Zombie Kong - Anthology

by Wilson, David Niall; Brown, Tonia; Meikle, William; McCaffery, Simon; Brown, TW; T. A. Wardrope

  “Do you need anything?” asked his new agent, Mr. Chris Whittaker, the former PA that had helped him so dearly. “Water? Soda? A brain sandwich with fried bananas dipped in peanut butter? I can cut the crusts off for you, the way you like.”

  “No, Koko.” It was Zeek’s affectionate name for him. “I’m fine.”

  “Positive? I can always get you a banana.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Whatever tugs your tuba, big guy. I’m here for you.”

  Chris, a.k.a. Koko, gave him a wink and two big thumbs up before making himself invisible. The perfect agent.

  They had to shoot the show outside; no place was big enough to accommodate him comfortably. Besides, he wanted to be near his devoted fans. They finally loved him for more than his physical assets, for more than the spectacle of his size and species. They cared about what he represented. What he uniquely had to offer.

  Over the heads of everyone, he could see the fences that kept his zombie admirers from flooding into the set and devouring them all. There were thousands, the city emptying, the outlying countryside drained, too. They pressed against the initial barrier fence that surrounded the more lethal electric wall like a fat lady’s thighs in fishnets. He was pretty sure the ones at the front had been crushed to death––giving their all for a glimpse of him and his magic.

  Why did they love his mojo? Because he shared it with them. He gave them what they wanted. And for those who already garnered a taste, he gave them the final thing they lacked.

  Immortality.

  He had a guest celebrity for every show currently scheduled and every show the execs could possibly give him, to infinity, if his body held together that long. Jimmy Zepp, Zalle Cherry, Tim Cruz, Janzifer Haniston, Lad Zit, Rob Zombie––all the A-listers down the row begged for a earlier slot. They all wanted their fame to last forever. And they were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to attain it.

  Today’s guest was Roger DiZero. Zeek planned to make his entrance into the kingdom of the eternal a tasty one, too. He’d make the perfect lasagna––handmade pasta, freshly ground meats and cheeses, and a double helping of Mr. DiZero, in the role of the special sauce.

  When he told DiZero about his recipe, the man practically wept, as much as the undead can ever do. Roger looked a little rubbery from all the plastic installed in his features, but once they ground him up into powder, Zeek was sure he’d make an excellence spice.

  Then the man became a legend. Then his fame would never die, never be taken from him. He’d live on forever, inside all his fans.

  And his fans would get a taste of what it was like to be a star.

  The set cleared. The lights dimmed, ready for his introduction. The prompter counted down from ten to six, then raised a hand to silently count down with his fingers.

  Five.

  Zeek straightened his spine and ran his tongue along the back of his teeth. He tasted Eston. After all this time, he couldn’t get that nasty flavor out of his mouth. It appeared evil never did truly die. It just spoiled.

  Four.

  In the silence, he heard the zombie masses grunt in unison. Either they grunted, or that was their stomachs, in anticipation of the feast to come. Like Oprah, he liked to give out gifts to the audience. Namely the diced up celebrities.

  ––(the prompter was missing his index finger so the nub instead had to count for three)

  The gorilla-turned-god beat his fists into his chest and his ‘Kiss the Kook’ apron before giving the audience his new millionaire smile with the world’s biggest Chiclets.

  Two.

  The lights erupted bright. The cameras rolled.

  One.

  Zeek took a deep breath.

  Action!

  MAX VILE

  Bits & Pieces

  Moody heard a loud bang from somewhere inside the museum. It startled him. His roach slipped from between his nails, landed square in his lap, and burned the holy fire out of his crotch.

  He hopped off the sarcophagus replica and swatted the loose embers from his slacks.

  Goddamn it. The roach had eaten a hole the size of a dime through the inseam, all the way to his Hanes. Eddie would be sure to take it from his pay once he discovered another pair of ruined workpants. That made two this week already.

