“Why don’t you get stuffed”, Chaz replied.
“Fuck him, he’s useless – I’ll go,” said Tim.
Tim was a modern day hippie. Wore his hair long in a ponytail, scruffy beard, Birkenstocks, Tie-dye, Greenpeace stickers on his Prius, the whole works, but he was an all right guy, and a good friend.
Artie turned to me and said, “Why don’t you go see if you can help your friend find some of the boards and things we need – I’ll see what I can do to unruffle Chaz’s feathers; he’s really not such a bad guy, once you get to know him.” I nodded and walked off after Tim.
“You know, Chaz,” Artie said, you really aren’t making this any easier.”
“Look all I know is, we were doing a lot better off until you started taking in all these strays – first the big guy, but him, he didn’t bother me much, he just kept to himself, but these two – they are going to be trouble, mark my words. We were doing just fine when it was just you, me, and Jerry cooped up in here. Even them things out there didn’t seem to care a lick about us – now since they chased those two here they, got all riled up, and suddenly we have to worry about boarding the place up and all. Like I said, things were just fine around here till they showed up. And you just let ’em waltz right in.”
“And what would have had me do, Chaz? Just leave them out there, to be torn apart, left to die?”
“You mean like we was all left to die at Easy Glades? Seems to me the world out there don’t much give a shit about guys like us, Artie. To them, we are just yesterday’s news. Lock ’em up, shut ’em up, drug ’em up - forget about ’em and worry about your own.
He poked his finger hard into Artie’s chest, “and maybe it’s time you started thinking the same way -- if you wanna live.”
Artie could see the anxiety in Chaz’s eyes. It was starting. Artie knew the signs of group cohesion breaking down all too well. Everything seemed fine, harmonious, but that’s only on the surface. It seemed a lifetime ago that he was holed up with another group of guys –isolated, cut off, like this. An experiment they called it. But that was in the Air Force – before he washed out of astronaut training, before they said he was unfit for space duty, before he began drinking... he shut off the memory.
“You guys look like you had some luck, let me see what you got there,” Artie said to us as Tim and I returned from our rounds with our stash. Dick was still out scrounging. We had found the 2 x 4’s Dick mentioned, along with a few boxes of nails, a couple of hammers, a pick axe, and a machete. We took the boards, and hammers and nails and started reinforcing every possible ingress to the barn. Artie coughed, as the sound of our efforts reverberated, and raised plums of dust. Chaz just stood in a corner – refusing to help, leaning on a shovel.
“Oh boys – boys, come here you have just got to see this!” It was Jerry, who was on watch. We all went to where he was looking out of the opening in the loft he was guarding. There, fifty yards in front of the barn was a girl, she couldn’t have been more than 19 or so. But too far away to tell if she was a zombie bitch. What we could see was that she was gorgeous, dressed in very tight orange shorts, and a T-shirt with the name of some bar on it – which she was very playfully lifting up and down to reveal nearly perfect breasts. She twirled and gyrated to some unseen beat, now taking off the T-shirt entirely exposing her well-tanned breasts, which she caressed lovingly, as she slowly licked her ruby lips.
“Whoa! Would you look at those puppies!” said Chaz, “I am sure glad I saved a few of these”, he said as he unscrewed a pill holder he had on a gold chain around his neck and popped a little blue pill. “Hold on there, sweetcheeks, I’ll be out in a minute or two.”
The girl continued to dance; she now wriggled out of the little orange shorts and was completely naked, the sun glistening on her increasingly sweaty body. She got down on the grass, would roll back and forth a few times, stop on her back and arch upward - then rhythmically move her hips up and down, up and down.
We were all enjoying the show, with the possible exception of Jerry, who maintained his vigil, shovel held at the ready, when Chaz tried to push past him, “Let me go,” he said.
I guess even old guys, stuck in one place who haven’t had it in while, still think with the wrong head!
“You big horny idiot, you can’t go out there.” The girl was now on the ground touching herself, writhing back and forth. Intermittently she would stop and lick her own fingers.
