Cinco De Zombie

by Albert Aykler

  I don’t remember it but, apparently, we liked him almost instantly. He didn't seem to know how to be friends with anyone. He said whatever he thought, and he said it loud. Despite his deep commitment to all things prog rock, Kevin had a punk rock soul. And he truly, deeply, madly wanted to save the world. Our kind of guy.

  “Why did they lay Kevin off again?”

  “Zey called it a boondoggle.”

  “Who called what a boondoggle?”

  “Ze fucking suits.”

  “Silvercrest corporate.”

  “Und maybe some government types. Maybe.”

  “Of course.”

  “Zis whole zing is a boondoggle. No more funding. No research anyway. Just keep it safe. Silvercrest said we would wait and start again. Zer was ozer work if you wanted it. Kevin didn’t want it. He left.”

  “They made him leave.”

  “Sure.”

  “And he took a job up here somewhere?”

  “Ha. If only. No. He made himself a job up here somewhere.”

  “Made a job?”

  “Stole virus samples from the lab. Bought a motor home. Made a lab. Disappeared.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It took six months, but zey find him.”

  “They?”

  “Silvercrest. Fucking Silvercrest.”

  “So, why aren’t They dealing with this.”

  “Asshole. Zey don’t want him to stop. He’s working for free. Zey watch and wait. Und so, I watch.”

  “I think maybe you’re an asshole, Ziggy.”

  “I am.”

  “Why the fuck should I trust you?”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “Why did you put me on ice for three years?”

  “To save you. To study you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “We wanted to know what your virus was for. And we needed to keep you from ze suits. Zey had strange ideas of transfusions and stem cells and ozer nonsense.”

  “Fine.” I knew he was keeping things from me. Things he did not have time to explain or just didn’t want to. It would take several more conversations. “What are we doing here? Why did you wake me up?”

  “To end zis. Somezing has gone wrong. Somezing always goes wrong.”

  “You said you were going to help me escape.”

  “I did.”

  “You put me asleep for three years.”

  “And now you are escaping.” He shrugged.

  “Such bullshit.”

  “Zer is no one else, Singleton. No way else.”

  “No other way, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re lying about something.”

  “Yes. Many zings. Only one of which might get you killed.” He giggled, shrugged again, and turned up the music.

  The old Corolla climbed the twisted road up out of Cowboy Heaven and into the evergreens. The sun rolled down and the darkness, always ready in the deep forests, poured out across the road and pulled us toward dinner and the fate of Quiet Kevin. But we ignored all that foreboding by persisting in our usual bullshittery.

  “It’s getting dahrk. Time for a ghost stohr-ee. Or ze infected.”

  “How’d you make that coffee this morning, anyway? What was it? Drip coffee?”

  “What happened in Helsinki?”

  “First coffee in three years and you give me something that tastes like bleached paper. Honestly, I expected better, Ziggy.”

  “You did not taste pay-pah. Ze water temperature was perfect. Now tell me about Helsinki.”

  “Helsinki?”

  “Yes. Ze lab in Helsinki.”

  “Technically, on an island just outside of Helsinki.” That was the last outbreak I had dealt with before they put me on ice. “Ask me something else. Different story. You bullshitted that coffee. Probably from a convenience store with a dirty urn.”

  “Stop trying to change the subject and tell me about Helsinki, Singleton.”

  “How about the jungle in Mexico? That’s a fun one.”

  “I want to know about Helsinki.”

  I looked out the passenger side window.

  “Helloooo Singleton? Are you zere?”

  “Come on, Ziggy, just admit you woke me up and gave me gas station coffee. You probably woke me up just to do that. Just to torture me with the hope of tacos while I drank bad coffee.”

  “Tell me, already. I have been waiting for years.”

  “Why do you want to know about that?”

  “It’s interesting.” He shrugged a shrug large enough that I knew he lied.

  “It’s not. Not really. Besides, you read all the official reports.”

  “Zose are not ze whole stohr-ee und you know eet.” He was getting insistent and perturbed. Dipping deeper into his Austrian accent and losing his English vocabulary again.

