tongue, except that Albert
asked me: "You don't like Mormons much, do you?"
We were in an alley outside a likely grocery store,
taking a breather. Zombies were unloading bread
from a bread truck, an eighteen wheeler. Bet the boxes
didn't contain bread; and I wasn't sure I wanted to
know what was really in them.
     "I have a problem with all institutional churches," I
said. "It's nothing personal." Of course, it was per-
sonal and I'm not a very good liar.
     "If you don't want to talk about it, I'll understand,"
said Albert diplomatically. The big dork had some
smarts.
     Maybe I should talk to him. Fly and I were so close
that we couldn't verbalize everything there was be-
tween us. He had a little-boy quality that was attrac-
tive in a friend but definitely not what I wanted in a
lover. Maybe it was part of the Mormon conditioning,
but Albert projected father qualities.
     The one time I let myself be talked into therapy,
back in college when my family was exploding, I
dropped hundreds of dollars to be told what I already
knew. My ideal male friend would be the brother I
never had. Fly was just what the doctor ordered. My
ideal lover was Daddy. The therapist was a Freudian
so he didn't have much imagination.
     The women's group I hung out with for one sum-
mer had a lot more imagination. It wasn't my fault
that the experiences of my youth fit the Freudian
pattern better than they did the theories of the sister-
hood. It just came down that way.
     So I saw the concern in Albert's face, a guy who
wanted to be a pillar of strength to some All-
American Gal, and it was hard not to cut him some
slack. Here we were, huddled down together in a dark,
smelly alley, ready to save the human race from all the
denizens of hell, and poor old Albert was concerned
about how I felt about his religion.
     A more elemental kind of man would just be trying
to put the make on me, arguing that the human race is
near extinction and let's make love while we can and
think about the future instead of the self, babe.
Not Albert. Not Fly. In completely different ways,
both these men were gentlemen. And Jill was a fine
young lady. I could have done a lot worse in choosing
companions for Armageddon.
     "Albert, I won't lie to you again. I do have a hang-
up about the Mormon Church; but it won't affect us. I
respect you, um, in spite of it."
     His voice was polite, if a little frosty: "Thank you. I
won't pressure you about it."
     Well, if I could tell Fly some of it, I didn't see why I
couldn't talk to the big Mormon. Again the thought
came to me that I could get more off my chest with
this relative stranger. As close as I was to Fly, my
platoon pal, there was a reticence with him I could
never shake.
     If I said to Fly that "there are some things you
wouldn't understand," he'd stare at me with his what
the hell are you talking about expression and make me
feel like a silly, emotional girl; he wouldn't do it
deliberately, but the result would be the same.
The truth was there were certain things I didn't
want to share with Fly. The reasons were emotional;
and those were never good enough reasons for him.
"Albert," I said, feeling the shape of his name as I
spoke it for the first time from a quiet place inside, "I
want to tell you about my brother."
     "I'll listen; but you don't have to if you don't--"
"He was never really what you'd call a real man; I
mean, I don't think he would have made a good
Marine. Had the bad luck to be really pretty . . . not
like a guy; I mean a girly-man kind of pretty. You
know, delicate features, pale skin, long, beautiful
lashes like a girl."
     "Big guy?"
"Yeah, right. When I was twenty, I outweighed him
by ten pounds--I mean, five kilograms . . . gotta be
military here."
     "Ow. That can be rough."
"It got worse. A lot of the older guys in the
theater--he did stage-crew stuff for the Spacelings--
they kind of came on to him. Real aggressive, gay
stuff; sometimes the theater can get like that, and
anybody who says it can't never did theater in L.A. or
New York. I don't even know if they were serious, or
of they just wanted to freak him; but Buddy--"
"Buddy?"
     "Heh, blame him for that. He was named Ambrose,
so he called himself Buddy. Buddy got real scared that
he was, you know, gay. It wouldn't have mattered if he
were; he would've said, 'Hey, like, that's it,' you
know? But he wasn't. He wasn't really anything; so he
totally bugged."
     "I don't know what to say. I've never had that
problem. I've always known I was a flaming hetero-
sexual."
     "So he kept always trying to prove his manhood
. . . you know, shoving little girls around, sticking his
zinger in any doughnut hole he could find. He even
once ..." I hesitated.
     "With you?" asked Albert, suddenly too perspica-
cious for words. Damn it.
     "It was pathetic; really negative zone. I took him
down so fast he cracked the sound barrier between
vertical and horizontal. And it wasn't too long after
that he fell in with a bad crowd and suddenly decided
he would convert to Mormonism."
