Checking around the room, Ink said to Vasilov, “Where is Nemesis’ manager?” Ink wanted to buy that zombie from her, and silver-tongued Vasilov could make it happen.
“Adrasteia?” Vasilov asked. “She passed along through an employee that she would be late. Coming, yes, but late.”
Milla Gorvich laughed and said, “Crying in a ladies’ restroom, no doubt. So close, so close, she had the scepter in her fingers and lost it to Thor! Vasilov, let me speak to you for a minute over at the sofas? I have a fighter that I’m putting up for sale and let’s set up an appraisal in the next few weeks.” He took out his cell phone to make the arrangements, and she whipped out an old-fashioned appointment book as they strolled away together.
Ink went to the buffet. It was magnificent, as it always was, but even grander than at most post-parties to match the prestige of the Games. Garlic-roasted shrimp cocktails, ham and honey-mustard palmiers, everything was mouth-watering and he didn’t recognize a third of them. And there was the blonde at the end of the table! Ink straightened his parrot shirt, wishing that he could have traded it out for a suit, and approached. He hadn’t even gotten his mouth open before the woman said, “Hello. You must be Ink.” Her voice was melodic, low and entrancing. In her napkin was a mini hot dog wrapped up in a flaky crescent. Each of her nails was painted red with a jewel at the center. Not too long, her nails, and not too short. Just right.
He was melting into a puddle on the expensive carpet. She was the most exquisite woman he had ever laid eyes on. Feeling his IQ sever itself in half, he said, “Yes. I’m Ink.”
“And how did you come by that unusual name?” she asked in amusement.
“It’s what my mother used to call me as a boy, short for Lincoln, because I always had ink from my markers on my fingers,” Ink said, and that was the truth.
Charmed, she laughed and he asked, “What is your name?”
“Dusk,” she said. It was beautiful, but it didn’t fit her one bit. She was a walking sunrise with the name of the darkest stage of twilight.
But he wasn’t here to criticize, whether it was her given name or one she had chosen for herself. “That’s beautiful. I’ve never heard that for a woman’s name before.”
“You’ve heard it for a man’s?”
She was teasing him. Dear Lord, she had him speared like a fish on a hook. His IQ cut in half again. “I’ve never heard it at all.”
“Then I’m pleased to be your first.”
He was down to zero. Whatever she said next, he would just nod moronically and try not to drool. Ever the queen of bad timing, Nadia appeared at the buffet and cried, “Ink, they want to take more pictures!”
These ones were beside Thor, and then holding the oversized check made out for a million dollars. Nadia picked up Scrapper from his podium and carried him over, insisting that they all pose with him too since there had been two wins in the family. As she carried him back once the picture was taken, Ink shook hands with more managers and the king of vendors in Giles Mazo, who waved in disgust at a cell phone in someone’s hand and said without preamble, “I do not communicate by text and email, Mr. Delwich. I prefer face-to-face, or the phone at the very least. When will you be available to have an appointment with me to discuss merchandizing options? The longer we wait, the more money we lose. People at the crest of their excitement want to buy.”
“Come now, the boy is off to Hawaii!” someone yelled. Oh God! Ink was off to Hawaii in a limo tonight. He would have to have his truck and trailer moved back home with the zombies. The neighbor girl could keep feeding them once they were there.
“Let’s speak on the phone the day after tomorrow,” Ink said. “I’ll be settled in and we can have a long chat.”
“Excellent. Good day. And where is the manager for Nemesis, for I must arrange a time with her as well . . .” He walked away in search, but she still hadn’t arrived.
“What about my zombies and vehicle?” Ink asked Vasilov, who had finished with Gorvich and was now wandering around with a plate of food.
“Not to worry, my boy. I’ll speak to Madeline over there. She’s the head of Secure and owes me a favor. They’ll be taken home and guarded until you return.” Vasilov parted the crowd with his bulk and Ink was reassured.
He hugged his vet, who was beckoned over to a threesome of her peers. Then he went to the bar and ordered a drink. The television overhead was playing the best scenes of the Games and there was Thor swinging Dog of Tartarus! The bartender laughed and passed over the margarita. A slip of paper came with it, her phone number written there.
