by D. M. Guay
I hit the floor. Ow.
“Uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Chef moaned, excited for dinnertime.
The weight of his metal braces pressed down on my gut. The pressure made my head feel like a gigantic zit about the pop.
“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr.”
He opened wide and went for my cheek. I scrambled, running my hands along the floor for something, anything to defend myself. Angel rolled across my face, screaming, “Nooooo! Lloyd can't die a loser!”
Chef bit down hard on the plastic eight ball.
Crack.
Red fluid splurped out. Chef shook his head and ka-kacked, shaking angel loose, and came at me again. My hand came up clutching a shard of Zebra. The record, not the striped African horse. Chef's teeth snapped shut, barely missing my neck, as I sunk that bit of Zebra right into his eye. He bared his teeth and moved in for another bite. I clutched that piece of vinyl like it was a knife, and as he moved in for the kill, pushed it deeper into his eye socket.
Spluuuuuuuuuuuuuurpp.
Chef must have been really rotten, because dude. That record cut his eye socket like butter. It was squishy as a black banana. Yellowish fluid squirted out all over my face.
So gross. Definitely gonna barf this time.
“Uuuuuuuh?” Chef said, then collapsed on top of me. Dead. Like dead dead. For real this time.
Yay. We did it! But, gross. Because he was dripping eyeballs and brains all over me. I wiggled and bucked and kicked, trying to get out from under him, but he was just too heavy.
Angel eight ball rolled around on the floor next to me, hemorrhaging red.
“Help me! I'm stuck,” I said.
“Help you? Help me! Plug me up before I bleed out.” His triangle turned. And yes, his fluid was running low. “I told HR they needed to upgrade me to an app on your iPhone, but no, they didn't listen.”
Suddenly, the weight of Chef lifted off of me, no thanks to angel eight ball. Bubby's face appeared above me. He held Chef aloft on the tip of a claw arm.
“Gee. How nice of you to take a break from cocktail hour to help me!”
Bubby's eyes turned to angry slits. He dropped Chef. Right on top of me. Eow. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry! But Chef almost ate me!”
Bubby picked him up again, lifted him over the counter, and dropped him head first into Big Larry's open mouth. That plant glup glup slow slurped Chef in like a boa constrictor sucking in a pig. Until he got to the metal braces. Then he had to stop. The bottom half of Chef dangled unceremoniously out of his mouth while he and Bubby had a whole conversation in blurps and clicks—I mean, I'm guessing here—about how to eat around metal.
I sat up. DeeDee wrapped her arms around me.
“Are you all right?” She kept on squeezing me. Hello. Shorts tingling. You feel me? Although, this would be way better if we weren't covered in salt and zombie goop. “I'm so sorry. I froze, and it almost got us both killed. I'm so, so sorry.”
Okay. She was squeezing me super tight now. Like, ouch. Girl had some muscles. “You saved my life. You're my hero.”
Angel eight ball shot me one last message—“mysterious ways” with a thumb's up—before enough liquid leaked out that his triangle wouldn't turn anymore.
“If you died, I would have never forgiven myself.” Her body shook. She was crying. “I couldn't carry on if I lost you and Kevin and Chef all in one night.”
Kevin. I looked around at the shattered remains of his record collection. Zebra, shattered. That Stargazer album? Out of the sleeve, cracked, with a zombie boot print on it. His stupid rock-and-roll hour saved my life. I owed that roach. Big time. And now I'd never be able to pay him back.
DeeDee eventually let go and looked at me with sad gray eyes. Her eyeliner had streaked down her cheeks. She was even more beautiful. I rubbed some away with my thumb. She grabbed my hand and pressed it hard into her cheek. She was silent for a long moment, then said, “I vote we close the store and go home early. We're calling in sick tomorrow, too. Movies and pizza at my house instead. Sound like a plan?”
“Hell. Yeah.” Could anything sound better?
She stood up. I took her hands, and she pulled me up. Earl walked up behind her.
“Aaaah!” I screamed.
“Relax. He's fine,” she said. “I checked him. He's still breathing.”
Phew. Okay. “Hey man,” I said to Earl. “You need some more Funyuns? Another PBR?”
