Battle of the Network Zombies (19 page)

“These fuckers are organized,” I whispered to Wendy.

She stopped filming and stared, her face paler than usual. “We gotta get the fuck outta here.”

“Agreed. And before they’re done with the soft-skinned woodland folk.”

“No doubt. I almost feel sorry for them.” Her voice was distant, almost dreamy—probably all the meat scent hanging in the air. She twisted toward me. “But how? Mama’s blocked all the exits.”

“Maybe that spell ended when she died, just like her control over the mistakes. Stay here. I’m going to check in with the other undead.”

I patted the undercarriage of the truck, an idea already forming, and pushed myself back out, curling up slowly to avoid the attentions of some hungry perv’s cadaver. Gil and my mother were in the same position, frozen like that in fear.

I opened the door and crept my head in. “I think the smoke has dissipated, but if you’re comfy like that I can fill up the cab with some more.”

“Mow,” Gil mumbled underneath his undoubtedly clammy palm. His head shook slightly, as he pulled his hand away from his ear and then let the other one fall. Ethel followed suit.

“Does this bad boy have keys?” I asked.

Ethel nodded. “They’re in the office.”

I looked past the tailgate toward the hostess station and knew that just beyond that was the door. There were a couple of the less stable zombies bumping into each other and bitching in that groany way of theirs. I looked back at Gil—his face was green with whatever Chase screwed into him. Useless.

That only left Ethel.

I glanced her way to find her staring intently at me, seemingly ready to act. I could smell the violence on her, just below the surface, and I knew I needed it.

“All right, Mom. I guess it’s you and me.”

She grinned.

“Gil, get Wendy up in here—she’s underneath us—and shut the door. And, sweet baby Jesus, don’t slam it. Got it?” He nodded. One of his hands crept to his crotch, kneading some shame away, his faced more pained than usual.

“You ready?” I asked Ethel.

“Damn straight I am, let’s kill us some creepy crawlers.” She squeezed herself over Gil and bounded out of the car, crouching and heading forward with much more stealth than I’d have given her credit for. I followed and watched her extract the metal testicles from the hitch and send them sailing through the air and straight through one of the shambler’s heads.

Leaving two.

I slid in behind her and whispered, “We don’t need to kill them unless they notice us, and since we don’t smell like food, they’re less likely to…”

“Oh, I get you.”

We put our backs to the wall and inched around the corner behind the little hostess podium. The papers on its top were spattered with blood. As we reached the door, a zombie lurched towards us, fingers atrophied into perilous-looking claws. I opened the door and before the zombie could moan a single, “brains”
⁸⁰
Ethel reached out for its claws and jerked it into the club’s tiny office.

“Shut the door,” she hissed, drilling her thumbs into the thing’s eyes. It spasmed, as Ethel helped it onto its back, rolling up an issue of
Sunset
and driving that down into the eyehole.

“I think you got it.”

“You never can tell,” she said, standing up daintily and brushing her hands off on a neat wool skirt. Her eyes searched the room, a question on her face before she spoke. “Where are those g.d. keys?”

I opened the top drawer of an old filing cabinet, pharmacy green and heavy with sin. The employee files. “A whole horde of stripper yetis,” I said. “Who’d have ever believed that back in Rapid City?”

“I know it. I’d never even thought of such a thing. Or even believed they could exist at all. Oh.” Her face brightened. “I remember.”

Ethel scooted up next to me and opened the next drawer down. A set of keys hung inside on a little hook.

“You know, honey. We’re going to make it out of this.”

I cringed. The nurturing made me want to vomit, especially coming from her. “Let’s just go. And don’t jingle those out there. You’ll draw attention to us.”

When I opened the door, I realized the keys were the least of our problems. A swarm of the zombies must have been hunting us and they stood outside two deep, ten in all, snarling and teeth snapping. I shut the door as they collided with it.

“Well, that’s not good,” Ethel said.

“Get the chair and slide it underneath this knob. Won’t keep ’em out long, but maybe long enough.” I tapped my fingers against the wall. “Is this hollow?”

“Um. I think so. Drywall probably, maybe a little insulation. It’s still loud as hell in here when the girls are dancin’.”

