The blue van.
I hadn’t given it much consideration; I’d completely forgotten to tell Wendy and Gil about the damn thing. They were clearly filming me, and “they” were at least two people, one driver, and one cameraperson. I’d simply played it off as paparazzi, downplayed it. But what if it were something truly sinister, even more so than myself, I mean? What if the camera lens was Karkaroff’s eye on the scene? I shivered at the thought and crumpled the note and crushed it beneath my foot.
Fear or no. I’d be there, fashionable as ever. The reapers inspired me. I wore my Chanel schoolgirl dress, black with pointy cream collar and cuffs, and an ethereal overlay in a gauzy jet.
The Westside Washington Mutual Starbucks sat between two towering escalators, in a glass hothouse. The skyscraper stood above at such a stance, the coffeehouse seemed to be a premature birth, too small in contrast. But the coffee would be the same, it always was, plus, I’d worn my mutsuki89.
I was inside, and then in line, before my mouth dropped open.
The coffee slaves weren’t their jittery selves. There was no chatting or BlackBerry pecking, no fumbling through domino tiles or clicking on laptops. The people were doing the unthinkable in the kingdom of caffeine. They were dozing. Heads lolled and snapped as they tried to stay awake.
None of the line standers seemed affected. They were doing the ever-popular busy dance—the living are so self-important—feet tapped, arms crossed, body language with a capital B. There were three of them, a woman in a brown corduroy mini and kicky boots, and two short-cropped paper pusher boys in low-grade wool three-button suits. Totally inedible; not a hottie in the bunch. The puffy blond guy closest to me wore the pimply face of a steroid junkie—can I just say, fat-covered muscle is not sexy. The other man was a towhead with a big girly bubble butt, not cute.
I didn’t see Shane.
The counter staff and barista weren’t doing much better than the seated customers; they seemed to be in a sleepy funk. The girl manning the metal behemoth coffeemaker seemed stalled behind the steaming milk; it bubbled over the stainless steel pitcher in clots. Her name tag read: Severine.
Her eyes were closed.
She sniffed the air.
Recognition flooded in. I knew that look. I’d seen that same face, in the mirror. And what comes next isn’t pretty. I think you know what I’m talking about.
Severine’s mouth opened and a pale puffy tongue thrust out like a schizophrenic on bad meds. She wheezed a whimpering cry, and her last two tears drained, and fell from drying eyes. She began to smell of hot urine and the thick musky rank odor of runny stool.
Crack!
Her jaw broke free from human; it began to ratchet down like a big plumber’s wrench.
Behind me similar sounds and smells echoed from the tables. This Starbucks had gone zombie in stereo, the volume surpassed the cool jazz pumping from the speakers. The people in line were fucked. Deeply.
They began to look around them, leaving behind their meaningless dwellings for a real visceral experience that meant something—death, sure, but certainly that’s more valuable than a triple shot Americano or an afternoon affair. Looking down death’s throat changes your perspective.
The situation was going to get messy and there was not a damn thing I could do about it. I’d be damned if I got another injury protecting my own food from distant relatives. I backed past the shelves of bagged coffee and cute mugs, and slipped discreetly into the restroom alcove.
The living customers came unglued, screaming and stumbling over each other like the Three Stooges at a foam party. Drawing way too much attention to themselves.
Gravelly screams sounded from unhinged and gaping mouths, frothy drool bubbled up and spilled past teeth and gums. Severine’s death progressed to a rapid seizure of her head, spittle flung from her mouth like dog slobber. She jumped onto the counter with feline grace and dove for steroid boy90. She tore off his pimply forehead in a puss-filled scrape of her lower teeth. His eyes blinked in shock, before closing as the zombie barista slammed her upper teeth into his skull, as teeth and bone fragments went flying. Severine dined on the man’s brain like a back-alley Filipino delicacy, but unlike her human counterparts, she’d leave no waste.
