Archive for January, 2010
Lauren, Queen of the Zombies
Monday, January 11th, 2010
1.
Lauren has two children, Brian and Parker, the elder named after her late husband. When he was young both of his parents and his brother would laugh when Parker would lurch around the house, hands stretched out in front, intoning, “Brians! Must… have… Brians!”
Now it’s not so funny. But, on the bright side, at least Brian Senior is still upright, still staggering about. Still King.
2.
Don’t ask how Lauren became Queen of the Zombies. She’ll just shrug and say that it’s her burden. Besides, zombies rarely pay attention to authority, or much of anything beyond their gravitation toward the nearest grey matter. The obligations are only as heavy as she wants them to be.
Lauren tries to be a good Queen. She fills notebooks with laws for her subjects, she writes government leaders asking to trade ambassadors. She argues tirelessly with governors. “If Lesotho can be a separate country surrounded by South Africa,” she says, “we deserve an independent kingdom inside Tennessee or Mississippi.”
She has yet to convince any official to welcome an autonomous nation of ravenous monsters.
3.
She is ever so slightly worried about her position. Not that any of her subjects would seek succession. No, they’re simply not interested. Assassination, though, seems possible, and zombies have not taken to heart the concept of ‘bodyguard’.
So far, nobody has taken any shots at her, although quite a few of her people have been dispatched under mysterious circumstances. By fire. By shotgun blasts to the head. By having ponderous weights dropped on them. All her appeals to law enforcement have fallen on deaf ears.
Or not so much deaf as vengeful.
Dont Frget Oracl
Friday, January 8th, 2010
Sandra texted me just as I left the Time Warner Building. “Doz eggs, cig lightr. Dont frget oracl.”
I had forgotten. Mazy Maxie under 96th Street Station was the most convenient, so I got off there and turned down the stairwell everyone pretends not to know about. Down and down, into the dark that smelled of old subways and new biodiesel trains and recent piss. It got cold then warm. When I couldn’t see my way any more I heard her voice.
“What’d ya bring, supplicant?”
“A carton of cigarettes and a bottle of crème de menthe.”
“Oh, it’s you, Dave. Finally somebody who knows what I like. It’s been rare unguents all day, fachrisayks. Hand ‘em over.”
I held them out in the dark and felt them lifted out of my hands. She flicked on an old clerk’s lamp and eyeballed me. She isn’t blind, though her milky eyes look like a blind person’s; just sees further than most.
“Question?” she growled.
“Oh yeah. Sandra wants to know if we should try to look for a new apartment.”
She glared into our future for a minute, then lit a cigarette and took a long drag.
“Beware of men wearing camels,” she snapped. “Have a good evening.”
Some newbies might ask, “What the hell does that mean?” but I know better: first, you get what you pay for in this town, and second, usually you find out what she means sooner than you want.
“Thanks, Maxie,” I said. “Have a good evening yourself.”
“Whatever,” she shrugged, and turned out the light.
Sandra got home ahead of me. I told her about the oracle while I cracked eggs for an omelet.
“I’m thinking next time you should try the one in Astor Place,” she said.
We didn’t find out what Maxie meant until my brother-in-law came over for dinner. Luke’s OK for someone so annoyingly hip, and his weird DJ projects make more money than we ever will. When we asked if he knew a good realtor, I couldn’t read his face, which was new. When he got up to go to the bathroom, Sandra grabbed my arm. Unlikely as it was for a guy so into his appearance—and after all, our apartment isn’t that dirty—he had an empty Camels package stuck to the seat of his pants.
FYI, the guy he recommended got arrested a week later.