Darkest Days: A Southern Zombie Tale (5 page)

“Hold on a sec.” She turned around and waved Martin away. The engine roared as the RPM’s launched into the red and the vehicle kicked up dust and gravel from the road. In only a moment, the car disappeared from sight and Cara entered this Bryant’s home.

Surprisingly, his living room was clean and tidy. The carpet matched the walls, a simple shade of brown. A glass coffee table occupied the space before a beige sofa. Across the room, a black television rested on top of an entertainment center with a few scattered DVDs. Books covered most of the room. Cara smiled at the stacks on the table, on the floor, against the wall.

“You’re the first truly literate person I’ve met down here.”

Bryant laughed. “God, it must take a lot out of you to compliment someone.”

Cara retorted. “Don’t expect another one anytime soon.” She surveyed the barren walls. No family photographs decorated the room; no posters hung with push pins in each corner, only naked brown paneling. She smiled at the similarity to her own room. “Do you live alone?” Her wandering eyes cut back to him.

“Yes.” Bryant casually answered.

“Do you enjoy it?” Cara raised an eyebrow seemingly interested.

“Sure, when I have time to enjoy it. I work almost full time and still go to school.”

“But you’re so young! Wouldn’t you rather enjoy life than settle down with all that responsibility?” Cara impatiently waited for a response.

Bryant suddenly became indignant, defensively retaliating. “How can you lecture me about experiencing life? I can guess what you do every Saturday night. You sit in your room listening to pretentious music while reading a book and thinking about how much the world sucks because not everyone is smart like you!”

Without warning she turned around and quickly walked toward the door. Again, he had intuitively found her weakest point and attacked it. Again, she fled from him out of embarrassment. As she grabbed the tarnished doorknob, she shot a fierce gaze at him. “I came over to apologize, you bastard!”

Bryant realized what effect his comment had on her and rushed to prevent her departure. His hand pushed the door that his fleeing guest had halfway opened. His face hovered inches from hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .” He trailed off noticing how close their bodies were, almost touching. She stood, back pressed against the door, facing him. Her eyes contained a hint of fear and a flicker of something else, something wanton. A dead silence filled the room with the exception of their breathing which was quite loud at that distance. The boy nervously licked his lips in a quick motion. “Do . . . do you think that I could give you a kiss?”

Before she could stop herself, Cara laughed. The pair of them had never had a conversation in which they had not criticized each other. Quickly coming to the realization that her laughter probably wounded Bryant, she spoke. “I found the situation funny, not your advance.” She paused. “I’ll make a deal with you. Saturday night, we can hang out and if we can still stand each other afterward, you can kiss me.”

Bryant smiled. “Sure, I’d enjoy the challenge of putting up with you for a whole night.” He nervously shifted from one foot to the other. “So, are you still running off now?”

Cara tilted her head, eyeballing the door, and then smiled coyly at him. She still felt a little apprehension, but if he wanted to kiss her, surely he had forgiven her. “Well, I think I can stay a little longer.”

Bryant tried vainly to hide his excitement. Nervous energy coursed through him as he sat down, stood up, walked around the room, fidgeted with his hands. “Would you like to watch a movie or something? I have a few on the shelf.” Cara sat on the floor in front of the entertainment center and perused the titles as Bryant spoke. “I have Star Wars, all of the Evil dead trilogy, and . . .”

Cara interrupted. “I can read. I get lots of practice every Saturday night.”

Bryant’s face reddened. “I’m sorry.”

Cara smiled in a good-natured fashion. “Oh no, don’t worry about it. It’s in the past. I’ll get over it after three years of extensive psychotherapy.” She asked, “Do you have any Blu-rays?”

“Some of us live on a budget. Besides, I don’t even have a high def TV. “ He watched her slender fingers pull a title from the shelf. “Airplane! That’s one of my favorites.”

Cara flipped the case over, examining the plot synopsis on the back. “It looks interesting. How long is it?”

“I guess about ninety minutes. Most comedies are pretty short.”

