And that's what starts off chapter 28, I dunno to me that description seems unfinished since the next sentence is going on about how you need a bigger kill for older zombies... Gore for gores sack, brilliant.
We then learn that most animators can't raise zombies who are 100 or more years old, Anita can (of course!) but she doesn't like to, her and Bert had some stern words about this fact and that usually this would earn Anita at least twenty thousand buckaroos, but doubts she'll be paid tonight since you know... She kinda crashed the vampire feast. Getting out alive would be what I'd call good payment in this situation, but that's just me.
Yadda yadda,, they have a quick yammer about how they can't kill the goat twice to invoke the power they need to raise the corpse, Anita claims that they can use there own blood since they don't actually have to create a new blood circle, they just have to re-walk it, since a small death aka their blood will reactive the circle.
Zac... Doesn't get it, so we get this.
I took a deep breath, and then realized I couldn't explain it to him. It was like trying to explain the mechanics of breathing. You could break it into steps, but that didn't tell you what it felt like to breath.
First off.
Second off, what the hell? He's also an animator! How the fuck could he not understand that? I could understand that and this isn't my profession!
This boys and girls is a classic example of a Mary Sue, they are the smartest, most awesome thing to ever grace the face of this pathetic planet. If the author has to dumb down every single fucking character around them to make this a reality then so be it.
But Wolf! I can hear the skeptical readers of this post think, maybe Zac really is that stupid, I've come across professionals who are completely fucking retarded and have no idea what they are talking about. It could be the same case with Zac here.
To those people I laugh in your face, not only because while you are somewhat correct, have you ever known those sort of people to throw their lot in with people who'd kill them once they found out how useless they really were? And secondly, just keep watching this blog because the rest of this series will eventually prove me right beyond your wildest, snarkiest dreams.
Zac hands Anita his knife, she bitches that it feels top heavy before admitting that the thing wasn't made for throwing. I'm guessing this was thrown in here to show us how knowledgeable she is about weapons, but it's a bloody knife, who cares?! Raise the damn zombie already!
So Anita and Zac cut their opposite upper arms, they kneel down, before bending their arms up so they are held at head height. Before holding hands and clasping their wounds together.
Whoa, hold on there one damn second, flips through book, yeah I read that right. How the fuck are they holding their wounds together if it's their upper arms? I think maybe she means they cut their wrists, in which case.
WHAT THE EVER LIVING FUCK?!
If they need to get all blood brothers on each other, why not just cut your hand open? A) You're less likely to fuck up and slit your damn wrist and B) it's easier to hold your open, bleeding cut against theirs. Honestly at this point, between this and the running dirty water over another open wound, I'm shocked Anita hasn't got blood poisoning or at least a pretty nasty infection.
Zac appears to be worried about this entire thing (not that I really blame him, but I also don't raise zombies for a living. So for all I know he should be fairly use to this shit) for some reason speaking a ritual sounding spiel makes Zac understand what is going on.
They get to their feet and slowly walk around the existing circle, letting their blood fall onto it. They then sit in the blood covered grass and smear blood over themselves.
I wish I was making this shit up...
So Anita smears goat blood over Zac's forehead and cheeks before leaving a blood hand print over his heart. She then randomly decides to smear some of the blood over the gris-gris that's on his upper arm, by doing this she somehow (it's not mentioned how, she just knows) that while it needs blood, goat blood doesn't suffice.
Zac returns the favor by also smearing goat blood on Anita's face, we learn that by leaving a hand print on her breast it apparently means heart blood. He then opens a bottle of home-made ointment which they then smear over the blood.
We then learn that, rosemary for memory, cinnamon and cloves for preservation, sage for wisdom and some sharp herb, maybe thyme, to bind it all together.
They then turn and smear both the blood and ointment on the tombstone, the occupant was Estelle Hewitt born 18 something, died 1866. While there is more written on the tomb apparently age and weather has eaten it away.
If you were wondering why they needed to smear blood and ointment on themselves when apparently killing a goat and using it's blood to make a circle should have worked, to bad! It's not exampled, in fact nothing about raising zombies is really explained in this series, every time someone asks about it, Anita just wanks on about how if you don't know how to, you'll never be able to understand it or some bullshit.
Do you know what this is called? Lazy fucking writing.
So they raise the zombie, as it starts crawling out of the ground Anita suddenly realizes where she's seen Zac before, apparently she went to his funeral, as she looks at his face she remembers thinking that someone did a bad makeup job on him.
If you're wondering why she was at his funeral, apparently being an animator is pretty rare, so when one dies all of them go to your funeral regardless if they know you or not out of professional courtesy.
So the zombie just chills on top of it's grave while Anita and Zac stare at each stupidly, Anita claims that Zac isn't a zombie, in fact she has no idea what he is beside the fact being alive of course.
Anita goes on to think that she's heard stories of gris-gris that could cheat death, and wonders what exactly it was after if not goats blood and how it links to him still being alive.
