Club Zombie 1-4

by Z. Allora

  Beau peeked back to grin at Kai, adding, “The sign will come down for about two days before Cassidy will find another sign to hack.”

  Whoever this Cassidy was, he ought to know better than to screw around with government property. Probably a troublemaker to be avoided at all costs. If Kai had learned anything from his uncle, it was not to stand out or create any waves.

  Before they reached their destination, this Cassidy person must have seized another sign, because the lettering said Zombies Ahead in flashing lights.

  “Isn’t that the truth, though?” Beau giggled.

  Lafayette swore and grumbled something under his breath that Kai couldn’t make out.

  Once Beau’s laughter died down, he glanced into his visor mirror to talk to Kai. “We’re almost there. So, our doctor will do a quick exam. Then he’ll give you something of… an orientation.”

  “I’ll be working for him?” Kai asked after noticing Beau’s hesitation.

  Damn it! What had Uncle Franz promised them Kai would do? He had no medical experience. He hoped like hell his uncle didn’t say he did.

  “No, he’ll just give you an overview. He’s much better at explaining things.”

  “Like my job?” Kai’s stomach dropped. They didn’t seem to be the sort involved in anything illegal, but what did he know? His self-preservation skills appeared to be sedated.

  “Something along those lines.” Beau shut the mirror, ending the conversation.

  “We’re here,” Lafayette said as he made a left.

  A huge black iron gate creaked open. Lafayette drove the car down a long-paved road. The acres of rolling grass, flowering white trees, and hills on either side reminded Kai of a plantation right out of the movies.

  After zigzagging down the road amid the petals, the house came into view. Beau had used the right word when he’d said estate. The imposing structure appeared to have come right out of the history books. The building was a pristine white multileveled, huge-columned dwelling. Each level had a wraparound porch with swings, bistro tables, and chairs scattered about the porches.

  Wow! This place would swallow ten of his uncle’s house in Germany.

  Lafayette swiveled up the circular drive and around a cascading fountain, surrounded by statues of mythical animals. Off to one side, ducks splashed in a pond the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

  “Tolle!” Kai gasped out in German before catching himself. “I mean, amazing.”

  “Thank you.” Beau grinned at him and sat straighter in the seat. “The house was built around 1818. Lafayette and I have renovated once or twice to add the modern conveniences.”

  Lafayette grumbled, “Tripping over workers for months on end.”

  Beau grinned at Lafayette with dreamy eyes. “We have to keep current, don’t we, mon cher?”

  “As you say, my dear one.” Lafayette huffed as he took Beau’s hand and kissed the palm.

  Beau groaned before he seemed to remember Kai was there. “Kai, I’ll take you to the doctor. He’ll give you something that will make you feel better.”

  Kai didn’t want drugs to stay awake, but he could barely talk. What would the doctor find? Was he dying?

  “This way.” Beau steadied Kai as he got out of the car, then half carried him up the stairs.

  3

  An Apple A Day

  Kai slouched on an examining table while he stared at the books lining the doctor’s office. He wouldn’t have expected to see The History of Zombies and Zombies In Cinema mixed in with the medical books.

  A young male nurse said, “Just a pinch,” as he drew Kai’s blood, then left the room.

  Beau kept him company while he waited for the doctor.

  A tall man entered, nodded to Beau, and reached out to shake Kai’s hand. “Hi, I’m Dr. Mayer.”

  Kai was glad when the handshake ended and he could drop his hand. The doctor appeared quite young to Kai, but what did he know?

  “I’ve confirmed it. You have the tags in your blood.”

  What tags in his blood?

  Dr. Mayer studied Kai. “How do you feel right now?” He moved his hands over Kai’s neck and down his arms.

  “Fine?” Exhaustion kept the panic out of his voice but not the confusion. Close to collapse described his physical state, but he didn’t want them to know that, hoping to play it off.

  Dr. Mayer bobbed his head again and flashed a light in Kai’s eyes. “Open your mouth,” he instructed before he peered inside for a moment and then said, “It’s almost your birthday, isn’t it?”

