Night of the Living Trekkies (18 page)

The suite’s lights were on, giving Jim a refreshingly unobstructed view. He spied two zombies, an adult male and an adolescent female, energetically clawing at the bathroom door.

They failed to notice him as he eased into the room. First, he looked around to make sure there were just two targets. Then he took careful aim at their backs with his Taser and fired.

The darts landed squarely between the creatures’ shoulder blades. Jim applied the juice. After a few seconds of frenetic jerking, they fell to the floor and lay still.

Leia followed Jim into the room. She helped him drag the corpses away from the bathroom door and into the living area. The bodies left long trails of green slime—all that remained of their alien third eyes.

They checked the bedroom, finding it empty but in a shambles.

“Now, let’s see about the bathroom,” Jim said.

Leia knocked on the door. She told whoever might be inside that it was safe to come out.

No response.

Rayna watched from the doorway, holding the doorknob in a death grip.

Leia knocked and spoke again. She turned to Jim and shrugged. He put his boot to the door and kicked it in.

“Hello?” he said as he entered.

The space looked just like every other suite bathroom in the Botany Bay: lots of white tile, a double vanity, and a large sunken tub. In this particular tub lay a woman perhaps forty years old. The only part of her body visible above the waterline was her head, cradled by an inflatable bath pillow. Her face wore an expression of serene repose. Or perhaps relief. Jim couldn’t decide which.

On the near edge of the tub he noticed a small picture of what he assumed was the woman’s family. She stood, smiling, beside a boy of perhaps seven, a girl of maybe fifteen, and her husband. Jim recognized the girl and the husband as the two zombies who were pounding on the door. He felt lightheaded, as if his spirit were trying desperately to flee the room on its own.

“I don’t think I can look at this,” Leia said.

Jim, on the other hand, couldn’t look away. On the far side of the tub glittered several pieces of a small, shattered mirror. One shard was bloody. Jim figured the woman used it to slit her wrists. Trapped when her own family joined the cannibal dead, she’d done what Jim couldn’t help but see as a sensible thing. She drew a hot bath, climbed in, and opened her veins.

The plan had succeeded brilliantly. The still water was livid red, charged with every drop of the woman’s life force.

“Let’s get out of here,” Leia said.

“She’s tall,” he heard himself say. “Maybe her clothes would fit you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Leia said. “Are you kidding?”

“You need something to wear. She doesn’t.”

Leia walked out into the main living area. She saw Rayna, Gary, and Willy peering in from the adjacent room.

“Well?” Rayna asked.

“All clear,” Leia said. “I’m going to check for clothes.”

Leia opened one of the closets. Several women’s garments were hanging from the rack, but the sizes appeared too small. Leia picked through them anyway, hoping to get lucky. There was something comforting about browsing a dress rack in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. She became so engrossed that she didn’t immediately notice the young boy standing stock-still in the closet’s farthest corner. A boy with a third eye on his right cheek. She didn’t spot him until he lunged.

Leia leapt back from the door, screaming. She tripped over a nightstand and fell, landing hard on her back.

In the bathroom, Jim heard the commotion. He got up and started to run. But at the last possible moment something grabbed his ankle, sending him crashing to the floor.

He rolled over just in time to see the woman rising out of the tub, her hand still around his leg, crimson water spilling over the sides and splashing onto the floor.

He kicked the creature in the face, knocking it backward into the bath. Then he got to his feet and ran, pausing only to pull the bathroom door shut.

Taser in hand, he sprinted into the living room. He found Leia standing near Gary, who’d pushed the closet door shut before the zombie got all the way out. Its right leg and right arm flailed wildly. Gary and Willy held the door firmly against its torso, pinning it.

Leia and Rayna stood side by side. Leia leveled her Taser at the creature.

“Okay,” she said. “Let it out.”

Gary and Willy let go. The door slid open and the monster spilled facedown onto the floor. It was barefoot and wore what appeared to be cotton pajamas; they were covered with little versions of the original
Enterprise
series. Leia fired a dart into its shoulder and unleashed a blast of current. In seconds it was over.

“Did he touch you?” Jim asked.

She shook her head.

“How about you?” he asked Gary.

