Page 30 of 10 Things I Hate About Zombies

‘It’s probably a cult, and this is how they get you.’

‘The Cult of Poetology, huh.’

Fortunately, they were given a reprieve from performing, which was a relief, as Zoey was having horrific flashbacks from her high-school performance in The Merchant of Venice. Just then, a skinny individual lurched down the stairs, stumbling over to the podium and grabbing the microphone from Cardigan Guy. They were green-tinged in the cycling lights, which the AV guy was having an absolute blast with. Or didn’t know how to work. (It was definitely one of those two.)

The new arrival swayed on the spot, blinking slowly.

Then, at last …

‘Brraaaiinnns,’ came a tortured voice over the microphone. A pause. ‘Brraaaainnns.’

The final ‘s’ was a sibilant hiss that devolved into a screech of microphone feedback, and the audience clapped their hands over their ears. Well, except for a girl in an Oscar the Grouch onesie who was already wearing giant headphones, and who looked quite triumphant about her pre-planning.

‘Gotta protect your hearing,’ she shouted.

‘Just incredible delivery, don’t you think?’ marvelled a guy in a bucket hat and a scarf so large it might have been a bedsheet. A glossy tag on a lanyard proclaimed him to be press. ‘So spare. So elegiac. So tortured. And that exit – what a way to ensure the moment lingers when you yourself cannot. Ooh, that’s a good line. Hang on. Let me record that as a voice note. Hey, Siri?’

Zoey met Nick’s eyes. He was clearly trying as hard as she was not to laugh.

The brains poet shambled offstage and back into the little room where the chocolate martinis were apparently being produced. (Zoey caught a glimpse of chocolate topping, the fast-setting type that hardened on your ice-cream.)

‘Okay, we need to get out of here before we’re called upon,’ said Zoey emphatically. ‘I can’t do it. I just can’t. Even as the resident grump, I cannot bring myself to speak in that cadence. It’s unnatural.’

‘C’mon.’ Nick grabbed her hand and led her back up the stairs. Alice trotted along beside them, nosing open the front door and letting them out into the warm night. And what would’ve been fresh air, except for the guy peeing by the side of the building.

‘Hey! I’m peeing here!’ he grumbled, as Zoey tried to avert her eyes.

Nick wrapped an arm around her and scooted her off to safety. ‘I’ve gotta say, that was the best twenty bucks I’ve ever spent.’

‘The dollar-to-cringe ratio was exceptional,’ agreed Zoey.

‘What’s with the whole brains thing, though?’ Nick asked. ‘It keeps coming up. Darina said it, although that was probably a head injury talking.’

Zoey frowned. Nova had shouted something about brains, too, hadn’t she? But Opal had said that was a band. And also a weird, possibly ironic nickname she used for her ex. It was probably just a coincidence.

‘Who knows,’ she replied. ‘It’s probably just hit the zeitgeist, through TikTok or something. Like Skibidi Toilet and 6-7 and whatever else the kids are into these days. I’ll ask Terriffany. She’s pretty good at keeping track.’

‘I’ll await your report. I mean, it’s probably just a Baader-Meinhof thing, where once you’re on the lookout for people saying brains, it’s all you hear.’

Fair, thought, Zoey. After all, she’d spent her whole life on the lookout for fellow brains. And now here she was, on a date with one.

I HATE THE WAY THEY MUMBLE

10

Zoey

Zoey set her forearms on the Smoothie Maven counter and rested her head against them. Today had moved at breakneck pace. The shop had sold out of its mushroom smoothies within the first hour, and she’d spent the rest of the day apologetically offering alternatives like the ABC CBD and the Skincare Pear.

‘I flew in from L.A.?’ complained a blonde woman in a capacious straw hat when Zoey explained this. Zoey did not doubt the woman’s claims: her skin was the colour of overcooked pancakes and her lips had a puffiness that nearly required an EpiPen. ‘This stuff had better be as good as the Japanese Milk Bread I waited overnight to try? Well, paid someone to wait overnight to try? Like I did with my Taylor Swift tickets?’

‘My mushroom guy is going to restock us tonight,’ promised Zoey. My very hot, very PNW lumberjack mushroom guy. Whom I kissed last night! Kissed! ‘You’re welcome to wait overnight if you really want, but honestly ten minutes before opening should do it.’

The blonde woman scoffed, then stomped off down the street to take selfies outside the vegan cheese shop.

‘Oh come on. We have a photogenic garden wall, and our ugly vegetable display is right there!’ muttered Zoey, going over to heft a particularly hideous rutabaga. ‘It’s perfect for selfies!’

‘We should start taking bigger orders,’ said Terriffany, as Zoey flipped over the door sign to ‘closed’. Terriffany was running models in some sort of fancy data-visualisation program on her iPad. ‘I think we’re close to having a viral moment. Especially since …’ she ran a quick reverse-image search ‘… that blonde lady has three million followers. She’s a trend spotter.’