jetpack_monkey | For midnightfae

Drabble/ficlet for

midnightfae, who wanted Wonderfalls and zombies. Rated PG-13/R-lite for violence.

The lion started it. He's the instigator.

"Don't go out there..."

I snatched him up and looked him in his beady little red wax eyes. "Not tonight. Tonight I finally get Eric all to myself. No wife, no craziness, just a boy who might actually not run away from my... what this is, and you are not ruining things for me!"

"He's right, you know..." Brass monkey. I like to think of him as the sensible voice of insanity.

"You stay out of it!" I jabbed a finger at him. It. Whatever.

I checked my reflection in the window. Looking good... I noticed Recently-Not-Fat Pat out of his trailer. Don't know what his problem was, but he seemed to be totally drunk, practically dragging himself along. I wondered if the muffin business fell out from under him.

My cell phone rang. Sharon. Of course. "Hi, Jaye. Um, could you come over to Mom and Dad's for a second? I need some help." Somewhere in the background someone was banging on a door. Probably Aaron locked himself out again.

"Sharon, you know I'd hate to, but tonight you have particularly bad timing. I'm busy."

"Jaye, please! I can't hold them back for much..." I hit "End." Sharon should have really known better than to call me about... well, anything. I couldn't figure out why everything seemed so weird that night.

I hustled to the door -- no point in staying around here with the naysaying animals of doom. I thought maybe I'd be lucky enough to get out before one of them...

"Before you go..." Barrel Bear. I really dislike him. It. Whatever.

"What? What could possibly be more important than a date and possible sex with a very lickable boy?"

"Remove the head or destroy the brain."

"Right. Whatever. I'm sure that makes some vaguely cryptic sense that I'll figure out later." I tromped out and over to my car. The night was dead. You know, weirdly quiet. Usually somebody would be having loud gossip or verbal abuse or something not silent. Anything would have been good right about then.

I slid into the car, jammed the key into the ignition, and drove. Just as I was pulling out of High & Dry lot, some idiot came stumbling in front of the car. I rolled down the window. "Excuse me, maybe you're missing where this is a two-ton beast that could *kill you*?"

The idiot jerked his head toward me as if he was just now noticing me. He looked... weird. His skin was greyish-blue and his eyes seemed to sink into his head. It was kinda gross. I smiled tightly at him. "Um, sorry, I just have to be getting on my way. If you could just step to the left or whatever?"

The idiot shambled to the driver's side of the car and started to move towards me. "No, really. I just needed you to move. No need to have a conversation or anything." He reached out a hand and I could smell him. Skunks would have run from this guy's bouquet. "I'm sorry, whatever your personal problems are right now, they're gonna have to stay personal. Igottagonow." I gunned the engine and tore onto the road.

The sidewalks, lawns, pretty much every open space teemed with people, wandering around like somebody put Everclear in the water supply. I drove past houses being boarded up and others with doors wide open. I bet myself 5 bucks that even under the worst catastrophe I still had to go into work tomorrow.

I parked behind The Barrel and let myself in the back door. It was still weird to see an empty corner where Eric used to sleep, but he'd moved to his own apartment when he came back home. Pushing my way into the front, I noticed that... nobody was there. The place usually kept a fairly full compliment of people on a Friday night. Now a pall hung over it. Weird. Had they closed early for a party or something?

I put my coat down on the bar and grabbed a shot of vodka. The place might have been devoid of people, but somebody was still serving drinks. The bar was covered with them. Most of the tables had unfinished plates of food. The night was officially kinda fucked up. I heard a rustling on the far end of the bar.

Panic seemed like an ill-advised emotion at this time, but it's what I had to work with. I downed the vodka and reached behind the bar for the Louisville Slugger that the bar owner kept for vague threats against unruly customers. I got nothing. Whoever left this place took the bat with them. Dammit. I crept along the edge of the bar, hoping that my time watching bad 80s action movies would somehow imbue me with the ability to improvise weaponry on the fly. The rustling came again, accompanied by a weird squeak. I grabbed a full pitcher of flat beer, intending to smash it over an assailant's head and send them running to the laundromat.

