by Tony Ungawa
“No, sugar cube, let’s keep his brain and everything else where it is for the time being,” said Denny. Uschi acknowledged his request to stop walking and set him down on the ground. “Let’s see instead if we can’t put him to work for us.”
Denny hated horses. He thought they were nothing but stupid and deathly dull things that came with unending and aggravating feeding, watering and cleaning up after responsibilities. But that didn’t prevent him from not knowing a thing or two about them. He was a Texas born and bred country boy, so, no matter how extensive his collection of Jaws 2 trading cards and knowledge of the ’70s paperback cover artwork of Jeffery Jones, there was no avoiding during his childhood years having some experiences with the beasts pounded into his gray matter.
Denny approached the gelding cautiously and hands held out before him. Sweat was dripping off of him and the intense sun was burning the top of his head. The rolled cuffs of his jeans were growing even wetter from stepping through the soggy earth and water beaded blades of high grass. The soaked denim was starting to chaff his skin along the ankles.
The horse raised his head, his ears perked and eyes turned alert. He watched Denny gradually coming toward him and neighed.
“Whoa, boy,” he told him. Denny wasn’t afraid and he never faltered in his step. He actually had some confidence in his skills at this. “Whoa. It’s all right. Nobody wants to hurt you.”
There were cicadas off in the distance, in the trees that were still left standing. They reveled in the hazy heat and were loud with their insect chorus. It seemed like they and the flocking birds were the only ones enjoying today.
When he was close enough, Denny laid a hand on the side of the horse’s neck and stroked it. The fur was sun-warmed and oily with perspiration. The muscles beneath the skin felt as dense as concrete slabs. Perhaps because he advanced with no bridle in his hands or maybe the animal was just lonely and welcomed the company, he seemed content to allow Denny’s presence.
Uschi, however, was an entirely different story.
As she began to step forward, the horse’s senses became aware of the unholy energy that animated her and he certainly did not appreciate her presence. He reacted in panic, neighing at such an awful pitch it sounded more like a human scream than any cry a horse could make. He bucked and reared back on his hind legs, threatening them both with his shod hooves.
Denny tried to calm him. “Whoa! Whoa! We don’t need that!”
An unintimidated Uschi simply stepped up and took charge. She put her hands on the horse and pulled him down to all fours and halted the action. The horse shimmied from top to bottom in surprise at confronting such no arguing with power.
“This is not how a good boy behaves,” she informed the horse.
Denny resumed stroking the fur, combing it down flat and removing mud. He talked to the horse in a soothing and gentle tone. This went on for a spell. Gradually, the hostility was worn down and disposition improved.
After pulling his jeans up as high as he could make them go without unbuckling and unbuttoning, Denny Gleeth jumped and mounted the horse. He took him out for a test drive, walking him in circles at first, and then a short, brisk run. The roan gelding was agreeable with being ridden. He steered him back toward Uschi and offered his cadaver chunks delight lady a smile and a hand up. “How about,” he proposed, “we say fuck off to the walking and we Randolph Scott this shit for a while?”
She laughed and took his offered hand and was lifted, taking a seat on the horse behind Denny and scootching in close as could be. Her arms went around his waist and her fat dirty pillows mashed into his backside.
“You are so ninja killing cool,” Uschi whispered into Denny’s ear. “I love you so much.”
“Love you, too, crypt baby.” Denny put the heels of his Converse All Stars to the horse and they were away at a tail swinging trot.
Chapter Twenty-one
It was sometime past dusk before they finally stumbled upon a paved road. Denny used the horse’s longer mane hairs to steer him onto its shoulder, hooves clacking on the blacktop.
Uschi was the one to first spot the street sign cemented into the ground. “Hot-diggity-damn, good Americans, we’ve made it. This is Nyman Road. We’re not far now from where we need to be. Help me look for the old goat ranch tasty-fangy told us was in spitting distance of the vampire campsite.”
Not a split-second had passed after she spoke before a pair of bloodsuckers came bounding out of the heavy brush across the road and charged toward horse and riders. Both had lily-white skin complexions and fangs in their snarling mouths almost as scary as a diagnosis of stage four lung cancer. One of them was wearing a Dallas Mavericks jersey and the bottom half of him covered in only a disposable adult diaper riding low on his slim hips. The other was grossly fat, with a front butt blubber bulge as big as a lawn mower’s twelve horsepower engine going on between his belt buckle and the crotch of his off the rack at the big and tall men’s clothing store polyester slacks.
