Battle of the Network Zombies (18 page)

I shrugged.

“I ran into your friendly neighborhood reapers and they are on a collections tear. Refused to see me at all until I forced you to pay them.”

“Jesus.”

Besides the reapers, there were three witch doctors in town. Achebe Ababe ran a quaint necropathy clinic out of a restored Victorian mansion on Queen Anne. Though reportedly fluent, he refused to speak English, preferring to dictate prescriptives through a series of quarrelsome tongue clicks and clucks understood only by his steadfast and towheaded nurse, Sojourn. Many suspected that the foul little albino was the actual doctor in the scenario, using Ababe as a ploy for undead cred.

Grant Coolidge was a snappily dressed aurapuncturist and noted venal-chakra surgeon, known for making house calls in his black Maserati and making time with his clients. Lawsuits plagued the man like, well…plagues, though he deflected them with a flourish of rattlesnake tail and the services of Anton Snell, esquire of the fifth borough of Hell.

The last one, Elliot Wasserstein, was known as much for his soft windblown hair—not often seen this side of the eighties—as he was for restoring humanity to werewolves and the occasional vampire (these claims have come under scrutiny by the
Undead Science Monitor
in no fewer than four separate articles). The doctor was in a practice with the famed voodoo priestess, Beth Liebowitz, who’d be no help curing a supernatural urinary tract infection, as her specialty was curing fashion disasters through the channeling of Erdu. Whatever that meant.

The problem was Gil had slept with all three.
⁷⁸

“I’m sorry. Really.” I patted his knee. “What are you going to do?”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to tell Lars.” He repositioned himself with some discomfort.

“Who?” Wendy asked.

“Lars. He’s the guy your mother set me up with. Turns out he’s a pretty decent guy, though a little woody.”

“Is that a fae joke?” I asked, more than a little tired of our woodland neighbors.

“Yeah. Seriously hot. Very blue collar and kind of scruffy.”

“Yummy,” Wendy growled. “Are you totally in love with him?”

This was sounding a little familiar, a little too Vance Ventura, Repo Artist. I interjected, “Blond hair?”

“Yeah.” Gil’s brow furrowed.

“What does he do for a living, this Lars?”

“He’s in maintenance, I think. You sound like you know him.”

“No. Just sounds like the guy that repossessed my fucking car.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t know. He totally could have lied to me about his name. This could be my guy.”

“Well he was driving a Volvo SUV.”

I slammed my fist on the chair arm. “Shut the fuck up.”

“No. I’m kidding.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m just really paranoid. First all the crap with my finances, the job, and now this murder mystery business.”

“What?” He perked up.

Wendy and I traded on and off telling him the story of the deaths at the Minions Mansion, our little road race with the Psychocabbie of Mumbai and Ricardo’s new club.

“So you’ve been filming everything?” he asked.

“Yep,” Wendy added.

“That’s not all she’s filming,” I pointed to the cell phone on the bed. “Show him.”

“Oh yeah.” Wendy bounded for the phone and clicked it on and then off again, face curdled with disappointment. “It looks like someone’s knocked the camera down. All I can see is the floor molding.”

“Oh. Too bad.”

“Gil,” she said dropping back down next to him. “I need you to do me a favor and go over to my apartment. Abuelita is throwing some weird vampire frotteurism party.”

“Okay.” A crooked smile starting on his mouth. “I’ll get right on that.”

“Whatever you do, don’t touch her. She’s full of cloud.”

“What?” He shook his head like he didn’t hear her correctly.

“Like a Carpathian drug mule,” I said.

“Is that a little joke?” Wendy asked, suddenly confrontational. “I don’t see the humor in it.”

“Come on, it’s pretty funny,” I countered.

“It is pretty funny.” Gil agreed and reached for his empty glass. “What are we going to do about this?”

I slurped the remaining vodka from my own glass. “Bar!”

There wasn’t a whole lot left in the Minions bar liquor cabinet, but at least the fat-headed bartender had enough sense to lock it up. I busted out the glass with my shoe and pulled out a bottle of tequila and a dusty Perry Como for Gil.

