Anything But Zombies (4 page)

How did Barry know she was a vegan? It was the old joke come true: How do you know someone is a vegan? Wait two minutes and they'll tell you. Plus, her
Meat Is Murder
T-shirt was a dead giveaway.

Meat was murder . . . tasty, tasty murder.

The circumstance bringing the four of us together is almost as bad as being in the same room with this sorry group
, Barry thought.

“They're ghouls,” Vinnie said as if he was the definitive authority on the undead. As if any of these things were supposed to really be above them on the street, walking around looking to bite someone on the ass.

Barry watched their fourth sitting silently in the corner, his arms wrapped around his legs. No one knew the guy's name. He'd already been here in the basement of this convenience store.

Melanie had asked him if he worked in the building or lived in the apartments upstairs, but he wouldn't say a word. He stared straight ahead, like he was blind or retarded or he'd just watched midget porn.

Barry called him Otto because he looked nothing like a guy you'd call Otto and it would make it easier for him to remember the fake name when questioned later. Barry had no idea why he'd be questioned, but you never knew.

“Romero zombies,” Barry said, getting even more annoyed at Melanie and Vinnie. Who really gave a shit what they were called? They were trying to bite you and turn you into a gross monster with no real hygiene or morals. Barry knew he was already close to that line and didn't want to cross it.

Melanie turned and stared at Barry like he'd just taken a dump in his hand. “What are you even talking about?”

Barry pointed at the falling ceiling. “What we're being hunted by are classic Romero zombies. Slow and shambling. Doing the stupid groan with mouths open and hands pointed straight ahead. Georgie-boy invented them.”

“You're even stupider than you look,” Melanie said. “I saw some of them running.”

“I'm not stupider than I look,” Barry said, thinking she might be right. “And you saw people running away from the slow zombies, you stupid plant eater.”

Melanie grinned. “Did you just call me a plant eater? Because that is a compliment.”

“He added stupid to the beginning, which makes more sense for what he was trying to say,” Vinnie said. “It wasn't a compliment.”

“You damn carnivores think you're so smart,” Melanie said.

“Honey, you need to relax and calm down with all of your vegan shit. This guy and the vegetable in the corner aren't going to make it past a few days, which will leave you and me to repopulate the world. But if you're going to throw insults my way I'll forget you have a nice tight ass and go find another chick. Someone who knows how to grill a good steak or used to work at a burger joint and can get the fryers going again. Got it?”

“The fact you'd eat one of their so-called burgers sickens me. If you were the last man on Earth I wouldn't come near you,” Melanie said.

Barry waved his hand. “Hey, I'm not going anywhere. I'm certainly not going to get killed if I can help it. And I don't appreciate you two thinking you'll outlive me and Otto.”

“Who is Otto?” Vinnie asked.

Barry pointed his thumb. “That guy.”

“He doesn't look like an Otto,” Melanie said. “He looks like something boring, like a John or Mike.”

“I'm calling him Otto until he speaks, which it doesn't look like he'll do anytime soon.” Barry was annoyed at Vinnie and Melanie even though that little voice in his head that made the bad decisions and gave the wrong advice was telling him they were right. “And right now I'm going upstairs to find a Twix bar and a six-pack of Coke or Olympia beer.”

“Yuck, dude. Bring back the good stuff, like a microbrew,” Vinnie said.

“I like the taste of cheap beer,” Barry said. “It reminds me of college.”

“Where did you go to college? John Carroll University?” Melanie asked.

Barry shrugged sheepishly. “I didn't actually go to college. All my friends did so I hung out on the weekends until they finally told me to stop coming around.”

“I'm not surprised,” Melanie said. She looked Barry up and down as if noticing him for the first time. He knew she wasn't impressed. He really couldn't blame her.

“I'll be back,” Barry said in his best Schwarzenegger voice, which left everyone in the basement looking confused. Figured.

Barry climbed up the stairs slowly, dodging the fallen debris and the cracked wooden steps. The door was closed, but in their haste to escape the chaos on the street, Vinnie had used brute force to kick the door in. The door to the basement. Which wasn't locked.

