Blood Soaked and Contagious

by James Crawford

  I still believe I saw her levitate one afternoon when her husband accidentally ruined a batch of her cheese. My Spanish is nowhere near as good as it used to be, but what I understood of her rapid-fire screaming was enough to make me want to build a bunker and hide behind it.

  Ómer, her husband, would stand in the face of her fury, smile, nod, and go about his business. I once asked him how he was able to control the urge to flee in those situations. He handed me a cold beer and replied, “You know, you had better know who you marry. Besides, her mother, much worse.”

  Yolanda sauntered over to me, a covered plate in one hand and a lidded Mason jar in the other. I smelled something alluring, tantalizing, and remarkably like her cooking. My stomach got the message and growled prodigiously.

  She laughed like a waterfall. A serious force of nature, this lady.

  She put the plate and jar down beside me, still laughing, and stood back up.

  “Now, you listen to me, Francisco, you eat and heal up. Okay? Juanito and Julia miss you, and my husband needs to build a chicken house.”

  “Si, Mamacita. Voy a comer porque te amo mucho.” Yes Mommy. I’ll eat because I love you a whole lot.

  “Ay! Me encanta ese hombre!” Oh! I love this man!

  We bid one another fond farewells, and I pulled the cover off the plate. There, revealed unto me, were huevos rancheros, sausage, and a big block of her queso blanco. Of course, there was also the Mason jar of milk. This was the “Breakfast of Champions,” no matter what the advertising executives said.

  If Julia were older... Perish that thought before it starts. There’s no way I could cope with a woman who learned to yell from Yolanda. Sticking to my fascination with Shawn’s younger sister was probably the best bet. Yet there were still a few sticking points to that issue.

  First of all, we’d never met. Second of all, I’ve never even seen a photo of her. Shawn had never described her to me. She might have been some sort of radioactive redneck princess with three eyes, two rows of nipples, and perverted desires to hit men with bunnies. Third of all... there wasn’t a third reason. The first two were good enough. Regardless, I could keep up my adoration from afar without disturbing anyone too much. I hoped.

  My only breakfast in days took longer to eat than I had imagined it would. I suppose a little fasting was enough to make my stomach shrink a tiny bit, so I just ate more slowly. Not a hardship in the least, because the flavors were worth rolling around on my tongue for as long as I could make them last.

  In my experience, there are three situations where food tastes far too good to be believed: when you’ve not eaten in days, when the food has been cooked over a real campfire, and lastly, of course, when you think you’re about to die in the immediate future. This meal fell into the first category. Shawn’s BBQ fell into the second.

  No opportunity at that juncture to comment on the third possibility. I suppose I should have felt lucky about that in some way, but I didn’t.

  The breakfast that morning in Scotland didn’t taste any better, nor did my lunch in Kyoto a few months after that. Although, I have to say, the Japanese zombies are some of the wildest I’ve run into. It is almost as though you throw people from certain cultures into bizarre situations and they get an attitude of “Oh, well then. Might as well push it for all I can!” In other situations, people revert to their idea of what things “ought to be” rather than carve their own path through a new situation.

  The Japanese zombies were a startling combination of both of those reactions. Deep down in the strange recesses of my heart, that afternoon will always be known as Day of the Cosplay Zombie. Honestly, it still gives me the shivers.

  My breakfast settled inside me and I quietly blessed whichever cow the milk came from. The inevitable happened: the digestive system issued a blanket order to the rest of my body. “Shut down non-essential systems. Restart post-grokking of groovy chow.” My brain happily obliged, and I napped-out across the sleeping bag.

  I dreamed of my mother. I saw her dancing with a former President at a social reception in the Oval Office. For some reason, it didn’t strike me as odd that he would have a large swing band in the Oval Office, probably because of the other things he did with cigars and dresses. Regardless, there were canapés, champagne, heads of state, and Mom cutting a rug with the Prez.

  They looked pretty good together, all things considered.

  Zombie Jerry, looking swanky in a mauve tuxedo, offered me champagne from the tray he was carrying. We enjoyed some small talk, and he moved on to serve the head of the UN Security Council.

