The Adventures of Holly Weird, Zombie Slayer Read online

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  I feed Percy some generic Pop Tarts when he gets up the next morning, hand him a few crumpled bills and one of the individually wrapped toothbrushes I keep by the warehouse door.

  “Check in with me tonight,” I say, following him out into the harsh LA sunlight.

  “Same place as usual?”

  “Chairman Chow’s on Sunset,” I wink, watching him disappear into the heavy brush that surrounds the abandoned warehouse.

  I listen carefully in his wake, eager for the sounds of footsteps other than his.

  Like me, Zannibals don’t need sleep; but that doesn’t mean they like to come out in the daylight, either.

  Of course, it’s harder for them to blend in; they look like zombies.

  Me?

  Well, with the ink and the makeup and the Goth wear, I pretty much look like just another Hollywood Boulevard tramp, trolling the boulevard for her next hot meal.

  Instead I hit up the usual spots, checking on “my kids” as I like to call them.

  I find a few at Franco’s Deli, sharing a plate of pancakes ‘cause they can’t afford more than that or, if they can, they’re saving up their money for smokes and beer later on.

  They’re a ragtag bunch, one boy and three girls, all ripe with street sweat and nicotine fumes, all in clothes either way too big, or way too small for them.

  “What’s up, Holly Weird?” says one of them, the tallest, a towering street girl with chipmunk cheeks and legs for miles.

  I wrinkle my nose and slug her playfully on the shoulder.

  “Why do you call me that, Chipmunk?”

  “Same reason you call my Chipmunk, Holly Weird,” she explains. “Because it fits.”

  “Yeah,” says another, a short, plump kid called Raver. “You’re cool, but there’s something… off… about you, too. Like, cool off, but still… off. So Holly Weird just fits.”

  I snort; it kind of makes sense, if you think about it.

  Besides, better to be thought of as weird than, you know, an actual zombie.

  Only Percy knows my real secret; and the less these kids know, the better!

  The better for them, that is.

  I make sure they’re okay, ask them if they’ve seen any weirdoes dressed in black lately and, when they’re all smiles and shaking their heads ‘no,’ order them another round of pancakes – chocolate chip this time – and move on.

  They bang their appreciation with greasy hands on the big window by their booth as I pass.

  Even through the glass I can hear them shouting, “Thanks, Holly Weird” in unison.

  There are more stops on the way as noon switches to afternoon, and afternoon to evening.

  Next up is the liquor store, where I catch a few of my regular kids hustling bums to buy them booze.

  Then there’s the crowded, hustling bodega on Vine Street, where I buy them all Slim Jims and Red Bulls just to make sure they’ve eaten something today.

  I find my last few gaggle of homeless kids in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater, hustling the tourists while pretending to be pirates from the latest Johnny Depp movie.

  Only thing is, they’re not dressing up; they just generally look like little scamps 24/7/365.

  They look to be doing okay, despite their rowdy appearance, so I don’t buy them anything; just ask if they’ve seen anything that’s strange – you know, even for them.

  When they smile and shake their heads, running after a Japanese couple before any of the other comically-clad “superheroes” can get to them, I turn and walk away.

  I have one last stop before nightfall.

  “Stained” is the grubbiest tattoo parlor on Hollywood Boulevard, and that’s really saying something!

  A blinking neon sign spells out S-T-A-I-N-E-D one letter after the other, night or day.

  I walk inside, hearing the blare of heavy metal music on the cheap radio over the cash register as I marvel, once more, at the thousands of snapshots of satisfied customers – and their artful tattoos – covering the walls.

  An old man, 79 if he’s a day, sits over a series of half-empty ink pots, refilling them with trembling hands in anticipation of the long, busy night ahead.

  “You never came home last night,” I tell him, grabbing a soda from the dorm fridge in the back.

  I grab something for him, too; he looks a little… shaky… if you know what I mean.

  He gives me that lurid wink of his and says, “What can I say, darlin’? When the last customer of the night insists on making you breakfast the next morning, what are you gonna do?”

  “Dad,” I sigh, handing him a tall can of cheap, domestic beer to steady his nerves. “How am I supposed to protect you if I don’t know where you are?”

  “Protect me from what?” he croaks, opening the can as foam sprays one of his trademark Hawaiian shirts.

  It’s unbuttoned over a stained wife beater tank top, bulging at the middle over his sizable beer gut.

  Dad came back from Vietnam, but it was like he never left.

  Mom says between the Army surplus hand grenades, flame throwers and rifles he kept in the shed out behind our humble Hollywood apartment, she was always afraid of getting blown up every time she reached for the potting soil!

  “The Zannibals have beef with you, Holly, not me.”

  His skin is leathery from the sun, a salt and pepper beard scratchy over his wattled neck and his own string of tattoos, stretching from his neck to his toes.

  His thinning hair is greasy and short, but his skin – like mine – tells the sad, storied tale of his long, miserable life.

  For whatever reason, the ladies find him irresistible.

  Me?

  I’ll never be able to figure it out.

  He’d remained faithful for as long as he could after Mom “left.”

