by Noel Merczel
"It's like I'm walking to work in the middle of the night!" Lisa exclaimed with a giggle. "Oopsie...I don't have my Maybelline’s clothes on. I hope I don't get fired!"
"Oh, fuck you, Lisa," Andrea mumbled. "Can't you ever take anything seriously?"
"You work at Maybelline’s?" Roger asked.
Andrea assumed Roger was just being polite.
"You wouldn't happen to have a key to get into the place, would you?" he asked.
"HA!" Lisa barked. "Like they'd trust me with a key!"
"I have to pee!" Gina whined.
"Go ahead, I'll hold you up," Nick offered. "And then maybe I'll let you hold mine!"
"EW!" Andrea and Drew both said at once.
"Just hold it, period!" Roger ordered her.
"This would be a really bad time to get your period," Andrea heard Gina say.
Andrea had to go, too. But she didn't want to admit it.
"I could just take my shorts off and go...."Gina suggested. “I mean, lickety quick!”
"Oh, baby!" Nick moaned. “You’re making me hard. Seriously. You’re making me hard.”
"Hey you! The one who has to pee! What's your name again?" Roger barked at Gina.
“Who me?” Gina asked, innocently.
“Yea, you!” Roger replied.
"Gina?" the girl said, like she wasn't sure what her own name was.
"Gina. Let's just get somewhere that’s semi safe at least, okay?" Roger said. "Can you do that for me?"
"You don't have to sound so pissed, man," Nick grumbled. "No pun intended..."
"What idiots,” Roger said to Andrea.
“Yea,” she agreed, thrilled that Roger included her in his cynical view of their annoying travel companions.
Suddenly, Andrea felt it again...that mind-blowing electric chemistry zipping through the moist humid air that hung between them...
Idly, Andrea wondered what Roger did for a living. She thought he acted like a cop, but she had never seen a cop car in his driveway. Plus, he was as clueless as she was as to why there was no police presence in the neighborhood when all this shit started going down.
And yet... he certainly had that take charge air about him...
If he did work in an office, he definitely held some sort of management position.
But he didn't seem like the cubicle type....
Maybe he was in the military?
Even though she was dying of curiosity, Andrea was not going to ask. This was definitely not the time or place.
After all, she wasn't as clueless as Lisa.
Oh my God. Is this really the apocalypse? Andrea asked herself. Could Roger be wrong, and this really is REAL?
My best friend Patty, from Kindergarten, is now a ZOMBIE?
Andrea felt an icy cold chill run down her spine despite the fact it was probably eighty degrees out and humid as hell. She couldn't think about Patty right now. She just couldn't!
Yet her brain wouldn't stop with the questions.
Is Roger's wife a real...zombie?
Is Patty one of "them" now too?
Is Roger's wife a dead person who came back to life....or does she have a parasite like those beetles Drew was talking about...like maybe a long skinny worm will suddenly shoot out of her body and she'll be dead?
Or is this is all some sick underground zombie cult like Roger thinks?
The endless questions banging around inside her head reminded Andrea of lightning bugs trapped inside a jar.
Will we get to Maybelline’s and the police will be there, and then everything will be back to normal by tomorrow?
Or will the police not be there but they'll all be acting like zombies?
Will I ever be able to go home again?
What about all my stuff...
And what about my parents?
How will I shave my legs and under my arms?
Oh, God. Did I just think that? Andrea asked herself, incredulously. I’m as shallow as Lisa!
In Dead Heads, the women never have hairy legs or armpits.
But wait a minute! Dead Heads is just a dumb show!
Will I ever get to see the ocean?
Just then, Lisa slapped her upper arm and screamed, “OW! DAMN MOSQUITO GOT ME!”
“OH NO!” Gina cried. "YOU'RE DOOMED!"
"DON'T SAY THAT, BITCH!" Lisa screamed back.
"CAT FIGHT!" Nick cried out, gleefully.
“Stop it, girls!” Roger warned. “It’s just a mosquito bite. Nothing more. If you want to be worried about a mosquito bite, then worry about getting West Nile Virus, okay? Not the Pink Zombie Virus, because there’s no such thing!”
"Or you could worry about getting malaria," Drew put in.
"There's no malaria in this country, smart lady," Nick proclaimed.
"Uh...incorrect, idiot!" Drew shot back. "Local mosquitoes become infected by biting persons carrying malaria parasites...then they transmit malaria to local residents, so there!"
"Okay, next time I have a question, I won't search Google, I'll search Drew's Brain!" Nick proclaimed. "And watch the name calling, smart lady."
"Hey, I'm smart too!" Gina whined.
"Yea, yea, we're all so smart," Lisa commented. "Being smart is over-rated."
