The Urban Fantasy Anthology Part 23

Marty caught up. "Sharon? Sharon Heep? Is that really you?"

Shari's eyes were daggers now. The corners of her mouth were playing with a smile, but just playing. And then she batted her eyelashes-a wicked twitch. Stirred the straw in the c.o.ke and took a dainty sip....

"It is her!" Nick slapped Marty on the back. "It is the Heepster! Jesus, Marty, it looks like old Sharon's been to charm school this summer!"

"s.l.u.t school, more like it," Marty replied, ever the quick wit. "Hey, c'mon Sharon. Let's go for a ride, just the three of us. Let's see what you've learned this summer."

I said, "You guys got room for one more?"

Nick and Marty whirled. They hadn't heard me coming.

Once again, Nick caught on first. "Johnny!" He gasped, a look of horror crossing his face. "No...it can't be-"

Marty cut in with the clincher: "Christ, Johnny...you're dead!"

I nodded, flicking open the switchblade that Nick had buried in my guts back in June.

They froze-eyeballing the knife, their faces pasty-white-so I decided to help them out. "Let me steer you fellas in the right direction," I offered. "This is the part where you're supposed to run for your lives."

"Don't confuse them, Johnny," Shari said. "Don't be so literal."

"Sorry, fellas." I snapped the blade closed. "I mean, you don't have to run run-you can take the car."

Nick and Marty just stood there, staring at us as we returned to the Ford.

"Man, can you believe that they're so stupid?" I said.

Shari took my hand. "Believe it, Daddy-o."

Behind us, the Chevy's engine finally rumbled alive.

Four new tires burned rubber.

Nick and Marty were gone.

Pretty soon, they'd be the gonest.

"What was that junk you put in the c.o.ke?" the carhop wanted to know.

Shari laughed. I didn't do a very good job of keeping a straight face, myself. But I did manage to set the model car on the serving tray.

"Decals," Shari explained between giggles.

"Yeah," I said. "We're a couple of hobbyists. We get together and build model cars. I guess we got a little sloppy tonight."

"It could have been worse." Shari's voice was suddenly real serious. "I mean, we could have gotten glue all over the French fries, or paint in the cheeseburgers, or something."

The carhop didn't seem to catch on. She frowned as she set a fresh c.o.ke next to the model car. "Well, just don't do it again. Those darn what-cha-ma-call-ems are stuck to the gla.s.s. I bet it's going to take a razor blade to get 'em off. I mean, only a gomer would want to drink c.o.ke out of a gla.s.s that says Chevy."

"Sorry," Shari said, and deep down I'll bet she really was sorry for putting the carhop to all that trouble.

The carhop skated away. We dug into our cheeseburgers, which hadn't even had a chance to get cold. Shari said, "I didn't think I'd ever want to eat again."

"You were really nervous, huh?"

"Are you kidding?" She swallowed another bite. "And it isn't like we're out of the woods yet."

"Sure it is."

She sighed. "C'mon, Johnny. We still have to go back to school. We still have to face everyone else."

"So what?"

"I mean, all the stories and everything...."

I shook my head. "It's like I said: This one little step, and it's all over. Nick and Marty were the biggest, toughest monkeys in that d.a.m.n zoo. With them gone, it'll be easy."

"But what about you? Nick and Marty talked, y'know. I mean, I never would have found your grave if I hadn't listened to all the stories that were going around. And there'll be lots of questions when you show up again. Think about it, Johnny. You're going to have to explain things. Your parents are going to want to know what happened-"

"Those rummies?" My lips twisted into a smirk. "They'll be sorry to see me walk through the door. My old man will worry that I'll cut into the beer budget or something. Maybe I'll just stay in the boneyard. It's gotten so I kind of like it there."

"But everyone else-"

"Screw everyone else. Screw their questions. Who's gonna have the guts to ask 'em, anyhow? Who's gonna come up to a guy who's supposed to be dead and buried in an unmarked grave in the old cemetery...especially when the studs who supposedly gutted him and put him six feet under turn up dead? Who's gonna say a thing to that guy when he comes waltzing into school with a girl on his arm?"

