8: Making Friends
A/N: Very scattered swearing from this point on.
Perhaps five minutes passed; perhaps an hour passed. If there were a unit of time called a 'brain' based on how frequently a zombie muttered the word brains, then seven brains had passed before anything at all happened.
What happened was another noise. It was slow and steady and quiet, and Scarecrow recognized it immediately as the shambling, shuffling thing that had scared them north into the forest in the first place. He could assume that it was continuing its northbound journey, which would mean that the group of zombies, and Scarecrow's friends, had gone north, based on the way he'd thought they'd gone. Great, he thought. Into the cold heart of the forest, just like Gerty said not to do. So far they hadn't followed Gerty's directions very well.
The shuffling thing was coming closer, and from what it sounded like, it was about to pass just to one side of the carnage. It was going to go re-join its zombie flock, perhaps for some flare-centric ritual, or maybe a sacred brain feast.
"Hey!" Scarecrow shouted. "Hey you! Over here!" Helpless as Scarecrow was, at least he could be of some use. At least he could try to slow down this particular threat. He listened, and heard that the shambling had stopped, but it wasn't coming any closer.
"Hello?" Scarecrow called. "I said I'm over here!"
"Brains," interjected the nearby legless zombie, which gave Scarecrow an idea.
"Yes, brains!" called Scarecrow. "There are tons of brains over here! You can have some!"
The shuffler still did not move.
"What are you, shy?" Scarecrow yelled. "You can't look any worse than I do!" More silence. He decided to try a different tactic. "The people with brains escaped…They ran east! I mean west! They ran west, and you might catch them if you shuffle a little faster! West is away from my voice, by the way. I know it's hard to remember these things when you don't have a brain." Still there was no sound from the shuffler. "And the people with brains definitely didn't go north, in case you were wondering!"
"Heeynth," came the eerie voice. Definitely the same shuffler. It was so otherworldly that Scarecrow began to wonder if this even was a zombie he was yelling at. Whatever it was, he didn't want it anywhere near his friends.
"Come on," he called again. "What do I have to do to get you to move? I know you're curious!"
Still silence. Scarecrow's feeling of helplessness was growing, and he was beginning to think that he might suffocate on it if he didn't do something real quick.
"Please!" he shouted. "Please come visit me! I'm lonely!"
Shuffle shuffle shuffle. It had decided to move, and it was moving towards Scarecrow.
"Shit, I didn't think that would work," Scarecrow muttered. "Now what?" When the zombie got here, it would either shuffle right on past, or stand there staring at him, or maybe it would try to rip his eyes out and steal his hat and throw the rest of him into a flare. This one was moving awfully slow; perhaps it was in very bad shape. Perhaps Scarecrow could just roll away from any advances, or bite it if it tried anything. He was not pleased with the idea of biting into a rotten zombie, but then again, better that than further dismemberment.
The shuffler hadn't been far away to begin with, and now Scarecrow could hear it clearly; if he'd had a better angle, he likely would have been able to see it coming by now. As it was the angle was awful, and the footsteps became quite close – twelve steps? ten? – before he could see the thing itself, and about the time it had come into view, it stopped and stood in its tracks, staring down at Scarecrow.
Scarecrow likewise stared. He wasn't sure what he was looking at. The man was old; white hair, wrinkles, skin and bone. No taller than Scarecrow himself, wearing a very nice suit, fit for any rich old man on a wilderness expedition. The cuffs on the green pants were very muddy indeed, but besides that not a scrap of fabric seemed out of place. In fact not a flap of skin seemed out of place either, except for one glaring exception, which was that the mandible had been torn half off the face, and hung loosely from the neck and one cheek. The tongue lolled. The eyes were glazed as they stared down at Scarecrow.
"Heeeynnnnth," the old man groaned. Besides the eyes, it didn't look like a zombie, but of course when one tries to say 'brains' when one hasn't got a proper mandible, it comes out sounding like 'heynth', so Scarecrow thought he could safely assume that the mysterious shuffler was indeed a zombie.
"You're rather dapper," Scarecrow said, "for being a zombie." Perhaps if he just kept talking, the zombie would stand there forever and not do anything bad.
This garnered no response.
