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It Was a Graveyard Smash

Warm light from street lamps gleamed on the taps and bottles at the counter. It came in through the bay window next to the glass door of the coffee shop, and warmed the red brick of the walls. The open expanse of the wooden floor gleamed, unencumbered by tables or chairs. All of those had been piled up in front of the door. A cardboard sign hung on a hook on the door, outwardly displaying, 'Sorry, We're Closed.' Someone had taken a black marker and squeezed a few extra words on it, so it now read, 'Sorry, We're absolutely Closed. (Please shamble along)'. The street outside the shop was similarly dark and quiet, but it wasn't still. Hordes of people roamed the streets, taking slow, stumbling steps to nowhere. Sometimes there was a groan, but mostly they didn't talk to each other.

Inside the coffee shop, Yuri lowered his phone from his ear and slipped it into his pocket. "That was Flynn," he said to Judith, who sat on the counter with her legs folded. "He and Estelle went home early and got back to his place in the suburbs before all this started."

"That's good. I was worried about them. Does he have any information about what's going on?"

Yuri looked out the window at a man - or, something that used to be a man, dragging his feet past the barricaded door. He was used to dealing with zombies at this shop, but usually they went back to normal after he gave them their morning coffee. "You mean other than the dead rising to consume the flesh of the living? I mean, we pretty much know that that's going on."

"True, but does he know why, or how, or what the government is going to do about a large chunk of their population turning into dangerous, brainless creatures with a drive to destroy anything different from themselves?"

Yuri shrugged. "I don't see why they would, considering they haven't done anything about supporters for that one candidate in the latest election."

Judith crumpled a napkin and chucked it at Yuri, who leaned to the side and let it fall to the floor. "Very funny."

"Seriously, though, it's all over the news, of course. The government is putting out emergency broadcasts, which would be helpful if we could turn on the radio. But…." Yuri looked over his shoulder at the door behind the counter labelled, 'Staff Only.'

Yuri hadn't been the only one on shift when the streets began to fill with screaming, running, panic, and general chaos. He and Zagi had closed the shop half an hour earlier and had been in the middle of cleaning up and preparing to leave for the night, while Yuri's girlfriend hung around and waited to take the bus home with him. Yuri had taken the screams and emergency of shambling corpses as a cue to barricade the front door. Meanwhile, Zagi in the back room had apparently decided that all his hours of playing Call of Duty had finally become relevant, so he kicked open the back door and shouted for the zombies to come and try him. They did, and found him quite tasty. Yuri wasn't sure how many zombies were in the back room now, but the back door had been propped open so any number could be shuffling in and out. Based on the moans Yuri could hear when he pressed his ear to the locked door, there were at least a few in there.

"Anyway," Yuri said, "the good news is that apparently this is a localized outbreak, and the police and national guard have got us quarantined." It was lucky the outbreak had occurred in a city built at a messy convergence of rivers, where the downtown core of the city was cut off from the mainland. They could easily keep the undead from spreading by sealing off all the bridges.

"Oh, goody. So we're being left here to die?"

"Eh… maybe? They're not being very forthright about their plans. Flynn said he's worried that they've already written off the entire downtown as a lost cause and are planning to carpet bomb it, but he and Estelle - and a bunch of other people who have gotten in contact with survivors like us - are trying to make sure everyone knows there are still living people here. Either way, they're probably not going to do anything for a few hours, so as long as we're safe where we are, we should just sit tight and wait it out."

Judith pouted. "Aww, I was hoping for a little more action in my zombie apocalypse."

Yuri rubbed her shoulder. "Yeah, it's kind of boring being stuck here. Maybe after we get out of this, there will be another time that the dead rise from their graves to consume the living."

"We can always hope."

The sound of a door creaking open made both up them jump. Yuri whirled to the Staff Only door and grabbed the closest thing to use as a weapon (an empty milk carton) and Judith rose to her knees. The door remained motionless, and clinking chains played over the speakers in the corners of the room, quickly joined by bubbling water.

"What is that?"

"Oh, no." Yuri dropped his milk carton as he realized that something far worse than zombies was about to assault them.

A drum beat kicked in and Judith asked, "Did one of the zombies accidentally turn the stereo on?"

In answer, a man's voice, thick with a Boris Karloff impression, began to sing. "I was working in the lab late one night…."

"I am going to kill Zagi." Then Yuri remembered the events from earlier this evening and added, "I am going to re-kill undead Zagi."

Judith covered her mouth as she snickered. "Is this Monster Mash?"