Shari nodded. "Not just any girl. A freak who believed in ghosts and witches and things that go b.u.mp in the night. A freak who everyone laughed at." She took my hand. "Until she found someone who taught her to believe in herself."

"Yeah," I said, "but you had to dig me up to do it."

"Sometimes you have to be real desperate before you can really believe." She kissed me, a sweet schoolgirl peck on the cheek. "And, anyway," she added slyly, "some things are worth a little digging, y'know?"

We finished the cheeseburgers and drove back to the old cemetery, parking the stolen Ford between the same two broken-down mausoleums. Like I said, there was barely enough room to get one door open, so we both slipped out the driver's side. I left the radio on, because Dinah Was.h.i.+ngton was singing "My Man's an Undertaker." Somehow, it seemed appropriate.

There was a marble slab a few feet off. Spider-webbed with cracks, but pretty much level. I set the Chevy model on top of it. "I wonder where they are," Shari said.

"Let's find out." I knelt down, put my ear to the plastic hardtop and listened for a couple minutes while Shari paced back and forth between two granite tombstones.

"No clue where they are," I said finally, "but you should hear the idiots yelling at each other." I stood up, shaking my head, and winked at Shari. "I can't figure out what surprised them more-that I'd come back from the dead, or that you'd turned into such a dead solid knock-out."

"Real funny, Johnny."

"Yeah." I sat on the slab. "Sorry. But I gotta tell you, Shari-your legs really made an impression on them."

"Why, Johnny Benteen, you're such a card." She laughed. "I never would have guessed that a dead guy could possess such a lively sense of humor."

"Ouch. Score one for the s.e.xpot sorceress."

"This is so weird."

"The weirdest."

"Let's get it over with."

"You want to do it?"

She turned away. "I don't even want to watch."

I slipped Nick's switchblade from my pocket. Flicked it open. Pressed the sharp metal point against the miniature tornado that swirled on the model's flimsy plastic hood.

"Look away, little darlin'," I said. "Look up at that pretty sickle of a moon."

Kitty's Zombie New Year.

Carrie Vaughn.

I'd refused to stay home alone on New Year's Eve. I wasn't going to be one of those angst-ridden losers stuck at home watching the ball drop in Times Square while sobbing into a pint of gourmet ice cream.

No, I was going to do it over at a friend's, in the middle of a party.

Matt, a guy from the radio station where I was a DJ, was having a wild party in his cramped apartment. Lots of booze, lots of music, and the TV blaring the Times Square special from New York-being in Denver, we'd get to celebrate New Year's a couple of times over. I wasn't going to come to the party, but he'd talked me into it. I didn't like crowds, which was why the late s.h.i.+ft at the station suited me. But here I was, and it was just like I knew it would be: 10 pm, the ball dropped, and everyone except me had somebody to kiss. I gripped a tumbler filled with un-tasted rum and c.o.ke and glowered at the television, wondering which well-preserved celebrity guest hosts were vampires, and which ones just had portraits in their attics that were looking particularly hideous.

It would happen all over again at midnight.

Sure enough, shortly after the festivities in New York City ended, the TV station announced it would re-broadcast everything at midnight.

An hour later, I'd decided to find Matt and tell him I was going home to wallow in ice cream after all, when a woman screamed. The room fell instantly quiet, and everyone looked toward the front door, where the sound had blasted.

The door stood open, and one of the crowd stared over the threshold, to another woman who stood motionless. A new guest had arrived and knocked, I a.s.sumed. But she just stood there, not coming inside, and the screamer stared at her, one hand on the doork.n.o.b and the other hand covering her mouth. The scene turned rather eerie and surreal. The seconds ticked by, no one said or did anything.