"You look about four times as old as any of those other zombies though. You must have some secret that keeps you together so well."
The zombie stared.
"Do you have a name?" Scarecrow tried, and was of course met with silence. "You can call me Scarecrow," he tried. "Because that's what I am. I haven't a brain. Just like you. Scarecrow."
"Hheeynnth."
"No no, it's Scarecrow. With an 's'. Sssss. I suppose you'd have trouble with that, though, with your jaw. You can call me… Hharegoa," Scarecrow said, trying to demonstrate how somebody without a working mandible might say his name. "Doesn't sound very close, but we'll know what you're trying to say. Hharegoa. Give it a try."
"Hharegoa," said the zombie, and Scarecrow raised his eyebrows. So the zombies weren't as dumb as he'd figured.
"You do understand me!" Scarecrow exclaimed, though a moment later he had to wonder what good that would ever do him. He supposed that if a zombie was taking the time to stare down at him and learn his name and not maul him, it was possible that it wasn't as malevolent as the other members of the flock.
"Say, can you sew?" Scarecrow tried.
The zombie said nothing.
"Figures," Scarecrow muttered. "Can you see my hands anywhere?"
The zombie maintained his steady stare, not even bothering to look around. Scarecrow wondered if the zombie's repetition of the name Scarecrow had said had been mere coincidence.
"What's my name?" he asked again.
The zombie was silent. So it had been a fluke. The zombie was just going to stand there and stare at him until Tin Man came back and rescued him, or until the rains came and washed Scarecrow away in a billion different directions to rot in a billion tiny little pieces. He had a strong feeling that the latter option was far more likely, but there wasn't a thing he could do about it, not without his hands.
"Brains," said the zombie half, from its position on the ground.
"Hands," countered Scarecrow. "And legs."
"Braaains," insisted the zombie half.
"Yes I know, but you'll never find a brain until you can get your legs back."
"Heynth," the old zombie contributed.
"Yes, trust me, I understand, I do," Scarecrow replied. "There are so many things I could do if I only had a brain, but give me a pair of hands over a brain any day."
The old zombie turned and shuffled away.
"Oh, for… I didn't mean to offend you!" Scarecrow called. "I'm sorry, I'm not much for conversation but you don't have to go and leave me here like that!"
It was useless; the old zombie continued to shuffle away. Scarecrow sighed. He'd kept one slow, skinny zombie away from his friends for a few moments. Great help he'd been. Maybe next he could –
"Haanth," the old zombie grumbled.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Scarecrow sighed. "I'm trying to wallow in self-pity here, please don't interrupt."
"Haaaaanth," the zombie crooned.
"Good grief, I heard you the first time," Scarecrow said. "Maybe your legless zombie friend cares, but I sure don't."
"Hanth!" the zombie exclaimed, making Scarecrow jump a bit. It was then that he realized the old zombie had not, in fact, shuffled off into the woods; the zombie had merely shuffled around the perimeter of the carnage, and was now lurching back towards Scarecrow, holding –
"Holy corn!" Scarecrow cried. "My hand! My arm! You found it! You… You were saying hands! Why, you sneaky bastard, you can understand me!" He watched, at once horrified and delighted, as the zombie approached, and then, obedient as a dog on a hunting trip, dropped the arm near Scarecrow's head.
"Hanth," said the zombie.
"Do you see my legs?" asked Scarecrow next. The zombie stared. "My legs?" he tried again. "Find my legs."
The zombie turned around again and began shuffling. It may have tried to say 'legs' but it came out as a sort of burbling, choking noise. Apparently the 'g' sound was especially difficult. As the zombie shuffled, Scarecrow wondered what in the world he was going to do with his arm and hand, now that he had it. The basket with the needle and thread was on one side of his head; the arm was on the other. He bitterly regretted that Tin Man was not with him at the moment; all of Tin Man's questions about the nature of being a living scarecrow could probably have been answered. Scarecrow could not move his arm, though it was mere inches from his head. He could not move the pile of loose straw and sweetgrass that lay scattered beneath him. If he couldn't move the loose straw but he couldn't move the unfastened burlap arm, then what was it that made him able to move his head around?
