Battle of the Network Zombies (2 page)

Birch pointed toward the shack.

The lights dimmed and a jaundiced glow rose behind the dirty shower curtain covering the front door of the facade. At the edges of the porch, slobbery men set down their jugs and hushed each other as though in reverence to approaching royalty. It became so quiet, I could hear the chickens scratching in their cages and crickets chirping or rubbing their legs together or whatever the fuck they do. Though that last bit was probably being pumped in through the speakers to set the mood. The stage light brightened until columns of dust motes stabbed into the audience from between the rusty metal curtain rings, stretching across the waves of corrugated roofing above and the five o’clock shadows of drooling businessmen below.

And then
she
stalked into silhouette—no…shuffled is a better word—to the opening cowbells of Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog”—’cause really, what else would you expect?

“Harry Sue!” I could have sworn someone yelled.

“Harry Sue!” the crowd shouted back in liturgical response.

“
Harry
Sue?” I asked Birch.

“Short for Harriet, maybe?” He shrugged without taking his eyes off the dirty play unfolding.

When the guitar roared in, Harry Sue snatched back the curtain and stomped out onto the porch in Daisy Duke overalls and the most hideous high heels—since when did Jellies make a heel? Her blond hair had been teased and tortured into massive pigtails, hay jutting from the strips of gingham holding them in place. Her face was pretty enough, if you could get past her wild eyes, bee-stung lips and the mass of fake freckles that sadly recalled the broken blood vessels of an alcoholic more than the fresh sun-kissed face of a farm girl.

She didn’t tease the crowd of howling men much, making quick work of the denim overalls with two rehearsed snaps at each shoulder; they slid off her bone-thin frame and pooled around her ankles. The ensuing slapstick of Harry wrestling her feet out of the denim mess would have been charming had my eyes not been stuck to her undergarments. Not satisfied with a dirty wifebeater and some holey panties, the stripper wore cutoff Dr. Dentons, complete with the trap door. Of course, in true trashy stripper fashion, Harry Sue wore hers backwards.

The room was filled with redneck boner and there I stood in the middle of it, without a vomit bag, a designer cocktail or a canister of mustard gas. You couldn’t move through the room without rotating aroused men like turnstiles and I had no intention of doing that. I did notice that Johnny Birch was standing awful close to me.

Glad to see you, close.

Too close.

“That’s my asshole, asshole.” I jerked away from his probing fingers.

Johnny grinned in response, totally deserving the punch I threw into his kidneys.

“Ow!” He ran his fingers through his hair, eyes darting nervously at the men around us, as if any of them were looking for anything other than a beaver shot. “Jesus. It’s all in good fun.”

“Touch me again and we’ll see who’s having fun.”

“Aw.” He scowled.

Harry Sue slunk down in one of the rockers and the men whimpered in unison—apparently prepared for what Harry Sue had in store for us. She rocked slowly, pivoting her ass forward on the edge of the chair until the flap was front and center. She toyed with the buttons, tweaking them like nipples.

I glowered. Shot a glance at Birch. Wished I were drinking.

The stripper got my attention when she unbuttoned one side of the flap, then the other, finally, exposing the biggest 70s bush I’d ever seen.
⁶
It was massive. Afro-like. Harry Sue needed to be introduced to the wonders of Brazilian waxing, though she’d likely be charged extra. And then it clicked. The men weren’t yelling Harry Sue.

They were shouting
Hairy
Sue.

Still. It didn’t make sense.

I’ve read
Cosmo
. I know men prefer shaved to bouffant. Yet they were clearly enthralled by this stripper. I watched more closely.

Hairy (let’s just drop the Sue part; it never had any real value anyway) reached for the butter churn and pulled out the plunger, dripping melted butter down the front of her jammies.

She peeked at the mess, frowned, then licked the end of the plunger before returning it to the churn. In one motion, she slipped out of the Dr. Dentons and reached into an aluminum pail next to the rocker and retrieved an ear of corn, which she preceded to shuck, using her teeth. She sprinkled her breasts with corn silk. With the ear she traced circles across her belly, her thighs and then, as though by accident, she dropped the cob on the porch, gasped and then slipped from the chair into a full split, hovering briefly above the ear before nestling it against her buttery crotch.

I shifted from one foot to the other.

There was absolutely nothing sexy about this. These guys were all perverts.

Hairy Sue rose then and bowed to the wild applause and showers of dollar bills. She posed there like she owned that porch, corncob dripping and a fat smile spread across her face.

