Well, the guys at TOWWZ were mildly impressed by my story of fighting off zombies in the Amazon. By mildly impressed, I mean they threatened me with a restraining order, but didn’t follow through. And by fighting off zombies in the Amazon, I mean ducking and jiving, and climbing lots of trees, and pushing fat guys into the shuffling herds of the undead.  I’d rather not talk about zombies, though.

I try being direct with the kid across from me, and tell him just that. “I’d rather not talk about zombies,” I say.

He looks at his shoes sheepishly. Now I feel like a schmuck. But I always feel that way when standing outside the beauty salon, holding my wife’s purse, waiting for her and my daughter to get their hair done. They’re Amazons. You know, AMAZONS. Everything about them is monolithic…their stature, their condescending attitude towards men, their poofy hairdos. They tolerate me…well, my wife does. She loves me. My daughter? She’s a teenager. She tolerates gossip and lip gloss, and that’s it. (She does enjoy throwing spears. But please, for the love of all things sacred, never say that to her. Unless you want to be impaled on a spear.)

The kid is still staring at his shoes. He likes my daughter. He’s trying to make small talk with me, but any talk with me is small talk. I’m a small guy. I’m comfortable with my height. I come up to my wife’s belly button. I don’t even compensate for what many would consider an embarrassingly short stature with giant combat boots like the kid has on.

“Those are nice boots,” I say. And I’m sincere about it. In the post-apocalyptic zombie world, shoes is important. He must have stolen them off a soldier.

“There’s a story behind these shoes, you know,” he says, cocksure.

“Don’t tell me – does it involve zombies?”

He stammers, and then falls silent. You have to understand, talking about zombies is like…I don’t know. Talking about the weather? The sky is gray, it’s overcast. It’s just not a day for sharing war stories. I peak in the window of the beauty salon, and they’re both still waiting on the other side of the hair cutters. Stylists. Whatever you call them, I wouldn’t know, I’m bald as a cue ball.

The kid perks up, “R.J. tells me you’re from Vegas?”

R.J. stands for Riley Jr. She’s named after her mom, not me. I don’t like telling people my name, and I ain’t from Vegas, I’m from New York. But I won’t correct the kid.

“Sure, I lived in Vegas. You?”

“It’s hot there, isn’t it?”

“I guess. Not jungle hot, though.”

Sheesh. Talking about the weather is such a chore, makes me almost want to talk about zombies. In the Amazon, there are two types of weather. Wet and dry. And both are miserably hot. I swat at a mosquito and ask the kid, “So when were you last up in Vegas?”

He looks down at his shoes. Maybe he’s looking down at me, I don’t know. At least he isn’t on one knee and talking to me like I was a child, like he did the other night when I first met him. I honestly cannot see any redeeming qualities in this kid. He’s built like a brickyard outhouse. Sloping shoulders, chiseled jaw, bright white straight teeth, slim waistline, and a deep baritone voice. I hate him and all he stands for. Especially his perfect, wavy black hair. He was about to go into the salon with the girls when my wife recommend we do some ‘male bonding’. Every Amazonian within earshot laughed at that one.

He stammers again. “I was there uh, let’s see. Two months ago? Yeah. We…that is, my family and I, stopped over in Vegas as we made our way to Paris.”

My ears perk up, “Paris, Texas?”

“Uh, no. Paris, France. You see blah blah blah.”

He’s droning on about chateaus and brie cheese, and I nod now and then and pretend to listen, then I start nodding off. He taps me gently on my shoulder, and I wake up. See, in a zombie filled, world it’s best to nod off in the company of those that are wide awake. Somebody’s gotta keep lookout.

“Huh? What? Or sure. Do they still call them freedom fries?” I ask.

“I beg your pardon?”

I rub my eyes and peer in the salon. Well, at least my wife is now sitting down on the side of the salon with the mirrors. The stylist is traipsing around and around the chair my wife’s sitting in, flicking at her beautiful long hair, and they’re both yucking it up over something.

“Kid, let me give you a piece of advice. There are only two things in life worth waiting for. One is waiting on a lady.”

“And the other?”

What planet is this kid from? Seriously. “Are you serious, kid? Pie fresh out of the oven, of course.”

