For me, the world ended in the men’s toilet at the Hamburger Palace. But right before that, I met a beautiful girl named Keisha.

Keisha looked like ValkYra of the Damned, the main character of my graphic novel. It’s like this: a guy gets abducted by aliens in 1947. He finally escapes and in the process of coming through a black hole into our dimension, he accidentally transports the prion element that has kept him young for all these years. But in this dimension, the prion causes everyone he touches to become a zombie. Only one person is immune, ValkYra. She used to be a Sunday school teacher but now she’s a zombie killer.

I loved the way my friend, Bob Boynton, drew her. She carried an over and under shotgun, and the muscles in her arm seemed to pop off the page when she fired. Blam! The little shorts she wore hugged her amazing thighs so snuggly I got spots before my eyes. That’s how freakin hot this chick was drawn.

And Keisha looked just like her.

Just exactly like her. Man.

Imagine me at the doctor’s office with ma, reading Sunset Magazine. A beautiful summer day. I just happen to glance out the window at the drive-in hamburger place next door…and there’s ValkYra herself on roller skates with a white headband and all that beautiful, twirly hair just spilling out of it as if my girl was a badass African Alice in Wonderland, down to the blue shorts and white apron.

My mouth dropped open. My chin could have been on the floor for all I know. And that’s when ma squished out of the examining room. “BrenDAN!”

I jumped, dropped the magazine, turned bright purple. “You ready, ma?”

“Get the car please.”

I ran out the door and then stopped dead. The breeze came up, whoooo, I smelled warm French fries on the air, and the roller skate girl looked up at me with a tray of burgers on her arm. Green eyes, much better than ValkYra’s whose eyes were blue except when she was in a zombie-killing blood lust and they turned silver. The girl rolled a few inches before leaning on her heel. If smoothness were a magical power, this girl would have been indestructible.

We looked at one another for a moment and she rubbed her lips together. My face was frozen and I couldn’t have smiled to save my life. We looked at each like a couple of deer across the meadow. Finally, she rolled back into the building and I went to get the car.

Ma was puffing and blowing when she got in the car. “You didn’t park in the shade, did you, like I asked?”

“It was shady when we got here. The sun moved.”

“Honey, the sun does not move. The planet moves.” She sighed. “It must be a thousand degrees in here.”

Ma. Gillian Tierney, born 1970 in Ojai, California. She suffered from a list of maladies. Restless leg, asthma, hypertension. I knew them all. Dad died in the war, and ma and I had been alone ever since. I was named after him, Charles Brendan Tierney, Jr. but I was always BrenDAN to ma. My fast and badass nickname was Bren. A good name for a writer of graphic novels.

On the way home, ma turned to me. “Here it is the end of June already. Are you going to sit home all summer?”

Mostly what I did was drive ma where she wanted to go. That would be Fred Meyer, K-Mart, the Dollar Store, Home Town Buffet, and Al-Anon.

With my window rolled down, I could still smell the delicious, mysterious scent of hot grease. What the hell. “I think I’ll get a job.”

“You’ve never had a job in your life,” said ma, ever supportive. “In this economy, you need work experience to get a job.”

While she was shopping at K-Mart, I called information and got the number for Hamburger Palace. By the time ma was riding the crip cart out the door with her stuff, I had an interview. Before sun set on the day, I was a Hamburger Palace busboy.

###

My best friend, Bob Boynton, had an art studio in the attic of his house. I’d known Bob forever. From the very first, his pictures became my words. Later, I got so that I wrote words that he was especially good at drawing, and that’s where ValkYra came from. We both loved to watch her kill zombies.

When his color pencil glided over her body, she was all his. But when I was sleepless and thought about new troubles for V to get into, she was mine. Smart, wise-cracking, a little bad. And terribly lonely. She had to be—she hated killing but it was the only way.

“I think she should be African-American,” I said.

Bob looked up at me, the yellow pencil he used for V’s hair motionless in his hand. “Fuck you. Are you nuts? She’s been a Viking since January, dude. We agreed.”

“Well, I’m disagreeing now.”

“Fuck you. I disagree with your disagreement. She’s a Viking. How many black chicks go by the name of ValkYra? Apollonia, Achillea, Cassiopeia are black chick names. And they don’t start with V.”

Bob had done some clever graphics with the letter V, using crossed spears and wings to form the letter. But it was the capitol Y I would miss, especially the way Bob made the letter burst out of her cleavage.

“What’s with you anyway?” he asked.

“I got a job at Hamburger Palace.”

“What about the book?”

