Zombies in Love (11 page)

"You're a good cook for a skinny guy," said Arturo, loosening his belt.  "So, you've got a reporter."

"Yep.  Donna something."

"What happened to Mr. Let's-Stay-Underground?"

Maybe it was the meal, maybe it was everything that was happening between him and Lisa, who knew what it was, but all of a sudden, the future seemed a lot more open than it had a few weeks ago.  He wasn't cursed, he was a man with an unusual but manageable medical condition.  Someone like that had no reason to keep hidden forever.  Right?

Besides, if he brought back a story like this, it would be the biggest story the
Palmetto
had printed in decades.  If nothing else, it would show everyone that he'd been a better choice than Sam, that his lie had nothing to do with what happened.  He didn't want to punish Sam for murdering him-- as far as he could tell, Sam had done him a favor-- but he still wanted to win.

This was his chance to go home. 

#

SLOANE PANNAPACKER

Sloane touched her name on the slate wall and it slid open, revealing the elevator she'd been told to expect.  Fingering her roommate's pearls (she'd have to get them back before Ellie noticed they were gone) Sloane stepped inside, enjoying the tic-tic of her heels on the marble floor, a sound that always made her feel powerful, like she was walking on the skulls of her enemies.  The elevator lurched upstairs, and the doors opened on a room that was exactly how Sloane had always imagined Winthrop from back home in Minnesota, including the old men looking approvingly at her in her roommate's camel-colored cashmere twinset.

"You must be Miss Pannapacker," said one of the old men.

"Hello," said Sloane, looking shyly at the floor.  It was fun pretending to be Miss Co-Ed 1963.  You didn't have to do anything too difficult, and if you were pretty, men just gave you things.  Also, she had kind of a thing for the smell of Aqua Net.

A simpler time,
reflected Sloane.  The men all looked at each other-- good, they were confused by how nice she looked-- and then they all sat back down.

"Please sit, my dear," said the man who had spoken earlier.  "I am Mr. Dudley.  Am I to understand you have something for us?"

"Yes, sir," said Sloane, and handed him the folder of photos she'd taken of Ian's lab notebook.

Zombies: ridiculous!  But a crazy TF, and a crazy professor, certainly should mean an A in the class for Sloane.  So all she had to do was sit here, look innocent, and then ask the nice old man for help with her big mean bad professor...

Mr. Dudley opened the folder and slowly read through its contents, his wrinkly old lips pursing like he'd sucked a lemon.  "You were right to bring this here, my dear.  We are very grateful."

Grateful. 
That sounded good.  She nodded, shyly, like a fawn all alone in the great big scary forest.

Mr. Dudley looked behind her.  "Carstairs, would you see Miss Pannapacker out?"
             
Wait, what? 
"Just one minute!" said Sloane, her head snapping up, forgetting to be Miss Co-Ed for a moment.  "What do you mean, see me out?  Don't I get something for bringing you this?"

"Ah, the language of the street.  Vulgar, but refreshingly direct.  Miss Pannapacker, permit me to be equally direct with you.  You are a very lucky girl.  You get to leave.  Now."

"But--"

"Fine, my dear.  I'll be generous.  We won't even prosecute you for what you've done to the Jubilee Club."

Shit,
thought Sloane, and scurried to the elevator. 

#

"Sorry!" said Ian, his empty tranquilizer gun flailing uselessly in his hand.

"I'll bet you are," said Uncle Fester.  "But you're going to be even more sorry when I'm done with you.  First, I'm going to bite you.  Then, I'm going to kill you.  Then, I'm going to make a little hole and pull out your large intestine slowly, and you're going to watch me eat it like it was spaghetti."

"Is there anything I can do to change your mind?" asked Ian.  "I've got a twenty.  It's yours!"

"Then, I'm going to start working on your liver..."

Ian smelled something really horrible.  More horrible than Uncle Fester.  It kind of smelled like the worst barbecue ever.

"Something's on fire," he mumbled.

Fester shrieked and dropped Ian to the ground.  Fester's entire back was ablaze.  Behind him, the waitress beckoned to Ian with her lighter.  "This way!" she said, as he stuck his hand, still holding his gun, through the loop of his backpack.