  He could always complain to the museum manager, saying Eddie was treating him unfairly, but what good would that do? Everyone knew he was a loser, even himself. His cog was so tiny they would remove him from the gears and replace him. Simple as that.

  Another banging noise, followed by several softer creaks, erupted from the main hall.

  Moody snuffed the roach with his heel and kicked it under the plastic tomb.

  “They’re playing my music, Tut,” he said to the fake mummy lying in the sarcophagus. He took his security guard hat off of Tut’s head. “Time to give reason to my life.”

  Moody clicked on his flashlight and slipped through the Egyptian exhibit toward the source of the noise. He doubted there was an intruder. It had been less than a year since he started working the new job, and a month since he’d been demoted to the third shift, but in that time, nothing gave him the impression that noises equaled thieves.

  During his first week on nights, he had heard a racket, which turned out to be a flock of pigeons that entered through a window. He had left the damn thing open to air smoke from a joint, and the little pricks flew into the rafters and pooped all over the ancient-man manikins. Eventually, he fed the birds crumbs with rat poison. He hated killing them, but it was either that or hand Eddie another reason to downgrade his already pitiful standing. He spent that night scraping bird shit from cavemen’s foreheads.

  Eddie never missed an opportunity to run his big mouth, but he never told stories about intruders in the museum, so there must not have been a robbery in his time. The man, now in his sixties, said he had started around Moody’s age. Long time to be nobody. Moody guessed his life was right on track to follow in the old man’s footsteps.

  Moody considered the last few hours, wondering if he’d left the window open again. The thought of bird shit made him cringe. But no, he’d only smoked with his pharaoh pals in the makeshift pyramid.

  It was prehistoric beast month and wooly mammoth bones dominated the front of the building. Curved tusks were angled toward all those who entered. The creaking noises might have been coming from the rigging that suspended the elephant skeleton in the lobby. If the wires snapped, there would be a mess, and probably a bone or two shattered on the floor.

  Of course, the bones weren’t real. They were facsimiles of the true pieces the owners had locked in their vaults. Still, if any of them fell––with his record––they’d surely blame him.

  “What’d you do this time, Mood?” he said to himself, in imitation of Eddie. He hated when Eddie called him ‘Mood’. “You take some acid or shrooms or something? Think the mammoth was your cousin and hump it? Huh-huh, huh-huh. You’re fired!”

  As he rounded the hallway leading into the main lobby, he tilted his flashlight toward the floor, looking for bones.

  The air smelled foul, like rotten meat and sewage.

  Please don’t let it be the toilets, he prayed. He’d rather deal with pigeon shit than people shit. Ever since the taco place set up shop in the food court, the bathrooms were disaster zones.

  Something smacked his face. It happened again, and again––followed by a buzz. He stopped walking and swatted away––

  Flies. Lots of flies. His flashlight beam showed a thick cloud of them.

  “Fucking toilets.” He took off his hat and used it to shield his eyes. Whichever janitor Eddie hired for night-call would soon be pissed, because he sure as hell wasn’t cleaning this one.

  He kept his head down and hurried into the lobby, which was a huge, vaulted-ceiling cavity, unlike the maze of the museum. As he entered the room, he could feel a cold wind, and the stench became worse. The flies thinned enough for him to uncover his face.

  Saber-to
othed tiger bones gleamed as he scanned his flashlight over the display, the bathroom doors, and the floor. He couldn’t see an overflow of water; he’d have to look inside.

  “Fantastic––”

  A third loud bang echoed through the cavernous room. The noise erupted from somewhere close, in the direction of the mammoth display, he thought. A wrenching noise followed, like a spring popping.

  Moody grabbed his baton, but then replaced it with his phone.

  In case of an emergency, Eddie had given him instructions to call 911. He didn’t. Instead, he clicked on the phone’s camcorder. If something was breaking, he wanted proof that it wasn’t his fault.

