Loganne Van Veen

In Case of a Zombie Apocalypse Loganne Van Veen • Nonfiction

The roo is a lot to take in upon first glance. There are clothes strewn about, from the floor to the bed to the black futon. Posters litter the walls—there’s two of Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad, a Deadpool poster, a Lego Pirates of the Caribbean and Lego The Lord of the Rings, as well as some hand drawn ones, a poster of Hollyn, a white shirt hanging from a nail, and a framed collage of family members along with several other decorations I can’t identify. A The Walking Dead poster hangs from the ceiling along with a poster featuring all the Marvel characters and a poster from The Last of Us—an apocalyptic survival game.

Heavy brown curtains hang from the windows above the trundle bed which is covered with salmon sheets and several mismatched pillows. A Green Bay Packers blanket draped over the foot of the bed. A desk/dresser combo takes up the width of the wall next to the door, and it is stuffed full of unorganized knick-knacks, like a map of the USA, a pink lava lamp, a stuffed Pluto, a Packers Christmas hat, cleaning spray, a soccer Easter basket, and a nerf gun.

So much personality screams at you from every inch of this room that it feels almost invasive to take it all in.

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Two spots of this room are used to house an unusual assortment of tools. The first is in a cubby near the head of the bed. The second is inside the third drawer of the desk. Inside these places hides an assortment of zombie survival tools such as a baton with built-in compass that can also be screwed apart to reveal a hatchet, a collection of a variety of pocket knives, a small samurai sword, a mini-crossbow, and rope that can be used to tie into knots.

My little brother has been collecting this assortment of survival tools since the age of twelve. Along the way he has also gathered knowledge from guidebooks, websites, and of course, AMC’s The Walking Dead to store inside his head in case of a zombie apocalypse.

Holiday after holiday, Mal asks for new end of the world preparation gear just to store it away in his room. Having grown up together, I have only seen him really use one of the items once: his crossbow, an item from the earliest of his collecting years. Even then, it wasn’t put to use for long, because it was purchased with faulty bolts, or so he tells me.

Mal keeps his room stocked full of these oddities and tools that seem rarely used. He doesn’t put them on display either. They’re purely just-in-case items that he never seems to have enough of. He opens them, puts them together, then puts them in one of his two hiding spots.

Two things are pretty certain to me. My brother is not a hoarder. He does tend to develop attachments to sentimental things. He does not keep random collections of junk. I also think that despite his avid Walking Dead habits, he does not believe there is an imminent infestation of zombies on the horizon. My brother is a smart kid, and while he may get lost in his mythological worlds, he has a very good grasp on this reality.

I do know my brother is a romantic. I don’t mean in the relationship sense, although I do think he is more romantic than most of the kids his age. As a romantic, I think he has an idealized view of life that people in the modern world have dismissed. He sees the world in stories and in adventures and never stops imagining.

There was a night somewhere between the fourth or fifth grade when I remember Miguel, our mum’s boyfriend at the time,

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standing in the corner of Mum’s room yelling at her, louder than I’d ever heard him yell before. Mal rushed in as always; he always yelled back—I never would. On this night, I followed behind him and found myself backed into the corner to the right of the open door—Mum stood straight across from me and Miguel in the corner diagonal to me.

“Go get Miss Tina,” Mum said to me, “Tell her to call someone.”

I nodded and wiped my sweaty hands together. I took a deep breath and headed for the open door, but didn’t make it two steps before he lunged in my direction.

I remember ducking, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Mal grab a broom from the corner and hit Miguel with it. The rest is all really a blur, but everyone was okay.

Malicaeh likes to call that night the night he saved my life. Probably a bit dramatic, because I don’t believe Miguel would’ve actually hurt me, but Mal still did something heroic that day. Something I don’t think I would have ever done myself.

This is a story I hear Mal mention more often than most of his stories, but not in a way to elaborate that night, or bring back the darker memories, but a simple reminder of “hey, remember that one time I saved your life?” to which I usually roll my eyes and say “yeah, that was a pretty cool thing to do.”

