2 Death Rejoices

by A. J. Aalto

  “My bad,” I cried. “Run!”

  “Where?”

  I couldn't think. Raw, stropping panic stole what little wit I might have once commanded. It moved quickly, and in seconds it was on us; it swiped at Golden. She had frozen in place, grabbing her bag of pretzels in the crook of her left arm to hold it like a security blanket, aiming the Glock one-handed with her right hand.

  I ran forward and kicked the zombie in the crotch.

  The zombie went “ derp,” and I lost a flip-flop to the fursuit.

  “He's got no feelings, why did I kick him in the junk?” I shouted at no one in particular — to the yard, to the Goddess, to Golden — but if I didn't know, they probably didn't, either. I hooked Golden by the elbow and screamed, “Go, go, go!”

  As I hurtled to the house behind her, the ground snuck up on me and I promptly face-planted on the lawn, skidding both knees in the grass. I lurched up the porch steps and threw myself into the cabin after Golden, slid on the rug, and went down on my knees again, hitting the hall floor but feeling nothing in my panic. My sweat-slick palm slipped on the linoleum and made wet, sloppy noises as I scrambled for purchase.

  “Un-invite him!” Golden yelled.

  “That doesn't work with zombies! Zombies don't need permission to break into your house!” I didn't have time to point out that he hadn't been invited in the first place. I am obviously a terrible hostess to the slavering undead. There weren't even any finger sandwiches, and I wasn't about to provide fingers.

  As if to prove it, the zombie roared into the hall on our heels. I vaulted up in a mad panic. Slapping the bowl of apples off the kitchen table onto the floor to trip the zombie, I tore around the table to put it between us, my single flip-flop slapping the floor loudly.

  It nearly went down on the apples; one hip shot to one side as its balance wavered.

  “Silverware!” I shouted at Golden, pointing at the chest above the microwave. Her hands were a jangling blur as she dropped the bag of pretzels, holstered her gun, plucked out several pieces of silverware at random and started chucking them in my direction. I dodged butter knives haphazardly slung at my head and snatched at something sailing toward my face, jerking back. A two-pronged pickle fork.

  The zombie said, “huuuurgl-raaawr” and darted forward against the corner of the table, shaking it hard enough to dislodge the Coke bottle full of roses, which took a rolling bump off the edge. It came at me like an aged uncle wanting a hug at a family reunion. Saying a prayer, I lunged forward like a fencer, thrust my ungloved hand forward, and jammed the pickle fork towards the open maw, angled up into its soft palate. The tines sank in with a meat-piercing sound, a wet crunch, effectively propping its mouth open.

  “Salt shaker,” I cried, pointing to the back of the stove, knowing it wouldn't be enough. My rock salt was with Batten, having been transferred to his kit. I flicked the nubby stopper out of the bottom anyways and palmed the salt. “Pretzel bag!”

  Golden blinked, uncomprehendingly, at the bag still clutched in her left hand.

  “Gimme the goddamned pretzels!”

  I flung my scant handful of salt at the zombie's mouth, but spattered ineffectively off its face. This wasn't going to work if it kept wobbling around, trying to lurch at me. I felt behind me on the counter, and my fingers brushed the butcher block.

  A horrible idea tickled my mind; before I could get too grossed-out to take advantage of it, I snatched two steak knives, dove at the floor, log-rolled to the zombie's sloughing shins, and slammed a knife as hard as I could through one putrid bare foot and into the linoleum floor. I tried not to hear the knife sink through soft tissue with a spluh-thunk and did the same thing to the other foot.

  While the zombie's rot-slicked tongue worked around the pickle fork, slurping and clucking, I rolled away again, jumped up to take the pretzel bag from Golden, and tried to shovel the pretzels out of the bag without spilling the pile of salt cubes rattling around at the bottom. Zombie Roger's jaws made uneven headway moving down the fork, driving the tines deeper. Something brown spurted in a foul fountain from its mouth. My best guess was that the fork had hit the nasal passages, and the world's nastiest sinus infection had just drained all over my linoleum. My last case saw my kitchen strewn with ghoul scum; zombie phlegm was not an improvement.

