Extreme Zombies, page 35
Brownie, down to one finger and one thumb, both of which he needed to hold his cards, said, “Can I use a toe? I got extras. I gotta stay in, Slim. I gotta win some parts back, I really gotta.”
“Aw, nobody wants toes,” Slim said. “I got thirteen already. You got anything else?”
“Zeke,” Brownie said to me, “can you loan me a finger or two?”
“Nope,” I said. Last time I loaned him something he lost three of my toes, and it took me six games to get them back, and some pinching in the night, because one of the other guys didn’t want to give his up. My body parts were different from most of the others’. I was one of the Reverend Thomas’s first Born Agains, before he got the Elixir of Life refined. I figured I got some secret ingredients none of the other zombies had, ’cause most of my body parts had a life of their own, and when the Rev punished us by withholding our zombie pickles, I never got so weak and wobbly as the others did.
I went over to join Prettyboy at the tent flap. Only one thing about him interested me, his still-alive wife. Prettyboy was staring toward the main tent. Faint on the heavy afternoon air, the “Amens!” and “Praise Jesus!” of the meeting sounded like a distant game show.
“It’s almost time, isn’t it, Zeke?” asked Prettyboy.
“You know one of the angels will be over to fetch you when it’s time, Prettyboy.”
“But it’s almost time, isn’t it?”
“Settle down and play some poker, will you?” Slim yelled from over to the table. “We’re sick and tired of your whining. All of us what has ears, anyway.”
Except me, maybe. Prettyboy’s noise didn’t bother me. He was the fifth or sixth whiner I’d seen since achieving the hereafter. Like a constant drip in a sink, he’d drive you nuts if you paid attention to him, didn’t bother you none if you just ignored him.
“Will Caroline be there?” Prettyboy asked, pulling on my shirttail. “Will she be there, Zeke?”
I was hoping she would be. She was the most devoted wife I’d ever seen, hung on far longer than most. Most spouses stopped coming to meeting when things went to pieces, figuring that death had them parted and they wasn’t required to stay by and watch their exes rot.
“She’ll be happy to see me, won’t she?”
I glanced at him and doubted it. Any live woman with the sense God gave her would run the other direction, with how Prettyboy looked and smelled now—not that I could smell him; my senses had changed after death—but so many flies couldn’t be wrong. If the Rev didn’t hold a revival meeting pretty soon and find himself a new prettyboy, business was going to fall off something wicked.
Edging away from Prettyboy, I settled on the ground and made my silent whistle. The finger I had lost to Artie crept off the table and wriggled back to me. I held out my hand and it hooked right up with its own stump, not needing glue at all. I hauled my way up to my feet again by gripping the canvas, and thought about Final Death. The Rev had threatened to chop me up and burn me a couple times, but I threatened right back—said I’d left some facts about his activities somewhere and if I died again somebody would see the news got to a reporter. I knew the Rev when he was still a prison doctor doing his own secret research, and if his Reverendness came from God, then I had never been on death row for murder.
Lately, though, I’d been brooding more and more about Finals. What good was life or even half-life anyway if you couldn’t get near a woman? Might as well see if the Big Nothing was better than what I had now.
The Rev had some Born Again women, but he kept them locked up except for services, when they acted as angels so long as they weren’t too obviously fallen-apart women. The Rev didn’t rightly know how the Elixir of Life worked, and he didn’t want to find out if those of us who still had the equipment could breed. He tried to keep us quiet by telling us there was no sex in Heaven.
One of the angels, all blond hair and white robe, came over from the meeting tent. She was pretty recent, looked pale but not too unhealthy except for the big dark circles under her eyes. Just as I was wondering what she died of, she held out a hand to Prettyboy and I saw the slash across her wrist. It was puckered and ugly. Somebody must have loved her, though, to bring her in to the Rev for revival.
“It’s time, brother,” she said to Prettyboy. Her voice was nice and gentle. I wondered if they played knuckle poker over to the women’s tent, and doubted it, somehow.
