Zombies vs. Unicorns (21 page)

“Sooofie … ,” he mumbled. There was a drag in his voice, a slurring distortion that wasn’t caused by the mask.

“Franklin?”

“Soooofie …”

He moved toward me, almost falling over. The actress was practically holding him up. She was strong.

“He’s still recovering,” the actress said, straightening him up. “I had to give him a little something to calm him down because at first he was a little … disoriented. Sometimes he seems agitated. But he’s okay now.”

I’d seen Franklin very righteously stoned, but never quite like this.

“Soooooofie … ,” he said, almost in a moan. There was real
longing behind it, like he wanted nothing more in the world than to be near me.

“I think he needs to go back and rest,” the actress said. “I just wanted you to see him.”

“Soooooooooofie …”

Franklin strained to keep looking at me, even as he was negotiated out of the room, banging against the doorway in the process.

I decided it was time to have a look at my own injury.

It took all the effort I had to pull my arm from beneath the thick duvet, and as soon as I did, I wished I hadn’t. While it didn’t hurt, my arm was clearly
not well
. It was whitish-gray from the tips of my fingers to just above my elbow. The wound itself had become engorged and pus-filled, green and purple and blue-black and angry red and every color of the rainbow that my hand could be except its usual one. You didn’t need a degree in medicine to know that that kind of a wound was
seriously fucking bad
, and that whatever herbal teas I had been given, or whatever magical rocks had been placed on my sleeping body to aid my recovery, hadn’t worked and were never going to work.

This woman had hit Franklin with a car and brought him back here to recover, and to cover up what she had done, and now he looked deranged. He was probably infected, delirious. She had weird children penned in the living room. And now I was going to get some hideous old-school infection if I didn’t get the hell out of here.

Just outside the window I could see the actress’s car. I had
to go outside, and take it and drive to town, somewhere with a hospital. I wasn’t worried about driving on the other side of the road, or that I was stealing. How could she report me when she’d mowed Franklin down with a car and not told anyone?

Get the car. Drive. Before I got any sicker.

The act of pushing back the duvet felt like pushing a piano up the stairs with one hand, but somehow I did it. I got out of bed. All my movements were unsteady. My feet couldn’t be relied upon to move as I wanted them to, not with a normal gait, but I could get forward and out of the room, to the hall, to the door. Slowly. So slowly. I was walking like I was tangled up in nets.

The actress caught me as I was just a few shambling steps away from the door.

“There’s something I need to explain to you,” she said, her voice pleading, urgent. “And it’s
really good news
. See, death doesn’t really exist. That’s why we don’t call it death. We call it sleep.”

She smiled and nodded and took it as read that I had any idea what the hell she was talking about.

“My kids,” she went on. “They’re very special. They were all asleep. I woke them up using the mech. I’m not supposed to have the mech. But … one of the lab heads … I met him at Star Center… . That’s the special center for, you know, famous people… . He gave me a little bit. But it works! It’s true re-an …”

This was all a jumble in my mind, but I can honestly say I
wouldn’t have understood it any better even under ideal conditions. It was a bunch of Lazarus crap.

“Re-an?” I repeated.

“Reanimation. True Health. My kids were asleep. I woke them.”

Piece by piece I clicked this all together. The picture I was assembling was very odd.

“You’re telling me that your kids were … dead? And you brought them back?”

“There is no death,” she said. “Remember? Just sleep.”

I wanted to point out that there are in fact a number of differences between death and sleep, like breathing and generally being alive. But then she added something that made me drop the nit-picking.

“Just like your boyfriend.”

There was a faint ringing noise in my ears.

“Franklin’s
dead
?”

“Not dead! You just saw him. Did he seem dead?”

I had no answer to that question. Thinking in general … It was getting harder by the moment. I just had to keep going. Get to the door. Get to the door.

“The mech is the answer,” she said, following me. “The end of death. He’s better now! Everyone will be better! It’s a revolution, Sofie. Against death itself. And my children are the start, and Franklin … and you. You’ll be with your boyfriend. You two will be together! You’ll
always
be together!”

With Franklin. Forever. Forever with that idiot. The idea was so horrible that I lunged forward, smacking myself
against the door as I reached it. Moving was so difficult.

“I think it’s in you,” she said, coming toward me. “The mech. It transferred to you in the bite. Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand how wonderful this is?”

The famous actress got between me and the door and wrapped those famously tattooed and toned arms of hers around me in the warmest, most motherly hug imaginable.

God, she was warm. People are so warm. And her
pulse
. It’s so weird, that pulsing. It was like a drumbeat, a drumbeat that made me outrageously angry. I opened my mouth to scream but lost my balance and found myself pulled into the actress’s neck, bare and exposed.