     "What were you before that?"
"What do you expect? 'Sanders,' Episcopalian, as
close to the Church of England as you can get in the
U.S."
     "How long did he stay with us?"
"Eight months; he moved to SLC, moved back to
Hollywood half a year later. I think he showed up at
the Overland church a couple times, then found a new
savior: a drug called tank. Ever hear about it?"
"Nope. 'Fraid I'm not up on the drug culture . . .
not from the using perspective. Your brother's prob-
lems are his own making," said Albert. "Would you
fee! the same way about the Catholics or Lutherans or
Baptists, if he used them as a rest stop on the road to
hell?"
     That made me smile. "Albert, I had no idea you
were so eloquent! I admit I'm prejudiced; when I'm
thinking about it, I'm pissed at all organized religion;
but only the Mormons cut into my guts like that. I
think church enables aberrant behavior."
     Albert laughed, and I had to admit I sounded
pompous. "Temples too?" he asked.
     "Oh, right," I said. This man had debated at some
point in his life. "All religion, especially the ones that
pretend not to be. They all say theirs is a way of life or
an ethical system or a personal relationship with
God--it's only the other guy who has a religion."
"Arlene, I'd like to ask a favor of you. Please don't
tell Fly about our talk. I like things the way they are
right now between all of us. I don't want to do
anything to distract Taggart from doing the fine job
he's doing."
     "I keep confidences. You listened to my story, that's
all."
     He shifted his bulk against the wall so he could sit
more comfortably. "You mentioned your brother
getting involved with drugs. So did I, from the other
side. I don't like to talk about being a Marine sniper;
it's a private thing between me and the Lord. But one
week, I was assigned to kill a woman who was
suspected of being the primary money launderer for
the Abiera drug cartel in Colombia."
     "No great loss," I said, far too quickly.
He moved closer, as if he thought the monsters
might overhear and report his confessions to Satan
Central. "Arlene, I said she was suspected, not
proven."
     "Oh," was all I could think to say. I said it with
sincerity.
     "I'd never killed a woman before. They call it
termination, but it's killing. I don't make it easier by
playing with words."
     "There goes your career in the military," I said,
liking him better all the time. "So you were to
terminate this woman with extreme prejudice because
she was a suspect."
     He nodded, unable to speak for a moment. "Strong
suspect. But I had a lot of problems with it. It went
against my moral learning."
     I was having an attack of sarcasm and couldn't keep
it bottled up. I hit him with: "Killing all the suspects
in the hope you get the target? The Church of Central
Intelligence makes that a sacrament."
     "No, I mean killing a woman. In the end I decided
if I couldn't justify killing her, then how could I
justify killing a guy who was supposed to be a
renegade colonel from Stasi? I did him the month
before."
     "Now who's playing with words?"
"Killed him the month before. He was training
Shining Path terrorists to be sent over to Kefiristan to
help the Scythe. It came down to one thing: either I
trusted my superiors knew what they were doing, or I
didn't."
     He wanted to be frank with me, but the words
choked in his throat. I helped him along. "You killed
her," I said.
     "I killed her, yes. I still think she was guilty."
Suddenly, I chuckled. He looked at me as if I'd
completely lost my mind. "No, no, Albert, it's not
what you think. I'm laughing about all the trouble
America went to trying to protect fuck-ups like my
brother."
     My use of the past tense brought both of us back to
the immediate nightmare. "I think we're all sinners,"
he concluded. "We all deserve to die and be damned;
we earned that fate when we disobeyed the Lord.
Which is why we need the Savior. I take responsibility
for the blood on my hands, even if I let Him wash it
clean. I don't blame the Church, the Marines, my
parents, society, or anyone or anything else."
"We have a difference there, my friend," I told him.
"I blame God."
     "Then you blame the nature of things."
"Yeah, I guess I do. 'The nature of things' is waiting
for us beyond this alley with claws and horns, light-
ning and brimstone. My only regret is that I won't
meet God when I have a rocket launcher." I knew I
was getting worked up and discussing religion; but I
was talking to a human being, not the President of the
Twelve.
     And really, Arlene Sanders, are you sure you're not
trying to wash away the blood on your hands, the blood
of a whole compound of innocents who might die
because of your stupid mistake, sending a radio mes-
sage to co-opted Colonel Karapetian? I shuddered and
shut off the thought.
     "You can't blow up God, Arlene," he said in an
annoyingly tolerant tone of voice. I expected my
blasphemy would get more fire out of him.