“I’m ready,” said Prettyboy. He glanced at me. One of his eyes was ready to ooze. I thought, Prettyboy, you should’ve joined the poker game before this. Show a good enough spirit, and you could be a tent zombie until you fell to pieces or got too weak to cart furniture around; tent zombies got to travel, and see places, even if it was only at night. In the tents, we all knew what to expect of each other; we’d seen it before. Not like the relatives of the Born Agains. Sometimes, if the relations wailed and hallelujahed enough, and the Born Agains agitated for it, the Rev left Born Agains with their folks, and got out of town before corruption set in. Sometimes I speculated on what happened to them all, wondering who screamed first when something dropped off.
The only other thing Prettyboy had to look forward to if he didn’t straighten up and be a good tenter was Finals, which looked like the road he was traveling. No sense in him, no fellowship, and too much whine. How’d he ever get a wife like Caroline?
“Are you Zeke?” the angel said to me. She stood there holding Prettyboy’s hand. I wished it was mine. My nerves was pretty iffy, but my vision still worked fine, and just knowing she was touching me would have meant a lot.
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
“The Reverend told me to tell you there’s going to be a revival meeting tonight.”
Goodbye Prettyboy. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. The Rev would be needing me to make the beginning preparations with the Elixir none of the other zombies knew about.
The angel nodded to me, her eyes bright blue in their nests of bruises. She led Prettyboy off across the browning grass, under the blanket of sun. In all that light, Prettyboy looked terrible even from behind. The skin on his arms was yellow and patchy, and clumps of his hair was coming out. I ambled after them, figuring to go to the supply tent beyond the meeting tent and get the Elixir mixing.
Caroline waited by the back flap of the meeting tent. Every time I had seen her she was wearing skirts and blouses that covered all of her except hands, face, and feet, no matter how hot it was. This time the blouse was white and the skirt was gray, and inside them she was shaped like a woman in a girlie magazine. She wore her red hair twisted in a knot at the back of her neck. Sweat made her forehead shine.
She smiled at Prettyboy. “Walter,” she said, holding out a hand.
I looked down at my hands. Right now I had all my fingers and thumbs and most everything else. My skin was yellowish, but it looked all of a piece, and had some vitality to it.
Just before the angel lifted the meeting tent’s back flap to usher Prettyboy and Caroline inside, I veered over to them. “Walter,” I said to Prettyboy, “you look sickly.”
Caroline stared at me. “Are you dead?” she asked.
“Born Again, ma’am,” I said. I had watched her before. She clung to Prettyboy like she really loved him, even when some of him came off in her hand. I thought about my wife. Of course, she died before I did, but even when we was alive together, she never liked to touch me unless we was in bed.
Caroline put her hand out toward me. I stood still, and thought, there’s something wrong with this one. Maybe the right kind of wrong. She touched my arm. I felt my skin twitch. It had been a long time. I gave her my best smile. I still had most of my teeth.
“Zeke, I want to go in. I want to tell them about the glories of being born again,” said Prettyboy.
“Pret— Walter, you don’t look so hot. I think you better go lie down.” I buttoned up my shirt, rolled down the sleeves, and tucked in the tails. I hadn’t been a prettyboy since the Rev’s early tenting days, though I could have kept the job forever if I had been more worked up about it. Right now I wanted it more than anything I had wanted since I woke to the afterlife.
The angel looked from Prettyboy to me, her eyes troubled. She patted Prettyboy’s hand. “Brother, you do look weary,” she said.
“But—but—” His shoulders sagged.
“Go back to the tent and lie down, Walter,” I said, as if rest would do him any good.
He turned and shuffled away.
I looked at Caroline. She slid her arm through the crook in mine. It was like the first jolt in the chair. I knew I liked it, and wanted more; didn’t mind dying to get it. “You’re really dead?” she said.
“Ma’am.”
