Zombies vs. Unicorns (10 page)

1. BEFORE

Last year, Iza turned fifteen and her father threw a massive
quinceañera
. It was the largest party anyone on the island had seen since the Return, lasting an entire week. Every captain who wanted to curry favor with Iza’s father and gain access to Curaçao and its port or dry dock paid a visit at some point. They pushed beribboned boxes into Iza’s hands, their eyes always on her father to see if he approved of their offerings.

They brought Iza jewelry that she shuddered to look at, wondering which bracelets had once adorned reanimated arms. They brought scraps of useless money from various countries for her to collect. Many brought books that Iza couldn’t wait to devour, all covered with raven-haired men and redheaded heroines.

But one of the men, a dark old Venezuelan with impossibly green eyes, brought Iza a game that belonged to his son. She knew it was the son’s because the old man made
him
be the one to hand it to her. The boy did so with a rage in his eyes that seemed too violent an emotion to be contained in his skinny teenage boy body.

The game came in a box with edges worn white, the cardboard slightly warped, and the name “Risk” in faded red.
There were no instructions, and the old man spent a sweltering afternoon teaching Iza how to play before he had to get back to his leaky boat. His son refused to join them, and instead spent the afternoon standing at the edge of the cliffs, staring out at the ocean.

Iza spent weeks begging anyone to play with her. Some of the men and women who worked the
landhuizen
tried to play the game, torn between the fear of angering her father by not doing their jobs and the fear of his anger if they ignored his daughter. But they always let her win, and finally Iza would send them on their way.

Still, every afternoon Iza set the board up on the table in the shade of a divi-divi tree, the little red, yellow, blue, green, black, and gray men arranged in tight rows according to rank. She once asked her father if he could make the old Venezuelan come back and play with her, but he told her it was impossible.

“Why?” she asked, brushing away the yellow-breasted bird picking at the crumbs of her lunch.

“I had his ship banished from Curaçao,” her father said.

Iza’s eyebrows tilted into a frown. “Why?” she asked. The bird swooped in, nabbing a crust of bread, but she didn’t care.

“Because you told me the son refused to play with you,” her father said. He didn’t even look at her as he rose from the table and walked away before Iza could respond. She felt slightly unsettled, her stomach twisted and queasy.

Hadn’t she known that her father would take action if she told him about the boy refusing to play with her? Isn’t that why she’d done it? The bird hopped over to the abandoned plate to
scoop up the remains left by her father, and she didn’t bother waving it away.

Alone, Iza was left to trace her fingers from continent to continent on the game board, memorizing the shape of countries that no longer existed. Before he’d left, the Venezuelan had taken out an old marker and drawn an
X
in the blue expanse of the Caribbean sea where Curaçao was supposed to be. Iza would press her thumb over it, wondering if it really was that easy to wipe out an entire world.

2. NOW

“You should be more careful when you leave the
landhuizen
, Iza,” Beihito says to her one afternoon. Even after so many years on the island, she’s not used to the way he says her name, like the word “pizza” without the
p
. Sometimes it reminds her of when she was a little girl before the Return, when she’d pull hot thin slices of greasy cheese out of a cardboard box. She closes her eyes, unable to remember the taste and burn of it.

She’s lying on her stomach on the large dock at the base of the cliff and staring into the water. She used to have a snorkel and mask and loved to swim around and explore the reef, but her father took them away when he felt she’d grown too comfortable.

Iza grits her teeth, thinking about the way he stood in his office, long finger crooked through the chapped old rubber of the mask strap, telling her she was old enough to know better than to take such risks. She imagines herself stalking across that wide wooden floor and snatching it from his hands.

But of course she didn’t, couldn’t, and never would do such a thing.

Iza lets her fingers trail off the dock and brush the tips of the waves that glide under the warped old wood. “I’m technically still on my father’s property,” she tells Beihito. But the day is hot, the sun at a harsh angle, and she doesn’t put much force behind her words. She watches as three flying fish leap out of the water, and she holds her breath, counting until the last splashes down again.
Bulladóe,
she thinks, and closes her eyes, trying to remember what it felt like to fly.

