That Time I Was Almost An Isle Royale Teen Artist-In-Residence

When I was a teen, I tended to write in the voice of a dispassionate scientist. I’d never had a creative writing teacher, so my written voice reflected the characters from the science fiction books I read. This came through in everything I wrote, even when that voice was totally wrong for my characters.

When I was 16, I discovered a teen artist-in-residence program hosted by the National Park Service out of Isle Royale National Park, and I absolutely loved the idea of going to that beautiful island to write. I applied for the 2019 season with a short story about Lake Superior taking the shape of a watery humanoid. That story had a lot of problems with it, including that misapplied voice, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t accepted. I was about as bummed as a 16-year-old could be, which is … considerable. 

My mom encouraged me to try again the following year, so I did. I wasn’t such a kiss-ass that time — the previous year, I had written about Lake Superior because I thought the judges would like it. Instead, I wrote about the beginnings of a zombie apocalypse as experienced by a busload of Model Government kids returning from their big yearly meet-up. This time, I was chosen as an alternate, and getting that email was the highlight of my year. While I didn’t outright win, having my story chosen as one of the top entries in a national competition affirmed that I was doing something right. 

But then, with the comedic timing of a trainwreck, COVID-19 hit, and they canceled the program that year. I was also already 18 (the program’s upper age limit) and wouldn’t be eligible to try again the following year. Instead, I spent the summer writing, helping my parents move, and trying not to get sick. 

There is no moral to this story—life does not give morals—but it was an important step for me. It was the first time — outside of my friends and family — that strangers whose opinions I cared about validated my writing ability and thought I was good enough to qualify for their program.

Here’s the story with all its errors and faults, but I think it isn’t too bad for that time in my life. I am still so grateful for what it did for me.

Highway Zombies

The bus ran over a pothole and I shifted in my seat, feeling momentarily weightless. In only a few hours we would get home, dispersing like a swarm of flies throughout the Twin Cities to our various homes and normal lives. 

We had been on the road since seven, and now it was a little after three, and we still had around 130 miles to go. Knowing the pace of this bus, I’d not be safely under my house’s eaves until well after dark. I’d missed almost a week of school for Model Government, and I was not looking forward to making up all my homework. 

My eyes wandered to a boy named Frederick, but he liked to be called Freddy. He was looking out the window at something I couldn’t see. He shook his head and looked around inside the bus aimlessly. Then, buzzing in my pocket distracted me from his odd expression.

I pulled out my phone and tried to turn it on, but it didn’t wake up. It had been out of batteries for hours. I sighed at the phantom buzz, and slipped it back into the pocket of my sweatpants. Not that it mattered; we were in a cellular dead zone. 

I leaned back and took stock of the things I could do for the last 130 miles. I could read, but the light in the bus was abominable. I could sleep, but I hated sleeping sitting up. I couldn’t goof off on my phone because it was dead. 

Joining a conversation seemed to be the only option. I pulled myself out of my near-comatose state and looked around. A couple of girls were talking quietly - and obviously privately - a few rows ahead of me. Beyond them were the chaperones and the college-bound ultra-nerds who were talking about what they’d done in Model Government. Even if I’d gladly talk with the nerds about nerdy stuff, the idea of discussing the political process right then made me want to puke.

From the back of the bus I heard the beginnings of an argument. “He doesn’t count because he’s actually alive,” Lucy said with annoyance. Lucy was a preternaturally gaunt girl who always wore big sweaters, skinny jeans, and Doc Martens, and could get a bit competitive.

I’d found my conversation. 

Before I joined them, I looked over at my best friend Willow, her mouth open a little as she slept in the crook of the window and seat back next to mine. I didn’t wake her, but felt bad about leaving her for some reason. Somehow I felt I was leaving her defenseless. I shook off my bad feelings and walked back to where the debaters raged.