We were just sitting down for a drink when Mama stumbled in, soberish and ready for some real questioning.

“Care for a drink, Mama?” I asked.

Gil took a seat nearby, while Wendy ran for the camera.

“Line ’em up, child.’ Cause I got woes to kill, somethin’ fierce.”

I poured her a shot and she threw it back, slamming the glass back onto the bar and tapping the rim. “One more to show you like the Mama.”

I poured it out and she threw it back again.

“Now, let’s get to talkin’.”

Wendy sped in with the camera up and ready, as Mama told us again that Hairy Sue and Johnny had been seeing each other for some time and despite her protestations, Johnny ensured the stripper a spot on both his last
Tapping Birch’s Syrup
season and
American Minions
. Rather than listen to stuff we already knew, I decided to force the issue—as I’m wont to do.

“I have to tell you something, Mama.” I leaned against the bar and looked her in the eye. “The sirens were found dead in Johnny’s room.”

“Oh, lord, no,” she wailed.

“They drank the scotch.”

Mama’s wailing stopped dead.

“I’m going to ask you again. Did you kill Johnny?”

Mama spat a fat loogie onto the bar.

“I wasn’t trying to poison Johnny. Are you insane? Look at what we had to lose in his death. No. I was trying to get rid of that pig Hairy Sue. Johnny never could resist trailer trash. He felt like they’d give up the stink quicker than a girl with breeding. Most men are fascinated with the ass, dontcha find?”

“I do find,” Wendy agreed, giving me that, “told you so” look.

“So why poison the scotch and put it in Johnny’s room?”

“Johnny doesn’t drink scotch, you see. Never touches the stuff. Wood nymphs are sensitive to alcohol, so I was sure he wouldn’t touch it. Now Sue. That bitch could drink her weight in alcohol, probably started in her baby bottle. The gift, I assure you, was for her.” She stood and looked out the window. “I’m only sorry those poor girls were such raging alcoholics that they couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

“And how did they know it was even in there?”

“That’s a good question, child.” She reached for her purse. “While you’re figuring it out, I’m going to find Hairy Sue. If that bitch didn’t kill my Johnny then no one did. Hell, I even saw her drop that envelope off in his room. She didn’t see me though. Not too bright that one.”

I placed my hand on her forearm. “One more question.” I pulled the Fae Away out of my pocket. “This is what you used, right?”

She nodded.

“So clear something up for me. Hairy Sue is like a nymph or something?”

“Hell no. Nothin’ that dainty.” Mama laughed as she staggered from the room, keys jingling.

“I think she’s right. It’s gotta be Hairy Sue. Wendy?”

Wendy looked up from the camera screen. “Yeah.”

“One last thing before we get out of here. Follow me.”

Everything was right where it should be. Pile of ashes half on, half off the oriental carpet on one end, two dead girls with over-processed hair on the other. Scotch bottle. Pornos. And Johnny’s envelopes.

“Wait a minute. Do these look right? Were they both closed like this?”

Wendy shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

I looked at the first one again. The same one he’d shown me at the Hooch and Cooch. I slid the thin plank of board out and the creature lay pinned there, screaming, just like it always had. The damn things gave me the chills. I opened the second envelope, the one addressed to the mansion. I pulled out the plank and dropped it to the floor.

It was lacking a certain something.

A certain creepy creature. I didn’t even want to think of where it could have gone. Maybe they weren’t even dead. The pins just kept them trapped or something.

Wendy looked down at the empty board and a small squeak issued from her mouth, she started backing toward the door. “Where is it?”

I looked under the desk and started for the edge of the bed before losing my nerve entirely and running for the door.

Wednesday
1:30–2:30
A.M.
Super Magic Power Ninjas

We caught up to Mama Montserrat straddling the two center lanes down the old Highway 99. The tequila shots were kicking her ass. Gil held the Jag back a bit, making sure we’d be around, in case the voodoo woman turned her beater’s nose into the divider or sideswiped a young couple, their new baby and super-cute Jack Russell terrier and sent them careening off the top of an overpass onto a school bus or something equally as tragic, and worse, newsworthy. After seeing Baljeet bite it, I was more than a little sensitive about psycho drivers.

