Sacred Cows: An Irreverent Zombie Novel Read online

  Sacred Cows: An Irreverent Zombie Novel

  by Bonnie Regn Fraher

  Chapter 1:Winter

  The Arctic Express took no mercy upon Connecticut. It blew down from the north, frosting over ponds and lakes, and dipping the temperature into the low teens. Sheltering in barns and abandoned buildings, lonely birds puffed out their feathers for insulation against the cold. The frigid air was charged with static electricity. Dead branches snapped and fell into the snow. The wind chill was positively brutal.

  But there I was, braving the elements for what had surely been a fool’s errand. My lips were chapped and bleeding, my bony fingers frozen like icicles, my lungs so tight that I could hardly breathe. If only I’d stayed at home, I’d be sipping a hot toddy and darning socks beside a roaring fire.

  So, what was I doing outside?

  I was running―way too fast.

  My husband, Omar, and I weren’t just out enjoying a leisurely afternoon jog. We were tearing down Hopmeadow Street like two bats out of Hell, the scenery speeding by at a dizzying rate. My temples pounded with every step. Every muscle in my body begged me to stop. I was dangerously close to keeling over from exhaustion. Somehow I had to convey this to him, but I couldn’t yell, because yelling could get us killed. So I kept my plea to a whisper. “Either slow down or I’ll divorce you!”

  There was no response. My words didn’t seem to register. His stride didn’t slacken one iota. He was probably doing quadratic equations in his head, or computing the speed of light, or some other geeky nonsense. Omar ran with the grace of a gazelle. Did he even break a sweat? His dark brown ringlets bounced to the easy rhythm of his footfalls.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” I huffed. “I’m about to croak, right here on the sidewalk!”

  “Pick up the pace, Sylvia,” he urged. “You can do it. We’re almost home.”

  So on we sprinted, past the wrecked cars, asthmatic banks, and shattered windows of Simsbury’s main drag. Jazzercise was gone forever, and now I was seriously out of shape. No more rónd de jámbe. No more grapevine. No more pump-it-up pop songs getting stuck in my ears for days, haunting me in the shower and plaguing me at the steering wheel. I never realized I could miss bad pop music so much.

  My heart pounded like a jackhammer, so I slowed my pace and waited for Omar to admonish me for not keeping up. But to my surprise, he stopped dead in his tracks. Pricking up his ears, he concentrated on a noise that I couldn't even hear. His movements were absurdly canine: brown eyes keen beneath his heavy dark brows, his curly locks practically standing on end. He raised an index finger to his lips and whispered, “Shh—they’re right around the corner. Let’s fly!” Then he took off.

  Craning my neck to catch a glimpse as I ran, I tripped on a log and fell down hard, ripping my ski pants at the knee. But fortunately Omar was right behind me. He grabbed my arm and hoisted me up. Tempering his exasperation, he pulled me across the backyards, dodging the canopy of low-hanging winter branches. Magnolia, sassafras, butternut, sycamore: naked trees, frozen in place like marble statues. They’d run, too, if only they could.

  Finally we reached our house. Omar leapt up the front steps, jammed his keys into the locks, and dragged me in behind him. Doubled over and gasping for air, I slammed the heavy oak door behind me as hard as I could before—

  Oh, sh*t!

  Down went Omar’s prized possession, an antique engraving of Ganesha, the Hindu deity, which he'd framed in gold and hung in the foyer after one of his trips to India. It crashed onto the tile floor, rending the air with the plink of breaking glass. Noise was the last thing we needed.

  ‘Oops!” I mouthed. “Sorry.”

  What else could I say?

  Omar’s eyes met mine in a silent, complicated exchange. It was all too much for one day. I lowered my gaze in shame, my eyes coming to rest on silly old Ganesha, with his elongated elephant schnoz, four human arms, and rounded pot belly. Ganesha was Omar’s favorite. Now there he was, a fragmented mess on the dusty tile floor, his faraway eyes staring up at the ceiling.

