“Experience?” I knew the educational system didn’t have sex ed when J.D. was dipping schoolgirls’ pigtails in inkwells but the little undead runt had been around long enough to do two lifetimes of the other kind of dipping.
“I mean, dating a Warm.”
“A what?” I didn’t recall this particular bit of noirish lingo.
“A ‘Breather,’” he elaborated. “You’ve been married. Had a family. And, since the transformation, you’ve been involved outside your species.”
I grabbed his arm a little more roughly than I intended. The subject of my family was still a sore spot and it didn’t take much to push the buttons on my mood elevator. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Calm down, Hon,” breathed a familiar voice in my ear.
I looked around even though I knew I wouldn’t see my late wife. She rarely made a visual appearance anymore. It was as if something was causing her ectoplasm to do a slow fade. “He needs some fatherly advice,” Jenny-the-friendly-ghost-ex continued, “not Daddy Dearest.”
“I need some advice,” The Kid echoed, unaware that our tête-à-tête had just turned into a three-way. “Date-wise.”
“Date-wise?”
He nodded and lowered his voice. “Don’t go all dark on me, Cecil; I’m askin’ for the straight dope.”
“He’s serious, Chris,” Jen chimed in. “Be nice. This is hard for him.”
“It would help,” I said, “if I knew what we were talking about.”
The Kid opened his mouth, hesitated, and closed it again.
“I think it involves the birds and the bees,” she kibitzed.
“What?!”
“I didn’t say nothin’,” he said.
I cocked an eyebrow. “You got a question about the birds and the bees? Or, in your case, the bats and the wasps?” I felt a ghostly finger thump my ear but I couldn’t help the attitude: this was a little like your grandfather asking for advice on bedroom techniques.
“It ain’t about sex,” he huffed. “Leastways, not yet.”
“What’s not about sex?” Lupé asked, reappearing sooner than anticipated. She was toting the broom still dark with dust and ashes and I prayed Jenny wouldn’t be tempted to snark. Even though she was dead and had already pronounced Lupé good for me, former wives can get funny about their replacements and Jenny still had her moments.
The Kid blushed—sort of. Being a vampire, however, he blushed in reverse. Excess blood in an undead body is drawn away from the skin during periods of physical or emotional stress or strain: a blush looks more like a blanch. And The Kid was now as white as a sheet.
“We’re talking about man-stuff, dear,” I said, trying to rescue J.D. from further humiliation. I wasn’t being especially kind. Humiliating The Kid was my own province and I didn’t like to share.
Deirdre was right behind. “What’s the sitch?”
J.D. looked from Lupé to Deirdre and his eyes took on the appearance of a cornered animal’s.
“James and Christopher are having a conversation about ‘man-stuff’,” Lupé explained.
“Man-stuff?” The redhead pondered for all of three seconds. “That means they’re talking about sex.”
The Kid glared at me.
I held my hands up. “I didn’t say that.”
Lupé smiled. “But you did, dear. All women know ‘man-stuff’ is merely a euphemism for ‘sex.’”
“Not true,” I tried. “Man-stuff can be about cars and sports and lawn care and stuff.”
She stood her ground: “It’s about sex when men don’t want women to listen in.”
“The question is,” Deirdre chimed in, “why don’t you want us to listen in?”
“I was just looking for a little advice,” The Kid said with obvious reluctance.
“Then why is he asking you about sex?” my wife’s ghost murmured in my ear.
“Hey, I know about sex,” I whispered back.
Apparently not quietly enough. Everyone turned to look at me. “Is Jenny here?” Deirdre asked.
“For Akela’s sake!” Lupé swore. “Don’t encourage him!”
There were two mindsets when the topic of my dead wife arose. One was that her ghost really did “haunt” me from time to time. The other was that I hallucinated Jennifer out of some Freudian, psychosexual guilt complex, kicked up a notch by the necrotic virus that was mutating my brain chemistry. Deirdre bought into the former theory, Lupé was a firm adherent of the latter.
