Jailbait Zombie

by Mario Acevedo

  We drove down the winding mountain road into the suburbs of Denver, turning through Golden and reaching Wheat Ridge. The Sloan’s Lake area was another five miles away. I caught the girl staring at me through the right outside mirror.

  This ride was about to get dramatic.

  Her big blue eyes moved in a searching pattern. She unclasped her safety belt and whirled about to stare at me over the side of her seat.

  The driver eased up on the gas. “What are you doing?”

  The girl’s eyebrows pinched together and her eyes became loaded with suspicion. “Mom, why can’t I see him in the mirror?”

  CHAPTER 5

  Time to cover my tracks and find another way home. I bent forward—pain zippered from vertebrae to vertebrae. I flicked the contacts from my eyes and sat up.

  Tendrils of alarm lashed from the red auras of the girl, her mom, and the boy. Buttercup picked up on their blossoming panic and the van quaked as the dog jumped and clawed at the wire grid.

  I made eye contact with the girl first. Her aura lit up like I’d hooked her little toes to an electrical socket. She sat still, open-mouthed, eyes big as quarters. I eased the girl back into her seat.

  The boy trembled as his blood turned ice cold. Terror kept him from doing anything but hold still while I hypnotized him.

  When Mom turned to look, I snatched the sunglasses off her face and zapped her. I reached over her shoulder for the steering wheel while telling her how to work the pedals.

  All three sat quiet as mannequins, their auras fading to red shimmers. I’d given each an extra powerful dose to keep them under long enough for me to escape. When they came to, they would remember giving me a lift and then me disappearing sometime during the drive down the mountain.

  Buttercup howled, rabid with rage, eager to rip me to pieces. Shame that vampire hypnosis didn’t work on dogs, especially this volcanic bitch.

  I guided the minivan into an alley behind a liquor store, tucked a pair of twenties into the mom’s hand, and got out.

  How to get home? I didn’t want to risk stealing a car. Taxi? A cabbie could recall me. Not too many fares look like they’ve rolled down a mountain.

  I limped two blocks and waited for the bus. Compared with the other people at the bus stop in their eclectic urban attire—chrome army helmet; a cape made of feathers; plastic shopping bags for shoes; the middle-aged man in a denim miniskirt—I appeared normal and easily forgotten.

  I took a seat at the rear of the bus and isolated myself behind a moat of pain. My arm hurt too much for me to care about anything but self-medicating and not missing the transfer.

  After I got to my apartment, I cleaned up and smothered the pain with aspirin and a whisky sour. I checked voice mail from my landline.

  There was a message from Olivia, a favorite chalice: a human who willingly donated her blood. Part of the attraction for chalices was belonging to our supernatural subculture. But once part of our extended family, chalices kept coming—so to speak—for the orgasmic rapture experienced from the fanging. For us vampires, chalices provided convenient nourishment without the stalking of innocents and the risk that brought.

  There’s a catch. A chalice was bound to silence about the existence of the supernatural world. Any transgression warranted an immediate and agonizing death. Failure to punish any such chalice meant the vampire master also deserved the final blow from undead to permanent dead.

  Olivia’s cheery voice sang from the phone. “How’s it hanging, Felix? Long and thick, I hope. If you’re hungry, call me, baby.”

  Damn right I was hungry. Plump, horny, and succulent Olivia. Comfort food for a vampire.

  I flexed the fingers of my injured hand. My wrist ached. My back ached. Everything ached. Olivia would help me feel much better.

  I set the phone aside.

  Then, like a curtain falling before me, everything blanked out. An instant later the little girl appeared.

  The voice returned, repeating my name.

  Just as abruptly, the hallucination disappeared. The voice faded, the echo so faint it was like I had never heard it at all.

  I put my hand on the desk to stop the dizziness.

  One second I was in my normal world, then flash came the little girl, and flash again, back to normal.

  My kundalini noir shrank around a cold ball of fear. My hands trembled from the chill.

  I pulled up a chair and sat.

  The war was years behind me.

