“Oh, fine,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie huffed, handing her the gun. Ernestine hadn’t any idea what to do with it, so she dumped it into a nearby umbrella stand. “But do hurry up, darling. I’m quite sure someone will be coming to murder me again shortly, and I must be ready to murder them first.”
“But we’re here now, Mother. No one can harm you,” Rodney pointed out rather condescendingly for someone currently cowering underneath both a couch and a sick butler.
“Harm me!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie made a noise of utter disgust. “When I set out to murder someone, I don’t mess it up!”
“Hear, hear!” Ernestine applauded, approving of Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s determination. “Only, why not let the zombies do it? They’ll eat out your murderer’s brains. That would be way more horrible than just getting shot.”
“That,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie said grimly, “all depends on where you shoot them. Besides, who knows how long this zombie apocalypse of yours is going to take, darling. No offense, but you’ve gone and lost the one zombie you had.”
“That is just a temporary setback,” Ernestine replied icily, red spots burning on her cheeks.
“Ew. Zombies.” Even under the couch and in fear for her life, Aurora Borealis held out her camera and leaned into Eduardo to take a selfie with him. “Yuck. That is so gross.”
“You don’t really think there are zombies about, do you?” quavered Rodney as Aurora Borealis decided it was safe enough to crawl out now that Ernestine had disarmed her grandmother.
“I believe in the unholy undead. After all, I’m looking at three of them right now.” Mrs. MacGillicuddie accepted a cup of hot chocolate from Charleston as he returned to the room. “What a good boy you are. You’d make a wonderful cabana boy, you know.”
“Mother! That was quite unkind and I refuse to stay here and listen to this sort of talk any longer,” Rodney huffed. “We only came by because we care deeply about your health, and you’ve seen fit to insult us. You’re clearly quite out of your mind. I think that’s evident to everyone here.”
He looked hopefully over at the psychiatrist for support, only to realize the doctor had long since vanished in a puff of panic and self-preservation, leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves.
“Ha! My lawyers will eat you alive in court. If the zombies don’t do it first.”
They all stormed out. Well, Rodney stormed out. Aurora Borealis was so busy updating her status on her diamond-encrusted phone that she didn’t notice he’d left until her father was already outside, whereupon she skittered after him on her stiletto heels. However, she did pause long enough to sneakily scoop up a diamond earring that had fallen from Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s ear and drop it into her purse, unseen by anyone except Ernestine.
The door barely had a chance to shut behind them before Lyndon crept back into the apartment, having apparently failed to interest Rodney’s doctor in his latest crazy business venture.
“I’m sorry about all of that, Great-Auntie Edna,” he said meekly, wringing his hands. “For what it’s worth, I’m very glad you’re all right, too, Eduardo.”
Eduardo waved his hand dismissively as though to indicate that a minor poisoning or two was an everyday occurrence around here and nothing to get too upset about.
“Lyndon, my husband left you five million in his will.” Mrs. MacGillicuddie sipped wearily at her hot chocolate. “How have you managed to go through it all, darling?”
“Well,” Lyndon’s eyes darted about nervously as though he were being interrogated, “in all fairness, that was twenty years ago.”
“Too true, I suppose.” Getting up, Mrs. MacGillicuddie hobbled over to the grand piano. Ernestine wondered if she’d be able to walk without a cane if she’d wear sensible heels instead of insisting on stiletto heels like her granddaughter. Opening up the piano cover, she fished out four stacks of fifties and handed them to him. “Do try not to spend it on any more of your frightful business ideas, darling. Spend it on something sensible like caviar or a spur-of-the-moment trip to Tripoli with a gorgeous blonde. Or an alpaca. Those always come in handy.”
Not needing to be told twice, Lyndon grabbed the money and scampered off. Possibly to Tripoli, with or without a blonde or an alpaca.
Ernestine fetched brooms for both herself and Charleston, along with a dustpan. As they cleaned up the remains of the shattered bust, she asked, “Mrs. MacGillicuddie, I know this is a very personal question, but you mentioned that a few people other than Rodney, Lyndon, and Aurora Borealis are mentioned in your will. Who else inherits when you die?”
