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  "And how do we do that?"

  "The Hidar's aren't the only ones who do magic. There's others we can ask about this shit."

  Wiley slapped the steering wheel. A laughed erupted from his mouth in a bark-like fashion. "Why ask them? We'll merely get the girl to make one of them dead like us. That way, we'll know what he or she knows. We'll independently verify as you say."

  "Why don't we do that to Elias and that girl Jan?"

  Wiley did not answer. After a minute he pulled the car into an alleyway and shut it down.

  With a display of speed and power that shocked even his undead companion, Wiley placed both hands around Mookie's neck and squeezed.

  "'That girl' is to be my bride. You will always show her respect. Disrespecting her is the same as disrespecting me and that I will not abide. Understood?"

  Mookie could not answer and it was a struggle to nod his head but his slight movement signaled his understanding.

  He relaxed his hands off Mookie's throat. Wiley smiled and Mookie forced a smiled in return. "You have to understand that I am very fond of Miss Sugerfoot. She is the key to my plan to eventually take over this planet." He saw the questioning in his companion's eyes. "I will hold that plan close, disclosing it to no one."

  "I will be loyal to you, Ben. I will tell no one."

  Ben smiled, patted the man's face. "I know you are, Mookie, but in this world of magic I cannot be sure what the Hidar's are capable of. Perhaps they know all the words we speak?" He shook his head. "No, I will tell in time but now is not that time."

  He fired up the engine and soon they were back in traffic, pointed toward the headquarters building.

  "What about Elias? Shouldn't we make him a zombie?"

  "We need him and other humans. They have unique motivations that make them more effective partners for us than if they are made into zombies."

  Mookie nodded. "But after you control the planet?"

  "Perhaps Elias will be food – two legged cattle – like any other human being."

  Wiley pulled into his parking spot in front of the building.

  "You're considering transforming him?"

  "I am. I have a soft spot for the boy." Wiley smiled. "Plus, I owe all that I am to him." The creatures laughed and exited the vehicle.

  At campaign headquarters, Wiley sat at the head of the cheap folding table located in the large conference room. There was noise outside the room as an army of contractors disassembled the computers and removed the furniture. By the end of the day the storefront would be empty, available to be rented by its owners.

  Facing Wiley were Jan, Elias, Mira and the new and apparently improved Mookie. Elias and Jan could not help stealing glances at Mookie, then to each other. They were shocked at his appearance and his verbal dexterity. Elias had known the man all his life and he swore that this version of Mookie was smarter and more correct with his English.

  Wiley looked at Jan then Elias. He seemed to read their minds. "By now you realize that Mookie has been transformed to a more fully capable member of the team."

  "Whip, whop, wham baby," Mookie said. He flashed a big toothed grin to Elias and Jan.

  "Mira and I had a conversation earlier and she has agreed to formally be my chief of staff." He looked at Elias. "You'll assume full control of my congressional staff and operations. I'll also need your assistance with the HUD transition. I'll need to know personnel, issues, budget, etcetera. I need to be prepped for the confirmation hearings. As such, I need the background on the Senators who compose the committee. I need to know what they'll ask before they ask it."

  Elias nodded, still shocked at this thing's mental acumen. The old Wiley was a political savant but needed a lot of help with organization. This one needed no such help. "I'll get right on it, boss," he said. "If you don't mind I'll also begin digging into the White House – verify their real agenda is in alignment with what Mrs. Obama stated."

  "Excellent, Elias." Wiley glanced at Mookie and the two zombies seemed to share an understanding.

  "Of course, HUD is just a first step. I have already moved toward the second step. Mira?"

  "Yes. We have a zombie imbedded in the First Lady's protection."

  "How?" asked Jan.

  "Ben suggested that I take Mookie to the roof, where he thought an agent would be alone, protecting the Marine Two helicopter. We managed to lure him out of sight of the copter's pilot, Mookie killed him with minimal damage to the body and I made him into an undead."

  "You don't plan to harm Mrs. Obama?"

