Zombies: Like the Backs of Our Hands
Originally posted at nora at inkstain.
I have always been somewhat puzzled by people who said they knew things “like the back of their hands”. I never really understood what that meant. I have three freckles on the back of my left hand and the faint blue of a vein, a scar between the knuckles of my first and second finger. I only can say that because I am looking directly at it, I would not have that memorized if you asked me.
Here is how it used to be.
We walked through my neighborhood, you always a step or two behind me, me usually leading us down the same routes. We talked at the same time as we studied the streets and the building, as we cut across the elementary school, taking off our shoes to walk across the sand, letting the rocky sand sink between our toes.
We knew these streets, these buildings, and that school better than we knew the backs of our hands. We knew when things changed, when things seemed wrong. And we had associations with all the parts of that world as well.
It was after a fresh midsummer rain when we walked barefoot across the sand at the elementary school, you standing on your tiptoes so you could touch the monkey bars with the tips of your fingers. The sand under our feet was wet on the top, creating a soggy shell that clumped together under our feet but that we would sink below with every step, getting to the cool sand beneath it.
We were talking about categorizing people that night, about fictional characters we thought we were. I told you I thought I was a Kaylee but I always wished that I was a Zoe, that I always admired her strength and courage in the face of danger. I told you I thought you were weirdly halfway in between Wash and Inara, and you smiled at me, cleaning your glasses on the edge of your shirt.
A few months later, in the beginning of fall, I led us down the alleyway between the gas station and the bagel joint and you stopped after walking a few blocks, looking around.
“Something looks wrong,” you said, and I followed your gaze. I walked over to one of the walls of the apartment building and pointed out a square that was painted just a slightly different color than anything else there.
“There was graffiti here,” I said, tracing the outline with a finger. “They painted over it.”
We came back two weeks later and someone had outlined the paint rectangle in sharpie.
This was how we spent our nights. At first it was exploring, but now it seemed to be some sort of surveying, just watching our neighborhood for changes, and soon every place in the neighborhood had some sort of association with it: this, the sculpture we climbed on top of and stared into space for a few minutes before telling you that I thought I’d fallen for a girl for the first time in years, that the tree you climbed to the top of to take a balloon down from.
Then the calamity occurred.
They started calling it “the calamity” because “zombie invasion” sounded too science fiction for the news, and it stuck when other stuff started to happen. Bioagents shut down all the highways into Texas. The dam on the Rio Grande broke and flooded parts of Albuquerque. That was as far as we knew what happened, though there were rumors of someone nuking Washington D.C. and Los Angeles.
I didn’t see you after it started. You live on the other part of town, we only shared my neighborhood because you spent so much time at my apartment. I called you a couple of times after the news reports started to come on but I eventually left town with my parents, headed for family outside of Taos. We brought all the canned food and bottled water we could find, figuring we’d wait out whatever it was there.
The beautiful country was marred by how much I missed home. Eventually I decided to head back, once they said that Albuquerque was mostly clear. I’d learned how to operate a shotgun, anyway, and I kept one of my uncle’s swords at my belt. I thought I should have felt like a real badass, carrying all of those weapons, but I still felt scared and alone, heading downstate in my parents’ car.
I came into the city and felt immediately nascious looking at all of the differences there. I headed for my neighborhood, not ready to go back to my apartment yet but curious to see what had happened to the area.
It was devastatingly empty. The streets were barren, with only a couple of broken down cars on the side of the road. There was a crashed motorcycle in the middle of an intersection that no one had even bothered to pick up off the ground; I thought I saw bloodstains on the asphalt next to it but did not have the strength to look closer. I was probably imagining it, I told myself as I walked in the general direction of the elementary school.
The buildings seemed somehow further apart when the place was so devoid of people. They were falling apart at the seams, with pieces of plaster falling down, with piles of leaves in the gutters. Fall had come and gone in the city and for the very first time I had missed it. I thought briefly of missing Balloon Fiesta before realizing the absurdity in thinking that it would have gone on after all this.
I walked to the elementary school. I thought I felt your ghost a step or two behind me, bringing up points of philosophy I would not have thought of myself, standing on your tiptoes so that your fingertips would touch the rusted monkey bars.
I slipped my shoes back on and headed back to the car, the whole time thinking I heard your footsteps behind me, and every time something was wrong- a piece of worn off plaster, a fallen down stop sign- I heard your steps stop, your breathing change slightly.
A tree branch fell down directly in front of where I parked my car, the tree dying from lack of water. As I drove away, I thought I saw you in my rearview mirror, touching where the branch had met the tree, an expression of curiosity on your features. I thought I saw a reflection of the apocalypse in your glasses. I slowed down and looked behind me but only saw the parched cottonwood and no trace of your footsteps in the sand.