     I tried one last time, while I still had my mad on:
"He made Himself flesh once, didn't He? If He'd do it
again ..."
     "I think you'd find the cross a heavier weapon to
carry than a bazooka, Arlene. Somehow I don't see
you nailing anyone to a cross."
     I almost told him about the row of crucified hell-
princes the pumpkins had used to adorn Deimos and
how I'd happily do the same; then I made myself shut
up instead. I'd said enough. More than enough. The
quiet, easy way he was dealing with my outburst told
me that Albert was a man of faith so strong I couldn't
crack it with a BFG. Besides, I had the feeling he
would start praying for me if I didn't cool it.
"Thank you for telling me about Colombia," I said.
"There's no one I'd rather talk to than you, Arlene.
Now let's get back to work."
     Damn if I wasn't becoming attracted to honest
Albert. For the first time in weeks, I thought about
Dodd, my guy, who was zombified; my lover
     whose body I put out of its misery.
A small glimmer of guilt tried to build up into a fire,
but I doused it with anger. We all had our problems.
We were all human. I was sick and tired of thinking
about all the things I did wrong or could have done
better. Humanity was not a weakness; it was a
strength, and our job was to win back our world, and
damn it, why did I hesitate to think "lover" when I
thought about Willie? Was it because it had the word
"love" in it?
     Darling Dan's Supermarket was the next battlefield.
The zombies finished unloading the crates of whatev-
er and drove off in the bread truck. Now the coast was
clear.
     "Come on," I said.
"Right behind you," he said.
     19
We slipped into the supermarket through the
     back delivery door and worked our way toward the
front. Lights were flickering on and off with the same
irritating strobe effect that Fly and I had to deal with
on Deimos so friggin' often. Maybe these guys weren't
sloppy, slovenly, indifferent creeps; maybe it was
some kind of aesthetic statement. All I knew was
flickering light gave me a headache and made me want
to unload a clip at the first refugee from Halloween
who happened across my path.
     "Come on," said Albert, a few steps ahead of me
now.
     I loved symmetry as much as the next guy. "Right
behind you," I quoted. It was the next best thing to
dancing with him.
     Inside the main part of the store, the fluorescent
lights were on and burning steady. But the refrigera-
tion was off, and there was a rotten smell of all kinds
of produce, milk, and meat that had been let go before
its time.
     "Ew," said my Mormon buddy, and he hit the
center of the bull's-eye. The meat smelled a lot worse
than the bad vegetable matter. And oh, that fish!
If I hadn't been wide awake on adrenaline--
     compared to which caffeine is harmless kid stuff--I
would never have believed what I saw next. Nothing
on Phobos or Deimos had the feeling of a fever dream
compared to the spectacle of...
     "Hell in the aisles," breathed Albert.
The grocery store was as busy as a Saturday after-
noon in the good old world. Mom and Dad and the
kids were there. Young lovers wandered the aisles.
Middle-class guys with middle-sized guts in ugly T-
shirts pushed shopping carts down the center aisle
with no regard for who got in the way. Nothing had
changed from the way it used to be ... except that
everyone was dead.
     Zombies on a shopping spree. Eyes never to blink
again. Mouths never to form words, but to drool foul-
smelling, viscous liquid worse than anything in an old
wino's stomach. Hands reaching out to grab anything
or anyone that fell in their path.
     The sour lemon odor was so concentrated that I had
trouble breathing and Albert's eyes were watering; my
throat was filling with something unpleasant.
The nearest zombie to us had been a big man once,
a football player would have been my guess. Thick
blue lines stretched across his face; I couldn't tell if
they were veins or grooves or painted on. Next to him
stumbled the remains of a cheerleader whose long
hair she'd probably taken good care of a long time ago
in the world lost way, way back ... in the previous
month. The zombie girl's hair looked like spiders had
tangled themselves up in their own webs and died on
her head.
     These two were the best-looking zombie couple.
The nearest family was disgusting; especially the
thirteen-year-old boy (what had been a thirteen-year-
old boy). Part of his head was missing. It looked
melted, as if a big wad of caramel had been left out in
the sun and gone bad on one side.
     A thin, bald man looked like a scarecrow with a
laughing skull on top. His right cheek was missing and
the few teeth that hadn't fallen out on that side made
me think of kernels of uneaten corn or keys on an
unpolished piano.
