Kendra and I hadn’t been to the movies in forever. The cinema was closed for renovations all spring and then we were away for most of the summer, because of the heat. The heat makes the smell intolerable.
Kendra, vibrating, wanted to see the new cartoon movie about dogs. But when we arrived, the zombie selling the tickets shook his head.
“Showwy,” the zombie said. He looked young to be a zombie. Mid-forties.
Kendra’s exuberance waned. “You mean it’s sold out?” She looked at the zombie like he’d zombie-puked all over us.
“No worries, man. What else is playing?” I asked. I smiled, too, because, hey, the zombie used to be a person.
A giant screen behind the zombie listed the movies and their showtimes. The zombie pointed to it, which means he swung his torso and used centrifugal force to propel one arm into the air to slap the screen.
Kendra squinted through the new armored plastic window. The window was part of the renovations. “That whale movie’s playing in twenty minutes.”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Actually, no.”
I tried to make eye contact with the zombie, though one of his eyeballs dangled by its optical nerve. The other was steady enough. “Do you recommend anything?” I gave him a good-natured grin to show I was half joking but including him in on the joke.
“Jesus, Joe,” Kendra muttered.
My grin faded. Unless the renovations didn’t include specified theaters where the zombies could watch movies? I didn’t know. I smiled again, to show that whether or not the zombie had an opinion was fine with me.
The zombie, who I didn’t think could blink, blinked his good eye.
Kendra pointed. “Love Pentangle is playing soon.” She raised two fingers. “Two.”
“Please,” I added.
The zombie heaved an arm to key in our order.
“Froosch?” he asked. His lips were unconcatenated, making articulation difficult. His good eye was dull, the skin around it greenish and peeling back. The pupil on the dangling eye jerked around, never settling. His breath, wherever it came from, made rainbows on his side of the window.
“Popcorn,” I said, before Kendra could say no. “A large diet soda. And a packet of ice cream dots?” I glanced at Kendra, who refused to nod. “And ice cream dots.”
It took the zombie a few moments to key in the whole order. People lining up behind us exhaled loudly.
I looked backwards and shrugged at them. “Sorry.” I lowered my voice and jerked a thumb at the plastic window. “I think he’s new.”
Behind me, the zombie said something.
I turned, pulling out my wallet. “I’m so sorry, how much did you say?”
The zombie’s eye rattled. “Nosh no,” he said.
I glanced at Kendra. Her left eyebrow lifted a tiny amount. It was an involuntary movement, one that meant she was irritated. And feeling deeply judgemental.
I leaned forward, broadening my smile. “Sorry, bud, I didn’t catch that?”
The zombie’s mouth opened wide. His teeth were brown as bark. “Ahm,” he said slowly. “Notch noo.” If zombies could shout, this one would’ve been shouting. He swung his torso, but his arms didn’t move. He pressed his grassy lips together like he was trying to access the force, or self-implode. The effort cracked some skin in his cheek. My guts lava-lamped inside the living, juicy tissues of my torso. “Ahm majaja.” The zombie lurched and his right arm hit his chest below his name tag. Tom, it read, Manager.
“Tom,” I said. “Oh, hey.” I looked at Kendra, nodding. “That’s Tom, the Manager. You remember? He gave us free popcorn on Talk Like a Pirate Day last year.”
Kendra neither blinked nor spoke. A beefy guy behind us coughed loudly.
“Anyway, doesn’t matter. Tom. Cool. How are you?” Jesus. Stupid question. “Anywho, I didn’t know you—” I nodded towards his decaying midsection, “were, yeah. Now.”
Tom nodded or shrugged or both. Since his whole torso was involved, I couldn’t differentiate. “Shanser,” he said.
Cancer.
“Shoot, man. That sucks. Terminal?” I was mortifying myself. “Anyway, cool.”
Tom bumped a low button with his hip and our total appeared in the plastic window with “tap to pay” illuminated.
“Cool,” I said again, which made Kendra pull the hair back from her scalp. Waiting for my card to be approved, I kept talking. “Also cool that you caught it in time—to transform, I mean.” That’s what the medical world was calling the zombie route, “The Transformation.” They’d started with “Eternal Life!” but when the results were so putrid, they’d been sued into less propitious verbiage. “At least you get to keep the movie theater gig going, man. That’s great.”
Tom heave-shrugged while our tickets printed out on our side of the glass. He said something that sounded like, “Paysz the billsz.”
Kendra tore off our tickets and gave Tom a thin-lipped nod. I muscled a smile.
“Cool. Thanks a lot, man.” I turned to go, but glanced back. “And good to see you.”
Tom didn’t react. The next movie-goer was already asking for whale movie tickets in a near-shout as he coughed wetly into his elbow.
“Glad mucus dude’s not with us,” Kendra said, dry-retching.
Inside, we collected our popcorn and treats from the counter. A teenage human employee, short with knobbly elbows and a half-shaved haircut, studied an enormous cell phone from his lean behind the counter.
“Thanks,” I said to him, indicating the popcorn.