Yuri sighed. "Zagi brought it on a CD today because it's almost Halloween and he thought we should play it. I guess he left it in the stereo and one of the undead bumped into the play button."

Over the speakers, they heard, "He did the mash… He did the monster mash. The Monster Mash… It was a graveyard smash…."

Judith looked over her shoulder at the monsters stumbling around in the street. "I can't say it's not appropriate."

"Oh, whatever. If we're going to be stuck here for a while, let's have some coffee." Yuri took up his position at the coffee bar and asked, "What can I make for you? Anything you want."

Judith slid off the counter to the other side. "How about an iced pumpkin spice latte?"

"Anything but that."

Judith folded her arms. "Are you going to be one of those people who gets judgemental about pumpkin spice?"

"Not at all! Pumpkin spice is delicious and is only beat by the peppermint and chocolate drinks. Buuut, all the ice is in the freezer, and the freezer is currently in the rotting hands of our less-than-alive friends."

"Hm, that does raise a problem then."

"Sorry, Judy, I don't love you enough to fight zombies for your latte."

"Gee, I thought you were a true gentleman."

"I can do a regular pumpkin spiced latte for you."

"No, I like them cold. What else does the wise barista suggest?"

"Hmmm…." Yuri surveyed his supplies and what he could get to without going to the fridge in the back room. "How about a Caffè Dystopiano? A cappucci-no survivors? Decaf-itate-the-head?"

"Ooo, tough choice. Why don't you surprise me? What drink would you make in the end of days when it might be your last?"

"I can do that." Yuri turned away and began rummaging around the bar to find the ingredients. While he worked, the music continued to play.

"…The zombies were having fun… The party had just begun…."

It took a while for Yuri to concoct his dream drink, and the song finally came to an end while he was adding the finishing touches. Before he could begin to celebrate the silence, a loud creak and a jangle of chains made his heart sink. "No… it can't be…."

"I was working in the lab late one night…."

Judith gazed upon the speakers in horror. "Is it playing again?"

"Oh, crap. That was the only song Zagi burned to the CD. Unless someone presses stop, the stereo is just going to keep looping it over and over."

"…he did the mash. He did the Monster Mash…."

Yuri scowled. "I really goddamn hate Zagi." Yuri took the finished drink to Judith, overflowing with whipped cream. "Anyway, here you go. I invented the recipe myself." He slid it across the bar to her and added, "This one's on the house," with a wink.

Judith raised her eyebrows at the pile of cream, barely visible under the caramel and chocolate drizzled on top. She gave it a small stir with the cardboard stick barely emerging from the whipped cream and took a sip. "Ugh!" She lowered it back to the counter with a wrinkled nose. "Yuri, this is awful."

"Are you kidding?" Yuri grabbed the drink and took a big gulp of his own, and then whipped whipped cream off his nose. "It's delicious."

"What did you even put in it?"

"Uh…." Yuri inspected the drink and tried to remember the whole list. "The base is a white hot chocolate, there's a tiny bit of coffee, then I added some pumpkin spice, a shot of caramel, a shot of chocolate sauce, peppermint flavouring, chocolate chips, whipped cream, chopped up strawberries, and the stirring stick is a cake pop. I call it the Caffè I'll-Die-Of-Diabetes-Before-I-Let-Zombies-Eat-Me-iato."

"That's horrendous."

"It's delicious!"

"Why would you put cake in coffee?"

"Coffee cake is delicious, so if it works to put coffee in cake, it should work the other way, right?"

"Yuri, there's no coffee in coffee cake. They call it that because you're supposed to eat it with coffee."

"Well shit, no wonder I like it so much."

Judith shook her head with a sigh. "You're ridiculous. Why do you work in a coffee shop if you don't even like coffee?"

Yuri shrugged. "It pays the bills.

"I do like the name you wrote on my drink, though."

Yuri looked down at it. "Oh, good. I'm a terrible speller, but I think I got it right this time." In Yuri's scrawling handwriting, the cup read, 'Zombies - don't Chew-dith!'

"You can drink that abomination, though. Just get me a normal coffee, please."

Several hours later, the pair lay on a couch together. It was the only furniture they hadn't moved to barricade the entrance, in part because it was too heavy. Yuri wasn't sure what time it was because his phone had run out of battery, but the sky wasn't showing any hints of dawn yet. They'd cuddled up on the couch to get some rest, but the threat of cannibalistic undead monsters beyond both doors tended to make it hard to relax. The fact that they were now on possibly the fiftieth loop of Monster Mash also made that difficult.