The gelding roan reacted to the sudden appearance of the fiends with the abrupt decision to hightail it from these whereabouts, and he didn’t need any passengers slowing him down. He bucked and sent Denny and Uschi flying off of him. Then the horse ran.
The nosferatu duo hesitated, standing in the center of the road and undecided on which prey to pursue. It didn’t look like the two bucked off people were going to be moving fast any time soon. A silent agreement was struck between them to go with the animal.
They turned on the supernatural speed and closed the gap between them and the galloping steed. They caught him by the hind legs, clawlike nails digging in and finding a fixed purchase in the skin and muscle. Eyes ballooning from the sockets and slobber spraying from an open mouth, the gelding screamed worse than he did when first meeting Uschi. Superhuman strength was employed to drag him down and have him fall awkwardly to the asphalt.
The one in the diaper assaulted the neck with his fangs and tore great, meaty chunks from it. A major artery was soon opened and hemorrhaged in a voluminous scarlet gush that washed over his happy face just as he was putting mouth over it and starting to sup. Polyester fatass slacks barehanded lacerated open the abdomen and made his way to the bleeding viscera. He went down on all fours and put his whole face inside the wound and suckled on the free flowing gore like a piglet at its momma hog’s teat.
A pack of lions taking down a gazelle on the African veldt couldn’t have done it any more quick and economical.
Uschi and Denny helped one another to their feet and attempted to collect themselves. About twenty feet away from where they stood, monsters feasted. The vigorous sucking and slurping eating sounds coming from the two of them were like nothing Denny’s ears had ever heard before. They totally put Uschi’s own brains chewing mouth music to shame.
“Huh,” said Uschi and picked road gravel out of the crack in her ass. “Welcome to Mutual of Transylvania’s Wild Kingdom.”
“Where in the wide world of professional amateur buttfucking did they come from?” wondered Denny.
Newbomb was the vampire in the adult diaper. He clothed himself in it not because of any bathroom control problems, but due to the simple fact that he enjoyed the feel of them on his skin and it as well gave him a distinct kinky delight to flaunt himself like this in front of others. His feet were bare and the dark calluses on the bottom of them were thicker than the soles on most shoes. He had the chiseled and shaved everywhere physique of a bachelorette party’s male stripper. His face was strikingly handsome the same housewife’s fantasy way as the male protagonist on the cover of a paperback romance novel.
Big and fat Van Valkenburgh wore along with his polyester slacks a wifebeater T-shirt and a preppy tennis sweater draped over his shoulders and knotted around the neck. His hair was long and in Rastafarian dreadlocks. In one of the back pockets of his slacks was a first edition paperback copy of Murder on Location by George Kennedy that he was about halfway through reading.
“I don’t ho
nestly care where they come from, best thing,” said Uschi. “I’m just thrilled they could join us. You don’t have any ideas of trying to make friends and ride them, do you?”
“Fuck no!” He said that with a tone as serious as a heart attack while behind the wheel driving along on the highway.
“I was hoping to hear that. I figure I’ll take myself on over there and eat on both for a spell.”
“Is there any chance I could convince you to think it would be better if we were to just leave them alone?”
“Oh, you big worrier, it’ll be alright. How often does a girl in this part of the world get to brag she lunched on vampire roadkill?”
The voluptuous like a racy Bill Ward pinup girl homemade zombie girlfriend began to sashay toward the pair. Her hands were resting on her swinging hips and the peanut butter and anti-freeze soup residing inside her wobbling oversized breasts was sloshing about like a half gallon’s worth of milk inside a gallon jug.
She whistled and cleared her throat a number of times in hopes of attracting their attention, but neither one seemed interested in abandoning the dead horse. It wasn’t until she rapped her knuckles hard against the StarKist can in her head and that unique metal on decayed flesh sound was successful in pulling Newbomb off the throat and turning eyes toward her.
