“I have a headache,” I griped.
Dara grinned. “You know that’s impossible, my love.”
My grin mirrored hers. “The centuries-old zombie drag queen is telling me about impossible?”
“Touché.”
So an expedition was planned, with me and Dara, VaVa, Flo, Ginger and Topaz as the scouting party. And suddenly we had a floating drag bar, albeit one that was insanely well-armed. I stared at them all—dresses and blouses and caftans blowing in the breeze, fabulous wigs as well, and enough makeup to stamp every last pore into submission—and I couldn’t help but smile, remembering my life as it once has been.
Dara held my hand in hers. “They’re beautiful, yes?” She turned and kissed my cheek. “Though not half as much as you.” I started to object when she touched her free hand to my chest. “Where it counts, I mean.”
My smiled widened as I kissed her back. “Were you always this schmaltzy?”
She shrugged. “Just the last couple of hundred years. Like whiskey, I mellow with age.”
“God how I miss that.”
“Aging?”
I shook my head. “Whiskey.”
The ferry pulled away from the dock, VaVa at the helm, the other queens spreading out, looking for any signs of trouble. “I could use a drink myself right about now,” she whispered back. “Or six.”
I stared back out to sea. “Amen to that, sister.”
***
We headed the way we’d come the day before. By then, the scent trail had evaporated, but at least we knew the general direction the invaders had originated from. This time we went beyond the stadium exit, continuing around the coastline.
“There,” said Dara, soon pointing in the distance.
I nodded. It was a marina, all the boats rusted, battered and beaten by age, none of them remotely seaworthy looking. None, that is, save for one. “B-I-N-G-O.”
“And Bingo was her name, oh,” sung Dara.
“Oh indeed,” agreed I as the boat chugged us ever closer. I turned to the others. “Any of you ever seen that before?”
They all shook their heads. “No, sorry,” said Ginger. “And we never have a need to go beyond the stadium, so this harbor is new to us as well.”
“Still,” said I, “that must be the boat that brought the zombies to your shores.” I gulped, again if only in my head. “Guess we should go and investigate.”
“Guess so,” agreed Ginger, sounding about as thrilled as I was about it. Which is to say, not very. Or at all.
The boat slowed down as we drew closer to the side of the other craft. It was empty, that much I was certain about, no smell of death, apart from what had lingered. But that wasn’t what gave me pause as we tied our boats together and went from one to the other, we two zombies lifted up by the humans.
Dara looked at me and I looked at her as all of us stood above deck. “You smell it too?” she asked.
Fear ricocheted across each of the queen’s faces. “What? They’re on board? Now?” asked Flo, hand trembling as she held her gun up and aimed it into the nothingness.
I reached across and lowered it. “No, we are quite alone.” I heard the moans and groans from the city beyond. “Apart from, well, them.”
“Then what is it?” asked VaVa. “What do you and Dara smell?”
I turned to her. “It isn’t what we smell so much as what we don’t smell, what we thought we might smell when we got here.”
She sighed. “Do zombies always speak in riddles?”
And I couldn’t help but grin. “Not without tips.”
Dara poked me in the side. “Good one,” she whispered.
“In any case,” I continued. “What Dara and I smell aboard this craft is zombies, the undead, a stench unmistakable. At least to the likes of us.”
“And?” asked VaVa.
“And,” I replied. “No humans. Which also have a scent unmistakable to the likes of us. In other words, a zombie somehow steered this craft and is, perhaps, steering the marauding undead, leading them, commanding them.”
“Like you do,” said Flo.
“Like I do, yes,” I reluctantly agreed, unsure how that was even possible, that there was someone else like me out there.
Flo moved in closer. “So we kill this zombie, this supposed leader, and the rest topple over like dominos?”
I shrugged, as best I could. “Makes sense, I suppose.” As much as anything did, I thought to myself, because none of it made sense, not really.
“But how do we find this zombie?” asked Ginger. “Doesn’t this one smell like all the rest, like the millions upon millions on all sides of this harbor, like the billions beyond that?”
I groaned, which, suffice it to say, came a lot easier to me than sighing or gulping. “Sadly, yes.”
I turned to the others, my eyes landing on the priestess, Topaz, who had, thus far, remained oddly silent. She locked eyes with me in just that instant. “So how do we proceed then?” she asked. “Wait for them to attack again and hope for the best?”