  “Did I tell you about the old lady with the ax in Mexico?”

  “Yes. Und you said zat was Guatemala?”

  “Oh, maybe. Kind of confusing when you’re running through the jungle down there.”

  “Helsinki. Helsinki. Helsinki. Helsinki. Helsinki.”

  “How much further, anyway?”

  “What could possibly have gone on zer zat would shock me?”

  “Fish. Lots and lots and lots of fish, Ziggy. And licorice.”

  “So what?”

  “And children. Very young. Very infected. Very zombie. Children.”

  “Shit.” Ziggy turned up the stereo. More Beethoven, I think. Piano Sonata maybe. Anyway, neither of us spoke for a while. The narrow band of dark blue sky over the high pines along the road grew dark. Looking up, we could see stars. Finally, he offered me his hushed confession, “I must tell you. It was gas station coffee. It’s a good gas—”

  “I knew it.”

  “Station…it’s better zan most.”

  “Asshole.”

  “I didn’t have time.”

  “Three years, Ziggy. Three years and you didn’t have time.”

  And for the next two hours, we avoided anything important, going deep into a recurring circular discussion about the best way to make coffee to bring out the unique origin of the beans. Some time after we had exhausted the many cases for and against the various forms of drip and/or pour over filtered coffee, Ziggy slowed down to the speed limit. I had clocked a road sign for a campground before I noticed him slowing down but continued on with my rant against the French Press.

  Ziggy heard me and ignored me at the same time. “Yah, yah, it sucks. Here it comes. Zis is the ze last place I heard from Kevin.”

  That stopped me.

  As we came upon the turn to the entrance to a campground called El Coyote Campground and Resort, Ziggy killed the stereo. We rolled down our windows. The rubber tires rolling against the rough pavement made a sound like peeling open shrink-wrapped candy. With the Corolla in neutral, the car’s inertia dragged us past the dark campground. We spoke in low voices.

  “No yelling or groaning.”

  “No screams.”

  “We made it in time, I zink.”

  “Or we’re so late it doesn't matter.”

  “Shut up, Singleton. We have time.”

  “OK…”

  Ziggy gave the Corolla some gas as he put it in gear. “Time for dinner.”

  “Tacos.”

  Another half-mile and we saw the sign for El Coyote Gordo. The Fat Coyote. On the sign, a cartoon of a fat-looking dog chewed a burrito almost as big as him. I groaned and started complaining as Ziggy slowed the car to a crawl.

  “How good can this be? We’re almost two thousand miles from the border. We’ll have to ask for extra spicy. The tacos will have lots of cheddar cheese and iceberg lettuce and probably hard, corn tortilla shells.”

  He seemed distracted and said with an automatic quiet certainty, “You are a snob.”

  Ziggy pulled to the side of the road and cut the engine about fifty yards from the restaurant. I could see him tense up. Waiting a little too expectantly for something to ha
ppen. Examining the El Coyote. Looking and not finding. A desperate stray dog with nothing but the distant scent of a bone, too little to chase, too much to turn away. Stuck in a moment that might last forever.

  In the asphalt parking lot, an SUV, an old Chevy truck, a small hatchback Nissan, a bicycle chained to a pole, a Subaru, another truck, a beat-up sports car, two Harley-Davidson motorcycles with saddlebags, and something that looked like an unmarked police SUV but too used to be in service. All parked in a row facing the restaurant. Painted parking spot lines almost too faint to see and too obvious not to obey.

  The lights were on inside the restaurant, and someone had put a string of colored Christmas lights around the outside. It would look festive if the fall air, faded beer posters, and impending zombies didn’t make it seem so forlorn.

  The one bright parking lot streetlamp cast shadows long and deep into the forest night all around us. Darkness coming together with other darkness.

  After a few minutes of that, I asked him. “What’s in there, Ziggy?” I caught him off guard. He had gotten lost in his own head.

  “Dinner.” He shrugged.

  “Big deal. Bad nachos?”

  “Are zere good nachos?”