The kid looked up. “Huh? Oh, yeah.”
“There’s no zombie dust in it, is there?” Kendra asked. There was a coy grimace in her voice. “No rotten fingernails, or skin flakes, or anything?”
The kid laughed. He glanced over at Tom, whose armored window box surrounded him on all six sides. The box appeared to lock from the outside.
“No, he stays in there,” the kid said. “Don’t worry.”
Kendra pretend-retched again. “Crazy that he’s working so close to the public.”
Most zombies worked in locked offices. Not that the transformation was catching—it wasn’t, not even by direct contact, but the danger was real. Because of what zombies ate. Usually, food was shipped to them in vacuum-packed bags, and that satiated their drives, but humans still had to be careful. One could get hungry at the wrong time.
Still, the zombies had to work. Vacuum-packed meals were pricey. Let alone whatever debt the transformation itself incurred. Computer work and mid-management jobs were often a good fit both physically and mentally, and companies had been making more and more accommodations for zombies in satellite workplaces. I had two zombie coworkers I video-conferenced with regularly. They were dynamite colleagues. Killer with spreadsheets.
But a zombie in a movie theater, that was new.
“Yeah, it’s something having him right here,” the concessions kid was saying. “But that booth is tight. Triple locked, bullet proof glass, the whole nine. Nothing’s coming out.” He finger-gunned down the booth.
I frowned. “It’s great he’s still the manager.”
The kid’s forehead wrinkled. “Who? Tom?” He shook his head. “No. Technically, maybe he owns the place. But really he’s just the ticket guy.” A new concession order appeared on a monitor and the kid grabbed a popcorn bucket.
Next to me, Kendra checked her smart watch.
“But he said he’s the manager,” I said. Not rudely, just friendly-informative.
Kendra nudged me with her hip. “Four minutes, babe.”
“Eh,” the kid said. He set the next customer’s popcorn-and-beer order on the counter. “Tom mans the booth. I mean, it’s cool his wife paid for all the zombie upgrades, but, yeah. At the end of the day, he’s just a kinda-dead dude sitting in a box.”
I glanced towards Tom but couldn’t tell if he’d overheard. I shook my head at the kid, just in case.
“Totally,” Kendra said. She looped her arm around mine. “I don’t want to miss the previews.”
I resisted her tug. “We’ll all be there someday. Transformed.”
The kid gagged. “Not me.”
“Right?” Kendra said. “I’d rather be dead.”
She sounded so young. I squeezed her elbow. “You never know.”
Kendra sighed.
Not that I was much older than her. But at least I was thinking things through. No grown-up wants to die. I turned to the kid. “What happens if there’s a fire?”
He looked from Kendra to me. “A fire?”
“Tom. He’s locked in there. What happens during a fire?”
“Uh,” said the kid.
“Babe,” said Kendra.
“Do you unlock him? Does anyone?”
The kid opened and closed his mouth. “The locks were the county’s requirement, man.”
“Of course. I hear you. But what does the county say to do in the event of a fire?”
“Babe. Seriously. Who even cares.”
“Does he burn?”
The kid held up his hands. “Dude, that’s fire protocol. We leave, we give the code to the fire guys, they unlock him remotely.”
Customers came in, collected their food. They nodded thanks to the kid.
“Which way’s theater six?” the mucousy guy asked.
The kid nodded about eight times. “To the right, down the hall, third door.” He turned back to Kendra and me. “You know where your theater’s at?”
I tried to think of a juicy rejoinder, but by the time I thought of “You know where your ethics are at?” Kendra had already pulled me down the hall and into theater two, where the previews were about to start.
“Oh my god, this is my favorite part.” Kendra sat us in the center row. The lighting was already dark. I’d missed this, the soft seats, the theater, the snacks. I put my feet up. When the first preview flickered on screen, I caught sight of a row of robust plastic boxes lining the wall. Four of them, secured up high like box seats in real theaters. Of the four plastic boxes, three were empty. In the fourth sat two women. Zombies, from the looks of it. Friends. Dead-eyed and unmoving. One had wide, blue-red lips. The other had missing patches of skin. Frost prickled through me.
Kendra grabbed a handful of my popcorn and leaned against me. “I’m so glad we’re doing this. I love movies.”
I shifted. There had to be a special zombie entrance. A zombie hallway. A whole zombie route. It stood to reason. Plenty of zombies could have been independently wealthy when they were alive. Even those that worked had downtime. I’d never wondered what zombies did in their free time.
I watched the previews. They all looked infantile.
I imagined Tom outside in his box, selling tickets. Thought of the zombie ladies in their box, watching the screen. Not blinking.
I snuck a quick look. One, the one with the blue lips, looked like she was smiling. Those lips were more intact than Tom’s. Fuller. Or her cheek was still in rigor mortis, I didn’t know.
That concessions kid was an asshole.
The backs of the zombie boxes each had the outline of a door. No handles on the inside. Perhaps they functioned on a remote locking system silimar to Tom’s.
