“That pissed him off,” Trent said while walking with Smokey to the front of the building.
“He’d be even more mad if he knew what I use that sock for in my spare time.”
Trent chuckled as the pair readied their diversion. Meanwhile, Big Rob raised the ladder into position over a back alleyway dimly lit by a handful of burning cars. Below, a host of creatures milled about in the haze, casting large, ominous shadows. They went berserk as Trent cranked up hardcore gangster rap on his boom box and Smokey shot a roman candle right into their ranks.
The cop banged on pots and pans for effect. “Hey, you morons, up here!”
While every zombie within a quarter mile swarmed the front side of the house, Rob dropped the ladder out back and nodded to his waiting friends. It was time.
Charlie had seen more action in the past ten hours than he had in the past ten years of his life, and had the cuts, bruises and sexually transmitted diseases to prove it. And so he hesitated for a moment.
“Move it, Nancy,” Russ said. Charlie obliged and soon found himself on the ground, scanning the alley for any stragglers. Seeing none, he signaled for Russ and Left-Nut to come down and then pushed in a window screen. They climbed inside and were, for the time being, out of sight.
“Yuck, this place smells like old lady,” Left-Nut said as he rummaged through the cabinets.
Russ smirked. “You think this is bad, wait till the corpses in the street start rotting. Hell, when I was in Vietnam…”
Charlie ignored Russ and focused on raiding the medicine cabinet next to the fridge. He found blood pressure medicine, hemorrhoid ointment and some pills he’d never heard of. It all went into the sack.
“Did she have any good prescriptions? Oxy or codeine or something?” Left-Nut asked.
Charlie moved on to the fridge and spied a plastic baggie in the vegetable drawer. “But look what we have here.” He pulled out several vials of clear liquid as a look of pride crossed his face. “Insulin.”
Left-Nut peered past Charlie and groaned. “She doesn’t have anything to eat in the fridge? It’s like food is illegal in this damned apartment.”
Russ opened a pantry door and revealed row upon row of canned goods tucked away inside. His face turned sour as he took a closer look. “It’s all cat food. Every stinkin’ can.”
“Where’s the cat?” Left-Nut asked.
Charlie grimaced. “She didn’t have one.”
“Oh that’s gross,” Left-Nut said, a little too loudly.
“Lower your damn voice,” Charlie said. “And I wouldn’t get too judgmental. It’s our dinner.”
Russ pointed to the potted meat. “That stuff is dangerous. Too fatty.”
The schoolteacher looked at Russ’s ample gut. “I think that ship has sailed.” They tossed the cans into trash bags and then looked for anything else that might be useful.
Left-Nut zeroed in on a picture of a youthful looking Mrs. Stone on her nightstand. “She used to be pretty friggin’ hot back in the day. I’d totally hit it. Kinda sad Rob smashed her like a wet turd, ya know?”
“She was pretty,” Charlie admitted and rubbed the fist-sized knot on the back of his head. “And judging from these other pictures in here, she was a bird watcher too.”
Left-Nut looked at Charlie sideways. “Who gives a shit?”
“It means there’s probably a pair of binoculars in here we can grab. Which would come in mighty handy.”
They continued rifling around as the racket from outside covered their tracks, and Russ found something of interest in a dresser drawer. But it wasn’t a pair of binoculars. In fact, it was far from it. He threw the giant, pink, spiked vibrator to the floor and dry heaved while the others tried to hold in their laughter.
“Mrs. Stone was a dirty girl,” Left-Nut said approvingly. “I like it.”
“Keep looking, those binoculars have to be close by,” Charlie said, hoping to erase the pink monstrosity from his mind by focusing on the task at hand.
Left-Nut popped open a small cylindrical device he had found in a leather case. Mrs. Stone’s last boyfriend had left the electric voice box there before dying the previous winter while shoveling snow. She had kept it around for other purposes.
The discovery should not have been a big deal, but Left-Nut couldn’t control himself. He held it to his throat and created a loud robotic voice. “Bow down before Optimus Prime and suck on these metallic balls.”