He starts chuckling lecherously, and I don’t like the tone at all. I stare up at him, “I ain’t talking innuendos, kid.”

He looks down at his shoes again. He definitely ain’t looking at me, and I feel bad for making him feel uncomfortable. My wife should have known I have this effect on people. I gotta lighten the mood.

“Alright,” I say.

“Pardon?”

“Alright, tell me about the shoes. But if you get into any heroics about how you came about them and you had to fight off any more than three zombies…fair warning. I’ll tune out. It will make me pine for more cheese stories, capice?”

So he tells me his story. Wait a second. I won’t just quote him, not unless you want to hear proper English, with all them pardons and adverbs. I’ll relate it to you. It’ll go down easier that way. He’s up in Vegas two months ago, flight stopped over in Vegas. The Canadians run everything up there now. They have been for years. Totally kicked out anyone who refused to call their ham, bacon. It’s ham! It looks like ham, without a ton of maple syrup it tastes like a shoe. Utoh. I’m going off on one of my tangents again, ain’t I? Sorry about that.

The kid is in Vegas with his folks. His mom is an ex-Vegas show girl, now she’s an Amazon…like all of the women around here.
I’m talking about the eastern side of South America. Deeper in the jungle, out west, where the Rockettes settled? They’re Amazons, too. Only they ain’t as peace loving as the kid’s mother, or my wife…or my precious angel of a daughter. What the hell does she see in this kid? The oversized combat boots? Why?

Anyway, Vegas is on lockdown. It was when I left fifteen years ago, and it is today. It was on lockdown when the kid flew in with his mom and dad. His dad is an ex-football player. Big guy (remember, anyone over 5’4” is a big guy to me). But his dad is larger than average, easily seven feet tall. And a nice guy, too. His wife lets him run the cash register down in their urban outfitters store. It’s like a camping store, but caters to the jungle girls who want to doll themselves up for who knows what. They all hate men. She sells high heeled shoes and expensive purses, he makes change and smiles. Another tangent…sorry about that.
So the Canadians ask the folks for their papers once they get off the plane. The mom is a little antsy. She’s a fugitive, because she’s property of the casinos…or at least used to be…before her and her friends all became Amazons. Her papers are forged. Not the father’s. His are legit, and the Canadian cops are yucking it up with him, posing for pictures, and everything else that comes with celebrity.

Unfortunately for the kid, his papers got lost when they stopped in Mexico. Oh, I should mention (this is common knowledge, but to the young readers, I will be as informative as possible without sounding like a history book)…I should mention by flying first class, that just means the puddle jumper’s got two engines, and extra barf bags. See now why I hate this kid? If I wanna travel cross country, it’s by foot. Canoe, if I’m lucky. Foot is better. Quick tangent, but there was this one puddle jumper, ran by old Malik Smith. Smitty to his friends. Thick specs…his specs were thicker than the windshield on that old ratty plane he flew. I used to joke to him that the only identifiable remains in a crash would be his flying goggles. He takes up some tourists a few months back. A young couple, two old couples, and a big fat guy. Real obese, took up two seats on the plane. It doesn’t matter that he’s obese in a zombie survival sense. Shoot, old Malik could outrun zombies, and he had arthritis.

Anyway, Malik’s plane barely makes it off the runway. I only know that because I was one of the few idiots ducking when I saw the plane skimming the trees heading towards Main St. I tell everyone it’s flying so low on account of the fat guy that swam ashore later after the plane crashed. The plane crashed, by the way. That’s not the climax of the tangent. That happened while the plane was taking off. Old Malik went to clean his specs because sweat was dripping on them, and according to the fat guy, “A pilot has to see during the critical stages of take-offs and landings.” That’s what Malik supposedly told everyone. But an old lady in the front row got scared and died of a heart attack when she thought they were going to crash. Well, we all know what happens with death, and rebirth, and the biting of people in enclosed spaces.