I felt a little shameful. We had agreed to do a lot of things together, but he hadn’t seen the roller skate girl. “Nothing’s going to change. I’ll be here.”

“We could use some art supplies.” Bob gave me a you’re-so-full-of-crap look. “But ValkYra is a Viking. Agreed?”

###

The Palace didn’t live up to its name. It was a grease pit. The owner was Byron, a guy who should probably have his salad dressing on the side, if you know what I mean. But whatevs. I had my eye on a different prize.

After I started the job, Keisha didn’t speak to me for a week. She was eighteen and going to the U in the fall. I was so not worthy. But I knew by the way she looked at me under her incredibly long lashes when she didn’t think I was paying attention—you know, emptying the garbage or something—that she noticed me. I could work with that.

The day the world started to end, Keisha wore a short skirt and pink socks. She had been stopping traffic all afternoon, and whenever I talked to her, she said unkind things about my age and ability to satisfy a woman. It was a good day.

The owner, Byron, was on break in the middle afternoon. A kid came in to the Palace and rang the order bell. I walked over, hoping he’d order something complicated so I could work the fryer.

“It’s the same, ain’t it?” said the kid. “This shop—all exactly the same.” He was a little guy, maybe thirteen, and he wore new blue jeans and a button-up shirt with short sleeves, as if his grandmother had just given him a dime for the church collection box.

“You want onion rings?” I asked.

At that moment, Byron returned and elbowed me out of the way. “What do you want, shorty?”

The kid dug his hand into his pocket. “What can I get for fifteen cents?”

“Do you see fifteen cents anywhere on the menu?” asked Byron. “No? Get the fuck out.”

“That’s not very nice,” said the boy.

“You want nice, come back with real money.” Byron turned away from the counter and headed for the grill. I looked at the kid.

“He’s a douche,” I said by way of explanation.

“His whole family’s like that. Always have been.” The kid shrugged and went to the men’s bathroom. A few minutes later he was out the front door and walking down the street. Keisha rolled over to me.

“Little racist pig. He called me colored. As in, ‘Since when do colored work at the Palace?’ Can you believe it? Next time I see him I’m rolling over his toes.”

“That’ll hurt.” Keisha rolled away and I forgot about the kid. It was hot and I took my break outside behind the Dumpster, near the open window where I could hear Keisha chewing out Byron for buying the wrong ice cream. She could go on about things for a long time. Even Byron gave up arguing after a few minutes.

But I remembered the kid later when I came back on duty and there was a little girl standing in front of the men’s. Probably waiting for her dad who was inside. Three or four minutes, she was still standing there, and now looked worried.

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.

“I can’t go in there,” she said.

“Nope. No way. You’re a girl.”

Behind the door someone moaned, the sound echoing in the bathroom, animal and wordless. The little girl flinched. Keisha rolled over to us. “What was that noise?”

“Someone’s in there,” I said, duh, obvious.

“Well, go in there and see if they’re all right, genius. It’s the men’s room. Not that you’re an actual man.” She took the little girl’s hand and they both stared at me as if I’d already somehow fucked up just by being born.

I pushed the door open and took a few purposeful, adult steps into the room. It was the kind of bathroom that had stalls rather than urinals. When the lights were on the fan ran high enough to whisk away funky smells and personal noises. It was just about the best bathroom a guy could hope to find, and the only problem was that the low light made it hard to read. If you happened to bring an issue of Basara to work. I’d noticed Byron seemed to like the bathroom too.

All but one of the three stall doors hung open.

I heard shuffling come from the closed stall, feet on the gritty tile floor, followed by the sound of ripping paper. I pictured the wall-mounted box of safety covers that you could drape over a toilet seat before sitting down. As I watched, a flurry of them drifted to the floor.

The occupant began hammering on the walls. The lock rattled.

I went to the door. “Do you need help in there?”

The man moaned, the same eerie, musical ululation. And more pounding, this time a fury of beating and slapping against the metal frame of the stall. Sometimes the door heaved outward as though the person inside had hurled himself against it. The toilet paper box hit the floor and skidded into the next stall.

I stepped back. Under the door I saw a thick-soled pair of red Converse. Jeans were accordioned on top of the shoes, and a pair of tidee-whiteys were on top of that. Hairy white legs above. Whoever was in there had his pants down for sure.

“Dude?”

Instead of answering, he yelled. “Aaaah, aaaah, aaaah.”

Something solid hit the stall door like a melon falling on the kitchen floor. Once, twice, again. The walls shook with each impact. I felt a little sick—the third time, the sound had been thick and soft, as though the melon’s rind was broken.

“I’m going to call 911,” I said. “Okay?”

