Frank Stein

Frank stood alongside the roaring, grease-flecked diesel generator that squatted on his concrete driveway. He crushed his cheek into his shoulder to damp the sound, but it was a largely useless gesture. With a half turn of the black plastic dial on the control panel, the motor grumbled a little louder and shuddered on its skids, clearly trying to shake off the tangle of rubber coolant tubes and plug wires that clung to it parasitically. The clamps and seals seemed to hold, so Frank gave another quarter turn. The pitch rose from a rattling grumble to a sort of Viking stubbed toe. The red hand on the voltmeter dial traced past 110, then 115, until its tip crossed 120 and headed into the white space beyond.

Stuffing the rolled copy of Apocalyptic Zombie vol.27 deeper into his pocket, Frank stepped back to assess the roaring beast and rocked on his heels. That damned thing probably weighs a ton, he thought. Maybe, a ton and a half. The machine now bounced in place, reminding him of an elephant testing a memory foam mattress. It didn’t worry him since the driveway was quite flat. If it were sloped, he had no doubt the generator would have been halfway to Missouri.

Frank’s mind wandered back roughly twelve hours.

***

“Sorry I’m late,” the rental company man with the Edna face tattoo and rough hands said, looking at his watch in the failing light. “Don’t run her too high. She needs an oil change.”

Frank couldn’t remember exactly what the man said after that, although he did recall the name embroidered on the uniform breast pocket. Tony. He wondered if that really was his shirt. A man with fingernails like those might go to any lengths, even stealing. Perhaps his real name was Vinny or Sal or Preston. The real Tony would probably be wondering where his shirt was, about then.

Despite paying little attention to Tony-Vinny-Sal-Preston’s words, Frank nodded appreciatively. He also signed the paperwork without reading it, though he knew all too well that it was packed with small print and disclaimers. What difference would small print make after he changed the meaning of life and death, and anyway, his mind was a hundred steps ahead, plotting the course the power cables would take.

“Don’t say much, do you?” Tony suggested, shrugging.

Frank would have answered if he had cared to, but he didn’t. He returned the shrug.

“I’ve got a brother-in-law who should take a page from your book,” Tony called as he lumbered back to the truck to reset the hydraulic crane arm. “He doesn’t shut up. Can’t stand the man. Don’t know what my sister sees in him.”

Frank lip-read the last part from inside the house, where he would not have to partake of conversation.

He wished the county experienced more thunderstorms. It would have been far more romantic and requiring of less human contact to raise a lightning rod and power his “lab” in the old-fashioned way.

Still peeking out from between the drawn curtains, Frank watched as Tony looked around, apparently nonplussed at discovering he had been chatting with the generator.

It was dark when Tony ground the ancient truck into gear and pulled out, so Frank postponed running the generator till the following morning. He assembled a dinner of bread, butter, and cold tinned sardines, accompanied by an episode of the Twilight Zone from 1977. He loved documentaries.

Planning to make an early start, he slipped under the covers fully clothed, save for his shoes. Excitement bubbled and frothed behind his shirt buttons, causing him to toss and turn. At around one, he decided it was time to stop equivocating, and sleep. He forced himself to lay quite still and stare at a small spot of sodium light on the ceiling. At three in the morning, he closed the curtains a little tighter to block the streetlamp. Then, he simply stared into the dark until the first bird sounded off.

That chirp sent the covers flying. He pulled on tied sneakers, snatched the comic from the nightstand, and sped out the front door before a second bird could answer. Shifting foot-to-foot, he waited in anxious anticipation while the dark sloughed off the suburb and the sun threw long shadows along the sidewalks. As the first cars pulled out of driveways, Frank took a deep breath, turned the generator key, and punched the starter button.

***

A sharp pok and accompanying smart on the back of his head snapped Frank out of his daydream. A small stone skittered away across the concrete.

Greasy gray diesel exhaust plumed into the air, creating a mist across his driveway. Hydrocarbon clouds drifted down the road on a gentle breeze, enveloping the neighboring properties as it went. Through the haze, Frank could make out the form of the woman next door, standing on her porch, shaking a fist, and apparently screaming words.

He couldn’t hear her.

She probably couldn’t hear her.

It didn’t matter, anyway.

He had lived in this house alone since the Clinton administration, and never once spoke a word to, well, anyone…even his mother while she was still alive. He was especially careful to avoid the neighbors. The closest he had come to conversation with anything more than a stuffed squirrel was a head nod to the cashier at the gas station. People were just not to his liking, and the neighbor seemed less of that than most.

