Four miles of asphalt snake through a canyon of Live Oaks between our house and suburbia. It’s the route we take to get our kids to school. We could drive another way, but it would add twenty to thirty minutes on either side of the commute, depending on traffic and the number of Orange County Housewives (Real and otherwise) who prioritize mascara application and Instagram stories over, ya know, defensive driving.
Also, the canyon’s prettier. Sunlight streaks through the canopy of Live Oaks. In the winter and spring, a brook—often a stream, sometimes a river—rolls and ripples and rushes alongside the road. And every so often, a doe and her fawn will scurry through the canyon or a full moon will float over the horizon like a plump grapefruit. It’s magical.
Of course, like all things, there’s a dark side. For every doe and fawn, we’ve seen an owl swoop across through the canopy like a phantom, the body of some poor bastard mouse dangling from its razor sharp talons, what’s left of the roden't’s head smeared across the owl’s beak like some nightmarish version of a milk mustache.
In addition to birds of prey, we’ve come across foxes, skunks, bobcats, a bull that had escaped from a nearby ranch, rattlesnakes so long and thick they could only be described as pornographic, turkey vultures, countless bats, a motley crew of trash pandas, and even a mountain lion.
At first glance, we thought the mountain lion was a cat that was all too American (i.e. overfed). As we drove closer toward it, we realized it was too big to be American, so we upgraded its classification to bobcat. It brought our car to a complete stop because it had sat slap-bang in the middle of the canyon road. I opened my car door to scare it away so that it wouldn’t get hit or, worse, so that some poor family wouldn’t swerve to avoid it, crash into an oak, and turn our canyon into Chernobyl.
Thankfully, as soon as I opened my door, it scurried across the road. I pulled my door shut and then caught glimpse of its momma in the rearview. So it was actually a mountain lion cub, and it probably saved my life by scurrying when it scurried. I’m confident momma mountain lion would have had something to say about me stepping on her parenting paws.
Still, for all these canyon dangers, the zombie has been the most terrifying.
My wife was driving us home through the canyon. We love this drive. It’s a long deep breath on the daily—ya know, something that takes the sting out of work, parenting, pandemics, your standard 21st-century grind. This particular time in our lives was tough. On top of the apocalyptic factors already mentioned, there were other challenges:
Our septic tank failed and backed up into our house, and when we opened our doors to air it out, a half dozen rats moved in.
We endured two consecutive rounds of COVID.
A turd of a child blindsided our son during PE, leaving him with a fractured wrist and a broken spirit.
I had recently experienced something we could gently refer to as a nervous breakdown (more hilarity on this another time).
And perhaps, worst of all, at least from wife’s perspective, Oprah gave an interview to Harry and Meghan, forever tarnishing the modern legacy of the British royal family.
These were dark times, indeed, my friends. And darker still when the zombie entered frame.
One turn in the canyon is pretty sharp, and there’s a gully in the crook of this turn. Dozens of cars have been towed out of this inevitable ER-visit in the seven years since we bought our home. We’ve personally witnessed two cars cut the turn too tightly and go headlong into the gully. On one of these occasions, we watched the Fast-and-the-Flawed driver crawl out of the the upended whip, stumbling like Wile E. Coyote after a roadrunner ass-whooping. And this is what we thought happened when we saw the woman—or woman-ish being—stagger across the canyon road.
She had one shoe on, and she walked sideways more than she walked forward. Her hair looked less like it was done and more like it was an electrical experiment. As we drove past her, she waved us down and threw up a thumb at the same time, as if it was a hitchhiking emergency.
Because my wife and I had seen drivers in the throes of shock after an accident on this very road, we assumed that’s what was going on. My wife hung a u-turn and circled back while I dialed 911. I gave my wife the phone and stepped out of the car. Our headlights blared across this woman’s back, and when she realized we were behind her, she whirled around.
This is when my wife screamed. Like, a scream-queen, Jamie-Lee-Curtis, howler-monkey scream.
And the scream was warranted. For this was not a woman. This was a zombie. I know you’re probably thinking I’m being hyperbolic, exaggerating for comedic effect. I am not. This was a zombie. Not living, not dead, skin like weeks-old gray Silly Putty, looking like she had unboxed herself from six feet under just minutes before.
Of course, I didn’t arrive at this realization in the moment. I still labored under the delusion that this was just a woman who’d rolled her car into a ditch.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She stopped gazing into the high beams and turned her attention to me, “I need to get in your car,” she growled.
“Um…we called 911…my wife is talking to…”
“No!” she said, followed by something unintelligible, followed by a scream of her own.
“They’re on their way.” They were not. My wife was on with the 911 dispatcher, and apparently it was a busy night for Orange County’s finest, and canyon zombies were low on the list of priorities.
“I need to get in your car!” she said again. She raised her arms toward me, as zombies are wont to do, and then she started wobbling towards me. I’ve been in enough dangerous situations—and half-court pickup basketball games—to know that spacing is an advantage. So I shouted “Stay back!” to put her on her one-shoed heels, and then I gave her a little Kobe Bryant jab step. It juked the shit out of her, and she stumbled to the dirt mound on the side of the road.
My wife begged me to get back in the car. I was torn. On one hand, this was my moment. Toe-to-toe with a canyon zombie—are you kiddin’ me? I’m a huge George Romero fan, and this was a nightmare come true. On the other hand, my wife’s favorite movie is The Devil Wears Prada, and if we ever found ourselves in some horrible socialite shindig and some fashionista struck up a horrible conversation with me, I’m confident she would pack it in. So I got back in the car.
