Zombies - Encounters with the Hungry Dead Part 20

"Actually," said the agent, who tended to be a bit of a know-it-all, "real zombies don't technically qualify as the undead. What appears to be death is actually a brief coma. They seem to be rising from the dead-'reanimating' if you will-when really they're only waking up."

"I thought it was some kind of voodoo thing. Haitian zombie powder."

"Like protein powder. Only not."

"Thaddy, why is there a girl in your closet?"

"That was the old zombie," the agent's boyfriend, who was a manager, informed them. He sipped his wine. "Now there's the new zombie."

"I get it. Like the old face. But now there's the new face."

"And by the time I'm old enough to need it, we'll have the new new face."

"They'd better hurry up. You're almost twenty-eight. Sweetie, don't throw the bread at me. I said don't throw-"

"There's this absolutely fabulous urban legend going around-one of my writers and I jumped all over it, fleshed out a treatment that sold to Warner just this morning-"

There were murmured congratulations, a few of which might have been sincere.

"-about a drug. It was supposed to be this new fabulous club drug, right, keep you up all night, keep you moving. Like Ecstasy, only better-"

"I never got the whole E thing. c.o.ke is so much better."

"It's a generational thing."

"Thaddy-?"

"It is not a generational thing! Everybody does c.o.ke!"

"I never do c.o.ke."

"You're such a liar. That's one of the two big lies that women at the clubs will always tell you. 'I never do c.o.ke.'"

"What's the other one?"

"It-"

"It's like cocaine invents other people just for you, so you can go to their parties and talk about yourself."

"Some genius was developing it in his parents' bas.e.m.e.nt in Palo Alto-"

"I lived in Palo Alto during the dot com boom. G.o.d, the parking. You could never find parking. And then I could never remember where I parked, so I'd end up wandering the streets, like some homeless, carless person."

"Or a pedestrian."

"Only what he came up with instead was this substance that had some highly questionable side effects-"

"Thaddy-?"

"Once it gets into your blood it acts like a virus, a kind of flesh-eating virus," the manager said, "that infects your skin, your muscles and your brain. It is also contagious. You understand? You can slip this thing to someone-"

"Zombie roofie!"

"-Infect them, and then watch that infection spread in a very short time."

"My kid's birthday party is going to have a zombie theme."

"You want to turn your kids into zombies?"

"No. I said a zombie theme."

"I want to turn his kids into zombies."

"Thaddy, honey-?"

"But he thought hey, I've got this thing, maybe I can sell it to the military. You know, for biological warfare or something-"

"It's like the swine flu. Only not."

"So he goes to a friend of the family for advice, and the friend knows someone who knows someone, and so to make a long story short this drug ends up in the hands of a profoundly well-heeled, connected and... esoteric... few-"

"Thad-"

"At least it wasn't the Scientologists."

"Or the gay mafia."

"I like the gay mafia."

"-who start experimenting with it for their own personal use. And that," the manager said triumphantly, "is where our screenplay begins."

"You're saying this is an urban legend? 'Cause that is news to me-"

"It's just starting to get pa.s.sed around. Actors, mostly. You know how they are. But like I said, we jumped on it."

"How much did the treatment sell for?"

"A lot," the agent said, and he and his boyfriend exchanged smug little smiles.

A pounding from upstairs.

Repeated thumps so strong and loud that Thad imagined he could hear- or maybe he actually could, his senses seemed so heightened-the closet door rattling in its frame.

"That's her," he said. "I guess she wants out."

Thad arranged two lines of cocaine beside his plate, lowered his nostrils and hoovered it all off the tablecloth. As the pounding sounded again, he sniffed and rubbed his nose and tipped his head back. He blinked repeatedly. The light from the chandelier was rather dazzling.

"... don't know what's going on," someone was muttering, "but somebody should maybe do something."

"Oh, h.e.l.l, I'll do it," Thad said. He got up, misjudging the distance between chair and table, and banged his knee. "I'm the host. It falls to me."

"Thaddy? Why is there a girl in your closet?"

He loped up the stairs, ducked into the bathroom and shut the door. He dug his cell phone from his pocket. Why is there a girl in your closet? Why, indeed? It seemed to Thad an excellent question. Before that girl, Andrea, had somehow gotten herself into the closet, she had gotten herself into his house, and how exactly had that transpired? Special delivery.

He called Sabine's number. He was good with girls' numbers, just like he was good with their names. Most of them, anyway.

He got voicemail. He left a message that he thought was admirably succinct. He put some cocaine on the edge of his credit card, lifted it to his nostrils, snorted. Which was when he noticed the silence.

The pounding had stopped.

Footsteps in the hall beyond the bathroom door.

Shuffling, dragging footsteps.

Thad was no idiot. He knew who that was.

And it occurred to Thad that possibly, very possibly, in his rush to get away from the zombie girl-and possibly to do another line of c.o.ke-he had forgotten to lock the closet door.

He said, "Oh s.h.i.t."

He considered the situation.

Tried to consider the situation. He was aware that the level of his thinking was not at its finest. In fact, it seemed to be getting fuzzier by the minute. He felt surprisingly good, though. Strong. Invincible. And a little hungry. Although his knee hurt from where he'd banged it against the coffee table. He hitched up his pant leg. The bruise was bigger than he would have expected, a splotch of blue-black spreading just beneath his kneecap. But he had to focus. The problem was not the bruise on his leg. The problem was the zombie currently on its way downstairs to greet his dinner guests.