I picked up a pair of scissors from her desk and stabbed it straight through.

It was probably the first time I’d smiled at my mother that didn’t involve me trying to get something from her. “This is how we’re getting out of here then.”

Ethel joined me at my side and drew her fist back.

I snatched her hand. “Aim for the spot I stabbed through. Vampire strength or not, if you hit a stud it’s gonna take a while to heal your busted hand.”

She nodded and punched straight through to the inside of the club. The sound of struggle grew as she kicked and knocked out a ragged opening between two studs. It was nearly completed when the door behind us came off its hinges and several of the dead men scrambled in, luckily stumbling over the chair and creating a ridiculous pile-up.

I pushed Ethel through the gap, screaming, “Suck it in.” And just as I moved to go out myself, one of the zombies reached out and sunk his fingers into my shoulder, digging through Alexander McQueen’s sumptuous fabric with such frenzy that my skin tore beneath it. A black stain spread across the side of my dress and I turned, so furious that he’d ruined one of the last great pieces of clothing I owned, I jabbed the point of the scissors through the base of his nose and into his brain. I pushed his quickly fading body at the approaching zombies and squeezed through and out into the gap between the truck and the wall.

The door was open and I dove in, slamming it behind me.

“Jesus. They got you.” Wendy poked at my shoulder.

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “You should see the other guy.”

We chuckled for a moment, then realized it hadn’t been funny in years and stopped.

“So when I crank the engine, we’re going to draw a lot of attention.”

“Absolutely.” Gil nodded.

Through the passenger window, I could see what looked like Hairy Sue fighting off ten of Mama’s voodoo zombies, snapping off heads and cannoning them toward other approaching ghouls.

“You all ready to get out of here?” I asked.

“Is that even a real question?” Wendy sneered.

I cranked the engine and three things happened.

One, Ms. Hairy Sue’s head twisted in our direction and she barreled through zombies at breakneck speed, tossing them off left and right
⁸¹
until she dove into the bed of the truck, just as, two, I dropped the transmission into drive instead of reverse and stood on the gas pedal. And three, the tires squealed against the wood floors for a second and then we were speeding toward the back wall of the Hooch and Cooch.

“Wait!” Wendy, Gil, Ethel and even Hairy Sue screamed in unison. “Wrong way!”

And then we were all screaming as the truck barreled through the wall and out into the air over Ballard. We skidded off a steeply pitched roof in the next moment, banked off the side of a bridge piling and then finally found the ground again, though barely. The angle was too steep to do anything but keep us from going end over front.

Or at least I thought so—it was hard to think about anything when you’re busy screaming.

We flipped and tumbled—and do you think any of us had managed to remember a seatbelt? Not a chance. The four of us bounced inside the cab like corn in an air popper.

The truck finally settled into a gulley behind three stories of brick and wrought iron with clothes strung up on lines between a pair of fire escapes.

Thank God. I started to speak but realized my neck was broken, twisted nearly all the way around and facing something even more upsetting.

The truck was pointed back up from where we came and the Hooch and Cooch, never the most stable of buildings, was quickly losing its battle with gravity. Creaking timbers gave way to the screams of splitting pilings and the loud shirring of corrugated aluminum roofing. In a matter of seconds, too quick for any of us to make a decision to run, crouch or do anything other than scream—not that we could have for all the broken and dislodged bones poking out everywhere—the building crumbled from the cliff and pummeled us with falling foundation, beams and assorted dead things.

My last thought was:
I hope my face will be recognizable enough for an open casket.

Friday
6:00–7:00
P.M.
Reaper School: Spring Broken

I really love sleeping.

I miss it.

You never understand the value of those comatose hours disconnected from reality until you die and lose them forever. I suppose insomniacs get it, those long hours of agonizing wakefulness, images racing behind their eyelids, replay of the crappy-ass moments of their day on a seemingly endless loop, not to mention the 2
A.M.
refrigerator assaults and misguided masturbation that ends up getting their hearts so jacked they have to watch infomercials about hermetic sealers to calm down.

It’s all so terribly boring.