  Was I going insane?

  CHAPTER 6

  I bought a new cell phone. My first call was to Mel and I told him about the visit from the crow.

  “What about the bike?” he asked.

  “What about me?” I replied. “The damn bird nearly killed me.”

  “But it didn’t. Meanwhile the bike is still fucked up.”

  “More than that. It’s a wreck.”

  “Man, I don’t want to hear that,” Mel said. “Where’s the bike?”

  “Up Coal Creek Canyon. Right where I crashed it.”

  “I got a friend who owns a wrecking yard. He’ll retrieve the bike and part it out. Give you a hundred for it.”

  “Deal.” Sucker, I would’ve given him the title for free.

  “What have you learned about the zombie?” Mel asked.

  “Nothing yet. Gimme a break, will you? I’m still limping from the wreck.”

  “That’s your problem,” Mel said. “Tell you what, I’ll send what I got on zombies. Modus operandi. Past history.”

  “As opposed to future history?”

  “Fuck you. You want my help or not?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Anything would be appreciated.”

  “It’s in the mail.” He hung up.

  I had better do my homework on Barrett Chambers, aka the now permanently deceased zombie. I keep a hacker on retainer. Every month I mail a few hundred bucks to a P.O. box in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In return I get snapshots into almost every database wired to the Internet. I sent an e-mail to my hacker with info I had on Chambers and a list of my questions.

  My next phone call was to Olivia. My wrist hurt more than it should’ve. I needed her fresh blood to help me heal.

  She told me her folks were visiting—I made it a rule not to host at my place—so we met in a hotel. A suite, as I liked plenty of space for our games.

  When I fang, I can administer a variety of enzymes. One accelerates healing of the victim’s wounds, in this case, the fang punctures. Another promotes amnesia and keeps the victim from remembering my presence. Yet another enzyme gives pleasure. Without it, fanging would burn like being force-fed napalm.

  My kundalini noir twitched with hunger pangs. Try recuperating after somersaulting from a motorcycle and rolling down a mountain, and see what kind of appetite you’d have.

  I gave Olivia plenty of the pleasure enzymes while I guzzled from her throat. As she floated in sexual euphoria, I peeled the metal splint from my wrist and rubbed the torn flesh against the blood seeping from her neck. The warm blood felt as refreshing as a salve. The blood I’d swallowed was enough to help me heal, but I enjoyed adding this ritual to my rehabilitation. Slowly but visibly, the ragged cuts on my arm closed to faint scars.

  I made a manhattan and got comfortable in a leather cigar chair. Olivia curled like a Persian cat across the love seat by the bed. I studied her with an artistic eye. She was a work in progress and I thought about what strokes I’d need to finish her off for the evening. When I got down to nothing but ice cubes in my glass, I flexed my wrist and felt it strong enough to put weight on it.

  I coaxed Olivia back to consciousness. She offered her neck but I kissed her mouth instead. After a good bout of foreplay and sloppy oral sex (the best kind), I used supernatural strength to hold her in a variety of acrobatic positions while I spanked her chunky bottom with my pelvis. She liked visuals in the mirror, but since I am a vampire, all Olivia got was her image hovering in the air as her breasts and limbs flounced about.

  At two
in the morning, we ended the festivities with a shower. After we toweled each other off, Olivia blow-dried her long brunette hair. She dressed and fastened a scarf around her neck to hide the healing fang marks.

  “I can’t spend the night.” She pecked my cheek. “My mom insists that I act like a good Catholic girl.”

  “There’s no need to act.” I adjusted the crucifix resting at the top of her cleavage. “I can vouch that you are Catholic and very good.”

  I walked Olivia to her car, then drove home. I climbed into my coffin: tired, satiated, but still sore from yesterday’s crash.

  The chime from my cell phone awoke me. The ringtone—AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”—told me that I had a message forwarded from my work number. I sat up, feeling refreshed, and realized that the Iraqi girl had not visited my dreams. Hopefully that nonsense was over.

