Beach Blanket Bloodbath (Amanda Feral Book 4) (8 page)

The whole town reminded me of Balboa Park
in San Diego, but this old world Mexico was polished to a proud shine by Disney
Imagineers and not migrant farm workers.

“A quarter 'til. We’re going to make it.”
I tapped the Volvo's clock and grinned. “See how I made that shit happen?”

But I was talking to myself as Wendy and
Gil had already bolted from the car and were crossing the median before I could
give Abuelita a final glowering gaze and follow.

A light mist cooled the night air and
carried on it a salty aroma, more than the sea could manage, as though I’d
nestled up against a sweaty scrotum. Scott used to roll in from the gym
completely coated in the same damp smell and try to embrace me, or worse, coax me
into unnatural acts, meaning anything that involved sweaty man parts bouncing
around the vicinity of my nose and mouth. So, no.

Just no.

By the time I launched myself toward the
crosswalk, the only person on the street was a surly looking youth wearing a
flat-brimmed cap with a huge blunt tucked under his ear and jeans so saggy he
was lucky to have the arms of a homunculus to fit his hands in the pockets.

I dug in my Birkin for my lipstick, which
always seemed to migrate to the bottom with the change. By the time I'd
reapplied, blotted and glanced back at the boy, his hand had already clamped on
the Birkin’s strap.

And then it was torn away from me,
flopping against the kid’s back as he inexplicably ran with the crotch of his
jeans binding his knees together.
I had to resist the urge to charge at the
little G, feel the weight of my lower jaw drop into my cleavage and tear at the
back of his neck until he collapsed, paralyzed.

First
impressions and all.

What if
someone were to see me? That would have really fucked up my cabbage patch for
the signing. And, to be honest, I wasn't terribly hungry—don't get me
wrong, I could eat, but my skirt would probably rip apart like the Hulk had
gone tranny.

“Tommy Doyle!” a voice cried from behind
me, reinforcing my decision. “You bring this nice lady's bag right back or I'll
put another hole in your ass with this here pea shooter.”

Tommy stopped still and stomped his foot.
“Oh, come on! Mrs. Swinton!”

I followed his glower to find a tiny
woman in a tweed skirt and jacket, her messy hair in a bun, glasses askew.
There was nothing off-kilter about the pistol in her hand though. She was
locked and loaded.

“I'm not fucking around, you little
idiot.” She warned, cocking the gun she brandished, the click echoed across the
intersection. The woman leaned close in to me and whispered, “I knew I should
have sold his parents some of those recalled magnet toys when he was a kid. Let
Darwin have him.”

The boy shuffled over, pouting and held
my bag out in front of me. I snatched it, twisting it in a circle to inspect
for damage—and to determine the degree of torture Tommy Doyle would be in
for—and, finding none, tossed it over my shoulder. He let a cocky snicker
escape and I couldn’t resist clutching his arm and jerking him close to me.
 
“You’re lucky there’s a witness,” I
hissed.

He yanked his arm away and scowled.
“Whatever, lady. You’re the one who’s lucky.”

“Always,” I agreed.

He glanced back at the woman who’d
intervened and winced when she stabbed the gun in his direction. “Go clean out
your boxers, Tommy. Don’t let me catch you harassing my authors again.”

The boy stumbled into a run and
disappeared around the corner of the theater.

“Thank you. I owe you one,” I said
jogging toward the theater and then stopped, remembering her comment. “Mrs. Swinton?
The bookseller?”

“Yes. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow!” She caught
up to me and rubbed my arm with the kind of familiarity I don’t usually care
for. “But tonight is Miss Sandflea!”

Mrs. Swinton hurried past and into the
theater.

I
wedged my foot in the slowly closing door and trod inside the theater,
searching, inexplicably, for the kind of rude-ass friends that don’t wait. I
caught sight of Gil backing out of the main floor door and shook my head. He
merely shrugged in response, and slipping his hand into mine, pulled me up the
side stairs after he and Wendy.

