Zombie Pink (25 page)

Andrea forced herself to stare at the bloody woman banging on her basement window.

She needed to get a grip.

There’s no way the woman could know that she fantasized about her husband.
There was just no way!

She needed to stop watching so many horror movies and zombie shows
. The poor woman
was sick... or maybe she had been attacked by someone....

B
ut a revenge seeking zombie?
Come on
!

"We should help her!" Andrea decided, thinking that would make up for the guilt she felt about indulging in inappropriate sexual fantasies about the woman's husband.

"How?" Patty asked
. "She looks...creepy. Besides, she'll get blood everywhere. Your dad will be mad, Andrea
! M. A. D
. D.!"

"One D, Patty," Drew said.

"Yea, he'll think you had a zombie party!” Lisa joked, despite the fact this was
no time for jokes.

"We should just call the police and let them handle it," Drew announced
, always the voice of reason.

Drew extracted her cell phone and punched in 9-1-1.

"No one's answering!" Drew reported.

"No one's answering 9-1-1?" Lisa asked
. "Maybe something's wrong with your phone."

Lisa and Andrea both tried 9-1-1 on their
phones. Patty, however, seem
ed to have entered into her own world, which involved singing "Doo-a diddy - diddy dum - diddy doo," and staring up at the ceiling.

Andrea marched purposely over to Patty and said simply, "Phone!" while holding her hand out.
"Patricia! Phone?"

"I like your bracelets," Patty replied absently, referring to the green glow-in-the-dark bracelets adorning Andrea's wrist.

"You have the same exact ones," Andrea reminded her dizzy friend.

"Oh...yea!" Patty said brightly. Then she giggled.

"How many beers did you have, girl?" Andrea huffed.

Then she retrieved Patty's silver Christian Dior handbag from the bottom
stair and fished out the girl's pink bejeweled cell phone.
Typical Patty - always trying to have what the celebrities have.
However, Patty's phone produced no better results than her own..

"Okay. That's really creepy!"
Andrea remarked.

"Maybe they're all on an espresso break," Lisa offered.

"Lisa...stop with the crappy humor," Andrea warned her
. "This isn't
the time to be flip."

"Flip?" Lisa asked
, laughing. "Like a flip-flop? You’re the flip-flop, Andrea. That’s all you ever wear on your fee
t.”

"I'm trying the local police," Drew informed us. "Only I don't know the number, so I have to call information.
I mean, who ever calls the local police?
"

"Hey, ugly!" Lisa addressed
the woman frantically banging on the glass. "
Wanna be on top?"

Lisa placed
her hand up against the window. This cause
d the woman go ballistic, smooshing her weird skinny black lips against the glass and making them open and close.

Just like Michael Fishman kissing me
, Andrea thought ironically
.

Lisa placed her puffy lips against the window and pretended to kiss the woman back.

"Gross..." Andrea said, feeling sick to her
stomach. "LISA, CUT IT OUT! WHAT THE HELL'S YOUR PROBLEM?"

“Oh stop, Miss Prude,” Lisa growled, backing away from the window and fanning herself. “She’s just so hot I can’t help myself!"

"Nobody's picking up the phone at information, either," Drew reported.

Andrea tried 4-1-1 on her
phone. There
was
nothing but a rapid busy signal.

She didn't want to call her parents for fear they would think she couldn't handle herself
. Then they would
probably insist they come home, which would really make Andrea feel like an incompetent child.

"Why is that woman acting like that?" Patty suddenly asked
, scratching her mosquito bite. "I mean, that's not normal, right? What if she's high on something? She could be dangerous."

"And what's all over her skin?” Drew asked
. “Maybe it's something contagious."

"I think she's been badly hurt by someone," Andrea said, as the woman frantically clawed at the glass. "Or some
thing
...."

"Yea, but what if whatever hurt her is still lurking out there?" Drew asked, pointing to the window.

"Oh, you mean like that cute little coyote you were talking about?" Lisa put in, snidely
.

"Coyotes aren't cute," Andrea pointed out.

"That's it!" Lisa cried out, like she had
just discovered the answer to the universe. "
She has rabies!"

"Do people still get rabies?" Andrea asked. "Is it contagious?"

"I don't think so..." Drew answered
. "A
nyway, you can go to the doctor and get a shot in the stomach.
But
I don't think it's rabies.
She's not foaming at the mouth
. Hey
wait! Look at her now!"

Andrea made herself look
towards the window. The woman
had stopped banging on the glass and now appeared
to be crying. She
was almost acting almost like a normal person... a normal person in deep despair,that is, trying desperately to communicate with them
.

Pleading for help.

The woman's palms were open, exposing the nasty pinkish-purple discoloration that had claimed her skin.

"That's weird," said
Drew. "
She looks so pathetic, I actually feel sorry for her. Now
I don't know what to do. Maybe I should call my mom."

"NO!" Andrea shouted
. "No parents
.
We can handle this ourselves
."

"Okay smarty pants," Patty said, rubbing her chubby b
are arms. "What should we do? We can't get through to the police....wait...what was I saying? God, I have the worst headache!"

"We'll let her in," Lisa decided.

"ARE YOU INSANE?" Andrea shrieked.

Andrea did want to help the woman. But she wanted to help in a way that didn't involve
her coming into the house.

