Battle of the Network Zombies Read online

  “I’m going with you to your reality show gig. I gotta break me off a piece of Johnny Birch.”

  I gestured to the suitcase. “You act like it’s tomorrow or something.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Is it?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I haven’t even talked to Karkaroff about any of it, though I’m certain in her mind it’s a done deal.”

  “Well, I just like to be prepared.” She patted the suitcase and then her forehead, indicating some level of brilliance I wasn’t aware of.

  “You’re not going, Wendy.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “Stop that! You can’t just keep asking questions and think that’ll discombobulate me enough to agree to your crazy plot to screw a wood nymph. Now come here and help me into the bedroom, I’m still a bit wobbly.”

  “A super-famous and wealthy wood nymph,” she corrected, slipping her arm under mine and bracing my weight through the door.

  Scott, crammed into his jeans and a tee, busied himself packing spare underwear into his overnight bag. He clomped around the room, snatching his things off the dresser, his face broadcasting his fury.

  “So you’re not staying?” I asked and shooed Wendy off to the living room. She lingered at the door a bit.

  “Get out, Wendy.” Scott spat the words like venom.

  She scurried away, shutting the door behind her. I imagined her running for a glass to magnify our voices through the door. As it turned out, amplification wouldn’t be necessary.

  “And no, I’m not staying. In fact, I’m leaving.” His eyes bugged, daring me to say something.

  “Okay.” The word lilted at the end, the beginnings of anger stirring. “Care to tell me why?”22

  “How’s this? You don’t value what we have.”

  “How do you figure?”

  Scott stepped around the bed, confronting me directly, using his hands a lot, like wolves do. “You insulate yourself with social engagements. You’re so busy being a persona, even when we’re alone, you’re still ‘on.’ Or available!” He pointed toward the living room. Toward Wendy. “You’re still working.”

  “It’s hard being a celebrity. I thought you were on board.”

  “You’re not really a celebrity, Amanda. You just want to be. You let it cloud your vision. It blinds you to the real important stuff.” Scott shook his head slowly, his jaw tightening. “Either way, I’m not a fan, Amanda. I’m your boyfriend.”

  “I totally value you, Scott.”

  “Oh yeah? How, exactly?” He waited.

  It was one of those moments where your life passes before your eyes. Only these snapshots were select. Ones I’m not particularly proud of. As per usual, they showed up in clear undeniable list format (damn it)…

  I left Scott sitting at the Well of Souls to meet Wendy for a photo op at Gangrene, the new slam poetry/art space in Ballard (which is awesome by the way), then totally forgot about him once we started talking to Gilles St. John, who promised to paint me slathered in caviar or some other egg, I couldn’t remember just then.

  Or the time he brought home dinner in the form of a recently released sex offender (who was totally against the idea of treatment) and ended up having to sit there putting up with the guy’s chronic attempts at masturbation while I mingled on a dinner cruise with Karkaroff and her demonic team of lawyers.

  Then there was the night I picked up the phone, with Scott in mid-thrust. Though, in my defense, it was an important tip on a clandestine red carpet event.

  What I remembered most about all of my assaults against our relationship was Scott’s response. He accepted them. He didn’t complain. Always the one to reach out to me. Which lead me to the following conclusion: I was the asshole.

  Damn.

  “Okay. So I haven’t been very attentive to you.”

  “That’s an understatement.” Scott zipped up the tote and charged for the door.

  “But you never said anything, Scott. You just let it build up? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I shouldn’t have to mention that I’d like to be treated like a person. Like someone you care about.” He stormed from the room.

  “Have you been reading Cosmo?” I called after him, attempting an inappropriate joke. If Ethel taught me anything it was to have absolutely no clue what to say to mend a hurt.

  Scott dropped his bag on the couch next to Mr. Kim and turned around. Honey and the Jonas Brother backed into the pantry.

  “Yeah,” he said, sarcastically. “And they got you nailed, Amanda. Dead to rights. You’re a commitment-phobe.”

