The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online Page A

turned to me. ‘I’m having a party at my house tomorrow night. Ryan knows about it, but I think it’s time you joined our circle. It’s the sort of thing a hobbyist like you shouldn’t miss.’
     
    I was going to have a hard time explaining to Tori where I was going without her. She was about five months pregnant now, starting to show in earnest - not as big as she was going to get, but still new enough to being big to be sensitive about it. You try telling your pregnant wife not to get all worked up about it. You try telling her that she desperately wanted to be pregnant, and now she was pregnant, so maybe she should stop complaining about it. Dealing with a touchy pregnant woman who is self-conscious about her appearance makes negotiating with North Korea seem like a pretty sweet deal. There was something about the way Ryan and Charlie spoke that told me that if I skipped the party, they wouldn’t quite trust me, wouldn’t quite consider me one of them. I didn’t know what Ryan might already suspect about me and Maisie, and I didn’t want to give him any reason to worry about me.
     
    Tori was furious with me, of course. I was always going out, she said. I was being secretive, she said. I was one of those asshole husbands who cheats on his pregnant wife because she is now fat and ugly. Of course I told her I had never touched another woman, but she didn’t believe me, which bothered me. I ended up leaving for Charlie’s party with her shouts ringing in my ears and the thin satisfaction of slamming the door.
     
    Charlie lived in a verdant old neighborhood, and his house was massive to the point of being intimidating, probably five thousand square feet and gloriously appointed. Ryan was there, and I recognized quite a few people from the Pine Box, but even so, it was hard at first to shake off the feeling that everyone was judging me for my creepy interests. I drank too much beer too fast, but that made me sociable, and that made things easy. The beer was served by unmasked reanimates in tuxedos. All of them, I soon learned, were black market. And that began to put me at ease. Charlie had illegal reanimates. Why shouldn’t I have one?
     
    The party had gone on for a couple of hours, and it seemed like just a regular party to me - people talking and eating, taking hors d’œuvres from trays. Ryan had promised something wild, but I began to think I was missing something. Then, at about ten at night, we all went outside to the fenced- in, private yard. The mood changed at once. It was tense and charged, full of an almost sexual expectation. Everyone spoke in low whispers. A couple of men even giggled nervously. I asked them what was going to happen, but they wouldn’t tell me. ‘Better to be surprised,’ one said, and then his friend gave him a high five.
     
    There was a big sheet of heavy plastic set out in the middle of the backyard, and Charlie ordered one of his reanimate servants to go stand on it. The thing lumbered onto the plastic and stopped. Charlie told him to turn to face the crowd, and it did so. It looked like it had died when it was in its forties or so. It was a slightly heavyset white man with thinning reddish hair and sad grey eyes.
     
    Charlie turned to his guests.
     
    ‘Hey, guys,’ he said, ‘this is Johnny Boy.’
     
    ‘Hi, Johnny Boy!’ the crowd shouted.
     
    ‘Johnny Boy has been a little slow to obey orders lately,’ Charlie said. ‘He’s not disobedient, but he’s getting a little old.’
     
    ‘Awww!’ cried Charlie’s guests.
     
    ‘What do you think? Should we retire him?’
     
    Charlie’s guests cheered.
     
    Charlie turned to the animate. ‘Johnny Boy, would you be so good as to remove your clothes for us?’
     
    With the fumbling and mechanical efficiency of its kind, Johnny Boy began to remove its clothes. Perhaps out of habit or training, it folded each piece of clothing, and it left them piled on the plastic sheet. When it was done, it turned back to