I wasn’t always sure what I believed.
J.D. got me off the hook with: “I just wanted some advice on how to get dizzy with a dame.”
They both turned to stare at him.
“You know,” he said, further obfuscating the explanation; “advice on bumpin’ the gums, pitchin’ woo . . .”
Lupé fought a smile. “Woo?”
Deirdre waggled her eyebrows. “Woo woo!”
“Aw, now see? That’s why I wanted to keep this on the Q.T. I knew youse would put the screws on!”
The girls tried on sober expressions. They almost fit.
“I think she’s human,” my ghostly ex murmured.
“Human?”
The Kid turned and glared at me.
I raised my hands. “Jenny’s opinion, not mine.”
His shoulders slumped. “Yeah,” he finally admitted. “She’s still alive.”
Deirdre perked up. “A vampire and a human? Dating? You want advice!”
Lupé nodded thoughtfully.
“I mean,” The Kid added, “it’s not like there’s anything in Cosmo or Dear Abby or nothin’.”
“There’s Buffy,” my sig said.
“Huh?” The Kid and I both responded.
“The Vampire Slayer,” Lupé explained without really explaining.
“Are we talking Spike or Angel?” Deirdre asked.
“Angel, of course.”
The redhead shook her head. “Nah. ‘Spike moves’ is what J.D. would be wanting.”
Lupé seemed taken aback. “What? Are you a sixth season ‘shipper? That was sick and disgusting!”
The Kid looked at me. “What are they talking about?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. But sick and disgusting sounds right up your alley.”
“Hey!”
“Maybe The Executioner is more to J.D.’s liking,” Jenny whispered.
“The Executioner?” I asked.
“Who?” The Kid asked.
“Anita Blake,” Deirdre answered.
“Oh, please,” Lupé sniffed. “She’s worse than Buffy, season six.”
“I suppose you’re a Giles groupie.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
J.D. and I looked at each other. We both took a step back.
“Hey! Buffy may be The Slayer but Anita’s The Executioner!”
“Buffy Summers would kick Anita Blake’s ass!”
The Kid and I both fled to the den.
* * *
Eventually there was violence.
Growling, screaming, anger, pain, and death. Strangulation, drowning, and presumed immolation as the windmill blazed and the Frankenstein monster disappeared behind a curtain of flame.
As the final credits rolled, Lupé leaned against me and murmured, “They’re heeeeere . . .”
I looked over at Deirdre, ensconced in a disheveled beanbag chair. She was tossing single kernels of popcorn high into the air and catching them with her mouth.
She was very good at it.
J.D. lay with his back on the hardwood floor and his legs sprawled across the seat of the rocking chair. He sipped from a bottle of Tabasco sauce as he perused the liner notes on the next DVD.
I looked back at Lupé with my oh-so-familiar I don’t get it expression.
“We’ve got company,” she offered.
“Company?”
She nodded her head toward the window behind us. “Someone left the gate open.”
I turned and looked.
Residential Ev
il. Or maybe The Killing Fields under glass.
A half-dozen fidgety corpses had their faces pressed to the great pane of the den’s picture window.
Ghastly. And smeary! It was going to take a whole lot of ammonia and elbow grease to get the glass clean again.
“So, like, The Bride of Frankenstein—” The Kid was saying, “—is this one more of a chick flick?”
“Depends on the chick,” I said, getting up off the sofa. “Some critics think BOF is the greatest horror movie ever made. Forget state-of-the-art effects, there are delicious subtexts on multiple levels.”
He nodded. “Ya can’t beat the classics, Daddy-o.”
“Maybe next week you should rent Dracula.”
He shook his head. “Nah. I want documentaries, I’ll watch PBS. Movie night’s for escapism.”
Okay.
I stretched. “Go ahead and start the next movie, I’ve got to go put some things away.”