  “I am not—”

  “You can drop back to your old standby of blaming your mother for all your problems, but at some point you’re going to have to take some responsibility for ruining a good thing here.”

  I think my mouth was open. I couldn’t find the words to fight back. And, damn it, Scott was right. But then, before I could agree, he said, “We’re done,” snatched his overnight bag off the couch and stomped out the door.

  Mr. Kim stared at the TV, which didn’t happen to be on. Wendy simply shook her head and pointed at me, accusingly, I thought.

  “Shut up,” I barked.

  “No. You’ve got a…thing.”

  I followed her cringing stare down to my leg. A strip of skin hung off my ankle and trailed across the carpet like a wet streamer, a line of rotting gore snaked from the bedroom. Wendy dug in her purse and extracted a bottle of leather repair kit and a Band-Aid. She heaved her shoulders sympathetically.

  “Ugh,” I groaned. “Goddamn dew claws.”

  CHANNEL 05

  Thursday

  9:00–10:00 P.M.

  Jersey Devil House Party

  Satana wins the ability to take her muscle boy for a stroll and discovers the horrifying truth about why he’s in chains. Jersey gets cozy with the feisty Miss Rickets and is left with an itch for a little bloody merriment.

  South Park was one of our favorite breakfast spots, a small neighborhood south of the city, quiet, if you didn’t mind gunfire, and known for the plentiful and hearty Mexican food…also restaurants, but that’s beside the point.

  “What are you going to do now?” Wendy asked.

  I glanced up from a totally unsatisfying meal of day laborer, greeted by Wendy’s judgment and a hand cocked on her hip with a little too much finality for my taste. Not yet 6:00 A.M. and girlfriend was already on my last nerve. Not that I blamed Wendy for Scott leaving. I totally take responsibility for my own actions…most of the time.

  Seriously though, would it have exploded if she weren’t there to prove him right?

  See what I’m saying?

  I dropped the leg and wiped my chin. “What do you mean? I’m going to finish my meal and then you’re going to drive me to the office. Seeing as how you live a life of leisure and all.”

  “I meant about Scott.”

  I shrugged and stuffed the remains into the sewer grate. “I’m not hungry.”

  Wendy sighed. “You know it was only a matter of time.”

  “I know you’re not trying to start an argument with me. Not before I’ve smelled my first coffee.”

  “You could get him back.” Wendy shrugged, picking at her teeth with a shard from her breakfast.

  “I intend to.”

  “Aw. You’re in love.”

  Was I? “I don’t even know what that means, Wendy. You’re talking gibberish.”

  “It means you like him enough to keep him around rather than eating him. Like when I had that Twix bar bronzed to remind me of the progress I’ve made with my little eating problem.”

  “But you haven’t made any progress.”

  Wendy looked up from collecting leftover bits of illegal immigrant with a pair of tongs and dropping them into an environmentally sound cloth shopping bag—it said so on the side. “I mean, the progress I’m going to make. It’s like when we were alive and had
a pair of goal jeans for weight loss.” She broke out in a proud grin. “Yeah, it’s just like that.”

  “Scott is my pair of goal jeans?”

  “Totally.” She crammed the shopping bag into a Dumpster behind the Taqueria El Soldado and cringed at some goo on her palms. “Do you have any wet naps?”

  I dug a packet out of my purse. “What’s the goal then?”

  “Do I have to clue you in on everything? It’s like you don’t remember being a human.”

  “Not true.” She pulled out a toothpick and pried a bone shard from between her front teeth. “I just don’t recall the love part.”

  “He’s your goal jeans because you need to fit him into your life.” She tossed the gore-smudged wipe atop the bin. “And you into his.”

  I raised my brow and nodded in such a way as to indicate Wendy was indeed batshit crazy. No need letting on that she was probably right. That would unlevel the balance of power.

  So not happening.

