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I walked by a wall covered in concert fliers. There were also zombie
hunting fliers – but not mine. Seemed like others were getting
into the business. There was Jackson “The Killer”
Ooperson, Percy “Stinging” Hurrowsy, Dina “Fisting”
Costello, Roy “Face Master” Gastone...and others. I was
happy to hear it. A little competition seemed like fun. Maybe I'd
make a friend or two?

That female zombie – the one that wanted me to “save her”
– popped into my mind. Maybe it was time to start up again.

Maybe it was time to make more zombie hunting fliers.

After a month of posting fliers, clients started calling me up,
started knocking on my door. And business was good. At one point, I
even eased down on the drinking – cutting down to just five
beers a day. Things were looking up. Many of us were kept busy. There
were many zombies to go around. Weird. It was a sudden burst of
activity. The great 2000's zombie boom.

I stayed single.

I drank; I ate...I killed aka
saved
.

Had many adventures: Fights with zombie hunters, ghost hunters,
exorcists, fights with choking ghosts. I call that time Doom
Business, because it was around then that all these paranormal
extermination businesses started popping up: Zombie hunters, troll
hunters, ghost hunters, Japanese ghost hunters, Indian ghost hunters,
on and on it went with these guys showing up. But that's all for
another book.

And then that ghost portal showed up, and all
hell
broke
loose....

CHAPTER
THREE

THE BIG
CLEAN UP

Every now and then, I'd find some alcohol in a building or rundown
store.

Time to relax. I was in an abandoned office building, way up above
the city. The sun tanned my face. I always went up there in the
morning to drink Jack Daniel's – just eased in a dusty office
chair, my feet up on a messy desk, staring out at the ocean,
listening to the wind whistle through the busted window. I remember
seeing a boat, way off in the distance. It was frozen in the classic
'sinking position', nose up and aimed at the clouds. It was
surrounded by smaller boats, all empty and surely littered with
corpses.

My eyes grew heavy. It was time for a short, drunken nap.

A scream.

It was a woman.

I knew that beautiful sound anywhere.

I jumped up, fell out of my chair, and crawled to the window and
looked down at the street of overturned cars and trucks. A woman
stood with her arms up. Three ghosts were flying all around her. But
she wasn't screaming out of fear. She was happy.
Laughing
. The
ghosts flew into her and took her soul away – carrying it up to
the clouds, to the ghost portal. I ran outside and leaned next to her
body.

She was dead, but she was smiling.

Drunk, I stood up and shook my fist at the ghosts.

“Take me!” I begged. “Come back, you bastards. Come
back!” I fell to my knees.

“Save
me
....”

But those ghosts, they just laughed.

My first effort in killing myself was an epic fail. Laughable, even.

It was pretty standard. I went into the woods, flung a rope over a
branch and tried to strangle myself. I remember looking up at the sky
as I put that badly-made noose around my neck. “I'm gonna do
it. Might as well come on down, you ghosts,” I said, voice
shaking. “Dinner's ready. Come and get it!”

I jumped...and the branch snapped in two, and I rolled down that hill
like a damn fool. Hurt myself pretty bad, too.

The second time, I tried swallowing 100 headache pills, but I just
ended up vomiting all over my legs.

Third time, I tried jumping off a building, but I panicked. I was too
scared. A strong wind kicked up, and I lost my balance. Jesus Christ!
Did you see that?? I almost
fell
! I had to save myself by
grabbing onto the side of that window – broken glass and all.

“You bastards....” I said to no one in particular. “You
dirty, rotten bastards....”

After much thought, I was sure I was self-sabotaging my efforts in
some unconscious way. I didn't wanna kill myself. And it wasn't just
because I didn't have the guts (and I didn't), but because I really
did
wanna live a little bit longer.

Why?

Not sure.

I just did.

Man...how do
they
do it? I guess when you really want to kill
yourself, your mind just goes blank and you just do it. All hope is
lost. Bye, Cruel World.

The following days after that were spent running down the streets,
just screaming at the top of my lungs.