I have always been somewhat puzzled by people who said they knew things “like the back of their hands”. I never really understood what that meant. I have three freckles on the back of my left hand and the faint blue of a vein, a scar between the knuckles of my first and second finger. I only can say that because I am looking directly at it, I would not have that memorized if you asked me.
Here is how it used to be.
We walked through my neighborhood, you always a step or two behind me, me usually leading us down the same routes. We talked at the same time as we studied the streets and the building, as we cut across the elementary school, taking off our shoes to walk across the sand, letting the rocky sand sink between our toes.
We knew these streets, these buildings, and that school better than we knew the backs of our hands. We knew when things changed, when things seemed wrong. And we had associations with all the parts of that world as well.
It was after a fresh midsummer rain when we walked barefoot across the sand at the elementary school, you standing on your tiptoes so you could touch the monkey bars with the tips of your fingers. The sand under our feet was wet on the top, creating a soggy shell that clumped together under our feet but that we would sink below with every step, getting to the cool sand beneath it.
We were talking about categorizing people that night, about fictional characters we thought we were. I told you I thought I was a Kaylee but I always wished that I was a Zoe, that I always admired her strength and courage in the face of danger. I told you I thought you were weirdly halfway in between Wash and Inara, and you smiled at me, cleaning your glasses on the edge of your shirt.
A few months later, in the beginning of fall, I led us down the alleyway between the gas station and the bagel joint and you stopped after walking a few blocks, looking around.
“Something looks wrong,” you said, and I followed your gaze. I walked over to one of the walls of the apartment building and pointed out a square that was painted just a slightly different color than anything else there.
“There was graffiti here,” I said, tracing the outline with a finger. “They painted over it.”
We came back two weeks later and someone had outlined the paint rectangle in sharpie.
This was how we spent our nights. At first it was exploring, but now it seemed to be some sort of surveying, just watching our neighborhood for changes, and soon every place in the neighborhood had some sort of association with it: this, the sculpture we climbed on top of and stared into space for a few minutes before telling you that I thought I’d fallen for a girl for the first time in years, that the tree you climbed to the top of to take a balloon down from.
Then the calamity occurred.
They started calling it “the calamity” because “zombie invasion” sounded too science fiction for the news, and it stuck when other stuff started to happen. Bioagents shut down all the highways into Texas. The dam on the Rio Grande broke and flooded parts of Albuquerque. That was as far as we knew what happened, though there were rumors of someone nuking Washington D.C. and Los Angeles.
I didn’t see you after it started. You live on the other part of town, we only shared my neighborhood because you spent so much time at my apartment. I called you a couple of times after the news reports started to come on but I eventually left town with my parents, headed for family outside of Taos. We brought all the canned food and bottled water we could find, figuring we’d wait out whatever it was there.
The beautiful country was marred by how much I missed home. Eventually I decided to head back, once they said that Albuquerque was mostly clear. I’d learned how to operate a shotgun, anyway, and I kept one of my uncle’s swords at my belt. I thought I should have felt like a real badass, carrying all of those weapons, but I still felt scared and alone, heading downstate in my parents’ car.
I came into the city and felt immediately nascious looking at all of the differences there. I headed for my neighborhood, not ready to go back to my apartment yet but curious to see what had happened to the area.
It was devastatingly empty. The streets were barren, with only a couple of broken down cars on the side of the road. There was a crashed motorcycle in the middle of an intersection that no one had even bothered to pick up off the ground; I thought I saw bloodstains on the asphalt next to it but did not have the strength to look closer. I was probably imagining it, I told myself as I walked in the general direction of the elementary school.
The buildings seemed somehow further apart when the place was so devoid of people. They were falling apart at the seams, with pieces of plaster falling down, with piles of leaves in the gutters. Fall had come and gone in the city and for the very first time I had missed it. I thought briefly of missing Balloon Fiesta before realizing the absurdity in thinking that it would have gone on after all this.
I walked to the elementary school. I thought I felt your ghost a step or two behind me, bringing up points of philosophy I would not have thought of myself, standing on your tiptoes so that your fingertips would touch the rusted monkey bars.
I slipped my shoes back on and headed back to the car, the whole time thinking I heard your footsteps behind me, and every time something was wrong- a piece of worn off plaster, a fallen down stop sign- I heard your steps stop, your breathing change slightly.
A tree branch fell down directly in front of where I parked my car, the tree dying from lack of water. As I drove away, I thought I saw you in my rearview mirror, touching where the branch had met the tree, an expression of curiosity on your features. I thought I saw a reflection of the apocalypse in your glasses. I slowed down and looked behind me but only saw the parched cottonwood and no trace of your footsteps in the sand.