By the time Malik turned around to tell everyone to stop with the ruckus, half of them were zombies. They were trying to bite the fat guy, but none of them could open their jaws wide enough to take a chunk out of him. As he told it, it was like watching old, toothless people trying to start an apple. The young couple seated behind fatty were grateful for his zombie stopping girth, but their joy quickly turned to dismay as the zombies headed toward the cockpit. Malik didn’t want to go out that way, so he nose-dived the plane not too far from shore. The fat guy was the only one to swim back, so I don’t believe that story one bit. I say he was too damn fat, and Malik couldn’t get the plane leveled off and he stalled and nose-dived. That’s why I travel by foot or canoe. Self-reliance, kids.

The moral of my short tangent is…wait. Was there supposed to be a moral? I forget. But if you’re smart, you’ll wait for any stragglers to get washed ashore during high tide. Malik came back, green skin, groaning and doing the Zombie Shuffle. He was covered with crabs noshing on his flabby old skin. He was a walking surf and turf, and only a few Amazon women gave me a hard time when I pushed him into a fire some teenagers had going on the beach. My defense was “Waste not, want not”…and them crabs were delicious. Malik was a bit overdone. I guess the moral of the story is ‘Don’t overcook your zombie.’

Oh yeah, the kid. He lost his papers, see? But the Canadians are so wrapped up with his dad, the kid decided to give his parents the slip. So he goes out of the security area, and now he’s in Vegas airport casino territory. Don’t ever play the airport slots, they never pay out. The kid doesn’t know this, and soon he’s out of money, and the Canadian security don’t like anyone cluttering up any of their casino space unless they’re spending money, so the kid (and he’s a big kid, mind you) gets thrown out on the street.
There he is, outside the Vegas airport, no papers, no cash, and no way to get back in. He tries to sneak back in, but the security around the airport is tight. Tighter than usual…security everywhere is tight. There are zombies out there! The only places that don’t have security are either super rural or are already overrun with zombies. The kid is lucky, though, because if the Canadians do one thing right, it’s curfews. He’s picked up in no time by the police, and naively enough, he thinks the cops are going to help him. I don’t know what part of the pig those whacky Canadians call bacon, but the part with batons and handcuffs surrounds the kid and whisk him off to jail.

By now his parents are alert their teenage son is missing, and the cops are soon aware of who the kid’s dad is. Canadian cops are also sadistic, and before the photo op with the kid’s dad is to take place, they want to have a little fun with him. So they throw in a grizzled vet in the jail cell with him. The vet is a drunk. Ticked off and rambling how the US shall rise again and kick out those fancy Mounties and their ridiculous breakfast meats. He rants and raves, and the kid is nervous that maybe the vet is going to turn on him. Instead, the vet simply turns in. Passes out. Snores up a storm. Despite his parent’s wealth and affluence, the kid is a bit of an adrenaline junky. That’s when he has the bright idea to steal the vet’s boots. They’re nice boots, too. Army issued; the leather looks soft and holds a mirror finish polish. Even the shoe laces look like they’re starched.

Besides starch, they also have the vet’s dog tags weaved into them, only the kid doesn’t notice. He slips his lambskin dress shoes on the vet’s smelly feet, and puts on the boots. Perfect fit. He gets released, and storms away from the polite, yet ignominious (grab a dictionary kids!) guards and into the receiving arms of his doting parents. The raving vet wakes up, and everyone ignores his pleas that, “Ma shoes have been plum robbed off ma dogs.”

They all three make it back to the airport, where guess what? If you say the kid got stopped as he went through the metal detector, give yourself a cookie. Airport security discovers standing before them is Sgt. Ivan Petroski, serial number ###-#### of the United States Freedom Reserves. The kid is once again whisked away. Only this time into a small, windowless room inside the airport. The kid has to make a decision. Does he come clean, and own up to stealing the shoes (and thus, get his hands cut off…a harrowing fate for any one of us, particularly a young, virile teenage boy), or does he play along and say he’s in the Reserves, and get shot as a spy?

He goes the spy route. The anguish of a grieving Amazon mother and the outbursts of an ex-football player father cannot save the kid from Canadian Kangaroo Court. That’s what they call it…Canadians. I’m so glad to be living down here with the mosquitos. Within a matter of minutes they have the kid tried, sentenced, and standing before a firing squad. To the kid’s credit, he’s fearless.  Must be the adrenaline junkie within him, or because he’s afraid to admit to me that he really pooped his pants and was groveling at their feet.

