by K Helms
“Baliel," muttered the knight with certainty and contempt.
He saw four more of the carnivorous corpses trudging toward him. One was a nurse that had handed out meds to him a couple days before. She was definitely not the same woman. When he had last seen her, she had been smiling and friendly. She had a healthy rosy shade upon her cheeks days before, but now her color was ashen, dark circles ringed her eyes and her lips were a bluish tint. Beside her was the walking remnant of a former patient. The right half of his face had been ripped from his skull and flesh dangled and flapped with each stumbling step. The other two had been orderlies and their white lab coats were stained and streaked in the blood of the insane. The knight ran at them. Usually that was enough for most of his enemies to make a hasty retreat, but not these. He watched as they hooked their hands into claws and their jaws opened to an impossible gap, which they slammed opened and shut like crocodiles.
He swung the blade sideways lopping the head off the woman nurse. Her body hit the floor with a heavy thump as her head slammed into the wall before dropping to the floor and rolling to a stop by the wheel of a gurney. The other zombies grabbed at Regeliel, restraining him, beating fists against him biting against the steel of his armor plate. He heard teeth cracking together with tremendous force as he jerked the blade upward spiking one of the orderlies beneath the chin; he twisted the blade and wrenched it back down dropping the dead man in a disjointed heap at Regeliel’s feet.
He felt one of the orderlies grabbing at his helmet and trying to rip it from his head. Regeliel slammed the pommel end of the dagger upon the top of the orderly’s skull, shattering it. The orderly stumbled, but regained its feet and flung itself at him again. Regeliel slashed the man’s throat, the cartilage of his larynx peeked through the torn, mottled skin, but the orderly took no notice. The knight drove the blade into the side of the orderly’s head just in front of the ear and pried up and down sawing at it until the dead man slumped to the floor with his jaws frozen in an abnormally wide position. The patient that remained still cracked his teeth against the armor of the knight’s left forearm. The zombie’s teeth finally found purchase upon Regeliel’s gauntlet and squeezed his jaws together like a pneumatic vice. Regeliel thrust the hand that was being bitten and slammed the dead man into the cinderblock wall. The force of it slammed the dead man’s head against the wall, crushing the back of his skull to the man’s ear; he spazmed, his feet kicked once as the knight held him a foot off the floor until the man was still. As the knight released him, spilling him to the floor, he felt more hands clutching at the leather straps that held the steel plate, and he jerked away, spinning to look behind him. There stood his friend.
“Murashell…” whispered the knight. But it wasn’t his friend any longer. The doctor’s nose had been chewed off revealing the division of cartilage beneath. His top lip had also been lost rendering him a permanent sneer. Regeliel felt their fingernails clicking against his armor, clawing, probing for exposed flesh to tear into.
“I am sorry, my friend,” said Regeliel and drove the point of the blade into the doctor’s eye as he had the first dead man, knowing how fast it had dispatched him. The same rule applied, and the doctor teetered on his heels for a moment then fell backward, his head hitting the tile floor like a ripe melon, shattering beneath the mass of black hair.
More of the dead lunged forward and he saw another pack massing behind them. He darted back to the stairwell; his armor rattling as he ran. There would be no victory in this enclosed area, eventually he would be overrun.
Chapter 6 – Waterloo
Our Lady of Mercy Hospital
Charleston, West Virginia
Napoleon Bonaparte AKA Earl Timmons sprinted onto the lawn of Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, his gown flapping open behind him like the French flag, if the French flag had been represented by two pale moons.
Insanity had its pros in that he was virtually fearless; the cons were that he was virtually fearless. Throw caution to the wind, flush tactics down the commode; this incarnation of Napoleon fought every battle as if it were Waterloo. Unfortunately, he only had the attitude of Napoleon in his fragmented personality. Insanity wasn’t magic it didn’t actually give Earl the Emperor’s battlefield wisdom, only the belief that he did.
As he broke into daylight, the brightness of the sun on the snow blinded his one good eye for a moment. Bah! I have no need for eyes! Napoleon thought feverishly; he could still hear after all and did an Emperor such as him need more than that?
