When Z got home from school they found Mrs. Dunnigan sitting on one of her small, heavily pillowed chairs. She was watching television and drinking tea, her lap well covered with her cats. They meowed at Z as they entered, shaking off their hood. The apartment was dry and hot inside. Z could see on the oven clock that something was baking. Waves of yellow light seemed to fill the apartment.
“What time did you get back from the bookshop?” Z asked.
“I left at noon today. It gives the younger cashier something to do. Besides, my knee was bothering me again,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “And I got a little woozy. I’ve been making pies,” she added, more brightly.
“You know, I don’t think I can eat now,” Z said.
“Nonsense. The undead can eat anything. It becomes incorporated into your essence. That’s how you keep going.”
Z looked at Mrs. Dunnigan in surprise. She was still watching television. “Really? Is that true?” The prospect of still eating—of even possibly having to eat—was slightly terrifying in its inconvenience. Z felt that death ought to be a kind of static state. Maintenance should not be required. The one benefit of their condition seemed to be its permanence.
“Biological matter similar to your own is ideal, naturally, since that’s less transfigurative work, but you can certainly manage pie.” Mrs. Dunnigan cackled in a very traditional way. She took a long slurp of tea and set down the cup and saucer on the windowsill. Her third-fattest cat, Isadora, noticed, and began to stealthily approach the abandoned dish.
“I tried to eat the sandwich you made me for lunch today, and I didn’t taste anything. It got stuck in my throat. My taste buds don’t work anymore.”
“I’m sure with a good wizard we’ll get your taste back in a while. I hear Mr. Weber at your school is a seventh son of a seventh son. We’ll get him to help.”
“The chemistry teacher?”
“He’s supposed to be very good. He helped sort out that golem last spring.”
“That was because the city asked him to,” Z said. They had read about it in the papers, when it happened. It was national news for a little while, since golems were so rare on the West Coast and usually the military had to be brought in to dismantle them. Mr. Weber had received an award for his ingenuity and heroism. Z was not clear on exactly what spells were involved, but everyone at Lower Salem Integrated School had talked for weeks about how the chemistry teacher had managed to trap the golem within a circle before undoing the original life-binding spell by climbing up its body and reaching into its mouth himself to pull out the shem as it tried to crush him in its hands. This was probably rumor. Mr. Weber had taken three weeks’ vacation afterwards. “I doubt he’d be very interested. He’d be breaking the law,” Z added, the last part with some uncertainty as they were not completely certain about what the law did and did not say about zombies. “Anyway,” they continued, sitting down on a cushion across from Mrs. Dunnigan in order to force the old woman to look at them rather than the television, “does this mean that I can starve to death like anyone else?”
“I’m not going to let you do that,” Mrs. Dunnigan said, very seriously in an even tone. She got up and moved into the kitchen.
On the television screen, the news was playing a story about a werewolf on the loose. The man’s face appeared onscreen, looking startled, his teeth white and eyes cheerful and large. Z remembered the photo from a Wanted ad they had seen in the newspaper a few months ago. The news said that the man was an arsonist and wanted for murder. The police thought he’d killed someone near Salem who had been out jogging late at night.
“He should know better than to jog about like that when it’s a full moon,” Mrs. Dunnigan said to Isadora and Angelina as she scooped two slices of what seemed to be apple pie onto mismatched plates and put one into a bowl for the cats.
“What, you think it’s the werewolf?”
“Of course it’s a werewolf.” Her glasses slid down her large nose as she sat down and she pushed them back up with a buttery finger. It left a smear of grease on her sand-colored skin. “Eat your pie.”
Z compliantly took a bite of their pie. It was still hard to get anything down their throat. It felt like trying to swallow a marble or a stone. “My throat is dry.”
Mrs. Dunnigan took a moment to finish chewing, looking at Z contemplatively. Marceline the cat had crept up onto her lap by this point and she patted the large gray feline’s head absently. “I’ll get you some milk or something.” She stood up, her chair creaking, and waddled into the kitchen. “Oof, I hurt all over. I think I have a cold or the flu coming on.” She touched her clammy forehead with a hand and swayed for a moment. “We both have to work hard to stay alive, don’t we?”
