The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(130)

Bob Fingerman is the author of several works of zombie mayhem, including the recent novel Pariah and the graphic novels Zombie World: Winter’s Dregs and Recess Pieces (which has been described as “The Little Rascals meets Dawn of the Dead”). Other recent works include an illustrated novella called Connective Tissue and the post-apocalyptic “speculative memoir” From the Ashes. His first novel was Bottomfeeder and other graphic novel work—for which Fingerman also provided the art—includes Beg the Question, You Deserved It, and Minimum Wage. Fingerman has also provided art for periodicals such as Heavy Metal and The Village Voice and did covers for Dark Horse and Vertigo Comics.





Fire Island, just off the southern coast of Long Island, is a bit of a mystery—no one really knows how it got its name. Historian Richard Bayles has proposed that the name resulted from a confused understanding of the Dutch term for “Five Islands,” as there are a number of small islands in the vicinity. Other stories suggest that the name comes from the fires built by pirates to lure passing ships onto the sandbars, or from the island’s rich autumn foliage, or even from the rashes caused by the poison ivy that grows there.





Our next story, as you might have guessed, takes place on Fire Island. “My wife and I used to rent a summerhouse on Fire Island and it struck me what a great setting for a horror story it would be during the off-season,” Fingerman says. “Come October it’s pretty desolate. And there are no cars. It’s a weird place, like a sand-strewn version of The Village from the old series The Prisoner.”





Fingerman never was a bike messenger like the protagonist, but as with much of his work, elements of autobiography found their way into the protagonist’s personality. One way they’re alike is that they both have some sympathy for zombies. “They didn’t ask to be what they are and even though they want to eat humans, there’s no malice,” he says. “They’re the average schmuck of the monster world. I can relate.”





I’m looking at the red ring of fresh, shiny tooth marks on my right palm, some highlighted by small dots of blood. Not a lot of blood; in fact, quite little. But enough to have me concerned. It’s times like this I get nostalgic for tetanus. Remember tetanus? When you were a kid and you’d go tearing around a vacant lot, some future construction site or some such, and you’d catch your tender young dermis on a rusty nail. Tetanus! Adults had warned you! You’d get visions of lockjaw and freak out. The grownups had cautioned you that infection with tetanus would cause severe muscle spasms and that those would lead to “locking” of the jaw so you couldn’t open your mouth or swallow. It could maybe even lead to death by suffocation. Tetanus! Ah, the good old days.

Tetanus is not transmitted from person to person.

I wish I could say the same for this current unnamed affliction.

That part also sucks. I don’t even know what to call this. The scientists and doctors hadn’t come to a consensus by the time the broadcasts had ceased. So, what’s the official classification? What’s the name? I never understood the concept of naming a disease after yourself just because you discovered it. Why would you want your name associated with pain and suffering evermore? What was Parkinson thinking? If I was a doctor and I chanced upon some terrible malady I’d name it after someone awful—Hitler’s Syndrome or Bush’s Complex. At any rate, what would you call this latest—and likely final—pathosis? Zombification sounds kind of stupid. And if it’s brewing, if you’re infected but zombification hasn’t blossomed into full-blown zombiehood, what then? What do you call its period of gestation?

I’m not man enough to go all Bruce Campbell on myself and lop off the offending extremity. Not yet. But why bother? It’s in there, doing its thing, circulating. I guess. I remember hearing about this guy who was bitten on the ankle by some totally poisonous snake—in South America I think it was. Anyway, he knew he had about three minutes before the poison killed him. The guy was a lumberjack or something—maybe he was decimating the rain forest. Maybe the snake was protecting its turf. I can’t remember that kind of detail. But he acted decisively and took his chainsaw to his leg and cut it off at the knee. And he lived. The guy lived. He cut it off before the poison could reach his heart. I couldn’t do that. I can’t. So I’m a-goner.

Why should I be any different?

Still, I feel so stupid.

I bandage the bite, more for the psychological comfort it provides. I just don’t want to keep staring at it. Still, there goes my sex life, not being one for ambidexterity. I step out onto the porch and look down at the asphalt walkway. I’d call it a road, but no cars were permitted here. Sure, the occasional emergency vehicle was allowed—they didn’t call it Fire Island for nothing—but no civilian automobiles. During the summer, just a few short, endless months ago, this road was teeming with the pasty and the tan, the fit and the flabby, all making their circuits to and from the beach, most of the guys toting coolers and cases full of cheap, low-octane suds. I never saw anyone with food. All of these beachgoers, the rare quiet ones and the common boisterous types, seemed to sustain themselves purely on beer and greasy wedges from the local pizzeria.

I’d kill for one of those mediocre slices right now.

The walkway is mostly obscured by slushy sand—just patches of buried blackness showing through here and there. I used to sit on this porch, reading—or at least pretending to read—and scoping the hotties. Right before the current, ultimate, nameless pandemic came and ruined everything, the Girls Gone Wild epidemic had swept the nation. Formerly normal girls, ones with a modicum of propriety, would suddenly whip off their tops and bounce up and down. All it took to loosen them up was massive quantities of alcohol, a bit of flattery, and the materialization of a video camera. How many parents cried themselves to sleep at night because of those DVDs?