     Two zombie Girl Scouts carried filthy boxes in their
pale hands. One dropped a box and several fingers
spilled out. A man dressed as an undertaker fell to his
knees and shoveled the fingers into his mouth where
they stuck out like pale worms. A dead priest groped
at the attache case of a dead account executive over a
pile of fish left to rot on the floor. The zombie odor
was so pronounced that I could barely smell the week-
old fish.
     "Are you all right?" asked Albert. I nodded but
didn't look at him. "You're staring at them."
Albert's words were like an echo from Fly. My old
buddy always gave good advice, like not focusing on
any details that wouldn't help the mission. But this
was the first time I'd seen so many of these human
caricatures this close when I wasn't engaged in taking
them apart.
     "I'm okay," I whispered, pulling Albert back in the
shadows. "We're doing fine. The stink in here is so
bad they couldn't smell out live humans to save
their--"
     "Lives," he finished my inappropriate image.
"Let's get the lemons and get out of here."
     There's never any arguing with good sense. But as
we took another look-see, the zombie density inside
the store was worse than a minute ago. "Where the
hell are they all coming from?" I asked.
     "Probably," Albert agreed.
The scene was becoming even more surreal. Zom-
bies pushing baskets up and down the aisles, grabbing
cans and boxes of junk food (which would take a lot
more than the end of the world to go bad). Some of
the zombies were engaged in what seemed to be
purposeful activity, moving items from one shelf to
another and then back again.
     They didn't eat any of the groceries. They seemed
caught up in the behavior of the past, as if the
program had been so hard-wired into their skulls that
not even losing their souls could erase the ritual of
going to the grocery store.
     And then suddenly the lights went out. Whatever
had kept the generator going was defunct. "What do
we do now?" asked Albert.
     "Take advantage of the situation," I said. "This is
fortuitous. We should have put the generator out
ourselves. We can pass easier for zombies if they don't
see us. They're too stupid to do anything about the
dark."
     If there is ever a Famous Last Words Award, I'm
sure that I'll receive sufficient votes to make the final
ballot. No sooner had I made my confident assess-
ment than flickering, yellow light filled the store.
Dozens of candles were lit. I could imagine Fly saying,
in his I-told-you-so tone of voice, "If they can still
shoot their weapons, they can do a lot of other
things."
     It was bad enough when Fly was right so often in
person. Now I was carrying him around in my head to
tell me when I made a mistake!
     Not everything the zombies lit was a normal can-
dle. Some gave off a heavy smell of burning butter or
fat. I didn't want to think about some of the items
they might be using for torches.
     "I wonder how long before they burn the store
down," said Albert.
     "They haven't yet," I said. "Let's get those lemons
and get the hell out of here!" As we went out into the
throng, my heart was pounding so hard that I worried
some of the creatures would hear it. Then they
wouldn't need to smell us out or see our TV-
commercial-smooth complexions to turn us into
today's lunch special.
     Matches still flared as zombies looked for items to
light up. A "Price-Buster" banner suddenly caught
fire and went up in flames. It didn't set anything else
on fire. For the first and probably last time in my life, I
was grateful to be among zombies at that moment.
Real, live human beings would have freaked and
caused a panic more dangerous than a fire. The
zombies didn't care. And of course they didn't bat an
eye.
     To be fair to Fly, he never overestimated zombies;
he just didn't want me underestimating them. For
what Albert and I had to do now, we had to count on
zombie stupidity. I made my way over to a pile of
hand baskets and took one. Albert stuck behind me a
lot closer than Peter Pan's shadow.
     I passed him the basket and noticed that his hands
were shaking. I sure didn't blame him. In fact, I had
the strong feeling that he'd be doing a lot better in full
combat against the monsters. With his religious back-
ground, bodies of the reanimated dead had to be
heavy stuff.
     If I remembered correctly, and I always do, the
Mormons had a more old-fashioned idea of the body.
One thing I could give Fly's nuns--the Catholic
Church didn't make you worry about what happened
to your body in a war zone if your soul was in good
shape. The more spiritual the faith, the more popular
I figured it would be in the atomic age, where we can
all be zapped out of existence in the pulse of a
nucleus.
     20
Albert's fear sort of made me more daring.
     After I got my award for Famous Last Words, I'd use
it to join Psychos 'R' Us. This situation was so insane
that I started to think it might work.
     We turned a corner and saw a zombie-woman
sitting on the ground. She had two candles, a bag of
charcoal, and a cigarette lighter; four items, two
hands. She couldn't decide which two items to hold.
So she kept picking up two of them, dropping them,
and picking up another random pair.
     I looked over at Albert and tried a little telepathy.