The daydreams and fantasies help, but it makes for a horrendously long existence, especially considering my distinct difficulty, rotting. Though I have a few fantasies that I indulge in quite frequently like not cramping up and exploding after a donut binge, blushing—rouge only goes so far—or making friends without the hidden motive of eating them later. I imagine myself without dark veins and the little areas of sag. Smooth. Resilient.

Wendy’s body seems to be going a little quicker than my own. I’ve noticed loose spots in need of fills and bruising that doesn’t seem to ever subside.

A quick trip to the reapers could cure that for sure, but that costs money.

My eyes snapped open at the thought.

Hillary gawked at me, lashes batting and blond hair hanging in perfect ringlets from underneath a paper nurse cap, like the many coils of a snake pit fat and swollen with babies.

It had to be the blond one.

“Wakey-wakey, Amanda!” The words rolled off her tongue in a grating singsong rhythm, interspersed with smack off her Hubba Bubba. “You’ve had yourself a wittle accident, now haven’t you?”

It took a moment to gather up the fragments of my memory and make sense of a truck crashing through a wall, careening off a steep embankment and the loud crashing din of an entire collapsed building being tossed atop the wreck like the final grave dirt. Must have been all the screaming that threw me.

“Christ,” I muttered, though it hurt to even speak. “How am I even here? How am I anywhere?”

“Well, we used shovels.” She blew a big pink bubble, poked it down and then stretched the gum out to an irrational degree. “
We
didn’t. The lowly werepeople we recruited to help certainly did. Nice folks, we found them on the side of the road with signs.”

“Cheap labor. That’s great.” I lurched up on my elbows.

“The cheapest. Worked for clinic credit which is always a great help to us in these deeply troubling financial times.”

I ignored her hint toward my bill. “You couldn’t just wave it all clean? Make it like it was?”

Her mood changed in an instant, as was common with this particular reaper. Hot one minute, cold the next, or rather, various degrees of cold. She snapped. “Listen, you dead bitch, if I’d had my way, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. We’d have let the city churn you up with the rest of the debris and haul you off to the dump where
your
kind of trash belongs.”

“Jesus,” I groaned. “Harsh.”

“It seems you and your motley crew have some friends.”

My “motley crew.” I assumed Britney—or whatever the little shit’s name was—didn’t mean the band. And I hoped to hell she meant Gil and Wendy, but I really hoped she didn’t mean…

“Your mother has been asking about you.”

“Oh, God.”

The demon in the little girl suit cackled and skipped off.

If I were that kid’s mom she’d be so grounded.
⁸²
I watched her flick the files of each hospital bed she passed, startling Mama Montserrat, in particular, miraculously free of bite trauma and cocooned up tight like Travolta in
The Boy in the Plastic Bubble
. Across the aisle, Hairy Sue, shrinky-dinked down to a size 0, convalesced on her back—a position with which I’m certain she’s quite familiar, although I imagine her knees get more of a workout—both legs stuck straight out, casted and lassoed in traction cables.

When I twisted to my left, I nearly jumped out of the bed in horror. Wendy lay prone on the hospital pinks—notice a pattern—her tits and snootch covered by a pair of thin throws of fabric (also pink). In the few spots her pale flesh wasn’t marred by puffy purplish bruises, a thick pus pooled around each of the hundreds of needles stabbing into jaundiced sores, painfully—maybe not for her, but it was certainly painful to look at, even more so than one of her woefully tragic outfits. A Tesla device hung from the ceiling, arcing electricity to each of the vile protuberances. They hopped and vibrated with each jolt.

What’s worse?

Wendy’s paralyzed Cheshire smile, that’s what. Toothless, except for her two front teeth, she beamed at me, eyes wide and seemingly waiting for something.

“What the fuck are you grinning at?”

The grin turned into a smirk.

“What?” Wendy is frustrating, sure, but this was hitting new levels. It’s not enough that we were broken and nearly killed; she was getting some weird joy out of it.

