Authors: Noel Merczel
"Hello!" Mr. Sexy Jogger barked
into the phone. "Who is this!"
God, he sounds so angry
, Andrea thought.
This certainly didn't have the same fun feel as one of Andrea's fantasies.
"Um...hi...my name is Andrea Muller?" Andrea said, trying her
best to remain calm. "Your wife Mimi is in my basement..."
"MY WIFE?" he yelled
, sounding even angrier than before. "YOU HAVE MY WIFE IN YOUR BASEMENT?"
Suddenly, Andrea didn't like this guy very much anymore
.
"She was in my backyard,"Andrea explained, feeling
shaky.
None of this is my fault
! she reminded herself.
"And I think she was, I mean, she said she was attacked by some homeless woman...plus, I think she's really sick or something....."
"I'll be right there!" he stated
, sounding a little less angry.
"Where do you live?"
"One twenty-two Lamplighter," she told
him. "I’m uh...You jog by my house almost every day. I'm the girl out watering the flowers?"
He didn't say anything, at first.
Oh great
, Andrea thought.
He doesn’t even remember me! Now I really feel stupid
.
Finally, he said
, "Okay. I know which house you mean."
Wait, Andrea thought.
I was wrong
!
He does remember me!
"I'll be there in about five minutes," he said
. "I'm over on
Chanticlair
. Have you been listening to the news? Do you know what the hell's going on around here?"
"No," Andrea replied
.
Drew and Lisa were staring at her
. Patty
was still staring at the ceiling
.
Mimi hadn't moved an inch under her bloody dish cloth.
"HA!" Mimi's husband shouted over the phone,
with a disgusted snort. "They say it's the damn apocalypse! But you know what it is? It's a bunch of crazies with zombie make-up running around attacking people, and the news media has totally bought into it. They're saying it's some sort of damn virus....."
Andrea couldn't help but think what a weird coincidence this all was, since she had been discussing the possibility of a zombie apocalypse happening just last night after watching the show Dead Heads with Drew.
"Are you serious?" Andrea asked
. "
This is on the news?
The
real
news?"
"Yea! More than one channel, too!" he confirm
ed
. "Just be careful. If she starts acting.....threatening just get away from her. Go lock yourself in a room. I'm heading up Lamplighter now. Get ready for me. Don't let anyone else in!"
Then he hung up.
Threatening
? Andrea thought, confused by the woman's husband's choice of words
. It was like he knew something....was warning her in some way.....
Andrea dropped her cell phone onto the table and said one word.
"Zombies."
Mimi tore the dishtowel off her face.
"What are you talking about, Andrea?" Drew asked.
"Your husband," Andrea told
Mimi. "He says this is on the news. You know that homeless woman? She was pretending to be a zombie. That's why she attacked you
."
"WHAAAAT?" Lisa screamed
. "Oh, that is too funny!"
"It's not funny, Lisa!" Andrea exclaimed
. "This shit is really happening!"
"Yea, think about it," Drew said
. "If enough people go around pretending to be zombies and killing people, that's almost as dangerous as the real thing!
Or wait...maybe even more dangerous, because they would have regular brains and zombies just have dumb zombie brains."
Just then, the girls heard a gunshot outside.
"It might just be a truck backfiring," Andrea ventured, remembering what Mimi's husband had said about people attacking other people, and that it was even on the news.
Nobody was buying the truck backfiring idea, including Andrea, herself.
“It sounds like my husband’s shotgun,” Mimi suddenly said.
"Your husband will be here soon," Andrea told her
, trying to sound soothing. "He's coming up the street, right now."
Then everyone in the room was silent, thinking the same exact thought.
If that was indeed her husband's shotgun... who (or what) was he shooting at and why?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My husband, ha
! Mimi thought
.
My husband is probably busy thinking of that stupid smiling slut from his office right now. My husband would probably look at you and secretly fantasize about fucking the hell out of you, the disgusting pig
of a man
!
Mimi's milky white eyes tracked
the girl with the thick honey blonde hair. The girl
was wearing one of those summer dresses all the young girls were
wearing these days.
The dress was virginal white with a high waste, and the bottom was all poofy
, like a tutu. It
was made out of delicate eyelet material and looked
like the sort of dress a five year old would wear to a birthday party.
What the hell is with all these young girls these days?
Mimi wonder
ed
, angrily.
They all want to look like children. What happened to girls wanting to look sophisticated and mature?
What’s with the stupid little girl act
?
Is it so they don’t make men feel threatened
?
They either want
to look like little girls or porn sluts, like that other girl with the skin-tight top. It all goes along with their dumb round faces and the stupid doll hair and big fat lips
.
Mimi was born in 1984.
Back when Mimi was growing up, girls were proud to be called women.
Now, fifty year old women were clipping fake hair to their heads, having their lips artificially plumped up, and going around calling themselves girls instead of woman
.
When did the word "women" become synonymous with "old woman?"
Nobody calls a fifty year old man a "boy."
Stupid girls....stupid women
...
Oh God, I feel like I’m going to throw-up
! Mimi thought.
I’ve never felt such horrible nausea in my life
!
