At that I’d simply turn and start my encore: Cher, always Cher. And, no, no Auto-Tune for the likes of her. At least not for her first thirty years in the biz. Plus, I’m fairly certain that she ultimately survived the solar blast. Mainly because after a nuclear attack the only things left, or so it was prophesized, would be cockroaches and Cher. Though, to be fair, I hadn’t seen a cockroach in well over several hundred years. Go figure.
Anyway, at least it broke up the monotony. That and if I didn’t regularly use my muscles, rigor, with a great deal of mortis, would settle in for a long winter’s nap. Truth is, it’s hard enough to speak let alone lip-synch, but far be it from me to withhold my, um, talents from the masses, slim though said masses were.
Funny thing is, it was the zombies who really enjoyed my show. And not the New San Francisco zombies either. No, I mean the ones outside the fences. Now they were an attentive lot.
See, once I began my act, and if I so deemed fit to set up the stage up in front of them, then, wouldn’t you know it, the groaning would stop and all eyes would be on me. Or at least that’s what it seemed like. Though since they couldn’t blink and their heads were already turned my way, it might’ve only been wishful thinking on my part. But, to be honest, I truly think not.
The zombies, I figured, were simply drawn to life. Which is why they groaned when presented with a human, of which, it appeared, I had the only remaining ones left. But the undead were drawn to me as well, seeing, like I said, as I was a connection to them, to life, that I could still think and feel and communicate, that I was both like them and like the humans. It was, I assumed, why they heeded my commands and no one else’s, not even the other zombies of my cognizant ilk. It’s why they still do, in fact, but for other reasons I now well know of.
In any case, throw in a little Britney or Madonna or Pink into my repertoire, and, voila, I had one hell of a captive audience. Silent though they were. And, trust me, no drag queen worth her Jimmy Choos likes the sound of one hand clapping. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and at least they ceased groaning, if only while the music played and my lips and hips managed to swivel. No easy feat for my feet, mind you. Kudos to moi.
“They do seem to worship you,” one of my minions would, and rightly so, whisper in my ear once my set was over.
“Guess even the dead know talent when they see it.”
The minion would then nod—again, and rightly so—or face the consequences, namely the thousands of rows of yellowed teeth facing our way. Not that I was that kind of ruler, mind you, but a little bit of threat of being torn limb from limb does indeed go a long way. And since I was no longer getting tipped for my talents, nor drinking frosty libations afterward (sob), I might as well have been bathed in compliments, even if they were a tad forced. Not like I had anything else to bathe in, right?
Well, not exactly.
Like I said, I didn’t eat or drink or sleep, but there was just enough human left inside of me to enjoy life, for lack of a better word. To rephrase all that, Creature Comfort, zombie drag queen, could still pop one serious boner. And when radiation is powering your turgid tool instead of blood (mine being quite stagnant), then watch out, because if you think Three Mile Island blew her stack, you ain’t never seen a long dead zombie do the same.
I had my pick of the litter, too. After all, there were teeming masses of undead surrounding us on all sides, a sea of them, an ocean, in fact. All I needed to do was point my miraculously well-manicured fingernail (and, yes, those still grew, even in death) and issue a command, and I could’ve had a veritable harem of hunky He-Men by my side.
Though that’s not what I did, tempting as it was to do so. Because talk about your hollow victories. I mean, yes, it was nice to have my minions fawning all over me, but a lover should always be an equal—well, maybe not equal so much as one notch down. Same thing for a friend, which, after those first few decades, I sorely needed. And by friend, I mean friend of Dorothy, if you get my drift.
Sadly, there were no gay dudes among my humanized, salt-swilling brethren to choose from on that front. They were a meager lot to begin with and small town hicks at that, so, no, not an option. Which meant that I inevitably had to pick—to change, to turn, as it were, a la the salt cure—just the right one from the horde outside the fence.
Just one, though, because, though queen, I wasn’t God, and didn’t feel the need to lip-synch my way through that role either. You see, I could’ve turned dozens of them, hundreds, but to what end? What gave me the right to inflict consciousness on the unconscious, to breathe life, or at least the next best thing, into the dead? I mean, think about it: yes, they were trapped out there, trapped in their own skin, unthinking, unfeeling, but what was so great about living in a salt factory for presumably thousands of years, your friends and family all gone, life as you know it equally as kaput?