The smell wafted into the little hall where I sheltered, like a Hostess snack cake bakery; I was nearly drawn in, my head gone fuzzy. The blood aroma was intoxicating, stronger even than the first time, with Ricardo. The only difference was maturity. Apparently, the longer I was a zombie, the more self-control I gained, much like a man’s ability to maintain an erection. An adolescent can shoot his spuzz from a simple brush across the jeans, while a man has learned to think about dead kittens, or whatever, if his momma taught him right. I backed off the cravings and focused on the possibility of being damaged in a struggle. Beauty marks were my dead kittens.
While I settled into food deprivation, a battle for survival had begun in the back of the room. The other man was long dead; by the time I regained my senses, his body was roughly bisected in a snarling tug of war between staff and customers. Two on the bottom half and two on top, all of them wildly gorging on sweetbreads91. Behind that lovely image, the woman was fending off three growling ghouls with a busted bottle of sugar-free hazelnut syrup. Returning each reaching limb with a thin ribbon of flesh or sinew dangling off. Her face was stretched in an insane smile that said, I’m an animal; I’m going to kill you. I wondered if she’d make it, but then a zombie to her left leapt between her flailing arms and clamped onto her face like the mouth of an accordion boarding corridor at an airport. The bite radius was deep on the woman’s face, stretching to just below her ears. When the creature retracted, he took with him both sides of her mouth, her cheeks, and vast chunks of muscle and sinew, the leavings curled back like New Year’s Eve noisemakers. Her jaw thunked against her chest, exposing a writhing half tongue. She went limp. Must have fainted; I guess died is more likely.
The room quieted to gnashing and wet snarls. Billie Holiday whined a baritone scat in the background. Fine dining compared to a snatch and grab at DSHS or a midnight binge at tent city.
My head count came up zombies–8, humans–0. There was going to be a problem here, the food supply had dried up and the undead would soon be shuffling for the door. Outside, throngs of weekday shoppers, couriers and mid-day smokers littered the courtyard. There must have been forty people milling about.
The door to the coffee shop opened and a distracted woman toting files on a quick cart ran shoulder first into Severine’s waiting mouth. The ghoul tore into the joint with butcher’s precision. But, to her credit, the attorney92 grabbed her dislocated arm before it hit the floor and wielded it like a weapon, leveling Severine, temporarily. The woman then turned to look at me.
“Help…me,” she gargled, blood sputtering from her lips.
I shrugged a quick sorry and retreated farther into the space. The woman’s eyes went white within the few seconds of our contact. Her jaw was crunching. This was going to be bad. In case you’re counting, that’s nine zombies. Ten, actually, but I don’t count, I’m civilized. I dove inside the men’s room and locked the door.
It occurred to me that this was the beginning of a major zombie outbreak. Outbreak. I was reminded of the plague in my death fantasy, and the gory scenes from that movie in the mall. I had suppressed what was actually happening. This was harkening back to that night outside the Starbucks near the Well of Souls. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out the two events were connected. If they were the same, I thought it would be over by now, that the reapers would come—at least one. Outside the door, I heard the scratching of fingernails, like a rat trying to get through drywall, but barely; Bebel Gilberto’s snappy Brazilian tunes were competing for volume.
And then I heard a new sound.
Sharp pangs.
Two came from the distance, and then, louder ones, closer.
Pow, pow. Powpowpow.
I kept track on my fingers. If the shooter was
good all he’d need was nine.
Pow.
Close enough, you have to admit, ten shots for nine targets is pretty good. I unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door a crack.
“Safe to come out?” I yelled in my best damsel in distress.
“Someone’s alive in here, Scotty.” I heard a voice shout.
“Where at?” Another guy.
“In the bathroom,” I answered.
I opened the door wide and hopped over the attorney’s severed arm, like a lucky Southern bride over the groom. Then wished I hadn’t, I slid across the floor on a thin puddle of blood and insides. Officer Scotty caught me in his burly thickly muscled arms. But all I could think was, sloppy eaters.
Scotty was a 6'2" hottie, with sandy curls, blue eyes and light afternoon shadow on a manly square of a chin. He held me in his arms. Stroking my hair and cooing consolations, “Sh. It’s all going to be alright. Sh. It’s over.”