“Ground floor is packed,” he said. “Hurry,
they're doing a musical number about toxic debris from Japan!”

“No?” How was that even possible? It
seemed to fly in the face of the human necessity to be offended by everything.

“Oh yeah. This shit is crazy ass
backwards.”

We squeezed into the last few seats up in
the nosebleeds and took in the pageant with growing horror...also delight. In
my world, the two are so tightly woven, you'd be hard pressed to tell the
difference, especially if you’ve been drinking—which reminded me. I
produced a flask of bourbon, screwed off the top and gulped.

“That one,” I said, pointing to one of
the contestants. “Really should have rethought the proportions on that trawler
costume, she looks massive.”

“Sh,” a rodent-esque redhead chided from
their left, her lips clinched tight. “She's only sixteen.”

I leaned over the aisle and hissed. “Then
she should know better.”

Abandoned rusty ships collided with
pagodas, remnants of the Japanese tsunami having made their toxic way to the
shores of Las Felicitas—“Aren't pagodas Chinese?” Gil muttered. The
shimmying “sea” of cardboard waves propped up by girls dressed as deformed
jellyfish, sharks and even a manta ray that looked more like a spatula.

“This is magical,” I had to admit, but
should have waited for the two-headed Kaiju headdress and the dancing
California Roll before making my final judgment.

The singing was exactly like a choir of
angels, if they were the fallen kind and had picked up an illiteracy problem on
their way down or smoked two to three packs a day. What I'm saying is: Jesus
Christ, pass the Q-tips and gauze, my ears were bleeding.

As the finale drew near, three girls
dressed as sand, a pier and what must have been the Felicity Theater itself
with a single curved clay tile on her head, bore the brunt of a tidal wave of
nuclear garbage, and somehow remembered to spring back for the final bow.

Our entire row of seats shook violently
as silent laughter finally exploded outward, hidden underneath the cheers of
the well-meaning or impressed or possibly drunken townsfolk until then. But was
quickly covered up by a raucous standing ovation which really did fuck up my
whiskey buzz.

When Miss Sandflea was finally crowned—my
fingers were crossed for Moonglow Featherberry (not her real name but she wore
a foundation that was two shades too light and some odd contraption in her hair
that looked like she'd been slaughtering chickens in a cranberry bog, so you do
the math on the nicknaming)—I nearly choked when the scepter arrived
topped with a golden sandflea replica. A name was called, Becky Swinton,
perhaps—it doesn't matter, I suppose because it wasn’t Moonglow—and
a pretty blond girl strode forward, smiling feebly and nodding. The lack of
personality in the winner was staggering and I began to pray that someone had
had the wherewithal to jerry rig a bucket of pig's blood to dump on her and
strip away my disappointment—as only a telekinetic massacre could rescue
this non-event.

“Boo!” Wendy and Gil shouted through
cupped hands. When the rat-faced woman inevitably turned to scowl in judgment
not just one, but both of them pointed that I had done it. I simply flipped all
of them off including Mrs. Frisbee. The townie's gasp of horror was oddly
heartwarming.

I did glance at Moonglow, the runner-up,
wondering what she might be thinking…also what she tasted like, but that’s
beside the point.

A strange sensation spread across my
face. I caressed my jaw and the upturned corners of my mouth. A smile. That’s
going to be sore tomorrow, I thought. It’s like when you’ve neglected your body
for a long time and then go to the gym. Those smile muscles were going to hurt
like a motherfucker tomorrow.

What more can you ask of a poorly
produced beauty contest with no actual beauties? Nothing. It was perfect. The
only thing that could make it better? A dirty martini. “Let’s beat it out of
here and grab a drink.”

“Now, you’re making sense,” Wendy said,
buttoning her jacket.

As the cheers faded, we slipped down the
back stairs and into the lobby. The crowd gushed out of the center aisle doors;
chattering about the spectacle as though they lived in North Dakota or
somewhere and not a few hours drive from Seattle and some actual cultural offerings.
Gil scooped our hands up in the crooks of his arms and led us out a shady side
door and up a short alley to an impassable chain link fence.

