ZOMBIE DREAMS by Peter Nolan Smith

Four springs ago Brock Dundee hired my driving services for a road trip across the Midwest. The Scottish filmmaker was seeking out the statues of a dying Irish sculptor in Middle America. His plan was to video the works and then film the the artist seeing his works for the last time.

My boss at the diamond exchange wasn’t happy with my taking off two weeks.

“He’s paying me $1000 a week.” I had been asking for a raise for the last year.

“Have a good trip.” Manny had a good head for numbers. He was saving my salary and fought off another attempt for an increase in my salary.

“Sei Gesund.” I wished the eighty year-old well in Yiddish. His only other language was almost dead.

A week later Brock and I flew to Chicago and hired a car at O’Hare. The Scot didn’t know how to drive, but he unfolded a map to plot out a route on the Interstates.

“No fucking interstates.” I ripped the map off his lap and threw it in the backseat.

“Aren’t the interstates faster?” Brock wanted to visit five statues in St. Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines, and Minneapolis and we had eight days to cover six big states.

“Only if you’re heading to shopping mall.” I-80 was rammed with SUVs and long-haul trucks. I pointed out a state trooper cruising in the opposite direction. “We want to stay far away from them.”

“Aren’t there speed traps on the back roads?” Brock’s vision of rural America had been formed by the movies DELIVERANCE and EASY RIDER.

“The cops go where the money is and that’s the interstates.” I turned off I-80 at exit for Peoria and turned to Brock. “Welcome to The Fly-Over.”

“Fly-Over?” The Scot was unfamiliar with the American term.

“This is the land you fly over from New York to LA.” The square states of the Midwest are mostly flat corn fields. They offer little for New Yorkers, Californians, and Europeans.

“I get it.” Brock relaxed in his seat. He had chosen me for my ability to take the least obvious course of action for the next week we avoided the Interstates like a plague.

Our path wandered along a flooded Illinois River down the broad Mississippi across the spring farmland of Missouri into the terra incognita of Iowa.
Sometimes my Scottish friend and I didn’t have any human contact for hours. The straight roads were devoid of cars. Everyone was on the Interstate heading to a WalMart.

South of Des Moines I remarked to Brock, “Not many people living out here.”
“No reason for anyone to live out here.” The small towns were empty and the big cities looked, as if they had been hit by a neutron bomb.

“Young people move out as soon as they finish high school.” The farmboys treated their boredom with crystal meth. They hid well of of sight.

“Leaving only the dead and the dying.”

“Like we were in a zombie movie.” It was almost as if the real world had been replaced by scenes from MAD MAX II and I accelerated to 100 mph. We hadn’t seen any police cars in days.

“I haven’t seen any zombies.” Brock scanned the bare expanse of fields on either side of the road.

“They would starve out here.” Zombies liked cities, because fat people were slower than them. “I once had a horrible dream about zombies.”

“Really?” Brock took out his camera and shot a minute of the passing void. This trip was as much about us as the sculptor.

“It was 1975. I was 23 at the time. I had caught a Trois Estellas bus from Monterrey, Mexico to Texas.” I hadn’t thought about that bus in ages. driving the car must have resurrected that memory from the grave. “It was a long ride and I was reading a book by HP Lovecraft. THE TERROR AT INNSMOUTH. The bus stopped in a small town. I ate a taco. It tasted a little funny and that night I fell sick with food poisoning. I checked into a small hotel at the border. The Mexican side was cheaper. I lay on the bed with a fever. I read my book and fell asleep. Sometime in the night I dreamed I was being chased through a garden by slow-moving zombies.”

“I hate the way zombies moved fast in RESIDENT EVIL.” My Scottish friend was a horror film buff and he turned to camera to me. A nod was the signal to start my monologue.

“Slow zombies are classic, but there were too many of turtle dead in my dream.” I had told his story a thousand times. It was like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “They cut off my escape and I ran to a gazebo. Old screens to keep out mosquitoes covered the windows. I locked the flimsy door. The zombies huddled around the gazebo. Their breath smelled of rotting flesh. They scrapped at the screen with long yellow fingernails. Their teeth ground in anticipation of sinking into my flesh, then a voice deeper than a six-foot grave said, “Tell us the secret of human life.”

“The secret of human life?” Brock like interrupting my spiel. He felt the breaks gave me time to collect my thoughts.

“I didn’t know what the secret of human life was and there was no stalling the zombies either. When they’re hungry, they’re hungry. They broke through the screens. I shut my eyes expecting the worse.” I usually stopped here to check, if I hadn’t lost my audience.

“You’re not supposed to die in dreams.” Brock was listening to every word. He picked up the map. We were coming to a turning.