  I’d answer the call when I got to my office. There’s always time for work. I headed into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. In the ancient days, long before I was around, when a vampire got hungry, he would go to the dungeon and sort through the menu. I stared with regret at the stacks of 450-milliliter bags of chilled human blood. This was progress?

  I grabbed a type B-negative and heated the bag in the microwave. Maybe I ought to convert the garage into a dungeon and keep a chalice. Then I’d have to keep another chalice to clean the cage and the litter box. The arrangement would get too complicated.

  My office was in the Oriental Theater at the corner of Tennyson and Forty-fourth, on the second floor behind the big neon sign.

  The red light on my office phone blinked. Caller ID gave a restricted number. The voice-mail message sounded like a robot learning how to speak English.

  “I’ve found what you wanted on Barrett Chambers. Check your e-mail.”

  The zombies were on my endangered list.

  CHAPTER 7

  The replies from my hacker came back in a series of e-mails from various anonymous accounts.

  As I sorted through the e-mails, Phyllis called. She represented the Araneum as my minder (that’s the closest word I could find to describe our relationship). The arrangement was definitely one-sided; her job was to make sure I understood the implications of my actions…and especially of my failures.

  “We need to discuss your assignment.” Her tone was as inviting as the teeth on a steel trap.

  My kundalini noir displaced uneasily. This was the first time the Araneum had contacted me like this at the beginning of an assignment. Usually I got my orders via the crow and off I went.

  I waited for Phyllis and Mel outside Ojo del Azteca, one of the remaining dives in this part of the Highlands neighborhood, also known as the North Side. The dry cleaners next door was replaced by a boutique and the corner space—empty since forever—was an espresso and wine bar. The sky was deceptively bright for such a cold day, a reminder that much in this world wasn’t as it should be.

  I kept thinking about the reason for our meeting and I formed the impression that the big thumb of the Araneum was about to press down upon me.

  Phyllis turned the corner of the sidewalk from Zuni to Thirty-second Street. Besides jeans and a green jacket, she wore a knit cap the color of a maraschino cherry that emphasized her milk chocolate complexion. False advertising—there was nothing sweet about her.

  In one hand she pulled a black rollaway carry-on. With her other hand she held the leash of her dog, a freakish golden retriever/blue heeler mix. The mutt had a long, skinny frame and a blue-gray pelt spotted with black markings. Straw-yellow hair sprouted from around its neck and bony legs. The dog looked like God couldn’t decide how to finish this mongrel before He gave up.

  I said hello. Phyllis responded with a nod. She looped the dog’s leash over the metal railing in front of the cantina.

  Phyllis removed her sunglasses and put them into a pocket of her jacket. We both wore brown contacts. Her face revealed no hint of her mood. You could read more emotion from a rock.

  Phyllis retracted the handle and lifted the carry-on. We entered the bar and proceeded to a table in the back. The owners must have been stingy about paying for electricity because the place was as gloomy as a cavern.

  A yuppie Latina in a navy blue power suit—lawyer, I guessed—sat knee to knee with a much younger man. They were tucked in a dark recess where the corner of the bar met the wall. He held her hand. As Phyllis and I passed, the woman lowered her face. The back of his jacket read LARRY’S LANDSCAPING. No question about whose bush he was trimming.

  The only other customers—two men who dressed like they raided a Salvation Army donation box for clothes—occupied a table at the opposite corner from us. They fell silent when we entered and stared at their bottles of beer. Both men acted like we’d interrupted a supersecret discussion, probably about the best intersections for panhandling.

  Phyllis and I took adjacent chairs facing the front door. She slid the carry-on onto the table, next to my backpack.

  The front door opened and a wedge of light sliced across the floor. Mel’s broad silhouette filled the doorway. He did a quick take of the bar and ambled to us.

  Mel carried a battered metal lunch box. He unbuttoned his denim work coat. Both his flannel shirt and his jeans were pock-marked with burn marks.