“This emergency exit leaves a lot to be
desired,” I said.

We turned to peer into the darkness that
seemed to absorb the back end of the alley and were greeted by a gust of wet,
salty wind. The flavor of it caught in my mouth, lingering there like an
unwelcome spritzing of perfume in a department store make-up department.

I opened my mouth to remark but was silenced
by a high-pitched shriek that echoed against the bricks and stucco. If I had a
beating heart it would have stopped dead—the organ is in there, but I’m
certain it’s a shriveled piece of jerky by now. I flattened myself against the door,
reaching for the knob and found nothing but flat splintery wood.

“Listen,” Gil whispered.

Wendy’s mouth dropped open, her eyes
saucering cartoonishly.

Another sound rolled toward them from the
far end of the Theater. The top of a fence was silhouetted by a streetlight, turning
the shadowed end of the alley into a treacherous cavelike hole in the night. The
tone was familiar.

A gnashing of teeth against flesh. Sinew
stretching and snapping. Entrails flopping onto gravel.

You know, the usual.

But there was something alien about the
chomping. An absence of pleasure. No ecstatic murmuring. You know what I mean. For
a zombie, I’ve been told I’m a dainty eater. I don’t leave much of a mess, if
any, and I rarely need to change clothes. I’m a professional, after all. I’m
also, apparently quiet, which I certainly couldn’t say about Wendy or any other
zombie I’d ever met. Wendy’s moans were legendary; she really gets into her
meal. I mean, if you didn’t know it, you’d think she was having sex for the
wailing and panting.

What was happening at the end of the
alley did not sound like sex. You know that awful comedian whose entire act is
splattering watermelons with a sledgehammer? It was loud and clumsy and
gory—if a sound can be gory.

It was also none of our damn business.

I crept toward the front of the building,
not wanting to draw attention or disrupt what was obviously a very private, and
dare I say intimate, experience, intent on scaling the fence.

“Chain link,” Wendy whispered. “That’ll
lop off your failing digits like a cheese slicer as soon as you put your full
weight on it. Plus, your Louboutin’s will be devastated.”

“Then,” I said, looking back over my
shoulder at the feeding ground. “We have to hold our heads high and walk on by,
just like a strike scab.”

“But?” The whites of Wendy’s eyes grew
large as they turned toward the feeding frenzy. “What if that’s a mistake back
there? Patient zero of an outbreak?”

“That’s why Gil’s going to go first.
Right, Gil?”

The vampire had disappeared into the
shadows, but his drawn out sigh placed him a foot from the door. “Let’s just
wait until it’s finished. We don’t want to be rude.”

I ground my teeth. Shaking my head at his
cowardice, I dug in my bag for the tiny flashlight I kept for door locks or
sussing out a hiding victim’s location. Clicking it on, the low beam lit the
far end of the alley in a grainy blur, but what we saw there caused a
collective gasp.

Monstrous and gray, but slick as oil. The
thing retreated rapidly, revealing flesh that was undeniably fin-shaped despite
mammalian characteristics. It crouched on two muscular haunches and as it
slipped out of sight, like a great white disappearing with its meal secured, I
caught a glimpse of a smooth human ass and something else.

Dangling.

“That thing was huge,” Gil said,
completely awestruck.

“I barely got a look at it,” I shrugged,
disgusted at his sexual avarice. “Of course, you’d notice.”

He narrowed his eyes, glancing at Wendy
for support. She shrugged.

“How could you not? It was clearly some
sort of a shape shifting shark thing. It was enormous.”

“Oh yeah, that,” I tried to recover,
embarrassment blossoming on my cheeks. “Yeah, huge. Absolutely. Scary.”

Wendy strode past. Never one to let
sleeping dogs lie, she muttered. “Amanda was talking about its dick...because
she’s a pervert.”

Gil busted up laughing, hands on his
knees for support.