by Mike McCarty
“I have been waiting for someone like you to arrive,” York said. “You have a superior brain, like Dr. Pazani.”
“I’m not talking to York, am I?” Bobbie said. She nodded toward the creature. “You’re controlling his mind somehow, just like you’re controlling the mini-bots.”
“Correct,” York said. “I am Ghattambah. I have been worshipped on this island for millennia, just as I have been worshipped at other points on your Earth, and on other worlds, too.”
“You’re from outer space?” Bobbie said.
“I am from a place of which you are not aware,” York said. “A place where everything is alive and time does not exist. I am still there. And yet this aspect … this facet of me is here. My worshippers summoned me to this island in the form of an egg which they did not know how to incubate. Dr. Pazani found that egg and from that simple form, was able to resurrect me. He used the mini-bots to etch sacred symbols into the walls of this temple. Those symbols drew the needed cosmic energy to this focal point.”
“Now Pazani is dead,” Bobbie said. At that moment, the mini-bots flew off of her knee. She rubbed it, gave it a few good bends, and found to her amazement that it was completely healed. She stood up and walked closer to Ghattambah. The small, shiny black eyes embedded in the creature’s lips followed her every movement.
“At first Dr. Pazani agreed with my plans for your race. But in time he changed his stance and grew to consider himself a traitor to his own kind. Very foolish of him. Perhaps you will not be so foolish. We shall see.”
Ross had seen York touch the door with his knife, so he knew that contact with metal was the key that allowed access to the structure. So his men stood beyond the stone slab in front of the entrance and touched the door with a metal pole. The door slid down and the slab raised and tilted. Once the door slid down and out of the way, they piled a couple rocks on top of its slot so it couldn’t slide back up.
On the other side of the door, the floor slanted sharply downward into darkness. Apparently Bobbie and York were now in the building’s subsurface levels. Brandon, Ross and four soldiers then cast knotted ropes down the steep ramp and moved cautiously into the structure’s depths. They constantly aimed the beams of their flashlights down the slanted corridor to make sure no perils awaited them.
“Bobbie, can you hear me?” Brandon shouted into the darkness, but no welcome, familiar voice answered back. Occasionally he heard distant buzzing noises, but those would soon fade away.
“So what do you think, Ross?” Brandon asked. “Do you think Bobbie and York are okay?”
“That wife of yours seems like a pretty tough customer,” Ross said. “She can take care of herself just fine under any circumstances. York, I’m not so sure…”
One of the soldiers, a thin bald man named Perkins, said to Brandon, “I heard this was supposed to be honeymoon time for you and your missus. This sure is one Hell of a way to spend a honeymoon.”
“Mind your own business, Perkins,” Ross said.
“That’s okay,” Brandon said. “He has a point. I can think of a thousand things I’d rather be doing with Bobbie right now. One thing in particular comes to mind… But, there’ll be time for that once we get this crazy island figured out.”
York moved closer to Bobbie. “The insects of your world are exceptional wonders of biological engineering. They are all graceful and quite beautiful. But they have weak minds and no imagination whatsoever.”
Bobbie shrugged. “Not sure about the graceful and beautiful part, but I’ll go along with the rest of that. Go on.”
“Humans have complex minds capable of processing great amount of information. Their brains can generate vast interior landscapes of imaginative splendor. But human bodies are fragile, cumbersome and ugly.”
Bobbie stared at Ghattambah. “You’re calling humans ugly? You look like a pile of crazy dinosaur puke. I mean, you have eyes in your lips! What, so you can see what you’re eating?”
“Yes,” York said matter-of-factly. “Dr. Pazani had created some wonderful insects –”
“Of course you’d think they’re wonderful. You kind of look like one of them.”
York–or rather, the will of Ghattambah which put words in York’s mouth–paused before speaking again. “Yes, they do share some physical qualities with me. But they have simple minds. I want them to be more like me. I know how to advance the race of creatures he created to the ultimate stage of perfection. They shall be the new rulers of this green world–and I shall be their god. And the process of transformation shall begin … now.”
