* * * * *
“You decent?” asks Percy as he pads out of the shower stall on bare feet, a dingy gray towel wrapped around his concave waist.
“As decent as I’m getting for you,” I snark, boiling two packets of Ramen noodles over my hot plate.
He slips into a clean wife beater and a pair of baggy boxers from my Lost and Found box and slinks over to me in his flapping purple flip-flops, also from the L & F.
“Yumm,” he says, sitting on a barstool and draining half the soda I’d poured for him while he was in the shower. “Is that the spicy kind?”
“Would I serve you anything less?”
He yawns and puts his sharp chin on one rosy palm.
“Hey,” he says as I dish the noodles and water into the giant black bowl in front of him. “Can you stand in front of me? I like to read while I eat?”
He’s referring, of course, to the tableau of tattoos that cover 85% of my body.
Half of them are visible now, even with my black yoga pants and matching sports bra on.
I sigh and stand there while he eats, giant green eyes exploring the colorful ink splashed across my pale skin.
“What’s this one, here?” he asks, pointing a plastic chopstick at my left shoulder blade.
I don’t have to try and look over my shoulder to know which one he’s referring to.
“My boyfriend at the time liked classic literature. That’s Moby Dick.”
“And this one?” he asks while slurping up another mound of steamy white noodles and pointing to my right bicep.
“That’s Edgar Allen Poe’s headstone.”
He shakes his head and says, “I know you’re a zombie, Holly, but… just how old ARE you?”
“A woman never tells,” I sigh, cracking a can of generic soda and drinking half of it down in a slug.
I pace the warehouse loft as he eats, wired from the run-in with those creepy Zannibals.
“You’ll have to be extra careful from now on, Percy,” I say as he washes his plate in the kitchenette sink. “They’ll want retribution.”
“Well, can’t I stay here Holly? You’ll protect me.”
“You can stay tonight, Percy,” I say apologetically, patting the single cot in the middle of the vast warehouse space. “I wish you could stay longer but… in case those Zannibals ever track me down one day, I don’t want them to find you here along with me.”
He shrugs, but doesn’t look too broken up about it.
Then again, he’s used to disappointment.
He slides under the covers, all 6’ 3” and 150-pounds of him, his borrowed boxer shorts practically sliding down his pale legs.
“Why do you have such a bug up your butt about those guys anyway, Holly?” he yawns, fluffing the starchy white pillow beneath his curly blond hair as if he’s waiting for a bedtime mint.
“Besides the fact that they prey on the homeless kids of Hollywood, you mean?”
He nods, yanking the covers up to his bony, pimply chin.
“Did I ever tell you how I became a zombie?”
He shakes his head and I say, for about the 100th time to the 100th homeless kid on the streets of Hollywood, “My mom took me to a casting agent’s office, high in the Hollywood Hills. His name was Frost, just one word; like Madonna or Cher. At the time, we thought it was charming. ‘Frost.’ It sounded so cool, you know? We were new in town, this was ages ago, and we didn’t know any better. We never told my Dad about it; he would have warned us against it. Anyway, the address was this grand old mansion. It was terribly derelict, no water in the fountain, weeds overgrown, but that only added to the charm.
“Frost said I was beautiful, but too young for the role he was looking to fill. He asked Mom to read for the part instead, but insisted she do it… in private. That was okay; sure, I was disappointed but also… I was so excited for her. And she was beautiful, too. Anyway, I stayed behind. There were all these creepy bodyguards around, dressed in black…”
“Like tonight,” Percy croaks, eyes half-lidded with a fully belly and a warm bed. “With those creepy Zannibals who were going to suck on my brain if you hadn’t showed up when you did.”
“Just like tonight,” I nod. “Anyway, we stayed outside Frost’s den, the bodyguards and me, and he took my mom inside. I was bored, started walking around the grand ballroom a while. The bodyguards followed. I hadn’t strayed too far when I heard screaming; I ran for my mom, but the bodyguards caught me. They… they…”
“They weren’t bodyguards, were they Holly?” Percy asks, eyes closed but brain wide open.
I shake my head but he doesn’t see so I say, “No, Percy, they most certainly were not.”
He hears the tone in my voice, the fear still fresh after all these years, and opens his big green eyes wide. “They were… zombies?”
“They were Zannibals, Percy. I’m a zombie, and you don’t need me to tell you the difference after all this time on the streets.”
He nods and the stiff white pillowcase rustles against his curly blond hair.
After a pregnant pause he says, “What happened to your Mom?”
“I passed out, after they bit me; that happens, for a few minutes or so after they turn you. It’s kind of like your body’s switching over from manual to auto-pilot, you know?”
He smiles, softly, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. “Or like when your computer has to shut down to reboot itself.”
“Exactly,” I beam, as if he’s my star student and just earned another A++. “Anyway, when I came to again, they were dragging Mom off; in pieces. I never saw her again, but I saw the Zannibals again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Once I figured out who I was, or what I was, I haunted that old mansion. Turns out it was the Zannibals’ hideout. They’d place ads in the trade papers, and stupid young girls like me would step right off the bus and head into the Hills for their ‘big shot’ at fame and fortune.
“The Zannibals either ate them, like my Mom, or turned them, like me. Anyway, I followed Frost and the bodyguards for weeks; there were no movies, no producers, no introductions. One night I went up into the Hollywood Hills, carrying two cans of gasoline. I started one fire in the four-car garage and, while the Zannibals were fighting that, another in Frost’s office; the mansion went up in flames. It was on the news and everything since it was right near the Hollywood sign!”
“Really?” Percy asks, like this is the best part of the story for him!
“Yeah, really; the Zannibals have been after me ever since.”
Percy snorts, no doubt recalling the run-in with Grinder and Stain from earlier that night.
“So now you have it, Percy, my whole sordid…”
But Percy isn’t snorting; he’s snoring.
I rise from the hard back chair next to his cot and begin pacing the perimeter of the warehouse, watching over him as he sleeps.