When the leader of the firing squad asks him if he wants a smoke, he declines. When asked if he has any last requests, he asks to give his mother and father a hug goodbye. The only problem is nobody on the firing squad has had a photo op with the kid’s dad, so they oblige him. And the dad is more concerned about lighting and having his picture taken on his good side, he barely says goodbye to the kid. Dejected, the kid shuffles off to a corner, and then shuffles slowly towards a door, and then shuffles off to freedom in the form of a puddle jumper heading towards Paris, France. The same one that has his ‘rent’s luggage, gold coins, etc. etc.’

At that point I tune out, because supposedly when he arrives in Paris, he fights off a bunch of Parisian zombies, complete with berets and haughty groans.

“So where’s the dog tag?” I ask.

He stammers, “I uh, I threw it away.”

“You threw away the only piece of evidence to your BS story, am I right?”

He looks into the salon, “They’re about done.”

Only he doesn’t say ‘about’…he says ‘a boot’…as in with a Canadian accent. My eyeballs pop out of my head.  The only thing worse than zombies (and spear throwing Amazons), is Canadian spies. It’s like the first time people were talking about zombies appearing. You want to laugh it off, because it’s so unbelievable. I heard the Canadians were sending down spies a few weeks back, who knows what to believe anymore? It’s a topsy-turvy world, but I’m not about to let any daughter of mine get involved with a Canadian, much less a spy. Well, a secret agent I would have no trouble with. They’re suave. This kid ain’t suave.

I make a show of peering into the salon. The girls are sitting under the hair dryers. “Oh, they won’t be done for another hour. What say you and me go grab some grub?”

He looks concerned, “I don’t eat insects.”

That’s a shame. They’re a good source of protein. “I don’t mean grubs, I mean breakfast. You wouldn’t happen to know the time, would you?”

Of course he wouldn’t know the exact time. Wind-up wristwatches are about as rare as hen’s teeth. It’s a trick question, and I want to confirm that this kid ain’t who he says he is.

He looks up at the overcast sky, “10 or 11.”

Huh? He didn’t say ‘a-boot 10 or 11.’ Hmm. I have to change tactics. This Amazon is walking towards us, huge rack. “Wow, look at them knockers, about what size bra you think she wears, kid?”

He’s looking the other way, and turns toward me, “Pardon?”

“Knockers, knockers,” I’m thumbing behind me, “about what size bra you think is holding up those melons?”

The kid is shaking his head, wincing. What kind of man is he? “C’mon kid, she’s right over-“

I look behind me. Towering over me is a 6 foot 5 blonde. She’s wearing a leopard skin miniskirt, leopard tooth necklace…and no bra. She’s overdoing the animal motif, in my opinion. Oh yeah, she’s also wearing a sneer and her right hand is cocked back and balled up into a fist.

She knocks me across the street, and as the kid picks me up and dusts me off, I notice she goes into the beauty salon, from within echoes laughter. Lots of laughter. At me.

I shake the kid off, “Come on. I know a good place for breakfast. Overlooks the zombie sanctuary.”

We walk down the main strip, and I gotta say, for wanting to start over in the New World, the Vegas show girls did a pretty good job of remaking the Amazon beachfront into a mini-Vegas. Only, I guess it would be more like a mini-Atlantic City, being so close to shore and all. But I’m keeping my mouth shut. You never know what will set one of these women off.

We arrive at “Jacque and Jeans” and the waitresses are, of course, all beautiful Amazons, wearing skin tight designer jeans and safari hats. It’s a French restaurant, and me and the wife take our daughter here for brunch on Sundays. It’s set up high next to this huge wooden barricade that the Amazon women keep the undead behind.  Don’t ask me why they do this, I say put the poor souls out of their misery. But the Amazons are weird like that. Very zombie friendly territory. It gives me the creeps watching zombies mill about down below as I nibble on cantaloupe above. Anyway, if it’s one group of people who hate zombies, it’s Canadians. And I’m determined to root this spy kid out from his calm, complacent veneer.