The lights dimmed.

“I’d sure like to see
your
bush.” Birch again. His lips curled into a lewd smile.

I nearly vomited up my dinner (let’s not go into what that might have been, just yet). “Is that some kind of wood-nymph joke? ’Cause I’m done with your poor impulse control.”

“Hey.” He stepped back, spread his arms and wiggled his fingers. “I can control the trees and stuff.”

I let my eyes wander down to the tent in his pants. “But not the wood?”

He sagged.

“Maybe we should just talk.” He covered his crotch with cupped hands, a flush rising in his cheeks.

I followed him back to a booth underneath a monstrous moose head, where he laid out the scenario. It was the first time I’d seen his face in full light. He wasn’t hideous, though his features were sharp and his nose a bit too thin. The brown of his eyes shimmered with veins of gold and his lips, though pale, were full and unexpectedly alluring. He looked much better on TV but that was probably the makeup.

Mmm. Makeup.

“The calls started coming about three months ago,” he said. “At first the caller wouldn’t say anything. Just hang up after I’d answered. The phone company said they were always from phone booths. I didn’t even know those still existed but they do.”

I nodded, though I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one, either. Still, why do people feel the need to tell me the most random crap? Like I care. I’m dead.

“About a month ago, they started getting threatening. Not overtly so, just freaky. Like letting me know that I was being monitored. You’re at the Texaco on 1st. Like that. And then they’d just hang up and I’d be standing there at the pump, not just worried that my cell was going to spark and blow me up, but now that someone was nearby watching. Then a couple of weeks ago I get the first one.”

“First what?”

Johnny reached into a briefcase he must’ve stored under the table before his lap dance and pulled out a plastic shipping envelope, the kind lined with Bubble Wrap. He placed it on the table between us and leaned forward, searching the room for observers. Half the crowd had been culled into the back rooms and the other half were busy drinking themselves into stupors.

I made eye contact with Gil across the room. He looked concerned. It must have been my expression of pure boredom. My eyes dropped back to the envelope.

“I’m not a private detective, Birch. I’m in advertising. Can we get on with this?”

“I know. I know. But, I don’t need you for that. I need you for your celebrity.”

Celebrity? I leaned toward him, suddenly more interested. “Go on.”

He opened the end of the envelope and pulled out a thin shingle of wood. Stretched across it, attached with thick pins, was a creature like none I’d seen, almost insect-like, with wings that clung to its sides like a termite. Its flesh was as black as obsidian and shiny from toe to its segmented abdomen to its horribly humanoid head. The creature’s waxy face was frozen in a torturous silent scream.

“Gross. What the hell is it?” I was unable to look away from the little body, pinned as it was like a lab experiment. Better there than flying around, though, or I’d be snatching a fly swatter.

“I don’t really know. But it looks like a fucking threat to me. Anyways! I’m going on tour this spring and clearly, with this shit going on…” He kicked at the briefcase. “I’m going to need some protection.”

“All right. How is my ‘celebrity’ going to do that? It’s not like I’m known for my strength or crime-solving ability.” I flicked the edge of the shingle the thing was attached to. It rocked back and forth on the table.

Johnny’s finger shot out to stop its movement. He slid it back into the envelope and tossed it into his bag. “It’s not. I’m putting together a team of bodyguards and what better way to do it nowadays than with my own fabulous reality contest show? Can you see it? Celebrity judges and weekly death matches. It’s exactly what Supernatural TV is aching for. Cameron Hansen would host, of course, and all we’d need is our Paula. You’d be our Simon.”

“Simon? I’m too cute and, anyway, you’d be our fucking Paula. What we’d need is a Randy.” I reached for my purse and began to scoot out of the booth. The idea was ludicrous.

“Maybe,” his voice thundered. “But I’m a nut with financial resources and I’d be willing to pay.”

“So you’re looking for more than just a guest judge here, then? We’re talking about exclusive advertising contract with product placement?”

“That could be arranged.”

“Let me think about it.” I looked around the Hooch and Cooch and couldn’t quite believe that such a gross experience might lead to a potential financial windfall. “All right, let’s plan to meet somewhere less…disgusting and then we’ll talk about it. Sound good?”

“Up to you.”

“Well, let’s figure it out in the parking lot. I don’t think I can stomach this place much longer.”