“I think I’m going to puke,” he replied.

“Don’t,” Jim replied. “The bathroom’s occupied.”

In fact, they could hear the bathroom’s occupant scratching furiously at the door.

“The mom?” Leia said.

“Yeah,” Jim said. “I’ll be right back.”

Gary, Willy, and Leia listened as Jim walked back to the bathroom, pushed open the door, and fired the Taser. They heard the splash of the creature falling back into the tub.

Jim walked back into the bedroom. He looked at the body of the boy on the floor. Then he picked it up by the back of its pajama top and lugged it into the bathroom. Afterward he did the same with the bodies of the father and daughter. Then he shut the bathroom door, walked back into the kitchenette, and sat down at the table with the others.

“What did you do with them?” Leia asked.

“I just . . . lined them up,” Jim said.

“Maybe we should put something over them,” Gary said. “A sheet or something.”

“They’re dead,” Jim said. “And we’ve already done the best thing we could possibly do by making sure they stay that way. Don’t think about it. Just push it into the back of your mind. I know it sounds impossible, but trust me, it’s the only way to handle stuff like this.”

“Will it stay in the back of my mind?” Leia asked.

“No,” Rayna said. “It won’t.”

“It will stay there long enough. Right now we’ve got bigger issues to deal with.”

“Like what?” Gary asked.

“Like the fact that Leia nearly bought it because I was careless,” Jim said. “I
saw
the boy in the photograph. I knew this room belonged to a family of four, and that only three of the family members were accounted for. But did I do the math? Did I stop to think for a minute? No.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Leia told him. “I should have checked the closet when I opened it.”

“I
do
blame myself,” Jim said. “It was my idea to go to the corner suite. My plan.”

“We’ll just be more careful going forward,” Willy assured him. “Maybe we call out to the zombies before we open the door. Round them up, if you know what I mean. Get their attention so nobody sneaks up on us.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Gary said. He went up to the connecting door and tapped on it. “Hello?” he called. “Anybody in there? Hello, hello?”

In response came a loud, forceful knocking from the other side. Gary recoiled so quickly that he lost his balance and fell backward. Willly let out a short scream.

“Don’t shoot!” a voice shouted back. “I’m innocent!”

Gary pushed himself to his feet. “A talking zombie?”

“There’s no such thing,” Leia said. “That’s a talking human.”

“Are you okay?” Jim shouted through the door.

“It was self-defense,” the voice called back. “I didn’t do it on purpose!”

Jim and Leia exchanged quizzical glances.

“I’m not police,” Jim stated loudly. “I work with the hotel. I don’t care what you did or who you did it to. But I need to get into your room, okay?”

“All right.”

“Take three steps backward. I have a passkey, and I’m going to open the door.”

“All right,” the voice repeated, slightly fainter this time.

Jim took the key from Rayna, unlocked the door, and opened it.

He was confronted by a massive Klingon in full battle armor. A massive Klingon that, judging from his bloodshot eyes and the moistness of his cheeks, had been crying.

“Martock,” Jim said.

The Klingon looked at his rescuers, then burst into tears again.

“It was self-defense,” he said between sobs. “She would have killed me. She was like some kind of monster.”

He wrapped his gigantic arms around Jim, buried his head on his right shoulder, and continued weeping.

Jim patted him on the back, let him cry for a few moments, and then spoke.

“You mean the girl in your booth,” he said. “The one who was sleeping on your cot.”

“Her name was Karen,” Martock said. “I kept telling her to go up to our room. She was so sick. But she wouldn’t move. After the vendor area shut down, I started packing up the booth, putting away my valuables, and somehow I lost track of her. Couldn’t find her anywhere. The place was deserted and her cot was empty. I was rushing because I had to bring a commission to the Klingon Feast—”

“Matt’s bat’leth,” Gary remarked.

Jim motioned for him to keep quiet. “And then what?”

“I was getting ready to leave when I heard something behind my booth. Something rummaging behind the partition. I pulled it aside and saw Karen on her hands and knees on the floor. At first my mind refused to accept what it saw. But then I realized that she was crouching
over
someone. A body. A body whose stomach had been cut open. Both of her hands were filled with intestines, and as I watched she brought the pile up to her bloody mouth and took a bite. And then . . . then she came after me.”