She grabbed him by his free hand and dragged him through the kitchen of the restaurant, past the filthy grill, past a giant rotting tower of garbage, and out into the alley.  Ian splashed into a puddle of something neon green before regaining his equilibrium.

"Thanks," he said.  He could still hear screams coming from the inside of the restaurant. 

She shrugged.

"Why'd you save me?"

"You didn't laugh," she said.  "Not like the rest of those assholes."

Inside the restaurant, something exploded.  Ian knew it was time to go but he couldn't quite tear himself away.  "How do you know how to fight zombies?"

"You're saying that guy was a zombie?"

"Yeah."

"Didn't seem different than most of our regulars."  She almost smiled at him.

When she looked like that, a little less angry, a little softer, Ian realized something: he was standing in an alley with a woman in her underwear, a woman who kind of looked like Angelina Jolie.  He could bring this girl with him.  They could hunt zombies together.  He could even see it, the two of them hunched down behind a monument in Mount Auburn Cemetery.  He'd be holding his tranq gun, and she'd still be wearing her lingerie and heels... yes, he could see it now...

Suddenly Ian heard a van squeal to a stop in the street next to the alley.  A big, white, Winthrop University van, with another right behind it.

He scootched down into the alley and watched the van doors open up, and a group of men in white Winthrop jumpsuits hop out and start running towards the restaurant. 

"Are those flamethrowers?" asked the waitress.

"Yes, yes, I think so."

They knew.  Winthrop University knew about the zombie problem.  And Ian had to run away, now, before they found out that he knew, and that he was implicated in the whole terrible thing...

Without saying anything to the waitress, he bolted down the alley, back to the safety of his apartment.

Lisa muted the baseball game and picked up the phone.  "Hello?"

A woman's voice said a very large number in her ear. 

"Tina?" asked Lisa.

"I didn't want you to hang up before you heard the price."

"I'm not interested."  She looked over to the kitchen where Jack was making some kind of omelet for his dinner.  She hoped he remembered to use his "special" pan for his "special" ingredient.  It was a real pain getting the smell out when he forgot.

"Did you hear the number?"

She wrapped the cord around her arm.  "Tina, I'm not selling my family's legacy."

"You're not selling the legacy, just the building.  You could always reopen somewhere else."

Tina wasn't getting it.  She kept Alioto's Pizza exactly the way it had been before her parents died because this way, it was full of ghosts.  Lisa could still see her mother working the register, chattering away like she always did, her father slumped in his chair, his half-frozen face smiling at his girls.  If she moved, would she still see them beside her?  "I've worked here all my life.  What would I do if I sold it?"

Tina sighed into the phone.  "I don't know.  But I do know this: it's a good deal.  I wouldn't have brought it to you if it wasn't."

"What's your client going to do with the building?"

"He actually wants the lot, not the building.  He's going to put in a boutique hotel."

"WHAT?"

"Ow," said Tina.  "You're close to Winthrop, and there aren't enough hotels in Cambridge, so... it seems like a good idea."

"He wants to tear down the building that--"  Why, why would Tina think this was a good idea?  Her commission, of course.  "No, Tina, I'm not going to sell.  Tell your client, no more negotiations, I'm done."

"You drive a hard--" 

Lisa hung up on her and waited, but the phone didn't ring.

"She wants you to sell the building?" asked Jack. 

"I'm not going to do it," she said.  She didn't want to talk about it anymore, so she changed the subject.  "That actually smells good."

"Want a bite?"

"Ha-ha."

"It's the mushrooms," he said, sitting down on the sofa, his plate balanced on his knees.  "I used to make this all the time for myself.  I'd go running after work, and I'd lose track of time and come home starving and whip one of these up, and sometimes I'd eat it right out of the nonstick pan.  The kind of thing you can only do when you live alone, right?"

"Did I buy mushrooms?"

"No, I did.  It's the funniest thing," he said, chewing his omelet.  He'd used the "special" plate and silverware, she was glad to see.  "I went to Star Market yesterday.  I hadn't been to a grocery store in months, but I thought I'd just sort of follow my nose around and see if anything appealed to me.  So I ended up with some mushrooms, and some blue cheese, and some fish sauce, and some coffee.  And I stood there in the checkout line, and I started taking things out of my basket, and I looked down, and my hand was shaking.  I couldn't believe I was there.  I used to love to cook, did you know that?  And here I was, that beep beep beep of the machine, and afterwards the cashier told me to have a nice day.  And it was all so normal." 

