Dara held my hand while her free hand pointed again to the left side of the mural. “There you are, Creature, also at the beginning.”
I’d failed to notice it. After all, my friends were painted much larger. Me, I was already a zombie by then, left in Utah, a relic, barely worth a mention in their herstory.
“Saint Creature,” commented Topaz.
I chuckled. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Not without tips,” replied the priestess. It seemed to be the standard reply around these parts.
“And, yet, no one’s come looking for me in all this time.” It wasn’t a question. After all, I already knew the answer. I was a zombie, after all, saint or not. And these people avoided zombies, and wisely so. Until now, that is. Still, there was one thing that puzzled me, and so I pointed to about three-quarters of the way through the mural. “There’s no way for the zombies to have attacked. Back then, we weren’t as waterproof as we are now. Plus, apart from me and my ilk, we’re unthinking and certainly unplanning, unscheming. So how could there have been an attack, a raid, all the way out here?”
At this, Topaz’s demeanor changed, her peacefulness, her solemnity, replaced by an obvious unease. “We . . . we do not know.”
“But they did attack?” said Dara.
Topaz nodded, the frown low on her otherwise beautiful face.
And that unease I’d been feeling, even before we entered this place, where my story ended and theirs began, grew and spread through me, the radiation suddenly sizzling down my spine. “And are attacking again?” I thought to ask. And still the priestess nodded. “Which is why you brought me here, us?” I gripped Dara’s hand even firmer in my own. “It’s not a homecoming; it’s a home saving?”
Her nodding ceased. I wished I could say the same for that sizzling unease of mine.
The Queen Mega-Mary
We were taken to a ferry landing after that; the ferry waited there, moored and bobbing. It was newly painted and very much reflecting the island’s current inhabitants. In other words, as Topaz had said, fabulous. In fact, it was the gayest-looking boat I’d ever seen, a Carnival cruise on steroids—or maybe make that estrogen—like someone went berserk with a rainbow-colored brush and cans of glitter and reams of chiffon. Then again, with all those things, berserk really is the only way to go, right?
“If my teeth hadn’t already rotted,” commented Dara, finger pointed seaward. “I would’ve instantly gotten a cavity looking at that.”
“It is beautiful, is it not?” replied Topaz.
I shrugged. I was leaning with not, but said instead, “Well, it’s a, um, a boat alright.”
Dara patted my back. “Good girl.”
Still, this is not why she brought us here, to this spot. We knew it without her even having to say it. After all, though we could no longer see it, we could in fact smell it: blood and lots of it, from many humans, I was certain.
“There was some sort of skirmish here recently,” I made note.
Topaz nodded, her face sad, eyes cast downward. “They came in the middle of the night, we figured, then hid among the nearby buildings, behind trees, anywhere out of sight. Come morning, we were defenseless.”
“Your people have no weapons?” asked Dara.
“We have a modest supply of guns, but those we keep locked inside of Libby.” She sighed. “By the time we dispatched the zombies, many of our people lost their lives.”
I scrunched my face and stared out to sea. “Doesn’t make any sense. Zombies can’t swim, that’s for sure. And they certainly can’t steer a boat or land a boat, not without adequate help. It’s just not possible. And even if they could attack, it would still be a fool’s mission, slow as they are and all, with so many of you as there are.”
“And yet it happened,” said Topaz. “I saw it with my own eyes, saw my friends murdered. I even took down a great many of the zombies myself, once I made it to this spot.”
“How do you think they got here?” Dara asked the priestess.
Topaz shrugged. “Not a clue.”
“And has this happened before?”
Topaz looked to Dara—well, to and down quite a bit. “You saw the mural.”
I tapped Topaz on the shoulder. Or at least would have if I could have. I settled for her elbow instead. “So just over three hundred years ago there was a zombie attack, and then nothing until recently?” I failed to mention that her people had waited the same amount of time to reach out to me. Why rub salt in the wound? Especially when the wound was solely my own.
She touched fingertip to button nose. “Exactly.”
I squinted up at her, the sunlight forming a halo around her head, an errant beam momentarily blinding me. “Um, mind if Dara and I check out the ferry?”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Do you need help?”
I shook my head. “The dock isn’t too steep; I think we can manage it. Thanks.”
Dara took my hand and ambled seaward with me. We boarded easily enough and disappeared around the corner, both of us staring out at the Manhattan skyline. The Big Apple had aged well, minus a few noticeable bite marks taken out of her, that and all the green that had sprung up where once there had obviously been cement-tan and steel-gray.
“Why the need for distance from Drag-daddy Long Legs?” asked Dara.
“Why did they bring me here, hon?” A question for a question.
“Your dashing good looks and razor-sharp wit?”