We went through the tent flap together, walking up the back of the dais between two wings of the choir, which, decked out in white and blue satin, looked like a low cloud. They were mostly alive, and not allowed to talk to us. Caroline and I came up beside the pulpit. “Praise the Lord,” cried the Rev, not missing a beat, “see what the power of the Lord Jesus can do, and not just in Heaven, but right here on Earth. The age of miracles is upon us again. He who raised Lazarus, He who raised Jairus’s daughter, He can raise your dead too. Praise the Lord!” He gripped my shoulder as Amens swept the tent. “Look on a wonder! This man stands before you, a testimony to God’s greatness, born again into eternal Life, reunited with his wife. Praise the Lord!”
“Praise the Lord!” The noise was like a wind against us.
“I was lost, but now am found,” I yelled. “I was blind but now I see. I was dead to life, a sinner in Satan, but now I am alive again through the power of Jesus.” The words came back easy. Caroline’s hand stroked my side as I spoke, and I felt her touch through my shirt. I felt it. Her fingernails slid along my ribs. “Born again to be with my beloved, praise the Lord!” Rib of my rib. Dust of my dust.
When all the singing and sobbing and carrying on was over for the afternoon, and Caroline had gone out to talk to some of the women and tell them about the miracle rebirth of me or Prettyboy, the Rev sidled up to me. “Zeke?” he said.
“What?”
“That was the best performance you ever gave. How come you came back into the fold, boy?”
“I want that woman, Rev. She wants me. Give me the night off and I’ll prettyboy for you again tomorrow.”
He tapped his fingers on his vest and stared off, considering. “You wouldn’t run out on me, now would you?”
“You’re the man with the special pickles,” I said. Most food wouldn’t stay down, and without food, we weakened and fell apart even faster. At least, most of us did. The Rev thought those pickles were the only thing that satisfied our appetites, and he kept them locked up.
“Have a nice night,” he said.
She had a car, a beat-up blue Chevette. It felt strange sitting in a passenger seat watching a woman drive only a foot away. Oncoming headlights flickered across her face. Who was she, and why did she cling to her husband so long? If she believed in Jesus and his miracles, and the sanctity of her marriage, how come she was taking me home with her?
She parked the car at a cheap motel on the fringe of town. She led me inside, flicking on the light.
The door had hardly closed behind me when she reached for the buttons at the throat of her blouse, staring at me all the while. Then she pulled the pins out of her hair and shook it out. It was long and heavy. Her eyes watched me as all her clothes and things came off. I felt the life rising in me then. Whether it was the life God gave or the Rev’s blasphemous version, I neither knew nor cared. Caroline had skin so white the veins showed through, little rivers of life.
When she finished undressing herself, she came for me. I blessed the providence that made me wash that morning, as if I hadn’t been doing it every morning since I first saw Caroline hanging on Prettyboy’s arm. She leaned so close her hair swung to touch my face as she unbuttoned my shirt, and then her hand was flat on my chest, warmer than the sun. Her eyes met mine and slid away.
“Lie back,” she said, pressing me down on the bed. She unlaced my workboots, let them drop, and pulled my pants off. She climbed onto the bed beside me and reached for the light switch.
In the darkness, she said, “I killed him.” She let about an acre of silence go by while I thought about that. “He don’t even know it. I killed him, and when I heard about the Reverend—I thought if only I had Walter brought back, it would make everything all right, but it didn’t. How can he forgive me for something he don’t even know I done?”
I thought about my wife, the last time I saw her. White clothes staining red, eyes lost in bruises. I had watched the color seep out of her face, and listened to her last breath.
I slid my arm around Caroline’s shoulders.
She leaned over me in the darkness. Her tongue touched my chest. I thought, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is a Heaven.
Nina Kiriki Hoffman is the author of adult, middle-school, and young-adult novels, and many short stories. Her first novel, The Thread that Binds the Bones, won a Stoker award, and her short story, “Trophy Wives,” won a Nebula Award. Her novel, Fall of Light, was published by Ace in 2009. Her latest series is Magic Next Door: Thresholds, published in 2010; and Meeting, published in 2011. Her recently published collection of short fiction, Permeable Borders, garnered a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Hoffman lives in Eugene, Oregon, with several cats and many strange toys and imaginary friends. For a list of her publications, see: ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html.
Nowadays sometimes talking to yourself is the only way to stay sane. If you can even use that word any longer.