“You don’t mind zombies, do ya?” I ask.

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. I knew it!

“Just look at them all. Milling about down there,” I look over at him. He picks up a dessert menu stuck between the salt and pepper shakers.

“Marvelous,” he squeaks out.

A big redheaded girl, big smile, saunters over to our table. She’s holding a bowl of finger food. Not for us, mind you. Real fingers, no doubt cut off the hands of a native man who got too touchy-feely with one of the Amazons. Punishment is brutal in a post-apocalyptic world. However, the Amazons treat the dead better than the living, and the bowl of fingers is for me and the kid to throw down to the zombies. Like feeding ducks in a pond.

“Oh, the fingers are here!” I say.

“Hello, I’m Stacy, I will be your, ahem…server…today. Can I start you…ahem…gentleman…with something to drink?”

“How about a beer?” the kid asks. He’s oblivious that we’re not really welcome in the establishment without the accompaniment of women. I’m always forgetting the nuances of this place. It’s all new to me. Mostly, I’ve lived in the jungle the past 15 years.

“For you…ahem…sir?” Stacy spits the sir out like it’s phlegm.

“The only beer I drink is of the root variety, miss. On the rocks. Oh, are we too early for brunch?” I ask.

“Brunch starts at 11. May I take your…ahem…orders now?”

“Maybe in a minute, Stacy. We need some time to, uh, look over the menus.”

She leaves, and the jeans leave nothing to the imagination. Which sucks, because I usually have a very vivid imagination. The kid has his eyes glued to the menu, and I throw down a few fingers to an emaciated zombie. He meanders slowly over to where I threw them, but a fat zombie with good eyes picks up the fingers instead, and bats away the skinny zombie. Oh well.
“You want in on this action?” I ask the kid. He shakes his head furiously. “Suit yourself,” I say, and throw down a finger at the skinny zombie, hit him on the head. It bounces off and lands near a few native zombies. They look up at me, start in with the growling, and then futilely begin clawing at the wall underneath us. What a waste of a finger. They’ll do this clawing routine all through breakfast now.  Speaking of which…

“So you know what you want, kid? You don’t need to order off the children’s menu.”

He looks up briefly from the menu, and I casually toss a finger over the side. It looks like the kid threw up in his mouth a little. I pick up another finger, “Oh, this one’s fresh. Look at that, it’s still twitching,” I hold it under his nose, and watch him turn green.
“What’s the matter, kid? Those zombies are way down there, and we’re way up here on this…rickety, but I’m sure structurally sound platform.” I stomp my foot on the floor, and the silverware rattles loudly, “See? Don’t worry, if we fall over into the sanctuary, I know a good lawyer. There he is!” I point at the emaciated zombie.

The kid scoffs at my remark, and goes back to studying the menu.

“It ain’t a college entrance exam, kid. It’s a menu. I know what I want, how about you?”

He puts the menu down, and forces himself to look over the edge of the table down below. He quickly looks back towards me. I don’t know if the face he is making is because of all the zombies below, or if I got a bit of cantaloupe stuck between my crooked teeth. Either way, he looks like he’s about to blow chunks.

“I’m going to have the bacon and eggs,” he says.

Perfect! Oh, this is going to be great. “You know what? You’re a man after my own heart…just like them zombies down there, huh?”

I wave Stacy over, and she waltzes over with her big…false…forced smile. She puts down our drinks and takes up her pad.

“Stacy, two orders of bacon and eggs.”

“How would you like your eggs cooked?”

“Oh, I like mine like I like my bowel movements, runny. How ABOUT you, kid?”

He smiles, “I like my eggs like I like my women, over easy.”

The place comes to a stand-still. I hear a plate crash to the ground from the kitchen. An Amazon at the next table spits her coffee.
I try diplomacy, “Err, what he means miss, is two orders of runny eggs,” I kick the kid under the table. “Didn’t ya, kid?”

He catches on and nods his head.

“You’ll have to excuse him, miss. His mother is an Amazon, and frankly, she’s a tad lenient on his errant tongue, if you catch my drift.”

She grimaces, “Do you…ahem…gentlemen…have any preference for bacon?”

Aha! “The play’s the thing,” I say.

