Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (Volume 1, 2 & 3)

by James Roy Daley

  “I live around the block,” he explained as he walked over to join her.

  “Yeah? Me, too!” she said, clearly surprised. “Well, not around the block. Couple’a blocks over.” She gave him a playful little push on his chest. “Shit, I din’ know you was from ’round here! How come you never tol’ me?”

  Josh shrugged. “Never came up. ’Sides, you woulda known about where I live if you just looked at the payroll records. I mean, you’re the one doin’ the accountin’, right?”

  She frowned, clearly annoyed that he’d pointed out that oversight. “Yeah, well, guess I just never paid it no attention.” She gave a little shrug. “No biggie. So, how long you been livin’ in the ’hood?”

  “‘The ‘hood,’ huh? Too fuckin’ long,” he said with a lopsided grin. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the front door. “I’m over in my parents’ house.” He saw her eyebrows start to rise and quickly added, “I mean, I don’t live with ’em. They moved out years ago. Down to Florida. I got the house to myself.”

  “Pobrecito,” she cooed in Spanish. “So you all alone, then? Got nobody t’go home to?” The way she said it, combined with the dismissive look she flashed as she gave him the once-over, didn’t add up to being any part of a seductive come-on. In fact, it seemed a hell of a lot more like she was mocking him.

  “Don’t worry, you ain’t my type,” he replied dryly, somehow managing to avoid gritting his teeth while he said it. “But don’t get all choked up ’bout my situation, sweetheart. I know there’s somebody out there for me. I ain’t gonna be ‘all alone’ forever.”

  She poked him in the belly with a dark blue fingernail. “Yeah, well, try losin’ this first an’ maybe you’ll get lucky. Girls don’ go for fat guys ’less they got money”––she flashed a condescending grin––“and that’s somethin’ I know you ain’t got.” The grin widened. “I’m the one doin’ the accountin’, remember?”

  Oh, here we go, Josh thought. Didn’t take long for her to start pullin’ out that fuckin’ Ginsu-tongue…

  But if Marisol had any plans of further pruning his manhood, they were interrupted by the loud bang of something hitting one of the big glass windows. She gasped, and pointed over Josh’s shoulder. “Jesus Christ…what the fuck is that?”

  Josh turned around. His first impression had him thinking that a couple of neighborhood teenagers were horsing around in Halloween costumes. They were made up like zombies, with dirty and torn clothing and piles of gunky, discolored makeup covering their faces and hands. One guy’s head was tilted against his right shoulder as though his neck was broken; he had a thick layer of fake blood crusted around his mouth. The other moron had a dingy blue denim shirt unbuttoned to show off the major gash that bisected his stomach. It was a gaping wound with fake intestines poking out. Both deadheads stared into the Laundromat with wide, unblinking eyes, and pawed at the glass like they wanted in.

  “Ah, it’s just a couple stupid kids,” Josh explained to Marisol. He turned back to the walking dead. “Hey, Halloween’s in October, ya fuckin’ mooks! Come back when they start passin’ out the candy-corn!”

  Instead of taking his advice the jackasses continued pounding on the window, only now they added loud, melodramatically drawn-out moans to the act. Well, Josh thought, at least you gotta give these shitheads some credit for stickin’ to their act. But after another thirty seconds or so of the constant groaning and banging, it stopped being amusing and became annoying as all hell.

  It was more than just annoying to Marisol. After her initial shocked reaction, she’d quickly regained her composure and started brandishing that sharp tongue of hers. Her obvious intention was slicing up a couple window zombies. A blessing in disguise, as far as Josh was concerned. Now that she had somebody new to pick on she’d completely forgotten her first target.

  “¡Hacete coger, putas!” Marisol shouted at them with a sneer. “You chaperos are lucky I don’ come out there an’ kick your asses!” Josh noticed, however, that as angry as she was, as loud as she barked at the two kids, she made no move to run outside and carry out her threats. It was all talk and no action with Marisol Puente, apparently.

