I, Zombie

The Adventure Continues

Geoff Carter


In Part 1, our hero came to spend 24 hours on the Strip in the company of a mysterious beauty. He quickly learned the terrible truth ... about his sneaky editor, the secret of Atomic Girl (Sin City's only superhero) and Elton John's mad scheme to conquer Vegas. As the action opens, Geoff and Elaina have just left the hotel room of a strange body-piercing artist.





THE PALMS TO IOWA CAFÉ: 4:05 P.M. TO 8:30 P.M.



"I don't remember him being that much of a sweetheart," said Elaina. "Thanks for coming with me."


"No problem," I said. I should have been freaked out, but I wasn't; hearing Ben-Doc's explanation of Atomic Girl had calmed my nerves considerably ... even though it meant, in no uncertain terms, that I was losing my mind. "He warms up once you get to know him."


"As do you, my Geoffrey. As do you."


We stopped at the Coffee Bean for lattes, taking seats in the food court. I had some history there, and I allowed myself to think about it: watching a crew film those whiny brats from The Real World and watching Muhammad Ali walk the red carpet to the world premiere of Ali at the Brenden, among many others. Even the countless hours I wasted sitting in the food court waiting for critics' screenings to begin seemed to be worth something.


At that moment, Vegas felt noble and good and true, and I could understand completely why Atomic Girl chose to defend it.


"I miss this town," I said. "I don't care if every local joint I ever loved is shut down, or if this is the only place in town to get a good latte, or if Elton John and Andrew Lloyd Webber are swooping in for the kill. There's something to be said for a city that shows you something you've never seen before every single day."


"It's a good place for a writer to live in," Elaina agreed. "But having some distance from it is a good thing, too. Observers can only have so much fun before they start thinking of the man behind the curtain."


"Is all your erotica set in this town?"


Elaina took a sip of her coffee and nodded. "It's what I know."


We sat in silence for a few moments before TC joined us, sitting at our table as if invited to do so. Neither of us was really all that surprised to see her, though Elaina stood to leave before TC had uttered a word.


"I've got some things to do, honey," Elaina said softly. "If you give me your MP3 player, I'll drop it off at the room and get it charged up. I'll see you at the Iowa tonight, for Gregory's reading. Eight o'clock or so. It would mean a lot to him if you showed up."


"I wouldn't miss it," I said. She leaned down and gave me a good kiss, holding onto my bottom lip with her teeth for a fleeting moment at the end of it.


"Be nice," Elaina advised TC, and walked off in the direction of the porte-cochere.


I regarded TC sleepily and without malice. I was too tired to brush her off, but more importantly, I was bursting with a few short questions for her, the first of which I asked immediately. "Want some pie?"


She nodded assent, smiling. We walked, arm-in-arm, to the Sunrise Café and took seats facing the entrance to the pool area. I ordered us two slices of apple a la mode with two coffees and we looked at each other's hands resting on the table.


"I guess you're ready to hear me now," said TC neutrally. "I'm sorry I came on so strong earlier today; I thought it was the best way to get your attention. I didn't know you had a girlfriend back home."


"No worries; she abides," I said. "As long as I act according to my conscience and don't keep any awful surprises from her, I can get into all the trouble I'm comfortable with."


"That's good," she said, "because you're in a bit of trouble. We all are. And I don't think you're going to be comfortable with it."


"Why does Elton John want to seize this town from Oscar?" I asked. "What's his plan?"


"He wants it because he wants it. I'm sorry to be so vague, but that's really I know. He's got some heavy backing from a few other big players—rock stars, movie stars, televangelists—and I think he wants to make it into some sort of colony. Vegas already has a reputation for being a maverick town; Elton just wants it to fully live up to that reputation, and move his friends in."


"That doesn't make any sense," I said. "Huge Mormon population or no, we've already got a mayor that's actively stumping to put strip clubs in the hotels and brothels Downtown. There's been attempts to legalize marijuana and such, and it's only a matter of time before enough disenfranchised Californians jump the wall of Schwarzenegger and tilt the political balance. He could just buy a condo here and wait it out, let nature take its course."


