May 7th thru the 13th, 2006

I first learned about the zombies when I was five or so, and I don't know, I guess I just got used to the idea. I mean, I still don't see what the big deal is. In the occasional alley, underneath bridges, there's zombies, flesh eating, brain sucking zombies. So what? My dad said that when he was a kid there where people, actual human beings, who didn't have houses to live in, and they slept on the streets. That sounds pretty stupid to me. Why would the government let people sleep on the streets? That can't be safe. It can get cold, or what if it rains? They'll get wet, catch the flu, and die. Zombies can't die, so who cares if they get rained on. Not me.

Yeah, when I was in high school, I went downtown one time, on a Friday or Saturday. With my friends. I think everyone tries it once. Maybe it's cruel, I don't know. You find a bunch of them huddled in an abandoned car on some rusted tracks in an old shipyard or something. You tease them, let them chase you theyre so damned slow, its funny. We got drunk, maybe somebodys dad keeps more beer around then he can keep track of and one or two of them is all it takes. One guy trips, the zombie is on top of him, and its not a game anymore, you can smell them, and their milky eyes, no pupils, its looking through you not at you, and you go a little bit crazy, and your friends jump on it, and kick it and beat it with sticks and it doesn't care and you sort of lose control and rip off an arm or a leg, all dry like paper, and get up and just beat it and hit it and finally you have to burn it because they don't stop moving no matter what, and you figure in for a penny, burn the rest of them. They go up like haystacks.

Just the once. There where other guys who did it more often. Like every week, but just in the summer because they where harder to find in the winter. I got cousins who tip cows, same thing. Or taking a magnifying glass to ants on the sidewalks. So what.

This one gal down at the office, though. Youd think the zombies where some kind of rare species of butterfly or something. Save the whales, save the owls, save the freakin zombies. Whats to save? Theyre not natural, I don't think. Its not like they're part of the ecosystem or anything. Im no tree hugger, sure, but if they need to reserve a couple of trees so some caterpillar doesn't go extinct, thats fine. But don't go putting spikes in tree trunks and dumping sand in the bulldozers gas tanks. Obey the damn law, get your writs or torts or whatever.

I always thought she was cute, maybe kind of quiet, but when youre the only girl in an office full of jerks, quiets pretty much all you can be. Quiet, or a cock tease, those are your choices around these morons. I figured Id play it cool, be nice to her, maybe look her in the eye instead of at her chest when I asked her for access to the field reports. Ask her out. But I don't know. She came in with one of those buttons.

Fine, I guess, I mean, some liberal bleeding heart daddys girl gets bored with her Porsche and her tennis lessons and figures the only way she can prove shes got a soul is to help the unfortunate, whatever. The rest of us work for a living. She wants to pass out flyers and start rallies, thats her business. Same thing always happens. They get a bunch of dumb-asses all sympathetic for the zombies, try to protect them, the Dian Fossey of the Undead. Then one gets in too close to a group of em, gets ripped limb from limb, brain sucked out through her crushed skull, and its the Sanitation Team down with the fire hoses and the machetes and the matches. Happens every few years.

But this gal. Shes working class like the rest of us,. Ive seen her down at Kellys, she drinks her beer from the bottle like the rest of us. Dads probably a union man, mom probably stayed at home and fried up pork chops every Thursday. What does she care about zombies? I figure, maybe its a boyfriend. Hes some student at the U, workin on his BA in Snob, dating the blue collar girl cause hes a man of the people, and its his idea, and she wears the button cause her dad raised her right, you got to be loyal to your man.

I figure, if shes wearing the button cause of her boyfriend, thats no dice on asking her out, or if its her own idea, I don't want to get mixed up with no zombie lover.

I hafta admit it, it sorta gave me the blues. I mean, wed exchanged all of ten words in the two months shed been there. I guess I got my hopes up, though. I go walking to her desk, all ready to ask her for a form J-17 and make some small talk about Law and Order or some such BS, ask her if she wants to grab one at Kellys, and I see that button. Zombies Were People Too.

What in the hell? "Hey. I need a J-17".

"Just the one? You can take a stack if you want."

"Nah, just the one." There goes my plan anyway, the buttons on her chest, and Im staring at it. So whats with the button.

"I dunno." She just sorta shrugs. "Gotta believe in something."

Back at my desk, Im thinking; how about believe in Jesus Christ and apple pie and pork chops and raising fat little kids? Half our damn taxes go to keeping the churches standing, how about believing in an honest days work and an honest days pay?

See, thats what I always hated about those arty types, with their soul-searching and philosophy and, to be honest, bull-fucking shit. You get up, you go to work, you file a few J-17s, a few MT-92s, maybe if its a good week a 90-H11, you knock off at five, you grab a cold one at Kellys, you go home and watch some Law and Order re-runs, if its Friday you take your chits down to the Parish and drop them in the plate. Thats life, its productive, its simple, it keeps you busy all day and warm all night and who the fuck needs anything else?

Yeah, like I said, it got to me. I felt dumb. Passed up the Arrangement when I was 22 cause I figured Id meet a girl on my own, right? And heres one, and it turns out shes already taken. I left work early, skipped Kellys cause my boss was probably already there, went a little further downtown, a place my dad used to go, a hole but they didn't bother with crap like asking you what you wanted. You sit down, they put a bottle in front of you, you put some bills on the bar and keep yourself to yourself.

I thought about that time, in high school. You want some philosophy? You want some Sigmund damn-it Freud? We burned em, we burned about eight or nine of them, and the next day I didn't feel any guilt. None at all. A headache from cheap beer, an awful stink from the one that was on top of me, but no guilt whatsoever. And they tell us, every Friday, how weve got souls, and our souls tell us whats right from wrong? Thats morality, right? So if I can sit there and watch the Sanitation burn another nest of em and yawn and wonder if the Coca-Cola Tigers are still three games up, and not give a damn, then my soul doesn't give a damn either, right?

