Free Postcards from a Dead Girl by Kirk Farber Page B

driving.
    The night feels suddenly cold, and the stripes flow past my car in the same steady rhythm, like time slipping away. Dash dash dash. One by one.

chapter 27
    I’ve read that in Haiti, magic is a part of everyday life. Things happen because they do, and people know better than to try to explain it. Objects float against physical law and people know things they shouldn’t. Zombies roam the earth. Many have witnessed the zombies, and reported them to be oddly familiar. They are not the glassy-eyed, open-mouthed, moaning creatures of horror movies, but everyday people caught in a half-animated state—quiet, desperate beings who swirl around in an eddy in the river of life. A curse, some say. A zombie curse. I’ve read several magazine articles on it, and I’m a believer.
    It’s a harder sell to my sister.
    â€œYou are not a zombie,” Natalie says emphatically. Her effort to whisper in her office phone sounds like foamy-mouthed madness. “You just got back from a nice cabin weekend away with friends. Aren’t you supposed to be relaxed and refreshed?”
    â€œThere is a condition,” I explain, “according to the Bizango secret societies, that is similar to a precancerous body state, only it’s more of a primer for zombieness, or zombiehood, whatever you might call it.”
    Nat scoffs. “I wish I could go on a cabin weekend away with friends.”
    â€œAre you saying there isn’t such a state?”
    â€œNo, there is certainly not,” she hisses.
    â€œA precancerous condition? Are you sure?”
    â€œYes, one can be in a precancerous condition, Sid, but you don’t have cancer. We ran all those tests already, and your white blood cells are perfect. You don’t even have signs of an infection. I’m sorry to say, but you are dangerously healthy.”
    I consider this, but MRIs and CATs and EKGs aren’t designed to pick up pre-zombiehood conditions. Maybe there is such a machine somewhere in the dark heart of Haiti, but I’ll need to do some more research.
    â€œWhat about my genetic disposition for aneurysms?” I ask.
    â€œWhat about it?”
    â€œI could fall over tomorrow. Bam. Just like Mom.”
    â€œAnd I could get struck by a bus.”
    â€œBut you’re not walking around with a genetic disposition to walk in front of buses, Natalie. You don’t walk in front of buses more than most people, putting yourself at greater risk than most people.” I feel my voice rising against her whisper-scream defense. “I don’t know that you even come in contact with buses, actually.”
    â€œI don’t have time for this today.”
    â€œWhen is the last time a bus rolled through your waiting room? I mean, really, of course you’re not going to get struck by one because the closest bus line is seven blocks from your office!” I loosen my grip on the phone, pull the hot receiver off my ear. I cool down while she mumbles something to her secretary.
    â€œSo what’s your point,” she says.
    â€œLousy metaphor.”
    â€œPoint taken. No more bus metaphors.”
    â€œDon’t get funny with me, doctor.” She hates it when I call her doctor. “You know I’m right.”
    â€œYou and I came from the same gene pool, Sid .” I hate it when she says my name like that. “But there are no other family members with a history of aneurysm, and even if there were, the chance that you would develop the same thing Mom had is extremely low, due to your age alone. Just because Mom had an aneurysm doesn’t mean you’re going to have one. You may give me one, of course.”
    I pace in the living room, switch the phone to my cold ear. Nat’s voice changes tone with the temperature. She sounds foreign, French maybe. I switch it back to the hot ear. I can’t get over the feeling that there’s something she’s not telling me.
    â€œWe should feel