Deirdre started to challenge me. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“The security staff is out and about and on high alert,” I argued. “I’ll be carrying and the Neighborhood Watch is all around. I’m not spending the rest of my life indoors like some hothouse flower!”
“I’ll tag along,” Lupé volunteered, “while he plays sheepherder of the damned.”
Deirdre grumbled, I retrieved my Glock from the desk, and Lupé followed, grabbing a sack of consecrated salt as we headed for the back of the house.
I checked the extension cord as we went out the back door. Everything looked secure; the plug was still in the outlet. I saw a knot of corpses gathered in the flickering glow of the spare television down by the cemetery wall. Walking around to the side of the house, I moved toward the clump of cadavers who were bunched up outside the big window. “Boys? What seems to be the problem here?”
They turned at my voice and managed to look a little sheepish. Only a little, mind you: when one thinks of sheep, one envisions them with skin and body parts intact.
“TV broken,” one of them mumbled.
I put my hands on my hips and gave him the Serious Parent look. “Now, Roger, the TV is on—I can see it from here. And everyone else is down by the wall, watching intently, so it can’t be broken. The only reason to be up here, peeking in the window is to see what we’re watching. Are you all Frankenstein fans?”
“Noooo,” hissed another voice. “Ally McBeallll!”
That one caught me off guard. “You’re Ally McBeal fans?”
A loud chorus of “No!"s and more than a few growls cleared the issue up immediately.
“I see. Okay. Well. Let’s go back and I’ll tell the girls that it’s your turn after their show is over.”
They shuffled their feet but no one moved forward. “FX all ni’ marat’on,” someone lisped.
Oh.
How was I supposed to rule a major enclave of vampires when I couldn’t arbitrate the viewing habits of the dead in my own backyard?
“You know, I read about this in TV Guide,” Lupé said. “The zombie episode is supposed to be on pretty soon.”
The growling died down. The deceased and dissenting looked thoughtful. “Wort’ a looh, Uh spose,” one said through decaying lips.
“Golla be beher than Fankenstein,” opined another who had lost his some time back.
“Too boring?” I asked, backing toward the cemetery.
They began to follow. “Too icky . . . gross . . . disgusting . . . scary . . .” were the various responses.
Norman summed it up: “Digging up dead bodies to cut up and use for spare parts—I almost spewed my maggots!”
“Um,” I said, “yeah.”
“Ali MahBeel’s gola be beher’n tha!”
“Ya know, if you squinch your eye sockets jus’ right, she even looks a little dead . . . emaciated . . . you know . . . cadaverlike . . .”
We got them back through the gate and Lupé resealed the gaps in the salt lines. “I didn’t know Ally McBeal had a zombie show,” I murmured, as she finished up.
“I doubt that it does,” she whispered back. “But a couple of episodes should be enough to either get them hooked or fleeing back into their graves.”
I stepped back and stared at her. “No wonder I love you: beauty and brains!”
The closest corpse turned and flailed against the wall. “Brains! Want brains! Must have brains!”
“Shut up, Kenneth.”
* * *
“Why do they do that?” Lupé asked as we walked back toward the house.
“Do what?”
“Want brains.”
Zombies . . . George Romero called them blue collar monsters. I wondered what sort of stand-up routine Jeff Foxworthy would develop if he moved next door. You might be a Revenant if . . .
I shrugged. “They sort of remind me of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.”
“But they don’t want to have brains, they want to eat them.”
“Only the ones that are really far gone. Kenneth was just joking, dear.”
Her lips twitched but she didn’t quite manage a smile.
“Look, I suspect it’s kind of like the planaria . . .”
“The building where they project the stars and planet on the ceiling?”
I sighed. Maybe this was the wrong night after all. The Bride of Frankenstein was doubtless underway by now. The Kid would dispatch search parties if we didn’t show up in the next few minutes. But I held Lupé’s arm and steered her in a half circle, away from the back porch. “Walk with me,” I said.