“Look, faggot – I’ve been stuck in here with you all too long, I know what she wants, and I don’t think I’m ever getting another chance like this.” Before any of us could stop him, Chaz pushed past Jerry and towards the nubile young succubus. She was still rocking back and forth on the ground as he reached her, and stood over her. We could see from the barn as she slowly climbed up his legs, and undid his pants, and they dropped around Chaz’s ankles. We saw his hips rock forward and his head arch back in pleasure as she took him in her mouth.
Chaz’s scream was deafening as we could see her head quickly withdraw from his crotch, blood trailing in a spattering arc along with it. With a shriek two more bitches bolted from the brush on either side of the shocked Chaz, gripping him by the arms and pulling-- his arms ripping free as if they had just made a wish.
Dick, barreled out of the barn like a 400-pound juggernaut, rusted, metal rake held high. The rake tore into the back of one of the bitches and he pulled her off of what was left of Chaz, like a sanitation worker would spear and pick up a candy wrapper from the ground in the park. The second girl challenged Dick with a hiss and she caught the back end of the rake, shoved so far down her throat that it came through the back of her neck. The original dancer got up, and started to run, trying to flee, but Dick brought the rake down hard on her head and through her skull, and it wedged there. The momentum of her body carried it forward as the head stayed imbedded on the rake, her once pretty face nearly split in two.
Dick, breathing heavily, made his way back to the entrance of the barn. As he pushed the head of the dead girl off of the rake with his thick-soled shoe, I could see she had something jammed in her mouth – it was Chaz’s still erect penis, but I guess he no longer had to “seek medical attention for an erection lasting more than four hours.”
Jerry opened the door and stepped out to let the big man back in, when suddenly one of the women Dick thought he had killed, her back ravaged and spine exposed by the rake, clawed her way forward, and bit Jerry on the calf. He howled as I thrust my shovel down, severing her head at the neck like a guillotine. Dick dove inside the barn carrying the screaming Jerry along with him.
“Put him down here, quick, quick.”It was Artie. Jerry was screaming. Blood from his leg was mingling with the hay on the barn floor making a thick trail behind him. “You,” Artie turned to Tim. “Over there by my bunk, there’s a first aid kit. Bring it here, hurry, now!” Tim obeyed. Artie tore open a few 4x4 gauze pads and put them immediately over the gaping wound on the back of Jerry’s calf.
“Here” he said to me, “Keep pressure here,” and he had me squeeze tightly over the gauze, which was rapidly becoming soaked in blood. With his mouth, Artie tore open a roll of tape and started taping around the gauze. Jerry was still screaming and crying in agony. Artie took a small metal flask out of one of the pockets of his vest. “Here, old buddy, drink some of this.” Jerry gulped down the booze.
“Holy Shit!” said Tim. “Did you see that, did you see all that!” Jerry’s screams had died down to whimpers now, as he continued to take long draughts from of Artie’s flask. I felt like I could use one myself. Eventually, Jerry drifted off into unconsciousness.
“Is he going to be all right?” I said to Artie.
“Well I’ve got the blood flow staunched,” he said taking a long swig from the flask himself now, before returning it to his breast pocket, the deep red stains of Jerry’s blood now commingled with the others of his ridiculous long underwear. “The thing is I don’t know anything about that bite. At the very least, it coul
d get infected, gangrenous – Jerry’s a diabetic after all, at the worst...”
Dick interrupted, “At the worst – go ahead and say it, man, we all know what you are thinking. He’s infected with whatever this shit is that’s making them all go crazy – and if he is he can’t stay in here, you got to get rid of him.”
“Wait a minute, you don’t know that,” said Artie, “Besides only ones I ever saw get nuts like that are women.”
“Yeah, but just cause we never saw anyone but women affected by The Plague, that doesn’t mean it only affects women,” countered Dick, “And Jerry practically was a woman”
“All right that’s enough!” said Artie –“another crack like that, smartass, and it’s you I’ll be getting rid of. Now me and Jerry go way back” – he lifted his bow, arrow cocked and pointed it at Dick – “so you just back off and shut up.”
Dick stepped forward, pulling himself up to his full height. “Okay, Artie, settle down.” He put his big hand on the bow and gently made Artie lower it down. In the corner Jerry started to thrash about still unconscious, he was sweating profusely. Artie went to him. “He’s burning up,” he said.