By way of answer I saw three bright drops of red hit the tiles, more falling on the dude’s underpants. He was having a stroke or a fit. Something that I sure as hell didn’t want to deal with. He started to scream again, the noise bouncing around the bathroom too loud for the fan to drown out.

I plowed into three customers and Byron as I hurried out.

“What the fuck did you do? asked Byron.

“Call 911,” I said. “Now.”

“You call 911. “Ever helpful guy, Byron.

I was about to remind him he made employees lock their phones in their lockers before shift started when a customer held up his iPhone. “Cops or paramedics?”

“Everything.” I thought about the blood, which had been coming down in a steady patter as I left. “Tell them to send everything.”

Keisha had taken the little girl outside to the picnic tables and given her a milkshake. The screams weren’t so bad out here.

“Suzie likes ponies,” said Keisha, giving me a say-one-word-and-I’ll-kill-you-dead look. “I like ponies too.”

I looked at the little girl. She had the straw in her mouth but she was staring straight ahead, barely blinking. I cracked my knuckles, making both females jump. “What’s the big deal with ponies?” I asked. “I want a stallion with fire shooting out of his eyes. And wings.”

Keisha and the girl made identical, disgusted sighs and looked at one another.

“See what I mean?” asked Keisha.

“Boys,” agreed the girl.

Two minutes later, the paramedics arrived. And the cops. Anyone and everyone who happened to be walking by the Palace stopped to watch. Byron screamed from the kitchen for help, but Keisha and I ignored him. Just like the guy to find a way to turn a buck over a medical emergency.

The paramedics were in the bathroom for twenty minutes, probably getting the door off the stall and stabilizing the man. They wheeled him out on a gurney, thrashing and moaning, flecked with blood. He had a collar around his neck. A police woman came over to us, thanked us for helping and took the little girl away.

“Was it some kind of stroke?” Keisha asked as we headed back inside.

“I don’t know. Probably not a stroke.” Can’t live with ma for seventeen years without picking up some medical intel. The diagnosis for that guy was going to come back mental. Stroke victims didn’t throw themselves against the door until they cracked their skulls.

We had a good crowd after that, and it was a minute or so before I happened to look out the window. The paramedics’ van was still in the parking lot, back door open. I could make out the victim’s feet strapped to the gurney, kicking weakly. But on the ground outside the van, two cops were bent over someone else.

Weird. I pushed open the door in time to hear one of the cops yelling into his radio. In the cop car, I saw the pale face of the little girl at the window, looking out.

There was a sudden burst of car horns as a minivan skidded to a stop on Seventh Street, narrowly avoiding a man walking down the center line of the street. It was a paramedic. His shoulders swung forward with each step and his knees were locked, as though he’d forgotten how to bend them.

Blocked by the minivan, he turned up the hill. And that’s when I saw his face. His mouth hung open and he had a smear of blood on his cheek. His chin was all shiny wet, as if he was drooling.

###

The next day I drove ma to her meeting before work. We were stuck in traffic where I never saw traffic before. Ma was saying for the third time how I could pull into some guy’s driveway and go back the way we came, and I was telling her for the third time that traffic was dead in both directions when suddenly there was a naked man right in front of us.

He was old and bony with wrinkle rolls and gray hairs dangling from the bones. He walked with the same lock-knee shuffle as the paramedic yesterday. He was followed by cops wearing purple latex gloves.  They herded him onto the sidewalk and we had a perfect view of his pincushion buttocks as he flopped by. Then, out of the blue, he just tore out of there, heading for the cliff on the other side of the road. He climbed a stone wall, stood there for a moment and then stepped off the cliff. Both ma and I yelled, first time we’d agreed on anything in years.

“Drunk,” said ma when she recovered. The traffic broke up and we moved on.

###

I slapped a burger basket and Coke in front of Bob. “I don’t think he was drunk.”

“Agreed.” Bob snagged a fry. I snagged a fry.

“I think the same thing was wrong with him as the guy in the bathroom yesterday.”

We both turned to look where the men’s bathroom door now carried an out of order sign and the women’s bathroom had a new sign. It was supposed to say unisex bathroom, but Byron had left out the i. “Unsexed bathroom,” said Keisha when she first saw the sign. “How fucking appropriate.”

“Was the paramedic exposed to his blood?” asked Bob.

“He could have been. There was a lot of it.” I looked the grease sheen on Bob’s burger. I’d given him my free lunch in order to get him into the Palace. Bob didn’t travel well. If I wanted lunch today I’d have to pay retail.

“It could be a blood-born disease,” said Bob.

“Like HIV?”