I was game for his macho routine—though, you could smell the irony of the situation, it reeked of butt—I played along. A dry shoulder-heaving sob, and the murmurs of “it was horrible,” and “I just want to go home,” were all it took, that and pressing my face tight into his puffy coat. He bought it, and hugged me tight as a baby. I won’t lie; it felt great. Even if we were surrounded by blood, urine and bowels leaking loose stool. After all, I’d seen worse and it’d been a while since I’d been next to a man I didn’t plan on eating.
When I pulled back to look up at my savior, he grimaced. I immediately looked from his sour face to his jacket. Sure enough, there it was. Mama left her face on the nice police officer. I tore myself from his grasp and ran out of the store.
The courtyard was cleared of bystanders and crowds gathered at the entry. To my surprise, Shane King was standing front and center of the morbid gawking hoard. When he saw me he blended back and disappeared. I tore past the grabby cop standing guard at the entry and straight through the yellow barrier tape, like a hundred yard dash winner. Behind me I heard shouts of protest.
“Wait!”
“She’s a witness!”
“Stop her!”
But it was too late. I slipped around the corner, and through an alley. At the half block, I re-entered the parking lot to retrieve my car.
Chapter 19
All Looks and No Moves Make Shane a Dull Boy
There has been talk of demons re-creating the orgies of Hell at secret warehouse parties. Attendance is strictly invitation only. But we know a guy…
—Otherworld Weekly
I drove back to Wendy’s with one eye trained on the road and the majority of my face obscured by a spread hand. The rearview mirror displayed a horrific mimicry of Baby Jane, streaks of mascara and eye shadow slid down scaly cheeks and lipstick smeared around my mouth like a hooker’s after a back alley blow job. I was so obsessed by my make-up malfunction, that when a husky voice rose from the backseat, I swerved. The rental jumped onto the sidewalk, barely missing a rusty truck and a howling woman shuffling out of an Asian grocer.
“Amanda?”
I knew the voice. I’d been damning the owner of it to Hell since seeing him with the not-so-innocent bystanders. I slammed on the brakes and felt his body pound against the front seats, and tumble into the foot well.
“Jesus!”
I leaned over the seat, and started in, “Shane, you piece of shit! You’ve got some serious explaining…”
“I know, I know. Just let me…”
I just couldn’t take his voice. I reached back and pummeled him with my fist with the force of a little brother.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Knock it off, Amanda!”
“What the hell was that, back there?” I asked as I slowed from punches to backhanded slaps, one for each word I spoke.
“Stop and we can talk.” His arms flailed, trying to deflect.
Settling back in the seat, I pulled the Volvo back onto the road and headed for my condo. “Well?”
“It was exactly what you think it was.”
“A bunch of mistakes at a buffet, then?”
“A zombie outbreak.” He’d slumped back into the seat. Shane wasn’t looking his best. His eyes were carrying dark bags, crow’s-feet spread from the corners. His jaw was covered with a scruffy growth of sandy hair smattered with grey. If I didn’t know he was a vampire, I’d say he was aging. “I’m sorry to involve you in all this.” His head fell into his palms.
“All of what?” I slammed my fist against the steering wheel. “I don’t understand what’s going on at all!”
“I needed help. I needed for someone else to know.” He paused, looked up into the rearview mirror. Our eyes met, but not in a romantic way. “I figured since you were…already in deep shit.”
“Excuse me?”
“I saw you snooping around Karkaroff’s office. You know that; you heard my call, and you saw me.”
He was right. I’d even told Wendy and Gil, just last night. From the moment Karkaroff became a part of my life, at least verbally, I’d been fucked. Car accidents, haunted elevators, and now, zombie outbreaks.
“You have a point. But, Shane, what is it you want to share? If it’s obvious, then I must be an idiot. Or my brain is starting to rot.”
“I needed you to see what was going on…with the mistakes.”
“This wasn’t the first time I’d seen them.”
“What?” he asked, brows furrowing like caterpillars in a scrap.
“I was down on Western Avenue, four or five months ago. The same thing happened. Well, I assume it was the same thing.”