"Freud said everything was driven by pleasure or death. Death in dreams was a way of understanding your personal sexual repression levels or you hated yourself, which wasn’t the case, since I was 23.” I put on the left-turn signal. The intersection didn't even have a name.

“Freud’s full of Oepidal shit. I’ve seen photos of his mother. She wasn’t worth killing his father for, of course Jung had a different take on death in a dream.

“Screw both of them.” My story had no place for dead psychiatrists. That territory was reserved for Woody Allen. “I tried to wake up, but couldn’t and I heard the voice say, “Tell us the secret of human life and I’ll let you live for another minute.”

“So what happened?” Brock was expecting a horrible demise.

“I realized the secret of human life was that no matter how bad the 61st second would be I still wanted the next 60. The urge to live.”

“And did you tell them to secret?”

“No, I woke up and foiled their attempt to destroy Mankind."

"A hero."

"It's not everyone who saves humanity in their sleep." It had seemed so real, but my flesh bore no teeth marks. " So I’m not really scared of zombies.”

“No?” Brock said that word, as if he wasn’t convinced about their status as myth.

“Zombies exist only in movies and video games. Not all of them bad. You ever see SHAUN OF THE DEAD?”

“That’s not a real zombie movie.” Brock was a traditionalist as was to be expected from a Scot.

I agreed that the British flick wasn't scary, but it was funny and after my dream I like funny zombies better than scary ones. We drove west toward Kansas City. They supposedly had some pretty women their according to Wilbur Harrison’s hit song from 1959.

A pretty girl had to be more fun than a zombie.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER by Peter Nolan Smith CHAPTER 4

Heading north we passed rivers on the verge of bursting their banks and I explained to Brock, "Last year an epic flood submerged Cedar Rapids, but it hasn't rained in days."

The radio weatherman had forecasted a pleasant day for Northern Iowa and Minnesota. I stepped on the gas. Everyone on I-380 was traveling ten miles over the speed limit. I kept pace at 85.

North of Cedar Rapids we got off the highway and twenty minutes later on a back road Brock spotted buffalo grazing on long prairie grass.

"Stop."

I braked the rented Ford in a parking lot of a small state park.

We approached the fence.

A state ranger was inspecting the wooly bison and told us, "They once roamed the Great Plains in the millions, but were reduced to 750 by 1890."

The small herd was fenced into a park and the ranger said, "This isn't a petting zoo, so I have to make sure no one thinks it is."

A good-sized buffalo weighed more than a ton. One came up to the fence and Brock touched its head. He passed me the film camera and said, "Keep me in focus. Barry's going to love this."

Brock and I ate a late breakfast of left-over ribs from Des Moines. They hadn't gone bad in the back seat and Brock put on a KC Royals baseball cap, which he had bought in that city two days ago.

"How many miles you think we've driven so far.

"Almost two thousand." Most of it had been on dirt roads cutting straight through the farmlands. Brock lived in London with his wife and two kids.

"If we drove two thousand miles from London, we'd be in Istanbul."

"Which probably doesn't look much like this."

"This is a big continent, especially from south to north." I dumped my gnawed ribs into the trash.

"Which is why I'm heading north with the Chicken Messiah." Brock wiped his hands on the back of his jeans. He was getting to be a real American.

"It's almost 5000 miles from London to Kabul." Brock couldn't get Afghanistan out of his head. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers felt the same. "Back in the 70s hippies drove to Kabul in school buses and vans. Next stop was Kathmandu and then Kuta in Bali."

"A long time ago and Iowa was never Kabul."

"Except with Rockford."

"And Barry's in Ibiza."

"My kids are in Thailand."

Like the Hare sculptures we were scattered across the globe far from home.

Corn was everywhere.

Brock shot everything.

"This will be Barry's last trip to America."

“You know I haven’t really looked at his sculptures.”

My daydreams were dominated by premonitions of seeing my son and daughter in the coming month. This driving job for Brock would pay for a ticket to Thailand.

“You shouldn’t look at anything.” Brock put down his camera. “You have to see or hear or feel Art. Open your mind to another dimension.”

“I’ll try.” We had one more Hare statue ahead and I gripped the wheel with both hands.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER by Peter Nolan Smith CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER THREE

To the west storm clouds towered over the brown spring plain. Hot flashes strobed through the black thunderheads. A swirling finger hovered over the earth.

"I've seen djins in Afghanistan," Brock pointed his camera at a swirling finger hovering over the horizon. I that what I think it is."

It's not a dust devil."

"A tornado?"

"Looks like it." The Great Plains bred these monsters from north to south. "The Dakota Indians called them iYumi, which means bastard son of Face and Wind."