  Her theory made sense in an “everything’s really simple” Wendy sort of way. Regardless of whether I loved the guy, or not, I knew I liked having Scott around and that was plenty reason to win him back. But, don’t go expecting some romance novel bullshit. Cause it ain’t happening.23

  When Elizabeth Karkaroff bought into Feral Inc. as a partner—and by “bought in” I mean “took over”—things changed. You don’t go into business with the queen of the underworld and not let her be the boss, now do you? It was her idea to move the offices from the waterfront to the lake—said that Puget Sound reminded her of the Styx. Also, a shudder rolled through her—a crappy endorsement for whatever it was she was talking about.

  “The band?” I’d asked, momentarily distracted by the en suite bathroom in the office I’d scouted and not particularly interested in her whims at that moment—if I remember correctly, she’d been on a tear about how bad Seattle drivers were, ranting and raving like mad.

  “Of course not,” she spat.

  I shrugged and ran my fingers across the black granite countertop.

  “I swear, sometimes you say things just to irritate me,” she scowled, flipped her wavy hair over one perfectly styled shoulder (Carolina Herrera sent a new suit for her that very week—must be nice to have a designer on speed dial) and stomped deeper into the offices.

  It was only later I’d realized she meant the river.

  She had an excuse for being bitchy, of course—and no, it wasn’t her time of the month or anything. More like her time of the year. Come every May, the hellhounds start sniffing from their brimstone doghouses, or whatever, for their precious Persephone, goddess of the underworld—Karkaroff, while a gorgeous and powerful attorney in this world, was pretty high up in management downstairs, as it turns out. And time is just as precious there. I’ve got a pretty good idea which world she’d rather inhabit. Right around the time the cherry blossoms popped open and the cottonwood trees filled the air with so much dander you’d think God was neglecting his dry scalp, the bitch got grumpy.

  And by grumpy, I mean deadly.

  The first year of our partnership, she tore through the marketing department with her bullwhip. Heads really did roll that day and she stomped them into mush. Of course, they were already halfway there, most of them being zombies and all. I had to bite back a comment about the fiscal irresponsibility of impromptu carpet replacement when I saw the stains spreading like a Rorschach.

  That said…

  The benefits totally outweighed the lingering fear of being swallowed up in an inky pit of death and darkness. Really, they did.

  Take the swanky new digs. In spite of a potential financial catastrophe courtesy of Necrophilique tanking, we were still living large corporate style, thanks to Karkaroff’s sizeable personal accounts.

  Wendy dropped me off in front of three stories of glass and chrome in a remodel overlooking Lake Washington, sailboats bobbing in the distance like a fucking Norman Rockwell painting and summer night client cocktail parties on the veranda.

  Too bad that last part was history.

  “Don’t forget the time. We’re meeting Gil at 9:00. And I need some time to freshen.”

  I waved her off. “Just pick me up in an hour. It’s just a business meeting, I’ll weasel my way out of it somehow.”

  The mood was remarkably chipper considering the layoffs of the previous week. Those had been exceptionally fun. To be fair, we started with the idea of ditching those hired most recently, but as one of the new guys, Jeff Gorst, was super-hot, we opted to get rid of Rachel Pratchett in accounting. She was a grim little zombie, wore Tevas in the summer and never brought us anything but bad news and even worse breath, unless you consider the questionable and mildly threatening casseroles she’d bring for potluck days an asset. I don’t trust zombies that continue to cook food. There’s just something wrong with it, like when people who wear leather dusters comment on fashion, or amputees insist on playing soccer. Plus, how many accountants does a business really need? With accounts in the toilet, there’s just not that much to count.

  There were a handful of others, but Greg Studebaker was the only employee I would miss, and primarily because his presence softened Marithé’s often frightening demeanor. Six-foot-three if he was an inch, tan and altogether agreeable, Greg had the kind of hair that stuck up like he’d just rolled in from a night of rough sex. He always had the good sense to wear clothing that stretched across his hips and crotch in such a way, every shift reminded a girl of a thin sheet draped over his naked junk. Marithé was appreciative, to say the least. But since no one could figure out what he actually got paid for, he was one of the first up for the chopping block.

