Living with the Dead

So now I have my very own login and password, courtesy of Mr. Tommy Williams. I asked him if he wanted to post anything and he said that he didn't really feel like it.

"Really?" I said. "But what about being the voice of the Dead Generation? What about all the people that supported you in your trip to Washington? Don't you want to update them on your, ah, life?"

He just stared at me. Whatever you do, don't try and win a staring contest with a zombie. Ain't gonna happen.

Some of you have asked about Phoebe posting as well; I wish I could give you an update but she's kind of not speaking to me because of my last post. I'm sure she already regrets giving me her password (remember kids: don't give out yer passwords), just as I'm sure Tommy will regret it in a couple days, too. Oh, well. She'll get over it. If I can't be me, I can't be me.

Colette is still talking to me, of course. She dyed half of her hair metallic blue and it looks super cool. I'll stick with pink, though.

Oakvale High Update: Classes are way way over-crowded now that the db kids have come back. There's got to be over thirty of us packed in a class now. And I get to sit next to that charmer, Popeye, in one of those classes. His real name is Chad, can you believe it? Chad Doyle. He absolutely flipped out when Mrs. Rodriguez called him Chad, though. He took off his sunglasses and everything. And his shirt, which was not a pretty sight, believe me, because he's done some really disgusting things--bodifications, he calls them--to himself. Like removed layers of skin right down to the muscle and stuff like that. Too nauseating to write about, really.

"Please put your glasses on, Popeye," Mrs. Rodriguez told him.

"Why?"

"You know why. And your shirt."

"I don't get it. Pinky Tuscadero over there gets to do whatever she wants to her hair, and gets to wear like three thousand bracelets, but I can't..."

"The school has a shirts and shoes policy, Popeye," Mrs. Rodriguez said, interrupting him. "And pants, before you get any ideas. It's all in the handbook."

"Oh, well, if it is in the handbook," he said. "That's like being in the Constitution itself. Or the Bible. The handbook. What about the sunglasses, Mrs. Rodriguez? I bet 'the handbook' has a policy on those as well, doesn't it? And the policy is that they need to come off."

He's such a jerk sometimes. He didn't even seem to notice that Tori Simmons was crying, she was so scared of him.

Mrs. Rodriguez sighed. "We're willing to make an exception for you," she said.

"Maybe I don't want to be the exception. Maybe I want to be the rule."

She told him that if he didn't sit down, put his glasses and shirt back on, and spend the rest of the class with his mouth closed and his hands neatly folded in front of him, she would make certain that he was suspended from school.

He complied, taking his time about it. I don't think he really cares about being suspended, but I think he wouldn't want to miss a few days of getting in people's faces and offending them.

He's in trouble all the time and the weird thing is I know he's trying to get into trouble. I think I'm pretty close to telling him off.

All You Zombies

Hi everyone--Margi here. This blog is more cob-webby than the Haunted House, isn't it. It will say "posted by PhoebeKendall" at the bottom of this post but that is just another example of how the Internet is a total liar. And why is Internet always capitalized, anyhow?

I asked Phoebe if I could post something here and she said sure go ahead here's my password. PSA: Kids and kid-like people,never ever ever give anyone any of your Internet account passwords. Or your wallet, your favorite stuftie, your ATM card, your mojo, or your car keys if you are old enough to drive. You wouldn't want some creeper getting a hold of that stuff would you? Luckily for Phoebe, I am not a creeper, I am her best friend. And besides, she says that she is never going to post here again, anyhow. She doesn't want me to get into it, but she was a bit embarrassed by Tommy's last post. You'd think that maybe she'd be over it and all now that Tommy is back home from his trip and back in school, but I guess it is more complicated than that.

But um yeah I'm not supposed to talk about that. Next topic, please?

So yes Tommy is back in school. And Colette! And we're having a blast every day except when she's being all mopey about missing DeCayce and everything (he's back in New Jersey with his band but they get together like every other week so I don't know what she's complaining about; at least she has a boyfriend), and Adam, and Melissa, and Cooper, and Tayshawn and Jacinta and Popeye (yes! even Popeye!). Pretty much every zombie kid I know in town is back at school, except for Tak.

Tommy, you see, was pretty successful. Politically,at least. Although Prop 77 didn't go through exactly as it was written, a number of limited rights were granted to the differently biotic, including the right to get an education. So the zombies are all back, shambling through the hallways, moving just a little faster than Phoebe before her morning coffee. Which is great! Yay, zombies!

Except, now our school is really, really crowded. Really crowded. And there's um, conflict. Not bullying exactly, at least not the same sort of obvious bullying that was happening back when Tommy was first starting to speak up. More like...intimidation. I don't know how to write about it yet so I won't. Soon, maybe.

