by Piper Dow
CHAPTER ONE
Kelly dabbed carefully at the congealed blood around the gaping hole in her shoulder. She wiped away a clot of red to reveal the waxy yellow of flayed skin below and grimaced. The blood dripping from the gash in her forehead oozed down past the corner of her eye. She closed her eyes and resisted the urge to reach up and touch her face, then stood back to get a good look in the mirror. It looked good –– really authentic.
“Wayne, you’re still too pretty from behind. Let me help,” she said, wielding a cosmetic sponge covered with Cadaver grey paint and a spray bottle of stage blood.
A radio in the main room pushed out bouncy tunes through the surround sound system, but in here they could still converse. The two were in a side room in the family’s walkout basement, which Kelly had long ago outfitted with a long table on one wall, an iron rod on the wall for hanging things up, and deep shelves along the end wall. When she was younger, she had used the room for crafts and painting, but a few years ago she’d added three large mirrors over the long table and started dabbling with costumes and special effects.
Wayne’s close-cropped head was sporting a nasty-looking spike sticking out. They’d argued over its placement – Kelly thought it should be coming through the side of his jaw so that it left no doubt that it hadn’t hit his brain, but Wayne had argued that it made it much harder to move his mouth, and he wouldn’t be able to eat while in make-up. Secretly Kelly had been counting that as a pro for the jaw placement, but since it was Wayne’s head, he did have final say.
“Whaddaya think?” asked Wayne, holding up a brown plaid flannel shirt in one hand and a faded green sweatshirt in the other. “Just this t-shirt is going to be too cold.”
Kelly eyed him in the mirror with irritation.
“Wayne, look. In the mirror – look. What do you see?” She watched Wayne’s eyes in the mirror, knowing he wouldn’t get it. When his eyes met hers in their reflection, she grimaced and pointed at the spike in his head.
“Oh, right! Well, wait, the flannel one is a button-up, I can wear that one, can’t I?”
Sighing, she nodded. “It can’t be clean, though. We have to mess it up, and this blood won’t wash out afterward, so if you like the shirt, you won’t want to wear it. If you don’t care, then I don’t care.”
She watched the conflict in his face as she finished dabbing on the stage make-up, alternating bits of Cadaver grey with Moss green to ensure that the skin around the wound was mottled and aged properly. Tiring quickly of his indecision and recognizing that covering his arms meant less work for her, she said, “I have a grey zip-up sweatshirt in the car you can use. It’s already filthy from riding under the tire last week when I had that flat.”
Wayne tossed his shirt aside. “Excellent. Are we ready, then?”
“Almost. I just want to add these,” she said, moving to the seat at the mirror and picking up a package. She pulled out the contact lenses she had just gotten in the mail that afternoon. “I was afraid they wouldn’t come in time. These are going to totally finish this costume!”
Wayne watched with a small frown on his face as she pulled the skin down from one eye and carefully placed a cloudy lens on her eye, then blinked rapidly to settle it into place. She repeated the process, looked intently into the mirror, then turned to give him a better view. The lenses had no irises – just a cloudy fog covering the lens so that they gave the appearance of the wearer being dead.
“Perfect! Come on, Rick and John said they’d be ready by 7. It’s almost that now, and Mom said she wants pictures before we go.”
Wayne led the way, stumbling and thumping his way loudly up the stairs. He was breathing loudly through his mouth, sounding like he was sucking air through a wet tube.
“Gross, Wayne,” Kelly prodded him in the shoulder.
“I’m just getting into character,” he said, grinning back over his shoulder at her.
She wrinkled her nose at him but said no more.
Wayne nudged the door into the kitchen open and shuffled his way into the room. He moved slowly, blocking the way through the door. Kelly pushed her hands past him, grasping and grabbing in front of him as though trying to get her share of whatever might be in the room. She couldn’t see around him, and couldn’t hear anyone over the music they had forgotten to turn off downstairs. She nudged the door open wider and side-stepped into the kitchen, from behind her brother.
