by Unknown
“Since 1946, when the alien bomb carrying the wild card virus exploded over Manhattan, they’ve walked among us,” the voice-over began. “The lucky few Aces and the hideously maimed Jokers. But who cares about that? We’re here to determine the hottest of the hot and grossest of the gross—Wild Card style!”
Michelle grabbed the remote. “Okay, that’s it,” she said, snapping off the TV. “Look, honey, America is a stupid place sometimes. We get all caught up in unimportant junk like that show, and we forget the stuff that really means something. And I am really sucking at this mom thing right now. The truth is that the world is going to be unkind sometimes because you’re different. But that doesn’t have anything to do with you, honey. It’s just that the world is full of idiots.”
Adesina crawled into Michelle’s lap—such as it was when she was in bubbling mode—and put her front two feet on either side of Michelle’s face, pushing away Michelle’s long, silvery hair. “Oh Momma,” she said. “I already knew that. I just get scared sometimes.”
Michelle kissed Adesina on top of her head. “I know, sweetie. I do, too.”
It wasn’t so bad up on the float. Lots of sight lines, Michelle thought. That’s good and bad. Good because she could see anything coming, bad because it put Adesina at risk. But being Michelle’s daughter was going to put Adesina at risk no matter what.
The crowd was especially boisterous in this section of the parade route. Maybe it was because they’d had longer to drink. The parade had been going on for a couple of hours, and now it was heading into the French Quarter.
Michelle’s float was decorated in silver and green. A riser with a throne was at the rear, and a beautiful arbor of papier-mâché flowers arched over the throne. Adesina had commandeered the throne for herself while Michelle stayed out on the lower platform to toss beads, wave, and bubble. Michelle thought Adesina looked adorable in her pale lavender dress—even if it did have six cutouts for her legs and another pair for her wings. Michelle’s dress was the same color, but made of a spandex blend. As she bubbled off fat, the dress would shrink along with her.
A couple of drunken blondes yelled at her, “Bubbles! Hey, Bubbles! Throw me some beads!” They pulled up their tops, revealing perky breasts. Michelle was unimpressed, but she threw them beads anyway.
“Momma,” Adesina said. “Why do they keep doing that?”
“Got me,” Michelle replied. “I guess they think they’ll get more beads.”
“That’s dumb.”
Michelle tossed more beads, then started bubbling soft, squishy bubbles that she let drift into the crowd. “You said it. Sadly, I think it works. I just tossed them some myself.”
There was a commotion up ahead on the parade route. Michelle stopped bubbling and tried to see what was happening. The crowd was panicking—people were shoving, and others were caught in between, unable to move.
The frenzy moved toward Michelle’s float like a tidal wave. Some of the crowd spilled off the sidewalks into the street, knocking down the containment barricades, and then they began clambering onto the floats in front of hers. Cops tried to calm the crowd and started pulling people off the floats, but they were soon overwhelmed.
And that’s when she saw them: zombies coming up the street.
Joey, she thought. What the hell are you doing?
Then she saw a zombie grab a guy in an LSU T-shirt and snap his neck. Michelle was horrified. But she immediately slammed that feeling down. She couldn’t help him—she had a job to do.
As she scanned the crowd, she saw the zombies brutalizing anyone in their way. A couple of cops tried to stop one of the zombies, and they each got a broken arm for their trouble before Michelle blasted the thing. And then she realized that the zombies were heading for her float.
“Momma!” Adesina’s frightened voice came from behind Michelle. She spun around and saw a red-faced, pudgy man and a skinnier man in a striped polo shirt climbing onto the float.
“Hey!” Michelle shouted at them. “It isn’t safe here. They’re coming for me.”
“Behind you is the safest place to be right now,” the pudgy one said. “We’re not going.”