Andrea stole a quick look at Roger's sexy profile. Then she quickly looked away.
Roger was smart. He was also incredibly self-confident.
She had to admit. Both qualities were a huge turn-on.
Suddenly, Andrea felt a wave of guilt wash over her. She fantasized about this guy knowing full well that he was married.
A decent person wouldn't do that sort of thing, would she?
I never should have called his wife an old frump! she chastised herself.
As the group steadily moved up the dark highway, an ironic thought occurred to Andrea.
Here they were, an attractive group of young people under the age of thirty (well, except maybe for Nick. He wasn't all that attractive) heading for the mall as they escaped blood thirsty zombies.
Plus,they even had the requisite slutty girl with the big boobs and the tight top.
Right on cue, Lisa did a little jog up the street ahead of everyone, her huge breasts bouncing suggestively under her short pink shirt.
"DROP DEAD, STUPID PINK ZOMBIE COCKSUCKERS!" she shouted.
"YOU SAID IT, GIRL!" Nick roared. "I'M GONNA KICK ME SOME ZOMBIE BUTT!"
Roger and Andrea looked at each other once again, rolling their eyes in unison.
Whether the zombies are real or not, it's official, Andrea thought. We have become the perfect cliché!
"How old are you?" Roger suddenly asked. "I mean, what about your parents?"
"My mom and dad are at a business seminar in Indiana," Andrea told him. "And I'm eighteen...I'll be nineteen in five months."
Roger laughed.
Andrea felt pleased she had the power to make this super smart guy laugh.
"So you're eighteen... and a half?" he asked in a teasing tone.
"You could say that..." Andrea replied, feeling a little embarrassed.
Oh God, he probably thinks I’m some dumb little kid! she thought.
"How old are you?" she asked.
Suddenly,she really wanted to know.
"Old, he answered.
"You don't look that old!" she countered.
Roger smiled.
"Twenty four..." he replied. "And nine months."
"See?" she told him. "That's not old! Well...not too old, anyway."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ray Sommers was feeling high. Crazy high. And he hadn’t even smoked any weed.
He was high on freedom.
Freedom from his loser job at the tire shop that he hated.
Freedom from his annoying boss who didn’t show him a lick of respect.
Freedom from his spiteful wife who showed him less respect than his damn boss. Always riding him about makin
g more money and buying her stuff and taking her on a real vacation because, in her words, “Camping doesn’t count, Ray!”
Freedom from rules.
Freedom from playing the damn game that was rigged so he would never win no matter how hard he tried.
Ray Sommers was tired of playing The Game.
He was tired of being treated like crap; tired of hating his boring tedious relentless life.
Ray Sommers didn’t know why he could never have any damn fun.
What the hell made others so much more deserving than him?
Maybe they were born with money. Maybe they knew the right people. Hell, maybe they fucked the right people.
He never cheated on his wife, although God knows he had a reason to.
“After you get a raise, we’ll talk about you getting some hanky-panky,” she had informed him on more than one occasion. “Until then? You ain’t getting none. That’s how it works in this world, Ray. You get what you give.”
Never mind the fact he worked his ass off ten hours a day. Never mind that she was free to run her own “second hand shop” on eBay that hardly made any damn money, and what money it made went for cheap drugstore eyeshadow and more stupid penguin decorations.
Ray thought if he had to look at one more ceramic penguin staring at him while he was on the john or pouring himself a stiff drink, he’d go insane.
And to drive that point home that he wasn’t “getting none,” Allison would go for weeks without a shower; fart in bed; burp big loud nasty burps whenever she felt the urge (which was often), and walk around all day in shapeless gray sweat pants and dirty boxy T-shirts, her greasy hair all stuck to her head. She used to be an attractive woman, but she’d really let herself go.
“I’m just matchin your look, Ray,” she’d tell him.
“Go fuck yourself,” he’d reply. “No one else wants to.”
“Yea right, Ray!” she’d snort. “You’d be on me in a white hot minute if I gave you the green light you’re such a horn-dog.”
Yea sure, Ray got horny. But his wife had become a major turn-off. She’d packed on about eighty pounds in the last two years; most of it, in her gut. That’s why she had to wear the sweatpants all the time. They were the only things she could squeeze her fat smelly body into.
So he made a decision. When Alison was off to Sally’s Beauty Supply to check out the nail polish sale her dumb friend Claire told her about, Ray addressed the flock of porcelain penguins over the TV and said, “Fuck it. Just fuck it.”
With a feeling of strength and fortitude like he hadn’t felt in years, he tossed some crap into a bag and called his sister in Poplar Grove to tell her he was coming to stay for a while.