I tore my eyes away and laid back into the less than sumptuous pillow. That’s when I noticed my very own matching Tesla coil, humming and sparking and dripping electricity into my needled flesh. The sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant, just gentle jolts followed by the odd pulsing of flesh. The worst bit was the expulsion of fluids from the needle prick. It glugged like fresh crude, only yellow and rank with a fetid rottenness that hung around me like a cloud.

And. It was ugly.

Pig-fuckingly ugly.

Passing out would have been a welcome relief. Especially since I suspected the reaping bitches added this little part of the treatment for their own pleasure, rather than any real curative properties.

“Hillary!” I screamed. “Hillary! I want out of here.”

Wendy chuckled.

“Shut up,” I hissed, from the side of my mouth. “Hillary!”

Whether I was in their back pocket or not, I fully intended on wiping the floor with the little cooze for this insult.

Another of the reapers bounded up to the bed. “Hillary’s taking a very important phone call and can’t be disturbed just now. I’m Britney.” I craned my head to look past her down the ward. Sure enough, the little blond midget chattered into her cell, twisting her hair casually with her free hand. When she noticed me glowering, she shot me the finger and a wide grin.

“Bitch!” I turned to Britney and smiled, I hoped sweetly, though really that would be a stretch. “Hi, Britney. Can you gather up some of your dear friends and get these needles out of me and my…friend?” Also a stretch, at this point.

“Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. The little shocks you’re getting help move all the healy goodness through your dead flesh. Kind of like vitamins. Just think of it that way. Pretty blue vitamins. Okay?”

I snatched at the lapel of her pink uniform and pulled her close. Her carefully constructed smile gave way to the evil underneath her skin. Britney’s lips pulled back to reveal rows of tiny shark teeth. Her tongue played on the sharp peaks. “Yes?” she growled. “You have a question?”

I released her and smoothed the front of her smock. “No, I don’t suppose I do. Just thank you. That’s what I wanted to say.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Britney pulled out a little plastic remote and pointed it at the Tesla ball. “How about this, you don’t ever touch me again and then I won’t ever be forced to do this to you.”

“What?” My eyes drifted from her hand to the humming globe above me. The arcs jumped in broad sweeping curves down into the needles and before I could even contemplate what that could mean, my body was jumping on the mattress like a demon possession.

Britney released the button and I dropped back into the bed, only seconds later to have the entire scene replayed, this time to the tune of several little girls clapping and giggling.

Monsters.

She leaned in close to my ear and whispered, “Besides, Hillary told me to tell you we’ve still got the matter of your bill to settle. You’re not leaving here until we get our money.” With that, she planted a kiss on my cheek, started to scamper away, twisted around cheerleader style and zapped me again.

“God, y’all. Really?” a male voice chastised, instantly recognizable as my friendly neighborhood collection artist, Vance Ventura. He probably drove to the reaper clinic in my Volvo, spitting chaw on the floorboard, or whatever it is men do on the rare occasion they don’t give a shit about a car.

Britney giggled and strode up to him, hips wiggling seductively.

Now.

I know the reapers look like little girls, no matter how old they get, and that this one was probably older than me, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s unnerving to witness a child attempt to seduce a full grown man even when that man is technically a bug or twig or something. Still, I’d have rather taken another humiliating shock than endure Britney rubbing Vance’s thigh.

Grossed out doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“Ew,” Wendy muttered.

The look on Vance’s face implied agreement. He soured and brushed her hands away, a shiver rolling through him with such violence you’d think someone took a metal rake to a chalkboard.

Britney shrugged her shoulders and cooed. “You silly. I’ll just leave you to your visit.” She turned and shook her finger at me sternly.

Crap. Here we go, I thought. Not conscious five minutes and already I’d been treated to a litany of my failures. Apparently, it’s not enough humiliation to be shocked to the point of bowel release—no, I didn’t, I’m just sayin’.

What did the guy need to repo now, anyway? My soul?
⁸³

He pulled up a metal folding chair and crossed his leg far more elegantly than I expected from a glorified car thief. “Ms. Feral. I’m glad to see they’ve been so fastidious with your care. Hillary assures me you’ll be good as new within the hour.”

I scanned the rows of needles piercing my body and wondered how she figured. “Oh yeah. They’ve been lifesavers.”