  “Everything is good somewhere some time.”

  “Even ze infected?”

  “Zombie nachos.”

  “Time will tell, Singleton.” He wanted to feel sure of himself. To stop worrying over that restaurant.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “And not at all worried about ze zombies.”

  “I’m already infected, remember?”

  “Right.” He opened his car door, and the overhead light in the car turned on. “First zings first. Pee now. In ze woods. And zen we equip.”

  “We what?”

  “We equip. Equip. We equip ourselves. Mit equipment.”

  “You have equipment?”

  “Of course.”

  We peed off the side of the road into the darkness. When we returned to the car, Ziggy opened the hatchback. “Ok. Zere isn’t much, but it’s somezing.”

  “We don’t need much.”

  “Look, zere are two bags. Mine and a backpack for you.”

  “Thoughtful but…” I looked inside the hatchback. No shotguns. No handguns. No clubs, bats, or pipes. No ax, sledgehammer, or sword. Not even a broom handle. “Where are the weapons?”

  “Weapons?”

  “Yeah. I mean…zombies, Ziggy. You said there might be zombies.”

  “Probably, but not definitely.”

  “Also, that’s not a bag, that’s a purse.” He was putting on one of those small shoulder bags reputedly popular for men in Europe. It looked silly here in America, where we consider any bag that size a purse. Or, in this case, a man purse, or murse.

  “It’s a bag. Und it’s quite useful.”

  “OK. What’s in the backpack?” I unzipped the black backpack he had brought for me and looked inside. Small first aid kit, headlamp, foil emergency blanket still in its wrapper, some cash, and a flip phone. “This thing work?”

  “Yes. It’s prepaid, but it won’t last long. Ze headlamp has fresh batteries.”

  “OK. Well, I’ll be leaving this in here. Don’t lock the car when we go in.”

  “Are you sure? Ze headlamp—”

  “Yeah. I can’t kill zombies with any of that.”

  He pulled down the hatch and was about to close it when I thought, “Wait. What about a tire iron? You have one of those?”

  “Of course.”

  I pulled up the hatchback and dug around until I found it. “I’ll take this up front.”

  “You’re bringing zat into ze restaurant?”

  “No. I just want it handy.”

  “OK.” Ziggy closed the hatch, and we got back in the car for the short drive to the parking lot, him with his murse and me with the tire iron. We drove over and parked. I left the tire iron and backpack on the passenger seat, but he kept that murse close. It occurred to me that he needed it as a source of emotional security. To those that didn’t know him, he could seem calm enough, but to me, he was a mursey wreck of zombie anticipating nerves.

  “Why are you so nervous, Ziggy?”

  Ziggy looked at me. “Why are you so calm?”

  “Despite it all, I still believe in the power of the boondoggle.”

  As I dove out of the way of the biker gone zombie, sliding through her girlfriend’s entrails across the restaurant floor, I could smell her enchiladas. The convenience store clerk’s advice came back to me: “Skip the enchiladas.” So true. I turned and swung the baseball bat at the biker’s legs.

  The bat cracked the biker’s knee sideways and she fell. Unable to react normally because of the infection, she couldn’t move her arms to catch herself and landed hard on her left shoulder, head snapping (not hard enough) against the Enchilada Entrails Suiza strewn floor.

  Her right leg was straight and still pushed her along the floor toward me. I slipped my way up to stand over her and looked at the Zombie Fiesta chaos all around. El Coyote Gordo would never recover. I flashed to an hour earlier, when Ziggy and I walked into this cool little mountain roadside Mexican restaurant.

  “Ten bucks, Singleton.”

  “Ten bucks, what?”

  “You learn to love zis place before ze night is over.”

  “You’re on.”

  Up the shallow step to the short sidewalk in front of the door and in we went. The entryway. Fliers for roofers and plumbers, some kind of spaghetti supper at a nearby firehouse, and a wall of local business cards weathered and dusty. There was a bench along one wall for busier nights. And a near empty gum ball contraption where you put in fifty cents and watched one of the artificially colored dental bombs spiral down a clear plastic shoot to land in a plastic mouth right at eye level for a kid on their first round of chompers.

