Undead and Unstable (18 page)

“Yeah, well.” She’d finished the grapes and was looking around at the various food displays. She spied a baking display and helped herself to a 24-ounce bag of chocolate chips. “That’s your thing. You sort of do everything by the hair of your ass. And sometimes it even works out.”

“And sometimes people die. I just can’t get it together this time. I’m Maverick after Goose bit the big one at Miramar.”

“A
Top Gun
reference? Seriously?”

“I’ve lost my wingman,” I griped, struggling with the cart before it could veer and clip someone else—thank goodness for vampire strength! “And now I enjoy standing around in my tidy whities staring at my mirrored reflection as Tom Skerritt checks out my butt!”

“Oh, the humanity.”

“Why can’t that bitch just
tell
me? Huh? Fuck all that mysterious-visitor crap. Just
tell
me what went wrong and how to fix it.”

“That bitch, Satan? That bitch, Elderly Betsy? That bitch, the Anti—”

“Elderly Betsy. In the movies they’re always ‘Oooh, we gotta watch out we don’t make a paradox so I’m just gonna be all cryptic and unhelpful,’ and then everyone’s mystified when things don’t work out. I should just get my hands on her, find a blowtorch or something, and get busy until she tells me how to fix everything.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah, but effective, maybe.”

“No, gross, and also that sets you on the road to Evil Town, which I know you’re trying to avoid.”

“Let me have my dreams,” I sighed, and she left me to my morbid, torture-filled fantasies.

THIRTY

When we got back, I’d managed to put a few of my problems
behind me to rave about the Lifetime Special
du jour
. Since I wasn’t having sex, and since I didn’t have a plan, and since there was a zombie creeping around, I was watching an unusual amount of television this month.

“Okay, so then—check this—the heroine does this—”

“But I hate Rene Russo,” Jess complained while I lugged bag after bag into the kitchen. “She was the least interesting thing in
Outbreak
. The monkey was a thousand times more interesting and it didn’t have to emote. And when her character got sick, okay, everyone
else
who caught it, they’re all bleeding out their ears and eyes, but she just sort of gets a mild flush. That’s how you knew Rene Russo had the deadly plague. They put more blush on her.”

“You’ll like her in this, I bet. She did this remarkable thing. The killer called her and tried to get her to meet him,
alone
, and the
only witness
to his
hideous unspeakable crime
refused to do it.”

“What?”

I was unloading bags, stacking cans and frozen birds and boxes of Stove Top on the counter. “Yeah. She wouldn’t take off without a word to anyone to meet with the killer at midnight in the middle of a cornfield. Unprecedented! And then, when the killer tried to reschedule, she turned him down
again
. Yes!”

“That does sound kind of cool,” Jess admitted.

“This time, though, she refused to leave the safety of her living room to meet up with a shady guy in an abandoned office building by a wharf where all the streetlights had been broken out. She said no. And she lived to testify! Unprecedented! So, yeah, I wanna reward that behavior. I’m renting everything Rene Russo ever touched.”

“You’re watching an unusual amount of TV these days.”

“My thought exactly!”

“Remember your Denzel marathon?”

“One movie isn’t a marathon,” I corrected her, but I did remember. It was the day after Marc had killed himself, so I’d had to watch the movie three times in a row before I could even think about trying to do anything else: Feed. Cry. Rage. Think.

*    *    *

“
I don’t need
Dead Man Walking;
I need
Man on Fire.”

“When was the last time you slept?” Jessica asked quietly.

I ignored her, sorting through the DVDs. I needed the movie, not the book. The book was almost as much of a downer as
DMW
, which didn’t mean it was a bad book, just one I wouldn’t read twice. And not now, of all times.

