“I'm in love,” she smiled coyly. “That's all.”
“Ain't life grand?” Chad broadcast with an ear-to-ear grin. “Say, Mort, can you bring me the usual?”
“One heart attack on a plate, coming right up,” Mort sang out, dinging the bell for emphasis. “And what about you, little lady? You want a poached egg with four strips of bacon and a side of hash? Maybe fry you up a jalapeño to go with it?”
“Not today, Mort. I'll just have something light. How about a melon and some cottage cheese?”
“For you, my love, anything,” Mort replied, turning to walk back to the kitchen and put in her order. Chad looked at her like she had lost her mind.
“You sure about that, babe?” he asked. “You know, this might be the last chance we get to eat out.”
“I'm sure,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes. “I'm just glad to be here with you.”
She took him by the hand, and even though he'd never been much for public displays of affection, he leaned in and gave her a long, soft kiss.
“I wouldn't want to be anywhere else,” he vowed, his forehead touching hers still, her lips curling into a simple smile.
If I could just stay in this moment forever, I would, he thought.
A loud crash broke the spell they were in, causing Chad to jump to his feet and grab her hand. He turned towards the street where a bus had crashed into the back of several parked cars, shoving one of them through the window of the restaurant.
“I think that's our cue,” Chad announced.
“But you didn't get to eat your favorite meal yet,” Skylar protested.
“No chance for that now.”
Chad pulled her along with him towards the front door, ignoring the screaming customers who were running back and forth inside the restaurant arguing about whether or not it was a terrorist attack.
“Time's up!”
Chad yanked the door open. What he saw outside made him gasp in surprise. The large, black man, who had been driving the bus, was being eaten alive by several homeless people, all chewing at him at the same time. Thick spurts of blood shot out of his neck and coated the inside of the windshield. Chad could hear his muffled screams. In his thrashing, the driver accidentally opened the doors of the bus, unleashing a flood of blood-covered undead monsters out onto Wilshire. There was a heavyset businessman in an expensive suit holding up his cellphone filming the accident. A small crowd had gathered behind him. The zombies wasted no time tearing into them, attacking the man with the phone first. He let out a shrill scream of pain as a homeless man chomped down on the meat of his arm and shook his head like a terrier with a freshly caught rat in its mouth. Chad turned the opposite way and saw that several more of the infected were already blocking the path back to his apartment. They were attacking anything living: joggers and businessmen and mothers with strollers taking their newborns for a walk.
“Which way do we go?” Skylar implored, tugging on his hand. Another loud crash went off to their left as a blue Honda Civic smashed into a red Jetta, setting off the air bag.
“I don't know,” Chad yelled back in frustration. “Wait. There! On the other side of the bus. That street leads back to 6th. There are less people in that direction!”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I'm going to be,” Chad yelled. “Let's go!”
The next few minutes were a blur. Chad was running as fast as his legs would carry him through a nightmare landscape of mayhem and death. All around him people were fighting and dying and being torn to shreds, then coming back to life and joining in the terror. He could feel the blood thumping in his ears as his heart pumped at maximum speed, like a runaway semi with no brakes headed down a steep embankment smack into rush hour traffic. Sweat poured down his forehead in greasy rivulets, bursting out of his pits and streaking down his arms. The air was like wildfire in his lungs, burning the way he imagined eternal damnation would feel, the way they described it in all those stupid stories in Sunday School that were used to frighten children into behaving. His senses were on high alert from all the adrenaline he had in him. He could smell his own stench the way they could in that moment, and all the wretched and useless fear wafting off him along with it, calling the newly risen dead right to them as if they were a hot and ready meal from Ralph's. They hadn't made it more than two blocks in the chaos.
They're just too many of them, Chad agonized. They're everywhere. There is no safe place.
“We can't stay out here,” Skylar yelled, pulling his attention back to her. “It's just a matter of time until they tear us to pieces.”
“If we go inside one of these buildings they'll just follow. Plus we don't know that there aren't already like a hundred more of them waiting for us in there.”
“We don't have a choice anymore,” she screamed in frustration.
“We always have a choice!” Chad tried to sound encouraging instead of angry. She seemed to soften.
“Please, baby,” Skylar pleaded, looking vulnerable for the first time since he'd met her. “I don't think I can run much further. I feel like I'm going to freak out.”
“That one,” he said, pointing to the first building. There was a couch holding the front gate open, as if movers had been interrupted on the job and simply abandoned it. “The door is jammed open, but we should be good on the second floor. Come on.”
They darted into the building, trampling up and over the expensive couch, then up the single flight of stairs, a pair of skinny, fast moving, freshly turned zombies close on their heels. They barely made it inside before the thudding started.
* * *
“How long have you known?” Chad asked. His head was swimming at the revelation.
“Ever since my father kidnapped me against my will,” she disclosed. “The doctors did a full health scan on me the minute they got me under the mountain.”
“How far along are you?”