His earliest memories were of not saying, just thinking. At school, his mind went on strange journeys, leaving his body sitting quietly at the back of the class to contend with spitballs and elastic snaps. The teachers were convinced he had rocks in his head. “He’s not all there,” the principal had told his mother back in ‘71. Nowadays, they would say he was a little delayed—by about fifty-four years.

Frank dragged a facsimile of a smile across his face and waved at his neighbor, hoping it would keep old whatserface from dialing 9-1-1. He really did not want cops about. If they rolled up, he would be forced to talk with them, whether he liked it or not. In the neighborly fashion he had come to expect, she yanked off a baby-blue terrycloth slipper and threw it in his direction.

Frank took that as his cue to retreat into the house and lock the door.

The rank yet pleasant stink of diesel that had permeated Frank’s checkered short sleeve shirt followed him into the dim interior. He sank back into the armchair in the living room, enjoying the mute roar from outside.

“With more than 5 kilowatts coming in, we have about ten minutes to a full charge!” His voice slumped into the thick, salmon-colored carpeting.

A stuffed squirrel stared back at him from the corner of the room.

“Soon as the batteries are full, I’ll head down. Give them time to explode if that’s what they’re going to do.” Frank winked at the squirrel.

He sighed and folded his arms, his eyes focused on the mantle clock.

7:44.

The second hand moved like it was trapped in molasses. To pass the time, Frank reached for his overstuffed notebook on the side table. He rolled the thick elastic band away, allowing the pages to swell out like a chilly pigeon’s feathers. The black, wide-ruled composition book was packed tightly with carefully scribed notes in a juvenile cursive hand. The margins overflowed with diagrams, doodles, and drawings of things like mice attached to wires and a head with unidirectional ear-attachments. Loose scraps of colored paper and lined note cards, similarly adorned, had been pushed deep between pages.

He settled the book on his knees and flipped through the pages from the back.

Design for a barbed lace aglet to facilitate emergency fishing.

6-volt battery driven voice box puncher for the silencing of close talkers.

An invention for the exercising of stiff ankles.

“Ah, Recipes,” he muttered and ran his finger down the thick column. “Life Infusion for the purposes of adding vigor to the deceased.” He tugged a pair of borderline opaque reading glasses from his shirt front and perched them on the tip of his nose. He squinted.

·                     Two ibuprofen – crushed

·                     One multivitamin – crushed – no gummies

·                     Lemon juice – half cup – fresh only – no concentrate

·                     Tabasco – one teaspoon

·                     Fresh egg yolk – three

As Frank read, he raised a finger and mouthed the word check. Relaxing back in his chair, he cast an eye up at the clock.

7:55. It was time.

“Right!”

Frank slammed the book closed and snapped the elastic band around it. He dropped the volume onto the side table before ejecting from the chair. Two wide paces took him into the passageway where he threw open the door to the basement and leaped down into the dimness below, three stairs at a time. He felt youthful, like he was forty again.

Cast in sharp streaks of morning sun, diesel fumes seeped in around the red and black power cables that snaked through the flipped-open window. Each cable, thick as a weasel’s neck, draped heavily and tracked across the floor. They connected to an array of large truck batteries that fizzed ominously. Another tangle of cables emerged through a black box at the opposite end of the array and terminated, some on thick bolts welded to a metal table in the center of the room, others fanning out to a variety of devices, all of which Frank, proudly, had made from coat hangers, aluminum foil, and old tools.

“It’s go time,” Frank said to the stack of old paperbacks, a rolled rug propped in the corner, and towers of overstuffed, collapsing carboard boxes. His intention was to mark this moment with a historic utterance filled with bravado and menace, but it sounded fake, and a bit stupid. Prickling embarrassment strangled his voice.

Frank cleared his throat and pulled a corpse from the chest freezer.

Following mother’s advice, when cooking frozen meat, in this case one Ralph Kibler, thaw overnight in the fridge. He had achieved a similar result by unplugging the freezer and leaving it open a crack. Frank was sure his mother never strained her back hefting a thawed roast to the oven. Wheezing and swearing, he staggered the seven feet with chilled Ralph in his arms, as if he were doing the limbo while carrying a battleship. With a final heave and a meaty slap, Ralph flopped down onto the cold steel surface of the table, legs and arms set in a stiff doll-like pose.