  He sprinted around the displays, toward the front of the lobby. Sure enough, the back end of the mammoth skeleton was swaying from the support cables.

  The flashlight beam passed through the elephant’s ribs. In the crisscrossed shadows beyond, the darkness on the wall shifted. The movement made him freeze. The sound of several pairs of feet clapped across the marble floor.

  Had some stupid kids broken into the museum after all?

  “Hey, hold it!” he shouted, trying not to sound as frightened as he felt. He heard the feet scrambling on the far side of the display.

  Maneuvering around the elephant’s hind legs, he saw the great double doors of the building’s entrance. One of them was ajar, and the door wedge had fallen out, keeping it from shutting completely. Must be how the flies had gotten inside.

  If it was kids, how did they get past the security system?

  Might not be kids; might be worse than kids, he thought. Could it be an actual burglary?

  There was enough damage to consider calling the cops. Part of the skeleton’s right leg was missing. He found the femur a couple of feet away from the exhibit, broken into three pieces. Several smaller bones lay scattered on the floor, which explained the bang and the creaking.

  Moody swiveled the light through the mammoth’s ribs. The room was too big and open for the intruders to get far. There wasn’t any place to hide, unless they fell flat on their bellies behind an exhibit.

  The light illuminated a furry patch on one of the stuffed, long extinct animals that flanked the mammoth. As he moved the light beam, the hairy model trembled.

  Moody looked again.

  The model appeared wet and dirty––patches of fur were tangled and discolored. And what was that next to it… attached to it?

  Connected to the fur was something shiny, though rusty in spots, and painted sky blue. The top of a Volkswagen beetle was somehow melded into the fur. Its windows were gone, but the curved dome of the car was unmistakable.

  “Well, that’s new,” he mumbled.

  The car roof and the fur turned away. What came in its place made Moody drop his flashlight and scream.

  For an instant, before darkness swallowed his sight, a huge round eye peered at him through the skeleton.

  On instinct, he snatched up his light and took off the way he had come.

  He heard bare feet racing along the marble after him. By ear, he knew they’d outrun and circle him, blocking his escape.

  He tried to press the emergency code on his phone, but his hands shook and he fumbled the buttons twice. Why can’t 911 be one number instead of three? he thought.

  Ahead of him, the feet-sounds stopped.

  Moody screeched to a halt and lifted his flashlight, which he almost dropped again before planting the beam on the impossible thing towering over him.

  Words escaped him; he couldn’t make sense of what he saw. The thing was huge, standing a few feet short of the vaulted ceiling. It filled the area between the displays with its girth. Pieces of it were made of metal, like the car top. Bits of it were furry, like the display beasts. But its head, for the most part, was a gorilla––a giant one, with a metallic jaw big enough to swallow him whole. Two massive eyes bore down solely on him, squinting. Their pupils shrank in the glare.

  “Would you mind not doing that?” the gorilla said.

  Moody’s legs quivered. He shifted the light out of the giant’s face, more from a loss of motor control than the monster’s instruction.

  “Much appreciated,” said the gorilla. The thing’s voice was hoarse and had an accent––British, maybe, like some rejected Muppet gone horror show.

  Behind Moody, the doors were still open. He could run that way; however, the thing had already exceeded his speed once. This time, it would have a clear path to snatch him up and devour him.

  As if reading his mind, the monster said: “Please don’t run again. I wouldn’t want to be forced to eat you, if at all possible.”

  The rotten smell he’d mistaken for the toilets was coming from the creature. From a close distance, the smell was like a wall of heat, making him nauseous. Flies tickled his face, but he didn’t dare make any sudden movements to swat them away.

  “I assume you have plenty of questions, but are too terrified to ask. Am I correct?”

  After a long pause, Moody realized the question wasn’t rhetorical. After a longer pause, he regained control of his tongue and lips. “Uh… maybe?”

  “Relax. I didn’t mean to scare you. I simply need a few things, then I’ll be on my way.”