  Kai had nearly forgotten with all the excitement. He glanced up at the big clock on the wall to do the time difference in his head. “Yeah. If I was in Germany I would be nineteen in about two hours.”

  “Good timing.” Dr. Mayer went to a mini refrigerator in the corner and pulled out a vial. “Here you need this.”

  “What’s this?” Kai stared at the glass tube.

  “Um, it’s a bit of fructose sugar, water, vitamin C, citric acid, some enzymes, protein, phosphate, bicarbonate buffers, and a touch of zinc. After you drink this you’ll be feeling much better.” Dr. Mayer patted him on the back. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks.” Kai took the tiny glass bottle from the doctor and studied the liquid. The ingredients didn’t sound like poison.

  He pulled out the red stopper and sniffed. Mother of God, the liquid smelled intoxicating. Without any more hesitation he tipped the contents into his mouth. The creamy substance exploded across his taste buds. This fluid was by far the best thing he’d ever had in his mouth. He couldn’t stop his moan as he swallowed.

  Beau chuckled.

  Dr. Mayer turned away to shuffle papers in his file, but Kai saw the man’s grin.

  “That’s the best medicine I’ve ever tasted.” Kai wished his tongue fit inside the vial, because he would have licked the inside clean.

  Laughing harder, Beau wiped tears from his eyes. “Oh, honey. You’re priceless.”

  “What?” Getting no help from Beau, Kai stared at Dr. Mayer with an open mouth. “I don’t understand.”

  “How do you feel?” Dr. Mayer asked.

  Pure energy shot through him. “Great—feels like my jet lag is gone.”

  “Jet lag?” Dr. Mayer stared at Kai and then glared at Beau. “Did you tell him anything?”

  Beau flushed and shrugged. “You do a much better job than we ever do.”

  Dr. Mayer shook his head and turned to Kai. “You’ll keep getting better for the next twelve hours, and then the effects will start to wear off. Twenty-four hours from now, you’ll experience a dramatic drop in your mental capacity and the exhaustion will return. You’ll be dazed and confused until you have more.”

  “More? Why do I need that medication? Am I dying?” That would just be his freaking luck! To be free from his constricting life only to die days later. Great. Just great.

  Dr. Mayer pushed his glasses up. “You’re not dying. Quite the opposite.”

  What did that mean? Kai waited for the doctor to continue.

  “You’re transitioning. You’re becoming more than what you were.”

  That didn’t explain a whole hell of a lot. “Please, Doc, spell it out.”

  Dr. Mayer took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He inhaled deeply and then gazed at Kai. “You’re transitioning…. You’re becoming a zombie. But not like in the movies, though.”

  Kai didn’t believe what he was hearing. His English translation must be wrong. He glanced over at Beau and asked, “Ein monster?”

  Beau said, “Ein monster. Yes. A zombie.”

  “What? Is this a joke?” Impossible. Maybe it was one of those silly American television shows Ulrich made him watch, where they played tricks on people.

  “No,” Dr. Mayer answered, regaining his attention. “The upside is your body can live forever.”

  “I can live forever but what…? The downside is I eat brains?” His voice rose, and he laughed hysterically. All the zombies he�
��d ever seen depicted in movies and TV were rotting corpses searching for brains to eat until the townspeople put them out of their misery—not a pleasant future.

  “Zombies do not eat brains.” Dr. Mayer sighed as if he said that a thousand times a day.

  Beau groaned. “No one seems to focus on the living forever part.”

  Dr. Mayer pointed his glasses at Beau. “I told you in 1932 that the White Zombie movie would affect us for generations.” He growled. “And each generation seems to come out with more distortions to the zombie lore. Why can’t they stick to vampires and werewolves?”

  Trapped in a Salvador Dalí painting, Kai didn’t see a path out of this surreal insanity.

  Dr. Mayer stared at Kai with a soft frown. “It might help if you think of it as a protein deficiency.”

  Being a zombie was a protein deficiency? Kai’s world shifted, and now he’d stepped into a half-formed nightmare. Calm, he needed to stay even. “Just tell me the truth.”