That was one beer. And the second beer was Dave, three desks away from me. Honest schmuck. Grabbed the Arrangement when he was 20, two years early. 2 kids, pictures on his desk. I saw him, every day, shed walk by his desk and hed stare at her tits, like you stare at a bus full of retards, like they where so rare and out of place, he wasn't the one doing anything wrong staring at them. You think he gave two shits about zombies? Im single, I got it easy, I give my chits to the parish but I got something left, maybe a steak on Sundays, but Daves got a wife and 2 kids, makes the same money as me, you think he wants folks wasting time and money on goddamn zombies?

The third beer was just out of habit and that was that until I hit the city limit at 6. So I went outside and started walking around.

They lifted curfew when I was, like nineteen. You know, when you grow up with something, you get used to it. Right or wrong, if its something youre born with, you don't give a damn. I learned that one from my dad, too. Wed see some kid with one leg or a water head, drooling around the playground, and I ask him if it hurt, and hed say nah, nothing youre born with hurts, its everything that happens to you after. So, I don't know what time it was, but I was feeling jumpy, like I was out after curfew, even though there wasn't one and hadn't been for like 13 years.

I got lost. Thats what I like about Kellys, and my Parish, and work; I could get blitzed, or struck blind, or just be dog-ass tired pulling some OT on the quarter-end form reconciliations, and Id find my way home like one of those pigeons from the world war one documentaries. But I was at dads old place, and hed been dead since before curfew, and I didn't know where the hell I was.

Got tired after a while. Just sat down. Loading dock, abandoned, I guess. The oil stains where dusty and the rust on the loading doors was flaky. Im an office stiff, right? I file forms and push a pencil, or a ball point blue for the government and church forms. But I still saw things the way my dad saw them. It was a waste of space, but maybe there weren't enough people left any more to fill them all up. Save the Zombies? Fuck that, save the Humans.

So Im sitting there, trying to decide if I should wander around some more, or maybe sober up some first, and this cardboard box next to me sort of starts to move, and Im thinking, what in the hell? I hear some noises, I don't know what, and then this leg pokes out.

Well there you go. A goddamn zombie. Sleeping or feeding on a dead rat or something. I stand up. Fucking zombies. We gotta save these? I gotta sit alone on a Thurday, watch TV by myself, because some gal down at work wants to where a button, needs something to believe in? I kicked the box. Get up, ya shredder. And it just sort of moved around in there, so I kicked the box again. Get out here, ya god damn zomb.

But he ain't going for it, and thats really pissing me off. I feel stupid, mostly, because no one ever talks to them, its not like they can speak anything except those weird stupid moans that make your flesh crawl. And the more stupid I feel the more angry I get so I kick the box some more. Theres a length of pole on the ground, so I pick it up and give the box a whack.

His head comes out, hes got some kinda grimy stocking cap on, and heres some more psychology for you, that really put me over the edge, this fucker wearing a hat like hes going to get cold or something? Like hes one of us? Shuffling around all day, looking for some poor dead animal so he can suck on its bones and chew its brains out? While Im working in an office, giving away half of every dollar so the Parish can stay open, this goddamn shredders just wandering around, free an easy? Fuck that. I brought the pole around, hard and fast, and laid right into his head.

It felt good. It felt real good. There can't be no wrong in something that feels that good. So I did it again. You wanna save some zombies? Ill show you how to save some zombies. I hit him again, and now hes trying to roll out of the box, but I won't let him, another whack on his head, and yeah, thats right you god damn brain sucker, here comes the moaning, I got your moaning right here. Hes half way out of the box, I go to work on his back, pound on it, I can feel that length of pipe bounce, every hit a solid hit, one across his ribs, that crunching sound, and now blood out of his head, its all over the goddamn place. You wanna save some goddamn zombies? Put em out of my goddamn misery, thats how you save the goddamn zombies.

He stops moving, just lays there. I ain't dumb though. I wait for a minute, catch my breath. Yeah, my arms are going to ache in the morning. Whatever. Ill pop into the Parish, fill out a voucher for some Percs, tell em Im feeling doubts about my faith, whatever, they don't care. I fish my lighter out of my pocket, Find some trash, shove the shred back into the box, light it on fire.

It doesn't start to burn for a long time. Takes a while, but I get him burned.

Coffee last night at Revolutions. Same old crowd. But good conversations. One guy said he'd been giving Buffy a try, but it wasn't holding him. Three others of us then launched into an overview-cum-apology for the show, and tried to encourage him keep trying-- at least through season 3. If by 3 you don't like the show, you're not going to. That got me all in the mood to watch Buffy but I have so many other Netflix shows to catch up with, I eschewed the urge.

It's Wednesday, people, and that means CCNA class tonight... maybe. Its been cancelled before, here's to hoping it's not cancelled again!

Yesterday was Jeremy's birthday but there was nothing I could do about it :(

Bye!

I figured out later that the wind from my window was rocking the chair, and the books where sliding due to their slick covers. But I still never went back to those books. Oddly enough, I started reading Stephen King not long after that, and wached horror movies with unabashed glee (cause they're usually hilarious).

Anyway, I thought I'd share.

After, U-Village for some Terry Pratchett and some Chai Latte. Also bough some chocolates for the GF. Of course, if she reads this, the jig is up. Also, I'm going to write a book. (yeah, right). That'll be the next post. Not the book, just the idea for it.