“Pardon?” the kid asks.

“The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king…it’s from Hamlet.”

“So you want ham instead of bacon?” Stacy asks.

“Ham? No…I want bacon. Wait. Kid, do you want ham?”

“No, I want bacon as well.”

“Uh, Stacy, you know what? Change mine from regular bacon, to Canadian bacon. Because…you know. It taste more like ham, don’t you agree kid?”

They’re both looking at me like I got two heads. This is not unusual for me. Stacy saunters off, leaving absolutely nothing to my overactive imagination, and I’m left to my own devices on rooting out this kid as a spy.  I must be clever. I must be subtle.

“You’re a spy, ain’t ya kid?”

“Pardon?”

I whisper over the cantaloupe, “Sure you are, you can admit it to me. I’m uh, I’m a Canadian secret service man myself.”

“You are?” he says all astonished like.

“Hey, I could be a secret service agent. What? You’re saying I ain’t one?” I go to stand up, and I feel a big hand come down on my shoulder.

“You? A spy?” my wife laughs. Sheesh. She sits down next to me, and smells like heaven. Even in a French restaurant, despite the occasional whiff of the undead below, and the croissants from the kitchen, my wife still smells better than both of them intermingling.

R.J. sits down next to the kid and kisses him, and now I’m about to puke. R.J. reaches over him, and throws a finger over the side. She hits the skinny zombie in the head without even trying. Show off.

“So you girls look lovely,” I say.

“Never mind that,” my wife says. “What’s this about spies?”

I take the bull by the horns, “Oh, nothing. The kid was telling me how he had an adventure because he had a dog tag stuck in his…sneaker. That right, kid?”

“Almost, it wasn’t a sneaker,” he says. “It was a boot.”

“Aha!” I shout. Only a few people look over at us. Hey, when you are accompanied by Amazons in Amazon turf, you can shout during brunch. Or pre-brunch.

“Aha?” my wife asks. R.J. is looking at me puzzled.

“Didn’t you hear him say ‘a boot’ like he was saying ‘about’, only with the Canadian accent? He’s a spy! He’s infiltrating your society, or something.” I look around the table, and nobody’s buying my story.

The kid tries to get up, “Let’s go, R.J. I’m not about to eat breakfast with a jerk who thinks I’m a spy.”

R.J. stands up, “Nobody calls my daddy a jerk.” She decks the kid. Knocks him over the table, and fortunately for him, he gets his boot caught on the railing of the table. He’s hanging there screaming, and Amazons go about eating their cantaloupe and Belgian waffles. R.J. sits back down, and as the kid slips and screams, she reaches over and grabs his boot.

“Help me!” he screams.

“First say you’re sorry,” R.J. says and winks at me. That’s my little girl!

“Riley Jr., you let him up this instant,” my wife says.

“Why?” I ask. “He’s a spy,” I look over the edge. A bunch of zombies are licking their lips, waiting patiently for him to fall. Some don’t have lips; they lick at their exposed teeth. Zombies are rarely patient, so they must know this is a certain meal. The frosty eyed emaciated zombie shuffles directly underneath, and I couldn’t be happier.

“Let him up, Riley Jr. Now!” my wife says. What a killjoy.

R.J. struggles and pulls up the kid and he’s shaking like a tambourine.

“Reginald,” my wife addresses the kid. (You can see why I call him ‘kid’, right?) “Kindly explain to these two numbskulls why you have an accent?”

“What accent?” the kid asks.

“Say ‘about’.”

“A-boot,” he says.

“Aha! See? Spy! R.J. toss him,” I proclaim.

My wife smacks me. “Dummy, I thought you were the sports fan. His father’s Canadian. He played for the Canadian Mounties in the Super-Duper bowl way back when, didn’t he Reginald?”

“That’s right, ma’am.”

Me and R.J. exchange knowing glances. Then R.J. kisses him on the cheek. What? Why? Damn. Foiled again.

“Huh,” I say. “Well, sorry about the mix up, kid.”

Stacey comes over with our breakfast. The girls eat the eggs. Reginald is happy with his bacon. I eat Canadian ham. Tastes like syrup coated shoe.