Michelle sighed. “You’re leaving me no choice here, guys.” The bubbles were already forming in her hands, and she let them fly. The bubbles—big as a medicine ball and just as heavy—bowled the men off the float. Michelle heard them cursing. “Hey,” she yelled. “Language! There’s a child here!” She picked up Adesina, tucking her under her left arm.
“Momma,” Adesina complained, “you’re embarrassing me.”
“Sorry, sweetie,” Michelle replied. “Now behave while I take Aunt Joey’s zombies out.”
Michelle let a tiny, bullet-size bubble fly at the closest zombie. Its head exploded, sending bits of brain, skull, and decaying flesh into the air. It was immensely satisfying. Unfortunately, this only made some of the people in the crowd even more panicked. And now Michelle could feel her dress getting looser. Dammit, she thought. I knew I needed more fat.
Michelle spotted another zombie and let a bubble go. There were more shrieks as its brains and pieces of its skull splattered everywhere. The float rocked as the crowd pressed against it, and she struggled to keep her balance.
“Momma, please, put me down.”
“Not on your life,” Michelle replied, yelling to be heard over the commotion. “Zombies and panicking nats are not a good combination. It would be too dangerous, so, yeah, that is not going to happen.”
Adesina let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re mean,” she said.
Michelle destroyed another zombie. She felt her dress get a little looser. The zombies were coming faster, and one-handed bubbling wasn’t getting the job done fast enough. “Oh darnit,” she said, putting Adesina down. “Go stay under the throne. And let me know if anyone—anything—tries to get up here.”
If there was anything Dan Turnbull liked better than blowing shit up in a first-person shooter, it was making a mess that someone else would have to clean up. His mother had left his father six months ago, and since she’d been gone, neither of them had cleaned up much of anything. Stacks of dirty laundry were piled like Indian burial mounds in different parts of the house. A variety of molds were growing on plates in the kitchen—and in the fridge, heads of lettuce were now the size of limes. Rancid, greasy water filled the sink, and Dan wasn’t sure if the sink had stopped draining or if the stopper at the bottom needed to be pulled. What he knew was that he wasn’t putting his hand down there to find out.
But lying up here on the roof of the St. Louis Hotel looking down on the mess he’d made just now, well, that made him seriously happy. Zombies were breaking up the Bacchus parade, and that Bubbles chick was trying to stop it.
He watched her pick up the freak she called her daughter while at the same time she methodically blasted the shit out of the zombies. And he had a grudging admiration for how cool she was, given the situation. She didn’t get hysterical or spaz out the way most women would. No, she just mowed those zombies right down without ever hitting a single civilian. And he wondered what it would be like when he grabbed her power.
It had been a rush when he’d grabbed Hoodoo Mama’s power. Of course, he’d only taken one other ace’s power before, and that had been an accident.
He’d been walking down the street and had bumped into a teenage girl. Reflexively, he grabbed her bare arm to steady himself. The expression on her face when Dan’s touch had taken her power was high-larious. He’d been so surprised that she had a power, he’d used it without thinking and teleported himself across the street, slamming into a wall as he materialized.
When Dan realized that he’d almost teleported into the wall, he started shaking. In a few moments, after the adrenaline rush of fear had passed, he looked around to find the girl. But she’d vanished. Of course she had, he thought. What else would she do?
Unlike the teleporting girl, Hoodoo Mama’s power about blew his skull off. But he was only going to get one ch
ance at using it before it reverted back to Hoodoo Mama, and he had orders to make a mess. What was happening out on the street was megaplus cool. He’d done his job well.
There were all kinds of local news video filming the parade, but this was the view he wanted. A nice long shot of the whole scene. He’d brought a video camera to get it, but he knew that there would be plenty of civilians making recordings, too. Those would be on YouTube before the end of the day. What mattered was having a lot of videos of all hell breaking loose. And the one that showed it all in perfect detail would be the icing on the cake.
