“Next in line?”
Her voice is coarse but confident, and of course I’m next in line.
There’s a woman behind me, older, I figure she won’t mind as much who – or in this case, what – waits on her so I nudge her politely and say, “You can go ahead. It’s okay.”
She takes one look at the beckoning cashier and barks, “Yeah, right.”
The girl behind the candy counter doesn’t miss a beat. Locking eyes with me – I can feel the chill even from ten paces – she says, pointedly, “Next? In? Line?”
Her eyes, so dark and severe, say, “That’s you, buddy. Yeah, I see you looking at me looking at you. Now move it!”
I gulp.
Her hair is limp and used to be blonde. Her skin is freshly poured concrete gray under the concession stand fluorescent lights. “I’m… I’m still deciding,” I say, not budging an inch.
“That’s okay,” she chirps aggressively, waving a gloved hand – also aggressively. “I’ll help you.”
Good God, is there no way out of this?
Is she… is she… enjoying this?!?
So help me, I think she is.
I feel the sweat clump under my armpits and shuffle forward, hearing a collective sigh of relief from the chicken-hearted patrons behind me.
“Hi there,” she says, teeth as yellow as the popcorn she’s shilling. “Welcome to Flickers Cinemas.”
The name tag over her pocket says, “Crystal.”
I gulp. “Hi, thanks, actually… is there… anyone else who can take my order? I mean, no offense but…”
She grits her yellow teeth and tries to remain pleasant as she reels off some type of spiel that has obviously been rehearsed. “According to the Reanimated in the Workplace Act of 2017, I have every right to serve you, it’s perfectly safe, I’ve been classified Code-N for ‘nonviolent’ and, technically speaking, you can’t actually refuse service…”
Her eyes go blank as she recites the press release by rote. I hold up my hands, anything to get her to stop. That croaky zombie voice of hers is creeping me out, plus she’s making even more of a scene. “Okay, okay, it’s just… you’re my first zombie cashier.”
“Oh,” she snarks, nodding her head vigorously, religious school cheerleader style, “then you’re in for a treat.”
I cock my head. Are zombies supposed to be so… sarcastic? “Oh, okay, well… I’ll take a small popcorn, cherry vines and a small Slurp-ade.”
“Butter on the popcorn?” She turns, limping noticeably with her left leg, and I wince. Now I feel kind of bad.
“No, thanks.” She fills a red and white bag with popcorn, taking special care to mash it down and keep piling it on. I kind of like that. The usual cashier chick just tosses it in and hands it over, and by the time I sit down, settle in and take a bite, it’s already halfway empty.
She tosses ice in a matching red and white cup, but only halfway, and keeps jabbing the soda button until the fuzz on top is gone and the cup is actually full of soda. Like, really full.
I nod as she hands it over. “Thanks,” I say.
She winks, slowly, and not very well. “I told you you were in for a treat.”
She slides over the long, thin plastic bag of cherry licorice and rings it all up. “12 credits even.”
I reach in my back pocket, my own nametag stiff against my chin as I root around in the bottom of my black work pants.
“Take your time, Jerry,” she says, obviously reading the tag above my own pocket. “Nobody else is waiting.”
I look up and see another five or six people in line next to me, but no one behind me. They’re all waiting, like I was, for the perky Black girl with the dorky glasses and pink bowtie.
I find my wallet, but pull it out slowly. She waits, patiently. I give her my government debit card and while the computer waits to approve it she says, “You work at the shoe store in the mall?”
I look down at my own black and white striped fake referee shirt. “How’d you guess?”
She snorts, taking me back a smidge. It sounds so… human. So casual. She probably, she probably sounded just like that in her before life. “Just lucky, I guess.”
The debit card goes through and I take it back. She still has gloves on her hands, but they’re that plastic, fast food, see through kind and I spot the telltale gray of her long, undead fingers just underneath.
They’re cool to the touch, even under the layer of plastic. “What are you seeing?”