The kitchen was empty. Wayne turned to look at Kelly, eyebrows raised. Kelly shrugged.
“I don’t know where she is; I’ll check upstairs,” she said. “Go shut the radio off.”
A quick check of the upstairs produced no Mom, and no Dad, either. Kelly ran down the steps and met her brother in the living room.
“I found this on the counter near the stove.” Wayne shoved a small square of paper toward her. On it, written in her mother’s hurried writing, were four words. “Be back soon, Mom.”
Kelly’s brow furrowed as she reread the note. “Well, that’s weird. She could have just called down to us.” She looked up at Wayne in time to see him shaking his head.
“Remember the radio?”
“Oh, right. Well, we’ll just take some pictures with my cell phone. It’s not our fault she’s not here, and I don’t want to be late,” Kelly said.
They moved into the kitchen where the lighting was better. Kelly used the timer on her cell phone camera, propped it up in a coffee cup so the lens was exposed, and they staged a few photos using the kitchen knife set as props. She took a couple of close-ups of Wayne and had him snap a couple of her before they headed out the door.
“Let’s take your car so I can message these to Mom on the way,” Kelly said.
Wayne grabbed the sweatshirt from Kelly’s trunk, then jogged to his car on the street, unlocking his car doors with the remote as they approached. Kelly slid into the passenger seat and clicked the seatbelt in with one hand, her other hand already busy tapping away on the message to her mother.
As Wayne drove the familiar route, Kelly scanned her newsfeed on her cell. She reached forward and turned the volume down so she could speak.
“Jess said she’s going to be there, too. Did you know?”
Wayne nodded, still keeping time on the steering wheel with the radio. “Yeah, she said she might go with Robin, who might go with Adam. Or maybe it was Gregg. Somebody she’s into this week.” He seemed to notice Kelly watching him. “It’s fine, Kel. It’s not her fault her father’s a jerk, but it wasn’t going anywhere anyway.”
Kelly looked intently at Wayne until his eyes met hers. As he turned his attention back to the road in front of them, she nodded and turned back to her newsfeed.
“Ok, but if I catch you acting like a moonbat tonight I’ll pour a drink in your lap,” she said. The threat was a standing joke between them –– a promise to help get out of a sticky situation by making an even bigger scene.
They pulled into the parking lot near the student center. Wayne maneuvered into one of the last spots in the lot and cut the ignition. Kelly was already unbuckling her seat belt.
“Rick said they’d meet us out front. Come on,” she said, climbing out of the car.
The sidewalk and lawn were already crowded with people. Fog hung near the ground, spilling out of the shrubs at the edge of the grass. Lights flashed from sets of stands set up near the front of the student center, and loud music pulsed from speakers set out across the front of the building. A large banner stretched across the front of the building announcing the “Zombie Apocalypse Party.” Kelly and Wayne made their way toward a large tree to the left of the student center, winding their way around other zombies and those who had decided to attend as survivors. Kelly knew Rick and John were among the survivors since Rick had said
he was planning to attend as his namesake, the main character from a popular zombie show.
She found them standing under the tree. Rick wore brown pants and an open tan shirt over a white t-shirt – his TV counterpart was a Sheriff. He had been growing his beard for nearly two weeks for this party and had a disrespectable scruffiness to his brown hair. He had a toy cap-gun strapped to his belt, along with what looked like a chef knife from a kitchen set. John wore a pair of filthy jeans and a denim shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He had fashioned a primitive bow from a tree limb and piece of rope, which he had slung over his back along with a few short sticks with feathers glued to the end to resemble arrows.
“Not bad, not bad,” Kelly teased, walking around the pair and critically assessing their costumes. She reached out to touch the blade of Rick’s knife. “Not too sharp, here, buddy. How many skulls is that going to be able to penetrate?” She tried to raise one eyebrow, but the make-up on her forehead had a Botox-like effect. She settled for putting her hands on her hips and frowning in mock severity.