The pad of her finger lightly touched the open/close button and she gently placed the disk into the DVD player. The pair of anti-social teens spent the remainder of the afternoon together laughing over the silliness of the movie. Both thought about how good it felt to curl up on the couch with someone else’s arms wrapped around them. It struck them both as awkward at first, but soon became a natural, relaxed way for them to sit. When it came time to depart, Cara asked to borrow a book, one of Stephen King’s few nonfiction works. Bryant acquiesced. Then Bryant explained that he borrowed his father’s old truck regularly and had to walk to his mother’s house to pick it up.

Cara smiled. “That’s okay. I’ll just call my mom to pick me up.”

“So, I’ll see you at school tomorrow, right?” He anxiously asked.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t you?”

He nervously laughed. “I don’t know. People act differently outside of school.”

“Well, I don’t.” Then she stepped forward and hugged him. She thought about giving him a quick kiss, but decided against it. She felt the irrational fear that if she did, he would cancel Saturday night. She used his phone and sat back on the couch to wait for her mother. Bryant returned to the comfortable position beside her and basked in his triumph. For the first time that he could remember, the girl he actually wanted sat right beside him.

***

Dr. Eric Wagner stood as something of an oddity in the small town where he lived. The townspeople whispered about his education “up North”. He had closed his own practice due to a lack of customers and taken a lower income position as an emergency room doctor at the Fayette Medical Center. He was tall with a handsome face. He attended church only for the social aspect and to make connections in the town. He planned to eventually reopen a practice, after he was no longer an “outsider”. Therefore, he chose the biggest church in town, the First Baptist Church. Eric went to there since he was trying to curry favor with the social elite of the town.

Eric walked into the living room of his small house and leaned against the door. He was tired. Sick and tired. The facilities in Fayette sickened him. Not due to cleanliness, but due to a lack of equipment. Any pregnancies had to be sent to Tuscaloosa or even up to Winfield, which was a smaller town. The people had such misaligned priorities that Eric could barely empathize with them. Wives came into the emergency room obviously assaulted and would not press charges. Kids would overdose on whatever synthetic drug was big that week. Whatever happened to good old pot smokers (who never o.d.)? Eric had passed through towns like this before as he moved around the country. It was always the same. In the middle of the night, he would sneak off out of fear that he was again discovered. This time, he hoped it would be different. He wanted to reopen his practice and stay here, despite the backwardness of the local inhabitants.

Eric wandered into the kitchen where he absentmindedly brewed a pot of coffee. Tomorrow would be better. He would be over his unfounded fear that people would find out his secret. If he could keep his mouth shut, no one would ever know. Several minutes of contemplation ended with adding the appropriate amounts of cream and sugar to his cup of coffee.

What would happen tomorrow? Not much in this small town. Some excitement would be perfectly welcome as long as it was not too serious. Eric blew across the top of his coffee, knowing that it would be a while before he could drink from it. He wanted to see something besides battered wives and ignorant kids full of meth or X or some other chemical abomination. He set his cup down and wondered if something fantastic would happen to him. Surely, all his time wondering around aimlessly would be rewarded.

The doctor walked to the living room to dream of his return to glory, release from the emergency room in a hick town and moving back into his own office. He used the slim lengthy remote to turn on the TV. A newscaster crisply spoke about a nationwide increase in murders over the past week and how an occasional spike was just the law of averages but a national trend might be cause to worry.

Instead of listening, he lost himself in bitter, recent memories. On that fateful day, he had sat behind his desk rolling a pen from one hand to the other, listening to the plastic ink-filled tube make a fast zipping sound like a baseball card in a kid’s bike tire. No patients had called for appointments. He had gotten out and pressed the flesh, so to speak. He’d kissed babies and shook hands like any good politician but no one wanted his services. Like Hester Prynne, he felt the stigma attached to him. He carried his own scarlet A on his chest. He had moved here. If he had native status, patients would flood his office to see him. Eric glanced at the clock and dropped his head. The work day had ended. He stood, ready to walk into the reception area and tell his secretary that her services were no longer needed. He had a feeling that she knew it was coming. She had collected a paycheck for sitting behind a sliding glass window and reading fashion magazines. A few minutes later, he locked the front doors and said goodbye to his short lived dream.

