by Del Howison
The author who had received Barry’s first pile of books, a midlist werewolf writer named Kerry Brattner, started to sign faster. “Del, I bought a copy of Stephen King’s book at the last signing he did here—”
“We’ve never hosted a King signing here, Barry.”
Sue’s second shout was far shriller. “Out!”
Del turned to wave Scott over. Barry took one look at the approaching bulk and pulled his books right out from under Brattner’s pen, repacking frantically. “Okay, okay. I’m gone.”
He left without further incident. Scott eyed the next man in line, and saw he also had a small dolly packed with crates. “Should I let him in?”
Del eyed the guy. “Oh, yeah, he’s a fan, not a dealer. He’ll actually buy something.”
Scott stepped back and waved the guy in.
It was forty minutes later when the shit really started to hit the fan. The last customer was about to leave, and Scott suddenly realized there was no one else in line.
“Hey, Del, I guess we’ve reached the end.”
Del, who was now schmoozing the famed genre film-maker Guillermo del Loco, excused himself and walked over to Scott. “There were five hundred people in line twenty minutes ago …”
“I know, but—well, look—”
Scott motioned down the short hallway that formed the store’s entrance. There was no one there. Del frowned and stepped out to the front door. He opened it and poked his head out, looking in both directions.
The street was empty, as far as he could see in any direction. The stoplights were blinking. There was no sound of traffic, or voices, or aircraft. There was an overturned car in the nearest intersection. A small fire burned in a parking lot a block away. A newspaper blew up against the building near Del; the headline read THE DEAD WALK.
“Huh!” Del muttered to himself.
He reentered the store, pausing near Scott.
“Are we done?” Scott asked.
“Naw.” Del considered, then: “You know how these things come in waves. The second wave’ll probably start any minute.”
Del walked behind the front counter and leaned down close to Sue. “Was the film company doing any kind of promotion today?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
Just then a scream erupted from the rear of the store. “Hey, we’re out of beer!”
Del and Sue exchanged a look, which ended as Sue exhaled and rolled her eyes. They both knew the voice belonged to Lee Edwards, the reigning king of Extreme Fiction—so called because most of it was Extremely Bad. Del walked out from behind the counter and started pushing his way past bored authors and doodling artists, heading for the 55-gallon trash barrel he’d filled with brewskis less than half an hour ago. He reached it and saw that, sure enough, it now contained nothing but a few inches of water and some tired-looking half-cubes of ice.
“What happened? I just filled this thing!”
Edwards belched loudly, and tilted his chair back to two legs. “So? Fill it again.”
Del fixed a steely gaze on Edwards. “There is no more. I can’t believe you drank it all!”
Edwards slapped his other chair legs down. “I can’t believe you didn’t fuckin’ buy more beer!”
Del was about to respond when Sue shrieked from the front of the store, “WE’RE NOT BUYING MORE BEER!!!”
Suddenly Edwards jumped to his feet. “Fuck it. I’ll buy it myself.”
He started to weave his way to the front of the store, causing a number of sidelong glances and whispers. Edwards even managed to tread on the toes of Clyde Woofer. “Sorry, dude,” he muttered, then continued along.
“Quite alright,” Woofer responded amiably. Then, when the short, greasy-looking, and vaguely malodorous Edwards had left the store, Woofer added, “Ugly little bloater. Glad he’s gone.”
Del, who’d overheard, replied, “He’ll be back, Clyde.”
“Yes,” Clyde responded with a staggeringly handsome grin, “his kind always does.”
The half-dozen female authors grouped around Clyde all laughed appropriately, even though they all knew he was very gay. Then, a vampire author on Clyde’s left thought moonily, If I was my Countess Sondra, I’d bite Clyde; and the vampire author on Clyde’s right thought shrewdly, Maybe I should have my Count St. Francis bite him—I could probably sell another ten thousand copies with a hot gay sex scene right in Chapter One of the next book.
Just then Dane Ketchuson, a middle-aged master of the genre who these days was likelier to invoke dread in his dinner companions than his readers, stood up and proclaimed, “I’m going out for a smoking break. Anybody want to join me?”