“Let’s go sit down,” Jim suggested.

He guided Martock back to the dining area table. The five of them sat down.

“I didn’t know what was wrong,” Martock continued. “I didn’t know what to do. I mean, what’s the procedure when your good friend suddenly turns into a cannibal?”

“I’m guessing you run,” Leia offered.

“That’s right,” Martock said. “I backed away, almost tripping over the damn cot. She followed me. She was moaning. It was horrible. I ran away with the bat’leth still in my hands. I ran to the men’s room and hid in one of the stalls. Just waited in there, with my feet up on the toilet. Maybe a minute or two later I heard the door open. And like an idiot I said,’Who’s there?’All I heard in reply was moaning. I heard her slowly stagger through the bathroom. I saw her feet go by. They were bloody. Once she got past I decided to open the door and run for it. But just as I did, I caught sight of her. And she of me. And then I noticed something that was a thousand times worse than the blood or the moaning.”

“The eye,” Jim said. “The red one.”

“That’s right,” Martock said. “She had a huge third eye on her forehead. Somehow I knew that it was responsible for what happened. For what she’d become. I got mad. I swung the bat’leth and I. . . .”

“I know,” Jim said. “You took her head. I saw the body.”

“I dropped the bat’leth in the men’s room and ran,” Martock said. “I know this sounds crazy, but if you look behind my booth you’ll see what she did. She was like an animal.”

“You mean you’ve been up here this whole time
hiding from the police
?” Jim asked. “You have no idea what’s going on? You haven’t heard any of the noise from the hallway?”

Martock removed a bloodied MP3 player from his pocket. “For the last few hours I’ve been alone with Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, savoring my last few hours of freedom,” he said.

“Well, there’s good news and bad news,” Gary said cheerfully. “Which do you want to hear first?”

They broke it down for him quickly. The good news was that he wasn’t going to jail. The bad news was that the world was ending. All things considered, the Klingon seemed relieved.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“We’re working on it,” Jim said. “Is there anyone else in your suite?”

“No, it was just me and Karen. We’d bunk together at conventions to save money.”

“Wait, Karen Masterson?” Leia asked. “The costume designer?”

Martock nodded. “I thought your bikini looked familiar. That’s one of Karen’s pieces, isn’t it?”

“I hired her to make it for me,” Leia said. “But if it’s okay with you, I’d like to exchange it for something else. It’s not really practical under the circumstances.”

“Help yourself,” Martock said. “I’m sure Karen wouldn’t mind.”

Leia patted him on the shoulders and entered the adjoining room. Meanwhile, Jim introduced Martock to the rest of his crew and briefed him on the plan to invade the corner suite.

“I’ve been thinking about something you told me downstairs,” Jim said. “When I was looking at your weapons in the vending area, you said you had a few live blades up in your bedroom.”

“More than a few,” Martock began.

Before he could elaborate, Leia emerged from the adjoining suite. Gary gasped and grabbed Jim’s forearm. She’d changed into what he recognized as Princess Leia’s outfit from the opening moments of the original
Star Wars
—a hooded, all-white robe cinched around her waist with a silver belt.

“What do you think?” she said. “It even came with shoes.”

“It’s spectacular,” Gary sputtered.

“I’m just glad I found something in my size,” Leia shrugged. She glanced at the tag that was dangling from her sleeve and then said, “Mr. Michael Bigalow of Dallas is going to be very disappointed when he learns I’ve taken his commission.”

Rayna laughed. “Michael Bigalow’s a drag queen,” she said. “He puts on these really funny burlesque shows. There’s a female Time Lord called Dr. Who-ha, and then a nymphomaniac Borg called Sixty of Nine.”

“Well, I’m guessing tonight’s performance is canceled,” Leia said. She tore the tag off the sleeve and tossed it aside.

“Wear it with honor,” Martock said.

“I will,” Leia said. “And just wait until you see the accessories.” She ducked into the adjoining suite and returned a moment later with a four-foot-long staff; one end formed a club and the other featured a fan-shaped blade.