ZOMBIE DREAMS by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the Spring of 2009 Brock Dundee hired my driving services for a road trip across the Midwest. I had driven cross-country at least ten times in the previous century. No accidents. He had never learned how to drive a car. The Scottish filmmaker was seeking out Barry Flanagan's hare statues of in Middle America. The Fly-Over.

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

“He’s paying me $1000 a week. You want to pay me that?” I had been asking for a raise since last year. No success.

“Have a good trip,” wished Manny. He had a good head for numbers and figured he was saving my two weeks' salary too.

“Of course I will." I was glad to be off the Street. Business sucked in April with no promise of flowers for May.

A week later Brock and I flew to Chicago and hired a car at O’Hare. The Scot mightn’t know how to drive, but he unfolded a map to plot out a route on the Interstates. He had just returned from Afghanistan. Filming for the British MOD. A spook many said. They had good map reading skills. I never asked about his trips to Central Asia, but I was the pilot for now.

I-80 south of Chicago was a nightmare.

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

“Aren’t the interstates faster?” Brock sought to visit five statues in St. Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines, and Minneapolis and we had eight days to cover six big states. His plan was to video the works and then film the artist seeing his works for the last time.

“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 easy pickings and that’s on the interstates.” I turned off I-80 at the Peoria exit 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. GMO corn for cattle.

“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 and 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.

On long stretches through the farmlands my Scottish friend and I didn’t see a human for hours. The low clouds clumped through the spring skies. They promised rain. The straight roads through the farmlands were devoid of cars. Everyone was on the Interstate heading to a WalMart.

Three days later 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 blasted by a neutron bomb.

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

“Leaving only the dead and the dying.”

“Like we were in a zombie movie.” 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. They had large populations of slow-moving fat people.

"They'd have to raid a Walmart."

"Or a McDonald's" Mickie Ds dominated the fast food feeding chain in the fly-over.

"The Undead eating the uneatable." Brock shuddered in his seat, although he was a sucker for KFC.

"Years ago I had a horrible dream about zombies.”

“What was it?” Brock took out his camera. "Let's have it from the top."

This trip was as much about us as the sculptor. Brock pulled out his movie camera.

"Camera, action."

“In 1975 I spent the winter in Mexico. Toward Spring I had caught a Trois Estellas bus from Monterrey, Mexico to Lardeo, Texas.” I hadn’t thought about that bus in ages. “It was a long ride and I read a story by HP Lovecraft. THE TERROR AT INNSMOUTH. The bus stopped in a small town and I ate a potato taco. It tasted a little funny and that night on the other side of the border I succumbed to food poisoning, so I checked into a cheap hotel. That night I lay on the bed with a fever. I read my book and fell asleep. Sometime in the night I dreamed that of a chase by zombies through an abandoned garden.”

"Fast or slow?"

"Slow."

“I hate the way zombies moved fast in RESIDENT EVIL.” My Scottish friend was a horror film buff and he zoomed for a close-up on me. A nod signal to resume my monologue.

“Fast is bad, but too many zombies was worst. They cut off my escape and I ran to a gazebo. Old screens covered the windows. I locked the flimsy door. The zombies huddled around the gazebo. Their breath smelled of rotting flesh. They scrapped at the screens with long yellow fingernails, then a voice deeper than a six-foot grave said, “Tell us the secret of human life.”

“The secret of human life?” Brock interrupted my spiel, since he felt the breaks gave me time to collect my thoughts.

“I didn’t know the secret of human life 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.”

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

"Freud said everything was driven by pleasure or death and death in dreams was a way of understanding your personal sexual repression levels.” I put on the left-turn signal. That road led to Kansas City. The Irish sculptor had a large statue at a local university across the Missouri.

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

“Screw him.” My story had no place for dead psychiatrists.

"So what happened?"

“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.”

“And?” 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 another 60 to satisfy my urge to live.”

“And did you tell them the secret?”

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

"A hero."

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

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

“Zombies exist 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.

In 1959 Wilbur Harrison sang that they had some pretty women there and in every one of my dreams pretty women were always more fun than zombies.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 2 by Peter Nolan Smith

“We have nothing like this in England,” Brock said, as he filmed the Mississippi spreading onto its broad flood plain north of St. Louis.

