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  Barbara was sound asleep.

  She hadn’t followed me. She hadn’t cared.

  I closed my eyes for not a minute when I began to have a dream. I was drowning in a stormy ocean that rose and fell…the winds stung my face. Giant waves crashed all over me and pushed me into its stygian underbelly. I was engulfed with the sudden, dark fear of utter loneliness.

  I expected the cheerleader to save me.

  She didn’t come.

  …No one did.

  Emo-typical.

  Nineteen.

  We were walking on a thin hiking trail that was on the edge of the mountain. A wrong step and one could tumble to certain death.

  It was hot. The sun was screaming at us.

  Barbara tried to impress me by doing a cartwheel down the path. I laughed at her and told her to be careful, but she made devil horns and wiggled her tongue at me and went “Blahhhhhhhhh”. Someone was running toward us, yelling and waving.

  This Italian hiker was just attacked by a mad woman that tried to taste him. She was an evil spirit, he said – void of skin and meat. “She was the walking rot!”

  The hiker threw many sharp rocks at the person and even yelled at her. Some rocks hit her hard in the face, but she wouldn’t go away – let alone react. The Italian’s group was still there. He had left them and felt incredibly guilty.

  Barbara and I nodded to each other. She asked the man if he could take us to this “walking rot”. The Italian hiker shrieked in terror with crazy memories and ran down the trail…his screams fading.

  We walked down the trail and soon enough entered a bamboo forest with a clearing made long ago by the park’s staff.

  There were in fact five zombies – four of them surely the Italian’s group members. The main zombie – the walking rot – had her back to us: A back that had fallen apart long ago. They were all eating bamboo shoots for some reason. Barbara took me by the shoulders and said, “You must go in there as one of them. Get in there, you hear me? Get in there and get close to them and cut off their heads with this here machete (she pronounced it as maishit-tay).”

  “How am I supposed to get close?”

  “Thee shall dress up as one of them.”

  “Oh, I’m no actor. I tried that and failed miserably!”

  Barbara drew her face close to mine.

  “This is not Acting, child. This is Becoming.”

  My heart pounded. My breath came in short spurts. My lungs weren’t working right. My legs had social anxiety disorder. I was going to die. At least I could run fast.

  I walked in with my arms up, biting my shoulder, moaning in fake pain. Barbara had taken a blade to my clothing and ripped it to shreds.

  The zombies looked at me and then went back to their eating.

  It had worked!

  Amazement!

  I sat next to them and pretended to eat a piece of bamboo, daintily. One of the zombies looked at me funny, and I smiled at it, going, “Mmmm.”

  The zombie rolled its eyes and got up to eat bamboo elsewhere.

  Sick from munching on bamboo, I got out my machete and crept up to each one, slicing off their heads and running away before any gore got on me.

  I asked if I had done a good job. Barbara threw me a towel and a bottle of Secret Garden by Victoria’s Secret.

  “You sing of stink.”

  As we walked through the bamboo clearing, Barbara gazed at the decapitated heads and noticed something.

  She fell to her knees and sobbed, mumbling a prayer.

  I stayed where I was and said nothing.

  My arms and legs shook. Barbara whipped her head to me, her eyes full of tears and hate.

  Twenty.

  Barbara ran after me, screaming like a confused pig on a treadmill. I didn’t run until the last moment, hoping this was just some kind of scary test. She raised her machete and sliced at me – and would’ve got me on the shoulder hadn’t I spun and ran.

  My mind erased. Had she finally snapped?

  Why?

  I couldn’t hear her anymore. Where did she go? Barbara had grown quiet…maybe tiptoeing and checking for me behind bushes.

  I ran up a steep hill and sat under a thick tree to catch my breath, hiding behind a curtain of tangled vines. Barbara had seen something. One of the heads had upset her to the point of bad rage.

  I had to see for myself.

  Maybe then I could understand. Maybe then I could try to mend things.

  When I got back to the bamboo clearing, only one head was left, on a pike. The face was distorted, but familiar…and I knew who it was as I stepped closer.

