Battle of the Network Zombies Read online

  He spun the girl away like a Frisbee, absolutely no regard for where she might land. She twirled a few times, collapsed in some other perv’s lap and started gyrating. Birch measured me in long sweeping stares. Head to toe, lingering on the tits and back to the head. “Sure am.” He extended his hand. “And you’re Amanda, lovely to meet you.”

  He pulled at my hand as though planning to pull off a gentlemanly knuckle kiss, but I snatched it back, wishing for a Clorox wipe. “Yeah. Um, you have some sort of business proposition, I’ve been told. Do you want to talk about that here or do you have a table somewhere? Maybe a private booth they reserve for regulars.”

  “You mean V.I.P.” He winked.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Just regular.”

  Birch nodded and chuckled off the jab under his breath.

  The next moment, the blaring 70s rock was silenced, an apparent signal for the strippers to make way for the principal dancer in this redneck ballet. They scrabbled off on bruised knees, wet hair dangling in clumps, bulldozing collapsing pyramids of dollar bills in front of them.

  Birch pointed toward the shack.

  The lights dimmed and a jaundiced glow rose behind the dirty shower curtain covering the front door of the facade. At the edges of the porch, slobbery men set down their jugs and hushed each other as though in reverence to approaching royalty. It became so quiet, I could hear the chickens scratching in their cages and crickets chirping or rubbing their legs together or whatever the fuck they do. Though that last bit was probably being pumped in through the speakers to set the mood. The stage light brightened until columns of dust motes stabbed into the audience from between the rusty metal curtain rings, stretching across the waves of corrugated roofing above and the five o’clock shadows of drooling businessmen below.

  And then she stalked into silhouette—no…shuffled is a better word—to the opening cowbells of Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog”—’cause really, what else would you expect?

  “Harry Sue!” I could have sworn someone yelled.

  “Harry Sue!” the crowd shouted back in liturgical response.

  “Harry Sue?” I asked Birch.

  “Short for Harriet, maybe?” He shrugged without taking his eyes off the dirty play unfolding.

  When the guitar roared in, Harry Sue snatched back the curtain and stomped out onto the porch in Daisy Duke overalls and the most hideous high heels—since when did Jellies make a heel? Her blond hair had been teased and tortured into massive pigtails, hay jutting from the strips of gingham holding them in place. Her face was pretty enough, if you could get past her wild eyes, bee-stung lips and the mass of fake freckles that sadly recalled the broken blood vessels of an alcoholic more than the fresh sun-kissed face of a farm girl.

  She didn’t tease the crowd of howling men much, making quick work of the denim overalls with two rehearsed snaps at each shoulder; they slid off her bone-thin frame and pooled around her ankles. The ensuing slapstick of Harry wrestling her feet out of the denim mess would have been charming had my eyes not been stuck to her undergarments. Not satisfied with a dirty wifebeater and some holey panties, the stripper wore cutoff Dr. Dentons, complete with the trap door. Of course, in true trashy stripper fashion, Harry Sue wore hers backwards.

  The room was filled with redneck boner and there I stood in the middle of it, without a vomit bag, a designer cocktail or a canister of mustard gas. You couldn’t move through the room without rotating aroused men like turnstiles and I had no intention of doing that. I did notice that Johnny Birch was standing awful close to me.

  Glad to see you, close.

  Too close.

  “That’s my asshole, asshole.” I jerked away from his probing fingers.

  Johnny grinned in response, totally deserving the punch I threw into his kidneys.

  “Ow!” He ran his fingers through his hair, eyes darting nervously at the men around us, as if any of them were looking for anything other than a beaver shot. “Jesus. It’s all in good fun.”

  “Touch me again and we’ll see who’s having fun.”

  “Aw.” He scowled.

  Harry Sue slunk down in one of the rockers and the men whimpered in unison—apparently prepared for what Harry Sue had in store for us. She rocked slowly, pivoting her ass forward on the edge of the chair until the flap was front and center. She toyed with the buttons, tweaking them like nipples.

  I glowered. Shot a glance at Birch. Wished I were drinking.