My phone vibrated inside the Novak bag.

“Scott,” I said aloud and answered. “Hey, hon.”

“Watch that. We’re buds now, right?”

“Right. Absolutely.”

“I found out some shit on your yeti problem.”

“Great, I’m gonna put you on speaker, okay?” I clicked the button and held the camera up to the phone. No sense in having to do a voiceover if we could help it.

“So I tracked down an expert on the woodland and in between being bored to tears, found out a little known fact about the yeti. They’re basically human with a bit of a twist. It seems their cells expand when they’re emotionally agitated.”

“Like when you eat carbs,” Wendy added.

Gil sighed and looked at Wendy like she was a dumbass.

“Sort of. But this is all of their cells. They can get really big, like the one at the Hooch and Cooch.”

I thought back to the rampaging creature and the havoc it wreaked on the club. If it weren’t intentionally designed to look like a dump, Ethel would have had to do a major remodel for all the damage the yeti caused.

“You mean Hairy Sue?” Gil asked, his wrist draped casually over the steering wheel.

“What?” I stared at him in the rearview mirror, fingers digging into the leather headrest and anger threatening to actually flush my deathly pale skin—if only it could.
⁷⁹
“You knew?”

“Of course. I hired her.” He shrugged.

“But you acted like it was going to kill us. Like we were really in danger.”

“We totally were. Sue gets really pissy from time to time, usually on payday but manages not to kill any customers.”

Wendy slapped the dash and spun around. “That’s what I meant when I said she puffed up. It was like really quick and then she shrunk back up like she’d tried to hold in a fart or something and finally let it out. It was some Looney Toons shit.”

“They can do that,” Scott said. “Reel it back in. She’s probably had some anger management classes.”

“Yeah. Court-ordered. I can’t imagine that thing at the club being able to control anything. Hell, Birch had to cage it up. You’re telling me, that’s normal? What have you and Ethel done in the past to deal with your star dancer’s demented rampages?”

“Ethel has an epi-pen of Thorazine somewhere. She’s used it a couple of times, but, for the most part, Sue can pull it back together on her own.”

“God, I’m such an idiot.”

“No. How could you know?” Scott’s nurturing voice flooded the car, deep and parental. He always could soothe me. I missed him all the more. He’s my epi-pen.

“It’s just absolutely ridiculous, I didn’t put this together. I mean, could there have been more clues pointing to the fact?”

“It probably speaks to our lifestyle that these kind of things are so normalized, we accept them without much thought.” Wendy examined her nails, while she spoke. “I really need to go see Angie.”

I slouched back into the seat and clicked the phone off of speaker. “You are such an intellectual. We’re off speaker.”

“Jesus, I’ve gotta pee,” Gil said as we curved onto Suicide Bridge, where hundreds of ghosts mingled before taking their dives.

“It’s like a freakin’ block party up here.” Wendy rolled down her window, stuck out a pair of eager rock fists and screamed. “Fuck yeah!”

A group of surly looking specters shot us the finger.

I tuned out the mayhem and settled into the conversation.

“Seriously, Amanda. You’ve got a lot on your mind,” Scott said. “What with the business and the condo and all. Then this.” He paused. “I probably didn’t help with all my pushing toward a real commitment. I apologize.”

What? I perked up. What was happening here?

“No. It was all me. You are so great and I’m just lucky to have you in my life at all, even as a friend.”

“Um…about that—” Scott started.

“What the hell is she doing?” Gil pulled the car into the Hooch and Cooch lot. Mama Montserrat was miraculously on her feet and stumbling around the outside, pouring powder out of black bags and waving her hands in front of the side exit doors, before chalking a big “X” on each, then moving around to the rear of the building.

“Hey, Scott. I’ll call you back, okay? We’re going to confront Hairy Sue.”

“What? No way. You can’t.”

“Talk soon. Bye.”

I dropped the phone back into my purse and darted from the car as Mama came back around and headed for the front door. Wendy’s feet pounded the pavement behind me.