As we stood to leave, a commotion began in the hallway to the private rooms. A steady stream of men was rushing from the exit, most of them screaming and none of them attempting to shield the bulge in their trousers. Following them was a roar that vibrated through the room and a crash as the chicken coops shattered, sending several birds flapping and skittering off toward the door in the shack. Gil and Ethel ran into the room, my friend brandishing a machete, my mother some sort of short club.

“We better get out of here.” I turned to Birch, but he’d already darted for the front door. Behind him a massive beast emerged from the tangle of metal cages. Its bulbous head sheared the ceiling as it lurched, creating a groove across the ripples of metal. Its thick muscled arms ended in rake-like claws that shredded the floorboards into mulch with each powerful swipe. It stopped in the center of the room, head twisting wildly from one patron to the next until it found its quarry.

The creature howled with such force, the floor shook under me. Slobber clung to foot-long fangs, like sloppy pennants, flapping in the direction of Johnny Birch, who let out a quivering whimper.

It rushed forward.

Dammit, I thought. There goes the TV show.

Monday
5:00–6:30
A.M.
Cannibal Cage Cabal

Just because I ducked under a table doesn’t make me a coward, I don’t care what you say. If a big-ass marauding hulk of meat was charging around your local strip club (which you didn’t want to go to in the first place, I might add) tossing perverts into the air with the sloppy abandon of a summer berry picker—raspberry from the look of the splatter on the walls—what would you do?

You’d hide, that’s what.

It was a pretty good vantage point, despite the cigarette butts, beer bottles and not-so-mysterious wet spots on the floor—too wet not to have been recent and too viscous to be anything but some pervert’s jizz. And I was pretty sure
which
pervert. The thought of Birch jerking off under the table while we talked sprang up as a distinct possibility, though, how he could have been aroused in the presence of that shriveled dead creature, is a question for a professional—my diagnoses are more of the armchair variety. I scraped my palm against the seat’s piping and gagged only a little bit as goo specked with ash balled up and clung to the bead of vinyl. Composing myself was a process, though it did feel better when I pretended it was beer staining one of my last good skirts, instead of Johnny Birch’s gross domestic product.

Just then, Ethel ran past and I shouted after her, “What kind of place you running here, Ethel? There’s spunk on the floor!”

She slid to a stop, glowered and hissed under my table, “Prove it!”

As she sped off, I got a better look at the creature. It latched on to one of the poles and spun impressively from a rake-sized fist, clawing several regulars in a single brutal arc and sending the rest backing into the already-clogged log jam at the exit. They stood there, squealing, tongues jiggling in their mouths like cartoons, pushing back into the crowd, punching, jabbing, anything to get farther away.

It dropped off the stripper’s island, splinters erupting from a loud crack at its feet and roared, spittle flapping and loosing into the wind of it like streamers off a cruise ship. A dense earthy smell filled the room, part rotten leaves, part dog shit, and all nasty.

“Get those customers out of here!” It was Ethel’s voice, and nearby, though I couldn’t see her anymore.

Gil I could see.

He tore at the men at the door. Each time he created a gap it was filled with another flailing idiot, as though they were fish floundering on an open deck. A few of them broke off, attempting to make for the door in the main stage set. Two were caught in either of the mammoth’s claws, their screams silenced as it clapped their heads together with the sound and effort of smashing tomatoes. Their skulls splintered, and gray matter oozed between the monster’s elongated fingers. It dropped them in a heap around its ankles. The other guy threw himself at the plastic shower curtain hanging in the doorway of the shack, but not before a dank brown stain crept down the back of his white linen trousers.
⁷

Ethel rushed back into view, club raised like some cavewoman crammed into a silk suit. The creature turned on her and howled. She slipped past it and swung at it viciously, hammering the thick bat against its pale naked back and thighs. Bruises spread under its skin with each fevered blow. Ethel’s face was a wicked mask of glee. She howled back at the thing, spraying its face with blood from the inside of her cheeks. Drops of crimson specked its hairless white belly like chicken pox.

Total. Fucking. Maniac.

I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Mother was the poster girl for passive aggression and verbal assault all her life, but now that she had a little physical power, it’s no wonder she’d revel in the violence.

The vamping had to have been a welcome release. Such pent-up aggression. Such violence in the woman. It explains the massacre at the hospice center, but don’t bring that up, or she’ll try to dazzle you with her spin. “It was my hour of redemption!” she’d shout. That kind of thing. Never mind that Ethel took out thirty-two terminally-ill cancer patients in one night—like they could fight back at all.