As usual, the results were nothing to worry the
neighborhood skeptics. Since Albert wasn't picking
up on my silent message, I stepped forward and
waited for my opportunity. The next time the
zombie-girl dropped her candle and lighter, I simply
reached down and picked them up.
     Now that I'd solved the zombie's quandary, she got
up and stumbled vaguely down the aisle with the
other candle and the charcoal. I started to pass the
lighter to Albert, then changed my mind and gave him
the candle, which I lit. I preferred keeping the thing
that actually made fire.
     Playing somewhere in the back of my head were all
those old horror movies where the one thing monsters
fear is fire. When I was a kid, sneaking those movies
late at night when everyone else was asleep, I never
thought I was boning up on documentaries. At least I
hadn't used a hammer and stake yet in fighting these
bastards; but I intended to keep my options open.
We staggered down the aisle, trying to look suitably
undead, and headed for the produce section. We
quickly grabbed plastic bags and filled them with the
most disgusting remains of lemons and limes we
could find.
     The limes weren't even a little green any longer;
they were dull gray with black splotches. Although the
lemons were still yellowish in spots, the other colors
were dark and unwholesome. They were the sort of
colors I preferred ignoring.
     Other zombies began gathering around us and just
standing there. Maybe our purposeful actions were
too purposeful. Did these idiots have the brains to
recognize nonzombie behavior?
     I tried to think and look stupid, but that wasn't
what was required. Pretending to be mindless is much
more difficult. I let my mouth hang open and tried to
work up a good supply of drool. Albert picked up on
the idea ... the fact I found him immediately con-
vincing shouldn't be taken as a put-down. But, man,
did he look the part when he put on his goggle-eyed
stare.
     The act seemed to help a little. Some of the zombies
left us alone and found other things to stare at. One
large black man--what had been a black man--
dressed as a high school coach, continued to block our
way, staring at the basket of rotting produce instead of
us. He started to get on my nerves. When I moved
either to the right or left, he shifted slightly . . . just
enough to suggest he was willing to block us if we
wanted to move up the aisle.
     We might very well want to move up the aisle
because the crowd was starting to press in behind us,
cutting off that avenue of escape. I couldn't remember
if we had closed the door behind us when we sneaked
in the back. Other zombies could be coming in that
way, dead feet shuffling forward, guided by dead
brains to regain a fragment of the living past.
A sound came out of nowhere. It was so strange that
I didn't even associate it with the walking corpses
hemming us in. It was sort of a low mewling sound,
coming deep from within chests where no heart beat.
A humming, rasping, empty, lost, mournful, aching
sound ... a chorus of the damned calling out to any
living humans left in the world, as if to say:
Come join us; life's not so good! Come and be with
us. We are lonely for company. You can still be
yourselves. The habits of a lifetime do not disappear
only because life has spilled out. If you loaded a
weapon in life, you can still do it in death; the routine
will survive; all that will be burned away is the constant
worry to prove yourself, make distinctions, show pride.
Judge not; there is no point when you're dead.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to take my 10mm and
start firing, and keep firing until I'd wiped them all
from the surface of the Earth. Aboveground was for
the living! The dead belonged underground, feeding
the worms, who still had a function to perform.
The zombies were the pure mob, devoid of intelli-
gence and personality. Staring at them in their own
flickering candlelight, trying to pass, reminded me
how much I hated Linus Van Pelt, who said he loved
mankind, it was people he couldn't stand. Earlier, I
read a book by H. L. Mencken, who said he had no
love for the human race as a whole, but only for
individuals.
     Individuals. The whole point of evolution. Individ-
uals. The only justification for the American revolu-
tion, for capitalism, for love. There were only two
individuals in this cemetery that used to be a grocery
store, and I was one. The other gestured at me that the
basket of rotten citrus was full and we should be
leaving, if we could find a path through the wall of
pale, stinking, shambling flesh.
     Albert took the lead. He picked up one of the limes
and threw it up the aisle. It was a long shot, but it paid
off when an ancient memory reached out fingers like a
groping zombie and touched something in the coach's
brain. He turned and shambled after the lime like it
was a thrown ball.
     We followed in the wake left by the big zombie
pushing through the crowd. By the time the coach
reached the lime, he had forgotten about us, which is
saying it stronger than I intend. We were merely a
series of impressions, of light and sound distracting
the zombie for a brief moment.
     The front door beckoned. It was standing wide
open, so we didn't have to worry about the power. A
fire was burning somewhere down the street, marking
the path we would take if we made it outside.
