The Living Dead

we weren't crazy, because of what we were seeing.

Luke poked and the dead kid moved, spasming at first, then grabbing at the stick feebly, and finally crawling around inside the box like a slow, clumsy animal, just barely able to turn, scratching at the cardboard with bony fingertips.

'What is he?' I had to ask.

'A zombie,' said Luke.

'Aren't zombies supposed to be black?'

'You mean like a nigger?' That was another of Luke's favorite words this year. He called everybody 'nigger' no matter what color they were.

'Well, you know. Voodoo. In Haiti and all that.'

As we spoke the dead kid reared up and almost got out of the box. Luke poked him in the forehead with his stick and knocked him down.

'I suppose if we let him rot long enough he'll be black enough even for you.'

The dead kid stared up at us and made a bleating sound. The worst thing of all was that he didn't have any eyes, only huge sockets and an oozy mess inside them.

Albert was sobbing for his mommy by then, and after a while of poking and prodding the dead kid, Luke and his friends got tired of this sport. Luke turned to me and said, 'You can go now, but you know if you or your piss- pants brother tell about this, I'll kill you both and put you in there for the dead kid to eat.'

II

I can't remember much of what Albert and I did for the rest of that day. We ran through the woods, tripped, fell flat on our faces in a stream. Then later we were walking along the old railroad embankment turning over ties to look for snakes, and all the while Albert was babbling on about the dead kid and how we had to do something. I just let him talk until he got it all out of him, and when we went home for dinner and were very quiet when Mom and our stepdad Steve tried to find out what we had been doing all day.

'Just playing,' I said. 'In the woods.'

'It's good for them to be outdoors,' Steve said to Mom. 'Too many kids spent all their time in front of the TV watching unwholesome junk these days. I'm glad our kids are normal.'

But Albert ended up screaming in his sleep for weeks and wetting his bed, and things were anything but normal that summer. He was the one with the obvious problems. He was the one who ended up going to a 'specialist,' and whatever he said in therapy must not have been believed, because the police didn't go tearing up Cabbage Creek Woods, Luke Bradley and his neanderthals were not arrested, and I was more or less left alone.

In fact, I had more unsupervised time than usual. And I used it to work out problems of my own, like I hated school and I hated Stepdad Steve for the sanctimonious prig he was. I decided, with the full wisdom of my twelve years and some months, that if I was to survive in this rough, tough, evil world, I was going to have to become tough myself, bad, and very likely evil.

I decided that Luke Bradley had the answers.

So I sought him out. It wasn't hard. He had a knack for being in the right place at the right time when you're ready to sell your soul, just like the Devil.

I met him in town, in front of the Wayne Toy Town, where I used to go to buy model kits and stuff. I still liked building models, and doing scientific puzzles, though I would never admit it to Luke Bradley.

So I just froze when I saw him there.

'Well, well,' he said. 'If it ain't the little pussy scuzz.' He blew smoke from the perennial cigarette.

'Hello, Luke,' I said. I nodded to his companions, who included Spike, Animal, and a virtually hairless, pale gorilla who went by the unlikely name of Corky. As I spoke, I slipped my latest purchase into my shoulder bag and hoped he didn't notice.

Corky grabbed me by the back of the neck and said, 'Whaddaya want me to do with him?'

But before Luke could respond, I said, 'Hey, have you still got the dead kid at the fort?'

They all hesitated. They weren't expecting that.

'Well he's cool,' I said. 'I want to see him again.'

'Okay,' said Luke.

We didn't have any other way to get there, so we walked, about an hour, to Cabbage Creek Woods. Luke dispensed with ceremony. We just crawled into the fort and gathered around the pit.

The smell, if anything, was worse.

This time, the dead kid was already moving around inside the box. When Luke opened the cardboard flaps, the dead kid stood up, with his horrible, pus-filled eye-sockets staring. He made that bleating, groaning sound again. He clawed at the edge of the box.

'Really cool,' I forced myself to say, swallowing hard.

'I can make him do tricks,' said Luke. 'Watch this.'

I watched as he shoved his finger through the skin under the dead kid's chin and lifted him up like a hooked fish out of the pit. The dead kid scrambled over the edge of the box, then crouched down on the dirt floor at the edge of the pit, staring into space.

Luke passed his hand slowly in front of the dead kid's face. He snapped his fingers. The dead kid didn't respond. Luke smacked him on the side of the head. The dead kid whimpered a little, and made that bleating sound.

'Everybody outside,' Luke said.

So we all crawled out, and then Luke reached back inside with a stick and touched the dead kid, who came out too, clinging to the stick, trying to chew on it, but not quite coordinated enough, so that he just snapped his teeth in the air and rubbed the side of his face along the stick.

I could see him clearly now. He really was rotten, with bone sticking out at his knees and elbows, only scraggly patches of dark hair left on his head, every rib showing in hideous relief on his bare back, and holes through his skin between some of them.

'Look!' said Luke. 'Look at him dance!' He swirled the stick around and around, and the dead kid clung to it, staggering around in a circle.

Corky spoke up. 'Ya think if'n he gets dizzy he'll puke?'

Luke yanked the stick out of the dead kid's hands, then hit him hard with it across the back with a thwack! The dead kid dropped to all fours and just stayed there, his head hanging down.

'Can't puke. Got no guts left!' They all laughed at that. I didn't quite get the joke.

But despite everything, I tried to get the joke, despite even the incongruity that I really was, like it or not, a more or less 'normal' kid and right now I had a model kit for a plastic Fokker Triplane in my schoolbag. I still wanted to measure up to Luke Bradley, for all I was more afraid of him than I had ever been. I figured you had to be afraid of what you did and who you hung out with if you were going to be really bad. You did what Luke did. That was what transgression was all about.

So I unzipped my fly and pissed on the dead kid. He made that bleating sound. The others chuckled nervously. Luke grinned.

'Pretty cool, Davey, my boy. Pretty cool.'

Then Luke started to play the role of wise elder brother. He put his arm around my shoulders. He took me a little ways apart from the others and said, 'I like you. I think you got something special in there.' He rapped on my head with his knuckles, hard, but I didn't flinch away.

Then he led me back to the others and said, 'I think we're gonna make David here a member of the gang.'

So we all sat down in the clearing with the dead kid in our circle, as if he were one of the gang too. Luke got out an old briefcase from inside the fort and produced some very crumpled nudie magazines and passed them around and we all looked at the pictures. He even made a big, funny show of opening out a foldout for the dead kid