  The stripper got my attention when she unbuttoned one side of the flap, then the other, finally, exposing the biggest 70s bush I’d ever seen.6 It was massive. Afro-like. Harry Sue needed to be introduced to the wonders of Brazilian waxing, though she’d likely be charged extra. And then it clicked. The men weren’t yelling Harry Sue.

  They were shouting Hairy Sue.

  Still. It didn’t make sense.

  I’ve read Cosmo. I know men prefer shaved to bouffant. Yet they were clearly enthralled by this stripper. I watched more closely.

  Hairy (let’s just drop the Sue part; it never had any real value anyway) reached for the butter churn and pulled out the plunger, dripping melted butter down the front of her jammies.

  She peeked at the mess, frowned, then licked the end of the plunger before returning it to the churn. In one motion, she slipped out of the Dr. Dentons and reached into an aluminum pail next to the rocker and retrieved an ear of corn, which she preceded to shuck, using her teeth. She sprinkled her breasts with corn silk. With the ear she traced circles across her belly, her thighs and then, as though by accident, she dropped the cob on the porch, gasped and then slipped from the chair into a full split, hovering briefly above the ear before nestling it against her buttery crotch.

  I shifted from one foot to the other.

  There was absolutely nothing sexy about this. These guys were all perverts.

  Hairy Sue rose then and bowed to the wild applause and showers of dollar bills. She posed there like she owned that porch, corncob dripping and a fat smile spread across her face.

  The lights dimmed.

  “I’d sure like to see your bush.” Birch again. His lips curled into a lewd smile.

  I nearly vomited up my dinner (let’s not go into what that might have been, just yet). “Is that some kind of wood-nymph joke? ’Cause I’m done with your poor impulse control.”

  “Hey.” He stepped back, spread his arms and wiggled his fingers. “I can control the trees and stuff.”

  I let my eyes wander down to the tent in his pants. “But not the wood?”

  He sagged.

  “Maybe we should just talk.” He covered his crotch with cupped hands, a flush rising in his cheeks.

  I followed him back to a booth underneath a monstrous moose head, where he laid out the scenario. It was the first time I’d seen his face in full light. He wasn’t hideous, though his features were sharp and his nose a bit too thin. The brown of his eyes shimmered with veins of gold and his lips, though pale, were full and unexpectedly alluring. He looked much better on TV but that was probably the makeup.

  Mmm. Makeup.

  “The calls started coming about three months ago,” he said. “At first the caller wouldn’t say anything. Just hang up after I’d answered. The phone company said they were always from phone booths. I didn’t even know those still existed but they do.”

  I nodded, though I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one, either. Still, why do people feel the need to tell me the most random crap? Like I care. I’m dead.

  “About a month ago, they started getting threatening. Not overtly so, just freaky. Like letting me know that I was being monitored. You’re at the Texaco on 1st. Like that. And then they’d just hang up and I’d be standing there at the pump, not just worried that my cell was going to spark and blow me up, but now that someone was nearby watching. Then a couple of weeks ago I get the first one.”

  “First what?”

  Johnny reached into a briefcase he must’ve stored under the table before h
is lap dance and pulled out a plastic shipping envelope, the kind lined with Bubble Wrap. He placed it on the table between us and leaned forward, searching the room for observers. Half the crowd had been culled into the back rooms and the other half were busy drinking themselves into stupors.

  I made eye contact with Gil across the room. He looked concerned. It must have been my expression of pure boredom. My eyes dropped back to the envelope.

  “I’m not a private detective, Birch. I’m in advertising. Can we get on with this?”

  “I know. I know. But, I don’t need you for that. I need you for your celebrity.”

  Celebrity? I leaned toward him, suddenly more interested. “Go on.”

  He opened the end of the envelope and pulled out a thin shingle of wood. Stretched across it, attached with thick pins, was a creature like none I’d seen, almost insect-like, with wings that clung to its sides like a termite. Its flesh was as black as obsidian and shiny from toe to its segmented abdomen to its horribly humanoid head. The creature’s waxy face was frozen in a torturous silent scream.