“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuh,” Earl said. Man, he was indecisive.
“I'll take that as a yes. I'll be right back.”
“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.”
I patted him on the shoulder, and he tried to bite my hand. That “uuuuuuuh” was an “uh oh.” Because that wasn't the moan of indecision. That was the moan of the recently zombified. Earl's eyes had gone milky. Dead. His skin was white as paper. His nose sniffed the air aggressively.
Poor Earl. He didn't deserve this.
“My bad,” DeeDee said. “He's not fine.”
And wouldn't you know it, while poor Earl stood there, sniffing around, adjusting to his new afterlife as a man-eating zombie, that tiny naked Ed McMahon fluttered down out of the heat vent and landed on his shoulder. He looked right at DeeDee and flipped her two birds.
“What's he mad about this time?” She planted her hands on her hips.
“The cotton candy.” Here we go again.
Ed McMahon tittered at us, then reached elbow deep into the collar of Earl's track suit. Ed looked confused. He held open the collar and fluttered in a circle around Earl's neck, titters growing louder and more irritated. Oh. I get it. He's looking for Earl's zombie containment collar, so he can screw us over. Again.
Earl sniffed the air around that tiny naked pixie as he fluttered around, digging in the tracksuit, looking for a collar that wasn't there. Which was all fine until he accidentally sat his butt crack directly on Earl's nose. In a flash, Earl's hand moved. He snatched that naked pixie by the wings. Tiny Ed kicked and yanked, trying to get away, but Earl grabbed his feet and held him out longways like a corn on the cob.
Earl opened wide and...
Crunch.
Holy. Hell.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Earl ate little Ed McMahon. Seriously. He crunched that pixie down bite by bite like he was eating corn on the cob, typewriter style.
DeeDee and I couldn't look away. It was that horrible. I had never seen anything so gory.
When Earl finished, all that was left was a pink skinless skeleton thing that looked like a Popeye's fried chicken leg. After Big Dan had had his way with it.Eek.
The only recognizable bit left was an uneaten section of belly. The mole. Still intact, billy goat hair still sticking out of it. Earl dropped it and moaned, like “mmmmmm.”
Wow. Guess Ed hit the spot.
“Uuuuuuuuuuh.”
Nope. Still hungry. Earl lunged at DeeDee, trying to bite her shoulder. I hit him with a left hook. His neck snapped, and he stumbled, but he wasn't down for long. He found his footing, turned to us and moaned. “Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.”
A black blur flashed before us.
Click.
Something snapped around Earl's neck. Green lights blinked, and he immediately went from “aaaaaarrrrrrgh” to “huuuuuuuuuuuuuh?”
I was just as confused. Earl now had a containment collar. It was on the end of a long black rod. A grabber, like the one DeeDee had given me earlier. And holding the other end of that grabber was a middle-aged white dude who looked at us like we were the stupidest people on earth.
“Do naht tell me you idjits let that dang plant eat my cleaning crew!” He jabbed his thumb at Big Larry, who still hadn't figured out how to suck Chef's legs out of his metal braces, and who for the record looked like he felt a little guilty about it. “Haw many times do I gotta tell yinz? Zahmbies dahn't grow ahn trees! Nah where's Kevin? That jagoff left me so many voice mails, he broke my phone!”
Chapter 29
That middle-aged white
dude was Steve. Yes. That Steve. From the plant. He had a clipboard packed with wrinkled, coffee-stained papers, and he flipped through them angrily as he outlined all of our shortcomings.
It was a long list.
“We just did a total rebuild a this store, and you idjits blew it up! AGAIN! Yinz couldn't keep the place together for two weeks? Twelve zahmbies destroyed. Breach of human interaction protocahl, a hunderd and seven times? That's a record. Violation of the Hades endangered species feeding guidelines, and ya let these two jagoffs drink half the stock in the beer cave. They're so drunk, they're pickled! Do they look like they can handle another rahnd?”
He pointed at Bubby, who girl-drink-drunk swayed as he poured eight bags of Smart Pop directly into his open mouth. Big Larry had tapped another keg. He sucked on the tube like it was a bendy straw, but he froze when Steve singled him out.