“Right, mister Kibler, time for your shot.”

Frank pulled a glass tube from his pocket. It contained a mixture that was at once thick, slimy, and grainy. He had written the word Infusion on the label, although this was the only vial of its kind in the house. You could never be too careful.

He plucked a 50ml syringe from the steel tray on wheels, weighing it in his hand. It was surprisingly light. With the deftness of a man opening vacuum-molded packaging with oily hands, Frank twisted a thick needle onto the hypodermic and removed the safety cover. He stabbed the point through the rubber stopper into the infusion and pulled back on the plunger, drawing the red-streaked yellow goo up with a satisfying slurp.

“Excuse me,” Frank mumbled as he felt for the corpse’s ribs, then slid the needle between them and shuddered, wondering if Ralph could feel any of this wherever he was. “Step one, into the heart we go.” Frank shut his eyes and pressed down firmly on the plunger, emptying the syringe.

“Bone Appetite,” Frank said, and gave the dead man’s cheek a gentle pat.

Ralph’s pale, bloodless body returned a vibrato squeak of escaping gas, and an eggy bubble appeared at the puncture point.

Frank ignored it and busied himself with strapping a steel oil funnel to Ralph’s head, wire coat hanger cuffs to the wrists and ankles, and a variety of other metal doohickies to various parts of the body. He felt a warm blush rising in his cheeks as he snapped a crocodile clip onto the end of Ralph’s wobbler.

“You know,” Frank said as he worked, “you’re the first person I’ve spoken to in a long time. Ever, actually. Most people don’t seem to be as good at listening as you.” He stopped to place a hand on Ralph’s shoulder. “Even people who like to make conversation have nothing to say to each other. They’re all thinking about what to say next, not really listening.”

Frank stepped over to a panel on the wall consisting of a rough wood plank with an industrial breaker switch and a large ammeter screwed onto it. The needle hovered far off the end of the printed scale and remained pressed against the limiting pin, even as he tapped the glass.

“Now, get ready, Ralph. This may itch.” Frank said, over his shoulder. “Three, two, one ...”

Frank threw the switch, expecting a dramatic effect.

Besides a low hum from the black box, the distant sound of the generator, and the odd crackle, not much happened. Frank edged closer to the table, expecting to see a loose wire or a disconnected battery.

Close up, Ralphs skin crawled, as if an infestation of lumpy maggots were moving in pulsing waves. Twitching, contorting muscles tugged and pulled below the surface. Without warning, the corpse’s face delivered the commedia dell'arte masks in myriad awful variations, its loose arms flopping about and spindly legs kicking like they had been hit by a disco taser. Trays and bottles and syringes crashed across the floor in an explosion of glass and spicy egg yolk.

Frank bit his lip. “I forgot the restraints.” A faint smell of roast pork played on his nose, and the thought of overcooking Ralph snapped him around to the switch. He slammed the breaker down.

A gentle steam rose from the body.

Ever cautious, Frank crept to the side of the table and prodded the corpse with a screwdriver.

A muscle twitched.

He prodded again, harder this time.

Ralph sat up and blinked. His eyes were clouded over and milky, yet they instantly fixed on Frank. “Ow,” he said, the voice thin and somehow untethered from the world.

Frank stumbled back, whacking his elbow on a support pillar. Furiously rubbing his arm and pain-grinning with slit eyes and clenched teeth, he struggled for breath. His mind reeled at the surprising turn. He had been convinced that the reanimation of a body would one day be possible, nay, inevitable. At the same time, he knew that it was completely and utterly impossible to do without years of research and testing. First time out, and here was zombie Ralph.

“Am, who I?” Ralph asked, blinking rapidly. “Me, where … am?” He looked puzzled. “Who … am … me … I?”

Frank, still massaging his funny bone, noticed his own mouth was hanging open and shut it.

“Know, you don’t?” Recently dead Ralph tried again, squinting with concentrated effort. “You … don’t … know who I am?”

“I do.” Frank mumbled, studying his own shoelaces. “Ralph Kibler.”

“Ralph?” said Ralph looking around the room, “Me? Ralph.” He mouthed the words like they were raw onion. “And—what exactly … am … here … doing I?” He lifted an arm and pointed the way a railway crossing boom does.

Frank looked to the spot he was pointing at.

“Not there … spe … cifi … cally,” Ralph said, shaking his head mechanically. “Last thing … I … remember … I was … perfectly … com … for … table. Deep … sleep. Then … bloody hot!”

