Excerpt from "Road Trip of the Living Dead" by Mark Henry

Gil brought lawn chairs to the cemetery—not stylish Adirondacks, not even semi-comfortable camp chairs (the one’s with those handy little cup holders). No. He dug up some cheap plastic folding chairs; the kind that burrow into your leg flesh like leeches. He arranged them in a perfect semicircle around a fresh-sodded grave, planted an iBoom stereo in the soft earth, pulled out a bottle of ’07 Rose McGowan, and drained half of it before his ass hit plastic. Granted, he managed these mundane tasks in a pricey Gucci tuxedo, the tie loosed and dangling. On any other day, this would have been his sexy vamp look, but tonight…not so much. His eyelids sagged. His shoulders drooped. He looked exhausted.

I, on the other hand, looked stunning.

One of those movie moons, fat and bloated as a late-night salt binge, striped the graveyard with tree branch shadows, and spot-lit your favorite zombie heroine reclining starlet-like on the polished marble of the new tombstone—there was no way I was subjecting vintage Galliano to the inquisition of plastic lawn chairs; the creases would be unmanageable.

Wendy didn’t take issue with the cheap and potentially damaging seating. She wore a tight pink cashmere cardigan over a high-waisted chestnut skirt that hit her well above the knee. She crossed her legs and popped her ankle like a 1950’s housewife, each swivel bringing attention to her gorgeous peek-toe stilettos—certainly not the most practical shoe for late-night graveyard roaming, but who am I to judge?

The dearly departed were our only other company; about twenty or so ghosts circled the grave—in a rainbow of moody colors and sizes. A little boy spirit, dressed in his Sunday best and an aqua green aura, raced by, leaving a trail of crackling green sparks; the other, older specters muttered to each other, snickered and pointed. Popular opinion aside, zombies do not typically hang out in graveyards—ask the ghosts. We don’t crawl out of the ground all rotty and tongue-tied, either. We’re created through bite or breath, Wendy and I from the latter. So you won’t see us shambling around like a couple of morons, unless there’s a shoe sale at Barney’s.