Zombies: The Recent Dead by Paula Guran Read Free Book Online

Problem-Solving, long term companion and sidekick.”
    I noticed that the woman had made a healthy dent in the tequila and was looking rather green. Heavy booze on an empty stomach. I saluted her enthusiasm, but she was going to geyser.
    “Whoa!” said I. “Slow down or you’re going to lose it all!”
    It was hard to say whether she heard me. Wordlessly Dogwood began loading our gear into the car and started the long road to actually getting the engine running.
    “Why are you two out here?” she asked, clearly bilious. “Where are you going?”
    “The Minister and I are on a quest for more Safety Drugs for our community of Bad Axe.”
    “We’re heroes,” Dogwood said sagely, fiddling vaguely with the car.
    “We head west, seeking population centers which might have a pharmacological bounty for us. But not into central Chicago itself. No, that might be a little too exciting. We seek the outlying regions.”
    Dogwood added, “Detroit would have been way too exciting.”
    I saw in that moment that she understood, but in retrospect it was probably somewhere between my experience with the amyl, and hers with rising bile. She took another swig and shuddered.
    “So that’s your plan? Survivors just taking drugs forever?”
    The Minister and I exchanged a glance and started to laugh. It was not an unreasonable question. Hell, I’m the first to admit that we had not hit upon an ideal long-term solution. Kids, for example. Kids could not be expected to be as Resilient as the Minister or myself, and yet the situation remained. Any given babies had the choice of being pulled apart like some struggling, gut-filled jelly-donuts, or growing into dribbling addicts with skulls full of bad cheese.
    I’m not saying we had the answers then, but this was a bridge to cross another day. However, Chantal had inadvertently stumbled onto the larger path that the Minister and I walked, a noble plan to which our current holy mission was but one small part.
    “Nah,” Dogwood said. “We’re going to get Twisted.”
    It was a simple statement, perhaps too simple by the blankness in Chantal’s eyes, and as Dogwood said it he popped the engine cover. At the time I wasn’t paying attention, but in hindsight the signs of the car’s doom were all there. But leaving that aside, the Minister was absolutely right. Our larger quest was to get Twisted, like those noble leaders of men, Presidents Ozzy and Tommy Lee. I believe myself to have been more attached to the notion and disciplined in its pursuit than Minister Dogwood, even then.
    “Twisted,” I said sagely, “is when you take enough different drugs over enough time that you—you—”
    “Smell different than people,” called Dogwood, from somewhere inside the car.
    “—Thank you, Minister—enough that your body-chemistry changes. Then they never find you, even if you’re straight.”
    Dogwood straightened up and mused, “Sounds useful, but I don’t see the point of that bit.”
    As I say, the Minister lacks true vision.
    I remember waxing lyrical, but can’t remember precise details. To be Twisted is to be truly free in this new benighted world of ours, untouched by the dead. Transcending natural human body-chemistry to become divine acid-casualties walking the world at will, spreading the word. Why do you think Ozzy and Tommy Lee are probably President? Nobody wants a Commander-in-Chief who might get eaten. It’s just sense.
    I was about to go into my theories about why cocaine doesn’t seem to work when the Minister proclaimed, “Car’s buggered.”
    He was right. Upon investigation, the battery reeked of sulfur.
    I’m sure that to someone who knows anything about cars, that’d mean something important. As it was, we were instantly reduced to moving by foot.
    “Everything out of the car, Minister,” I said, knowing he was already working on it. “This will not slow us down, for we are Resilient.”
    “True,” he said, “unless you mean in overland