Free Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth by Stephen Graham Jones Page A

need a receipt anymore.”
    “I could tell them what you did.”
    “You’d trade your version of fame in for that? You’d just be a passenger then. A victim. It would be my husband’s revenge that made you like you are. Not your own . . . what did you call it?”
    “They were putting words in my mouth.”
    “We needed a hero.”
    “Needed,” I said.
    “Very past tense,” she agreed, and then I felt that tap on my shoulder I always feel about this time in a case.
    This time it was a pair of giant, vatgrown butlers.
    The one on the left came at me with a hot katana.
    It flashed out of nowhere, split me from my cheek, here, down to my armpit—is the feed picking this up?
    Here, I’ll lean in.
    Yeah, pretty ragged.
    Turns out when you’re dead, though, they can just sew you right back together.
    Anyway, in case I go infectious at some point, can make everybody else live forever just like me, the Service keeps agents in the bar, now. So I won’t go getting cut in half anymore.
    That doesn’t mean I’ve forgot, though.
    That first time your mom strutted in? I was on the phone, collecting a payment.
    That’s what this recording is about.
    If I did it live, I’m sure they’d find a way to stop me. And, I would be leaving this on your mom’s machine, but she won’t accept my calls anymore.
    With me, though, you always pay. One way or another.
    Here, let me . . . recognize this?
    Yeah, you do.
    Cute little crawfish. Been keeping it in a tank under my desk all this time.
    Oh—I mean him , not ‘it.’
    When I crawled up from that crater your dad made falling from the heavens, I’d crawled up alone, yeah. But now I had a rider. In my pocket.
    Gravity had found your father again, just like I told everybody.
    In low-grav, with the stars as backdrop, he was a monster, a giant, a space god.
    Here on Earth, well. As you can see.
    Was that a rocket in my pocket or was I just glad to see your mom again?
    The first.
    Take a transport up, open the airlock, let Daddy here float out, and, bam, instant spaceship. Immortality. Eternity awaits. Live forever, ma dame.
    Or don’t.
    Funny thing about this is, I don’t even really need to eat anymore, right?
    But—here goes, here goes, into the hangar—I can still chew, as you can see.
    Legs and all, baby.
    Nice, good. Tastes like hope. No, no. Tastes like justice .
    So, if you need my services again, you can find me in the Directory, I expect. I’ll be filed under Dead, probably.
    Dead and Loving It.
    Bye, now.

THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT
     
     
    What Paula tells us at the Saturday morning sales meeting is that we won’t know who it is, this inspector from Corporate, a place so remote from our little corner of things that it might as well be another world. And then, after saying that, she leaves a silence we all know how to interpret.
    For her last round of training, she spent three weeks at Corporate, and so may just recognize this inspector, this interloper, this—Corporate’s word—‘visitor.’
    “And I’ll be on the floor myself, of course,” she adds, managing somehow to look each one of us in the eye.
    Maybe it’s a trick she learned while she was away, or maybe it’s a natural ability all the women in her family have. Either way, when she doesn’t smile, I feel compelled to grin, like I’m making up for her seriousness, just trying to maintain some balance here, keep us from tipping all the way over into the absurd.
    Of course my efforts go unappreciated, but, too, it’s not like that’s in my job description either. All I’m supposed to do is man my counter, wipe away the smudges, show the customers the sunglasses they want to see, and maybe the ones that cost ten dollars more too.
    Before I know it, the week before the visit’s smeared past, simply gone, and, like we’re secret service agents, coiled white wires snaking up to our ears, we all know that the visitor is in the store. His presence crackles across all of us. Nobody whispers, but—it’s