  Dr. Mayer put his glasses back on and clasped his hands in front of him as he cleared his throat. “Basically, we have certain families and areas we watch. I won’t go into detail right now but Beau, Lafayette, and some of the others gather zombies right before they start their transition. Our goal is to ease the way for as many as possible.”

  Kai leaned away from the doctor. “Are you a zombie too?”

  “Yes. See, I didn’t eat your brains. I wasn’t even tempted.” Dr. Mayer smiled at his joke, though it wasn’t funny to Kai. “Lafayette and Beau didn’t either.”

  “So, you’re a zombie too.” Kai took a deep breath, trying to calm his spinning thoughts. “You know this sounds crazy.”

  Both Beau and Dr. Mayer nodded.

  “Why did you really bring me here?” Kai asked Beau. Perhaps this was how they started, so whatever they actually did wouldn’t seem totally off-the-wall.

  Beau gawked at Dr. Mayer with wide eyes for a moment. “By bringing you here, we can make sure you get what you need.”

  “That medicine?” Kai surmised. Now that his head was clear, he wanted to know what in the hell was going on.

  Beau didn’t answer, so Kai directed his attention back to the doctor.

  Dr. Mayer glared at Beau and then answered Kai. “Zombies need a protein essence that is found in what I gave you.”

  “O… kay. What was it?” Cue the creepy horror-movie theme song. Whatever the doctor said next, Kai wasn’t going to like.

  “Semen.”

  “What?” Kai must not have heard right.

  “Semen,” Dr. Mayer repeated, giving the word three syllables.

  No! What? Kai stared at Beau and clarified, “Sperma? Samen?” Focusing, he found the English word. “As in sperm? Spunk? Jism… as in….”

  He ran out of English vernacular to continue his list. Oh God! He hadn’t just—Kai ran to the sink, turned on the taps, and rinsed his mouth. Semen?

  And he’d liked it?

  Dr. Mayer nodded. “Yes, ejaculate. You’ll need more every twenty-four hours, or you’ll become disoriented like you were, but worse. If you don’t get what you need, eventually your body will cease to function.”

  Trying to understand this insanity Kai asked, “But didn’t you say zombies live forever?”

  “Yes we do, however we must receive this essence to continue to exist.”

  Kai shook his head in disbelief. “I have to whack off and eat my own sperm?” Wait, who did the sperm he drank belong to? Oh, no! What if he’d swallowed the doctor’s splooge? Gross!

  “No!” Beau exclaimed. “Unless, of course, you want to. We don’t judge.”

  Kai didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was almost funny. Why did Beau feel the need to reassure him that eating his own come was okay? Had Kai landed in a brothel?

  Did the doctor see how Beau misread the entire situation?

  Dr. Mayer cracked a smile and answered Kai’s question. “What your own body produces won’t give you the protein you need. The essence has to be from another person who still has the ability to orgasm.”

  “That’s why we started Club Zombie. You can get what you need and hopefully find your mate,” Beau continued.

  “My mate?” Kai asked Dr. Mayer, because Beau didn’t seem to understand how upsetting and confusing these revelations were to him.

  Dr. Mayer cleared his throat. “We each have a mate, and when you bond with them, you’ll only need each other.”

  Kai stared at Beau. “So, Lafayette is your mate?”

  Beau smiled dreamily and sighed. “Lafayette is everything to me. He’s the very air I breathe.”

  Dr. Mayer rolled his eyes at the lovesick man. “You can take that as a yes. But those of us who haven’t found our mates survive on the essence of others.”

  “Essence is come. You drink come.” If Kai said it enough, maybe someone would say that wasn’t the case. He jumped back up on the exam table.

  “Well… yes, for lack of a better way of putting it,” Dr. Mayer said.

  Beau grinned. “You’ll love Club Zombie. There’re all kinds of different and exciting ways to fulfill your need for essence so you won’t have to deal with vials again.”

  “What do you mean?” Kai asked.

  “Straight from the source,” Beau answered, confirming Kai’s fear.

  “Um, okay, but I’m not gay.” Kai frowned. Or at least he didn’t think of himself that way.

  “Of course you are,” Beau stated as if he knew better than Kai.

