Zombie Bitches From Hell

by Campbell, Zoot

  So these dudes are doing their marching in a circle routine when off-camera we can hear shouts and screams and the signs of minor mayhem. But it is most definitely not minor. From the left we see a swarm of about five thousand black-cloaked broads running in to where this cube thing is. Now be sure that the cube is blocked in all around by walls—looks like a gigantic courtyard bigger than two football fields. In other words, getting in may be an orderly event through a gate or something but getting out is not going to be so simple if everybody is in a hurry. These women are in their burkas like I said before—you know the black-hooded bathrobe looking thing that the men force the women to wear so other men cannot lust over these ugly fucking broads that only a blind dude would lust over anyway. I mean, even some computer hacker geek who wacks it five or six times a day would still marry his palm rather than go near the pussy of one of these stank factories. Well, maybe not every geek, but a big majority.

  We’re all thinking that the broads have had enough and it’s probably the end of their world too like the dumbass Christians have been bally-hooing about for maybe a thousand years and maybe all these assholes on both sides of the aisle finally got it right. I mean you put your bet on number ten on the roulette wheel long enough—like a hundred years, every day, ten times a day—it’s bound to come in, right? But we’re watching the vid and some of the burkas have fallen off and underneath each one is a broad with the GaGa. They all got it, as a matter of fact, and now also keep in mind that these dudes always have guns on them—you know every time they celebrate some stupid shit thing, they fire a rifle in the air—even their fucked up leaders. But in this fucking “holy” place, you got to check your gun at the door like in Abilene when Wyatt Earp tells every dead-eye sheep-fucking cowboy they can’t come into the saloon with a weapon; except him of course.

  These GaGa bitches are berserking in a style we have not to this point witnessed: It is mess en masse. They are jumping the guys and biting and tearing, rending meat from the bones, dicks and balls being the main prize and then all the other goodies. Some cop types eventually show up and start shooting but everybody is covered head to toe in more black cloth than losers at a Goth Halloween party, so it’s hard to tell male from female so they just shoot everyone they can. Everybody knows these cocksuckers don’t give a hoot in Muslim hell who they kill, as long as it someone. But the GaGa bitches do not go down easily and if a man gets shot it just makes it that much easier for the hungry ones to chow down. In less than a half hour, mostly everyone is dead or dying. One of the cops takes out a pistol and blows his own head off but collapses near a bitch who is wounded and pinned under some other bitches. She still attacks his good parts the way you’d think grandma would eat some turkey on Thanksgiving.

  Eventually, an armored troop carrier shows up and flame-throws the whole kit and kaboodle bunch of them. I like that about these countries. They don’t think, “Maybe they have some constitutional rights that we need to consider.” Nope, they shoot first and have fun later. They turn this fire hose on the bastards that is filled with Sterno or some shit like that and there is a barbecue the likes of which no one has ever seen. Thick black smoke goes billowing up into the sky and a good number of the pricks being burned are not quite dead so they are running around, screaming and trying to get help while the bitches are still eating even though they, too, are burning. One guy falls into a group of about six of the burning broads and as they are eating him from the belly up and he’s shouting, their heads are on fire and the only thing anyone can see is the slashing white teeth glaring out from the blackened flaming heads. It doesn’t take long for the entire crowd to be burned worse than a side of beef at a drunken Texas bar-b-cue.

  More soldiers show up and pot-shoot at a few stragglers. It seems contained but unbeknownst to anyone at the scene, the smoke is carrying the human ash up and out where it is settling like tiny bits of soot everywhere in the region. One of the American scientists with a wry smile that he sorta hides like he’s pretending to be the Mona Lisa, says that the population of the Middle East has been reduced by almost ninety-five percent. What the idiot didn’t take into account was the fact that there are a whole lot of our guys in uniform over there and what has happened to them cannot be guessed but we all know it’s not good. We’re hoping they’ve safely holed up but Jack Larson, one of the interns, says, “Hey, guys, don’t forget that there are a lot of women in the military. They got guns and ammo and know how to use it. Wonder if the GaGa makes them forget their training.” No one answers but we all hope that the disease makes the bitches lose their human nature and just makes them mad with the hunger. What if they do get organized, I think. Crap, I sure hope I don’t ever see that day arrive.