The far corner of the bar approached rapidly. I had to do this quickly. I couldn't have told you what "this" was, but I was going to do accomplish it in a speedy manner. Facing the bar, I leapt to the side, fully doing the John Woo mid-air double-barreled gun thing, but with Budweiser instead of firearms. The beer sloshed, spilling on the ground and my arm. I landed, raised the pitcher, and...

"Jaye?"

"Mahandra?"

"Oh, Jaye, thank God." She stood up and gave me the kind of air-constricting bear hug that we'd never shared in all our years of friendship. "You're okay. You're not..." She pulled back and looked at me. "You're okay."

"Mahandra, what's going on? The Barrel is empty on a Friday night, but everybody in Niagra seems to be drunk."

Mahandra leaned forward against the bar. "I don't know. I just don't know. One minute we're having a good time, the next, most of the people in here are just... They just... Why would they do that? Why would somebody just... eat somebody?"

"Eric. Was Eric here?"

"He was here when it happened, but he wasn't one of the people that changed. He grabbed the Slugger and started swinging at anybody that came near."

"Where is he now?"

Mahandra's eyes started watering.

"Mahandra... Oh God."

"I don't know. I ran. I locked myself in the Women's restroom and hid in a stall. I've been in there the last hour, waiting for it to stop."

I fished my phone out of my pocket. "He's probably fine." I hit Eric's speed dial. "C'mon, c'mon..." Somewhere, the tiniest tinniest ring sounded. "He's in the building somewhere."

"Uh-huh." Mahandra sat down on a stool, eyes staring at nothing.

"Drink something strong. I'll be right back."

I pitched my ear toward the source of the ringing. I made it as far as the backroom when it stopped. I speeddialed Eric again. The sound was definitely coming from the far end of the room. He was probably huddled back there, freaked out like Mahandra.

I passed racks of food storage. "Remove the head or destroy the brain!" A shot a look to one side. The bunny rabbit printed on the box of maraschino cherries lifted her cocktail platter a little higher. Perky wench.

"Ssssh. Can't you see I am in the middle of a delicate rescue operation here?"

"Remove the head or destroy the brain!"

"Whatever. Eric?" I whispered. "Eric, if you're there, give me a sign!" The ringing stopped. I redialed. It was still a very faint sound, but it was definitely coming from inside the walk-in cooler. Somebody had done some damage to the exterior of the door recently -- way recently, because they left the crowbar laying on the floor -- and there were little spaces blowing out cold air.

I grabbed the crowbar and jammed it into one of the open spaces between the jamb and the door. "Hold on, Eric! Don't freeze to death or get hypothermia or anything!" I sorta yelled, sorta whispered. There wasn't a lot of give, but I managed a little extra leverage and pushed as hard as I could. The door creaked forward a little, but it was still latched on good and tight.

Then I noticed the handle. Sorry if I wasn't being observant of basic door theory while my boy... person was dying from the cold. I yanked the handle and the door swung open. A blast of cold steam blew from a vent above, blocking any clear view of the interior. "Eric? Eric, are you in there?"

Eric or somebody with his exact shape (not that I spent a great deal of time before this contemplating his exact shape) stumbled forward, shivering. I smiled. "Eric... oh thank God. Check your toes. If any of them are black, we may need to amputate."

Eric didn't really say much. He just kind of stumble into the fog and then out the other side, where I could clearly see with little doubt that he was probably Eric an hour ago, but he definitely was not Eric anymore. The whole grey skin with a side of drool gave it away. I nearly tripped in my measured no-sudden-moves retreat.

"Eric. Hi. Um, maybe this isn't a good time to tell you this, but... I have a policy against dating cannibals. I mean, we could make an exception if you really wanted to make it work, but..."

NotEric studied me briefly and then lurched forward, arms outstretched like he was asking for another helping of stew at the orphanage. He moaned, an unearthly yawning sound.

"Remove the head or destroy the brain," the cocktail bunny chirped from the box of maraschino cherries.

"I hate you so much right now."

I swear the bunny lost her perky look. One of her ears drooped.

NotEric's stumbling picked up pace. He looked really hungry.

I gripped the crowbar tighter. "Eric, if you come any closer, I'm really going to have to do something I might regret. I mean, I just got you away from Heidi and I was looking forward to our date and..." NotEric grimaced.

I cracked the crowbar into his skull and ran.

Stupid animals.