Reviews
Mrs. Giggles, 86
There are courageous sacrifices, self-serving antics from jerks,
and unexpected nobility - really, nothing unusual if you are
a fan of the zombie genre - but the depths to the characters
make these elements shine as I do care for these guys and want
to see them survive.
Excerpt
Through the binoculars, a zombie was even uglier
than when seen up close and personal. Of course, when they were
near, you didn't generally have time to study them too carefully.
There were other things to do—like screaming and running.
From a distance it was safe for Ari to let his gaze wander over
the creature's rotting skin, its flat, vacant eyes and slack-jawed
yokel mouth. Blood stained the lower half of its face, coating
cheeks and chin and nearly obliterating the Alpha Kappa Beta
logo on the upper half of the thing's sweatshirt.
An "after" then. He could usually tell
by the clothes a "before" corpse from one that had
been turned after the first wave. Who would bury their beloved
Brenda or Beth in a sorority sweatshirt? Most of the first generation
zombies wore suits or dresses since they'd come to the banquet
from mortuary viewings or funeral services. Or they were naked
cadavers straight from the slab at a hospital or city morgue.
The people they'd infected rather than completely
devoured tended to wear more casual clothes and generally had
a bite or two taken out of them. And wasn't it an amusing sight
to see a little girl in shorts and shirt and daisy-decorated
sandals munching on an arm held in one hand like a turkey drumstick.
Ari adjusted the binocs, bringing the zombie
sorority sister into sharper focus. He immediately wished he
hadn't. Her hair remained in patchy, random clumps on her half-scalped
head. Bright pink streaks and little sparkling clips decorated
some of the long blonde strands. Adorable. She tossed her hair
back from her face with a girlish flip and reached for another
length of intestine from the body she was eating. Lucky dead
guy wouldn't be staggering to his feet and perpetuating the
cycle any time soon.
The zombie's milky gray eyes suddenly turned
toward Ari and for a second it was as if she was looking directly
at him. His heart stuttered and he nearly dropped the glasses.
"Fuck!" He jerked the binoculars away
from his eyes as if not seeing her would hide him, and then
he snorted at his stupidity. Of course, she couldn't see him
from blocks away. He was well hidden in his perch on the fifth
floor of an office building. Even if the thing had glimpsed
a flash of light on the glasses, she wouldn't be able to interpret
it as a pair of binocs. The creatures weren't that smart.
"Hey, Captain!" The voice coming from
behind made him jump and the binoculars slipped from his fingers
to clatter on the floor.
"Jesus, don't do that!" He turned to
face Derrick. The kid was as jittery as a meth junky without
a fix in sight.
"What is it?" Ari dreaded the answer.
"It's Mrs. Scheider. We think it's almost
time. Can you come?"
Ari picked up the glasses and took a last glance
at the zombie girl and her victim. She was on her hands and
knees, head down, burrowing into the man's abdominal cavity
like a dog with a particularly good treat. He pulled the binocs
from his eyes and packed them into their carrying case before
rising. "All right, let's go. And Derrick..."
"Yeah?"
"Quit calling me 'captain'."
"Right."
As Ari followed the younger teenager from the
office, a big, drooping, half-dead plant in the corner caught
his attention. "Someone's not keeping up on their watering."
He tried to put the kid at ease with a little joke—very
little—but Derrick didn't crack a smile.
"Dr. Joe doesn't know what to do. Some of the others are
saying we should…you know, take care of her right now.
But we have to wait and see first, don't we? I mean we can't
just kill her, can we?"
If Joe doesn't know, what makes you think I do? It was beyond
him how the rest of them kept turning to him for answers and
trusting him to make decisions for the group. He still believed
it had all started because he was wearing his army uniform and
he wished he'd never worn it that day he'd gone to meet Billy,
C.C. and the other guys. The goddamn camouflage had somehow
convinced everyone he was a man who could take charge and they
listened to him as if he had some authority. Stranded souls,
they'd been desperate for anyone to tell them what to do and
suddenly that had been Ari. But he was only nineteen. The army
hadn't said jack shit during basic training about what to do
in case of a hostile zombie takeover.
His pulse pounded as he followed Derrick down five flights of
stairs to the ground floor where the group was camped. In the
conference room, they sat around a big table eating Hostess
cakes, chips and slices of an apple they'd foraged from vending
machines and desks. The office personnel had squirreled away
little nutritious food in their drawers, which was too bad,
because a diet of candy bars and soda wasn't helping jittery
Derrick any.
Joe crouched beside Mrs. Scheider. The sick woman lay on a pile
of folded coats and jackets someone had put together.
"What's up, doc?" Ari stopped himself from mimicking
Bugs Bunny. Joking over a dying woman's body was harsh, but
when he was keyed up he always made smart ass remarks. "How
is she doing?"
Dr. Joseph Morgenstern, who wasn't really an M.D. but a dermatologist,
shrugged and scratched at the stubble on his chin. "She
regained consciousness for a little bit, but now she's out of
it again. From her breathing, I don't think she's got much more
time." He lowered his voice. "I'm so out of my element
here. I have no idea what else to do for her. If we were in
a hospital, I'd give her oxygen, but here..."