Slowly his vision came back but by that time he had already run into the side of a parked Buick; the impact throwing him to the ground where he cursed a blue streak as he dusted his gown free of snow with his free hand. He could have none of that ruining his battle dress. He saw the dead closing in on him, surrounding him slowly and completely.
The Emperor’s temper raged. In his mind the dead were nothing short of mutineers.
He screamed profanities in garbled English with a French accent, like an enraged Inspector Clouseau. The dead groaned back at him disrespectfully.
The four closest to him encircled Earl/ Napoleon snapping their jaws and flailing their arms like clubs, but he pressed forward to the closest one. The Emperor would never retreat.
The filed down bed rail slashed, stabbed and parried. He had managed to cut one of the zombies’ hands, but the thrusts didn’t faze them in the least. He swung wildly, a dervish in a flood of flesh. Their fingernails hooked into his exposed skin, ripping into the meat that covered his bones but the emperor fought on ignoring the pain. He felt teeth sink into the back of his calf and he slammed the point of the blade into the back of the crawlers’ neck, severing the spinal cord but its jaws were locked firmly onto his lower leg. The bite burned within the meat.
He felt his vision blur as his mind cleared. Shock had begun to set in and in that mental trauma he regained his former self.
He was Earl Timmons, a factory worker, engaged to a great girl named Joanna, not Josephine…no not anymore, she had left him. He remembered wrecking his truck and the loss of his eye. He wondered what had ever happened to Joanna, if she was dead, and if she waited in the ranks of the dead to feast on his flesh. Was Joanna now just a parasite, much like he had been to her? He remembered the disappointments he had brought to so many and regret filled his heart. He felt the bed rail slip from his fingers as more and more of the dead converged on him, toppling him to the ground.
The snow felt warm, like a red lace blanket and he felt his eyes growing as heavy as his heart. He felt fingers press like machines into his stomach with hydraulic force, the nails piercing, tearing, and exposing his organs. He felt teeth sink, clamp, rip, shake and rend him.
They were voracious. Greedy, were the dead. There was an intangible awareness of the hatred they had for the living. Envy maybe, thought Earl.
He heard his ribs snapping as bruised hands clutched at them and wrenched them backward to expose the meat of his slowing heart.
He smiled bitterly as he thought that they probably wouldn’t like the taste of that organ. How long had that sanctum of love and kindness been a dried and empty husk?
The dead didn’t seem to mind the flavor of regret. They tore into him like sharks, like jackals, like piranha, like hyenas shredding him, and he fell into a pit of darkness that made him feel as if he was burning. He had but one lingering thought.
“I feel so hungry,” he groaned and snapped his jaws greedily.
Chapter 7 - No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Christ’s Table Mission
Rollins, West Virginia
Karen Oswald spent her early mornings volunteering at the local homeless shelter, serving breakfast to those less fortunate. Though poor herself, her family had been raised to help even if it meant self-sacrifice. She stood behind the counter dolling out ladles full of oatmeal and scooping out scrambled eggs as the less fortunate slid their trays across the steel tubes to get their free breakfast.
Karen tried not to judge,
but sometimes it wasn’t easy. A lot of the people getting free meals were morbidly obese and it didn’t seem fair that her husband Foster was so skinny and worked so hard, but would never accept charity. He would find work where he could, he always did. His friend Jim Claymont always found something for him.
She was snapped from her reverie by the sound of a man’s voice that sounded like he had a glob of peanut butter stuck in his throat. The sound of that voice made her want to clear her throat involuntarily.
“I’m real hungry this morning, Ma’am,” said the man.
She looked up from the metal tin of scrambled eggs and saw the fattest man she had ever laid eyes on. He looked sick, though. Dark bags hung beneath his drooping eyes like satchels of blood and at the corners of his eyes a thick yellow fluid had gathered like cottage cheese curds. His face was gray and thin red veins streaked over his cheeks giving them an appearance of roadmaps. As he spoke his multiple chins shook like the beard of a turkey. “Yeah…I am so fucking hungry,” he said thickly, as he eyed the food with almost a look of lust in his gaze.
