The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home

Chapter 3 - Clio

After the call with Okie had ended I felt at loose ends. Waiting for the arrival of a loved one can be stressful, especially when the future is strewn with potential dangers. I did not relish the images I was sure would come with nightfall as I tossed around in the damp although freshly-laundered sheets trying to sleep: my sweet Okie clotting on the soft shoulder of the highway like a discarded cream-filled cookie with a few bites taken out, leaking filling onto the gravel. Or worse: Okie infected in her turn, knocking at Grandma’s door like Little Red Riding Hood, only to turn into the wolf and leap upon me growling and worrying at my saggy throat. Or even worse: myself turned Zrabid, forgetful of everything about Okie except the delicious odour of her lip-licking blood and melt-in-your-mouth flesh, hiding behind the front door, creaking it open it to her trusting ring, then gobbling her all up.

But such fantasies had to be postponed until shadowfall. It was still sunshiny, still early afternoon, sharp-edged and comprehensible, a time for advance planning. Take hold of reality, I told myself sternly. Map it out. Prepare your arsenal. Don’t crumble and whine.

According to the Daily Spider – a silly name for an online news service; many online sites have silly names, though with this particular one I suppose they intended some sort of winking reference to the World Wide Web – according to the Spider, Okie’s home location of Queens, New York, had checked out “ClearZ,” though there had evidently been at least one slip-up or Sumatra would not have fallen apart like that. I suspected the less than A-list cosmetic work she’d had done a month before – an unclean scalpel, perhaps, or a careless nurse who’d gone dancing off-limits a few nights before. Sumatra had frequently nipped and tucked herself over the years, rearranging her wrinkles and hoisting up her jowls and torquing her eyebrows into ridiculously high arches, but none of the previous adjustments had had such disastrous results.

Because Queens was relatively clear, the Z-Liner containing Okie and – with luck – the relatively replete and therefore sedate Sumatra would be able to make it through its streets without incident. But once into the outskirts with their deserted warehouses, then further, into the woodlands and rocky fields on the long run up to Toronto – it would be ten hours at least – who could tell what perils might be encountered?

I had every confidence in Z-Line – I’d heard praiseworthy things about them, and had done my research in Consumer Reports (“A superior delivery service, known for adroit handling of the most bulky and awkward packages”); but I did hope they’d chosen one of their more experienced drivers. Also one who’d be able to keep it zipped: Okie is an attractive young lady, and ten hours with her in an adrenaline–sodden Z-Liner with the added erotic charge of imminent death might prove tempting, for both of them.

It’s not that I’m old-fashioned or a purist. I’m aware of what sort of experimentation the young people get up to; I was after all once young myself. Not that we had the latitude then. But from experience I know that those indulging in passion are blind and deaf to their surroundings. They get carried away, they relax their vigilance, they become defenseless, easy prey. Not to mention the added handicaps posed by dropped trousers and shoeless feet, so difficult to run away in. The Spider has run many stories – warning stories, cautionary stories – about such heedless entanglements. “Amorous Couple in Parked Car Torn Apart by Slavering Z-mob.” “Praying Mantis Death: Female Z Entices Victim at Truck Stop, Devours Face in Mid-Act.” Headlines like that catch one’s attention.

No point lecturing Okie about this matter via text, however. She’d just think I was being prudish. “Prudent is not the same as prudish,” I used to tell my poor and now deceased son, Norman. He didn’t listen though: he’d fallen victim to the enticements of that conniving and heavy-handed bloodsucker and mind-twister, Sumatra, and now she’d destroyed him, just as I’d warned him she would. “She’ll destroy you,” I used to say. “She’ll wear you down. She’ll undermine your self-confidence. She has an insatiable ego.”