His upper lip was curled back and the slick, gooey blood on him appeared in the pale moonlight the reddish-black color of a pickup truck’s brake fluid. He growled at her and it sounded the exact same as a chainsaw’s motor revving.
Uschi suggested with her ’60’s sex kitten bubbly purr, “Yo, Pampers, be a dear and come over here to me so that I can fuck up your sorry ass in naughty ways like it has never been fucked up before.”
Like the way an old timey burlesque dancer would wear a feathered boa wrapped around her neck, Newbomb carried a pair of automotive battery jumper cables, running down the shoulders and dangling past his knees. These were twenty-foot long four-gauge cables with color-coded insulation and vinyl-coated clamps. Lively and smoothly, as if it were as simple an act for him as peeling off the condom after concluding a rewarding fuck, Newbomb took the jumper cables in hand and lifted them off of him. He was like a Gaucho working a bola when he began to whirl them around and around over his head. They made a helicopter’s rotating tail rotary blade whooshing roar as they spun.
Uschi arched an eyebrow. “I got to admit, this I did not anticipate.”
Newbomb hurled one end of the jumper cables at her. They were propelled forward at an incredible speed and force. The red positive and black negative clamps whipped twice around Uschi’s neck and then cinched in tight. She was yanked forward and sent stumbling off balance on the toes of her cha-cha shoes. Her eyes she rolled at the embarrassment of getting caught in a predicament like this as her superstructure teetered and wavered on the verge of a complete collapse.
The other end of the cables Newbomb swung out low to the ground. These negative and positive clamps snaked about her left ankle and caught the leg before there was any chance of Uschi regaining some semblance of equilibrium. One fierce tug took her foot out from under her and there was no way now she was going to keep upright. “Oh fuckity-fuck!” she exclaimed and toppled backwards. Her tailbone landed with a mean determination on the unyielding street surface.
Newbomb stepped forward and stood over her, looked down on her with his head turned at a diagonal angle. He was unaware at the time, but this was his first ever zombie encounter. He believed he recognized Uschi.
“I know you, don’t I?” he said and shook a finger at her. “You use to be kinda halfway famous. You’re that bosomy kissing bandit bitch that back in the eighties would run out onto the baseball fields and smooch the players. Yeah, I saw you plant one on Nolan Ryan this one time. Damnation, girl, you done went and let yourself get fearsomely ugly. Ugh. I’ve seen assholes on livestock that were prettier than what you and your face have got to offer. We’re talking a skank ugly that makes sure to pay all its gross taxes fully and promptly every April fifteenth. Here I am now trying to make up my mind whether it’s worth the mild effort to get your autograph or not.”
Talk of a high caliber class of ugliness prompted Van Valkenburgh to cease licking the rich slather of plasma off of horse organs and rise up from his hands and knees and join the down on her ass Uschi and his fellow creature of the night in the center of Nyman Road.
Uschi stared up at the both of them, her hands cupping her tremendous breasts, and said in a sunshine, lollipops and comic books illustrated by Joe Kubert cheery tone, “Stop smoking in time and you’ll have lungs as healthy as mine.”
The reference was incredibly obscure, and not surprisingly the vampires didn’t catch it. But Denny Gleeth, who owned a copy of the June 1983 issue of Playboy, did. Even in the face of such horrible conditions, he still was able to giggle about it.
A giggling that drew a vampire’s notice. Van Valkenburgh turned his head in Denny’s direction. He studied intensely on a squirming where he stood Denny for a heartbeat or two. Then the grin he gave told he approved of what he saw and he started to pregnant momma waddle toward him, his abundant belly leading the way and the soft, flabby man boobs meat spilling out over the sides of his wifebeater T-shirt rippling with his every step. He was scat singing the theme music to The Rockford Files to himself and his chunky white thighs rubbed together as he was in motion and he had to work at it to ignore the uncomfortable sweaty friction feeling so he wouldn’t loose his jolly mood.
“You find something funny in all of this? Okay. I can appreciate a sense humor in my food. Know what I find humorous?” And out of the ass pocket of his slacks that didn’t contain the first mystery novel penned by the Academy Award winning co-star of Cool Hand Luke he produced the mowing blade from a Sears Craftsman riding lawn mower. One end of it was wrapped heavily in black electrical tape to fashion a crude handle for gripping. “I always find good for a chuckle the opportunity to present to some bug-eyed and bad teeth dicklicker a proper and up close and personal wet and sloppy slaughtering. Yeah, buddy, here we go.”