  The crazy zombie the Italian hiker had encountered was Toshiba.

  Janeen.

  My stomach collapsed.

  I was dead.

  This whole trip was devious from the get-go.

  I was being used. I was being molded into someone else. Barbara was going to kill me now – no matter what. And she was right behind me. I was too afraid to turn around.

  If you’re going to kill me…do it fast.

  A beat.

  Nothing.

  Nothing?

  Barbara walked past me and stood next to the head on the pike. She said that she had eaten the other heads. She didn’t boil them though, and that any minute now she would be a member of the living dead. Barbara pulled up Toshiba’s head and cradled it, humming “Aerith’s Theme” from Final Fantasy 7.

  She began to cry…then reached out to me, her hand shaking.

  I walked up to her and hugged them both.

  Barbara kissed Toshiba as I kissed Barbara.

  We all slept on the ground.

  When Barbara’s cellphone woke us with its blaring ringtone the sun was setting, stretching the shadows. Barbara nodded as she spoke, only saying Yeah’s and Uh huh’s. She hung up and stood and began doing stretches. I wondered if it was okay for me to talk.

  There was the crunching of shoes on dead leaves in the distance.

  It was Barbara’s mum, carrying a duffle bag.

  She hugged her. The mum did not hug in return. I wanted to say something – anything – but I couldn’t form the words, only managing to produce bizarre chirping sounds.

  Barbara walked over to me, smiling, and then embraced me.

  I didn’t want to let her go.

  “What’s happening?”

  Barbara turned around to face her mum and said:

  “This will make it easier.”

  She punched her mum in the face, sending her sailing ten feet through the air in a heavy WHOOSH, right into a thick bamboo shoot. It cracked in two and fell over with a disturbing whine.

  I yelled out in protest and stood between them, but her mum pushed me out of the way and shook her head at her daughter, then said to the heavens, “Forgive me, Father, for I know what I do!”

  Barbara attacked her mum – to my horror – and proceeded to punch and kick her and throw her onto the ground and into the bamboo shoots. She even whacked a heavy length of bamboo on top of her mum’s head in a sickening THUNK. Barbara got out a machete. Her mum revealed a heavy medieval sword from her duffle bag and they both took mad swipes at each other.

  I tried to stop them, but they kicked me out of the way, hard. I found myself massaging various parts of my body.

  They began shrieking at each other, all those years of pent-up frustration and anger finally coming through. I began to retreat. This wasn’t my fight. There was nothing I could do – no matter how much I tried. Someone was going to die, and I didn’t want to be around when it happened – especially if it was someone I cared about.

  I ran with their battle cries at my back.

  I could feel the zombies above and all around me – staring from behind the dark bushes. I knew they could hear them fighting. Any minute now Barbara and her mum would be attacked.

  Well, maybe that was what they wanted. They knew what they were doing – what all their screaming would do.

  As I jumped over a tree stump, I remembered
what Barbara had told me, about loving me, trusting me in killing her if ever necessary. And then that scared Italian hiker popped into my mind like a jack in the box. I hated how he had left his friends behind. What kind of human would do such a thing? Not help? Not do everything in his power to save the ones he cared for?

  It was a way to measure the love of a man.

  I stopped dead in my tracks, holding my breath.

  Barbara and her mum were clanking blades. Their voices were shrill and echoed throughout the woods.

  Then…silence.

  No wind. No crickets. Nothing, except for a growing ringing sound in my ears.

  I fixed my hair, then straightened my shirt…

  …and ran back.

  Twenty-one.

  They were making zombie calls. They had stopped fighting long ago. I ran faster, slipping and falling in mud every twenty steps. The trees above me rustled, trying to scare me away from the upcoming bad news bears.

  I thanked the trees for their concern and ran even faster, falling even more. When I reached the bamboo clearing, zombies surrounded Barbara and her mum.

  No one moved.

  The undead stood under streaks of moonlight that melted through the bamboo ceiling, reflecting in their eyes and made them glow.

