One Foot in the Grave: An Almost Zombie Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

cascade. “Your kind of people.”
    “What do you mean, ‘my kind of people’?” I lean forward in the chair.
    “Isis, what do you think you are?”
    The question kind of throws me. “Well, for starters, a high school graduate…but that’s not what you mean, is it?”
    He shakes his head.
    “Do you know what I am?” I feel a bit like the little bird in that kids’ book Are you My Mother?
    “I have my suspicions,” Father Moss says. “But I think it’s something you need to find out for yourself. I will tell you this, however. This church, these people…they’re all here for the same reason you are; because none of you fit completely into either reality.”
    I blink. “There’s only one reality. Isn’t there?”
    Someone knocks at the archway and I turn to see Lydia. “Hey, can I come in?”
    “Please,” Father Moss replies. “We were just getting to the sticky part of the conversation, anyway. It might be easier coming from you than from me. Besides, I need to tend to my flock.”
    “The freaks.” Sometimes I really just need duct tape for my mouth. I’m sure of it.
    “They’re not freaks, Isis,” Lydia corrects me. “They’re halves.”
    I feel about as smart as the closest telephone pole. “Halves of what?”
    The gargoyle answers me right before he steps through the archway. “Supernaturals, Isis. Just like you.”
    “You’re crazy. He’s crazy.” I’m not really sure who I’m talking to at this point, because Father Moss is gone and Lydia is just standing there, staring at me. “This isn’t Narnia. It’s Atlanta.”
    Lydia takes the chair I’m sitting in and spins me around so I’m facing the computers. “Type H.V.V. into the search bar.”
    I put my hand down on the mouse pad. “Don’t you mean H.I.V?”
    “No,” she says. “I mean H.V.V.”
    I guess I don’t do it fast enough, because she leans over me and types it into the Google search bar. My heart begins to stutter when I read what appears on the screen.
    ‘Human Vampiric Virus: A condition found in 0.000000001% of the population in which a human begins to take on the traits and mannerisms of a zombie (including the consumption of raw flesh, decomposition, madness and eventual death). Attributed to the swamps of Louisiana, it is spread via blood to flesh contact. There is speculation whether the virus exists or is, in fact, a rare mental disorder with no known cure.’
    I lean back in the chair, pretty much as far away from the screen as I can get without tipping over backwards. “Zombies don’t exist.”
    “Tell that to any practitioner of voodoo.”
    “I can’t be half a zombie.”
    She looks pointedly at my still unwrapped stump. “Your hand tells me a different story.”
    I glance down. “You mean because of the lack of blood?” I’m pretty sure I should be freaking out more, but it’s all so unreal.
    Lydia peers into my eyes. “I think you’re in shock.”
    “I can’t cry,” I blurt, apropos of nothing.
    She pats my arm and I shake her off. “No, you don’t understand. It’s not that I don’t want to cry. It’s that I can’t. There’s something wrong with my tear ducts.”
    “That’s interesting,” Lydia murmurs.
    “No. No, it’s not ‘interesting’. It’s freaky and it’s bizarre and it’s weird. But it’s not interesting!” My voice rises on the last word.
    “You’re not the only one who’s gone through this, I promise.” Her voice calms me down. A bit.
    “I’m not? There are others like me? Other half-zombies?”
    Her eyes are sympathetic. “We’re all like you, Isis. Well, not Father Moss or me, but everyone else here is a half-something or other.”
    “Then what are you?” Maybe that chick in the sanctuary is right. I am rude, but it’s too late to take it back now.
    “I’m a witch.”
    I’m distracted from my own plight, which may have been her intent. “Like in the Salem Witch Trials?” I remember vaguely reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond when I was