Part-time Zombie

Chapter 1: Nausea

Alice was somewhere between transcribing Dr. Price’s faxed notes and entering a lab result when she decided to eat someone. It wasn’t a conscious decision, exactly, and the thought registered as a cramping pain in her stomach simultaneous with a throb at the back of her brain. Alice rose stiffly from her desk, thinking about getting something to eat, although she felt nauseated and hadn’t been hungry a moment earlier.

Drs. Price and Goldblum had the only doctor’s office in the strip mall, nestled between a Dairy Queen and an auto parts store. Well, the auto parts store was permanently closed although they still had the sign up. Alice stumbled out the front door, still with enough presence of mind to lock up before she bowled into a group of six teenagers. The girls had on a rainbow of different color lipstick with flecks of gold or silver, the boys all had jean jackets with unruly collars, Converse sneakers with no shoelaces and the tongues lolling out.

They all yelled and one girl’s ice cream spilled out of her hands after Alice fell into her, knocking her back. Hey! the girl dressed in what looked like a shiny, fitted banana peel said. Look what you did, you old bat! The girl was taller than her by half a head and wore her blonde, wavy hair in a high ponytail. Alice craned her head back to look up at her and something about the teenagers’ collective attitude changed.

Nawl, a boy said. He had on a pair of thick herringbone necklaces with medallions hanging off them as big as wall clocks and a red jogging suit complete with matching red round bucket Kangol hat. Iss cool, Chrissy. I’ll buy you another one. The girl opened her mouth to protest as he was already dragging her along back into the Dairy Queen. The others trailed behind, glancing Alice’s way as they passed.

Maybe she wanted Dairy Queen too. She had to do something to settle this nausea. She’d meant to apologize but was afraid to open her mouth to speak. Hadn’t she heard something about milk calming nausea? Alice couldn’t think straight, she was so hungry. She had never felt anything like this before.

She stumbled inside, the pungent smell of soft-serve ice cream and cones filling her nose. The scents were momentarily overwhelming, giving Alice a tinny sensation in the middle of her brain like the onset of a headache. She put a hand to her head, intent on apologizing to the teens but not watching where she was going as she bumped into the same teens she was looking for standing in line. They all looked at her and took a step back.

They smelled sweet too and the dull knife in her brain abated.

"Look, grandma, what is your problem?" The girl who'd lost her ice cream a moment earlier stepped forward. She shoved Alice’s shoulder, her manicured fingernails shaped like pink claws. Alice wasn’t conscious of snapping at her hand until the girl reared back, a shocked expression on her face.

"Ow. You bit me! Jake, she bit me!" The girl’s eyes went wide and she stepped back into her boyfriend.

Alice didn’t think she had, but she tasted something tangy sliding around on her tongue. There was something else hard and semi sharp agitating the roof of her mouth and Alice spat out one of the girl’s press-on fingernails.

"See! I told you so, Jake. She bit me. Jake, she bit me. Every time the girl spoke his name she sounded more whiny and nasal. The girl flashed her hand in front of her like she was telling Alice to halt. She ruined my nails!" Jake rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Okay, Chrissy, what you want me ta do about it, though? I cain’t beat up no girl.

"She is not a girl and yes, you can. Chrissy sounded offended. She’s like thirty. She’s like my mom’s age, you can fight her. Punch her, Jake. Knock her teeth in. Do it."

"Uh, how ‘bout I get you a Band-Aid or somethin’? You don’t wanna get that infected or nothin’, do you?

The girl’s eyes went wider. "Rabies? You don’t think she has rabies, do you, Jake?" She turned and huddled even more.

Ahownknow. Jake hunched his shoulders, his eyes flicking up and down the length of Alice’s body as he simultaneously curled a protective arm around his girlfriend. Alice knew the look even if it was tinged with a bit of wariness. She does look kinda sick. Right, guys?

The other teens nodded and grumbled in agreement. Jake held a hand up and with a fluorish snapped them into motion, following them as they shuffled out of line, giving Alice as wide of a berth as possible in the small area. Once they were gone a small bald man in black-and-white plaid shorts up to his nipples and a shirt with palm trees on it was ahead of her. He was getting his ice cream in a cup with red syrup drizzled all over it with a healthy sprinkling of peanuts.

He nodded at Alice, giving her the up and down too with eyes behind fishbowl glasses. Then the old man shuffled past and pushed outside.

I’ll have what he had. No nuts, though, Alice said to the teen behind the counter. The girl nodded, her sweet smell wafting over as she proceeded to ring up her order. She had braces and her fire-engine red hair twisted up in two scrunchies like knobs to either side of the back of her head. Alice handed her the first bill she dug out of her wallet and accepted her change blindly, disturbed at how the girl incessantly chomped away at a piece of gum.

A moment later Alice had her own cup of ice cream with syrupy red drizzled all over it.

Alice carried it like a weight as she walked back outside, the teens studying her as she emerged. She was certain there was no way she could eat this, her nausea had increased to the point she was seeing everything under a haze of red and knew any moment she’d be curled over, yakking her lungs out.

Right now, though, she was so hungry.

That tinny feeling returned, spreading behind her ears as her mouth filled with saliva. Any minute now, she thought. Before she could be gripped by horrid release a giant fist crashed into the side of her head.

Ice cream and syrupy red drizzle were both forgotten. Alice had somehow gotten a hand up even though she hadn’t seen the blow coming, attempting to block. She’d only succeeded in getting her ice cream smashed into her face before she went tumbling to the concrete.

