I waited until he went back in. He had that same furtive, haunted look as he scanned the area before closing the door behind him. He looked like he’d been through the wringer, must have lost a few people he loved. “That’s okay,” I murmured. “I’ll help end all your suffering soon enough.” I pulled back down the road, running like I had springs in my shoes as I got further away. I don’t think I could’ve been any happier even if I’d found out my father had been cloned multiple times and I could eat every one of him. The backyards were a little more difficult to navigate as the majority had a fence of some sorts. It would be obvious to anyone that saw me I was sneaking around, though I did look human and that was the general state of things today, hiding I mean. Not many would peg a thirty-something small female as a murdering zombie-thief anyway.
I was two houses away; this was where I was going to set up my surveillance. This one was empty, except for maybe the ghosts of the previous tenants. I’d once read that ghosts are spawned by swift and violent deaths, that the soul doesn’t know what has happened to it and is forever doomed to wander where it passed, trying to reconcile what has happened to it. If that were truly the case, there were a good seven or eight ghouls in this place. The Manson family, if there were any of those idiots still around, would have loved it here. The kitchen, the living room, most of the stairwell, and the hallway leading to the bedrooms were coated in blood and bones. What the zombies hadn’t picked clean other scavengers had. Cat, rat, mouse and cockroach shit was everywhere. Must have been like an all-you-can-eat buffet in here for a few weeks. I bet all the little vermin were saddened when this place closed up shop.
I got past all of that and found a young girl’s bedroom. It was surprisingly untouched, strange given the state of the rest of the household. Typical boy band posters hung on the wall, along with some serious breast-revealing pics of Katy Perry. A pink blanket covered a bed strewn with pillows covered in princess-themed pillowcases. A small desk with a large mirror was off to the corner. “Oh look, a little narcissist in training. Soon, she would have started painting herself up to look like a little doll, and then get pissed off when men tried to own her like a possession. I got news for you, honey, stop trying to look like one! Whoa, where’d that come from? I am so sick of having a vagina.” I strode over to the window before having the common sense to duck down. Yorley would surely have wondered what the hell was going on if she saw someone in the window of a house she must have ransacked by now. Even if she thought I was human, she would have a warning and proceed with caution.
It was an assault on the senses, looking at that house for any extended amount of time. “You, Yorley,” I said aloud, “are the reason Home Owners Associations came into being. Ain’t nobody wants to live next to that fucking eyesore.”
“Isn’t Manny going to get hungry if we keep waiting here? Why don’t we go someplace to find something to eat?”
“Really, Scarlett? That’s the best you have? Sure, he will eventually get hungry, but for the first time in maybe the history of zombies, that bastard is satiated. I’ve got a little time. And look at you, so willing to sacrifice some other poor unsuspecting slob in an effort to protect your babies. That’s so…” I fluttered my hand in front of my face and allowed fake tears to fall as I put a quiver in my voice. “…motherly. I think we’ll wait right here and see what’s up.”
It took a while. I was just thinking about wrapping my hands around Yorley’s throat and squeezing the life out of her when I caught movement in her backyard, something which I had a great vantage point of. A teenaged boy who looked suspiciously like a younger version of the other man that had come out earlier was walking around the backyard. I noticed he was stepping gingerly and also had with him a plastic bag.
“What the fuck gives?” I asked as I watched. As much as this kid’s father or older brother had been nervous and had his head on a swivel, this kid didn’t seem to care at all. He found a place that he thought was better than others and then opened his bag before turning it over. It took me a few seconds to figure out what he was doing.