His eyes bulging in shock, Charlie grabbed at Left-Nut, but it was too late. Upstairs, the song had ended right as Trent paused banging on the pots to open a beer. Left-Nut’s corny shtick might as well have been an air raid siren. Two zombies immediately crashed through the front window and became tangled in the blinds while dozens of others jockeyed for access behind them.
Russ entered the hallway and emptied his pistol, dropping the two lead zombies. However, they brought the blinds down with them and opened a clear path for the others to stream in.
Charlie raced to the kitchen with the type of speed that life and death situations call for. He grabbed the table, tilted it vertically and shoved it into the doorway all in one fluid motion, catching the impact of the racing horde. It inched backwards, and hands poked through the opening.
Russ put his shoulder into the table, pushing it back and pinning the flailing arms snuggly to the wall. “Dammit, Left-Nut, get over here!” he yelled and peered over his shoulder, just in time to see two feet disappearing through the window. “Motherfucker!”
The pair wouldn’t be able to hold the crowd back for long, so Charlie pointed to the refrigerator. “When I say go, tip it towards me.”
“But—”
“Do it, I’ll move,” Charlie assured him. “Now go.”
Russ pushed the fridge over, and it broke the legs off the table and slammed to the ground, barricading the door perfectly. As Charlie hopped backwards, an object flew off the top of the fridge and hit him square in the chest.
“I found the binoculars.”
Chapter 19
The Curious Case of Matt (Left-Nut) Tucker
“Is it cool to bang a zombie? Like, say it’s a really hot one?” Smokey asked and passed his pipe. The outbreak was now a week old and things had slowed down quite a bit. They were spending that particular night gazing at the stars, smoking the last of the pot and focusing on the important things in life.
“No way,” Charlie said, a serious look etched on his face. “You’re talking statutory rape. A zombie can’t give consent any more than a coma patient.”
“Or that poor girl Left-Nut recently had sex with,” Bruce said and took a hit.
Trent snatched the pipe. “Zombies don’t have any rights and you gashes know it. If they did, Cliff could have us shot for crimes against humanity.” He threw an empty can at the restrained man who now sported strings of rapidly blinking Christmas lights and a paper sack emblazoned with a smiley face and the words “INSERT PENIS HERE.” Cliff looked almost comical in the getup, but his feral grunts betrayed a murderous lust that was just waiting for an opportunity.
“And for the record, if a zombie Jessica Alba were to come shuffling by, I’d feed her a piece of meat all right. Fuckin’ quarter-pounder.” Trent patted his imaginary giant dong for emphasis.
Mike rolled his eyes. “You know, for me being the only homosexual here, you guys talk about penis an awful lot.”
“And that's why we always knew you were a butt pirate, because you say penis,” the cop replied. “Real men say cock, shlong, wanker, dong, joint…” Trent’s manhood list went on for several minutes.
A lightweight, Bruce leaned back in the lawn chair as his head spun from the designer strain known as New York Diesel. “I’m high as giraffe pussy right now.” He squinted at the sky. “Why are the stars so bright? It’s like we’re out in the country or something.”
“Without the smog and city lights, we’re close. It seems cooler too,” Charlie noted, and he was right.
After a cascading overload
of the electric grid, besides Smokey’s solar-powered building, Chicago had been dark for days. Without a million air-conditioners dumping out heat, the record temperatures had eased. The gentle breeze would have made for a nice night if not for the stench of rotting flesh wafting in from the neighborhood. It was the turd in the punchbowl nobody wanted to mention.
Bruce sat up. “Did you know Cliff’s a sex offender?”
Blake nodded begrudgingly. “Yeah, I knew.”
“Why?” Left-Nut said through a split lip and two black eyes, courtesy of Russ and Charlie. They’d threatened to toss the coward off the roof but had settled for kicking the living shit out of him. It was a close vote.
Bruce continued. “True story. We were at a Hawks game and got completely plastered by the second period. This older chick came on to Cliff and blew him right there in the seats. Then the Jumbo-tron picked it up on accident during their kiss-cam shot, and it happened to be family night.”
“What happened?” Rob asked and exhaled a monstrous stream of smoke through the air.
