Get Zombie: 8-Book Set (60 page)

I kissed her forehead.

Sweet kid.

Waikiki at night always made me feel dirty.

Here was a place spilling with drunken military people. They always
seemed to be looking for fights. The streets were filled with
slow-moving cars and cops and whores, and homosexuals that treated
Waikiki like Halloween. Many arrests. You'd always hear a hip car go
by – they'd always have a large speaker in the trunk. It was
for attention, of course. The bass would send vibrations up and down
your legs.
At night, all the freaks come out to play.
I walked
with my head down, wondering how many of these people went to church.
How many of them were God-fearing? How could they let themselves go?
A very disrupting feeling in the air. Bad vibes. Uncertain
frequencies. Anything could happen....And I hated that feeling. I
needed control.

The bars spewed people – drunks. My ears were filled with a mix
of all sorts of music: Country, R&B, Rock. My eardrums wanted to
vomit.

A fight broke out in the middle of the street. White guys with
military haircuts, dressed in bluejeans and polo shirts with the
collars up, ran out from bars and formed a big circle. My heart
raced. Big, muscular guys that meant business. Totally unpredictable
personalities, capable of anything, afraid of nothing. Real men.
I
can't be seen.
I forced my tiny body across the street to avoid
that wild mess of screaming men & women and the thudding of fist
on flesh. The crowd parted a bit, and I caught a glimpse of the
combatants. A black army-man in full soldier attire, fighting with a
Chinese biker-guy.

No one stopped them. I began to wonder, was this how it was in
Waikiki during the 60's? 50's? 40's? Probably. Most definitely.
Things never change, do they?

Where were the police? I imagined myself running in there –
into that mob – and stopping the fight, telling everyone to go
home. They'd respect me – be afraid of me, this little guy that
meant business.

Crazy drunks. Crazy, bored tourists. To be honest, I feared those
people more than the zombies.

Welcome to Waikiki.

I kept seeing these posters all over the place. They read, “Wanted!
Have you seen this man?” There was a crude sketch of a man with
an eye patch on them. Of ME. Apparently, I was wanted for kidnapping.

Goddamn.

I reached the hostel and walked up to the room the client told me
about. Indeed, the smell was bad. My nose caved in. I took out the
keys and opened the door. The place made me gag – turned my
stomach. Those eggs were coming back up. I bit down on my hand to
regain my control. It worked. I walked to the refrigerator and looked
inside. I opened a soda and took a sip, soothing my innards.

No sight of the zombies.

The place was quiet.

But not
quite
.

There was a very soft sighing sound.

I walked to the bedrooms. The first one was filled with empty potato
chip bags – hundreds of them, all littering the floor. Roaches
saw me and froze. I walked to the next room...and saw the zombies.
They were on the bed – sitting on the edge of the bed, eating
something that looked like....

They were eating themselves.

The man was eating his own hand, and the woman....She was eating her
own breast. The left one. I turned away for a second but then
remembered I had a job to do. I reached back and pulled out my
knives. The zombies were at me. They were faster than what I was
accustomed to. They speed-walked! I couldn't believe it. I remembered
Nora saying something about how zombies run sometimes, but I thought
it was just a myth.

I went, “Yarrghh!” and fell back into the hallway, right
through
the wall, landing on my butt. I was in the bathroom,
and my head had hit the toilet. Blood came out and covered my face.
Those hyper zombies were at the hole in the wall, sniffing the air.
My brain locked.

Now what???

I sat up, and the zombies were on me, holding me to the floor. I
raised my knee and got the male in the genitals. He make a retching
sound, and two bloody round things landed on my chest (I was lucky
they didn't get all over my face). The female tore at my hair. I
kicked the male away and grabbed the female's head and forced her
face down the toilet, slamming the cover on her and pressing down
hard – bashing her head over and over until I saw brain shoot
out from her ears. She was still. The male growled and came at me
again. I turned around and did a roundhouse kick and took its head
off. It landed in the sink, looking around confused, mouth shaping
vowels. The female came to and moved around. I took off the top
toilet lid – damn thing was heavy – and slammed it over
her head. She just blew up, and I made sure to shut my eyes and my
mouth. I stumbled over to the bathroom sink. I washed her goo off my
face. The zombie man's head was looking up at me. I picked it up by
the hair and whacked it against the wall a few times until the skull
cracked and green stuff came out. I had to jump back, not wanting
that crap on my shoes.

