Scott Kenemore - Zombie, Ohio: A Tale of the Undead

Scott Kenemore

One forgets that one is a dead man conversing with dead men.

-J. L. Borges, "There are More Things"

For Heather, the Kenemores, the Blissters, the Cougars, and Mr: T. Banks

Hello.

I want to eat your brain.

Well, not your brain, necessarily. It could be anybody's brain.

I mean, let's be clear ... Nothing about this is personal.

But ... brains. Yes. I do want to eat brains.

Brains ...

Braaaaaaaaains ...

Sorry. You'll have to excuse me. I ... drift a little bit sometimes. These days, it just sort of happens, and I can't control it.

Don't let it worry you if I ... list ... on occasion. You're still doing fine, and I'm not losing interest. I'm certainly not feeling sick. Okay, to be completely honest with you, I do feel a little sick. But I always feel a little sick. I'll be fine. It's not like I'm going to die or anything.

I don't think I can.

So-what did you want to know about?

Really?

You're serious? You want to know about that?

All right, I'll tell you ... sure.

Just give me a moment to ... collect myself.

I remember waking up ... or something ... by the side of the road, near a town I would later learn was Gant, Ohio. It was midwinter. My eyes were closed as I came to, but I could tell it was winter. I could smell it.

And I ... I opened my eyes and I saw the sky-a bleak gray and white Midwestern sky-and it was snowing just a little. Light, tentative flakes that drifted down absently.

I was on my back. My legs were crossed awkwardly, one atop the other, and my arms were spread out wide.

I untangled my legs slowly and sat up, pushing myself upward on numb, empty-feeling arms. I looked around and saw the trees and the road-empty winter woods, and a lonely country highway without streetlights. On the other side of the road was a wrecked car, impaled squarely against an old, gnarled buckeye tree that split into a "V" halfway up. One of the front tires on the car was still spinning. The headlights were on, and there was a massive, violent hole in the front windshield, like someone had been thrown through it.

I looked at it, and I looked at me. And I thought that maybe I was that someone.

I stood up slowly, feeling like a person who has been asleep for days. Like a patient coming out of anesthesia. Dizzy and lightheaded, but also empty. A lingering emptiness that felt like it would soon give way like I was waiting to come back and feel like myself again after a sickness ... get an appetite, and so forth. (Probably, I thought, this was shock, and what awaited me when it wore off was horrible pain.)

I took a step. It was okay. Not normal, but I could work with it. I took another. Walking felt like floating. It was awkward, but I could do it. I took another step, and then another.

I looked down at the road. Gray asphalt covered with snow so thin it blew in the wind. The sky above the bare, reddish-brown trees was getting dark. It was a late afternoon in winter.

It was also eerily quiet. No traffic and no people sounds. It felt like Christmas Eve, or some other holiday where everybody is at home. Slowly and carefully, I crossed the road and made my way over to the car. Not because I knew whose car it was-mine or someone else's-or because I wanted anything from it. Rather, I walked toward it because it was what there was. The headlights were like a beacon beside the lonely country road in the creeping dusk.

I walked gingerly, like a man with a hangover-trying not to provoke a throb or an ache. I looked myself over as I did. There was a little blood on my hands-a few cuts, but they weren't bad. The rest of my body seemed okay. I wore a jacket, a red-andblack-plaid shirt, and some jeans. The jeans were wet and clingy from snow.

I crept closer to the car.

It was a tiny import-a convertible with its flimsy canvas top raised heroically against the Ohio winter chill (and now ripped apart in several places from the accident). This was the kind of car that wouldn't have an airbag, I thought. The kind of car that invincible-feeling men tend to drive too fast down winter roads. The kind of car that, if you crashed it you were pretty much just going to be fucked (and maybe that was a perverse part of the appeal).

I moved closer, easing my way down the embankment to where the automobile rested. I could hear the radio or a CD playing through the shattered windshield. It was a classic rock song. I'd heard it many times before ("Oh yeah, that old number ..."), and yet I couldn't place the artist or title.

Something about this inability to remember the name of the song really unnerved me. You know, like when you can picture someone's face, but just can't think of his name? What the fuck, right? It's crazy. And it was like that with this classic rock song. It seemed crazy that I couldn't think of it. Insane.

But I know this song, I thought to myself. Of course I did ... Yet hard as I tried, I couldn't name it.

I just couldn't.

Keep in mind that I knew as much then as you do right now about where I was and what was happening to me. (You know more, actually. I didn't even know I was in Ohio, near a small college town called Gant.) Anyhow, that was when it hit me.

Amnesia. This must be amnesia.

I must be the man who went through that windshield, and this must be amnesia.

The driver's license was buried deep in the folds of the thick brown wallet I found in the back pocket of my jeans.

The name on the license was Peter Mellor. Though it listed a birth date, I couldn't pin down an age because I couldn't seem to remember what year it was. In the photo, he looked early fortyish, probably of Irish descent, with moppish brown hair and a drinker's redness to his cheeks. There were the beginnings of lines on his brow and circles under his eyes, but the face still had the confident jaw and steely eyes of a healthy man. In the right light, I suppose he might have looked handsome. In the right light ...

The weight was listed as 175. Looking down at the bulge above my belt, I guessed this was being a bit generous. But was this, was he ... really me?

I crept over to one of the car's side-view mirrors and woozily knelt down in front of it. In the dying light, I stared hard at the face it showed me. The visage I beheld looked fatter and more haggard than the one in the picture. The cheeks and nose even redder. The lines crossing the face even deeper.

But, yes. It was the same face. I was ... apparently ... Peter Mellor.