  There was a waitress zombie with strips of muscles for arms; a hiker zombie with a samurai sword through its neck; a nude, muscular male zombie with no legs, resting on its belly – its head poised (eyes wide and crazy); a little girl zombie with backward legs; a butcher zombie, gripping two butcher knives and eating its own dangling eye; a priest zombie, standing very close to three zombie boys; and a surfer zombie with a surfboard sticking out of its back.

  Barbara and her mum had dropped their blades and were holding hands, making no attempt to run. I moved back and stepped on an empty bag of Doritos. Barbara and her mum turned around and looked at me, surprise in their eyes, mouths agape. The crawling zombie made a mad dash for me. Barbara’s mum jumped on its back – feet going right through it. She yanked out its spine and used it as a whip to take off the priest’s head, which flew toward me. I shrieked and kicked it, sending it flying into the waitress’s mouth. She ate the head.

  Barbara and her mum picked up their blades. They stood back-to-back, yelling at me to stay where I was.

  The butcher zombie snuck up behind Barbara’s mum and made to bite her. I yelled out in warning and she spun around, cutting its head in half from ear to ear. The brain popped out and the waitress zombie leapt into the air like a fish and caught it in her mouth, then ate it.

  Barbara butchered the child zombies, hacking them into tiny cubes. The surfer zombie bear hugged her. She reached back and pulled out a rather large portion of its ribcage. The zombie fell to the ground, but was persistent, gripping onto her ankle. She fell and yelled out as the undead surfer crawled over her, drooling and growling. Barbara chopped at it, but in her fright only managed to cut its ears and the front portion of its face, revealing a grinning white skeleton. She reached out to me.

  “Not like this! Not in this way!”

  Her mum was busy, struggling with the hiker zombie, the sword in its neck shining moonlight. I ran up to the hiker and pulled out the sword, leaping into the air and driving the heavy blade through the back of the surfer’s head. Red showered loudly over Barbara’s face. The blade was mere inches from her face and I felt immediately guilty. She stayed on the ground, struggling to breathe and spitting. Something was wrong with her. Her skin was turning blue. She shut her eyes tight…and when she opened them they were completely black.

  I backed up.

  She massaged her eyes and they were normal again. Her mum was strangling the hiker zombie like an insane person. Its eyes popped out and then there was the snapping of spine. Barbara’s mum gave out a mighty yell and an equally mighty squeeze. She made to rip off its head, slowly stretching the neck – the zombie’s moan rising in pitch.

  The hiker zombie’s spine whipped like mad from out the lonely neck, slapping her in the face. She spun around and kicked the zombie’s torso away, which landed onto a bamboo pike, moved around for a bit, then froze. Barbara’s mum threw its head into the air and punched it toward the waitress zombie – who was feasting on the children’s remains like a chicken. The flying head hit her in the face, hard, exploding both skulls into a rain of gooey bits.

  Barbara and her mum then chopped everyone into tiny fractions, dug a large hole with their hands, and buried everything, topping it all off by sticking bamboo shoots over the gave to disguise it.

  Barbara accused me of meddling and ruining her plans. I said nothing. She turned around and regurgitated, squatting. Her mum walked up to me briskly and poked my chest with her finger, asking why I had to come back – everyone would’ve been happy if the zombies just had their way. She said more things, but I wasn’t even listening. I was watching Barbara. Her mum noticed the perplexed expression on my face and also looked.

  Barbara was standing, facing us, eyes black as night, her arms glued to her sides. She wasn’t standing upright – she was more in a half-squat, like a standing crab, legs spread. Perfectly still.

  It was now windy. Her mum got her machete and slowly walked toward Barbara with her free hand out, as if to keep her daughter at bay.

  She raised the weapon.

  In a bust of energy, Barbara attacked her mum. The machete cut into Barbara’s neck and got stuck halfway down her chest…I could see her heart beating…My head grew dizzy…I fell to my knees…Her mum yelled out for me to help, weeping, pleading…I just stayed there…staring with my mouth open as Barbara threw her hands into her mum’s mouth…and tore her head in half with the sound of ripped paper.