  Slowly, Moody’s senses returned enough for him to understand what he was being told. If running wasn’t an option, what was he supposed to do? He spoke with caution and sincerity, in case the monster decided it would have to eat him. “How’d you get by the alarm?”

  “My boy. If you don’t want anyone to get into this collection of relics, you should choose a keypad code other than 12345.”

  Eddie should’ve changed those damn numbers; Moody kept telling him they were dumb.

  The gorilla continued, “I could have simply knocked the doors down, but I was trying not to disturb anyone while I got what I came for.”

  “You need something… from the museum?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I ask what?”

  “You may.”

  Moody thought about that one for a minute, then asked. “What?”

  The gorilla began moving, but it didn’t walk on two legs. It only had one: a crippled limb it dragged along. When it moved, it used its two extra long arms, with its fingers propping it up high. The feet-like sounds, Moody realized, were the gorilla’s fingers and knuckles.

  Halfway to the mammoth, the creature paused, saying, “Are you coming?”

  Now that the monster had moved, Moody could see the hallway leading to the mummy exhibit. The thing might not be able to follow him if he ran––

  Moody yelped as the monster slid a hand around his torso and lifted him from the ground. It held him in one hand while dragging itself toward the mammoth with the other, leaving a trail of greenish slime on the floor. The vibrating ooze was filled with tiny worms and maggots. No wonder flies were everywhere.

  The creature set Moody down beside the exhibit, then grabbed the unbroken left leg of the mammoth skeleton, yanking and twisting it until the femur snapped free. The monster made a happy noise and shook the femur to throw off the loose bolts.

  “We didn’t break this one. Cheers!”

  Moody dodged the limp leg as the gorilla positioned it.

  The creature wiggled the bone against its flaccid thigh until the it found an opening. Carefully, it slid the femur through its flesh until its upper leg went rigid, and then pushed its fingers into the hole all the way to the wrist. After fooling around inside the flesh for a few seconds, it found a secure fit, and removed its hand.

  The monster smiled. “Much, much better. Too bad I buggered the other bone or I might have been walking out of here on my knees.”

  “Are you going to… eat me now?” asked Moody.

  The gorilla shook its head. “No, I’m not going to eat you. I promise. You’ve been far too civil for me to repay your kindness by way of the tooth. Please don’t be afraid.”

  Moody surprised himself with a laugh. When you lost it, everything must be funny, he figured. />
  The gorilla chuckled with him, a guffaw that echoed like thunder.

  “I’m nuts!” Moody shouted.

  There was no way this was happening: a giant part-monkey, part-machine, part-fake mammoth was talking to him in the museum? There was probably angel dust in his last joint. If they didn’t slap him in a cuckoo asylum, he’d have to strangle his dealer.

  “That has to be it,” he said. “I’ve flipped. I’m grade-A almonds. Nuts!”

  “Bananas,” added the gorilla.

  Moody clapped his hands together, laughing harder. He reached into his pocket for his wallet, retrieving a joint from inside. He lit it with his Zippo. Might as well enjoy myself in this little freak-fest, he thought.

  “I’m glad to see you’re in better spirits,” said the gorilla.

  “Me, too. Any minute now I’m going to wake up on top of Mr. Tutankhamen’s crypt.” Moody offered a puff, but the gorilla shook its head. “By the way, you’re not real.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  The creature thought about that for a minute while Moody swiped flies from his face. The little pests had begun to congregate on his pants, some actually finding their way into the burnt hole in his crotch. He smacked them dead but more took their place.

  Finally the gorilla replied, “But what does real mean? Are any of us truly real?”

  “Touché,” Moody said, as if he comprehended the creature’s meaning. “So… my name’s Virgil Moody. What’s yours?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those. I’ve had a lot of things, but never a name.”

  There was writing on the gorilla’s chest, beneath the fur. No, not fur. There was dried seaweed around its sternum. The breastbone was shiny.

  Moody turned the flashlight on it and read: