by Jim Couper
A bit of good luck, on the most miserable day of Ramon Reynolds’ life, arrived a few minutes later when an ambulance, speeding to hospital with a woman about to give birth, saw him. The thick tread of the all-season tire skidded towards Reynolds’ head.
5
Because they moved relatively slowly gnomes and goblins got digested immediately.A minimum of fear, a maximum of trust and no awareness of the needs of the dead dread contributed to their demise. Sharp fingernails uncovered their diminutive innards and little brains and then half-dead heads pushed in, like kids with faces in bowls of ice cream.
Another dark menace also smelled the electrically charged blood of gnomes and goblins stalked them, sinking white fangs into thin necks and draining them until they became five-kilo sacks of skin, bones and drab clothes. Normally vampires showed restraint and sipped to quench a light thirst, leaving their victims to recover and slake the vamps another day, but with the infusion of extra energy and the little people’s increased electro-nutritional content, imbibing vamps sometimes lost control and drank to the death of the container of blood.
The little folks’ innards, after vamps had helped themselves to a healthy but not fatal hit, went down zombie gullets like peanut butter without jam or milk to help it slide. Some parts bunched in the maw and initiated coughing spasms that caused revenants to projectile vomit parts of their own bodies against trees and rocks. The stench lingered for weeks.
When zombs were first to get to the small folk, and large folk, the desperate vamps sucked red dust into their mouths. Those who drew dusty red into their systems paid the price in terms of indigestion that could only be relieved by unpredictable upchucking.
The young woman in a dark business suit, who had, too late, sampled the blood of Mary’s corpse, later dined at Peachland’s only upscale restaurant. As the waiter presented the wine list she bent over and retched a reeking, quivering concoction of coffee and coagulated blood onto the floor. Most patrons lost their appetites and left after a stench worse than an August outhouse reached their crab, coffee and croissants.
The innocent little gnome’s life-span diminished to a matter of hours. When a newly-risen had completed its instinctive duty the remains consisted of patches of hair, swaths of skin and brittle bones atop a forlorn heap of clothes. Those creatures were too trusting and too naive for their own good.
A symbiotic relationship among the two tribes of the dark had enormous potential, but it dissolved when the organ-eaters found that guts that had been blood drained did not have the same nutritional or taste benefits as pre-vampire organs. On the other hand bodies that had their brains and innards removed left little for the vampires. A food co-op based on mutual restraint and sharing did not blossom.
6
After having Mary for dinner and resting at Rebirth-on-the-Lake the monster Mortimer instinctively headed to Peachland Memorial Cemetery. There he encountered a female creature with flat hands, broken neck and punctured, dribbling eyes. The pathetic woman looked to have been on the wrong end of a long fight with a hungry lion. Barbara wandered in circles, banged into trees, tripped over tombstones and then staggered in the general direction of a cliff over which she fell, landing in a lake and sinking quickly. Her pathetic activity confused Mort, but he felt no empathy, sympathy or kinship for a sister in despair. This lack of feeling did not surprise him for the feeling of surprise had also absented itself.
A disturbance in the soil in front of a gravestone drew Mort’s attention and he got down on weak knees and started scooping dirt like a dog determined to uncover an old bone. Within a few minutes he had helped a corpse escape from its grave, thus doubling the population of undead that now trod the upper deck. Mort didn’t know why he did this and he did not recognize the repulsive corpse as being a fellow flesh eater. The reeking cadaver staggered, without thanks, into the woods and got hold of a tiny trusting gnome, which it pulled apart and devoured. Partially sated and filled with energy, the arisen returned to mindlessly help Mort uncover more living corpses. One, an elderly woman, neatly dressed and the other a teen who met his fate in an auto accident that forced him to lurch forward as best he could with broken spine poking through rotting clothes and skin. As the sky lightened the recently resurrected retreated to the deepest, darkest parts of the forest, dined on anything they could catch and hid from the painful light.
Beneath the soil, in the silent blackness, fingers relentlessly scraped, pushed and pulled until they saw traces of light and then waited until dark to push away the last crumbling dirt and emerge to a new, second life.
