The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(156)

This is a slip, Michael, not a relapse. The Colonel is going to have somebody keeping a close eye on you. First time you look like you’re even thinking about biting somebody, it’s a bullet in the head.





I gotta tell you, your brains smell great, Mr. Harper.





This isn’t about me, Michael.





I mean, sometimes I wake up dreaming about eating your brains. Like they would taste better than any other brains in the whole world. I would soooo love to eat your brains.





That’s called “transference.” It happens in therapy sometimes. If you spend time obsessing about my brains, you don’t have to face your own issues.





I bet I could just jump over the desk, and—





But you won’t. [Sound of shell being jacked into twelve-gauge pump shotgun.] Michael… you’re a slow zombie. I’d blow your head off before you got completely out of the chair. You know that you wouldn’t be the first.





Fuck. Sometimes I wish I was a fast zombie.





They’re all gone. They were an evolutionary dead end. Every human still alive has killed hundreds of zombies, fast and slow, Michael. Being slow is what saved you.





Crap. Yeah, I know. You need guys like me.





You’re a great plumber, even if you are undead. Please open your bucket. Now.





[Pause.]





How does it smell?





It’s cow brains. How you think it smells?





Please, Michael?





It smells… okay. All right? I could eat them. It would be okay.





Okay is what will keep you out of the ground. You stick with okay and no bullet in the head. You get too far away from okay, and you’re gone, no matter how good a plumber you are. Okay?





[Pause.] Okay…. Crap.





I want you to do thirty meetings in thirty days. Here’s the card. I want it signed every day by your sponsor. You need to have some long talks with him.





Aw, man! I haven’t had to do that stuff since when we first started.





You ate some brains this week. If you think that was a good plan, let me know. I’ll shoot you myself.





It wasn’t a good plan.





Pee test every week until you get to the other side of this.





Fine. Just… fine.





I’m on your side, Michael, but you’ve got to be on your side, too. I believe in you. You’re a good man. You can do this.





I know.





I’ll see you next week, Michael.





Not if I see you first.





[Pause.]





Just kidding.





There’s a meeting at Beth Israel at seven tonight. I’d like to see a signature on your card that says you made it.





Yeah. I’ll try.





Just remember: there’s a bullet in the head waiting for you if you don’t.





He Said, Laughing

By Simon R. Green





Simon R. Green is the bestselling author of dozens of novels, including several long-running series, such as the Deathstalker series and the Darkwood series. Most of his work over the last several years has been set in either his Secret History series or in his popular Nightside milieu. Recent novels include The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny and The Spy Who Haunted Me. A new series, The Ghost Finders, is forthcoming. Green’s short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Mean Streets, Unusual Suspects, Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, Powers of Detection, and is forthcoming in my anthology The Way of the Wizard.





Apocalypse Now is a strange, wild movie. In it, director Francis Ford Coppola retells Joseph Conrad’s classic Colonial-era novel Heart of Darkness by transposing the story to the Vietnam War. In one scene, American soldiers attempt to seize a beachhead while simultaneously blasting Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and surfing. Robert Duvall, playing the mad Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, stands tall as mortars land all around him, and declares, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” From there things only get stranger and more surreal, as Martin Sheen’s character Captain Willard travels farther and farther upriver, seeking a rogue colonel named Kurtz.





But the process of filming the movie was as mad and out-of-control as anything that appears on film. Drinking and drugs were rampant among the crew. A storm destroyed the sets, and the borrowed helicopters were called away to fight real-life battles. Star Marlon Brando had become grossly obese and refused to be filmed except from the neck up while standing in deep shadow. Someone on the production had obtained real cadavers to use as props, which turned out to have been stolen from local graves. And director Francis Ford Coppola, who stood to lose everything if the film failed, threatened repeatedly to kill himself.