Kyle lay in the middle of the alley behind an old strip mall from the seventies. He had not moved since the rain well before sunset the previous day, the rain that had come before sunset had pushed various bits of foliage and garbage against his head, creating a sort of pile of refuse that started at his head, wound down around his shoulders and trailed off as it passed his feet. He had not moved a single muscle in over ten hours. Bugs were starting to crawl on him, as if he were a corpse, investigating in their own way, to see if he were food or shelter. Their tiny insect minds followed a logic set down for thousands of years: when it stops moving it is food, when it smells a certain way, it is food, when other insects are close to it, it is food. Kyle's stomach was flatter at the top, more evenly distended further down, Kyle felt the pain of the slowly moving food, the gases that were building up and knew the way he was going to get relief. The insects crawling across his open eyes bothered him less than making doodie in his pants and that fact got him to finally move. Alarmed, confused insects scurried away as what they had thought was food began to move again. The boy fumbled for his pajama's zipper, tugging it down, then removing his pajamas and pulling his tidy-whiteys down to his ankles only an instant before he voided his bowels. Times like this always brought the diarrhea song into his head. "If you're sliding into first and your gut is gonna burst, diarrhea, cha-cha-cha!" He hummed the rest of the song to himself as he squatted in the middle of the starlit alley. When he finished he had a problem, no toilet paper. "Gotta wipe or it'll leave treads!", he thought, "Mom says treads are disgusting. Dad says they are normal." In an effort to appease mom he did his best to battle the 'treads'. His pajamas had been hit by 'splatter'. Gross. Hm, well they are already ruined, he was not going to bring them home like that, but walking around in his underwear? It was dark and he was not too far from home, he could get clothing there. He used his pj's to clean up, stood up, pulled up his undies and set off down the alley, easily outdistancing the slow, brownish river that was racing him down towards the grate at the end of the alley.

He followed the alley back around taking a right turn and then made a left where he came out at Ralston Road. He could see the ice arena through the trees to the right and decided to head towards it and use the foot bridge behind it, instead of following the road straight ahead of him. There was a bicycle and jogging path that ran behind the ice arena along the creek, the bridge was old, with wooden slats and chain link sides, it has been there as long as Kyle could remember. The path behind the ice rink also offered more privacy to a young boy clad only in underwear. Somehow Kyle got the feeling, this was not a big deal anymore. On the west side of the building there was not a sidewalk, only a worn dirt path, used by countless people who needed to access the bridge, but didn't feel like walking the long way around to use the sidewalks on the east side. Wandering around at four am alone in his underwear did not cause him any undue stress, almost as if it were a normal thing. He made his way behind the building to the bridge and paused, there were people back there. Not colorful people, blank dark, pitch black people.

He stayed behind the corner and watched them for a bit, they bumbled back and forth, looking up at the top of the ice rink's huge cooling system. He followed their head's gaze and saw at the top of the machinery a colorful display of light, a glowing arm shaped form that barely peeked out from the top of it, he knew there was more than the arm there too. It was a little arm, about his size, and it was human. He pulled back behind the corner, startled. It was a HUMAN arm. The colors were humans; he ate the colors. He ATE them, he had eaten a human and drank its blood, and diarrhead it out. He was a cannibal, no worse a zombie, like in his song. Kyle leaned his head back against the faded green painted steel siding of the building and then slowly slide down onto his behind. He kept his face looking up at the stars and his eyes became wet with tears.

"What have I done? Did I eat somebody I liked? Mom? Dad? Miss Wallace?", that last thought seemed especially poignant and brought up hazy pained memories. "Miss Wallace? How would he have been with her and not his mom and dad? In his pajamas?" He needed to remember, need to figure out what happened. He sat there silently crying by the side of the building as the sun began to rise. Kyle heard a commotion on the side of the building, peeking around the corner he spied on the zombies walking around under the heavy machinery, trying to climb up the side. They were ignoring some support bars and things they could have used as steps to get closer to the top. They were also ignoring him, they looked, well kind of like a bunch of clowns Kyle had seen at a circus once. All reaching upwards, not paying attention to what was around them or their feet, so they would get closer in, get bumped by someone and stumble over the uneven ground and fall over, then they crawled out of the mess between the legs of the others, stood up and did it all over again.

It was slowly getting lighter in towards the east, Kyle was startled by a voice around the side of the building, "You dumb-fucks, still ain't made it up huh? Good doggies, keep em treed for me, right?"

Peeping around the corner near the ground Kyle could barely make out a newcomer to the scene before him. It looked like a lanky man, all dressed up in black, with a cowboy hat on, he stood with his feet apart and his hands on his hips, he was a white guy, not Hispanic as so many in the area were these days, he had shoulder length black hair that was all stringy and greasy. His shirt and most of his blue jeans were hidden by a long coat, which was strange as even though it was getting close to sunrise the temperature was warm, not jacket weather. On his left shoulder he carried a burgundy colored backpack. The guy in black was standing in about the center of the old blacktop bike path, which trailed out behind him in a long line paralleling the creek.

The guy was also as lifeless as those others trying to get up on top of the machinery, he looked, kind of colorful, only not in an attractive sort of way, like the arm. Abruptly the man spoke again, "Hey, you up there!? You still alive or what?"

A low moaning came from atop the machinery.

"Yeah about what I thought, come on then I brought you food and water, you better catch it or you'll go hungry."

Kyle wondered what was going on, a moment later he saw a brilliant cascade of colors from up on the machinery, he recognized it now, and as he tried to take in what he was seeing his eyes adjusted to dampen out the glow, force it down into a more human recognizable form. Startled, Kyle recognized the man, it was Katie's dad, from three houses down. Kyle and Katie were in the same class, their parents played games together sometimes, mostly their dads drank beer and burned things on the gas barbecue behind Kyle's house while the moms talked about the other women in the their lives. Katie and Kyle were always getting teased about being boyfriend and girlfriend, not the least of the tormentors were their parents themselves! Nothing ever came of that though, sure they played together, mostly video games or board games, Katie never wanted to play football, which Kyle loved and he never....well okay, rarely, wanted to play 'house', which seemed to be Katie's driving ambition.

Katie's dad, Charlie, or Chuck, just sat up and stared at the young man. The man took off his backpack and threw it with casual ease up to him, saying, "Gonna be a hot one today, I packed in extra water and a couple of those ice packs. You take care of yourselves, if those stupid zombies actually get up there at you, start yelling."

The man in black turned to go, then Chuck called out, "Why are you doing this? I mean for Chrissake, either have done with us or get us out of here and let us go!"

Walking down the path the man in the overcoat didn't even reply. On top of the machinery Chuck called out, "Why!?" one last time, before he sat down and out of Kyle's view and started talking to someone else quietly. Kyle was pretty sure it was Katie, she was crying. Kyle had to help them, he had to get help, his dad would know what to do, he had to cross the bridge. If he were a zombie, like he knew he was, the others would ignore him. He tried to ignore the voice in the back of his head that kept telling him he was not 'one of them'. He was 'one of them', he knew he was, he had to walk around the corner and prove it. Standing up slowly he peeked again around the corner, making sure Chuck would not see him first. He then tilted his head up, squared his bare shoulders and almost strode around the corner full of confidence. He really tried to do that, but in the end he was barely able to make himself slink around the corner like a mangy dog. He was right though, the 'other' zombies ignored him.

...back ..home.. next...