Only the elderly and highly respected Clay John Georgeson stood up and accompanied Dane to the front door. He always did. No one knew why.
Five minutes later Del was schmoozing the soft-core porn actress Glory Osqui when the front door abruptly banged open loudly. Del whirled to see Dane staggering in clutching his left arm. There was blood on his tweed jacket.
“That sonofabitch just tried to bite me!”
Del and Scott ran to Dane. “Who did, Dane?” Del asked.
“That—that stupid kid, the one who’s an awful writer …”
“Lee Edwards?” Scott asked.
“That’s it! He’s outside, and he’s acting like he’s … I don’t know—”
“Drunk?” Del ventured.
Just then the door flew open again, and Lee Edwards staggered in, looking even worse than usual. His skin had gone several shades more puce, there was blood staining the lower half of his face, and his eyes were, impossibly, both fever-bright and glassy. He staggered forward, making a strange low noise in his throat.
“Did you get the beer?” asked somebody behind Del.
Del saw that there was a six-pack dangling from one of Lee’s fingers, but two cans were already missing.
And then Lee was lunging at Dane. The six-pack dropped from his fingers as his arms came up and reached for Dane. The clawing hands clutched at Dane’s jacket and the gaping mouth began to move toward the blood on Dane’s jacket.
“See? He’s doing it again!” screamed Dane.
Scott stepped in and put a restraining hand on Lee’s scrawny chest. “C’mon, bro, what are you—?!”
Suddenly Lee turned and snapped at Scott.
Scott jerked back, his eyes wide. “I think he’s a zombie! Mom—!”
“Scott, don’t be ridiculous,” Sue answered. “You may not like his writing, but you can’t say that—”
“No, Mom, I’m serious!” Scott danced back to avoid Edwards as he advanced, those strange gray-red eyes now fixed on Scott’s neck. “I mean zombie as in walking-dead-cannibal guy!”
“That’s it, buddy.” Del stepped up. “You’re outta here.”
He caught Edwards by one arm and spun him around back toward the front doorway. Then he planted one boot firmly in Edwards’s chest and heaved. Edwards flew back so hard the front door was hurled open and his body landed on the sidewalk outside with a resounding thunk. As Edwards started to scrabble to his feet again, Del leapt forward and thrust his key into the door’s lock. Edwards crashed into the door just as Del locked it.
“Yeah, and your books suck, too!” Del called out at the undead thing that pressed its face up against the glass.
Just then Dane ran up. “What about Clay? He’s still out there!”
As if in answer, Clay appeared behind Lee Edwards, staggering, dull-eyed. “Aw, shit,” Del muttered softly—he’d always liked the old hippie. “Clay’s dead, too.”
“No, he’s not!” Dane said urgently, “He’s just stoned!”
Just then Clay really saw the undead thing pushing against the locked door, and his eyes suddenly popped open in alarm. Without further ado, he turned and hightailed it down the street.
“Good luck, Clay!” Dane called after him.
Just then the dogs, Morticia and Gomez, began to growl while staring pointedly at Dane. “What is it, girls?” Jason asked,
trying to console them.
“I’ll tell you what it is!” Scott answered. “He’s been bitten, and now he’s gonna turn into something just like Lee!”
“That’s ridiculous,” Dane replied, grimacing as he touched the oozing wound on his arm, “I could never write that badly.”
Jack Skatt, one of the famed original “splatterpunks” and coeditor of several renowned anthologies of zombie stories, stepped forward just then. “He’s right, Del. Dane’s gonna turn.”
“Oh, Christ, Skatt! First you wouldn’t put me in your books, now this,” moaned Dane.
Del ignored Dane and turned to Skatt. “So what do we do?”
“I’m sorry, man, but we gotta stick him”—he nodded at Dane—“outside, and then we gotta barricade the doors and that front window.”
As if to confirm Skatt’s advice, a huge THUD! abruptly sounded from the front window.
“Hey, watch it! We can’t afford to replace that glass!” Sue yelled at whatever was outside.
Just then another man pushed forward to join the conference. It was Joe Somlumkoontz, current president of the WHO (World Horror Organization). “I’m sorry, Del, but I can’t let you throw Dane to the zombies like that. He’s an ex-president and a member in good standing of WHO.”
