by Lori Perkins
He must have died early, because he sure looks ripe. Never thin, but omigod—in death, he has put on some serious water weight.
It splooshes as I pull the trigger.
BLAM!
Then, from around the corner, here comes Ray in a spray of gunfire.
The first thing I look at is his beautiful face. There’s no blood on it. That’s a very good sign. His expression is one of intense concentration, no small measure of anxiety notwithstanding.
I love how smart and capable he is.
I knew he knew I’d be waiting for him.
Ray is tall, long, sculpted, and lean. A college basketball star and Gulf War soldier before he became a federal agent, he lives through his body the way most people only live through their dreams.
He is an active man. Powerful. Disciplined. Engaged.
And oh, so tender, when the push comes to lovin’…
I never thought I could fall for a government man. They were Fascists and vultures, pure and simple. Didn’t matter which party was minding the store. They just wanted to eat what was ours.
That was how I was raised. That was what I believed.
So when the feds came to my ranch-style suburban home and started asking questions about Mom and Dad, and their alleged signing of some crazy petition that they probably knew was dumb at the time, but they were just really angry, way back in ‘02, my hackles were raised. I wasn’t rude, but I was firm.
I love my parents, I told them. I don’t live with my parents. They have a life of their own. They’re good Americans. They’re not trying to overthrow anybody. They just want to be left alone. And so do I.
The first guys they sent were officious and stiff, and what they gave was what they got back, in spades.
Then they sent Ray.
God bless America.
It wasn’t just how damn fine-looking he was. From the start, I recognized he wasn’t trying to nail them. He was just burrowing through the bullshit of a paranoid nation to weed the legitimate terrorist threats from all the other little blips on the possible threat index. That was his job.
And I could tell he was clocking me, too.
“We live in a dangerous world,” he said.
“I know.”
“It all could all come apart at any second.”
“Exactly.”
“We need to keep track of what matters to us,” he said, blue eyes shining deeply into my own. “Keep each other safe. Take care of each other.”
“Otherwise, we’re all alone,” I said, leaning closer. “And that’s no way to live.”
Ray smiled, his lips amazing. “No, it isn’t.”
“So what, if I may ask, matters most to you?”
“Ah…” Ray actually sat back and thought about it, his eyes skimming heavenward before locking back on mine. He sighed once again deeply, unconsciously licked those lips, and said, “Oh, you know. Other people. The people you love.”
“So who do you love?” I wasn’t being a smartass. At least, not entirely. I actually suddenly wanted to know. “Are you talking everybody, in a Socialist do-gooder kind of way?”
“Or a Christian way?” He laughed. “Sort of. Yeah. Absolutely. That’s—you’ll pardon the expression—the whole motherfucking point of any attempt to make the world a better place.”
“Language! ” I cautioned in mock dismay. “Are you allowed to say shit like that, in a federal capacity?”
“Extreme times demand extreme measures,” he said, winking. “So yeah, but…
No. I mean, of course it’s not all just some vague dumbass hippy-dippy love of the idealized commonweal. But that’s definitely part of it.”
“Do tell.” I was enjoying his chatter. But mostly, I was enjoying his company. His proximity.
The way he was looking at me.
“You’re a human being, right? You love people.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“But you love some people more than others.”
“Yes, I do.”
“So let me ask you this,” he said, leaning into me, as I leaned into him. “Does loving certain people more than life itself make you a) love the whole of the human race?
Or does it b) only make you love those certain people?”
Now it was my turn to think about that. And it only took a second.
“Both,” I said. “Just more the one than the other. And thank you for asking.”
“Why?” He grinned, searching. Just confirming the evidence trail, like a good investigator should.
“Because it made me really like you.”
“I like you, too,” he said, as our noses touched. “Sunshine.”
And the second he said my name out loud, in just that way…well, baby, it was on.
The courtship that followed went quickly from formal to truly love-tastic. The second he declared my Mom and Daddy off the list, we fell into each other heart and soul, body to body, mind to mind. All subsequent interpersonal investigation was off the record, and off the hook.
I gotta be honest: for a couple of days there, I honestly thought about following him back to D.C.
Then the dead got back up, four hours ago and counting. And almost everything seems to have changed, except for the fundamentals.
If there is a God—and I believe that there is, weirdly now more than ever—then God is love.
And God, I love that man.
“Ray! Baby!” I holler, heart a bass drum in my chest. “Over here!”
“Sunshine? ” Like me, he has barely dared believe. Watching his joy and relief is like a baby’s first Fourth of July, all unexpected fireworks and glee.
“Come around the side!” I continue to yell. “They’re all kind of focused up front here, so you should be able to get around ‘em, no problem!”
He hesitates, still in the street, gun hand aiming back from whence he came.
“Sunshine baby?” he says. “It’s not gonna be quite that simple.”
Then the horde of zombie women appear behind him.
Dear Lord, there have to be forty more, of all conceivable shapes and sizes, ages, and walks—make that shambles—of life. In his short time here, he has clearly gathered some admirers.