It was like I hadn’t eaten in days and then someone had shoved a perfect, juicy burger under my nose, fresh from the grill, still running with those delicious juices that you get right as the meat comes off the flames … and I knew it was a neck and not a burger, but it had become one and the same, and there was only one thing to do … one thing … so I bit. I bit so hard! I was so strong! I clamped down, and then … delight, blind delight … a happiness I had never known! I didn’t even mind the screaming. And my face was all wet. I guess blood, but that was
right
. It was all right. It was right, it was right, it was right, it was …

Excited. Don’t know why just happy now. Machine on wall with pictures comes on. Is television. Right, is
television
. Why so hard remember?
To
remember. Ugh, so hard thinking. Would think is sick but feel so good so must not be sick.

“Sponnnn?” Franklin say.

Franklin happy too. And so pretty lady. She say “Spooonnnn” too. Little ones happy too. Everyone like sponge.

Not always here. Remember other place. Hard remember but try. Like room and machine with sponge …
television
… and tree. Nice room. But know other place. Car outside. Car
is
outside. Can go places! Like drive. Maybe when no more sponge we drive. Remember big place wanted to go to. Big city. Yes. Nice there. Can take car to big city. London is called!

But when sponge done. Sponge first. Then car to big city.
To London
.

Franklin touch hand, smile.

“Spoonnnnn,” he say again. Franklin so pretty.

We happy.

“The Care and Feeding
of Your Baby Killer Unicorn”

Holly
: Although few people believe in unicorns today, there was a time they were referred to by naturalists as casually as you might refer to cats. Researchers looking back on those writings often try to identify what might have been “misrepresented” as a unicorn. A rhinoceros is one possibility, an antelope seen from the side, so that both its long horns were perceived as one single horn is another, and of course, narwhal horns are thought to be the material with which kings inlaid their thrones and their cups.

But the possibility remains, as Diana postulates in her marvelous “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn,” that unicorns have been here all along, hunted into near extinction, but now ready to come back and make themselves known.

Justine
: I suspect that some of the Team Unicorn partisans are currently muttering under their breath about my unfairness to their team. Utter rubbish, of course, but in case you think I am entirely one-eyed on this subject, I will confess that I like Diana Peterfreund’s killer unicorns. Frankly, they’re the only interesting unicorns in the entire book. I can trust an animal that’s out to kill us. It’s the rainbow defecators I don’t hold with.

Of course, the unicorn obsession with virginity remains a concern. Some of us nonvirgins are quite lovely, you know. Why
do they shun us? Of course, it should be pointed out that the Peterfreund’s killer unicorns are even fussier: You also have to be a descendant of Alexander the Great. Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

Holly
: I see even you are weakening, Justine. The lure of the adorable killer unicorn must be great indeed.

By Diana Peterfreund
 

“Cool. It’s a freak show,” says Aidan. “I didn’t know they had those anymore.”

I don’t think we’re supposed to call them freak shows. Though I know my parents would freak if they knew I was anywhere near one. Too much nudity, too many pathways into the occult.

The tent is near the back of the carnival, decorated with garishly painted plywood signs and lit by a string of lights at the entrance flap that does little more than cast long shadows, obscuring most of the ads.

So far, the carnival has been pretty lame. There’s a Ferris wheel, but it costs four dollars to go around a single time—Yves says they must have to pay a fortune for insurance. The hot dogs look ancient and shriveled, and taste more like jerky. The cotton candy is deflated, the funnel cake soggy, and they aren’t selling anything cool like deep-fried Twinkies. I had to beg my parents to let me come too. You see, the fairgrounds back up to the woods, and I’m not allowed anywhere near the woods anymore.

Maybe if we played some games on the midway it would have been fun, but Aidan pronounced them childlike and insipid, suitable only for jocks and their sheeplike followers, and we all agreed. Except for Yves, in a move clearly designed to recall my collection of bobble-headed monkeys that
we’d amassed over several summers spent being childish and insipid at the Skee-Ball range down the shore.

Yves loves telling cringe-worthy stories about the dumb stuff we used to do, especially since last fall. Most especially whenever he catches me flirting with Aidan.

“Ewww,” says Marissa, insinuating herself and her bare-midriff top between Aidan and me. “A two-headed cow? Is it, like, alive?”

“Probably not,” says Yves from behind us. “I bet it’s pickled.”

I look over my shoulder and wrinkle up my nose at him. Yves’s eyes are dark, framed by even darker lashes that were always too long and full for a boy. His hands are balled up in his jacket pockets and he’s giving me one of those long piercing looks that have been another one of his specialties since last fall.

Summer refuses to go inside the freak show, citing how inhumane it is to put people with deformities up on display. But a quick glance at the signs out front reveals only one sideshow performer whose “qualities” don’t seem self-inflicted: the wolf-boy. The others are a tattooed man, a sword swallower, and some guy called the human hanger who looks like his claim to carnival fame is dangling stuff from his body piercings. Gross. Maybe my parents have a point. I move down to examine the next sign, and freeze.

There’s a bad drawing beneath the words, nothing like the blurry photos on the news, or the pictures you’ve seen of the corpses. The unicorn on the sign looks like one from the old fairy books, white, rearing, its mane flying out behind it in artful spirals. Just like a fairy tale, except for the fangs and the blood red eyes.

I stumble back and almost trip over Marissa. “A unicorn?” she says. “But it can’t be a real one.”