And yet.

He was still sharp enough to know what he was not hearing.

He was not hearing screams and sounds of mayhem.

Somehow another minute pa.s.sed. Then he splashed water on his face. He examined his bloodshot eyes in the mirror. He wasn't maybe looking all that great. Who could blame him, there was a f.u.c.king zombie in his house.

Except...

From downstairs, he heard conversation, even laughter.

Was it possible he'd gotten it wrong? Maybe the zombie stuff was all in his head? Or someone was playing a joke? Or it was a stunt they were pulling for Rayne's reality show, because Rayne's t.i.ts just weren't entertaining enough?

Determined to get to the bottom of this, Thad stalked out of the bathroom and returned to the dining room.

"Where is it?" he demanded. "Did a zombie pa.s.s by here?"

"Thad," Kimmie said gently, "sit down. Take it easy."

She came up beside him, took his arm and tugged him toward his chair. He shook her off. "The zombie," he said again. "Where is it?"

"Thaddy! There's just some girl who's, like, really sick, and seriously about to upchuck, and you are embarra.s.sing me." Her voice was a hiss. "Why was she in your closet, Thad?"

"Ashley and Jessica took her into the bathroom," Z announced. "Jesus lord in heaven, Thad my man, what did you do to that little honey?"

Thad pulled in breath and tipped his head back. He addressed the ceiling. "She's a f.u.c.king zombie."

"Sit," Kimmie snapped, and her voice was so authoritative, so unlike her usual kitten self, that Thad found himself abruptly sitting.

It appeared that dessert had been served. It was molten chocolate cake. The hunger stirred again, deep inside him, sending a strange rippling sensation through his gut and groin. His guests were talking, maybe they were even talking to him, but their words had turned into a strange kind of gibberish. His entire being was focused on the cake. Attuned to the cake. He was one with the cake. He picked up his fork, and dropped it, and picked it up again. A little hard to hold this fork in his fingers, something was obviously wrong with it, he'd have to speak to somebody about that, but in the meantime he could manage. He sent the edge of the fork slicing down through the dessert and dark viscous liquid oozed over the cake and pooled onto the plate. Voices moved up and down the table and got a little louder, a little agitated. Someone might have given a little shriek, Thad wasn't entirely sure, he was so intent on the sauce in his mouth, the thick salty satisfaction of it. It wasn't like any chocolate sauce he'd ever had, there was a coppery aftertaste to it, but it was... good.

The cake, too, had a kind of... meatiness... to it, but it was also... good. He ate all the cake and lifted the plate and licked off all the sauce. He noticed the sauce on his fingers and hands and licked that off too. The hunger churned and boiled inside him. It seemed to have deepened. The cake was not enough to satisfy. He wanted more.

"Thad."

More.

Kimmie's face swam in front of him. There was a trembling in her voice. "Is this a joke?"

"What?"

"The cake," she said.

"What?"

"The cake," she was yelling now, "the cake, the cake! Is this a joke?"

His gaze shifted beyond her to the other faces at the table. But they had all gone kind of blurred, were overlapping with one another, he could no longer pick them apart and didn't care. He felt a vibrating in his pocket. His cell.

"Stop talking to me," he said to Kimmie. His tongue felt like a dead fish inside his mouth, but the words were clear enough. "Excuse me," he said to the blurred, meaty-smelling ma.s.s that ranged around the table, "I need to take this."

Raised chatter behind him. He tuned it out, because for some reason it was taking an unusual amount of concentration just to put one foot in front of the other. He didn't think he could manage the stairs so he headed for the study at the back. On the way he pa.s.sed a bathroom. There were sounds from inside. Now these sounds, unlike the babble at the table, were interesting to him. They were wet, crunching, ripping sounds. He flung his hand against the door and when no one answered he said, "h.e.l.lo?" The door wasn't locked. He pushed it a little bit open and peered inside.

The zombie girl was crouched on the floor. Bits of gray matter clung to her lips. There was blood on her chin and her clothes and the floor and the walls. Sprawled in front of her were two of his female guests. He couldn't put names to them because the faces were mutilated beyond recognition. The zombie girl reached for one of the bodies and appeared to be doing something to the spinal cord. Then she lifted her head and looked toward Thad. She was chewing loudly.

Thad closed the door.

He went into the study. He pressed the phone to his ear.

"I want to make sure I understand this," Sabine was saying. "You think I sent you some kind of... clubgirl zombie?"

"I think..." Fighting to form his mouth around the words. "I think... I just want to know." Indeed, his only reason at this point seemed to be sheer curiosity. Maybe because he was so tired. He could hear-and it seemed to be coming from very far away-some kind of ruckus coming from the direction of the dining room. "Just want to know," Thad said again. It came out: jus-wannaknow. "Yes or no?" Yezzzorno?

Sabine was laughing. The sound hurt his eardrums. He held the phone away from his head, waited a moment, pressed it back to his ear. She was still laughing, but now there was a wild, hysterical ring to it.

"I didn't send you the girl. I sent you the chef."

"The chef," he said blankly.

"And the servers. And Rayne's new camera crew. I did not send you that girl. She got infected all on her own. You got her all on your own. f.u.c.k it, I should have known it would turn out like this! You're soooo predictable."

He had nothing to say.