Early in the morning, after lying staring at the ceiling for five hours, Z heard three cats trying to get out the door. They got up to let them outside, flicking on the dim yellow light in the front hall. Mrs. Dunnigan had hung a mirror in the hall for some reason, so when you were moving in the dark it always appeared that there was another person next to you. It creeped Z out.
As they waited for the cats to come back in, they looked over at the clock. It was six. Almost time to get up anyway, Z thought, and turned on the television.
“Late last night, police cornered Timothy Morris at his campsite and, after Timothy threatened the police by baring his teeth, he was shot. After resuming human form he was taken to Salem Hospital, where he died of his wounds.” The reporter who said this tried and failed to look concerned. “Police who searched the site report that the tent had evidence inside it of a conspiracy of werewolf terrorism. Police advise the public to stay calm, as there is no indication that there are any plans for attacks in the area, and werewolves are usually not dangerous except at the full moon.”
A cat outside meowed. Z turned the television off. Something in their stomach felt unsettled.
Bethany was growing increasingly distant. Their lockers were next to each other so they exchanged words with Bethany, but the conversations were brief and Bethany seemed guarded. They would stand next to each other long enough for Bethany to grab a jacket, or get her books, but then they would part. Z greeted Bethany in the hallway and Bethany did not reply. So much for friends supporting one in one’s time of loss, Z thought grimly.
Mr. Holmes continued to drop hints about the undead. By the end of their second week back, Z noticed graffiti in the bathroom that said, Susan Chilworth Is a Zombie. Underneath, someone else had written, in blue, To the Incineration Station.
Z tried to eat lunch, but often ended up going to the restroom to spit everything out again. The food was too dry to swallow, or too tough to chew, or too difficult to keep from vomiting. Several times they had thrown up in the toilet. They imagined their sinews coming unraveled as no sustenance strengthened them, imagined their face sunken and rotten and gray, covered in spots where blood had pooled beneath the skin.
What made it worse was that that week, Mrs. Dunnigan also got sick properly. She had been coughing a little for a while, but then was struck low by a flu. She came home in the afternoon on Tuesday and said that someone had thrown a rock at the window of the shop, because the bookstore had a poster about a werewolf support group and a section on werewolf rights. Mrs. Dunnigan had put up a board over the broken window and put a Closed sign on the shop door. When she got home she went straight to bed. It was probably partly psychological, she told Z, but Z gave her a thermometer and the thermometer said Mrs. Dunnigan also had a fever. She stayed in bed for two days straight drinking orange juice and tea. Z had to figure out how to change the cat litter. Z stopped eating without Mrs. Dunnigan feeding them. When she finally got out of bed and announced it was time to go back to work, the apartment looked as if it had been home to two corpses, not one, for several days.
Z began to wonder what would happen if Mrs. Dunnigan died. Which she was bound to do, Z thought, at some point. What would happen to them if they started really decaying then, with no legal custodian? They remembered the policeman saying that a zombie without a custodian could be legally incinerated.
They decided to ask Mr. Weber for help.
Mr. Weber’s classroom was used for both biology and chemistry courses. Z, who was taking environmental science, didn’t see him much. Mr. Weber, who was more enthusiastic than many other teachers, had gone to great lengths to personalize the space. The room was ringed with tanks containing living amphibians and fish, who watched anyone who entered through the glass panes of their watery prisons. The filters in the tanks burbled constantly. The windows were partially obscured and shaded green with interesting potted plants Mr. Weber had brought from home. Tendrils of one enterprising vine plant had begun to grow along the ceiling.
Z had waited fifteen minutes after the last bell before entering the classroom, as they did not want to talk to the other students or be jostled by anyone else as they exited. Z had not taken a class with Mr. Weber since the previous year, but his room was mostly the same. He sat marking a student’s test with a red pen and chewing pink bubble gum, blowing small sticky bubbles as he scratched corrections onto the paper. He looked the same as Z remembered from when he taught eighth-grade biology, though he was maybe a little heavier. His light yellow shirt contrasted with his deep brown skin and the empty whiteness of the room behind him. The room was mostly empty. There was a fat girl hunched in the corner, working on something and tapping on a calculator. She did not look up as Z approached Mr. Weber. Her dark hair formed a veil around her paper, hiding it from view.