Even as the words left York’s lips, Ghattambah lashed out and seized Bobbie in a tangle of writhing tentacles.
At last the rescue party reached the bottom of the steep incline. Brandon noticed that the inner walls of the temple were also covered with carvings, as was the ramp.
“Look!” Ross pointed the beam of his flashlight at a streak of blood on the cream-colored stone floor. “Bobbie or York must have been hurt when they hit the floor after rolling down that ramp. And there are drops of blood leading down that hallway.”
“What do you think happened?” Brandon said.
Ross shined his flashlight further down the hall. “The trail of blood drops seems to weave around. Whoever was injured must have staggered down this hall–they must be somewhere around that corner. Let’s take a look.” He waved to the four soldiers. “Come on, get a move on.”
The group hurried down the hall and around the corner–where they came face-to-insectile-face with an entire army of Dr. Pazani’s Maximillipedes.
Before them stretched a hallway filled with thousands of the winged, centipede-like mutations. Many of them lashed their venomous stingers in the air, but none of them came forth to attack them.
“It’s like they’re … waiting for something …” Perkins said softly.
“Or someone,” Ross said. “Look, way down the hall. Somebody’s coming this way.”
Brandon aimed his flashlight down the stone passageway. “Bobbie? Is that you, Bobbie?”
The shape heading their way remotely resembled Bobbie–in the same way that a skeleton might resemble the fleshy human that used to surround it.
Bobbie was now ten feet tall–or more accurately, long. Her body was a multi-segmented, fleshy tube with a vaguely human upper torso at one end and a stinger at the other. Long, diaphanous wings sprouted from her shoulder blades. Her arms resembled the angular forelimbs of a praying mantis, except that they each ended in five stiff, slender talons.
Her eyes, once so beautiful, were still beautiful in a cold, alien sort of way, with their thousands of shining facets. Instead of small, pearly teeth, she now sported curved ivory mandibles. And from her forehead spouted two long, curved, beet-red antennae….
Brandon stared at the antennae and suddenly he remembered what he’d been told about the soap-scribbles Dr. Pazani had left on his mirror. Two long, curved strokes on the upper portion of the glass…
Apparently the doctor had tried to picture what he would look like with antennae.
“Hello, honey,” Bobbie said, her voice a freakish cross between a low purr and a buzz. “Ghattambah showed me what fate holds in store for all humans. Do you like the new me? I’m their empress now–I’ve always wanted to be royalty.”
“What? Who is Ghattambah?” Brandon cried. “What happened to you? Did this Ghattambah do this to you?” He kept wiping the tears from his eyes, but they continued to pour down his cheeks.
The giant creature moved closer to him. “We can continue the honeymoon whenever you like. I think it might be less … awkward … if you were to make the change as well. Ghattambah has given me the power to take care of that for you.”
With that, Bobbie raised her arms, and before Brandon could even think of a reply, the lashing tendrils that sprang out from the side
s of her thorax were upon him, covering his body from head to toe. The Maximillipedes sprang into action, rushing over Ross and his men with voracious glee.
“Ghattambah told me about the factor that makes the Maximillipedes breed at top speed,” Bobbie whispered to Brandon. “Can you guess what it is…? No? Then I shall tell you. It’s the ingestion of human flesh. The Maximillipedes really are the perfect weapon. The more they kill and eat–the more hungry children they can bring into the world, to kill and eat even more. Which reminds me–I have York tucked away in one of the tunnels, just for us…”
Later that evening, two long figures writhed sinuously, side by side, on the sands of a lagoon near the temple. Bobbie shared with Brandon everything that Ghattambah had told her. “You will get to meet the Eternal One soon,” she said.
“The Eternal One…” Brandon echoed. “Where is Ghattambah now?”
