Zombiez! (4 page)

And then he thought of this Irish guy being
willing to beat up a random Priest for an extra hundred bocks.
Shaking his beret with disbelief and disgust, he plopped some money
down to cover the bill and got right back to his business. He
needed to see a man about horse, and then a man about a Death
Panel.

MR. SUNGLASSES

He literally did not notice the men or
unattractive women as they stood in line to get the latest in Apple
computers' signature line of Electronic Sunglass Products (ESPs).
Forty percent of the people in line were wearing the previous (and
now obsolete) model, the Apple ESP i4 Superglass. Danger was one of
that forty percent, even though the line was indoors. His personal
sunglass policy had no accounting for light levels.

This i5 had an updated style, an
auto-darkening feature, and weighed one full ounce less than the i4
model. Needless to say, those in that line needed the i5 to feel
like they were living life properly. Danger was compelled to make
sure he got whatever his Danger mind thought to desire. In that
mind, he was a rabid Alpha wolf scouring the plains for mates and
shiny things and yummy antelopes. If he ever met an actual wolf
with actual rabies, he would see immediately how misguided that
idea was. But he never really went into the woods, so the
misguidedness stayed hidden and intact.

The best part of sunglasses was that nobody
could tell where you were looking. Danger used this to his
advantage, keeping his head straight and darting his eyes like a
laser pointer at whatever T or A came into his radar screen. Since
he was in a straight line of people, and he was surrounded by dudes
on both sides, striking up a conversation with a pretty and/or hott
lady person was proving to be a challenge. There were plenty of
potential subjects in line, but he was separated from them by at
least five males and several uggs. He would probably wind up
purchasing the new shades first, then making a bee-line to the
first nice piece he saw. If she banged him, fine. If not, also
fine. It didn't matter. Statistically speaking, the first three
would feign disinterest anyway. The key was being a volume shooter,
and also not having a soul.

His way-cool state-of-the-art phone buzzed.
It was that one guy from work, that Derrick guy, texting him again.
He was always trying to be Danger's friend, but Danger didn't have
friends. When it came to other males, he had either a) respected
but doomed-to-be-defeated rivals, b) groveling worshipers, or c)
enemies. Derrick wanted to make a fourth category, one of
“former-respected-rivals-who-had-a-weird-life-event-and-now-just-want-to-hang-out-and-talk-about-deep-life-issues.”
Danger thought Derrick was lame, but Derrick seemed to not agree.
This was the crux of the issue. Danger often thought of just
ignoring the text messages, but since he had to see Derrick at
work, he always humored the dude.

“Yo Eddie, how's the line for those
glasses?”

This guy knew way too much about Danger's
life, and always used his given name. Danger needed to jettison
this tool, and fast.

“can't talk line moving” Danger replied
curtly, hoping Derrick would get the message behind the
message.

“Good luck!!” the tool texted back. Even
indoors and through the tint of his i4's, the good wishes and
exclamation points were annoying. In fact, Danger decided right
then and there that only chicks should use those in text
messages.

As if to keep him from having lied, the dudes
and uggs in front of him started moving. He figured they had to
have at least a hundred of the i5's ready to go, and by his count
he was 27
^th
in line. Sure enough, when he got up to the
counter and plopped his credit card down in front of the massive
male Apple Store employee, he received a sleek black package
containing technologically superior eyewear in exchange. Danger did
not notice one thing about the humongous employee – race, clothing,
scent, or even his cabinesque height and width. He was too busy
staring at an Apple Store employee at a different register, an
attractive female in a black-and-white Apple-branded button-down
shirt who was rocking a sporty ponytail. He made a mental note of
what he thought she'd look like naked as the male processing his
transaction handed him his card back. He was thinking of making a
run at her, but decided she was probably a little too busy right
now. He looked down at the black box. It made him feel good that he
had this product and was therefore so cool.

