Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 01 (17 page)

I remember once wondering how I would die. These thoughts weren’t old, either. I think they occurred a mere week before the embarrassment of the actual event. I was just lying around on my patio, drinking iced tea, thinking about death—nothing wrong with that. This is how it played out:

If only my reality were a Technicolor dream. As it is, my own skin is taking on hues of black and white, and not the shiny cleaned-up Turner Classics, but dull and dingy greys, like the Sunday afternoon movie on a local channel. Still, there was something about this fantasy that stuck in my head like a popcorn husk digs into your gum line.

Was it Martin? No. And best not to think about him too much, that’s a story for another time. My mind cleared of its haze, revealing the tasteful décor of Wendy’s apartment. A haze is what I have, now, instead of sleep. The apartment is the obvious result of a totally consuming catalog addiction, Pottery Barn couch ($2499, in plush loden), Crate and Barrel coffee table ($2100, mahogany stain); you get the picture. Wendy was gone, but left a note, next to the Museum Company euro vase ($229+SH). It read:

Even after a brisk morning shower, I wasn’t ready to face a hellish day at the office. The mundane tasks of advertising and creativity were weighing on my nerves—I wasn’t even sure those worked—like a too-tight seaweed wrap, dipped in the pissy stink of Puget Sound water. My business was, simply, interfering with my fabulous supernatural life. And that’s really something you have to make time for, cultivate, you know? I think if you spend too much time focusing on deadlines and copy and office politics, there’s no time left for the really important things like flesh eating, cocktails, undead body preservation and supernatural investigations. What’s death without them?

I needed to get my priorities straight. I called in sick; I’d been doing that a lot.

I was putting the phone back in the charger, when I noticed a note slid under the door. Apparently, this was a morning for notes. I wondered if it had just happened. I opened the door into the hall. A grey haired woman with a walker trudged down the corridor, with a zip, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. The elevator
ding
ed and a sweat-suited man emerged carrying a paper, heading back in for his morning crap.

Zip, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. I closed the door.

The top of the note was blank. It was folded in quadrants. It read, in all blocky capitals like screams:

I checked my watch. 7:30. Who was this? A secret admirer? I followed the curls of the S with a fingertip. Shane King? Mmm, yummy, if only. With the crowd I’d been bumping into lately, it was more likely from a horned devil with a razor spiked double-cock, than a tasty morsel like Shane King.

I wasn’t getting my hopes up. I flipped the paper around. Nothing.

Another option floated from the back of my head to just behind my eyes, blossoming like a migraine worm.

The blue van.

I hadn’t given it much consideration; I’d completely forgotten to tell Wendy and Gil about the damn thing. They were clearly filming me, and “they” were at least two people, one driver, and one cameraperson. I’d simply played it off as paparazzi, downplayed it. But what if it were something truly sinister, even more so than myself, I mean? What if the camera lens was Karkaroff’s eye on the scene? I shivered at the thought and crumpled the note and crushed it beneath my foot.

Fear or no. I’d be there, fashionable as ever. The reapers inspired me. I wore my Chanel schoolgirl dress, black with pointy cream collar and cuffs, and an ethereal overlay in a gauzy jet.

The Westside Washington Mutual Starbucks sat between two towering escalators, in a glass hothouse. The skyscraper stood above at such a stance, the coffeehouse seemed to be a premature birth, too small in contrast. But the coffee would be the same, it always was, plus, I’d worn my mutsuki
89
.

I was inside, and then in line, before my mouth dropped open.

The coffee slaves weren’t their jittery selves. There was no chatting or BlackBerry pecking, no fumbling through domino tiles or clicking on laptops. The people were doing the unthinkable in the kingdom of caffeine. They were dozing. Heads lolled and snapped as they tried to stay awake.

None of the line standers seemed affected. They were doing the ever-popular busy dance—the living are so self-important—feet tapped, arms crossed, body language with a capital B. There were three of them, a woman in a brown corduroy mini and kicky boots, and two short-cropped paper pusher boys in low-grade wool three-button suits. Totally inedible; not a hottie in the bunch. The puffy blond guy closest to me wore the pimply face of a steroid junkie—can I just say, fat-covered muscle is not sexy. The other man was a towhead with a big girly bubble butt, not cute.

I didn’t see Shane.

The counter staff and barista weren’t doing much better than the seated customers; they seemed to be in a sleepy funk. The girl manning the metal behemoth coffeemaker seemed stalled behind the steaming milk; it bubbled over the stainless steel pitcher in clots. Her name tag read: Severine.

Her eyes were closed.

She sniffed the air.

Recognition flooded in. I knew that look. I’d seen that same face, in the mirror. And what comes next isn’t pretty. I think you know what I’m talking about.

Severine’s mouth opened and a pale puffy tongue thrust out like a schizophrenic on bad meds. She wheezed a whimpering cry, and her last two tears drained, and fell from drying eyes. She began to smell of hot urine and the thick musky rank odor of runny stool.

Crack!

Her jaw broke free from human; it began to ratchet down like a big plumber’s wrench.