“Oh, darling, that’s not a personal question.” Going over to a heavy gilt mirror, Mrs. MacGillicuddie tucked her eyelashes back into place. “Asking a woman her age when she’s clearly only forty-five the way that impertinent Detective Kim did last night, that’s a personal question. Anyhow, darling Mr. and Mrs. Talmadge will receive enough to ensure that they can retire comfortably since they’ve cooked for me all of these years. Eduardo here receives my little vacation cottage down in Florida and enough money to support his family down in Ecuador. Mr. Sangfroid will receive several paintings that my husband’s will gave me life estate on—”
“What does that mean?” Charleston asked. Ernestine had wondered that herself but was planning on googling it later rather than letting anyone know that she didn’t know.
“It means that my husband left them to Mr. Sangfroid but the terms of his will let me keep them for as long as I’m alive. When I die, he gets them, and won’t he be happy when he does! They’re worth quite a lot these days, you know, which should please Mr. Sangfroid immensely. I know he’s an awful man, but he did me a great favor once, you know.”
“What was that?” Ernestine interjected quickly, eager to know what made Mrs. MacGillicuddie put up with the least popular member of the retirement house.
“Never you mind!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie fluffed her hair and clothing. “Anyhow, MacGillicuddie House itself becomes a self-sustaining cooperative because I want it to always be filled with interesting people, not miserable beasts like my son and granddaughter. Oh, and Mr. Theda will receive a special bequest that is absolutely confidential. Only he and I know what it is.”
Actually, Ernestine and Charleston knew as well. Or at least, Ernestine suspected she did. If Mr. Theda’s bequest wasn’t those Torrid Dilemmas tapes, Ernestine would let a zombie eat her brain.
“Oh, enough of this dreary talk!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie waved her hand dismissively. “What do you say the two of you try and raise another zombie? Get this apocalypse of yours properly under way. I can’t wait to see Rodney running around with zombies chomping at his heels. How he turned out so awful, I have no idea. It certainly wasn’t my fault. I let the nannies raise him.”
So at midnight, Ernestine and Charleston found themselves back in the graveyard again. Only this time, rather than having to make do with dead chicken parts from the grocery store, they had several live chickens with them, compliments of Mrs. MacGillicuddie. Where she had gotten them from at ten o’clock on a weekday night, Ernestine didn’t know and wasn’t about to ask. Some chickens sat perched atop the tombstones, while several more wandered among the graves.
“You’re sure you’re not going to murder them, right?” Charleston asked anxiously.
“Don’t worry. I brought Band-Aids.” Tonight they’d be raising Mrs. Ella James (b. August 5, 1902—d. September 30, 1972) from her grave.
“All right. Remember, this time we don’t want to let the zombie get away,” Ernestine warned and then began to cast her zombie-raising spell.
“I didn’t think we wanted to let the last one get away,” Charleston muttered as he held out a wildly flapping chicken for Ernestine to scratch.
Several irate chickens later, they discovered that it was a lot harder to put a Band-Aid on one than you might think. They had also yet to raise a zombie, but Ernestine was getting there.
Plucking several feathers out of her hair, she jabbed her finger with a much
smaller paring knife and chanted, “Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari! Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari! Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari!”
Then they sat down on a grave and waited. They drank some hot chocolate from a thermos and then waited some more. The chickens avoided them both. It began to snow, and apparently zombies didn’t like to be out in bad weather because not a single one had yet to appear.
“Charleston,” Ernestine said suddenly, her breath making a puff of white in the cold air. “Do you think it’s possible that Eduardo could have poisoned himself intentionally to make himself look innocent?”
Charleston thought that one over before admitting, “I dunno. He always seems on top of everything so, yeah, I guess if he was going to murder Mrs. MacGillicuddie, I think he’d make sure to have a pretty good alibi.”
“Exactly. He’s like me. If I wanted to murder someone, I’d be sure to cover my tracks, too, even if it meant sipping a bit of poison myself.”