An author whose name Del couldn’t for the life of him remember but whom he knew was WHO’s secretary stepped up and whispered something in Joe’s ear. “Okay,” Joe corrected, “so he’s not currently a member in good standing.”
There was another WHOMP! against the storefront. Del glanced outside, and—well, quite frankly, nearly shit himself.
The sidewalk in front of the store was crowded with dozens, maybe hundreds of those things. Some had obviously been in the waiting line earlier, and still clutched books in dead fingers. Some drooled. Some already looked like they’d been dead a long time.
“The fans came back!” exclaimed a midlist mystery writer.
Del was already moving. “Jason, get the toolbox in the back room and start breaking down some of the tables—maybe we can nail those up against the window.”
“Right!” Jason yelled, already on his way to the back.
Next Del turned to Dane, who was already starting to smell bad. “I’m really sorry, Dane, but you gotta go.”
Del moved to the front door, joined by Joe. “WHO’s got your back, Del!”
“I don’t know. Who does?” Del asked.
“I said WHO does!” Joe responded, irritated.
“WHO’s got my back?” Del asked, dimly aware he was repeating an old Abbott and Costello routine.
“Right!” Joe answered.
Del nodded at Joe and then to Scott, while Scott grabbed the protesting Dane. “C’mon, Del, I’ve made a lot of money for this store—!”
“I’m tellin’ ya, Dane, it’s nothing personal.” With that, Del twisted the key in the lock and wrenched the front door open.
Zombies poured through the doorway.
Joe began battering them with a copy of a huge Cemetery Dance lettered edition, while Scott used Dane’s body as a bulldozer, shoving him into the crowd of zombies. The zombies began to claw at Dane, and Del took the opportunity to begin pushing with the door. After a second, Skatt and Scott joined him, and together they finally managed to get the door closed and locked again.
Del had barely had time to breathe when Jason showed up lugging a heavy table top, while Lisa Morton, a smalltime screenwriter and Dark Delicacies’ own Webmistress, appeared behind him with hammer and nails. “Mom and Clyde are working on the front window. We’ll get the door.”
“Okay,” Del panted, stepping back. Outside the zombies moaned and grunted, a sound not unlike the way many of them had sounded before death.
Just then an elderly female voice interrupted (in an affected accent), “I demand to know what’s going on here!”
Del sighed and turned to face Jean T. Lebriner, a onetime editor and two-time author whose real claim to fame was her baseless arrogance. “What, Jean?”
“That young man took my table! I don’t have anything to sign on right now! This is outrageous!” Jean exclaimed, apparently outraged.
“Well, Jean, we had to use it to board up the storefront against invading zombies,” Del explained.
Jean tried to peek past Del at the storefront, where Jason was holding the table while Lisa hammered in the first nail. “That’s ridiculous.” Jean exclaimed.
“Wanna see?” Del gestured at the door. “Hey, Lisa, let her see.”
Lisa stopped hammering, smirking. “Sure.”
Lisa nodded at Jason, who obligingly tilted the heavy table far enough to one side that there was a sliver of doorway. Jean stepped forward, bending over to peer out. “I don’t really—”
Suddenly Del unlocked the door with one hand while planting his other hand firmly on Jean’s back. “Here, Jean, take a closer look.”
In an instant, she was gone, and Lisa had locked the door behind her. Del turned around to face those behind him. “Anybody got a problem with that?”
There was a silent beat, broken by a resounding round of applause.
After a moment to let the clapping die down, Joe said, “Just don’t get the idea that it’s okay to keep feeding them WHO presidents.”
“No problem,” Del noted, dusting off his hands.
“Hey, they spit her out,” Lisa cried out from the front door, before Jason moved the table back into place.
Once the boards were in place, Del turned to face the 92 signers who were left. “Anybody got any ideas?”
“Do we know how widespread this is?” somebody called.
Sue was in the front office, typing at the computer. She stood up, shaking her head. “Power’s still on, but the Internet’s down. Lisa, can you fix this?”