“Mr. Weber?” Z said.
Mr. Weber glanced up from the paper, snapped his gum, and tapped the tip of the pen on the desk. “Susan? I haven’t seen you in a while.”
Z shifted awkwardly in their shoes. Z didn’t like being called Susan, and somehow it felt worse coming from Mr. Weber than from other teachers. Z cleared their throat. “I’m going by Z now.”
“I see.” Mr. Weber looked politely at Z.
“Yeah, uh. I don’t feel like a girl, so I shortened it.”
“That’s a cool nickname. Sort of skater punk, huh.”
“Not really.”
“What brings you here?”
“Could you ask that girl to go out in the hallway? I need help with something personal.”
Mr. Weber frowned. “Are you sure I’m the best person to talk to about it?”
“I don’t want to talk to the counselors about it.”
Mr. Weber looked over at the girl in the corner, who was watching them now. “Would you mind moving the desk into the hall, Aysel?” he asked her. She shook her head, and rose with a great creak and squeaking of metal desk legs against linoleum, the cry of sad birds. She pushed the desk with some difficulty through the door, and Z and Mr. Weber could hear her settling back into her chair in the hall. The door stood open, still, and Z moved to close it. Mr. Weber held a hand up for them to stop. “I have to have the door open. School policy,” he said. “Obvious concerns.”
“I understand,” Z said, though they wished the door could be closed.
“What did you want to talk to me about, Z?” Mr. Weber asked. He kept his voice low and confidential, and Z wondered if he was patronizing them.
“Well, I know you know a lot about animation of inanimate beings,” Z began. They wondered if this was the right way to phrase it.
Mr. Weber shifted in his chair. “Relatively speaking, yes. I’m no expert.” Mr. Weber pushed up his large glasses and smiled as if he was sharing a joke with Z.
“I was wondering if you could give me . . . um, well, some references or something on the undead.”
Mr. Weber looked surprised—or pretended to look surprised. He scrunched up his nose to keep his glasses from slipping. He was motionless, his position in the chair casual and open but frozen. “I see,” he said.
“You know what has happened with me, right?” Z glanced back at where the girl had been sitting, wondering if she was eavesdropping. “The teachers all seem to know.”
“I do. We were told.” Mr. Weber paused. “I personally think it was a breach of your privacy, but school policies, you know.” He sighed. Z glanced again around the room nervously, their eyes lighting upon a purple toad stuck to the side of its tank. It glistened unnervingly in the fluorescent lights.
“And I know you know about that kind of thing. I don’t know any other adults who have any grounding in that who would want to help. So maybe you could give me some books to read. I haven’t been like this very long, and I’m not even sure what I can eat, or how much, or whether I’m going to . . .” Z lowered their voice. “Whether I am going to fall apart and turn into a skeleton or just disintegrate into black goo with no warning.”
“I’m curious as to why you think I know any more than you do about this,” Mr. Weber said.
“I don’t. I was just hoping.” Z gnawed at the inside of their cheek.
Mr. Weber breathed in deeply. “I really don’t have much information to offer.” He seemed nervous, and glanced anxiously at the door and ran a hand over his hair. Z looked at the door. Nobody was there.
“That’s all right.” Z pulled up a chair and sat stiffly in it. They wondered if they should lower their voice. “Just tell me what you know. I want to know more about why—or how— my body is staying alive. Mrs. Dunnigan . . . the woman I live with has some books, but it doesn’t go into the technical rules of necromancy, since that’s illegal and all.”
“It is. Z,” Mr. Weber said, sticking his gum in the inside of his cheek with his tongue, “I have to tell you that I could get in trouble with the school board for sharing any information with you on school grounds.”
“Oh.” Z sat, uncomfortable.
“Don’t misunderstand me, Z,” Mr. Weber said quickly. He glanced again at the door. “I want to help you, but I want you to know beforehand the professional problem that presents for me and the danger it puts you in.”
