She put her hand on my shoulder. “No, a perfect disguise is dressing like a man. She’ll never expect it.”
This time my own sigh came easier. “Or recognize me.”
She gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Ta da!”
Her face lit up. Mine sunk in on itself. In three hundred years, I hadn’t worn guy drag. Life—what there was of it—was drab enough. Still, she had a point. In fact, she was pointing to the store, her squeezing hand pushing me toward it. “You don’t have to shove.”
She chuckled. “Don’t I?”
Stupid theater folk, I thought; bitch knew her gay men all too well. And so in I trudged, shooing off the two undead store clerks before we perused the musty, dusty, beige and navy and gray men’s clothes. “Blech,” I wretched.
“It’s not that bad,” she cooed, her hands pushing through the racks of clothes when I no longer had the heart (figuratively speaking) to. “How about this outfit?” she asked a short while later, slacks and a button down and loafers held out for me.
“The heels are less than a half an inch high!” I protested.
“You’re not helping, Creature.”
In truth, I wasn’t trying to. Still, Dara and Ricky needed me, and quickly, so I stopped my belly-aching (again, figuratively speaking) and got dressed. She had to help me, which was even more embarrassing, and then had to peel and pry and scrub and buff the makeup off my face, but eventually I was, sob, dressed like a boy.
“Did I already say blech?” I asked, both of us staring at my refection in the dusty mirror.
She nodded. “Yep.”
“Can I say it again?”
Her hand was again squeezing my shoulder. “Pretend in your head that you’re made up like Marlene Dietrich, like a girl dressing like a boy.”
She was now pushing me through the front door. “Genius,” I allowed.
“Yes, we’ve already covered that,” she said, once we were again heading to the disco. “Now, amass the troops.”
Standing in the middle of the street, with zombies trudging this way and that, I lifted my hands up to the sky and shouted, “If you can hear my voice, surround us!”
Suddenly, I knew what the cowboys felt like when the Indians were circling the wagons. Except that the Indians knew to keep a certain distance. “Too close,” panted Lola, her fingers pinching her nose.
“Too close!” I shouted. “Everyone keep a foot or so between each other and three from us.”
It took a while for them to figure that one out, mathematics not being a zombie’s strong point, but eventually we had a ring of about fifty or so of them around us, like an undead fortress wall.
“Now tell them to obey me,” Lola said.
I nodded. “Whatever she says goes!” I looked her way and smiled. “Care to take a crack at it?”
Her smile mirrored mine as she glanced round and round. “Stop groaning!” she commanded.
And, wouldn’t you know it, that’s just what they did, a welcome silence enveloping the area around us. “Good job, Queen Lola.” And a queen knows another queen when she sees one.
“But how long will my powers last?” she asked, squelching my smile in an instant.
“Hard to say,” I replied.
“Try.”
I squinted my eyes and thought of the last time I’d commanded zombies to do something, and ones that weren’t the ones back home. “If I don’t give them a booster shot of some sort, I’d say you have a good hour or so, give or take ten minutes. Then they’ll simply wander off until I command them again. Moving forward, they’ll only ever listen to me, which is how imprinting sort of works, I believe.”
She grabbed my hand. “Then we better hurry.”
And so, en masse, we hobbled toward the disco. Once we arrived, a swarming circle of us, we found that the building was now surrounded by guards, way more of them than before. Blondella, it appeared, wasn’t taking any chances. Not this time.
“Tell your queen that she has company!” shouted Lola, at the dead (seriously dead) center of our group.
The largest guard, the one blocking the front door, who was, in fact, almost as large as the front door itself, moved an inch forward. “And who the fuck are you?” He was scary to behold (seriously, scary).
Lola put her hand to her chest and turned her face in profile. “I?” she projected. “I Am Lola Fontaine. The Lola Fontaine.”
He eyed her, clearly unsure of how to respond. I was quite certain that his only job was to guard the door, presumably from me. But here was Lola, who, by all accounts, looked human. Had he even seen a human since his death/undeath? Doubtful, not unless he was used by Blondella on Liberty Island. And I doubted any of the traitors came to Blondella because you’d have to be one hell of a crazy-ass human to surround yourself with brain-hungry zombies. Heck, they even gave me the heebie-jeebies, and I’m one of them, give or take.
“Up the ante,” I whispered her way. “Give him no choice but to go get her.”
She nodded and again turned his way. “Tell Blondella that I know that she has accomplices on Liberty Island.”
His eyes grew wider. This had to be secret numero uno, secret prime. “Wait here,” he barked. “I’ll see if the mistress is available.”
I snickered as I stood there, scowling. “The mistress. Please, Mary. Give me a fucking break. Bitch is from Sacramento. Bitch shopped for her clothes on Amazon. Even her wigs were hand-me-downs.” A head shake joined my snicker. “Mistress my stunningly perky ass.”