Zombies in Love (2 page)

What Lisa should do was call the cops.  What she needed to do was call the cops.  She probably even knew the guys who would show up.  So all she needed to do was call and say that she’d shot her employee because she thought he was a thief breaking in...

Because he’d been eating a hand, an actual hand, and he’d moved towards her and then her finger had tightened on the trigger. . .

She’d never forget the sight of his headless body dropping to the floor.

His mostly headless body. 

She bent over the shotgun, rocking back and forth, her ears ringing painfully, the scent of the cordite and blood still in her nose.

Now she was going to have to clean up in there.  She guessed the police would take the body away, and some of the bigger chunks of the head, but she'd have to clean up the blood and brains and skull and hair of someone she'd actually thought was a pretty good guy, a reliable hard-working guy, until she'd caught him eating a human hand in the supply closet where she stored all the nonperishables like canned tomatoes and flour, oh God, there was probably blood and brains all over the food, she'd have to dump everything, in case there was even a fragment of Jack seeping into the flour sacks, turning the white dust to red, baking into her pizza--

A sudden cramp of nausea gripped her and she nearly dropped the shotgun. 

So you wanted excitement?
she thought.
You idiot!

She heard something moving.  Footsteps.  A man’s footsteps, walking slowly towards her.

Her head popped up and her hand gripped the barrel of the gun.  One shell left.  Maybe next time, it would be easier to shoot.

Jack came out of the dimly lit back hallway.  He had a head.  That was good.  He had a head. 
You need a head to get ahead need a head to get ahead...

“You’re all right,” she said.  “Oh, thank God, thank God.  I’ve never even fired this thing before.”

“I’m fine,” he said, setting a torn duffle bag on the floor with a clank.  He spread his hands like he was showing her there was nothing in them.  Closer now.  His face and hair were clean, but his shirt was soaking wet and stained blood-red. 

No.  She couldn't be seeing this.

“Your head shattered,” she said.  “I killed you.  I saw it.  Am I crazy?”

He dropped his hands.  “I’m just going to go.”

She stood up and cocked the other barrel of the shotgun.

“Jesus, Lisa.  You already shot me once.  Why don't we call it a night?” He bent down to pick up the bag, and she walked closer to him, a shotgun's length away.

Why was she so doing this?  She should let him go.  She didn’t have to know.  The sensible thing to do...

She didn’t feel sensible.  "How did you do that?" she asked.

“You don’t want to know,” he said, his mouth twitching nervously.  “You don’t want to ask me.  And you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

She poked him in the stomach with the gun. He flinched.  “Whose hand was that?”

“Edward Genovese.  That’s what his tombstone said.  He was in a cemetery in Waltham.  Did you know him?”

She shook her head.

“Good.”

“Why were you eating a hand?” she asked.

“Look, Lisa--”

Okay, he was a charmer, but she was not interested in charm.  For so many years her life had stood still, and now she had her own genuine mystery, right at the point of her shotgun.  Poke, poke.  “I let you work for me.  I let you feed my friends.  Now you’d damn well better tell me what’s wrong with you.”

He smiled like his face muscles had tightened beyond his control.  “I don’t know.  But I don’t have a choice.”

“Have you always been like this?”

He shook his head.  “Ever since I died.”

Dead?  Well, of course, she’d just shot his head off.  Most of his head.  But before?  She moved closer to him.  The lighting in the restaurant made everyone look like a walking corpse-- she’d always meant to fix that-- but if she got really close she could see that something wasn’t right.  His skin looked faintly purple-blue.  He wasn’t blinking, or breathing, until she got even closer and he inhaled like he couldn’t help it.  He licked his lips.

“You going to eat me?” she asked.

“You still owe me my last paycheck,” he said.

She laughed and backed up a step.  "So you're dead and you eat people.  You're a zombie.  Wow."

"Call me anything you want."  He rubbed his hand roughly through his graying black hair.  “May I sit down?” he asked.  “It’s been a hell of a day.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. 

He sat down and rested his face in his hands.  She kept her gun pointed at his face for a moment.  And then felt silly.  Was he going anywhere?  No.  He looked like he might never move again. 