Z studied him. “What do I do, then?”
Mr. Weber sucked in his cheeks and furrowed his eyebrows. “How about this,” he said, slowly and quietly. He got up and grabbed a pad and pencil on his desk, and stood by his desk as he began to draw. “The Willamette library has detailed information on this sort of thing, in the Censored Materials Division. Behind a spell barrier. I have tried to get in a few times, for personal research reasons, and one time I had an old friend who worked there show me how to get past the barrier. This was back when all the restrictions were new and I thought I might still be able to pursue some of the stuff I studied in college as a career someday. I can draw you the rune. I don’t think they’ll have changed it. They don’t have funding for that. There are tons of books in there. I don’t know what about, you get me? I have no idea what you’re looking at in there, and you did not hear this from me.” He tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to Z. There was a complicated rune on the paper.
Z raised their eyebrows and felt the skin crack. “How do I use this?” they asked.
“Set it on fire,” Mr. Weber said. “Blue fire, not too hot. You’ve already learned that, in eighth grade, right?”
“Yeah,” Z said. “Though my magic’s been hit-and-miss lately.” Nonexistent, really, they thought, except for the time with the electricity and Uncle Hugh. Which hadn’t even felt like their own magic.
Mr. Weber nodded. “You have a guardian, right? Ask them to go with you.”
Z shook their head. “She can’t go. She’s sick. And old. This weekend she stayed in bed for two days. She’s back at the bookstore today, but she gets tired really easily.”
“Oh,” Mr. Weber said.
“That’s part of why I want to know this stuff. In case she doesn’t get better and is declared incompetent. I have to know how to survive alone.”
“Oh,” Mr. Weber said, looking more unsettled.
“But I can go alone,” Z added quickly. “What bus route do I take to get to the campus? I can go like, this Friday or Saturday. I can like, take a cigarette lighter in case my magic doesn’t work.”
Mr. Weber frowned again, and bit his lip. “That won’t work,” he said. “Nonmagical fire is just going to set off the smoke alarm. If you get caught, police are going to be involved.” His brow furrowed further.
Z nodded. “Okay,” they said. “Well, then I’ll try to use magic. Thank you,” they added. They stood and turned to go, but at that moment their foot turned numb and they fell over. They knocked over a chair and sprawled onto the ground.
“Are you okay?” Mr. Weber asked, leaning over to help them up with a look of concern.
“I’m fine,” Z hacked. One of their eyelids was sort of turned inside out. “Sorry.” They rose unsteadily, balancing on the edge of the desk. They shoved the rune into their pocket. “Thank you for all your help. I’ll let you know how it goes.” They tried to put weight on their foot, to see if it would hold. “I’ll let you know next week.”
“No, no no no.” Mr. Weber shook his head. “I was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking. You’re fourteen. You’re . . . You can’t . . . I’ll go for you.”
“You said it was dangerous for you. I can do it,” Z said.
“I’m sorry for being so cold at first,” Mr. Weber said. “I really didn’t mean to imply that I don’t care about your safety. I do care.”
Z looked at Mr. Weber. He still had bubble gum in his mouth.
“Well, thank you,” Z said. “But that’s okay. I’ll manage somehow. If I’m going to stick around I have to learn how to take care of myself sometime.”
Mr. Weber scowled at a lizard in the corner, snapping his bubble gum. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Look, I don’t want to talk to you too much in school, but I’ll give you my number in the parking lot when I leave. We’ll work something out. But not here.”
Z nodded, tried to smile, and prepared to walk out the door into the hall.
“So, you’re really undead?” The voice startled them both. The girl who had been out in the hall was back, and was now craning her neck staring over at Mr. Weber and Z. A necklace with a blue glass bead that looked like an eye hung down over her black sweater. Her dark, frizzy hair hung down her back. Two eyes glinted fiercely through bottle-thick glasses. “Like, really undead?”
Horror flooded Z’s body. “None of your business,” they said, their voice catching on the words.
Z and the girl stared at each other for a long second.