Their muffled mumbles emerged from below and, in the dark of the next night, Mort scraped at the earth until bodies could rise. Ravenously hungry, the newly reborn searched the woods to gulp down the guts of any living thing they could find, even foul-tasting frogs and slippery snakes. Within hours few who filled the plus side of the ledger remained available for dinner.
Just after midnight Mort stumbled against a rickety tool shed and knocked it over, spilling a cache of picks and shovels. He equipped the platoon of zombies and, like chimpanzees capable of using tools, they began unearthing every moaning or groaning thing that had been buried in Peachland in the past two decades. Before getting out of the earth more than a few felt a shovel remove and ear or a pick dig into a shoulder. This bothered neither the wielder of the tools nor the recipient of the blows.
Several long-departed had lost eyes, muscles and tendons and their mildewed bones clattered about in search of food. One wandered onto the road, got hit by a car and the bones scattered so far and wide that the driver believed he had hit a ghost. Another wandered uphill into coyote country where a pack seized him and enjoyed the bony bounty. The long-dead could not be helped and could not fulfill their destiny of a second life.
Extractions of more recent vintage lumbered downhill towards the town of Peachland and on their way stopped in at a trailer park. Friendly residents opened doors, said hello and were greeted by decomposing ghouls who, without introduction, knocked them over, tore out their guts, smashed their skulls and ate their brains. All without a word of gratitude or a nod of appreciation. Not even a thank-you note.
Those who thought it unwise to swing wide their portals to strangers after dark, received no reward for their prudence as the army of night smashed windows, crashed doors and devoured those who resisted with relish equal to the consuming of the cautionary. Families fell without screams, panic or any ado whatsoever. None managed to dial 911 before their quick demise. The fastest response possible by police or ambulance could not have saved them.
The park sat silent for several hours before a grandchild ventured forth from under a bed to learn why nana and gramps didn’t answer their beeping phone. A 911 call finally went through.
Nourished and energized from the feeding frenzy the tattered tribe stumbled quietly through the woods, guided by the scent of emerging new life in Peachland’s more distant Catholic graveyard. Even zombies without noses intuitively knew where to go to help fellow ghouls get a foot up and out of the ground.
7
Jane Dougherty slept deeply as beeps from her phone unconsciously annoyed her. The caller left a message. A second call caused her to roll over and pull her pillow over her ears. A third stirred her into irritated answering action.
“Wadda ya want?”
"Sorry to disturb you Sarge, but if I didn't call you'd be mad.”
“I am mad - make it worthwhile.”
“Come over to Cream Bay trailer park. More murder. You won't believe it."
Sgt. Jane Dougherty did not call her partner and second in command, Jesse Nesterinko, and wake him as she had been wakened. It seemed like mere minutes had passed since her head finally found the pillow in the deep a.m. and for Jesse the situation was likely the same. He valued sleep more than most. The investigation of Mary’s murder and the filing of reports had put both of them into double overtime although neither thought of claiming such.
The situation at the t
railer park must be an especially nasty marital dispute, Jane thought, otherwise the call would not have come to her in the early hours. She vaguely recalled hearing someone, probably the caller, mumble about more murder as she shrugged off sleep, but he might have wanted more money or commented that the terrain was mostly muddy.
Probably someone had waved a knife or threatened to jump out a window although the most one could expect in jumping from a mobile would be a sprained ankle. The idea of a second homicide on her watch was inconceivable. The first one blanketed her in disbelief, self-doubt and determination to catch the culprit.
Assorted lights scratched the dull sky as Jane numbly steered her way through a mass of police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and unmarked vehicles that belonged to various levels of authority. Sleepy recollections of Mary’s body must be remnants of a bad dream, she reasoned. Realizing that one’s worst fears were artifacts of a nightmare had a reassuring appeal. No one would leave a mutilated victim on the back steps of a stranger’s house.
Then she remembered brushing past her hall table and papers falling to the floor: a copy of the coroner’s report. Reality. Peachland had its first murder and she had her first homicide. And what a hideous homicide. And now what? Had the killer struck a second time? Surely not.
