Battle of the Network Zombies by Mark Henry Read Free Book Online

out and he darted into traffic, slowing to avoid a semi, its air brakes tearing the concrete in stereo. He tossed himself onto the divider like a pommel horse and, glancing briefly, scrambled into the traffic, sidestepping a skidding Honda. The driver laid on the horn and screamed obscenities out the window, but didn’t stop. Then he was in front of me.
    He was about twenty and dark, with skin so coarse it could have borne a Grown in Florida label if it weren’t for the alternating crop of patchy facial hair and shiny achy pustules in desperate need of a depilatory. He wore a grim pair of Adidas with soles worn thin enough, it was possible his socks were touching sidewalk. The white T-shirt he wore hung nearly to his knees, well past the end of his denim jacket, and his pants were at least three sizes too big, which, while seemingly the uniform of every other gangsta, wanksta and wannabe, probably came in handy for the kind of work that required quick and covert access to the nether regions.
    I sparked his smoke.
    He nodded, his face glowing red as he took a drag. “I don’t chomp no box.”
    Charming. I would have choked had I any sensitivity left in my esophagus (that was one of the first places to go). But my bulging eyes and gaping mouth must have spoken volumes. He grinned and turned his head to chuckle, as though that might be more of a crime than his illicit proposition.
    Shaking off the mild shock—really saying something there, as I’m rarely in that particular state—I said, “No? You look the kind that might go in for that.”
    “I don’t do ladies, not normally.” He shrugged, rubbing his fist across his mouth and tugging at his loose jeans. He clucked his tongue. “What you got in mind?”
    I motioned to the side of the now quiet Hooch and Cooch. Gil and Ethel hadn’t left. Gil probably busy heaping unwarranted praises and Mother “debriefing” the girls, or whatever.
    The burn barrel let off a soft glow and a flurry of sparks flew like gnats into the still night air and up the side of the building’s clapboard exterior. Probably a fire hazard, but after the night’s spectacle, I’m not sure I’d even alert Gil if the place caught fire. 16
    The kid nodded and shuffled off in the direction I indicated. When not racing like a madman across a moderately busy freeway, he expressed a slight limp, favoring his right leg explicitly. He lugged the left behind him with a spare hop at the end of each step.
    I wish I hadn’t seen it.
    Those kinds of things make me wish I didn’t have to feed the way I do. The thoughts are always fleeting and always my own fault, a hazard of being too observant. Noticing little details of my victims—and they were definitely that, no matter how hard I rationalized—was not helpful. Not. Helpful.
    In those moments, when food becomes human, identifiable, I’m more likely to walk away than any other.
    Occasionally.
    The boy’s scent trailed in his wake, dense and meaty. 17 There were sweet hints of maple, smoky bacon. The hustler was a breakfast fan. A lot of street people were, cheap meals done quick and from places that usually kept waitresses long after their expiration date, long after they gave a shit about a kid dining and dashing. Either that or hired them so green they didn’t know what to look for.
    A quick refresher—if you’re late getting on and trying to catch up—when a zombie catches the scent of its prey, it’s over. Reason goes out the window, for the most part, and the hunger kicks in like autopilot. When I first turned (after a run-in with a breather and later a misplaced donut box—damn if slick cardboard and concrete don’t equal flat on your back dead in a parking garage, at least for a little bit), I had absolutely no control over the process. I’d catch a scent and the next thing I knew I was spitting out a retainer (not mine and not necessarily a kid’s, either). 18
    Anyway.
    He stalled at the far corner of the Hooch and Cooch, settling