“Your father worries about the pirates,” Beihito tells Iza. “They’ve been coming closer, making threats. He wants you to be safe.”

Iza smiles just a little. Her father has barely spoken to her in a month; she hears his words only through others. Iza wonders if she should make it a game: How long can she go without speaking to him?

Beihito’s knees crack a little as he bends over, setting a machete on the dock next to Iza. She opens her eyes and stares at the way the sun sparks off the edge of the blade. “At least until your father’s men kill the pirates,” Beihito says.
“Permití.”

Iza makes him stand here, a sigh building in him as he waits for her to promise. Beihito has many other things to do, and while he loves Iza like
un yiu muhé
, having no children of his own that survived the Return, she’s old enough now that his day no longer includes watching her like a tired old babysitter.

Iza nods her head, deciding that it’s not lying if she doesn’t say the words.

3. BEFORE

She always heard when the pirate ships passed by the island at night. She could feel them in her bones, a shiver soft and sweet along her skin. The moans of the
mudo
slithered into her dreams, a tinge at the edge of her memory.

She woke up one night and stared into the darkness, the spin of the ceiling fan cutting the air.
“Here,”
the whispers called. She slipped out of bed and shuffled through the dew-damp grass to the edge of the cliffs.

It used to be that she could never see the pirate ships, only hear them as they slid through the darkness, the
mudo
lashed to their hulls. But ever since her father closed the port, they’d been inching closer, circling like
tribons
, teasing and toying, ready to bump the island in a warning, with their masts cutting the air like fins.

Iza wrapped her arms around her body as if she were holding who she was safe inside. Below her the waves crashed and crashed and crashed against the limestone, cutting away at her island.

In the distance, under the haze of the moon, the hulk of the pirate ship drifted by like a ghost in a skirt, tarps and sheets draped over the edge of the railings and covering the hull. Shapes huddled and strained beneath the tarps, sharp edges raking against the graceful arc of fabric that rippled in the breeze.

The corner of the tarp at the bow lifted, and Iza saw the bend of a bare knee, the curve of a shoulder. But it was the gaping mouths and desperate faces that she couldn’t bear, the sound of the moans cutting over the waves and bounding against the
cliffs. The
mudo
strained against the boat, reaching—always reaching and needing.

The tarp fluttered back into place, hiding the bodies lashed to the hull, concealing them until the pirates bore down on their prey. Iza saw dark shapes gathered on the deck of the ship, crowding at the railing. They watched her as they glided by in the night, and Iza wondered what was worse—the
mudo
, or the moon gleaming off the teeth of the pirates.

4. NOW

Iza is lying on her back on the dock, letting the sun burn her body, when the hand wraps around her ankle. She is at the edge of sleep and she’s slow to react. Her fingers fumble as she grabs for the handle of the machete Beihito left, and by the time she pulls her foot away and scrambles to her knees, the man’s already halfway out of the water.

Iza knows that a
mudo
could never be coordinated enough to climb onto the dock. Still her first thought is to strike at his head, to slice the blade through his spinal column.

“Wait,” the man gasps as her muscles tense.

5. BEFORE

“Why don’t we call them zombies?” Iza asked Beihito one day. It wasn’t long after her father had taken over the island and hired Beihito to run the plantation and keep an eye on his only child.

“It’s not respectful,” Beihito said. They were standing near the edge of Curaçao’s limestone cliffs, watching a giant iguana try unsuccessfully to hide itself in a kadushi cactus.

Iza kept tugging against the straps of her sundress where they left grooves in the baby fat on her shoulders. She’d outgrown almost everything shortly after arriving on the island and was tired of the way the tight clothes made her feel big and ungainly.

“But it’s what they are,” Iza whined. She was just getting used to the idea of her father’s power. Just starting to understand that something about her father made her different. She tossed a strawberry at the iguana, seeing if she could temp him down.

Beihito pointed to the animal and said,
“Yuana.”
Iza waved her hand in the air, brushing the word away.

