Zombie Kong Read Free

Nothing.
    Broken dishes peppered the floor. Half-eaten meals sat abandoned on tables gathering flies. Someone had left a purse sitting in the booth next to them, along with an iPod and a pair of cheap sunglasses. On a different table a twenty-dollar bill, folded in the middle, had been tossed atop an empty plate. There were no waitresses to be found, no cooks, no hungry customers, no people standing behind the counter eager to serve food. Aside from Jake and Candice, there was only one other person in the restaurant: a stiff-jointed man with a chiseled face and razor short hair. He might have been thirty-five years old, give or take a year.
    Standing motionlessly in the center of the room, beneath a ceiling fan that spun wobbly-circles above him, the man looked a little bit like a shorthaired version of Jack Nicholson back in the 1970s. Specifically, when Jack played the role of Randle Patrick McMurphy in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, except that the man in the restaurant wasn’t wearing a white hospital shirt; he was wearing a referee’s jersey, covered in dust. And he didn’t seem cheerfully zealous. He seemed downright weird.
    It took Candice a moment to remember the sports store across the street and grasp the fact that the people working there wore the referee jersey as part of their uniform. The store, Athlete’s Delight , had always done excellent business as far as she could tell. She had assumed it always would. Of course, that was before––
    Slowly, as if he was in a trance, the man cocked his head towards them. He looked at Jake. Then Candice. “What do we have here?” he said.
    Technically it was a question, but he wasn’t asking it to anyone in particular. He just said it––quietly, almost emotionlessly, with his eyes locked on the empty space between them. He mumbled something under his breath after speaking, and then he stumbled forward. In some ways he looked like he was suffering the effects of a voodoo curse.
    A moment of silence came, followed by Jake leaning across the table, whispering, “That man’s acting funny, Mom. Look at him. Look at his hands. Do you see what he’s doing with his hands?”
    Candice looked over her shoulder. Once again her thumb found its way between her teeth.
    Meaner than a pit-bull with blood on its snout, the man was opening his hands slowly then snapping them into fists, then opening them once again, and snapping them into fists––repeating the motion, over and over. If the oddball look sheet-rocked across his vacuous face wasn’t reason for concern, the way he was moving his hands definitely was. The guy had toys in the attic; it wouldn’t have surprised Candice if he pulled his pants to his knees and sang Happy Birthday in French while doing a jig.
    “Mom,” Jake said. “Do you think––”
    “Quiet. Don’t look at him. Just… ignore him for now.”
    “But––”
    “Hush!”
    Jake nodded and his eyes found the table but he felt no comfort knowing his mother was ignoring something that needed to be addressed. The smell of lunacy was in the air, only she didn’t recognize it, or perhaps she didn’t care. He wanted to tell her that the man was not in touch with things, only he could not find the words.
    Candice considered leaving the restaurant but needed a moment to think, and the relative tranquility of room was the most she could hope for.
    Help. She needed help. And she needed to do something smart, but what? What could she do? Her husband Dale had phoned her from inside the gorilla’s belly and he wanted her to do WHAT exactly? What was she supposed to do about this little situation, phone the police? Without a doubt, the police were already well aware of the fact that there was a giant gorilla smashing the shit out of the town, so that was one phone call she didn’t have to make.
    She needed a cigarette.
    Or better yet, a joint… a big fat one. One grown by Snoop Dogg, rolled by Ziggy Marley, and endorsed by Cheech and his