I yelled, “Yaaa!” and threw the head down on the tiles,
then grabbed that heavy toilet lid and dropped it on the head. It
cracked in two, and the eyeballs came rolling out.

I stepped on them, and that was that.

After showering while trying to swat flies away from my face, I went
outside and made my way to the nearest bus stop. I tore away as many
of those dumb “Wanted!” signs as I could get my hands on,
crumpling them up and tossing them behind bushes. I looked down at my
feet and let my bangs cover my face when people walked by. One time,
I heard a couple whispering to themselves, staring at me, pointing at
me, so I sped up and turned a corner. I was having trouble breathing.
My mind was betraying me: I kept getting visions of prison –
hardcore prison, where they pass you around for cigarettes and do
things to your body that make the baby Jesus cry.

I heard a woman arguing with someone.

Not being able to see too far, I squinted and slowly made my way
toward her. It was a prostitute. She was trying to get out of a car.
A real fancy one, too. The doors didn't open sideways, they went UP.
It was a DeLorean, just like the one in
Back To The Future
. I
was impressed and immediately jealous. The woman kept getting pulled
back in. She screamed and whacked the guy – hitting him with
her purse. She looked at me.

It was Lynn.

A look of shame crossed her face. Before she could say anything, the
driver pulled her back in, and one of her high heels flew off and hit
some woman in the eye. I ran to Lynn and grabbed her foot and pulled.
The man inside was an older gentleman with white hair and a cigar in
his mouth.

“Let go, you fool!” he yelled at me.

Lynn snarled at me.

“Get out of here, Boss!” she said. “Leave!”

That old man yanked on her hair.

“Gimme back my money!” he kept saying. “Gimme back
my money, you useless
whore
!”

That old man began punching her in the face. I dove in with my elbow
out – like a damn torpedo – and got him right in the
nose. Blood shot out in clumps, and he slapped his hands over his
face, crying like a baby, just, “Wah! Wah! Wahhhh!”

It was a little disturbing.

I took Lynn by the hand and dragged her away.

“Let go of me!” she said, hitting me with her purse. “You
shouldn't be here, Boss! He'll see you!”

I was about to ask her a whole bunch of questions, when a beefy hand
clamped down on my shoulder. My knees buckled, and I was on the
ground, kissing concrete.

Slovoth had his other hand in Lynn's purse, digging around.

“Where's my money? I know it's in here, dammit,” he said.

Lynn was kicking him in the knees.

“Let go of him!”

He grabbed her face...and pushed hard. Lynn stumbled back about
twenty feet, landed on her ass, and I heard something crack. She
cried out. It was something I never heard before – a horrible
sound of pain, like someone strangling a cat.

“My back....”

She said it soft, like it hurt too much to even speak up.

“My back, my back, my back. Jesus, my back....”

I took hold of Slovoth's fingers and bent them until they
snapped
.
He shrieked like a fancy school girl and let me go. He brought his
hand up to his face, holding his wrist, staring and drooling over his
broken fingers. His hand reminded me of a swastika. I took him by the
hair made his face meet my knee. He bounced back and did a cartwheel
through the air, landing on a passing dog. The owner, he screamed and
ran off, his dog whining behind him. At this point, a crowd had
gathered, mainly military folk, men and women, black, white, Asian.
They formed a circle around us. I jumped on Slovoth and bit him –
sunk my teeth into his neck, his arms, his stomach, his nipples, and
I tore away much flesh. All my anger just went into each bite, and I
snarled and made wicked animal sounds as I worked. I felt alive! It
felt
right
!

I helped Slovoth up by his broken fingers. He spat in my face. I
punched him right between the eyes. My hand cracked a little, and the
pain was like lightning shooting up my arm. The crowd cheered. They
clapped and cheered for
me
, and it felt
good
.