Anyhow, I'm going to try and get Phoebe and Tommy to post eventually. But not until I get to have some fun first! I'll be answering questions, too, so post lots.

Bye!

--Margi Vee

Open Letter to Phoebe

Phoebe, I lost my cell phone in Texas, which is why I haven’t called.

But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’ve been thinking about Evan and Texas and what happened to Karen and more and more I’m coming to the conclusion that life is short. Even differently biotic life is short, it seems. Some of us—zombies, I mean, but I guess trads too—act like we’re immortal. Nothing could be further from the truth. We disappear a bit more every day. I’ve been thinking a lot, Phoebe.

I’ve been thinking of you.

I know you’re with Adam now. Adam is my best friend in Oakvale; he’s the first trad guy to stand up for me and I’d never do anything to hurt either of you. He gave his life for you, and I will always owe him for that.

But Phoebe…things weren’t over between us. You know it and I know it. I may have stepped aside, but I was lying to myself. I was lying to you. I thought that time and distant would change the way I felt but if anything my feelings have only grown stronger.

I think you know what I’m talking about. I think there’s a part of you—and maybe, right now, it is only a tiny, fragile part—that feels the same way.

When I’m done here in Washington I’m going back to Oakvale. I’m going back to Oakvale because there’s a lot that I have to say to you.

Please listen.

T.

What Happened to Karen?

WHAT HAPPENED TO KAREN?

Memphis

We rolled into Memphis the day after a week of heavy rains. The river swelled against its banks, and again I had to fight the urge to leave the van, to leave my friends and just start walking towards the river, and keep walking until the muddy water covers my head.

“What’s with you?” Ty said, just after slapping me in the back of the head. “You look like a zombie.”
I turned towards him just as he lets loose with a manic giggle. Truth be told, Ty is the one that looks like a zombie. He’s been driving for the last six hours, a during which time I watched him consume two cans of red bull and eat two large Snickers bars. There’s only three living kids still traveling with us, and all three of them seem to regard ferrying the rest of us around the country as some sort of holy mission. There’s an odd sort of symmetry among the three—Ty, Chris and Kyle all wear hats or bandannas, all three have tattoos on their mountain-bike hardened calf muscles, muscles which are always visible because all three wear cargo shorts constantly. All three are addicted to the new Stone Sour CD (Ty, when the others are asleep, will sometimes put Hendrix’s “Valleys of Neptune” on the dashboard. They are the sort of athletic, easy going sort of guys that you can totally picture running two dozen miles over rough terrain to get medicine to an injured party lost in the woods. They are the guys you’d want with you in a fight.
“Sorry,” I said to Ty. “I’ll try and look more alive.”
Ty laughed his jangly laugh and tapped me on the back of the head again. Affectionately, I think. Ty was a basketball player; that’s what basketball players did on their way to the bench, tap each other on the head. Before my one-play football career with the Oakvale Badgers, I’d been a baseball player. I think the basketball guys had the better idea.
“We going to try and find Elvis?” Ty said. “I hear he's dead like you.”
“Funny,” I said. “I think his followers believe he never died, which is a little different.”
Ty shrugged. Kyle and Chris were helping our dead friends out of the van—for some reason they thought stretching was as beneficial for us as it was for them.
We made a few stops. Most everywhere we went people were supportive and kind. A girl gave Chris her phone number. An elderly couple brought three dead kids to us and asked that we take them with us, which we were glad to do. The girl who gave Chris her phone number painted a hot pink heart on the side of the van and I started thinking that the world had possibilities again.

We went to the Lorraine Hotel before we left town for D.C. The hotel is a museum now, and if you don’t know what it is and what happened there you need to look it up on Wikipedia. Hard to believe that happened within my mother’s lifetime.

On to Washington. Wish us luck.

Companions

I know it has been awhile since I've written last. Texas...things happened in Texas. I can't even put them into words yet that's how terrible they were. The images are there in my head, like they were etched there by a ragged fingernail, but my body and my hands resist pressing the keys that would turn those images into words.

Our first few stops in Texas were pleasant...but nothing had prepared us for what was going to happen. Nothing. The look in their eyes...

That was weeks ago. We--those few that remained--stopped in New Orleans afterwards and although that city opened its heart to us we really couldn't enjoy the hospitality. The news never reported what happened; the story was squelched. When we tried to explain no one could really understand what it was like. Not unless you were there. I called Phoebe, and told her as best I could what had happened. If I don't find the strength to write about it soon--or if something should happen to me--I've asked her to help me get the story out. But without Karen to help her, and with everything that is happening in Oakvale, and don't know that anyone would listen.