  Wiley waved away Jan's question. "No, I would never do such a thing." But he would – oh how he anticipated eating those well toned arms. "The plan is not to harm the First Lady but to get our imbed assigned to the Vice President's detail."

  "That should be easy as that is considered a demotion," Elias added.

  "Yes, once he's on that detail he will assist me in taking command of the VP's protection. It will put the VP at our mercy."

  "Will you make him a zombie?" Jan asked.

  "I thought he already was one," joked Mookie and the others laughed.

  "We need him out of the way," said Wiley. "With him gone, Obama will have no choice but to name me his running mate for 2012."

  "How do you plan to do that? Won't Obama be reluctant to name a black running mate?" Elias asked.

  "We'll give him no choice," said Wiley. "In this era calling for budget cuts and government efficiency, we will make HUD a model of what Washington can do when it puts its mind to something."

  "How do you plan to do that?" Jan asked. "HUD has always been a money pit, full of pork for Congress and the administration."

  Wiley looked at Mookie and the two zombies shared a smile. "We will make cuts, darling. I'm calling it the 'Wiley Way'. And Washington has never seen the kind of cuts we have in mind." The two zombies laughed, joined politely by Mira and Jan.

  Finally Elias chuckled but he felt queasy inside, a bit afraid of what the 'Wiley Way' held for the world.

  THIRTEEN

  Mira Hidar had had a busy week. She sat in the back of Wiley's limo as she waited for the man himself to grace her with his presence. She was instructed to don businesslike clothes and to bring a generous supply of the blue elixir. But she was told nothing of their destination.

  Using Mookie's contacts in the underworld, Wiley had tapped mostly 'disposable' people – pimps, hookers, runaways – as the first soldiers in Wiley's army. She had converted dozens to zombie form, and then restored them to lifelike function. Her grandfather had agreed with Wiley's request that all these zombies perceive Wiley as their alpha. Some of these individuals he has used as his ancillary staff – bodyguards, maid, butler, even a cook when he hosts the living that he doesn't plan to kill.

  She and her grandfather still did not fully understand why Wiley seemed so much more capable than the others – smarter, shrewder, even physically stronger and quicker. But Hamid was not concerned – Wiley couldn't harm them and he couldn't harm the West Bank, Hamid having placed a protecting spell over the land of their ancestors, just in case. He continued to state that it didn't matter what Wiley did as long as he helped their people but Mira was not so sure.

  There was no longer just blood on her hands, it was pooling around her ankles and rising higher. She was concerned but she let those feelings fade as the door to the limo opened and Wiley and Mookie climbed inside.

  The driver – yet another zombie – pulled away from the curb.

  "Where are we heading?" Mira asked.

  "My friends want to congratulate me on my recent victory. I figure what better time to begin to consolidate my power base."

  "The top money men and political people will be there," added Mookie.

  "All for the converting," said Wiley.

  Mira smiled. "One stop shop," she said.

  "Saves me some gas," Wiley responded. The three laughed as the vehicle zoomed toward Manhattan.

  The meeting at the Plaza was an opportunity to fete a man on th
e rise. The rumors of Wiley's White House appointment were rampant, despite the rumor's object's coy denials. This was the time, before the man went to DC to resume his more mundane duties in the House, to remind him of his friends in New York City, his lifetime ties to the area and his obligation to take care of them all.

  Being the Plaza, the ballroom they occupied had all the subtly of a Roman amphitheatre. The walls were Tammany Hall gilded, and cut glass chandeliers lit the room, their light bouncing off marble floors imported in four meter square sections from a remote quarry off the Tuscany coast. The fact that the marble was now quarried by illegal African immigrants making subsistence wages instead of the more picturesque slew of sweaty Italian artisans made no perceptible difference to the celebrants.

