Tony’s finger twitched on Betsy, the specially modified Glock in the pocket of his nondescript grey slacks. He had narrowed the possibilities down to two: the thirtysomething mother who was arguing with the clerk over the clock speed of the computer she was considering buying while her son – maybe 10, maybe 12 years old – stood by her side with a bored expression on his face; or, the Goth girl who had been playing Loco Roco on the Demo Playstation in the back corner of the store.
The problem, Tony mused, not for the first time, is that all of these mall dwellers had the pallor and slack jaw that were prominent signs of the zombiefied state. After a couple of hours, even the most ardent and wealthy people found their enthusiasm for shopping start to drop off, even during the holiday rush (especially during the holiday rush), and they started shuffling from store to store in a way that cried out, “Hello! Recently deceased person here!” Not only that, but spend enough hours in a mall, and you begin to take on the whiff of decay that is a zombie signature. Hell, Tony had felt the pull of the mall himself, and he was protected six ways to Sunday from unnatural zombiefication.
It made life for a zombie hunter difficult. But, then, that’s exactly the way Tony Ampersand liked it. Well…like may have been too strong a way of expressing Tony’s feelings for his job, but you get the idea.
The Goth girl had a blank look on her ashen face, but that was par for the course for Playstation gamers. She had the slightest bit of drool at the corner of her mouth – circumstantial evidence, but not, alas, damning proof. Her eyes seemed dead, but recent medical research suggested that teenage brains dumped a lot of their core functions in order to make room for adult functions, so that proved nothing.
As a zombie hunter, you needed to know things like this.
The mother at the counter had caught Tony’s attention when she shuffled into the store with the classic zombie gait. She seemed tired, beaten down, with a facial expression that in other times had been described as “death warmed over.” On the other hand, she was the mother of a young boy. Tony had his back to them; he watched the mother argue with the sales clerk (who convincingly professed his ignorance) in the blank screen of a 127 inch television set opposite the counter. The sullen way the mother made her case suggested that she was no longer fully alive, but the fact that she was arguing at all suggested that this wasn’t because she was one of the undead.
With his free hand, Tony reached into the pocket of his black trenchcoat and surreptitiously pulled out Professor Lardner’s Zombie-ometerTM. The red blip in the middle of the screen told him that a Zombie was close. Very close. Tony thought, not for the first time, that Professor Lardner’s device, as useful as it was, would have been much more useful if it actually pointed out who the zombie was. Tony resolved to talk about this with the kindly old Professor as soon as this mission was completed; this time, unlike all of the other times, he felt certain the Professor would actually listen.
The ghoulish Goth. The putrefying parent. The putrefying parent. The ghoulish Goth. Time was running out – Tony knew that if he didn’t make a decision soon, the argument would end or the game would lose its appeal, and he might lose his prey. With a blinding flash of insight, Tony pulled out his Glock and with a cry of “Return to the grave, undead scum!” he shot the zombie in the head.
“The boy?” Tony’s roommate, Doctor Watson, asked when, weary, he returned to The Digs. “You shot the boy?”
Tony stirred his tea and downed a healthy gulp of the life affirming liquid. “That’s right,” he responded.
“But, the way you tell the story, you were looking at the mother, or possibly the Goth girl,” Doctor Watson caviled. “What made you decide upon the boy?”
Tony put the cup down and gave the good doctor a serious look. “Simple, really,” he explained. “A young boy was in a consumer electronics store full of Playstations and Game Boys, RoboSapiens and high definition television sets, and he didn’t care for any of them. No boy his age could help but be excited in such an environment. No living boy.”
“Wouldn’t his mother have noticed that something was wrong with her child?” Doctor Watson argued.
“The mother was the one who zombified him,” Tony expounded. “She would rather have a shambling, half-dead thing by her side than accept the reality of her son’s death.”
“Sad.”
Tony shrugged. “It happens in all the best families,” he said.
Satisfied, Tony was about to reach for his cup of tea when a knock came on the door of The Digs.
“No rest for the weary, eh?” Doctor Watson good-naturedly ribbed.
“That’s the way of the zombie,” Tony grimly stated, and got up to answer the door.