There were two monsters fighting out there.

Do you think it’d be bad if I rooted for the other one? Would you think less of me?
⁸

The massive creature spun on her small frame, one paw snatching the bat from her hands and the other closing into a huge fist that connected with Mother’s jaw loud enough for a thwack to echo across the room. The smack sent her spinning off into the wall, where a framed shadow box of the Confederate flag slipped from its nail and crashed down onto her head. She eked out a hollow gasp and slipped to the floor, legs splayed and scowling.

Gil finally loosened up the opening enough for the flood of perverts to empty out. The girlish screaming subsided, leaving the monster’s marauding the only sounds in the place. The deejay snuck away from his little booth at the far end at some point during the rampage, silencing the barrage of butt rock but leaving the not so subtle shirr of needle against vinyl to provide the white noise for a killing spree. Gil raced along the wall of banquettes, hunching and searching under tables, presumably for me. “Amanda! Where are you?”

“Right here.” I reached out into the space, eyes darting between Gil’s loping movement and the monster’s lumbering rage. It saw the vampire and darted toward him, arms swinging wildly (not unlike Wendy’s after a night of clubbing—like an orangutan’s, those arms). Gil must have seen me cringe. His head craned toward the approaching thing and a sound like a squeak crept from his open mouth.

He was snatched from his hunch and slammed into the corrugated metal ceiling, which buckled up like a cartoon, and dropped back with a force that would have shattered a human’s bones completely.

“Gil!” I screamed and then wished I hadn’t.

It turned its whacked-out gaze on me. To say its eyes were googly was being kind. The thing didn’t seem capable of focusing, the bloodshot orbs rolled in its head like a slot machine and finally came to rest back on Gil who was crawling—of all places—toward me.

“What the hell are you doing? Lead it the other way.” I waved my hands at him, shooing him toward the stage.

He slipped under the table.

“Jesus. That yeti is pissed.”

“No shit.” I slapped the back of his head. “Where are the fucking reapers?”

“They’re not coming.” He said the words as if I already knew.

I stared back at him. I think I did one of those ditzy blink things.
⁹

“Jesus. Don’t you read?”

I shrugged. “Um. That’s what you’re for. You’ve been at this supernatural game a lot longer than me. So, what gives?”

“This here…” He pointed at the yeti, which stumbled over a serving tray and busily rubbed at its knees. “…is a woodland creature and one that’s already been exposed.”

I shook my head. Not really putting it together. “Exposed?”

“Yeah. Back in the 70s, the Patterson film?”

I nodded, vaguely remembering the lumbering ape-thing trudging through somewhere that didn’t have sidewalk sales or wine bars.

“Well, experts were paid quite a bit to report it as a fraud, but in the end, the reapers concluded the damage was done. People believed in them.”

As if on cue, the thing in the center of the club began crushing the wooden chairs into kindling with no more effort than you’d snap a matchstick, slamming the furniture into the poles, exploding splinters off into the corners of the room like shrapnel.

“Where’s its hair? It’s like bald or something.”

Gil eyes sped back at the marauding creature. “That
is
definitely odd…and so not a good look.”

“Absolutely not. Skin like a morbidly obese whole chicken fryer. It’s nothing like
Harry and the Hendersons
.”

“You saw that movie?”

I thought a moment, wondered what John Lithgow was up to now, and responded, as though I were offended, “No.”

He squeezed in tighter and two things happened.

One. The creature stopped moving, an eerie silence replacing its rampage.

And two. Gil kicked a beer bottle from under the table, off the little dais the booths were built atop and down onto the floor with a clink so loud it could have been a dinner bell.

A roar rumbled through the room like the first slip of a fault line, shaking the floorboards. In the next instant, we were flat on our backs, pressing against a table turned into a great hamburger press. The heels snapped off my shoes and went flying. Gil, who was taking the majority of the weight, started to shake as though nearly ready to collapse. I looked at him. He looked at me, brown eyes sad as a basset hound’s and said, “This is the end.”

“Yeah, of me!” I yelled. “You’ll survive it. The reapers won’t be putting my pancaked ass back together. They’ll have to bring a spatula.”

Gil sucked up into a sour face and nodded a quick agreement as the monster continued to press down in great rocky bounces.

“Yeti!” It was Birch, calling out the creature, who stopped flattening us to follow the voice to its owner.

