Authors: A.J. Aalto
He won't go for them
, I thought. Why would he? He's mindless, now. He doesn't remember keys and locks. A far more morbid part of my brain reported:
But they sure are shiny
just before he bent to swipe them up; by some human habit, he crammed them somewhere under his fursuit-top.
“Why the suit?” I asked aloud, really more to myself. “Did you put it back on, or did it never come off? Why cover yourself? Are you in there, Cosmo? A little bit?”
I tried to make eye contact, but the zombie's blank, rapacious stare had gone back to the yummy, multi-tattooed, morsels in the shell of the nut he needed to crack. He turned his pale, pasty ass cheeks to me, and one fist thumped the passenger side door in greedy frustration. The door frame buckled with a metallic squeal and the punks let out a chorus of shrieks. Cosmo threw his head back and made a weird, yipping caterwaul. Ribbons of decayed tissue spouted from his raw throat and hit the window with a
splut
.
I diagnosed the situation: these guys weren't going to voluntarily jump out of the truck. They'd been too stunned to drive away; they
were running on fumes due to shock. I was going to have to force the issue.
Sparing a quick glance behind me to watch Batten rounding up citizens and shepherding them back into their rooms, I saw wide-eyed faces straining to see past him as he spread his arms and barked short orders. As soon as their doors closed, their blinds and curtains opened, and cell phones were pressed to their ears. I wondered howlong it would be before one of them posted this on Facebook or YouTube.
I knew zombies were single-minded, and by and large pretty stupid, but just how stupid? I sidled to my right, simultaneously transferring the gun to my left hand and placing myself directly behind the lumbering, decomposing mass. I tested Cosmo's limited brainpower, and maybe my own, by stepping closer.
Did he hear me, or notice? I froze in place, mouthed wordlessly over and over a desperate mantra:
If I giggle at zombie wiener, I will reveal my position. If I giggle at zombie wiener, I will reveal my position.
Every nerve on edge, ready to jolt backward if I needed to, I stepped forward once more.
Okay, Marnie
.
Niiiiiice and easy
, I told myself, slinking one testing arm close to his armpit, in the general area where he'd shoved the keys. There was a large, sopping gap there.
Dread Aradia, hear my plea / don't let Agent Batten catch me
, I thought fiercely.
Not pick-pocketing a zombie, Dark Lady, not that.
I pinched the wet fabric, thankful for my gloves, shook the suit a tiny bit, hoping the keys would dislodge from wherever he'd tucked them and fall to the asphalt. Nothing happened. Since he hadn't noticed, I jogged it a bit more. Zombie Cosmo howled at the glass but thudded his fists against the metal of the roof. If and when he figured out the glass would be easier to get through, those boys were screwed; the glass would only withstand one solid punch.
The aroma of him this close was astonishingly bad, spoiled meat and rampant disease, ripe cheese and anal leakage. The back of his legs, where the rain and mud wasn't spattered, was coated with a greasy-foamy greenish substance. Black splotches mottled and swam visibly underneath his skin. The tops of his feet were puffed up where blood had pooled, livid purple and jiggling with every move he made, like fetid water balloons ready to burst.
There must be an actual pocket
. I wriggled one gloved hand into the fursuit, praying for caution, while the punks in the car went eerily silent, watching me aghast with eyes wide as moons and their mouths in little puckers that might have been comical any other time.
I mouthed around Cosmo's side angrily at them,
Make noise!
The bald one with the teardrop tattoo was more with-it than the driver. He nodded silently and started waving one hand feebly at the zombie, giving a half-hearted, “Hey! Hey you! Hey, keep watching, man!” When the driver slugged him, he started ranting in rapid Spanish that I couldn't follow; the flailing and punching seemed to interest Cosmo a lot, whose rain-plastered head pitched forward toward the glass a bit too hard. The glass cracked, but didn't shatter.
My gloved hand trembled badly as I probed the sticky pocket. Something oddly shaped caught my eye and I looked up, way up, to Cosmo's ear: a Bluetooth headset.
Briefly, my gloved fingertips touched hard metal in his pocket, and it fell away. I took a shot: cramming my hand down deep, I fished against a second smooth surface. I grabbed both, a cell phone and the key ring, just as Cosmo felt me rummaging and turned.
“
Errrrrggggh
,” he complained, and the whip of his head flung something gooey in my face. I wind-milled wildly backward, my Keds grinding in the mud, barely keeping upright. Dangling snot battened on my cheek and I swiped at it. The cell phone in its waterproof case slipped from my hands and bounced on the ground, settling in a vast, dirty puddle.