“What does ‘
mudo
’ mean, anyway?” She pronounced it like “mud,” thinking of the way the ground looked after the snow thawed at her old home. She wanted to see how far she could push Beihito. She threw another strawberry.

“Mudo,”
Beihito corrected her, saying it “mood-o,” no tinge of anger in his voice. “It means ‘mute.’”

Iza rolled her eyes. “I know that,” she said, her hand on her hip. She hated being talked down to. She hadn’t been a child since the months-ago day when she’d turned seven and seen her first dead man rise and walk. “But they’re not mute, duh. They still moan.”

Beihito stared at her, perhaps with pity or maybe with impatience. “It also means ‘speechless’—those who have lost their voice. They have nothing to say. They’ve lost who they are.”

“They’re dead,” Iza grumbled. “They’re nothing.” She picked up a stick and walked closer to the iguana. She reached
out to poke at it but Beihito closed his hot dry hand over her arm, stopping her.

She stared at the spot where he touched her—his dark wrinkled skin against her own. Rage seared inside her that he would stop her from what she wanted to do. A rage that she knew her father would act upon if she told him.

“There are things in this world greater than you or me,” Beihito said then, and she wondered if there was something in the
mudo
that she couldn’t see. Something about them that he understood and she didn’t.

There was a crack then, and a loud hiss. The old man twisted Iza behind his back, standing between her and the kadushi. The branch holding the massive iguana cracked, and the iguana leapt into the air, thick tail swinging. It scrabbled on the edge of the cliff, its claws raking against the limestone until it finally found purchase. The cactus branch bounded down into the waves below.

Beihito had protected her. Iza wondered then if he would always protect her. Her cheeks blazed, her entire body a feverish red burn welling with shame. She turned and stalked back to the plantation house without thanking him. She vowed then that she would learn to be more like her father. He never thanked anyone.

6. NOW

Iza lunges forward and holds the sharp edge of the machete to the young man’s throat just as he throws a knee over the edge of the dock. He freezes. They both pant and stare at each other.
Time still hasn’t caught up to Iza, and she feels sleep-drugged and slow. She notices things about the man she shouldn’t—how water streaks down his face like tears, breaking over high cheekbones. How his eyes are a bright green that doesn’t seem to match the darkness of his skin.

His nostrils flare with each breath, puffs of air skimming over Iza’s knuckles. His arms tremble with the effort of holding himself on the edge of the dock, half out of the water. He looks young, not still in his teens like Iza, but near to her in age.

“Please,” he says. “Please, I promise I won’t do anything. Please.” He turns his head slightly as if glancing back to the open waves behind him. Iza doesn’t let her gaze on him waver.

“Who are you?” she asks. Her voice shakes a little too much as the adrenaline from being startled works its way through her system. She clenches her teeth, knowing that her father’s voice would never shake like hers. “Are you one of my father’s men?” She’s fairly certain she doesn’t recognize him, and she’s also quite sure that if he worked on the
landhuizen
, she’d have seen him. She knows for sure that if she’d seen him before, she’d remember.

Water drips from his chin onto her wrist and twines down her arm. “I was on a ship,” he says. “I saw the lights on the island as we sailed by last night. I ran away. I jumped.” He swallows, his throat pushing against the blade. Iza can hear the desperation in his voice, but that’s nothing new. The entire world is desperate.

“They were pirates,” he says. “You can’t let them find me.
They were going to infect me and lash me to the boat with the others.” He pauses, licks his tongue over his lips. Iza can almost taste the salt.

“Please,” he whispers.

7. BEFORE

When Iza was young she had nightmares that the
mudo
were coming for her. She’d see the teeth of the woman who’d once been her babysitter and the hunger of the used-to-be gardeners. But more than anything she’d
hear
them, their pleading need for her. Iza always felt a deep ache at the moans and a desire to do anything to quench it.

Her father’s men, the
homber mata
, were good at their tasks and always killed any
mudo
that washed ashore. There’d been small outbreaks on the island over the years, tales of
lihémorto
sprinting across the sticky dry desert inland, but they were always contained eventually.