"You're assuming that he likes the idea of strip clubs in hotels and a discotheque in every convenience store. He doesn't want that stuff any more than you do. He wants museums, zoos. He wants the gay population to get a better deal. He wants Amsterdam, not some frat boy's ideal of Amsterdam. He wants an adult utopia."


"What about the kids?" I asked. "And the Mormons?"


"There's always Henderson," she said.


I shook my head hard. "So let me get this straight. Elton John is gunning for me because he thinks I'm gonna stymie this Chitty Chitty Bang Bang utopia of his? What in the hell did I do?"


"It's not what you did," she said. "It's who you know. Elton's gotten reports that you have a direct line to somebody that can foil his plans."


I tried to think of everyone I knew in Vegas, but the only people I could think of at that moment were Doodles and Abowitz, and I got pissed about the strip-bar story all over again. TC snapped her fingers in front of my face to get me back on topic.


"This town is crawling with Elton's people," she said. "I only joined up to get close to him, to figure out what he was up to. He started planning for your arrival about four months ago..."


"How in the hell can that be?" I demanded. "I didn't know I'd get this assignment four months ago."


"Who do you think got Doodles to give you this assignment?" TC demanded. "I mean, 24 hours on the Strip? What right-minded local would want to read about that? He planned to bring you here so he could make an example of you ... and your friend."


The last part of her answer flew right by me as a considered the truth of the first part. But of course Doodles didn't really want me to file this story! The miserable son-of-a-bitch had set me up, right down to planning the Abowitz story; he knew it would make me so angry that I'd finish the assignment to spite him. He wanted me half-dead and bleary-eyed by this evening, so Elton John could take me out without losing so much as a rhinestone.


"Figures," I growled. "Every time there's a nice-sized paycheck, there's a goddamn catch."


"Look, Carter," said TC firmly. "You've got to have something that can stop him. I don't know what it is, but when the time comes—when he's about to drop that piano of his on your head—I want you to be ready to take him down. This town's got to be left alone to figure out its own destiny."


"Sure thing, Tough Chick, but how in the hell am I supposed to do that? He's got his own army and hundreds of gold and platinum records and Michael Eisner's number on speed-dial. I've got nothing ..."


"...Except Las Vegas," TC finished. "And if you don't save it, no one will. Who are we supposed to put our faith in? Wayne? His loyalties are split between Vegas and Branson. Oscar's doing what he can to protect us, but he's obsessed with getting a cameo shot on 'The Sopranos,' and it's splitting his focus. So, here's what you do: go back to your room and get some sleep ..."


"I can't do that," I said.


"What?"


"I can't go to sleep until midnight tonight. Doodles gave me a 24-hour assignment, and I aim to finish it."


"Doodles gave you this assignment on Elton's say-so. He wants you weakened when it comes time to face you down. Go to your room and sleep. My friend and I will make sure no one comes in."


"You and that lush in the pink wig? Fat chance. Besides, even if Doodles gave me the assignment in duplicity, I took it in good faith. And I've never, ever not finished a story."


At that exact moment the pie arrived and closed the argument. I shrugged, grabbed an apple chunk with my fork and dipped it into the vanilla ice cream.


TJ rose from the table and dropped a $10 bill on the check.


"I really wish you'd reconsider," she said.


"I didn't come here to fight anybody," I said. "If Elton John's gonna take over this town, it must be part of the natural order of things. Donald Trump tried and failed, the Guggenheim tried and failed and now it's Elton John's turn."


"Just remember two things when he finds you," said TC. "One, that this town made you a writer. And two, that writing isn't the only thing you can do well."


She grabbed my shoulder as she walked by.


"We'll be around," she said. "Hang in there."


She walked out to the pool. I couldn't see too well though the afternoon glare, but I thought I saw her talking to her friend with the pink wig. I walked out to the pool after I'd finished my pie and coffee, but they had vanished.


