The Cocaine Chronicles (26 page)

One of the zombies teetered on its feet, snow powdering its decomposed face. It ran into a tree and started to bang its head against the trunk so fiercely that it broke its face open. It continued hitting its head against the tree, smearing gore over the bark.

“Shit,” Holmes swore. “Shit.” He stomped about in frustration.

The zombies fought and scratched and snorted and mutilated each other until body parts were littered among the overgrown grass. Even legless zombies crawled their torsos over to any patch of flake on the ground to snort. The moon shone pregnant and brilliantly yellow against the warm night air.

Watching this, the four were soon witness to the actions of the last two zombies left standing. One was the creature with the nasty Afro and the other the ghastly one in the miniskirt. They each pulled on the end of a piece of plastic—a clump of the white stuff clung to the material. They stood among the battered and deformed heads, smashed eyeballs, torn-out tongues, broken teeth, severed fingers, cracked mood rings, ankh and cross ornaments, and knit caps of the walking disco dead.

Several of the disconnected heads mumbled, “
Coke, coke,
” over and over again, as a few of the mutilated hands crept across the ground in search of any fine white crystals left.

Meanwhile, miniskirt had an arm around Afro zombie’s neck and was gnawing on his ear as he ignored her and snorted his treasure of blow. He then turned and bit into her face and the two bearhugged each other and rolled down the opposite side of the hill to a tributary of the river. Their bodies broke against a cropping of rocks, yet they continued to claw and rend each other.

Holmes wanted to cry. Corso consoled him as the four trudged back to the house. Each step along the way, all except Holmes grew slowly elated and pumped, having survived a vicious zombie attack.

“Come on, baby,” Corso told a brooding Holmes back at the house. “I got something that will make you forget all about those funky zombies.” And they made loud, rough love that left them both satisfied and weak, as was the same for McMillan and Fernandez. Fortunately for McMillan, his arm was merely wrenched, and he was able to use both hands to further explore the woman’s body.

In the morning they ate well and Holmes and McMillan talked over other sources for some blow, given they still had their cash. Corso had declined any money.

“I’ll call you.”

“Liar.”

“No,” Holmes said, as they stood outside her house in the morning. “We connected again.”

She kissed him.

Holmes and McMillan had started for their car when they spotted Wild Willie shambling from around a corner of the house. That he was dead was obvious from the hyperextended eyes, gray flesh, and festering leg with flies buzzing around it.

He sprayed bullets from his AK, all the while grunting, “
Coke,
coke, give me my coke back,
” as the Tramps could be heard singing, “
Burn that mutha down,
” from their song, “Disco Inferno.”

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