In the Passenger Seat

It seemed that, even in death, Jared liked to drive. As Casey sat beside him, she told herself to keep her eyes on the road. Sometimes her brain liked to split in two: the mature side, with the good advice, and the lethally curious one that enjoyed, deep down, to be shocked. Now the mature voice was saying: Don’t fill your head with that crap. Looking will only upset you. But it was the other side that always took action. So she let her eyes wander to him, the man in the driver’s seat.

Or was he a man? 

Casey didn’t always know how to classify what he’d become– an animated corpse, a shell that kept moving long after the soul had fled. Somehow, the spirit wasn’t entirely gone. If it were, the thing beside her wouldn’t still have her cousin’s mannerisms, his stiff posture at the wheel. His slight tic, a peculiar squeeze of his eyes here and there.

He drove as though it were a lingering thing, how a chicken still walked around after its head had been severed, or how sometimes the audio persisted for a second or two after Casey closed a video app. Something about Jared remained, still powering the motions, while almost everything else had changed. Taught, peachy skin had turned droopy and grey. His eyes had gone watery and yellow– a little too much like Jell-o, Casey realized with queasy regret– while his dark hair had begun to shed, rubbing off against his seatback in patches. His body was mottled with oozing patches of purple and green. 

Casey, very slowly, reached up and pulled a pack of Marlboros from the sun visor. Beside her, the window was open about an inch and that would have to do– not that she fully minded the smoke; it was better than suffering Jared’s smell. But she didn’t dare touch the door. As she lit a cigarette, she tried to organize the past few days. To meditate on them. There was little else to do at this stage.

She didn’t dwell too long on the virus– most people who had any interest in pop culture had thought enough about the idea of an undead apocalypse. Now, it almost seemed realistic, easy to process. Though, she would admit that the origin of the plague had been a bit unexpected. It had come from a new kind of strange fish discovered and captured from the deep sea, and the genius who had decided to give it a kiss for a photograph. He’d caught something that had rotted him in days then quickly spread to others through his bites and saliva. 

Casey’s family had died on the way to Granby, Colorado where they’d all hoped to meet with their extended relatives. She’d arrived alone to find only Jared. Though she felt guilty about it, she’d been relieved it was him. Of the cousins, he was her favorite; they were about the same age and had both gone to space camp in elementary school. 

She blew smoke. It was a good effort, she thought. Really, a great show. Attagirl. Her inner voice was sardonic, but there was some truth there. She felt as though they’d done their best. Nobody had been foolish or short-sighted. She’d been blessed with a good family, one that fought their hardest for each other, and they’d given their all. And sometimes that just wasn’t enough. Sure, she supposed she could still be the one to carry on the genes but…

What to do about Jared?

Her eyes fell upon the angry slash on his forearm. They’d talked about it a few times then decided it was safe. It hadn’t come from one of the undead prowling America but from an exposed nail on a fence they’d climbed to escape a hoard. Still, somehow, something must have gotten into the wound. They’d hopped into their truck, and Casey had fallen asleep in the passenger seat. When she’d awoken hours later, there was this monster still driving… driving… driving… driving. Stuck in the act. 

At first, it seemed like luck. She hadn’t been devoured while she dozed; he hardly seemed to notice her. His hands were on the wheel, and his gaze was glued to the road. Most of the time. Casey had learned miles ago that, if she moved as though to touch the passenger door, he’d jolt from his trance and stare at her, ready to lash out. It had terrified her into stillness, the way people froze up when they saw a mountain lion. When she settled back into her seat, he regained focus on the road. So she sat rigidly, not doing anything a good, normal passenger wouldn’t. Not removing her seatbelt or turning around to get her supplies in the back. Never EVER touching the door. This was to be a pleasant little road trip, alone with a zombie. 

The truck rumbled down the interstate, through mountain passes and under vibrant sky. Casey had grown up hiking and exploring. As a kid, with her nose a pig snout against the window, she’d once thought that the mountains looked like layered cake. They still did– rusty shades on grey ones, natural slices of flavor all under the snow-frosted mountaintops. A big ol’ wedding cake.  

Above, the Colorado sky was a riot of morning colors— cotton candy pink with wisteria purple and popsicle orange. A bird, a big one, flew across the sunrise shades. And, when it got close enough, Casey could see the unmistakable white head of a bald eagle. 

“Look, Jer,” she said. “‘Merica.” He would have laughed. He always laughed at stupid jokes like that. Now he drove, drove, drove, drove.

Silence, but her comment lingered in her own mind. It made her think of spangled flags and fireworks and then, of course, the 4th of July when her family used to gather at the Granby house. They’d grilled and played cornhole and toyed with sparklers. She took a drag from her cigarette, then said, 

“You don’t have to worry about my mom’s ambrosia salad anymore, at least.” 

Casey had always thought ambrosia was aptly named (the mythological food of the gods), but Jared had hated the stuff. He hadn’t even liked to be in close proximity to it, always getting a little pale and carsick-looking when seeing it on the table. Casey had learned the hard way that she couldn’t eat it across from him, especially after he’d stuffed his face with ribs. It had been a shame to have to throw away her favorite Skechers, but she hadn’t been able to get the barbecue vomit smell out of them. 

The worst thing was that, over these past few hours, Casey had come to consider how often she’d done stuff like that to Jared. Pushing him, prodding him. Testing out the things that made him ill or anxious or embarrassed. Hell, a week after the ambrosia salad incident, she’d turned on a program about moths right when she knew he was about to come inside. He loathed the little pests– a hatred birthed from the minor plagues of moths that sometimes hit Colorado during the summer; they got everywhere, in the coffee cups and curtains. Inevitably they got squashed, leaving dusty carcasses and yellow goop on the carpet. Jared always said that, if he saw one, he’d feel it crawling all over him for the rest of the day. But Casey had liked to see him squirm. Back then, she’d seen herself as a prankster. Of course, she loved her cousin with all her heart, but she couldn’t help her fascination with people’s phobias and icks. 

Looking at Jared now, she felt less scared than sad. Saddened that his big green eyes and thick curls had been taken from him, mourning his voice which could do a dozen good impressions of movie stars and cartoon characters, missing her best friend. What about the future they’d drafted out together? How they’d promised to cheer loudly at each other’s weddings and visit Russia when they both turned thirty? Now it just wasn’t possible for them both to publish novels, set in the same universe they’d made together. But, more than she lamented particular things they’d lost, she regretted certain things that had been. 

“Dammit, I’m sorry,” said Casey, leaving her cigarette in her mouth and letting it muffle the words. “I really wasn’t the best cousin.” She could smell the rancid odor of puked-up ribs and potato salad on her shoes again. Now, it was her sensing the moths on her arms and legs, the back of her neck. She considered that she was being hard on herself, that none of these things were really that bad, just the nonsense that kids did to each other. But it was difficult not to nurse the sadness. It was hard to be kind to herself in a situation like this, where her world was over and lost and she hadn’t always taken very good care of it.

Jared only drove and drove and drove.

So, was this it then? Would she be there in the passenger seat until she succumbed to hunger and thirst and time? No. The thought hit her suddenly, like a cuckoo clock striking the hour. She peered over at the gas gauge, a fortune cookie that defined an end and was stingy with the details. An ominous timer.  

Twenty-five miles remaining.