“Literally,” he added.

“Though, I suspect they’re scouring their dungeons for even more inventively torturous treatment modalities, as we speak.”

“They do enjoy their humiliation, but you can’t deny the results are nothing short of miraculous. You should have seen your bodies when they brought you in. Your friend there was like a pile of ground beef laced with satin ribbons.” He jerked a thumb in Wendy’s direction.

“Ground sirloin.” She propped herself up on her elbows behind him, drool pooling in her mouth, I’m sure.

“So what is it now, Vance. Do you need my teeth or something?”

He slapped his knee, chuckling. “No, no, nothing like that. In fact, I’ve been running some numbers and if you sign over your condo to the reaper clinic, that’ll cover your bill, and get you out of here pronto.”

“You can’t be serious?”

“Oh, yeah.” The excitement spread across his face like a rash. He pulled a spreadsheet printout from his briefcase and pointed out various strings of numbers. “If you’ll notice here…” Vance continued jacking his jaw about equity and figures and so on, but all I could think about was how far I’d fallen. It seemed like just a few days ago I was living the high life. Expensive shoes, bags, gowns, an awesome boyfriend, who sparkled on my arm like antique Bulgari.

Living the dream.

Vance’s scruffily handsome face was bright with the kind of hopeful glee I wanted to slap clean off.

“If I do that it’ll cover all of it. I won’t owe those bitches another dime?”

“Well, most of it, there’ll be some charges for today, but I’m going to take care of that for you with my collections commission.”

“And why is it that you’d help me, Mr. Ventura? Did your last porn tape go platinum or something?”

As if on cue, Gil strode into the ward, Ethel following close behind him, chattering on about insurance payouts. I thought I’d be miserable seeing Mother again, but instead there was an odd tinge of regret. After all, she’d lost her business, as I was surely about to lose mine.
⁸⁴
Then there was Gil. His attitude always cheered me up.

So you can imagine my displeasure when my best friend, and first supernatural I met after my zombification, ran into Vance’s arms for a deep kiss and a quick butt grope.

“Seriously?” I looked to Wendy for some support.

She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem right.”

Gil turned towards my bed, arm slung around Vance’s waist. “You’ve met Lars, then. Doesn’t he glitter like new money?”

To Vance’s credit, he cringed at being shown off like a trophy wife, but his easy smile in Gil’s direction loosened some of those coals in my dead heart. “I know him as Vance, and yeah…he’s cute.”

“That’s his work name.”

“Don’t make many friends in my line, so I keep it up, like a stage name.”

“Yeah. I figured.” Though I figured something entirely different.

Ethel squeezed past the happy couple and sat next to me on the bed. She grimaced at the needles and attempted to feel my forehead with the back of her hand. “Ew. Cold.” She withdrew her hand with a snap.

“Yeah. It goes with the whole zombie thing. And it’s actually room temperature, so…”

“Well, darling. I know the delightful Mr. Ventura has spelled out your options and I just wanted to offer up a spot in my guest room. It’s small but I have clean sheets and towels and a basement for you to keep your victims if you like a late-night snack. I don’t know exactly how it is you…creatures deal with that kind of thing.”

“Or,” I suggested, head snapping in Wendy’s direction, waiting for her to make an offer.

She stared at me blankly. “Or?” she asked.

“Or I could stay at your place for a while.”

“Yeah. The thing about that is, I’ve got this whole Abuelita thing going on. And so, until I get that dealt with…”

“I could just roll out a sleeping bag next to the stove.”

She shook her head, nose crinkling.

My mouth hung open.

I turned to Gil. “Gil?”

“Your mom’s is a really nice place and it’s only for a little while, until you get on your feet again.” He shot an uneasy grin at Ethel, who was nodding conspiratorially.

I glanced at the papers sitting on the side table, next to a small tray of what looked like false teeth, though they weren’t set into any acrylic gums. They lay loose like charms, only instead of a loop each root ended in a long nail head. I was reminded of Wendy’s broken grin and shuddered to imagine what the reapers had in store for her dental needs, also secretly glad that she’d be getting a healthy dose of pain for what she was willing to put me through.