“How do you know she’s out there?” he whispered in return.
I put my hand to my chest. “Trust me, I know.”
We stood that way, crouched to a degree, backs bent, for what seemed like forever but couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, fifteen at most. I could hear the wind as it whipped by, could hear the groans of the passing zombies and, all too soon, could also hear voices echoing in the distance.
I leaned my face closer to Ricky’s. “They’re coming,” I whispered, terror now gripping me. I couldn’t get captured now, not when she needed me, and so I simply I stood, motionless, my eye peeking through a gap.
“Find her!” I heard, the voice chilling my already frigid body to the bone. Oddly, it sounded vaguely familiar, almost long-forgotten. Almost. My mind is playing tricks on me, I thought. Fear, I knew, could do that to a person, even a long-dead person such as myself.
And then I saw the moonlit zombies pushing through, toppling the others like so many dominos. These weren’t unthinking undead; these were beings such as myself, brought back and clearly taking orders.
In their hands they held torches, which they used to light the street around us, to incinerate any zombies that got in their way, all while they searched, presumably for yours truly. Ricky grabbed my hand when we both noticed the next group that followed, their steely grips keeping their lone prisoner in place: Dara. NO! I shouted, if only in my head. But at the very least she was still alive, for lack of a better word.
“Find her!” I heard yet again, the apparent leader the last to arrive, following the others, which were perhaps twenty in total.
And it was then that I knew whose voice it was I was hearing. Yes, it had been centuries since last I heard it, but it was hers, no doubt about it. Especially when she came into view, her face twisted by death, but hers nonetheless.
My very soul clenched at the sight of her, at the sound of her.
Blondella.
Not dead, not buried back on Liberty Island. But how? And, more importantly, why was she looking for me?
Back from the Dead
Despite their best efforts, the one place the bad guys failed to look was beneath a torn and weather-beaten awning. Score one for my hide and seek abilities. Or at least hide. Onward they went, the first group, then the second, with Dara as their prisoner, and, lastly, Blondella, until the street in front of us was littered with newly-dead undead, not even a groan to be heard among the scattered corpses.
When we were certain they were out of earshot, Ricky whispered, “That was who turned me. I remember now. Do you know her?”
I moaned. Even the thought pained me. “She . . . she’s my friend. Or at least was. A long, long, seriously long time ago.”
“Friends don’t try and kill friends. Friend’s don’t capture friends. Not unless this is some sort of zombie ritual.” He turned my way, both of us still beneath the awning. “Is it? Some sort of ritual, I mean?”
“Zombies don’t have rituals. In fact, up until a few moments ago, as far as I knew, me and Dara, plus barely a few dozen others back in Utah, and, of course, you, were the only conscious zombies on the entire planet. Also, in fact, up until a few moments ago, Blondella was dead and buried, worshipped by the remaining humans who live around the Statue of Liberty, all of them, including the statue itself, drag queens. To add another in fact, Blondella, in fact, besides being my friend, however long ago, was one of three humans who turned me into the queen you see crouching before you right now. So why she’d now want me dead and/or captured, and why she did in fact capture my centuries-old partner and why she, apparently, attacked the drag queens back in the middle of the harbor, are all mysteries, each of these added to a growing list of them.”
He seemed to be soaking all this in before eventually replying, “I’m not even going to say that I’m lost. That would be like saying that I’m dead, both clearly foregone conclusions. All I know is that I was a New York dermatologist and the last time I checked, the Statue of Liberty was most definitely not a drag queen.” He held up his hand and shook his head. “Please don’t fill in the gaps; I have a strong suspicion that it won’t do any good.”
I sighed. Or at least tried to. “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. All you need to know is that I’m the good guy, dressed like a girl though I may be, and Blondella’s the bad guy, dressed like a girl though she may be, and Dara is my husband, dressed like a wife though she may be, and we need to rescue her: Dara, my zombie drag queen wifely husband.”
Again he shook his head. “You’re really not helping, Creature.”
At last I moved outside the awning, the moonlight now washing over me. Ricky was quick(ish) to follow. “The question is not, am I helping you? The question is, will you help me? Because I can’t trust anyone back on the island, not anymore, not after what I just saw. They, after all, think of Blondella as a goddess, someone to be revered. For all I know, they’re in cahoots.”
He chuckled. “This sounds like a bad Scooby Doo movie.”
“There was a good Scooby Doo movie?”
His chuckling promptly ceased. “Be that as it may, do I have a choice?”