“We haven't gotten to the big one. Unauthorized zahmbie creation. Forty years without an incident. Forty years! Until you morons show up. I clearly got two tweedle dumbs.” He jabbed his clipboard at us, then at Earl. “But who's tweedle dee here?”
Earl stood next to us moaning softly, looking up and around, bewildered by his new and unexpected life after death. Poor Earl didn't know if he should eat us or do the robot.
“He's the cook from Monster Burger,” I squeaked.
“A cook, huh? Well, I hope you like him because he's yours nah. Yinz lucked into a new Chef. Of course, nah I gotta to take him in, get him juiced up, and bring him all the way back here. 'Til then, you two idjits are making your own damn lunches.” He flipped another paper on his clipboard. “Christ almighty! You had a work order to neutralize a patch a hungry grass in front a Monster Burger, and yinz didn't do it! You coulda prevented this whole thing. I dahn't know this moron.” He pointed at me. Man, he was pointy. “But I expect better from you.”
He pointed at DeeDee, and her cheeks flushed. She stared at the floor in shame.
“Hungry grass?” I whispered.
“Oh man. I should have known,” she said. “That explains a few things.”
“It does?”
Steve looked through the holes where the windows used to be at the smoldering wreckage of Monster Burger. “Well, the fire probably took care a the grass, but do it anyway, just to be sure. Yinz messed up enough for one night. It's about time you did something right. You still have your work order?”
He flipped through his clipboard. “Never mind. Take my copy and dahn't lose it.”
He ripped a piece of purple paper off the clipboard and thrust it at DeeDee. It had a Ziploc baggy containing a white mini bottle of holy water and a can of Murphy's Irish Stout taped to it. And...that's when an angry naked pixie chick plopped straight out of the heat vent, landed in Steve's hair, and started pulling on it like it was her job. Dude. That pixie did not read the room.
“What the? Pixies. Still? You let this go on for two weeks?” Steve yanked the pixie—and a handful of his own hair—off his head and smacked away the other pixies who were stupid enough to flutter around him. “Geesy Pete! This place is a zoo! I oughta send you two to employee boot camp.”
He flipped another page on the clipboard and huffed. “It says right here Henrietta Getley ordered yinz some pixie bait, and Dolly's delivered it. But you idjits didn't use it. What are we paying ya for? I'll be right back.”
Steve stomped through the shattered remains of the front door and over to a white utility van parked neatly in the spot on the far end of the two handicapped ones. Of course. Because this dude followed rules, even if the lot was empty. He opened the van door, pulled something out, then stomped inside carrying a—Barbie Dream House?
Well, this night just keeps getting weirder. It was just like the one my sister had when we were little, two stories of pink and teal plastic. It had lacy curtains and plastic molded furniture in a rainbow of optimistic colors. Steve sat it on the counter. Then, he carefully opened all the little doors and windows and rearranged the furniture.
Uh. Okay?
He opened the doughnut case and tonged out a pumpkin spice fritter. He broke a hunk off and crumbled it into pieces, which he sprinkled into the little bowls on the pink plastic dining room table. He dropped the rest of it whole and untouched in what could best be described as the house's living room. The pixies hovered around him, eyeballing that Barbie Dream house and that pumpkin spice fritter with a focused intensity, equal parts desire and determination. They wanted both. Bad. They tittered to each other, sizing up Steve and the house and me, as if they were debating.
When he was finished, Steve shook his head at us and stomped off to spew his ire all over Big Larry and a still visibly intoxicated Bubby. I mean, that jelly centipede was so drunk, he held onto the wall like he was gonna spin off the earth.
The second Steve stepped away, a pixie zoomed in close to the Barbie Dream House. A lady one. She peered in the window, caught sight of the closet full of Barbie clothes, and lost it. I mean, she went full on feeding frenzy. She dove into that closet and tore through it, yipping like a chihuahua on meth. Tiny pink silk dresses fluttered all around, glitter sparkling, until that naked pixie chick emerged, victorious, wearing only tiny pink plastic cha-cha heels, a pageant sash and a rhinestone tiara. No pants. At all. Okay, then.