Cosmo's slick foot went out from under him. I darted forward to help him fall, kicking his right knee hard. With a short, furious burst of power, he launched up from the asphalt toward me.
“Down!” Batten shouted.
I dove to the left without thinking, taking a textbook belly flop in the mud while Batten's gun went off twice in quick succession. Cosmo's left kneecap exploded and he fell hard enough to make the puddles around him splash a dozen feet in every direction. Batten fired twice more, sinking two bullets into the top of the giant's head. Cosmo looked up, the bottom of his chin just gone, his mouth a ruined landscape of shattered tooth and bone. He snarled and started to get up.
Taking the second's reprieve, I scooped up the cell phone and ran around to the driver's side, fiddling with the keys. Two seconds later, Batten was at my back, shouting into his phone.
“I-70 east of Glenwood Springs, Starlight Dreams motel, one Type C berserker zombie, Cosmo Winkle; two civilians in a sheriff's department vehicle, three rooms occupied, a total of sixteen civilians in all. Need containment team ASAP.”
I peered into the cracked window and the stink of sweat, panic and urine hit me square in the nose. I jiggled the key into the door handle, unlocking it. The driver hit the automatic lock again. I unlocked it. He slapped the button again, shouting obscenities.
“Coming out, Cheech and Chong?” I called. “Or are you waiting for him to come in?”
“Jesus, lady, what the
Jesus shit.
Fuck you! Shit!” went the tumbling litany, one over another, blubbering. They were nearly in each other's laps in the driver's seat, now, pressed as far as they could get from where the zombie was at the passenger window.
“I know, the beaver's trying to eat you. Pretty Freudian,” I agreed. “Get the fuck out of my car.”
“Fuck that,” one of them whined. His shaking hand pointed to the passenger side, where Cosmo's face, drained and drawn, jaw lax, was pressed against the glass. “Freak come outta nowhere.”
Unlikely. It made more sense that the punks were busy going through Hood's glove box and debating stealing what was obviously a cop's car, and didn't notice the zombie coming out of the darkness.
“It's only one little zombie. Okay, one
big
zombie. Come on out,” I repeated.
Batten added gruffly, “Or you're going back to jail,
cholo
.”
“Fuck you, he'll get us!”
“Not if you run,” I told them, lifting my voice to be heard over the rolling echo of thunder. “He's got a shattered knee. Run hard, and keep going. I'll distract him. Opening the door in ten …”
“No, don't! Please, lady! Oh, Jesus.”
“He's all the way on the other side of the truck, don't be a pussy,” I yelled. “You ready, Batten?”
“Ready,” Batten assured me, gun aimed steadily at the zombie.
“Nine!” I warned them.
“Fuck you, cunt!”
“You want help or not? Eight!”
The bald one with teardrop tattoos under one eye clawed at the driver's face. “Okay, let's just go, let's do this shit, let's do it!”
“I don't wanna die like this,” the other croaked. “Oh Jesus,
Mary-madredeChristo!”
Behind me, through the spray of rain, I heard Declan shout something at us. The driver brandished a weapon; through the drizzle-smeared window it looked like a Glock. I'd heard him fire at the zombie, probably emptying his clip in the process, but he clutched it like it was a security blanket.
“Seven…” I watched Cosmo for movement. He was intent on spreading goo from his splitting fist on the passenger window, unthinkingly watching the streak go back and forth. Without warning, one thick punch pulverized the window glass in a splintering shatter.
I yelled, “Two, one, go!”
The driver and I jerked the handle at the same time, and the door spilled both punks at my feet in a mass of flailing limbs. They bolted into the night, mud spraying from their heels. Batten covered their escape by firing two more slugs into the zombie's chest.
The zombie gave a cry of anguish as his meal escaped, lurching forward around the front of the vehicle. It swung its hungry gaze at me. That look made everything in my chest want to be in the back of my throat.
Batten leapt at it, swinging his foot out in some nifty take-down maneuver, kicking it hard where the right foot met the ankle, then sweeping Cosmo off his feet. I heard a satisfying crunch as something broke. All three hundred and something pounds went down.
I bellowed, “Declan, salt!”
“Try this!” Declan threw us something, which Batten caught neatly; a small sachet with dried, golden herbs projecting from the top, and coarse salt in the packet. Some of the flowers clinging to the sticks were still slightly bluish.