He thanked the formless clerk and turned
around. Directly in front of him, standing by a bench in the mall,
stood a pair of 6' tall brunette beauties, both holding black i5
boxes just like his. He smiled and made his way over there
immediately, fearful of disobeying the five second rule of
approaching broads.

“Hey, are those reflective pants you're
wearing?” Danger mused at one of the hott babes.

Nearby, a man in a red beret was also
smiling. Getting this douche to those woods was going to be almost
too
easy. Who knew you could hire actresses for this sort of
thing? Had they known this little subterfuge's ultimate purpose,
they would never have agreed to participate. But he'd put in a good
word for them when the time came. Perhaps they would die a quick
and merciful death, as opposed to a slow and merciless one? It was
probably better for them, as attractive girls, to die before old
age anyway, or so he assured himself, to make himself feel better
about the whole thing.

CRAZY LADY II

Rose barely ever left the house in the five
months since she had ceased taking her pills. She had managed, in a
fleeting moment of fear-based lucidity, to drive to a nearby
grocery store and purchase every can of tuna they had. She filled
two shopping carts with hockey-puck-shaped fish-holders and wheeled
them right up to the checkout counter as if it was the most natural
thing in the world to be doing, using her dark sunglasses as armor
against lookie-loos who wondered what exactly she was up to. It
took eight whole minutes for the annoyed and weirded-out cashier to
scan all those cans, and Rose paid for them in $100 bills gleaned
from the still-formidable trust fund that was set up for her when
she was six years old.

Rose's father, one of the few remaining
wealthy industrialists of the mid-to-late 20th century, hated girls
of all kinds. He married a handsome woman, and they had 10
beautiful children, none of which had male genitalia. All 10 of
them ended up being raised not by the wealthy industrialist and his
long-suffering and drug-addicted series of trophy wives, but rather
by young Republican infertile east coast couples who answered ads
in the Cape Cod News-Ledger. Don't worry, though, he totally set up
trust funds for his ten beautiful daughters before he renounced all
of his parental and marital rights and moved to an undisclosed
location in the Middle East with one third of his industrialist
gains.

Rose's trust fund was still so formidable
because every time she used it she was reminded of the
unquestionable fact that her parents didn't love her. She went so
far as to let it sit untouched for 15 years as she struggled to
make ends meet as a single mom of an only child, supported by
nothing save her floundering medical supply business. It was a
tough time, and heck yes she wanted a cookie for it. She felt she
deserved thousands of cookies, thank you very much, for those
terrible years.

Then her mental illness got worse, and out of
concern for her only son's obvious concern, she saw a doctor and
got the pills. Only recently had the boy discovered people (women)
worth loving outside the house, and that caused Rose to completely
unravel. She had done so much for him, and he repaid that kindness
by throwing himself at the first tootsie-pop that floated by. It
wasn't fair. She wanted cookies, and she got a bag of ungrateful
nothing. It made Rose so mad she could spit.

So Rose had enough food to last her for quite
a while. That she managed to drive to the store successfully at all
was a small miracle; if that (now shrinking) part of her that
wanted to resume taking her pills every morning could talk, it
would have blamed the success on Rose's ever-vigilant army of
guardian angels.

The clock on the wall behind Rose clicked its
approximation of seconds, as close as you could get to Greenwich
Mean Time for only $14.95 at Target. It was the only real-world
noise loud enough to register with the angry insane woman who was
spooning tuna out of a half-opened can with nothing but her bare
spindly fingers. She was wearing her sunglasses and staring
straight ahead at the unplugged TV in her living room. On it, she
could usually play back events from her past, or events that she
wanted to see in her future. Lately it had become locked on the
Death to Stacy Channel, and Rose enjoyed the shows on that channel
very much.