“Smart fuckers, aren’t you. That’s all Yorley.” They were dropping their eliminations all around the yard—what better way to hide the stink of humans than to spread human stink around. Shit, its shit, in case you missed that part. Keep up. I was now noticing due to my better vantage point that the fence, which I thought was moderately okay, was fortified much better than I’d anticipated. Wooden beams had been nailed along its entire length, and these were braced by more lumber attached to them and stuck into the ground at an angle. Sure, a horde might still be able to take this down, but it would have to be a good sized one. I might go that route if I couldn’t find a way in, but for now I wanted to be the one and only one that took my prize. I’d played on teams my entire life, this time I wanted to go solo. So far I’d only seen a fence and some piles; I wasn’t overly worried at this point. Didn’t mean I was gonna go racing in just yet, but I felt pretty good about my chances. The man and the boy both had pistols attached to holsters on their hips. But they weren’t machineguns, and one looked like a Nervous Nelly and the other an Indifferent Isaac, both of which were extremely bad dispositions to have in this world.
It was another long span. Watching crap ferment is not my favorite way of spending time. Night was quickly falling, I wanted—no, that’s not strong enough—I needed, I needed to fucking know that Yorley was in that house. Sure, the inhabitants were all going to die by my hand. That was a foregone conclusion. It was that the she-bitch needed to be among them. I’d done something right at some point in my life, because my prayers were answered. I wanted to simultaneously jump up to the ceiling in celebration and out the window to get at her. It was my incredible edible Yorley, in all her yummy momminess. To be fair, I guess she was a practicing mom and not one in earnest, but man did she look good. My heart labored with the exertion I was putting it through. She was standing on the back porch, at first I thought smoking a cigarette. But she was holding it and her breath strangely.
“Ah, look, my little Yorley is a stoner. Hey Scarlett, she probably sold your kids for that dime bag. That’s right, my sweetheart, keep smoking the sweet leaf, take a nice long nap, and I’ll be waiting for you when you wake up.” I had my hand pressed against the glass and was leaving a fog on it as well from my heavy breathing. Like a dart to a bullseye, Yorley turned that quickly to where I was, like the bitch had some sort of trouble-finding radar. Right now, I knew the best thing was to not have any sudden movement, no matter how much I wanted to duck and cover. If I still had my soul, which right now was roasting like chestnuts, she’d be peering at it. She took another toke of the joint and continued looking at the window. There was no way she could see me. What little of the sun that still remained was on the other side of the house. This window had to be as dark as a cellar at midnight during a power outage. She turned back, stubbed her joint out on the railing and went back in the house. The sigh of relief I let out was long and slow as I pushed it through clenched teeth.
“That was fucking close. Damn chick is like a ninja.”
“She’s going to kill you. You know that, don’t you? On some level, Tim, I think you do and that’s the real reason why you needed to find her,” Scarlett said.
“Wow, it looks like you’ve figured me all out with your pseudo or is it quasi-psychiatry? I’ve been such a bad boy that I needed to go and find my retribution. Is that it? Is Yorley going to serve me my penance? I really hope you weren’t going to teach your kids this New Age shit. Just what we needed, a new generation of crybabies that go running to momma when they don’t get their participation trophy.”
“Shut the fuck up, Tim. She’s going to kill you—again, I might add, and you’re not going to be so lucky this next time. I’m going to cheer her on while she’s doing it. Nothing except the birth of my children will give me greater pleasure than to seeing you finally be put out of the earth’s misery.”
“There’s no woman, ever, that is going to
get the best of me, honey.”
“Are you kidding me, Tim? She already has. You’ve been following her around like a little lost puppy, and I hate to tell you, but she has no plans to adopt you. Euthanize, sure. Adopt? Not so much. And, oh yeah, it does look like she’s already castrated you!” Scarlett was howling with laughter. It was difficult to say whether she had lost her mind or not, but she sure was enjoying herself.
“You’ll pay, you’ll all pay,” I told her. She was wholly unimpressed. “Yeah, keep laughing, bitch, wait until I pluck your kids’ heads right from their shoulders. That ought to be a truly laughable event.”
She immediately sobered up. “I won’t allow it.” The quiet voracity with which she delivered those words gave me pause. I couldn’t let her know that though. “Looks like Mexican tonight, Manny, we should stock up on some antacids. You know what all that spice does to our stomach.”
