Putting NodeJS on a Raspberry Pi isn't too difficult once you know what to look for. NodeJS hasn't been officially supported since v10 but there are Unofficial Builds: https://unofficial-builds.nodejs.org/download/release/

This has builds for more recent versions for the armv6l processor that the Pi Zero and its variants have. For this I'll use v18.9.0:

cd ~
wget https://unofficial-builds.nodejs.org/download/release/v14.10.0/node-v18.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.gz
tar -xzf node-v18.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.gz
node-v18.9.0-linux-armv6l/bin/node -v

The last command should display v18.9.0

If so, we can copy it over to /usr/local:

cd node-v18.9.0-linux-armv6l/
sudo cp -R * /usr/local/

We can then check to make sure it was successful:

cd ~
node -v

This should display v18.9.0 if everything went well.

Hope this helps anyone else looking to run NodeJS on a Raspberry Pi Zero or its variants.