Ari nodded. Even if they'd administered oxygen a while ago or
had an entire medical team working on Mrs. Scheider, he doubted
it would have helped. But they couldn't have gone searching
for a tank. It was too dangerous. There was no hospital or medical
clinic nearby and even if there were, they'd be hopping with
revenants.
"Hey, you're back." Lila's touch on his shoulder brought
his head up fast. He looked into her unusual indigo eyes and
his stomach gave a little flip. Because she'd taken him by surprise,
he told himself, but he knew better. It was the way his body
always reacted to seeing Lila, a stomach flip usually followed
by a low burn in his groin.
"I see you found brunch for everybody," he said.
She tucked strands of her shoulder length, brown hair behind
her ear. "Wasn't much to find. The ground floor had already
been picked over. We gathered this stuff from the second floor.
We'll have to have to raid a grocery store soon. We can't live
on junk food."
He nodded and gazed down at the sick woman's face. She looked
old, much older than she'd seemed at the beginning of all this.
When was it? Only four days ago? Five? He'd nearly lost track.
It seemed this had been their life forever, trekking through
a dying city on their way to an uncertain future.
When he'd first seen Mrs. Scheider, she'd been one of those
brisk, styled and pressed, white-haired women who could be any
age from sixty to eighty. He'd looked right past her on the
subway, his attention caught by a sexy, dark-haired chick and
her friend sitting farther up the aisle. They were the kind
of girls who talked and laughed too loud, enjoying drawing everyone's
attention. He'd been happy to oblige because both girls were
worth looking at.
The truth was, that day on the subway he'd noticed very few
of the people he was traveling with now. He sure as hell wouldn't
have struck up a friendship with any of them under normal circumstances.
But that day on the subway things had veered far from normal.
Now, Mrs. Scheider looked about a hundred years old, or as if
she was already halfway dead. Her skin was paper white, her
cheeks sunken and her mouth seemed toothless. The once fluffy
white hair was flat and dirty, the designer clothes torn and
bloodied. Her chest hitched up and down and her breath rasped
between parted lips.
"Too late for oxygen anyway," Dr. Joe said quietly.
"We're going to have to be ready."
Meaning Ari was going to have to be ready. No one else would
want to do what had to be done here—if it had to be done.
Ari wasn't the only one who'd made a kill since this begin.
Deb, Derrick, even Sondra had taken out some revenants. But
killing one of their own was a different matter. Ari was a soldier
so everyone assumed he was equipped to handle anything. He'd
have to suck it up and do the job.
"Why don't you clear the room," Ari said.
"I'll do it." Lila squeezed his shoulder lightly and
when she took her hand away, he still felt the warmth and pressure
of it.
Behind him, he was vaguely aware of Lila talking to the others,
chairs moving away from the conference tables, footsteps and
voices receding from the room. But most of his attention was
focused on the wheezing woman in front of him. He'd admired
Mrs. Scheider's sharp tongue and dry humor and he'd miss it.
They'd had been scavenging in a diner, when the zombies came.
The ax he'd taken from a store had come in useful in slashing
a path through them. The blade cut cleanly through gristle and
bone, severing heads like a weed-whacker churning through dandelions.
He'd managed to escape along with the people in the front of
the diner, while the rest of the crew, who'd been in the kitchen,
ran out the back. Only when they came together several blocks
away did they realize Mrs. Scheider wasn't with them.
Ari had gone back for her, running harder than he ever had on
the obstacle course at Fort Benning. He'd found the woman hiding
in a storage room and carried her back to where the others waited.
Julie had cleaned the blood from her trembling body. Joe had
stitched and bandaged her wound. And Ari had mentally kicked
himself for allowing this to happen. He should've kept better
watch. He should've kept them all safe. They were his responsibility
now whether he liked it or not.
Lila was back now, joining in the vigil over Mrs. Scheider.
She crouched beside Ari, her shoulder bumping his. "Do
you need me to help?"
Ari looked into her exotic eyes focused on his like searchlights
probing his secret thoughts. He shook his head. "No. I'll
handle it. Please, just make sure everyone's staying calm and
that Deb has set up perimeters. Don't want to get slack with
security."
"All right." She rose and walked from the room. His
gaze lingered on her backside before the door closed behind
her. What kind of a sick perv checked out a girl's ass when
a person was dying right in front of him? Especially when it
was very likely he'd have to behead the poor old lady soon after
she died.
Mrs. Scheider drew in another rattling breath and paused. Ari
held his own breath, waiting for her to exhale. His hand tightened
on the ax, and then air whistled out between her slack lips.
He glanced at Joe. The other man was pale and looked like he'd
rather be anywhere but here.
"Isn't there anything else you can do for her?" Ari
asked. "I know we don't have morphine or anything, but…"
The dermatologist shook his head, locks of his gray-shot hair
tumbling onto his forehead. His beard was growing in and his
hair was shaggy. "There's nothing we can do but wait."
Ari sat back on his heels, the ax lying across his legs, and
waited.