There's little point in giving you a detailed account of what I did for the next few hours. I stopped at that new "Hawaiian" market to send an e-mail and found it as evocative of the Islands as Donny and Marie. I blew a couple of hours with a screening of The Day After Tomorrow and thrilled to its notion of "super-cooled air." I strolled along the edge of the "outside" dining area at Spago, poking diners and saying, "Duck ... duck ... duck ... duck ... GOOSE," and then running away.


I did these idiotic things to keep my blood going until 8, at which time I went up to the room, showered, changed and took my MP3 player off the charger. I went back downstairs and gave my valet ticket to the attendant, who brought up the Orange Roughy in less than five minutes. I tipped him $10.


"Hakuna Matata," he said, as he closed the door behind me.


"That's what I thought you said," I muttered, and drove away.




THE IOWA CAFÉ TO DINO'S: 8:30 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT



Gregory's poetry reading went beautifully, and it did my heart good to see one of my oldest friends slugging out in one of Vegas' last few independent coffeehouses, even if the faces in the crowd watching him read his stuff had scarcely changed in 10 years.


After the reading I schmoozed with friends and told them I was near the end of a 24-hour assignment, though I didn't mention that I'd actually been awake—hallucinogenic episodes notwithstanding—for 38 hours and some minutes. Nor did I tell them that Elton John was planning a hostile takeover of the town, and their only line of defense against his musical tyranny was me and a couple of drunken party girls.


They looked at me wide-eyed, properly amazed by everything I didn't say. Twenty-four hours! Wow!


I told Gregory a bit more outside, that I'd been awake since dawn the previous day, and he looked alarmed.


"You all right, old sport?" He handed me his coffee and I drank a sip. "You sure you're up for some karaoke?"


"I wouldn't miss it," I said, and after we said our goodbyes I drove us to Dino's, "The Last Neighborhood Bar," a place that I'd only visited twice. Since I'd left town, First Friday had given Dino's a fair measure of hipster cache; in return, Dino's provides Vegas' artistic community a place to drink heavily before and after the gallery walk.


Dino's location is nearly ideal—no more than a five-minute cab ride from the Huntridge, Lower Oakey, McNeil Estates, the Scotch Eighties, Charleston Heights—the neighborhoods where most of First Friday's artists and gallery owners live and work. If Elton John were to strike me down that night, Cindy or Julie or Renee or Elaina could be at Dino's within moments to spirit my lifeless corpse away before the buzzards picked it clean.


Such thoughts were going through my head as Gregory and I arrived at Dino's. But they didn't stick. After an hour of Danny G's "No-Bullshit Karaoke," I got into the spirit of things. Dayvid and Gregory picked my songs, and I shouted my way through "Shock The Monkey" and "Life During Wartime" with joy in my heart.


I was poring over the songbook when Elaina, who hadn't been at the poetry reading and who had seemed to materialize out of thin air just that moment, bent down and whispered in my ear, "Geoff, he's here."


I looked up to see Elton standing outside in the parking lot, dressed down in a simple black suit and Homburg hat. He touched his brim with his black cane and gave me a toothy grin.


"That's not Elton John," I said through gritted teeth. "That guy's wearing a hairpiece, and Elton John is bald."


"That may be true, but believe me, that's really him out there," Elaina said. "He gave me his business card ... Look, you and I have been through some weird shit today, but this is real. You've got to deal with this."


Instinctively, I dug into my pocket to find TC's phone number, but I'd changed my jeans for the evening; the gum wrapper with her number on it was back in the hotel room.


"Aw, fudge," I said. "Listen, you cover for me in here. Tell Gregory I had to make a phone call. And don't let anyone come outside, if you can help it."


"I'll do what I can, hon. Now go on out there and kick Elton John's sorry ass. Our American home was clean 'til he came."


"Ty-yi-yippee-yi-yi," I said, and walked outside feeling simultaneously terrified and ridiculous.