  I knew what I had to do, but knowing wasn't the same as doing, or doing well, not without getting myself killed or infected. Tipping the pretzel bag up, I aimed it down the chute of the zombie's forked-open mouth, just as its left foot tore free of the knife with a fleshy tearing sound I may never forget.

  The zombie hissed pretzel breath at me, but that was all I'd accomplished. So much for salt. Who came up with these half-assed ideas for what works against the undead, anyway? If I get out of this alive, I'm gonna punt them right in the squidgy bits.

  I tipped the last bit of the salt into my palm then flung it at the target of its open mouth. Half of the salt bounced off his goo-slicked teeth and shot back in my eye.

  “Not working. Boathouse, boathouse!” I pointed hard out the back door. Thinking back to Cosmo and the kitty litter, I added as I ran after her, “I really need to get a cat!”

  While Zombie Roger worked at getting its right foot free, we flew through my cheerful, sun-dappled yard, hands out like two kids racing through a meadow; to anyone watching, it might have looked like a fun game of tag. I kicked off my other flip flop as we sprinted into the relative safety of the boathouse, slammed the door, threw the lock, and pressed bodily against the door.

  “You all right?” she panted.

  “No problem.” I squeezed my watering eyes shut against the sting of the salt. “It's fun. Like building a sand castle. In my eyes. But with pretzel crumbs.”

  Wham! Our bodies rocked off the door with the impact, our bare feet skidding on the dirt floor.

  Golden let out an alarmed yip but set her brow to “serious,” dug in, and leaned harder. She rolled her head sideways against the door to look at me. I couldn't believe her wig hadn't even come askew. “Can't you kill him?”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn't dream of attempting it without some bitchin’ kung fu sound effects and a Footloose dance number. I haven't even had time for a training montage; I just run through the fucking forest with Sheriff Hood and fall on my ass.”

  “His as good as Batten's?”

  I gaped at Golden; I couldn't believe someone besides me was having pervy thoughts while we were seconds from death. “I haven't conducted a close examination.” I grinned.

  “Don't you wield magic, witch-woman?”

  “I don't practice butt-scoping magic! I have eyes for that.”

  “No, I mean, for getting rid of the zombie. Like, spells to hide, or make it fuck off, or calling for help?”

  “Not exactly. ‘Drawing good luck’ magic? Sure. ‘Paralyzed by goofy hand gestures’ magic? Not so much.”

  The zombie crashed against the boathouse door, once again jolting us. In response, I made valiant attack noises that my fists had no intention of following through on.

  “Aren't you going to do something?” she demanded.

  There was a lawn care pamphlet on the potting shelf nearby. I leafed through it on the off chance I might find a recipe to combine two cans of Turtle Wax, a box of Miracle Gro and a refurbished leaf blower into the world's deadliest anti-zombie weapon.

  “The good news is, it's hot out,” I said. “Real hot. It's going to bloat as it putrefies and eventually explode. Or the guts will leak out the anus.”

  “That is good news,” she drawled.

  “More good news: I have popsicles in the freezer.”

  Her hands patted her pockets and holster for cell phone or gun, finding neither. She stared unhappily down at her goth-black toenails. “We can't let him catch us holed-up like this, weaponless, in bare feet.”

  She didn't have to say who, or why. I nodded. “What would you rather do? Go out there and risk getting eaten or zombified, or eat popsicles and wait for d
ecomposition to bloat the guy until he bursts like a rancid meat balloon?”

  She looked like she was considering her options.

  “You know, if Batten ever took me seriously, I'd have grappling hooks to get us out this window and onto the roof, and a hang glider to get us off the roof and over to the other side of the lake to safety,” I continued, although this plan was only now occurring to me. “Boy, I hope he figures that out so he can make my eulogy apologetic.”

  “So that's it? We're just going to stand here bracing the door until he breaks it down and eats us?”

  “Infects us. Remember, that's the scary part.” I pointed at the freezer. “If you want to face it, be my guest. It's my day off. You're on deck. Before you go out there, hand me a popsicle.”

  “Hey, I just got out of the hospital. They shaved all my hair off.” Her natural hot-streak flared, and her cheeks turned pink in response. “They locked me in ICU. Those damn pretzels were the first solid food I've had in two days, so back off, dick whore.”

  I frowned. “Wait just a minute. A crack whore has sex for crack. What would a dick whore have sex for? Dick? That's just a slut, stupid.”