"An appropriate name." Brock focused on the roiling wall of weather. "The only time I ever saw a tornado was in THE WIZARD OF OZ."

"Me too and I do't need to see this one any closer." The flat lands of Kansas offered no shelter from the iYumi and I stepped on the gas and the rented car ate up the rural road paralleling US 169.

Ten miles up the road I slowed down for an approaching horse carriage. The driver waved with his whip and I said to Brock, "This is Mennonite country."

He was more familiar with Afghani tribes and I explained, "They fled persecution in Europe to live peaceful lives. They are very good farmers."

"He was the first person we've seen in an hour."

"Peace can be measured buy your distance from other people."

I sped up to 90.

This was a very good dirt road.

"We're heading north?" The Scotsman couldn't drive, but the points of the compass were stitched into his flesh.

""100%."

Twenty minutes later we approached a deserted farmhouse. Paint peeled off the walls like potato chips. All the windows were broken.

"Stop." Brock was the boss and I punched the brakes to batslide to a halt.

"When you think that family left that house?" The Scotsman stepped out of the car.

"All these farms crapped out back in the 90s. The banks took over the land. They've done nothing with it."

"Bankers don't like anyone growing anything other than debt."

I had certainly done my share of debt farming.

I got out of the rented Ford and shut off the engine. Brock walked around the house.

"We can't stay here long." The black sky was catching up with us.

A storm's mutter invaded the quiet and the wind whooshed through the barren trees.

"Make sure it's only a few."

Raindrops dotted the dust.

As Brock set up his movie camera, he explained a little more about his film's subject, "Barry once said to a journalist, “I enjoy the third dimension and I appreciate material in time and space. I find it exciting to the eyes.”

"Then he'll love this." The house's desolation was timeless, but a black funnel formed several miles away. A little too close for comfort and I said, "Let's go."

We jumped in the Ford and I easily outran the storm.

iYumi was heading in a different direction than us.

Thirty miles later we stopped at a Black Cat Fireworks store.

"This is the first store we had seen since this morning."

"Civilization at last. Can I use your phone?" asked Brock.

There was no service.

"We're in the middle of nowhere." He handed back the phone.

"There's a lot of that out here, but Buddy Holly's plane crashed north of here."

"Along with Richie Valens and the Big Bopper."

That tragedy was known as The Day The Music Died.

"But not Dion."

"No, not the Wanderer. Someone had to be lucky that night." I still loved that song. "Are you buying fireworks?"

"I love a little pyrotechnics." Brock spent $100 on rockets and M80s. The only food for sale were sodas and potato chips. We ate outside on a table and the filmmaker said, "Only four days ago I was in Afghanistan. Sometimes it was quiet like this. Sometimes not."

"Loud?"

"Very."

His sudden silence said he had seen them not so long ago and we left the parking lot with the rear wheels spitting up dust.

Twenty minutes later we pulled over on a dirt road. Iowa had thousands of them. I lit the fuses and Brock filmed the explosions.

"Not even close to the real thing," he said, as the report of the last M80 faded into the tree line. "The ringing in your ears lasts for hours. Worse than the artillery were the IUD."

"You mean IED?" Road bombs had savaged the occupying troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Yeah, slip of the brain."Brock scanned the clearing sky. "Looks like we outran the storm."

"Maybe." I was superstitious and didn't like talking about storms or bombs.

We got back in the car and kept driving north.

We arrived in Des Moines after 5.

The state capitol was devoid of people.

"Is America dead?" Brock asked, as if a plague had killed my countrymen.

"After five everyone leaves for their home, eat, watch TV, and then sleep."

"Not us."

"No, not us."

We visited the Barry's hare at the Art Center. Brock focused his camera on the statue. I sat in the car and called Thailand.

My son Fenway was better.

His mother was angry at me.

"Why you go trip? Why you not see son?"

I offered no defense, because a man was always wrong in the eyes of his woman.

We stayed the night in Des Moines. Brock and I ate ribs at the restaurant next to the motel. It had been there forever. The TV over the bar showed fast cars. At the end of the meal I ordered a doggie bag.

"Why did Barry sculpt hares?" I asked, walking back to our room.

"One day he bought a dead rabbit from a butcher in England and remembered a jumping hare. To him it represented freedom. All kinds of freedom."

Freedom was hard to find in America of 2009 and I called Rockford in Iowa City.

The old hippie was looking forward to seeing us.

The next morning we left Des Moines. Silos towered over the old highway.

"This is farmland." Iowa was the center of America to me.

"It's all farmland. Corn and wheat."

"Tortillas and bread?"

"No, corn for bio-fuels and fodder to GMO cows."

The farmlands were a food desert.

