“How do you mean that? I have to admit that I don’t know much about zombies—apart from the thing with the brain, obviously. Wait! Should I have brought some brain? How rude of me not to ask. I’m sorry.”
Jon waved it off. “No problem. My standing order is coming tomorrow, so I’m good. As for zombies being rare, well, there are different reasons for that.” While he got some plates from a cupboard, Jon was obviously thinking about how to tackle the topic. Barion waited silently, giving his friend the space he needed. “There are different types of zombies and people often have a hard time distinguishing them, probably because of the terror involved when confronted with the living dead.”
“Yeah. The Walking Dead was probably not the best PR for you guys.”
“No.” Jon shuddered a bit. “Especially because it depicts only a certain type of zombies, though definitely the worst.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Okay, so we have what people commonly think of when they hear the term ‘zombie’, which are the creatures depicted in many movies and series. They are animated corpses who are alive up to a certain definition of life but keep decomposing. Their bodies are like an old cloak that somebody wears until it’s completely gone. Once the garment has vanished, the power that animated it has to return to Papa Legba’s realm.”
Jon was now arranging the pastries on a huge serving plate while Barion found himself hanging on his every word. He was the first to admit not to be too interested in other paranormals or learning about them. He suspected it had something to do with the knowledge that nobody out there could pose a real threat to him. Yes, there were a few witches who might be able to summon and control him, but they were few, and none of them had the means to control more than one demon at a time. And they all knew better than to challenge the wrath of the demon king by fucking with his people. Everything else, Barion could easily deal with by either slicing it to pieces, dumping it somewhere truly unpleasant and deadly or simply leaving it to stew in its own juices.
“Then we have the kind of zombies most often used by voodoo priests. They are very much like the first category, meaning they keep rotting away until they’re gone, but the ugly thing about them is that their soul is chained to the corpse as the animating agent. They are fully aware what’s happening and can’t do anything against it, true slaves to the person who has brought them back. It isn’t done very often anymore because people don’t look favorably upon it, and Grann says it’s too much hassle to resurrect somebody anyway. There’s easier ways to get revenge, less obvious.”
“Your Grann sounds like a sensible woman.” Barion offered the compliment without knowing the woman, but anybody who had raised Jon had to be good. He thought about it for a moment, his brain catching up with the math after it had gotten a swift kick from his common sense.
“Wait. Your Grann? How is that possible? I know from Sammy you’re at least a hundred years old.”
“Uhm, a hundred and three. And it’s possible because she’s like me.” Jon carried the plate with the pastries to the coffee table in his living room. Barion followed him with the smaller plates and the two cups of coffee he had brought with him. They both sat down, and Jon took one of the croissants, bit into it and moaned. “So good. Thank you for bringing these.”
“You’re welcome. Now back to your Grann and how she is like you.” Barion knew he sounded impatient, but he found he wanted to find out more about Jon. The zombie looked uncertain. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m just being pushy. We can talk about something else,” Barion assured Jon when he sensed his trepidation.
Jon shook his head. “It’s fine. I just haven’t told anybody about this ever.”
Barion realized what a big deal this was for Jon and leaned forward to touch his hand. Jon flinched automatically at the contact but didn’t pull away. On the contrary, after a short moment of hesitation, he turned his palm upward to weave his fingers between Barion’s. “I died of the Spanish flu in 1918 and was woken only hours later by Amede and Gaspar Honoré, Grann’s grandsons, who prayed to Papa Legba to bring her back because her people were lost without her guidance. That I was wakened as well was an accident.”
“Ah, yes you mentioned it when we talked about your gamer name. Now it all makes sense. The grandsons didn’t intend to wake you also?”
“No. Grann lectured them for days about why performing a ritual designed to bring back the dead in a room chock-full of corpses was a bad idea.” Jon chuckled at the memory. Now, over a hundred years later and without being occupied to try to come to terms with his new circumstances, he could see the funny side of things.
“Uh, they probably didn’t think that one through.” Barion was sniggering.
“No, they didn’t. In their defense, they were panicking. It was the first time New Orleans had been without a witch queen or king from the Honoré line, and they were terribly afraid who would come and fill the vacant spot.”
“I guess that won’t ever be a worry again.”
“Nope. Grann has things on a tight leash. Anyway, she and I represent the third type of zombie, the true undead. Our souls aren’t chained to our bodies but have been returned of our free will—don’t ask me, I don’t remember giving my consent—and Papa Legba has infused our corpses with a magic similar to the one vampires have. We do not rot. We do not age. We are.”
“You don’t sound entirely happy about that.”
Jon took another bite of his croissant before he answered. “I have to admit that I’m still struggling with the concept of potentially living eternally. When I died, I thought that was it, and after I came back, it took me some years to get used to being back but different. I guess it’s something else for demons or other supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves. You know from the beginning that you’re looking at a very long lifespan. Back when I was human, we were very much aware of how fragile life was, especially when the flu started spreading. Making your peace with death then suddenly being back, no longer under her dominion is…unsettling.”
“I can see that.” Barion took a sip of his coffee. “I don’t understand it, but I can see it. You know, for demons, the most important thing is to stave off boredom. Being alive is just a matter of course. We don’t think much about death, unless we deal it out. Then it’s frankly more along the lines of ‘do I go to the trouble of covering it up’ or ‘do I just leave the mess here’. Sorry,” he added, when he saw the look on Jon’s face. The zombie waved it off.
“No, it’s fine. I was a bit taken aback, but thinking about it, you’re right. Different perspectives and everything.”
They both ate in silence for a while. It wasn’t uncomfortable. They were both thinking about what they had learned concerning the other. When they were done, Jon got up to clear the plates. Barion helped him.
“When do we start our game?”
Jon smiled and looked at the watch. “In half an hour. I announced we would go live at eleven.”
“Cool. Plenty of time to get everything ready.”
Chapter Nine
“And we start in five, four, three, two, go.” Jon pushed the button on the remote that started the cameras and microphones. A quick glance at his side screen showed him they already had a huge audience, all of them pumped for the game, as it seemed from the comments.
