Zomboid Boy
by Lainie Calvin

Devon would have wanted to inspire a different kind of story. One worthy of the Zombie Love anthology, perhaps, or Fleshophilia comic books. Instead of this slight story that will probably be published in a magazine he would never read.

I'm Drew George and I've joked since childhood about my reversible name, but no one has ever laughed. I'm not supposed to know my nickname is Georgie Porgie, said mincingly with an effete flop of the wrist. My students assume I'm gay; I guess due to my predilection for bow ties and my slight tongue-to-teeth lisp.

I'm trapped here at Macedonia High School--squat blond-brink buildings spread over acres of treeless lawn. Welcome to generica, I thought, when I first saw Macedonia Heights' cloned houses: the owners' individuality proclaimed by choosing a cottonwood instead of an elm, a frog fountain instead of a trampoline. Every few blocks a school, or fire station, or mini-mall was plopped down to break the monotony.

So why am I here? Because Macedonia High is the perfect place to disappear. I'm practicing disappearing, hoping that I'll wake up someday and I won't have awoken. And that will be all death is. My students will be somewhat taken aback at my up and dying on them, more embarrassed at not knowing what to say than sorrowful. Like most high school teachers, I'm merely an extra in a movie starring themselves.

My first four months as Macedonia's Biology instructor slash Friendship Club sponsor were mindless, uneventful. I didn't come home drained as I had at Squanee Springs High. Spring semester rolled around: the students dragged in, sluggish from Christmas sweets and extra sleep. I assigned seats, told them what to expect homework-wise, tried to associate names with faces. (Even though I can only remember four former students: Jared "Red" Noize, Bronco quarterback (every boy's dream--nobody wants to be president anymore;) Stacee Richter, whom I mentored unstintingly until--I see so clearly now--my jealousy of her writing talent got the better of me; Matthew Gray, smart enough to cook up a bomb; and, finally, Miché pronounced Mee-shay with her mocha skin and eyes as warm as brownies baking.)

So...where was I? Oh yes, sauntering down Student Memory Lane brings me to the present, i.e., former honor student and--ludicrously enough--zombie-wannabe: one Mr. Devon Jon (variously known as "Zomboid," or "Zombie Boy") Petro.

I knew trouble loomed ahead after I took attendance the first day. Students are casually scornful of hapless instructors who innocently mispronounce their names. So I like to have a little fun. "Abe-ran-house-key," I enunciated haltingly. "Sa-RAH," I chirped, accenting the wrong syl-LAB-le. "Devon Pee-tro? Pet-row?" Stony silence until Rulon Patterson, all blond lethargy hunkered down in a too-small desk, muttered, "You mean De-VON-ible the CAN-ni-bal?" Much laughter.

"Has anyone seen Mr. Petro?" I asked daily, similar pleas to the Attendance Office obviously futile. "Does anyone know if he signed up for second-semester Biology lab?"

"Shoot, yeah." Hal Warren--stereotyped as a "goat roper"-- grunted, his fleshy lips barely moving as his ever-present toothpick wobbled. "Petro'll prob'ly finish off the animals we dissect. Mmmm...mm good." Again the room convulsed with that peculiarly teenage laugher/hysteria. Hal looked delighted by the public approbation.

Eight days into the semester, Devon Petro made an appearance. In my own more conservative high school years, he would have been dismissed as a pretty boy: pale, slight frame, paintbrush-thick eyelashes, and, in repose, a wistful air you could see him visibly shake off, like a dog would his rain-slicked fur. He was dressed in de rigueur Goth: solid-black clothing too warm for the weather, a dog collar, and a torn Deathrocker t-shirt.

Having taught at the hellish Squanee Springs High, I was well versed in the whole Japeth-Case-of-Deathrocker phenomenon--he was the mediocre school's most famous alumnus. I was inured to my students' slavish fascination with all things Case-ian, and sometimes, surprisingly, even found myself wishing he hadn't graduated six years before I was hired. Case's songs were memorized instead of poetry, his grandstanding concert opening: "Greetings, deathlings" had wormed itself into everyday student vernacular, and his sing-songy death-obsessed lyrics were analyzed endlessly.

