Zombie Con Read online

fell forward causing one of the vials to roll off the bed. The vial hit the floor and shattered spilling the liquid. Yarub grabbed the remaining five vials and put them in his suit pocket.

  “Nice doing business with you,” Yarub said and grabbed his briefcase. He quickly walked out of the room.

  “Lauren, you’re going to be late,” Danny, her agent, said.

  “Danny, I’m almost ready. I want to look sexy for all my fans,” Lauren said.

  “Make sure you are wearing your glasses. For some reason that drives the guys wild.”

  “Are you sure it’s not my British accent?”

  “Maybe a little of both.”

  “I’m done,” Lauren said and walked out of the bathroom wearing a low cut fancy red dress with long red stilettos. “What do you think? Sexy enough?”

  “If I was straight, I’d be drooling,” Danny said.

  “Like you are when you are around Hugh?”

  “Something about a rugged man with metal claws,” Danny said blushing.

  “Come on. Let’s go fulfill some lonely guys’ fantasies,” Lauren said and led him out of the hotel room.

  “Mia, it’s almost time to perform,” Tia said, grabbing her violin case.

  “The fans are going to go wild when we play the Walkers theme song on our violins,” Tia said.

  “Knock ‘em dead,” Kurt, who dressed similar to Dennis, the arrow shooting bad boy from the Walkers, said. He even carried around a crossbow and an ax attached to his back. His look and the sound of his voice were so dead on, a person would think that it really was Dennis. He went to most of the zombie conventions.

  “We will, Kurt,” Tia said.

  “Who’s this Kurt?”

  “I mean Dennis,” Tia said as he walked away.

  “Housekeeping,” Rosa said as she knocked on the hotel room door. She waited a few seconds with no answer and unlocked the door with her electronic skeleton key. She entered the room and saw the lamp lying on the floor. She grabbed the lamp and placed it back on the nightstand. She saw the broken shards of glass on top of a big red stain in the carpet. She walked out of the room and retrieved her vacuum. She walked back into the room and plugged the vacuum in. As she was about to turn it on, she heard a noise coming from the bathroom.

  “Is someone there?” she asked.

  No answer.

  She walked up to the bathroom door. She could hear loud growling coming from the bathroom.

  “Pets aren’t allowed,” she said. She slowly pushed open the door. A hand grabbed her and forcefully dragged her into the bathroom. Before she could scream, Ali bit into her neck.

  “Is everybody having a great time?” Chris, the host of the panels, asked. “Wow, can you believe what we just heard. This is continuing to be an awesome season of The Walkers. Shortly we will be hearing from Mallory Wheat, Kimberly of The Walkers, talking about her character and her new CD. Right now the Violin twins will perform a few tracks from their Best of the Soundtracks.”

  “I just took some pictures of them,” Norman said as everybody awaited the arrival of Lauren.

  “I was watching a lot of their videos on Youtube last night,” Barbara said.

  The fans at the front of the line started cheering as Lauren walked over to her table.

  “Finally,” Norman said.

  “VIPs, Lauren will start in five minutes.”

  “This is exciting,” Barbara said, holding her VIP badge toward the regular ticket holder line. “That’s right everybody over there. We get to go first.”

  “Are you lost?” Anabel asked.

  “No, our room should be here somewhere,” Frank, her husband, said.

  “I’ve been telling you we walked down the wrong corridor. This place is like a maze.”

  “We are not lost.”

  “Frank, you do this all the time. Get lost and refuse to acknowledge the fact that we are lost. Go ask that maid over there.”

  “She’s walking funny. Is that blood on her uniform?”

  “You’re just making excuses not to ask her for directions. You coward,” Anabel said and walked over to the maid. Before she could ask for directions, the maid grabbed her arm and bit down ripping a big piece of her flesh.

  “Anabel!” Frank screamed.

  Frank ran over to her. The maid quickly knocked him to the ground and ripped into his flesh.

  Norman stood nervously. Barbara was getting Lauren’s autograph and he was next. He couldn’t believe how beautiful Lauren looked in person. The red dress she was wearing was driving him crazy. He knew he would never have a chance to meet a celebrity as beautiful as her ever again. He put a couple of breath mints in his mouth. The last thing he wanted her to smell was coffee breath. Barbara turned around and showed him the autograph picture. He smiled. She stood to the side and waited for Norman to get his autograph.

