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details—reminding the clientele that the “product”
    was once a living man or woman not too much unlike themselves didn’t help sales—but he could see the gleam in tub-o’-lard’s black beady eyeballs.
    He wanted to share what he knew.
    “Why?” Derrick whispered and glanced around, as if the fat fucker was revealing the secrets to Atlantis instead of how a guy decided to off himself.
    You know, therefore you must tell , he screamed with his eyes and mannerisms, standing before the salesman like a revered mystic on a holy mission. The fate of the world rests on your shoulders. Use the force, Tub-o. Let it guide you.

    44
    “Well.” Fat man peered around and lowered his voice. “His wife found him in the garage after he bet everything they owned on a long-shot horse that broke its leg out of the gate. That’s why he’s here.”
    “She’s a scorned woman?”
    Tub-o nodded eagerly. “And then some. I was here the day she brought him in with the release papers. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, with long legs”
    —he moved his hands down his stumpy body and brought them back up again, cupping his man boobs— “–and the nicest pair of ta-tas this side of Dollywood.” He sighed and shook his head. “Then she opened her mouth. I haven’t heard a woman talk like that since my Aunt Ermer gave my Uncle Mortimer hell for driving the widow Parker home.”
    “So she’s fine with donating his body?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Good to know.”
    He walked in a circle, studying what once remained of—he leaned forward and read the cheap paper name tag—Eric Joshua Bradworth. The body was good, in incredible condition, and he was running out of time.
    Glancing down at his own skin, he struggled not to cringe. Once blue veins were now turning black, the surface no longer smooth and silky but becoming dry and parched.
    The zombie virus was in full swing.
    He’d learned within hours of his expenditure—following the car accident that severed the femoral artery and bled him dry—that he wouldn’t be seeing those heavenly white gates. God had other plans in store. But if he didn’t get his brain inside another body, the only thriving portion of him would slowly start to decompose, and then he’d be 45
    singing along with a well-known straw man while searching for the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
    Goddamn the government and its twisted chemical weapons gone awry.
    “When did it happen?” the attendant asked casually.
    “Just this morning,” he answered.
    “Damn, man. That’s got to be tough. But if you’re here, that means you’re ahead of the curve. It could be worse.”
    “You mean I could be like the other assholes without a sizeable bank account to procure a body?”
    “You said it, not me.” His rat-sized eyes narrowed and his portly belly rippled as he shifted his feet. “Are you interested in buying or will you shop around?”
    He walked to Eric’s wheelchair and kneeled, staring at the body he would control and the face he would assume. It could have been worse. The guy wasn’t ugly and he’d died of something that didn’t affect viability or fuck up his face or limbs. He would be able to continue with his very physical lifestyle, having only the impediment of learning to maneuver and control a body both taller and wider than the one he was accustomed to.
    But there was one deciding factor that would put it to the test.
    Rodent-eyed associate frowned when he moved closer and placed his hands between the legs of the invalid, accessing the package just between. In a normal setting, he wouldn’t be caught dead copping a feel of another man’s cock and sack. But since he was dead, and the body didn’t belong to anyone at the present moment, he felt his heterosexual status was still on the up and up.
    When satisfied with the answer he sought, he asked, “What are the terms of sale?”

    46
    “Uh, what?” Tub-o stammered and quickly looked away when Derrick peered up at him and