She twirled around, and that was it. The rest of the pixies zoomed straight into that house. Some of them dug through the Barbie clothes, fighting with each other and grunting as they assembled their own equally weird outfits. None of them with underpants. Those pubes were loud and proud. Jesus. It's like they wanted the whole world to see their junk.
The rest of them dug into that doughnut like they hadn't eaten in a month.
Only one pixie had doubts. I'm pretty sure it was the jerk who tried to poke out my eyes with spicy Bugles. He flew circles around the house, flitting up and down, examining every inch of that plastic mansion. He must have decided it was safe, because he eventually flipped me the bird and flew in. All the doors and windows immediately snapped shut and locked, trapping the pixies inside. A couple of them pounded on the plastic window 'glass', but the rest didn't seem to mind. They were too busy playing dress up, testing out the mattress in the master bedroom (ahem), and chowing down on that doughnut.
Oh, man. We really were idjits. The doughnut was the pixie bait. Henrietta had ordered it for us. Duh.
“Works every time. Pixies love pumpkin spice. Dolly's delivered them for a reason, ya morons.” Steve shouted at us from across the room. “Nah get to work.”
Well, shit. I had a deep, sinking feeling that we could have avoided near death at the hands of our zombie cleaning crew if only Kevin didn't hate pumpkin spice. If we'd fed the pixies, maybe they wouldn't have been so mean. That's probably how Henrietta lured them into her purse.
DeeDee seemed unburdened by second-guessing. She examined her work order while scratching her head. “Hungry grass. I'm so stupid. It was obvious. Mr. Jimmy died on the grass under the Monster Burger sign, didn't he?”
Yes. Yes, he did. I nodded.
“That must have done it. See?” She showed me the paper.
It said, “Hungry grass has been detected in your sector. Please neutralize this threat immediately. DO NOT walk across the grass. It is magically contaminated. Symptoms of infection include insatiable hunger and unchecked desire for food.”
There was a drawing underneath of a beautiful meadow of tall grass with red flowers on the end. Wait. Those weren't flowers. Those were tiny mouths lined with spiky teeth. It was just like the picture in the Dante's Guide. Great. More hell plants. Right here on earth. What next? Possessed parsnips in the produce aisle?
“I may have this wrong, but I think any grass can become hungry grass if someone dies horribly on it. Or if there's a body buried under it that didn't get last rites. So, either Mr. Jimmy's death cursed it, or the grass was always cursed and he was keeping it contained somehow? We'll probably never know.”
Okay then.
“Either way, hungry
grass must be why the salt didn't cure the hunger. The new owner closed the drive-thru, so customers had no choice but to walk over the hungry grass. It was double magic. A spell on the food to control whoever ate it, and the hungry grass to keep them coming back for more so the spell didn't break.”
DeeDee looked out the window hole. “No salt? Hungry grass? Zombies? Whoever bought Monster Burger knew what they were doing. Caroline Ford Vanderbilt is definitely in over her head.”
“Yinz get moving.” Steve snapped his fingers at us. “This is your mess. Clean it up!”
He already had all the baby Larries in a line, directing them back into the beer cave like hell's school crossing guard. They used their leaves to pick up their pots, white roots poking through the drainage holes in the bottom as they tiptoed into the beer cave.
DeeDee examined the contents of the Ziploc and the diagram on her work order. “I'll right back. Good luck with Steve.”
She moved and her boot bumped angel eight ball, who lay motionless in a pool of red liquid that looked suspiciously like blood. “Oh. He doesn't look so good. You might want to patch him up.”
I picked angel up. The triangle, red and crusty, lay silent in a dry ball. If he hadn't hopped into Chef's mouth, I might be halfway to zombie by now.
“Hey. Idjit. Stop patty caking and get a mop!” Steve barked at me. He pointed at the pile of boots on the floor—feet still in them—and to the sticky puddle of Larry goop and zombie guts in front of the slushy machines.
Great. Guess I get the fun job. DeeDee was already out the door, halfway across the parking lot on her way to Monster Burger.
“And you. Fatty thousand legs.” Steve pointed at Bubby, who was in the pharmacy section eating whole bottles of aspirin, trying to stave off a hangover. “Make yer giant meat body useful and help me poosh this pumpkin through the door.”