  Another door, which was propped open that night, took us into the entry area of the restaurant. To our right, the bar, and behind it, the kitchen. To our left, booths and tables, a step up dividing the dining area from the bar area. Straight back and two steps up, in something that looked like a half-assed add-on or maybe a conversion from a storage shed, was a pool table.

  The walls there were a beer promo museum of posters, banners, lights, and stickers. Stuff was plastered everywhere, including all over the pool stick rack. I saw something that looked like a list of rules, posted directly behind the table and opposite the front door. Players alternately angry and impish had heavily redacted and edited the list via permanent markers, more stickers, and what looked like rough treatment from several car keys.

  Two big guys looked like trained grizzlies pacing a zoo cage in the small add-on as they shot pool and drank beer. I gave them a second look. One dressed like a weekend cowboy, button down plaid shirt tucked into clean jeans and cowboy boots that spent more time at the bar than on a horse, and the other, a guy who took a wrong turn on the way back from a Jimmy Buffett concert, faded jeans, old slip-on sneakers, sun burn, thinning blond hair, and what I can only call a Mexican Hawaiian shirt with faded red peppers on a washed out yellow background.

  The smell was beer, cheap tequila, greasy meat, melted cheese, soft-serve ice cream, cumin, and chili peppers. Having brought me here after a year or more of eating exclusively Silvercrest cafeteria food prior to a few years of tube feedings, Ziggy had been well on his way to winning that ten bucks, but now…as I swung the bat down and into the biker’s skull, I shouted, “Ziggy.” Cracked skull.

  “You.” Swing and split skull.

  “Owe me.” Swing and crushed skull.

  “Ten bucks.” Swing and dead zombie.

  I looked around. What happened to Ziggy, anyway?

  I figured it was as good a time as any to head for the bar. I ran for it, scrambled up on to it, and gave the place a more thorough mid-zombie attack once over.

  Fiesta flags. Christmas lights. Mexican beer poster of a white sand beach, an ice bucket with long-necked beers decorated with a
salsa rojo splash of blood from the bartender’s jugular where one of his zombified customers had bitten deep into his neck.

  Somewhat miraculously, given the chaotic ramblings of zombies and terrified scramblings of the as yet to be zombified, the impressive collection of Tequila and Mezcal bottles looked intact, like a glass jury waiting patiently for the prosecutor to declare something truly inflammatory before exploding into wrathful fury.

  Over the bottles, there was colorful serape or poncho artfully twisted and tacked to the wall. Earlier, a big black sombrero with silver trim and sequined patterns hung over the twist in the serape, and now you could see the ring of dust on the wall where its huge brim went beyond the waves of the serape.

  The tap handles for both taps, American lite and Mexican lite, had snapped off under the bartender’s bloody panic and ultimate demise. Beer foamed and dribbled out of the remaining pipes. Most of the cardboard six packs containing both red and green hot sauce, salt and pepper, toothpicks, and extra napkins remained on the tables. Where they were missing, you could see a nice smash and splash on the floor nearby, usually confused with the Jackson Pollock-like spatterings of blood, entrails, tortilla chips, refried beans, and Mexican food.

  The small salsa bar had escaped destruction if you didn’t count the fingers (four) of the zombie Bartender that had flown in when the cook’s cleaver cut them free in his vain attempt to stop the oncoming Zombie attack. Someone didn’t get the memo about going for the head at all costs. A digital jukebox kept going, playing a less than soothing grunge metal cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.”

  Again, I remembered the place as we walked in, all of this zombie destruction but a gleam in Ziggy’s eye. By which I mean, he knew this might happen. He did not want it. Why would he? Who wanted to be a zombie? Or even deal with them?

  As we came through the entryway, the waitress had come ‘round to the front on her way to delivering drinks and food to the family of four, Mom, Dad, Chad, and Tara. “Have a seat anywhere. I’ll be right over.” And then called out to one of the pool players in the back, “Hey, Pete. Can you get these guys set up?”