All I'll say now is that the little caravan that we had has now been reduced to one vehicle, our hand painted van. There's only a few of us still traveling; some went back to where they were from, others we had to leave in Texas. We had to leave them in Texas and they won't be returning.



"I'd almost forgotten what it was like to not exist," Darius, one of the guys who'd joined us in Denver said when we were miles away from the attack. It was the first thing that any of us had said in a few hours.

We're on our way to Memphis now, a stop I swore we'd make to help three of our brothers and sisters who need our help. We're doing almost all of our traveling now at night, and during the day we have to be careful where we park so that our living drivers can get some sleep in the van. The miles roll past and I'll think about people I thought I knew and then I'll wonder if they were ever really there at all.

I feel like my whole life right now is staring out a car window, looking for something that that I'll never find.

Desert Highway

Driving through the desert for seemingly endless miles, working our way back east. We stop every couple hours or so, so that the living among us can stretch their legs and breathe. There further we go the windier it gets, so that at our last stop you could actually see thin curtains of sand rising and falling away. The living people don’t like to stand out in it for very long, but I wish that I could feel the grainy air abrading my skin. We wear sunglasses, even at night, when we are outside. Not to look cool but to keep the sand out of our eyes.

I could look out at the desert sky all night and get bored. Sometimes I think that, rather than go on to Washington, that I should just gather up as many zombies as I could and more them all here to the desert, where there isn’t anyone to bother us. We could move into the Grand Canyon. Or maybe Death Valley would be more appropriate. We don’t need to worry about water, and while the wind, sand and sun would most likely take a toll on our skin, it wasn’t like we could feel sunburned. We’re immune to rattlesnake bites, too. We could find the ghost towns of the old west and move right in and create our own town.

The thoughts make me smile, because the idea of being able to get away from everyone that hates us certainly is appealing sometimes. But I know it isn’t the answer, not really. It might be nice to have a secluded corner of the world, but the world will always turn its eyes on you, eventually.

It would be great if zombies established some communities outside of “Normal” society—in the desert, at the poles, under the ocean. For all I know we could colonize the moon—we could go Anywhere we could be safe and free. But only if it was by choice, not because we were forced there or in hiding. Maybe if things go well in Washington we’ll have some of those options.

Those were some of the thoughts I had as we moved sleeplessly through the desert.

Membership Drive: Success!

Wow! In just a little over a week, you helped us get over the 2000-strong mark! We're hovering at 2001 at the moment--thank you!

And there's always room for more...

Membership Drive

Hey everyone, Phoebe here. I'm writing to ask you if you have any friends, zombie or otherwise (werewolves, pixies, and creatures from the black lagoon are welcome, also), who you think might be sympathetic towards the issue of rights for the undead, that you would consider encouraging them to add their names to The Wall at right. We're hoping to get as many people as possible to sign up in anticipation of Tommy and team arriving in Washington.

We're hoping to get the total number of names on The Wall to two thousand in the next two weeks. Can you help us?

Here's a silly "joke" from Adam:

Who won't get any older this year?

Answer: Zombie kids, and Phoebe. (I was born on February 29th--no birthday for me this year!) Conan O'Brien, he isn't.

He'd better not think he's getting out of giving me a present...