I’m reaching over, grabbing my food, when I stop. I think… I think she’s the first cashier, ever, to ask me that. I’ve been coming here since freshmen year, when my family and I moved to Nightshade.
“Oh, uhhm, well…”
She stands there, arms crossed over her chest, waiting patiently.
“Well, I’m kind of embarrassed to say.”
She smirks. “Let me guess: Ghoul School 3?”
I nod, blushing. “Guilty as charged.”
She nods. “Why guilty? Ghoul School 2 was classic.”
“You think so, really?”
“Sure, why not?”
I look around and there’s still nobody in her line, but now people are kind of looking at me funny, the guy who didn’t want the zombie to wait on him suddenly chatting her up nonstop.
“I just mean, they’re kind of rough on the zombie characters, you know?”
She shrugs. “Well, I guess I saw the sequel before I became one, so… I didn’t mind as much back then.”
I stare at her. “So, it happened, what… during the second major outbreak?”
She nods, like it’s no big deal.
“I’m sorry.”
Her expression, her voice, is matter of fact. “Why, you didn’t bite me.” There is a slight, dry, nervous chuckle there at the end.
I look left and right and lower my voice before asking, “Who did?”
“Really?” I can’t tell if her expression is annoyed or curious or both or none of the above. Their faces are kinda blank.
I check my watch. The movie doesn’t start for ten minutes and I know there will be twenty minutes of previews after that. I nod.
“My brother did. We were in the backyard, actually, filling in the swimming pool so zombies couldn’t hide there. He’d seen it on the news, I think, or one of the neighbors had told him about. So we dragged these bags of cement out back. But one of them beat us out there, she was hiding in the deep end. She bit my brother when I wasn’t looking and by the time I turned around with another bag of concrete, it was all over.”
I gulp. This is better than the movies. “Did he… survive?”
She looks to the left, not away, but not back at me, either. “No, the Sentinels got him after the outbreak was over.”
I nod, thinking of my own brother. We were in the attic when it happened, the second, the biggest outbreak, the one that robbed Nightshade of half its citizens. It was the first day of July, and the attic was hot and musty.
Our mother knocked on the door. It sounded… funny. Too loud, or slow, or heavy, I couldn’t put my finger on it. At least, not at first. By the time I did, Randy had already opened it and she was feasting on his ear.
I managed to lock them both out, bolt the door, and lived off a bag of old candy someone had stashed in the Halloween decorations the year before. Dad, probably, figuring he’d sneak up to the attic one day and gorge in his own private candy corn heaven, without Mom ever finding out he’d cheated on his lifelong diet.
I guess he never got around to it. Now, he never will.
There is an awkward silence. I look behind me. The crowd is getting bigger now, but no one has chosen to join Crystal’s line. I feel bad, for dissing her the first time.
“So, Ghoul School 3, huh?”
I nod, half-proud, half-embarrassed. “You seen it yet?”
She nods, smiling, proudly. “Be sure to stay through the credits, you know?”
I nod. “Oh yeah, always. That’s the best part.”
> “I hear they’re making the last one, Ghoul School 4: Senior Year, into a two-parter.”
“Really?” I frown. “I hate when they do that.”
She shrugs. “I guess so, but… at least our theater will make twice as much money that way.”
I look around at the evening crowd, a full lobby, lots of happy people heading into theaters munching corn. “I don’t know, it looks pretty busy to me.”
Finally, a customer appears behind me. He’s a Sentinel, off duty, but they always wear their black berets and stun guns, just in case. He’s clearly not afraid of a zombie cashier.
I say, “Well, I better go.”
“Sure. Hey, I go on break soon. Maybe I’ll sneak in and see how you like the movie.”
“Cool!” I say, a little too loudly.
The Sentinel looks at me funny as I walk away, his hard, cop eyes suspicious. I ignore him, and wander into my theater.