The slivered moon had disappeared behind a solid soup of clouds and the light from the television sets had diminished so we held hands and picked our way carefully in the dark as we moved toward the front of the house. Stopping outside the window to my study, I pointed at the giant aquarium that glowed like a pale emerald in the dim room. “See that purple sluglike critter crawling over the rocks in the corner?”
She slugged my arm in turn. “Sluglike critter? It’s a sea slug, you chew toy! A nudibranch. I’m not a moron.”
“Well, you’re not a moron,” I said, rubbing my arm, “because it does look like a nudibranch and most people wouldn’t know a nudibranch from a nudist colony. But that thing is a member of the flatworm family, not a mollusk. More specifically it’s a Pseudoceros ferrugineus.”
“And you are telling me this because . . . ?”
“A number of years ago some behavioral scientists discovered that they could train their cousins, the planaria or flatworm, to avoid light sources by associating their exposure with electric shocks.”
“Gee, kinda makes Pavlov seem like a real dog lover by comparison.”
“Just wait. They then discovered that they could cut a flatworm in half and it would become two individual planaria. Well, they already knew that. But what they discovered was that both flatworms retained the same avoidance conditioning.”
“Lovely.”
“So, they said, if memory is not specifically confined to the planarian brain, let’s see what happens if we grind up a trained worm and feed it to an untrained worm.”
“Yuck,” she said. “Who wrote the research grant? Dr. Hannibal Lecter?”
“The point is the untrained worms that ate the ground-up remains of the planaria that had been preconditioned, were conditioned at a far more accelerated rate than the untrained flatworms that were fed the placebo invertebrates. Something of the memories of one creature had been passed on to another through ingestion or digestion.
“And you’re suggesting that some zombies are like these flatworms? They want . . . want . . .”
“Well,” I said, steering her away from the window and on toward the front of the house, “if their minds and memories are nearly gone, I guess they’d be looking for some replacement parts. You know the old saying ‘You are what you eat’?”
“That’s it!” she said. “No more popcorn for me, tonight!”
Great. The rumble in the cellar had already dampened th
e mood, this conversation wasn’t helping, and I still hadn’t gotten around to telling her about the evening’s earlier developments. She needed to know about my “funny valentine” and Dr. Pipt’s psycho-spam and Theresa Kellerman’s noggin-napping.
But I had even more important things to discuss and, in these particular matters, timing was everything.
“You’ve been a really good sport about all this,” I began.
“About all what?”
I gestured at the dim glow of the TV through the picture window as we passed by. “Having company over on a regular basis. A bunch of dead busybodies in our backyard. The Kid . . .”
“Deirdre,” she added.
I cleared my throat. “Uh, yes . . . Deirdre . . .”
“Chris,” she said, her head down, her voice soft, her grip a little firmer than before, “I was an enforcer for Stefan Pagelovitch before I met you. This is a trip to Neverland—Michael Jackson excluded—compared to my time at the Seattle demesne. The dead—well—they’re like unruly children sometimes—brain issues aside—but they trigger my maternal instincts the same way they appeal to your father complex.”
“Father complex?”
“J.D. now, he’s a bit of a challenge but he needs a Doman with patience and someone who will encourage his best instincts instead of aggravating his worst. He needs you.”
“Uh . . . and you.”
She sighed. “Yes. I know. But Deirdre . . .”
We stumbled around into the front yard and I led her up to the porch steps. We sat for a minute before she continued. “Deirdre would be a lot happier if I was out of the picture.”
“She likes you,” I argued. “You’re her best friend.”
“I’m the only other woman she gets to socialize with. I’m the only other woman who could possibly understand what she is going through. And I’m not sure I’m even qualified to say that.”
“Her situation is complicated,” I said.
“Her relationship with you certainly is.”
I sighed. “All my relationships are complicated.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ring before she could turn the conversation back to Deirdre. “That’s why I would like to simplify ours.” I sank down on one knee. “Will you marry me?”
Chapter Four
Lupé went very still.
Habeas Corpses - The Halflife Trilogy Book III Page 6