“Hey, considering that you’re the zombie, I would think you’d prefer a dull blade!” Rick laughed. “Very realistic, too, I must say. How long did it take you to do all this?” He reached out to touch the hole she had put on her shoulder, withdrawing red fingertips. “Yuck.”
“The blood and everything took about an hour today, but I’d already made the prosthetic pieces. Oh, and my clothes, I worked on those yesterday,” Kelly said. She glanced down at her jeans, which she had stained liberally with inkberries and mud from the yard and her sweater – a pick from the thrift store that she’d ripped the shoulder out of to ensure the bite would show through.
Rick looked toward Wayne, who was looking around at the students milling on the lawn. “You up for this?”
Wayne turned back and grinned. “Of course I’m up for this! Look at all these lovely corpses – what could be better?”
Kelly rolled her eyes, then realized the others couldn’t tell because of her contact lenses. They were making it darker than it was, but otherwise, she didn’t think they were impeding her vision much.
“How’d they manage all this fog?” she asked. “That’s pretty cool. Dry ice?”
John motioned her to follow him as he moved toward the low hedge behind the tree. “Yeah, they’ve got it in buckets spread around in the bushes. The buckets have paint roller grids on them to keep anyone from accidentally touching the ice.”
John was also a student in the theater department, though he was focused more on directing movies than creating the special effects to pull them off. He had just spent the past month helping to plan the party and coming up with the decorations. Kelly thought he had a right to feel proud - it had turned out fantastic.
The party was planned around showing the season opener scheduled to come on at 9, but the season finale from the last season was going to show at 8. A screen was hung along the far wall, with a projector connected to the audiovisual equipment to project the show. Another table along the right side of the room was lined with colorful little plastic cups, with what looked like a trash can behind the table. Displayed on an easel next to the trash can was a circle divided into different colors, all matching the colors of the cups on the table. Kelly veered toward the display, drawn by the cheerful colors, and saw that it was set up for a drinking game.
People were already lining up to spin the wheel and get their colored cups. Kelly hesitated. She didn’t mind an occasional wine cooler at a beach fire during the summer, but she didn’t think it was too smart to drink on campus.
Rick had no such qualms. “I’m in,” he said, joining the line.
Wayne reached toward his pocket, but Kelly reached out and touched his arm, shaking her head once. He turned his gesture into an elaborate backstretch. Kelly hid her smirk as she turned her attention across the room. She motioned with a nod of her head toward another group of people gathering. Along the other wall were three dart boards outfitted with zombie cutouts. Students were taking turns aiming suction-cup dart guns at the boards. The noise level was nearing a level that was making it impossible to carry on a conversation. Wayne motioned with his hands that he planned to join the shooters. Kelly nodded.
She watched him walk across the room before turning back to find Rick watching her. “You going to babysit all night?”
“I’m not babysitting him, Rick. That’s not fair,” she said, leaning in to make sure he could hear her. “But you know that if I brought him home wasted, my parents wouldn’t forgive me, and I’d never get to come to another event. You think it’s worth that?”
Rick grinned but put his arm around her shoulder. “I’m just messing with you.” He reached the table and took his arm from her shoulder to pull out his wallet. He passed forward his cash and reached to grab the wheel. He spun, and the arrow landed on blue.
Rick raised his shot glass in mock salute and turned back toward Kelly. John was right behind Rick and spun the wheel to red.
~~
Thirty minutes later Rick had already made several trips to the shot table, and John was on his third trip. The noise level in the room, which had quieted when the show was first turned on, was rising. The soundboard techies were muting the sound and playing music during the commercials. Wayne had dragged a seat over to their cluster during the first set of ads.
Wayne leaned toward Kelly suddenly. “What did Mom say about the pictures?”
Kelly shrugged. “I don’t know, I haven’t checked.” She dug her cell from her pocket. She tapped a button and swiped the front of the phone. A small frowned teased at her mouth. “It doesn’t even say she saw them yet.”
The music faded out as the show returned from commercial break.
“I’ll call home between the shows,” she said, turning her gaze back to the screen.