“Come on!” I shouted back to Gil, who was too busy relieving himself behind the shelter of the open car door. A puddle of blood spattered at his feet.

“It burns!” he screamed.

I pushed through the doors a moment after they swung closed and already the inside of the club had erupted into anarchy. The strippers were crowded on the stage just behind a topless and infuriated Hairy Sue, her hands balled into fists and one of those curled tightly around the butter churning bat. Mama Montserrat faced her adversary from the floor, shaking the bones dangling from her wrists and chanting. Surrounding her was a crowd of booing perverts freshly cut off from their fix of beaver pelt, the steam not yet evaporated from glasses, bulges still tenting from their Sansabelts.

Ethel stormed in from backstage. “What the fuck is this?” She yelled and called for the deejay to nix the music with a scowl and quick finger slash across her throat. The room was quiet for a moment. And then the waller and din of the crowd erupted again.

I stepped in behind Mama and put a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Mama?” I asked. “Maybe we should—”

The woman reeled toward me, eyes black and coursing with hate magic. “Leave!” she bellowed in a voice not quite her own. Deeper. Darker.

“Holy crap!” Wendy barked from beside me, her camera hand drifting sideways. “What the hell’s got into her?”

“I think that’s exactly what’s in her now. Hell.” I backed away from the woman and took her in. Her feet were planted sturdily despite the wild gyrations of her hips. Mama’s tongue flicked and she shouted a garbled mishmash of sounds and words in both Spanish and French. Nothing I understood, but the meaning was clear.

She was calling for something.

I noticed movement on the dais. Hairy Sue stepped forward, her face twitching, her teeth clenched. “Get out of here, Mama.”

“Like hell, I will. You took my Johnny!”

“He was never yours!” the stripper spat back.

Oh, shit
.

I glanced at Wendy. Her face wore the unmistakable grimace of identifying with Mama Montserrat’s pain. “We better move away, someone’s gonna cut a bitch.”

Even Ethel had shrugged and given up trying to control the situation. She squeezed herself into the truck, next to Gil, who seemed to be holding himself and rocking.

As we pushed through the crowd, I noticed some of the men were hovering around the exit, throwing themselves at the doors, trying to bust out. Even the front door, which bore the same chalk marks Mama applied outside, must have been enchanted to keep us inside, a spell activated by the voodoo priestess’s venom, possibly, though I know as much about voodoo and black magic as you do.

Wendy and I took up a position on the opposite side of the truck. It seemed a good idea to put some metal between us and the action taking place in the center of the room. Occasionally, I have good ideas. Not as good as Gil and Ethel, who seemed a hell of a lot safer inside the truck.

“Shit.” Wendy pointed at Mama, or a space just behind her. “Look at that.”

The floor cracked open and a gray smoke rose out of it, encircling the men nearby, who dropped to the ground in heaps as it clouded their heads. A poison, perhaps. Tendrils of the fog tentacled through the room, seeking out mouths, noses, even stabbing into ears, yet slithering right past Wendy and me with all the haughtiness of a back-handed compliment at a country club function.

It didn’t occur to me what we were witnessing until movement inside the truck cab drew my attention. Gil and Ethel cranked the windows closed feverishly and closed the vents as best they could. I couldn’t make out anything from their muffled shouts but their eyes were pleading. A wisp of smoke snaked from the floorboard up into the cab and Gil slapped his hand over his mouth and nose and the other over his left ear. He nodded for Ethel to follow suit and then preceded to press their exposed ears together.

I would have chuckled at the ludicrous position, if I hadn’t realized what was happening. Vampires can’t handle the zombie virus, it fills their dead lungs and veins to the point of embolism. I know. I’ve killed someone with the breath. I joke that it’s the breath of life, but it isn’t really. It’s just more death.

More and more and more.

Whatever
this
smoke was seemed to be a bit more powerful, both delivering the virus and killing its target with a single infection. Potent.

There must have been at least fifty of them that rose, gray-skinned and eyes white with cataracts, the smoke blistering through them like the steam off a meth lab, stripping the life out of them and cauterizing the wounds on the way out.