It didn’t matter to Dan why his employers wanted a mess. For 5K and an hour’s work, it was a no-brainer. He didn’t even care how they knew about his power. His father had started demanding rent, and Dan had no job. And he had no intention of giving up his status as top shooter on his server. It had taken way too long for him to get there, and his team needed him. A job would just get in the way of that.
With his video camera tucked into the pocket of his baggy jeans, he climbed down the fire escape and slipped down the back alley. A couple of stragglers from the parade came toward him. As they got closer, he saw that they were girls. They were trying to run, but drunk as they were, it was more like fast staggering.
“Oh my God,” one of them said to him. She was wearing what looked like a pound of beads. Long dark hair framed her face, and he wondered if she was drunk enough to fuck him. “Did you see what happened back there?”
He shrugged. “Looked like a bunch of drunk assholes. Like every Mardi Gras.”
They gave him a baffled look. “No,” the other one said. She wasn’t as pretty as her companion. There’s always a dog and a pretty one, he thought. “I mean Bubbles. She was so incredible, like, she just demolished those zombies. Oh shit, I think I have some zombie on me.” She wiped at her shirt.
“Looked like she just made a mess of things to me,” Dan replied. Neither girl had looked at him with anything like interest, and it annoyed him. He’d been the one who’d made everything go crazy, not Bubbles. He’d made her look bad, too. It was his job to make her look bad. These chicks were drunk and stupid. He started past them, then impulsively grabbed the one with dark hair by the arm.
“Asshole!” she yelped, yanking away from him. But he hadn’t wanted to cop a feel—he was checking whether she had a power. But there was nothing. She was an empty battery. It made him sad—and he hated that feeling more than anything.
“Jerk!” The uglier one snarled at him and looked like she might actually do something.
But then he put his hand up, using the universal gesture for a gun. He sighted down his finger at the girls.
“Bang,” he said.
The zombies were nothing more than piles of dead flesh now. Zombie goo was splattered everywhere, but that couldn’t be helped. You kill zombies, it’s gonna make a mess, Michelle thought.
The parade had stopped, and some of the crowd who had climbed up onto the floats to get away from the zombies were making no effort to get down now. The rest of the crowd had poured into the street and surrounded the floats as well. It was a compete logjam. People were sitting on the ground crying. Some of them were wounded.
Adesina crawled out from under the throne, and Michelle picked her up. “You okay?” Michelle asked, kissing her on the top of her head. Adesina nodded. “Will you be okay sitting on the throne?”
“Yes,” Adesina replied. “But there are some men trying to get up here.” Michelle put Adesina on the throne, then spun around. A couple of different men were pulling themselves up.
“Guys, other people are going to be needing this space,” she said, growing a bubble her hand. She’d lost most of her fat during the parade and zombie fight, but there was still enough on her to deal with a couple of drunken douches.
“Hey, it’s really crowded down here,” complained one of them.
Michelle shrugged. “I don’t care,” she said. “Right now, this isn’t a democracy. I’m queen of this float, and I refuse.”
“Bitch.”
“That’s Queen Bitch, and there’s a child here. Watch your language. Besides, the people who are injured need to be up here more than you do.” The men grumbled, but dropped down and began pushing their way back through the crowd.
The cops were trying to restore order. Michelle called out to them, and they began bringing the wounded to her float. One of them stayed and started triage. Then Michelle heard sirens and a surge of relief went through her. Blowing things up and taking damage was the sort of thing she excelled at. But the aftermath was always more complicated and messy than she liked.
Now that things were starting to calm down, one of the krewe running the parade got on the loudspeaker for the float in front of hers and encouraged people to get out of the street and back up on the sidewalks. A couple of teenage boys helped the police reset the barricades.
Michelle pulled her phone out of her dress pocket as she moved away from the wounded. Michelle hated purses, and because her clothes were specially made, she always had pockets added. Though why women’s clothes never had pockets was a mystery to her. She scrolled through her favorites and then hit dial when she found Joey’s number.