  The Mayor led the hosannas for his "lifetime friend" Benjamin Wiley. It was his lifetime friend if his life began in 1992, but no one bothered to correct the Mayor. Tonight was the night for praise, although exaggerated. They spoke in a defined order – the politicians, then the liberal activists followed by the money men. There was no podium and each man rose from his chair to salute Wiley. Finally after the CEO of Facebook spoke to praise Wiley's support for homeless black puppies, or something equally heartbreaking, they were done and Wiley rose from his seat, lifted by a wave of applause. The remnants of dinner had been removed – there was no silverware to make noise, nothing to interrupt the great and now exalted man's words.

  Mira watched as the doors to the room were closed and sturdy members of the wait staff blocked the doors.

  Did I convert the general manager of the Plaza? She tried to remember as Wiley began his speech.

  "No stiff dicks tonight, Wiley!" the Mayor blurted out, reminding the audience of their last joint appearance. It would be the last words of his real life. The remaining human utterances from his well formed Irish mouth would be incoherent screams.

  "I am so grateful, my friends, for all your kind words this evening. I will remember this evening fondly if, as some of you tell me, the president gives me the honor of serving his administration."

  "Remember us with cash," someone blurted out. Wiley smiled, pointed at the man and the audience cheered.

  As things quieted again he spoke. "As many of you know I am not known as a man of big ideas. I am a so called street corner politician, getting the hard work done and leaving the vision thing for others." Members of the audience laughed, shouted their encouragement.

  "Tonight I want to tell you that I am a new man. I have been transformed." Here he looked at Mira, winked one of his dead but lively eyes.

  "I am a new man, one who stands before you with a vision. This may sound presumptuous but I have a dream." Some in the audience gasped. "I dream of one mankind, united in purpose. There is nothing to divide us – not politics, not religion, nor the manufactured strife of abortion or gay rights. Governments, that of this nation and throughout the world, would serve men, doing so with efficiency that would make our Tea Party friends proud." Some in the audience hissed and hooted. Wiley ignored them.

  "Yes, if given the opportunity, I will lead HUD. I will transform it into a model of how the government and the world should be run – low cost, efficient but highly effective and meaningful to the life of the nation." The audience stood and cheered. The Mayor slapped Wiley on the back with his meaty paw.

  When everyone was seated Wiley spoke again. His voice was lower now and he spoke in a slow rhythm.

  "I have a confession, one that will not leave this room." All noise ceased.

  "I am a new man. In fact, I am not a man at all – I am a zombie." Stone silence followed by a nervous spasm of laughter.

  Is our boy back on the drugs? Does he need to hit rehab again before he heads to DC?

  The room quieted again. "Think about it – we'll need no farms or factories geared to producing food. We'll need to have no concerns about pollution or global warming because we're already dead. All the billions spent on medical research and health care – untold billions alone fighting cancer – could all be redirected to higher purposes." The audience sat in a stunned, depressed silence. It was worse than they imagined. Some thought of leaving to keep from being tainted by the man's insanity.

  "The problem of space travel to distant worlds – how do we survive years in space with limited food and water – is solved. A zombie can travel years with a handful of propagating human companions." A few hardy souls laughed.

  "Yes, I plan to serve mankind. I will serve him for breakfast, lunch and dinner." With that, he walked over to the Mayor's lead security man and separated his head from his body. The blood was awful and the audience was silent as the man's body twitched on the floor before finally stilling.

  Wiley held the head up as a trophy. His jaws expanded and he swallowed the object as easily as his witnesses have swallowed succulent grapes. The audience, as one, stood and surged toward the doors. It was too late – the doors were blocked by huge zombies, armed with tasers which they used to great effect.

  In minutes the rich and powerful of America's largest city were quiet. One by one they were suffocated. Once they were all dead Mira began her work. By the early morning hours Wiley had given his new army of zombies their marching orders – in brief, to continue business as usual until called upon, while being as discrete as possible with their new desire for human flesh. He unleashed the group onto an unsuspecting city.

  He watched them toddle back to their limos and into the breaking dawn.

  Wiley felt good – today was the first day of a new world order and it felt excellent.

