by David Beem
“It’s almost like they’ve always been zombies?” says Shmuel, now using his phone’s mirror app while he picks his teeth.
“Exactly! Because they were shit givers before and they’re shit givers now!”
“Whoa.” Shmuel widens his eyes. “I’m getting a thought here. A thought like no one’s ever had.”
“Nah-ah! I’m gonna stop you at ‘getting a thought.’”
“It’s like we’re plugged into a virtual reality program, and all we need to do is decide—”
“—okay, shut up—”
“—whether to take the blue pill or the red pill—”
“This is my monologue, and you’re not invited! Now, shut up! Those zombies may be off the streets, but they will not rest until they find us! And I, for one, refuse to be found! They want to make me say Happy World Fucking Peace Day, but I say this: You can ravage my body, especially if you’re hot, but you will never have my soul!”
“Duh-nuh, dun, da-dun,” hums Shmuel. “Duh-nuh, dun, da-dun.”
“Da fuck is that?” asks Wang. “Are you singing Terminator?”
“Duh-nuh, dun, da-dun,” Shmuel hums again. “Duh-nuh, dun, da-dun.”
Wang’s resolve hardens. The Terminator is, he must admit, the perfect soundtrack for their escape. Well, The Wanginator anyway.
“Shmuel, my friend,” says Wang. “Everyone has a first principle. Everyone.”
“Mine was Principal Patel? She was a Hinjew from Saskatchewan?”
“And mine is chaos. Possibly it’s selling out for personal gain, but if so, chaos is a close second.”
“You don’t have to choose? You can have two first principles?”
“That’s right, Shmuel! I can sell out for personal gain and be an agent of chaos. Now, come on. We’ve got to Ron-day view with Consuelo, steal into the night under the cover of darkness, and find the Legendary Temple of Cock Block. Shmuel, you boobiliciously beautiful bastard, we are going to live our best motherfucking lives.”
Chapter Fifteen
The soul-stars fire into the velvet night sky like a confetti cannon. A showering fountain outlines in the negative space the Earth Mother. A gust of stardust blows through the shower of raining silver, swirls, and re-forms to reveal the Wise Old Woman.
“Oh my God,” says Mary, her psychic sense terrified against the backdrop of the constellation fireworks. “Edger. Are we where I think we are? Am I dreaming?”
Shock plunges through my stomach. That is, if I had a stomach and weren’t floating in a disembodied sea of soul-stars.
“You’re right,” says Mary, reading my thoughts. “We don’t have any bodies!”
“Wait. You’re… You’re in my head? I mean, you know what I’m thinking?”
Please don’t picture Mary naked, please don’t picture Mary naked, please don’t picture Mary naked…
Ah-hah! says Nigel. One picture of naked Mary coming right up!
And here is Mary waking up naked in the tube, quickly replaced by X-ray-vision Mary in her bra and panties in the hotel in New York. But, to be fair, I only saw the X-ray of her because I couldn’t figure out how to work the suit, and then—
“Looks like you figured it out just fine,” says Mary, as next my mental photo album calls up a great big eyeful of my bulging morning wood. Hey! This is the morning she snuck into my room at Gran’s place!
“Wow,” I say. “You really served yourself an eyeful.”
Her thoughts worm deeper into mine…
“Welcome to the Collective Unconscious,” says Bruce Lee’s star, winking as it swoops in like it’s the opening of It’s a Wonderful Friggin’ Life.
Mary’s mental photo album pushes into my brain. Me, exiting the shower through thick steam—wait, hold on. When was this? Mary’s never seen me like this! She wasn’t even there when—
“Hey! Stop that!”
“Now we’re even.” She giggles as her eyes linger on my exposed ding-a-ling.
“You do realize the entire human race is here watching you memorize my junk.”
“What?” she replies. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
Chapter Sixteen
The stars’ brightness intensifies, gobbling up the dark. Soon, the blackness of space is replaced by a sea of white light. Our soul-stars descend and push into the surface, which stretches like a bioluminescent film before enmeshing us in a cocoon of light. Our descent doesn’t slow. The substance simply clings to us while stretching above to infinity. A self-awareness settles into me—and Mary, I can sense her too—and between one second and the next, we have arms, legs, fingers, and toes. A pink glow shines through my newly formed eyelids. Something solid pushes into my toes, rolls under the balls of my feet, and settles beneath my heels. My arms spring reflexively up, and I find my balance. Air floods into my nose…except that can’t be right. There’s no air in the Collective Unconscious.