“But he was dead! Reanimated isn’t alive; it is reanimated, whether it’s by a pretentious college drop-out or a vampire,” Carrie said, her voice more than a little venomous, high, and slightly squeaky. However, If you met Carrie in person, you wouldn’t describe her as mousey; she was definitely a rat.

I took a seat across the aisle from Freddy, who was watching the debate with mild interest. His eyes jumped to me as I sat, and he smiled. 

“But when Frankenstein reanimated it, the monster had a heartbeat. He wasn’t undead because technically he was alive,” Lucy said and paused. “He got a second chance at life while a vampire is just dead.”

“Freddy…!” Carrie whined. “Will you back me up?”

Freddy paled, put up his hands and shook his head a little. He was tall and skinny and had a smile and nose too big for his face. His blond hair hung in his eyes, and he would brush it out of his face when he was nervous. He had a very expressive face and he rarely held back emotions. He was the perfect theater kid. “Oh, no. I’m not opening that can of worms. You two can figure this out on your own,” he said and Carrie turned to me, silently asking for a tiebreaker. 

Before I could say anything in favor of either side, Willow stumbled down the aisle, her hair smushed in different directions from sleeping, and she sat down in the seat ahead of me. “You’re both dumbasses. It’s just fiction; who gives a crap about the definition of undead? Y’all are boring,” Willow said, staring at Lucy and Carrie through narrowed eyes. Lucy seemed relieved while Carrie looked totally pissed. I felt warmth in my chest for Willow’s deliberate intervention. Willow glanced at me and smirked. I smiled back, mouthing a silent thank you!

Carrie began to tear into Willow for interrupting their argument, but I wasn’t worried; Willow could hold her own, so I looked out the window for a moment—

Something was happening in a field just off the side of the road. 

A man was running from a woman. He looked back at her from time to time, his face pinched. The expressionless woman was flat out sprinting after the man. The woman didn’t even seem to breathe; she never let up. She closed in on the man, and then she tackled and pinned him to the ground. I watched in horror as the woman bit the man, and I continued to watch as blood pulsed out of his neck.

“What the fuck?” I muttered. Suddenly everyone’s eyes were on me, and I felt my voice climbing up my throat. “That guy… oh my God!” 

“What is it?!” Freddy asked, sitting up and looking through the back windows, but we were already too far away.

“That woman, she—” I said, the words stumbling out. “She bit him!” Horror pooled in my guts, and I suddenly felt dizzy. I put my head between my knees. 

“What??” Willow asked, squinting back, trying to see what I’d seen. 

“The man— he was running. Fast. And the woman… She tackled and bit him. In the neck,” I said, my fingers tracing the spot on my neck where she’d bitten him. Lucy, Willow, and Freddy shared a look of worry. 

“Like a zombie?” Carrie asked, a glimmer of mean humor lighting up her eyes. I flashed a look of irritation at her. She was always the first to put people down, and I wouldn’t let her be the one to silence me.

“Yeah,” I said. My heart pounded, and I felt something rise in the back of my throat. Again, my friends shared a look.

“Viv, it’s been a long day, you could have—” Lucy began, but I cut her off. 

“I know what I saw,” I said, frantic. “I saw her bite the guy.”

“There is probably a more logical explanation than a zombie outbreak,” Freddy said, watching me. “Like Lucy said, it’s been a long day.”

I began to question my state of mind: underslept, stressed, already anxious. I tried to slow my breathing and began to analyze what I’d really seen. Maybe I had just imagined it.

“Yeah—” I said, stumbling a little. “I don’t— I don’t know.”

“It’s ok,” Freddy said, furrowing his brow. “A little while ago, I thought I saw a plane crash in the distance. I’m sure I imagined it, but still. Weird stuff, right?”

“Yeah,” I said and sighed. I looked out the window. “Do any of you have a battery pack? My phone’s out of juice.”

Willow pulled an external battery bank from her bag and handed it over. “Just give it back when we get home.”