Our last obstacle was the long line at the checkout,
believe it or not. A zombie-woman stood at the cash
register, responding to old job conditioning as the
others had fallen into the role of shoppers. She stood
behind the counter, banging on the keys of the register
with a clenched fist. The sight was too much, too
friggin' bizarre even after all that we had seen. I
laughed. It wasn't very loud, and I managed to choke
it off at about the half-chuckle point.
     But it drew attention.
Maybe the shred of a brain that still functioned
inside the ex-cashier's head was back from its coffee
break, but she stopped banging the keys and looked at
me. Then she opened her mouth, disgorging a cock-
roach that had been making its home there. A gap in
her neck revealed the probable entrance to the bug
condo.
     Then the bitch made a sound. It was a brand-new
sound, a kind of high wailing that drew the attention
of the others. She was doing a call to arms, and the
wandering eyes, listless bodies, jerking limbs, and
empty heads responded.
     They finally noticed us.
"Run!" I shouted, and I didn't have to tell Albert
twice. There weren't very many between us and the
door. Albert used his bulk to good advantage, and
while he cleared the path I readied the AB-10.
I waited until we were through the door before
spinning around to take care of business. Sure
enough, some of the zombies of higher caliber fol-
lowed us through the door. I expressed my admiration
for their brain power by answering with my machine
pistol.
     It felt good to be killing them again. Most of the
zombies in the grocery store didn't have weapons, but
the ones who followed us outside were armed. I
always thought there was a link between intelligence
and defending yourself; apparently it even applied at
this almost animalistic level. The zombies returned
fire.
     Albert saw I was in trouble and ran back to me, Uzi
ready. "Keep running, it's all right!" I shouted as he
took down a pair of Mom and Dads who took turns
unloading the family shotgun in our direction. As
they collapsed in a heap, other zombies I had shot got
back up, fumbling with their weapons. Before they
could get off another round, zombies coming up
behind them fired, and the bullets tore into the front
line of zombies. We booked.
     The "Fly" tactic worked its magic; the front rank
spun to return fire against their clumsy compadres. By
the time we got behind a row of munched cars
"parked" by the curb, the zombie melee was in full
cry.
     A bunch of spinys appeared from somewhere and
had their hands, or claws, full trying to stop the melee.
"Good job," I said in Albert's ear.
     "The Lord's work," he said, smiling. "I didn't
know they were such a contentious lot." He quoted a
line, I don't know if from the regular Bible or the
Book of Mormon: "Satan stirreth them up continu-
ally to anger one with another."
     "You said it, brother."
We had to get back to Fly and Jill; they'd be able to
hear the ruckus and would wonder what hornet's nest
we'd stirred up. And it was nearly 2200.
     I thought about Albert as we made time. There was
a lot more to this beefy Mormon than I'd first
expected. Fly and I had done all right when he joined
our team, or we joined his. I'd bet on all of us, even
Jill.
     The reasoning part of my brain ran the odds and
concluded that we were screwed. It had done the
same on Deimos where Fly and I had beaten the
odds so often as to give a bookie a nervous break-
down. That was with just two top-of-the-line hu-
man beings against boxes of monsters. Now with
four of us, we had the boxes of monsters badly out-
numbered.
     Albert and I entered the alley that felt like home
after the grocery store. One advantage of fighting
monsters was not having to worry about identifica-
tion and who-goes-there games. There was a certain
gait to a running human that the zombies lacked.
They forgot a lot about being human.
     Fly sighed and shook his head, somehow managing
to say "I can't take you anywhere!" and "welcome
back" simultaneously without speaking a word. We
were together again.
     21
Damn, I was glad to see Arlene again. After
     all we'd been through together, survival was getting to
be a habit. If reality took her away from me in blood
and fire, I wouldn't mourn until I'd finished avenging
her on the entire race of alien monsters. If by some
miracle I was still alive when it was over and she
wasn't, I would mourn for the rest of my life. Maybe
she felt the same, but I couldn't afford to think about
that.
     As Albert dropped the grocery basket of rotting
lemons right in front of Jill--who made one of her
patented "ick" sounds--he tossed a quick glance
back at Arlene, and it seemed to Yours Truly that the
aforesaid returned it with interest. Compound inter-
est. Well, stranger things had happened, especially
lately. But I would never have imagined any chemis-
try between . . . well, it didn't bother me if something
were cooking between them. All that mattered was the
mission, I told myself.
     "That caterwaul was you?"
"Like the good old days," said Arlene, "when we
were young and carefree against a bloodred Mars
filling up the sky."