“Still inside, of course. Ghattambah has to stay within the temple, surrounded by the carvings. The god cannot leave the temple.” She gazed down at a bright-red beetle crawling over the sand. “Oh, look at the little one. Beautiful, isn’t it? So beautiful….” She gestured toward a bundle tucked under one of Brandon’s thick, ridged arms. “What do you have there?”
“My jacket,” he said. “I took off my wedding ring during the transformation. Had to, the way my hands were growing. You ere … busy … so you must not have noticed. I put it in one of the pockets. I don’t want to lose it. Where’s your wedding ring?”
“I took it off when I changed, like you,” she said. “But … I don’t know where it is right now. I can’t remember. It has to be in chamber where I was transformed by Ghattambah.”
“Let’s go back in and find it,” Brandon said.
They went into the temple and scampered down the long entrance ramp. A few minutes later they found the ring and Brandon put it in the pocket of his jacket along with his own ring. He then pointed to passageway on the far side of the chamber. “Where does that go?”
“I haven’t been through there,” Bobbie said. “Let’s take a look.”
Together they slinked down the cream-colored stone corridor. Along the way they saw the various nests where new Maximillipedes were hatched. They found and followed an underwater stream, which turned into a waterfall that cascaded down into a vast abyss.
Down another passageway, they encountered an overpowering gassy stench. “What is that smell?” Brandon said, almost gagging.
They looked through another doorway and saw mounds and mounds of rotting, bubbling green and yellow filth, spreading across an enormous cavern.
Bugshit. Tons of bugshit, stretching for what appeared to be acres.
“That reek is so strong,” Bobbie said. “Ammonia and a hell of a lot of methane. I’m sure we’ll get used to it.”
“Well, you could get used to it, I suppose,” Brandon said, walking behind his wife. “You can be distracted. You’re scattered. Ghattambah was able to make you accept … all of this. But I’m more focused. Always have been.” He pulled his jacket out from under his arm and took a small, rounded item out of one of its pockets. “You know how I wanted our honeymoon to end?”
“No…” Bobbie said, staring out over the piles of insect poop. “Tell me, sweetheart.”
“With a bang.” Pulling the pin, Brandon flung the hand grenade into the methane-filled chamber.
Once Bobbie realized what he had done, she turned on him with a high-pitched squeal of rage and tore off his head. Then she realized what she had done, and plunged a razor-sharp talon into her own heart.
When the grenade exploded amid the gaseous wastes, the blast caused a massive cave-in. The temple above the cavern collapsed as it fell through the ground, destroying the complex carvings that tied Ghattambah to this dimension. The Earth-based facet of the horrid god was instantly hurled back to its native realm, where everything is alive and time does not exist.
The military hadn’t needed to blow up the island after all. Just the temple–the very thing they were trying to save.
Mark and Mike Stories
co-written with the
Zombie Ladies:
Kyra M. Schon of Night of the Living Dead
and
Linnea Quigley of Return of the Living Dead
Arlene Schabowski
of the Undead
by Mark McLaughlin and Kyra M. Schon
Really? Right now?
Okay.
Let me tell you about a nice lady, who lives not too far from here. She was in the movie. And still is, in a way.
Her name is Lorraine Tyler–and also Arlene Schabowski. Lorraine is in her early forties, though you couldn’t tell by looking at her. She has long, wavy blonde hair. Arlene is nine years old, and she has long, wavy blonde hair, too. Most people would agree that she looks quite dead.
Lorraine played Arlene, all those years ago. Lorraine stopped, but Arlene kept right on playing.
After the zombies swarmed the building, Arlene devoured most of her parents–they were hers, so she certainly deserved the best parts–and then simply wandered off into the night. And the night was filled with shambling, ravenous corpses, feasting upon the flesh of the living. But the undead knew she was one of them, so she was safe from their hunger. Her body held no warmth, no nourishing spark of life to entice the other zombies. That was the last the viewers ever saw of her.