“I will,” I said, plugging my phone into the battery. Slowly the conversation picked up again, but it was muted compared to the conversation before I’d seen the “zombie.”

 My phone woke up soon after I plugged it in, but it was pretty much useless because there was still no cell reception. I put my phone back into my pocket along with the battery bank.

A few minutes later, as I continued shaking off my hallucination everyone’s phones went utterly insane at the very same time. We had obviously regained cell reception.

Just like everyone, I pulled out my phone. My mother’s caller ID came up, but I sent her to voicemail because the bus suddenly became far too loud for me to hear her. I unlocked my phone, and I began receiving a torrent of text messages from my parents and brother. Some were new texts, others were a couple of hours old. My mother was furiously texting me, but I held off replying until I’d read her previous installments of motherly anxiety. 

What's your ETA? School says 6 but buses are so slow.

Making chili. I’ll save some for you if you don’t get back b4 dinner. 

Hey, answer my calls! 

What's going on?! There was a crash near you...  Are you all right?! 

ANSWER ME! I CAN SEE YOU READING THESE GODDAMN TEXTS!

I quickly thumbed in a message that I was, in fact, still alive. She immediately began typing again, but I pulled up a news site to see what she was talking about. There’d been a plane crash in rural Iowa just off the route we’d been taking. I looked over at Freddy, plugging one ear with a finger and shouting into his phone. He made eye contact with me, and I showed him my screen. His eyes widened, and he stared back to me. I mouthed ‘you were right,’ and he nodded, shock and the beginnings of full-blown terror warping his usually cheerful face. He seemed stripped of protection, a child shaking at the notion of death and danger. 

Suddenly there was a crescendo of voices, and someone began to shout over the squall of frightened people. “At least 34 people died on the plane in Iowa,” whoever-it-was shouted over my classmates. 

Lucy looked over at Freddy, tears in her eyes. “I guess you weren’t seeing things,” she said, and Freddy nodded a little, not really listening. He was concentrating on his phone.

“Another plane just went down! Over Vegas! It was a private jet, and it crashed into a huge hotel on the strip! They’re saying this one was a terror attack!” Carrie yelled. 

Willow stood up from her seat and shouted, her voice cracking, “Two hundred and fifty on a flight from LA to New York!”

I looked back down at the news site; everything they’d just shouted was corroborated on the screen. Suddenly the page updated and a live video began to play. It was a shaky hand-cam video of one of the plane crashes, and I quickly held it up so that everyone near me could watch the video too.

The video showed the crashed plane gushing smoke. The audio was terrible, but we could all pick up the sounds of sirens and people screaming. The cameraman advanced slowly and we all watched as someone crawled out of the wreckage and got to his feet. He was a tall man wearing a gray suit with burn holes in the pants and shirt. There was dirt and blood caked on his knees and face. His hair was sticking out in all directions, and there was something deeply fighting about his eyes: devoid of emotion, cold, both calculating and dulled at the same time. His mouth hung open and ropes of saliva dangled from his lips. He wandered around the wreckage, seemingly searching for something. The cameraman was shouting, asking if he needed medical assistance. The crash victim stopped his random movements, and turned to look just above the camera’s eye into the face of the man filming him. He stared at the cameraman, his addled mind coming to a conclusion.

My friends had gathered behind me to watch the video, and a collective scream erupted as the stumbler lunged at the cameraman… seemingly at us. We saw a wildly spinning world as the camera landed on the ground, positioned perfectly to let us watch the coming slaughter. We watched as the zombie pinned the man. As the zombie ate his flesh. As the former cameraman weakened in the zombie’s hold, blood spattering the camera. Finally the news site’s admin switched off the feed, cutting short the dying man’s final scream. 

The bus was completely silent. It didn’t sound like people were even breathing. The only sounds were the wheels on cement, and the bouncing of tires and suspension over a pothole.

I found myself grinning sickly. At least I thought, I hadn’t been seeing things.