Lisa stepped behind the computer and went quickly over a few things. “Sorry, Sue—I can’t solve a problem with rampaging zombies wiping out the Internet.”
“How much food do we have?” another voice asked.
Del and Sue exchanged a quick, worried look. “Not much,” Del finally confessed. “Some crackers. Some cookies. Little monster candies that ooze ichor when you bite into ’em.”
Skatt noted gloomily, “Nope. Dane ate all of those.”
Sue’s eyes widened in anger. “Hey, those weren’t free!”
Suddenly Harry Palmer, a husky novelist whose werewolf novel had been one of last year’s surprise horror hits, asked urgently, “What time is it?”
Del glanced at his watch. “About seven. Sun’s probably going down outside. Why, Harry?”
“Well,” Harry began, averting his eyes, plainly uncomfortable, “I’ve got a … no, we’ve all got a pretty big problem in just a few minutes. See, there’s something you don’t know about me, and it’s a full moon tonight, and I’ll—well, I’ll—”
“Harry,” Del ventured, “are you trying to tell us you really are a werewolf?”
Harry simply nodded.
“Oh, great!” Del noted sarcastically.
“No, wait a minute, that is great!” All eyes turned to Pete Akins, a strapping British screenwriter who was noted for his quick wit and innovative use of barbed wire. “In fact, it’s perfect!”
“How’s that, Pete?” Del asked.
“Harry’s a werewolf, right? A ferocious engine of inhuman destruction! The instant he changes, we shove him out into the zombies, and he’ll tear ’em apart!”
Del considered, and had to admire the idea. After all, he thought, who better to know about shredding and being shredded than a screenwriter?
“What do you think, Harry?”
Harry nodded, then grinned. His teeth were already starting to look a trifle pointed. “Sounds doable. In fact, it sounds like party time.”
“Okay,” Del said, then turned to address the others. “Do we have any other monsters here we should know about?”
After a long pause, one trembling hand went up. The crowd parted to reveal the visiting legend Whimsey
Scrampbell, a British author known for the sheer strangeness of his stories. “I’m … well, I’m a vampire,” he admitted in a trembling voice.
“But Whimsey,” Steve Smith exclaimed, “you’re always out in the day.”
“I’m a vampire like in Stoker’s book. The Irish had it right for once: We can go out in sunlight; we’re just not very strong.”
“But you’ve never even written a vampire story!” protested Taylor Kam, the vampire writer who had earlier been mooning over Clyde.
“Didn’t want to give anything away, y’know,” Whimsey muttered in his working-class accent.
Suddenly a young writer who had just sold his first story to the anthology Incredibly Gross Erotica shoved his way past the others and fell to his knees before the perplexed Whimsey. “Mr. Scrampbell, I love your work, but this … you gotta bite me. Please, please bite me! I’m having trouble with this vampire story I’m working on, and I just know you could help….”
Whimsey looked down, simultaneously tempted and horrified. “First I have to go out and fight some zombies. Maybe, if I make it back …”
The young man was weeping in gratitude now. “Thank you, oh thank you—it would mean so much to me.”
Del scanned the rest of the crowd. “Anybody else?”
Another hand shot up. It belonged to Demars Dunise, a pagan who wrote nonfiction books about witchy things. “It’s the fall equinox tonight. I could turn the dogs into all-powerful hellhounds.”
Sue immediately clutched protectively at the girls. “No, you don’t!”
Del shook his head. “Thanks, Demars, but I guess it’s a bad idea. Anybody else?”
One last hand was raised. This one was attached to Whitey Striper, whose best-selling series of UFO abduction books were often incorrectly shelved in Fiction. “I’ve got an anal probe that’s also a transceiver. I could call on the aliens to bring the mother ship down and open fire on the zombies.”
The ensuing silence was very impressive.
After a few seconds of stunned disbelief, Del waved at Whitey. “Thanks, Whitey, but I think we earthlings can handle this.”
Just then Del heard an animal growl behind him, and he spun about, only to see that Harry was starting to transform. His face was already covered in even more fur, and lengthening into a muzzle; his clothes were splitting at the seams. “Quick—we gotta get him to the door.”
