Cinco de Zombie
The Silvercrest Experiment: Book One
Albert Aykler
Love & Wander Books
Copyright © 2019 by Albert Aykler and Love and Wander, LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Ebook ISBN 9781734290707
Cover © 2019 by Love and Wander, LLC
v1.0.1_r4
Contents
The Question
1. Something Ziggy
2. Gummy Worms
3. Big Blue Monsterita
4. Not a Taco. Not a Pie
5. De Dondé Son Los Sombreros?
6. Excuse me, is this your arm?
7. Yes. We deliver!
8. Taco Flavored RV
9. The Cutting Business
10. The Ballad of El Sombreron
11. Salsa Fresca
12. Since You Asked
Also by Albert Aykler
About the Author
The Question
“And what about Sigmund Ratseneager?”
“Who?”
“Ziggy.”
“Ziggy is the last best hope for humanity.”
Silence.
“And he owes me ten bucks.”
1 Something Ziggy
Ziggy, the one-eyed Austrian mischief maker. The person to blame for all my troubles. Asshole of inordinate magnitude. Proudly guilty of ruining my life. Ziggy, my one true friend.
And Ziggy the zombie. As zombie as any zombie is a zombie. Grunting and ripping the liver out of a screaming overweight cook.
Before he went down swinging his meat cleaver at the ravenous party of zombies demanding fresh flesh service in his place of employment, the cook had been the sort of fishing enthusiast who liked Buffet, Chesney, and Shakira on the weekends, and Sheryl Crow and the Eagles during the week.
Under his enchilada explosion-stained apron, he wore baggy cargo shorts (counter to the local health ordinance), kitchen clogs (evidence that he wanted his footwear, if nothing else, to have some association with some fine cuisine credibility), and a shirt that said, “If it ain’t bass, it better be ass.”
Over that fine slogan, I made out the remains of a faded cartoon drawing of an impossibly busty blond woman hooking a boat containing a fat fisherman. The fisherman, in turn, had hooked the back of the blond’s daisy duke shorts. They reeled each other into some strange fisherman’s wet dream.
Ziggy and a zombified off-duty cop who had dropped by to shoot pool and drink beer had taken the chef de cuisine of the El Coyote Gordo down and made a meal of his once sizable belly.
I will give that fisherman cook this, he had nerve. It takes more than a little to run at a flesh-eating ghoul instead of turning tail, no matter how well armed you think you are. He charged out of the kitchen with his cleaver in one hand and his cell phone in the other after seeing his bartender go down in a fountain of blood. Expecting to take the cop zombie out mano-a-zombie, he ran into both the cop and Ziggy. I wanted to help but ended up knocked out of commission in a tangle under a table with the zombie who had once been El Coyote Gordo’s only waitress.
All of this adds up to your usual zombie outbreak chaos, but with my pal Ziggy at its center.
By the time I came to and finished dealing with the waitress, the cook had stopped screaming. With Ziggy chomping down hard into the cook’s internal organs, and the off-duty cop lost in the burbling bloody spring of the cook’s throat, I saw my chance. I lifted my aluminum bat, yelled, and took a running swing at the ex-cop zombie’s head as he sat up blinking in search of the sound.
One swing. Up and under the head and…off it flew. Tee ball home run.
OK. Not quite off. Not really off at all, but not functional either. Hitting where the spine connects to the skull was a trick I picked up a while back on an incident in Helsinki. A strong upward blow rarely disconnects the head from the body (unless you are lucky enough to be wielding a sword—which I wasn’t this time), but it usually disables the zombie. The jaw can bite and limbs move, but they lose all coordination and balance. It neutralizes the threat, reducing it to a snapping jaw head hanging from an incapacitated body.
When I looked back, I saw the head flopped to one side like a melon in a hairy sack. The whole torso teetered there a moment before falling forward on to Zombie Ziggy. I came closer and waited for Ziggy to pop up so I could get a clear swing at him.
Funny thing about zombies, they react poorly (read: lurch, bite, and scratch) at any interference while eating. I mean, he could have kept eating, but the torso on his back constricted him, limiting his ability to bite, tear, and feed. So, I knew he would pop up to push it off.
Sure enough. Like some sick dance, down fell the cop’s torso and up popped Zombie Ziggy, hard and fast enough to send the cop’s torso back the other way, where it bounced but remained arched awkwardly backwards. And then I saw the cook’s first twitch, enough of him connected and pumping fluids to become infected. In another minute, Ziggy Zombie would lose interest in the tainted flesh.
I looked at the back of Ziggy’s gore-covered head. Aluminum baseball bat up and ready. He would go down with one clean hit. I hesitated.
Ziggy turned toward me the way they do, no longer flexible enough to twist the upper spine like a non-infected person. It was enough, though. His one good eye kept moving my way, all the way to the corner of the eye socket. Searching for me. It was not the empty starving thing, blind to all but heartbeats and bloody flesh, that typically looks out of a zombie head.
There was something alive in there. Something Ziggy.
His mischief. The way he joked about the darkest most awful thing you could mention. Not because it was funny, but because it was the opposite of funny and the only way to keep from falling into despair was to turn that day’s bleakness into a laugh. Hospital bombings? How many children lost? Crack a joke about it.