  Or maybe it was because the zombie makeup was starting to freak her out; it sure looked like the other two customers were headed in that direction. The hipster couple was frozen in place, the guy having awkwardly positioned himself behind his girl. Now there’s one brave motherfucker, Josh thought sarcastically while the girl nervously chewed on her bright pink thumbnail and hugged herself for reassurance. Both of them looked about ready to shit a brick. But none of the prankster nonsense going on outside bothered Josh—he’d seen scarier, far more disgusting shit on medical shows that ran on the Discovery Channel, and that stuff was real. This was just a bunch of cheap makeup tricks and bad acting from teenagers with nothing better to do with their time. It wasn’t anything to get all worked up about.

  Mrs. Alvarez wasn’t bothered by the spook show, either; in fact, she looked more pissed off than Marisol. Probably afraid the dumbasses are gonna break the window with all that hammerin’, Josh imagined. Slipping out from behind the counter with a broom in one hand and a ring holding the keys to the store in the other, she stomped up to the front door and flung it open.

  “Stop that!” she ordered, pointing the broom handle at the kids. “Get away from there before I call the police!”

  Immediately, the teenagers stopped their carrying on and slowly turned to face her. As Mrs. Alvarez and the potential vandals silently faced off, Josh suddenly heard the theme from that old Clint Eastwood Western, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, echo in his head. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-wa-wa-waah… He couldn’t help but smile.

  “Oh, this oughtta be good,” said a male voice to his left. He glanced over to see that the two hipsters had moved up next to him, no doubt wanting a better view of the argument to come. Apparently Mrs. Alvarez’s charge had inspired Soul Patch to grow a backbone and stop hiding behind his girlfriend. “Five bucks says she cracks that broom handle over Joey McGutsy’s skull.”

  Beside him, Little Miss Nose Ring giggled.

  Josh frowned. “You know those two assholes?”

  “Nuh-uh,” Soul Patch said with a quick, worried shake of his head. Probably thought Josh would pop him in the face if he admitted to being their buddy. “I was just, y’know, makin’ up a funny name for the guy with his guts hangin’—”

  “Oh, shit!” Nose Ring squeaked, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as she looked past Josh. “What’re they doin’?”

  Josh turned back to the window in time to see the zombie teens launching themselves at the old woman, arms outstretched and mouths hanging wide open. Now they’re really goin’ over the top with that shit, he thought.

  Taken by surprise, Mrs. Alvarez stumbled back, her feet tangling around the broom’s dirty, splintered bristles. Spinning a half-turn as she tried to right herself, she instead lost her balance and crashed onto the sidewalk. The teens pounced on her like starving lions bringing down a gazelle.

  “H-help me!” she screamed. “Please somebody help me! They’re—AAAHH!—they’re biting me!”

  It was more than just biting, though; even from fifteen feet away, Josh could see the blood—bright red under the store’s flourescent lighting and anything but fake—on the teens’ lips as their heads rose and dipped above the old woman’s struggling body. Biting? Shit, they were chewing on her!

  “Shouldn’t we, like, do somethin’?” Nose Ring croaked. “Call the cops, maybe?”

  Josh nodded mutely but apparently––like the others––he was too mesmerized by the violence to do anything more than stand and watch. It was a hell of a street show, too. For an overweight woman in her sixties, Mrs. Alvarez wasn’t going down without a fight. She kicked and punched the teens, slamming their faces with her elbows, driving her knees into their balls. But none of the blows did anything to convince them to break off the attack; in fact, her struggles seemed to excite them.

  And th
en the one with the exposed guts bit down hard on her left leg, viciously snapped back his head, and tore out a chunk of her calf. He gobbled it down hungrily and went back for seconds.

  Mrs. Alvarez shrieked loud enough to rattle the windows; the sound was almost high-pitched enough to match the scream that leapt past Marisol’s tonsils. Almost, but not quite. Josh winced, wondering if he’d ever hear clearly from his right ear again.

  “Holy shit, they’re real!” Soul Patch yelled.

  Yeah, they were real zombies, all right. And a lumbering movement under the streetlights on the corner of the block made Josh suddenly aware that the teens weren’t the only ghouls out for a late night stroll. They had company—lots of company. It looked like the cemetery over on the next avenue had opened its gates so every goddamn stiff in the joint could run loose. Problem was, they had only one thing in mind right now: answering the ringing dinner bell formed by Mrs. A’s vocal chords. Holy Christ, that woman could scream!

