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“Look away, little darlin’,” I said. “Look up at that pretty sickle of a moon.”
Kitty’s Zombie New Year
Carrie Vaughn
I’d refused to stay home alone on New Year’s Eve. I wasn’t going to be one of those angst-ridden losers stuck at home watching the ball drop in Times Square while sobbing into a pint of gourmet ice cream.
No, I was going to do it over at a friend’s, in the middle of a party.
Matt, a guy from the radio station where I was a DJ, was having a wild party in his cramped apartment. Lots of booze, lots of music, and the TV blaring the Times Square special from New York—being in Denver, we’d get to celebrate New Year’s a couple of times over. I wasn’t going to come to the party, but he’d talked me into it. I didn’t like crowds, which was why the late shift at the station suited me. But here I was, and it was just like I knew it would be: 10 pm, the ball dropped, and everyone except me had somebody to kiss. I gripped a tumbler filled with un-tasted rum and Coke and glowered at the television, wondering which well-preserved celebrity guest hosts were vampires, and which ones just had portraits in their attics that were looking particularly hideous.
It would happen all over again at midnight.
Sure enough, shortly after the festivities in New York City ended, the TV station announced it would re-broadcast everything at midnight.
An hour later, I’d decided to find Matt and tell him I was going home to wallow in ice cream after all, when a woman screamed. The room fell instantly quiet, and everyone looked toward the front door, where the sound had blasted.
The door stood open, and one of the crowd stared over the threshold, to another woman who stood motionless. A new guest had arrived and knocked, I assumed. But she just stood there, not coming inside, and the screamer stared at her, one hand on the doorknob and the other hand covering her mouth. The scene turned rather eerie and surreal. The seconds ticked by, no one said or did anything.
Matt, his black hair in a pony tail, pushed through the crowd to the door. The motion seemed out of place, chaotic. Still, the woman on the other side stood frozen, unmoving. I felt a sinking feeling in my gut.
Matt turned around and called, “Kitty!”
Sinking feeling confirmed.
I made my own way to the door, shouldering around people. By the time I reached Matt, the woman who’d answered the door had edged away to take shelter in her boyfriend’s arms. Matt turned to me, dumbstruck.
The woman outside was of average height, though she slumped, her shoulders rolled forward as if she was too tired to hold herself up. Her head tilted to one side. She might have been a normal twenty-something, recent college grad, in worn jeans, an oversized blue T-shirt, and canvas sneakers. Her light hair was loose and stringy, like it hadn’t been washed in a couple of weeks.
I glanced at Matt.
“What’s wrong with her?” he said.
“What makes you think I know?”
“Because you know all about freaky shit.” Ah, yes. He was referring to my call-in radio show about the supernatural. That made me an expert, even when I didn’t know a thing.
“Do you know her?”
“No, I don’t.” He turned back to the room, to the dozens of faces staring back at him, round-eyed. “Hey, does anybody know who this is?”
The crowd collectively pressed back from the door, away from the strangeness.
“Maybe it’s drugs.” I called to her, “Hey.”
She didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. Her expression was slack, completely blank. She might have been asleep, except her eyes were open, staring straight ahead. They were dull, almost like a film covered them. Her mouth was open a little.
I waved my hand in front of her face, which seemed like a really clichéd thing to do. She didn’t respond. Her skin was terribly pale, clammy-looking, and I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. I didn’t know what I would do if she felt cold and dead.
Matt said, “Geez, she’s like some kind of zombie.”
Oh, no. No way. But the word clicked. It was a place to start, at least.
Someone behind us said, “I thought zombies, like, attacked people and ate brains and stuff.”
I shook my head. “That’s horror movie zombies. Not voodoo slave zombies.”
“So you do know what’s going on?” Matt said hopefully.