There was no energy in my step. I fought through the exhaustion and tried to look tough. I've no idea if it worked, but standing up straight and tall did make me terrifically dizzy; when I locked eyes with Elton, there were cartoonish stars, birds, and exclamation points orbiting his head.


"Where's your friend?" he asked.


"What friend?"


He grinned his gap-toothed smile. "Look, mate, I've got my people in every casino in town, waiting for me to call them on this phone"—he held up his rhinestone-encrusted Nokia—"to tell them that Atomic Girl is no more. So hurry up and get her here so I can get this thing moving. We've got the Foundation Room reserved for the post-coup afterparty at 1, and even though I don't touch the stuff myself, I don't want my ground forces to miss out on even one second of the hosted bar."


"I don't know how to reach ..." I started to protest, just as my phone rang. I answered: It was TC.


"Where are you?" she asked.


"Dino's. Across from the OG."


"We're at the Nugget. We'll be there as soon as my friend gets changed."


"I don't suppose you know how to get a hold of, um, Atomic Girl?"


"Don't I?" she said, laughing. "Look, I'm funning with you; we're, like, right across the street at the OG. We'll be right over."


"Great," I said, and turned to look at Elton, who was busily stripping off his suit to reveal a jeweled, royal-blue bodysuit with a giant "EJ" on the chest spelled out in diamonds.


"Well?" he demanded.


"Um, somebody's coming. I don't know if it's the person you wanted, but they're, um, friends of yours, I think."


"Quit stalling," he said, putting on the suit's matching cape and horn-rimmed glasses. As soon as he was finished donning them he clapped his hands, and the suit came to life with glowing blue neon piping; the "EJ" on his chest and cape glowed yellow. "If you don't have Atomic Girl down here by the time I get through the first verse of 'The Bitch is Back,' I'll be forced to ..."


"... Sing the second verse," said TC. She was dressed in showgirl finery—jewels, feathers, the works. Her friend, on the other hand, was wearing the exact same clothes she'd been wearing for the past 24 hours.


"Oh, come on," I said nervously. "Even I've had two wardrobe changes in the course of this story."


"Y'know what my initials stand for, Geoff?" TC asked. "Take cover."


And with that, her friend whipped off her pink wig to reveal golden-blond hair, cut in the bobbed, Louise Brooks-like style that women seem to favor these days. She had eyes bluer than the skies over Yucca Mountain, and her features, while soft, were very precisely cut; she looked like she'd been rendered on a computer at Pixar. Her pink, tacky clothes melted away, and where a drunken party girl once stood was now the awe-inspiring sight of Atomic Girl!


"Oh, no!" I shouted, and buried my face in my hands. I knew at once what had happened: I had successfully created another character for the Weekly's gossip page. Doodles had asked me to write a story about a classic Vegas photograph, and here she was.


"Great! Fucking great!" I wept. "Metafiction! Writing about writing! A cheap-assed Fight Club knockoff ending! I'll never get paid for this shit!"


"Geoff, don't move," said Atomic Girl.


"Yeah," said Elton John. "Don't move; don't even breathe!"


"You so much as muss up his hair, bitch, and I'll give you two cups fulla of Philadelphia Freedom," said Atomic Girl, her breasts seemingly feeding on the energy of the conflict; they glowed a deep, rich orange. "And you, quit eyeballing my tits."


"I can't help myself," I said. "They're too dazzling."


Elton John and Atomic Girl advanced on each other, fists clenched. Each step they took toward each other sounded like falling pianos hitting the pavement, with performance artists beating on the twisted remains with aluminum bats. Elton pointed a jeweled finger at Atomic Girl, whose arms were raised and whose breasts seemed to be fully charged.


They made ready to strike the first deadly blows in a skirmish that would probably devastate the city just as Gregory stuck his head out the door and said, "Geoff, you're up next."


The electric charge in the air died out immediately, and the combatants looked at me, puzzled.


"Um, I have to go sing now," I said. "Karaoke."