“Well, we are happy to give you breakfast, but please don’t use that kind of language,” she said softly and politely.
“What? Fucking? You don’t like that word?” he asked, still looking longingly at the food.
“No sir, I don’t. This is the Lord’s kitchen,” she explained patiently.
He smiled revealing a set of yellow teeth that were packed with remnants of previous meals.
“Are you alright, mister?” she asked
“Yeah…just so...hungry,” he repeated absently.
Karen eyes widened when she noticed an ethereal gray black haze that seemed to writhe around the fat man and she suddenly felt the urge to pee. She turned her head to ask her friend Gladys if she would take her place while she used the bathroom. As she did the man lunged forward, grabbing her wrist and pulling her forward over the counter. The tin of eggs clattered to the floor and she screamed. The man brought her arm to his mouth and bit down, sinking his yellow teeth into her flesh.
Several of the other patrons jumped on his large back, others grabbed his arms and one began to punch the man in the side of the face. Karen screamed again as she tore her arm from the fat man’s mouth, blood pouring from the jagged wound. She watched as the pastor, Dick McManus, a reformed biker, tackled the fat man and beat the man in the head with the handle of a thick wooden spoon. She hated to see the good pastor resort to his former behavior, but thanked God for his intervention.
The wound on her hand burned like it was on fire and she felt the fire slowly travel up her arm. “Oh Jesus, help me,” she whispered and heard the pastor yell for some of the kitchen staff.
“Call an ambulance!” Dick shouted as he continued to piston his right fist into the fat man’s face. He drove it forward again hitting the fat man in the mouth, the fat man accepted the fist into his gaping jaws and clamped his broken yellow teeth around the knuckles. The pastor screamed and that was the last that Karen Oswald remembered until she woke up in the ambulance.
Chapter 8 - We Put the Fun in Funeral
Chard and Mangold Funeral Home
Dayton, Ohio
Daniel Tyson had driven from Zanesville to attend his Aunt’s funeral. He hadn’t known her very well, at least since he was ten or eleven. Daniel remembered that she had been nice and had made him cookies. The rumor was that she had been loaded. Sure, he was sorry that she had died, but he secretly hoped that there was a surprise waiting for him at the reading of her will on Tuesday.
He met his mom and sister in the parking lot. His mom smiled wanly at him as he approached them on the sidewalk in front of the funeral home. He bent toward her and kissed her on the cheek. She grasped his tie and straightened it.
“You look very handsome.”
“I feel like a douche bag,” Daniel said, “This suit makes me itch.” He irritably ran a finger under the collar of his shirt.
His mom smiled, “You said the same thing when you were six.”
Daniel shrugged. He felt extremely uncomfortable, not only because of the cheap suit he had just bought two days ago, but also because he hated funerals. He was aware that the ritual was supposed to give closure or some other load of crap, but to him they were just plain weird. He wasn’t trying to be insensitive or apathetic, but he didn’t believe that the worm farm lying in that box was anxiously awaiting the preacher’s kick ass eulogy.
There was also the smell of all those flowers, powdery like an old woman’s perfume that made him want to choke. He figured that they were there to cover the underlying scent of death and slow decay or formaldehyde.
His mom slid her arm into the crook of his, and they walked into the parlor together, his sister trailing behind as she hot-boxed a cigarette.
They walked to the casket and peered upon the motionless body of his aunt Vicky. There, lying in that quilted crate she slept. It was a sad and distorted image of his vague memories of the woman. She was caked with make up in a pitiful attempt to make the carcass look rosy-cheeked and ready to crawl out of its box and do some jumping jacks.
From behind him he heard the same old rehearsed lines that made his skin crawl.
“She looks so peaceful.” That was his favorite. It was an oldie, but a goodie. He was looking right at the old girl and she didn’t look that peaceful to him. If you asked him she looked downright creepy; like she should be in a wax museum, almost lifelike, but not quite.