I open my eyes. Bright, fuzzy. A humongous shape coalesces into the only feature on the white landscape. The image sharpens. A tree writhing with living panoramas hewn into its trunk. A lion roars, and the inside of its mouth becomes a tree hollow. It closes, and the tree re-forms into solid bark. The lion saunters around the curvature of the tree’s mass, and carvings of antelope, zebras, and wild boars creep into the spot it vacated. The antelope bounds up the side of the tree and bends its neck to drink from the river winding around and through the ever-changing canvas. The sheer height draws my gaze up, where gold and red leaves orbit the top and shine with lights of their own, twisting and turning with cinematic grace.
Mary’s smile is like Christmas morning. She raises her arms and spins, her gaze tracking the never-falling leaves. Her laugh is childlike. I love seeing her like this, seeing how this is how she makes me feel all the time. She deserves some happiness in her life.
Her head tilts sharply. She’s heard something. She turns her smile on me, and its character changes.
Our clothes vanish. We lunge for each other—
Bruce Lee clears his throat.
—aa-and we separate. What—? She’s in a thermal Eskimo jacket down to her ankles. Hood cinched up so only her baby blues are visible. I glance down and suffer a second shock: I’m in an astronaut suit!
Close my eyes. Focus.
I open them, and Mary is back in her no-nonsense black tank and shorts. I’m in the white suit I always wear here. Tie, tan shirt. Bruce steps between us, hands folded in front. He’s dressed like me. Or am I dressed like him?
“Copycat,” I say.
“Think of this place like a hive mind,” says Bruce, addressing Mary.
Comprehension dawns over her features.
“Whoa. Bruce Lee.” She touches her temple. “It is like a hive mind.” She lets her arm fall to her side and turns to face me. “I make you feel like Christmas morning? No one’s ever used that line on me.”
“Technically, I never did either.”
“Then it’s the sweetest line anyone never tried on me. How’s that?”
Bruce folds his arms with a swagger. His lips pull back on one side as he scratches his neck with his thumb. Again, he clears his throat.
“You catchin’ a cold?” I ask.
“Mary,” he says. “This has never happened before. A guest in the Collective Unconscious. Until Edger, we’ve never communicated like this with the living. And now we have not one, but two visitors.”
“You say that like you think it’s important,” she replies.
“It is. I don’t know what to make of it. You shouldn’t exist at all.”
“Hey—whoa,” I say. “That’s…harsh?”
“No, it’s okay,” says Mary, and I can sense from her mind she’s had years to process this already. From the moment she woke up, still thinking of herself as Blythe, but gradually identifying as the reincarnated soul of a child. Which, of course, makes total sense. Her awkward flirting, kind of like mine. Only she’s got an excuse.
“Speak for yourself,” she says. “I’m not awkward.”
“Sorry.”
“When people die,” says Bruce, addressing Mary, “they join us in the Collective Unconscious. You did too. We knew you as a child, even though your unconscious mind has no memory of this place. But when Nostradamus created the person you know as Blythe, your presence…left us.”
“What?” I exclaim. “That makes it sound like straight-up reincarnation. Dad implied it wasn’t that simple.”
Bruce shrugs. “It isn’t.”
I look at Mary, whose forehead is furrowed.
“Dude,” I say. “That totally sounds like straight-up reincarnation.”
“Except there have been other souls that have vanished without a trace like Mary’s,” Bruce replies.
“You mean like going behind the shadow curtain?” I ask. “Like the Übermenschen?”
“No,” replies Bruce. “I mean annihilation. True, violent annihilation. One minute, the soul is vibrant and with us. The next, ripped from the Collective.”
“Ripped?” Mary asks.
Bruce nods, and Mary folds her arms.
“Maybe the clones?” she asks. “It sounds weird, but maybe their existence relies on stealing souls in some way science doesn’t understand?”