A cluster of cars made parking difficult, but she didn't want to stumble about in the semi-darkness as she didn't know what kind of masked psychopath might lurk behind a cottonwood tree. Impatiently she drove over a wooden fence, already broken down, and parked her car, with lights flashing, on the front yard of a neat double-wide.
"Normally I'd warn you about disturbing evidence," said a serious plain-clothes officer, "but this time I don't think it matters." She vaguely knew him, but he obviously didn't recognize her in the multi-function jumpsuit she kept beside her bed. She knew every member of her crew and thought this young man had to be from another detachment. What was he doing in her territory?
She ducked under police tape, walked through a splintered door hanging off its hinges and entered a well-appointed living room that had every appearance of normalcy. "What's up," she said to another plain-clothes whom she also did not know.
"You Jane Dough?" he asked cryptically.
"Jane Dougherty, yes," she corrected.
"OK, step in here and give us your opinion of how this relates to the woman recently killed."
He led Jane to a modern bedroom with unmade bed and side tables laden with books, TV remotes and the remains of a meal. A good-looking young man and woman lay on the floor, eviscerated, with heads smashed. She gasped, not only at the horror of the moment, but at the knowledge that Mary's death was not just a weird, one-of-a-kind atrocity committed by someone who had momentarily gone off the rails.
"The other room is worse," the plain-clothes warned, pointing to an open door. “Two kids: a teen boy and girl. Their dog too. Do you want to see?"
"No. Don't have to," Jane answered. "It's the same. Exactly the same as the other murder. My God, this is beyond belief. Who, what, could do this? Why, why, why?"
"It's not just this house,” the detective said. “Whole damn park has been decimated. Dozens of bodies smashed and pulled apart. A freshly-tramped trail of dozens of footprints leads from the park, deep into the woods. Dogs refuse to follow. I've sent a team after them."
"Who are you?" Jane asked.
"Detective Richard Duff, from Kamloops. Part of a tactical unit that's come to help. Got here in less than an hour. Before the Kelowna unit from next door, if you can believe it."
“While I slept? All this and no one called me? Because they thought I needed some sleep? Shit, that’s so stupid. Get Jesse down here.”
“We did call. No response. I don’t know any Jesse and I’m not under your orders. Not sure who would be in command here. District I suppose, but I don’t see anyone.”
“Until you hear otherwise this is my town and I’m in charge,” Jane shot back. “I’ll call him myself. Meanwhile quit standing around and get after the killers.”
8
With a small splinter group of newly-born skull crackers milling around him, Mort randomly lurched along rural streets, private yards and public parks; his brain incapable of forming a plan, mapping out a path or even conceptualizing a purpose. The slow, shuffling mob took advantage of opportunities to attack and devour uninformed pedestrians out for a stroll in the still night. Joggers, for the most part, survived since zombies took only a dozen steps in pursuit before abandoning a hopeless chase. Their lumbering style could not match the speed of the lamest, most pot-bellied pacer.
Although much of Mary bounced within him, Mort wanted more. When he saw misshapen teeth of fellow zombies pull purple sinew Mort desired to stick his face into the fray and pull with the others. No one offered to step back and accommodate him: he could not get through to savor warm organs.
An overweight man driving a battery-powered scooter crossed the lurchers’ path and eight dirty arms pulled him from his mount. 80 fingernails hollowed him out. Mort could not push through to get to the meat of the matter. When the wave parted, yellow fat covered the ground like melted butter and enhanced Mort’s appetite. He dragged his grey tongue along the greasy sidewalk, but the taste made him think of snails and caterpillars swirling in a blender. A rock shattered the skull of the disabled driver and displayed a bigger than normal brain. There was enough inside the head to go around, but that opinion belonged only to Mort. Others knelt, shoulder to shoulder and pressed forward to get the biggest share. Long bony fingers poked into eye holes and festering tongues lapped up seepage. The victim’s intelligence paste stuck to the palate and had to be washed down with aqueous humour, mucus, urine and snot. As zombies dined, the paraplegic’s legs spasmodically twitched and jerked as they had refused to do in life.
