Let There Be Linda

by Rich Leder

  Greenburg pointed the shotgun at Danny, his nearest target, and said, “I want my dog, my cash, and my car.”

  “You’re kidding,” Danny said.

  Harvey pointed his gun at Greenburg, and said, “If anyone kills the agent, it’s me—immediately after I shoot the dentist.”

  Ramona bounded over the sofa and around the dog on the coffee table—bark, bark—put the point of her sword against Harvey’s neck so that the dwarf’s skin was dangerously indented, and said, “Do we look like we kidding, hair dude?”

  Omar pointed his gun at Ramona’s head and said, “Not we, we’re. Do we look like we’re kidding? We is the first-person plural pronoun used in the subjective as a contraction with are, the present-tense conjugation of the basic verb to be, used here in the plural because there are three of you. Jesus. Grammar anyone?”

  Bark, bark. Bark, bark.

  Judd Martin moved to Mike, pointed his snubnose at Mike’s face, and said, “I’ve waited all my life and death for this moment, Miller.”

  Shuler put his gun on the back of Martin’s head and said, “This is how you kill a zombie, Judd.”

  “Fucking TV,” Martin said without turning around or lowering his snubnose. “Now every asshole’s a zombie killer. You going to shoot me in the head, Detective?”

  “Ninety-three percent chance,” Shuler said.

  “Fair enough,” Martin said.

  Bark, bark. Bark, bark.

  And then Saint Linda the Undead moved to the middle of the room, surveyed the scene—everyone stalemated with guns and knives and swords pointed every which way at everyone else—and said, “This is my soiree, and you’re having all the fun.”

  Mike looked past Martin’s gun at his recently dead mother. He wanted to put his thoughts together into some kind of cohesive whole, but he couldn’t do it. For the first time in memory, he couldn’t account for his life. His ledgers were no longer balanced. He had carried the weight of the week with him, and now his back was broken. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to feel. He didn’t know what to say. A dead dog was barking in his living room. The Bride of Frankenstein was addressing the band of lunatics. His brain was chaos. His heartstrings were pulled asunder. He refused to cry out loud, but his eyes filled with tears.

  “Chin up, fairy boy,” Linda said to him as he wiped his eyes. “Let’s get this party started.” She walked past Danny to the light switch and said, “Here’s a parlor game called ‘Run for your Life.’”

  And then she flipped the switch, and the room went black.

  Mike ducked. He didn’t know why. He just did. Maybe it was his knees buckling more than any kind of conscious ducking motion. Anyway, it was a good thing he did because Martin’s gun went off right where his face had just been.

  Mike took off for the double doorway behind him and ran into his kitchen. In the living room, he heard pandemonium—guns going off, people shouting, Chachi barking.

  The kitchen was dark as well, but his eyes were adjusting to the LEDs on the coffee maker and microwave, and he had a moment where he wondered where Jenny had gone—why wasn’t she in the kitchen? But the moment didn’t last because the zombie was in the kitchen as well—Mike could smell him, even if he couldn’t see him yet—and Martin’s eyes, Mike figured, were adjusting to the darkness too.

  And then the hulking shape of the zombie appeared out of the shadows, and the blue-green lights of the LEDs glinted off his Bowie blade, and Mike knew there was only one way out.

  He ran though the mudroom into the garage, where his brother had been living and working without permission since Wednesday. There was a box of who-the-hell-knows-what blocking the door to the backyard and pool, so Mike ran to the Tiki bar in the center of the garage. The light was on, and he frantically tried to locate the remote garage door opener. He couldn’t find it.

  “The more you run, the more I enjoy it,” Martin said, entering the garage and walking toward the Tiki bar. “Zombies feed on fear. And I’m having a fucking feast with you.”

  Mike wanted to be brave. He told himself be brave, but he couldn’t find any courage inside him. He faced Martin and backed away until he hit the garage door.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Mike said.

  “It’s the only thing I have to do,” Martin said. “After you’re dead, I’ll retire south of the border, where zombies wear serapes and sip sangria.”