“Aaaaaaarrrrrghhhhhhh!”

I sounded like a sea lion. Not too clear why I did it. Maybe I was
just releasing some steam. Maybe I was bored. Maybe, when you're the
last man on Hawaii, you just end up doing questionable bull crap. I
kept seeing more and more people – on the streets, on the
beach, in the woods, on rooftops – giving themselves to the
ghosts, and each time, the ghosts would take their souls up to the
ghost portal. And that wasn't it. As the nights crawled by, I kept
getting this...sense...this tug in my stomach...that something bad
was coming – like the whole island – maybe even the whole
world – was clearing out. Something
bad
was coming. What
was I to do? I couldn't get off Oahu. I could take a boat; maybe
learn to drive it. Wouldn't hurt to try. So that's what I did. I went
over to the docks, in Ala Moana, and climbed onto a rich man's yacht.

No keys.

Of course.

So then I start looking for a rowboat, but who has a friggin' rowboat
in this day and age? As I walked around, thinking about how to off
the island, I thought I saw Shells down in the distance...down some
street. The sun was in my eyes – yes – playing tricks on
me! Strange vision. It looked like she was with that prick Slovoth.

Strange, odd hallucination....

Morning.

I cleaned my condo – washed some dishes, scrubbed a few
doorknobs – and went outside in search of food, something other
than Spam. Right outside the Neal Blaisdell Concert Hall, a dead man
sat on the bus stop. Not a zombie. Just a dead guy. I touched his
shoulder with my finger and pushed. The body fell over on its side.
He seemed fresh. I moved on....

I walked down to Straub Hospital, walked by an ambulance with its
back doors open and swinging in the breeze. I looked in for some
reason. I didn't know what I expected to see. Maybe dead people, I
don't know. The hospital doors still worked: They felt me walking
close and slid open. I went into the kitchen, or mess hall, or
wherever doctors ate, opened the refrigerator and found some food:
Some tuna and mayonnaise. I mixed them in a bowl and ate, then I went
back out under the boiling sun and defrosted a frozen can of corn.

It was splendid. Really great stuff, right there. And then that old,
familiar feeling came over me. It would happen sometimes – just
out of nowhere: I'd get the Fear.

Like I said, it would just
happen
. My body would say, “You
might wanna get the heck out of here, Boss. Something's wrong with
this picture. Something's coming.”

So I listened and headed back home, eating that corn.

At the bus stop, I noticed something queer.

That fresh, dead guy was gone.

Maybe he turned into a zombie and up and left?

Maybe.

But, then again, maybe
not
.

I hadn't seen a zombie in a looong time – not since that ghost
portal arrived.

Again...the Fear.

I dropped my can of corn and spun around. Felt like eyes were on me,
examining me.

“Who's there!” I yelled.

Wind. Hissing sun.

I looked at the scene, squinting and looking some more.

As I was walking back home, I saw another woman surrounded by ghosts.
She was on the roof of a car, jumping up and down, reaching up to one
of them ghosts. It was an older ghost – male. The woman kept
saying, “Johnny! You've come back for me! Take me with you!
I've
missed
you!” The old ghost – Johnny –
laughed like a deranged monkey and flew through her chest, dragging
out her soul, flying her up into the sky. I think I saw them bastards
kissing –
french
kissing.

Her body dropped dead.

Just then...an old, red truck done pulled up, and a big man wearing
one of them black dominatrix masks come walking out. It went over his
head, and his hair stuck out at the back where the zipper ended. He
looked like something out of a
Mad Max
movie. This guy waved
to the truck, and a woman, also wearing the mask (a red one), come
jumping out the back bed. They both walked over to the woman's body
and picked her up by the wrists and ankles and tossed her into the
back of the truck. I was hiding behind a bus stop the whole time. As
they drove away, I saw that the back of the truck was filled with
bodies...and that girl was having a little snack, munching on a
severed hand.

Cannibals,
I thought.
Sweet sassy molassy.