“Aysel,” Mr. Weber said. “Have you met Z before?” Mr. Weber looked at Z. “It’s okay, she’s a friend of mine. Fellow nerd.”
“We have a class together, I think.”
“Z was just asking me some questions. Come in, though, we’re done now.” Mr. Weber was pretending he hadn’t heard Aysel’s question.
Aysel stood up and walked across the room over to the desk. Z felt her radiating sweaty heat as she approached, her rubber-soled sneakers squeaking on the bright linoleum.
“I’m sorry for eavesdropping, Mr. Weber,” Aysel said. Her voice was low. “That was rude to ask. I can leave. I won’t tell anyone.”
“No need to leave. I’d really actually like for you to meet Z,” Mr. Weber said, seeming not to notice that Z was trembling with discomfort. “Z, this is Aysel Tahir. She’s the president of the science club here. We’re trying to recruit more members. There’s a pretty cool paper airplane contest we have planned that’s coming up.”
“Hi,” Z said quietly, making eye contact with Aysel’s stomach.
“Hi,” Aysel answered grimly, looking at the newt tank on the opposite wall over Z’s head.
“Aysel is taking a test she missed last week in my class.”
“I’m actually done with that,” Aysel said. She thrust a paper forward at Mr. Weber. “I really can leave right now. I’m sorry.”
“If you’ve got a minute, stick around. Z was going to leave in a minute, I believe, and I am almost done. I think I should give Z my contact information. We can all leave when I lock up and you could both help me carry Leo to the car. He’s sick.”
“Who’s Leo?” Z asked. The discomfort had not disappeared, and they imagined that they felt Aysel’s returning malicious energy in the air around her.
“The big bearded lizard,” Aysel said, and pointed to a fat gray scaly creature skulking in a large sunlit tank behind Mr. Weber’s desk. His legs were splayed unhappily on the rocky floor of his tiny glass room.
“I think he doesn’t like my sixth period and is trying to make himself ill on purpose,” Mr. Weber said. “I’ll make him a remedy tonight and maybe let him take a break from the academic world awhile. But I can’t carry his tank on my own. My Transportation Spell jostles him and makes him drool.” Mr. Weber stood up and, slipping Z’s paper into his pocket, set about stuffing various items into his large canvas bag and his coat. Aysel and Z meanwhile struggled to look each other over without actually making eye contact. Z noticed that Aysel’s heart rate had increased: they heard it pumping loudly, far noisier than Mr. Weber’s or any of the lizards, frogs, newts, or fish.
“Aysel, can you get the door?” Mr. Weber asked. He clapped his hands and the lizard’s tank shook and rose a few inches off the floor. Leo the bearded dragon looked distressed and began to paw the glass with a petulant tapping.
“Z, grab the far end of the terrarium,” Mr. Weber said. Z walked over and stooped down, feeling the skin of their back stretch uncomfortably with the stooping. The muscles in their arms seemed very weak, and were numb as they tried to heft the tank upward. They tried to focus on lifting, flexing, but the lack of feeling continued, as if there were a great distance between Z’s arms and their brain. Z felt frustrated. The light on Mr. Weber’s desk went off abruptly. He looked from the lamp to Z as they walked carefully, slowly toward the door that Aysel held open.
Aysel and Z shuffled awkwardly across the parking lot carrying the lizard in its dry, sandy terrarium. Mr. Weber followed behind, whistling, despite his heavy load of bags and papers. Mr. Weber’s car was small and old and indestructible-looking. The terrarium barely fit into its trunk. As soon as the car door had shut, Z looked at Aysel with a glare meant to communicate to her that she should go. Aysel seemed to understand at least part of Z’s intent, and moved away. She hesitated about fifteen feet away from the car as Mr. Weber gave his contact information to Z on a small sheet of yellow paper and Z, in turn, wrote down Mrs. Dunnigan’s phone number and the name of her bookshop.
“I’ll call you before Saturday,” Mr. Weber said. “I need to think about what the best plan is. I do want to try to help you with this.” He got into his car and started it. It clunked and came to life, and he drove down the street.