  The dream went downhill quickly after Jerry bit off the guy’s nose. It was all bloody mayhem. Out on the dance floor, my mom was grinding on the Prez from the Female Superior position while clawing out gobs of his chest. The man was a pitiful, pitiful screamer. Shawn appeared out of nowhere, clothed in nothing but a Speedo and sunburn, mowing down the guests with a giant machine gun.

  His sister, or what I imagined his sister to look like, tapped me on the shoulder. In the dream, I turned around to take in her Country Amazon goodness, only to find her wearing nothing but some kind of harness and a distressing strap-on. It was black and looked just like H.R. Giger’s Alien, if that critter had been a dildo.

  She smiled and the dildo hissed at me, opened its mouth, and stuck out its fangy tongue. The mouth snapped at me. I screamed.

  The scream woke me up. I looked over at the empty plate and Mason jar, and I silently cursed them for being psychoactive substances disguised as tasty cooking.

  Abruptly, I needed to get out of my room. My bladder and bowels were speaking, but that wasn’t the deeper motivation. I felt the need to see people and find out what day it was.

  Getting down the stairs was not as awful as going up them was some days before, and I took that as a positive sign my body was deciding to heal up well. I could see sunlight through the shades on the store windows. A good thing, I thought.

  I wandered the aisles a little because it was comforting and seemed to settle my mind. After a while, I went in the back to use the facilities for the first time in a couple of days. The less said about that unique experience, the better.

  Strangely enough, it managed to ground me back into my body better than having breakfast did. That, in turn, lead me to wonder where my weapons of choice were hiding, because I’d not taken them upstairs with me. I was also ambushed by a surprising thought.

  “Frank?”

  “Yes, Brain?”

  “You’ve been wearing the same clothes for the better part of a week and you have not bathed. Aren’t you worried you will upset people when you encounter them?”

  “Oh my!”

  “Precisely!”

  Chapter 15

  I scooted off to the storeroom. I hoped there would be water left in the tub that wasn’t supporting an algae-based ecosystem. There was no point in worrying about the temperature: it would be frigid unless I started a fire, scrubbed myself off, and then started soaking. I wasn’t sure if I could deal with frigid, or if I was concerned enough to cope with tepid water.

  Shortly after I appropriated the hardware store, I built something I’d always wanted. An ofuro: a Japanese-style bathtub. I even built a wood-burning water heater, a drain system, and a rainwater barrel. Immensely cool, even if I do say so myself.

  Having basic handyman skills is the best way to survive the slow collapse of civilization. There’s no point in going out if you can’t end your final days with a good, hot soak. This is a fundamental tenet of my belief system.

  I heard soft singing when I got to the door of the storeroom. Puzzling. There were also muted water noises. Apparently, my desire to rejoin the human race was linked inextricably to a Goldilocks situation.

  There was someone in my ofuro. Unacceptable.

  I was unarmed and wounded, which was also unacceptable. I was forced to ask myself which of these situations was the most traumatizing to my psyche. The answer, of course, was having someone taking a dip in
My Precious without my informed consent. You just don’t fuck with a man’s bathtub.

  All I could do was hope it wasn’t a member of America’s fastest growing social group: the Undead. A zombie would definitely finish off what the grenade had started, and I took that into consideration for about ten seconds. But my tub was more important. There are things a man simply must take a stand for, even at the expense of his own life.

  Small children. Pregnant women. Really cute women. Women in general. Bath tubs. Good friends. Apple pie. Freedom. Beautiful weapons. Yolanda’s cheese.

  I slid the door open a tad, so I could peek. Luck was on my side, because the blond-haired head was facing away from me, still singing quietly. Female. Steam. Some foreign blond tart had fired up my heater and was enjoying the fruits of my labor! Unacceptable!

  Just keep facing the other direction, missy. We’ll settle this invasive behavior in just a moment.

  Scooting through the smallest space I could quietly make between the door and the jamb proved to be intensely painful. I swallowed the yelp when the lock plate grazed some of the sutures in my back and did my best to control my breathing. There wasn’t much I could do about the tears that sprung to my eyes, so I just kept moving forward.