"Is this going to be in your movie?" I hadn't asked too many questions about his Barry Flanagan project.

"You never know what will mean something in a film." Brock was a one-man crew. Two, if you counted me a driver. He stopped shooting. "But this film is for Barry Flanagan. He's in the last stages of his disease. Imagine yourself trapped in a failing body. You'd want to see all this, wouldn't you?"

"And more." I had seen a good part of this world."

"Barry just has the view out his house on Ibiza."

"I imagine it's a good view." My French side of the family came from the northern Catalan of Perpignan. I had never crossed the seas to the Mallorca.

"Santa Eulalia del Río dates back to before the Romans. There are too many tourists, but this time of year."

"Same as here."

We traveled US 54 to Vandalia. We counted twenty-three cars and fourteen pick-ups on the state road. I turned northwest to Paris on US 25. The rental Ford hit 80 on the straightaways. The V6 could go faster given the right conditions.

"Aren't you scared of police?" Brock aimed the camera at me.

"They're out on the Interstates hunting revenue." I hadn't seen a cop car since a Highway Patrol cruiser in St. Louis stopped me for speeding. "Remember this is the Flyover, but it's not a wasteland."

Miles and miles of newly plowed fields wasn't much of a thrill, but a week's parole from New York was soothing to my eyes.

"No, I wouldn't say that." Brock put down his camera.

"How do people live out here?" Brock shook his head, as we passed an abandoned junkyard. Both of us were hungry, but US 24 offered little in the way of eateries. We were holding off for ribs in KC.

"Farming."

"I feel like we're remaking the last chapters of COLD BLOOD." Brock had chosen Truman Capote's opus about two drifters murdering a Kansas farmer as his travel book.

"Not much has changed out here since then." My book was Herman Melville's TYPEE. He had romanticized the Pacific cannibals of the Marquesas. They were good eaters, but I hadn't even opened the tale of a whaler stranded on a cannibal paradise.

"The last time I came through the Midwest was in 1994 in a Studebaker Hawk."

"That's why I wanted you with me. You're American."

I pressed PLAY for Arthur Lee and Love's IF 6 WAS 9 and my foot hit the gas.

The Ford was all go.

It hit 90.

Rain splashed off the four-laner. The sky was an ominous black. The tornado of THE WIZARD OF OZ belonged to Kansas. That flat state lay straight ahead.

"Stormy weather." It scared Brock.

"Nothing to worry about." I slowed the Ford to under 50 to prevent us from aero-planing into the scenery.

The rain stopped after a torrential deluge and the sun broke through the thick clouds. Kansas City rested on a hill. A golden nimbus transform it into Oz.

I was no Dorothy and stepped on the gas.

"I love America." Brock had been filming for two minutes.

I doubted any of it would make his film.

"My friend, Joe, ran away to Kansas City in 1965. He was 13 and wanted to see if there were any pretty girls there."

"As Wilbert Harrison sang in that song." Brock had a good voice typical to the Scots and sang the chorus.

"Joe found none and the cops sent him back to Boston."

"But he got here and here is a long way away from there."

"And that's the truth." I aimed at KC, thinking of pretty girls.

Downtown Kansas City mimicked St. Louis' purgatory. The pretty girls were heifer-fat from fast food. We booked a room in Kansas not far from Ray Santo's house. The South Shore native was free tonight and we met for ribs. Brock and I got sloppy. Ray stayed clean.

"I have to play later." Ray was a drummer in the KC scene.

"We're coming with you." Brock ordered another round. The three of us left the restaurant in a taxi.

"Good idea, Kansas City PD are always on the hunt for drunk drivers.

"But not drunks." Ray gave the driver directions.

"Not yet." I muttered, because Kansas was next to Oklahoma and that state didn't believe in curves, unless they were connected to a tornado.

Five minutes after we arrived at the crowded nightclub, Ray hit the stage. The band performed a tight set of country-western music. Brock yee-hahed during a break.

"How do you know Ray?"

"He went out with my sister." Ray had driven a red Corvette. He played good hockey and shoot better pool. My mother didn't approve of his dating my younger sister. "Back in 1970."

