by Mark Henry
It’s not that heat makes zombies sweat—we don’t do that, we can’t. It makes us stink, rot faster than we can afford to keep up with. I simply cannot abide.
So, I combat that shit at all costs.
Inside my atomizer: rubbing alcohol spiked with Issey Miyake eau du parfum (and not cologne because concentration of fragrance is key). The concoction is a tad more floral and sweet than I’d normally wear, but “graveyard fresh” is not easy to mask.
I gave myself a thorough misting and pounced on Wendy. "We couldn't possibly meet your contact inside where it's air conditioned?"
I glanced around the abandoned sidewalk tables at Gloat Bar and then at the crowded human revelers inside, clinking glasses, rubbing their arms from the artificial and life preserving chill. Some were even putting on sweaters.
Bitches.
Wendy tossed her golden mane over her shoulder and glared. "Listen, mule. This is my plan and we'll follow it. I don't need your random commentary."
"Do you mean the animal? Because being a mule is like an employee. You know that's a job, right? Mule. Not a name. I'm still Amanda." I tried to sound as condescending as possible, but it might have been lost in translation.
Abuelita glanced up from her piping hot cup of coffee and sneered, a gesture made all the more frightening by the addition of chola brows so gigantic she could have used a dinner plate as a template. The woman had changed a lot since the day Wendy and I had walked in on her clandestine home-brewed cloud business. She’d become obsessed with “security” and nineties gang culture, even going so far as to wear plaid shirts buttoned only at the neck and spread wide across a plain white tee-shirt for easier gat access.
I thought I heard her mumble, "More accurate to call her ass."
"What did you say?"
The woman shrugged, took another sip and cinched up her lips cruelly, daring me to say more.
Because I’m the bigger person, by at least a foot, I only sighed and shook my empty glass in the direction of our completely vacant waiter, who glanced straight over my head as though he were blind and had forgotten to hide behind sunglasses. “Hey, crazy eyes!” I shouted, waving. “Fill ‘er up!”
He blanched and hurried off toward the bar, weaving through a boring crop of mid-level Gen-Xers doing their best to delineate Grey Goose from Belvedere—hint: they’re both vodka, they’re flavorless, as far as I’m concerned.
Now whiskey, that’s another story.
After a few more spritzes from my atomizer I was ready to settle in and put all my focus into judging Wendy and Abuelita’s business dealings. And dealing was the appropriate word.
The fact that my best friend, Wendy, along with her previously enslaved Panamanian bead-stringer, Abuelita, had turned a cottage industry into the biggest organized Cloud Cuddle Conglomerate (CCC) in the country, should have made me sick—as do many things: Couture knock-offs, white limousines and people who eat too much salt, creating the ultimate in bait and switch, a succulent looking meal that is predominantly water-bloat—seriously, stop it with the sodium, people—but, as it turns out, not nearly as sick as you’d think.
“We have to sit out here,” Wendy said. “My distributor needs to stay mobile…in case he’s being followed.”
“Followed by who, Scarface? The feds? The authorities don’t know anything about cloud. Last time I checked they don’t track the comings and goings of drugs taken by fictional characters, who happen to be dead.”
Wendy drew her finger around the rim of her manhattan as she leaned across the table, suddenly sinister—like the pasta salad, only twice as manufactured. “I’m not the only cloud dealer, Amanda. There are others out there. Others who want my turf. Want to cut off my supply. I can’t let that happen. Vampires need to cuddle and get high or they’ll get testy.”
I had to concede.
Even Gil, given a few days without his beloved Vance scruffing his neck like a momma cat, would go on a mini-rampage, draining street kids dry and not cleaning up after himself, which made it all the more worrisome. Back when he still had Vance, that is.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry. This is your business. I’m just along for the ride.”
“Cada vez, Missus,” Abuelita said, under her breath. “Every time.”
In lieu of merely gawping in her direction, I tossed my freshened drink into my throat and shook the single cube at the waiter who should have known better than to return to roaming the interior tables. He gave me a quick nod and disappeared. Training, it has its benefits. Threats are good, too.