Bob lifted the lid on the burger and removed the iceberg, tomatoes and onions. “More like ebola. The paramedic caught it from the little girl’s father, and he got it from something in the bathroom.”

I shook my head. “That’s impossible. Incubation period for ebola is a couple of days.”

“I said like ebola.”

“BrenDAN!” Byron pounded the counter. “Quit flattering your girlfriend and get back to work.”

The Palace was dead but I did my rounds, emptying the garbage and doing Byron’s bitch work outside. When it was break time, I came back and found Keisha sitting in the booth with Bob.

“Jeez.” I slapped the back of Bob’s head, not hard, just enough to let him know I noticed he was talking to the girl I saw first. He scooted down and I sat. The burger basket was empty. Across the table I saw salt crystals on Keisha’s chin. It just wasn’t fair.

“Tell him what you told me,” said Bob.

“Well, my sister works in the ER. Last night she said they had twenty-three cases of this crazy sudden onset dementia. Ten of the cases were brought in on gurneys. Three of those were paramedics who had been treating patients. One was probably your guy.”

“And the other thirteen?”

“One intern, two nurses, four orderlies and six patients who just happened to be in the halls when the first ten arrived.” She snapped her fingers, making a very impressive Addams Family snap. “It happened just like that. Immediate.”

“That’s fast,” said Bob, looking at me. “Maybe it started here in this bathroom.”

“No it couldn’t.” I stood up, irritated with both of them. “You don’t know for sure that our guy was the first victim—what do you call it—”

“Patient X.”

“Remember that racist little shit from yesterday?” asked Keisha. She directed her question at Bob who hadn’t even been here. “He used the bathroom.”

“Please. Stop now. You’re both ridiculous.” A customer had come in, the first in twenty minutes. Byron wasn’t at the counter so I went to take his order. I spindled the ticket on the metal spike, started his milkshake and yelled for Byron.

Five minutes later, the customer was poking his straw into the thick ice cream core of the shake and sucking until his cheeks collapsed. Still no Byron. I checked outside in case he’d passed out over the Kegerator we weren’t supposed to know about. Nothing. I was thinking I’d get to dunk the fries myself when I heard a familiar drone. The bathroom fan.

It wasn’t supposed to be on.

I walked to the door and hesitated. It was pretty badly busted up in there, doors off the stalls and garbage all over. I was supposed to clean it up but hadn’t been able to face it yet. It was always me, doing stuff like that.

But with the fan on, it was still a pretty good bathroom if you wanted to be alone.

“Byron?” I rapped the door with my knuckles. “You in there?”

No reply. Suddenly today felt a lot like yesterday. I pushed open the door and leaned inside. The furnishings of the place were all wrong, so it took me a moment to orient myself. One stall door was removed from the frame and left leaning against the wall. Toilet paper dispenser was on the floor and paper seat covers were everywhere. On top of that was a clutter of blue medical sheets, plastic wrappers and other unidentifiable stuff left by the paramedics.

“Byron? Hate to interrupt you.” I stepped in and the heavy door fell closed behind me. And that’s when a man emerged from the last stall in the row.

For a second, Byron seemed okay. Six foot-two inch, two hundred and fifty pounds of beer-pickled fry cook. He’d never been a genius, so the slobbery chin and vacant, white-rimmed eyes weren’t immediately out of place.

“Byron?” Then I saw blood. It trickled down his arm and dripped off the tips of his fingers, not heavy flow. A scratch. “Dude, you’re bleeding.”

He took one heavy, stiff-legged step toward me, hesitated, then swung the other leg forward. All I remember thinking at that moment was oh, shit, this is not normal. The next thought was oh shit, blood. And the third thought was oh, shit, whatthehellamIgoingtodonow?

Byron raised his arms straight out, like he was sleepwalking. Classic George Romero zombie. The blood on his hand was wet and fresh. I reached for the exit door handle. Before I could pull, Byron slammed his hands into the door, holding it closed. I ducked under his arm—that was one thing about him, he was slow—and hit the loose door panel with my knee. That was one thing about me, clumsy. My knee went thermonuclear and the panel fell over with a mighty metallic clang. I promptly tripped over it and skidded across the door to the rack of sinks.

I climbed to my feet again, saw my pasty-white mug in the mirror, and turned back to the Byron thing. He stubbed his feet on the panel, first one, then the other, but his enormous bottom-heavy bulk kept him upright. I had a toy like that once. He came at me, mouth hanging open, his fat tongue pushing at his lower lip.