  “Gross. What the hell is it?” I was unable to look away from the little body, pinned as it was like a lab experiment. Better there than flying around, though, or I’d be snatching a fly swatter.

  “I don’t really know. But it looks like a fucking threat to me. Anyways! I’m going on tour this spring and clearly, with this shit going on…” He kicked at the briefcase. “I’m going to need some protection.”

  “All right. How is my ‘celebrity’ going to do that? It’s not like I’m known for my strength or crime-solving ability.” I flicked the edge of the shingle the thing was attached to. It rocked back and forth on the table.

  Johnny’s finger shot out to stop its movement. He slid it back into the envelope and tossed it into his bag. “It’s not. I’m putting together a team of bodyguards and what better way to do it nowadays than with my own fabulous reality contest show? Can you see it? Celebrity judges and weekly death matches. It’s exactly what Supernatural TV is aching for. Cameron Hansen would host, of course, and all we’d need is our Paula. You’d be our Simon.”

  “Simon? I’m too cute and, anyway, you’d be our fucking Paula. What we’d need is a Randy.” I reached for my purse and began to scoot out of the booth. The idea was ludicrous.

  “Maybe,” his voice thundered. “But I’m a nut with financial resources and I’d be willing to pay.”

  “So you’re looking for more than just a guest judge here, then? We’re talking about exclusive advertising contract with product placement?”

  “That could be arranged.”

  “Let me think about it.” I looked around the Hooch and Cooch and couldn’t quite believe that such a gross experience might lead to a potential financial windfall. “All right, let’s plan to meet somewhere less…disgusting and then we’ll talk about it. Sound good?”

  “Up to you.”

  “Well, let’s figure it out in the parking lot. I don’t think I can stomach this place much longer.”

  As we stood to leave, a commotion began in the hallway to the private rooms. A steady stream of men was rushing from the exit, most of them screaming and none of them attempting to shield the bulge in their trousers. Following them was a roar that vibrated through the room and a crash as the chicken coops shattered, sending several birds flapping and skittering off toward the door in the shack. Gil and Ethel ran into the room, my friend brandishing a machete, my mother some sort of short club.

  “We better get out of here.” I turned to Birch, but he’d already darted for the front door. Behind him a massive beast emerged from the tangle of metal cages. Its bulbous head sheared the ceiling as it lurched, creating a groove across the ripples of metal. Its thick muscled arms ended in rake-like claws that shredded the floorboards into mulch with each powerful swipe. It stopped in the center of the room, head twisting wildly from one patron to the next until it found its quarry.

  The creature howled with such force, the floor shook under me. Slobber clung to foot-long fangs, like sloppy pennants, flapping in the direction of Johnny Birch, who let out a quivering whimper.

  It rushed forward.

  Dammit, I thought. There goes the TV show.

  CHANNEL 02

  Monday

  5:00–6:30 A.M.

  Cannibal Cage Cabal

  Badass vamp Georgio Gruber tackles his toughest competitor yet, Mickey “The Mouth” Ruggiero. Will the Dark Destroyer finally meet his match, or will he be chewed through, a Cabal kebab? (Repeat)

  Just because I ducked under a table doesn’t make me a coward, I don’t care what you say. If a big-ass marauding hulk of meat was charging around your local strip club (which you didn’t want to go to in the first place, I might add) tossing perverts into the air with the sloppy abandon of a summer berry picker—raspberry from the look of the splatter on the walls—what would you do?

  You’d hide, that’s what.

  It was a pretty good vantage point, despite the cigarette butts, beer bottles and not-so-mysterious wet spots on the floor—too wet not to have been recent and too viscous to be anything but some pervert’s jizz. And I was pretty sure which pervert. The thought of Birch jerking off under the table while we talked sprang up as a distinct possibility, though, how he could have been aroused in the presence of that shriveled dead creature, is a question for a professional—my diagnoses are more of the armchair variety. I scraped my palm against the seat’s piping and gagged only a little bit as goo specked with ash balled up and clung to the bead of vinyl. Composing myself was a process, though it did feel better when I pretended it was beer staining one of my last good skirts, instead of Johnny Birch’s gross domestic product.