  CHAPTER 5

  I’ll admit I could not sleep the night before we were going to leave. I went outside and sat next to a rock and looked up at the sky. There was no moon and every star you could imagine was shining and little meteorites shot past like bottle rockets I had set off when I was a kid. I could see the red tips of the guards cigarettes, hear them shuffling over the gravel as they made their rounds. The transmission tower that I was so impressed with when I got this job loomed up, black steel against the blue velvet sky. Sometimes I still think this is all a dream, a nightmare that perked in my brain because I saw too many horror flicks when I was a kid. Maybe this is a dream and I’ll wake up or maybe this whole world is a computer game in someone’s CPU, someone who’s alive in the year 2500. And he’s fucking with us. Makes us go through shit just to see what we’ll do and knows that he can hit a key and we’re all erased along with the seven seas, the seven continents, the eight planets, the milky way and the universe—that’s it all in some supernerd’s new game that he got for Christmas and he dreamed up the GaGa because he’s bored with all the usual wars and cancer and AIDs and heart attacks and ragheads blowing shit up. “Hey,” he says, “I’ll turn all the females into flesh-eating raving lunatic monsters. Maybe that will be fun to watch. Those concentration camps were cool and I loved Hiroshima. But this is going to beat all. Hey, Fred, come here. You gotta see this. Check it out.” Well, fuck him and his mother and his father and Fred and anyone who knows the prick. Fuck them all to hell.

  So you see I’m not into wondering anymore and I’m not going to philosophize. No point and it isn’t me. I’m biding my time until dawn when Rick and Tim and MG and yours truly get in that fucking balloon and head east to find Jen or whatever is left of her and if that doesn’t work, maybe we’ll just keep floating over the Atlantic or wherever to whatever.

  I’m looking for the constellations and cannot pick them out easily because at this altitude and lack of humidity, there are so many stars that even the Big Dipper is buried in them. I look out over the valley and the purple glow of dawn is simmering on the horizon. I can see the city which is now just a bunch of dark cubes and rectangles like some kid’s blocks left in a ditch overnight. No lights, no sounds, no cars, none of the reddish glow over the Mile High City that you could see from a hundred miles away just a year ago. I know there must be pockets of men hiding out in basements or attics or in the hundreds of mine shafts that pock the foothills. But I also know that most guys are going to bring their wives and daughters along, maybe a girlfriend. It only takes one and then they’re all at it; the tearing, the biting, the gouging, the swallowing. The blood, the death. Just take one of them along and it’s the end. My mom told me that the devil can’t come in if you don’t invite her. It’s the most natural invitation any dick swinger could make.

  I’m interrupted in my reverie. This guy named Alan opens the bunk door, steps out and lights a cigarette. Wearing a red and white striped shirt that looks like a barber pole. He starts walking to the perimeter and sees me, comes over.

  “Hey, kiddo, how’s it hangin’,” he says. Alan is at most five years older than me but I guess he can call me “kiddo” if he wants. He was a copy editor—the guy that took the news from the wire service and translated it into the teleprompter.r />
  “Beautiful night. Can’t sleep much. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, I know. She must be something. That’s a lonnnnng way through hostile territory for poontang. No offense. I’m sorry. Guess it’s getting to me.”

  “No offense taken.”

  “But, ya know, maybe it’s better than hiding up here, I guess. My wife went to Oklahoma City to help her mom recuperate from a fall. The old bag tripped on the cat and broke her hip. Haven’t heard from her in weeks. Maybe she’s hiding, maybe she’s gone over to the other side. Not much I can do about it. I dream about her a lot. Sometimes she’s a GaGa and I wake up sweating bullets; sometimes she’s the beautiful girl I fell in love with and married. We honeymooned at the Grand Canyon. You know, that lodge that sits at the north quarter. We’d make love all night, wake up to hawks hooting the way they do and watch the sun rise over the eastern rim. When I wake up, I got tears in my eyes. I know you think I’m a sap or something. But I miss her. So I know what you’re thinking and why you’re doing it. I’d ask for a lift, but what would I do when I get there? I guess I’m just a coward.” He took a long drag on his smoke and exhaled two perfect rings that floated up like magic donuts into the still night air.

  “This whole shit thing no one could imagine. Whether I make it or not, don’t think it matters. I’m taking it a day at a time,” I say, making a good effort to not be judgmental.

  “You think we can last up here?”

  “I don’t know a better place. At least it’s out in the open. Not holed up like a rat in trap. Plenty of supplies. Communication with the outside world. Can’t say.”

  Alan sat a while and stared up at the same starry sky. Didn’t say another word. Got up, muttered something that sounded like “Good-night” and went back to the tech shed.

  My cellphone rings and I jump up from a light sleep. It’s Jen; not her voice but a text. Says: “Hurry. Need U. Vaccine.”

  Hurry? How the fuck can I hurry. Does she have the vaccine? Would it be too late? I text her back: “Coming ASAP. Hang in.” Not exactly Romeo and Juliet, but this ain’t Verona.

  CHAPTER 6

  The mountains are turning that dusty violet color when I see the surface of a foothill about a half mile out begin to move. I rub my bleary eyes thinking it’s the dust and the sleeplessness or maybe the updraft winds that own this valley are playing tricks. But no. It’s none of these things. The skin on that hill is moving like a rug being pulled by a giant.

  Then I realize it’s people. Must be two or three thousand people moving in a slow swarm up from the city, up the foothills and inching toward us like lava in reverse.

  I run to one of the guards—Jim, I think his name is. He looks and signals to the guy in the watchtower who uses his binoculars to verify what I just told them.

  “Shit,” he says. “It’s a million of them. Movin’ slow and steady up here. Don’t make any noise. Alert the others. Maybe they’ll just pass us by. No one knows we’re up here.” Right, I think. Pass us by. Sure. And maybe we’ll sprout wings and fly to Hawaii for a fucking luau.

  They do know. I’m up and running back to the shed where everyone is sleeping, shouting the alarm. I get Tim and Rick riled.

  “Rick, get the balloon ready. Now.”

  He looks at me and knows this is not the plan of the slow rise into the wild blue yonder and the fond farewells. He also knows if we don’t move quick, some of these guys are going to try to board the gondola, swamp it and we’ll be fucked. For a moment, I think maybe better now than later. We’re the dead men walking anyway. Then I remember Jen, tell Tim to get MG and get in the gondola pronto.

  “Just do it quiet. No panicking or our asses are finished here,” I say quite steadily considering I’m almost pissing myself. As I head to the gondola, I remember that scene in the Wizard of Oz flick where they’re all supposed to get in the balloon with the phony wizard but Dorothy runs after her dog and misses getting in and the fucking thing takes off without her. But out back, I see Tim and MG already boarded.

  Tim signals with his hand and has his rifle ready. Rick is firing up the burner. With a few quick steps and a hurdle jump, I’m in.

  “Let’s go,” I loud whisper.

  One of the guards—remember these are weekend warrior National Guardsmen who made it up here at the first sign of trouble—says, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going? Get to the barricades.”

  “Captain,” I say, knowing full well this is just an asshole in a uniform who worked at the local Ford dealer selling shit pick-up trucks to rednecks. “We’re not going anywhere. Sir, we’ve already cleared the idea with the major. We’re going to lift off fifty feet and do some reconnaissance. If it’s trouble those bitches want, we’ll rain down shock and awe on their asses. Permission sought, sir.” Man, I am slinging it, hoping he doesn’t realize there is no major here. I salute.

  “Permission granted,” he says saluting back. I’m thinking if we survive all this I’ll carve this jerk-offs head next to Lincoln’s on Mt Rushmore myself if I have to use a nail file to do it.

  Tim grabs my shoulder and smiles at me with a nod as if to say, “Nice work.” For someone who doesn’t speak much, he can express himself.

  The balloon rises about thirty feet off the ground and I’m watching the swarm approach. It is a massive horde of GaGa broads, some looking no more than seven or eight years old. There must be at least two thousand of them. They’re moving at the same pace they’d move if they were at a mall looking for a bargain. The guys below are armed to the teeth and holed up in hidden spots all around the transmission tower. The perimeter fence is electrified but I don’t know if it can handle that much resistance. It was designed to keep teenagers on a bender out. Maybe an itinerant drunk.

  I was amazed that the guys could hold off firing until the bitches reached the sandbag barrier. They open fire on them. The barrier slows them down but the bullets do very little. It’s still mostly dark so the flares from the muzzles looks like flashbulbs. Tim takes aim and I stop him.

  “This battle is not ours anymore. Don’t waste your ammo. We got a long way to go.”

  He looks at me and nods but still keeps the rifle at hand. MG is wagging his tale like he’s expecting breakfast. I manage a smile at his dumb face.

  “Release the line,” says Rick.

  I unhook the grillion from the loop guard and toss the rope to the ground. Rick hits full fire-up and the sound of that flame is like an atomic blast. Even the bitches stop in their tracks. The guys all turn and look up like maybe the Avenging Angels have descended from the heavens. But, no, it’s just us running like rabbits for pastures unknown. One of the soldiers yells, “You traitors, motherfuckers!” and fires at us. We duck and he misses because the balloon is rising so fast and gets picked up by a mountain up-current so quickly that only an experienced hunter could hit us. We’re all knocked to the sides of the gondola and even MG is flat on his ass quietly whimpering. I stand up and look over the edge with Tim. The sun has risen and the entire hilltop is illuminated in broad Rocky Mountain daylight.

  The swarm is at the fence and the electricity is doing its thing. The bitches grab the fence and smoke streams out of their hands and their hair catches on fire. Large globs of the black ooze spill out as their faces burst open and the bullets fly through their dead flesh. (We learned much later on that the only way to kill a GaGa bitch is to shoot her ovaries. Either through the belly or through the back. I had seen Mrs. Fark and Hannah die in this way but I didn’t know then why and can only guess now. Eggs? The source of the double X chromosome? My biology is probably fucked up so don’t hold me to it.) And things change.

  The moaning and screaming is filling the air. MG is huddled at my feet as we float over the scene below. The circle that was our “fortress” is completely surrounded by the swarm. At the northern end, where the fence has a slight break in it to accommodate a huge boulder sticking out of the rockface, the fence collapses and the bitches pour through. From the air it’
s a narrow breach but our guys just can’t handle the flood. The shooting almost stops as the ammo gives out—I think—or the guys just instinctively start to run. But where can they run to? There is no cave, no shelter, not even a goddamned tree to climb. Some make it back to the generator shed which has smoke coming out of it but the bitches are on top of them. A new kind of screaming weaves its way through the desert air to us up in our balloon.

  It’s the sound of men being eaten alive. I can see the soldiers punching and swinging their rifles at the bitches but the sheer number of them is overwhelming. As the men fall, the bitches go first for the dick and balls, ripping off the pants with nails and teeth and pulling the meat out with a stretching yank. Red blood is lapped at like cats at a milk-filled saucer. The balls are fought over, dicks chewed from both ends, the bitches ending up face to face, lip to lip. Then the men’s faces and necks when the screaming stops and finally the pulling open of the belly, intestines dragged out like rope uncoiling, the little girls fighting over the shit-filled tubes because the bigger bitches are getting the good parts. Two guys come running from the tech shed with machetes and they’re hacking away as if they are in some deep part of the Amazon rain forest and are chopping their way through the undergrowth. But this is not vegetation; it is a swarm of mostly third stage GaGa bitches, ravenous as piranhas, numerous as flies on a buffalo carcass in the Sahara. The machete boys make a good go of it, bitches’ heads flying off, tits being split open, guts oozing with the black coagulant that the bitches are full of. But in no time, the guys are down watching their balls being yanked off and fought over, dicks being devoured. One guy has his liver ripped out right through his belly. His head is being held down and gnawed by two old bitches and the young ones are squeezing the liver out like a sponge and blood is pouring into their mouths. He screams, but their teeth find his tongue and then his throat and all he is now is meat.