“Goddess,” wailed Ginger. “You’ve returned!”
“Speak to us, Goddess!” loudly moaned Kit.
Luckily, Blondella’s cigarette-infused, boozy she-voice wasn’t all that difficult to mimic. Besides, with no other sounds to drown me out, I didn’t need to speak all that loudly. “Traitors,” was all I said, that and no more. Plant the seed of doubt, I thought to myself. Plant it and watch it grow.
After that, the zombies started pouring in on all sides, from behind the gate and in front, from east to west, the aroma of human, of breakfast, carried on the wind. The queens had little choice but to retreat back to the ferry, to remove the attaching plank and to wait for me, the real me, not the gussied up me, to return to the ship, all while the zombies kept on coming. Soon, the entire pier was teeming with them. But it wasn’t to the undead that the queens stared. Nope, it was to me: the star attraction—and about damned time.
But did I lip-synch to a non-existent soundtrack? Did I bow and curtsey to the likes of them? Did I even deem to acknowledge their presence? No, no and no, I did not. I already gave them their sighting, their message. Now it was their turn to act as they saw fit. Besides, Dara and Ricky and I already had our answer: Blondella was not doing this alone.
Morning gave way to afternoon, afternoon to early evening, and still I stood and still Ricky stood and still Dara hid. By then, the marina was crammed with an army of zombies, every square inch of space filled to the brim with them. After that, all we had left to do was wait the queens out. And zombies are good at that. Not a lot else we do well, but standing around doing nothing, yep, that we can most certainly do.
It was only then, when it was fairly obvious that I wasn’t returning, that it would’ve been next to near impossible for me to even work my way through the throng, with Dara in tow, that the ferry at last pulled into the harbor and headed back to Liberty Island, the queens staring at me until, I was sure, I was barely a blip on their radar.
“That was interesting,” said Ricky, once we were alone again.
“That was long,” added Dara as she emerged from her hiding place.
“But worth the effort,” I said. “At least now we know who we can trust and who we can’t.”
Dara nodded. “VaVa and Topaz, the priestess, born of the House of Blondella. I suppose that makes sense then. They worship her above all others, would, it seem, follow her to the ends of the Earth.”
“The ends of their lives is more like it,” said Ricky, now helping me off the swaying ship I’d been on. “So what do we do about it? You said we stay and fight. Is that still the plan?”
That I had to think over. Stay and fight? With what and to what end? “Just before they came and got us from Utah, there was a zombie attack on the island,” I said. “To pull that off, to drive the ferry boat, to dock it and undock it, to lower and raise the connecting plank, all that took human help to pull off.”
Ricky nodded. “Zombies, even conscious zombies, wouldn’t have been able to do all that, no way. Heck it took three of us just to get your mascara on.”
Dara chuckled. “And just barely, by the looks of it.”
“Thanks,” I said, with a grimace. “Is it that bad?”
She shrugged. “Blondella was no prized catch to begin with, so we didn’t have to do such a great job anyway.”
My grimace sagged further. “So, yes, that bad. In any case, to do all that, and successfully I might add, they had to be in communication, the bad queens and Blondella.”
“And?” said Dara.
“And,” said I, “With the recent sighting of the fake Blondella, the accomplices are sure to be confused, are sure to get in contact, to see what’s going on, to see what traitor meant, to see why she showed herself. Right?”
Dara nodded and then promptly shook her head. “And?”
Okay, she had me on that last one. “Not a clue. But if we can be there when contact is made, maybe we’ll somehow be able to turn the tables on them. Maybe if the good queens find out about the bad queens, if we can prove all this to them, then we’ll have an army to back us up with. Because, as things stand right now, no way are the good guys going to attack someone they see as a goddess simply by our word. Plus, if we accuse Topaz or VaVa of anything without said proof, the queens might just leave us out here to rot, forever.”
“Forever,” said Ricky, a sadness to his voice I’d yet to hear. “Really? Forever? Like this?”
I dreaded answering him. I kept forgetting that, as far he could recall, he’d been human just a short while ago, while Dara and I had centuries to grow accustomed to the idea of who and what we were, what we’d always be. “It’s, um, impossible to say, Ricky. Decades, centuries, millennia. Who knows?”
His grimace stamped mine into the dirt. “Maybe it is best to stay zombie then, ignorance equating to bliss.”
I pointed to the sea of zombies on the other side of the fence, all of them still clamoring for the long departed ferry. “That look blissful to you, sweetie?”
He looked from them to me. He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. Perhaps there were no winners in all of this. But, just in case, I was hedging my bets that it was going to be us.