She tried to focus on the action on the screen, but now that she was reminded of her parents’ strange absence at home she felt distracted and on edge. Her parents were dependable. Boring, maybe, but dependable. They didn’t disappear without a word. They didn’t stay out for hours when they’d only left a quickly dashed off note. They certainly didn’t leave the house after supper on a Sunday night when they both had work early in the morning.
By the next commercial, Kelly already had her cell in her hand. She stood casually, motioned that she would be back in a few, and moved toward the side of the room where the doors to the bathrooms were. Glancing back she saw Wayne in conversation with John, who was laughing boisterously. Kelly saw several girls waiting outside of the restroom, so walked out the front door instead. She waved vaguely with one hand to a girl who called out her name, but kept walking.
She quickly dialed her home phone. Surely her mother had just not looked at her cell phone and was sitting home watching television on the couch. When the answering machine came on after the fourth ring, Kelly hung up and stood looking down at her phone. She hit the messaging app with her thumb and saw that her mother had still not seen the photos she had sent on the way to the party. She dialed her mother’s cell. When the call went straight to voicemail, Kelly hung up and dialed her father’s cell. That call went straight to the automated voice telling her that her dad still hadn’t bothered to set up his voice mail. Kelly wasn’t surprised since he hated using a cell phone, but she had thought it might be worth a try.
An arm wrapped around Kelly’s waist. She jumped and whipped her head around to see who was at her side. “Rick!”
“Hey, watcha doin? You disappeared on us, Kel. Kelly,” Rick said.
Kelly took a breath through her mouth to avoid the smell of the alcohol on Rick’s breath.
“Just trying to figure out where my parents are. They’re not answering any of their phones,” she said.
“Oh, so now you have to watch out for them along with Wayne, huh? Poor Kelly, you have too many people to keep track of, that’s what’s wrong with you,” Rick said. He tugged her toward the door with his hand, which she had tried unsuccessfull
y to remove from her waist. Kelly allowed herself to be steered back into the room but resumed the effort to remove Rick’s hand from her waist.
“It’s just weird, them not answering. I messaged my mom while we were driving here, and she hasn’t even seen the pictures yet. Hey, how many shots are you up to?”
“I don’t know, a few,” Rick’s diction was slurred.
“Wow,” Kelly said. She smiled sweetly up at Rick’s expression, which was stuck between trying to figure out if she was admiring him or insulting him. “This explains so much.”
The music faded out as he opened his mouth to say something, and Kelly shushed him. “Ooh, it’s back on. This is the last ten minutes, right? Let’s see what happens –– it’s got to be a cliffhanger!”
They moved back to their seats. The room was getting more crowded as people who hadn’t bothered to show up for the replaying of the last episode started coming in to see the season opener. Twice Kelly bumped into people, apologizing profusely as one girl spilled the contents of her cup onto her friend. Rick stepped on the edge of her shoe, causing her to bump a third person. She reached her seat gratefully and sank onto it. Rick leaned toward her to say something, but Kelly put a finger up to his lips and pointed at the screen, settling back in her own chair. Managing regular Rick was easy enough, she’d been doing it for years, but managing tipsy Rick was proving to require a little more finesse.
As the characters on the screen ran to escape a herd of zombies, Kelly looked around again, fighting irritation at the haze the zombie contacts threw in front of her eyes. The lights were dimmed so that the show would be easily visible projected up on the sheets, but her contact lenses really were impeding her vision more than she had thought they would. She turned back to find Rick watching her with a smirk hovering about his lips. He leaned toward her again.
Kelly stood. “I think I have to get in line for the restroom; I might be a while. Save my seat?” she smiled sweetly again at Rick.
Laughing softly at the look of confusion on his face, Kelly headed for the far wall again. This time she did get into line for the bathroom. She pulled her phone free from her pocket and swiped her thumb across the screen again. This time she had a notification for a voicemail from home. Kelly looked at the number of girls in front of her in line, then glanced around the room. It was way too loud to hear a message in here, but the music had also been loud outside. She decided to wait until she got into the bathroom to listen to it.
