The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home

Chapter 11 - Clio

No sooner had I returned from the bank than my cellphone chirped. It was a text message from Okie: X brdr, C U 1 hr I hope, xx. O.

X brdr must have meant than she and her Z-Liner driver, and by implication Sumatra, had now made it safely across the U.S./Canadian border, which – from what I’d seen on TV, earlier – was well fortified.  Transporting the afflicted across international borders was strictly prohibited. I did wonder how they’d managed to disguise or explain Sumatra, but it may have been a matter of simple bribery. What route had they taken? Perhaps one of the border posts was now insufficiently guarded due to atrophied brains among the staff. If so, at least they wouldn’t have been aggressive. Or not verbally.

Before their arrival there was much to be done. First, I went through the cupboards and located all the spare bottles of “Glowing Skull”  “sports drink – in various stages of development – that Dexter had kept on hand for experimental purposes. I’d had my suspicions, though I had not voiced these to anyone, not even to Dexter; a man does hate to be challenged when in the throes of an invention that’s certain to make him rich. Increased energy, freedom from Alzheimers – who wouldn’t want that? And “Glowing Skull” did at first live up to its promises, at least the energy part. The tennis doubles scores racked up at the club by early users were truly sensational.

But then something must have gone wrong. Dexter’s notes indicate that  a virus or microbe appeared to have hybridized with certain of Glowing Skull’s desirable features, speeding up energy burn and cell division. Accelerated brain deterioration was – he suspected – the result, with the additional behavioural aberrations that are now so much in evidence.  After that, the energy component of the drink was its least desirable one, as it allowed the body to be mobile more or less indefinitely, even when severely damaged.

I hadn’t drunk any “Glowing Skull” myself, though more by good luck than good judgment, never having had any marathon or trampoline or even tennis ambitions, I’m happy to say. For if I had drunk any, I’d likely not be happy to say anything; I’d simply be making that irritating moan. But Dexter did try the brew out on himself, like any self-respecting mad scientist.

At first he was rejuvenated, and took up ballroom dancing and flirting with flight attendants. “Spy” and “obnoxious” were both adjectives one might have applied to him, had one not been his indulgent wife. Then he became very peculiar, and started appearing in doorways with a vacant look, drooling in a witless but malevolent way. I realize now that he was trying to control himself: his notes at the beginning of this period are heartbreaking. What is happening to me, I can’t seem to… I smell meat even when there is none in the room, and at the same time rhubarb pies fill me with revulsion. I look at my dear wife Clio and all I see is a great pink throbbing juicy brain… I must get, I must go… Then the notes trail off.

I had to put a stop to poor Dexter after he tried to sink his false teeth into my left buttock. Over-aged sex play is one thing, I’m all in favour of it up to a point, but one has to draw the line. It was a good thing we were in the kitchen at the time: acting in self-defense, I made swift use of the tools at hand, which included a cast-iron casserole and an espresso maker that we’d never used much anyway. Plus a chef’s cleaver.

It was early days and there might have been an inquest, but our family doctor – we still had one then – was understanding, and money greases many a wheel, and it was a closed coffin; so no one remarked upon the severed head and the bashed-in skull.  Goodbye, Dexter, I whispered to myself at the funeral. I loved what you used to be. Your secret is safe with me.

Now, in anticipation of Okie’s arrival, I gathered up the bottles of “Glowing Skull” and took them down to the cellar. It would not do to have anyone – such as Okie’s Z-Liner young man – drinking any of the suspicious liquid by mistake. I hadn’t known how to dispose of the stuff: it could not be put into the trash, where some homeless person might root it out and drink it. It could not be disposed of in the sewage system: who knows what it might do to any fish or frogs that came across it? That’s all we’d need, a plague of brain-dead carnivorous frogs, hopping all over us and taking tiny bites. Nor could I pour it out in the garden: it might result in giant, ambulatory superweeds that would send voracious tendrils in through your window at night, and could not be killed.  No, the bottles would have to remain under lock and key, like nuclear waste. Perhaps after decades their contents would lose potency.