Jealousy rears its ugly head, and puts his face squarely in my sniper sites: not because I want to shoot him, but because I want my hypersensitive scope to show me every single flicker of thought or emotion going on in his face. See if there are any secret shames trailing him that I might want to know about, sooner rather than later.
I see nothing but love and determination, staring right back at me.
Then I jig to the right, draw a bead, and divide Penny Hager’s eyebrows by one thick squirting red inch.
She drops. Ray starts running toward me.
And the last dozen zombie men in my front yard all turn toward him with fresh and unsettling intensity.
The first wannabe rival Ray separates from his forehead is Elmore James: not the blues singer, just the asshole named after him. Ray pops him clean, watches him cave, pivots left, blows a hole in John Dixon, feints to the left, dribbles Pete Seymour’s graymeat down the back of his ruptured skull.
It’s like violent ballet, so graceful and smooth. I can see how he must have been a vision on the courts.
I want to open fire on the rest, clear the field, and put a dent in the wave of undead hussies. But I’m down to my last several rounds.
And the fight has just become a lot more intimate.
My bedroom has a porch outside. The torches are prepped in a metal bucket right inside the door, rags soaked in kerosene draped right around the hacked-off dining room table’s legs.
I grab one, fire it up, pocket the lighter, throw open the door, and pull the .357
from my sling holster.
One hand thunder and one hand lightning, I burst out into the yard.
My calculations are correct. There’s nobody around the side. They’re still waiting for the Bravo to fire from my bedroom window, because that’s how
fucking dumb they are.
I’m not even sure who the first guy I set on fire is, or was. I guess he must have liked me, because he’s here. Or maybe he was just hungry.
But I’m thrilled by how quickly he goes up, becomes a flailing warning flag. The other zombies recoil. I torch the next one, spin it back toward its friends, then set fire to another pile of corpses on the ground.
Within seconds, my lawn is a funeral pyre. I accept it, as I accept the end of the world I’ve always known.
Then Ray’s arms are around me.
And he’s kissing me hard.
And I almost set us both on fire, because I want to hold him so badly.
“Take this,” I say, pulling back and proffering the torch. “I got more.”
“You’re knockin’ me out.”
“That’s why you love me.”
“You better believe it,” he says, taking the torch, and twirling just in time to make Bob Zortman’s face ignite in fatty yowling sparks.
I run back to the bedroom, grab a pair of torches, spark the first off the last, and wade back into the fray.
Ray has herded the last men back toward the street, where the former women have caught up with them at last. I drop one torch on the pile of bodies closest to the sidewalk, start shooting ladies in the head.
BLAM! There goes Lisa from Bed, Bath, & Beyond, out on Route 37. What she’s doing here is a mystery to me. A mystery liable to go unresolved.
BLAM! Of course Cindy Fitch would be here. Little snooty blonde Daddy-runs-the-country-club beeyotch. She was probably trying to get Ray into her private racquetball court for some sweaty one-on-one.
Not in this lifetime, cupcake.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Between us, we mow down a row. But more are still coming. We wave the torches around to back them off. This will not last forever.
There has got to be a better way.
“Ray?” I say. “How you doin’ for ammo?”
“I got four shots left,” he said.
“I brought us a couple of extra clips,” I said, slapping my jacket pocket with the gun hand while I set real estate cougar Ruth Mellman’s heavily hair-sprayed head on fire.
“But we need to make a move here, for certain.”
“Whose van is that, parked at the curb?”
“The Mexican gardener guys.”
“Are they still around?”
“Right here,” I say, kicking Raul, splayed out on the sidewalk before me. He was the first poor bastard I had to watch get eaten, and the thirteenth one I shot. The rest of his crew was down as well.
Raul was legal. His friends were not. My parents would not have approved.
But I really liked those guys. I really, really did. I playfully flirted with them all the time, got ‘em laughing, got to know them well enough to know they all had wives and families they cared about. So it never crossed the line. Never got weird. Was always respectful and fun.
“Okay, then,” Ray says, as I feel my tears start rolling, thinking about their families now, and wondering what they’ll do.
Thinking about my Mom and Dad…
And in that tiny spacing-out moment—so fast that, in normal life, you’d barely even know it happened—a dead hand grabs a hold of my hair.
All of a sudden, I’m face to face with Dorothy Sutton.
This is a woman I’ve known my whole life. My high school librarian. Friend of my parents. An inspiring person, all the way around. Kind and thoughtful.
There are maggots in her eyes.
Who do you love? Ray’s voice, inside my head. Imitating my question to him.
“I love you,” I say, and press my barrel to her head, saying goodbye to what’s left of her the only way that I know how.
Now I’m back on my game. BLAM! Watching her fall, and thinking about Ray’s van inquiry. The dead are all spaced out around it.
I think I finally get his drift.
One, two, three, I drop the last three zombies between us and the van’s engine block. He’s already taken care of two others. The space has cleared.
He empties his last two shots into the gas line, like a pro.
“RUN!” he says. And I do. Back toward the house. Looking over my shoulder.
Then he tosses his torch and takes off as well.
