StarFall Comics
A Division of Pullemouttayerhat Productions
A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary of StarFall Innovations
Proudly Presents:
Zombies Don't Eat Living Flesh
New Orleans has been through the worst of things. Even though Katrina hit several years ago, it still resides in the memories of those who lived through it. Despite all this, there are several constants in New Orleans that seem to withstand even Random Acts of God: The French Quarter, the oldest part of the city - the original city - situated on the only land above sea level; the annual Mardi Gras parades and celebrations in the weekend before Lent; and Voodoo.
All of this was well-known to Niqa Patra, better known to her clientele as Miss Cleo, the self-styled Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, as she stood in the graveyard. Niqa had received the vision from Erzulie sometime after her third glass of rum. Someone had disturbed Papa Legba, the loa had been restless, and all the signs she'd gleaned in her hypersenses indicated St. Roche's cemetery was the focus.
As she flitted through the city of the dead, as the streets and alleyways of New Orleans' large above-ground marble mausoleums are known, Niqa couldn't help but feel a sense of forboding. It was a sense she hadn't felt since she'd been consulted by the Jackson family to prevent someone from doing an authentic remake of the "Thriller" video a few years back.
At first, all she saw were a few people - men and women, some younger, many older, and some not more than children - mulling about the necropolis. That's when the hypersenses kicked in; these people were not alive; indeed, the spirits about them, animating them, flowed in wrong ways. Plus, they were all shambling in the same direction: towards the main street. Fortunately, the only thing in that direction was the fence which separated the cemetery from the street.
"Zombi," she muttered to herself, closing her hand around the amulet she wore as symbol of her station. But who was it animating them? She faded from sight, the magics she wielded disguising her.
As she approached the fence, she noted a black man, tall, dark, and powerful, dressed in little more than a loincloth and sandals, adorned with skull-motif jewelry. The man floated high, in front of the horde of walking dead.
"Yes, go my zombies!" the man called out. "Feast on the city! For every one that falls to your jaws, a new zombie shall rise! Soon, very soon, New Orleans will be a true necropolis!"
"Ah, mon ami," she said, dispelling her invisibility spell, "ya really do need a new schtick. How many times do Ah hafta tell ya, Gheda, Papa Legba's zombi don' eat da flesh o' da living."
"Cleo. This time, you cannot stop me! Eat her!"
The nearest of the zombies shambled towards her, but its bite was fairly ineffectual.
"Guess again, Gheda." She gestured, and a bolt of silver-white energy shot from the heavens, sending Gheda reeling. He landed near her, face down on the grass. "Now, break the spell," she commanded him, "b'fore Ah get mad.
"Upstart wench..." he muttered as he pulled himself up.
Niqa punched him. It's not often that she could let loose in this manner - even in this 'enlightened' day and age, a woman throwing a punch at an opponent is still a novelty. Niqa, however, had sparred somewhat with her cousin Hugh Knight and his friends over in Los Angeles, and knew how to throw one well enough to land a blow to end the fight quickly.
And Gheda, as she knew from experience, had a glass jaw.
As he lost consciousness, all the zombies his spell had animated - some of them barely able to support their rotting flesh, others barely more than bone and tendon - fell to the ground in sickening piles of decay.
"Ah tol' ya b'fore, Gheda," she told her fallen opponent, "ya can' make zombies make new zombies jus' by eatin' folks."