  Imelda Jimenez-Gordon sat in the same chair in the same interview room she had occupied less than a week prior. Her appearance - for she was a former supermodel and still a very striking woman – had caused the same commotion as it had the first time. To the detectives interviewing her – the lucky pair who caught this 'case' being Sondra Bracey and Renaldo Alvarez – her demeanor was vastly different. Mrs. Jimenez-Gordon was logical, calm, happy, and pleasantly jovial. After thirty minutes she kept insisting that her initial allegation – that her husband Robbie had been transformed into some type of monster – was the result of a marital rift.

  Bracey had the woman's initial report laid open. She and her partner had agreed to take one more run at this woman. During a slow stroll to the soda machine to secure the ex-model a diet Coke, they both agreed that the woman had undergone a dramatic change, her wide, brilliant smile notwithstanding.

  She and Alvarez had been forced by their supervisor to take the original report – the justification being that, legally, if the NYPD failed to at least pantomime taking this seriously, if something happened to either the Mr. or Mrs., the NYPD may be liable for negligence.

  Robert Lewiston Gordon III, a jet job at Goldman Sachs who reached vice chair before turning thirty, certainly had deep enough pockets to cause the department serious legal and financial damage.

  Part of the domestic violence unit, they had interviewed enough victims to sense that perhaps the performance they were witnessing was coerced in some way. Given her dramatic change of tune, the partners were highly suspicious. "Mrs. Jimenez-Gordon, you stated that the man who came home from the Wiley election celebration was not your husband."

  Bracey read from the report: "My husband has changed. We had a Pomeranian named Uncle Albert. My Robbie loved that dog and Uncle Albert loved him. After the Wiley party Uncle Albert wouldn't come near Robbie. He actually shook when he was in Robbie's presence. A little bit later I found Uncle Albert dead. I picked him up and his neck flopped around like it was broken. I confronted Robbie and he claimed not to know anything about it."

  Alvarez interrupted. "I wanted to say again how sorry we are about Uncle Albert's death. You had indicated a week ago how fond you were of the dog. We're so very sorry."

  The woman shrugged, smiled vacantly.

  "Yes, we're so sorry about Uncle Albert," Bracey added in a vain attempt to touch this jovial robot's emotions.

  When the woman di
dn't respond, Bracey continued to read the woman's comments in the report. "I made arrangements with the pet funeral home to have Uncle Albert's body taken care of. When they came to gather the body I couldn't locate his remains. I asked Robbie and he said he threw Uncle Albert in the building incinerator."

  "I asked you what you thought happened to the dog, Mrs. Jimenez-Gordon. Do you remember what you replied?"

  The woman smiled, shook her head. "My memory is not the best," she said with her heavy Brazilian accent.

  Bracey read again: "I think he ate the dog. I thought and thought about it. He never left the apartment. The funeral home took ninety minutes to get here. He didn't leave the apartment and I searched everywhere for Uncle Albert. The only explanation is that this monster who replaced my husband ate Uncle Albert whole."

  Alvarez leaned forward. "Mrs. Jimenez-Gordon, if your husband has threatened you because you have made this report rest assured that the NYPD can protect you."

  The woman smiled at them both, a smile that had graced several million magazine covers. The detectives fought the instinct to shade their eyes, the sight was so brilliant. "I was simply mistaken. I recall now that Robbie did leave the apartment while I was on the phone making funeral arrangements. He wasn't aware of what I was doing and he was simply trying to protect my feelings by getting the body out of the house as soon as possible. He was looking out for me."

  "Okay, Mrs. Jimenez-Gordon. Has your sex life improved any? You said that the new Robbie came close to raping you several times, he was hyper aggressive for sex," Alvarez asked.

  The smile remained plastered on the beautiful face. "He simply shocked me, is all. I thought he was no longer attracted to me. His desire was shocking at first but now I find it very pleasant and invigorating. I am wet once he walks in the door and I cum several times each night and once in the morning before he goes to work."

  Bracey continued as Alvarez flushed. "You said before that you thought your life was in danger. Do you still feel that way, Mrs. Jimenez-Gordon?"