Kiss of Life (27 page)

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Karen standing behind the cash wrap, apparently working.

"Oh, my gosh," she said, gripping Adam's rock hard bicep. "It's Karen! I totally forgot she worked here!"

Karen saw her and held up a finger, asking for a moment. She spoke to a frowning, acne'd guy with a ring through his eyebrow who Phoebe assumed was her boss, and a moment later Karen joined them at the display.

"Hey, guys," she said, "don't you look cute together. Off ... on a date?"

Phoebe blushed without knowing why. Adam's "yes" sounded like a tire slowly deflating.

"Listen," Karen said, drawing close. "Don't let on ...I'm dead. They don't know."

The news stunned Phoebe, but Adam seemed to take it in stride.

"Does this ...stuff...work?" he asked, holding up a can of aerosol zombie deodorant. "I don't ...smell ...do ...I?"

"Of course not," Karen said. "It's really an ...antibacterial spray. If you've been in the ground too long, I think. Try the Z if you want a ...cologne."

"You didn't tell them you're a zombie?" Phoebe noticed that her eyes were blue instead of their usual diamond color. Was she wearing contacts?

"We all have secrets. Don't...out me, though, okay?"

"I wouldn't do that."

"I know you wouldn't, sweetie." Then, loud enough for her scowling boss to hear at the cash wrap, "We also have the Z in a six-ounce bottle if you'd rather, sir."

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Adam smiled.

"Perhaps a T-shirt, then?" she continued, her voice ringing out over the loud horror-punk music playing from the store's sound system. "We have, just in, baby doll tees with the 'Some of My Best Friends Are Dead' logo. Very ...popular."

Phoebe couldn't keep herself from laughing, and she held on to Adam for support. Karen smiled sweetly at her grumpy boss, fluttering her long eyelashes as she did so.

Phoebe thought it felt very natural, very real, to be having fun with her friends. Very normal. She looked at Adam and he was smiling at her, and she squeezed, not wanting to release him, not wanting to let that feeling go.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

DUKE SHOWED UP
at exactly two a.m., as promised. His huge black truck, sleek and reflecting moonlight, was almost soundless as it rolled up to the curb.

"Hey," he said as Pete climbed in. "Have any trouble getting out?"

"Are you kidding?"

Duke smirked and gave him the once-over. He'd worn exactly what Duke had told him to--black sneakers and jeans, a dark, hooded sweatshirt. Duke was dressed almost the same.

"So where are we going? You know you have to go back the way you came, right? This just goes into the development."

"I know." Duke slowed down a few streets away and pointed at a house near the end of a cul de sac. "Is that where Evan Talbot stayed?"

Pete noted he didn't say
lived.

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"Yeah."

"Got away with that one, didn't you?"

Pete didn't reply. Duke smiled at him, and then gunned the engine, and soon they were on the back roads of Oakvale.

"Did you know that there are twenty-seven cemeteries in Winford? And another seven just in Oakvale?"

Pete shook his head. "No, I didn't know that."

"True fact. That's almost three times as many cemeteries as liquor stores. That's a lot of dead people."

"Are we going to a cemetery?"

"We certainly are. There's a bag under your seat. Open it up, would you? I brought you a present."

Pete found a green canvas bag by his feet. He opened it and a pair of rubber masks fell out.

"You get the one with the long black hair."

Pete spread the mask on his knee.

"Zombies? We're going to pretend to be zombies? In a cemetery?" His mask had a long slash on the left cheek that exposed cracked yellow teeth along a gray gum line. The eyeholes were cast to make the mask look faintly Asian. It was a cartoonish likeness of the zombie who had maimed him.

Duke was smiling. "Fun, huh? Go ahead and try it on."

Pete held the mask stretched out before him a moment longer, then he pulled it on his head. The latex was moist and cool against his skin.

"That looks great." Duke reached over and ruffled the long black hair. "You, son, have just joined the ZLA."

"What's the ZLA?" Pete's voice echoed against the mask

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and he adjusted it slightly. Already the trapped heat was making his stitches itch.

"The Zombie Liberation Army." Duke grabbed his own mask and pulled it on with one hand. Pete looked back at a bald zombie with pockmarked skin and round, crazed eyes, its mouth drawn back in a wet looking snarl.

Liberation, Pete thought, excitement and nausea welling up within his stomach in equal amounts. "We're going to dig up some graves, aren't we?"

The mad, slavering zombie face turned toward him.

"Oh yeah," it said.

There were three other vehicles at the cemetery, two white vans and an

American-made sedan. Pete saw a half dozen or so figures milling about in front of one of the white vans, each with a shovel.

"Holy crow." He lifted the neck of his mask up because he thought he was starting to hyperventilate in the latex. "We're so close to the main road. What if the cops come?"

"The cops won't come." Duke brought the truck to a halt on the shoulder of the gravel path.

"How do you--"

"I know. The cops won't come. I've got a shovel for you in the back. And put your mask back on, we don't like to show each other our faces."

Pete scrambled out the door and joined Duke at the back gate of the truck.

"What about the zombies? Isn't this the place they put all those posters up?"

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Duke unlatched the gate; the shovel he selected rasped against the bed as he drew it out, like a sword. He handed it to Pete.

"I like you, kid. You're observant." "But what if they show up?"

Duke paused, and Pete could almost picture his bemused expression beneath the garish zombie mask.

"You aren't afraid of some zombies, are you? Big Pete, zombie killer?"

Duke's words made his stitches itch even more. "No, I'm not afraid. I just don't want to get caught."

Duke slid his own shovel out. "Quit acting like a girl. We know where the zombies are. They're busy with their own pranks tonight, so don't worry about them."

