Extreme Zombies, page 37
So I did the job, a little reluctantly. I just didn’t think it was right—but, hell, what’s right any more? These days no one can say what the moral high ground is. We all make compromises and it’s a sick ugly world out there. But I was gonna have my slice of Paradise. I knew Emily and me were gonna be the happiest couple of the face of the Earth.
Emily looked at me with those gorgeous brown eyes and smiled a broad smile. “You should see the house—it’s like a dream! Dishwasher and everything! The bed has this motor that makes it jiggle and—Tony, oh, you don’t even have to put a quarter in to make it go!” I swear, there were tears in her eyes. “We’re gonna be so happy there! Hey, Tony, you must be totally wiped out after your flight.”
“Nah,” I said, lighting a Black Lung, double filter.
“Then hey, you wanna go out tonight? Jack says we can go anywhere and they’ll treat us like royalty!” She seemed so excited about that fact, like it meant she’d finally made it in life. “We’ll catch dinner and a show! Freddy Valentine is singing at the Castle—I’ve got a new dress and I think you’ll like it . . . ”
And I did. It was a tight little cocktail number in black sequins, cut short, just the way I liked it. Emily was a beautiful girl. There wasn’t a lady in the world better looking than my Emily, that was for goddamn sure. We ate like King Tony and Queen Em at the Steaming Plate and cruised over in the Merc to the Castle. Emily had called JT and he had valet parking, the boys in red waiting for us and greeting us by name.
“Don’t fuck with the fuzzy dice, punk,” I told the parking attendant, a freckle-faced kid. I slipped him a twenty and winked at him.
“Oh, I won’t, Mr. Stinson!” He smiled a big broad dopey smile and I patted him on the arm. I was feeling like a million bucks. I even had a brand new Armani on, double breasted. As we went in I reached over and gave Emily a squeeze on the ass.
“Tony!” she giggled, swatting my shoulder.
“Sorry, Em. Just can’t control myself. The way you walk in this thing, you make me wanna tear it right off of you.”
I leaned down and kissed her, and Emily giggled some more. “Later, Tony! Don’t forget about the bed—”
“I got a pocket fulla quarters,” I snickered.
“No, silly, you don’t need quarters for this one!”
“Well I got ’em!” I laughed, and then I winked at Emily. She blushed a deep red and hid her mouth behind her pocketbook as she giggled.
Em mouthed, “I love you” at me with those kissable shiny-pink lips of hers. It was a good thing I’d got the Armani in a full-cut.
Inside, JT had the best table in the place reserved for us, even though the mayor was sitting about two tables back. I walked by the mayor and nodded. He just gave me a tight-lipped smile. The Castle was JT’s club, and I was number one on JT’s payroll for what I’d done, and I was getting paid back in spades. Not even the mayor got the kind of treatment I did. The rule was usually “lay low” after a job like that, but who could touch me? Vegas was JT’s town. The man owned Paradise.
I pulled out Emily’s chair for her, and she sat down daintily. The lights went down just as we ordered—rum and Coke for me, brandy Alexander for Em.
“Don’t make it too strong,” she said to the cocktail waitress. “I don’t want this big strong hairy man to take advantage of me later.”
The waitress floated off and Em gave my knee a squeeze under the table.
The club went dark. In the box, the band began to play. It was a big group with trumpets and trombones and a double-bass and three guys playing maracas, and then Freddy Valentine took the stage, lit up in a single white spot.
Now there’s a man with class, I thought. He had on this understated purple velvet tux—exquisite. Black satin on the lapel, with a white carnation in the buttonhole, and a classy white tux shirt and a silver bow tie. Now there’s a performer, I thought to myself. There’s a man I can admire. He does what he does and he does it with balls. Freddy started into a rendition of “Viva Las Vegas” that was more like velvet than his tux.
“Isn’t he dreamy?” whispered Emily into my ear, her breath warm and her lips touching my earlobe.
“Hey—” I started.
