I grinned. “More like razor-sharp looks and dashing good wit, but thanks. And no.”
She sighed. After all, she knew the answer as well as I did. “You can communicate with other zombies, control them.”
I nodded my head, my neck bones creaking and grinding as I did so. “And yet, my abilities began before the beginning, as they put it. And if they have no oral history, if they don’t talk about their past, talk about life before they were Libetians, how would they know about my, uh, skills?”
“Word gets around?”
“Again, nice try. But, barring some sort of rampant zombie fan club of mine, the only word for miles and miles (and miles) around is grr, and that’s not even a word.”
“So what you’re saying is—”
I stopped her. “I’m not saying anything. Yet. Just, we have to be careful around these people is all. Clearly, they have no love of our kind and the only reason I’m here is to help them. Plus, I have a sinking feeling that they’re not telling us everything.”
She cringed. “Please don’t say sinking when we’re standing on a boat, my love.” To which she added, “In any case, they do call you Saint Creature.”
I shrugged. “An homage to my past, not my present. They’d just as soon look at me in that mural than in person.”
She closed the small gap between us, a perfect kiss placed on my lips. “Well, I like looking at you. Past, present and future.”
“Ditto, girlfriend,” I purred—though, coming from me, it sounded more like a soft roar mixed with crunching gravel.
“So what do we do then?”
A shrug joined with a sigh. “Guess we help. If nothing more than in deference to what my friends created here.”
“It is beautiful,” Dara said.
“But is it only skin deep?”
Ah, now that was the question.
***
A short while later, we found ourselves back in the golf cart. “So, will you help?” asked Topaz.
I turned to Dara. She smiled and nodded, ever so slightly. I mimicked the gesture. “We’ll help,” I replied. “If we can.”
Topaz left it that. And then she left us to our own devices, back at the base of Libby. She pulled away, shouting over her shoulder, “Let me know if you need anything.” And with that, and a honk that sounded like a sharp squeeze on a clown’s nose, she was gone.
I turned to Dara. “So much for our vacation.”
“Better than Utah.”
She had me there. “Well then, first thing we need to figure out is how they’re attacking, then why after all this time. Any ideas?”
“They came by water, so they must’ve had some sort of vessel that took them here. I didn’t see any other boat besides the Queen Mega-Mary back there. And they couldn’t have used that if it’s still docked on this side of things, right?”
“Right.” I knew what she was getting at and added, “But, besides being such a pretty face, the kind that only a zombie mother could love, I can’t drive a boat, which is the only way for us to investigate the mainland, where they had to have originated from.”
“Still,” she said, “someone knows how to steer that thing, right?”
“What thing?” we suddenly heard from behind us.
We turned. VaVa and Ginger were headed our way and closing fast. “The ferry boat,” I replied.
VaVa, who’d since changed and was now in a rather fetching pantsuit and flowing amber wig, smiled widely. “Plane, car, cart and ferry boat captain, at your service.”
“You’re joking,” said Dara.
And before the two of them could respond, I needlessly replied, “Not without tips.”
“Exactly,” said VaVa. “It’s my job to know how to operate all working crafts on the island, as it was my mother’s job and her mother’s before her, back to—”
“The beginning,” interrupted Dara. “Got it.”
“So can you take us to the mainland?”
Her grin faltered. “Um, I said could, not would.”
“But you said ‘at your service,'” said Dara.
“I thought you meant something like a booze cruise around the harbor.”
“We don’t drink,” I reminded her.
“Sucks to be you,” said Ginger, her hand placed reverently just above her liver.
I shut my eyes and counted to five. “You brought us here to help. We can’t help without investigating. And the zombies had to arrive via some sort of water craft. Since there’s no such craft docked where the slaughter took place, we must assume that said craft is back on the mainland. So to prevent the next slaughter—”
“She’ll take you there.” It was Flo, who walked in from our left side, a chocolate bar in her hand, a smudge of brown against her emerald-painted lips.
“Um, if you don’t mind me asking, is that candy bar you’re eating more than three hundred years old?”
“Yuck,” said Dara.
But Flo shook her head. “The island has enormous working freezers.”
I knew where she was going with that, mainly because she reminded me so much of my long-dead friend, Kit. “Let me guess,” I guessed. “The goddess of the House of Kat stocked a great deal of chocolate in those freezers.”
Flo smiled. “How did you know that?”