  “Congratulations, Amanda!” Marithé looped her forearm through the crook of my elbow and clopped along with me. “Your appearance on American Minions and the ad revenue built into that contract is going to turn all this shit around.” She gestured to the rows of low-walled cubicles and then to a particularly forlorn employee named Renata. “And that.”

  The woman’s head snapped up from a stack of papers, her mouth twisted up like the pucker in a Chinese dumpling.

  Marithé continued, “Elizabeth is working on a relaunch of Necrophilique, under a new name and without the excrement, of course.”

  “Christ, again?”

  “Yes, again. Stop being so negative. All Necrophilique needs is pretty people on pretty packaging and the dead will be lining up to smear it on their clammy chops. Besides, it’s been two months; there’s been plenty of tragedy in the world to keep them occupied. Who’ll remember a little shit in their foundation?”

  I stopped her as we neared the narrow hall to the executive offices. “Just as long as we don’t go the infomercial route, again. I don’t want my face attached to another major screw-up. Plus, if I see that Janice Dickinson again, I’ll beat her so bad.”

  “She was a celebrity impersonator.”

  “Whatever.”

  The shoot for Necrophilique was wrought with mishaps, general bumbling and a virulent strain of incompetence, none so great as my own, I’m ashamed to say. Despite being accustomed to the camera at local events and club openings and such, I wasn’t at all comfortable reading from a script, or memorizing lines or pretending to like things that I don’t. That last part must come as no surprise.

  The lights hit my makeup like a blowtorch and before I knew it, Dickinson was giggling and pointing and the audience was doubled over laughing as stripes of foundation bled off my face leaving me looking as fresh as a glazed blueberry cake donut. If only I’d had some mustard gas. I could have at least taken out the shapeshifters. No such luck.

  “Amanda! Darling!” Elizabeth Karkaroff stomped down the corridor from her office in vintage Chanel bouclé and scooped me up in her arms. “So good to see you!”

  I squeezed my stomach in as she continued to tighten her grip, fully expecting my ribs to crack before she let go.

  “Nice to see you too, Elizabeth.”

  “Hmm.” She relaxed her
arms and stood back a bit, assessing me. “I’m counting on you. And I know you can pull this agency back from the brink.”

  “It would have been nice to know what I was getting into,” I said, thinking again about the death threats on Birch and the yeti attack, rather than my part in the reality show.

  “I’d have thought you’d be thrilled.” Her voice carried a hint of hurt and her lips pursed.

  Marithé crossed her arms and judged, as per usual.

  “Well, I certainly don’t mind the exposure and I imagine I’ll do better just being me.”

  “Exactly!” Her hands shot forward and clutched my biceps forcefully. A spasm passed through me. “And who doesn’t love unbridled Amanda?”

  “No one,” Marithé added, shaking her head. “Well, maybe soccer moms.”

  Elizabeth sneered at my assistant.

  “What?” she asked, then gestured to me. “I’m talking about her pottymouth.”

  I supposed they were right. After all, I, myself, love unbridled Amanda.24

  “Still. It would have been nice to know that Birch has been getting death threats. A yeti attacked us last night. I don’t imagine that was part of the pitch he threw you?”

  “Oh please.” Elizabeth waved off the remark. “Who doesn’t want to kill Birch? I can’t name a species he hasn’t fucked, defrauded or fouled in some way or another. He’s a complete Neanderthal and everyone knows it. That the woodland types have turned against him doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.” She pivoted on her Givenchy stilettos and slinked off into her office, speaking over her shoulder.

  Karkaroff had an unhealthy relationship with scale. Her office was long, thin and shiny as a wet birth canal. The perspective was forced as a de Chirico painting; walls slick with subway tile narrowed the full length of the building to just enough space on either side of Karkaroff’s desk for the woman to saunter around. The place echoed and was a tad claustrophobic if you ask me, but she didn’t.