It’s mostly empty, a few couples canoodling in the back but I sit in the middle, no problem. I get comfortable and spread my food around, just in case someone wants to sit right next to me. I don’t know why I bother; no one ever does.
I put my feet up and smile when the previews start. Then I frown a little. I don’t know why I always get so excited about the previews, when they’re always so full of suckage.
First there’s the new preview for Vampire Sorority House 4: Blood Rush, which has a cool title but looks so lame and, besides, everybody knows vamps aren’t real. Then there’s something called Bike Week, which is sad and sappy and shouldn’t even be on before a zombie movie, and finally there’s the preview for the long-awaited by no one, ever, werewolf flick, Fur: Story of a Lycan. Snooze.
Finally, the lights go down and the logo for Ghoul School fills the screen; a creepy haunted mansion in front of a blood red moon. I’m so engrossed in the opening credits I don’t notice the theater door open, shuffling footsteps and then, suddenly, a stranger sitting one seat over.
I frown. I hate it when they… but it’s no stranger. It’s Crystal.
She looks better in the movie lights; softer, less, well… less dead.
“What’s up, stranger?” she whispers, leaning over.
I hear grumbling from a few rows back, but ignore it.
“How do you like the movie so far?”
I snort. “It just started.”
Suddenly, footsteps tumbling down the stairs along the side of our row.
The others storm out, grumbling not so subtly, “We could smell her from the back row…”
And, “The government says they can work for us, they didn’t say anything about sitting with us.”
I feel bad, watch her flinch with each insult until they’re gone. “It’s not true,” I say as she turns back to me. “You don’t smell.”
She snorts that zombie snort. “None of us do after the first week or two, that’s an urban legend.”
She looks around the theater, empty now except for the two of us. The screen flickers, but suddenly I’m more interested in the real monster one seat over than the fake ones up on the screen.
She settles in, putting her leg up on the chair in front of her. Now it’s my turn to snort. “What?” she asks.
“I thought ushers told people to keep their feet of the chairs, not on them.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not an usher.”
“Sorry, cashier.”
She shakes her head, blond hair rasping against the seat back. “I’m not one of those, either.”
I let it slide; chick is clearly in denial over her career choice. As a guy who shells sneakers after school three days a week and every weekend, I can relate. “Popcorn?”
“We can’t eat popcorn,” she says, reaching for my soda. “But this? I can drink this all day!”
And she does, repeatedly, slurping it up, down and sideways. She holds it out to me, the cup half empty, and I decline. While I’m wagging a finger she snags my cherry vines. “And these,” she says, biting the plastic open with her teeth and chewing the red licorice strips all at once like a candy bar instead of taking them out, vine by vine, the way I do. The way I was going to, anyway.
They’re hers now, let’s just put it that way.
“Help yourself,” I snap, a little perturbed because, interrupt my movie, fine, but don’t mess with my movie snacks. Ever.
I kind of watch her for a minute, smiling. “Aren’t you afraid your manager will catch you?”
“What manager?”
“You know, your manager manager.”
She turns to look at me, garish red cherry vine flakes stuck between her yellow popcorn teeth. Her voice is coarser, now; hoarser, too. “I don’t have a manager,” she fairly growls. “I don’t even work here.”
The first flash of fear pricks my heart. My beating, living heart. “But, your nametag. The plastic gloves. You… you served me my popcorn. I paid twelve bucks for it!” I stop, my hand holding several kernels, and drop them back into the bag.
She shrugs. “A hobby of mine. Last week I worked at the ice cream shop, the week before that, the bath and body shop. This whole Reanimated in the Workplace Act bit is classic. They can’t not hire me, even if they don’t really need me.”
“B-b-but your coworker, the cute chick with the pink bowtie, why didn’t she say anything?”
“I told her I was standing in for the usual chick.”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “Well, where’s the usual chick?”
She turns, taking her feet off the desk and putting her hands on the armrest of the chair between us. “Oh, her? She’s in the break room, with the manager. They should come to in an hour or so, and then… look out Flickers Cinemas.”
