Services Rendered

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Eat dirt, zombie!” She screamed and snarled, then swung the axe again with all her might, her lips drawn back in a grimace. “Take that for eating my thoroughbred horse!” Another blow of the axe knocked a head clean off of one of the slavering undead, and with a cool backstroke, barely even shifting her weight, she brought the weapon up into the crotch of another moaning zombie, which made him moan much more loudly. “And that’s for my dog!”

  Stumbling zombies collided with her pickup, arms outstretched, fingers hooked into claws. They closed in, oblivious to the whirling weapon. The sharpened steel head made wet hollow sounds as it impacted the bones, chopped shoulders, split ribcages down the middle. “And that’s for my dad! You ate him right in the barn!”

  Vengeance and adrenaline work well together, but the zombies kept coming, suffering from relentless munchies. Showing no common sense, Robin ran forward shouting, “Stop that! Leave her alone.”

  McGoo and I each drew our pistols. My .38 was fully loaded, and he had his police special revolver along with his police extra special revolver loaded with silver bullets. “Could we lend a hand, Miss?”

  The young woman swung the axe again, but missed, which threw her off balance and gave the zombies a chance to lurch in. Two grabbed at her arm, tore her flannel shirt.

  It was time to open fire. Given my preference, I’d rather not kill zombies—some of my best friends are zombies—but these weren’t at all sociable. The creep who had torn the poor girl’s shirt leered toward her with his mouth gaping to show his rotting teeth ready to clamp down on her arm. My first shot splattered his head. Brains and bits of skull spurted all over her face and the front of her shirt, but she didn’t have time to show distaste because a second zombie was pressing her back against the truck, ready to rip out her throat. McGoo shot the second zombie.

  The rest of the horde didn’t mind. If they were starving for human flesh, that just meant a bigger portion for each of them.

  Then the situation got worse, because the zombies realized that Robin and McGoo also smelled very tasty. Several shamblers turned and began lurching toward my two human friends, and McGoo had his hands full just defending Robin, while she looked around for a spare axe. He emptied his police special, then started using the more valuable bullets in the other revolver. Sheyenne flitted in, trying to distract the zombies, but her intangible form swooped right through their undead bodies, and they weren’t impressed. The zombies kept coming.

  The girl at the pickup truck shoved the bloody, rotting corpses away, panted to catch her breath, then charged in beside me to help kill more of the horde. We exhibited good teamworking skills, and soon the undead lay in a more permanent state of death, strewn around us on the isolated highway.

  The girl looked at us, exhausted and terrified. She was spattered with oozing blood and brains.

  “Glad we could help,” I said.

  She turned to thank me, but when she realized I was a zombie too, she recoiled, ready to use the axe again. I held up my hands and backed away. “It’s all right. I’m not with them.”

  “They’re everywhere!” she said. “They rose from the grave and now they’re wiping out the entire town.” She hitched a deep breath, sobbing. “They attacked our farm. I tried to help defend it, but they killed my pa, my dog, my horse. I barely got out alive.”

  “What’s your name?” Robin asked. Sheyenne drifted close, trying to reassure her, but the presence of a ghost wasn’t as reassuring as Sheyenne had hoped.

  “I’m Jenny Sty,” she said, “from the Sty Farm down the road. I was heading into town to find Sheriff Anderson. He’s got to know what’s happening.”

  I remembered Jenny Sty from one of the character cards in the game. Even with the goop splashed all over her, she was prettier in person.

  “I played Sheriff Anderson once,” McGoo said. “It didn’t turn out well.”

  “We don’t quite know why we’re here or how it happened,” Robin said. “We were playing a game and …”

  Jenny sobbed. “This isn’t a game!” She looked at us again. “Why were you out here? Where’s your car? Were you just walking alone down the highway? It’s not safe.”

  I was concerned for Robin and McGoo, who were the most appetizing among us. I wanted to get them to safety. “Can you give us a ride into town?”

  “Sure, if you help me fight any zombies that try to stop us.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said.

  “Sheyenne and I will ride in back. Robin and McGoo, you join her up front. You’re the most vulnerable.”

  “Who are you calling vulnerable?” McGoo asked.

  “Who’s the most likely zombie tasty treat?”

  McGoo said decisively, “Shamble’s right. You’re up front with me, Robin.”

  Despite my stiff limbs, I managed to climb into the pickup bed. Under other circumstances, it might have been an enjoyable ride with my ghost girlfriend. It reminded me of happier times when we weren’t in a real zombie apocalypse. And these were not cuddly zombies.

  Jenny Sty drove along at top speed with her unmufflered pickup roaring. Sitting in the back of the truck with the wind whipping around us, I spotted more zombies stumbling along the side of the road, lurching out of the trees. As we approached to the lights of Woodinvale, five zombies had wandered across the road like chickens in search of the other side.

  Jenny mowed them down without even stopping. As the truck rolled over the bodies, Sheyenne and I jounced in the back of the pickup.

  Ahead, oddly incongruous, we saw a rugged man standing by the side of the road. He looked well worn, as if he’d been washed on the heavy-duty cycle and left to drip dry. He extended his thumb in classic hitchhiker pose. Jenny slammed on the brakes, slewed the truck to a stop. McGoo stuck his head out the passenger window. “Not a good night for a walk, Mister. Too many zombie pedestrians.”

  “Can you give me a lift to town?” he asked. “I’m Jake—Jake Cartwright.”

  “Hitchhiking is dangerous,” Sheyenne said.

  “There’s room here in the back,” I said, and helped him climb into the bed.

  Even before the drifter managed to settle down, Jenny roared off again toward the outskirts of town. More groups of zombies lurched along in the ditches, but the pickup was going too fast for them to attack.

  “If Woodinvale has a population of only 1500, where are they getting all these reanimated bodies?” I wondered.

  Sheyenne said, “Maybe they have a special storage area somewhere.”

  The drifter had a grim expression as he peered ahead down the road. The town lights looked warm and comforting, but they also served as bug lights attracting bloodthirsty zombies like moths on a summer night.

  Before we reached the main buildings of Woodinvale, we rolled past a brightly lit diner with several cars parked in front, including a sheriff’s police cruiser. Jenny hit the brakes again, hard, spitting gravel under the tires, and she swerved into the diner’s parking lot. I held on hard, preferring not to be thrown headfirst over the cab. An instant after the pickup ground to a halt, the driver’s door popped open and Jenny scrambled out. McGoo and Robin emerged from the other side.

  “Sheriff!” Jenny yelled as she ran toward the diner. We followed.

  “I could use a bite to eat,” said Jake the hitchhiker.

  The diner was crowded with frightened townspeople, and frightened people were apparently as hungry as zombies on the prowl. Every customer had a plate of food piled in front of them. The cook was working overtime in the back.

  “Sheriff, there’s zombies out there!” Jenny said.

  Sheriff Anderson was standing at the counter facing all the people who had gathered for shelter. “We know, Jenny. I’m rallying the citizens. We’ve got to defend ourselves. This is my town and I’m taking it back.”

  The angry and terrified people in the diner had armed themselves with baseball bats, sledge hammers, axes, hunting rifles. One man even held a mop.

  “They’re back again,” s
aid a weary-looking older man. I recognized him from the townsfolk card: Doc Brody. “It’s happening all over. Some of us remember the last outbreak thirty years ago.” He glanced at Sheriff Anderson. “We thought we took care of it back then.”

  “Not good enough, obviously,” said the sheriff. “This time we’ve got to wipe them out. Completely.”

  Jake walked up to the counter just as the diner cook, a hard-muscled man who looked like a drill sergeant emerged with two more plates of eggs and hash browns. “Sam, can I get a cup of coffee?”

  “I’ll have one too,” I said. “Best to stay awake. This is going to be a long night.”

  McGoo ordered breakfast with extra bacon. “Game universe calories don’t count,” he said. “We’re stuck here until we can figure out how to get back to our normal world of resurrected monsters and mythical creatures.”

  “A world that makes sense,” I said.

  Sherriff Anderson continued to address the townspeople. “Zombies have come back to Woodinvale, but they can be killed—again. Beware, if they bite you, you’ll be infected. You become one of them.” His voice hitched. “My own son Bobby …”

  “Oh, Sheriff,” Robin said with deep sympathy. Apparently, she hadn’t read through the entire rulebook.

  Doc Brody said, “Thank God the outbreak is localized to Woodinvale. If this spreads across the country, it might mean the end of the human race.” He looked solemnly at all the people clustered in the diner. “This could be our last night on Earth.”

  “Good title,” I said.

  As Sam the diner cook brought our coffee and served McGoo his plate of eggs, bacon, hash browns and a side of pancakes, I leaned closer. “You know this is all because of that Wish Stuff you took from the genie.”

  McGoo fell to his eggs, mashing them into his hash browns. “The stuff must be defective, because I never wished to get into this game.”

  “Maybe it’s a generic brand of wish stuff with unknown side effects.”

  He patted his front pocket where the broken shards of the bottle remained. “It won’t do us any good, and now my shirt is soaked with the goop.”

  I scanned the people in the diner, recognizing many of them from the character cards. I recalled that some had died horribly in our game—Sheriff Anderson had been torn apart in this very diner—but now they were back. Was it all different now? Since Sheyenne, McGoo, Robin, and I had entered the game itself, would that change the outcome? We couldn’t know, and I didn’t want to stick around to find out.

  “We’ve got to get out of here, McGoo. Can’t you undo what you did?”

  He munched on a strip of bacon. “Why are you blaming me?”

  “Because you’re usually the one that messes things up.”

  “You’ve got me there.” He concentrated on his eggs and hash browns again.

  The diner cook came back around, holding a cup of coffee for himself. “Is the food all right?”

  “Delicious,” McGoo said with his mouth full. “I need to keep up my strength if we’re going to be fighting zombies.”

  “He usually just solves cases with zombies,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t call attention to that bullet hole in your head,” said Sam the cook. “Zombies don’t have a good reputation around here right now.”

  “I’m a different sort of zombie,” I said.

  “They’re back and they’ll keep coming back,” groaned Doc Brody.

  “Here they come!” shouted a young man in a high school letterman’s jacket. He pressed his hands and face against the window of the diner. “Must be a hundred of them.”

  Sheriff Anderson unholstered his revolver, while McGoo hurriedly finished his breakfast. The Woodinvale townspeople gathered their makeshift weapons, ready to make a last stand. The man with the mop held the wooden handle and looked ferocious.

  I stood next to McGoo and told Robin to come closer. Sheyenne hovered in front of us. “We’ll do our best to protect you two,” I said. “You’re my friends, and I don’t want you munched.”

  “We don’t want to be munched either,” said McGoo, scraping the last of his eggs with a stray pancake. “If I had another vial of that Wish Stuff … but all I’ve got is a sticky mess.” He dabbed his fingertips to the stain on his pocket.

  The first zombie smashed through the diner’s plate-glass window. The townspeople screamed. Rotting hands stretched through the broken glass, grabbing the kid in the letterman jacket who didn’t move fast enough. Another window shattered and five more of the undead pressed in, their faces ragged, greenish, and rotting.

  Since it was game night, I hadn’t brought along extra bullets and I rapidly emptied my .38. Sheriff Anderson shot his revolver until he had nothing left but empty clicks. The townspeople with rifles opened fire.

  And the zombies kept coming.

  The man with the mop charged into the fray as walking dead pushed through the smashed window. More polite zombies actually entered through the diner’s main door.

  “This isn’t a fun game anymore,” I said to Sheyenne. “Too realistic.”

  She looked forlorn. “It was fun when it was just a game.”

  “We had a bad day to start with,” Robin said.

  The hitchhiker gulped his coffee and stood, cracked his knuckles, and joined Sheriff Anderson. “Ready to do this again, Sherriff?”

  “There’s always trouble when you show up,” said the sheriff.

  Since my pistol was out of bullets, I just tried to look threatening, hoping that might protect Robin and McGoo. Dozens of zombies lurched their way through the jagged glass, which did little to help their physical integrity. I preferred the more friendly zombies in the Quarter.

  Though I could tell Robin was frightened, she didn’t say anything. She picked up one of the silver napkin containers in one hand and a salt shaker in the other, ready to defend herself. She had faced plenty of difficult court cases, and sometimes she lost, like today in the larva-custody battle. But this was serious. I could see in her face that she genuinely expected to die.

  McGoo was also pale and sick. He didn’t even have a stupid joke for the occasion. I didn’t know what I’d do if anything happened to them.

  “But it’s just a game!” Sheyenne insisted.

  “It’s a very realistic and engaging game,” I said. “And now we’re screwed.”

  Maybe it really would be our last night on Earth.

  The zombies crashed inside, flooding the diner as if this were the lunch rush and Sam had offered free beer with every meal. I saw people fall. Jenny swung her axe again and again, and then the zombies were upon her. Other victims fell screaming, their skin torn, their bodies opened up as the zombies feasted.

  “McGoo, you’ve got to make a wish,” I said desperately as we backed against the poorly defended counter. “You didn’t use all of the stuff. Smear the stain on your fingers. Maybe there’s enough magic left in the residue.”

  McGoo dabbed at the sticky substance that had leaked out of the broken bottle and into his shirt. “But there’s not much.”

  “Then wish really, really hard.”

  As the zombies lurched closer, McGoo pawed at his shirt, got his fingers as wet as possible, and started chanting over and over, squeezing his eyes shut. “There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!”

  The rest of the trapped diner patrons were falling under the zombie onslaught, and their deaths were horrifying, but they were all nonplayer characters—and we were real.

  McGoo pressed his palm harder against his wet shirt and pushed his eyes shut, grimacing like a man who had been constipated for four days. “There’s no place like home! I wish I was back in the Unnatural Quarter!”

  The zombies lunged toward us, groping hands outstretched—

  And then they were just pictures on the cards.

  We were back in the Chambeaux & Deyer conference room. The din of moaning zombies crunching bone and slurping flesh, the horrified screaming and gunfire, suddenly changed to deafening
silence. We stood shaken, staring at one another, and then we simultaneously began to laugh with an edge of hysteria.

  “That was close!” McGoo held up his sticky hands. “Man, I wish—”

  I immediately clamped a hand over his mouth. “Let’s not take any chances, McGoo. Go change your shirt and wash your hands.”

  He realized what he’d almost said. “You’re right, Shamble.” He began unbuttoning his blue uniform blouse.

  Sheyenne looked down at the scattered pieces and cards of Last Night on Earth and silently began to put the game away. “That’s enough for tonight. No point in doing another round.”

  Robin nodded, still shaken. “I … I should get back to working on my cases. That’s what I do for fun.”

  “Sorry game night didn’t turn out the way you wanted, Sheyenne,” I said. “Thanks for wanting to bring us all together.”

  She closed the box for Last Night on Earth. “We better store this in a safe place and not risk playing it again.” Even her ectoplasmic form looked wrung out. “Next time, we could try something different, something safer.”

  “What did you have in mind?” I asked, still hoping for one of the private adult games.

  “The same company has a weird western game that looks fun. It’s called Shadows of Brimstone, and I think—”

  “Not now, Spooky,” I said. “Not now.”

  When an Aztec mummy stopped me on the streets of the Unnatural Quarter, I knew it had to be an important problem. “Excuse me, are you Dan Shamble? Zombie P.I.?”

  “Chambeaux,” I corrected automatically, because so many people—both naturals and unnaturals—make the mistake. “But yes, that’s me—of Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations.”

  The day was bright and sunny, and we had paused under a street light where two precariously balanced werewolves were stringing holiday lights. One mockingly dangled a fistful of mistletoe over the other, demanding a kiss. The second werewolf said, “Not with your ugly furry muzzle!”

  Across the street, a skeleton lounged with a saxophone against another lamppost, ready to play a mournful holiday tune, but it was all for show because the skeleton wasn’t a very effective sax player, due to his lack of lungs. Skeleton musicians usually stick to playing the piano.