  Quietly locking the deadbolts, Omar whispered, “They’re still out there.” We stood motionless for five minutes, listening intently. Omar stifled a cough. I wiggled my toes to repress a sneeze. Outside the door there were unnerving sounds: the gurgle of tracheal fluid, footsteps shuffling, the clang of a falling aluminum trash can, and the pop pop pop of the bubble wrap we’d strategically placed on our front walk.

  I whispered, “I'll go up and check.” Careful not to make any noise, I tiptoed around the broken glass and slipped upstairs to take a quick peek out the bedroom windows. Coming back down, I held up three fingers. We’d have to wait them out.

  Keeping our weapons handy, we retreated into the quiet living room and sat for a while, holding hands on the couch. I didn’t dare utter a word. I didn’t pick up my book and start reading, either. The situation was far too nerve-wracking. But luckily, Omar found a way to relieve the tension. He started with a peck on my cheek and worked his magic from there.

  When at last the disturbance outside faded, I took a deep breath. “That was close!” Now that my adrenaline rush had subsided, a craving for caffeine stepped in to take its place. “Want some coffee?”

  “We can’t risk using the wood stove yet,” he replied, “give it a couple more hours.”

  “I’m not waiting.” I opened a jar and took two mugs from the drainboard. “Here’s the coffee I saved from this morning. Just pretend it’s hot.”

  Omar and I dumped out our backpacks on the kitchen table. We’d been out hunting for supplies, but the spoils were meager: a case of junky snacks, six cans of water chestnuts, four tins of baby corn, a tube of Superglue, and a five-pound bag of Chinese rice.

  Looking at the food, I felt a little wobbly. How long had it been since breakfast? I picked out two packages of mini-doughnuts and handed one to Omar. As I opened mine I sighed, “Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it.”

  My husband finished chewing. “What do you mean?”

  My voice wavered, “I mean, why bother risking our lives scrounging up scraps of food? Is it worth all this trouble just to stay alive?”

  He wove his strong arms around my bony waist. “Of course it is, Sylvia. Life is a gift.”

  “But what if they kill you? I don't want to be left all alone!” I offered him the rest of my doughnuts.

  My husband knew better than to ask about PMS. Instead he smiled, “I’d do anything to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  “Shucks,” I replied, the caffeine withdrawal fog beginning to lift.

  Then, quoting Tolkien, he blew it. “’I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.’”

  I picked up a kitchen towel and hurled it at him in mock protest. “I was being serious!”

  He tossed it back, deadpan. “So was I.”

  I was always cold (hands, feet, ears, even the tip of my nose), so I slipped into my closet and put on two merino wool sweaters under a thick red robe. Then I went downstairs to sweep up the broken glass while Omar conjured up a fire in the wood stove. Before I knew it, the whole first floor was toasty warm. It was positively luxurious. After a bottle of Pinot Noir and some canned cream of mushroom soup we headed up to bed, closing the blackout shades and reading by candlelight until drowsiness set in.

  Later, as Omar slept peacefully, I lay in bed, wide awake. The music of the night was chilling: a discordant symphony of distant moans pierced by the occasional shriek of another victim as he or she bit the dust. Fighting back tears, I thought of my parents and my two younger sisters, who happened to be twins. Oh, how I missed them! Family trips to the zoo; river cruises; long,
lazy beach days; stringing up lights on the Christmas tree. So many memories, so bittersweet. But flipping through all those Kodak moments was getting too depressing, so I forced myself to think of something happy. What was happy? Summer! I recalled one sunny afternoon last June, when the world was just beginning its radical change.

  “Sylvia, you won’t believe what happened today,” Omar had said as he sat on a chair on our back deck, clasping his arms behind his neck. His biceps bulged deliciously. He took a long swig from his Heineken bottle and held the cool green glass to his forehead. Rivulets of condensation drizzled down his brow.

  “Believe what?” I glanced up from my book, a collection of tales by the Brothers Grimm.

  “My boss called me in to a meeting today. He ambushed me!”

  I set a bowl of tortilla chips on the picnic table. “Ambushed? Meetings are what most people call normal.” (Omar disliked most humans, bosses in particular.)