Her personal viewing of “Stacy Gets Hit By An
Errant Boulder” was interrupted by a louder noise than the clock –
out of nowhere, a single knock at the door. Normally, this would
not phase Rose in the least during her tuna TV time, but something
about the single knock drew her interest. She looked through the
kitchen at the solid oak door, and was surprised to see a red beret
in its 1' x 1' glass window. A red envelope poked through the space
underneath the door. Without thinking or even taking her hand out
of the tuna can, Rose rose from her easy chair and began walking
towards the kitchen. He legs were half-asleep, and the stroll
proved difficult in her entropied state. She fell to the floor with
a crazed shriek, launching the tuna can over her head into parts
unknown. The red envelope was closer now that she had fallen, and
she used this closeness to motivate her body into crawling across
the cold dusty kitchen tiles in an attempt to reach it. For some
reason, that red envelope had become her reason for living. Maybe
it was the sane part of her reaching out for something in the real
world that had some meaning, or maybe she just liked the color red.
Whatever the reason, she had to have that envelope in her
tuna-caked fingers as soon as insanely possible.

It was a red envelope with writing on it.
Rose stared at the calligraphy for twelve full seconds before
recognizing her name. It was for her! Part of her believed it was
too good to be true, but she tore the envelope open anyway. There
was a card inside, also blood red. It said:

To: Rose Fitzgerald Walker-Hughes

From: The Kennedy Foundation

You are cordially invited to a dinner in your
honor

on June the Seventeenth, at Eight O' Clock in
the evening

at the request of John F Kennedy, the living
President

In the woods behind the farmer's field,
directly South

from the cabin at 2011 Straggler Way

just keep walking South until you find a
feast, Rose

this is the opportunity of a lifetime,
Rose

Even in her detached state, Rose knew this
couldn't be anything but a figment of her imagination. She looked
at her kitchen table where her Red Friends were hanging out. They
were giving her the thumbs-up sign. She didn't remember them ever
having thumbs before, but the little devils were still correct --
there's no use being insane if your imagination can't lead you on
an adventure or two. She looked back at the blood-red card in
amazement. The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived was having a dinner in
her honor; what an escape from reality
that
could
potentially turn out to be!

THE CONGRESSMAN II

Jennifer could feel the fire burning in her
calves as she trudged over the black dirt and dead leaves of the
forest. This was not the way she wanted to spend a Friday night,
with her creepy boss in this creepy place. She drove here because
Albiers was drunk, and also because she did everything he told her
to. He paid her a lot of money, and a lot of attention, and
sometimes this meant she had to do unpleasant things. Such was the
life of a United States Congressman's assistant. If it wasn't worth
such invaluable connections with important people, she would have
tendered her resignation a long time ago. But this was the present,
and not the future. Jennifer hoped and prayed that someday she
herself would be able to drunkenly harass her own poor assistant
into driving her to pick up a bribe in the woods.

They reached the clearing and Albiers grabbed
her smartly by the arm. “I think this is the place,” he whispered
out loud as he held her there. They both looked around for any sign
of the man in the red beret.

“How can you tell?” she asked, standing
awkwardly with her arm in his grip.

“Because...I remember that tree.” He pointed
at an elm about 20 feet away.

As their eyes adjusted to the woodsy
darkness, a bench appeared at the base of that very elm tree. It
had two standard-looking black briefcases on it.

Albiers let her arm go and whooped with glee.
This was always Jennifer's least favorite part of the bribery and
influence cycle. He was fond of saying that the actual loot one
received in a quid-pro-quo did not matter – the bribe was always
its own reward. Jennifer found this attitude profoundly disturbing,
especially for a public servant, and changed the subject whenever
he brought it up. For Albiers, the very act of being bribed meant
that he was
bona fide
powerful. He was obviously tickled
pink to see not one but two containers full of cash sitting on the
bench.

“I guess the man just left the stuff
here...are you sure this is ok?” asked a concerned Jennifer to
Albiers, who just shrugged his shoulders, picked up the briefcase,
and pressed his nose to one of its leather-bound edges.

“Smells like monay!” Albiers loudly
pronounced, sniffing it like it was the morning's bacon.

“Sure, but something doesn't feel right,” she
whispered, crouching down and looking around wildly at the dark
greenery surrounding the clearing. “We're being watched.”