“Stop,” I said to him. He froze in mid-shuffle. “Drop the cane.” He tried, he really did, but his hand had been locked like that for too long. In other words, he needed some help. From, yuck, me. “Sorry,” I said as I wrenched each finger loose from the wood, the sound of popping knuckles and cracking bones almost too much to bear. Still, eventually, the cane went from his hand to my own. “Um, thanks much.” He didn’t reply, just stared into the oblivion. “Guess your intermission went on a bit longer than expected, huh?” I got a groan for my troubles. Hard to tell if it was for my dark sense of humor or not. I was going with the latter.
In any case, after that, I found some loose rags behind a nearby bar. I stared longingly at the vast array of dusty gin and vodka and tequila bottles before wrapping the rags around the end of the cane. Had I been able to drink, without the consequence of promptly exploding from within, I would’ve gladly glugged every last bottle. Because three hundred years of forced sobriety was, to be quite honest, cruel and unusual punishment.
After that, I dribbled some vodka on the rags, fired up my ocular beams, and, voila, instant torch. The fire felt warm against my cold flesh, though even that was muted by the death that constantly enveloped me. I paused, then moved to the theater doors. This wasn’t going to be nice. No way, no how. I mean, outside was one thing, and one bad thing at that, but a room chock-full of zombies, thousands of them, confined, was sure to be nasty. No, wait. NASTY. That’s more like it.
And, yes, I wasn’t disappointed. Or, better yet, yes I was. Big time.
I swung the door open and was very nearly overcome by the stench of them, by the sound of them, by the utter darkness that filled the huge void within, stretching far beyond the light of my makeshift torch.
“Silence!” I shouted, my voice echoing out in all directions, the acoustics in the theater, not surprisingly, first-rate.
The moans and groans abruptly stopped. Too bad the heady aroma of death and decay kept coming. And coming. Until my nose felt like it was fairly melting off of me. “If anyone has some Binaca, now would be a good time to use it.” I waited. “No? A Tic Tac? Altoid? Anything?” Still nothing. Oh well. At least they were an attentive lot. And a drag queen simply adores a rapt audience.
I looked at my flame. It was already starting to flicker and die. This was my chance. No way was I going any further into the cavernous crypt if I didn’t absolutely need to, and so, with face tilted up, I bellowed, “If your name is Lola, um, groan, please.” In an instant, I heard it coming from the stage, one deep, rumbling growl that made my very bones shake. “Lola,” I whispered. “Thank God.” I stared ceilingward. “Sorry it’s been so long. Guess I’ve had little to be thankful for as of late.”
Still, the groan had come from the stage. Me, I was barely inside the theater. And no way could she see, let alone climb down any steps to get to me. If there was a back door, it was sure to be locked, so that wasn’t an option either. Which meant that I had to go and get her, in a densely-packed theater full of stinking zombies, and, in mere minutes, in the pitch black, unless I lit and relit the torch until we were both back outside. And Lord, thanked or not, knew how long that would take.
“What to do, what to do,” I lamented. And then, in a burst of inspiration, I thought of another option. This was, after all, a theater. Not a music theater, mostly, at least not the sort that played my kind of music, but the concept was the same. Meaning, this could work: “Everyone that still can, stand up. Those in the front of the theater, move to the edge of the stage.”
Now then, if the sound of one old man’s hands popping and creaking and crunching was almost too much to take, imagine if you will the sound of hundreds upon hundreds of long-unused legs and laps and knees straightening as one. Satan himself would’ve cringed at what followed.
“Everyone in the audience, lift your hands up!” I hollered next, my voice echoing out in all directions, before I added, “Now, Lola, walk to the front of the stage and fall backward.” I couldn’t see if she’d done what I said, but I assumed her rigid body was now prone, lifted high above the undead audience in a truly gruesome sort of mosh pit. “Okay, everyone who comes in contact with a zombie above your heads, pass her to the back of the theater.” I grinned. “And no gropie-hands. The lady, after all, is married.”
And so I waited there, as my torch dimmed and flickered and sputtered, whistling a happy tune, if only in my head. Then, fifteen minutes later, after lighting and relighting my flame, using a jacket I found in a nearby empty seat to replace the rags, there she was. Or, at least, there her back was. “Set her down,” I instructed. “Gently.”
Which was like telling an elephant to walk quietly. In other words, down the zombie hands went and down she fell, landing in a dull thud at my feet. I bent down, not easily, mind you, and helped her up, which was very nearly impossible, especially with one hand, seeing as my other hand was still carefully holding the torch. Because if I’d started a fire in there, it was impossible to tell which would make it to the front of the building first: it or me.