Charleston gaped at her for a moment, hot chocolate dribbling out of the corner of his mouth. Finally, he wiped it with his mitten and swallowed, “Uh, should I be worried about going to sleep at night?”
“Everyone should always be worried about being eaten by the undead in the night,” Ernestine said, waving her hand dismissively. “The point is, I haven’t had him on my list of suspects. Which means that he’s smart enough to stay off my list of suspects, so he should definitely be on my list of suspects.”
Charleston mulled that over, and then suddenly spit out the mouthful of hot chocolate he’d just swallowed.
“Ernestine,” he gasped as he jumped down off of the tombstone. “Did you ever fix the laundry room window?”
“No, that was on your list.”
“Well, I sort of got distracted when Mrs. MacGillicuddie wanted me to wear her dress!” Charleston grabbed two chickens, stuffing one under either arm. “What if the zombie arose, and we didn’t see it again, and now it’s inside the apartment building eating everyone’s brains!”
“I’d think we’d have heard it, if it was,” Ernestine pointed out sensibly, but Charleston just shoved one of the chickens into her startled arms. The bird turned its head and blinked up at her with one eye as though it didn’t understand what the fuss was all about, either. “And why are you gathering up all of the chickens?”
“We can’t leave them behind to be zombie snacks!” Charleston snatched up two more chickens. Arms filled with squawking, wriggling fowl, Charleston sprinted toward the house.
Ernestine rolled her eyes. If he didn’t want the chickens to be snacks, then why on earth was he carrying them toward the supposed zombie infestation rather than away from it? Grabbing the remaining blood donors, she ran after him. When she finally caught up with him all the way around the house in the backyard, Charleston stood stock-still at the foot of the steps, one bird at his feet and another wriggling free from his arms.
“Look!” he gasped, pointing. Uneven footsteps led a jagged trail through the newly fallen snow to the window, which gaped as wide open as a hungry zombie mouth.
Still clutching her chickens, Ernestine shoved past Charleston and burst through the back door. Where the heck were the zombies coming up out of the ground? They’d have seen them if they’d risen from their graves in the cemetery.
“You check the second floor!” Ernestine gasped as they sprinted down the hallway. “I’ll make sure Mrs. MacGillicuddie is safe!”
“But you don’t have your baseball bat!” Charleston cried.
That was, of course, a problem. However, Ernestine had already spotted Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s back door hanging wide open. Which meant that Mrs. MacGillicuddie was about to end up as a midnight snack. Baseball bat or no baseball bat, she was not about to let her friend get eaten.
Putting on a burst of speed, the chickens shrieking their encouragement, Ernestine sprinted through the open door, zigzagged her way through Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s maze-like suite, and burst into her bedroom.
Where a zombie in a long dress stood over Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s sleeping body, a candelabra raised in its undead hand.
Chapter Nine
When Confronted With a Zombie, Panic
THURSDAY, 12:17 AM
Step four of Ernestine’s zombie survival guide stated quite specifically that as soon as you were finished panicking, you should arm yourself with something deadly before confronting the undead. Without something to kill them when you ran at them, you were pretty much offering yourself up as fast food.
Now, confronted not only with a zombie, but a zombie carrying a weapon, Ernestine found herself armed with nothing more deadly than chickens. Chickens. It was too humiliating for words.
Oh, well. If all she had for a weapon was chickens, then she’d just have to use chickens as a weapon. As the zombie slashed the candelabra toward Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s head, Ernestine screamed, “You wanna eat something? EAT CHICKEN!” and flung the birds right at the creature’s head.
As these things went, “Eat chicken” wasn’t terribly clever. But it was a zombie. Its brain was liquefying in its skull. It wasn’t like it would appreciate witty banter, anyhow.
Ernestine’s shriek woke up Mrs. MacGillicuddie, who saw the danger and rolled out of the way just in time. Rather than breaking open her skull to reveal a delicious, juicy brain inside, the candelabra tore her pillow apart. A cloud of feathers puffed up into the air, joining those already flying from the furious birds as they landed on the zombie. They took out an entire evening’s worth of aggression by pecking mercilessly at its decaying flesh. Ernestine had just wanted the zombie to eat the chickens rather than Mrs. MacGillicuddie, but she was fine if they wanted to eat the zombie instead. Birds. Who would’ve thought they’d be excellent allies in the coming war against the undead? Ernestine would have to make a note of it in her zombie survival guide.