A rustling rose up in the distance, soft at first, a rolling grumble like a crowd making for the exit of a stadium. I was grateful for the distraction, if for no other reason than to take my mind off the the reaper bill and my dwindling bank account, oh, and my empty cocktail glass.
“There he is.” Wendy raised her hand toward a hipster with seventies pork chop sideburns and the tight striped pants of an Osmond brother.
“His name is Grits.” Wendy gave me the kind of wink that seals a secret (in a sitcom). “It’s a code name.”
“I hope so.” I said, absently watching the creature peddling. “Code for what? Does he taste good with shrimp?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she waved off my questions.
Grits rode a bike with a basket in the front, a brown paper-wrapped package barely fitting inside of it. When he saw Wendy, he lit up, waved frantically, clearly smitten—if the bell he rang on the handlebar was some sort of extension of his interest. He kept jangling the damn thing all the way across the road.
Despite the total shit show rolling toward us, I couldn’t help but pay attention to the growing waller behind me. Voices. Moaning. Not the excited murmur of chatter, but a familiar teeth grating not often heard in human social climbers.
But when I turned around I didn’t see anything.
Grits bucked the front tire of the bike up onto the sidewalk and deftly weaved between pedestrians, breezing past ratty homeless men and chatty shoppers rather than simply knocking them down, as some of us at the table might have done.
Yeah. I’m talking about me, but I won’t be judged. I’m just not very good at not knocking humans down, bike or no. Though, frankly, I wouldn’t be caught dead on one of those contraptions, unless it was a Huffy with a big banana seat—I’m fucking with you, if I see any of you riding that retro-shit, God help you…and I hope you’re not on one of those low-capsicum diets; I’m so tired of bland food.
So. Tired.
“Grits!” Wendy yelled.
I imagined it wasn’t the first time she’d uttered those words with the same amount of enthusiasm, probably not with so much exposed cleavage, but who knows? If you’re into grits, you’re into grits. Live and let live. Hell, splash around in that shit for all I care. Cooked, of course. The alternative is far too gritty for soft lady business.
Wendy waved him over as though it was possible he’d miss the only dead people sitting outside, sweltering in the August heat with empty bourbon glasses.
“Waiter!”
Gathering up her most pleasant demeanor, Wendy rose to wrap her spidery arms around Grits.
The man grinned sheepishly—just shy of braying under his massive overbite. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, even as he wrapped them behind pale lips. Dentistry exists, people. Take advantage of that shit and don’t tell me you have a phobia. I’ll give you something to be phobic about.
Oddly enough, both involve teeth.
Wendy and I are not exactly human—we were…once. But like Hollywood producers or those fuckers that sell ice cream out of dirty vans we lost our ability to empathize with the rest of the human race—we’re dead and thus hungry for the flesh of the living.
So…there’s that.
We are, as has been repeatedly alluded to, zombies. But not the shambling dumb-as-sticks variety, we’ve got this shit under control. And when we chow down, we’re not leaving any stragglers to start some ridiculous outbreak.
We were
classy like that.
Also different. But we’ll get to that after Wendy finishes slobbing on this motherfucker’s knob. Metaphorically, of course.
“Is that the stuff?” Wendy nodded toward the basket.
Grits rolled his eyes and grinned. “Um yeah.”
“Sample me.”
I’m not gonna lie, grimy drug deals are kind of exciting. You expect the participants to exude a rough street-like demeanor, so you’ll understand my disappointment when instead of producing a switchblade or a butterfly knife, Grits flashed a pearly white overbite—not a gold one in the set—and pulled out a regular paring knife of the variety used to slice granny smith apples into delicious bite-sized chunks for a county fair pie. He jabbed the brown wrapper delicately and extracted a small Ball jar of white cream. Twisting open the lid he held the glass container toward Wendy, who snatched it from his hands, snapped her fingers and looked skyward.