  Inside the house, an engine was roaring. It sounded as if Harvey had driven his Range Rover through the front door. Mike’s head hurt, his ears burned, his heart pounded.

  And then Martin was right in front of him. The zombie held the knife up and turned it this way and that. “I’m going to stick it in your stomach, Miller, and twist it back and forth like a screw until you’re dead.”

  Mike couldn’t speak, couldn’t find his voice. But the thought in his head was, I’m going to die with my eyes open. And then somehow his voice appeared, and he said it out loud. “I’m going to die with my eyes open, you zombie fuck.”

  “Suit yourself,” Martin said, and he moved the knife back behind him (like it was a softball he was going to pitch very fast) to shove in Mike’s gut at full force and then froze. His eyes opened wide and then wider, and then he started to shake, and his jaw dropped open, and he was shaking out of control, and blood was coming out of his mouth and his nose and his eye sockets, and he was shaking violently, his head going up and down like a hideous zombie bobble doll, and there was blood covering his face and neck, and the engine was roaring and roaring, and then the motor-driven blade of Mike’s Makita chainsaw tore though Martin’s chest and shot blood all over everywhere, and still the zombie shook like the devil.

  And then the chainsaw stopped, and the garage went quiet, and Martin fell dead to the floor, chainsaw jammed in his back, jutting out through his chest, blood pooling all around him.

  Mike looked down at the zombie in silent shock and then looked up and saw his mother standing in front of him, Martin’s blood speckled on her white toga-gown.

  “You owe me one, fairy boy,” she said, and she took the remote from the folds of her gown and hit the button, and the garage door went up. She went into the zombie’s pocket, pulled out his keys, ran to his beat-to-hell Ford pickup, got behind the wheel, and backed across the lawn to the street, where she stopped, pointed the remote at the garage, at shell-shocked Mike, and hit the button.

  The door went down as she drove away.

  Mike stepped over the zombie and walked back through the mudroom and through the kitchen and into the living room, now lit by a single table lamp on the fireplace end of the sofa facing what used to be the French doors.

  He’d expected to see bodies strewn about but instead saw Danny sitting on the sofa beside the table lamp. The room was trashed. He walked to the sofa across from Danny and sat down. The brothers looked at each other and said nothing for one hundred twenty seconds.

  “Where’s Martin?” Danny said.

  “Mom cut him in half with my chainsaw,” Mike said. “Where’s the dog?”

  “Shuler grabbed him.” Danny said. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Drove away in Martin’s truck,” Mike said. “Where’s Greenburg?”

  “Harvey and Omar took him hostage,” Danny said. “Where’s Jenny?”

  “Left the building,” Mike said. “Where’s Ramona?”

  “Went after Greenburg,” Danny said.

  The sound of sirens began to emerge in the distance.

  “One of my neighbors called the police,” Mike said.

  “We’re going to need an angle,” Danny said.

  MONDAY

  ALL HELL WILL HAPPEN

  “Dead in the garage,” Mike said, “chainsaw sticking out of his chest.”

  “Bullet holes in the living room,” Danny said.

  “Furniture overturned, lamps on the floor, picture frames broken; it looked like a gang war,” Mike said. “Except there was no gang. Just me and Dan.”r />
  “Then the cops came,” Mike said.

  “And I didn’t have an angle,” Danny said.

  “We were screwed,” Mike said.

  “And then Shuler showed up,” Danny said.

  They were in Jenny’s crooked kitchen, which was pitched so severely that Danny wondered how cans and canisters and bags and boxes didn’t fall off the shelves. Mike and Jenny were seated at the table. Danny stood by the sink. They’d been here ten minutes. It was Monday morning, seven thirty, one hundred five degrees, cloudless sky, burning sun. Projected high for the day: one fifteen.

  Jenny’s hair was Marilyn Monroe blonde. Her eyes were icy blue. Danny and Mike had woken her up when they rang the wounded-bird doorbell, so she was wearing white, micro-mini silk pajamas that hardly covered her ass or anything else. She was barefoot. Her fingernails and toenails were painted icy blue to match her eyes.

  “I thought Shuler grabbed the dog and left the house,” Jenny said.