Alice was upside down and knew her skirt had flipped over her face. Sunlight transluced through her skirt, giving everything a soft dark glow. That of course meant that anyone looking was getting a good view of her underwear. Alice kicked her legs until she had changed the position of her body, which had become semi lodged in a vertical corner between the walkway and façade of the building.

Crap, I think Big Jan just killed her! somebody yelled. Alice was still blinking the clouds out of her eyes as teenagers laughed and retreating feet beat against the concrete.

No, she ain’t dead. The voice was deep and feminine. Yet. Alice looked up from her prone position at a figure that at first appeared to be a hairy mountain with neon pink hair. She went on staring at it until her eyes focused enough to make out that the mountain was actually another teenager. At least Alice assumed she was a teenager—the girl’s mustache hadn’t completely filled in. Get up.

Alice rose, upset about the ice cream spilled all over her, but more frightened of the giant woman-child standing over and glowering at her. Now wait a minute—

Big Jan punched her again. It felt like she had punched her entire chest and stomach all at once. Alice flew back and bounced off the wall. She felt as though her bones had dissolved and was mid-crumple when Big Jan seized her by the throat.

This is for spilling Chrissy’s ice cream, the girl said and punched Alice in the stomach again. Alice felt a hot something with a thousand needles in it crawling up her esophagus. This is for following us into the Dairy Queen like a weirdo-stalker. She hit her again and the needles turned into barbs. "And this is for. . . this is for just being so old!" Big Jan punched her in the stomach one last time and everything in Alice’s allegedly empty stomach came up.

To the casual passerby it might have looked like someone might have had too much ice cream and threw up on someone else. Or maybe someone had had a mouthful of ice cream and had sneezed at an inopportune moment.

What happened was just so. . . gross.

Big Jan stumbled backward, a dissolving expression of horror on what was left of her face. There was the smell and sound of sizzling meat and burning tomatoes that set Alice’s mouth to watering, the nausea finally lifted. A whistling sound came from the expanding hole in the teen’s throat which she tried to cover with a blob of a hand that looked like Superman ice cream.

Big Jan turned with a stilted gait and walked into the parking lot. No sooner had she made it past the first row of parked cars when a Geo Metro came around a corner five miles faster than the posted limit of fifteen and ran her down.

The girl hit the asphalt, the remnants of her upper body practically disintegrating upon impact with the asphalt. Her upper half and shirt continued melting along with the top three inches of asphalt beneath her.

Alice, still shaky, shuffled over to what was left of the girl. She looked up and locked eyes with the driver of the Metro, half out of his car, a pair of sunglasses pushed up in his feathered hair, looking as frightened by what had just happened as of the dead body no more than fifteen feet away.

No way, the man said, clapping his hands over his lush head of jet-black hair. I didn’t do that. He looked down at the girl’s soupy remains. I-I didn’t. He’d been shouting over a blaring radio inside the car, playing Queen’s Keep Yourself Alive. He pointed to what was left of the girl and opened his mouth as if to say something else. Then he looked around and apparently saw that other than a woman who appeared to be in shock, no one had seen what had just happened. He glanced nervously at Alice, turned, then got back in the smoky din of the Metro. The tires chirped as the car lurched forward, weaving jerkily around the semi-liquid remains of the dead teen. Then the car accelerated again, whipping around the end of the row of cars and pulling out of the lot, cutting off a car headed south as it turned in the opposite direction.

Alice felt somewhat better, the hunger and nausea lifting like a receding fog. She looked at the pair of legs on the ground, splayed like someone trying to show what a figure-four leglock looked like without the benefit of the other two legs. Red gore poked out of the top of those legs, including the thick trunk of what looked like a vertebral column that seemed to be melting before her eyes. She took a step forward, not knowing if her intent was to satisfy lingering hunger or morbid curiosity and hooked the tip of one of her shoes on the heel of the other and face planted in the girl’s red chowder remains. Then she blacked out.

Chapter 2: In the Hospital

Dr. Price was there when she woke up. Alice came aware, seeing him standing over her, a broad smile on his bearded face. Dr. Price was a husky man of about sixty or so with wisps of gray atop his head and thick glasses. He was taller than her by almost a head and was one half of the Price-Goldblum practice. Alice had never met Dr. Goldblum whose picture hung in the office from when he’d dug water wells in an African village. He looked tall and thin, a head full of thick black, wavy hair, and mutton-chop sideburns. Maybe he was Middle Eastern or Italian, she couldn’t really tell.

How are we doing, Alice? Dr. Price said. He looked like he couldn’t have been happier that she was in the hospital. Alice felt better now, the antiseptic smell of the hospital scrubbing the malodorous stench from before out of her mind. She was still a far cry from feeling good.

I’m okay, Dr. Price, she said, the memory like a misty dream. I guess I have a bug or something. I’ve never felt like that before.

Dr. Price nodded, still hovering inches away from her. Do you remember what happened?

No, she said and then thought about it. She remembered hitting her head or maybe something hitting her in the head. Alice felt like she had been hit by a car and that was sort of familiar. Did I get hit by a car?

No. Dr. Price shook his head. Alice noticed for the first time that he was speaking louder than necessary like she was hard of hearing or wasn’t exactly familiar with the English language. He rested a hand over hers. We’ll talk about it soon. You just get some rest. Okay, m’dear?

Alice did her best to nod, already fading even though she had felt wide-awake just a moment before. Before she slipped away, though, she felt Dr. Price’s hand shift and realized he was taking her pulse for some reason.

She slipped into a dream where she was alone in a pool. There were people all around, watching her from the edge and she didn’t know how to swim. Alice kicked her legs wildly and thrashed her arms to remain afloat, but she kept dipping beneath the surface.

She noticed the people watching her were leaning in like they were waiting for something. Alice wanted