Tender is the Night of the Living Dead
“The best way to kill a zombie is with a rocket launcher,” Brent insisted from the back seat. “You know that as well as I do so I don’t see the argument here.”
The Packard hurtled down Hollywood Boulevard. Ace was the wheelman, his eyes darting about nervously for traffic cops as he upped the acceleration.
“The argument here,” Wolfe said from his perch in the front passenger seat, “is that we don’t have access to a goddamn rocket launcher, Brent. For chrissakes, it’s just one guy we haveta take down.”
“A nice cranium blow with a machete oughta bring ‘im down,” Ace grumbled. “But I forgot to tell ya guys the weird part.”
“There’s a weird part?” Brent laughed and lit a Pall Mall.
Ace hung a left on Highland, nearly trading paint with a bulky red Buick. “The call came in from this funeral director in Culver City, see? Says the corpse just stood up and walked away from the table like nobody’s business. Then, like I told ya earlier, he attacks and eats the brains outta the skull of some poor schmo working a Christmas tree lot on Culver.”
“Tis the season,” Wolfe cracked.
“So I asks the funeral home director fella, I asks him ‘Who is this guy? We gotta know his name in case we gotta call out to him to, you know, get his attention. Zombies ain’t so attentive, ‘cept when they’re looking for victims, right?’ So the guy tells me — get this — the guy tells me that it’s this famous fella, see, a writer type named Fitzgerald. Goddamn Mick name, if ya ask me.”
Brent leaned forward in the back seat. “Scott Fitzgerald? Jesus Christ. Yeah, he died yesterday. Heart attack, I think they said on the radio.”
“You know the guy?” Ace forced the Packard into a hard right turn at Wilshire.
“Personally, no. But I read some of his stuff. Back when he was somebody. He ain’t done much lately.”
“Except eat the brains of some poor bastard working a Christmas tree lot. A Christmas tree lot, for God’s sake. You’re right, Ace, only a fuckin’ Mick zombie would do something that uncouth. I’m gonna enjoy killing this sonofabitch.”
April 9, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Fun. The zombie meme seems to be picking up steam these days. I must admit that ‘World War Z’ was surprisingly literary and interesting for all of the fact that I refrained from reading it for almost a month out of some sort of weird principle of the thing.
April 9, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I was simply having fun with the literary conceit of Scott Fitzgerald as a zombie, though a friend remarked to me last night that he would be more scared of a zombie version of Zelda …
I agreed with him.
April 9, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Also, I couldn’t resist the hybrid title of the story.
April 9, 2008 at 9:26 pm
I was just thinking about how much I’ve been working this past week, how furiously I’ve been working, how detached I can get when I’m not making my usual rounds, how I needed to connect to reality…
…then I read…
“The best way to kill a zombie is with a rocket launcher,” Brent insisted from the back seat. “
Ah. Reality.
April 9, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I find the idea of a Fitzgerald zombie hilarious. =)
But then I’m really, really tired. Going to bed now. More Microsquish… I mean Microsoft work tomorrow, so probably not much internet time. (They are really tight on internet security over there, which I suppose is understandable.)
April 9, 2008 at 11:34 pm
More than happy to bring you the type of reality you crave, Joseph, and so nice to see you here again. I hope Lynn is doing well. 8 double-chemo cycles. Yikes!