I love this book. Short and sweet, it’s the only book I have ever given away, and I regret it. Zombies, zombie drugs, guns, and a remote island off the coast of Georgia. I had so much fun writing this one.
Zombie drugs . . . Flakka. Crocodile. Devil’s Breath. Synthetic drugs so dangerous that they were self-limiting. No one could sustain a habit of taking them. But zombies for real!
“A new drug. From the islands out there.” He waved toward the ocean. “Made out of weird plants. Natural poisons.” Nick took a swig. The drink was terrible—overly sweet instant tea with hardly any rum. At least he was in no danger of getting drunk. “That’s what killed this kid. There’s been more than one fatal overdose with what seems like the same drug. And if it doesn’t kill them, it can leave them all messed up.”
“That’s terrible.” She sighed, and added softly, “I know people can get wrecked by drugs.” Nick waited, and after a moment, she looked at him. “Margo’s brother. He got into trouble with drugs.” Then, reacting to Nick’s expression, she touched his arm. “Oh, he’s okay now. Like I said, Margo looks out for him.” Her face fell. “But I’m not sure he’s the same. It did something to him.”
Nick made his tone casual. “Some of those weird drugs make people nuts. Make them act like zombies.”
Randi looked at him with lips parted, eyebrows high. “Zombies again!”
Nick backed off with a chuckle. “I know, sounds crazy. But we had what we called zombie drugs a few years ago, down in Florida. Same kind of thing. Drugs that made people lose their minds. Made them act like zombies.” He mimed a little stagger, eyes wide open. Lifted a shoulder and took a sip of his drink. Tried not to make a face.
She shimmied her shoulders in a little shiver. “Well, zombies are bad. That’s scary stuff.”
Nick set down his glass with a grimace. He was no closer to understanding what Margo had been talking about. Maybe Randi was right and it was just a passing joke without meaning. He stretched out his legs and said, “There aren’t any zombies for real. Nothing to be scared of there. But the drugs are real, and yeah, they’re scary.”
She looked away. “Oh, zombies are real, but they aren’t scary. They’re pitiful.”
Nick was baffled into silence. After a few beats when she said nothing else, he said, “You seriously think there such a thing as a zombie? Flesh-eating undead or whatever?”
“No, of course not, silly.” She grinned, then turned serious again. “Not like the movies. But they’re real. When he was young, Uncle Evan was a sort of explorer. Hmm, maybe that’s where Mel gets her restless feet. Uncle Evan was a great sailor too. He could sail all over the Caribbean, even South America, but he especially liked to go to Haiti. He told us many times about the zombies there. He saw some. It used to terrify me. Not Mel. She was fascinated by the whole idea. But I didn’t like it. I still don’t. It’s scary stuff.”
Nick was perplexed. “I thought you said they weren’t scary.”
“I wasn’t scared of the zombies. I was scared I would become one!”
Nick had to laugh, but she looked away and hugged herself. Night was coming on fast and her face looked different in the dark. The relief of her cheekbones, the depth of her eyes, now entirely serious.
He stopped laughing, not wanting to offend her. Made his face as solemn as hers. “How would you become a zombie?”
“Oh, it couldn’t really happen to me.”
“How would anybody become a zombie?” He felt ridiculous even asking.
“Somebody—a bokor—gives you a drug.”
“What’s a… what?”
“A bokor. It’s like a witch doctor.”
“How does the bokor get them to take the drug?”
“They want it.” She shifted in her seat, explaining as if it were a perfectly unexceptional matter of fact. “Bokors are not necessarily evil. It’s part of a religious ritual. Uncle Evan called it Vodou.” She pronounced it VOH-doo. “You know, voodoo. People take a drug to communicate with the spirits.”
Nick said nothing. He was thinking that the bokor sounded pretty much like a dealer who supplied users who wanted to get high.
“But an evil bokor can give you too much on purpose. Or maybe he adds an ingredient, I forget.” She sighed, and added softly, “Can’t ask Uncle Evan now.”
“What kind of drug is it that these bokors use?”
“Oh, I have no idea. Maybe like that one you were talking about? Not what you usually hear about—you know, coke or whatever.”
“This new one has a weird name.” Nick squinted, trying to recall the unfamiliar words Billy had mentioned. “Kra-see-wa?”
“That’s it.”
Nick nearly dropped his drink in his lap. He spluttered and managed to say, “That’s what?” She laughed, then touched his shoulder to make up for laughing at him. “The Iwa is a Vodou spirit. There are lots of them. You’d have to ask Mel, but I think Kris is when you get possessed by a spirit? Kris Iwa. You maybe sing and dance and say all kinds of crazy things, then you get tired and go to sleep, then afterward you don’t remember anything . . .
Elizabeth Buhmann 