Z looked at Aysel suspiciously. They turned on their heel and began to walk away. It was almost a minute later when they realized Aysel was following them. Z hoped that she would go away if Z seemed entirely uninterested. Aysel’s confidence did seem to falter as she approached.
“Hey,” she said nevertheless. “Hey, uh, Susan. I mean Z. What name do you want me to call you?”
“Please call me Z,” they said, mustering a firm tone of voice.
“Okay. And uh, while I’m at it, sorry, actually, what does it mean that you’re not a girl? I heard you telling Mr. Weber.”
“I’m just not a girl,” Z said.
“Yes you are,” Aysel said, though she sounded hesitant.
“Maybe I was born looking like one, but I’m not. I’m like in between a boy and a girl. An androgyne. I’m transgender. I’m genderqueer.” The word felt funny in their mouth, not pretty like when it was on the screen of the library computer.
“Oh,” Aysel said. Z was not sure Aysel understood at all. Her face was scrunched up.
“Do you know what that is? It’s someone who’s outside of men and women. Something else.”
“Yes,” Aysel said defensively. “I mean, I know about people who are transsexual.”
“Right,” Z said. “I’m not quite transsexual. Transgender.”
“Like gay.” Aysel looked hopeful.
“It’s neurological. I did a test online. I’m almost transsexual but I’m not. I’m right in the middle. There’s a lot of people like it.”
“Oh. Well, I know about that. I know there are lesbians who dress like boys.” Aysel shrugged. “And gay men who dress like women. I relate to that.”
“It’s this whole thing where you’re not a boy or a girl. Even if you dress like a boy or a girl. Lots of societies in history had them.”
“Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”
“There have always been people like that. Like”—and here Z paused to remember—“Claude Cahun.” That was from a website called DragKingForum. Or Sphere. They couldn’t remember. “Who go by new names and live weird lives.”
“Yeah, totally.”
“I want people to call me they. Instead of her, or she. That’s something people do. In other places. A neutral pronoun.” Aysel was the first person to let them talk long enough to even mention the concept.
“They?”
“English only has neutral pronouns when it’s plural. And I want to be neutral.” Z paused. “Nobody calls me they, though. I guess you could also switch back and forth between he and she.”
“I can say they,” Aysel said.
“Don’t do me any favors.”
“Turkish has gender-neutral pronouns for everyone. It’s just o, no matter whether you’re a boy or a girl. It’s not so weird to add the same thing to English.”
“Oh.” Z was a little taken aback. “Thanks.” They felt that they were smiling, even though they had been determined not to smile at Aysel. Then Z remembered they were meant to be on high alert. “Why are you following me?”
“I’m not following you,” Aysel said. “I just wanted to, uh. I think you should know that, uh.” Aysel paused, scrunching her eyes up. Her voice sounded much more hesitant than it had in the science classroom.
“I should know what?”
“I think you were worried about me telling people that you were a zombie. So, uh, I thought you should know. I heard Ginger talking about you.” Aysel stopped again. She seemed frustrated with herself. “Anyway, I think people know.”
“Who knows?”
“Most people by now, probably. Though,” Aysel added, “you don’t look alive, honestly, so it might not be hard to guess.”
Z set their chin and walked faster. They felt conscious of the stitches on their neck and pulled their collar up.
“Look, I don’t know if you care,” Aysel continued, “but I figured I would let you know, as Ginger is a . . . well. She pushed that kid off the roof last year just because people said he’s descended from a shapeshifter or a troll and because he’s sort of girly. Who knows what they’d do to you, you know. And the teachers aren’t very friendly either. You know that. So I guess . . . just be on your guard. I’m on your side,” Aysel finished loudly, trying to make eye contact. She continued to walk alongside Z.
“I know you don’t really know me, or anything. But I feel like we’re sort of the same.”
“I don’t think we’re the same,” Z said.
“You’re right. I mean, whatever. If you want me to watch your back, though, I can.”
“I don’t see what it has to do with you,” Z said.
“It doesn’t have to do with me,” Aysel said quite calmly, though she seemed a little disgruntled at Z’s rudeness. “You’re right. If you want me to watch your back, though, I can.”