He smiled at her, one of those genuine smiles that always made her heart melt a little.  And there was another reason not to sell out.  Right now, everything was perfect.  If she'd been the kind of woman who told men she loved them, she would have said it right then, but she figured he'd been paying attention.  He knew.

"Sure you don't want a bite?  I can pick the meat out."

"Stop tempting me," she said.

#

For the first time in years, Donna Chillingworth was eating shrimp and grits for lunch because Sam Lazarus, with a sense of humor she wouldn't have expected, had taken her to a Charleston-themed restaurant in Baltimore. 

"You've seen my cousin?" asked Sam.  He'd barely touched his tuna, which Donna thought was a real shame; you should never let expense-account food go to waste.

"I saw him briefly," said Donna.  "We were at the same press conference.  He was pretending to be a writer for a paper in Memphis."

"This was in Boston?"

"Mmm-hmm."  She scooped up another forkful of grits and wondered if Sam would be willing to share some of his tuna.  She was one of those people who forgot to eat when she was busy, until her hunger caught up with her with an unladylike vengeance.

Two days earlier, she'd called up an old acquaintance from her Charleston days and learned that (a) no one at the
Palmetto
knew where Jack was and (b) Sam was in Baltimore trying to track him down.  She'd argued with her credit cards about paying the cost of a trip down there-- and with the fact that no one was paying her to write about this, at least not yet-- and finally her curiosity won out and she took a train to Baltimore, intending to spy on Sam from a distance, to see if she could figure out what her old employer had planned.

Who could have expected that he would have recognized her, sitting in his hotel lobby?  Or that he would have asked her to lunch?  She should have realized that her "friend" at the
Palmetto
would discuss her phone call with his boss. 

But Sam didn't seem annoyed at her intrusion into his family's affairs.  And she was getting a free lunch out of it, which was always a good thing.

Unlike most people, Donna did believe there was such a thing as a free lunch. 

"Did you speak to him?"  Sam asked.

"No.  Actually, it got a little strange.  Jack faked a heart attack, and that was the last I saw of him."  Donna hadn't spent too much time thinking about whether she should tell Sam the rest. 
Then I followed him down to the morgue and watched him bite his own index finger off.  And get this, Sam-- he claims to be some kind of supernatural monster! 
Why tell the part of the story that made her sound like she'd lost her marbles?

In any case, she'd told Sam enough to unsettle him.  He shook his head as if annoyed by his cousin's inexplicable behavior.

She swallowed the last piece of shrimp and continued.  "I couldn't figure out why he was working in Memphis, instead of at the
Palmetto
, so I followed up, and they've never heard of him."

"Of course not."

"And I haven't seen him since.  I'm sorry I can't be of any more help."  She'd eaten everything on her plate, and she was still hungry.  She stuck her hand into the bread basket, which proved empty.

Wordlessly, Sam slid his plate over to her and took her empty one.  "Can I trust you? This doesn't leave this table, all right?"

"Certainly."

"I always liked you, Donna, and I never thought we should have fired you, just because you were curious.  There's nothing wrong with healthy curiosity.  We should have told you the truth back when you were working for us, because that's all you wanted, and I'm going to tell you the truth now."  Sam sighed.  "Jack is an embezzler."

"What?"  She was genuinely surprised. 

"He stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the newspaper.  We didn't find out until he disappeared after my aunt and uncle named him the next publisher."

"That's why he vanished."

"That's why," nodded Sam.  "It doesn't make sense otherwise.  The thing is, he took enough to kill the
Palmetto
, as soon as some loans we've taken out come due.  And if there's any of it left--"

"You need it back."

"We do.  Or that's it for the
Palmetto,
at least as an independent paper
. 
No one knows yet, not even the people working there.  And we need to keep it that way, or the bank will call our notes in immediately.  I know you don't work for us anymore, and I know your job with us didn't end well.  You have no reason to think kindly about any of my family.  But for the sake of any friends you still have at the
Palmetto
, if you hear anything about Jack--"

"I'll let you know."