  Danny poured a glass of tap water and caught a glimpse of himself in the window above the kitchen sink. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. He hadn’t showered or shaved. The bleeding had stopped, but his forehead bandage was stained a deep, dark red. His nose was less swollen, and his eyes less black and blue, but he still looked like he’d been boxing without gloves. He wore black board shorts, a red V-neck T-shirt, and flip-flops. His hair was back behind his ears, and his sunglasses were up on top of his head. He thought he looked like Brad Pitt in Fight Club and wanted to savor that moment, but he was still shaken from the night before, so he let the thought go.

  “He did. He took Chachi and followed my mother,” Danny said, turning to face Jenny and Mike, leaning against the counter and sipping the water.

  “That’s how we know she’s in the small yellow house,” Mike said.

  “Then he put the poodle in his office and drove back to Mike’s,” Danny said.

  “There were two cops,” Mike said. “One old, one young. The old one grilled us while the young one looked around the house.”

  “I stalled for time,” Danny said, “told him it happened so fast, the lights went out, there was chaos and confusion, giving him nothing really, then the young one said, ‘I’m going to check the garage,’ and I thought, game over,; and then Shuler came in—from the garage—and said he’d gotten a call about a zombie home invasion, that the garage was clean. Then the old one rolled his eyes and looked at the young one and said, ‘Doughnuts and coffee; you’re buying,’ and they left.”

  “What about the zombie?” Jenny said.

  “He’s still in there,” Mike said. “And unless you breathe on him, he’s not going anywhere.”

  “Where did you go?” Danny said to Jenny.

  “Home,” Jenny said. “Harvey and Omar and Shuler weird me out. They’re not everyday people.”

  Says the woman who breathes life into death, Danny thought.

  “The point is Linda’s out there in the world,” Mike said. “And she’s supposed to be dead, and if they find her alive, if Mrs. Alemi rents her house to someone else and my mother is in there, then all hell will happen. The point is what do we do now?”

  “You have more experience with living dead things than we do,” Danny said.

  “Lookee here,” Maggie said, coming into the kitchen before Jenny could speak. She wore a cow-print muumuu as eye-catching as it was frightening. She wore bunny rabbit slippers. Her hair stood out and up at as many angles as the house itself.

  “Mother, go to your room,” Jenny said.

  “Not so fast,” Maggie said, crossing to Danny at the counter. “Pretty Boy blew up my beauty sleep, and I want to know why.”

  She was in Danny’s face before he could move away. Her breath smelled hideous, just like…just like…wait, yes, the horse, that’s it, Danny thought, the racehorse with the jockey and the carrot.

  He’d once tried to sign a washed-out jockey who fancied himself a Vegas magician, though the only thing he could make disappear was a carrot—and he needed a horse to help him do that. The jockey took Danny to the stables one day to film his audition—a thrill for Danny until the jockey stuck a carrot in his own mouth and fed a horse—like Neidermeyer in Animal House. But though it was funny in the film, watching someone French kiss a horse in the flesh was sexually grotesque.

  And then the jockey demanded Danny do it. To get the guy’s money, Danny had forced a smile, put the carrot in his mouth, and turned to the horse. The smell of its breath as it closed in on Danny’s end of the carrot was an olfactory nightmare Danny couldn’t expunge from his memory to this day. He’d buried it deep, it was true, but now Maggie had brought it back.

  “Get out of my face, Maggie,” Danny said. She’d tried to cut his head off with a serrated grass whip and poison him with lemonade and now she was trying to suffocate him with her horse breath, and he’d had enough.

  “Make me, Pretty Boy,” Maggie said in a threatening tone.

  “Mother,” Jenny said.

  Danny put his arms up to push her out of his way—not knock her down, just move her aside so he could sit at the table—and she opened the drawer beside him and pulled out a carving knife and held it against Danny’s throat.

  “Mother,” Jenny said again. “Put the knife down and go to your room.”

  Maggie cackled. “Not this time, Blondie. This is the end of road for Pretty Boy.”