“Let’s say the judge came down on him way harder than the old skank did.”
“That ain’t so bad. I’ve done a lot worse,” Russ said and patted Zombie Cliff on the shoulder. “You’re still okay in my book.”
Cliff’s head swiveled towards Russ and shook with anger or hunger. It was hard to tell as the smiley-faced sack made every move look like a well-orchestrated goof. Only Cliff wasn’t joking around. He wanted to eat his friends.
Blake sighed. “It was bad. Cliff had to hand out fliers every time he moved and shit like that. He even took a bunch of pills one time trying to kill himself. Poor bastard never did clear his name.”
Trent nailed Cliff in the head with another beer can. “I bet he wished he finished the job.”
“Stop torturing him,” Blake said and rose to his feet. “He might still be in there for all we know. It’s not right.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, lighten up. He’d treat you like a roast beef sandwich if he had the chance.”
Mike turned to Charlie. “You feeling better?”
“No, it still hurts to piss. First time I hook up in four years and I catch something.” He punched Blake in the arm. “I never properly thanked you.”
The admission blew Russ away. “You hadn’t gotten laid in four years in Chicago? Talk about no game.”
Charlie blinked as he fought the urge to blast back at the mouthy hillbilly. “I was in a rut. The only girl I talked to regularly was the one that cut my hair.”
Blake rolled his eyes. “Oh, not her again.”
“I called her Tits Magee, for obvious reasons. She was gorgeous, good personality and fun to talk to.”
“She got paid to talk to you, dude,” Bruce said.
“What happened?” Big Rob asked.
“Absolutely nothing. I got my hair cut every week for a year and never asked her out. I couldn’t pull the trigger.”
“I always told you to go for it Charlie. Girls with dead-end jobs usually date losers, so you had a chance,” Blake said with a snicker.
“Maybe you were better off,” Jim said and looked at his feet. “At least you didn’t have to lose her. I mean, look at me. I had everything and now I’m sitting in this dump listening to you guys talk about your bullshit problems. I was gonna be a dad, and now…”
Russ’s hand crept to the weeping man’s shoulder. “Son, life is like a box of chocolates. Only each individually wrapped morsel is really a turd. Some have peanuts, some have corn, but in the end, they’re all shit.”
“Having kids isn’t a big deal anyways. I had about ten running around, and you don’t see me crying about it,” Left-Nut added with a smug look on his beat up face.
“Shenanigans,” Charlie said.
Blake nodded. “This is why you’re less popular than dog shit at a picnic, you’re always making stuff up.”
“Remember that newspaper job I had the summer before junior year?” Left-Nut said.
“How could I forget you trying to sell me a subscription about thirty times?” Charlie said. “You were even more annoying back then.”
“Moot point. One day I was covering for a guy at the ad desk and this dude in old timey clothes comes walking in. He was from that weirdo cult south of town.”
“The Seventh Day Shepherds? They’re like a mix between the Amish and Southern Baptists, only nuttier,” Blake said.
Left-Nut nodded. “Yep, that’s them. It turned out their gene pool was getting shallow and all their kids were being born with extra fingers and crap. Anyways, they wanted to place an ad for reproductive assistance.”
“Like sperm donors?” Russ said and perked up.
“Only they weren’t talking test tube babies. It was more of a pinch-hitter situation, if you catch my drift.”
“They wanted to pay people to sleep with their wives and get them pregnant?” Mike said.
“Bingo. And since they refused to read the newspaper, like it’s idolatry or something, they never knew I trashed the ad. Nobody else showed up, so I was a hot commodity.”
“Let me get this straight,” Blake said. “You’re telling me this religion thinks newspapers are taboo, but a random dude banging their wives is kosher?”
“Crazy, I know. Even better, I got paid five hundred a pop. It was the scam of the century.”
Russ beamed with approval. “Impressive. But how’d they look?”
“Like total sasquatches because of all the birth defects. But there was one chick that was hot, and I mean hot, and I was biding my time until I could get my turn at her.”
“You just strolled into town and started blasting these chicks?” Bruce said.
“It wasn’t exactly spring break. We’re talking fully clothed, and their relatives are in the room.”
