That day, though, with Amber Watson approaching on my radar, barefoot the way she usually was, her shoes hooked over her shoulder like a rich lady’s purse, that day, it was either Michael T or nobody. Or, at first it was nobody, but then, just joking around, Theodore said he’d seen Michael T shuffling around down by the rocket park anyway.
“Michael T?” I asked.
“He still can’t catch,” Theodore said.
“That was all the way before lunch, though, yeah?” Rory said, socking the ball into his glove for punctuation.
It was nearly three, now.
“Can you track him?” Les said, falling in as we rounded the backstop.
“Your nose not work?” I asked him back.
Just another perfect summer afternoon.
We kicked a lopsided rock nearly all the way to where Michael T was supposed to have been, and then we turned to Theodore. He shrugged, was ready to fight any of us, even tried some of the words he’d learned from spying on his uncles in the garage. He wasn’t lying, though. Splatted all over the bench were the crab apples him and Jefferson Banks had been zinging Michael T with.
“Jefferson,” I said, “what about him?”
“Said he had to go home,” Theodore shrugged, half-embarrassed for Jefferson. “His mom.”
Figured. The one time I can impress Amber Watson and Jefferson’s cleaning out all the ashtrays in the house then reading romance novels to his mom while she tans in the backyard.
“Who then?” Les asked, shading his eyes from the sun, squinting across all the glinty metal of the old playground.
None of us came to this one anymore. It was for kids.
“He’s got to be around,” Theodore said. “My dad said they like beef jerky.” I seconded this, had heard it as well.
You could lure a zombie anywhere if you had a twist of dried meat on a long string. It was supposed to be getting bad enough with the high schoolers that the stores in town had put a limit on beef jerky, two per customer.
I kicked at another rock that was there by the bench. It wasn’t our lopsided one, was probably one Jefferson and Theodore had tried on Michael T. There was still a little bit of blood on it. All the ants were loving the crab apple leftovers, but, for them, there was a force field around where that rock had been. Until the next rain, anyway.
“She’s never going to see me,” I said, just out loud.
“Who?” Theodore asked, studying the park like Amber Watson could possibly be walking through it.
I shook my head no, never mind, and, turning away, half-planning to set a mirror up in right field, let Gerald just stand kind of by it, so it would seem like we had a full team, I caught a flash of cloth all the way in the top of the rocket.
“It’s not over yet,” I said, pointing up there with my chin.
Somebody was up there, right at the top where the astronauts would sit if it were a real rocket. The capsule part. And they were moving.
“Jefferson?” Theodore asked, looking to us for support.
Like monkeys, Les and Rory crawled up the outside of the rocket, high enough that their moms had to be having heart attacks in their kitchens.
When they got there, Rory had to turn to the side to throw up. It took that loogey of puke forever to make it to the ground. We laughed because it was throw-up, then tracked back up to the top of the rocket.
“It’s Michael T!” Les called down, waving his hand like there was anywhere else in the whole world we might be looking.
“What’s he doing?” I asked, not really loud enough, my eyes kind of pre-squinted, because this might be going to mess our game up.
“It’s Jefferson,” Theodore filled in, standing right beside me, and he was right.
Instead of going home like his mom wanted, Jefferson had spiraled up into the top of the rocket, probably to check if his name was still there, and never guessed Michael T might still be lurking around. Even a first grader can outrun or outsmart a zombie, but, in a tight place like that, and especially if you’re in a panic, are freaking out, then it’s a different kind of game altogether.
“Shouldn’t have thrown those horse apples at him,” Gerald said, shaking his head.
“Shouldn’t have been stupid, more like,” I said, and slapped my glove into Gerald’s chest, for him to hold.
Ten minutes later, Les and Rory using cigarettes from the outside of the rocket to herd him away from his meal, Michael T lumbered down onto the playground, stood in that crooked, hurt way zombies do.
“Hunh,” Theodore said.
He was right.
In the year since Michael T had been bitten, he hadn’t grown any. He was shorter than all us now. Rotted away, Jefferson’s gore all drooled down his front side, some bones showing through the back of his hand, but still, that we’d outgrown him this past year. It felt like we’d cheated.
It was exhilarating.
One of us laughed and the rest fell in, and, using a piece of a sandwich Les finally volunteered to open his elbow scab on—we didn’t have any beef jerky—we were able to lure Michael T back to the baseball diamond.
After everybody’d crossed the road, I studied up and down it, to be sure Amber Watson hadn’t passed yet.
I didn’t think so.
Not on an afternoon this perfect.
So then it was the big vote: whose glove was Michael T going to wear, probably try to gnaw on? When I got tired of it all, I just threw mine into his chest, glared all around.
“Warpath, chief,” Les said, picking the glove up gingerly, watching Michael T the whole time.
“Scalp your dumb ass,” I said, and turned around, didn’t watch the complicated maneuver of getting the glove on Michael T’s left hand, and only casually kept track of the stupid way he kept breaking position. Finally Timmy found a dead squirrel in the weeds, stuffed it into the school backpack that had kind of become part of Michael T’s back. The smell kept him in place better than a spike through his foot. He kept kind of spinning around in his zombie way, tasting the air, but he wasn’t going anywhere.
And then—this because my whole body was tuned into it, because the whole summer had been pointing at it—the adult swim whistle went off down at the community pool. Or maybe I was tuned into the groan from all the swimmers. Either way, this was always when the lifeguards would change chairs, was always when, if somebody was going off-shift, they would go.
“Amber,” I said to myself, tossing my ragged, lucky ball to Les then tapping my bat across home plate, waiting for him to wind up.
“Am-what?” Theodore asked from behind the catcher’s mask his mom insisted on.
I shook my head no, nothing, and, because I was looking down the street, down that tunnel of trees, Les slipped the first pitch by me.
“That one’s free,” I called out to him, tapping my bat again. Licking my lips.
Les wound up, leaned back, and I stepped up like I was already going to swing. He cued into it, that I was ahead of him here, and it threw him off enough that he flung the ball over Theodore’s mitt, rattled the backstop with it.
“That one’s free too,” he called out to me, and I smiled, took it.
Just wait, I was saying inside, sneaking a look up the road again, and, just like in the movies, the whole afternoon slowed almost to a stop right there.
It was her. I smiled, nodded, my own breath loud in my ears, and slit my eyes back to Les.
He drove one right into the pocket, and if I’d wanted I could have shoveled it over all of their heads, dropped it out past the fence, into no man’s land.
Except it was too early.
After it slapped home, I spun out of the box, spit into the dirt, hammered my bat into the fence two times.