"And prisons. My friend Rockford spent two years at the state penitentiary after the police had raided his farmhouse and found something else other than the grass they knew he had."

"And we're meeting him tonight?"

"But of course." Rockford and I went back to an acid trip on Moonlight Beach in 1974. He was a hippie, not a criminal.

Train tracks ran beside US 6 to Amana, the Old Pietist commune.

Only a few tourists were wandering around the Heritage site. It was too early in the season for the hordes. I ordered chicken pot pie and Brock chose a ham steak. The waitress served us water. There was no beer on the menu.

"What were the Pietists?"

"Disgruntled Lutherans seeking salvation through leading a virtuous Christian life dedicated to hard work or Werkzeug." I had studied religious sects in college.

"Germans?"

"Mostly. They worked and ate in communes. Not many of them left here. Maybe a thousand."

After lunch we visited the brewery. It was the oldest in Iowa.

Brock filmed my drinking an ale.

"This can't be very cinematic."

"Barry likes to see everything."

"How much longer you think he has?"

"He might make the end of the summer." Brock intended on visiting the artist in Ibiza after our return to New York.

"Do you think the Hare would like the beer?"

"Maybe the Hare Thinker. All the others run to fast.

"To Freedom."

I raised my glass to his toast and then sipped my beer.

"Hmmm good." I knew how to act for Brock.

Nice and natural.

Leaving Amana I received a call from Rockford. His farm was outside Iowa City to say he was holding something special.

"A surprise."

Brock and I could only guess what that was and we would find out soon enough.

Rockford and his son met us at a bar on the outskirts of town. I hadn't seen John since he was a baby. He was a teenager now.

I gave John a Ferrari jacket from my defunct internet site. He loved the red red. His friends picked him up.

They were going to a movie.

ORIGINS: WOLVERINE.

I had loved the X-Men as a boy, but I never went to the movies anymore, since I hated the smell of fake popcorn.

Once he left, we ordered another round.

Rockford told how we met and later worked as the chicken messiahs.

"Chicken Messiahs?"

"Yes, we were secret shoppers for KFC. We tested the chicken all over the USA. The car would be packed with packed with fired chicken and we'd distribute it to the homeless, who called us the chicken messiahs."

"Just like the SLA," I explained further how one of the girls at Rockford's Moonlight Beach commune looked like Patti Hearst."

"We got stopped everywhere and she refused to dye her hair."

"Pam was beautiful."

We toasted her and the bartender offered us shots. I had a Jamison.

Jake was back from a 3rd tour in Iraq.

"It sucked. All I ever thought about was coming home and my commanding officer wants to go again."

"Bring the troops home. From everywhere."

The USA had troops in scores of countries.

The bartender, Rockford, Brock, and I clinked glasses.

Three right-wingers were drinking Bud-Lite at the bar. They must have heard me, because the chubby one said, "This country was founded on conservative values."

I slammed down my PBR.

"This country was founded on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, so shut the fuck up about your conservative values." Obama was my president.

"Calm down, my friend."

"No fucking way. I've been listening to their bullshit way too long."

Rockford suggested we move to the Deadwood, which was Iowa City's best dive bar.

"Sounds good to me."

Brock and I had more front teeth than any of the regulars at the Deadwood, but the bartender was friendly, especially since we gave him a $5 tip on our first round, then Rockford broke out a bottle of Bolivian Pink 1975.

"I've been keeping it for a special occasion and nothing more special than an old friend visiting me." Rockford offered me the first blast.

1975 had been a good year.

"Was he a hippie back then?" Brock's 'he' was me.

I hated being third-person.

"Not even close, but he was good people." Rockford knew my soul.

I got another blast.

2009 was even better, because we were alive and alive was all there was everywhere in the world.

After the bar closed we returned to our motel to sleep.

Rockford kept hoovering his pile and asked with a growl native to the Hawkeye State, "Do you mind?"

It had been a long day and I answered, "Not at all." before crashing into the pillows like a plane without wings.

Rockford was still at it at dawn

"Hope I didn't keep you up. I tend to talk a lot." His voice possessed," he said, as I crawled out of bed.

"

"It was nice to meet you." Brock was polite.

"I wish you could stay longer."

"Me too." Brock was no angel, but a museum in Minneapolis expected him tomorrow.

Rockford said good-bye and drove back to his farm. We skipped the motel's complimentary breakfast and hit I-380 northbound.

"I love these dirt roads." Brock was into the trip as much as the movie.

"Only trucks and traffic on the interstate."

"And cops."

"And mayhem."

I pushed the Ford to 90.

We had to make time.

And time was easy to make once you were off the highway.

Especially when we had one more Hare to see.

To show to Barry.

In Ibiza.

It was far from the Fly-Over.