Dead in Hollywood

I could write an entire book on the adventures that we had in California. In some respects, California seems like its own country within our country, there is so much diversity within the state in terms of lifestyle. I’ll keep today’s entry quick though, confining my comments to the time that we spent in Hollywood.
I’ve got to admit, that the trip to Hollywood was really more about satisfying my own curiosity. What would America be without Hollywood? I really didn’t expect to find a very big undead population there, and I was right. I mean, the Sunset Strip was loaded with zombies, but only at night, and most of them were doing their best to blend in with the rest of humanity. If, that is, you consider them to be a part of humanity.
We didn’t stay long. Not because we pelted with rocks or driven to the edge of town by angry villagers or anything like that, but I’m not sure that any of us felt less comfortable in a place than we did during our trip to Hollywood. I was talking about it with Christie in the van when we driving away, heading east. It wasn’t that the beautiful people there were hostile, or even curious. It was more like they were completely indifferent to us—like we didn’t even show up on their radar. Like they were so inside themselves and their own concerns that they didn’t even notice we were dead.
I’ve got to tell you, in some ways I found that even more terrifying than the guy who pulled a gun on us outside a gas station in Utah.
We didn’t stay very long. The police kept us moving along and didn’t really give us a chance to talk to anyone. They weren’t violent—actually they were probably the most polite of any of the cops we’ve dealt with thus far, but they kept us moving, like we were trash they would like to see swept out of town.
The only thing that even came close to a normal human interaction was when a bearded guy stopped Christie and I and told us really liked our “look”. We were too stunned to speak, at first. He went on to tell us that he was a filmmaker and that he’d really be interested in having us do a screen test. I don’t even think he was aware that we were dead, not at first. He was sort of a heavy-set guy, which set him apart slightly from most of the people we saw in that town, and when he looked at us he seemed to be staring right through us; I felt like he was staring at something that wasn’t even there.
I told him no, thanks. After I spoke he looked at me like he could see me, the real me, for the first time.
“Why not? Really? You really wouldn’t want to get some screen time? I’m shocked. I’m really shocked that you would say that.”
I started to reply, but he kept going. For such a large guy he moved around a lot, shifting from side to side and punctuating his words with his waving arms. Christie would tell me later that his sneakers cost upwards of $500 dollars.
“Look, you people need to get some screen time. Images. Image management. All that newsreel stuff, it doesn’t do you any good. I’m talking positive images, film, documentary. Images people can relate to. Beauty. You’re beautiful. That will translate.”
I remember turning towards Christie in the exact moment that she turned towards me. Whatever it was that would translate, it wasn’t anything the bearded man was saying.
“Look,” he said. “I know. You’re busy. I understand this. You have things to accomplish. But I think we’ve got something hear. Death as attractive. In the right light, makeup, some slice of life, I think we could really make a statement. Do you have a card?”
“A card?” I said.
“Here’s mine,” he said, and fished one out of his jeans, which Christie said were the least expensive thing the man was wearing.
I took his card, which was creased and torn at one corner. It had his name and a phone number, nothing else.
“Kid, call me,” he said. “When you are ready, call me. You can’t get anything done in this country without Hollywood.”
His Bluetooth lit up and he pressed a stubby finger to his ear.
“Yeah?” he said, and, turning, started walking away without another word to us, this hands fluttering and making forms in the air that would remain unseen to whoever he was speaking with.
Christie and I had a long talk about this encounter. Had he understood? Was he offering us something real? Some of the things he said made it sound as though he knew who we were, and what we needed. But most of what he said left of feeling like he had no clue at all.
I kept his card, though.
Actually, we had one other interesting encounter just before we left, again at a gas station. A girl and a boy about our age, beating hearts, walked over to Christie and I as we stood outside the van. They were so tanned and healthy looking; it was hard not to think of them as the our living reflections, the image of what we’d be if we were truly alive. The girl asked if she could add a slogan to the van, and Christie found her a can of blue paint.
“Death, to zombies…” the girl wrote, and a thin drip of blue paint slid down her bare leg, “…is an endless sunset.”
She drew a big blue smiley face, and then she stood up and gave Christie a big hug. Weirdly—or I thought it was weird anyhow—the boy hugged me as well.
“Good luck,” he said, and then he took the girl’s hand and off they went.
I left as confused as ever. Maybe some day I’ll come back to Hollywood, someday when I have the time to figure things out.

Death To Zombies

So we get to Denver. And as cities go, this one is actually fairly hospitable to the differently biotic. We're able to line up a few places where we are welcome to speak about what it is like to be undead in America without much hassle or heckling, and a number of zombie teens want to join up with us on our travels, so we've now got a caravan of three vehicles, and we've got three traditionally biotic supporters who are driving, including the mother and the older brother of one of the new recruits. All and all, a pretty good trip. Except during one of our stops--in the community room of a senior center, no less--we come out of the building and someone has painted "DEATH TO ZOMBIES" in still-dripping black paint on the side of our white van. We're outside staring at this lovely peace of artwork, a whole host of thoughts and emotions going through our head, when Justin, one of the newlydead kids, say "I can fix this." We all looked at him--it was sort of like when Jeff Spicoli trashed the car in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and says his father has a 'awesome tools' or whatever. But we play along and drive Justin to the local hardware store. He comes out with a couple brushes and cans of paint.
"Watch this," he says, and he opens a small can of black paint and makes a few marks. We wait until he's done, and then we see that the van now says:

"DEATH,TO ZOMBIES..."

He opens a can of red paint, and in tiny letters writes:

"another chance to get it right."

"You try," he says, handing brushes out to some of the other kids. In a few minutes there are a number of messages in various spots on the van, messages like

"a sobering experience."
"the great equalizer."
"a laff riot."
"a pain in the brain."
"heaven deferred." (That one was Christie's)

So now whenever we stop we ask local zombies to add their thoughts to our travelling billboard. Thank you, nameless vandal!

What will you write on the van when we stop by your town??





(thx to Dee for the inspiration)