Their arms fell limply at their sides. They opened their mouths to say something, but nothing came out; they were too flabbergasted.


"I'm sorry," I said. "Hey, if you want, you can come in there with me and watch me sing. After that, we can get right back into the Armageddon, I promise you."


Elton looked askance at Atomic Girl, who shrugged and instantaneously changed back into her tacky street clothes. Elton calmly took off his cape and put his suit back on. TC had disappeared, probably to change out of her showgirl gear.


"This way," I gestured. Elaina met me at the door and helped me up to the stage just as Gregory finished a vamp on Tom Petty's "Here Comes My Girl."


"Let 'em have it," Gregory said. Elaina draped me over the mic as Danny introduced me:


"And now, here's Geoff singing 'Just Like Heaven' by The Cure. Let's give it up!"


Dayvid couldn't have picked a better song for me even if he knew what kind of shit I was in that night. I sang the song largely without the aid of the monitor, pulling up the lyrics from memory. I was so tired and so far outside myself that I didn't even have to think about what I was doing; the words simply poured out, and I put as much heart as I could into them.


I knew, at last, what it meant to be a zombie.


As I sang the words "I opened up my eyes," I did exactly that and saw Elton and Atomic Girl at the back of the room, smiling through tears. Atomic Girl had an arm around Elton's waist, and the two of them looked as tight as old friends.


I finished the song and my friends applauded wildly. Gregory clapped an arm around my shoulder and said, "Wow, you really owned that one." I thanked him and walked outside, where Elton, Atomic Girl, and TC were leaning on the Roughy, talking. TC was back in street clothes.


"That was beautiful," said Atomic Girl.


I smiled, shrugged. "I can pull a melody outta my ass sometimes."


"You did more than that," said Elton. "I mean, if I were to take over this place, little dive bars like Dino's probably wouldn't exist. And I wouldn't have heard your song."


"It may be quite simple, but places like this make the rest of the city mean something, Elton," I said. "You could tear this place down and duplicate it inside a casino down to the last light bulb and it wouldn't be the same. It's just part of the way the town happens, you know?"


He nodded. "I'm calling it off. Besides, this place is too overbuilt. Branson, on the other hand ..."


I tried to give a courtesy laugh, but I was too tired to produce anything more than a gentle hissing sound.


"Go on back in there," said TC. "We're going to the Foundation Room anyway. We'd invite you, but I suspect you want to get back to the room and, I dunno, sleep for 20 hours or so."


"It'll be more like 10 hours," I said. "I have to check out at noon."


"We'll swing down and see you before you leave," said Atomic Girl. "Good night, zombie."


"Good night, sweet things," I said, and blew them a kiss. I watched as they hailed a southbound cab and hopped into it, and just before she climbed in, Atomic Girl said, "Oh, by the way, sorry about that 'curse' business. I just did that to keep you on your toes. Consider it lifted."


"What curse?" I demanded, but she'd shut the door and the cab pulled away from the curb. Strangely enough, at that moment, I had completely forgotten her "lyrics" curse from the previous day.


("I don't think I heard any Elton John lyrics that day," I said to Elaina later. "I mean, a valet said 'Hakuna Matata,' but that's a pretty common phrase, right? Right?")


I turned to walk back inside, but before I got to the door, my phone rang. I answered it ... and much to my surprise, it was my girlfriend, calling from Seattle. Gregory came to the door just in time to hear me say, "Nothing worth writing home about ... Aw, I love you too, honey. G'night."


"Another day at the office, hm?" Gregory said.


"That, and then some. But I can't talk about it, really. It'll sound better on paper."


"Excellent. You can get started on it at Mr. Lucky's, my treat. I'm dyin' for a steak here."


I looked at my phone: it was midnight exactly.


"Sure, why not?" I said. "But I gotta be in bed by 7 a.m."




EPILOGUE: CAESAR'S PALACE TO PRIMM



I got about nine hours of deep, delicious sleep, woke at 11:20 a.m. and looked out the window. Las Vegas, to my relief, looked much the same—flat, brown, sprawling and crisscrossed with sawtooth roads.