  Just then, Ethel ran past and I shouted after her, “What kind of place you running here, Ethel? There’s spunk on the floor!”

  She slid to a stop, glowered and hissed under my table, “Prove it!”

  As she sped off, I got a better look at the creature. It latched on to one of the poles and spun impressively from a rake-sized fist, clawing several regulars in a single brutal arc and sending the rest backing into the already-clogged log jam at the exit. They stood there, squealing, tongues jiggling in their mouths like cartoons, pushing back into the crowd, punching, jabbing, anything to get farther away.

  It dropped off the stripper’s island, splinters erupting from a loud crack at its feet and roared, spittle flapping and loosing into the wind of it like streamers off a cruise ship. A dense earthy smell filled the room, part rotten leaves, part dog shit, and all nasty.

  “Get those customers out of here!” It was Ethel’s voice, and nearby, though I couldn’t see her anymore.

  Gil I could see.

  He tore at the men at the door. Each time he created a gap it was filled with another flailing idiot, as though they were fish floundering on an open deck. A few of them broke off, attempting to make for the door in the main stage set. Two were caught in either of the mammoth’s claws, their screams silenced as it clapped their heads together with the sound and effort of smashing tomatoes. Their skulls splintered, and gray matter oozed between the monster’s elongated fingers. It dropped them in a heap around its ankles. The other guy threw himself at the plastic shower curtain hanging in the doorway of the shack, but not before a dank brown stain crept down the back of his white linen trousers.7

  Ethel rushed back into view, club raised like some cavewoman crammed into a silk suit. The creature turned on her and howled. She slipped past it and swung at it viciously, hammering the thick bat against its pale naked back and thighs. Bruises spread under its skin with each fevered blow. Ethel’s face was a wicked mask of glee. She howled back at the thing, spraying its face with blood from the inside of her cheeks. Drops of crimson specked its hairless white belly like chicken pox.

  Total. Fucking. Maniac.

  I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Mother was the poster girl for passive aggression and verbal assault all her life, but now that she had a little phy
sical power, it’s no wonder she’d revel in the violence.

  The vamping had to have been a welcome release. Such pent-up aggression. Such violence in the woman. It explains the massacre at the hospice center, but don’t bring that up, or she’ll try to dazzle you with her spin. “It was my hour of redemption!” she’d shout. That kind of thing. Never mind that Ethel took out thirty-two terminally-ill cancer patients in one night—like they could fight back at all.

  There were two monsters fighting out there.

  Do you think it’d be bad if I rooted for the other one? Would you think less of me?8

  The massive creature spun on her small frame, one paw snatching the bat from her hands and the other closing into a huge fist that connected with Mother’s jaw loud enough for a thwack to echo across the room. The smack sent her spinning off into the wall, where a framed shadow box of the Confederate flag slipped from its nail and crashed down onto her head. She eked out a hollow gasp and slipped to the floor, legs splayed and scowling.

  Gil finally loosened up the opening enough for the flood of perverts to empty out. The girlish screaming subsided, leaving the monster’s marauding the only sounds in the place. The deejay snuck away from his little booth at the far end at some point during the rampage, silencing the barrage of butt rock but leaving the not so subtle shirr of needle against vinyl to provide the white noise for a killing spree. Gil raced along the wall of banquettes, hunching and searching under tables, presumably for me. “Amanda! Where are you?”

  “Right here.” I reached out into the space, eyes darting between Gil’s loping movement and the monster’s lumbering rage. It saw the vampire and darted toward him, arms swinging wildly (not unlike Wendy’s after a night of clubbing—like an orangutan’s, those arms). Gil must have seen me cringe. His head craned toward the approaching thing and a sound like a squeak crept from his open mouth.

  He was snatched from his hunch and slammed into the corrugated metal ceiling, which buckled up like a cartoon, and dropped back with a force that would have shattered a human’s bones completely.