by Dixie Lyle
I didn’t have enough data yet. Time to go dig up some more.
I found Lucky and Oscar talking in the study. I stopped at the doorway, Whiskey at my heels, and waited for a break in the conversation.
“—really, it’s about the criminalization of poverty and the inevitability of revolution,” Oscar said. He crossed one leg and took a sip of tea from the china cup he held. “And of course, the unholy hunger of the living dead.”
“Discussing the movie?” I said, stepping into the room.
“No, a modest proposal of my own,” Oscar answered. “Within the genre, but taking a subtly different approach.”
“Yeah, it’s not bad,” admitted Lucky. I imagined he got a lot of pitches for movies, but he actually looked interested. “Got kind of a Robert Rodriguez feel to it.”
“Thank you,” said Oscar. “As I was saying, due to the shortage of ammunition the hero often employs a sword. This, combined with his expertise on a motorcycle, should make for quite the action dynamic.”
“Kind of a modern-day knight?” I asked.
Oscar frowned. “No, that’s the precise opposite of the social metaphor I’m trying to construct. Obviously I’ll have to synopsize the premise for you, or I’ll be deluged by inaccurate comments.”
I smiled but didn’t reply. I knew Oscar well enough to see through his feigned annoyance; he couldn’t pass up the chance to double his audience.
“Very well,” Oscar continued. “It’s set a few years after civilization has fallen due to the dead rising from their graves. Pockets of humanity still survive, especially those in remote locations with stockpiles of weaponry and defensible compounds. One such location is deep in a South American jungle, in the once-opulent mansion of a local narcotics kingpin. These days the high life isn’t quite so high, but the kingpin’s paranoia, extreme wealth, and proclivity for violence have stood him in good stead; he managed to stockpile an impressive mountain of supplies before the world crashed and burned, and he has a small, thuggish army to help him keep it.
“However, the populace of the local village isn’t quite so lucky. Beset by zombie attacks and running low on resources, they’re completely dependent on the largesse of the drug lord. This is not an entirely novel situation; before the undead apocalypse, they toiled in his fields, planting and harvesting the illegal product that made him a veritable king. His once-loyal subjects now view their feudal lord with thinly disguised hatred, but there’s little they can do.
“Into this desperate, volatile environment strides—or rather, rides—our hero. A biker whose family was devoured by the shambling corpses, he now swears not to rest until each and every one has been returned to the hell that spawned them. His preferred method of dispatching the walking dead is decapitation with a Japanese sword.”
Oscar paused. Lucky was leaning forward in his seat, genuinely absorbed. “It might seem,” Oscar continued, “that the biker and the drug lord would unite against their common enemy. But there’s a problem.
“You see, the drug lord is, by definition, a ruthless capitalist. Having been deprived of his source of income by the minor inconvenience of the world ending, he still seeks to turn a profit. Narcotics may no longer command the sort of price he’s used to, but he can grow food instead—he still has the fields and the resources to defend them. Manpower is a bit of an issue … but then it comes to him. Who says he has to use men?”
I thought I saw where this was going, but I didn’t want to steal Oscar’s thunder. “You mind explaining that?”
Oscar sipped his tea and smiled. “Not at all. In a pre-industrial society, energy is a highly valued commodity. Much of this energy is generated by simple brute force, often via the muscle power of living beings. But it’s the muscle part that’s important. Living, it turns out, is optional.”
“Zombie power!” Lucky said, chuckling. “I love it!”
“Wait,” I said. “They’re going to use zombies as what, cheap labor? How would that work?”
“Fairly easily,” Oscar said. “A zombie that can’t bite or grab is virtually harmless. If all you need them to do is pull a plow or even just walk in a circle, that’s not hard to accomplish.”
“Sure, just dangle some meat on a stick. Don’t need to actually feed them, clothe them, or house them … okay, that might be possible.”
“I’m seeing hamster wheels,” said Lucky. “Giant, zombie-driven hamster wheels. You could totally generate electricity like that.”
“And our intrepid hero?” I prompted.
“Isn’t it obvious? Dedicated to the zombies’ destruction, he attacks and destroys one post-life industrial site after another. Terrified by the drug lord’s constant threats to zombify them, the villagers come to see the newcomer as a savior rather than a destroyer.”
“This has a familiar flavor to it,” I said. “Downtrodden townspeople, evil nobility, lone hero with a blade riding out of the night—”
“Ask him what it’s called,” said Lucky with a grin.
“Okay, what’s the title of this epic?”
“Zomborro.”
I considered this. “Well, that’s better than Grave-Robbin’ Hood.”
“Clever,” said Oscar. “Entirely different metaphor, though—”
“But your way, you miss out on all the Merry Men: Will Eat You Scarlett, Friar of Human Flesh Tuck, Alan-A-Daily Meal of Brains, Little Papa John, the Inventor of Human Pizza…”
Whoops. Thunder, stolen.