  “I’ve never been with a guy.” He’d never been with a girl either. Whenever his mind went in that direction, he simply changed gears and thought about something else. He hadn’t taken the time to ponder his orientation since his sex life was nonexistent. Who he might be attracted to was never a consideration. He just assumed he was straight. Besides, his uncle had made clear that homosexuality wouldn’t be tolerated in his home.

  Dr. Mayer folded his arms and stared off into the space between the far wall, which was filled with books, and the ceiling.

  Beau gasped. “Doc, is that possible?”

  The doctor turned toward Beau for a moment and shrugged. “Everything is possible, regardless of the implausibility of it.” He inspected Kai with knowing eyes. “We might never have experienced this strain. I’ll do more research.”

  If he wasn’t interested in men, why did getting essence in a more direct fashion make desire ping through Kai? When he tried to push the feeling aside, the possibilities lingered. “What else should I know?”

  Beau folded his arms tightly around himself and enunciated his words as if he were weighing each one. “Well, once the transition begins, you’ll require… medicine to function as you normally would. Transition begins on the nineteenth birthday.”

  “Why didn’t you get me sooner?” Kai wondered aloud.

  Beau exhaled hard. “We’ve been watching you.”

  “Stalker much?” Uli would be pleased with Kai’s use of slang.

  Dr. Mayer interjected, “Usually the subject is more willing to come here once the transition is close at hand. You’re more pliable when you need essence.”

  Kai swung his legs back and forth. That much was true. He’d hopped on a plane out of his country, with strangers… kind of insane.

  “We find this is the easiest way.” Beau sounded sincere.

  “And after a zombie finds his mate?” Kai asked, hoping there was a way out.

  Dr. Mayer shut that door to hope. “You’ll still need medicine, but only from your mate.”

  Did the doctor think calling come “medicine” would help him deal with the idea better? Why did the stuff in the vial taste so incredible? He wanted everything on the table, then maybe he might deal with the crazy all at once, he asked, “Anything else?”

  Beau gestured to the doctor.

  Dr. Mayer glowered at Beau. “Without a mate, once the transition is complete, zombies lose the ability to reach climax.”

  “What? When?” Kai’s voice rose an octave.
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  Beau held his hands out in front of him. “At age twenty-three, our aging stops, along with other things. Don’t worry, your functions return when you find your mate.”

  “What happens if I’m really not gay and my mate doesn’t have sperm?” Kai wondered.

  Granted, the concept of getting married to a woman didn’t bother him… in the abstract. That’s what was expected of him. However, the addition of a time limit and the many husbandly duties made him rather uncomfortable. He’d deal with that at a later date. Right now, he had enough cans of worms opened at this point in time, and they were squirming all over the floor.

  Dr. Mayer raised his hands in a calming motion to Kai, and it stopped Beau from saying something else. “That’s why I’ll do further research and figure out a plan of action.”

  Great! Kai would lose one of the few things that gave him pleasure. But he shouldn’t worry ’cause Dr. Mayer would develop a plan for when he lost the ability to get off? Was there an escape hatch in this crazy?

  Kai craved the exhaustion; at least then he’d sleep for a week, blocking out all of this weirdness.

  Never one to be a freeloader, Kai asked, “So what’s my job?”

  Dr. Mayer cleared his throat and folded his arms. “Beau?”

  Beau answered with a grin. “Finding your mate is your job.”

  “Wonderful,” Kai said, shaking his head. “Then?”

  “Well, then as a mated couple, you help retrieve other newbies before they can get into a bad situation. Or you can have a career. It depends on you.” Beau turned toward the doctor. “You know he and Jasper would have a lot in common.”

  Dr. Mayer’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline, and he searched Kai’s face. “That might be. Their families are both from Germany.”

  Kai didn’t ask who Jasper was, because he had a feeling he was going to find out… whether he wanted to or not.

  4

  Counselor Seeking Counsel

  Jasper meandered into the almost empty club. The cleaning crew had just finished. No jamming beats threatened to rupture his eardrums. Absent were the bodies undulating under the colored lights and whirls of dry ice smoke. No pheromones clung to the desperate dancers who seemed hell-bent on getting off with strangers.