A-zigging and a-zagging behind trees and buildings and derelict
automobiles, I was able to follow the truck a little. These
cannibals, they lived in an abandoned, local restaurant that
specialized in Zimbabwe hamburgers, called Mouth Palace. I hid behind
a car and watched as they pulled up to the front and dragged out
bodies.

Then they walked into their home/restaurant and locked the doors.
They had painted the windows black. Why? I didn't know. Not like
anyone was snooping around. Well, I guess 'cept for me.

I walked to the door and brought my hands up against the window and
tried to peek inside, and then I heard something.

Screaming.

But not just normal screaming.

Bloody
screaming.

Sounds of murder.

Something heavy banged up against the windows. Other people were in
there, trying to get out – all yelling and fighting and begging
and calling out for Jesus. I looked around and found a big ol' rock,
so I's picked it up, but before I threw it, I looked up to the
clouds.

If I do this, will you take me?
I thought, really trying to
shoot my mental words into the sky.
Will you guys save me? Huh?

No answer (although the sun did appear from behind a cloud and
blinded me a little).

Good enough,
I thought...and threw the rock at the door.

The thing
shattered
. A naked old woman and a naked man ran
out, both limping, both shielding their eyes from the loud sun. That
cannibal man ran out after them, wielding the biggest butcher's knife
I ever did done see. I reached behind me and took out one of my small
knives and jumped on his back and slit his throat. His blood shot out
in glittering streams and went SPLAT on the ground like thick rain –
splat, splat, splat! He fell to his knees, holding his neck. He spun
on his knees to see the jerk that did him in, and when he saw me, he
reached out and curled his fingers...then fell on his face.

His girlfriend screamed and ran out to get me. She was waving a
samurai sword around in the air, and something told me she had no
idea how to use it right. She took a sloppy swing down at me, and I
stepped to the side real easy-like. The blade dug into the concrete,
setting off a spark. She tried to yank the sword free, but it
wouldn't give.

I kicked her in the face, and she back flipped through the air, her
mask flying off. She landed hard on her head, and she moved around in
pain, gripping her stomach. She was young, probably just a teenager.
The girl snarled at me, acting like some kind of crazed, uncivilized
animal. I pulled out the sword and held it high above my head. A part
of me didn't want to kill a living person; but another part of me
said,
Not human. She deserves to die. All monsters deserve to die.
Cannibals. Not human. Do it. Kill her. The world will be a safer
place. You'll sleep better at night.

“Just a monster,” I said, and chopped her head off in
three tries. The girl made a pathetic sound right before I did her
in. It was something like a yelp.

Jesus. She sounded human enough.

I stepped back and looked up at the sky.

No ghosts came.

Not one.

Back home, as a mad storm kicked at the windows, I had a terrible
dream.

I'm back there at that restaurant, in the freezing rain, at night,
and I'm killing those two cannibals all over again. I take off the
dead man's mask, and it's...Slovoth, still missing his eye. I walk
over to the girl's severed head and, after a whole minute thinking
about it first, I take off her mask, and what I see knocks the
strength from my knees.

It's Shells.

I woke up
screaming
and
crying
.

I put my clothes on and ran out and ran, ran, ran back to that
restaurant, my heart pounding in my ears. I ran through that stinging
rain that felt like needles on my face, through all that thunder and
lightning.

When I got to Mouth Palace, the bodies were still there. Dogs were
eating parts of the male cannibal. I yelled at them, and those dogs
ran off complaining with his fingers in their mouths. I leaned over
his body, kicked over his heavy bulk, and worked at taking his mask
off.

It
was
Slovoth.

Odd reaction: I fell on him and started attacking that dead man,
elbowing his face, screaming at him, strangling him. After minutes of
that BS, I stood up. I was lost for a second.

Where am I? What am I doing here? Dear God, what's
happening
?

It was time to check on the girl I beheaded.

And I didn't wanna do it. I didn't want to know. My body walked
there, but my brain was screaming, begging not to do it. The girl's
body was still there. The rain picked up, and it was like she was in
a river that threatened to carry her away. I could see her pruned
fingers.