I have to tell one of these dumb sluts to bring me a bucket.
This is so embarrassing!
To be at their mercy...
Mimi tried to tell the stupid girl with the virginal white dress to get her a bucket, but the words wouldn't come out right.
“Booo,” she said
. “
Boooodit?”
Suddenly, everything in the room looked like it had
a white film over it. Mimi blink
ed, thinking she had
something in her eyes. But the white film remain
ed
.
The picture of the kitten wearing the frog hat on the computer was laughing at her from behind the white film.
Laughing at me
!
Mimi thought, indignantly
. How rude
!
Then, mysteriously, the nausea just disappeared...
replaced by an overwhelming gnawing hunger.
Why am I so ravenous
? Mimi wonder
ed
.
I feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks
.
Why is everything so filmy
?
Why is the cat on the computer laughing at me, with its sharp little kitten teeth sticking out in such a mean way
?
Mimi always liked cats. But this cat was not to be trusted.
Mimi shook
her head.
Why am I having these strange thoughts
? she thought.
Where are they coming from
?
I’m hungry. So hungry. This is almost worse than the nausea
!
I want to sink my teeth into some delicious soft flesh
.
Flesh...it’s all around me....fresh meat...fresh...so good....it smells so good....looks so tantalizing
....
"Hey, Andrea....um......something's not right..." the skinny girl with the straight blonde hair was saying.
"What do you...." the girl with the thick honey colored hair started
to respond.
Mimi was
now sitting up. She ha
d removed the bloody dish towel from her face.
She was smiling, anticipating sinking her teeth into fresh raw bloody dripping meat.
Mimi's sickly milky white eyes tracked
the pudgy girl with the mounds of frizzy blonde hair.
That one is loaded with meat!
she thought
. What a feast
!
"Mimi?" the girl with the big dumb doe eyes and the white dress was
saying. "Are you alright? Do you want me to get you something?"
The girl looked
scared.
Her huge bug-out eyes were even bigger and buggier than
before.
She backed away from Mimi, like Mimi had suddenly turned into the bride of Frankenstein
.
Bitch. Fucking baby doll bitch.
Yea. Get me your fucking arm to eat, bi
tch.
"Oh shit!" exclaimed the skanky whore in the hot pink t-shirt
. "I
gotta take a picture of this!"
"Lisa! This isn't the time for that!" the skinny girl w
earing plaid sleep pants and a navy blue tank top warned.
"Oh yes it is!" the whore declared
, snapping away. "This shit's on the news, remember? They want up-close pictures! I might get paid a lot of money for these!
Enough money to get on America's Next Top Model!
"
"I must...eat...flesh...mooo...flleee...," Mimi gurgled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mimi stood up and shuffled slowly yet determinedly over to Patty as Lisa kept snapping away with her cell phone
.
Finally, Lisa
swore and stuck her phone in her back pocket. Then Lisa, Drew, and Andrea began backing up in the direction of the stairs.
"PATTY!" Lisa yelled
. "GET OUT OF HER WAY!"
Patty, clueless as usual, stood in the middle of the floor with her arms outstretched like she had turned into a human tree.
"There's cheese in the garage," Patty stated solemnly.
"So Mimi is actually one of those crazy people pretending to be a zombie?" Drew asked.
"Unless she's the real thing..." Lisa responded.
Now even Lisa looked scared.
"PATTY!" Andrea called out.
Patty continued to stand in the middle of the floor as though she was involved in some religious ceremony, offering herself up to the gods.
"Maybe we should hit her with something," Drew suggested
.
“Which one, Patty or Mimi?” Lisa asked.
“Mimi, you dolt!” Drew snapped.
"Are you kidding?" Lisa demanded
. "She'll attack us!"
"I knew we shouldn't have let her in..." Andrea exclaimed.
"It was your idea, brainiac!" Lisa reminded her. "You jumped up and put the sheet on the couch and got these frickin blue gloves...so don't blame me!"
"Yea, but I changed my mind!" Andrea protested
. "If you hadn't been so impulsive, like usual...if you could just act like a regular person
!"
"Oh be quiet, Little Miss Big Eyes," Lisa growled menacingly.
"Oh fuck!" said
Drew. "This isn't good. We need to just get out of here and go find some help!"
"PATTY!" Andrea called out again, feeling frantic.
But it was
too late. Patty d
idn't
even scream. She just collapse
d onto the hard tile floor with a loud thump as Mimi tore into her head, growling and snarling and ripping through her ear with relish.
Andrea, Lisa, and Drew just stood there, dumbstruck, feeling totally helpless.
"If this is fake, it’s going way too far!" Andrea whispered.
Suddenly, there was an urgent knock at the front door.
"THANK GOD!" Andrea cried
.
Andrea roared up the stairs with the two other girls hot on her
heels.
She flung open the door before realizing she hadn't asked who was
there.
But it was okay, because it was
him.
MR. SEXY JOGGER!
Right at her doorstep.
Only, she couldn't think of him that way.
They stared
at each other intently for a just a moment too long. There
was
a strange look in his face.
Andrea couldn't pin-point exactly what it was.