  The corpse fell, twitching.

  Barbara sat down and ate her mum.

  I walked away.

  I looked over my shoulder and noticed that she was following me. She’d stop whenever I stopped, hiding in the shadows of the hiking trail, eyes glowing with moonlight. I wanted to run up and hug her, wanted to kiss her, wanted to do so many things.

  How do you forget someone?

  How do you forget someone you still love? How do you try to understand that this person doesn’t want you the same way anymore? How do you forget? My head hurt. I had to move on.

  Just keep walking, as fast as you can.

  Look back for that very last time.

  Nothing, but the dark pathway.

  You’ll find it so painless now.

  You will never see her again.

  Soon enough, you’ll forget.

  This is what you wanted…

  …to never remember…

  …since it’s easier…

  …to forget.

  —RCH

  Get Kilt

  A Zombie Pill

  THE RECORDED MESSAGE

  After the “incident”, a soldier patrolling downtown Honolulu discovered a cellphone in a bus with burning tires. Although the phone was damaged and deemed useless, a recorded message played on a loop. This is that message:

  I'm stuck in the office. I'm too scared to go outside. Saidi, I love you. Oh, God...I hear them outside. I don't have much time, but if there's anything I want you to know, it's that I love you and that I wish I was with you....I can hear them outside in the hallway, running around, looking for people to eat so they can get faster, stronger, better. I'm so scared right now. They can run so fast. I saw one run after a dog and actually catch the thing. The old hag ate the dog, and then ran off, and I swear it was even faster than before. What is happening to these old people? Are they possessed? This isn't normal. Another one of those old...THINGS...picked up a small Honda and threw it at a group of cops. They were all wiggling, squirming under the car and crying for help. I had no choice but to vomit all over myself. The cops were shaking...bleeding...pleading.

  I'll never get that image out of my head. Especially when those crazy old people started eating them. After they licked every bone clean, the monsters ripped off their shirts
and started flexing their muscles and posing like champions. Some of them golf-clapped and nodded in approval. I saw cops SHOOT them – right in the body, sending those old people right to the ground. They just got right back up again like nothing happened. These “people”...they're like...like...zombies. They don't wanna stay DEAD. Creeping Jesus. They just laugh and kill everyone. They seem so merry. They laugh when they kill. So cheery. Why?

  One of them smelled my musk and tried to smash their way into the office. Remember that taser my boss, Mr. Murbag, gave me? I used it on the zombie old woman – got her right on the forehead – and didn't stop cooking her until her eyes popped out and dangled by their optic nerves. It was quite a sight. God, forgive me. Oh, hunny. Oh, my love. I wish I was with you, wife. I love you. I'm so scared. I can't stop shaking. Timothy's dead. It happened in the copy room. I saw the zombie....I saw the old man lift Timothy up high into the air and snap his body in two like a pencil. His innards came out in a hurry. The monster drank Tim's torso like a gallon of milk. They're so strong. TOO strong!

  How is that even possible? It's ridiculous! It doesn't matter now. All logic is shit now. The whole island has gone weird. Things don't make sense to me anymore. Where are the police? The soldiers? I don't understand. I don't wanna die. I wanna be with you, Saidi. Please, I miss you. I admit that YES I slept with Mary. If I'm gonna die, I want to be honest with you. YES, I slept with your sister. Creeping Jesus! Forgive me. I left her. She's not with me. I promise. (Crying sounds.)

  Please pick up the phone. Dear God, I hope you're still alive. I hope you're not on the streets. (Crashing sound.) No! Nooo! Take your stinking hands of me, you old, dirty bastard!

  OLD VOICE 1: Let's play jump rope with his guts!

  MAN: Don't do it!

  OLD VOICE 2: I have a better idea. Grab his feet. Let's make a wish!

  MAN: Noooooooo!

  (Big, wet ripping sound. Various splats. Eating sounds.)

  OLD VOICE 1: I am invigorated!