She nodded. I was now being pushed forward, Ricky as well, parting the sea of undead as we moved away from the dance floor. “All made up. A story to tell the kids before they went to bed, and one that went from generation to generation, until it was believed to be true. Kit and Destiny and me, they saw something in us, to be certain, something worth emulating, a joy, a strength, a beauty.”
“Inner beauty, you mean,” I countered, clearly unable to control myself.
She pushed me harder, until we were in a private office that she’d unlocked with a swipe of a card. Once inside, we found Dara tethered to a chair. A smile burst free upon my face, hers as well. The guards retreated, leaving the three of us and our captor alone. “How did you end up here then?” asked Ricky.
“Years after we remaining humans found one another, after the island started taking shape, they knew something was wrong with me, the fact that I wasn’t aging, that my skin grew grayer. They worried that it could be contagious, that I’d brought something to the island, that we’d brought something, me and Kit and Destiny.”
I groaned. “Oh no.”
She suddenly looked angrier, her eyes steely, seething. “You say they worship me and the other girls. I know nothing of this. The emulation started in our lifetimes, yes, that much I saw. The rest, whatever the bedtime story became, that I never heard.” She paused, looked away, a pool of hatred obviously boiling up inside. She then turned and finished her story. “The zombies came one night. The islanders must’ve lured them over, taken the ferry when everyone was asleep. The girls were the first to be slaughtered, but the zombies never attacked me. After all, they never attack their own kind, as you well know.”
“Minus you attacking me,” I couldn’t help but say.
She shrugged. “We are not the same kind. You need the salt; I do not. The infection changed me, but my humanity, what remained of it, is also still there. So I am as different from you as you are from them. That is why they follow you, the zombies. That is why they follow me as well. We are unique.”
“Imprinting,” spat Ricky.
Her shrugged repeated. “Call it what you will. Doesn’t change anything. They follow her and they follow me. Soon only the latter will be true.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” added Ricky.
She sighed. “How I got here?” The shrug stopped, her shoulders in mid-bunch. “The zombies, like I said, didn’t kill me and the humans didn’t have the stomach to do it either. Instead, they sent me adrift, knowing, or at least thinking, that would do it, that I’d be powerless against them, that I’d eventually turn zombie like all the rest and they’d be rid of me.”
“They made martyrs out of you,” I made note. “Out of all three of you.”
She nodded. “I suppose so. I’ve, of course, seen them over the years, the humans, seen them when they make their excursions to the mainland. I’ve followed them, kept up with their activities. Know thine enemy, it’s said. That’s what I’ve done. So, yes, I know that they eventually became like me and Kit and Destiny, came to look like this, like some sort of hero worship on their parts. So what? What good did it do me, dying by inches out here, utterly alone? Worship is meaningless if you never hear the praises.”
Now that sounded like the Blondella I knew. Once a drag queen always a drag queen. “But I’m here now. You’re not alone. Why not just come back with me? Start a new, um, life?”
Her face was suddenly an inch away from my own. Too bad zombies didn’t use mouthwash, I thought to myself; a little Scope would’ve gone a long way. “You’re here because I brought you here. I knew they’d look for you, that they knew where to find you. If I was a martyr, if the girls were, then I assumed that you too were venerated. And if the legend of your powers persisted over the centuries, they had little choice but to bring you back to the island, to counter whatever it was that had attacked them.”
“A trap,” I lamented.
“Says the fly to the spider,” she hissed. “You’re here and your humans in Utah, the descendants of those we left you with, are defenseless, while mine are marching even as we speak. Your friends, in other words, will be just as dead as you will be before long. The humans on Liberty Island will be next, finally getting what’s coming to them. And I, at long last, will be the lone queen standing.”
“Teetering you mean,” I hissed back.
“Bitch,” she spat.
“Takes one to know one.” And it was then that I realized what she’d said. “Lone queen? But we made a deal. You said you’d let Dara go, Ricky here as well.”
She nodded. “I did and I will, after the salt in them runs out. Then they can go wherever they please.”
I turned and looked at my beloved. A mixture of fear and hatred washed over her face. Same for Ricky. “You’ll return them back to their hells?”
“So what? Not like they’ll even realize it. Like you said, they’re no different than bowling pins, than Twinkies, trees.”
I pointed to my heart’s desire. “She’s not a tree. She thinks and feels and loves. You loved once, too. Johnny was his name, right?”