We set the tabletop to the side. The pole that had been holding it up was bowed and the floor cracked where it was anchored. I pressed myself against the wall and followed it around toward the stage.

Birch stood near the main entrance by the open truck bed. Ethel sagged on the floor behind him a bit, not near as eager to brawl as before. He carried no weapons and his expensive suit certainly wasn’t going to shield him from the yeti’s claws. But Birch stepped forward with a look of calm on his smarmy face.

The yeti’s eyes found their quarry and I swear to God the thing snickered. The snicker turned into a roaring chortle that shook the pale chicken skin on its belly like a JELL-O mold.

I took the opportunity to dart to the front of the truck and slip underneath, pulling myself forward with my elbows like the soldiers do in those basic training movies. Was this the correct moment to “serpentine,” I wondered? Seemed not. I stopped moving, just as Birch advanced into the room. The motion startled me and I banged my head against the massive metal scrotum dangling off the hitch.

“Dammit!” I patted the spot to check for tearing; that center stitch in the ball cleavage was terribly realistic…and sharp, I might add. Seemingly intact, and more than a little impressed I’d bumped into something I might use as a weapon, I made quick work of disconnecting the sac and crawled to a vantage point near the tire.

On the far side of the room, peeking from around the gnarl of chicken cages, Gil waved his hands, as if to say don’t come out any farther. It’s like he doesn’t know me at all.

“Duh!” I snapped.

His nonchalant shrug was obscured as the slick-skinned yeti stomped back into view, crouching as if to lunge at Birch, its claws spread out and knuckles cracking with tension.

The wood nymph seemed overly confident, considering he’d fled our conversation at the first hint of trouble. He balanced his weight on one hip, tilted his head a bit and sang.

Yeah. I said sang.

It didn’t seem appropriate to me, either.

Neither did the song, which at first sounded like Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” but turned out to be something else entirely. Johnny peppered the lyrics with a volley of “
Mmms
” and “
Oh yeahs
.” He swiveled his hips seductively at the beast.

I held back the vomit and considered looking away. Johnny’s track record of conquests would take up a scroll. Who’s to say that this creature wasn’t a spurned lover, some backwoods ex come to exact a little
Deliverance
on his ass? Maybe I’d misjudged the entire situation.

It could just be entertainment.

The yeti lunged at the nymph—again, hard to blame it—crossing the floor in three lumbering strides. Birch raised his arms and then his voice. What was once cheesey lounge singing became something different entirely. Even, dare I say, beautiful? The words were gone, or rather, the English was stripped out of the vocalization. What was left was a soothing melody made form that arced and swam in the air. With each note the sound became denser until a swirling mist turned the room and the play into a dream.

The monster stopped dead in its tracks and cocked its head to the side, arms slack and eyes following the streaks of tone.

Birch walked circles around the creature, continuing his song—which, while mesmerizing, wasn’t exactly chart-ready. I’ll give him this, the notes were otherworldly. I began to understand how the little horndog got laid with such frequency—you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing him slobbering over some flavor of the week as if she were a scoop of dark chocolate chip.
¹⁰
I even found myself drawn to the lilting refrain and before I knew it had crawled out from under the truck and stood a few feet away from where both Birch and the creature stood.

Gil left his hiding place, too. His mouth hung open, tongue out and teetering over his bottom lip. I reached up to see if I was doing the same, intent on shoving my lolling tongue back in. Thankfully, I’d managed a modicum of civility.

I slipped in beside him. “Slut.”

He looked at me and then down at my hand. “I’m not the one fondling truck balls.”

I shrugged, though the weight of the things was likely giving me a totally unattractive hunch.

Birch swept his fingers through the air like a conductor, as though playing the notes he’d already sung.

Nothing happened at first.

Or at least nothing I could see.

Fury burned in the thing’s black eyes, lips drawn back from its fangs and quivering. I was pretty sure Birch was gonna end up Yeti Chow, and despite a pretty healthy sense of self-preservation, I couldn’t resist the urge to watch the feeding.

But even the yeti’s growls were slowed and there was nothing between them but the wood nymph’s careful refrain.

Then the air seemed to thicken like fog lazing on glass and that image solidified as a frost, as though the whole scene were trapped in an oil painting. Birch’s fingers circled and churned the air, spinning gossamer eddies into the wet mural of the room. The curls stretched and struck the wood floors, where silver sparks jumped and tendrils of new growth shot up from knots. The nymph backed away as sprouts turned into branches that thickened and espaliered around the creature like a cell.