ZA Chapter 19: In which Lady M figures it out…

Lady M was elbow deep in zombie guts, trying to detect exactly what it was about this particular zombie that made it different from the other garden variety zombies she was used to dealing with, when Cyrus came bounding in from the Vast Wasteland with another meaningless trinket. M's little monkey jumped to the dissection cart, rattling the stainless steel knives, picks, and spoons, and held out a small scorched chunk of meat as though offering a tasty sausage link to her mistress. It was an appendage of some sort—possibly human, probably zombie—with a gold ring (at least 24 carat) pierced through one end of it.

Lady M wiped her brow, smearing zombie viscera across her nose and cheek. But she was used to that, being a zombie dissector and all, and she was a firm believer in the phrase "if you can't swallow the smell, get the hell out of the perfume factory!" Or something like that. See, the stench of zombie rot caused severe headaches in most people, right behind the eyes, though some got addicted to the euphoric high and ravenous hunger the stench created, which caused all manner of chaos in The Fringe. Addicts went berserk for it, scraping zombie bacon from any flambéed undead flesh they could find, chopping it into a fine black powder, and snorting it right up into their mushy brains, eventually necrotizing the gray matter and zombifying the user from the inside out. Even getting it on your skin could have an eventual zombifying effect. Once the shit worked its way into the central nervous system, you were done, cooked. Dead, damned, and doomed to forever seek out live flesh to satiate your eternal hunger. Think about that for a moment, willya? Never knowing the loving embrace of another human being or the sight of a beautiful sunrise … no more feminist porn at 3 a.m. … no more Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt with extra chocolate chips from the bag … no more rolling Meg's orgasmic hot caramel chip devil's food cookies around in your mouth like the tongue of a gentle and particularly generous lover (because this entry is all about hunger and food, and by extension, sex) … endless reruns of Oprah, Wife Swap, The Bachelor, and Jerry Springer…. It became all about the glut. And the gut.

Fucking parasites, sucking the life out of humanity, turning us all into automatonic mushy-brained mushbrains! They weren't just fuckers. They were undead zombie fuckers. They were zuckers.

M took the ring and its appendage (obviously) from Cyrus and placed it under the microscope lens. Cyrus chattered, annoyed and impatient, tossing up her little monkey hands in exasperation.

"I know, I know" Lady M said. That monkey sure had a thing for sparkly stuff. The more blue and twinkly, the better. "Just give me a sec."

Cyrus sat back on her haunches and crossed her arms, looking admiringly at the shiny bauble on her wrist. She bobbed her head from side to side, staring at her reflection in the shiny-silvery zirconia, and smiled that mischievous capuchin smile that could win over any zombie with half a necrotized brain. Even Virgil.

"Uh-oh." Lady M straightened and looked at her monkey. "Where did you get this, C-baby?"

M listened as Cyrus chattered and screeched in capuchin-speak, tossing in some street slang because the tiny primate often fancied herself a spotted leopard, a sleek and stealthy wildcat, a delusion that got her into a pickle from time to time. (I would tell you exactly what Cyrus told Lady M but capuchin is a bitch to translate).

Lady M's expression darkened. She looked again into the eyepiece of the microscope, saw that familiar green-black goo writhing in worm-like fashion, thickening, transforming, healing, regenerating the tissue right before her eyes. She knew this already from the many statistical analyses and careful dissections she'd been performing in her lair since the beginning of The Zombie Revolution so long ago. But what was it exactly? What made these second-wave zombies so stinking hard to decapitate? What made these more resilient than the ones that came before? And, more importantly, what was that delicious, intoxicating smell?

M's stomach growled. She glanced at Cyrus, who was still admiring her reflection in the bauble, pulled off her zombie gut-covered, arm-length, black rubber gloves and tossed them into the basin in the corner as the room filled with the aroma of fresh baked goodness and … and … and … chicken. Yeah. Lemon chicken. With just enough tang to make it sweet and sour at the same time. And roasted new red potatoes. Soaked in butter and garlic. Ginger baby carrots … and … and … cookies … warm right-outta-the-oven devil's food caramel chip. With a scoop of Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt on top, and …

M shook herself and brought a trembling hand up to wipe the sweat from her brow, the drool from her chin. She was prone to bizarre psychic breaks, sure—you know, visions from the ancients and all—but what the hell was that about?

Then she noticed something. She looked at her narcissistic little monkey.

"C-baby, where's your brother?"

Cyrus pouted, grabbed her tail (which had a pretty purple ribbon tied around it) and began obsessively grooming, something she did only when she got into trouble or there was trouble brewing somewhere in The Fringe.

A deep dread filled Lady M from marrow to flesh. "Cyrus Christine. Where's Billy Ray?"

Cyrus began chattering. Something about a wild-haired dingo, or a hairy wild child with a pet dingo, or a dingo-wolf-man hybrid with hairy armpits, or a baby-eating dingo wearing a cape, or a crazed capuchin-munching mantis, or a were-dingo wearing a bathrobe in the outback, or a chocolate-covered primate-eating hairy-pitted robed mantis, or a monkey-masticating much-maddened mantis-macking Meg-monster … like I said, hard to translate.

Thinking only of Virgil and his perfect ass—if he’s betrayed me like all the others, there will be hell to pay!—Lady M bolted across the room, grabbed her satchel, tapping stick and ink, and skinning knife, and, leaving behind the regenerating love-shaft and a pile of cold zombie intestines, set out to find her monkey, an unsettling realization forming at the edges of her mind …

It's the marinade that's making the zombies more flame resistant and regenerative! Damn Selig Retsuc! He's in cahoots with the Masterful Mixologist Meg Monster and her miraculously maniacal macerated metastasizing marinade! That cowardly, contrary, cunning cootie-concoctor is contaminating contemporary culture with coercive crack-like cookies containing corrupted, crumbly, cruddy zombie corporeality!

In other words, there's frackin' zombie dust in the cookies, people!

M set her jaw, narrowed her catlike eyes, and strode out of the lair into the Vast Wasteland. If anyone knew anything about Lady M it was that one surefire way to piss her off good was to eat her monkey.

Meg would pay dearly for this. If she thought Billy Ray was yummy, wait till she got a taste of Lady M's flying monkeys. They would not be kind or merciful in their slow, sadistic torture of Meg. Indeed, Meg would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, never ever be the same again. And that's just too bad, because that bitch could whip up a rockin’ Irish cream milkshake.