But I digress...I admit Devon fascinated me, the same way Jared, Stacee, Matthew, and Miché had. But what was with that whole zombie shtick? Luckily for me Devon's only choices were: make-up missed classes or automatic suspension time.

"Thanks for gracing me with your presence, Mr. Petro. Let's get right down to it. I'm not a teacher who spends the first week of class spoon-feeding students to acclimate their holiday-soggy little brains." I was betting he was one of those students who think being sparred with is the equivalent of being treated as an equal.

Devon looked up from a boot festooned with a motorcycle-chain-thing around the heel. One deeply arched eyebrow quivered before his face slammed shut. His gaze skittered away to my collection of Disney memorabilia; then he sighed, as if put upon.

"Sorry about that. Long story. But I've been getting the assignments from--"

"What about the circulatory system dissection? How do you intend to make that up?" I watched him carefully, saw his features transform, melt down like those special effects in a bad horror movie, then coalesce into his face of thirty years hence: tired, creased. Like mine. I was shaken by my brief glimpse into the future; it'd been happening a lot lately, but never concerning other people. "Rumor has it you could dissect one of your leftover cadav--"

"The minds of the Mash-a-don't-ia kiddies are easily confused. Cannibals consume human flesh, as do zombies, but zombies are the living dead. They're also mixing me up with satanist-types who scare the shit out of the local yokels by disemboweling cows without leaving any blood." His pupils glittered and seemed to reflect myself back at me, like cop sunglasses.

"I know what a zombie is, or is supposed to be, according to Hollywood movies and splatterpunk comic books." I was proud of using the word, "splatterpunk"--was that respect I saw on his face? "Let me get this straight. You want everybody to think you're a zombie? That you're a living dead man who munches deli-thin sliced human liver sandwiches in your brownbag lunches instead of p., b. and j.?"

"Whatever."

"Uh huh. Well, not that I don't believe you're a zombie, but, for the sake of argument, let's say I don't. So I would logically have to wonder why the hell you would want people to believe you're something so off-putting. Christ, what's the payoff for you?"

A grin creased his face. Students love it when teachers swear; as if it's endearingly droll or something. "Well, hm...mmm...let's see. To get dates? To pile up impressive credentials for my high school rap sheet? Devon Petro: National Honor Society 2; Track, 1; Future Corporate Raiders of America 1,2; Flesh Lovin' Zombie Society 1,2,3,4."

"So I take it I shouldn't mention that being a zombie-wannabe won't impress college admissions officers, or the HR departments of Fortune 500 companies?"

He squinted at me, not letting himself smile again. The kid liked me; I could tell.

"So illuminate the aged gray cells of yours truly: Mr.--I made quotation marks with my fingers--'Georgie Porgie' George."

He snickered.

"Since I'm assuming you're not a zombie--"

"Never assume."

I ignored him. "What's the point?"

"The point is: maybe, just maybe, I know what I'm doing. Maybe it's no big deal that I'm throwing away all my wonderful opportunities to end up "deadened by generica/and striving for the good life--"

"--in corporate America." We finished in unison. "Man of the House" from Deathrocker's "Remedial Rock Star 101," right?"

He nodded. Of all the Case lyrics he could have quoted, that one was the most telling. I was disappointed. I'd wanted more back-and-forth, wanted that wonderful frisson of recognition I experienced whenever I'd been lucky enough to encounter that anomaly of anomalies: a true high school original.

Instead he was--though he didn't realize it--nothing more than a stereotypical teenage kid who worships eccentricity, cloaks himself with weirdnesses to set himself apart from the crowd. Not fully grasping that he'd simply thrown himself in with a different conforming crowd: the rage-full aloners, the self consciously rebellious, the depressives, the purposefully misfitted. That the deadened face he affected was exactly the face of the bored mall-goers, the harried soccer moms, the preoccupied suburban daddies that he so despised, and who he hoped to shake up in the only way he could: by their recoiling at the assaultive strangeness of him.

