Death After Life: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller by John Evans Page B

enforcement resources were spread too thin to halt any remotely devious traffickers.  
    That was where Manuel came in. Sure, he got high on his own supply, but he had a nice business going selling for an L.A. based gang. Customers were still mostly yuppies but, as prices dipped, new markets emerged. Manuel believed that, at these prices, only the homeless had an excuse to smoke crack.
    Though his eyes remained closed, Manuel felt Rico taking the coke. He let him, making a mental note to set his lieutenant straight. You didn’t just pull a man’s drugs from his hands. That shit wasn’t right.
    As that first, 10-second blaze of purity faded, Manuel scowled at Rico. “Y’all are like my dog, beggin’ and shit….”
    A few rows away, Voskuil watched the movie with contented disinterest. Onscreen, an attractive actor overplayed a petulant expression and said, “If I go with you on this road trip of yours, at every comfort stop I’m going to require sexual favors. And a shot of tequila. Deal?”

    #

    Lena made her way through an anemic crowd to the dance club’s bar, an island of light in a dark expanse.  
    She leaned against the rail. Glancing down, she saw the opaque liquor case was lit with pink bulbs so the bottles inside were only silhouettes.
    The bartender, a slender woman with multiple facial piercings, immediately came to take Lena’s order.
    “Tom Collins and a virgin Sea Breeze.”
    “I have to charge full price for the Sea Breeze.”
    “Make it a Diet Pepsi, then.”
    “How about Coke?”
    “Sure.”
    Lena carried the drinks back to a table near the dance floor, where Nic was waiting. A few dancers were doing their thing but while the beat-driven techno was suffused with energy, their movements were stiff and inhibited.  
    The couple’s moods had not been in harmony for long. At their first stop, a quieter hotel bar, Nic put away most of a carafe of wine. She seemed weary and lethargic afterwards. Lena was still feeling celebratory, for reasons she was nervously eager to explain.  
    As Lena approached the table, she saw that over Nic’s shoulder were nebulous color swirls, projected onto a screen. Rather than inspiring the dancers, as they were no doubt intended, their languid circular motions seemed to trace a hypnotic path to nowhere.
    “Thank you, baby,” Nic said and took a sip of her drink. To Lena, it looked like a big sip.
    Nic’s voice did sound a little slurred as she said, “Guess we came on the wrong night, huh?”  
    Lena tried to stay upbeat, though she rapidly had a sense that the evening was heading south. “Plenty of room on the dance floor, though.”
    Nic shook her head. “Not in the mood. I’m mopey drunk, not wild and crazy.”
    Lena scanned the vicinity for alternatives. “Want to shoot some pool?”
    “Ummm… Not really.”
    Though there was only a two-year age difference between them, on occasion Nic slipped into a little girl mode of manipulation. It was rather like a petulant female asking to be pampered by her man. Lena found it a cosmic irony that gay men and women had their gender’s most difficult aspects turned against them. It was a joke on both genders that they must suffer their own uniquely frustrating sides.
    Lena abandoned this slightly disturbing train of thought and kept plugging away. “Air hockey?”
    Nic responded with a smile and a squeeze of the hand.
    “Air hockey it is.”
    She was, after all, really an adult, and a loving one at that.
    They went over to a recessed area where a few bar games sat unplayed. Lena swiped her credit card to turn on the air hockey machine.  
    They slapped the puck back and forth with practiced flicks of the wrist. Before meeting, neither had been much into the game, but there was something magical in the adversarial flirtation between opposite sides of an air hockey table. Since a memorable duel on their second date, the game had become a nostalgic ritual for them.
    As the puck zinged back and forth at high