  The plan was a simple one. Get to the side of the tub, right behind her head. Reach over with my right arm and get her in a headlock across the wooden planks. Zombie or person, she’ll grab my arm, which will tell me, by the length of her fingernails, what sort of shit I was in.

  I glided across the floor like a ninja with Crisco on his booties. Silent and full of righteous power fueled by my indignation. Ready? Steady? Yeah.

  In mere seconds I was in position to execute my plan of identifying and neutralizing the interloper. My arm was up, ready to move, and I was suddenly looking at a pair of green eyes, not the back of someone’s head.

  Oh. Damn.

  “Um. Hey. I bet you’re Frank. Right?” Even coming from behind the cedar planks of the tub, it was a pretty voice. I really hoped I wouldn’t have to kill her before we could discuss why someone had been in my tub and was still there.

  “Nargle.” Sure. It wasn’t a suave way to begin an attack or interrogation, but that was what I had.

  The eyes looked down and back up. “Yeah, you’re definitely Frank. That arm must hurt with all those stitches. How’s your back?”

  “Perkin’ squashem.” I had no eloquence, menace, or ability to speak properly.

  She laughed at me, and her eyes crinkled in a really merry sort of way. I really hoped she wasn’t a zombie.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed abruptly, and put her hands up above the line of the wood. “I’m not a zombie, if you were wondering about that.”

  “Who?” A little better: I got a one-word question out.

  “I am so sorry! No one told you I was stayin’ here until you started moving around again?”

  “Nope.”

  “Remind me to kick some ass.” She arched one eyebrow in a particularly menacing manner, and I could tell someone was going to get it when she got out of my tub. Strangely enough, I wasn’t all that disturbed about my squatter’s rights at that moment.

  Her right hand scooted up over the rim and sort of bent down as if to shake mine, so I shook it.

  “I’m Charlie, Shawn’s sister. Pleased to meet you!”

  “Oh.” Bollocks! So much for my quixotic tilting at the windmill of a woman I’d never met!

  “Yeah, I’m really sorry we didn’t get introduced properly. This really has to be a surprise, finding me in your tub like this. I hope you don’t mind!”

  Sweet cooties of Ganesha, I didn’t mind at all! I was simply, astoundingly unprepared to see anyone, much less the woman I’d threatened to snog the stuffing out of.

  All I could do in my unprepared, taken-aback state was throw up my hands, shake my head, and make non-specific negative noises. I could cope with taking a bath in… taking a bath in her… oh submerging… Woman. Water. It was surprisingly hot and humid in the storeroom.

  “Tell you what? You were going to wash off before getting in, right? This is an ofuro after all,” she said, poking her face up all the way over the rim and smiling at me.

  I found myself thinking, “The cute. It BURNS!” Her nose was a gently upturned button relaxing above a set of full lips and surrounded by a gently rounded face. Topped, as I mentioned, with short, disheveled blond hair. Burns! My Quixote aimed his lance and I was vastly grateful for the loose-fitting jeans I was wearing. Even my Sancho Panzas were pleased they had room to move in. Nevermind.

  “You’ve got your stool and washing kit over there, so why don’t you do that, and I’ll soak for a little while longer until you’re ready. Then we’ll switch up, and I’ll go find us something for dinner. Work for you?”

  “Ah, yar mmm-hmmm. Ah.” It didn’t occur to me I’d be naked in the same room with her until I was actually sitting on the stool, facing away from the tub, getting ready to sponge the Quixote.

  He was gracious and retreated. I got an evil case of goosebumps instead.

  In short order, my mind turned to other things, because the amount of crap I was washing off myself was just this side of nauseating. Jayashri may have put me back together, but she didn’t do much in the way of cleaning off dried blood and other things. I can’t imagine what I looked like after days of languishing in my own depressed filth.

  I have never been vain. At least, I don’t think I have been. I simply prefer to meet new people without a week’s worth of beard, dried blood, crusty eyelashes, greasy hair, and body odor that would have made maggots barf.