She laughed. “Don’t worry, Mr. Big Shot. He’s no competition for you. You’re the only man I want that way.”
I smiled, satisfied, and put my arm around Emily. She snuggled closer.
Freddy followed up Viva with “Luck Be a Lady”—gorgeous. Emily and I applauded and she even whistled like she was at a baseball game. Em was from Brooklyn.
“We’ve got a very special couple in the audience tonight,” Freddy said between songs. “They’re a wonderful coupla cats, gonna—that’s right, you know it—tie the knot day after tomorrow, on Valentine’s Day.” There was a little chorus of “Awwwws” from the audience. “That’s right. We all know about the power of eternal love.” Freddy nodded to Em and me. “Let’s hear a big round of applause for the soon-to-be happy couple Mr. and Mrs. Tony Stinson—!”
The applause started and Em and I did some waving. Em was blushing something fierce there in the half-light and she wore it well. Freddy went on. He got a very serious look on his face.
“That’s right, cats. We all know about the power of eternal love. About the bond that happens between a man and a woman who are totally—and I do mean totally—in love. And when I say they’re in love, I do mean love, L-U-V.” There was a faint spray of laughter. “But all kidding aside, I’m not joking around here, folks. Love. It’s serious business. And that’s why I’d like to dedicate this next song to Tony and Emily, the very special couple here tonight.”
There was more applause.
“Oh, Tony,” said Emily, snuggling up against me, and I saw that she was crying mascara tears down her pale cheeks. I fished my handkerchief out of the pocket of the Armani and dabbed at them, smearing black all over the handkerchief.
Freddy started in with “Just Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” Emily turned to kiss me in the darkness. When Freddy was done there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, including mine. That’s how great this guy was, total class, the best crooner in the business. I’m not kidding here. He knew it was time to liven things up so that’s why the band started playing a perky island beat.
“All right, folks, there’s love and then there’s love. That’s why we’d like to do a little number for you—” he seemed to think about it for a minute—“Maybe on a cheery note. Got a song they sing down Jamaica way, in a place called the Caribbean, see they’ve got stories they like to tell about a creature called the ‘zombie.’ ” Some people in the audience laughed a little. “Hey, this is serious,” said Freddy. “Hey, I think this audience is a buncha zombies. Heh heh. That’s why I think it’s time—how ’bout we have a special on zombies? Can we do that, Barry?” Freddy pointed at the bartender, who gave a big nod and a grin. “All right, then. Zombies, half off. Get out there, ya no-good cocktail girls. So now here’s a little song, hey, pick up the tempo, guys, a little song they sing down in the Caribbean, something I like to call ‘Zombie Love.’ ”
Freddy started singing. The song was something special, something happy and fun, about how “Zombie love, it ain’t what it’s cracked up to be—” a cheery, happy song, and that’s why I almost forgot myself there in the darkness smoking my Black Lung double-filter. That’s why I ordered another drink when the applause rippled through the audience and Freddy was taking a bow for his happy little song called “Zombie Love.” And maybe there in the darkness I fell in love with Em all over again, like we were sixteen and horny, like we were just finding out what it’s all about. And that’s why I maybe drank a little too much and maybe so did Emily. So when we made our way out to the car park and the freckle-faced kid brought the car around I didn’t see the look in the punk’s eyes until it was way too late.
The freckle-faced kid grinned his wide grin as I fumbled in my pocket for a bill to hand him. He gave me the keys and I groped after them. That’s when his other hand came up holding the .38.
“Manny Pearlman sends his most heartfelt salutations on the happy occasion of your wedding, asswipe,” the kid said, quickly, and pulled the trigger twice.
Emily just gasped, like she didn’t realize what was happening. But the front of the black-sequined cocktail dress blossomed and red sprayed over her face. Now the kid was gone and I was on my knees screaming.
Em was looking up at me, her eyes suddenly glassy, her breath coming short. I looked into her face with sudden terror, sudden rage as I took her in my arms and whispered, “Em?”