  “You’re next,” the lady, wearing a yellow staff t-shirt, said. He handed her his ticket and then walked over to Lauren’s table.

  “Hello,” Lauren said.

  “Hello,” he said back, trying not to stutter.

  “You don’t have to be nervous. I don’t bite. The zombies do,” Lauren said flirtatiously.

  “That obvious.”

  “Yes. Who do I make the autograph to?”

  “Norman.”

  “To Norman,” Lauren said as she signed her photograph.

  “Let me see,” Barbara said excitedly.

  “Are you two together?” Lauren asked.

  “No, we just met.”

  “I think she likes you,” Lauren said softly.

  “What did she say?” Barbara asked as he walked over to her.

  “She told me not to be nervous around beautiful women.”

  “That’s good advice. Let’s go get Andy’s autograph,” she said and led him to Andy’s VIP line.

  “I just sold almost all of the posters of Lauren,” Keegan said.

  “Nobody wants the posters of Loretta anymore,” Russo said.

  “I told you to bring all the boxes of the Lauren merchandise in,” Keegan said.

  “I didn’t realize she was going to be that popular this time,” Russo said.

  “She’s here in person. Normally, she isn’t at the conventions we set up at. I need you to go out to the truck and grab those boxes,” Keegan said.

  “Since the cafeteria is on the way, do you want me to grab us something?”

  “A couple of Chicago style hotdogs would be nice.”

  “Keegan, I’ll be right back,” Russo said and grabbed their dolly.

  “I was like with Dennis and we were like running from the zombies when we first encountered the sergeant and his group. I was like having fun on that day of the set,” Mallory said as she addressed all the fans attending her panel discussion.

  “She must love that word like,” Norman said.

  “My friends and I have a drinking game for every time Mallory is a guest on Talking the Walkers. Every time she says the word like we take a drink. We are usually all hammered within the first fifteen minutes,” Barbara said, laughing.

  “I like her character, but her voice is like nails on a chalkboard,” Norman said.

  “You said like twice.”

  “I did. Like a zombie plague, it’s contagious,” Norman said.

  “I think The Walkers’ theme sounds better every time we play it,” Tia said.

  “I think I’m more passionate about it each time,” Mia said.

  “People love it. We sold ten more copies of the CD the past thirty minutes,” Tia said.

  “Coming up next we will hear from Karl Romero, Chuck Blazers of the Talkers,” the panel host said.

  “Cover your ears because potty mouth is coming on,” Mia said laughing.

  “If the mic had a sensor button, all we’d be hearing is beep this and beep that,” Tia said.

  “I’ve never heard someone speak so vulgar before. I think it’s time to freshen up.
I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Mia said.

  “Don’t be too long. We’re up again after Karl.”

  Max stood next to his girlfriend Brook having their photo taken with the zombie on stilts. Once the photo was taken, the zombie on stilts growled loudly and continued walking through the massive crowd of zombie fans.

  “Thanks for taking the picture for us,” Brook said to the man in the werewolf costume.

  He howled as he gave the camera back to Brook.

  “People really have used their imaginations designing their costumes,” Max said.

  “The best we could do was rip our old clothing and put gray face paint on,” Brook said.

  “Let’s get a photo with the Dennis lookalike over there. People will think we actually met him,” Max said.

  “Are you sure it’s not really him?”

  “Brook, let’s go find out.”

  “I can’t believe what Andy wrote on the autograph photo: Thanks for being a fan, babe. Love Andy,” Barbara said.

  “He wrote on mine: Thanks for being a fan dude, Sincerely, Andy,” Norman said.

  “At least he didn’t call you babe,” Barbara said teasing. “There’s nobody in line for Cara right now.”

  “She always has that sad puppy dog look. It’s adorable,” Norman said.

  “You’re drooling again. Not as bad as you were around Lauren. Come on before somebody gets in line. There’s not much time until we need to be over at the other side to get our photo ops with Lauren.”

  “Lead the way and I’ll follow.”

  Russo wiped his head with his red handkerchief as he finished stacking the boxes of Lauren’s merchandise on the dolly. He was sweating even though it was extremely cold out in the wintery Chicago day. He wished he would have remembered to grab his coat before leaving their booth. The snow had been falling for the