The old zombie had shuffled over again and, true to Scarecrow's request, had found Scarecrow's legs, and now dropped them on the ground within reaching distance of Scarecrow, if Scarecrow had been able to reach for anything at the moment.
"Thanks," said Scarecrow.
"Brains," said the half-zombie, flailing its arms about weakly.
"You're just jealous I got what I wanted," Scarecrow replied, but the sentiment was forced. What good were his appendages when he couldn't get them back on? He considered the old zombie, and he considered what had just happened. Apparently the zombie was willing to fetch things, but didn't know about sewing. Or maybe hadn't understood Scarecrow when Scarecrow had asked. Maybe Scarecrow needed to be more direct.
"Would you please go into that basket," Scarecrow said, nodding to Dorothy's basket, "and find the needle and thread?"
To his delight, the zombie creaked into motion, first lurching over to the basket, then lowering itself down to the ground. Then it reached for the basket and ended up flipping the whole thing over. It didn't seem to have much coordination, but Scarecrow, being familiar with this problem, was willing to give the zombie some slack. The zombie rooted through the spilled contents and Scarecrow tried to turn himself around a little to see what was going on; by the time he had an okay view of the basket, the zombie was already holding the spool of thread in one hand, and was pushing the other items around. For a moment, Scarecrow feared that the needle had rolled away and fallen into a little crack in the rock, never to be seen again, but then he noticed the needle.
"Oh," Scarecrow said. "The needle is stuck there, in your finger… Right there…" The zombie had managed to prick itself with the needle without having realized it had found the needle, and now it didn't seem to notice, even though Scarecrow was saying it aloud. "You found the needle," Scarecrow tried.
"Neeeel," said the zombie, and kept digging.
"Stop digging," Scarecrow said. The zombie halted in mid-dig. "Okay, now take the needle out of your finger." The zombie looked down at both of its hands and, after a moment, saw the needle and pulled it out of the finger. There was no blood. "Good. Great," said Scarecrow. "Now thread the needle."
The zombie stared.
"Thread the… See that little hole in the end of the needle? You have to put the end of the thread through the hole."
The zombie held up the needle and the end of the thread. So began one of the most agonizing waiting times Scarecrow had ever experienced. The zombie was not concentrating very hard on its task, and Scarecrow supposed that that came with the territory of being dead, so he couldn't get mad at the zombie for being such a crappy needle-threader, but it was very frustrating to watch the zombie take clumsy stab after clumsy stab at threading the needle. Each time it failed it would try again, which was admirable, but it never tried anything new to make the task easier; it simply tried the same thing over and over, which Scarecrow had heard was the definition of insanity, but maybe it was also the definition of being undead. It wasn't as if Scarecrow had any needle-threading advice to offer. Time passed; the half-zombie continued its regularly-scheduled declaration of its deepest desire. Above, through the scrappy canopy of trees, the cloud cover was becoming patchy and moonlit, and soon Scarecrow could see a few stars above. He wondered if any of his friends were observing the opening of the skies, or if they were instead experiencing the opening of their heads.
About eighteen brains later, the old zombie stopped making the same repetitive motion. Scarecrow at first wondered why it had stopped, but upon closer inspection he realized that somehow a miracle had occurred and the needle was threaded.
"You did it!" Scarecrow exclaimed. "Good job! You threaded the needle! Oh, that's so great. Boy am I glad you decided to stop by. Now… um, stick the needle into my shoulder. No, wait! Stick it into my arm there, the one you dropped on the ground. Wait wait wait wait," he said, as the zombie lurched into motion. Scarecrow saw that the thread was just one tug away from coming out of the needle, so Scarecrow had the zombie pull the thread through the needle for quite a ways, to ensure that the needle would not come unthreaded. It was a very painstaking process, and Scarecrow had to make sure that one little slip-up in his instructions wouldn't ruin everything. He was making things up as he went, but was happy to do so; there was a sliver of a chance that this would work. Eventually he'd gotten the zombie to pull the needle through the upper cuff of the burlap at the top of the arm, and he'd gotten the zombie to scoot the arm up near Scarecrow's socket.