  Golden's eyes blazed and she got in my face. “You're right, it is, dick whore.”

  “I hardly ever get sex! How am I a dick whore?”

  The zombie slammed the boathouse again and we both quickly resumed our propping positions.

  “Point taken!” she said. “Stop yelling ‘dick whore’!”

  “There's a zombie dentist in a chimp suit outside my boathouse and I am going to die! I can yell whatever I want. Dick whore! Dick whore!”

  “Fine.” She closed her eyes, squeezed them hard. Her wig had finally slipped a bit from the last jolt, but I wasn't angry enough at her to point it out. “I guess we're going to be here a while.”

  “Hand me a popsicle, and I'll update you on the science you missed.”

  “What color?” she asked with a defeated sigh.

  “Green,” I replied. “Please.”

  My gloves were in the front yard. My cell phone was on a lounge chair. So was hers. Her gun was in the lawn somewhere; one little zombie and she completely forgot her FBI training, not that I could blame her.

  Harry was at rest. Wes was a bat. Viktor was an ogre statue, and if Harry was to be taken seriously, probably a naked ogre statue with its tongue sticking out. Chapel was unconscious with corpsepox. The other FBI guys — Batten, de Cabrera and Dr. Edgar — were at the fish camp with the CDC, maybe all the way on the other side of the lake with the K9 unit. After I brought Golden up to speed on the types of zombies we were dealing with, and our pitiful lack of real-world knowledge, I had lots of time to suck green Popsicles and think about stuff. Important stuff, like what if all of Vin Diesel's roles were given to Tootie from Facts of Life? Ass kickin’ on roller skates, that's what.

  I'd monitored the door while Golden ransacked Harry's new Ferrari and borrowed a cigarette from a pack in his glove box. She said she was an ex-smoker, but added to that a resounding “fuck it,” with which I wholeheartedly agreed.

  “Hey, Golden?”

  Zombie Roger slammed the door. She hurried back and we tensed, pressing our backs against it. The zombie made a gurgling noise, which was followed by a soft, wet splat that might have been flesh falling off its rapidly decomposing body; the sound was fairly repulsive and the smell was worse, but we'd been subjected to both for over half an hour, so neither of us dry-heaved this time.

  “Might as well call me Heather,” she replied, alternating between the cigarette and her Popsicle.

  “Hey, Heather? Did you see a Bluetooth headset? I didn't.”

  She saw my point immediately. “This zombie was bitten, not raised.”

  “Type C, contagious.”

  “Right, and I didn't see any electronics. Not controlled.”

  We sucked our Popsicles in silence while we considered the matter, staring into the gloom of the boathouse. Scant light filtered through the dusty window pane of the single window, high above the little chest freezer. Pink webs clung to splintery wood at the sill.

  “It must have been wandering since leaving the fish camp,” I said.

  “Because why would a bokor send it here, right?” she reasoned. “A lot of work, just to kill the investigators of this case, when he could shoot us instead.”

  “I'm highly shoot-able,” I agreed.

  “Or avoid us.”

  “That's certainly worked well for him so far.”

  “So why did Roger leave in the first place?”

  “Woke up hungry but disoriented. They all do.”

  “Where has it been, and who did it eat when it was wherever it's been?” she asked with dread, and we stared in wide-eyed horror at each other.

  My Popsicle failed, dropping in halves from its stick to plop on the dirt floor. We stared at it because it was easier to be upset about Popsicle Fail than think about how, right now, somewhere around Shaw's Fist, there could very well be other victims, and they would be infected. The CDC said they had evacuated the three couples that had year-round cottages and were permanent residents, but had there been anyone accidentally left behind?

  The zombie punched the door; what followed was the scrape of broken fingernails punctuated by wet choking noises.

  “It's not exploding, doctor,” she said impatiently. “I thought you said it'd explode.”

  “It's not hot enough today, I guess. It must be bloating by now. It's been dead for two days. Even factoring in the Revenant Coefficient…” I sucked flavored ice and tried to do the math, but got tired and gave up.

  “Don't you know the answers, somewhere inside that brain?”

  “You mean inside the shredded and discarded husk that was my functional intellect?” I thought about it, wiping my sweaty hands on my cut-offs. “Nope.”

  “Can't you use your Talents?”

  “Sure, I can tell you how Zombie Roger is feeling.” I shrugged and waved my hands in a sarcastic mystical pantomime, throwing in some oogly-googly eyes for effect. “Hungry. Does that help?”

  I watched her open the last red Popsicle, and wished I had one last cookie before dying, or one last nibble of Hot-Ass Batten; flavored ice treats were a really poor substitute for cookies and sex. For lack of anything better to say, I offered, “Dude has bitchin’ hair. You know, for someone recently deceased.”

  “And un-deceased. Don't forget that part.”

  “It's so hard to get the part right,” I demonstrated on my scalp with a combing motion at the forehead, the only part of Kelly's head that was still present. “Especially when your head's bashed open like that.”

  “What if we made a run for it?”

  I shook my head sadly. “Type C. Berserker. The byproducts of yersinia repens oil them up, makes them really flexible, fast. You saw how quick it was. They're not stiff like the raised-by-the-Vodou zombies.”

  “Right.” She wilted. “And it rots faster. And is hungrier.”

  “Definitely wants to make flesh-kabobs out of your face,” I agreed. “Also definitely okay with eating face-kabobs raw or cooked.”

  “Hmm, cooked.” Golden lit one cigarette off the tip of the other and stuck it between my lips. “Cooked. Hold this for a second.”

  I sucked on the cigarette and coughed madly, watching her with interest through non-smoker tears and an eye-stinging haze.

  She swiped a jam jar off the dusty shelf. It was half-filled with nails; she emptied these out on the dirt floor. Then, with a tear, she shredded strips off an old canvas life jacket and jammed it in the mouth of the jar. Harry had a small can of gasoline for the lawnmower. She filled the jar, crammed some more canvas on top, and doused the end of the strips.

  She took the lit cigarette from me and touched it to the rag, causing a lick of flame. She stuck the cigarette back in the surprised O of my lips then opened the boat house door and pitched the jar out.

  The zombie gnashed its teeth at us for a split second before she slammed t
he door in its face. She put one hand on my head and shoved me into a crouch.

  Ducking beside me, she dragged and exhaled as the makeshift bomb went fwish-foomp-crack! The explosion rocked the door on its hinges and showered the cedar planks with flaming, searing chunks of spoiled meat. The near-silence that followed was offset by soft, crispy cooking sounds and the hammering of my heart.

  “You made that look easy.”

  Golden accepted this with a smile, and puffed air up to blow her bangs out of her eyes.

  “You just became my idol,” I told her. “Super-serious.”

  Pinching her cigarette between her teeth, she announced, “Cooked.”

  The explosion wasn't particularly dramatic, not nearly as fantastic as the propane tank explosion had been, but the plume of smoke must have caused quite the uproar at the fish camp; it only took a few minutes for the sheriff's department and the FBI to hit my property. Some of them even had wailing sirens, which was a nice touch. Golden fetched her gun, shoes, and both our cell phones, and she and I waited under the shade of the tree in the backyard, her smoking Harry's cigarette, me finishing a blue Popsicle, both of us staring at smoking zombie chunks and a blackened chimp suit.

  There was no Bluetooth headset on Roger Kelly's remains that we could see, but that made sense now that I thought about it: no brains, no ears, no control. This one had been wandering around the lake and — unfortunately or fortunately; I wasn't yet sure — stumbled upon us. It wasn't part of the bokor's grand scheme, whatever it was. Probably.

  Batten glared at Agent Golden but squared off against me. He took in my bikini top, grass-stained knees, and bare feet with a brand of critical scrutiny that I found more than a little insulting. I might have had blue-green lips from the Popsicles, but that gave him no excuse to judge me. His voice was scary-quiet. “What the fuck did you do now, nitwit?”

  I hadn't done a damned thing. I ran away like a wiener, which would have made Hood proud; I tried to salt the zombie's mouth after wedging it open and skewering its feet to my kitchen floor, which should have worked, and should have pleased everyone, because I can be a badass; and then I huddled in the boathouse, which should have pleased Batten. I felt like sharing none of this with him while his jaw was doing its irate clench-unclench routine and his chest was rising and falling like he'd run a marathon.