I walked through the maze-like suburban streets the evening after our third makeup lab. I hadn't consciously meant to check out where he lived; it's just the lilt of 555 Hathaway Drive had wormed its way into my subconscious. The Petro split level was the only one on the cul-de-sac with its Christmas lights still up; a pennant with Mickey Mouse wearing a Santa hat flapped in the breeze. I hesitated, skulked back into the shadows across the street when I saw their front door burst open. Devon raced to the Honda parked in the driveway; its bumper sticker read: "Visualize Whirled Peas." He seemed to toss himself into the passenger's seat; slammed the door. We both waited. And waited. He sat there so long I debated whether I should knock on the window, say I'd been out on my evening constitutional, saw him, and wondered what he was doing sitting alone in the car, in the dark. But then a woman in a bulky coat with a snowflake pattern walked out, turned to lock the front door, then clumsily shoehorned herself behind the steering wheel and drove off.

I knew what I wanted to do was wrong, as I had with the...brouhaha...in Squanee, but I couldn't stop myself. I looked around--all the neighbors' windows were dark. I crept toward Devon's backyard. On the thin strip of weedy lawn between the two houses, I stumbled over a plasticky kiddie car, with an odd oval-shaped, protruding roof. The yard was as barren as a moonscape with a dog-less dog run and one stark, branchless tree that seemed too poignant, somehow, for the scene. The glass patio door was unlocked. I entered; mind devoid of thought, whistle-clear.

I was looking for something, but I didn't know what. It was similar to when I'd read true-crime books. I'd pour over every detail about the person who'd murdered their spouse, or abused their daughter, or whatever. Burrowing for that telling anecdote that made what happened make sense. I looked around, enthralled. The putty-colored wall above the plaid sofa was covered with curio cabinets filled with miniature clocks, bisque baby doll knickknacks, matched sets of teaspoons with pictures of countries on them.

A shedding poinsettia, newspapers, a Super Slurp cup, and the detritus of a fast-food meal rested on the dining room table. I opened Devon's backpack: The Human Pageant and En Español textbooks, no sign of his Biology homework. Up a short, carpeted stairway was a damp bathroom with towels and dirty clothes strewn everywhere, even on top of the shower curtain rod. A door opened into a master bedroom, overwhelming with its rose wallpaper and matching curtains, bed spread and throw pillows. A photo of a gap-toothed, younger Devon grinned from behind a frame meant to look like a jail cell: "I've been framed" it read. I shrugged, and held my palms out toward the walls in a petitioning gesture--though I didn't know why I did that. I turned back to the stairs, and grasped the smudgy stairwell rail. I hesitated, listening, then headed toward the basement level, sure I'd discover Devon's warren there, when I heard a car pull into the driveway. A metallic taste flooded my mouth as I hurried out the back door.

And that was that.

The next morning I watched Devon as he squinted over a microscope, as he smirked at the other boys' showboating, as he brooded and looked bored. I tried to make sense of what I'd seen at his home, and what it said about him. I don't know if it was my imagination, if I'd been prejudiced by the banality of the house I'd invaded, but his expression seemed more purposefully blank than before.

Then he caught me watching him. He winked and quietly mouthed a Deathrocker lyric, as if for me only: "Our masks melded onto our faces/Disguises grow inside." My heart started racing--had he seen me skittering away from his home last night and thought I was stalking him, obsessing over him? But later when his gaze landed on me and wandered away, elaborately bored, I knew. I felt my face disappearing before it'd ever been seen.

Then I knew I had Devon's number all right. I mean, what kind of zombie doesn't recognize another dead man?

Lainie Calvin has won several short story contests. Her first novel: Deathlings and Other Stories will be published soon.