Not everything the zombies lit was a normal can- dle. Some gave off a heavy smell of burning b.u.t.ter 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 h.e.l.l out of here!" As we went out into thethrong, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 allthose 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 doc.u.mentaries. At least I hadn't used a hammer and stake yet in fighting these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds; 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 a.s.sociate 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 d.a.m.ned 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 andstart 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 pa.s.s, 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 c.o.c.k- roach that had been making its home there. A gap in her neck revealed the probable entrance to the bug condo.

Then the b.i.t.c.h 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 Alberttwice. 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.

d.a.m.n, 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 mynose 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 b.u.t.ter 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 p.i.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed through an archway and suddenly we were surrounded by imps, h.e.l.l-princes, and bonys, with those d.a.m.ned 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- a.s.sembly-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 pa.s.sed close enough to smell years of acc.u.mulated 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 ma.s.sive 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 h.e.l.l-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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d if he wasn't right. They were putting us on a b.l.o.o.d.y 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 d.a.m.ned train were headed east; but I had a gut feeling it was headed straight into Los Angeles.