Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (45 page)

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Drip ’n’ Dry was a little busier than Josh expected for a graveyard shift. On most late runs like this he had the place to himself, not counting Mrs. Alvarez, who––along with her husband––owned the Laundromat. She was always there, usually stationed behind the counter like she was tonight, making change for the customers so they could use the washers and dryers. Josh couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her old man put in an appearance; he probably only popped in when one of the machines was on the fritz. Not that it would kill him to pay a little more attention to the place. About fifteen of the ceiling tiles were heavily water-stained from the steam pipes above them, and had started sagging in the middle. The blue paint on the wall near the front windows had been scraped off at waist level, thanks to the customers sitting in plastic chairs, waiting for their loads to run their cycles. The strip of decorative wallpaper pasted just below the ceiling border—some kind of desert scene at sunset, with the sand painted a deep red against a pink-and-lavender sky—had peeled away in large swatches along the length of the entire Laundromat. And in the six or seven years Josh had been coming to this place, nobody had ever bothered to correct the sun-faded, misspelled sign taped to the wall above the washers:

Please

NO DYING

Everybody knew what it meant, though: the Alvarezes didn’t want customers dyeing their clothes in the washers, and have them end up ruining the next person’s laundry or crapping up the machines. Of course, it could also mean they didn’t want anybody croaking on the premises (might be bad for business, after all), so if they felt a sudden case of death coming on they should drag their ass somewhere else to deal with it. Josh had never bothered asking which one it was supposed to be.

About the only things that ever got some kind of regular maintenance were the arcade games in the right-hand corner at the back of the Laundromat, and the gumball machines that sat next to them. And that was because the company that owned them had a guy come in every few months to empty the coin boxes and swap out the games and stale candy for new selections. The
Mortal Kombat
and driving games he’d seen the last time he stopped by were still around, but Josh noticed that the Superballs, Skittles, and toy jewelry had been replaced with
Homies
figures,
Bratz
stickers, and some kind of sweet-and-sour jawbreakers. There wasn’t a metal-and-plastic ring to be found among the bunch, but that was probably for the best. After the trouble with Siobhan, he’d had his fill of cheap reconciliation gifts.

Mrs. A apparently didn’t need her husband around tonight, for work
or
companionship, not when she had a small black-and-white TV on the counter and four patrons of the laundry arts to keep her company. Along with Josh, there were a couple of twenty-something hipsters: a guy sporting a shaggy haircut parted in the center and a small soulpatch under his bottom lip, a bottle-blonde girl with dark roots showing everywhere and a silver nose-ring pierced through her right nostril, and some black-haired Hispanic chick with painted-on blue jeans and a tight gray t-shirt knotted in the back to make it even tighter. He caught a flash of a black Playboy bunny logo printed on the front as she turned to dip into a red metal shopping cart for another armful of clothes.

Josh tilted his head to one side and stared hard at the woman. That mane of shoulder-length hair might be obscuring her face, but there was something awfully familiar about those major league boobs and that J-Lo-competitive ass… Then it hit him.

“Holy shit,” he croaked, his voice jumping an octave. “Marisol?”

She undoubtedly heard her name being called, even above the muffled roar of the washer next to her. She turned from the machine she’d been stuffing clothes into to face him. Her light hazel eyes grew wide and she grinned. “Oh, hey, Josh! Wha’cha doin’
here?”
she said in that heavily accented Queens voice of hers. It always reminded him of that movie actress Rosie Perez, only nowhere near as gratingly nasal.

“I live around the block,” he explained as he walked over to join her.

“Yeah? Me, too!” she said, clearly surprised. “Well, not
around
the block. Couple’a blocks over.” She gave him a playful little push on his chest. “Shit, I din’ know you was from ’round here! How come you never tol’ me?”

Josh shrugged. “Never came up. ’Sides, you woulda known about where I live if you just looked at the payroll records. I mean, you’re the one doin’ the accountin’, right?”

She frowned, clearly annoyed that he’d pointed out that oversight. “Yeah, well, guess I just never paid it no attention.” She gave a little shrug. “No biggie. So, how long you been livin’ in the ’hood?”