“Just six weeks. You should have seen the look on my dad's face when they told him he was going to be a grandfather. I thought Mister Macho was going to pass out right then and there.”
That's why he wanted me to find her, Chad thought. He never gave a rat's ass what happened to her before, but now that his grandchild is at risk he's willing to do whatever it takes, even offer me asylum from the end of the world, to get her back.
“Are you angry?” she asked.
“What? No. Of course not. I'm just processing it all,” Chad said thoughtfully. “It's not every day that you find out you're going to be a dad, you know?”
“You're going to be a great dad,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.
“We'll have to make it out of here first for that to happen,” Chad argued, “but I appreciate the compliment. Do you know what we're having?”
“It's a girl.”
He hugged her tight as tears welled up in his own eyes.
Why is this happening now? Why couldn't we have had a kid right after we met so we'd have time with our child?
“I've always wanted a baby girl,” Chad laughed, wiping tears from his eyes. “But I guess you already know that.”
“I've known I wanted to have kids with you since the day I first laid eyes on you,” she confided, laying her head on his massive chest. “I couldn't wait to share the news with you.”
Chad's mind wandered back in time to their volatile start as he rocked her gently back and forth.
* * *
The first time he laid eyes on her she was nothing short of a hot mess. Her shoulder length black hair was standing as erect as a corpse in the throes of rigor mortis, all in a teased mess that made the purple extensions woven into it look like streaks of lightning. She didn’t exactly look like Elsa Lanchester, the monster in the Bride of Frankenstein, but she definitely resembled a member of the close family—like maybe the crazy cousin who couldn’t keep a man.
He’d come into the club early that night to make sure the new sound system got set up for a big event later in the week. It was the only tim
e the technician could come out, so he found himself driving from the Miracle Mile over towards Vine and heading up into South Hollywood in traffic during the late afternoon hours when the other night crawlers were just beginning to stir back to life. He remembered how the sun threw an orange glow across the streets as it set in a fiery burst of color. He remembered thinking that her eyes looked nearly the same burst of color as she came storming into the club and announced her intentions for a fight at the top of her lungs.
“Hello! Does anybody work here? Because we’re about to have a major fucking problem!”
Chad hadn’t seen her at first. He’d had his head down going over the paperwork from the technician. In fact his reaction would have been to ignore her altogether, had not his technician’s face gone slack in amazement and his mouth open into a surprised capital O at the sight of her. Chad smirked to recall how it amused him to have to know what the man had seen that caused him to react that way.
“Can I help you?” Chad asked, turning to her at last and taking in the sight of her outrageous getup. She was dressed in a cutoff shirt that left her hot pink bra exposed, and a skirt that didn’t quite get all the way to wherever it thought it was headed, falling short by a few obvious inches of frilly lace that betrayed a peekaboo of white cotton underwear.
“Are you the one in charge around this fucking shit shack?”
Chad fought back the urge to laugh.
This has got to be Roach’s fault, he thought.
Roach ran the bar during the day shift. Come hell or high water, he was there from ten to five. He complained endlessly about it to anyone who would listen, how the reason he was still single and couldn’t get laid was that he worked the day shift and no decent “tail” came in during those hours. His repulsive hygiene, and sloppy manner of dress, never seemed to factor in to his relationship status. Neither did the fact that he hadn’t run a comb through his greasy unwashed locks in years. In Roach’s mind the reason guys like Chad were able to meet and date strippers and models was because they were part of the clientele come sundown.
“It's a well-known fact that babes don't come out as much during the day,” Roach bitched.
Every time Chad relieved him, Roach would start up again, bitching and moaning. It got so bad that Chad had eventually set him straight, saying that Roach had no one to blame but himself for not taking advantage of his position in life to make opportunities like anyone else. Chad assumed that Roach would clean up his act, but that just went to show how naïve he was about human nature. Instead Roach went the sleazy route, putting an ad online for paid go-go dancers for the club and listing himself as the one in charge of doing the hiring.
“I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner,” Roach laughed when Chad asked him about it. “It's even better than a casting couch. In no time at all I'll be getting more ass than a public toilet seat, my friend!”
Within a week there was an endless line of desperate girls showing up asking about the position. Roach auditioned them all, making outrageous promises in order to loosen them up to his sleazy advances. Then he’d blow them off when the next gullible new starlet showed up and began fawning or fighting over him. If the girls complained, he blamed it all on Chad, telling them he’d refused to hire them despite Roach going to bat for the girl. Chad had been told off in graphic detail six times because of it, including being cursed at in Cantonese, before letting Roach know that if he didn’t shut down his little “pet project” Chad was going to break his fucking neck. The fact that Roach had bolted the minute Skylar came roaring into the club, claiming he needed to go on a supply run to restock the bar, only further convinced him of why she was there. Chad dismissed her with a wave of his hand, assuming she was one of the countless girls that showed up every week.
“We’re not hiring, doll face,” Chad said testily, rubbing his eyes and trying to get accustomed to the darkness. “Try the Popeye's Chicken down the street. They always need cashiers.”