Matt, his black hair in a pony tail, pushed through the crowd to the door. The motion seemed out of place, chaotic. Still, the woman on the other side stood frozen, unmoving. I felt a sinking feeling in my gut.

Matt turned around and called, "Kitty!"

Sinking feeling confirmed.

I made my own way to the door, shouldering around people. By the time I reached Matt, the woman who'd answered the door had edged away to take shelter in her boyfriend's arms. Matt turned to me, dumbstruck.

The woman outside was of average height, though she slumped, her shoulders rolled forward as if she was too tired to hold herself up. Her head tilted to one side. She might have been a normal twenty-something, recent college grad, in worn jeans, an oversized blue T-s.h.i.+rt, and canvas sneakers. Her light hair was loose and stringy, like it hadn't been washed in a couple of weeks.

I glanced at Matt.

"What's wrong with her?" he said.

"What makes you think I know?"

"Because you know all about freaky s.h.i.+t." Ah, yes. He was referring to my call-in radio show about the supernatural. That made me an expert, even when I didn't know a thing.

"Do you know her?"

"No, I don't." He turned back to the room, to the dozens of faces staring back at him, round-eyed. "Hey, does anybody know who this is?"

The crowd collectively pressed back from the door, away from the strangeness.

"Maybe it's drugs." I called to her, "Hey."

She didn't move, didn't blink, didn't flinch. Her expression was slack, completely blank. She might have been asleep, except her eyes were open, staring straight ahead. They were dull, almost like a film covered them. Her mouth was open a little.

I waved my hand in front of her face, which seemed like a really cliched thing to do. She didn't respond. Her skin was terribly pale, clammy-looking, and I couldn't bring myself to touch her. I didn't know what I would do if she felt cold and dead.

Matt said, "Geez, she's like some kind of zombie."

Oh, no. No way. But the word clicked. It was a place to start, at least.

Someone behind us said, "I thought zombies, like, attacked people and ate brains and stuff."

I shook my head. "That's horror movie zombies. Not voodoo slave zombies."

"So you do know what's going on?" Matt said hopefully.

"Not yet. I think you should call 911."

He winced and scrubbed his hand through his hair. "But if it's a zombie, if she's dead an ambulance isn't-"

"Call an ambulance." He nodded and grabbed his cell phone off the coffee table. "And I'm going to use your computer."

I did what any self-respecting American in this day and age would do in such a situation: I searched the Internet for zombies.

I couldn't say it was particularly useful. A frighteningly large number of the sites that came up belonged to survivalist groups planning for the great zombie infestation that would bring civilization collapsing around our ears. They helpfully informed a casual reader such as myself that the government was ill-prepared to handle the magnitude of the disaster that would wreak itself upon the country when the horrible zombie-virus mutation swept through the population. We must be prepared to defend ourselves against the flesh-eating hordes bent on our destruction.

This was a movie synopsis, not data, and while fascinating, it wasn't helpful.

A bunch of articles on voodoo and Haitian folklore seemed mildly more useful, but even those were contradictory: the true believers in magic arguing with the hardened scientists, and even the scientists argued among themselves about whether the legends sprang from the use of certain drugs or from profound psychological disorders.

I'd seen enough wild stories play out in my time that I couldn't discount any of these alternatives. These days, magic and science were converging on one another.

Someone was selling zombie powders on eBay. They even came with an instruction booklet. That might be fun to bid on just to say I'd done it. Even if I did, the instruction book that might have some insight on the problem wouldn't get here in time.

Something most of the articles mentioned: stories said that the taste of salt would revive a zombie. Revived them out of what, and into what, no one seemed to agree on. If they weren't really dead but comatose, the person would be restored. If they were honest-to-G.o.d walking dead, they'd be released from servitude and make their way back to their graves.

I went to the kitchen and found a salt shaker.

If she really was a zombie, she couldn't have just shown up here. She had either come here for a specific reason, there had to be some connection. She was here to scare someone, which meant someone here had to know her. n.o.body was volunteering any information.