"That's almost thirty years ago."

"Yep." I hadn't seen Ray in too long. I yee-hahed and Brock joined me.

Drinking beer in Kansas was good and listening to country music was even better.

We were all friends for life and called it a night at closing. We dropped ray at his apartment and the taxi took us to our hotel. I fell asleep dreaming of my wife in Thailand.

Mem was not Dorothy and my son Fenway was my Fenway.

The next morning after coffee and donuts at the motel I drove us to Overland Park. Flanagan's Hare statue was supposedly in the middle of the Johnson County Community College campus. Everything about the school said suburbs, except for one thing.

Guns were not allowed on campus.

A uniformed guard gave us a pass. Our parking space was specified as 'visitor'. The art director met us on the walkway.

"School's not in session."

JCCC offered its student body of 37,000 the chance of changing lives through learning. It was a big school.

"That's fine. We're here to see the Hare." Brock broke out his equipment, as we entered the Administration Building.

"Well, here it is." The director stood before the 11-foot statue of a Hare on a Bell. I liked the one in St. Louis better. It had been more Nijinsky.

Brock asked our host about the Hare. I made myself scarce during the interview. I liked to know nothing and pulled out my cellphone to call New York.

No one answered, so I visited the Nerman Museum attached to JCCC. The sky was threatening heavy rain and hard winds. This was tornado country.

The statues and paintings appealed to the flatness of the Midwestern psyche. I tried to Vulcan mind-link with the atmosphere without success. I left the museum and reached the car before the sky opened for a deluge. I popped in a CD and read TYPEE.

An hour later Brock ran to the Ford in a downpour. He carried the camera bag under his coat. I was listening to Dave Van Ronk's BOTH SIDES NOW.

"Sorry about the wait." The Scot sat in the car. Rain dripped off him.

"The movie's more important than me." Brock wiped his face with a paper towel.

"That was great. I interviewed seven people. They really understand the Hare."

"So they don't think it's a rabbit?"

"They think it's something much more."

"Like what?" I was curious.

"You'll see."

"See what?"

"The difference between a rabbit and a hare."

"If you say so." I backed out of the parking spot. "Where to now?"

"North to Iowa." There was a Flanagan statue in Des Moines.

"Right." I headed toward the highway. It was the fastest way out of here and I was happy, because 'North to Iowa' was as good a destination as any and my friend Rockford would be waiting in Iowa City.

THE FLY-OVER Chapter 2 by Peter Nolan Smith

CHAPTER TWO

“There's nothing like this in Afghanistan.” Brock had spent the last two months outside of Kandahar. shot the spreading Mississippi with his movie camera. Farm houses seemed to float on the flood plain like Huck Finn's raft.

In the 90s I had driven across the Roof of the World. There were few trees and little water, but lots of desert.

Here the unplowed fields bloomed with flowers.

"Is this going to be in your film?" I hadn't asked too many questions about his Barry Flanagan project.

"You never know what will mean something in a film." Brock was a one-man crew. Two, if he counted me as a driver. He stopped shooting. "But this film is for Barry. Imagine yourself trapped in a failing body. You'd want to see all this, wouldn't you?"

"And more." Every mile was new to me.

We traveled US 54 to Vandalia, then turned northwest to Paris on US 25. The rental Ford hit 80 on the straightaways. The V6 could go faster given the right conditions.

"Aren't you scared of police?" Brock aimed the camera at me.

Yesterday I had explained why we were on the backroads, but this was my scene for the movie and I said without taking my eyes off the straightaway, "They're out on the Interstates revenue hunting. Remember this is the deep Flyover. No one from not here comes here, except anyone who lives here, but it's not a wasteland. This is America's breadbasket, although most of the corn goes to cows."

We passed a farmhouse and Brock said, "I feel like we're in COLD BLOOD."

The Scottish filmmaker had chosen Truman Capote's opus about two drifters murdering a Kansas family as his travel book.

"We don't look anything like Hickok or Smith." The young killers had been hung at hanging at the Kansas State Penitentiary in 1965.

"Or Truman Capote."