  “Oh, God!” Marisol wailed, and hysterically clawed at Josh’s shirt. “There’s more of ’em!”

  “I can see that!” he snapped, and pushed her away. “Get a fuckin’ grip, wouldja?”

  “Whatta we gonna do?” Soul Patch asked. “When they’re done with the old lady, you know they’re gonna come in here for the main course!” He moved behind his girlfriend, what little backbone he’d developed in the past five minutes having oozed down his leg to join the trail of urine pooling at his feet.

  “What about lockin’ the door?” Nose Ring asked.

  “Yeah, like that’s gonna keep ’em out,” Josh replied with a sneer. “Besides, Mrs. A took the keys with ’er.” He gestured to where the key ring lay on the sidewalk by her now fingerless right hand. Alvarez’s screams died away to a soft moan that rose and fell, providing some unsettling dining music for the rotting duo as they ate their fill. “Joey McGutsy” had gnawed Mrs. A’s left leg like a drumstick, right down to the bone, and was now working on the left arm. As for his buddy, the broken-neck corpse was bent low over the old lady’s pelvis, his angled noggin wedged between her hips in such a way it looked like…

  Jee-sus God, Josh thought. Is he…actually eatin’ her pussy? He felt the mini-donuts and beers he’d had earlier start racing up his gullet, and clenched his teeth to keep them from spewing all over his last clean shirt. What he couldn’t decide on, though, was which was more stomach-churning: having a mental image of the old lady’s used-up snatch bouncing around in his head, or watching Junior there cuttin’ himself a slice of poontang pie.

  A big, hairy, wrinkly, blood-filled, clam-scented slice of poontang pie.

  He felt his gorge rising again…

  “Shit, let’s jus’ run out the back!” Marisol shouted, and pointed to the far end of the Laundromat.

  Just past the arcade games and gumball machines, an Exit sign glowed dimly above a battered metal door with a push-bar set across its width.

  “I like that plan,” Josh said, nodding vigorously, grateful for anything that would take his mind off picturing Mrs. A’s private parts. He began herding Marisol and the hipsters toward the door, taking care to avoid slipping in Soul Patch’s puddle. “Let’s get the fuck outta here. If we’re lucky, the two out front won’t even know we’re gone.”

  But luck, he realized, had very little to do with it as he glanced back over his shoulder. Truth of the matter was, the teen corpses were just too busy eating to pay the Drip ’n’ Dry customers any mind—until, that is, Marisol gave a hard shove to the back door push-bar and set off the ear-piercing screech of the fire alarm. Then the zom-boys became all too aware that their future meals were making a run for it, and, stuffed though they were on Fillet of Senior Citizen, they didn’t look happy about missing out on the next course.

  Neither did the mob of walking dead that finally arrived on the scene. There must have been a couple dozen of Calvary’s finest residents crowded together on the sidewalk, all of them looking into the Laundromat like it was the display window for a butcher shop, all of them sizing up the cuts of meat to be found on the sides of beef standing on the other side of the glass. It reminded Josh of the time he’d been walking past an Ecuadorian bakery over on Queens Boulevard, and glanced in to see a couple of the workers carrying dead pigs into the back, the animals’ bellies slit wide open and emptied of intestines. It had struck him as unusual to see hollowed-out porkers being stocked in a pastry shop of all places, but damn if his own gut hadn’t rumbled hungrily in response. The sight of all that meat, coupled with the sweet aroma of pies and breads fresh from the oven, had made his mouth water like a goddamned faucet.

  Kind of like the way the mouths of the starving corpses outside the Drip ’n’ Dry were watering right now.

  Josh raised his right hand and held up his middle finger. “Yeah, well, this wittle piggy says, ‘Go fuck yerself.’ ” he said with a grin. Then he turned around to leave—only to find his three unwanted charges standing in the fire exit, frozen in the proverbial deer-meets-headlights scenario; Marisol’s hands were even still on the release bar. You would have thought getting away from the noise of the fucking alarm would have been Priority One for them—after all, it was just another dinner bell calling the damned to supper—but apparently they were too stupid to figure that out for themselves.

