“Until now,” said Ginger, standing by my side.
“And,” added Dara, “until now, zombies didn’t attack the humans, didn’t destroy their supplies, so, ten to one, the two ‘until nows’ are somehow related.”
I frowned and started moving back the way we’d come. Because, if there was one thing I knew all too well, where there was one zombie, there were more. Lots and lots more. “Hurry,” I said. “Before the backups arrive.”
The others nodded, VaVa suddenly at my other side. “So, do we keep going then, take the ferry and look for the ones that attacked the island, as planned?”
I paused, if only for a moment. “Not a good idea, I’d think. Not with only three guns and no extra ammo, at least.” Plus, whomever this enemy of ours was, we now knew they were well-organized, perhaps even watching our every move.
VaVa nodded. “And no extra nails either.” Again she looked down at her hand. “And I just had them done.”
So much for that more butch thing she promised.
Too bad, because, right about then, we sorely could have used it.
Purple, Blue, Green and Gray
We made it back to the island without any more incidents. The zombies outside the stadium heeded my commands, and there were no more zombies within the stadium to contend with. So, at the very least, we were again safe and sound—well, safe, at any rate.
By then, it was getting late, the sun just as sick and tired of this day as we were, not even bothering to turn the sky a brilliantly gay pink for us. Instead, a cold fog rolled in, the clouds gray above, Dara and I soon enough deposited within Libby’s bowels. And, no, despite the humor in that imagery, I couldn’t even bother to crack a smile.
“Weird,” said Dara. “All of it. The queens, this place, those zombies in the stadium. Like time itself had a hiccup and all of a sudden we’ve been set on a different course.”
I sighed. “And you know as well as I do that a zombie doesn’t act out of reason, like intentionally smashing up a stadium. In fact, they only follow commands, and then, at least up until recently, only from me; they certainly don’t issue them.”
“Unless . . .” Dara said, eyes growing wider.
“No, can’t be,” I replied, knowing full well what that “unless” meant.
“But our zombies think and feel and act just as they did when they were humans.”
“Aided by the salt, which is administered by the minions. And that had to have started with a human, right? I mean, I was turned by Kit and Blondella and Destiny all those centuries ago. It wasn’t time that started us on this course of ours; it was them. And even that was by pure dumb luck, at the girls taking a chance that iodized salt would act like radiation sickness pills.” I looked at her and sighed again. “How could the same thing have happened independently? I mean, can there be another one like me out there? Another clan of thinking zombies, of sidekick humans, all of them, for whatever reason, working to destroy what my friends started here so long ago?”
She shrugged. “Not a friggin’ clue, sweetie,” she replied, her attention turned elsewhere, namely to the rack of clothes in the corner.
“How can you think of dresses at a time like this?”
She grabbed a slinky beaded number and held it out for me to see, the gorgeous red outfit shimmering beneath the overhead lights. “Oh,” I fairly moaned.
She grinned. “Yeah, oh.”
Now, to be fair, I’d spent just over three hundred years in whatever clothes we could find in the small towns that surrounded the salt plant—in Utah, need I remind you. In other words, though there were certainly more pressing matters to contend with at the time, right then and there the only thing concerning me was pressing that beautiful beaded number against my cold, lifeless body.
Took some wrangling, since I no longer had my minions to help, but drag queens are nothing if not resourceful, and, soon enough, we were both naked and ready to try on some of those ancient outfits. Of course, it was then that we both realized we were naked and alone and equally as ancient. And, though neither red nor beaded, Dara was a delicious shade of purple, mottled with blue and gray and touches of emerald green. So, yes, suddenly I was even more concerned with pressing my partner’s beautiful number against my cold, lifeless body.
“God, you’re incredible,” Dara said, her fingers tracing the lines of veins that crisscrossed my chest, the feel of her touch on my skin sending a shiver through me as my dangling prick began its inevitable rise upwards. And a radiation-powered boner truly is a sight to see. Or maybe that was just my boner in general. Hard (pun intended) to tell.
My hand reached out and caressed the prick aimed my way. Dara sighed and inched in closer, until we were bloodshot eye to bloodshot eye, her lips on mine in a flash, tongues doing an oral tango as we jacked one another’s pricks and moaned in delight—as opposed to just moaned, which is what we zombies generally do.
Now, to backtrack just a bit, because even I, jaded drag queen though I am, realize full well that a dead(ish) zombie having sex with another dead(ish) zombie may seem, well, okay, icky, but one simply loves what one loves. And, to me, she (even though she had one stellar prick) was nothing short of stunning, purple and blue and green and gray flesh and all. Besides, it was the man (drag queen) within that I’d fallen in love with and still loved with all my (non-beating) heart all these centuries later. To paraphrase, beauty is only purple, blue, green and gray skin deep.