He dropped his free hand on Pete's shoulder and pulled him close, so that their masks were almost touching.

"Don't think we're a bunch of stupid rednecks going off half-cocked, Pete. Don't confuse our actions with yours. This is a very carefully thought out operation. The key to destroying your enemies is knowledge and planning. We've got both."

"Who's we?"

Duke let him go and rose up to his full height. He was bigger than any zombie Pete had ever seen.

"Just keep your mouth closed and your eyes open, Pete. I'm giving you a great opportunity here, but you're the one that's got to take advantage of it. Now don't say a word."

With that, Duke called over to the men from the other vehicles, shouting naturally, as though they weren't about to

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desecrate a cemetery at two thirty in the morning.

"Gentlemen," he said, as they formed a loose ring around him. Pete counted seven other figures, all men by the looks of it, but he wasn't entirely sure because they were all wearing zombie masks. Each mask was designed to frighten, each having a macabre or grisly detail like a severed ear, missing nose, or wild pop eyes to make the wearer look insane or dangerous, or both. Someone made a comment about the long hair on Pete's mask, another whistled. The weight of the shovel felt reassuring in Pete's hand.

"Hey," a "zombie," definitely male, his large gut hanging over the waistband of his black jeans on all sides, called. "Who's your date?"

Duke pointed a finger at the fat man. "Shut up. We don't have time to be screwing around. Everyone know their parts in this?"

Zombie-masked heads nodded.

"Just to be sure, I'm going to break it down."

The respect that Duke commanded from these men was obvious, even through their disguises. When he spoke, all chatter and joking ceased, and they all milled in a little closer as Duke began to break down the plan. Pete gathered that he was supposed to dig graves along with the men while Duke supervised and took pictures.

"Read the tombstones before you dig," Duke said. "What we want is people with families, hopefully with one name on the marker not yet buried. Kids are okay, but stay away from teens."

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"Don't want to catch a live one?" the fat man said. "I mean, a dead live one?"

No one laughed, maybe because Duke leveled his shovel at the man's protruding gut.

"That's the last time I'm warning you. You want to see if you can be the first person over eighteen to come back from the dead?"

The fat man shook his head, his zombie mask twitching back and forth so fast it would have been comical if it wasn't abundantly clear that Duke thought the time for jokes had passed.

Duke lowered the shovel and nodded at another zombie-masked man. "What do you have for us?"

He came forward with a large duffel bag. The man unzipped it and withdrew a stack of paper sheets similar to the "Undead States" posters that the real zombies had used when they decorated the cemetery. They had the same picture of that really, really dead-looking zombie, but the words had been changed to "ZLA--Rise up and Destroy the Living!"

Duke nodded. "Nice."

The man with the duffel took out an old grayish bedsheet. He unfolded it completely until it lay atop a grave like a picnic blanket. The words, "Zombie Liberation Army--Destroy the Living!" had been painted in dripping crimson letters.

Duke laughed. "Put that bad boy up on that mausoleum over there. Okay, people. Let's dig."

The men, even the fat comedian, rushed to obey. A few had already picked out their graves; Pete heard the unmistakable

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sound of blades biting into the frosted turf. He was aware, suddenly, of the crazy eyes of Duke's mask staring down at him. He almost flinched.

"You okay, son?" he said softly.

Pete nodded, hefting his shovel.

"Attaboy. Why don't you get started on that one over there?"

Pete walked over to the grave Duke had indicated. There were two names on the headstone; the woman had died last year, in her forties. Her surviving husband, a few years older, was still out and about.

He looked back at Duke, who was leaning on his shovel to balance the camera he pointed at him.

Pete started to dig.

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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

TAKAYUKI LOOKED
back to the edge of the parking lot, where Tayshawn stood under a high streetlight. Tayshawn's job was to watch the mall entrance for prowling police cars, and signal the remaining Sons of Romero with an air horn that he had "liberated" from the hardware store. They had been in the mall lot for an hour now and not a single cop car had swung by. Tak couldn't believe their luck.

He looked back at the mall entrance, where Popeye was putting the finishing touches on his latest art installment. George and Karen stood with four mannequins propped up on the front steps under the unlit neon sign, each bent into stiff, awkward poses meant to parody the languidly unnatural poses of fashion models. Popeye had used papier-mâché to give the mannequins a rough, old-school zombie appearance; one even had a strand of latex skin hanging down from its cheek in what

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was perhaps a sly tribute to Tak himself. Tak thought it looked like someone had plastered shredded wheat to its wooden face.

"Move her over ... to the left ...George," Popeye said. "Just a ...hair. No, my ...left."

The mannequin had one of the newest shirts from the Slydellco line, the words "Just Dead" in block letters on a white background. The zombie mannequins were all smiling, and all of them sported Slydellco shirts that Karen had picked up for them at her job. The two girl mannequins were wearing cosmetics from the Z line; Tak had watched Karen apply "Kiss of Life" lipstick to one of them from her own personal tube. Tak thought that the crimson lips and the other liberally applied cosmetics--the eye shadow and blush--combined with the grayish papier-mâché made the figures look like garish undead clowns.

He thought "Kiss of Life" looked really good on Karen, though. He wasn't sure but he thought she used the eyeliner as well, and he once thought he smelled flowers when standing next to her--his sense of smell was so tricky, and he was never sure if he wasn't imagining scents rather than experiencing them.

George knocked off the zombie's wig as he moved the mannequin.

Tak wished they would work faster, but he was also glad that Popeye took things so seriously; his creativity had been a real boost to the Sons of Romero, who responded to the various projects with eager enthusiasm. And there wasn't much that any of them were enthusiastic about.

"Let me help you, George," Karen said.