Ink only had eyes for the blonde, who was tending the old man as he pushed away a plate from the buffet and demanded something else. Her voice too loud over by Scrapper, Nadia was telling her idea of an all-children stable to people who listened with faces washed clean of expression.
Divorce. Pronto. He had to do this before he signed deals with Mazo. If he signed them too soon, she could lay claim to half. He should have printed out those divorce forms from the Internet years ago and gotten this process in motion! The petition, the summons, the property declaration, all of that had to be mailed to court to be filed and then he’d serve her . . . he wanted to smack himself for letting it go on this long. That had been a mistake and he was done making those.
One of the oak doors opened between Thor and Maenad. It was Adrasteia at last. People clapped and cheered for her. Ink did too, needing to be seen as gracious. Her smile was strained and she stayed by the open door like she had just come to make an appearance for formality’s sake and then planned to take her zombie lover and split.
Ink turned back to watch the blonde at the buffet table, where she scooped up a different array of treats and ferried them to Cantine. The other two women of his were seated on either side of him. They were injecting themselves into a conversation between wealthy business people and getting patronized or ignored. Gorvich had a handsome young man at her side, but he was only listening. He knew his place. Everyone waved Ink over to the last seat on the sofas, where he was welcomed into the chat.
He did a lot of listening, too. He was too heady to trust that his voice wouldn’t crack from joy, or that his words would come out in the proper order. Only once did he speak, after being asked if he would be investing in property. “Oh, yes,” Ink said. “I was considering a move nearer the Hill. There are so many good properties in that area for stables.” And the bigwigs agreed with him! Heads nodded all around and Stanson said that the old Raynal ranch had just gone on the market. The house needed some love in a new roof and paint job, there were only two bedrooms, but it was a fine property and had had its stables upgraded five years ago. Ten by ten stalls, a wash stall too, tons of storage space, nice tack and feed rooms, there were spigots and electrical sockets everywhere and even a bathroom for the owner. And a small rink for training! That would get snapped up fast, so Ink should look sharp about it if he was interested.
Raynal. Ink was interested, and filed the name away in his mind. Once he was in Hawaii, he would sit in his private lanai, look that up on his phone, and see what was being asked for it. Hell! He would do it in the limo tonight! The early bird got the zombie stables. He’d check out the pictures of the property and make an offer if they pleased him.
“Are we ever going to see the true face of Nemesis?” Vasilov cried to Adrasteia, who was still stationed near the door. Few took notice of it, too engaged in a variety of conversations and others enjoying the Games replays on the television.
“There is no need,” Adrasteia said with a shrug so casual that it was insulting. Ink didn’t believe that this woman knew who Vasilov even was. Tucking a stray bit of hair behind her ear, she added, “You know his face well, as does everyone else in this room.”
Vasilov came forward, fingers pinching the last shrimp on his plate, and said, “I do not, my lady!”
“Ah, you do,” she insisted, and walked over to the podium where Nemesis was standing stock-still. She was so tall that she rose
only a little off her chunk heels to part his lips. Pinching one of his teeth, she tugged at it.
“Oh my! Oh, my, my, my!” Vasilov gasped, swallowing hastily and putting the plate down on a side table. “Do not tell me that it is Lucky Mercury hidden behind that mask? But yes, this could be him!”
Lucky Mercury! Ink leaned over the back of the sofa to listen. That zombie hadn’t been seen in five or six years now. Lucky Mercury had been one of those golden fighters from his very first show, always, always making it to the brawl, and winning it a fair amount of the time. But his manager had been far less fortunate, spending his winnings wildly on a drug habit, and in time he had put Lucky Mercury up for sale at such a steep price that all interest was dissuaded. Vasilov had dropped the manager as a client when he would not listen to reason, and then he and his zombie fighter had just vanished from the circuit. Ink hadn’t thought about those two in years.
The woman worked open Nemesis’ mouth a little more and tugged the tooth as she said, “Our parents thumbed their noses at vaccines, all of them. They were quite religious, do you understand? God will provide the ultimate healthcare. God will provide only as many children as could be afforded. But neither was true. Religion made destitute fools of them, of all of us, and all eleven children fell to the virus. Zeke was the oldest at nineteen, a strong brute with a weak heart, and I was five at the time. The girls rose again, right as rain several weeks later, but the boys did not.”