Bruce shakes his head. “This phenomenon predates the clones.”
“Then, what?” I ask. “You must know. You’re functionally omniscient over human consciousness, dead and alive. How could you not know?”
Bruce lays a hand on my shoulder. “We’re in uncharted territory. But never fear. Be like water, my friend. Adapt. Flow. There is opportunity in the unknown. Observe.”
His hand slips from my shoulder, and he turns to face the horizon, holding his empty palm up to his mouth and blowing stardust into the air. It lifts and swirls around us, enveloping us in a cyclone of sparkling lights. They shoot up with a whip crack, and we’re whisked behind, tethered to our ancestors, breathless and cold. Nausea phases from Mary into me. But there are no stomachs in the Collective Unconscious. Her mind is playing tricks on us. Her green feeling passes, and now it’s her gratitude phasing into me instead. Weird being connected like this.
Our feet touch down, and the soul-stars race ahead along a darkened cobblestone street, twisting through narrow alleyways, over irregular rooftops and, with another loud whip crack, rocketing into the sky.
I glance at Mary—is she seeing this? Her eyes sight sideways to find mine, the hint of a smile on her lips, before again turning skyward to track the silver light, now a faraway galaxy. The stars sweep out, then back in, tracing the archetypes with their light and revealing them in the negative spaces: the Wise Old Man; the Wise Old Woman; the Trickster; the Great Shadow.
“I can see them.” Her mouth opens, and her astonishment flows into me.
Bruce watches her in silence. “The secrets of the dead are now known to three of the living. The rules are changing faster than we can keep up. Come.”
We follow him down the darkened street, the irregularly spaced torchlight flickering at the edge of the shadows. Distant clopping hooves ring out in the night.
“I don’t like it,” I say. “Feels kind of, I don’t know, Jack the Ripper-y.”
Mary shakes her head. “That’s not right. Feels…French. Hey, are we in France?”
Bruce nods. Mary and I stop walking to exchange dumbfounded looks—until realizing Bruce, who never broke stride, is getting away. We hasten to catch up, and our footsteps echo as we pass beneath a stone arch supporting a large clock tower.
“How did you know we’re in France?” I ask.
“Feels Frenchie,” she replies. “Mr. Lee!”
Bruce stops to face us, and I skid to a halt across a patch of gravel. By my side, Mary is peering at the building behind Bruce.
“Sir,” she says, facing Bruce. “What’re we doing here?”
“Not what. When.” He gestures to the building. “Welcome to 41 Rue de l’Horloge, Salon-de-Provence, France. The year is 1566, the day is July 1. Michel de Nostredame is about to die, and, by doing so, vanish from the Collective Unconscious…without a trace.”
Chapter Seventeen
Wang squeezes the rail of the Level Two parapet of Westfield Horton Plaza and peers down at the two zombies meandering through the open-air street-level shopping below. The night breeze is chilling in his thin ninja uniform. So is the discovery of zombies out after curfew. Beads of cold sweat rise on his forehead.
“Dammit,” he whispers, ducking out of view to join Shmuel and the pig beneath the cement balcony rail. “Don’t they know they’re supposed to be in bed?”
Shmuel yawns. “I’m a little tired too? What do you say we head to Cheap Used Queens and take a nap?”
“Be quiet.”
Wang sits back on his heels and thinks. They could be curfew patrol. They could be other people who, for some reason, are not under Nostradamus’s magic.
“Or they could be looking for us,” he whispers, finishing the train of thought aloud.
“Us? How come?”
“Think, dumbass, if you can still remember how.”
“Hey. That’s hurtful? Even a blind tree can find a squirrel under an acorn sometimes?”
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe you beat out a hundred thousand other sperm, you know that?”
Shmuel brightens. “I’m a strong swimmer?”
Wang peers over the top of the parapet. Omelet-brained zombies, right there, rubbernecking it in front of Victoria’s Secret like two old people searching for pants they’re already wearing. He ducks back down.
“Okay, look. Chances are, when we set off the alarm in the vault, Nostradamus sent a few zombies out after curfew to look for us. Nod once if you understand.”
