Apocalypse of the Dead. Joe Mckinney

      The intercom chimed and the flight attendant spoke up, telling them the local time and temperature and informing them to keep their seat belts fastened and to refrain from using electronic devices until they were stopped at the terminal.

      “Will do,” Jeff muttered, and took out his cell phone and flipped it open.

      He sent a quick text message to Colin.

      on the ground finally

      A moment later, Colin wrote back:

      took you long enough. got a surprise for you. you’re not gonna believe it.

      Jeff laughed. Typical Colin. He wrote:

      what kind of surprise

      The flight attendant was looking his way. Jeff put the phone down and tried to look innocent. It was a silly thing to do. He knew that. It wasn’t like she was going to call in the air marshals on him. Images flooded his mind of dark-suited men with pistols in their hands boarding the plane, demanding his cell phone, dragging him kicking and screaming and pleading into a bare room for hours of absurd questioning that would make him feel like a character in an Albert Camus novel.

      The thought made him laugh. But then he thought of the questions the real police were likely to ask him and the laughter died in his throat.

      After all the good times at Harvard, he and Colin had gone their separate ways. Colin was heir to the Mertz family fortune, all $1.3 billion of it. Harvard had been a C-average joke to him. He had no worries, no need to bother with graduate school or law school or medical school or anything, really. There was college, because he had to, and then after that, the world opened up like a sun-dappled delta plain of privilege and pampering.

      For Jeff, there were scholarships to keep, which he did. He graduated with a fairly respectable 3.86 GPA, left Cambridge and went to Colorado University for law school, where he did two years before the crack-up that led to flunking out, which in turn led to missing payments on his student loans and racking up $18,000 worth of credit card debt. Now, he was working as a store manager at Blockbuster and waking up everyday in a shabby little efficiency apartment over a garage in Littleton, Colorado, with the constant panicked feeling that he was drowning.

      Colin knew the bit about law school, and he knew about the Blockbuster job. He could probably infer the rest. He wasn’t stupid, after all. He was a drug-addled party animal, but he wasn’t stupid. That was probably why he offered to pay for this whole weeklong party to Vegas. But of course Jeff couldn’t allow that. There was a deep vein of pride in him that would rather deny the truth than let it be said out in the open. And that was why he had steadily, over the last week, taken cash advances from the credit cards his customers used at his store. All told, it was $9,200 in cash, making his wallet feel fat as a brick under his right butt cheek.

      Yeah, there was going to be hell to pay when he got back to Littleton.

      His phone beeped again. Jeff looked down at it. He had completely forgotten his last text message to Colin. He hit the read button.

      greatest surprise of your life. hope you’re horny.

      “What the…”

      Jeff closed his phone and looked around.

      The fat lady next to him was slapping Alex in the back of the head again. “Stop scratching it,” she said, her voice a muffled hiss.

      She looked at Jeff and smiled.

      “Kids,” she said.

      They were close enough to the end of their time together that he didn’t see any need to be a jerk to her, so he smiled back and said, “Yeah, whatcha gonna do?”

      A few minutes later, they were walking through the jet-way to the terminal.

      Colin was waiting for him, looking cool with his finger-combed brown hair and good tan. He looked smug and well-provided for, with his hands stuffed down into the pockets of his $3,000 Armani suit pants.

      Jeff held out his hand to shake and Colin smiled and said, “Fuck that,” and hugged him.

      “You look good, man,” Jeff said.

      “I’d say the same about you, but you look like shit.”

      “Yeah, fuck you, too.”

      The fat woman and her even fatter kid walked by and the boy coughed, scratching at a part of his arm hidden by his shirtsleeve.

      “Take care, Alex,” Jeff said.

      The boy waved.

      For a moment, it looked to Jeff like the boy’s fingertips were red.

      “Friends of yours?”

      “Yeah, you know. We’re tight.”

      “Uh-huh.” Colin turned and they walked together to the baggage claim, talking about Colin’s new fiancé and his life out here in L.A. He had yet to tell Jeff the girl’s name, and Jeff hadn’t asked.

      “So what’s this surprise you were telling me about?”

      “Out in the car,” Colin said.

      They stepped out to the loading zone, and Jeff saw a black limo waiting for them.

      “We’re taking a limo to Las Vegas?” Jeff said.

      “No, we’re taking a chartered party bus to Vegas. But before that, we’re gonna do a little partying and play catch-up.”

      Colin reached into his pocket and held out a closed fist to Jeff.

      “What’s that?”

      “Just take it,” Colin said. “One for you, one for me.”

      Jeff looked around. The place was crowded, but nobody was paying any attention to them. He reached out and Colin dropped something into his hand. Jeff glanced at it.

      One pink pill, one blue.

      “Is that what I think it is?”

      “Viagra and the best ecstasy you’re ever gonna take. Pop ’em real quick. You’re gonna need it.”

      “For what?”

      “Just take it, would you?”

      Jeff popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry.

      “Cool,” Colin said. He opened the back door to the limo and with a sweep of his hand motioned Jeff inside. “Go on,” he said. “Check it out.”

      Jeff put a hand on the roof and peered inside. The first things he saw were two pairs of long, beautifully bare legs. They led up to two tiny black skirts and bare midriffs and halter tops. Above that, smiling at him, were two of the most fantastically sexy women he had ever seen.

      Jeff blinked. It took a moment for recognition to set in. There in the backseat before him were Bellamy Blaze and Katrina Cummz, the famous porn stars. He had spent quite a lot of alone time lately with their best scenes.

      He glanced at Colin, who just shrugged, a smirk on his face.

      When he looked back into the limo, Bellamy Blaze was holding out a martini with three olives skewered on a plastic sword.

      “Want a drink?” she said.

      Colin gave him a nudge.

      “Yeah,” Jeff said. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”

      CHAPTER 11

      Billy Kline ran for the courtyard, holding the old man in his arms like a baby. The old broad beside him was doing a pretty good job of keeping up. She was gripping the garbage spike tightly in her fists, her eyes wide open and desperately scanning every nook and half-open door they passed for signs of movement.

      There was another gunshot up ahead. The old dude in the cowboy hat was popping off a few well-aimed shots at a section of the courtyard off to their right, and as soon as Billy stepped