Best New Zombie Tales (Vol. 2)

by Youers, Rio

  I put the shotgun in her mouth and almost totally blow her out the window. Almost, but not quite. Her bottom jaw is functioning, and looks kind of freaky in the absence of a top jaw. I shove her with the butt and she goes wet and gooey down the side of the car. She makes hissing sounds as she slides.

  They’re coming after me, up the alley off of Flamingo, another crowd racing up Paradise. Those fuckers really can move––faster than I’ve ever seen them move before. Competition must be getting fierce out here––natural selection and all that.

  Things are getting serious.

  I put it in reverse and floor it, mowing down some and impaling a couple on the tail fins. I hear Emily shrieking and carrying on in the trunk. “Sorry, baby, I’m so sorry,” I whisper, as if she can hear me. I hit the brakes and get the Caddy in ‘Drive’ again. It doesn’t stick this time.

  Then I’m out onto Flamingo with the pedal down, tearing like nobody’s business. It’s just open road in front of me. I almost make it to the Strip before I hear something bumping on the passenger’s side; I stop in mid-street, lean out and scream. Part of the nun is glued to the Caddy, her bug-eyes and top jaw regarding me from a thing that does not look like it could once have been a skull, inside a thing that must once have been a habit. For a second it looks like the eyes are moving, but that’s got to be my imagination.

  I am way past puking. I smack the remains of the nun’s face with the butt of the Remington and she goes slick and slidy down the side of the Cad, hitting Las Vegas Boulevard with a slurp, like so many of us.

  The headless cashier I leave there; he’s not bothering me. He finally falls off, taking the back window with him, as I hit the on-ramp to 15 a little too fast with tires squealing.

  “Mmmeaaaaat,” I mumble to myself, sort of a private little in-joke. That’s when I realize that the lady construction worker is still squirming around in the back seat where I left her. I pull over to the side of the freeway and drag her out by her shattered legs, then I just sort of leave her there, since I’m not coming back this direction and I’ve had enough violence for one day.

  I know that sounds crazy, but sometimes it seems like bullshit to keep killing, just because they’re there to kill. Occasionally I think I’m in the wrong business.

  The sun is going down.

  * * *

  I take a long bath. I’m pretty used to the cold water by now so it doesn’t bother me like it used to. I run my hands over my body, checking every inch I can. I’m covered in cuts and bruises but not a single one looks like it’s got tooth marks that broke the skin. You’ve got a Guardian Angel looking out for you, Mom used to say. She was old school, and thought God maybe loved us. I’m about to find out if she was right. I know Emily will recognize me. I know.

  I do everything I can to wash the stink of the dead off my body. None of it seems to come off.

  I’ve got her tied to the metal bed frame upstairs. She’s still raving and drooling; she hasn’t said a single word. Not even “meat.” I look into her eyes and they’re blank. The pupils are dilated and the whites are pink with congealed blood. Her eyes don’t light up. Her lips don’t whisper my name. Her teeth come together mechanically, rhythmically, as if working on an imaginary meal.

  I swear to God, if I can make her understand me everything will be all right. This whole apocalypse will be worth it if I can just have Emily back. If this one woman can rise from the dead and come back to me, if I can somehow make her the woman she once was––so I can love her like I did––everything that happened will be worth it.

  I’ve been living in this place for a couple of weeks while I cruise the streets of the city. It’s the tower of a church, the steeple. It was up for grabs when I got here. The churchyard is locked up pretty good; the doors are barricaded. There’s an alarm system and everything, which I was able to jerry-rig with power from a dozen car batteries. Sometimes they climb the fence; once or twice they’ve made it into the sacristy. I’ve stockpiled a whole lot of ammo, and the altar is looking somewhat worse for wear.

  I get into the steeple by going through a door behind the baptismal font. Once I’m above the bottom level I feel pretty safe, all things considered. It’s kind of like an old warehouse inside, with stained glass windows and high ceilings. I had dragged a bed from the rectory into the steeple, along with a bunch of candles from the sacristy, since there’s no power for the lights. And I guess one of the nuns or priests used to grow roses, because there’s an overgrown rose garden, so I clipped some of the red ones, brought them into the steeple, and scattered them around the room for Emily. I was never much of an interior designer but I figure if Emily comes to her senses she’ll think I did all right. She always did like roses.