Scarlett was glaring at me.
“Then, I think we top it off with some white cake for dessert. Two of them, as a matter of fact.”
“We’ll see,” Scarlett said before she retreated from the area.
“What can she do?” I nudged Manny. He didn’t care, we were so beneath him as to be inconsequential. He was still in a state of food bliss.
Night had finally come and with it the advantage I had over the people in that household. They had to sleep at some point, and as of right now, I’d only seen three of them. If and only if they did guard duty, only one would be involved; there was no way they could cover the entire perimeter, so most of their effort would be on the easiest approach. Zombies weren’t going to climb fences. I’d sneak in the back and have that midnight snack I was so looking forward to.
“Just going to have to settle in for a little bit and wait. I wonder if I should call ahead to make reservations?” I quipped. I was just about to hop onto the bed when I caught movement in the backyard. Figured some more food babies were being deposited. Not sure if I could have been any more wrong. I don’t think you can blame me though. Who in the fuck has emus? The large birds flooded out of the basement and started running around the yard pecking at food that only they could see. Then it dawned on me.
“Meat. That’s smart. Put them out at night so their movement doesn’t attract attention. Again, pretty smart. Wonder if I should drag one of those things down and eat it. Just to check, might be delicious.” I waited a couple more hours, figured by then the inhabitants of the house would be lulled into thinking everything was hunky dory. “Time to go.” I roused the troops. Manny just told me to hurry and Scarlett flipped me off. “I guess I’ll do all the heavy lifting … again. I’m coming, Yorley. Can you tell?” I asked as I headed out of the house. I climbed over the middle neighbor’s fence and was halfway across the yard when I heard a strange sound, sounded like a kid beating on a hollow log with a heavy stick.
Couldn’t figure out what the hell it was at first, then the closer I got to Yorley’s fence the louder and from more sources it came. It was the fucking birds, a warning, like a dog barking, the emus were booming. Just about got caught with my pants down around my ankles. They weren’t meat; they were guard animals and the alarm was sounding. I had just enough time to run across the yard and get back over the fence when I heard more movement at Yorley’s. No cries of “Who’s out there?” and no flashlight beams, but oh yeah, there was someone out there and I could just about guarantee it was Yorley with some high powered weapon, scanning for threats. They’d been warned that something was out there, and my guess was they’d be on high alert for the rest of the night.
“Fuck,” I hissed. “This is going to be harder than I thought.” Manny was good to go for now, but he wasn’t going to wait forever. I had to come up with a plan that didn’t involve me just going straight over there and ripping through stuff, hoping for the best. I thought about wallowing the night away, not getting to eat Yorley, and well, it was eating at me. Not much into puns, but that seemed fitting. I’d just gone into the back door of the house and was going to head back upstairs and see if anything new developed when I figured now was as good a time as any to go and enlist some help.
After some serious prodding and cajoling, I got Manny to reach out and find some friends. For someone that prided himself on being part of a collective, he really did have some selfish tendencies. Appeared that we were all having greater influences on each other than we were prepared to admit. I don’t know what the range was on the zombie telephone network, but I walked at least two miles to Laura’s Sausage Fest. It was a diner that specialized in breakfasts for gay men. I don’t know if there was a big demand for that kind of thing, but it was San Francisco, I suppose. I wonder if any straight old timers had walked in there just wanting to get their eggs scrambled and almost had their tickers give out by some leather-clad men pouring their syrup. Funny how you can make just about anything sexual with the right tone.
I was trying to distract my mind from the intense dislike I had of the stasis piles. They represented at least two things I hated. Hunger and stillness, and being all huddled up in the jelly like mess was not on the top of my list either. Manny would probably go to sleep for that entire period we were congealing there, but I’d be completely aware, immobile and nearly blind, as my eyes were coated with the protective zombie grease, made from who the fuck knows what. I’d go insane trapped like that, without the ability to take action in any form. I’d be like a mental patient, harnessed in a straightjacket and bolted to the floor. I could not imagine a more claustrophobic experience. It gave me the chills just thinking about it. Luckily, Manny was more inclined to think along those lines as well, although I could feel a part of him that was drawn to the security of that pile.