“‘The ‘hood,’ huh? Too fuckin’ long,” he said with a lopsided grin. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the front door. “I’m over in my parents’ house.” He saw her eyebrows start to rise and quickly added, “I mean, I don’t live
with
’em. They moved out years ago. Down to Florida. I got the house to myself.”

“
Pobrecito
,” she cooed in Spanish. “So you all alone, then? Got nobody t’go home to?” The way she said it, combined with the dismissive look she flashed as she gave him the once-over, didn’t add up to being any part of a seductive come-on. In fact, it seemed a hell of a lot more like she was mocking him.

“Don’t worry, you ain’t my type,” he replied dryly, somehow managing to avoid gritting his teeth while he said it. “But don’t get all choked up ’bout my situation, sweetheart. I know there’s
somebody
out there for me. I ain’t gonna be ‘all alone’ forever.”

She poked him in the belly with a dark blue fingernail. “Yeah, well, try losin’
this
first an’ maybe you’ll get lucky. Girls don’ go for fat guys ’less they got money”––she flashed a condescending grin––“and that’s somethin’ I
know
you ain’t got.” The grin widened. “I’m the one doin’ the accountin’, remember?”

Oh, here we go,
Josh thought.
Didn’t take long for her to start pullin’ out that fuckin’ Ginsu-tongue…

But if Marisol had any plans of further pruning his manhood, they were interrupted by the loud bang of something hitting one of the big glass windows. She gasped, and pointed over Josh’s shoulder. “Jesus Christ…what the fuck is
that?”

Josh turned around. His first impression had him thinking that a couple of neighborhood teenagers were horsing around in Halloween costumes. They were made up like zombies, with dirty and torn clothing and piles of gunky, discolored makeup covering their faces and hands. One guy’s head was tilted against his right shoulder as though his neck was broken; he had a thick layer of fake blood crusted around his mouth. The other moron had a dingy blue denim shirt unbuttoned to show off the major gash that bisected his stomach. It was a gaping wound with fake intestines poking out. Both deadheads stared into the Laundromat with wide, unblinking eyes, and pawed at the glass like they wanted in.

“Ah, it’s just a couple stupid kids,” Josh explained to Marisol. He turned back to the walking dead. “Hey, Halloween’s in
October,
ya fuckin’ mooks! Come back when they start passin’ out the candy-corn!”

Instead of taking his advice the jackasses continued pounding on the window, only now they added loud, melodramatically drawn-out moans to the act.
Well,
Josh thought,
at least you gotta give these shitheads
some
credit for stickin’ to their act.
But after another thirty seconds or so of the constant groaning and banging, it stopped being amusing and became annoying as all hell.

It was more than just annoying to Marisol. After her initial shocked reaction, she’d quickly regained her composure and started brandishing that sharp tongue of hers. Her obvious intention was slicing up a couple window zombies. A blessing in disguise, as far as Josh was concerned. Now that she had somebody new to pick on she’d completely forgotten her first target.

“
¡Hacete coger, putas!
” Marisol shouted at them with a sneer. “You
chaperos
are lucky I don’ come out there an’ kick your asses!” Josh noticed, however, that as angry as she was, as loud as she barked at the two kids, she made no move to run outside and carry out her threats. It was all talk and no action with Marisol Puente, apparently.

Or maybe it was because the zombie makeup was starting to freak her out; it sure looked like the
other
two customers were headed in that direction. The hipster couple was frozen in place, the guy having awkwardly positioned himself
behind
his girl.
Now
there’s
one brave motherfucker,
Josh thought sarcastically while the girl nervously chewed on her bright pink thumbnail and hugged herself for reassurance. Both of them looked about ready to shit a brick. But none of the prankster nonsense going on outside bothered Josh—he’d seen scarier, far more disgusting shit on medical shows that ran on the Discovery Channel, and that stuff was real.
This
was just a bunch of cheap makeup tricks and bad acting from teenagers with nothing better to do with their time. It wasn’t anything to get all worked up about.