“Look at his leg,” I said. At the wound, just above the bandage, black lines like tendrils were reaching out, up Jerry’s leg, already almost past his knee.
“You!” Artie shouted at me, “Give me your belt.” I did, and he took it and strapped it tight around Jerry’s thigh just above his knee.
“You think that will stop it?”
“I can’t be sure,” said Artie, “I’m no doctor.”
Dick’s large shadow slowly passed over Jerry and the two of us kneeled beside him. In his deep baritone he said, “There is only one way to be sure.” And that was when I noticed the machete in his hand.
We moved Jerry up onto a table the oldsters had been using to play bridge, we laid him right on top of the cards. “Okay, okay,” Artie said to me,” you hold him down at the shoulders, keep him from squirming too much, here pour some more of this down his throat.” He passed me the flask, Jerry coughed as I did as Artie asked. “Now, do it right here, just above where the belt is serving as a tourniquet. Try to make it one quick blow,” he said to Dick, who was poised above Tim brandishing the machete. Tim was holding a makeshift torch made from some old rags we found around the barn, which he’d lit with a Zippo lighter lying on the table. He handed it to me and I pocketed it. Black, acrid smoke from it swirled toward the ceiling in a macabre dance. A bucket of water was at his feet. “Now, Tim, very important, as soon as I pull the leg clear, you have to press that torch quickly and firmly against the stump to cauterize the wound. And then douse it immediately in that water – if you drop it, or ignite any of this hay around here, it won’t matter if this works or not.”
“Okay, let’s go.” I took a deep breath, and said a little prayer as Dick raised the machete over Jerry’s leg. Jerry groaned and let out a little whimper as I pressed down harder on his shoulders, but he remained barely conscious. The Machete came down with a sickening thunk, passing through Jerry’s leg and into the table below as easily as Abe Lincoln splitting a rail. Jerry began screaming, but I shoved a “bite stick” from the First Aid kit between his teeth, forced his jaw shut, and held it fast.
“Tim, the torch, now!” shouted Artie. Tim, did what he was told, and the cloying smell of roasting flesh filled the air. I could feel Jerry slip back into unconsciousness as I heard the hiss of Tim’s torch being extinguished in the water. That was followed by the clatter of the machete hitting the barn floor, Dick’s broad back turned to me in disgust as he walked away in silence. “I need some air.” I knew he shouldn’t go outside, but I was not going to argue with the big man.
Artie took Jerry’s amputated leg, wrapped it in some rags, and carried it over to the latrine hole in the floor, and let it drop through, it landed in the lye pile with a soft ploomf and puff of white powdery smoke.
Dick had been gone about fifteen minutes when I heard a strange sound.
“You hear that?” There was drone that was soon recognizable as a car engine, growing louder and louder. We all ran to the opening of the hayloft, just in time to see a black sedan barreling toward the farmhouse, running over and through the creatures – tossing them aside like rag dolls, beating out a concerto of bone cracking thumps. Then, the car took off like a rocket, hit an old tree stump, rolled over and over, finally coming to a stop just feet before the entrance to the barn. I could see the driver was still alive inside. He was trying to crawl out, toward the entrance, but was held by his seatbelt “Cover me,” I shouted to Artie, as I grabbed the machete and charged through the entrance and out into the madness just in time to bury it deep in the face of the first creature that was about to pounce on the drivers back. The machete came free with a slurp, and she slumped to the floor. I barely heard Artie’s arrow whiz by my cheek as it took down the second squarely between the eyes. Another came scrambling over the bottom of the overturned car, leaping, only to find herself impaled on my machete; it protruded out of her back, a limp and deflated silicon implant dangling from the tip. With a twist I removed the long blade, which slid back out through her once ample chest, covered in gore. I used the machete to cut the seatbelt that held the driver in the car, and dragged him back inside the barn, just as Artie got the barn doors shut.
“Are you crazy!” shouted Tim. “You could have been killed. If those things got in here we all could have been killed!” Whatever Tim was going to say next, it was cut off by a high-pitched blood-curdling scream. Jerry had picked that moment to regain consciousness, and was screaming, having noticed his missing leg. “My leg, what did you to my leg, my beautiful legs!” Artie went to kneel down next to him.