The worst was over and you lived to see it. Laugh so you can save all those people not already lost. I saw it there in that crazy eye of his. That awful horrible joke whose punch line is, “Surprise, asshole, you are alive.”
The cook’s body shifted gears into a spastic high-frequency twitch. I quietly stepped aside as Ziggy Zombie continued turning. Searching for me with that one eye. Sniffing the air, unsure of the smell since the fighting had drenched me with a bloody spray of Eau de Zombie. I had him. I took a breath and tightened my grip.
My arms did not move. Could not move.
I knew he would continue turning, the disease in total control of how and why he moved. Despite the joker spirit still looking out from inside him, Zombie Ziggy would smell, see, and attack my living flesh.
All zombies must die. But how could I kill Ziggy?
2 Gummy Worms
Why did I have two sandbags pulling down on each side of my lower back? What was this noisy machine void around me? Why did I feel my kidneys?
As a rule, I take any awareness of my internal organs as a bad sign.
Slumped and twisted over myself, I had a hard time taking the breath I needed in order to come to and understand the situation. That, and those dragging anchors on my lower back. Pulling, pushing, and uncrumpling myself, I found an upholstered seat under me. Noise and vibration. A moving car. Classical music screeched from the stereo. I inhaled, and with the air came the smells of dust, oil, and old wool. Ziggy’s car. And tobacco. Ziggy.
“Am I awake?”
“Yes, Mr. Singleton. Yes, I believe zat you are awake now.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“We are on ze road to ze ah-pocalypse.”
“Am I blindfolded?” I reached up and pulled off an airline issue eye mask, then blinked, squinting at the daylight flooding the car. Ah.
“To help you rest.”
My body shivered at the rush of sun on my skin. “Which road?”
“Don’t you mean which ah-pocalypse?”
“No. Which road?”
“Away from Silvercrest, I will tell you zat.”
“Come on, Ziggy.” Rasping and coughing, I discovered out loud, “I’m so thirsty.”
“In ze ice chest in ze backseat.”
“How long have I been out?” Twisting back around, I opened and checked inside the blue plastic ice chest that covered half the back seat of Ziggy’s 1999 Toyota Corolla wagon.
“Out of what?”
“This looks like it's just water back here. And cold gummy worms.”
“I zought you liked zose.”
“As an available alternative to Silvercrest cafeteria food? Sure. Also, I need to pee like crazy. What did you give me?”
“What you asked for.”
At that moment, I could not remember requesting anything of Ziggy. Ever. “More specific, please?”
“Ambien. Or somezing an awful lot like it, anyway. I was eem-proh-vising.”
“You’re lying.”
“How can you say zat?”
“As usual.”
“You sleeped zrough ze whole zing. As requested.”
I guzzled down one of the small water bottles I had found in the ice chest, threw the empty in the back, and opened another. “I need to pee. And I need caffeine.”
“Ah. Right. Under your feet somewhere zere's a whaddyacallit full of hot coffee. A zermost.”
“What?” I groped around under the seat. Ah, a thermos. It was coffee. Warm enough, but not hot. Coffee. Blessed coffee. “Why are my hands trembling? What else was in whatever you gave me?”
“Somezing to wake you up, you know.”
“I don’t know.”
“Aw, Singleton, my friend. Come on.”
“Can I pee now?”
“It's all a matter of time. It's only a matter of time, Singleton. Always and only a matter of time.”
“Okay. It’s time to pee.”
“Pee out ze door. Or ze window.”
“Pull over. I need to stand up. God, my kidneys.”
“Scheisse.”
“No, just pee. Pull over, asshole.”
He found a decently wide piece of shoulder and pulled over. We were in a forest somewhere. I disentangled myself from the blanket Ziggy must have wrapped around me back when he knocked me out. I was wearing a hospital gown and a pair of those shoe covers doctors and nurses wear in hospital operating rooms. No shoes.
“Was I in the hospital?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Did you bring my clothes?”
“Right. In ze way back.”
“The what?”
“Ze way back. Ze-ze-ze hatch back.” Ziggy put the car in neutral, pulled the brake, and jumped out to retrieve a plastic shopping bag of clothes from the back.
I looked through the bag. All new stuff from one of those discount name brand stores. Jeans, T-shirt, underwear, socks, sneakers, and a hoodie all declared their brands at high visual volume.
“What, no gold rimmed Dolce Gabbana sunglasses, Ziggy?”
“What?”
“Never mind. I hope it fits.” I climbed out of the car, stepped into the ridiculously fashionable sneakers—more logos than laces—and headed into the forest to pee and change behind a tree or bush.
I spotted a large fallen log maybe a hundred yards from the road and hiked around it.
Once I had stepped out of immediate range of the car engine and classical music, I heard birds. I took a deep breath, and in came the smell of the pines, dirt, ferns, the young trees, and low bushes growing wherever they could steal sun from between the trees. I saw a squirrel back in the woods, too. Heard insects. Signs of life. Nature was as oblivious to the apocalypse as I was. Going on as it always did, this eon’s planetary decor here in the happy zone of our solar system.