“Don’t you turn your back on me,” Skylar shouted menacingly. “We’re not even close to being finished.”
“Okay, little girl,” he said, growing more angry by the second. “Is there something you think I can do for you?”
“Yeah!” she said, her body nearly trembling in anger. “You can go outside and tell your parking staff to give me back my weed.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I'm not leaving until I get my shit back,” she informed him. “I came here for a business meeting and valeted my car. When I went to leave, the pound of Alaskan Thunderfuck I'd just picked up from my dealer was no longer in the center console. The valet asshole is trying to tell me he doesn't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Someone needs to set him straight!”
“Ramon,” Chad moaned. “Hold up.”
He'd gone out to the parking lot and cornered the skinny Mexican valet. Ramon looked nervous and guilty before Chad even had a chance to open his mouth.
“She's loco,” he’d protested, but Chad shut him up with a look.
“Give it to me now,” Chad said without hesitation. Ramon raised his hands as if he meant to argue, then relented, hanging his head as he went to the trunk of his car. He popped it open and dug underneath a blanket, pulling out a small designer purse.
“Lo siento,” he crooned as he handed it over to Chad, still not making eye contact.
“Last warning,” Chad said in reply. “Next time I'm turning you over to the cops. Got it?”
He marched back in to find Skylar was now sitting at the bar demanding Roach serve her. Chad shooed him away with a wave of his hand.
“I got this one,” he said.
“Of course you do,” Roach shot back angrily, throwing his hands up in disgust as he sulked back to the stock room. “You always get the hot ones.”
“Does this belong to you?” Chad asked, holding up the purse. Skylar grabbed for it, but he held it just out of her reach.
“That's mine!”
“You know you ought to be more careful about leaving your illegal narcotics lying around,” Chad scolded.
“It's just weed,” Skylar protested. “Besides I've got a license for it. I wasn't expecting your man out there to case my car for valuables, like an ex-con working at the car wash. ”
Chad laughed, and Skylar made another attempt to snatch her purse back.
“Give it to me!” she hissed.
“On one condition,” Chad agreed. “Go out with me.”
Skylar cocked an eyebrow at him and giggled.
“You don't want to go out with me,” she warned. “I'm a whole new level of trouble you're not ready for. Trust me.”
“I'll be the judge of that. Come on. One date. That's a small price to pay to get back all this sweet, sticky weed.”
“You are pretty cute,” she said, flirting with him.
“So is that a yes?”
“Yes,” she agreed, taking the purse back from him at last. “But don't get attached to me because it's not gonna last. It never does. Once you hear my story you'll be running for the door as fast as your feet can carry you.”
“I might surprise you,” he teased with a smile.
And he had. They had gone out to eat at Jan and Dean's on their first date, and then went for a long walk, stopping at the La Brea Tar Pits while Skylar told him all about her crazy life as an Army brat.
“I've never lived anywhere more than six months,” she said. “But this time is going to be different.”
“Why's that?” he wanted to know.
“Because Los Angeles is different than any place I've ever lived. I've never felt like I belonged somewhere so much.”
“Yeah,” he responded. “It's full of freaks and weirdoes and flakes.”
“It's full of dreamers and artists and poets, too.”
“Some days it's just a little hard to pick them out among all the rapists and gangbangers and homeless guys though,” he laughed.
“So if you hate it so much, why
do you live here?” she asked, turning on him.
“I never said I hated it,” he shrugged. “It's my home. It's always going to be my home. I was born here, raised here, and I'm probably going to die here.”
Famous last words, he thought.
* * *
The walls of the apartment began to vibrate. Chad felt the humming inside his head begin again, the kind that signaled those things were nearby. He looked at the back of his hand, where the tracker had been implanted, and saw that it was now glowing blue and pulsing. Chad felt the same pressure inside his head he'd experienced while he'd been talking to Grandpa Joe, and once more a trickle of blood poured freely out of his right nostril.
“What is it, baby?” Skylar asked, looking concerned as she pulled back from him.
“I could be wrong,” he said, “but I think our ride is here.”
The walls began to shake violently. Chad gripped the sides of his head and cried out in unexpected pain. Skylar took several steps back, looking at the ceiling above her, which had become a liquid swirl of blue light.
They've found us, Chad thought, fighting through the pain. It was just a matter of time. They were always going to find us.
A shaft of brilliant light surrounded Skylar. Her mouth opened in surprise as she was slowly pulled off the ground.
“Take my hand, Chad,” she shouted. “I'm not leaving without you!”
Chad dropped to his knees as blood flowed out both sides of his nose and onto his trembling hands.
“I can't get up,” he shouted in desperation.
“You've got to fight it,” Skylar pleaded. “Think of me. Think of your unborn child!”
Using all the will power he possessed, Chad stood up and trudged forward. It was like fighting his way through a raging river current. He reached out to grab her hand, his fingers slipping through hers as she was pulled skyward in a whirling ball of glowing blue light.
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