The movie version, though: totally different story. Denzel Washington’s character, Creasy, thought Dakota Fanning’s character had been kidnapped (she had been) and murdered (she hadn’t been). So he fucked with a bunch of bad guys and blew bad guys up and cut pieces off them and shot a few of them, and then he rescued Dakota Fanning and she got to go home to her mom. Yes, definitely a time to take
MoF
to heart as opposed to thinking about Sean Penn getting the needle while his nun friend watched helplessly and prayed and cried. “Where is the fucking thing? It was right here last week when Marc was teasing me about—about something else. Where the hell is it?”

“It’s—it’s here. See? You buried it by accident while you were looking.”

“At least that’s not a metaphor for anything awful,” I muttered. “Are you gonna watch with me?”

“Betsy,” my friend said, with an expression on her face that meant she was picking her words with care, “Creasy died at the end. He saved the girl … and died.”

I met her look. “So?”

She had nothing to say to that.

I guess I didn’t, either.

“You should be glad I’m catching up on all the movies I never
watch, what with dying and all.”

“I’m kind of glad,” Jess admitted so diffidently I had to smile.

“Movies? Cable television? Really? That’s your priority at this time?”

Didn’t even have to look. I just shoved cans into random cupboards. “Get bent, Wretched Me.”

“For God’s sake.” Hmm. Nice to see Evil Old Me could still break the third commandment. Wait. Fifth? “I sent Marc back to help you.”

“Some help!” I whipped around and glared. “He slunk around and giggled and freaked everybody out and scared our Marc into killing himself. And stop wearing my clothes!”

“Oh my God.” Jessica was all big eyes and open mouth. “I’m seeing it and I don’t believe it.”

“Oh. Yes. Hello.” Rude Elderly Me tipped a shallow nod in my (our) best friend’s direction. “You’re looking round.”

I gripped the one can of cranberry jelly I hadn’t put away. Right between the eyes … that ought to put a dent in her day. Not to mention her skull. “You watch how you talk to her, you clothes-grubbing harlot.”

“I am here to—never mind why I’m here.”

“See?” I said to Jessica, triumphant.

“Yeah, the coy thing is definitely annoying,” my beloved brilliant best friend agreed.

“It’s not only your turn to pull the freight, it’s your damned job. What do you want me to do, tattoo instructions on your forehead?”

“You can’t talk to you like that,” Jessica scolded.

“You hear but you don’t listen. You look but you don’t see.”

“I fart but don’t stink. I shampoo but don’t condition. What are you doing here? What am
I
doing here, you horrible decrepit thing?”

“Whoa,” Marc said, shambling in. Okay, maybe not shambling. He walked pretty much like he had in life. I had to work on letting go of my zombie stereotyping. I’d hated the term
politically correct
long before it was trendy, but I had to get over that, too.

He didn’t shamble, he didn’t moan “Braaaaaains” while clutching at terrified roommates, he didn’t stare vacantly (except when he was watching Drogo’s scenes in
Game of Thrones
, but he’d done that in life, too) or hungrily (see above: only with
Game of Thrones
). He didn’t do any of that stuff. He was a zombie, but he was still Marc. He was still my friend, and I was still his. As someone who resented being painted as a soulless bloodsucking dictator with a silly hard-on for good shoes (
it wasn’t silly!
), you’d think I’d catch on to that stuff a little quicker.

He wasn’t a terrifying
Pet Sematary
zombie … he didn’t come back with demonic baggage. (And I’d thought toddlers were scary before I saw Gage Creed return from the grave.) He wasn’t lurch-ey or clumsy; Ancient Me apparently knew her shit when it came to raising the dead—and keeping the dead.

At worst, he could be a speedy zombie. My God! I had hated the
Dawn of the Dead
remake zombies … they could run people down like a jaguar after a gazelle! I’d been so, so happy when movies and the TNT network went back to classic, shambling zombies.

“I forgot how much milling around we all did in the past,” Ancient Me said, holding her head like she was getting a migraine. “All milling, no action. Until we were pushed to the wall. And then it was often too late.”