“He seemed like a nice kid—” she told me, and then she was gone.
War for the future: No question about it. This was a new kind of war, and there were no fucking prisoners.
JT taught me that phrase when he was trying to talk me into nailing that little punk Donny Pearlman. I didn’t really want to hurt a man by killing one of his relatives, a non-combatant. Just didn’t seem to fit in to the code I had grown up with. It just didn’t seem right.
“There is no code,” JT had told me. “The stakes are too high. The world is a different place than it was, Tony. This is a war for the future. There are no rules.”
JT’s men had promised me revenge on Manny Pearlman. I didn’t want revenge. Way I saw it, nothing mattered anymore. Me and Manny were even, and if he and JT wanted to even up some bullshit score they had between them, that was their own problem. I just wanted out. I hooked up with an outfit, doing security on oil rigs up in Alaska. Maybe I thought the cold would freeze some of the hurt out of my soul. I buried Emily in that cocktail dress she was so proud of, and I wept behind my shades as I scattered Vegas dirt across the red roses on her coffin. Maybe she was the only fucking thing that mattered to me but at least I knew that had been real. JT was right. It was a war for the future, and everybody had lost.
Sometimes I think I went a little nuts up there in Alaska. Maybe the cold froze out my brain, instead of my heart. When it started happening—when the dead started hauling their sorry maggot-eaten asses out of the grave—I realized that there was a chance, a tiny, tiny chance, that I might find my Emily, and she might welcome me with open arms.
Open arms is pretty close to the mark. But it’s not exactly what I had in mind.
Roses. Dead roses. Everywhere.
I come to my senses with her hands all over me. She’s clawing and scratching, biting and tearing, uttering a nightmare wail like fingernails on the chalkboard of the damned. Or something. She’s got her body up against mine and her legs spread around me, grinding her crotch against mine, and so help me I’ve got a hard-on even though I’m bleeding all over. The Johnnie Walker is spilled across my suit. I’m pressed against the bed and Emily has got the tie pulled tight, strangling me. Somehow she’s gotten loose from the bonds. I feel her teeth closing on my throat and it seems like she’s ripping me open. That’s when I see her wrist, and I know in a flash what she’s done. She got free from the ropes by gnawing all the flesh off her wrist. And then using that mangled hand to free the other. Goo smears across my face. I hit her hard but she won’t budge. I reach out blindly for the night stand, manage to pop open the top drawer. I feel the butt of the .45 and haul it out, thumbing off the safety. The Armani’s come loose and Emily gets her teeth closed on a chunk of my neck, ripping it out with a shred of my shirt. I scream as I feel the flesh tearing. While she’s chewing that one I get the barrel of the .45 into her mouth amid the pulpy mass of my skin.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her as I pull the trigger.
One ankle is still tied to the bottom of the bed frame, so she flies halfway out of bed and sprawls there ruined and dangling. The pain in my shoulder is overwhelming, it’s throbbing and blood is running all over the bed. I look down at Emily and I start to think I should cry, but I just don’t feel like it anymore. I kneel over her, amid the scattered rose-petals and upended candleholders, and look into Emily’s ruined face.
“Flights of angels, baby,” I say. It’s hard not to cry.
Sadly, I bend down and kiss the gaping mass that was her mouth a minute ago. One last kiss, tortured and romantic. She tastes like chorizo.
Far below, I hear the sound of breaking glass.
I go to the window. Below, bleached in the white glare of the full moon and mingled with my reflection, stretching out as far as I can see across the moonlit desert, is a sea of the dead, garbed in Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts, black peg pants and dealer’s vests, tuxedos and cocktail dresses, plaid and crepe and pinstripe: all the freaks in Vegas; a rotting ocean of shambling bodies come at midnight to church to claim one of their own.