Mrs. Alvarez wasn’t bothered by the spook show, either; in fact, she looked more pissed off than Marisol.
Probably afraid the dumbasses are gonna break the window with all that hammerin’,
Josh imagined. Slipping out from behind the counter with a broom in one hand and a ring holding the keys to the store in the other, she stomped up to the front door and flung it open.

“Stop that!” she ordered, pointing the broom handle at the kids. “Get away from there before I call the police!”

Immediately, the teenagers stopped their carrying on and slowly turned to face her. As Mrs. Alvarez and the potential vandals silently faced off, Josh suddenly heard the theme from that old Clint Eastwood Western,
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
, echo in his head.
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-wa-wa-waah…
He couldn’t help but smile.

“Oh,
this
oughtta be good,” said a male voice to his left. He glanced over to see that the two hipsters had moved up next to him, no doubt wanting a better view of the argument to come. Apparently Mrs. Alvarez’s charge had inspired Soul Patch to grow a backbone and stop hiding behind his girlfriend. “Five bucks says she cracks that broom handle over Joey McGutsy’s skull.”

Beside him, Little Miss Nose Ring giggled.

Josh frowned. “You know those two assholes?”

“Nuh-uh,” Soul Patch said with a quick, worried shake of his head. Probably thought Josh would pop him in the face if he admitted to being their buddy. “I was just, y’know, makin’ up a funny name for the guy with his guts hangin’—”

“Oh, shit!” Nose Ring squeaked, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as she looked past Josh. “What’re they doin’?”

Josh turned back to the window in time to see the zombie teens launching themselves at the old woman, arms outstretched and mouths hanging wide open.
Now they’re
really
goin’ over the top with that shit,
he thought.

Taken by surprise, Mrs. Alvarez stumbled back, her feet tangling around the broom’s dirty, splintered bristles. Spinning a half-turn as she tried to right herself, she instead lost her balance and crashed onto the sidewalk. The teens pounced on her like starving lions bringing down a gazelle.

“
H-help me!”
she screamed.
“Please somebody help me! They’re—AAAHH!—they’re biting me!”

It was more than just biting, though; even from fifteen feet away, Josh could see the blood—bright red under the store’s flourescent lighting and anything
but
fake—on the teens’ lips as their heads rose and dipped above the old woman’s struggling body. Biting? Shit, they were
chewing
on her!

“Shouldn’t we, like, do somethin’?” Nose Ring croaked. “Call the cops, maybe?”

Josh nodded mutely but apparently––like the others––he was too mesmerized by the violence to do anything more than stand and watch. It was a hell of a street show, too. For an overweight woman in her sixties, Mrs. Alvarez wasn’t going down without a fight. She kicked and punched the teens, slamming their faces with her elbows, driving her knees into their balls. But none of the blows did anything to convince them to break off the attack; in fact, her struggles seemed to excite them.

And then the one with the exposed guts bit down hard on her left leg, viciously snapped back his head, and tore out a chunk of her calf. He gobbled it down hungrily and went back for seconds.

Mrs. Alvarez shrieked loud enough to rattle the windows; the sound was
almost
high-pitched enough to match the scream that leapt past Marisol’s tonsils. Almost, but not quite. Josh winced, wondering if he’d ever hear clearly from his right ear again.

“Holy shit, they’re real!” Soul Patch yelled.

Yeah, they were real zombies, all right. And a lumbering movement under the streetlights on the corner of the block made Josh suddenly aware that the teens weren’t the only ghouls out for a late night stroll. They had company—
lots
of company. It looked like the cemetery over on the next avenue had opened its gates so every goddamn stiff in the joint could run loose. Problem was, they had only one thing in mind right now: answering the ringing dinner bell formed by Mrs. A’s vocal chords. Holy Christ, that woman could scream!

“Oh, God!” Marisol wailed, and hysterically clawed at Josh’s shirt. “There’s more of ’em!”

“I can see that!” he snapped, and pushed her away. “Get a fuckin’ grip, wouldja?”

“Whatta we gonna do?” Soul Patch asked. “When they’re done with the old lady, you
know
they’re gonna come in here for the main course!” He moved behind his girlfriend, what little backbone he’d developed in the past five minutes having oozed down his leg to join the trail of urine pooling at his feet.