A zomb, wearing a gold tile necklace spelling Suzie, had worked as a heavy-equipment operator until crushed to death in an accident on the job. Her legs bent like a stork’s at the knees, which made walking, even slow lumbering, difficult. She clambered onto the driver’s seat of the scooter and motored ahead of the others until the road curved and she didn’t. Suzie puttered directly into a community garden that did not offer wheelchair access. The machine felled tomatoes, cabbages and sunflowers before plunging into a compost heap and covering its driver in garden waste.
Suzie twisted the throttle and the little machine burrowed deeper until damp, rotting vegetation caused an electrical short and the scooter whirred no more. After several minutes of immobility the driver accepted the fact her ride had ended. She jammed a big tomato into her mouth, spat it out and awkwardly hobbled back to the main group with decomposing cabbage and lettuce leaves adorning head and shoulders. Fellow zombies found no amusement. Their sense of humor had gone south when their bodies went six feet under.
Mort offered no smile of acknowledgement when Suzie awkwardly shuffled beside him and rested her heavy hand on his shoulder for support. He hardly noticed her and could not have cared less, as caring stood pretty low on his emotional totem pole. His labored thinking focused on the end of his life although such insight proved difficult as his brain leaked thoughts from his grey, overcast interior in slow motion. He didn't know who he was, where he was going or what he was doing. Did he turn off the stove? Did he cancel newspaper delivery? Did he miss a doctor’s appointment?Only one thing had a comforting ring:
“My name ith Morthimer Smithers.”
He gnawed on the strange words as he walked, repeating them loudly. The utterances reassured him although he didn’t know reassurance.
Mary, his first meal, had confused him with a town drunk of similar name of whom he had the vaguest memories. The mental mudslide that flowed over his train wreck of thought would have frustrated him had he recognized frustration. Instead he just walked; comfortably dumb.
To stay animated, to escape the eternal blackness, to walk the glorious surface, Mort knew he had to ingest organs and brains. It was instinct: he didn’t learn it from reading
Zombies for Idiots or by watching late-night infomercials. Never had he tasted anything as euphorically delicious as Mary. Every organ shot unique rivulets of flavour into his mouth. Her dark red liver with its store of earthy iron could not have been better if a Cordon Bleu chef had prepared it with exotic spices on a buttered, cast iron skillet. Her bladder sprinkled an under-taste of urine onto her salad of organs like an exotic vinaigrette. Glands full of energizing enzymes complemented intestines full of fetid organic matter, a second entree. The taste sensations exceeded anything ever put on a plate for the living. And the brain! Dessert. Each bite a multi-orgasmic feast that trembled through his wretched body and made him jut his frenzied tongue into every cranny and crevice in a search for another jolt of pleasure.
After doing Mary he craved a cigarette. Mort didn't know if he partook of the foul addiction, but a fellow reanimate walking ahead puffed casually and it looked enticing. Delicious grey smoke wafted from the walker’s nose and maggot-holed lungs that hung like black, dripping sacs. The smoker surely died of lung cancer, but now he enjoyed his poison like never before, free of anxiety caused by warnings on the package.
Mort harbored no conscious concept of being followed and knew nothing of the dangers of pursuit. Nevertheless, when he sighted flashlight beams dancing in the treetops he sensed danger and knew that unless those behind could be stopped, he and his kinsmen would return to the black.
Using hand signals and hard pushes he designated several tribesmen to stay back and lurk behind thick pine trees. He wasn't certain why, but lurking seemed like something they could handle. Thoughts arrived from a mental conveyor belt that creaked at quarter-speed and needed oil and maintenance. He didn't comprehend reanimation and his second walk on the bright side. A vague notion of a woman, perhaps a wife, and children and a house on a hillside danced just beyond lucidity. Mort didn't know where he worked, when his Cosco membership was due or when he should celebrate his birthday. How many candles on the cake? A search of his pockets found tools, stones and coins, but no soggy photo ID. Age 30 felt right: a married man with kids living in a small town. Disappointing. Could he be in a witness protection program or be an actor hiding from the paparazzi? Unlike his companions who wore suits, ties and dresses in various stages of rot, he sported outdoors attire. Perhaps he worked as a lumberjack or hunter although he didn’t feel particularly muscular or athletic. He was here for a reason, but he couldn't dig deeply into philosophy. Was it his duty to lead the apocalypse, to free the undead?