The convenience store was trashed, but not like you see in a horror movie. There was no blood on the floor, no body parts. No deep, dark corners where the monsters were hiding.

It was just dirty and the floor looked like it hadn't seen a mop since the early 1950s. Barry also ignored the expiration dates on most of the items in the store, too. Not that it mattered to him. Everything he wanted to eat was candy and nonwater drinks. The stuff bitchy Melanie would rail against until the only thing left to eat was processed food and chicken.

Barry hoped he'd live long enough to see an even skinnier Melanie chasing a rabbit through a ruined city for dinner. And she'd still harp about eating vegetables while cooking the rabbit. Just thinking about cooked meat was making him hungry.

He thought beef jerky and Slim Jims counted as meat, so he grabbed as many as he could carry to the counter. Barry went around and took four plastic bags, filling them with his foodstuffs. He'd never been on this side of the counter in a convenience store before, which was odd considering the dead-end jobs he'd been in: shoe salesman, short-order cook in a dive bar, fast-food restaurant drive-thru worker (he'd worked at all of them over the years), and an actual ditch digger. That job had paid the best.

Barry looked under the counter for the shotgun. He'd seen enough episodes of
Cops
and movies to know the guy making minimum wage only worked this shitty job so he could shoot a would-be robber in the face and be a hero. It was the only reason he'd tried unsuccessfully to work at a convenience store.

But there was no gun. Only rotting food and mold that had been there way before the zombies attacked. This place was going to kill him, with diseases growing in the corners and in plain sight.

He filled up the other plastic bags with potato chips and French onion dip and lots of candy bars.

With his free hand he picked up a twelve-pack of Corona (it would be a nice compromise so he didn't have to carry another case or come back up) and headed down the stairs, the door kinda closing behind him.
Stupid Vinnie
, he thought.
We're going to need to figure out a way to rig the door so it stays shut
. But Barry knew he wasn't going to waste time doing it. He was going to feast on chips and warm beer. People called this the zombie apocalypse, but to him it would be just another Friday night, only for once there would be company during dinner.

Someone screamed out on the street and Barry ducked. He heard two gunshots followed by more screams. As he raised his head slowly someone bloody and big slammed against the plate glass window of the convenience store before sliding slowly down, leaving a nice trail of crimson.

Barry almost pissed himself. As another three gunshots rang out, closer this time, he ran to the basement door and pulled it as tight as he could, cursing Vinnie for acting all macho in front of the vegan chick and ruining their sanctuary.

“Ugh, man . . . is that foreign beer?” Vinnie asked when Barry got down the steps and put the food down. “I asked for a microbrew. Not some beer bottled in a third-world country.”

Barry shrugged. “It's from Mexico. So not foreign. And if you want something else feel free to walk up the steps and fight your way to the cooler.”

That shut Vinnie up and kept Melanie from talking as they both looked up the stairs.

Barry realized he'd forgotten a bottle opener. He looked at Vinnie and mimed opening the bottle as he took a Corona from the packaging.

“Are you suddenly a mute?” Vinnie asked.

“That would be really nice,” Melanie mumbled.

“I heard that. And I'm not sharing my food or drink with you,” Barry said.

Melanie wrinkled her nose. “You brought nothing down I would put in my mouth.”

Barry smiled, dirty thoughts running through his head.

Melanie groaned loudly and put her arms across her chest. “Wow, you are really creepy, buddy. I might take my chances upstairs.”

“While you're up there, bring me back some American beer. Preferably microbrewed,” Vinnie said. “Oh, and string cheese.”

Barry sat on the floor with the Corona and stared at it. “I need a bottle opener.”

No one said anything.

“Seriously? No one has a stupid bottle opener key chain? No matter where I go, there's always some dude with one dangling from his Camaro key,” Barry said.

“Where do you live that dudes still drive a Camaro?” Vinnie asked. “I drive a Dodge Charger,” he said and looked at Melanie. “It's red.”

“I ride a bicycle because I don't want to pollute the planet any more than I have to. Like you're doing with your stupid muscle car,” Melanie said.