His sister Grace lived on a soybean farm with her husband Ned. Ned was okay, but really dull. All he talked about were soybeans. That’s why Ray knew really boring things, like dry soybeans had 38 percent protein, which was twice as much as pork, and they had more essential amino acids than most other foods, and blah, blah, blah.
“Are you in some kind of trouble, Ray?” Grace asked over the phone, her voice oozing with suspicion.
Ray had been a bit of a trouble-maker in his youth, and that sort of reputation had a way of following a person around into adulthood.
“You could say that,” he’d replied, being deliberately vague. “Nothing illegal, don’t worry. Just relationship crap.”
“Oh!” Grace exclaimed, obviously relieved to find out that Ray wasn’t involved in any criminal wrong doings. “Well of course you can come. It’s just uh...”
“Just what?” Ray had asked, feeling impatient.
“Oh...nothing,” Grace had said. “Just that me and Ned had a little something planned...”
What the hell was his sister talking about, Ray wondered. Was she planning to have sex with her ugly redneck husband, and she was worried that Ray would get in the way?
Were they planning on lighting candles and doing it in front of the cows?
Or maybe on the hood of a tractor?
Ray was repulsed at the thought. But he couldn’t allow gross images of fat relatives fornicating to throw him off the track.
“Don’t sweat it, sis,” Ray said. “I won’t get in the way. You go ahead with your plans. I just need some peace and quiet, away from everybody and everything, ya know?”
“Yea, I know,” Grace said. “Well sure! You come on over whenever you like, Ray. We got plenty of space here. You can even hang out in the barn if ya want.”
Oh goody, Ray thought. But he didn’t feel it was appropriate to be sarcastic right now when he was asking his sister for a favor.
“I’m already there,” he simply said.
After he hung up, Ray called the tire store and told the bitchy receptionist he had a “family emergency” and he’d be out for a few days.
“Yea sure,” she said, chomping away on a huge wad of gum.
Ray had been this close to telling the bitch to go fuck herself. But amazingly, he restrained himself.
Now, here he was! And crap of all craps, he was turning into a damn zombie! A damn pink zombie. They even talked about it on the news. Every damn channel!
It was like he was a damn celebrity.
Life sure was funny. He escaped one hell and now he was entering another. His sister and Ned had turned also, and Ned had gotten so into it, he’d bitten off Grace’s nose. That’s when Ray decided to get the hell out of the house. His damn brother-in-law sure as hell wasn’t going to bite off his nose... or his dick, God forbid!
Damn zombies...the blood was everywhere. He got it all over his shoes and his pants.
Although, this whole zombie thing...Ray decided it could work in his favor. Now that he wasn’t even human, he had real freedom...the freedom NOT to be civilized anymore! The freedom to NOT play The Game.
It was a heady feeling. Sure his eyes stung. And he had felt really nauseous for a while, although he blamed Grace’s dinner of blood sausage for that, compounded with being forced to listen to Ned go on and on about soybeans being the “king” of beans.
Ray hardly ate any of the nasty blood sausage, it grossed him out so. And now he was starving. Starving for flesh.
Female flesh.
So he was just laying out here in this field in the damn rain with wet beans smashed into his chest where his shirt was open. However, the sweet reward would be worth getting soaked. He just had to be patient and wait....
...wait for the perfect candidate.
She would have to be young. And innocent looking. Preferably wearing something frilly that showed her little panties underneath. He was getting an erection just thinking about it. Ha! Viagra was for pussies. He could get a damn erection anywhere at any time. This just proved that fact.
Ray shifted slightly on the wet crops to accommodate his rapidly expanding organ.
Why couldn’t his damn sister and her damn husband grow corn instead of stupid soybeans? Ray thought as he tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. At least then, it would be easier to hide.
King of beans my ass!
That’s when he saw them. Trudging up the street, being super loud like there was a party going on. Some slut running in the front with her giant knockers banging around.
Damn girl, you gonna hit yourself in the face with those melons, Ray thought.
But Ray wasn’t interested in her. She looked too cheap. Too easy. Like she’d been around the block one too many times. Might even have an STD or two.
Ray chuckled silently. An STD! Imagine a zombie being afraid of catching an STD. There was something so hilarious about that.
There were two guys in this group. One of them looked big and built. He could be trouble. Plus, he was packing. Ray would have to be quick. He had the element of surprise on his side, which was good.
Would he be risking his life? Perhaps. But so what. What the hell was his life worth these days, anyway?
There were three other chic
ks in the group. One of them was way too skinny, so she was out of the running. The other two were young, bouncy and innocent looking. Just how he liked them...the kind of girl who looked like she was always giggling and not too swift. Just soft and dumb. Perfect.