What would happen in an earthquake, I wondered. What would happen to those nice zombie lady friends who just wanted a night out?
One of the zombies up there reached into a bucket and lifted something to her rich lips. It wasn’t popcorn. My stomach seized.
At my side, Kendra dug into my bucket.
The zombie with the lips offered her snacks to her companion, who shook her head, face extra-contorted. For the first time, I wondered how freeze-dried entrails tasted. I’d read the mix was originally only seventy percent mammalian. I wondered if somebody had ever solved the supply issues.
The movie had a complicated plot where neurotic characters tried setting one another up at various restaurants and art museums. After forty-five minutes, I forgot which pink-lipped character I was rooting for. My eyes ached.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Kendra. She nodded.
I wanted to pee, but I couldn’t get any out. I washed my hands anyway. There were no plastic protective boxes in the men’s room, just the regular stalls. Either zombies had a separate bathroom or zombies never had to pee. I retreated to the hallway, where I searched for signs of renovation, for an understanding of how those zombie ladies accessed the theater. But the hallway had the same decades-old sound-dampening walls, electric-blue-and-stars floor-to-ceiling carpeting that had always been there. If the zombies had their own hallway, it was separate from the humans’.
Shouldn’t someone know where it was? What if a terrorist came in with a bomb and gave everyone ten seconds to clear out? What if the zombies were locked in? Shouldn’t someone be able to help them? Shouldn’t everyone who goes to a movie know that they’re safe? Even zombies?
The fire alarm pull was halfway down the hall. I reached it in seconds. Kendra would kill me if I touched it. She hated interruptions.
I touched it. It didn’t immediately alarm. I pulled a white lever down, pushed the top button. It was surprisingly easy.
The buzzing, shrieking noise rang out. Strobe lights flashed.
I raced to the lobby. I was the first one there. The concession kid was gone. In the booth flailed Tom, struggling to his feet. Waiting to thank me.
I crossed the lobby. No other movie goers, including Kendra, had exited the theaters yet.
“Misha fusha,” Tom was saying. He was kicking the box. His face was wrenched in distorted fury.
He couldn’t get out. He was caught. I ran towards the box.
Tom was snarling through torn lips. His flat eyes landed on me and he stilled.
“Tom!” I said, triumphant.
He crouched like a panther. I had no idea he was that nimble.
“Yush didsh zhat?”
“What? I pulled it, yeah. Tom, I’m going to get you out.”
Tom threw himself against the plastic box.
“Shurns a yoff!” he yelled, head-butting the plastic.
“Tom.” I held up my hands, the universal “be cool” sign. “Once it’s on it’s on. The fire department has to turn it off.”
Tom rammed his box again. “Ahm shoings choo kish yush.”
I wanted to believe Tom was grateful. But from the way he was throwing his arms at the box—the way the box was creaking—I didn’t think he had said “I’m going to kiss you.”
“My bishnesh!” Tom yelled it, over and over.
I didn’t realize zombies were so materialistic. Tom’s box groaned loudly.
I ran. Down the hall, not out the front doors. I told myself it was so I could help Kendra, but then I sailed past theater two. It was Tom I had to worry about. Because he was going to get out of that box, and he was going to eat my brains. I past a stream of exiting humans. I ducked into an empty movie theater and kept running, down the aisle, past the giant white movie screen. I found a side door tucked into the shadows, where emergency exits usually are in theaters, and I slipped through it, thinking it might take me outside. It didn’t. I was in a dark stairwell. “No Exit,” a brand new, shiny sign read. “Enter at your own risk.” The stairs took me up to a hallway, off of which were projection booths and—
Inside one of the booths was a zombie.
Inside all the projection booths was a zombie.
More zombies—movie-goer zombies—started exiting their movie-watching boxes. Someone must have unlocked them. They filed out, moving past me. I pressed my back against the wall and shut my eyes. Tried not to smell delicious.
“Lootha tha,” a voice said.
I peeked through my lashes. It was one of the zombie ladies, talking to the other.
“The guy who wash shtaring durinjh the movie.” The other zombie, the one with the beautiful lips, moved closer to me. Her zombie stench was horrendous. Old chicken, rotten fish, slimy lettuce, burnt honeysuckle. I gagged.
“He doesna like ush,” the first zombie said. Her words were slurred, like Tom’s but not as bad. Her transformation seemed to have gone smoother.
“Should we eat his gonads?” asked the second, the one who was right in front of me. The one who smelled like sauteed garbage.
I shook my head. No, please don’t.
“Ewck,” her friend dry heaved. “Nosh.”
“But I’m here to help.” The words churned out of me. I pressed backwards on the wall. I thought of Kendra. I could have married her. “It’s just—” I said. The zombie pressed closer. I flinched to the side. “I’m not bad.”
“Bad.” My zombie opened her mouth, wide. Inside, her teeth were gunmetal gray. “Who is?”
Her tongue was lolling, a wet rat of decay. A sinewy beast. Those beautiful lips. I could smell them. I could almost touch them.