Some dreams, however, refused to stay down. Today, the doctor glanced down at his new lazy habits, disgusted with himself. Eric resolved to get up early and jog three miles the next day. He just had to remember to set his alarm clock an hour earlier. After flipping channels to watch a sitcom about a family consisting of a dad, mom, son, daughter, baby, and dog. Forgetting about his drink, he fell asleep in his recliner. Minutes later, the sounds of loud snoring emanated from the unconscious man. His alarm clock waited in the bedroom, not set for any particular wake up call.

***

Monday at Fayette County High School, Cara hesitantly exited her mother’s car in a small cul-de-sac at the band building, which was separate from the rest of the school. The entire structure was red brick and only one story but the rehearsal area possessed high ceilings that made it look much taller. One door lead to the chorus room, further down the sidewalk a second door opened into the band room. She looked inside and saw students dropping off their instruments and toting their books to their homerooms. Each grade was slotted into homerooms by alphabetical order, but Cara did not know this. She searched vainly for Bryant or even Martin to ask where she belonged. Unfortunately, both of them drove themselves to school and were on the other side of the grounds at the student parking lot.

Cara looked at the main building across a laughably sized quad, forty yards by fifty yards with a flag pole in the center. The buses dropped students off on one side, while the band room bordered it on another. A catwalk which connected the Music building and main building, closed off another side, and finally the main building itself boxed it in directly across from the band room. Even farther out from the main building, the student parking lot was arranged by grade. The seniors were given the closer parking spaces and the juniors took the leftovers. Since only half of the student parking was paved, the juniors’ cars were always dusty and nicked by the flying gravel as someone spun his or her tires.

Eventually, she discovered the office and explained that this was her first day. Cara was given a homeroom assignment. Minutes later, she sat in Mrs. Killroy’s classroom, staring at her schedule in disbelief as if she expected the letters to change. She had taken every one of these classes in New York. She would not waste a year of school! She had to receive a new schedule. The new student raised her hand attempting to get the teacher’s attention.

Behind the oversized desk, the oversized Mrs. Killroy looked up. “Yes, Miss Creed?” The old woman was nearing sixty with gray threatening to claim all of her hair. She could stand to lose forty pounds but did little about it. The flesh sagging from the sides of her face gave her the appearance of a bulldog with the flaps of skin acting as bookends for its mouth.

“I need to see the principal.” Cara lowered her hand as she answered.

“You may go by the office after homeroom.” She replied.

“But we aren’t doing anything.” The young girl retaliated. Behind her, the voices of talking students began to drop out as the adolescents took an interest in the gathering confrontation.

“I said wait. If you don’t like that, you can transfer to a different school. This county has an abundance of them. However, no matter what you decide, you will take whatever action after homeroom.” The old hag stared into her eyes. “Do I make myself clear?”

Cara defiantly answered. “No ma’am. It’s hard to understand you with your head up your ass.”

The class collectively gaped in shock, and watched the confrontation with growing interest.

“Go to the office!” The archaic bat shrieked pointing toward the door.

“Are you giving me permission now?” Cara sarcastically replied.

“You’ll be lucky not to get expelled.” The teacher continued fuming as Cara walked through the door. Silence filled the classroom until the door slammed. Then the mutterings of students took precedence over any lesson.

***

In the principal’s office, another overweight and ignorant authoritarian gave Cara the run around. William Strugghold appeared to be of German descent. He had light skin turned pink from the sun and always appeared to be sweating due to the Alabama humidity. He believed strongly in the physical fitness side of education, hence there were almost no artistic programs. Nothing mattered more to him than whether a student was an athlete or supported athletic programs. Coincidentally, his son played for the Fayette Tigers football team (first string).

Principal Strugghold explained the school board policy to Cara. “Our school system does not have any advanced classes. You can either retake the courses offered or be a teacher’s aide, which consists of making copies and grading papers.”