There is no
Contingency Plan for the Zombie Apocalypse
Written by
Katherine Tomlinson
Illustration
by Mark Satchwill
It was 101
degrees outside but Esme had cracked the car’s window to avoid breathing in the
stale alcohol fumes her partner was breathing out. The metabolized bourbon
mixed with toxic levels of garlic from the pizza he’d eaten at lunch had formed
an almost visible aura around him. The smell was so thick she wondered if it
would explode if she flicked her lighter.
Some days
she really missed smoking.
“We should
all go out sometime,” Edgar said, for at least the fourth time since they’d
clocked in. He was newly hooked up with a skanky badge bunny he’d met in a bar
and was looking for validation for the relationship. Considering he’d thrown
away four years of sobriety to be with his new love, Esme was not a big fan.
She already knew more than she wanted to about “Lucinda” from the pictures on
Edgar’s cell and the stories he chose to relate.
She didn’t
even listen to the stories anymore, just nodded or grunted every once in awhile.
“You’re not
listening Esme,” Edgar said.
“Sorry,” she
said. “I’ve got a little bit of a headache.”
“Caffeine
withdrawal,” Edgar suggested smugly. He drank Maker’s Mark like it was mother’s
milk but didn’t like coffee. She had tried to be inconspicuous about her
attempts to cut back on coffee in the wake of a scare with some breast cysts,
but Edgar had noticed and driven her nuts with questions until she finally admitted
what she was doing.
She was
about to say something scathing about there not being sobriety chips for caffeine
when the call came over the radio.
“Dispatch,
say again,” Edgar said.
“You heard
me Edgar,” the dispatcher said, in total violation of protocol. “You’d better
get over there fast. The uni who called it in sounded pretty freaked out.”
Esme was
already turning the car around.
“It was only
a matter of time before they showed up in Los Angeles,” Edgar said.
“There is no
‘they,’ Edgar,” Esme said.
“You saw the
memo, same as me,” he insisted.
“This is L.A.,”
Esme said, “somebody’s shooting a movie.”
Edgar made a
noise that sounded like “humph.”
Esme sighed.
It was bad enough that everyone on the force had been working overtime on the
homeless serial killer case. When the stories started coming in about cannibal
attacks and zombies eating dogs, and the shift briefings started including
warnings about designer drugs, everything got amped up another notch.
She knew
Edgar was just clowning around to annoy her but some of the kids actually believed
zombies were real.
But then, Esme
guessed she couldn’t blame them when news stories were actually reporting that voters
thought President Obama was better suited to leading the country in the face of
an alien attack than Mitt Romney.
In the face of an alien attack, God help us,
Esme thought.
“I
wonder if it’s a fast zombie,” Edgar said.