Oscar was giving me a smile that let me know he’d cheerfully throw me to the next zombie horde that staggered by. Lucky, though, was looking at me as if I had suddenly sprouted wings made of hundred-dollar bills. “That’s brilliant,” he breathed. “No problems with copyright, either. Public domain all the way, built-in fan base, archery is hot right now…”
“I’d be happy to discuss it at dinner,” I said. “But at the moment, I need a little of your time.” I told them about the upcoming interviews with Forrester. Oscar grudgingly agreed to do his duty, though Lucky took even more convincing.
“Is it really necessary?” he groaned. “Cops make me nervous. I always think they’re going to Columbo me about something I did when I was twelve. Thank you for your time, Mr. Trentini. Oh, there’s just one more thing—the DNA analysis on that gum wrapper finally came back and we know you’re the one who stole that pack of Bubblicious from Mr. and Mrs. Krakowski’s corner store. What size of handcuffs do you take?”
“You have nothing to worry about,” I assured him. “I think they’re just trying to figure out who was where when it all happened. You know, in case someone heard or saw something.”
“In that case, they’re wasting their time. I was working late, I went to bed alone, and then I was asleep. Wait, that’s terrible—I have no alibi!”
“You don’t need one, Lucky. And I’m afraid this isn’t optional. I’m arranging the interviews as a courtesy, but if you refuse to cooperate the police will still want to talk to you. You can have a lawyer present, of course.”
He sank back in his chair and looked gloomy. “No, that’ll make me look even guiltier than I usually do, which is a lot. Plus, it’ll cost me money I don’t have to protect me from something I didn’t do. Go ahead and schedule me; I’ll deal with it in the usual way.”
“Which is?” Oscar inquired.
“Complaining, mostly. Worried complaining beforehand, relieved complaining afterward. Hey, it works for me.”
And that’s when my boss flew through the window and landed on my shoulder.
11.
I have two bosses. Three, if you ask Tango, but to her the terms cat and boss are interchangeable. My first boss, ZZ, is the one who signs my paychecks.
The other one is the ghost of a white crow named Eli.
Eli is more like my superior officer than my employer, I guess, but it comes down to the same thing: He tells me what to do, and I do it. Unlike ZZ, he doesn’t pay me, and unlike my job as an administrative assistant, I’m pretty sure I
can’t just quit—though I’ve never actually tried.
But then, Eli had never flown into the house and landed on my shoulder, either.
For a moment I thought both Oscar and Lucky could see him, too; they were looking at me with the strangest expressions on their faces.
“Are you all right, Foxtrot?” Oscar asked. “You seem a bit … stricken.”
Which was when I became aware that my eyes were open about as wide as they would go and my upper body had assumed a position best described as “bolt upright.”
“Hello, Foxtrot,” said Eli in his croaky crow voice. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I managed. “Just a sudden chill.” Not being corporeal, Eli weighed nothing at all—but somehow, I could still feel his ghostly bird feet on my shoulder.
“Good to hear,” Eli said. “It can be quite unsettling to have one’s normal routine disrupted. Say, by having one part of your life abruptly spill over into another.”
“If you’ll excuse me? I have a lot to do,” I managed. I got to my feet and quickly left the room. Whiskey came with me, of course, staring up at Eli the whole time.
“What’s the problem?” I hissed once we were out of earshot.
“The problem? Let’s see. How about you ignoring your duties as Guardian of the Great Crossroads?”
“What are you talking about?” I strode down the hall, looking for a room to duck into. Ah, nobody in the billiards parlor. I stepped in and closed the door behind me.
“I’m talking about chaos, Foxtrot. I’m talking about exactly the sort of thing that’s not supposed to happen in the Crossroads and currently is.”
That was news to me, but I hadn’t set foot in the graveyard today—I’d been too busy. I didn’t think I’d put in more than a momentary appearance yesterday, either. “Um. Does this have anything to do with the goats?”
“Yes, Foxtrot, it does. But not just the goats. Also the hamsters, and the snakes, and the rabbits, and the parakeets. Let’s not forget the rats, the mice, the cats, the dogs, the iguanas, and the fish. In short, just about any creature that can swim, slither, crawl, fly, hop, or walk, and are currently dead but not in their respective Paradise. Would you care to guess what all these animals I just mentioned are doing right now?”
“Going directly from one afterlife portal to another in a calm and orderly fashion?”
Okay, that was definitely crow talons digging into my skin. “No, Foxtrot. They most definitely are not. But perhaps you should go see for yourself.”
And with that, he launched himself into the air and vanished through the ceiling.
I stared up at the roof for a second, collecting my thoughts. Everybody gets chewed out by their boss now and then, but this was the most annoyed I’d ever heard Eli. “Maybe we should head over to the graveyard,” I said.
[Perhaps that would be wise.]
* * *
When we got there, I understood immediately.
“Oh, man,” I said softly.
[Tango,] growled Whiskey.
The Great Crossroads is a mystic nexus. That means that out of the over fifty thousand grave sites here, many are actual portals to the afterlives of different species—including humans. This lets the spirits of former pets visit the people that loved them when both were alive, and that motivation is usually so strong it overrides any petty behaviors like aggression. At first glance, the Great Crossroads might seem to be a chaotic jumble of bright colors and constant, random movement, but that’s not accurate. Once you know how to look for it, you can see regular patterns all over the place: That slow-moving line over there is a stately parade of turtles; that flock overhead are racing pigeons; the surging, Technicolor carpet to the left are guinea pigs. All of them heading from their version of the afterlife to ours, or back.
