Comfort food... and zombies - Part 3 of 5

CHAPTER 3

Chef Sydney Meers stepped out into a murky, misty morning just as the newspaper slapped the stoop of his Port Norfolk cottage.

Each morning the same man in the same car flung the paper out the window at the same time with eerie punctuality. Today, it was a comforting moment of normalcy in the weirdest of times.

The headline warned “Undead unite!” in the tallest print Meers had seen since Old Dominion University fielded a new football team. He scanned the story.

The ranks of zombies were growing like kudzu; the entire region had been put on high alert.

Another story outlined the contents of a survival kit every family should have: all the usual items found in a hurricane-survival kit, plus a sledgehammer to bludgeon undead brains.

Underneath that, an ad from public radio station WHRO touted survival kits as perks in its fall membership drive.

A sturdy pair of salad tongs in hand, Meers scanned the street. Shuffling footsteps and strange moans outside his bedroom window had kept him up all night, but now he saw no one, alive or not, moving in the dawn haze.

Carefully, head swiveling, he stalked across the street and unlocked the doors to his diminutive restaurant, Stove. There, he’d have everything he needed to survive: food, drink and lots and lots of knives. Plus, he knew there was a hammer somewhere around the place.

He got to work dusting the antlers of the mounted moose, ibex, antelope and wildebeest that ringed his Cougar Lounge. He thought the animals might lend him extra protection. Then he headed into the kitchen to make some comfort food.

Apocalypse chow, he thought, giggling to himself.

As the smell of sizzling Smoochie Bear Ham and onions rose from his cast-iron skillet, Meers heard a thud at the door.

It’s not nearly time for the early-bird diners, he thought.

Thud. Thud. Shuffle. Thud.

As the noises kept coming, Meers grew nervous. He gripped his chef’s knife, bits of onion still clinging to the blade, and sidled closer to the door.

Slam! The wood splintered, and in trundled Johnny, a Cougar Lounge regular. “Hungryyyyyy,” he moaned, drool dripping from his mouth.

“We’re not open yet!” Meers yelped. But Johnny stumbled on, gnashing his teeth and stretching his arms in front of him. Today, he was hungry for brains.

Heart pounding, eyes watering from the onion fumes, Meers hurled the knife.

“Whaaaat’s onnnn specia – urk.”

Johnny collapsed, a stainless steel blade lodged in his brain.

Meers exhaled, feeling relieved but a little guilty. “Still,” the chef thought, “he always was a lousy tipper.”

He headed back to the kitchen and turned off the burner, shaking his head at the burned ham, then gathered some artwork from the back room to secure the door.

Hammer in hand, ready to pound the first nail, Meers was startled by another form at the door. He raised the hammer above his head, then froze in surprise.

Standing in the door frame was former Portsmouth Mayor James Holley, visibly shaken with what looked like blood marring his lapel.

“I figured no one would think to look for me here,” Holley said breathlessly, knowing that the restaurant was the site of a celebration following the recall vote that unseated him.

“Mr. Meers, the fine and honorable city of Portsmouth is thick with the undead, and it’s a daunting task indeed to ascertain the good citizens of this fine city from the bad.”

Holley shuddered, thinking of his narrow escape from a throng of zombies as he’d tried to make his way to Waterside in Norfolk, where former city leaders years ago had agreed to meet in such an emergency. Tunnel traffic had kept him in Portsmouth.

He worried that another former mayor, Meyera Oberndorf, might be holed up in Waterside waiting for him. They had talked only last night. Now, there was no answer on her cell phone.

“The people need you,” Holley told Meers.

Meers understood. He offered his restaurant as a sanctuary and at once began planning a menu.

As Holley went to tackle the damaged door, in from the green mist came Obern­dorf, trailing a bit of seaweed from her shoe.

Story by Deb Markham, Jim Haag, Mike Gruss, Lorraine Eaton, Joanne Kimberlin and Jill Martin, The Virginian-Pilot

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<-- CHAPTER 2: Will either ex-mayor make it to Waterside alive?