Vampire versus a fired over the phone Blockbuster Video store employee. Hot damn, this was truly to be a confrontation for the ages.
Van Valkenburgh swung the mower blade at the face—a cold-blooded downward vertical swipe—and, miracles of miracles, Denny did something to protect himself. Faster than he had ever moved before, he managed to sidestep and evade having his head slashed open. Van Valkenburgh, his hair tentacles fanning out around his pumpkin round head like a gorgon on a bad hair day, was lax to bring his arm back in close to him quickly, and this gave Denny the opportunity to go on the offensive. He went after the obese vampire’s wrist, snatching at it and leaning over and biting down and sinking his big, crooked teeth deep in it.
“What the what?” This pained and inconvenienced Van Valkenburgh about as much as would an itch on the end of his dick. He looked down at his chomped on arm and couldn’t decide whether this spectacle should drive him to shit his pants or go blind. “Boy, you are tragically confused. I am supposed to be the one here that do the biting—not you. Behave yourself. You’re making a scene.”
Denny was not a fighter. He didn’t know the first thing about how to throw a punch or put a chokehold on an opponent or any other manly self-defense shit. He just went with what seemed comfortable and came easiest to him. So the biting. And kicking. He started to raise a leg and repeatedly kicked at Van Valkenburgh’s shins while his jaws remained clamped down on the wrist. His Converse sneakers didn’t manage much damage, but they kept trying.
Now Van Valkenburgh was outright laughing at him. He looked to his fellow bloodsucker, Newbomb, and said, “Do you believe this tomfoolery? I swear, this boy has got more goofy in him than the Saturday morning cartoons.”
Distracted as he was, the tight grip on the mower blade was something he became forgetful of. It grew slack and loose. From the corner of his eye, Denny spotted the fingers relax and the blade droop. Van Valkenburgh was barel
y bothering to keep clasping the thing. There it all of a sudden was—just shit eating grin perfect for the picking. Denny had to go for it.
Please let me do something right for just once in my life.
Denny whipped his own hand out and plucked the blade out of Van Valkenburgh’s hold while simultaneously giving up on the kicking and removing his teeth from the wrist.
Van Valkenburgh’s head came swinging back around to face Denny the split-second he registered the theft. There was surprise and agitation on his puffy face. “Hey!” he snarled between bloody fangs.
“Hay is for horses, douchebag.”
Denny swung that razor-sharp solid steel motherfucker like he was Prince Valiant going to town with a broadsword.
So fast. So accurate. So effective against the portly vampire.
The lawn mower blade came in on a horizontal slice perfectly parallel with Van Valkenburgh’s bunched shoulders. It traveled effortlessly into the neck an inch or less under the jawline, cutting through sinew and fatty flesh like a hot knife doing what it does best on butter. There was only a momentary spot of resistance when blade connected with neck bone—a contact harsh enough to make Van Valkenburgh’s skull vibrate like a just rung bell and the fangs in his mouth to rattle and the bloody saliva pooled under his tongue to fizz—then it was past and exiting the body on the opposite side.
Beautiful, flawless decapitation.
“I did it!”
The jumper cables coiled tight around Uschi’s throat couldn’t stop her from praising her man. “That’s my best thing. Cutting heads off and giving nothing but misery to the folks we don’t like.”
Van Valkenburgh’s untethered noggin, with picture perfect “Oh calamity!” expression to the face, tipped backwards and fell clear of the body it only until just recently was a major part of. There was a dull smack and very little of a bounce when it struck the street pavement.
Dissolution immediately followed. The meat of Van Valkenburgh had no hesitancy to assume the density of warm nasal mucus and trickled off the skull and skeletal frame. All bone matter timely followed the same path and joined the watery flesh in a bubbling hot pool that cooked away in seconds. Clothing and the George Kennedy mystery novel crumbled to ashes. The dark coloring in the blacktop’s tar where the remains once lay was permanently leached out, leaving behind a nauseating pale splotch.