As the trio turned from the casket and made their way to their seats Daniel scanned the room, shaking his head indignantly and did a poor job of masking his disdain for his extended family. He saw his Uncle Dan fidgeting as he nicked for a smoke, but Daniel knew that anxiety all too well, he needed a cigarette himself. There was one of his cousins sitting against the far wall. Daniel couldn’t remember the dude’s name, but he had an earphone screwed into his left ear. The man’s wife sat beside him and kept shooting him glances that glared with disapproval, but more than likely it was on what she feared as public perception than it was actual distaste. He saw the same bored expressions that virtually screamed that they were thinking more about picking up a Quarter Pounder or a Whopper when they busted out of this joint than reminiscing about the deceased. He noticed a dude that he didn’t recognize checking out one of his cousins, and judging from the expression that dripped like grease from his lips; Daniel didn’t want to know what the dude was doing to her in his head.
Of course, sitting in the front row was his Aunt Shirley. She wailed like a banshee and made exaggerated movements so everyone would be aware of her enormous despair at the loss of her sister. The only thing she was missing was a bull horn and a neon sign.
Daniel had to stifle a laugh when he saw his Uncle Pete doze off and smack his forehead on the chair back in front of him. He thought that Uncle Pete must have Narcolepsy because the man was always falling asleep at the most inopportune times.
They sat three rows back from the casket. It was odd for close family to sit so far back from the casket, but due to the sheer volume of phony mourners, it was as close as they could get. He saw his Mom dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her handkerchief, trying in vain to keep her mascara from running, and he put his arm around her shoulder. She patted his knee as she looked at him, and he nodded. Daniel had never been very good with words, he knew what he wanted to say, but his words always betrayed him, not to mention that his tone seemed to invariably sound sarcastic. He was aware that he often sounded like a dick when he spoke, so unless he was around his closest of friends he tended to keep his mouth shut if at all possible.
Daniel saw that some of his more distant relatives were looking at him suspiciously, as if he were about to start praying to Satan or sacrificing a goat anytime now. They hated his long hair, which was pulled back into a pony tail and trailed down the middle of his back. He was sweating nervously and was aware that he was starting to smell riper than his Aunt laying at the front of the viewing room. Although he hated th
e smell of all those flower arrangements he was also glad their smell was enough to at least mask his own nervous odor. His stomach and guts were churning and he squirmed in his seat as he tried desperately not to fart out all the gas produced from last night’s Taco Bell. He tried to focus his mind on anything other than what the Reverend was saying. As an agnostic and mostly apathetic, he didn’t know, and he didn’t care, but he had to concentrate on something. He wondered how his own eulogy would sound and the scenario played in his mind. Would the preacher be swimming in sweat, nervously patting down his forehead trying desperately not to offend his family? Probably; he figured that the preacher would have a hard time convincing the audience that Daniel rested in the arms of Jesus. Daniel knew how he was perceived and that clergy probably didn’t believe that heaven had tattoo parlors or tittie bars.
The reverend said something that snapped him back to reality so he grudgingly listened for the sake of his mother. Eulogies were hokum. The description given of Daniel’s Aunt Vicky could have been used interchangeably on a thousand other people.
Vague, but final.
To his credit the preacher tried to say the right things in the right tone of voice to comfort those that desperately needed that reassurance.
An image crept into Daniel’s mind and he again had to stifle a fit of laughter. In his mind he tried to reanimate his aunt by scuffing his shoes on the carpeted floor and zapping her on the nose with his finger like a super low budget Frankenstein.
He didn’t know what he was supposed to believe other than the fact that last night’s pintos and cheese had been a very bad idea. He listened to the light sounds of sniffing and sobs that dotted the room. He tried focusing on the pictures of his aunt, her family and friends that were posted to a large board propped on an easel to the left of the casket. He felt the gas bubble in his bowels recede for a moment and he was able to relax his sphincter for a second.