The Living Dead

I head down to the creek because the cemetery is a lot like the town and barring unexpected headstones, I know every corner by heart. So I sit on the muddy bank on a rock or on a fallen log and listen to the creek go splish-splashity by.

I see the footprint there. I'm still studying it when Lion comes up, muttering, "Emily Fitzhugh, '87 to—what's that?"

He spots the footprint right away. It's hard to miss. The water is edged in mud, speckled with raccoon fingerprints. But this print is in a smooth empty spot and clear as if I'd stamped it there just now. One left footprint, deeper at the ball of the foot and the toes, like she stepped down from the grassy tree-shaded bank, dropped and sank, pushed off against the yielding muck and landed her right foot in the creek, or on a stepping stone.

"Not me," I say. "Do you think it's Emily?" But my name is Emily, too.

Lion gives me a hand up, long chilly fingers wrapping my wrist. I kick off my sneakers and pick my way through the mud to the stepping stones, cool and rough beneath my toes. I crouch down, teetering, to examine the others ahead. There's another print, imperfect, rubber stamp in need of ink. And on the far bank grass, a smudge of mud on a flattened dandelion. I stand and wave to Lion. "She went this way."

"You don't know that she's a zombie," Lion says as we walk our bikes back up Salt Hill. The side that sweeps down to the cemetery is steep and we've no momentum to carry us up. Instead, we'll trudge to the top of the hill and remount there. "She could be a ghoul or a ghost or a skeleton. We could've made her up."

"You saw the footprint," I remind him. "We didn't make her up." We'd followed the trail to the highway. We'd paced along the shoulder, searching for the spot where she'd stepped back off the road. We hadn't found anything. But even Lion had agreed that the print by the creek was beautifully clear. "And if she'd been a skeleton, it would have just been bone. And ghosts wouldn't leave any prints at all."

"They might," Lion says, "if they were acting out their deaths."

I shrug. "But a ghoul—"

"You don't know she's a zombie. You don't know she's dead at all."

I blink up at Lion and into the sun. It's sinking now behind the top of the hill, though it'll be above us still on the way down. Interrupting is an unLion-like thing to do and he's scowling, staring hard ahead, and so I'm thrown. "Yeah," I agree at last. "But what kind of freak goes barefoot in a cemetery?"

Lion slants a glance at my sneakers where they hang, laces bound to the handlebars. I shrug again, and he laughs.

Jokes may not be better with zombies. The problem about jokes with zombies is that they all have the same punch line. It all comes down to brains.

Sometimes I wish the rest of life was more like jokes about zombies. But maybe it is. Lion went up to see his doctors today and so I skip Amanda's end-of-the-summer party, sit out on the porch and count fireflies and pretend not to hear my dad saying we'll have to hit the road soon, to get me to my mom's new place before school starts up there. Later, there's bike tire whir on pavement. Lion coasts to a stop in the porchlight, panting hard. I offer him my lemonade and ask, "What do zombies want with brains?"

"Maybe they're jealous." But he says it like he's not quite paying attention and it's been, I guess, a not-so-good day. "When you're a zombie," he begins, "do you remember who you were?"

I take my lemonade glass back and set it with a thunk down on the porch steps. I fetch my bike and my pack from the side of the house. We ride slowly down the street and my pack lies close against my back and even coasting where I can, my shirt grows sticky with sweat. Over the tracks and out of town and up the hill. We don't have much momentum. Lion seems tired. We dismount and walk the bikes towards the top.

"You're quiet," he says.

"So are you."

"Yeah, but I'm always quiet."

"I think," I say, "that if I was a zombie, I wouldn't want to remember who I was. It's not like I could go back."

I sneak a glance at him through the gloom, but this is a new moon night and it's dark out here in the way that it never is in town. He plows on up the hill, throws back, "When I'm a zombie, will you want to see me?"

"Lion," I start, but we're at the top of the hill, climbing back onto our bikes, and I don't know what I'd meant to say.

Zombies will kill anyone. They'll eat anybody's brains. It doesn't matter if the brains belong to their dad, or their daughter, or their best friend. I don't know if this means that they don't remember, or that they do. And if we find the other Emily, it won't prove anything. But I've never seen a zombie before, however hard I've looked. Probably it's best to start with one that I don't know.

Lion beats me down the hill. He doesn't do that often, but tonight he's pushing hard and besides, I rode my brakes. I leave him alone when I get there, dropping my pack to the grass and digging for the flashlight, but Lion says, "Don't."