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These pictures are my life, at least at that time. Like memories, only fragments. Impressions, really.
Like memories, incomplete. Twenty-three snapshots from a roll of twenty-four. Like the rest of my life, those pictures came out odd.
Some nights, when I feel the cold breezes come off the Pacific, I stare up at the sky and the thousands of stars I never knew existed, wondering how I’ll document these memories of mine: the sunsets over the sea, the valleys of redwoods that feel like sacred groves. The trees that are starting to grow through suburban homes. The people I’ve met, both good and bad. The scars on their faces, the calluses on their hands. Is it right to live life knowing every detail will die?
I’ve never been good at endings either, to tell you the truth. I mess them up all over the place. May could tell you that. She used to tell me that my stories were all jokes without punch lines. I never did figure out what she meant by that. I bet Kyoko’d say I was bad at endings, too. And Bradley, and Karen in her own way. So you might have to help me:
Breathe in, keep breathing. Shut your eyes, then open them again. Take a good look around you, then back at me. Try to remember every little detail, no matter how unimportant. Freeze this split second in time.
It’s important, this moment. Every stupid detail about it. It’s you and me, unwilling to forget we’re alive.
The Mexican Bus by Walter Greatshell
Walter Greatshell is the author of the novels Xombies: Apocalypse Blues and Xombies: Apocalypticon. A non-zombie novel, Mad Skillz, is forthcoming. On his website, waltergreatshell.com, Greatshell says that the last real job he had was as a graveyard-shift nuclear-submarine technician, and before that he was the general manager of the Avon Cinema, a Providence, Rhode Island, landmark. In addition to writing, he currently dabbles in freelance illustration, numerous examples of which are available on his website.
In 1957 Jack Kerouac published On the Road, a lightly fictionalized memoir of his road trips crisscrossing the U.S. and Mexico. The novel was written single-spaced and without paragraph breaks on a 120-foot long roll of tracing paper that Kerouac called “the scroll.” (It originally used the real names of Kerouac’s friends and acquaintances, including the free-spirited ex-con Neal Cassady and the poet Allen Ginsberg, but their names were changed in the published manuscript, at the publisher’s insistence, to Dean Moriarty and Carlo Marx.) The book has been massively popular, influencing artists from Bob Dylan to Jim Morrison to Hunter S. Thompson, most obviously in the latter’s 1972 road novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
On the Road also seems to have exerted an influence on our next author, who writes, “This story is an offshoot of my Xombies storyline. It’s about a young guy, a college dropout, who is bumming around Mexico and has the extreme misfortune of being caught in the middle of a zombie-type epidemic-what I call the Sadie Hawkins Day Massacre. Almost every woman in the world simultaneously turns blue and goes berserk.” He adds, “I actually was a college dropout, because once I discovered hitchhiking I was done with school. I have all these notebooks of stuff I wrote while on the road, hundreds of pages of obsessive beatnik musings that I hoped might come in handy someday. Who knew it would be for a zombie story?”
Tres Estrellas de Oro. Three gold stars on a green medallion, possibly signifying the Holy Trinity-or perhaps nothing at all. It didn’t matter; what was important was that his two years of high school Spanish were not completely wasted. He was not just a college dropout with little money, no prospects, and all his remaining possessions stuffed into a rain-soaked dufflebag, but a romantic figure: a bohemian man of the world. What did he need with Aristotle and Copernicus?
Tres Estrellas de Oro-beautiful.
This wasn’t the bus he had started out on. That one had been red and white, with the words Norte de Sonora on the side. But heavy rains had washed out the road, and the bus had been forced to turn back. All that headway south, hours of travel, just to return to the border and start over! But it was okay; he had nothing but time, and no place he would rather spend New Year’s Eve than on a Mexican bus going anywhere. He had learned what was possible if you had a map…and time…and a little money. Just follow the dotted line.
It was near midnight when the second bus stopped.
The young man awoke from his doze and realized he had been drooling. His neck hurt and his face was sore from being pressed against the vibrating window, but he didn’t dare move lest he disturb the beautiful Canadian girl who was using his left shoulder as a pillow. An elderly man across the aisle winked at him. There was nothing to see outside but flat black-the windows might as well have been painted over. Inside the bus it was dim and cozy, with cigarette smoke drifting across the overhead reading lights. Muted Spanish conversation simmered in the cabin, and it wasn’t necessary to understand the words to know what they were saying: What now?
Gears clanked and the bus moved forward, weaving around a line of cars. Another highway accident, that’s all-they had passed enough of those. The passengers relaxed as the bus swerved clear and gathered speed. Things were looking good, but a moment later it abruptly stopped again with a hiss.
They waited. Perhaps there was still a chance this was only a short delay. The sense of collective yearning was palpable, forty people hanging on the edge of their seats. Then the driver turned off the engine and all hope collapsed. Without a word, he opened the door and got out.
Abandoned, the passengers gave in to resignation. Actually there was a certain sense of relief, as if everyone could now relax and be themselves. No one was particularly angry or upset. This was why he loved Mexico.
The Canadian girl came half awake, taking her fragrant head off his shoulder. “What’s going on?” she groaned.
“Nothing. We’ve just stopped. It’s probably a car accident or something.”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know. Nowhere.”
The Mexicans were making a party of it. Cigarettes were lit, snacks brought out, and the volume of conversation increased. A radio was turned on, playing a live New Year’s Eve countdown from Mexico City. Some folks got up to stretch their legs, and the young man decided to do the same. He would scope out the situation and bring the girl a full report-show her he had everything under control. As if a sixteen-year-old girl traveling alone through the backlands of Mexico needed reassurance from him.
Outside it was quite a scene. The bus was part of a long line of stopped traffic in the middle of the desert-a festive-looking chain of lights spa
The young man wanted to walk down there and see, but he was reluctant to venture too far from the bus. What if the traffic started moving, or the bus turned around and went back? Last thing he needed was to be stranded out here. But he figured he was all right as long he kept the driver in sight, so when that officious old character and some other men started down the hill, he tagged along behind.
It was nice to be outside in the fresh air. He had been a prisoner for hours, afraid to budge. And it was so stupid: as if he had any chance with this incredible girl. Confidence with the opposite sex was not his strong suit; his record with women was a catalogue of rejection-it was a rejection, in fact, that led to his dropping out of college and impulsively heading for Mexico. He tended to rush things, that was his problem. Unrequited love was a bitch.