"I really hate this song," Yuri said as the creak and jangling announced a fresh loop was about to begin.

"Do you know who sang it?"

"Nope."

"What a shame. I hope he's still alive so that I punch him."

"I hope he turns into a zombie himself."

They sat in silence for another few minutes. Well, not silence, because Monster Mash continued to serenade them. Yuri had his arm wrapped around Judith's shoulders as he watched the undead shamble along the street outside. He wondered if Flynn's campaign to hold off the carpet bombing had been successful, or if they were protecting themselves from zombies only to be blown up by their own government.

"I think we should turn that music off," Yuri said.

"I'd love to if we could."

"…Out from his coffin Drac's voice did ring… Seems he was troubled by just one thing…"

Yuri's mind supplied, He opened the lid and shook his fist, And said, 'Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?' Then Yuri thought, I can't believe I have the entire song memorized. "We definitely need to shut it off."

"Are you sure that's a good idea? There are still zombies around the stereo, after all."

Yuri slipped out from under Judith and got to his feet. "I know, but think about it. Zombies could break through that barricade any time now. We might very well die in an explosion in an hour or two, and do you want that goddamn song to be the last thing you hear? If we're going to die tonight, let's do something before it ends! Don't you want to fight for something before you die?"

Judith nodded. "You're right. We can't continue to endure this atrocity without a fight. Let's put an end to Monster Mash once and for all."

Yuri could think of songs better suited for a lock-and-load montage, but given their circumstances, Monster Mash would have to do. Unfortunately, coffee shops were not generally equipped with weapons, so they made do with what they could. Yuri broke a chair leg off their barricade and got a decent club with a splintered end, while Judith grabbed a bottle of overpriced artisan lemonade from the drink case, smashed it against the counter, and made a jagged nest of blades at the end of the stem. They both wrapped duct tape around the arms to prevent bites, and then stood before the door, ready to do battle.

"Ready?" Yuri asked.

Judith grabbed Yuri's collar, pulled him over, and left a kiss on his lips. "Let's go get 'em."

Yuri unlocked the door and kicked it open. The song was even louder in here, but the handful of zombies milling about weren't mashing to it. Before the undead could react, Yuri and Judith ran into the room, shouting and swinging their weapons.

The scene would have sounded dreadful, if any of the groans, squelches, and cracks could be heard over the cheery music. Yuri focused on the zombies in front of him, trusting Judith to take care of herself. Ever blow with his make-shift club let out some of his hatred for the song. The zombies fumbled around, grasping at him, and one struggled to sink its teeth through the tape on Yuri's bicep until he kicked it to the ground and monster-smashed its head until he destroyed the brain. When he turned around, Zagi was reaching for him with blood oozing from his mouth and down his dead skin.

"Nice to see you." Yuri swung his club and knocked him into the wall. "You know, Zagi, I think being a zombie is an improvement for you. At least you finally learned to shut up." He threw the worst coworker he'd ever had to the floor and then smacked the back of his head a few times to put the corpse to rest. He straightened up to see who was next, but the room was finally still.

Yuri took a deep breath and then went to the door to shut it and keep any more from getting in. "Hm-hm-hm-hm… Oh, fuck, I'm starting to hum it."

And then, blissfully, the room fell silent. Yuri turned to see Judith standing next to the stereo, breathing head and splattered in blood. Her hair was a mess, there was a rip in her shirt and fingernail scratches across her exposed belly, and the glass weapon still in hand dripped with blood.

Yuri took in the sight and remembered exactly why he'd fallen for Judith in the first place. He closed the distance to her in seconds, her glass shattered to the floor, and he pulled her into an intense kiss while awkwardly stepping over zombie corpses. She bumped into the desk with the stereo and Yuri ran his blood-flecked hands through her hair. The only thing audible throughout the coffee shop was their quick breaths and the smack of lips because the background music had finally, blessedly, gone silent.

So they could hear perfectly well when a stream of bullets sounded not too far away. Yuri and Judith broke apart, looked at each other, and then returned to the front room to see what was happening on the street. With shouts and even more gunfire, soldiers ran through the streets and cut through the mindless hordes. With an especially loud rumble, and entire tank came into view, trundling down the main road.

"Well that's good," Judith said. "We're not going to blow up. A solid win, I'd say."

Yuri grinned at the street. It wouldn't be long now before the army retook control of the downtown and they could put this mess behind them. Then something else occurred to him, and his smile faded. "Ah, crap. Think about how much I'm gonna owe Flynn for this."