"Hip-hop hooray," I said.


I took a long shower, packed up and checked out. TC, Elton, and Atomic Girl were no-shows, which didn't surprise me. They probably had much to do, the three of them—protecting this town from robber barons, freeloading print journalists and each other.


Nor did I see Elaina. She didn't follow Gregory and me to Mr. Lucky's, and she wasn't answering her phone that day, which was a shame because I was in desperate need of an expert witness. Her unwillingness to answer my call more or less confirmed what I feared in my heart: that the whole thing was a hallucination provoked by too much booze and too little sleep.


I couldn't tell anyone about my experiences—not my girl, not Gregory and certainly not Doodles, who expected a 3000-word fact-based piece on what it was like to spend 24 hours awake on the Strip. While I waited for the valet to get the car, I looked at Abowitz's Weekly article again and concluded that I could write something "substantially different," after all. With some hesitation, I took a moist towelette out of my bag and scoured Abowitz's name off my knuckles.


For most of that day, I wondered what kind of fucked-up, rambling piece of metafictional junk I'd end up writing for Doodles. But I soon tired of that line of thought, and when I sat down with my notes at the Coffee Bean, intent on getting an early start on the story while it was fresh, I made a coin-flip decision to scotch the work in favor of a road trip to Disneyland.


The following morning I woke up Gregory and convinced him to join me. On Interstate 15 I opened up the Orange Roughy for the first time, pushing it past 90 MPH.


"It's cherry, as the kids say," said Gregory.


"Running on fumes," I observed. "I'm gonna need to stop at Stateline."


A short time later, we pulled into a gas station across the street from Buffalo Bill's. Gregory had gone back to sleep, the lucky bastard. I went inside to pick up some bottled water and a can of Pringles and was just walking back to the Roughy when my phone rang.


"Hiya, cutie," said Elaina.


"Hey there! Where the hell have you been? Gregory and I are headed for the Magic Kingdom and we're short one Cinderella."


"Well, you and your wicked stepsister are gonna have to get by without us. We're going to Laguna Beach, and TC says rollercoasters aren't her bag."


"You're with the girls?" I said, surprised. "They're in the car with you?"


"Look left," she said, and I saw Elaina's Hyundai pulling out of the gas station. Just as the car turned onto the street, Atomic Girl popped her torso out of the left-rear window and gave me her victory pose.


"Sorry we can't stop to talk," said Elaina, "but we're on a schedule here. Besides, we wanna get to the hotel and start makin' out before noon."


"Is that how this thing's going to end?" I asked. "After all that's happened, it's just gonna end with a ham-fisted lesbian gag, and a pat ending right out of a summer popcorn flick?"


"Geoff," said Elaina, "it's a Weekly story."


"Touché," I said.


"Bye, sweetheart!" shouted TC and Atomic Girl, and Elaina added, "I'll race you to the big pond, Rocket Man." She blew a kiss through the phone and hung up.


Gregory had awakened just in time to see me close the phone and roll my eyes, and waved at me. I walked back to the car and got in.


"Who was that?" Gregory asked.


"It was a carload of girl superheroes," I said, "and they're in a Hyundai, so we can catch them easily. Get buckled up."


Gregory started to ask another question, but I cut him off with a wave, started the car and turned on the MP3 player, fully expecting to hear "Jesus Built My Hotrod." To my surprise, it played the first few unmistakable notes of "Bennie and the Jets."


"What the hell?" I muttered. "I had the Ministry track cued up. I don't remember loading this on here ..."


"Aw, leave it," said Gregory. "It's a decent road tune, and we're in a high-speed chase here. C'mon, old sport ... we're goin' to California."


Without another word, I gunned the car into drive and we howled Howard Dean's barbaric yawp. I launched the Orange Roughy back onto the highway at 100 miles per hour, spinning fiery orange cartwheels across the desert floor.

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