“It’s okay, it’s okay Jerry, you are going to be alright,” and he cradled Jerry’s head in his arms. Jerry’s screams slowly subsided, but he continued to cry and whimper. He was muttering something about now he’ll never dance with Liza Minnelli, as Artie passed him the metal flask from which he continued to drink deeply.
Tim, on the other hand, was really losing it – I had never seen him like this. His eyes darted from me, to Jerry, to Artie, back to the door.
“This is crazy, Man. Captain Viagra gets torn apart, the queen is screaming, the big guy’s nowhere to be found, and there are more and more of those things trying to claw their way in here now, and you go and open the doors just to let another poor bastard in here.”
“Hey, Tim – think! Use your head. If Artie there didn’t open up and let us in here, we’d already be Purina Zombie Chow!”
“Better all calm down” It was the guy we just brought in. He was seated against the back wall, his head bowed between his knees.
“What?” said Artie. He still cradled Jerry’s head in his lap, who had mercifully fallen back into unconsciousness.
The stranger in the corner lifted his head slowly; “I said you all have to take it down a notch.”
“Hey, Mister, you just got here – you have no idea what we been through,” said Tim
“And you have no idea what all your anger, aggression and macho bullshit is going to do to those things out there. You guys keep going at it, lose control, get the adrenaline pumping, and the testosterone flowing and those things are going to be drawn to this place like a pack of hungry dogs to a butcher shop.”
“They must know we’re in here now,” I said.
Artie was hopeful. Poor guy. “Maybe they didn’t see. We’ve been up here for a while without much incident.”
“You’re wrong,” the stranger said.
“How do you know that?” said Artie.
“Because that’s what it was designed to do. I’m David Keilar, and I am, or was Chief Science Officer of Vivax Pharmaceuticals. You ever heard of Oxytocin?”
Tim said, “You mean the painkillers that Rush Limbaugh was addicted to?”
“No, you idiot,” said Artie, “that was Oxycontin, Oxytocin is some kind of ‘love hormone’ isn’t it? Supposed to be a human p
heromone.”
Keilar and the rest of us looked at Artie in surprise. He gave a look back that said, “Told you I’m not just a stupid old drunk.”
Keilar nodded and said, “Yeah, but the stuff we came up with was hundreds of times stronger. We were trying to develop something that would make men,” and he looked right at Tim, “any man, incredibly attractive, irresistible not only to women, but to everyone around him. Call it a kind of charisma in a bottle, but no matter what you called it, it would spell power to the user. But something went wrong. Horribly wrong, a few women in the trials…they died, but that wasn’t the worst of it. They didn’t stay dead, they came back as those things out there. Strong, fast, aggressive, you’ve all seen that, but they also seem to actually feed on testosterone, need it to survive like a mosquito needs blood. They can ‘smell’ it, and it whips them into a feeding frenzy, the results of which you’ve all seen. Then somehow which we still don’t understand, it started to spread to people that never even took the drug.”
“Wait a minute, are you telling me you’re the bastard that caused this mess? Tim’s voice rose, becoming shriller. “I mean, I thought, who knows maybe The Plague was just nature getting back at us, an Act of God, weird mutant virus like AIDS, or whatever. I should have known some suits were behind it.” Tim started pacing, and circling like a rabid dog. “Shit, my girlfriend Christina became one of those things, and I watched her tear apart my little brother right in front of me.” Tears were welling up in Tim’s eyes, and something else; he picked up a bloody shovel off of the floor. “You God damn bastards, you knew, you all fuckin’ knew...”
“Wait!” Keilar shouted. I could see the fear in his eyes, the veins pumping in his neck, his body entering fight or flight mode. “We didn’t mean for this to happen, we didn’t know. How could we?”
Tim started screaming at the top of his lungs. “Yeah, that’s how it always is with you types. ‘We didn’t know there was melamine in the milk, Mad Cow in the meat, lead in the fucking toys’. You don’t give a shit about people, man.” And he raised the shovel over his head. I was the first to grab him. Then Artie. Tim was swinging the shovel around wildly, we spun and spun trying to get it away from him, he just kept shouting crazily, and he knocked me to the floor. Artie was still on him. Keilar had curled up into a ball in the corner.
Zombie Bitches From Hell Page 12