“Well . . . the clothes you're wearing made pollution,” Vinnie said.

It sounded good to Barry. He wanted to see them argue but wished he had a bottle opener to chug a beer while doing it.

Melanie stood up and twirled around. “Wrong, idiot. My pants are made from hemp. The shirt is made from hemp, too.” She sat back down on the floor. “You have no idea what you're talking about.”

“What about your underwear? Hemp thong?” Barry asked.

Melanie shook her head. “I don't wear underwear.”

“I love you,” Vinnie whispered.

“What do you think is going on outside?” Vinnie asked thirty minutes later. They'd all stretched out on the dusty, dirty floor in the corner and tried to relax, taking turns sneezing and sweating.

“I think people with ridiculous amounts of key chain bottle openers are being killed while I sit here thirsty and rot away,” Barry said.

“Go get one then, dude,” Vinnie said. “All you do is talk about it. Seize the day.”

“I thought that movie was stupid,” Barry said.

“You're stupid,” Vinnie said.

“I think it's fair to say you're both equally stupid,” Melanie said. “And I don't know what movie you're talking about. Or care.”

“You're against movies? Why, the film stock is ruining the ozone layer?” Barry asked her.

“I
read
for entertainment,” Melanie said.

“People write books on hemp?” Vinnie asked.

“No.” Melanie turned away to stare at the wall next to her head. “When I was young I was stupid. I ate meat and drank from plastic water bottles. I also bought books.”

“Tree killer,” Barry said.

She ignored the comment. “I still have them. They'll never go into a landfill, though. So I read them over and over instead of rotting my brain with television and movies.”

“Did you get them as a kid?” Barry asked. “If you did, isn't reading Dr. Seuss over and over getting boring?” He laughed at his own joke but no one else did. As usual.

“I read Dumas and Kipling, Brontë and London,” Melanie said.

“Someday I'd like to visit London and see what their microbrews taste like,” Vinnie said.

“I thought you hated foreign beer,” Barry said. He held up the still unopened Corona in his hand. “Over there everything would be a foreign beer. And you'd be a foreigner so you couldn't drink any of the beer.”

“You make no sense,” Vinnie said slowly, but Barry could see he was trying to work it out in his head. “No sense,” he finally said after a pause. “Even if I had a bottle opener, I'm not going to drink that foreign beer in your hand.”

“This one is mine,” Barry said and covered the bottle with his other hand. “Get your own. And while you're up there getting some fruity beer brewed in someone's bathtub, make sure you bring down a bottle opener. I'm getting thirsty eating these potato chips.”

“Give me a bag,” Vinnie said. “Did you find Doritos? Cool Ranch?”

Barry shook his head. “I'm not sharing. You won't get a bottle opener.”

“I'm not going upstairs. There are ghouls waiting to bite me,” Vinnie said.

“You mean zombies.” Barry stuffed potato chips in his mouth. Now he wished he'd gotten a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. That sounded really good right now, too. And he was never going back up those stairs to certain death again, he decided.

“I'm not going to kill a zombie,” Melanie said.

“Of course not. Why would the vegan pacifist try to save herself? I bet you're miserable inside,” Barry said. Vinnie acted shocked, but Barry knew he was thinking the same thing. Barry had no delusional thoughts about procreating the human race with this skinny bitch like Vinnie did. He was going to say whatever was on his mind. “All of those plants and hemp have screwed up your organs. I bet I live longer than you and I eat cold pizza for breakfast twice a week. I only eat food that had a face whenever possible. You know what lettuce is? Food my food eats.”

“You're an asshole,” Melanie said.

Barry stabbed a potato chip–crusted finger in her direction. “Vegans don't curse.”

“Yes, they do. I do. You're thinking of a Straight Edge person.”

“Never heard of it. But it sounds ridiculous,” Barry said. He put more chips into his mouth and leaned back against the wall.

Otto hadn't moved in hours. Or it might've been minutes. Barry was so bored it felt like they'd been down in the basement for days. And he had to pee really, really bad.