It takes almost forty seconds for the van to explode, the squirting gas igniting and spreading mayhem far and wide. Sheets and scraps of metal pierce and bisect already dismantling corpses, pieces of whom festoon the yard and pavement.
Ray stands, as the mushroom cloud plumes, looking sexy as hell in the sunset.
Beyond him, the crowd has thinned to less than a dozen still standing. And several of them are on fire.
We make short work of the rest. The extra clips come in handy.
For a moment, there is actual peace.
We look at each other. The last ones standing. Alive. So alive it is almost obscene.
“So now what?” I say, trembling.
“Well,” he says. “If it’s okay with you, I think it’s a good time to meet your parents.”
I think about Mom and Dad, on their forty acres of land. Out in the boonies.
Fifteen minutes by Jeep. By foot, a little longer. We’ll just see how it goes.
One thing for certain: they’ve got munitions out the ass, and a buffer of woods between there and civilization.
Plus, I’m dying for them to meet him.
“I would love that,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
“Are you sure?”
“From what you say, they are wonderful people.”
“Yes, they are.”
“Will they trust me?”
“No,” I say. “Not at first. You’ll have to charm them with straight talk and utter sincerity, just the way you did me.”
“I’ll give it everything I’ve got,” he says.
“And what about the rest of the world?” I ask him, already terrified by whatever answer he might have.
“Well…” he says, surveying the wasteland of Donnybrook Terrace. “I think they might be on their own for a minute, till we get our strategy worked out. They don’t have Internet out there, do they?”
“Of course!” I say. “Secured satellite. What do you think they are, primitives?”
He holds up his hands. “I’m just askin’!”
But the question remains: what about the rest of the world? It’s a big one, and a terrifying one at that.
I know this war has just begun. That it might take years. And that Ray is sworn to fight it.
I know, too, that my fate is sealed. I’m too damn good at this to just sit on the sidelines.
Most of all, I know that—if we can just keep fighting side by side—we can handle this thing. We can bring our country back.
And if it’s truly all over the world, we can handle that, too.
Just as long as we’re together.
Down the street, a couple of late-comers straggle into view. There will be more. It is time to get a move on.
“Baby?” he says, wrapping an arm around me. I snuggle in tight.
“Yeah?”
“How long do you think it’s gonna take us to load up?”
“Everything’s packed but the Bravo and that one last torch…”
“You’re shitting me.” His eyes are wide.
“No. I—”
Then he kisses me so hard that the soles of my feet start to throb.
When he pulls back, my eyeballs almost pop out of their sockets—not just from suction, but from the magnetic pull of his all-enveloping gaze.
“Sunshine?” he says, almost incredulous himself. “I have fought alongside some serious motherfuckers, okay? Unbelievable soldiers. Agents trained out the Academy wazoo in the logistics of urban warfare.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But for you to have your shit dialed so tight—with zero warning—is just staggering to me.”
“Well, thank you,” I say, slightly light in the head.
“I swear to God.”
Then he kisses me again.
The best kiss in the world.
This time, when it breaks, he hugs me tight as can be, so tight it almost hurts. I squeeze him exactly that hard back.
“I can’t imagine this without you, my glorious Sunshine,” he whispers in my ear.
“My gorgeous, glorious, unbelievable Sunshine. ”
I let that shudder through me.
He kisses my ear. I kiss his throat. We kiss each other’s lips until the moaning of the dead is almost as loud as our own.
“And to answer your question?” he says, pulling back. Wicked grin on his face.
“As to who do I love?”
“Yes?” I say, as we both point and aim.
Then he tells me, as we fire together.
Apocalypse as foreplay.
“I love you, too,” I say.
Julia Brainchild
by Lois H. Gresh
“Dick, I want you to meet Julia Brainchild.”
My producer, Harold Latootski, was all aglow. Beside him was a young woman, maybe twenty-five years old. His hand was on her elbow, and a beautiful elbow it was.
I propped my spatula on the fry pan. So this was Julia Brainchild, author of The Art of French Brain Cooking and blog mistress extraordinaire. “Enchanted to meet you.
Please, call me Richard.”
She held out a hand. It was delicate and as white as chalk. The nails were pearly and the color of farm-raised salmon.
I bent, kissed her fingers: cold but fragrant, a citrus bouquet that reminded me of my grandmother’s scent. With my eyes lowered, I scanned her body, but in a way she wouldn’t notice. The peach pencil skirt showed off slim hips and long legs. Matching four-inch high heels. Nice breasts beneath a creamy cashmere sweater. Classy, as I’d expected Julia Brainchild to be.
She quivered slightly, released her fingers from mine. “Richard Ashford, the American brain food expert. I’ve watched your show many times. You’re very good with simple matters.” She paused. “Qualifié.”
“Why, thank you. From you, that’s quite a compliment.” I wasn’t sure what qualifié really meant, but it sounded good.
Harold smoothed some hair strands over his bald scalp and whisked lint off his thousand-dollar suit. I figured he was anxious to leave and get back to whatever it is network producers do. But then he dropped the bomb: “Dick, I’ve hired Julia to co-host Brain and Soul with you.”