  Danny could feel the sharp blade of the knife pressing across the full width of his neck. He tried not to move, not to breathe. He looked into Maggie’s eyes and saw soulless black pools of death. Then he looked past Maggie and saw Jenny stand. She was as close to naked as a person could be and still have clothes on. Dear God, if you let me live through this and have sex with her, no matter what color her hair is, I’ll teach Sunday school for the rest of my days, Danny thought.

  “Stand up, Mike,” Jenny said, her eyes on Maggie.

  “What?” Mike said. He was frozen at the table, one eye on Maggie and his brother and the knife, the other on Jenny’s tits, which were spilling out of her thin silk top.

  “Stand up,” Jenny said.

  Mike did as he was told.

  He had not slept all night, but he’d showered and shaved at six a.m. and changed out of his Wasserman and Waddell New Partner Party suit and into blue and red plaid golf shorts, a blue Ralph Lauren polo, and blue, slip-on sneakers.

  “Stand still,” Jenny said, and she unclasped his belt and slid it off his shorts. Mike’s mouth fell open. “Last chance, Mother,” she said while removing Mike’s belt.

  “For Pretty Boy, maybe,” Maggie said. “Not for me.”

  And then the muscles tensed in Maggie’s arm as the message arrived from her brain to slice Danny’s throat wide open. But before she could move the blade, Jenny crossed the kitchen, slid Mike’s belt over Maggie’s head and around her neck, looped the notched end through the buckle, and pulled it tight, strangling her mother while moving her away from Danny.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Danny said to Jenny, and he thought he might have been shouting.

  Maggie dropped the carving knife, which clattered to the kitchen floor, and put her hands on the belt around her neck, struggling to get it off, battling to breathe. But Jenny pulled tight and tighter, and Maggie’s eyes bulged out.

  “I’m murdering my mother,” Jenny said.

  Maggie made terrible sounds and thrashed around the room, crashing into the kitchen table and whacking it into a chair, which then smashed hard into Mike’s balls. Mike screamed, grabbed his nuts, fell back against the wall, and slid down to his butt.

  “What?” Danny said to Jenny. Of all the things that had happened in the past week, Jenny Murdering Her Mother With Mike’s Belt was in the top tier of terrifying—and yet was still oddly arousing.

  “I’m murdering my mother,” Jenny said.

  “You can’t do that,” Danny said.

  “I’ve done it dozens of times,” Jenny said. “But then I feel guilty, and I can�
�t leave her dead. She’s my mother. Know what I mean?”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” Danny said. “You’ve killed her dozens of times? Why have you killed your mother dozens of times?” Then he looked over at Mike and said, “Are you hearing this?”

  Mike couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t even nod. He was watching Jenny strangle Maggie with a powerfully painful look on his face that was half about the violent death scene playing out in the kitchen and half about his balls, which he held with both hands, and also half about his dick, which was somehow getting hard.

  Maggie thrashed back and forth and then fell to her knees, her face turning blue, still fighting like the devil.

  “She gets to a point where I can’t control her, and then I kill her and then bring her back and then kill her and then bring her back and then kill her and then bring her back and then kill her and then bring her back,” Jenny said. “I probably shouldn’t be breathing life into things in the first place.”

  You think? Danny said to himself.

  Maggie was running out of steam. She leaned sideways and went from her knees to her ass. Her gurgling-gagging-wheezing noises became softer. Her hands fell away from the belt and jiggled at her sides. Jenny kept tightening and tightening.

  “Your mother might get to this point too,” Jenny said.

  “Where we can’t control her?” Danny said.

  “It happens,” Jenny said. “Sometimes faster than other times.”

  And then Maggie’s legs began their final-throes-of-death kick. Once, twice, three times.

  “So what do we do then?” Danny said.

  Maggie made a final gasp and died, blue in the face, eyes popping out of their sockets, tongue hanging out of her mouth, cow-print muumuu up around her thighs.

  Jenny held the belt a bit longer, just to make sure Maggie was dead, and then let her go. Maggie’s face fell to the kitchen floor.

  “It’s up to you,” Jenny said, moving to Mike and handing him his belt. “She’s your mother.”