The pig nods. Shmuel frowns.
“Good Lord,” says Wang. “If you were any dumber, I’d have to water you twice a week. Even the sentient bacon understands!”
Shmuel scratches his head. “But if Nostradamus knows we tripped his alarm, why would his zombies be at Victoria’s Secret?”
“Obviously because Victoria’s Secret is very interesting.”
Wang leans forward and pushes off the cement rail. Hunched, his hands out to the side for style points, he makes a beeline for the stairwell, pausing only for a second to wave for Shmuel and the pig to follow. At the stairwell door, he carefully eases it open, winces as the latch clicks, then hurries inside.
Seconds later, Shmuel and the pig arrive behind him.
“But is it very interesting to Nostradamus?” asks Shmuel, his voice echoing in the stairwell.
“Shh!” Wang peers over the railing and then upward to ensure they’re alone. He cocks his head forward—listens—nothing. He signals with his hand for Shmuel and the pig to follow, then sets off down the flight of stairs. Speaking over his shoulder, he says, “How would I know what’s interesting to Nostradamus?”
“If they’re zombies, then Nostradamus is controlling what they do, right?”
“Duh.”
“And they’re staring at the Victoria’s Secret window, right?”
“Duh.”
“Then Nostradamus must like Victoria’s Secret?”
“Duh.”
“But if Nostradamus has the entire world under mind control, then isn’t he also in the minds of the actual Victoria’s Secret models? And, if so, why would he find it interesting to stare at their pictures in the window? Wouldn’t it be like staring at a picture of himself?”
Wang stops midflight and faces Shmuel.
“You know what? That might be the first well-reasoned, articulate point I’ve ever heard you make. You even managed to ask actual questions that synchronize with your question marks.”
Shmuel brightens and puffs out his chest. “It’s called upspeak?”
“I know what it’s called.” Wang strokes his chin. “So. Nostradamus is a narcissist. No, Shmuel, don’t even try to say the scary word. It means he thinks the whole world revolves around him—”
“I know what it means?”
“—and don’t tell me you know what it means, because I know you don’t. Now. This is good. For us. We’re really getting into the mind of the enemy. In order to beat a narcissist, one must think like a narcissist.”
Shmuel strokes his chin. The pig releases a sigh.
“I used to be a narcissist, you know.” Wang parts his hands. “But look at me now.”
Shmuel frowns.
“Okay,” says Wang. “Follow me.”
He resumes their stairwell descent, stopping at the ground level, where he eases the latch on the door. It clicks. He winces, but hurries to scan the immediate vicinity through the narrow opening. The patch of sidewalk in front of Victoria’s Secret is empty.
His gaze sweeps left. Macy’s—nothing.
His gaze sweeps right. An ATM—nothing.
“Pst. Wang.”
“Not now,” he whispers.
“Are we living our best motherfucking lives?” asks Shmuel.
“You’re damn right we are,” he whispers, and begins inching the door shut—
A soft weight pushes into his shin, edging it away from the cracked door, which pushes open further. The pig nudges his snout into the door and shoves his way through.
“Hey!” hisses Wang, catching the door before it bangs shut, but the damage is done: That pig is trotting up the middle of the sidewalk like it’s the Queen of England!
Shmuel presses into Wang’s side. Wang opens his mouth, but quickly shuts it to follow Shmuel’s gaze. The pig has stopped between Macy’s and the ATM. It opens its mouth and squeals loud enough to wake up all the farms in Kansas.
Wang clicks his tongue. “What the hell is it doing?”
“Either he is living his best life, or…he’s creating a diversion?”
They hunker down and observe through the cracked door.
The pig hops and turns. Snorts, grunts, squeals. Tips its snout skyward, releases its loudest squeal yet, and then falls silent.
Muffled footsteps—
Wang tenses.
Bursting through Macy’s front doors, the two zombies spill out onto the street, the first man wearing a fluffy red scarf, wide-brimmed hat, and an armful of hoop bracelets, the second man in a long-sleeved, short-shorts silver onesie with rainbow spikes down both arms, and a hoodie with more rainbow spikes on top. This man is accessorizing with a purse.