"Not much has changed out here since then."

"And not much will in the future."

My book for this trip was ON THE ROAD. I looked more like him than the killers.

I had yet to open Kerouac's homage to America, but his trip had begun up the Hudson at the Bear Mountain Bridge. I knew it well.

"The last time I came through the Midwest was in 1994 in a Studebaker Hawk." Meg had done most of the driving.

"That's why I wanted you with me. You're American."

I pressed PLAY for Arthur Lee and Love's IF 6 WAS 9 and my foot hit the gas.

The Ford was all go.

It hit 90.

Fifty miles east of KC rain sploshed off the four-laner and I slowed to 50.

THE WIZARD OF OZ belonged to Kansas. The sky turned black.

"Stormy weather." It scared Brock.

"Nothing to worry about."

I had never seen a tornado, but I didn't need to tell Brock that.

Twenty minutes later the rain stopped and the sun broke through the clouds. Kansas City rested on a hill and a golden nimbus transform the city into Oz.

"I love America." Brock filmed two minutes of our approach.

I doubted any of it would be in his film.

"My friend, Joe, ran away to Kansas City in 1965. He was 13 and wanted to see if there were any pretty girls there."

"As Wilbert Harrison sang in the song."

"He found none and the cops sent him back to Boston."

"But he got here and here is a long way away from there."

"And that's the truth."

Downtown Kansas City mimicked St. Louis' purgatory and we booked a room in Kansas not far from the house of my old friend from the South Shore, Ray Santo. The South Shore native was free tonight and we met for ribs. Brock and I got sloppy. Ray stayed clean.

"I have to play later." Ray was a drummer in the KC scene.

"We're coming with you." Brock ordered another round. The three of us left the restaurant. Ray hailed a taxi.

"Kansas City cops hate drunk drivers."

Ray gave the driver directions.

""But not drunks," I muttered, because Kansas was next to Oklahoma and that state didn't believe in curved road, unless they were connected to a tornado.

Five minutes after we arrived at the crowded nightclub, Ray hit the stage. The band performed a tight set of country-western music. Brock yee-hahed during a break.

"How do you know Ray?"

"He went out with my sister." Ray had a Corvette. He played good hockey and shot better pool. My mother didn't approve of his dating my younger sister. "Back in 1970."

"That's almost thirty years ago."

"Yep, and I haven't seen Ray in too long." I yee-hahed and Brock joined me.

Drinking beer was good and listening to music was even better, espically since they did have pretty girls in Kansas City.

The next morning we had coffee and donuts at the motel and then I drove us to Overland Park. Flanagan's Hare statue was in the middle of the Johnson County Community College campus.

Guns were not allowed on campus.

A uniformed guard gave us a pass. Our parking space was reserved for 'visitors'. The art director met us on the walkway.

"Not many people around," said Brock.

"School's not in session. It's Spring Break."

JCCC offered its student body of 37,000 the chance of changing lives through learning. It was a big school.

"That's fine. We're here to see the Hare." Brock broke out his equipment and we entered the interior quadranlge of Administration Building.

"Well, here it is." The director stood before the 11-foot statue of a Hare on a Bell. I liked the one in St. Louis better. It was very Nijinsky.

Brock asked our host about the Hare. I made myself scarce during the interview. I liked to know nothing and pulled out my cellphone to call New York.

No one answered, so I visited the Nerman Museum attached to JCCC. The sky threatened rain and the clouds weren't telling any lies.

An hour later Brock ran to the Ford to beat a downpour. He carried the camera bag under his coat. I was listening to Dave Van Ronk's BOTH SIDES NOW and I turned down the volume, as the Scot sat in the car. Rain dripped off his hat and he wiped his face with a towel. "That was great. I interviewed seven people. They really understand the Hare."

"So they don't think it's a rabbit?"

"They think it's something much more."

"Like what?"

"Freedom and wildness."

"And those are good things."

"Always for us. so now what now?"

"North to Iowa."

"On the highway?" Brock was a little concerned about his schedule.

"Not a chance." I pulled out of the parking lot certain no one had said 'North to Iowa' in this century and more importantly I was glad to have heard it at least once in my lifetime.