  He said, “There was a roomful of people, including a medical doctor. And some other constipated reptile was there, too, from Homeland Security. He sat there the whole time, tapping his fingers on the desk.”

  Now Omar had my full attention. “That’s creepy.”

  My husband mimicked, “’Tom, we’ve made some observations: you flat-out refused to take the company-mandated vaccines; you visit non-sanctioned websites from your home computer; and you use the alias Omar—we think you might be an enemy combatant.’”

  “Not funny!” I scolded, lifting the brim of my straw hat to squint across the table. “How can you joke about such things?”

  “I’m not kidding!” he protested. “So I explained to them that Omar is the nickname my wife uses because she thinks Tom is too pedestrian—they didn’t believe me. Next, I told them that the reason I read alternative news is because the cable news networks are nothing but government-sponsored propaganda.”

  “I’ll bet that went over well.”

  He shook his head. “Then it got worse. The doctor gave me his spiel about the Smartvac.”

  “You mean that new vaccine for the Simian flu?”

  “Yep. He tried all the standard arguments: ‘We must protect the children; The company requires full compliance for Blue Ribbon status; You shouldn’t risk infecting your co-workers.’ Blah, blah, blah… So I told him it would be logically impossible for me to infect others if they already had immunity from the shot.”

  “Touché!” I applauded, clapping my hands.

  Omar frowned, “And then the Homeland Security lizard got really pissed! He started pacing back and forth. I thought flames would come out of his nostrils. Finally he gave me a warning: ‘You have two days to reconsider.’”

  “What happens if you resist?” I asked.

  “Then I lose my job,” Omar sighed. He dipped a tortilla chip in guacamole and crunched loudly for emphasis.

  I tossed and turned, wiggling my toes and counting sheep, but I still couldn't drift off. Outside the windows, the winter wind howled. Bats thumped around in the attic. Who could sleep with all this noise? It was worse than Grand Central Station. I considered getting out of bed to make tea, but the house was way too cold for me. So I settled my head on the pillow and thumbed through the events of the past year.

  One November morning we’d heard an urgent knock at our front door. As Omar loaded his revolver, we peeked down from the second-floor bedroom windows. On our front stoop stood a gangly male in his late teens. He looked like a missionary: clean cut, khaki trousers, cable knit sweater under a down jacket. Heaving the window open, Omar groused, “Who are you and what do you want?”

  I elbowed him and whispered, “Shh―you’re not being very neighborly.”

  “Sylvia,” Omar explained, “these are unfriendly times. That guy could rape and torture you, for all we know. He could burn cigarette holes into your bare skin. He could disembowel me and make you watch.”

  “O. K.,” I glared, “but you have a sickening imagination.”

  The young man gazed up at us, sunlight reflecting off his halo of golden hair. He explained, “I was just passin’ through. I seen the smoke from your wood stove. It’s cold out here.”

  Omar left the window open but pulled his head in. He warned me in whispers, “It’s not safe! We know nothing about this guy. He looks like an ax murderer.”

  “An ax murderer from Brooks Brothers?” I stared sadly out the window. “But he’s just a kid. He probably hasn’t eaten in days. The poor thing doesn’t even speak decent English. Maybe he’s an orphan.”

  Omar flicked the safety off the gun and pointed it out the window. The young man flinched but kept staring up at us. He was the picture of innocence. I rested my head against the window frame and sighed, “What’s this world coming to?”

  That did the trick. After some debate we agreed that the kid could enter our home under one condition—he had to be frisked.

  The blonde stranger was only seventeen years old. His name was Jeremiah. “It’s so cozy in here,” he exclaimed, warming his big puppy hands and feet before wolfing down three steaming bowls of pinto bean stew. Keeping the gun tucked into his waistband, Omar watched him warily. We sat with Jeremiah at the kitchen table while he ate. He slurped, spat out a chunk of carrot, and dribbled soup down his chin. At one point he glanced up at a family photo on the refrigerator door. “I seen one of them ladies not long ago. Can’t forget that pretty face.”

  “Which one?” I asked.

  Jeremiah belched, “Can’t tell; they both look the same.”

  “They’re identical twins,” I told him, feeling oddly soured.