She pulled out the chair opposite him and set the shotgun beside her.  There he was.  Her very own monster.  She felt like she was looking at one of those old fashioned picture puzzles: now it's a little girl, now it's an old lady.  Or to put it another way: here's your average guy.  Now here's a zombie.  

This was the weirdest thing that she'd done in a very long time.  No,
ever. 

"How did this happen to you?" she asked.

He slouched back in his chair.  "I have no idea.  It was a surprise, I'll tell you that."

"Never pissed off a voodoo priest..."

He smirked.  "Never got bitten, never fell in a vat of toxic waste."

"Okay," she said, leaning back.  "What
do
you know?  How long have you been like this?"
              "About six months."

"You've been dead six months."

He nodded. 

Weird conversation
, she thought. 
Weird weird weird. 
"How do I know you're not going to eat my customers?"

He looked very tired.  "How do I know they're not going to eat me?"

"Because it's disgusting and wrong."

He nodded as if she'd just proven his point.  "Look, I know you have no reason to trust me.  But I wish you would.  I just woke up like this and now there's nothing I can do about it."  He folded his arms on the table and rested his head on top.  "I'm not going to sleep. I can't sleep, I haven't slept in months.  Just ask me whatever it was you wanted to ask."  His eyes closed.

She looked at the limp figure in front of her.  He was very still, not even breathing, and he smelled like rotting meat. 
Not good. 
"Did you bring any other food?"

"No." 

"Jack--" she put her hand on a dry patch on the back of his shirt and shook him. 

"You're very warm.  Did you know that?"  His voice was slurred.

"Do you have anything in your apartment?"

"Sure.  I can go back there.  Good idea."  His hands roamed over the surface of the table, but he couldn't seem to lift himself.  "Give me a minute."

#

             
He leaned on her as they walked up the three flights of stairs, moving stiffly, his knees barely bending.  His smell was getting harder and harder for her to take, but luckily he was a small guy, shorter and leaner than she was, so he wasn't too heavy.  By the time they got the door open, she was afraid she was going to have to hand-feed him, which frankly would have been too much to ask, but the prospect of dinner seemed to reenergize him, and he managed to stumble to the fridge by himself. 

              Lisa didn't want to watch, so she sat on the sofa by the coffee table, stuck a menthol cough drop in her mouth to cover up the corpsey smell, and looked around.  It was pretty much what she'd expected, a sad efficiency apartment filled with cast-off furniture.  But he'd kept it absolutely clean, and the coffee table had today's
Globe
on it, crinkled as if he'd read it then neatly folded it back together.  He always did that at the pizzeria, too-- if someone left a paper, Jack folded it together and put all the sections back in, in order, a little fussy detail that had always made her smile.

              She was going to have to fire him after this.  No, this was just way too weird and disgusting.  And just because he hadn't tried to rip her guts out in the car, did that mean she should trust him with her customers?  He was right, she didn't know him, she had no reason to trust him.

              She heard the fridge door close, and then the water in the kitchen sink started running as Jack started washing himself off, and Lisa found herself staring at the newspaper resting squarely in the middle of the coffee table. 
He's holding on by a thread,
thought Lisa. 
And if he loses this job, he's lost. 
But it wasn't her problem, her duty was to keep the restaurant going, not to fix every sad sack who came through her door.  Even if he was a good hard worker, even if she could tell he would do anything to keep this job...

              A damp Jack sat next to her, sitting straight so his back wouldn't touch the sofa.  He'd scrubbed his face and hair and changed his shirt, but there was something stuck to his cheek, right by his ear.

             
Is that a piece of skin or a fingernail?
she wondered.  She'd have to pick it off to know for sure, but she really didn't want to.

              "Thanks for bringing me home," he said, his face contracting into a nervous smile.  "See you tomorrow?"

              She looked at that sad, hopeful face and she couldn't say no.  She couldn't.  "Sure," she said, standing up to go.

ch. 4

For the same reason she couldn't stand to use a neatly folded guest towel, Lisa would never have read the reassembled Boston
Globe
sitting on Jack's coffee table.  So she didn't notice that the
Globe
was sitting on top of another newspaper, the Charleston
Palmetto. 
And why would Jack go to the trouble of finding a spa-owner ("spa" = "corner store" in Boston) willing to obtain a daily copy for him?

