Disclaimer: Well, here I am, back at it again. Since my earlier story did big money at the virtual box office (just go with me on this), it was only natural to do a sequel. And thus I give you Shaun of the Dead: Vacancy.
As always, major props to Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, to whom the Shaun of the Dead characters belong. Even bigger props to my fellow PeggLeggs in the US and the UK for their continued support and encouragement, dedicated webmasters Thomas and Harmony of the Frostitution dot Net and Peggster dot Net websites respectively, a special thank you to Nic for her story ideas, and a special dedication to Joss Whedon just because.
Underneath the extravagant official seal, the words on the white linen paper read as follows:
"Dear Relative/Friend/Colleague,
We regret to inform that you that Sara Elena Cross unexpectedly perished in a plane crash in a remote part of the Austrian Alps. As per her wishes, she was cremated, and her ashes scattered over the Mississippi River so that she might finally return home and find peace. We trust that you enjoyed being related to / being friends with / working with Miss Cross, and we ask that you would consider making donations in her name to the following charities…"
Shaun sighed heavily and rubbed his tired eyes. He'd read the letter a thousand times since receiving it a month earlier, but it still didn't seem real. He'd even rung Sara's supervisor at the Council, Michael Simmonds, to see if there had been some horrible mistake. But Michael merely confirmed the letter's contents in his usual stoic manner.
"Shaun, I'm off!" a cheerful female voice called from downstairs.
"Yeah, just a minute!" he responded. He folded the letter up and gently placed it back in the depths of a desk drawer. As he headed downstairs, he saw Emma's face turned up to him, smiling as she stood in the foyer buttoning her coat. Dark blond hair framed her oval face and large green eyes, and her petite frame was almost swallowed up by the fur-trimmed jacket.
"What's wrong?" she asked softly as he met her on the landing and headed for the kitchen.
"Nothing," he said dismissively, starting to make a cup of tea.
"You haven't changed your mind, have you?" she insisted, following him.
"No, of course not."
"Good, because I think this holiday is going to be really, really good for us." She put her arms around him, entwining her fingers behind his neck.
"I agree. Totally."
"We've both been working so hard lately, we haven't had time for each other. I mean, it's been almost three months and I feel like I hardly know you."
"Well, there's not that much there, Em. I think three months is more than sufficient."
"Shaun, sometimes you are so annoyingly self-deprecating."
"But that's one of my charms," he boasted with a smug smile.
"One of many," she agreed, kissing him. "And I fully intend to discover all of them this weekend." She walked away toward the door, picking up her handbag. "Don't forget to set the tape for Coronation Street."
"I was gonna'."
"And don't forget to stop in at the store on your way home."
"I wasn't gonna'."
"Bye, sweetie!"
"Bye!" As the front door closed, Shaun sighed and turned his attention back to the process of making tea.
Meanwhile at the Eden River Inn in the Lake District's Eden Valley, the hotel's staff was attempting to deal with the exuberant members of the Matecheck/Moran wedding party. The attendees of the pre-bachelorette party brunch were quickly going through the prepared supply of mimosas, and so Tara was ordered to go to the cellar and fetch two more bottles of champagne.
Tara paused in the doorway and slowly inhaled. She hated going to the cellar. The cavernous room redefined her perceptions of dark and creepy, but lately it felt even more foreboding. She stepped into the room lined with racks of bottles and breathed in the chilled, musty air. Just get the bottles and go, she thought to herself.
She strode quickly across the room to the champagne rack, grabbed two bottles and turned to head back toward the door. But something stopped her. She felt another presence in the room, heard movement across the brick floor, smelled a faint stinging aroma of smoke. "Is anyone there?" she asked hesitantly, inwardly scolding herself for sounding like a horror movie damsel in distress. "I assure you, this isn't the least bit amusing," she declared with more forcefulness.
She continued to scan the room but saw nothing in the shadows. She shook her head at her own foolishness and started to stride quickly toward the door. But something struck out of the shadows, a sharp spike piercing her heart. The bottles fell to the floor and shattered. Tara sank to her knees in agony. She tried to cry out, but her throat could make no noise as blackness enveloped her.