Some of the people watching were looking at me all funny...like they
somehow knew me. Many of them were on their phones. I heard police
sirens in the distance. Slovoth just stood there on wobbly knees,
head spinning, eyes to the stars – just standing there, covered
in bite marks. Pieces of him – chunks of him – were all
over the place, steaming, nerves twitching. I shoved my finger in my
mouth and felt around, picking and spitting out whatever remained of
Slovoth between my teeth. I pulled Lynn up and was about to walk
away, when a van pulled up.

It opened, and the Pope reached out for my hand. His goons helped us
in, and we drove off. I looked out the back window and saw that crowd
running after us – cheering at us.

At me.

The walls of the van were covered in what appeared to be
kid-drawings: There was one of a man conquering a tall demon and one
of the same man fighting on the street. The man had an eye patch, and
it didn't take me long to realize that it was
me
. That same
woman I saw earlier – the one with the wires coming out of her
head – was there, still sitting in the dark next to the doctor.
A crayon was in her hand, and she was drawing something: Me in a
giant van, surrounded by some people. She stared at me, and I was
impressed how she could draw so well without looking down. Lynn had
her head on my lap. She stared up at me. It was like I could read her
mind.

Everything will be all right,
she was saying.
I won't let
anything happen to you,
she was saying.
I love you. Boss, I
hope you can hear me.
Hear me,
she was saying.
Boss...I love you. I will always love you, no matter what happens.

I ran my fingers through her hair.

“I know,” I said. “I love you, too.”

She smiled.

A throat next to me grunted. That Pope held out his little offering
plate.

“I think you know what I want,” he said, shaking the
plate. I was drawing a blank. What was he talking about? The Pope
seemed to understand. He smiled. “That little gig you did at
that house – with the giant demon. Our holy psychic got the
vision a little late, so we couldn't get there in time to collect.
But now that we're finally all together....” He shook the plate
again. A few coins were in it.

So I paid them their share. I figured it was fair. They DID just save
us from the cops.

I reached back and took out my
wallet. The Pope's eyes grew wiiiiiiiide in anticipation. He licked
his lips. Before I could place the money on his rattan plate, the van
JUMPED, and we all flew up into the air and hit the ground hard. The
Pope's goons were moaning and massaging their limbs and their heads
and grabbing at one another, helping one another. The van made a loud
scream, took a tight right turn, and then...SPLASH. I just knew...I
just
knew
we were in the
Ala Wai Canal. Bad water. Bad sewage. A man
died in that canal. After a fight, covered in bruises, he fell in and
went to the hospital. His body pretty much swelled to a comedic
state, and he blew the hell up. I just kept thinking,
Don't fall
in. The last thing you wanna do is open your mouth, eyes, or ass. All
holes are doomed. All-holes-are-doomed.

The van was on its side.

Everyone was in a mad panic, stepping over themselves. I caught a
glimpse of the Pope. His goons were running all over his head,
crushing him. They had no idea what they were doing. One of them
reached UP and pulled the side door open and climbed out – they
all
climbed out, thanking Jesus and kissing the air. The van
began to sink – it rumbled. A black box labeled “Van
Tools” slid next to my foot. I heard the goons outside
screaming. It was a fight! I could hear meat being tenderized. I
grabbed Lynn and pushed her UP through the van's side door.

“My back....” Lynn begged.

“Jump down,” I told her. “I'm right behind you.”
I looked down and saw the holy psychic and her doctor. They just sat
there, smiling at me, holding each other. I was about to say
something, but the psychic seemed to already know, which makes sense.

“We're staying,” she said. “Our time has come.”

The doctor nodded.

“I've been praying for this glorious day!”

And then they embraced and kissed in a sloppy way, hands going into
greasy areas. I believed they were turned on. So be it. Lynn jumped,
and I heard a splash, followed by her screaming out in pain. I
climbed up and looked around. A cool breeze slapped me in the face,
and I got goosebumps. All these people were standing on their
balconies, pointing at us – at this van in the stink canal –
taking pictures – flash, flash, flash. Japanese tourists
chattered in excitement, giggling with their hands over their mouths,
nodding and going, “Oh! Sugoi! Sugoi!”