Frank watched Ralphs capacity for language develop in real-time. He was deeply fascinated, but at the same time, a sense of sick unease swarmed in his belly. Had he created something terrible—a zombie with reasonably good English?

“Now, here I … am looking … like a middle-grade science exhibit,” Ralph continued, hardly taking a breath. “And who … are you? I bet … you’re the one that ran ten million … volts … through my trousers. Hang … on. Where are my trousers?” He reached down and snapped the crocodile clip off, cursing silently at the blue spark that followed it. He mechanically cupped a hand over his exposed parts.

It seemed to Frank that Ralph would have blushed, if there were any blood in his body. He thought a faint blue color rose in Ralph’s cheeks. Quite odd for a zombie.

“I am—” Frank began.

“Wait. I remember,” Ralph blurted.

Frank could almost see the memories meshing like prickle bricks in Ralph’s head.

“My car broke down. I was walking toward the light. Turns out it was a truck. Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?”

“Not when you’re a bit dead,” Frank mumbled into his chin. “You’re a zombie.”

“Oh?” The until recently deceased corpse tilted his head, like a dog studying a math equation. “Define zombie.”

“The undead, returned from the grave. And they don’t say much.” Frank began, feeling a creeping uncertainty. “Usually, they sort of mumble ghaaaar or brains. For some reason they like to eat brains, which has never been adequately explained to my thinking.”

Ralph recoiled. “I think there is ample evidence that my vocabulary extends beyond a guttural and one word, and I’m not a fan of the sweet meats.”

“But you were dead.”

“So you say,” ex-Ralph conceded, “but I would consider myself more of the reanimated type. You know, like that man on TV.”

“Herman Munster?”

“No.” Ralph looked up thoughtfully. “Nicolas Cage.”

“That’s all very fascinating, but I was hoping you would be less talkative. More zombie-like.”

“That ship appears to have sailed,” Ralph said, studying the dirt under his fingernails.

Frank struggled to find words and quickly decided there weren’t any good ones. Certainly, none that wouldn’t further inflame the discussion. He stopped searching and shrugged once again.

“You don’t say much,” slightly dead Ralph sneered. “You sure you’re not a zombie?” He drew himself up, an indignant look on his decaying face. “Let’s dispense with the chit-chat. Since you are responsible for my situation, I believe you owe me a few answers. I have rights you know.”

“Do you?” Frank wondered aloud. Would the undead have inalienable rights, given that they were alienated from life as it is commonly defined.

“I do,” Ralph insisted. “For starters, how did you get my body? If you hijacked a hearse, that would be grave robbing and grand theft auto. Both felonies, I should warn you. And, if I was dead, surely you would need my consent to revive me? Dammit, man. I think I was Presbyterian, and now I’m—I’m—undead!” He spat the last part out like it was mouthful of wasps. “Imagine if everyone just went around reanimating the recently deceased without their permission. Chaos!”

“Could you please stop—," Frank began, and was quickly drowned out.

“And what now? Do I go home?” Ralph paused, thoughtfully. “I vaguely remember having a home. Where did I live? Who did I live with? Mark? Marjorie? Mary? The name started with an M, I think. If I was married and I died, am I still married? I would guess my marriage is void. I mean, the vows do say until death do us part, don’t they?” He looked Frank in the eye with a tight, blue-lipped expression. “Don’t they?”

“I really need you to—”

“And of course, we must consider what happens to any life insurance I may have—er—had. Does it need to be returned? I can’t imagine my next of kin would be happy giving up a sum of money for a recently decomposing analog of their next of kin. And if there was a will, does it remain in force? I mean, I’m sure there are things I would want back. How do I get around if my car now belongs to an idiot I only ever saw at weddings and funerals? Wait a minute. Did I have a funeral? I need to see my obituary.”

Frank stood and clumped up the stairs, leaving Ralph where he sat, tangled in a nest of wires and old tools.

“Where are you going?” Ralph swung his legs off the table and reached out. “Don’t I get one phone call? Who should I phone? A priest? The sheriff’s office? Don’t you dare leave me alone down here, Sparky.”

Frank slammed the door to the basement and locked it. He did his best to ignore the muffled voice coming up through the floorboards and flopped back in his easy chair with a deep sigh. Making a mental note to return the generator at once, he flipped open his notebook and began a new list.

·         Earmuffs

·         Pitchfork