After finishing up his shift at Foree Electric, Shaun was strolling the aisles of the Landis market, stocking up on supplies for their trip to the Lake District. As he absent-mindedly reached for the freezer door to grab a Diet Coke, his hand collided with another hand reaching for the door handle. He looked up to see an embarrassed blond woman retract her hand.
"Liz?" he muttered in disbelief.
"Shaun?" she blurted with a pleasant smile. "Wow, it is you! Fancy meeting you here. How have you been?"
"Surviving," he replied with a casual shrug.
"That's great. I'm really glad to hear it. I feel like I haven't seen you in ages. Tell me what you've been up to."
"Um, work's going really well. I'm seeing someone new. We're headed out to the Lake Country for the weekend."
"You're taking your girlfriend on holiday? Well, that's…that's progress."
"Let's just say, I did learn a few things from our relationship, Liz."
"I didn't mean it like that," she apologized. "Shaun, I know that things ended rather badly for us. But I don't think it was fair to either of us to stay in a relationship that wasn't working."
"No, you're right. I mean, we've both had some time and some distance to deal with things. I don't want you to feel like I resent you or anything. There's no reason we can't still, y'know, talk to each other."
"I'm so glad to hear you say that, Shaun. We did have some good times together, didn't we? Like that time in Skala?"
"Oh, yeah. When you kept harassing some off-duty police officer thinking he was the club DJ? And I wasn't sure I had enough money in traveler's checks for your bail."
"I firmly believed that you would be there to bail me out," she stated. She looked him in the eyes, then looked away with a stifled laugh and tucked her hair behind her right ear. "Y'know, there's something I've been wanting to ask you. I just wasn't sure how to phrase it, and I'm a bit afraid of what you'll say."
Shaun felt his heart start to beat a little faster but struggled to maintain nonchalance. "Liz, what is it?"
"I've met someone, and I'm getting married later this year. It would really mean a lot to me if you could be there."
Shaun struggled to catch his breath and find the words. "Yes, absolutely. Emma and I will be glad to be there," he stammered, putting an exaggerated stress on the name "Emma."
Liz smiled, seeming to be sincerely happy. "Good. I look forward to meeting her. Oh, let me introduce you to my fiancé. Neil!" She called to a tall man in the next aisle over.
The muscular blond strolled up to Liz's side and affectionately put his arm around her waist and flashed a blindingly white smile at Shaun. For a split second, Shaun knew what David must have felt like facing Goliath. "Who's this, then?" he asked in a distinctly Australian accent.
"Neil, this is Shaun. An old friend of mine. Shaun, this is Neil, my fiancé."
"Pleased to meet you, mate," Neil greeted, offering a surprisingly firm handshake. "Did she browbeat you into coming to the wedding? I'm telling you, our guest list is growing exponentially. I am not looking forward to the catering bill."
"No, no, I would expect not," Shaun muttered. "So how did you two meet?"
"Neil's a lecturer at the college. The world's foremost authority on Russian tsarist history," Liz beamed.
"Nah, I'm sure there's some bloke over in Moscow who might know more than me," Neil countered.
"So that whole policy against dating co-workers," Shaun began, "that was just, uh…a suggestion."
"Well, at first Liz was very adamant that she didn't want to date a colleague. Luckily, my charm and a bottle of Galliano wore her down," Neil boasted.
Shaun laughed shallowly. "Well, you're probably half right."
"Look, you're preparing for your trip," Liz interrupted, "so we'll let you get back to shopping. I'll talk to you later, okay?" she asked in a conciliatory tone accompanied by somewhat pleading eyes.
Shaun's bitterness suddenly lessened. "Yeah, sure. Congratulations to you both."
As he watched the two of them continue down the aisle, he barely perceived the words of the song being piped through the store's muzak system.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Shaun groaned as the realization dawned on him that Hall and Oates' "Sara Smile" was now filling every corner of the store. He wearily rested his forehead on the freezer door and fervently prayed that he would be able to escape the ghosts of ex-girlfriends past for the next three days.