Her name (or the name her adopted parents had given her) was Tammy, but her followers called her Mistress Lilith, Queen of Night. At the moment, she had only one disciple, and he was more interested in getting in her pants than aiding her in opening the way for the old gods. Chad Roberts was lacking in true devotion, but assembling a legion of believers in a dust bowl like Rockwood — five square miles of town spread across thirty — was no easy task. Chad wasn't her first choice, but he could be useful in a muscle-bound lackey sort of way.
Tammy and her cult of one squatted by the ceremonial fire in the burnt-out remains of Make Out Barn. He hummed the theme to Bonanza while tracing patterns in the dirt with his fingers. The firelight glinted off her ritual dagger.
"Uh. . Tammy. ."
She tossed him a hard look.
"Mistress Lilith," he quickly corrected, "I don't think they're coming."
Sighing, Tammy snatched up her worn copy of the abridged Necronomicon next to her pile of clothes. She flipped through the pages to the ritual of Thanatos's Risen Children, but there was nothing in the book to help her. They'd performed the ceremony a dozen times. Even Chad, who didn't have much in the way of brainpower and understood nothing of black magic, could execute the spell by memory. No, it wasn't a flaw in the casting. It had to be the zombies. They just weren't enough.
"Damn that fat old bitch."
Any normal person would flee from the risen dead. Why didn't she? Something new was needed. Something more powerful.
She leafed through the book, ignoring Chad's unblinking stare at her breasts. Tammy was used to the stares. Not just from her follower, but from all the boys (all nine of them her age) in Rockwood. She was far prettier than all the other girls. Except for Denise Calhoun, that fat cow with her C-cup boobs. But Denise was white trash whereas Tammy was adopted and the only Japanese girl in town, possessing an exotic edge over Denise, whose parents let her wear makeup, even though it made her look like a big slut.
"What do we do now, Mistress Lilith?" Chad asked, as he leaned closer and brushed her long, silky hair.
She shoved him away. "I'm thinking, dumbass."
Chad was not so easily discouraged. He flexed his overdeveloped pectoral muscles like some primate mating signal.
She kept reading.
"Are we going to do it or not?"
"Why don't you go into the corner and do it yourself?"
He stood, slouching. "Aw, come on, Tammy. Big Jimmy needs his lovin'."
"Mistress Lilith," she replied.
"Uh, sorry." He adopted a whiny tone. "Come on, Mistress Lilith. Please?"
"Oh, alright." She laid the book aside with a sigh. The jerk was impossible to ignore when he was horny — and he was always horny.
Chad grinned, grabbing a condom from his neatly folded trousers. Nineteen groaning, sweaty seconds later, Tammy climbed off Big Jimmy (all three inches of him), Chad fell dead asleep, and she returned to her research.
There was much to be done. Soon the planets would align. The Gate would open and flood the world with beautiful darkness. Her masters would ascend to their rightful thrones, and she would reign by their sides while Denise Calhoun screamed herself hoarse in eternal agony.
If she could only get inside that diner.