But she needed food, for she was–and still is–always hungry. Deliriously hungry. For there is a deep black coldness within her that constantly needs filling. Sometimes, right after she has eaten, she actually feels alive again. Perhaps even better than alive. She felt that way after she ate her parents, and she wanted to feel it again. So she wandered through the woods, through the darkness, until she came to another farmhouse.
Now at this point, One might ask, “They never showed what happened to the little girl after she wandered off. Didn’t the police get her when they came and shot all the zombies’ brains out?”
Obviously not.
One might also wonder, “’Fear-Farm of the Undead’ was only a movie, wasn’t it?”
Well, yes and no.
Lorraine Tyler’s father was one of the producers and stars of the movie, which was made on a shoe-string budget. The money her family put into that movie back then wouldn’t even buy a decent new car these days. Her father, mother and some of their friends wanted to make a movie, so they pooled their resources, found a few more investors and did it. And Lorraine got to play a little girl who gets bitten, turns into a zombie and eats her parents.
Lorraine went on to become a school teacher with a cool website selling “Fear-Farm” memorabilia. Teachers get time off during the summer, so she started going to conventions, meeting fans, doing a lot more to promote her memorabilia sideline. She did that for years. Made good money, too. Last year she made enough to buy a nice little vacation in Mexico.
People still watch that movie all the time. Still think about it. “Fear-Farm of the Undead” has spawned hundreds of knock-off versions, most of them released direct-to-video. And Lorraine has watched every one of them. Because she is also Arlene Schabowski, and wants to know what other zombies are doing.
Somewhere out there, it is always night, and a little dead girl who is also a living school teacher is always hungry.
Anyway. Back to that other farmhouse.
Arlene could hear cows mooing in the distance. The sound made her hungry. She crept up to the house and looked in the window, into a quaint, tidy living room, with knick-knacks on little cherrywood tables and furniture draped with lace doilies. An old woman was sitting at her desk, reading some papers. She had long white hair and wore a dark-gray housecoat. Of course, everything in that world is black and white or shades of gray, just like in the movie. The old woman must not have turned on the radio or the TV that day or
night–she looked so peaceful, it was clear she had no idea what was going on.
The little dead girl went to the front door and knocked. The old woman called out, as cheery as can be, “Who is it?”
Now, none of the other zombies in that movie were able to talk. All they ever did was grunt and roar and squeal. But Arlene was able to think really hard and call upon the abilities of her other self, Lorraine. And she managed to rasp out the three-word phrase from the movie for which she is best known. She also says a four-word phrase early in the movie, but most folks don’t remember that. No, they only remember what she says just before she turns into a zombie: “Help me, Mommy.”
“Mommy? I’m nobody’s Mommy!” the old woman cried. “Who’s out there? Is this some kind of a joke?” So saying, she threw open the door. “My God! Little girl, are you hurt? There’s blood all over you!”
Arlene held out her arms, just like she did before she killed her movie-Mommy, who was played by her real-life mother. Again, she said, “Help me, Mommy.”
“Of course I’ll help you, you poor thing.” The old woman knelt before her. She must have had something wrong with her knees, because she winced with pain. “So tell me, who did this to you? Who–”
Her next few words were lost in a thick gurgle of black blood, because by then Arlene had her little teeth embedded in the old woman’s throat. And even though the dear old thing was past her prime, she was still full of warm, delicious, intoxicating life.
Arlene ate her fill and by the time she was done, that sweet old woman looked like a car-wreck victim, sans safety belt. Arlene turned and strayed into the night. She didn’t wait around to watch the old woman’s gnawed carcass scramble back to hungry life.
Mind you, while all that was going on, poor, confused Lorraine was hiding in some bushes in the school playground, screaming and wondering why all these bad things were going on in her head. The other kids thought she had gone nuts. Her parents and the teachers talked about it later, and based on what she’d told them, they decided she had an over-active imagination. They told her not to let the bad images scare her–they were make-believe, so they couldn’t hurt her. It was all in her head, they said, and in a way it was. Hers was a sort of Reality Surplus Disorder. It’s hard to concentrate when you’ve got another personality playing in your mind.