Seconds later, a mirror was cantilevered out of an open window on the second floor directly above them featuring the bearded face and bare shoulders of another of Wendy’s accomplices, one I hadn’t met—and behind him, deeper in the shadows, a vampire in sunglasses and a red robe. A basket was lowered, dangling precariously from a bent piece of coat hanger standing in as a hook. Wendy steadied the basket and set the jar inside it, all the while smiling coyly at Grits.
The jar was whisked away. Wendy set her phone to a stopwatch app and flicked the start button. The numbers ticked away as the product was being run through a little quality assurance upstairs. I tried to avert my eyes as the man rubbed a thick palm-full through his wild chest hair, but he seemed to be watching me as he did it, licking his lips.
Disgusting.
“This’ll just be a few moments, Grits,” Wendy said, fixing a lock of hair behind her ear, coquettishly. “Would you like a drink? Something to help cool you down? A long island ice tea perhaps?”
The man whipped a checkered handkerchief out of his back pocket and dabbed his forehead and the damp tips of his handlebar mustache. “No ma’am.” His words stretched out in a country bumpkin kind of way, lilting and sing-songy. “It’s mighty hot though. How do you manage to look so spring fresh, Ms. Wendy?”
Wendy giggled, nauseatingly. “You’re so sweet, Grits.”
“Not as sweet as you.”
I was rapidly approaching regurgitation when, from above us, a whole new set of moans joined the ones in the distance. It took everything I had not to look.
“Oh yes!” the vampire cried. “Yes! Hug me tighter! Tighter! ”
Grits blushed, clearly human. Wendy smiled and shrugged off the obvious sounds of a male vampire in the throws of a cloud cuddle.
“Climb on my back and grind! That’s it! Get me all creamy.”
I cringed, glancing up in horror at the scene of the hairy man riding on the now nude vampire’s back like a mayonnaise-covered child at a county fair, and shouted, “Shut the window, boys!”
I turned to Wendy. “Are you going to be free for a few days after this deal?”
Wendy lit a smoke and stared back at me blinking.
“Like to go with me to the coast for that book thing we talked about.”
She shrugged. “I dunno, sounds like a huge waste of my time.”
“I'm going to pretend you're on a gigantic ego trip and are still my friend and ask you again. Can you go?”
Wendy smiled, a bitter rictus that was sticking more and more. She really was going to have to check into the Reaper Clinic and get some touch ups soon. She reached across and placed her cigarette-spiked hand atop mine. “Honey, I'd love to go, but with all this new product, I'm going to have to pull some all-nighters as it is. You go on ahead. Abuelita and I will be fine without you.”
I sneered at the other woman, who grinned broad as a jack-o-lantern.
“Is okay, Missus,” Abuelita said. “You'll have a good time with all your fans.”
That was all it took to start a cascade of giggles, first from the aging chola, then Wendy and then even the cuddler on the second floor seemed to be in on the joke.
Dirty bitches.
I knocked back a slug of the bourbon and scowled.
The vamp’s moans of pleasure were certainly fantastic advertisement for the product, but were becoming so loud; I could barely hear a screaming woman scrambling backward into the intersection, two men sluggishly wandering toward her.
“What’s this?” I muttered and craned my neck for a better look around Grits and his bike.
The woman clamped a hand to her throat, where a crimson stain gushed down her whiter than white business blouse. The color was mimicked on the men’s faces and it quickly became clear where the moaning had come from. They were still far enough away that it wouldn’t interrupt their business, but nonetheless, there they were. A group of mistakes—what we call the regular dumb-ass feeders you think of as zombies—stumbled out into the intersection after the woman.
This was the kind of thing that would probably be noticed. Once the reapers came in to clean up after the mess, everyone’s afternoon would be ruined. Plus, the little bitches never left their lair without a list of those that owed them money.
“It’s so slick-k-k.” The vampire stuttered and groaned upstairs. “Slick-k-k-k.” Followed shortly thereafter by a thud as the bloodsucking junkie hit the floor.
Wendy listened, tapped the stopwatch app and nodded, pleased. “That’ll do, Grits. Zero to brain-dead in thirty-six seconds. Very nice. You can tell your chemists I’m super happy with the increase in potency.”