Z turned and looked at Aysel with trepidation. The fat girl looked depressingly earnest for some reason.
“If you want to watch my back, you can,” Z said finally.
The bus arrived, splashing both of them as it pulled in.
The rain continued. The blank trees and earth soaked in the downpour and grew soggy. The windows of Mrs. Dunnigan’s apartment all faced the road, and from their room Z could see cars driving by, their wheels spinning through mud and throwing up arcs of water along the sidewalks.
Mrs. Dunnigan was late coming back from the bookshop; she returned with arms laden with groceries she could barely carry.
“I’ll make a stroganoff tomorrow,” she announced. “I don’t have the energy tonight, I hope you understand. All I can do is take my brittle self to bed and read. I found a really vital book on the great beast beneath the ocean and the end of the world.”
Mrs. Dunnigan and Z had toast and pickles for dinner. Mrs. Dunnigan dripped dill-garlic brine on the pages of her book as she ate. After they were done, Z went back to their room.
The clock in the pink room was broken, so they kept time by the buses passing each half hour. At 10:30 p.m., the last bus drove by. Through the water-streaked windows Z could see that only a few people were on board.
They went over to the bed and sat down and turned on the reading light. They picked up the book they had checked out for themselves at the school library. Everything You Need to Know About Monsters, it was called. The author was called Dean Goldsmith, and he grinned unflappably from the back of the dust jacket, his hair coiffed into a style nobody had worn since before Z was born. Z had found the book in the section of the library dedicated to expository nonfiction intended for teenage readers writing reports. Its cover showed a colorful, airbrushed photo of a young woman with a torn shirt brandishing a head of garlic at a recoiling vampire. The summary on the back was extremely peppy. You may think it’s boring to learn about monsters, the back cover read, but it’s actually pretty sweet to know facts that may save your life!
The inside jacket, too, was a collection of upbeat phrases with a lot of exclamatory punctuation. Z laughed when they had first looked it over in the library.
Did you know that one in thirteen high school students will encounter a monster before they turn eighteen? That’s pretty “wack”! Here’s the source for the real truth about monsters. No rumors or myths—we play it straight.
Z had checked out the book as a kind of last resort. After all, they needed something to fall back on in case they didn’t get any help from Mr. Weber. However, as Z began to read, it became clear that despite the book’s promises to be helpful, it was not. The page on “Zombies and Enchanted Undead” had very little in the way of useful facts.
Most monsters are like people, but with a huge personal supply of magic they can’t control, which drives them crazy or makes them violent. Zombies are different: most have no magical power of their own, since they are the product of other people’s spells and their own magic is gone with their life force. They can, however, leach magic from other people around them and direct it back at their attacker, making them difficult to bring down without nonmagical weapons like fire and guns.
Goldsmith spent most of the time recounting anecdotes about famous zombie massacres. Toward the end he mentioned, briefly, the fact that some zombies seemed to be capable of “some limited cognition, maybe equivalent to that of a mentally ill living person.” Z supposed that Goldsmith must not think very much of “mentally ill” living people, because he still recommended either cutting off the head of a zombie and burning it or putting a tire around the zombie’s neck and then covering them with gasoline.
Z thought about what they would do if someone tried to cut off their head. Probably bite them, Z thought. And then stab them, maybe, and run or stumble away and then—what? Set everything on fire. Z looked at the picture of Dean Goldsmith again. This man wants people to cut my head off and throw it in a river, they thought.
They got up and grabbed a red pen and colored the picture on the dust jacket so it looked like Dean Goldsmith’s eyes were bleeding. The ink glistened in the dim light of Z’s bedroom and got on their hands. It didn’t look like blood, really—it was too close to pink, especially because of all the pink and rose and fuchsia and magenta already in the room. Everything seemed too warm so Z tried to walk across the room to the window, where rain was still coming down. Z looked out into the night at the silent street. The rain made noise on the pavement.
“I’m going to eat Dean Goldsmith’s eyeballs for breakfast!” Z yelled out the window. Their voice was cold and hollow and dead-sounding, like a rasp that comes from something at the bottom of a cave. A dog in the backyard of the house across the street barked.