Someone at the sofas was trying to get Ink’s attention, but he wanted to see whom Nemesis was. If this were truly Lucky Mercury, he would make an offer on him. A zombie wasn’t a boyfriend, sorry to say, and the woman might change her tune at what Ink would spend. At the time of his disappearance, Lucky Mercury had been all of twenty-two years old. That made him twenty-seven or twenty-eight now, so there were still good fighting years ahead of him in the 20-35 category.
The height was right, but the frame wasn’t quite right for Lucky Mercury, who Ink remembered dimly as being a little more thickset at the chest, and narrower at the legs. Vasilov was thinking the same. He gasped again and said, “No, this is not Lucky Mercury. I know this shape. It is Lugus, but . . .”
Ink’s eyes widened at what Vasilov wasn’t saying. Lugus was another zombie who had been a good fighter but vanished before his time, and he was too old by now to have been enrolled in the 20-35 age group. He was over forty. That meant the Greek woman had been sold false papers, or knew the truth and bought that place in the younger category anyway. Either way, that disqualified Nemesis, and Vasilov wasn’t the kind to shout it out so indiscreetly.
“Lugus died, didn’t he?” Bayder rumbled as he walked by to the bar. “I heard that from a friend of his manager. He had an infection from a fighting wound to the abdomen and never recovered.”
“That was Lares III,” an elderly vet called over. “No one knows what happened to Lugus. The manager just stopped bringing him to shows.”
The woman kept wriggling at that one particular tooth as she refused to answer Vasilov’s question. Then she went on with her story, and Ink wanted to shake her for not knowing whom she was being so rude toward. “No, the boys never were well again. All four of them had to be taken to the stalls, which my devastated parents built themselves out of scrap metal and boards. It was too dangerous to have them in the house. But God, God is good, and they told us that God would heal them. So I prayed to God, as did my sisters, so hard we prayed . . . but God never answered our pleas. And I grew up caring for them, these big brothers whose former lives I couldn’t even much remember. Feeding them, cleaning them, keeping them company . . . At school, my classmates taunted me as the zombies’ sister. My teacher asked why didn’t my parents just put them down? So many times I chased the curious out of our backyard with Zeke’s old BB gun. Poke the zombie boys with a stick! Moon them and taunt them and see what they do! Block the light with a sweatshirt and watch them get angry! Halloween ever brought the fools out in force, all wanting to give themselves a scare. I would wait for them in the bushes. My brothers were not exhibits for them to see, and they ran with my pellets stinging their backsides.”
“Yes, yes, but who is this?” Ink interrupted, a pointed message in his tone that she needed to act with more care in this room.
Treating him with the same dismissal she was giving Vasilov, she said, “My poor brothers. I could only watch old videos to know their voices, and look at pictures to see their smiles.” The tooth came free. Disgustingly, she tossed it onto the floor like they were in stables and brushed spit from her fingers. “Who knows what they understand? We thought after many years had gone by from their infection that their lives were terribly dull, so my sisters and I lent them to a moving company a few days a week. The three younger ones only in John and Luke and Gabriel; Zeke was still a strong brute but his heart was failing. Our family doctor said the exertion would kill him, and he was flagging more and more each year already. So we just had him lift things around the property for his exercise. That way we could keep an eye on him and stop as soon as we thought he had had enough. Our parents were dead by then, going to their graves in the same year and both angry, so angry at my two oldest sisters, who had started their own families by then and vaccinated their children against the virus. But they had boys, four beautiful boys between them, and they feared God’s disapproval far less than having their sons grow up as our brothers had. Our parents cut them out of the will, what little they had to divide among their many heirs, and my sisters laughed in the lawyer’s face when he read it out loud to us. Their sons were whole, and are whole to this day. What is a dusty heirloom to a healthy son? One trusts in God’s guidance for life, but one still wears a seatbelt.”
Vasilov and Ink exchanged a look and it was there in the old man’s face, the brief flash that he had had when talking up the zombie children for Nadia. Distaste. It was for the better that this woman wasn’t planning to attend any more shows as a participant. She was making enemies.