Wendy’s crew of professional cuddlers had lobbied for just such an enhancement. The quicker a vamp went slack, the sooner the cuddler could wipe up and get paid and move on to the next client or group. She nodded to me and I rolled my eyes, reaching beneath the table for my bag—a Birkin, this time, black ostrich—and before you go on about how I can’t possibly afford that on a writer’s pay, I traded a pair of Ukrainian twins for it. The manager at Hermes happens to be family (in that colloquial sense that he’s totally dead, not like Ethel Ellen Frazier pushed him out of her twat).
More of the undead mistakes crowded into the intersection, stopping traffic, spreading bloody handprints down the sides of white cars, scraping their teeth against windshields.
“It’s an outbreak,” I said, standing.
Abuelita pulled her gun and held it out sideways—clearly something she’d seen in a movie involving drive-bys and guys in handkerchief headbands drinking beer on porch couches.
Wendy threw up her hands disgustedly. “Really?” she screamed. “I’m trying to do business here people!”
Moments later the street was flooded. Strangely costumed undead scrabbled toward them, their blood-caked clothing scratching against the cars parked on the street, then the sides of nearby buildings and finally along the rail that separated the patio area at Gloat from the sidewalk.
Grits crammed the envelope full of cash into the basket on his bike and backed away in the opposite direction. Wendy was smart enough to reign in her attack dog, shoveling Abuelita’s gun arm down and pushing her inside the restaurant. Neither of us would have any dealings with a crowd of stupid mistakes, unless they got too close and fucked up my outfit, or God forbid my Birkin—insert a choir of angels here—and then, well, there’d be hell to pay and a shit ton of dismemberment. If anything would draw them over the rail, it’d be Abuelita, despite her sour demeanor; the woman stuffed herself with more spices than a Moroccan Bazaar. Occasionally when I looked at her, I imagined the aging chola wrapped in a giant tortilla, cilantro tucked in her hair like an organic fascinator.
“Where are the reapers?” Wendy said, clucking her tongue impatiently. “Any other outbreak they’d be here ruining our cocktail hour faster than a bait and switch of cheap booze.”
I climbed atop my chair to see if there were an end to the throngs of undead in sight. “This is a big herd, too. They’re going to have to call for reinforcements to clean it up.”
B
ut while I was up there, I began to notice something. Or the lack of something. It wasn’t fear, exactly, or the creeping dread that violence would sweep me into its nasty embrace and I wouldn’t be able to afford the fixes necessary to my already tentative anatomy. These zombies didn’t smell like the dead. They smelled like other things: greasy hamburgers, sweat, Goodwill clearance bins.
“Damn.” I shook my head. That feeling was hunger.
“What?”
“I know why there’s no reaper presence. They’re not real. They’re in costumes. Jesus. Stupid costumes.”
The cuddler jutted from the upstairs window, pasty with cloud and smoking a post-romp cigarette. “They’re going for another world record,” he said. “Biggest zombie walk ever. I thought it was tomorrow.”
“Shut. Up!” Wendy slammed her palm on the table; the package of jars clinked as it hopped. “They’re pretending to be zombies?”
It didn’t make any sense to me either. Sure, pretend to be Wendy or I—preferably me, because damn, so cute, particularly in the vintage hairstyle I was courting like a sailor on shore leave—an apt simile as the idea had hit me after a particularly tasty meal during fleet week—but for god sake don’t mimic the idiotic brain sucking mistakes.
They are so uncoordinated, and I’m not just talking about fashion.
It really did just serve as a reminder of how dumb our food source really was.
The more I watched the more interested I became in one of the participants in particular, a woman in a floppy garden hat and a seventies sundress reminiscent of an Ira Levin adaptation. I couldn’t see her feet but I suspected wedge espadrilles (the macramé belt was a pretty distinct clue).
One of these zombies is not like the others. Even a child would know that. The rest had obvious physical complaints, dragging bum legs, arms listlessly swinging from a loose socket, visible scars. So many visible scars.
