Run being such a subjective word, they still managed to trudge and totter and traipse and trod my way, dozens upon dozens of them, all heeding, thank goodness, my command. When the front of the pack was a mere ten feet away, I added, “Block the door to the building! Put your bodies into it!”
And that’s just what they did, all of them, at least a hundred walking corpses slamming themselves into the rear of the building, blocking the exit completely, their collective grunts and groans a wretched cacophony which, all things considered, was music to my ears. Especially once I heard the banging coming from within the disco. “Take that, assholes!” I hollered as I put one hand in front of the other and slowly—seriously, slowly—crawled away on my belly.
Not a pretty picture, but at least I was safe.
Just me. All alone now. Ugh, one final time.
Her Name was Lola
I managed to right myself by using the stairs to a nearby building, then teetered as fast as my rickety legs could carry me back to the golf cart. Thankfully, if such a word was even still possible by that point, neither Blondella nor any of her henchzombies had made it there yet, and so I was home-free. Minus the home. And the only thing I was free of was my one true love and my one true friend. And all because I had the bright idea of returning to the scene of the crime, which, even after seeing countless episodes of CSI, I should’ve known better than to attempt.
In any case, with a torrential flood of sadness gushing through me, I drove away from the disco. I didn’t have a plan for rescuing Dara and Ricky, nor one for defeating Blondella and saving the Libetians and my minions back in Utah. My only plan, in fact, was to come up with a plan, and, to be quite honest, I sort of always relied on Dara for that sort of thing. Two heads, in fact, were better than one, especially when one of those heads was mine.
I stopped the golf cart once I was far enough away. I sat there praying for an idea, but nothing was coming to me. All I had was love to keep me going, Dara’s voice inside my head, the image of her bolstering my ever-dwindling confidence. She was, in fact, what kept me sane these past few hundred years. Without her, I was lost. Everything, in fact, was lost: all of humanity, what little of it remained.
And then, at last, I had an idea, knew what would win the day.
“Love,” I said, again with my foot on the gas.
As mushy as it sounded, love was, as I’d told Ricky when we first met, the one true constant in a world where quite literally everything had changed. What I found with Dara was that connection. With love, anything could happen. I smiled as I zoomed (at ten miles per hour) down the block, “Multiply love by two, and who knows what could happen.”
Now then, I’d been to New York before and had a rudimentary understanding of the layout: where the landmarks where, where north and south and east and west was, and what major arteries got you to where you needed to be. For the time being, I was still in Queens. I knew that if I took the Long Island Expressway, I’d end up in Midtown Manhattan. Then it was a straight shot to Broadway. To love. To Lola.
And if anything could save the day, it was two humans, even long dead ones, trying to save their mates. Good over evil. Brains over, well, Blondella. And she had said that she wouldn’t kill them, just let the salt run out, which, to be quite honest, was a fate worse than death. But would she stay true to her word on that? Of course, I hadn’t a clue. All bets were off when it came to the likes of her. Still, without help, I didn’t even have a chance.
So, yes, I began my search for Lola. I had, after all, promised just that to Ricky; I was simply doing it a tad earlier than expected. And if I couldn’t find her? Well, you don’t get anything in life, or death for that matter, without at least trying.
***
Ten minutes later, I’d found the exit for the expressway. It was then that the golf cart proved invaluable. Mainly because, a few hundred years earlier, all traffic, everywhere, had come to a complete standstill, and the only way for me to drive was to veer between the long-dead cars. The long-dead drivers were, of course, still in them, staring dead, as it were, ahead. Sad, I know, but I’d long ago come to grips with how the world was now.
I gazed forward, never looking directly left or right, waiting for the New York skyline to poke its formidable head up. Lord knew how long it took, what with me going at the cart’s full power, which, like my own, was meager at best, but eventually the skyscrapers appeared, growing taller and taller as I puttered steadily along, deathly silence everywhere save for the sound of the tires on the road and the voice in my head telling me to keep going.
Strangely, or maybe not, said voice was Dara’s.
The expressway ended and Midtown began. Here, unfortunately, I was in trouble. See, the expressway had been wide enough for me to maneuver through, but thousands upon thousands of cars all stalled in the city, well now, there was just no way for me to drive between them.
I groaned as I gazed into the maze of traffic, though not nearly as loudly, of course, as the throng of undead on all sides, milling everywhere, also blocking my path. I looked left and right and up and down seeking a solution. I managed the slightest of grins as I repeated the process, my head frozen in the up position, because though I was in a golf cart, yes, it was a security golf cart. In other words, there was a motorized speaker system welded to the top of the vehicle.