And then it got weirder.
The zombie woman started crawling—yes, crawling—from the canyon shoulder and into our high beams. She was about twenty feet from our car, still crawling in profile, and then, I assumer similarly to how insects are drawn to light—she turned and started crawling toward our car.
“Oh, my god, Dorothy! She’s crawling toward us! She’s in the middle of the road and she’s crawling toward us, Dorothy!” my wife said.
“Who the fuck is Dorothy?” I said.
“Dorothy is the 911 operator.”
“Hi,” Dorothy said. My wife had her on speaker.
“You’re already on a first-name basis with Dorothy?”
“You were outside, and we just started talking.”
“I’m battling the undead, and you’re making small talk.”
At that point, the canyon zombie woman was about ten feet from our car and she had sort of wobble-crawled toward the middle of the road. My wife gave Dorothy the play-by-play.
“What’s she doing now?” Dorothy asked.
On cue, the canyon zombie woman shouted something in gibberish, but she was cut short by a car zooming past her in the opposite direction, maybe two feet or so from liberating her zombie head from her reanimated corpse.
Being unfamiliar with zombie logic, I can’t say why the zombie switched tactics, but she got upright after two of three failed attempts and started lumbering along the middle of the road. Just like we worried about the mountain lion cub who took a seat in the canyon, we also worried about the zombie and how she might cause a gruesome accident. So we trolled along behind her, my wife flashing the brights to warn oncoming traffic, all the while chatting it up with Dorothy.
“I can’t believe I’m following this zombie woman. Dorothy, have you ever gotten a call like this?” my wife asked.
“I haven’t.”
“Amazing,” I said.
“Norm, how is this amazing?” My wife doesn’t share my appreciation for new experiences and conversation pieces when they fall into the category of trauma and horror. Me? I’ll take ‘em however they come.
“This is new territory for a 911 dispatcher, and we get to be part of it," I said. “It’s like we’re Lewis and Clark.”
“I will definitely remember this call,” Dorothy said, and I tilted my head and winked at my wife, as if to say, See, I’m right.
Suddenly, the zombie whirled around when another oncoming car passed, and then she started wobbling closer to our car again, her gray skin all lit up by the high beams. I rolled the window down, and the zombie moaned a familiar sentiment: “Let me in your… I need a car…”
Creeped out, my wife laid on the horn. The zombie woman staggered back, like we offended her. The nerve some zombies have! Then she turned around and kept stumbling along the middle of the road, and we crept along with her. Out of sight, out of zombified mind, as the saying goes.
“Cops getting here any time soon, Dorothy?” I asked.
“Not yet, but we really do appreciate your patience.”
“We appreciate you, Dorothy," my wife said. My wife says this to anyone who’s even a little helpful. If she sees a firefighter in public: “We appreciate you!” Military? “We appreciate you!” The guy that checks the water meter? “We appreciate you!” She overflows with sincere gratitude.
Dorothy was taken aback. “Nobody ever says that. Thank you so much.”
“Are you kidding?” my wife said, “I have a friend who quit her job to become a 911 dispatcher. Her name is K*** *****. Do you know her?”
“Oh, my god! I do!”
“Isn’t she great? I just love her,” my wife said. This happens all the time. My wife is two degrees of separation—sometimes a single degree—from everyone on the planet. And it always comes out in moments like these. There I was, thrilled that I finally got a real-life zombie story, and my wife had a heart-to-heart with the 911 dispatcher and turned it into a Nora Ephron movie starring Meg Ryan.
We’d been creeping along for about fifteen minutes now, and we maybe covered a quarter mile. That’s when the zombie stopped and turned to us again. This time she started rummaging through her tattered fanny pack. I’m politically opposed to fanny packs, so I couldn’t say for sure, but I assessed her rummaging as particularly violent and aggressive. What was she looking for? Bath salts? Chewing gum? A knife? A gun?
As she rummaged, she limped toward us again, this time approaching my wife’s side of the car. At this point, Dorothy instructed us to get the hell out of there. I believe she said something along the lines of, “Never trust a zombie with a fanny pack…” But that could have been my interior monologue. Hard to say.
My wife thanked Dorothy again and wished the police luck in their dealings with the canyon zombie. As we drove back home, my wife recounted our recent challenges—the nervous breakdown and the septic tank debacle, the rats, the broken bones, the British royal family. “It’s as if the gods thought we hadn’t had enough, so they said, send in the zombies!”
We really did have a rough go, even before the zombie encounter. Sometimes, though, it takes a zombie-level scare to remind you that everything’s gonna be okay if you have your person, your literal ride-or-die, right beside you—especially if that ride-or-die brings light and laughter and the best of life in the face of the fanny-packin’ undead.
If you enjoyed this, know that there is also a canyon ghost, a canyon monster, and a canyon witch—all true stories in development. In the mean time, consider perusing some of these:
A critique of physical intimacy: The Dubious Act of Hugging
Reflections on gratitude: Bloody Towels
A story about a chicken who was something of a zombie herself: The Lifesaving Virtues of Super Glue
Thanks for reading! I dream of some day telling these stories at Carnegie Hall, which means I’ll need to grow this audience. So tell your friends. Forward it, share it, talk about it! So much more to come!
If you have any zombie encounters of your own…
This one may be my favorite so far! Who the f@&k is Dorothy?!
Brilliant.
In all seriousness I’m fascinated by this canyon zombie and her origin story. What’s her deal??