“No way, Manny. The idea is to bring them along for a party, not to join this snooze-fest.” I knew zombie-speak. I pulled away so I would not get blasted by that high, ear-splitting chatter they call communication. I should have been more concerned when I found it wasn’t quite as mind numbing as it had been in the past. I just chalked it up to excitement at the prospect of getting to Yorley. It was coming up on dawn as I walked the dead back to Yorley’s; this fact was not lost on me. I can’t say I was a huge fan of Romero, but I’d seen the movies, and yeah, zombies always paid a heavy price, but it didn’t usually work out too well for the people either. Manny gave the z’s some final directions, and we went back to our perch, like any good field marshal should.
It wasn’t the largest horde in the world, but sixty-seven of the smelly bastards should be enough to keep the Garcia household busy for a while. This would also give me a chance to see some more of their defenses and how many adults were there as well. It would do me no good to walk into a room of ten people or so when I was only expecting two—and not to be racist or anything, but this was a Mexican home, lord knows how many were in there. Could be a mini Guatemala, as far as I knew. I looked into the backyard; the emus were gone back to wherever they had come from. The dipshit zombies were passing by the house. None looked over to their right because Yorley and her cohorts gave them no reason to do so.
“Manny, you need to give them a little nudge.” Like they were troops on the parade grounds practicing drill, they turned sharply to their right and straight toward the house. A group of flying swallows could not have been any more choreographed. “Yeah, that’s not going to look suspicious,” I whistled through my teeth. Still nothing, no response from the house. The zombies had smacked into the fence, which was moving slightly from the contact but looked in little danger of falling. Their legs kept moving, looked just like the stupid, stuck, remote control vehicles they were.
“Stop, Manny, she’s going to know something is wrong. That’s not how zombies act or attack.” I shut up as soon as he showed them how to climb that fence. “Holy shit. Sorry for doubting you.” One zombie had dropped into the front yard and another was just cresting the top when the first shots were fired. The battle was on. Three people, including Yorley, came out onto the raised porch. I couldn’t tel
l for sure, but one looked like the older man from yesterday, the other I’d not seen before. While I was trying to figure out who was out there, Yorley had bent over and pulled some pins, and the four stairs leading to the deck fell away.
“Fuck, that bitch is smart.” That made it much more difficult for the zombies to make it to them. I could see puffs of smoke coming from some higher windows in the front. I was going to use the zombie distraction as a means to sneak in the back, but there were at least five shooters in there, odds of success were not greatly in my favor. I paced back and forth in the room like a fucking target at a carnival. At some point, Yorley must have detected the movement. The bullet grazed the front of my neck and blew through my shoulder; if I had a pronounced Adam’s apple, she would have sheared it off. I collapsed down from the pain but mostly the shock of the whole thing. Some prescient sense in her had made her look my way, and in my lost in thought state, I had nearly paid with my life. Blood leaked from me at an alarming rate. I wasn’t worried about that at the moment though. What really had me concerned was that Wonder fucking Woman would come over and finish the job.
I had to get out of there and now. I picked myself up and dashed out of the room, petrified that when I got to the top of the stairs, Yorley would be waiting for me at the foot of them, her rifle and an “I got you now” expression written all over her lips. I was two steps down and in mid-flight to go another three when I detected movement in the living room, a shifting of light. This was it, she had me. I hit that next step, my ankle rolled, and I went down, landing hard on my already damaged shoulder. The pain nearly caused me to black out. The only thing keeping me from doing so was the thought that Yorley would be standing over me soon. From my vantage point, I saw the curtains flutter in the next room. The source of movement. I would have laughed if I wasn’t terrified.