  Mel took a seat. Under his bulk, the chair looked like a milking stool. He placed the lunch box on the floor. He smelled of welding flux and charred flesh. That explained the bandage on his left hand. Mel did a lot of welding but he wasn’t good at it.

  The bartender left the bar and came toward us. She was a plump woman with a Mayan profile, a Frida Kahlo unibrow, and golden earrings the size of jalapeños. Tattoos peeked around the neckline of her peasant blouse. I ordered a Carta Blanca, Phyllis a Superior, and Mel whatever was cheapest.

  When the bartender left, Phyllis glanced at the other customers. They’d forgotten about us and leaned close to one another and whispered.

  Ojo del Azteca was a good place to trade secrets.

  I looked at the carry-on and wondered what it had to do with our inquiry into the zombie.

  Mel fiddled with a zipper pull on the carry-on until Phyllis pushed his hand away.

  “It’s your meeting,” I said to her. “Start with the questions.”

  Phyllis set her gaze on mine. The heat of her vampiric nature radiated through her contacts. “What have you found out about the zombie?”

  I opened my backpack and pulled out copies of the e-mails I’d gotten from my hacker. “Here’s what I’ve got on Chambers. His commercial footprints—use of credit cards, telephone calls, bank activity—stopped six weeks ago, about the time I’m guessing he became a zombie. His last address was in Morada, where I’m headed.”

  “Any leads?”

  “A couple. His landlord. His ex.”

  Phyllis asked, “What do you expect to find?”

  “In Morada? What I’d like to find is a big neon sign saying, ZOMBIE LAIR THIS WAY. But what I expect to find is a trail of flimsy clues. The usual.”

  Phyllis unzipped the main compartment of the carry-on. “When you get to Morada, you need to consider something else.” She said this like she was about to drop a heavy weight on my shoulders.

  Phyllis reached inside the carry-on and withdrew an odd contraption. It was a shiny metallic case the size of a large dictionary. A four-sided pyramid sat on top. The pyramid seemed made of glass triangles about six inches along each side. On closer inspection, I saw the sides weren’t glass but sheets of thin, transparent quartz. A crystal the size of my thumb stood upright in a cup-sized depression inside the square base of the pyramid. The ornately filigreed case, the use of gemstones as rivet heads, and the gold seams along the corners of the pyramid told me this device had most likely been crafted by the Araneum.

  An elongated ruby the size of a pen cap angled from a top corner of the case. Phyllis flicked the ruby like a switch. A faint silvery glow illuminated the crystal.

  Mel asked, “Looks pretty, but
what the hell is it?”

  “A psychotronic diviner,” Phyllis answered. “It detects psychic energy.”

  Psychic energy. The two words boomeranged into my brain. This was another example of how my experiences with the weird and supernatural kept twirling back upon themselves.

  What originally brought me to Colorado was an assignment I had contracted with an alien masquerading as a college friend. The alien wanted me to find out what was causing an outbreak of nymphomania at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. The alien knew all along what the cause was—a bizarre red mercury isotope leaking from a UFO the government was studying at Rocky Flats. What the alien really wanted, and couldn’t get because of government security, was a different psychotronic instrument, what he called simply a device, that was stored in the UFO.

  I turned my attention to the diviner. “This doesn’t look like the device I found in the UFO.” That one resembled a box camera with two handgrips. It was a prototype with a more sinister application than merely detecting psychic energy: it was to test psychic control of humans.

  After I had retrieved the device from the UFO—at great risk to myself—and learned about its function, I destroyed it. The alien hadn’t liked that, but screw him for lying to me.

  I studied the diviner, fascinated by the ostentatious decoration. “So this detects psychic energy. What’s the big deal? I can take off my contacts and see auras.”

  Phyllis grew pensive, as if gathering herself to explain something complicated to someone not as smart as she. “Are you familiar with the astral plane?”

  “I’ve heard of it. That’s the extent of what I know.”

  “In our physical world,” Phyllis said, “we have three dimensions.”

  Mel interrupted and said, “Actually four, as you have to include time,” proving he’s more than his Neanderthal appearance.