Keisha pounded at the door, calling my name. The door was wedged shut by the fallen stall panel and with Byron’s vast weight holding it in place. I grabbed a handful of the nearest thing, seat covers, and flung them at Byron’s head. They fluttered in the air and he batted at them with his hand, sending blood droplets into the air. One hit my cheek.

“Bren! Bren!” Keisha sounded nearly hysterical now. Even in the midst of fighting for my life, it was nice to know she cared.

I scooted around Byron to the door, reefed on the handle and got nothing. Byron saw me in the mirror and reached for the mirror-me. I had a moment of absolute wonderment—Byron couldn’t tell the difference anymore! What had Keisha’s sister called it? Sudden onset dementia. That was it exactly.

He stood on the door panel. At my end, a hinge prevented the panel from lying completely flat. There was enough space for me to squeeze my fingers underneath. All I had to do was unbalance Byron. I lifted my end and gave a fierce twist. For a moment I couldn’t budge it more than a few inches and then it moved and Byron tumbled toward the sinks, going head first into the mirror. It shattered in a hundred pieces as I flipped the panel over. Stunned and bleeding, Byron fell onto the middle sink, pulling it out of the wall in a geyser of water.

The door flew open and Keisha’s long, gorgeous, muscle-popping arm pulled me out of the bathroom. For one perfect moment, I rolled with her.

“What the fuck?” she asked.

“It’s Byron! Close the door.”

There was a roar in the bathroom. We reefed on the door but it wouldn’t close all the way. Twelve inches of open space.

“But what the fuck?” asked Keisha again.

The customer came forward carrying his empty milkshake cup. “What about my order?”

“Sir—” I began but Byron’s bloody shoulder wedged through the door opening, followed immediately by the rest of him. In daylight he was a horror of sliced flesh and free-flowing blood. The pulp of one eye hung deflated on his cheek. He reached for the customer’s throat and reeled in the poor skinny little cuss.

I wasn’t ready for the bite he took out of the guy’s face, nor for the way the guy immediately stopped screaming. Everything was silent and then I heard a tap-tap-tapping on the floor as the customer’s loafers did a frenzied dance. Byron released him and the guy made his first lock-kneed step toward Keisha. He was completely gone. Demented.

“Oh, no you don’t!” She rolled backwards, finding the counter with her shoulder. He came on, arms outstretched. I grabbed for his neck and lost my grip in the slippery blood that poured from the half moon punctures on his cheek.

Keisha reached out, gracefully snagging the order spindle. I watched her raise it up, papers crackling. The man came a step closer, his hands brushing her springy curls and reaching for her throat. Keisha slashed down with the spindle, driving the point into the guy’s chest.

He stopped, vibrated for a moment like a struck tuning fork, then slowly slid to the ground.

“Order’s up,” said Keisha, a quaver in her voice.

Bob came out from behind the counter. “Wow. That was…Wow.”

But I was watching Byron, who was now free and shambling across the parking lot. Anyone he encountered was in danger from exactly what he’d done to our customer. The transformation had taken less than ten seconds.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Keisha. “But I have a feeling we are all most sincerely in trouble.”

I heard blaring car horns and a woman screaming. “The police will catch him.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Bob.

Keisha touched my cheek. “You have something…” She wet her finger tip and touched it again, scrubbing lightly. Then she raised her finger to her tongue again.

“No!” I yelled. But it was too late, she licked her finger.

“Must be chocolate,” she said. “You never got the hang of the shake machine. Is someone going to call 911 or do I have to do everything around here?”

“I’ll do it,” I said, though I heard sirens in the distance. It could be some time before emergency personnel got around to us.

She rolled to the dead guy and yanked the spindle out of his chest. “We’re keeping this.”

As she went into the kitchen, Bob turned to me. “Dude. That was blood on your cheek, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “She must be immune.”

We turned to stare at the closed door. “Amazing,” said Bob after a moment. “She’s ValkYra.”

“Fuck you. What did I say?”

###

Later, I saw three of them on our street. A woman and two kids. The smallest kid fell down. Still in diapers, it couldn’t get up very quickly and the other two kept walking.

Ma latched the screen door and sat down beside me on the porch swing. Not saying one word, we watched the baby push itself up and head across the street. The other two were long out of sight by then. In the distance, more sirens.

I wanted her to explain it to me, to tell me that all this was normal, that it happened sometimes. Like a plague of locusts or twelve-year old Scotch. But she took my hand and rocked the swing with her foot. We sat like that, me and ma, until it was dark and the street lights came on, flickered once and went out.

“See if you can find some candles, Bren,” she said.

“Sure, ma.” But we didn’t light any candles. Not with all of them out there.