ZA Chapter 15: All Squidgy

Cam leveled The Cleaning Lady at the hotty in the skirt. What the hell was the postergirl from Playboy’s College Coeds doing walking zombietown? Well scratch all o’ that shit, anyway. That wasn’t the first question that jumped to mind. There was so much wrong with this goddamned scene that it made his ears hum. If Cam wasn’t hallucinating, that was the gum girl from the zombie school.

“Ya better fuckin’ answer my question, Doublemint!”

She raised her slender, tanned arms high over her head. “You didn’t ask a question.”

Cam’s lust for undead death was twitching something terrible. If she was a zombie, he was aching to kill her, aching so much that his arm hair vibrated and his muscles palpitated. If she wasn’t, he wanted to roll his eyes and walk away. But his kill switch was caught on toggle somewhere in-between.

Cam Sparks got a boner.

“I did so ask you a question!” he blurted, not liking the feeling. His zombie bacon should be itching, not-.

“Please repeat it,” she said, her voice far too calm for someone who was a half-second away from becoming a bubbling, greasy stain on the floor.

“You got a twin or something?” he yelled.

She cocked her head to the side. “What?”

“You’re the gum girl, aren’t you? From the school?”

“You rescued me,” she confirmed nicely for him.

“Fuckin’ right on,” he muttered, his switch clicking firmly into place. Whatever the hell she was, she wasn’t human. He thumbed on The Cleaning Lady and pulled the trigger.

She yelled, “Apatosaur of Colombe! Stop the spume!”

The Cleaning Lady sputtered and died.

Cam stared at her. He knew he should be intimately concerned with the fact that his beloved weapon had just run out of fuel, but…

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“Something about a dinosaur, I think. I don’t know. Ever since Lady M did her thing, these weird phrases just pop out. It worked, though, right?”

“I have to kill you,” Cam said, frowning and throwing down The Cleaning Lady. He pulled out his knife and strode toward her. “I’m pretty damned sure I do.”

She held her arms out in front of her and backed away. “You don’t sound sure-”

He jumped forward, knocking her to the ground and straddling her belly. He quickly pinned each of her arms under his knees and put the knife at her throat.

“Cam. Cam! CAM!” she said quickly.

He paused. “What?” His boner came back. Goddammit!

“I’m not a zombie,” she said in that soft voice.

The girl had a point. A zombie wouldn’t say "I'm not a zombie". A zombie would say “Rrrrggghrflrf.” Cam's switch clicked back to indecision. Fuck it all.

“What the hell are you then?” he asked.

“I’m Lucy Tisdale.”

“I remember your goddamned name. I asked what you are. Virgil said you fried.”

“I-”

“And how the hell did you get so clean?” he asked.

“I washed myself.”

“Well that don’t make no goddamned sense.”

She shrugged, and it felt good. Cam snarled.

“Do you kill people, Cam?”

“Zombies.”

“Am I a zombie?”

He growled. “No.”

“Would you mind letting me up, then?”

He stood up, frowned at her, then reluctantly held out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. He couldn’t help but look at her long legs and where they disappeared into that tight skirt. He looked away with a twitch of his head.

“You make me feel all squidgy,” he said. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Could be a normal feeling,” she said, winking.

“I think I hate you.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It goes like that sometimes.” She ran a finger up his arm, the one with the zombie bacon.

A chair fell over behind Cam, and there was a groan that sounded a lot like “Rrrrggghrflrf.” He spun around to find a half-dozen zombies shuffling toward them. The Cleaning Lady was on the ground, too far away. And the bitch was out of gas, anyway.

“Damn,” Lucy Tisdale sighed with true regret. “I’m afraid that’s probably my fault.” She let her hand fall from his arm.

“You’re a weird bitch,” Cam said.

“You have no idea.”

Cam launched himself at the zombies, knife bared. It was sharp enough to slice clean through the neck of the first and the second. The third and fourth grabbed him, but he head-locked one and popped it’s fuckin’ skull right off. The other one bit him on the shoulder. Twisting, Cam threw it off the building. The last one shuffled toward Lucy Tisdale, who watched it with resigned distaste.

Cam grabbed a chunk of broken concrete, leapt up and brought it down on the zombie’s head. It exploded, and green-black gunk spewed everywhere, including one precise line across Lucy’s white blouse.

She didn’t seem to notice. “That was hot,” she said.

“Fuck you,” he said.

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "Something like that."