Sam smiled at her.  "You're very talented.  I'm sure you'll learn something."

I have,
she thought. 
You killed him. 
Because she'd believe a lot of things about Jack, but she wouldn't believe that he'd embezzle six figures and end up working at a pizza joint less than a year later.  And someone had to have given Jack all those stab wounds she'd seen in the morgue. 

She'd always thought Sam was a spring wound too tight. He must have finally spronnnggged free. 

"Thank you," said Donna, and ate the nice murderer's tuna.

#

Jack was a happy man.  It was a beautiful day-- he had ridden into work with his head out the window, daring decapitation so he could feel the sunlight on his skin.  And he was standing next to the love of his life, and he was pretty sure she loved him back, though she'd never actually said the words.  Such a hard case, but he loved her anyway, and he was happy standing next to her, working without saying a word.

And he had a story, a story story story.  He'd call Donna after the zombie meeting on Wednesday, and carefully shepherd her through a series of interviews with the most clean-cut zombies he and Arturo could dig up (ha) and help her polish that story until it shone.  He'd been serious about winning her that Pulitzer, and he was going to stand behind her as she shook hands with the judges, and the cameras flashed, with a sharp suit and a French tie and a big bossman smile on his face and he would visibly demonstrate the
Palmetto's
commitment to serious journalism in an era of bureau-cutting bean-counters.

Take that, Sam Lazarus!

Humming a little under his breath, he sliced peppers into rings while Lisa diced onions next to him.  He had no idea why, but she smelled especially good this morning.  Like something new had been added to the stew.  What was it?

He leaned in and sniffed her neck.

“You’re so funny,” she said.  “Listen, I wanted to talk about something.”

Lilacs, cinnamon, cigarettes... sassafras.  Just like on himself.  Just like on Sarah, who’d been infected, but hadn’t died yet. 

Oh dear God.  He’d infected Lisa.

“I know you used to be a reporter, and if you ever want to start looking for work doing that, I'd understand."

They hadn’t used any kind of protection.  Why would they?  He hadn't thought of it as a disease, but some strange supernatural thing, the well-deserved result of his own shameful waste of a life.  And he’d infected her.

“I know something happened, and you don’t like to talk about it.”

No-- what would be worse is if he hadn’t infected her when he had sex with her.  If just by standing next to her, he was shedding enough of the virus to infect her.  Or anyone else he happened to be standing next to.  Was he some kind of Typhoid Mary, spreading poison in the world just because he was there?

“You look like you’re going to puke.  Forget I mentioned it.”

He should probably tell her.  He should probably tell her right now, but what would she say if she knew she was going to end up like him?  Not up in heaven with her mother and father and the little ceramic angels, but down here with him digging up someone’s grave?

And there went the idea of going public, because people might be willing to feel sorry for zombies, if you told the story right, but if there was a chance you'd become one if you got too close-- no one would stand for that.  If he was lucky, he'd end up interned somewhere, like they'd done with TB cases before antibiotics.  And if he was unlucky, they'd kill him properly.  And he could think of a few ways that would probably work. 

Lisa was looking down at him, such warmth in her kind dark eyes, waiting for him to say something.  He couldn't tell her.  He
couldn't
.  Because if she stopped loving him, he might as well be dead.

Sometimes he was just a misery to himself.

"Lisa," he said, "Being here, working with you-- it's the happiest I've ever been.  Ever."

She leaned over and kissed him on the lips.  He flinched. 
Too late
.  “Sometime,” she said, “sometime you’ll tell me what happened.”

#

David Leschke pulled the calligraphied envelope out of his mail cubby.  Silence descended as the rest of the people in the office pretended to be occupied with other things.  They all knew what it was.

Winthrop was an old university, and many of its traditions were equally ancient.  One of the most venerable was the method by which the Board of Overseers communicated with professors.

Prof. Leschke opened the envelope and pulled out the engraved invitation. 

THE BOARD OF OVERSEERS

REQUESTS THE PRESENCE

OF PROF. DAVID LESCHKE

AT

10:15 TOMORROW MORNING