“Okay, that was almost helpful.” I could feel myself perking up. “If you could elaborate just a teensy bit…”

Before she could, a wild-eyed Nickie/Dickie/Tavvi burst through the kitchen door. “You didn’t answer my texts!” he cried.

“What texts?” Jessica fished her phone out of her purse, then looked up with a grimace. “Sorry, Dickie.”

“Ugh,” I muttered.

“Sorry,
Dickie
, but I didn’t know my phone was off.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “It’s his name. Suck it up.”

“So you’re okay?” He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her. As much as he could, anyway. I had to applaud his heroic effort. “Jeez, don’t do that. I was shitting bricks.”

“Gross,” Marc commented.

“Aw, it’s cute,” I teased. “In a nauseating overprotective and creepy way.”

“And you!” The Artist Formerly Known as Nick let go of Jessica’s “waist” and whipped around. “This is more or less your fault.”

“Well, you’re probably right,” I admitted, “but I’m not sure why. Or what I can—”

“
He’s
a zombie.” Pointing to Marc, who shrugged, embarrassed. “Which is why
she’s
here.” Pointing to Ancient Me, who had never looked less interested in a person or what they were saying. “And now Satan is a pop-in guest? Fucking
Satan
?”

“She’s never a guest! I only summoned her once; she almost always shows up on her own. Satan’s the worst.”

“And
he
might be skinned. By you!” Nick/Dick looked around the room in confusion before realizing Sinclair wasn’t actually in the room. Now that was a frazzled cop. “And Antonia’s back from hell, but your stepmother is still dead and in hell.”

“Okay, those aren’t entirely my fault,” I began.

“In our home! Jesus Christ, Betsy, we’re trying to have a baby here!”

“We?”
Don’t look at his groin. Don’t look at his groin. Don’t mention that he doesn’t have a vagina, so “we” is bullshit. This is not the time to mention your pet peeve about expectant fathers talking how “we” are having a baby. Don’t. Don’t.
“Um, sorry?”

“You’re always sorry, Betsy, but things just keep getting weirder, don’t they?”

“Huh.” Ancient Betsy was staring thoughtfully at Dickie/Nickie. “A backbone in both timelines. Interesting.”

“
You
shut up.”

“And a moron in both timelines,” Ancient Me decided.

“This is on you,” he said, pointing to (ulp!) me. “It all comes back to you. It always comes back to you.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the vic—”

“You were always going to go your own way.”

“Maybe not always…”

He was in no mood to be coerced or distracted. Just held himself stiffly and stared at me with a gaze so fierce it nearly scorched me. “You were always going to fix things the way you liked them and to hell with the consequences.”

“If you think
this
is how I like it, you’re deranged.”

“That’s why you put it all off.”

“Put what off?” I cried. To my annoyance, no one in the room seemed inclined to tiptoe out and leave Dick and me to thrash this out in privacy.

“Burying Marc!”

“Do not drag me into this,” Zombie Marc began, but Dick/Nick was not about to be derailed.

“Classic Betsy: stall until something weirder happens, then do your own thing while we’re looking the wrong way. You knew you were going to do something and you knew we wouldn’t like it.”

“Yeah, because that’s how brilliant I secretly am. I’m so diabolical I planned for Marc to kill
himself
in November in Minnesota so his coffin wouldn’t get sunk six feet and I could get my other self from a timeline I didn’t intend to create to bring him back to life,” I snapped. If only I
were
that diabolical a planner…

“You knew you were gonna do something.”

Then I had my “you can’t handle the truth” moment: “Okay, yeah. I was, and I knew you wouldn’t be able to wrap your head around it. So I promised myself and Sinclair—”

“Sinclair!” he echoed, throwing his arms up like an NFL referee.
And … it’s gooooooood! The Packers win the Super Bowl!
“Big part of the problem!”

“Don’t start, Nick/Dick! I don’t bust your balls because of who you sleep with, and I expect the same goddamn courtesy.”

“How many times? It’s
Dick
. You’re talking about courtesy and you haven’t bothered to learn my fucking name.”