  * * *

  I put on a new suit: Armani from a boutique on Fremont Street. Some part of me thinks I should be dressed as nice as possible for Emily. I make myself a drink: Johnnie Walker from the pastor’s liquor cabinet. Straight up, since of course there’s no ice. I’m starving but I can’t bring myself to eat after what I just dealt with. Bottle in hand I go up the many tiny stairs, locking the door to the steeple behind me. I go into what passes for the bedroom.

  I play soft piano music on one of those little battery-powered players, thinking it’ll help Emily sleep, and when she wakes up she’ll be just like she was, when she was my Emily so long ago.

  But she’s not. She’s not asleep. The dead don’t sleep. She’s tied to the bed, squirming and making these whining, gurgling noises. Her lips, tongue and jaw are working and clacking as she chomps her teeth together.

  She’s still wearing the cocktail dress she was buried in, that gorgeous number she always loved so much. It’s black with sequins. The sequins sparkle and dance in the flickering candle-light. Her hair, ratted and tattered, was bleached platinum blonde when she died. Now it’s mottled and half-black in ruined streamers. I remember old Marty the undertaker telling me that your hair and fingernails keep growing long after you croak, which turns out to be bullshit; this is just age, age and chemical deterioration. Em’s fingernails are still painted red. Her skin is white and pasty, her lips blue-black. Her tongue––an unnatural shade of grayish-pink––lolls out as she makes her little grunts and gasps of hunger. Her dress had been pulled down a little from her squirms, and I can see the swell of her breasts and the twin suppurated bullet holes between them. I reach for her. Emily strains her neck, trying to bite me as I pull the front of her dress closed and button it.

  I wish I could give her a bath, but she’s shrieking and trying to rip off chunks of my flesh so she can eat them. A nice relaxing soak isn’t much of an option. So I wipe her down the best I can with rags, apologizing. It doesn’t help much. She’s still filthy.

  The roses aren’t doing much to offset the smell.

  Emily’s throat emits a wild, deafening scream of hunger.

  I look into her twisted face. Her eyes are empty, soulless. Her face is sickly white, tinged with blue, but I don’t care about any of that; she’s gorgeous. Her lips are almost black but I want more than anything else to kiss them, to tease that purpled tongue out of her mouth and feel it against mine. I try to tell myself that there’s some sort of hope, that Emily is going to wake up from this any second, she’ll be mine again. I sit down on the side of the bed and that’s when the tears come. It just hurts too much to see her like this, more than I thought it would. I climb into the armchair I had dragged by the bed. It’s been a long day. I’m asleep before I even finish the Johnnie Walker.

  * * *

  It always comes back to me when I’m wiped out. It makes it that much worse because I know it’s real, it’s as real as what’s happening now.

  It was right after I did the hit in the Cleve on Manny Pearlman’s kid. Old JT had set things up so I could be on a plane before the cops even made the scene. I went through four airports on different flights under different names, impossible to trace. I landed in Vegas maybe twelve hours after I pulled the trigger, and Emily was waiti
ng for me at the gate.

  She wore a brand new dress, pink and white with those big poofy buttons. She had just done her hair, and she looked like a million bucks. She was driving an old Mercury, and man, was it cherry. Fifty-six, baby-blue, the chrome polished till it gleamed; it had one of those sweet 292s with a stock Holly Haystack carb––hell on wheels. She even had fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview. JT knew Mercs, all right. He had kept all his promises to me and Em. “You do this for me, I’ll set you up right. You’ll be free and clear…we’ll set you up on that retirement plan you and I talked about. You and Emily both. We’ll get you married and get you a house in Vegas. None of this suite bullshit…a house. The job gets done, Pearlman never finds out who did it, you get a new life in the ’burbs, everybody’s happy.” Sounded like heaven.

  So I did the job, a little reluctantly. I didn’t think it was right…but, hell, what’s right anymore? 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 on 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, a double-bass and three guys playing maracas; 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, white carnation in the buttonhole, and a classy white tux shirt with 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 Carribean, something I like to call ‘Zombie Love.’”

  Freddy started singing. The song was something special, something happy and fun, about how “Zom
bie 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, ass-wipe,” 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.