The front of the Armani is caked with gore. My shoulder is torn open and my flesh shows. I pull the jacket off, grunting from pain, and set it on the bloodied bed. I peel off my shirt and look down my shoulder, with its missing chunk of flesh where Emily gave me her final, insistent, kiss. The wound glistens wetly in the candlelight. I turn back to the window, where the dead burbling pricks are mounting the walls.
“Guess the war’s over,” I say to nobody, or to my reflection.
I feel the dull dead weight of the .45 in my hand.
Downstairs, the dead are climbing.
Thomas S. Roche is a widely published writer of erotica, horror, and crime fiction short stories, and also blogs on organized crime, sex, science, and international politics. His books include the story collections Dark Matter, His, and Hers, as well as the military-noir-gonzo zombie novel The Panama Laugh, for which nominated for the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. Roche has also been a finalist for the John Preston Short Fiction Award from the National Leather Association. His crime story “Hell on Wheels” was recently adapted into an audio program broadcast on BBC 4, and his short fiction has been translated into French, German, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Turkish, and Russian. You can find him at his personal website, www.thomasroche.com, as well as at his crime fiction blog, boiledhard.com.
It was hard to see the drug as anything but a curse that had destroyed everything . . .
Romero’s Children
David A. Riley
Senator Hardy launched an attack tonight against the widespread use of the age-retarding drug OM (Old Methuselah), in which he condemned black market sales. “No one today knows what its long term results will be. It may halt aging in the short term, but it will be years, perhaps decades before anyone can say that its usage is safe or does not have possible side effects which no one at this time can predict. People take this drug with the hope of a longer, healthier life, but they do not know if this is all they will get.”
—One of the last newspaper reports ever published in the United States
The old man could hear them scratching and clawing at the outside door two floors below, trying to get in. He’d been able to hear them for the last few nights as he lay in bed, trying to keep warm on the thin mattress of the old cast iron bedstead, with its well-worn blankets and hard pillow. But the door was strong. It would take months for them to wear it down and he felt secure enough to lie listening to them without any fear. Let them waste their energies. He was safe, if neither comfortable nor warm.
The next morning, his joints aching, Jack climbed out of bed and put on his clothes. Although the sun rose several hours ago, it was wintry and pale and gave off little heat, and the cold of the threadbare carpets, scattered like rugs on the bare floorboards, chilled his feet as he trod across them. He rooted out his boots from where he discarded them last night when he drunkenly made his way to bed, and tugged on the socks he’d stuffed inside them, then the boots themselves. He yawned, scratched for a minute or two, then padded across to the window. Its dusty panes looked down onto the street.
They’d gone. Romero’s children nearly always disappeared when the sun came up. They preferred the night, with its darkness and shadows. In daylight they were easily seen and picked off. Even their dim minds were aware of this, self-preservation kicking in to make them hide.
Jack put on his padded outer jacket and slipped on his gloves. Snow was on its way, though he didn’t need that to appreciate how cold it was. He reached for the rifle propped against the wall, safety catch on, one shell in the breach. Although he felt secure up here at night, there were always accidents—and enough survivors had been complacent in the safety of their homes that they ended up as meat.
Less than twenty years had passed since OM made its first appearance and still they were paying for it. And would till long after he turned into maggot food, Jack thought as he set about unlocking the series of doors that led down the stairwell to the street. He had installed them at the top of each flight, with spy holes through which he could see if any of them had gotten inside the building. That had only happened once so far. One night he had been too tired—or drunk, if truth were known—and left the door onto the street ajar. There was a large piece of wood still screwed to the last door at the bottom of the stairs to cover the hole he’d blasted through it—and through the head of the thing mewling on the other side, its beautiful, youthful, dirt-stained face visible through the fish-eye lens.
OM. It was hard to remember it now as anything but a curse that had destroyed everything. Brought an end to all the calamitous fears of global warming too, since few cars, factories or anything else mechanical or electrical had functioned for years. Yes, we sure put a stop to that all right, Jack thought to himself ironically. Something to be proud of, at least.
