Page 7 of Slayer Mom
“All right.” He pushed the door open for me and shone his light around so I could see the clear walkway and the group of empty aisles that weren’t blocked up by old popcorn makers or pinball machines or broken dispensers. Large swathes of fabric were spread over the back rows of seats.
I stumbled down the aisle towards the middle row, following the thin beam of Tom’s light. It was so spooky, but fun.
Soon enough, the film began, but the sound was sporadic. It would have been irritating, but I just kept drinking and waving my bottle around to help out the hero.
During one fight scene, the sound cut long enough for me to hear something right behind me. Iwhirled around with my bottle instinctively, vaguely realizing that nothing was behind me. It was just drunkenness in a creepy movie theater, but it was technically possible that there was a pervert who came in after me.
The pervert had milky white eyes, scraggly teeth in her distended mouth, and hands curved like claws, with strands of desiccated flesh coming off them. My bottle hit her head, sending it off the neck to bounce against the back of a theater seat before it tumbled to the floor and rolled out of sight.
The hand brushed my shoulder, and I swung my bottle again, knocking the hand off of the wrist while I stumbled back into the chair in front of mine.
The creature made a hissing gurgling sound as it bent over, arms outstretched as if searching for its lost pieces. That’s when I screamed.
I rolled over the seat in front of mine and then stumbled towards the aisle, screaming at the top of my lungs. When I reached the aisle, I half expected a horde of zombies to come out from between the seats, but there were only old rolls of printer paper. I ran towards the doors, screaming the entire way. When I got into the hall, I ran into Tom and knocked him back into the wall that time.
“Zombies!” I gasped, pointing back into the theater and waving my bottle around. “Zombies! Do you understand me?” I got right in Tom’s face and then had a moment of near lucidity. I had to look completely nuts, or just drunk out of my mind. “I know what I saw!” I said defensively.
“Zombies. That’s what you said. Why don’t you keep that just between us,” he said before he ducked around me, shifting his flashlight in his hand so it was more of a thumper, and then casually bent down to pull a knife off his leg under the long cuff of his pants.
He glanced right and left before easing the dooropen. He glanced in then pulled back against the door as he frowned.
“What are you doing? Shouldn’t you call the police, or a priest, or someone professional?”
He held up his wrist to show me the little blue star he’d said his parents had given him soon after he was born as a mark of his destiny as the next in a long line of Van Helsing descendants, slayers of monsters. His stories were always ridiculous, and I’d had a lot of fun listening to his wild hijinks with ghosts and zombies, but this was not fun.
I swallowed and grabbed his arm. “Tom, this was a real zombie. I knocked its head off with my bottle and then it went to look for it. I don’t think it can be killed. Also, why does it smell like nutmeg?”
He gazed into my eyes intently. “It does smell like nutmeg, doesn’t it? That’s unfortunate.”
“It’s not that bad. I mean, pumpkin pie scented zombies is better than a lot of things.”
“We’ll talk about it later. Do you want to stay here or come with me? You’d better come with me. Stay close, but not too close, because you’re very drunk.”
I nodded, feeling very sober, but then when I followed him into the dark theater, I promptly bumped into him. I winced and waited for him to shush me, but he was in super stealth mode.
We crept down the aisle and then the zombie leapt out, knocking Tom to the side. When it came at me, I screamed and my hours of aerobic kickboxing reflexes kicked in, and so did I. I kicked that zombie back with a solid to her chest and then when it crouched and came back at me, I swung the bottle at it. It caught the end of it, putting all its weight on it so I lost the bottle, and then she was on me again, leaping with claws outstretched. She lurched and landed on her hands and knees, making retching sounds and shuddering. The tip of Tom’s knife came through its skull, upthrough its nose and forehead, slicing through its brains.
“Back up, Lucy. It’ll take time for this one to go down,” Tom said and then proceeded to cut the monster apart with his very sharp knife.
Blood trailed down his arm. Where was my first aid kit? In my sensible SUV, which I’d left at Gloria’s house. Tom had a first aid kit in the long room above the theaters where he put on the reels.
“You’re hurt,” I said, stepping forward and then stumbling back when the zombie snapped at me in spite of having a split skull. Why wouldn’t the thing die already? So gross. So creepy. So the reason I didn’t watch horror movies.
“Back up. Now.” Then he started seriously hacking, like speed saw killer, and zombie chunks were everywhere. I backed up before I got anything on myself, then tripped and sat down hard, watching Tom until the alcohol mixed with the brains and guts and I threw up. I hadn’t thrown up for years. I hadn’t missed it. After I was finished retching, I headed up the aisle because we’d need cleaning supplies, and not just for me.
After the zombie was super dead, we lit its remains on fire in the burn barrel Tom kept behind the theater outside. I gripped my bottle tight, glancing right and left, before checking Tom, over and over. Maybe he’d gotten infected by the zombie. Zombie. There was a zombie in the burn barrel, snapping and cracking and popping like wet pine needles. When it was burning well, he turned to face me, and I watched him warily.
He nodded at the first aid kit next to me. “I could use that.”
Right. He’d been hurt. “Are you infected?”
He shook his head, but looked serious, like it hadn’t been a ridiculous question. “No, she didn’twant to infect me. You were her target, not me. Can you clean up my scrape, or are you still feeling delicate?”
I took a deep breath through my mouth and stepped towards him with the alcohol cleansers. He was such a good patient, nothing like Wat when I made him sit while I irrigated his cuts and scrapes. It was almost peaceful without the screaming.
“What makes you think that she wanted to infect me?” Zombies were real. And one of them was specifically targeting me? Bizarre didn’t cover it. Unbelievable? Yes.
“She was clearly after you. It was lucky that you knocked her away from you in the theater while she was being stealthy, otherwise, you’d be infected.”
