Lili St Crow - Strange Angels

I thrashed wildly, smashing the thing on the head with the gun, hammering on it and struggling free of deadweight. Still making that high, whining sound, I crawled fast as I could across the living room until I reached the corner farthest away from the zombie. My left hand got rug burn. My right was full of the empty gun.

I put my back in the corner and heard myself babbling. Weak, incoherent sounds bounced off the empty white walls. I was cold and covered in stinking, burning goo.

The zombie lay facedown. Runnels of filth caved through its rotting skin. The smell was unbelievable . It wore Dad’s jacket and Dad’s jeans. Once you’ve taken the heart out, a zombie rots real quick. Even the skeleton decomposes into dust.

I started to cry.

The babbling turned into one word, over and over again.

“Daddy? Daddy? Daddy? ”

He just lay there.

The zombie just lay there.

The mall wasopen because the snowplows had come out. The main drags were clean and clear. They took winter seriously around here and had everything salted, sanded, scraped, and plowed to within an inch of its life. The buses were still running, too.

Life doesn’t stop out on the prairies for a little snow. Canned Muzak still has to play, after all, and if they closed the malls, who would play it?

I stared at the small McDonald’s cup. It was full of coffee that had been steaming hot and now just kind of sat there. My eyes burned, full of sand. I’d scrubbed the zombie rot off my skin and thrown some clothes on, shoved all the cash I could find—Dad’s billfold was gone, probably tucked into the truck somewhere or, more likely, taken—into my messenger bag and hightailed it out of the house, stopping only to turn the heat off, for some weird reason. The back door was shattered and the smell was incredible, thick as Crisco in the nose.

Did anyone hear the shots? I didn’t think so—there had been no sirens, and our house was a pariah, set apart like it had a disease. We heard nothing from our neighbors, and that was the way Dad liked it. The snow would muffle everything, too.

If it had killed me, nobody would even know I was dead. I’d be lying there, and . . .

My brain stopped working, stalled like a choked engine. I shuddered, the plastic chair squeaking. The mall was as brightly lit as Heaven and people were wandering around, shopping like there wasn’t a decomposing zombie in my living room. Down on the lower level of the food court a fountain splashed, water rilling musically down squares of Art Deco concrete and sculpted, welded steel.

The Styrofoam cup was a white circle with a brown ellipse inside it, a conical, textured shape. I could draw it. My pad was in my bag, shoved in there with hysterical haste like everything else.

Drawing sounded good, except I couldn’t do it with my hands shaking so bad. I shivered again. I couldn’t have told you what I was wearing, only that I’d changed clothes after scrubbing the zombie goo off me.

I shot him. I shot Daddy.

I kept bumping up against the memory—Dad’s blue eyes with their rotting whites fixed on me, a crimson spark dancing in the depths of the clouded pupil, no longer perfectly circular but fringing at the edges as the tissue died. The gun jolting against my hands. The smell .

I realized I was making the sound again, a low whining at the back of my throat under the fountain’s wet splishing, and killed it. I couldn’t afford to have someone look too closely at me.

I’d just killed my dad.

Hello, Officer? Can you help me? My dad got turned into a zombie. You know, we’ve been traveling around getting rid of things that aren’t real, and this time they hit back. I really need someplace to stay—but can you make sure I have some holy water or something wherever it is? And some silver-jacketed bullets? That’d be sweet. Yeah, that’d be totally cool. Thanks. And while you’re at it, can you tell the guys with the straitjackets that I’m really sane? That would help.

The coffee trembled inside the cup as I touched its rim with two fingers. Soon the mall would start closing down. It was a weeknight. Where would I go? I couldn’t get a hotel room with the ID I had on me, unless I tried the bad part of town, and that would cost more cash than I wanted to spend right at the moment. Speaking of cash, I needed to find a way to get more if I ran out, and—

I couldn’t even think about planning that far ahead.

I shot my daddy. Jesus Christ, I shot my dad. Tears rose hot and thick in my throat. The awful scratching sound at the back window turned into someone pulling the cheap plastic chair opposite me away from the table and dropping down into it, grinning at me through a mop of curly dark hair.

“ There you are. Skipping two days in a row. Someone call the cops.” Graves set an Orange Julius cup on the table—I’d chosen a place with my back to a wall, jumping nervously anytime someone walked behind me on their way to the restrooms. It was the spot with the best sight lines, and someone had put a fake potted plant behind my chair. Awful kind of them.

I stared at Goth Boy instead of the coffee cup now. The silver earring in his left ear was a dangling skull and crossbones. The faint satisfaction I felt at finally getting a clear look at it was drowned in the panic rising in my throat, thumping behind my heart.

He shook dyed, dead-black hair out of his eyes. They were more green than hazel now, cradled in the slightest of epicanthic folds, and the even caramel of his skin was something to hate him for. “Hey.” The grin faded, spilled out of his face. Today he wore a Kiss T-shirt and the usual black coat, and when he put his long hands on the table I saw he was wearing fingerless black gloves. The inverted crucifix winked at me from its silver chain, and my gorge rose again, pointlessly. “Are you okay?”

I almost laughed. I was not okay. I was not anywhere near okay. I was about as far away from okay as it was possible to get. My eyes swiveled back down to the coffee cup.

“Jesus. What happened?” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. I almost flinched.

Don’t get too close to me. I just shot my dad.

“Hey. Dru. Hey .” He snapped his long brown fingers. “Hello. Sitting right here. What happened?”

Oh Christ. The lump in my throat went down, after a short wrestling match. I swallowed convulsively twice and found my voice, weak and watery but still mine. “Fuck off.”

His eyebrows shot up. He had actually scraped his hair back behind his ears with both hands, and now he looked very young as he stared back at me. His mouth thinned out, and I thought he was actually going to get up and walk away.

Then he settled back in his chair, arranging his long, gawky limbs as best he could, and picked up his cup. He took a long slurp of whatever was in it, and his eyes turned even more greeny-gold. They caught the fluorescent light and glowed at me.

Graves just sat there like he had all the time in the world.

I finally picked up my coffee cup. It seemed like the thing to do. The crap inside it was ice-cold, but it tasted better than the remainder of the zombie’s smell in my mouth. I took a gulp, set the cup down, and grimaced. My face wrinkled up, and I almost spewed cold ash-tasting coffee sludge across the table.

He didn’t move.

I listened to the soft strains of canned Muzak, trying to place the song. It was hopeless. Some pop anthem strangled by the gods of commerce. The words curdled in my chest. I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened.

Who would believe me? That’s why it’s the Real World, the night world, and not the normal world. People don’t want to know—and the things that eat people or grow fur or tell the future don’t want people to know. It’s a perfect marriage, complete with lies.