  It took a while to get my legs clean, because moving my back hurt too much, but I managed it. When I got to my face, I dug around for my razor, lathered up my face, and closed my eyes.

  Shaving your face by touch alone was something I’d started doing in college. There were post-party mornings when I didn’t want to see what I looked like in a mirror and the best way to shave was to do it by feel. Once I got used to it, I found it to be a wonderful way to center my thoughts, almost meditative.

  The meditation of shaving through the lawn that had appeared on my cheeks must have been extraordinary, because I didn’t hear her get out of the tub. I put the razor down, and I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  I squeaked, levitated, and, I’m ashamed to say, farted in surprise.

  The next thing I knew, she was on the floor holding a towel around herself and laughing her ass off. I guess we’d managed to break the ice. I confess, I wasn’t thinking about ice.

  She wasn’t tiny, but she wasn’t a Country Amazon either. Words like “lush” and “ripe” were slipping in and out of the folds of my brain. The Sancho Panzas struck up a Gregorian chant that was surprisingly lewd.

  I hadn’t noticed that she sported shoulder and half-sleeve tattoos on each arm. They featured things like matched passionflowers, vines, leaves, and orchids. Whoever her artist was, he was a genius with a needle and color.

  I suppose I was staring, because the next thing I knew, she was sitting there, looking back at me with a slightly serious expression on her face. Shit.

  “Um. Um!” I tried to stammer out some sort of apology, but it really was not happening.

  “Frank, you can’t get into the tub with your back all bandaged up like that.”

  “Murfle?”

  “No, really.” She stood up, walked over, and put a hand on my shoulder. “All of this would get wet and just hang off you. I’m sure you’re due to get this stuff changed anyhow. Let me help you get it off, and then we’ll get you into the tub. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Damn me, and my terminal lack of suave!

  “All right. Now, do you want it fast or slow?”

  Señor, this is Quixote. Sancho #1, Sancho #2, and I would like to comment at this point in time. Thank you for your patience. It is our opinion that we want fast, slow, and anything else the Señorita might think of. Muchisimas gracias por su ayuda.

  “Whatever. You. Thi
nk. Is. Best.” I spoke, even if it was a little mechanical.

  “Gotta say, Frank. I like hearing that from a man!” With those words, she spun me into a sharp moment of ripping agony. Quixote, Sancho, and Sancho fled back inside my abdomen and shut the door behind them. I was left making tiny “eeeeeeee!” noises.

  “Oh my.” I didn’t like the sound of her voice when she said that.

  “Nargle?”

  “Jayashri and Shawn told me you dropped a grenade on a zombie and took off, but I had sorta thought you’d make it farther away before it went off. You sure you’re alive?”

  My voice came back and I asked her, “Is it really that bad?”

  “You haven’t even looked in a mirror?”

  “No, I don’t have one upstairs.”

  “Well, let me tell you. No, actually, I’m not going to tell you anything. Just be really happy that nothing is infected and you’re still around to take a bath. How about that?”

  “Oh dear.”

  “That’s putting it lightly, believe me.” She really sounded like she meant every word, which was more than a little unsettling to me. “I’m going to sponge your back down before you get in the water. I don’t know how this is going to feel, but you just do whatever you need to do. All right?”

  “Okay.” I was not doing well in the witty patter department, and I was also a tad worried about how bad my injuries really were. My arm didn’t look half bad, and there wasn’t any pain when I moved the hand or wrist. It did look like the stitches were about ready to come out, and I still felt a little itching now and then.

  Somewhere behind me I heard her fill a container with water from the tub. All my hindbrain wanted to do was talk to me about “Charlie Tea,” while my forebrain was becoming progressively more nervous. Quixote and the Panza twins were giving my hindbrain a wide berth, and I was happy about that. The whole thing was embarrassing and vulnerable enough without adding another element on top of the Self-Consciousness Pie of Doom.

  Splash. Splash. “Okay, I’m going to dab some water on you. That’s all, no scrubbing. Just like a sponge bath, but with a washcloth instead. You doin’ okay so far?”