Mal has always been more introspective than talkative, my quiet counterpart. He prefers to think and observe, but the times I can get him talking, I learn more from him—even though he is five years my younger—than I do from most of my peers. He is wise far beyond his own years. He gives life advice and love advice while also having one of the most creative minds.

“When you finish your homework we should go—” a pain shot up through my left calf.

“Crap, you know those like really random pains that pop up in your body, and just like drive you crazy for a minute? Definitely just had a major one.”

“Yeah, Lo,” Mal said. “Everyone gets those. I think when you get one it means an alternate reality version of yourself is warding off bad guys while we sit here and live a normal life. And when you

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feel the pain, it’s them getting, like, stabbed, or maybe shot with an arrow or something.”

That moment has stuck with me for years. At first I think it was because of how creative the sentiment was, and how it was such a writerly thing to say. Looking back now, I think it’s all about how Mal wants to be a hero. He wants to be the protector of his world and all those he loves that are in it.

For such a quiet guy, Mal is better at reading situations than I am. Where I tend to push my limits with others, Mal is quick to know when to drop it, unless it is my mum of course.

In a zombie apocalypse my brother would no doubt find a way to get all of his family together so he could protect us all in one place. They are the world he will always fight to protect. Having no father, my brother grew up pretty quick as the man in the family, and I can imagine that’s another reason he feels the need to be prepared, even for the most extreme circumstances. We still make jokes about how Mal will probably end up building one of those tiny homes from HGTV in Mum’s backyard so he doesn’t have to leave her.

During his first overnight trip away from home in the 5th grade to Gettysburg, following a ghost walk, Mal found himself sleep walking through the hotel after a series of nightmares.

“I don’t believe in ghosts, but I thought I saw a figure in the corner most of the night until I finally got to sleep,” he told me. “Then I saw the glow of the hallway lights and woke up in the hallway standing outside the door. Obviously it wouldn’t open so I had to knock on it and was let back in. The weird part is that Mr. Rascoe said that when he let me in the metal door lock thing was still intact and he didn’t know how I got in the hallway without it coming loose.”

I think the nightmares were a reaction to leaving Mum alone for the first time.

Growing up Mal and I learned to care for each other with our Mum’s busy schedule, and found solace in the presence of each other in the best and worst of times. He has always known my deepest secrets and has always been there when I needed him.

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We grew up spending more time outside than most of our friends and exploring whatever we could get ourselves into. When we lived in our first childhood home my grandparents helped my Mum build a new fence outlining the entire property to enclose more of the backyard. They tore down all of the old fence except for the section lining the left side of the yard.

Me and Mal spent that summer scrounging scrap wood and large tupperware lids to throw over the top of the parallel segments of fence to create our own little tunnel where we’d hideout and pretend we lived with wolves and other forest creatures.

I can remember running around the backyard only to dart back in between the two fences, the old and the new—to hide from whatever monsters decided to run after us that day. This carried our summers together, in between swim meets and play dates with other friends, until the school years started up again.

Once we stopped spending all of our free time in it, Mum would talk about tearing the inner old fence of our hideout down and we’d shout “no” every time.

My brother is a walking paradox. He is so gentle—I have never even heard him utter a swear word. He is very passive, but yet he can’t learn enough about wilderness survival and how best to kill a zombie with an assortment of weapons.

Zombie apocalypse preparedness is not really Mal’s preparation for the invasion of the zombies, but rather a way he sees he can be a hero of his world, in his time. It is a romantic vision of saving civilization from the brain-eaters. A means to take control of his own life. My little brother is going to change the world some day—I know it. He will be the hero in his own story, which probably won’t be a zombie apocalypse. But his gentle spirit, grounded heart, and passion for being the hero will drive the plot of his own story.

In his mind he is the Rick Grimes of his story.

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