  “Jesus Christ, what’re you doin’?” he bellowed. “Run, you stupid shits! Run!”

  That got them moving. They bolted outside, with Josh bringing up the rear. He didn’t bother to look back when he heard the front windows shatter.

  When he stepped into the dead-end alley that ran the length of the block behind the stores and apartment buildings, he only found Marisol waiting for him. She pointed to the entrance before he could say anything.

  “They jus’ kept goin’,” she explained.

  Josh looked to the mouth of the alley, just in time to see the hipsters turn the left-hand corner. “Stupid fucks,” he snorted. “That’s just gonna take ’em back to the main street, where all the corpses are runnin’ loose.”

  “Don’ you think you oughtta go tell ’em that?” Marisol asked.

  “I don’ gotta tell ’em shit,” Josh replied with a sneer. “Let ’em figure it out for themselves.”

  That didn’t take too long; the high-pitched scream that echoed down the alley was proof enough. Josh wondered who’d voiced the nails-on-a-blackboard screech; might’ve been the girl, but for all he knew Soul Patch could’ve had a set of pipes like Donna fuckin’ Summer. The thought of piss-pants launching into a terrified rendition of “On the Radio” as zombies tore off his balls brought a wicked little smile to Josh’s lips.

  Marisol glared at him. “You’re a piece’a shit,” she snapped.

  “Yeah, an’ you’re a real charmer,” he replied dryly. “A mouth like that, it’s no wonder every guy in the shop wants t’bone you.” Before she could think of another four-letter comeback, he grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the entrance. “C’mon. Those things in the Laundromat’ll be bustin’ out here any minute, an’ I don’t wanna be stuck between them and their buddies around the corner.”

  They raced past odorous piles of trash bags from the Golden Wok restaurant next door, scattering the swarm of flies and handful of stray cats that had gathered to share a late dinner. He hopped over mounds of discarded fliers and leaflets advertising the 99-cent store abutting the Chinese takeout, and stepped gingerly around smashed beer bottles and crushed soda cans and pieces of broken furniture dumped by people in the area for who-knew-what reasons. Along the way, Josh alternated between listening to his reedy, labored breathing—he really needed to lay off the goddamn donuts—and stealing glances at Marisol’s Playboy-decorated funbags as they bounced up and down. If she noticed the attention they were getting she wasn’t saying; given the circumstances, she probably considered some guy from the shop oggling her braless titties the least of her worries. That didn’t mean she wasn’t making a mental note of every peek he took, however, and knowing her like he
did, odds were better than good she’d give him shit about his Peeping Josh act the first opportunity she got.

  He wheezed to a halt at the entrance to the alley and pulled her over to stand against the wall. He held up a hand for silence before she could object. “Lemme…lemme take a look first,” he gasped. Marisol nodded, and Josh eased his head around the corner. He immediately wished he hadn’t. “JesusMaryGod…” he croaked.

  The street was filled with zombies. Shuffling and stumbling on twisted, atrophied legs, crawling on their ruptured bellies if they couldn’t stand, they swarmed across both sides of the two-lane avenue in search of a living food. They smashed into a corner bodega and the front office of a private limousine service. They forced their way into apartment buildings and battered down the front doors of the small homes lining the next side street. Screams and shrieks and cries for mercy echoed through the neighborhood; occasionally there was the firecracker-like pop of a handgun being fired as a few well-armed residents tried to defend themselves against the undead intruders. And farther back in the distance they could hear the wail of sirens—cop cars or ambulances or fire trucks on their way to answer the frantic 911 call somebody must have placed. Or maybe the Laundromat’s fire alarm had alerted them—Josh could hear the damn thing continually blaring even from a half-block away.

  As for the two hipsters, other than a quickly drying pool of blood and a few discarded body parts, there wasn’t much left of them after they’d been ripped apart and passed around like a plate of buffalo chicken wings by the dozen or so zombies that were hunched over their remains. A snapped-off jawbone decorated with a small tuft of hair under the lower lip was proof enough of Soul Patch’s messy demise. As for his lady friend, evidence of her gastronomic fate came in the glint of streetlight bouncing off the silver nose-ring that lay on the pavement—a ring that still had part of her left nostril attached.