              The
Palmetto is
an excellent newspaper, with a long and proud and slightly self-destructive history.  In 1785, after Isaac Chestnut, first proprietor of the Charleston
Palmetto
, wrote an editorial critical of the mayor, whom he called a "meretricious Tory lickspittle," some unknown person threw a bag of flaming dogshit through the window, nearly burning the newspaper's offices down, with Chestnut inside.  In 1860, after M. Frederick Kershaw warned in print that secession should be delayed "until such time as we have positive proof of the support of the perfidious English," he was never seen again, except for his right hand, still clutching its pen, nailed to the
Palmetto's
front door.

              Those exciting days of journalism were long gone.  Today the worst thing an American newspaperman confronts is not the angry, armed reader, but the constant problem of money, as young readers disappear, and older readers believe that they should be able to read the paper for free on the internet.  And so Sam Lazarus, Jack's cousin, spent most of his days at the office looking for ways to raise revenue, or trim staff in ways that wouldn't be noticed.  Anything to hold off the day when the proudly independent
Palmetto
would finally have to be sold to a syndicate. 

              It wasn’t what you’d call fun, but someone needed to do it, and Sam was always the man who did what needed to be done.

              Sam looked out of his office door in time to see the private detective walk into Uncle Cheves's office.  He sighed.  Another waste of money.  It was always the same story.  They could trace Jack up to Baltimore, where he'd sold his car for cash, but he hadn't used his credit card or gotten a job since.  Aside for checking the hospitals and morgues, that left very little for the private eyes to do.  But Jack's parents kept trying, hoping they'd find someone with some new angle, something they'd forgotten to think about.  Pawn shops?  Jewelry?  Did he bring his watch with him?  Anything?

              Sam had tried to tell his uncle and aunt many times that he was sure Jack would turn up, but only when he was ready.  He'd probably started drinking again, he said, and Jack just didn't want them to see it.  When he was ready, he'd come back, they could send him to rehab again, and it would all be back to normal.  And then Uncle Cheves would say that he was an old man, and they didn't have forever.  And then there was nothing for Sam to say, was there?  He couldn't offer to take over as the
Palmetto
's publisher, even on a temporary basis until Jack returned, because then they'd believe what Jack had said about him was true, even though there was no proof. 

              When Sam had killed Jack and dumped his body in the bay, he thought he was finally done with his cousin for good.  A lifetime of always being the reliable one, always cleaning up his cousin’s messes, and always getting second-best for it, finally finished.

No such luck.

But what really bothered him is that the detectives always, always said that Jack had made it up to Baltimore in November, which was impossible, because his body had been rotting in the bay for a couple of months by that point.  Sam knew it for a fact.  He'd watched his cousin's dead-eyed body sink, for as long as he could see it through the murky water.  Even if the stab wounds hadn't killed him, he had to have drowned. 

Obviously the detectives were wrong.  But why were they wrong the same way, again and again and again?

Could Jack somehow have survived?

#

Sarah watched as Ian gingerly opened the bottle of cadaverine and droppered it over the pork chop they had rescued from the dumpster behind Star Market.  "Ugh," he said.  "Do rotting bodies really smell like this?"

"I can't imagine they smell worse," she said, holding her nose.

"Do you think this will fool a zombie?"  He screwed the cap back on the bottle.

"Now how am I supposed to know that, Ian?"

He shrugged.  As far as he was concerned, Sarah knew everything.  She was the one who came up with their whole strategy.  All he did was fish the pork chops out of the dumpster, saving them the $3.95 they'd budgeted for hamburger. 

"Stand back," she said, undoing the C-clamp acting as a safety on the bear trap.  The sharp spikes on it made it even more lethal-looking, and Ian found that he was unconsciously backing away from it, and the stinky pork chop lying on its trigger.

"Hope this works," said Ian.

Sarah shook her finger at the grass-covered graves all around them.  "You hear that, guys!  Ian says, rise and shine!"