Relieving myself in that relative quiet, I sighed and relaxed. Some old forgotten tension drained out of me with my piss. I inhaled again, and along with a deep pine forest breath came an impossible glimmer of my real past. The past before the lab accident. Before I became Sid Singleton. In another, denser wood, with a deeper smell of pine.
An old man waking me up with cool water on his hands, gently slapping my face. Time to get up. Wake up. Work to be done. The sound of a stream. I had experienced flashes of images before. From childhood. From whenever. But this time, I could hear all these words. And distinctly, the voice and words of the old man. You’re okay. You’ll always be okay now. Just breath. Remember to breathe. And a little cool water.
I had to get away from it. From the comfort of it. It was safe there, and I was ruining it by remembering it, bringing it here now. I could not let it become part of this, whatever this was. Another awful chapter in the life of Sid Singleton. Another zombie disaster in the making.
“Singleton. Come on,” Ziggy yelled at me from the car.
Done peeing and staring off into space, I knew I was on some western backroad in the mountains somewhere, but I also knew I was in those deep woods with the old man under fresh cool air as though a soft rain had fallen and ended. Left wondering then and wondering now what he meant by okay. How he seemed to know what I would become. Or maybe what I was already then but didn’t know myself.
“Singleton. Asshole. We don’t have time for fucking around.” Ziggy honked the horn and birds took flight overhead.
Another honk brought me fully back to now again. I put on the ridiculous clothes, leaving the hospital gown for the forest to reclaim, and hurried back into the car. I looked like an Eastern European gangster trying to blend in at an American high school. “Where are we, Ziggy?”
“I told you. Ze road.” He took off without waiting for me to buckle up.
“That is a what not a where.”
“We are between two places on a road. On ze way to dinner.”
“What time is it?”
“Not yet dinner time, I can tell you zat.”
“Feels like late morning.” Water dripped down the windows. The two-lane road damp under the trees, but dry where the sun came through. Blue sky. Only a narrow strip of it at any given time as we made our way deeper into the forest. Cool but not cold. Summer. Or late summer, since the few deciduous trees, oaks mostly, were going brown and losing leaves. Brown grass on the roadside.
He looked at me and said, “Well?” without speaking.
“Eleven. Eleven-thirty maybe. A good deal north of Silvercrest. And probably a little west. Almost no buildings of any kind. We’re gaining altitude. Somewhat slowly.”
“Oh, ho ho ho ho ho. Zat is the Singleton we know and love. Observant. Careful with ze inputs but willing to draw reasonable conclusions in order to move forward and learn more.” He said all of this in a funny, ironic way, like maybe he was repeating something someone else had said. Someone he didn't respect much. Someone who made a living stating the obvious and making a big deal of its so-called implications. He gave the word reasonable a particularly ironic twisted emphasis so it was clear he did not think it had any merit at all. That I was, in fact, not all that reasonable or if I was, it was not a good thing but a serious flaw.
“What's up, Ziggy?”
“We're on a trip. Quietly visiting one of zose states north of Barabacoa and west of cheese curds.”
“For dinner. You mentioned that. And a ways out yet?”
“Too far maybe. It is all a matter of time. It's only a matter of time, Singleton. Always and only a matter of time.”
“So you said. What's for dinner?”
“Oh, after so many years in ze Silvercrest cafeteria, can’t you figure zat one out yourself?”
“What day is it?”
; “Tuesday.”
“Tacos.”
“Genius. And so reasonable, too.” Ziggy had a habit of speaking about me as though reporting to some all-seeing clinical study group. I had a habit of ignoring it. “Too bad he's infected.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“What?”
“Infected.”
Infected. Ill. Contaminated. Unwell. Tainted. Unclean. Sick.
When Ziggy or I (or anyone else with anything to do with Silvercrest) used one of these words, we meant one very particular illness. Not the common cold. Not chicken pox. And not the measles, mumps, rubella, scarlet fever, smallpox, anthrax, malaria, dengue fever, HIV, or any of those old killers. We meant our very own virus. Custom made in the Silvercrest lab. The virus strain to end all virus strains. We meant our extraordinary strain of viruses that went from “I don’t feel so well” to death to up-from-the-grave-non-verbal-flesh-eating zombie without pausing for the victim to take a sick day.
“Infected.” Ziggy repeated for the fiftieth time in the face of my raving denials and angry panic.
“You’re full of shit and you know how I know you are full of shit?”
He laughed. “How?”
“I cannot get infected, that’s how.”
“In.”
“I’m Sid Singleton, the immune guy. Bitten. Scratched. Covered in zombie gore. And still nothing. More exposure than any living person and no signs of infection.”
“Fected.”
As any responsible adult might begin a first date, I think it is only fair of me to fill you in on some of my personal history. My particular baggage, as it were.
Apparently, there was an accident. Isn’t there always an accident? A slip of the tongue. A clumsy hot beverage delivery. A wrong address. Hole in the condom. Miscalculated ovulation. Everyone’s conception is as much accident as intention. And the same is true for good old Sid Singleton. The second me. The me telling you this now. The only me I remember, but not the original me.
Cinco De Zombie Page 1