by D. M. Guay
I sat up and grabbed the Morton's out of my holster. I was about to shake it on Big Juicy, but Bubby had taken care of it. Big Juicy sucked on the salted rim of one of Bubby's margaritas, looking a bit confused about how he'd ended up speared on the claw of a giant hell centipede for cocktail hour. And, just my luck, that's the moment Big Juicy spit out a paper clip, fry eaten, spell broken.
So I turned the shaker on the dudes chewing on my legs. I shook that thing, and the salt rained down like snowflakes at Christmas.
The beefy jogger stopped chewing on me and sat up. He had half a french fry hanging out of his mouth. Then the guy in the camo hat stopped, sunk his finger into his mouth, and pulled out a paper clip. He dropped it and chewed up whatever was left in there.
The bald guy in tweed was more determined. He lunged at me, and I shoved a handful of fries straight into his mouth. Dude. Those had totally been on the floor, but he didn't seem to mind. He crunched them down to nothing in less than a minute. Then looked at me like, “Who are you?”
None of my assailant were trying to eat me any more. They sat, looking around as if they were stunned. DeeDee stood on the counter, pouring salt into the open mouths of the crowd around her. Big Larry had righted his fallen babies, taken their place in the hell hedge, and tried once again to separate the possessed from the de-possessed.
“Hungeee. Eeeeeeeet.” The moans came from behind me. I turned around, salt shaker in one hand, wad of mooshy floor french fries in the other. All the zombies Bubby had knocked away from me lay in a pile at the end of aisle five, confused and moaning on top of the broken shelves and bottles of motor oil. I sprung into action. Well, okay. I scrambled. I am chubby with a history of minimal thigh work outs. I don't really spring. But I was over those fiends, shaking my salt shakers into their mouths like I was shaking maracas in Gloria Estefan's back-up band, in under a minute.
“Good work, kid!” Kevin crawled across the chubby red-headed lady's face, knocking her rhinestone glasses right off. He dutifully shook his salt shaker into her mouth. Until he caught a glimpse down her V-neck sweater. “Wow. This one's got a face like a foot but she's smuggling watermelons. Check out these cans, kid.”
“Are you serious? Zombies!”
“Yeah yeah.” Kevin shrugged. He hopped onto the back of another guy's head, a dad jeans dude who reached out for me and kicked his legs, obviously still determined to eat me. Kevin scuttled down the side of his face, picked a french fry off his back and shoved it in the dude's mouth. “Larry! We got more over here!”
Bubby had dropped Big Juicy on the floor. He lay there, beached like a whale. He stared at me—face blank as a sheet of paper—as a red vine wrapped around him and dragged him backward. Satan's hedge parted, Larry yanked Big Juicy through, and the hedge closed up again.
One by one the fiends stopped clawing at us. They stood around, staring blankly, confused. One by one, the Larries' vine-fence parted, pulling them into the VIP de-possessed section in the candy aisle.
The store was absolutely packed with people, but they'd stopped moaning and they'd stopped trying to eat us. For the most part they milled around, looking confused. The place was wrecked, of course. The front door had broken out completely, frame and all. Aisle six was toppled. And the recently de-possessed had nearly eaten the candy aisle bare. They were ankle deep in empty wrappers. It seems like we'd only broken half the curse. They were still hungry, just not for human meat.
I spotted Big Juicy stuffing a whole pack of beef jerky in his mouth. And I mean stuffing. With his fists. They were all still eating. A grandma in a powder blue cardigan pounded bottle after bottle of Strawberry Quik. And the beefy jogger with the lifetime doughnut ban? He was on his knees in front of the doughnut case when a Larry vine got hold of his leg. He shoved two devil's food cake chocolate frosted in his mouth, double-fisted, as Larry dragged him across the floor.
But we'd done it. We'd made it through.
DeeDee marched around the store barking orders, in crisis management mode. “Kevin. I'm going in back to get more rotten meat for the baby Larries.”
Kevin stood on an end cap, directing the Larries like one of those runway traffic guys with the orange light cones at the airport, while sipping one of Bubby's margaritas. Bubby helped Kevin sort through the remaining people to figure out who still needed de-possessed.
My nerves were frayed, on high alert, but my body felt like it'd been trampled by buffalo. My coveralls were soaked with saliva, and most of the french fry lures had bent or been pulled off. Only a few dangling, smooshed fries remained. But we had to finish this. So I wandered through the store, salt shakers ready, trying to be useful.
When Bubby blurped down the housewares aisle, I found a guy under his tail, lying on his stomach, wiggling.
“Uh, you okay, dude?”
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeet! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeet!” The jerk chomped down on my ankle.
“Aaaaaaahhh! Zombie!” I popped that shaker into action and salted my leg like it was a pretzel. But that grizzly zombie kept right on chewing, I tried to pull my leg away, but he had a death grip on me. He scooched right along with me.
“Mmmm. Mmmmm. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
Aw, man. He wasn't biting me, was he? Nope. No, he wasn't. This was kind of worse. His mouth was wide open, and he rubbed his tongue around on my ankle, licking up salt. Jesus. He was french-kissing my ankle bone.
“That's the most action you've had in a while, isn't it kid?” Kevin stood next to me. “Larry. We got another one over here!”
Larry dragged the lascivious licker away, and he finally let go of my leg.
Kunk. Kunk. Kunk. The door to the stockroom kicked open and Chef stomped out, metal mecha-braces scraping through leftover zombie parts and Big Larry afterbirth. He pushed a cart heaped with rotten meat, and scooped out portions to each open hungry mouth in the row of tired, slightly wilted baby Larries.
DeeDee stepped out of the door behind him. She looked at me and smiled. My heart skipped a beat. She was a vision, a Venus in french fry-baited coveralls. She walked over to me and said, “Are you all right?”
I nodded, and was just about to say something romantic, like “I will be all right as long as you are safe and alive, my beloved!”
When she began spraying my coveralls with cooking oil and shaking a can of salt over me and said, “Good. Take a bucket of fries and go save Doc and Henrietta.”
Chapter 26
There is no creepier experience than being outside, alone, at night, when the only sounds are zombie moans and the rattling of glass as their fists pound on windows, trying to break in so they can eat you. Nothing. Creepier.
If there was a silver lining to this turd of an evening, it was that there weren't many zombies left outside. Apparently, almost all of them had chosen to descend on Demon Mart, so they'd already been salted and potatoed into submission. Maybe whoever created them hated me and DeeDee more. Or, maybe we were more appetizing than a really buff, gruff Pawn shop owner with a vaguely Caribbean accent and a teeny eighty-year-old woman who hawked dashboard Jesuses all day. Who can say?
There were maybe fifteen burger zombies in front of Doc's shop. They all had their hands up, like they were doing the wave at a high school basketball game. It took me a minute to figure out they were reaching for Doc, who stood on the edge of his flat roof with a bright green T-shirt cannon that said “Canton Crocodiles” on the side.
“Hello, New man!” He called to me. “How was your night?”
He had to be kidding, right?
“Do you need help?” I raised my bucket of french fries and immediately felt stupid.
“You are funny, new man.” He laughed. And when I say laugh, I mean bellowed, deep and loud, from the bottom of his belly. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Fatty boom boom, help me. Priceless. Now go. I will save the old woman. Jesus Saves shares a roof!”
My cheeks went hot. He just called me fat. And laughed in my face. And embarrassed me in front of all these people.
“Don't be too u
pset. They're zombified. They won't remember.” Angel eight ball was triangle up in my bucket of fries. “But look at those biceps. You should ask Doc where he works out. If you were stronger, you could have rolled that fat guy off you.”
“Where the hell have you been? You hung me out to dry back there.”
“What was I supposed to do? I work from home!”
Doc fired his Canton Crocodiles cannon. Sparkling yellow crystals showered down all over the people trying to break into the pawn shop. One by one, the crowd lowered their hands and looked around, confused. Doc moved to the corner, shooting crystals off the other side of the building above the Jesus Saves Discount Religious Supply Store.
Huh. He really did have it covered. Nothing for me to do out here. I turned around, and three little old ladies with white cotton ball hair and pastel embroidered sweatshirts grabbed me.
“Eeeeeeeet.”
What? Oh shit! I dropped the bucket.
One granny opened wide and sunk her teeth into my collarbone. Because that's about as high up as she could reach. The other two dug right in. One bit the nearest love handle, the other sunk her dentures right into my butt cheek. “Aaaaaaaaah!”
It hurts! It hurts! I pushed, but couldn't get them off me. I would have punched them, but dude. They were someone's grandma! I spun, but the grannies spun right around with me. They clamped those teeth down harder and held on for dear life. Man. Poligrip really works!
Ow ow ow ow ow! OMG, they had me. Death by grandmas. And I didn't even see it coming.
Rip.
Uh oh. The coveralls. My only defense. The collarbone grandma stumbled backward. A strip of fabric hung from her mouth. She straightened up, locked eyes with me, sucked that fabric in between her sparkling white dentures, chewed it up and swallowed it. She stared at me, blinked a few times, then said, “Oh dear. What did I just eat? Something isn't agreeing with me.” She rubbed her belly. “Gloria? Edna? Do you have any Tums in your purse?”
One set of teeth, then another, eased up. Then I felt a tiny squeeze on my butt cheek.
“Ooh. Nice tushy. Call me sometime, handsome.” Edna winked at me. She smiled and the ring of salt on her lips glistened in the red glow of the Demon Mart sign.
The love handle biter just looked around, confused.
Okay, then. Awkward. But the salt worked!
“Sorry dear,” Gloria patted my arm and the three of them waddled off into the darkness, arguing about where they parked the car.
Well then.
“Number seven! Number seven.” A shout came from behind me.
I turned around. Earl staggered across the Demon Mart parking lot, his tracksuit smudged with dirt and ripped at one knee. He held one arm across his belly as he moved, like he was injured.
“Earl! Are you all right?” He had no idea how relieved I was to see him. “I thought you were dead!”
Or worse.
Earl panted, trying to catch his breath. “Why do you have a whole bucket of french fries?”
“Long story. What happened? The phone went dead.”
“The new guys went nuts! They attacked me. It sounds crazy, but it's like they were trying to eat me or something. I barely got out of there. It has to be drugs, man. The dudes never slept, never took breaks, never stopped working. You can only do that with a little chemical assistance, know what I mean? They must have had too much. Street drugs are crazy these days. Remember that guy in the news that ate a dude's face? I was afraid I was gonna be that dude!”
I didn't have the heart to tell him he almost was that dude. I gave him a quick once over, looking for bites. I didn't see any blood. Phew.
“The zom—the new guys. Where are they now?”
He pointed at Monster Burger. “Still inside. I snuck out the back and locked them in. They work hard, but they aren't too bright. Look at 'em, banging on the glass. They haven't even tried the knobs.”
I made the mistake of looking. Gulp. His undead coworkers? Yeah. They were pounding on the front door, trying to get out. And they were the kind of zombies you couldn't cure with salt.
Lightning cracked above the restaurant.
“That's weird, right?” Earl watched the sky flash green, yellow, then blue. “I called the electric company, but they said it was fine on their end.”
Um, no. Definitely not fine. None of this was fine. “We better get inside.”
Just then, a very expensive European sports car squealed out of the Monster Burger parking lot and sped down the street. Nearly plowing down the newly de-zombied customers. “Slow down! You almost hit those people!” Earl shook his fist. “That's the new boss lady. She doesn't give two craps about anyone. Not like Mr. Jimmy. I miss him so much.”
New boss? It wasn't Caroline. It was a brunette. I didn't recognize the car.
I had bigger problems than Caroline Ford Vanderbilt. I had a wrecked Demon Mart and some for-real zombies trying to claw their way out of Monster Burger. “Come on, man. Let's go.”
This wasn't over.
I put my arm under Earl and helped him to the door. I wasn't quite sure how to explain what he was going to see inside. A giant blue hell centipede sipping margaritas. A bunch of meat-eating ambulatory plants who'd drained five kegs between them. Upended shelves and recently de-possessed living zombies? But I had no choice. He was injured. I couldn't leave him outside.
When we stepped back in, DeeDee was working the cash register like a fiend, barely keeping up with the rush. The Monster Burger customers had formed a line snaking all through the store, their arms piled high with Slim Jims and King Dons, Cheetos and Honey Buns. Seriously. Armloads. Each and every one of them.
On the plus side, the Monster Burger customers seemed to be completely de-zombified. No one tried to eat me or french kiss my leg. But clearly we didn't manage to cure their underlying hunger.
The baby Larries had moved to their usual spot by the Spanish fly slushy machine, and tried their best to hold stone still, not moving so much as a root, now that the store was filled with reasonably sentient customers. Big Larry and Bubby stood in the back corner, swaying slightly, sipping margaritas when the humans weren't looking. And sharing a keg. Dude. Each one of them had a clear plastic tube curling into their mouths like twisty straws. Well, at least someone was having fun.
“Wow. Your Halloween decorations are still up? They're off the hook. Those animated inflatables look real.” Earl's eyes went round as silver dollars as he sized up Bubby and Big Larry. Then he grabbed me and whispered, “Listen man. I gotta tell you something. This is gonna sound crazy, but I saw Ed McMahon in the restaurant. He was tiny, but it was definitely him. I don't know how he shrunk down that small, or came back from the grave, but he sicked my buddies on me. He told them to attack me. You gotta believe me.”
Oh. I believed him all right. I glanced up at the heat vent over the front door. Sure enough, a row of tiny hands hung through the grate, shooting me middle fingers, planning their next attack. “God, I hate pixies.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
The little Larries had blocked the door to the back, so I had no choice but to sit Earl down behind the counter next to the magazine rack. He flipped through the car magazines. “Look at this crap. They haven't made a good sports car since The IROC-Z.”
“What's he doing here? We got enough problems!” Kevin pushed his tiny broom around on the floor behind DeeDee, sweeping up french fries. “Look at this place! I ain't got time for loafers. You two got time to lean, you got time to clean. If you hadn't noticed, the cleaning crew's permanently out to lunch!”
I pretended to be fishing around for something under the counter, blocking Kevin from Earl's view, so I could lean over and whisper, “the pixies freed the Monster Burger zombies. They tried to eat Earl.”
Kevin stopped sweeping and stared at Earl. “Great. Just great. Did he get bit? Get the axe and cut his head off. We ain't taking chances. I'm not going zombie, you hear?”
I looked a
t him. He looked at me. “That last time didn't count.”
“We're not cutting his head off. He's fine!”
Kevin looked Earl up and down, then shot me some side eye. “He gets the cold sweats, he's headless, got it? Are the zombies at the restaurant contained?”
“He locked them in, but they're trying really, really hard to get out.”
He sighed, then scuttled up the cabinet, pulled out his tiny binoculars, and peered out the window for a good long time. “Well, shit. Looks like I gotta man up.”
“But you're a roach.”
He shook his head and scuttled off.
“What are we gonna do?” I yelled after him. “Anything I can do to help?”
“If you have a big Band-Aid back here, I could use it,” Earl said.
“What?” I spun around. Silly me. Earl thought I was talking to him. “Oh yeah. Right.”
I rooted around until I found the first aid kit, a little white box with a red cross on it. Dude. You'd think we'd have a bigger box working in a place like this.
“Can you give me a hand with this?” Earl rolled up the greasy sleeve of his tracksuit. There was an angry red wound on his wrist.
My guts sunk. Oh, no. Earl. Was that?
“One of the jerks bit me. Crazy, right? If you want to settle a beef, fine. Use your fists. What kinda weirdo bites another man?”
Earl filched an alcohol swab pack out of the box, but struggled to open it.
“Here. Let me help you.” And I did. My heart sank as I patted his wound as gently as I could. Earl flinched. It had to hurt. I could see the teeth marks, and the start of the raging purple infection snaking out from the edges. Not. Good. Jesus Christ. Poor Earl. What were we gonna do?
“Thanks, man.”
“Of course.” I tried really hard to keep calm as I put a big swab of cotton over the bite and bandaged it as best as I could. I put the kit away and spotted a handful of mini bottles of Wild Turkey under the counter. Kevin's stash. “It's been a crazy night. You want a drink? You like whiskey?”