I nod, nervously, wondering if she’s joking. But the look in her eyes, her dead, black eyes, tells me she isn’t. “What are you saying?”
She shrugs, unclipping her nametag and tossing it in my popcorn bag. It lands with a rustle, knocking several kernels onto my shoe. “You know how they say deaths always come in threes? Well, tonight’s your lucky night because… you’re number three.”
I should stand, run, fight, do something, but I’m tired. I’ve survived three outbreaks in two years, outlived the rest of my family, half my junior class at Nightshade High and have used chainsaws, hatchets, hammers and, once, a clothesline to do it.
I’m wiped, you know?
“So, what now?”
“Now? Now you try to get out of this theater alive.”
I reach for my stun gun, the one the army issued us all last month after the New Congress passed the Armed Citizens Response Act.
She sees me, but doesn’t move. “Looking for something?”
It’s not there, and then I remember; we’re not allowed to wear it on the shoe store floor, so I’ve left it in my employee locker.
Again.
“Why are you doing this?”
She rolls her black eyes. “I’m a zombie, Reggie. This is what we do.”
I slump in my seat. She’d been so nice, so warm and funny, so knowledgeable about movies. I wanted to like her, I did like her. She liked Ghoul School 2, for Pete’s sake. Do you know how rare it is to find somebody who actually liked Ghoul School 2? And is willing to admit it?
And now, she’ll be the death of me.
“Whatever,” I say, just grunting it out. “Just, get it over with. I can’t do this anymore, fighting off the lot of you every five to six months, always waiting for the next outbreak. Just… do it, and then I can know what it’s like for others to be scared of me.”
She rocks back, like I’ve stunned her without even using my gun. “What do you mean?”
“I mean bite me, have at it, I won’t stop you. I can’t stop you, probably. I’m not even sure I want to anymore.”
I sit back, preparing myself, numb to the possibility, surprised but not entirely scared, only wishing I’d been able to have one last cherry vine before she ended it all.
She stands, and turns, stepping
into the aisle. “You’re no fun,” she grumbles, stopping one row beneath me. “You’re supposed to fight, not just give up.”
I shrug, getting a little pissed. “And you’re supposed to behave. That’s why they passed that stupid act to let you work for us in the first place.”
The black gleam comes back into her eyes and she comes back up the step, pauses, and then turns around. “I’ll never work for you,” she says over her shoulder. “And you can have your life, and your fear. I’d rather have you be afraid for the rest of your life than share my world with you, anyway.”
She limps down the steps, leaning against the railing for support. At the bottom, she looks back at me, face paler than ever in the flickering movie light. She shakes her head, and storms out, slamming the door behind her.
I try to stand up, but am shaking too hard. I sit back down, take a few breaths, give her a few minutes to find some other poor sap watching a movie alone, and then get back up. This time, I stay up.
I take the steps two at a time, barreling down the aisle, clearing my throat so I can yell “Zombie!” at the top of my lungs the minute I’m out of the theater. I reach the bottom of the steps, turn to sprint down the exit ramp and there she is, leaning just inside the door.
“Psych,” she growls, limping toward me, arms out, nails green, mouth open, teeth yellow.
I turn, stumble, and fall to one knee, just like some random skeezer chick in some awful B-movie would. By the time I’m back up, her teeth are in my shoulder, brutal and hard, sharper than I’d thought.
I feel my own blood stain the white stripes of my fake referee shirt, and wonder if this was how it was for my Dad, my two brothers, my mother, my sister. If they stood there, trembling, frozen, while the zombie did her thing.
Or his.
And then the thoughts go blank, and the screen dark as I sag to the floor, the sound going out, but only in my ears. My eyes blink as she stands above me, wiping her mouth clean of my rich, red blood.
She’s the last thing I see and, I fear, the first thing I’ll see when I wake back up.
If I wake back up…
* * * * *
Story # 14:
Zombies Hate Zombie Movies