"Why of course I'm insane, darling!" Lisa replied
in a fake English accent. "Another lovely guest for the party! How
utterly delightfully! I do hope we have enough caviar and scones!"

Andrea tossed
Lisa a dirty look. Then
she turned her attention back to the woman outside the window.

"She could be dying..." Andrea said
. "Oh, okay. Maybe we'll just let her lay on the couch until we can reach a hospital or something.
Maybe she needs a glass of water. I know! We can call her husband for her and he can come get her. Maybe he doesn't know where she is."

Despite the incredibly weird circumstances that would bring Mr. Sexy Jogger right to Andrea's doorstep, she couldn't help but feel excited at the prospect of seeing him.

Immediately, she stopped herself.

What the hell is wrong with me
? Andrea asked herself.

"Okay," said
Drew, taking another look at the pitiful woman bawling her eyes out on the other side of the window. "But put a sheet
or something on the couch, first."

"In the laundry room!" Andrea exclaimed
, jumping up from the couch. "I'll get it."

"WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING IN YOUR BACKYARD AT THIS TIME OF NIGHT ANYWAY?" Drew called in, as Andrea hunted around the stacks of folded laundry
for an old sheet. “D
O YOU KNOW HER?”

"NO!”
Andrea replied.
“I mean, I think I’ve seen her out in her yard
.
She lives right on this street. But I don’t
know
her, know her. I’ve just seen her.”

Andrea didn't tell Drew any more than that. She didn't want to admit that this strange woman with the weird skin rash was the wife of the hot guy Andrea had nick-named Mr. Sexy Jogger
.

Andrea would never tell anyone about her married guy fantasies because she was well aware of how juvenile those fantasies were.

Talk about a fucking cliché!

The hot married guy who jogs by her house every evening
? That
was more lame than a twilight movie.

No...more lame than the lamest Taylor Swift song!

Andrea finally dug up an old green sheet
that was shoved in the bottom of the hamper. It fit her
parent’s king-sized bed and hadn't been washed yet
. It
wasn't one of the better sheets
. It
sported some mysterious stains and was kind of faded.

Andrea grabbed the sheet out of the hamper and brought it over
to the couch. First,
she removed
the Pier One Imports pillow.
She didn't want
anything to happen to that. Then
she shook out the olive drab sheet and draped it over the couch.

"Also, don't touch her," Drew cautioned.

"Oh!” Lisa pouted
. “I’m dying to touch her! She’s so sexy!”

"Wait. I know!"
Andrea announced, bolting into the unfinished part of the basement which was dubbed "the laboratory" by her
parents.
It was where Andrea's parents made the e-juice for their business
.

Andrea emerged from the room with a pair of blue medical grade gloves for herself and each of her friends.

"Will we be conducting surgery?" Drew asked.

"My parents have to wear these when they make e-juice," Andrea explained
. "They can't get any nicotine on their skin. They
also protect you from germs and bacteria and bodily fluids and just about anything, I guess."

"Yummy! I love bod
y fluids!" Lisa quipped, putting on the
gloves.
"Especially certain ones, heh-heh...."

“How about rabies?” Patty asked, first smelling the gloves, then studying them. "Will they protect us from rabies?"

"Do you have to smell everything?" Lisa asked, sounding annoyed.

“I guess so,” Andrea replied, in answer to Patty's question about rabies.

When the girls finished donning the gloves, Andrea couldn't help but think how strange they looked wearing medical gloves with glow stick jewelry.
L
ike ghoulish characters out of some weird cult medical show.

Andrea wasn't sure if allowing this woman into her house was
the right thing to do.
However, the woman was from right down the street, so it wasn't like she was a complete stranger
.

But what if she dies in my basement
? Andrea worried.
Will people blame me
?

In her head, Andrea saw a trial going on.
The mood was very dark and serious.

“She wanted this woman’s husband!” the hard-nosed lawyer in the gray vest declared, pointing at Andrea
. “She did this! She’s guilty!
She
promised him mind-blowing blow-jobs!”

In this decidedly
non-sexy
fantasy, Andrea is
dressed very conservatively, wearing a maroon and navy blue argyle sweater over a crisp white blouse with a dark blue neck-tie, and a longish navy blue wool skirt.
Her thick honey colored hair is pulled back on one side with a dark blue – no – pearl bobby-pin.

“I’m innocent!” Andrea pleads
. “I was only trying to help her! That’s why I let her lay on my couch!”

“Andrea, are you okay?” Drew suddenly asked.

Andrea shook the courtroom scene out of her head.

“Not really,” she replied.

What if the woman has some deadly disease, like
Ebola or bird flu or bubonic plague?
Andrea thought.
I don’t want to risk my life for someone I don't even know
!

Suddenly, Andrea changed her mind.

"Hey, you guys, maybe we..." she started to say.

But it was
too late. Lisa
was already half-way up the basement stairs.

"LISA, STOP!" Andrea yelled
, running after her.

But Lisa was too fast - even in her mile-high heels
. She
was already clumping to the back door and....opening it.

"OH FUCK!" Andrea shouted.

Andrea chickened out at that point, and ran
back down into the basement.

Then Drew and Andrea just stared
at each other. Patty seem
ed lost in her own little world again, staring at the ceiling and humming a tuneless melody.

"OH ANDREA, YOU'RE TURNING INTO A DONKEY!" Patty suddenly screeche
d.