     "Huh?" said Jill.
"Uh," said Albert.
     When Arlene waxed poetic, she was a happy camp-
er. "Mission went well, did it?" I asked. "All right,
let's apply the beauty treatment."
     Albert bravely set the example, squashing several of
the lemons and a lonely lime between his big hands
then applying the result to his face. Arlene followed
suit, and I, after taking a deep breath, dug in. There
were plenty to go around. Then I noticed that Jill was
hanging back.
     "You're going to have to do this," I told her in my
friendly voice.
     "Yeah, yeah, I know," she said, only the second
time she'd pulled the sullen bit around us. I could well
imagine her giving this treatment to the President of
the Twelve full-time. I wouldn't fault her for that.
"It's not that bad," said Arlene, rubbing one down
the side of her own leg. Staining camo wear was a
nonproblem.
     "Okay, okay," Jill said, picking one up and tenta-
tively applying it to her nose. "It's gross," she said
with heartfelt sincerity.
     "Here, let me help," I said, becoming impatient. I
took a lemon in each hand, squeezed, and then began
rubbing the results in her hair.
     "Hey!" she said, backing away.
"No time to be belle of the ball," I snapped,
continuing the operation on her face.
     "Hey!" said Arlene, coming over, taking one of the
lemons out of my hands and brandishing it under my
nose as if it were a live grenade. "What do you think
you're doing?"
     "Doing my bit for truth, justice, and the American
way."
     "Uh-huh," said Arlene, reeking of a lack of convic-
tion. "Fly Taggart, I need to explain this to you so that
you will understand." Smiling pleasantly, Arlene
stomped on my right foot.
     While I was digesting all the implications of her
argument, she whispered in my ear, "She's a woman,
not a child."
     "Don't treat me like a child!" Jill chimed in, as if
she could hear.
     "Don't act like one." I leaned close, ignoring
Arlene, and spoke to Jill as I would to one of my
squadron Marines who was acting out. "Listen up,
ma'am. When you've got a set of butter bars, you can
start thinking and making decisions. But until then,
you do what / say, and / say this stuff is going on now.
"We've done your hair and face; next step is the rest
of your body. You want to do that yourself, or do you
want to give me a thrill by having me do it?"
She stared, then took the lime I held out. Test time
was over for now.
     We finished applying the lemons. Jill made faces
but did fine; I hoped she wouldn't stay pissed for the
rest of the mission. Arlene lemoned the backs of the
rest of us where we couldn't reach, and then I did the
same for her. After that, we bid farewell to our alley
and moved out.
     Albert took point and led us toward the railway
station. I took the rear. Fortunately, now that we
smelled like zombies, we could walk openly and carry
our weapons. We rounded a corner and found our-
selves in a mob of the previously mentioned. I could
see Arlene start to tense up--understandable after
what she and Albert encountered at the grocery store.
But a moment later she was putting on a good act,
probably better than mine.
     For a moment I worried about Jill's performance:
arms straight out like a bad copy of Frankenstein's
monster, legs too stiff and jerking as she walked . . .
too exaggerated. She'd never make it on the legitimate
stage. But the zombies didn't seem to notice.
We passed through an archway and suddenly we
were surrounded by imps, hell-princes, and bonys,
with those damned rocket launchers strapped to their
backs. I watched the bonys walk with a jerking
motion so bad I could imagine strings pulling them as
if they were the puppet skeletons I'd seen in Mexico
during their "Day of the Dead" festival. If I hadn't
already seen one in action in the truck, I'd think they
were fake. One thing: they gave me new appreciation
for Jill's performance as a zombie.
     Then came that lousy moment when the Forces of
Evil unveiled yet another brand new, straight-off-the-
assembly-line monster. This one wasn't inadvertently
funny in the manner of the bonys. This one was just
plain disgusting.
     The word fat barely described the awfulness of this
sphere of flesh. We passed close enough to smell years
of accumulated sweat, a neat trick considering how
new the model had to be. The thing made me think of
a planetoid trapped in Earth's gravitational field, only
this hunk of flesh comprised fold upon fold of nause-
ating, ugly, yellow, dripping, flaccid chicken flab.
Of course, that was only a first impression. As it
came still closer, I decided that it was a lot worse than
I first imagined.
     All I could think of was a gigantic wad of phlegm
carved by flabby hands into a semblance of the
human form with two beady pig's eyes sunk deep into
the grotesque face. At the end of each tree-trunk arm
was a massive metal gun, starting at the elbow.