“Not quite. In the Western Sample, the reapers were alerted to end it before it spread. In today’s, what they are calling the Downtown Sample, humanity got lucky.”
Samples? Alerting reapers rather than them coming on their own? This was news to me. I swung the car into a parking garage and drove down the corkscrew until a vacant floor was exposed. It was time to park. Think. Probably yell.
Shane went on, “Today’s test could have been the big one. The humans worry about earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanoes. They don’t know to worry about the final plague, and it’s coming sooner than they think. Unless we stop it.”
“But both times they seemed to be stopped easily enough,” I said. “The reaper responded in a timely fashion the first time, and Officer Scotty93 didn’t need a whole lot of help blowing zombie brains out.”
“True, and these seem to be isolated incidents. But where were they located?”
“Starbucks, yeah that much I figured out. So what?” I asked.
“I just said, they seem to be—”
“Okay, shit. I got it.” Not so long ago, Starbucks was a single store in the Pike Place Market. But now it was global. Thousands of stores circled the globe pushing caffeine like crack in kitschy mugs. And regardless of your taste preference—I think they burn their beans—they are definitely consistent.
“Imagine what happened today, occurring at nearly every store simultaneously. The human race would be done.”
“And we’d be out of food,” I finished. “So while the humans dwell on natural disasters, we can worry about a famine, is that it?”
“Exactly what Karkaroff wants to happen. If we’re all starving, then she can swoop in with the second phase of her diabolical plan, I guess.”
“And what is that?”
He bit into his lip on one side with a canine and winced. “I have no clue. I haven’t gotten that far.” The blood beaded into a knob that his tongue caught before it could dribble down his chin. In the time it took to lick, the hole had healed. And all I could think was, the lucky bastard. I took a quick look in my visor mirror. I was giving unacceptable face, and covered it with my hand.
“You’ll have to excuse me, but I really need to powder my nose. Go on talking though. Particularly, that interesting bit about not having a clue.”
“Well, I have a clue. I guess I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed.”
“Oh, oh, hold up, Shane.”
I turned and lifted my hand, I shook my head like he’d made some small mistake and mouthed, “no.” “This isn’t a therapy session. Leave that to the humans, and spill your shit. Go on.”
“Where else is there to go?”
“Let’s start with how it is that a vampire is working the day shift over at Starbucks. Emphasis on the d-a-y.”
“I don’t really understand how it works. It was a gift, the ability to day walk, not the job. That, I had to apply for.” Shane’s gaze drifted away, toward the window. He patted his chest.
“A gift from Karkaroff?”
“Yeah, she needed someone inside Starbucks Corporate to monitor their knowledge of the project.”
We pulled into the garage of my condo and continued the discussion in my bathroom, him on the toilet with his chin in the cup of his palm, me working at my face like a Rembrandt restoration. I began wiping down with moist cosmetic pads, removing the streaks. Then it was routine, mindless work; I could have done it blindfolded—concealer, foundation, eyeliner, shadow, blush, lipstick, powder.
“It was my impression that the reapers just knew, when something like these outbreaks happened. I didn’t think they needed to be told.”
“That’s true,” he said. “The reapers keep an ear to the ground at all times. But the difference here is there’s nothing to listen for. No scrambling mistake, coming across and then biting a victim and spreading his viral shit. The reapers pick up on that immediately. No, in these samples there is no patient zero.”
I turned on the hot water to steam my face a bit, before I did my foundation. I found that I was getting increasingly dehydrated, the more days I was into my afterlife. I wondered if brining would help, like a Thanksgiving turkey. I could fill up the tub, add some rock salt and soak overnight. Maybe, I’d find the added benefit of plump succulent breasts—and the smell of rosemary is always so festive.
“Then how does it start?”
“It’s in the water.”
“What, the water supply?” I turned on the sink for effect. But there weren’t any cameras on me. I turned it off. There’s simply no reason to be dramatic unless you’re being filmed, or working out some family issue, like why doesn’t Daddy love me? Or, I’ll prove I have value, goddamn it! Something like that. I snickered at the thought, and then cringed at being caught while insane.
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