Worried that her allies might not be able to finish the zombie off all on their own, Ernestine launched herself forward and pummeled it right in the stomach with her outstretched hands.
It turned its hideous, deformed face to gaze at her with a slack jaw and purple, mottled skin. Ernestine swallowed hard, wishing she’d kept one of the chickens to defend herself with. Whatever she had seen in the alleyway this afternoon, the creature before her definitely had a skin problem. As in, its skin was rotting away and hanging in flaps off its cheeks, which Ernestine assumed would be a problem for most creatures, even ones who hadn’t gotten out of their coffins much the last couple of decades.
While Ernestine was wishing she’d thought to bring along a rain poncho in case it decayed all over her nice coat, the zombie fell to the ground and tried to crawl away. Mrs. MacGillicuddie clutched her satin sheets to her chest and shrieked, “What is it? What is it?”
“Mrs. MacGillicuddie, meet Ella James, deceased! We just raised her,” Ernestine yelled as the zombie sprang to its feet. It swung the candelabra at her and would have gotten her on the nose if Ernestine hadn’t jerked back in time. Then it kicked her with a stiletto heel, which smarted like anything.
“Ow!” Ernestine grunted, rubbing at her shin as Charleston burst into the room and flipped on the lights.
Just like Mrs. MacGillicuddie, he shouted, “What is it? What is it?”
“What on earth do you think it is?” Ernestine snapped back in exasperation. The late Ella James tried to kick her again, but Ernestine wrenched its shoe off instead.
Its zombie brain must work pretty well given that it had been dead for the better part of the last century. Because Ella James clearly seemed to realize she was outnumbered and tossed off the last bird to dash past Charleston. He tried to decapitate it with his baseball bat, which was a lot better than flinging it at the zombie and screaming hysterically the way he had last time, but Ella also moved pretty fast for someone who not only was missing a shoe, but who’d lately
spent more time decaying in the ground than exercising. Its legs just couldn’t be attached all that well anymore, yet it darted right past him, leaving the bat to whiz through the air.
Ernestine wasn’t about to lose a second zombie in less than a week. Shoving the stiletto heel into Charleston’s hands, she bolted down the hallway and managed to grab the zombie by the hair as it made it to the kitchen. Her victory was short-lived, though. While Ella James’s legs were remarkably well-attached, its hair was not. As Ernestine tugged at its curls, they slipped right off the zombie’s head. Ernestine blinked stupidly down at the hunk of hair, allowing the creature time to kick her right into an enormous garbage can full of debris from the party the other night.
Quite literally into it. Hitting the rim, she tumbled over the edge and ended up with her face smushed into the remains of a custard tart. Her legs kicked ignominiously in the air while she tried unsuccessfully to get out.
“Ernestine! Are you okay?” Charleston and Mrs. MacGillicuddie each grabbed an ankle and pulled her out.
“I scalped it,” Ernestine said bitterly, custard sliding down the side of her face to dribble onto the floor as she held up the zombie’s hair. Other than that, the zombie was nowhere to be seen.
“Good heavens, darling! You just saved me from being murdered again!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie cried.
Well, there was that, Ernestine supposed, but she’d still lost her zombie. It wasn’t like you could order them online when you ran out of them.
“Come on, Charleston! Let’s see where it went!” Snatching his baseball bat from him, she barreled out the kitchen door without waiting to see if he was following.
“How—are—the—muscles—of—the—undead—in—better—shape—than—mine?” Charleston panted, catching up with her as she paused on the back porch, her eyes searching the immense, silvery garden for signs of the missing zombie. A clatter by the carriage house caught her attention. Through the light snowfall, she saw the gate to the alleyway swing shut.
Ernestine, Catastrophe Queen Page 11