“Salt and Wolfsbane, throw it!”
Batten darted forward and crammed it in the zombie's collar, and then scuttled away. It lay against his throat, a misplaced corsage.
“No, get back!” I cried, grabbing Batten by the elbow and manhandling him backward. “The salt has to go in his mouth.”
Batten swiped the wet hair out of his face. “How are we going to do that without getting bitten?” he demanded over the creeping thunder.
I looked up into the relentless storm, then down at the zombie. “No idea.”
Cosmo had made it to hands and knees. Batten stepped forward, dancing nimbly on the balls of his feet, and used a deft foot sweep to take Cosmo's hands out from under him again. The warbling zombie collapsed on its shattered face in the mud. Cosmo's muddy chin came up and he said, “
Errrrrggggh
.”
Mud.
Earth.
Clay. My mouth dropped open. “Sodium bentonite. Clay.” An improbable solution started swirling in the front of my skull, but I didn't think it would sound so bright out loud. “Keep him busy! Don't get bitten! I'll be right back!”
Batten fired off a shot that took out Cosmo's femur in an impressive spray of bone.
I started for the manager's office, taking the Taurus out of my waistband. I pelted along the wet sidewalk, Keds slapping uneven concrete, dodging curious whores and horrified businessmen who had come back out despite Batten's warning. Praying that the office was open and I wouldn't have to shoot the lock or break a window, I grabbed the handle. The door swung open to the reek of cat piss.
My eyes watered instantly as the stink overwhelmed me. Coughing hard, I had to struggle to breathe. I heard the chirrup of curious felines as I crammed Batten's gun in the back of my jeans and squinted around the dark office until I found a cat box.
There was a bag of Happy Kitty cat litter beside the box, a pink and yellow bag with a big grinning cartoon tabby on the front. I picked it up, but the bag was empty, only a few granules skittering inside the plastic.
I wrinkled my nose and picked up the nearest of the cat boxes. It looked like it hadn't been cleaned in months. There was barely any free litter that wasn't clumped in gummy-dry pee piles or stuck to cat shit.
“When I find out who made me sink to this level of drive-bygenius,” I whispered, bending at the knees to lift the box. “I am going to clog their suckhole with my foot.”
I hoisted the whole damn box, struggled under its impressive weight for a second, held it as far away from my face as possible, and started back to the fracas.
“Hold him by the shoulders!” I cried, as I ran bent-kneed under the weight of the cat box past two curious whores. “Hold him by the shoulders! Don't get bitten!”
“What the hell?” Declan shouted, a demand rather than a question. “That's not going to work.”
Cosmo was dragging his lower half, now, his trajectory an elbowed see-saw through the mud toward Batten.
My cell rang against my ass cheek, a brief clip of music from Rameau's
Rondeau des Indes Galantes:
Harry. I'd put it on auto-answer, and from within my jeans I heard his crisp British complaint.
“My, but you are breathing rather heavily, sugarplum.”
I raised my voice to be heard through my pants. “Kinda busy, Harry!”
“Whatever could you be doing, dare I ask?”
“Heaving dirty kitty litter down the gullet of a half-naked zombie beaver!”
“As you do,” he said, as if I'd said playing chess or having a picnic. “Home before I go to rest, I hope?”
“I don't know!”
“Wesley and I have a lovely surprise for you.”
Cosmo was still doing a gruesome parody of a Marine's belly crawl towards us. Zombies: not very bright, but big on follow through.
“Can I get back to you, Harry?” I asked.
Even through my jeans, I could hear his wounded
tsk
. “Very well. As you would prefer to dally with your monster hunters, I shall leave you to it.”
Prefer. Riiiiigggght
.
I struggled to lift the cat box to hip level. “Not now, Harry! Declan, hold his other shoulder.”
“Run along now, my resplendent little radish leaf, but don't lollygag. I'm making you a nice kidney pie for dinner tonight.”
Blerg.
Kidney pie? Apparently my culinary punishment.
“Gotta go, Harry!”
“As you wish, my sweet. Do take care.” Harry hung up.
Batten had managed to kick Cosmo over to his side and hauled on his shoulder to bring him all the way to his back. Declan took one shoulder while Batten held the other, while Cosmo roared and tried to snap at them. The cat tray was now so heavy with a rain-filled soup of cat crap and piss and clumps of litter that I almost couldn't heave it into Cosmo's gaping maw. The next time he opened his ruined jaw, I dumped.