“What the hell is wrong with you,” Michelle hissed as Joey answered. “Do you have any idea what a fu … freaking mess you made here today?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “What are you talking about?”
A fine red curtain of rage descended on Michelle. “I’m talking about zombies attacking a parade,” she whispered. “Killing people in the crowd—and they were coming for me and Adesina.”
“You fucking think I’d do something like that, Bubbles?” Joey’s voice was tremulous. It sounded worse than when they’d been in the People’s Paradise of Africa and Joey had been running a hundred-and-four-degree fever. The hairs on Michelle’s arms rose.
“Are you saying there’s another wild carder who can raise the dead? Am I going to have to deal with two of you?” The red veil lifted, just long enough that another horrible thought slipped in. What if this had been just the first wave? Honestly, she thought. Enough with the goddamn zombies already.
The laugh that came over the line was hollow and mirthless. “For a smart bitch, you’re awful fucking stupid. Obviously, we need to fucking talk. When can you get to my house?”
“I’m stuck here,” Michelle replied. She looked around at the wounded on the float and the cops trying to get the crowd cleared out. There was zombie ick all over the sidewalks, and Michelle really wanted to smack Joey hard. “I’m kinda busy.”
“Just get here quick as you can.”
The connection went dead. Michelle stared at the blank screen.
“Are we going to Aunt Joey’s now?” Adesina asked, tugging on Michelle’s dress.
“Soon,” Michelle replied, surveying the ruins of the parade. “Soon.”
If there was one thing Joey hated, it was nosey cocksuckers sniffing about her business. Not that Bubbles was usually a nosey cocksucker. Given what she said had happened at the parade, Joey could even understand her being fucking pissed. But now she had to explain what was going on with her children.
The problem was that she had no idea.
One minute she’d been making her way back from the bakery up the street—early, because it was Mardi Gras, and there would be tons of tourist dickweeds otherwise—and the next thing she knew, it was as if a light had just shut off inside her head. Usually, she knew where every dead body lay for miles around, and she often had zombie bugs and birds moving about keeping an eye on things. And today had been no different, until the lights went out.
She’d been “blind” for a few hours, and then, just as abruptly, her power was back. Truth be told, she’d been out of her mind while her power was gone. And she’d been scared. Really scared. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this frightened. Yes, you can remember that time, whispered a voice in the back of her mind. But Joey shut that
thought down hard and fast—or tried to. What did your mother say about lying? the voice persisted. Well, she’d lied, too, Joey reminded herself. Her mother had lied, and left Joey alone, and what had happened after that …
Then Bubbles had shown up on her caller ID, and Joey had been relieved. Bubbles was the most powerful person she knew. Bubbles would keep her safe.
But when Joey picked up the phone, Bubbles started giving her shit. But Joey didn’t know what had happened. And if she was being honest with herself, she was scared. What if she was losing her power?
Without her children, she wasn’t safe. Without them, she was just Joey Hebert, not Hoodoo Mama. Without Hoodoo Mama, no one, not even Bubbles, could protect her.
And when she thought about what not being Hoodoo Mama anymore would mean, she began to shake.
There wasn’t much that Adesina didn’t like. She liked American ice cream, American TV, and American beds. Ever since Momma had brought her to America, Adesina had been making a list of all the things she liked.
She liked Hello Kitty, the Cartoon Network, and taking classes from a tutor (even though sometimes she missed being in school with other kids). She even liked the way the cities looked. They were so big and shiny, and everyone talked so fast and moved around like they were all in a big rush to get somewhere important. Even if it was just to go to the grocery store.
And she liked Momma’s friends. Aunt Joey (even though when they’d lived together in the PPA, Momma had kept yelling at Aunt Joey about her language), Aunt Juliette, Drake (even though he was a god now and they never saw him anymore), and Niobe. Sometimes they were invited to American Hero events, and she got to meet even more wild carders. But she liked Joker Town the best of all because no one there ever turned around and stared at her.