The yetis didn’t seem to be effected. I followed the edges of the misty haze. It seemed to stop in an even line parallel with Mama Montserrat. There were even a few men huddled behind the deejay booth, eyes struck wide with fear and, likely, insanity.

“Get behind me, children!” Mama Montserrat called and swung her arms to her sides for her forces to gather there. They shuffled forward, lining up like trained soldiers, albeit less disciplined. They clawed at each other’s flesh and chewed off neighboring fingers and cheeks.

“Oh, no you didn’t.” Hairy Sue stripped off the chaps and her panties, standing naked before the mass of groaning dead.

“Yes. I did.”

Mama Montserrat raised her hand in the air as though collecting the zombies’ attention, but before she could utter a word, the lead stripper stepped forward, opened her mouth wide and roared. The voice was deeper than you’d imagine, gravelly and torturous; it shook the waddle under Mama’s chin and heralded Hairy Sue’s transformation.

The flesh of her legs, arms and torso puffed—just like Wendy’d said—to at least three times its size, folding over on itself in great voluminous fatty rolls. Her feet and fingers cracked as they stretched, elongating into those same rake-like claws that tore through the beams and dented the ceiling only days prior. As the yeti’s head grew fat and bulbous, Hairy Sue’s long stringy backwoods locks seemed to recede into the follicles, though it was much more likely that the fat and skin cells were growing out past the follicles and the hair was simply enveloped by its girth, much like the way a fat man’s dick turtles inward as his pooch gets fatter—a scene I’ve witnessed only once, and, thankfully, for only about the three seconds it took me to grab my coat and scurry away from my horrifying inappropriate blind date.

Hairy Sue roared again. Fully transformed, her claws reaching out on either side in a massive span.

It was then I noticed the other strippers.

They inched forward on their purposefully dirty feet, gathering around the yeti like a shield. I wondered what was in it for them. Why protect the yeti and so fearlessly to boot? Didn’t make sense.

And then they changed too.

The walls vibrated from the intensity of all the roaring and Wendy slapped her palms over her ears. Ethel and Gil had hired an entire girl gang of yeti strippers. I had half a mind to rip open the doors of the truck and blow in some more zombie virus. Dumbasses.

Mama was furious, but as she turned to deliver orders to the throng of zombies, Hairy Sue reached out—I thought to just snapped the voodoo woman’s head clean off with the ease of a child popping a candy dot off a paper strip—but instead she smacked her upside her head. The woman’s body collapsed to the floor, but before she even hit, the zombies behind her surged forward.

“Damn.” I huddled in closer to Wendy and pointed for the gap underneath the truck as a safer option. We crept under slowly, trying desperately not to attract attention from either the yetis or the zombies, newly released from their contract to Mama.

I didn’t have to worry. The guys hiding with the deejay began to scream and were swarmed. The yetis weren’t faring much better, despite their distinct size advantage. The mistakes tore through the bar for fresh meat like a line of termites through dry rot. Blood streamed in great crimson arcs across the walls and ceiling. A yeti stumbled out into the open, four zombies chewing at her knees and arms. The left leg went first and the creature toppled, valiantly tearing apart a pair of zombies in road crew overalls on the way down—the sounds of their spines stretching and snapping one after the other filled the room for a second and then they were tossed into the air like confetti.

Writhing confetti.

There had been six yetis, including Hairy Sue, at the start of the battle. So when I peeked out from under the truck and saw that there were only four, yet at least thirty of the supercharged zombies still battling, my thoughts started to shift toward escape. Then, the deejay staggered out from behind his wheels of steel, his jaw twisted at an odd angle and bloody tongue lolling out of a mouth split open at the sides like an amateur episiotomy. Five more freshly revived corpses trailed him out. One lurched forward, juggling his loose bowels, while another crawled behind him snapping greedily at what could have been a shoulder blade or a nice shank.

I do enjoy a nice shank, from time to time.

Mama’s zombies travelled in packs. They separated the remaining yetis and circled them, attacking from all sides and gnawing with ferocity and numbers, the supernatural equivalent of piranha. Two more of Hairy Sue’s peers dropped without taking out a single mistake.