  “She sure was hot,” the young man mused, misting into reverie. “Pale skin, ruby red lips.”

  “She’s got you by a decade,” Omar said sharply. “Find someone your own age.”

  I rose to make tea. “Jeremiah, I’m worried about those twins in the photo. They’re my sisters.”

  The boy looked surprised. “But they’re so pretty. They don’t look nothing like you.”

  Grrr…

  I said, “The woman you recognized—where did you see her?”

  “Over at Hartford Hospital. She was a real good nurse. I asked her out on a date but she just said something about Hell freezing over. Stitched up my arm months ago, before the mosquito plague hit.”

  Omar’s eyes widened. “Mosquitoes?”

  “Yes, Sir, that’s how I figure it.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause my family didn’t go nowhere except church. They mostly kept to themselves.”

  Thinking out loud, my husband rubbed his chin. “DARKA was working with mosquitoes. Maybe they were developing an alternate vector to ensure transmission to the non-compliant population and—”

  Jeremiah interrupted, “Say what?”

  “Nothing,” said Omar. “By the way—did you get the Smartvac?”

  “You mean that new flu shot?”

  “Yep.” Omar’s brown eyes flashed.

  “No, I didn’t get it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Me and my family are Christian Scientists. We don’t take shots.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They're in Heaven. Nobody’s left but me now.” He glanced up at the photo again. “Is that lady from the photo here?”

  “No,” I sighed, “she’s not.”

  “Anyways,” said Jeremiah, pushing his bowl away, “I’m walkin’ north to Longmeadow. It ain’t too far. My girlfriend goes to a big church there and I’m wondering if she made it.”

  Omar asked, “When are you leaving?”

  “As soon as I use your pisser.”

  I was horrified. “But it’s not safe out there―don’t go!”

  Suddenly full of purpose, Jeremiah ignored my warning. He stood up abruptly and walked out, leaving the front door wide open. He stopped on the paving stones to urinate on the nearest dormant rosebush, then kept going without glancing back.

  Once he’d passed out of sight, I bleached the area where he’d been sitting.
Omar locked the five deadbolts and said, “I thought Christian Scientists were more genteel than that.”

  “So did I, but that guy was a walking contradiction. He must be one of the Raggies.”

  “Raggies?” Omar’s forehead crinkled. “Whoever heard of a blonde Arab?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I meant the Winsted Raggies—backwoods mountain folk: banjo pickers and all that. I think they're the descendants of iron workers or whatever.”

  “Well I’m glad that’s over,” Omar declared. “Good riddance! And he didn’t even say thank you.”

  I squeezed soapy water out of the sponge. “He didn’t leave a tip either.”

  Omar noticed what I was doing and smiled, “Sylvia, why are you using bleach?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  The corners of his mouth rose. His sepia eyes danced. “C’mon: fess up.”

  I couldn’t repress my grin. “You know how I am.”

  “Ridding the kitchen of double negatives?”

  “Something like that,” I answered, working off my angst in rapid clockwise motions.

  Sleeping was close to impossible. I sat up in the darkness and watched Omar's eyeballs do the mambo beneath his lids. What was he dreaming about? Eggplant rollatini? Sailing the Grecian Isles? Was he dreaming about his parents? He hadn't seen them in ages. Lying back down, I rolled over and lay on my side until my left arm went numb, which gave me pins and needles, but at least it kept me from crying.

  I missed my mother a LOT, but several months ago I came to the tragic realization that she was probably dead. We last spoke on the phone in July, when I begged her, “Mom, don’t do it—please!”

  “Look at the news, Sylvia.” As usual, she wasn’t really listening to me. “There’s going to be a pandemic. Everyone’s getting the shot, and frankly dear, I’m worried about you. I hope you’re not listening to that husband of yours. What if you catch the flu?”

  “It’s a hoax, Mom.”

  “Darling, why would anyone say such a thing?”

  I wanted to scream, but instead I asked, “Don’t you remember the Swine Flu scare a few years ago? It was a great big nothing. Omar says it was a test run to measure the gullibility of the public.”