  Held a steady job inking cells for some downtown movie studio that specialized in “adult cartoons,” whatever those are.

  Then, one day, he just started drinking and never stopped.

  I called it his “delayed reaction” to Mom’s death.

  He called it “moving on.”

  Either way, he “moved on” in a big way.

  He quit his job, sold the house and opened Stained.

  He was an artist, he said; time to start showing his art.

  I was his first customer; and his second… and his third.

  Since then, he’s never looked back and I’ve pretty much been on my own.

  I sigh and sit down in his chair, waiting for him to fill his ink pots.

  “Another one?” he asks, hands still trembling but less so now.

  “Two,” I say, giving him time to finish his beer so he doesn’t flub up my latest tats.

  I roll up my black yoga pants, revealing a long, white leg filled with names; cursive names, all of them inked by Dad, all of them commemorating one less Zannibal in the world.

  He sighs, crumples up his empty beer can and tosses it in the trash by his cluttered work station; it falls on top of several other empties.

  “Names,” he grunts, just as he’s done a hundred times before.

  “Grinder. Stain.”

  And, just like that, he gets to work.

  I don’t feel the pain of the needle, only its vibrations in my very bones.

  In a way, getting a tattoo – that piercing, buzzing, trembling feeling – is the only time I really “feel” anything at all.

  As he tackles one leg, I look at the other, covered in faces, in pictures, in names that resonate through my long, desolate life.

  The hidden meanings of this rose or that quote, of this face or that butterfly, are nearly lost to me now.

  They meant so much at one point; enough to permanently etch into my thick zombie hide.

  Now they mean only that I look like half of Hollywood; dark and twisted, sleek and a little bit sexy.

  Whoever thought my own obsess
ion with recording my zombie existence would make me look as human as anyone else in town?

  “That’s still my favorite,” Dad croaks, and only then do I realize his needle has been silent; perhaps even for some time.

  His thick finger is surprisingly gentle as it traces the deep, dark tribal ring that surrounds my wrist; only he could spot it, so entwined is it with the skulls and barbed wire and bright red rose tattoos that litter my forearm and the upper part of my hand.

  “And to think,” he admires, voice surprisingly gentle as the sun gently sets outside his open shop door. “It’s a birthmark, not a tattoo.”

  I smirk. “Mom always said she’d tell me what it meant when I got older.”

  His eyes get moist, if not exactly watery as he looks away, suddenly. “Who knew she’d be the one to never grow old, Holly?”

  He stumbles away from his table, limping slightly as he crosses the cramped and acrid tattoo parlor to get to his precious fridge.

  It hides another steel gate, this one sealed tight with a lock all day, all night, long.

  Inside is his weapons stash; some sawed off shotguns, boxes of bullets, the odd flame thrower or machine gun.

  Most of them are relics, all of them necessary in this part of town.

  (Okay, so maybe not the flame thrower, but… Waddya gonna do, right?)

  Dad says all Vietnam vets have a stash; Mom said they all had a footlocker, only Dad had a stash.

  He brings back a beer for him; a soda for me.

  Just as I go to pop the top the door fills with a tall, thin shadow; Percy.

  “Holly,” he wheezes, asthma acting up again as his chest heaves and I notice the ring of dark sweat around his faded collar. “Come quick! The Zannibals are at the playground again.”

  “What?” I stammer, standing up as Dad shifts slightly to avoid spilling his beer. “I thought I told you to stay away from there, Percy.”

  “I was going to,” he says, standing in the doorway, antsy to leave. “But I stashed my backpack there before the Zannibals cornered me last night and I wanted to get it back. There’s, like, 30 dollars in there!”

  I look back at Dad and he waves me off, a wry smile on his face as I follow Percy out onto the Hollywood Boulevard and the ebb and flow of human traffic.

  Dad knows what I’m up to; he’s happy someone’s there to look out for the kids, but not so happy I’m still chasing the Zannibals all these years after what they did to Mom.

  “What are they doing?” I ask, hot-footing it after Percy, which is no small feat seeing as his legs are about twice as long as mine and, you know, actually have blood and adrenaline pumping through them.

  “It was just a few of them,” he says, expertly passing through the short cuts and dark alleys behind the façade of Hollywood Boulevard’s scenic hot spots. “They were digging up their pals, you know, Grinder and Stain, but then they went away to bring back some reinforcements.”

  “How many Zannibals does it take to dig up a few body parts?” I ask.

  We’re almost there and I pause when he says, “I don’t think the reinforcements were just for a few zombie heads, Holly. I think… I think… they were worried you might come back.”

  The playground is sad and angry at the same time; dead trees and rusty swing sets, a place no good mother would ever take her child.

  That’s why it’s so popular with homeless kids like Percy and, of course, Zannibals looking for a quick and easy midnight snack no good mother would ever miss.

  “Here,” I grunt, stopping him by the water fountain near the restrooms. “This looks like a good spot.”

  “Good spot for what?” he asks, resisting only barely when I drag him into the ladies room.

  “A good spot to wait them out.”