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The Hidden Zombie. Faux-news footage showed a smiling woman working as a barista.
The Truth. A night scene with the same woman crouched beside a mangled corpse, gore on her face and hands, and a savage look in her eyes.
Several more scenes of people in ordinary jobs with quick scene cuts to show them killing and eating customers or patients or neighbors. I snorted. Please. I’d never once killed and eaten a customer or neighbor. And the bodies at the morgue could hardly be counted as patients.
“You’ve seen what zombies are like in movies.” The narrator’s voice resonated through the tent.
Another subtitle flashed. Zombie Frenzy!
The football field melée scene from High School Zombie Apocalypse!! filled the screen, except this clip was from a different camera angle than the ones used in the movie. It showed plenty of general movie zombie madness, but there I was at the back of the crowd, leaping on Philip and biting his neck to calm him down. I gulped, mouth dry. At least it didn’t show either of our faces.
“Are you prepared for the reality?” the narrator asked, dark and serious. “The truth will shock you.”
r /> Dramatic music punctuated each word as it filled the screen—
ZOMBIES
ARE
AMONG
US
—followed by a rapid-fire series of gory images, too fast to register individually.
Short credits rolled, accompanied by eerie snarls. I spotted my murder victim’s name, Grayson Seeger, listed as a producer. The final line told viewers to visit zombiesare amongus.com for more information.
Well, shit.
I managed to clap along with everyone else, forced a grin onto my face as the moonlight returned. People jabbered in excited voices about the film as they milled toward the food, and the tent suddenly seemed way too hot and crowded. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the studio used footage from that melée on the football field, but never in a million years did I expect them to make a “mockumentary” about it. Those fake documentaries were great and funny and all that, except for the pesky fact that there were always a few people who either didn’t get that the shit was fake or wanted to believe it and started looking for mermaids and monster sharks. Despite the presumed absurdity of the subject matter, this little film did a damn good job of portraying the issue as legit and serious. The last thing any of us needed was for a moron viewer to get worked up and believe that zombies were real and needed to be hunted down. Especially with the angle of zombies living like ordinary people.
I made my escape through the graveyard and stepped out into the daylight. The abrupt shift helped drive away the creepiness of the video. Why the hell was I letting it get to me? It was just a silly piece of studio promotion. Besides, one of the reasons I’d come to the Fest was to get a read on the Three Dumbass Amigos about the murder. I needed to stop fiddlefucking around and get moving on that.
But my mind kept going back to the Zombie Frenzy! subtitle that had accompanied the melée scene. I’d seen it before, handwritten on the paper I found in Seeger’s pocket, with an arrow to the filename zombie_frenzy. I ducked into a porta-potty and took care of my insistent bladder, then pulled the paper from my bra. Zombie_frenzy had one asterisk, which meant “approved by DR for ZAAU,” according to the notation. As I’d suspected, ZAAU was short for Zombies Are Among Us!! I scanned the other files marked with single asterisks: zombie_heal_1, zombie_amputation, zombie_feeding_3, zombie_speed. My uneasiness increased. Would there be healing and speed segments in the documentary too?
No question—I was definitely coming back tomorrow afternoon to see all of Zombies Are Among Us!! Maybe I’d get that picture taken with Justine after all.
• • •
Clear skies and brilliant sunlight lorded over a Fest in full, raucous swing. Merchants hawked everything from munchies to zombie puppets, and kids squealed in fearful delight on the carnival rides. On the big stage, a zydeco band played to a lively crowd, with at least a dozen couples twirling in a high-energy Cajun two-step. And through it all wound the mouth-watering aromas of crab boil and jambalaya, café au lait and beignets.
My Deep South brethren were doing what they did best: enjoying the hell out of a party.
A packet of “ProteinGel” quieted my brain hunger and sharpened my senses a bit. Smiling, I wove through the rotting rabble toward the Hunting Grounds. Laughter and applause broke out from the crowd gathered in a hay bale amphitheater, and an announcer’s voice cut through the clamor. “You can’t fool the Marquise de Saber, folks! She’ll root out zombies every time.”
The Marquise de what? A sharp bark issued from the direction of the stage. Curious, I wormed my way through clusters of people until I had a decent view. On the stage stood a man dressed in a military-style zombie hunting outfit with a sheathed machete slung across his back. A German Shepherd sat beside him. I narrowed my eyes. That was Tactical Pants Man and his goddamn cadaver dog.
“For the last demonstration, it’s your turn to see if you can trick her,” the announcer continued from the edge of the stage. “Dante will take her offstage so she can’t peek.”
Dante? At least he looked like a Dante. Man and dog disappeared through the back stage curtain. Yep, definitely Tactical Pants Man. I’d know that ass anywhere.
The announcer gestured with one hand. “Everyone who received a box at the beginning, come on up!”
A dozen people made their way to the stage, ranging in age from preteen to a couple in their eighties. Each carried a wooden box about the size of a loaf of Bunny Bread and sealed with a padlock. While the announcer lined up the participants, the words Dante Rosario and the Marquise de Saber filled the screen above the stage, followed by Paws of Service. Paws of Pride. Stirring music swelled as the video showed Rosario and the dog picking through smoking rubble, working next to cops as they combed through woods, and locating a missing child. It closed with a shot of the pair standing proud as a list scrolled by of the places where they’d volunteered, with a giant Saberton Corporation logo at the very end. Even I had to admit it looked seriously cool. Damn it.
The announcer swept his arm toward the participants. “One of those boxes, and only one, contains a zombie hand. It’s up to the Marquise to find that hand. If she fails, everyone in this audience wins a pair of tickets to High School Zombie Apocalypse!!” He paused and smiled for the applause. “Of course, if she succeeds in finding it, you all lose!” He grinned at the chorus of boos. “But not to worry. No matter the outcome, each of our contestants here on the stage will win a free item of their choice from the Tasty Brains booth and a ticket for tomorrow’s raffle!”
The crowd cheered again, and Rosario returned to the stage with the dog trotting along happily beside him. I edged behind the woman next to me. Cadaver dogs made me more than a little nervous, even when they were just doing their job.
