Zombie, Illinois Read Online Free PDF

finishes. According to the program, he goes after the CTA guy. It won’t be that long to wait. I hope.
    I decide to go take a piss so I won’t have to later. I discreetly close my laptop and stand up. I unhitch a metal side-door as quietly as I can, and ease my way out into a hallway near the stage.
    In this hallway, I am abruptly confronted by four young women in coordinated outfits. Sexy coordinated outfits. That’s right, I remember. The band.
    The young women are huddled together around a tablet computer resting on a drummer’s plastic bass drum case. The case is completely covered with stickers. Most of the stickers advertise women’s roller derby in some form or another. Others bear clever variations on Rosie the Riveter. Others still declaim “Straight but not narrow,” “Critical Mass,” and “Twisted Scissors.”
    The young women—all of them—are absolutely beautiful. And they are sharing a case of beer.
    Suddenly, I forget I have to take a leak.
    â€œOh my gee,” says one of them. “It’s totally a zombie!”
    â€œIt can’t be,” says another. “Can it?”
    â€œAre you kidding?” says the first. “It totes is!”
    â€œI heard they’re all being made by a film student out at USC,” says another still. “Like, a special effects guy who interned at ILM.”
    â€œUm, ladies . . . who’s the old guy looking at our asses?”
    Gulp.
    The jig is up.
    â€œHi there,” I say. I stand up straight and try to hold in my belly. “Who are yo"?” one of them asks.
    It’s hard to tell which one spoke. All these women are beautiful. I am noticing that again and again, and becoming a little flustered as I look from face to face.
    â€œA, uh . . . reporter,” I answer.
    â€œA ‘uh reporter’?” one of them responds.
    She turns back toward the computer. Another one—who is tall and black and showing a lot of cleavage—puts her hand on her hip and gives me a “May I help you?” look.
    I sigh, turn around, and start to shuffle back down the corridor to the restrooms, my hopes of beer and hot-women-being-around thoroughly dashed.
    But then the band member holding the tablet computer says: “Wait, why don’t you see what he thinks?”
    I slow my retreat and hazard a glance over my shoulder.
    And she turns around too—the one using the tablet computer—and she is stunning. The other girls are beautiful, yes, but this one is stunning. She looks like a Latin Joan Jett in her prime. Dark eyes, dark hair, tremendous curves. Neck tattoos like snakes coming up from under her collar. A voice that makes you think of cigarettes, bourbon, and dark, musky perfume.
    Wow.
    â€œWhat’re y’all looking at?” I ask in my most genial Iowan. “The zombie clips” Latin Joan Jett says. “You know, the new ones on the internet?” I nod. I do.
    For the last three days, viral videos of what some people are saying are actual zombies have been circulating across social networking sites. Some are shaky, amateur video of corpses at funerals twitching spastically and then falling still again. Some are close-ups of bodies with fingers and toes that suddenly tense and flick like frog’s legs dipped in salt. Other videos show full cadavers prepared for autopsy—or during autopsy—rising from metal examining tables and walking around as medical students or morticians stand by, flummoxed.
    They’ve been all over the blogosphere, but hard news outlets have yet to report on them. Nobody is taking them seriously... yet.
    â€œWe were talking about those videos in the newsroom just this morning,” I say. “We were cracking up.”
    â€œCracking up?” she asks. “What if they’re real, though?”
    I make a face like this is a crazy idea. Latin Joan Jett frowns and turns back to her screen.
    Then I remember that my