Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie by Jeff Norton Page A

first day at camp.’
    ‘Then you haven’t heard about our … clothing charity,’ she said. I couldn’t tell if she was asking me or telling me.
    I just shook my head.
    ‘At the end of every session, we ask the campers to donate as many of their clothes as they can spare to help the needy. At the end of summer, the camp makes sure the clothes and shoes and stuff—’
    ‘Socks too?’
    ‘We’ll take it all. We make sure it all gets washed and given to charities then handed out to the less fortunate at Christmastime.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said, suddenly feeling a bit foolish for feeling so ghoulish. ‘That’s a relief.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
    I somehow didn’t feel right revealing my morbid anxiety about the piles of clothes, so I tap-danced a bit. * ‘You know, that you guys actually wash the clothes first. On a high heat, with antibacterial soap and fabric softener.’
    ‘Sounds like doing laundry is your talent, Adam,’ she said with a smile, leading me out and closing up the barn door.
    ‘It’s just a hobby,’ I said.
    ‘Talent show’s in just two weeks,’ she said. ‘What is your talent?’
    I was about to say, ‘rising from the grave’, but I certainly didn’t want to reveal my undead status. ‘Dancing,’ I said. ‘I’m a pretty good dancer.’
    I was doing myself down. I’m not just pretty good, I’m zomtastic. Since returning from the dead, I’d kept practising at Sunshine Studios, and I actually think my rhythm and timing had improved in my afterlife.
    We walked back through the woods and then across the fields. Lana told me her life story. She was born in somewhere called Sarnia, Ontario and always wanted to go to camp when she was my age.
    ‘In my last year of high school, I was working at a doughnut shop when this camp advertised for counsellors. So I signed up and made the cut. I’m in university now, studying to be a teacher, probably for kids your age, actually, but coming up here in the woods is like a dream job.’
    My suspicions started to fade. She was pretty normal, and not at all weird as I’d expected. ‘Can I ask you a question, Lana?’ I asked.
    ‘Anything, Adam.’
    ‘Why does everyone up here like doughnuts so much?’
    She laughed. ‘Ha, yeah, we do … we’re Canadian. It’s in the blood I guess.’
    In the blood .
    It made me think of Corina, and what a tough time she was having. She was hungering for human blood and although she projected an iron will, I couldn’t be sure that at some point she wouldn’t snap and go on a bloodsucking rampage, especially up here in the woods … with no phone signal and no witnesses. It feltlike the perfect place for a vampire massacre. She chose to be a vegan, but being a vampire was … in the blood .
    ‘Can I ask you a question?’ Lana asked.
    ‘Anything,’ I said. I mean, she could ask anything she wanted, but that didn’t mean I had to answer.
    ‘What were you really doing snooping around?’ she asked. ‘I won’t tell anyone, I’m just curious.’
    ‘Well,’ I said, buying some time for my thankfully still-firing neurons to work out the best response. ‘If this isn’t too forward, do things seem a little strange to you here?’
    ‘What do you mean by strange ?’
    ‘Um, are you guys deliberately fattening up us campers?’
    ‘Deliberately?’ She laughed. ‘We can’t keep you little guys away from the grub!’
    ‘It just seems—’
    ‘Adam, enjoy it. This camp is supposed to be an escape for you guys, away from school, away from your families, away from dinner-time rules that say you can’t have ice cream before your main meal. This is a place to let loose and have fun, and if this isn’t too forward, you strike me as the kind of guy who has trouble letting go and having fun.’
    ‘I have fun,’ I said. ‘In my own way. Ideally with indoor plumbing.’
    As we approached the campfire area, the flames were dying but the singing wasn’t. The happy campers were singing about a camel