Zombies

The Boards’ zombification is a condition that the people around them describe as both frightening and potentially reversible: the band is called evil and undead, yet Doc cautions against blaming its members for what has happened to them. Their later exorcism and continuing psychic “perimeter checks” turn that uncanny diagnosis into an ongoing problem of care and maintenance.

The Zombie Label

The talk begins with a blunt judgment: even Doc thinks the Boards are zombies. He agrees that the description is probably true, but resists treating it as proof that the band members are simply evil. His joke about the lack of career counselors for the undead makes the condition sound like a fate imposed on people rather than a moral choice. The distinction matters: the zombie image names a loss of ordinary agency, while Doc’s response preserves some sympathy for those caught in it.

Exorcism and Maintenance

Coy later reports that the situation has been “fixed.” According to him, the women in the band could no longer tolerate what was happening, so they pooled their resources and hired an exorcist, a Buddhist priest from a temple downtown. The priest performed a ritual, after which the Boards and the house were officially considered dezombified. The response did not end with the ceremony: the women gave him a maintenance contract for regular psychic perimeter checks, treating the change as something that might need continued protection.

An Uncertain Recovery

When Doc asks whether any band member suddenly recognized Coy, Coy shrugs and allows that perhaps one did, but says it matters less than it once did. The exchange leaves the practical effects of the exorcism uncertain: the group has been declared restored, yet recognition is not offered as decisive proof. Later, driving beneath an airport runway, Doc asks whether the Boards are no longer so evil. Coy answers that they may still be confused now and then, comparing that uncertainty to the ordinary confusion of any band. The story thus shifts the image from fixed monstrosity toward an imperfect recovery, without claiming that every trace of the former condition has disappeared.

Narrative Significance

The episode makes zombification less a spectacle of pure evil than a way of describing estrangement, and it complicates that description through the practical actions taken to address it. The exorcism depends on collective effort by the women in the band; its aftermath is marked not by a definitive test but by recurring checks and Coy’s qualified account. By the time Doc revisits the question, the decisive change is not certainty that the Boards have become entirely normal, but a more forgiving way of speaking about their remaining confusion.