"Okay, now stick the needle into my shoulder, like you did for – argh, stop!" Scarecrow exclaimed, as the needle came plunging down dangerously close to his eye. "I said my shoulder. Go slower. Just… bring it down by my shoulder there. Okay." Soon after, the zombie had managed to make the first wearisome stitch. Scarecrow asked the zombie to pull the thread through, and as the zombie did as it was bade, the arm was pulled into the socket.
Immediately, Scarecrow's arm twitched to life.
"Look! Look look look, see? See what you did?" Scarecrow cried happily. The zombie looked, but did not seem to share his excitement. "This is great! It – " Scarecrow had tried to move his arm around some more but the movement had separated the arm from the socket again, and his ability to move it was canceled. Scarecrow frowned, and scooted himself closer to the arm. He regained the ability to use it, but was very careful not to jostle the joint. Now he was able to take up the needle and thread himself and begin the stitching process. The angle was very awkward, and at first, the joint kept coming apart, and he'd have to instruct the zombie to help him, but eventually he had a few secure stiches in and was able to proceed by himself, the zombie watching absently from its position by Scarecrow's head. Nearly thirty-five brains passed before Scarecrow was able to get around the entire joint, and some of the stitches were hideous, and the thread had knotted and tangled and looped itself everywhere, but his arm was relatively secure, and, better than that, he could now move on to attaching his own legs.
This process went much smoother and only took about thirty brains to complete; as Scarecrow stitched, he stuffed as much of the loose straw as he could get his hand on back into his body. When he finally came to his feet, it felt so good to be standing that he very nearly smiled, but then he remembered that if he could stand, he could walk, and if he could walk, then he should be trying to rescue his friends, which was no doubt going to be a horrifying, if not painfully disappointing, experience.
"Quick," he said to the old zombie, "help me find my other arm. It hasn't got a hand. See if you can find my hand, too."
"Arrn. Hanth." The zombie slowly got to its feet and started shuffling around again. Scarecrow was a bit peeved when the zombie found his arm before he himself did – he had been thinking that his ability to find things had to be at least on par with a zombie's, if not superior, but apparently this was not necessarily the case. He set to work sewing the left arm back onto its socket while the zombie continued to search for the hand, but by the time Scarecrow had gotten the arm on, no hand had been turned up.
Scarecrow stood frozen in indecision for a moment. Hands were, as their name suggested, handy things to have around, possibly especially during rescue attempts. But he'd already been delayed so much; maybe he'd be able to get by with just one. It was really too bad that he didn't even have a working elbow, but he supposed he'd have to deal with it.
"Okay," he said out loud. He crouched and put the contents of Dorothy's basket back together, then took up the basket. "Never mind about the hand. I'll get another one later. Now, show me where they went."
The old zombie stopped shuffling and stared at Scarecrow.
"Oh, don't tell me you don't know where the others went. Don't tell me we went through all that and now I can't even… Okay, how about this: follow Dorothy. Follow the young lady."
The zombie stared.
"Brains," said the one on the ground.
"Hush, semi-zombie, I'm trying to do something very important. Old zombie: bring me to your home."
The old zombie pivoted laboriously, and started to trudge north. Finally. Scarecrow followed; he was more unsteady than usual, as his newly-reunited body was still getting used to itself, but still he had no trouble at all keeping up. In fact he found himself off ahead sometimes, staring eagerly into the dark, and then glancing back to make sure he was still following the zombie's projection. They gained elevation at a steady rate, and the farther they went, the chillier the air became. It dawned upon him that he hadn't seen any flares since they'd encountered the horde of zombies; either the flares were on a very strict schedule or they had a specific territory. Either way, Scarecrow was more than relieved to be able to drop that particular worry. At one point he noticed that the old zombie had a hole in the back of its head. The zombie didn't seem to mind that Scarecrow was inspecting it so closely, so Scarecrow peered in and shuddered to see a completely brainless skull, just as they'd suspected. The hole seemed to indicate that perhaps the zombie had once had a brain, but the brain had since been removed. Had this zombie once been a normal meat person? Had all the zombies once been alive and well?
If so, some very foul magic was at work. Scarecrow shuddered; if there was dark magic at work, it was probably to be found in the heart of the forest. Where they were headed. Of course.