Viva Las Vegas
Thomas S. Roche
I cruise the blackened city in the primer-gray Caddy, all-steel construction carving a path of blood and bone as I search the faces of the living dead. I stalk the streets like nightmares on a pale horse with a 390 pre-smog, radials and a big ugly hood ornament of a woodpecker or something, the air conditioning on high and the Beretta across my lap. I drive the Strip with its shattered neon lights and fragments of plate glass windows, silver dollars and poker chips and hundred-dollar bills forming drifts like the desert sands across Las Vegas Boulevard. I look into the desperate eyes of the rotting, watching them claw at the windows of the Caddy, and I put my shades on.
Emily is nowhere in sight.
But I hold on to the faith that’s kept me on the highway since I started. It’s a small burning coal at the pit of my stomach that tells me one day very, very soon I’m going to have my Emily back and then not even Manny Pearlman can take her away again. Off in the distance, I hear the howl of a dog.
I park the Caddy in the parking lot of a Mister Doggy and light an unfiltered Black Lung. I sit there, smoking and thinking about the way Emily’s eyes are going to light up when she sees me. It’s been a long time coming, pedal-to-the-metal in the Caddy, burning up the road to this place, and every time I look into the face of Death, he is a brainless zomboid drooling green muck on his shirt. Every time I get cornered and try to speak words of wisdom to the great unwashed (which has gotten particularly unwashed of late) I find myself face to face with a greater kind of pinhead, occupant of a brave new and even stupider TV nation looking for a rather unwilling TV dinner—namely, me. Every time I point nine millimeters of death at the brain of the New Regular Joe, his jaws just clack and his hands claw to get a grip on my arm and peel off a succulent morsel.
But none of that matters worth ratshit. I know, know in my heart, in my soul, that when I finally lay my hands on Emily I’m gonna take her in my arms and she’s gonna see me, recognize me, remember everything we had together. That’s when her eyes’ll brighten and I’ll see those beautiful shining tears of hers, and at long last I’ll have my Emily back from the hands of Death.
Then all at once I see them. Two dead hippies, one short and one tall, wearing tie-dye shirts with skull logos, have just walked up to me like they’re trying to sell me some weed and now they’re coming at the Caddy’s side windows with a couple of Louisville Sluggers. No time to get the car in gear. I open the door fast so the short guy takes the bottom edge in the knee, the bat goes flying. I lean out of the car just enough to point the Beretta at his head; the gun barks and brains spray over the second hippy as he comes at me.
I see tie-dye and Jerry Bear on the guy’s shirt: “Forever Dead.” Christ, could I make this shit up?
I fire again but miss the second hippy’s head and the bat comes down on me once, twice; I see stars and tumble back into the Caddy. He starts climbing in, his jaws already working, his hands grabbing for me. I’ve still got the Black Lung in my mouth and I quickly put it out in the hippy’s eye. Not that it hurts the bastard but it seems to slow him down just a hair. That gives me just the chance I need to get the Beretta in his mouth and to spray his brains all over the inside of the Caddy’s door. The first bullet takes the guy out something fierce, but you know how it is with those goddamn Berettas, once you get started it’s kind of hard to stop, so next thing I know the clip is empty and hot cartridges are rattling around the inside of the Caddy like pinballs in the Hot Rod Derby machine down at the Boardwalk in Santa Monica, and the guy’s head isn’t just blown open but gone, which is maybe how I like it. The Beretta makes a hollow click over and over again as pull the trigger, then with a “Yech,” I kick the headless body out into the Mister Doggy parking lot, slam the door, and get the car in gear.
Wetwork never used to be this wet.
Both of the hippies crunch under my radials as I swing a tight turn out of the parking lot and just barely miss the giant dog with the obscene wiener which used to flash neon-red like a goddamn blood sausage. The back end of the Caddy scrapes loud as I crank another turn and get going onto Tropicana, flooring it. Cruising in the fast lane, I shake out another cigarette and get it into my mouth with trembling hands. It doesn’t do much to kill the smell of the guy’s rotting insides drizzling down the inside of the Caddy’s door.