She then thinks that Estelle might have been beautiful 100 or so years ago, but now her skin was and ugly greyish white, waxy, nearly expressionless, fake looking.
It might just be me, but that sentence doesn't look complete, or something was cut and LKH forgot to replace it, before you start thinking that I cut the next part of the description to make it look like this makes no sense. I haven't and shame on you for thinking I need help making this book look bad. The next part goes on to explain that it looks like she was buried in wedding finery which seems to bother Anita for some reason.
She then goes on to think that the zombies eyes are showing to much white, though she prefers that to when they look like raisins. Again, random gore for no reason.
Also, since I didn't have room to shove it in before. Why did she do the big bad reveal Zac is really dead thing here? It's so... Pointless, and now we know he's the one killing the vampires, bravo LKH, you could have had this really intense scene where Anita is shocked to find his death record or something, but no. You just slide it into this scene which makes no bloody sense and have officially
killed what tension or mystery you had in this book.
Anywhose, Estelle is sitting by her grave trying to gather her thoughts since she's been dead for 100 years.
Anita slowly paces around the grave, being careful not to break the circle, thinking that Zac wasn't able to raise the zombie because he was actually dead himself.
Somehow he can still raise the recently dead, but not the long dead. The dead calling the dead from the grave; there was something really wrong with that.
Uh... Why? No seriously, is it her morals that say this? Religion? Simply just unheard of or counted as unnatural in this world? Because it doesn't seem that wrong as a outside reader, at least to me that it.
She watches Zac tighten his grip on his knife, wondering if anyone but herself and the person who made the gris-gris know he's dead. The gris-gris was clearly made before he died, so how would the person who made it for him know he's dead??
Anyways, she gets her blood on her fingers and makes to touch his gris-gris with her blood covered fingers...
Zac catches her wrist, eyes wide, probably wondering how stupid this women is. He tells her that it's not for her. Anita asks who then, people who won't be missed is the answer she receives.
Anita freaks out claiming that she should have let the vamps kill him, Zac asks if anyone can kill the dead, Anita replies that she does it all the time.
Just not in this damn book apparently...
The zombie starts pawing at Anita's leg, she tells Zac that he can feed her himself. Zac offers the zombie his bleeding wrist, which the zombie sniffs before ignoring. He informs Anita that he can't seem to feed said zombie.
Anita cusses him out before offering her blood, since apparently they need fresh blood to complete the ritual and since Zac is dead he doesn't count anymore.
... Say, what are the vampires doing during all this? Shouldn't they be wondering why Anita was prevented from touching Zac's gris-gris and the following conversation? What about the fact the zombie wouldn't chow down on his blood? Even if you have no idea how a zombie raising was suppose to go, this just reeks of 'shit not going right.'
The zombie starts drinking Anita's blood, for some reason zombies in this world are basically less attractive vampires. While this is happening Anita demands to know how many people have died so Zac can live, after a small back and forth about how Zac doesn't want to tell her, and Anita demanding to know, we learn that he has killed enough. Glad we got that sorted out... Again though, don't vamps have superhuman hearing in this world? Why are they not curious about this topic??
Anita claims her arm back from the zombie, once she's freed Zac calls to the vampires that the circle has been broken and that the zombie is theirs now.
Even Anita admits that she'd forgotten about the vampires that are standing around, apparently it's because of how still they are standing, but I claim it's because the author forgot they were there and needed a way to explain why they weren't at all mentioned for the past chapter.
Theresa stops Anita as she makes to leave the clearing, demanding to know why she allowed the zombie to suck her blood since they apparently don't do that.
Anita explains that the ritual had gone wrong and that she offered herself as the sacrifice to get the thing back on track. Theresa is surprised, Anita basically tells her to get fucked and get out of her way, which Theresa does for some reason, Anita puts it down to her being to eager to get to the zombie to be fucked tormenting her.
So it turns out that the vampires just wanted the zombie raised so they could torment it, as Anita hears a strangled scream from behind her. She then hears a faint echo of JC's laughter (why the fuck would you hear that while a zombie you raised is screaming behind you??) and wonders where he is.
She looks over her shoulder to see that the vamps have the terrified zombie surrounded, the zombie is trying to run but has nowhere to go. Anita flees the scene as the zombie starts screaming for real.
The end of this chapter bugs the living fuck out of me, Anita goes on about how she this huge boogeyman to vampires and has no issues killing them. But then they start tormenting a zombie she has raised and she runs away, now I could understand if she had some reason like.. She was seriously outnumbered, she knew she'd be killed if she intervened and had to way to make it appear like an accident. Anything besides 'oh I'm the only live person in this clearing, Zac being dead makes me feel sick and I have to leave now, so fuck you zombie I raised into this mess. Have fun being tormented I'm out!'
It's hard to root for a heroine who can't keep to her own fucking morals is what I'm saying.
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