In a choice between being blasted by those guns or
touched in any way, there was no contest. I could
imagine a lot of names for the thing, and I was sure
Arlene would have some ideas; but I wanted Jill to
have the honor of naming this one. She'd probably
come up with a better name than the different terms
for excrement unrolling in my mind.
     There were plenty of other monsters and zombies
through all this, more than enough to keep us all on
our toes and plenty scared. But this thing was just too
much for my stomach.
     The two steam-demons looming up before us were
more dangerous; but there was something almost
beautiful about them in comparison. They were well-
shaped, with good muscle tone showing on the parts
of them that were flesh instead of machine. Even their
metal parts seemed clean and shiny compared to the
dingy, rusty-looking metal tubes sticking out of that
fatboy. I knew I was in trouble when I started making
aesthetic judgments about the monsters.
     I didn't like the way the zombies hemmed us in. I
pushed left and right, trying to lead my troops out,
but always shying away from the vigilant hell-princes
and bonys; they kept getting underfoot. . . whenever
I'd try to ghost, there they were.
     It took some moments for the penny to drop: we
were being herded like cattle. By the time I realized it,
it was too late to get out; the zombie mass funneled
together, headed toward a large building. My heart
went into overdrive, and I was already starting to
calculate the odds of bolting, when Albert leaned
close and rumbled into my ear, "Here's some luck--
they're driving us into the train station."
     I looked, and by God if he wasn't right. They were
putting us on a bloody train!
     A man's heart deviseth his way: but the Lord
directeth his steps.
     The only possible fly in the ointment would be if
the damned train were headed east; but I had a gut
feeling it was headed straight into Los Angeles.
We couldn't avoid the steam-demons; they were
standing at the boarding ramp to the open cattle car
that was already starting to fill. Well, we'd decided to
take the first opportunity to get aboard, and this
surely was some sort of sign.
     Those old nuns of mine were receiving a lot of
prayers from me lately. I could never imagine saints
or angels; so when I got in one of these moods, those
withered souls in black and gray habits played across
my memory. I used to think the nuns that taught me
were ugly old crones. With what I'd been seeing lately,
they had taken on a new beauty in my mind's eye.
My prayer was simple. Don't let fatboy get on with
us, please; pretty please with a Hail Mary on it.
It was easy to stay together; there wasn't any room
to be separated. We were packed in like the Tokyo
subway at rush hour. Of course, I realized that if we
were separated, we'd have the devil's own time trying
to get back together.
     When all this was over, I thought I might give
religion another shake; as the door to the cattle car
closed, I saw that we weren't going to have to put up
with fatboy: it got onto another car.
     "It's open in the back!" said Jill in surprise. At first
I made to silence her for fear we would attract
attention, but there was so much noise going on
around us that our words wouldn't be noticed over
the roaring and growling filling the narrow space. We
were being pushed toward the rear of the car, where
instead of a solid wall, there was an arrangement of
vertical wooden posts with horizontal metal slats
running through them.
     "That's some window," Arlene commented.
"I see that none of you were brought up around
livestock," I said caustically. "It's a cattle car."
With a grinding sound, the train started forward
with a great lurch, throwing us into our rearward
neighbors, who growled and pushed us back. The
former humans who were now zombies did not be-
have nearly so well as humans would have; some
responded to being jostled by firing off a few shots.
"Great!" shouted Arlene.
     "If this escalates, we'll be wiped out in here!" I
hollered back.
     "What can we do about it?"
"Nothing!" I admitted. Time again to trust to luck.
The nuns must have been working overtime, because
the shots suddenly ceased. I glanced over and saw
Albert with his eyes closed, moving his lips silently. I
supposed that if praying was going to save us, this was
a job for the pro.
     Jill grabbed the back of my pants; it was a good
idea--I grabbed Arlene, and she caught Albert.
We traveled past several small towns that evidently
held little of interest. The night sky had a weird glow,
but I still preferred it to the return of day, if that
sickening green sky was waiting for us. It was too dark
to make out details, but occasionally we saw fires
burning on the horizon, funeral pyres to mark the
passing of humanity. We finally came to a violent stop
and there was more jostling. Our luck was still with
us; the gunshots did not resume.
     "Damn, I wish we could see through the door," I
said. Behind us was a splendid view of a smashed
building and a nice stretch of barren countryside; but
heavy sounds in front of us indicated some action.
"The designers must not care if the cows are well-
informed," said Arlene.
     As if in answer to my request, the heavy wooden
door in the side