“Your work is what is important,” she said. “Someday a new publishing company will go into business. When that happens, you’ll have several manuscripts ready to go. Then we’ll be rich again.”
Charlie agreed, but he wasn’t as optimistic as she was. It was difficult for him to get back into writing. He became more interested in drinking, sulking around the house. He started taking pills, getting high on Waste, and sleeping around with prostitutes. But Rainbow helped him out of his despair. She told him that she would leave him if he didn’t quit taking drugs or ease up on the drinking.
To get back at him for sleeping with prostitutes, she told him he had to write ten pages a day, every single day. If he was short a single page, a single paragraph, she would go out and fuck a random guy that night. Sometimes he met his goal, sometimes he didn’t. She always made good on her promise, even if she wasn’t in the mood that night. If he didn’t write a single sentence, even if he happened to be sick, she wouldn’t even come home that night. She would let some strange guy pick her up, then sleep in his bed with him, snuggle him, kiss the back of his neck as he slept, until it was time for her to go to work the next day.
Even though he wasn’t making any money, Rainbow Cat made him a better, more responsible writer for doing this to him. He thought she was a total bitch for it, but because she was a bitch she had helped him through a hard time. He believed she was a bitch to him because she loved him.
He still can’t believe she would sell him out to this television show, just for the sake of money. And on their anniversary, of all days, which wasn’t just to celebrate five years of marriage but also to celebrate the completion of his newest novel. It wasn’t only his newest, but also the greatest book he had ever written. His masterpiece. The book that he would be remembered for more than anything else he’s ever written.
The last thing he remembers from their anniversary dinner, before the drugs in their drinks took effect, was telling her who the book was dedicated to.
The inscription on the manuscript page read:
To my Rainbow Cat, for always believing in me.
The number of zombies outside of the hotel is rising. The undead are breaking the wooden barrier into splinters. Some are puking green radioactive vomit across the walls, others are dripping black oily fluids on the sun-burnt pavement.
“We need to get going pretty soon,” Junko says to Charlie.
They have separated from the others and are now in a private hotel room, trying to plan their escape. Haroon and Lee are in the room, leaning against a dresser. Laurence is also there, pointing at the path.
“I say we head straight through there,” Laurence says, while pointing at the widest street in sight. “It might be the most wide-open but it has the least amount of obstacles. We’ll be able to run faster.”
“No,” Junko says. “You want to put obstacles between you and them. They can run pretty fast, but they are terrible climbers. We should go over the wall. They won’t be able to follow us over and it’ll take them a good hour to figure out how to get around. I’ve seen it before.”
“How far away do we have to get before our packs open?” Lee asks through his scruffy gray beard. By his tipsy posture, Charlie assumes that the old man is drunk even though he couldn’t possibly have any alcohol on him.
“Don’t bother with them until we get over the wall and find safety,” Junko says. “Focus on running. Trying to fight them will only slow us down.”
“When should we leave?” Charlie asks.
“Right now,” Junko says.
Once the five of them arrive in the lobby, they notice that the seven punks have the same idea. The punks are ready to go, their eyes lit with excitement. The other people in the room don’t seem to be as organized. Charlie can’t tell if they are all one group, several small groups, or if they all plan to go solo. Rainbow is the only person who isn’t in the lobby. She must still be hiding up in a room somewhere.
The zombies are ripping boards from the windows and scratching against the glass. One of them is missing flesh from the tips of its fingers, causing a screeching noise as its finger bones scrape across the glass.
Scavy looks closely at one of the zombies. It is a female corpse who looks like she had been an exotic dancer in her past life, wearing fishnet stockings and a withered black corset. Her breasts are hanging out of her ripped open shirt. Scavy can see the saline implants through holes in her breast meat, where chunks of flesh had been bitten away.
The female zombie locks eyes with Scavy and says, “Braains!”
Then she thrashes harder against the boards. It’s as if looking him in the eyes made her more hungry, as if she could see his brains through his pupils.
“Hey, this one’s kind of hot!” Scavy says to his friends, pointing at the ex-stripper zombie.
His friend, Brick, laughs and wiggles his tongue at her through the glass.
“Braains,” she says, staring Scavy in the eyes. “Let me eat your brains!”
Charlie notices that she is salivating.
“Brains!” she cries.
Brick and Scavy pretend to squeeze her breasts through the glass. This only works up the zombie even more.
“Need!” she cries. “Need your brains! Now!”
Junko pushes the punks away from the window. “Don’t tease them. You’ll only make them hungrier.”
The punks don’t seem to care.
“Are they intelligent?” Charlie asks Junko. “I’ve never heard them say anything but brains before… even when I was a kid and saw them all the time.”
“It depends on how much of their minds are still intact,” Junko says. “Most of their minds have been destroyed. Some of them, especially the freshly turned ones, can have entire conversations with you.”
“So you can reason with them? Convince them to let us go? They must understand what it’s like to be human.”
Junko laughs and shakes her head. “Even the most intelligent zombies are like junkies going through a massive withdrawal. All they need to get their fix is to feed on the electrical impulses in your nervous system. If you want to convince junkies not to shoot up anymore, it’s not going to happen while you’re waving a bunch of free Waste in front of their faces.”
“But what if you tried to reason with them from a distance, over an intercom?” Charlie asks. “Maybe if you take the Waste out of their faces it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Clever,” Junko says. “But a useless idea.”
“I wonder if the more intelligent ones have conversations with each other,” Charlie says, “when humans aren’t around to drive them brain-crazy.”
“Brain-crazy?” Junko asks.
“It’s a term I use in my novels to explain zombie behavior around living beings.”
“Hmmm…” She scrunches her eyes at him. “No wonder why people don’t take your books seriously.”
He shrugs. “I was never trying to be taken seriously.”
“Are you ready to do this?” Junko asks.
Charlie looks behind him to check with Lee, Haroon, and Laurence. They nod their heads. Laurence smiles and gives him a thumbs up through his black leather glove.
“Let’s do it,” Charlie says.
The punks crowd the front entrance, wanting to be the first ones out. As they pry the boards from the front door, all of the zombies in the yard become attracted to the sound and gather on the other side.
“How are we gonna get through them?” Bosco says.