Behind me similar sounds and smells echoed from the tables. This Starbucks had gone zombie in stereo, the volume surpassed the cool jazz pumping from the speakers. The people in line were fucked. Deeply.

They began to look around them, leaving behind their meaningless dwellings for a real visceral experience that meant something—death, sure, but certainly that’s more valuable than a triple shot Americano or an afternoon affair. Looking down death’s throat changes your perspective.

The situation was going to get messy and there was not a damn thing I could do about it. I’d be damned if I got another injury protecting my own food from distant relatives. I backed past the shelves of bagged coffee and cute mugs, and slipped discreetly into the restroom alcove.

The living customers came unglued, screaming and stumbling over each other like the Three Stooges at a foam party. Drawing way too much attention to themselves.

Gravelly screams sounded from unhinged and gaping mouths, frothy drool bubbled up and spilled past teeth and gums. Severine’s death progressed to a rapid seizure of her head, spittle flung from her mouth like dog slobber. She jumped onto the counter with feline grace and dove for steroid boy
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. She tore off his pimply forehead in a puss-filled scrape of her lower teeth. His eyes blinked in shock, before closing as the zombie barista slammed her upper teeth into his skull, as teeth and bone fragments went flying. Severine dined on the man’s brain like a back-alley Filipino delicacy, but unlike her human counterparts, she’d leave no waste.

The smell wafted into the little hall where I sheltered, like a Hostess snack cake bakery; I was nearly drawn in, my head gone fuzzy. The blood aroma was intoxicating, stronger even than the first time, with Ricardo. The only difference was maturity. Apparently, the longer I was a zombie, the more self-control I gained, much like a man’s ability to maintain an erection. An adolescent can shoot his spuzz from a simple brush across the jeans, while a man has learned to think about dead kittens, or whatever, if his momma taught him right. I backed off the cravings and focused on the possibility of being damaged in a struggle. Beauty marks were my dead kittens.

While I settled into food deprivation, a battle for survival had begun in the back of the room. The other man was long dead; by the time I regained my senses, his body was roughly bisected in a snarling tug of war between staff and customers. Two on the bottom half and two on top, all of them wildly gorging on sweetbreads
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. Behind that lovely image, the woman was fending off three growling ghouls with a busted bottle of sugar-free hazelnut syrup. Returning each reaching limb with a thin ribbon of flesh or sinew dangling off. Her face was stretched in an insane smile that said, I’m an animal; I’m going to kill you. I wondered if she’d make it, but then a zombie to her left leapt between her flailing arms and clamped onto her face like the mouth of an accordion boarding corridor at an airport. The bite radius was deep on the woman’s face, stretching to just below her ears. When the creature retracted, he took with him both sides of her mouth, her cheeks, and vast chunks of muscle and sinew, the leavings curled back like New Year’s Eve noisemakers. Her jaw thunked against her chest, exposing a writhing half tongue. She went limp. Must have fainted; I guess died is more likely.

The room quieted to gnashing and wet snarls. Billie Holiday whined a baritone scat in the background. Fine dining compared to a snatch and grab at DSHS or a midnight binge at tent city.

My head count came up zombies–8, humans–0. There was going to be a problem here, the food supply had dried up and the undead would soon be shuffling for the door. Outside, throngs of weekday shoppers, couriers and mid-day smokers littered the courtyard. There must have been forty people milling about.

The door to the coffee shop opened and a distracted woman toting files on a quick cart ran shoulder first into Severine’s waiting mouth. The ghoul tore into the joint with butcher’s precision. But, to her credit, the attorney
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grabbed her dislocated arm before it hit the floor and wielded it like a weapon, leveling Severine, temporarily. The woman then turned to look at me.

“Help…me,” she gargled, blood sputtering from her lips.

I shrugged a quick sorry and retreated farther into the space. The woman’s eyes went white within the few seconds of our contact. Her jaw was crunching. This was going to be bad. In case you’re counting, that’s nine zombies. Ten, actually, but I don’t count, I’m civilized. I dove inside the men’s room and locked the door.

It occurred to me that this was the beginning of a major zombie outbreak. Outbreak. I was reminded of the plague in my death fantasy, and the gory scenes from that movie in the mall. I had suppressed what was actually happening. This was harkening back to that night outside the Starbucks near the Well of Souls. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out the two events were connected. If they were the same, I thought it would be over by now, that the reapers would come—at least one. Outside the door, I heard the scratching of fingernails, like a rat trying to get through drywall, but barely; Bebel Gilberto’s snappy Brazilian tunes were competing for volume.

And then I heard a new sound.

Sharp
pangs.

Two came from the distance, and then, louder ones, closer.

Pow, pow. Powpowpow
.

I kept track on my fingers. If the shooter was good all he’d need was nine.

Pow
.

Close enough, you have to admit, ten shots for nine targets is pretty good. I unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door a crack.

“Safe to come out?” I yelled in my best damsel in distress.

“Someone’s alive in here, Scotty.” I heard a voice shout.

“Where at?” Another guy.

“In the bathroom,” I answered.