“Awkward,” Jim added. A rare smile crept onto his face as he listened to the ridiculous story.
“Yeah, I wasn’t supposed to show pleasure or make any noises or I’d get fired. Plus, they just lay there, stiff as a board, so it wasn’t as awesome as it sounds.”
“Oh yeah, impregnating mutant women while their troglodyte family watches sounds like a regular dream come true,” Mike said.
Left-Nut shrugged. “At the end of the summer I finally got a crack at the hottie, and she ended up being the preacher’s daughter, go figure. But the thing was, I took a bunch of my dad’s Viagra that day because these chicks were seriously testing my libido, and that’s saying something because I would pretty much nail a mud puddle.”
“No shit,” Blake said.
“I’m packing some serious steel that this girl’s bum-fuck husband Jedediah or whatever has never done, and she actually opened her eyes, and I can tell she’s loving it.”
The group stopped their pestering questions and leaned in, lost for a moment in the epic tale. “As if on cue, the storm that was brewing all day crashed into the little cabin. We’re talking heavy winds, rain, thunder and lightning. It was something right out of a movie. Not a porno, mind you, but like a sexy thriller. Maybe something with Brad Pitt.” Left-Nut paused and looked at his friends slyly. “But you guys don’t want to hear the rest of it since I’m always making crap up.”
A collective groan went up in response. “Fine, fine. So there we are, missionary style, literally, because these weirdoes were missionaries. And I started railing this chick and she screams out, ‘Oh God, give it to me!’
“I bet they didn’t like that,” Blake said.
“Yeah, it turns out that was the absolute worst thing to say for The Seventh Day Shepherds, and her family decided to yank the plug on the whole operation. Her husband started crying like a little bitch, and her dad tried to pull me off, but as you can imagine, I was buried in deep as a tick. They paid me to get that girl pregnant, and for once in my life, I was a workaholic.” Left-Nut looked around. “Is there any pot left?”
“Finish the damned story,” Charlie said.
“They started hitting me on the back wi
th a broomstick, and that just made me pump away harder because I like the rough stuff, but then wham! Her dad cracked me in the head with a chair and I tumbled out of bed, bare-assed and pants at my ankles, boner dragging on the floor. So I crawled outside, and by this time half the town’s come to kick my ass.”
“That, I believe,” Mike said.
“I couldn’t make it to my car, so I pulled my pants up and grabbed this old bike from the porch. It was like this old 1800’s style with metal wheels. Now it’s pouring rain by this time and all these inbred dumb-fucks are chasing me on foot. I’m riding up this big ass hill and barely making headway on account of it being such a retarded bike. I got to the top and it was all downhill from there, so I turned to give the dipshits a double middle finger salute. But as I did, there was a huge flash of light.”
“There is a God,” Jim said dryly.
Left-Nut rose from his seat. “Next thing I know, I’m in the hospital, my hair’s permanently turned white, I got black eyes, a broken nose, and my shlong’s all bandaged up.” He dropped his pants to reveal a giant, solitary testicle gleaming in the moonlight. “And that, dear ladies and gentleman, is how I really earned my nickname.”
The group shielded their eyes or turned away in disgust, which allowed Cliff to break free of his bonds unnoticed. Amidst half-hearted cheers, Left-Nut bowed to his audience, completely unaware of the infected lunatic lurching towards him. The brown paper sack fell to the ground, smiley face up, peering at the shining stars overhead.
Chapter 20
All Along the Watchtower
Marquell held aloft the severed head of the hated prison guard, Steve, and addressed those before him. Thick, coagulated blood dribbled from dangling veins with each gesture the maniac made. “Now that I have your motherfuckin’ attention, I’m gonna get right down to business. It’s simple. I’m the man, and anyone who doesn’t toe my motherfuckin’ line is gonna get a dome shot.”
There were uneasy grumbles among the prisoners, but nobody stepped up to challenge the proclamation. “As of now, the guards, the workers and their families are off limits. Everyone else will keep their old prison job. Motherfuckers on laundry detail are still motherfuckers on laundry detail, and so on.”
Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse... One Beer at a Time Page 10