Not anymore.
I’m not saying every deceased animal I could see was there for Tango’s movie, but the ones that were had clearly been waiting for a while. Many of them were cats. Many of them were dogs.
Some of them were good at waiting.
Many of them were not.
So what does a huge mass of deceased cats and dogs do when they’re bored? Just about what you’d expect.
It wasn’t as ugly as it could have been if they were all alive; spirits aren’t as strongly driven by their instincts as the living. And despite Whiskey and Tango’s constant bickering, cat and dog ghosts don’t actually loathe each other as a matter of course.
But, as I said—they were bored. And I guess the devil makes work for idle paws as well as hands.
It probably started innocently enough. One dog chasing another, maybe. A cat who bolted. Dormant pack instincts getting riled up, and then …
That was the most likely scenario. But I like to think it was a bulldog who looked a lot like John Belushi, standing up and bellowing, “Food fight!”
Spectral dogs ran between graves, barking wildly. (In case you’re wondering, that translates mostly into “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!” with the occasional “What? What? What?” thrown in.) Cats leapt from headstone to headstone, or sometimes just perched on them and looked down disdainfully. A few felines seemed to have gotten into the spirit and were chasing dogs, or stalking smaller game like rodents. The rodents had bunched together out of self-defense into nervous, quivering masses resembling furry, crazy-quilt amoebas, while the usually orderly reptiles were just milling about, aimlessly crawling over everything and everybody. The sky overhead was a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of brilliant-colored parrots, parakeets and pigeons, wheeling and soaring and diving; none of them seemed inclined to land. Nobody seemed to be actively trying to eat anybody else, but I’ve seen birthday parties for six-year-old sugar junkies that were less crazy. No wonder the goats left.
Tango was nowhere in sight.
[I believe I’ve located the problem,] said Whiskey.
“Thanks, genius. Any ideas how to fix it?”
[I wasn’t referring to the overall disaster. I meant its cause. Look for the pattern overhead.]
I did, though the swirling, multicolored display was a little disorienting to stare at. After a moment, though, I understood what he was talking about; like a hurricane, there was an eye of calm at its center. The birds were circling one particular point, and I knew right away what that point was.
“Davy’s Grave,” I said. Davy was the very first inhabitant of the graveyard, and his burial plot was in a little valley, flanked by benches. Whiskey and I hurried toward the nearest rise, scattering animal spirits as we went.
The hills surrounding the grave formed a natural amphitheater, and that’s where Tango had set up shop. She had a few of the scarier animals stationed around her to form a perimeter, including a crocodile, a warthog, and a porcupine. People keep the oddest pets.
Tango herself was perched on the headstone, while apparently the grave itself was the stage for those auditioning. Piotr the circus bear was doing his usual shtick at the moment, riding a unicycle while dressed in a pink tutu.
Whiskey and I started down from the top of the rise. We’d only gotten halfway down when we were stopped by an octopus.
{~hold on there, folks~please wait your turn~she’s very busy you know~}
Being dead, the octopus didn’t have to pay attention to little details like gravity. He drifted in front of me like an eight-armed bouncer, his tentacles waving in a vaguely threatening manner. Many people don’t know that octopis are masters of disguise, able to change both their shape and shade. This one was puffed up like a balloon, his color a blazing crimson with bright yellow stripes. It was supposed to be intimidating, but it just made him seem like an animated piñata.
I gave him a look of pure incredulity. “Okay, first? You know exactly who I am and what I do, or you wouldn’t be talking to me. Second? You also know that since I’m alive and you’re not, I could just walk right through you. And third?
Why am I still talking?”
{~no need to be rude~i’m just doing my job~you have no idea how hard it is for a cephalopod to get a speaking part in this town~}
“Move it, Eightball.”
The octopus reluctantly moved to the side, letting us pass. We continued down to the bottom of the hill, where Tango finally noticed us.
“Yes, you do,” I said. “And I don’t think you’re going to like it much.”
Tango cocked her head to the side, like she had no idea what I was talking about.
“Awk!” the parrot blurted. “Not a clue! Not a clue!” I do apologize for that outburst, the parrot thought at me. While I have, in the past, periodically made such impulsive statements, I assure you said tendency is now completely under control—“Awk! Lying through my beak! Lying through my beak!”
“What’s wrong?” I said. “While you’re busy setting up your own private post-life Hollywood, the lobby of your agency is hosting a special how-to-stage-a-riot episode of Ghosts Gone Wild. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
Tango shot an accusing glare at a large, brightly colored angel fish hovering beside her right shoulder.
{~i don’t know~possibly~i’ll look into it~yes that seems to be the case}
{i’m also supposed to stop anyone from bothering you unless they have an appointment~i felt sure you would be bothered by a riot~also they didn’t have an appointment~}
“I’ll tell you about this riot, Tango. It’s what happens when you disrupt the normal routines of a bunch of animal spirits by cramming them all together in a single space with nothing to do but wait. After a while, they tend to make their own entertainment.”