And she was still talking, oblivious to their response or just indifferent to it. “The little money the three boys earned in moving boxes and other heavy items around helped to pay for the stables where all of them lived. Better stables now, for we had fixed them up to be comfortable. And we wanted to think that they enjoyed the work on some level. Better than just sitting or standing in a stall, listening to music and us speaking to them of the life that they were missing.”
She worked her finger into the tear on the cheek and tugged at the prosthetics. Gently, Vasilov said, “If this is Lugus, Miss Sophoclei, we must have a quiet chat. Come with me into the hallway for some privacy.” Ink was filled with a malicious pleasure at the prize money this unbearable woman was about to lose.
Adrasteia persisted in her story. “We were heartbroken when Gabriel went missing a few years ago. Absolutely heartbroken. The driver of the moving company said he didn’t know what had happened. He just turned around for a minute and when he looked back, Gabriel was gone. Wandered off. We knew this was a lie. Gabriel didn’t wander away from the lights. None of them do. The police would do nothing, of course. He was just stolen property, or perhaps he had been crushed by something he was moving and his body disposed of under our noses. No body, no proof, no investigation to unearth anything, and we couldn’t sue over that. The cops retreated to what they consider real crimes. So we resigned ourselves to never knowing what had happened to our dear brother, and imagine our surprise when he turned up earlier this year.”
The prosthetics tore reluctantly. She pulled a pair of fingernail scissors from her pocket and snipped at them. “I know now why it was Gabriel taken, and not Luke or John. Gabriel was Zeke all over again, just as tall, a brute of a man, minus the heart ailment. A solid plug of muscle was our Gabriel. Those two were almost identical twins, just with slightly different noses. The other boys were so much shorter and smaller, taking after our mother’s side of the family.” She made another snip and tugged hard at the lower half of the prosthetics. More people
were watching now, and whispering in excitement to see the true face of Nemesis. Someone was hissing Lucky Mercury is back!
“But there he was on our television screen one day!” Adrasteia said in grim purpose. “At something called the Filo. We had never heard of it. One of my sisters was just flipping through the channels for something to watch when she saw him in a ten-second blurb of a report, but she knew him in an instant. Gabriel! Our brother lived! And so we endeavored to bring him home. We met up with a lawyer, who advised us against it. Finders keepers, as they say. He wouldn’t take the case. None of them would, of the six attorneys we tried. The police refused to make an arrest for his theft, saying by the time anyone was convicted, Gabriel would be halfway across the world in some Russian fighting ring and gone forever. They’re organized, a cop told me. They’ll retaliate if you make trouble. Let it go. He doesn’t know where he is anyway.”
She ripped off the bottom half of the prosthetics at last, and let them hang around Nemesis as a gruesome necklace of fake rot. His chin was bruised and swollen from a blow. “But I knew where he was. My sisters knew. My nephews knew. Our many cousins knew. Peter wanted to march right over to the stables holding Gabriel captive and wrest him free. Those two were best friends as boys. But we did not want to invite a retaliation against our family.”
Ink got up from the sofa and came closer to listen to this strange, pointless tale of family drama. Nadia’s laughter floated over from the other side of the clubroom. The people over there weren’t paying any attention, and some of those at the sofas had gotten bored and returned to their chats about property near the Hill and on it. One of Cantine’s women squealed, “Oh, I love those houses! I want to live in one someday!” Ink didn’t have to turn around to know it wasn’t the blonde.
Adrasteia began to work at the top half of the prosthetics, which were sticking on just as stubbornly as the bottom half had. “Gabriel! I wish I could remember more of him. I have to rely on my older sisters’ memories. He was kind. Peaceful. A fair student. Never the one to start an argument, but a great practical joker. Everyone liked Gabriel. John and Luke would push our sisters over and Gabriel would patch up their scrapes. A gentle giant, they tell me. When I cried as a baby, he would run to my cradle to see what was wrong. How cruel that the virus stole away a soul like that. He would have been a wonderful husband and father, a man for other men to look up to, and never did he get the chance. But healthy or sick, he was ours. Our Gabriel. So we plotted how to get him back. And it broke our hearts anew that Zeke’s heart was at last giving out at the same time.”
Zombie Tales Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 60
