Zombie Angst

by Jim Couper

  His upper arms puffed against a plaid shirt, but the puffiness came not from strong bulging pipes, but from some strange skin condition that turned his epidermal layer grey and made it swell. He must be a famous explorer who died of an exotic disease.

  9

  Regenerated vampires never killed intentionally, but occasionally they crossed the fine line separating need from greed. That same line divided recovery from death for the blood source. Overindulging and siphoning the last drop, or even second or third last drops, from a donor was the pitfall of the rookie imbiber. Euphoria from drinking could so overwhelm that stopping well before the last slurp from a shrunken vein took training and self-discipline.

  When leeches dipped into a living donor the victim quickly became unconscious and when he or she awakened, an hour or two later, no memory of the minutes before the bite remained.

  Vamps slept during the day and passed their nights hanging around dangerous intersections and emergency entrances to hospitals waiting for the opportunity to come stalking. Draining a few drops from the very recently deceased or drinking deeply from a screaming car crash victim, immobilized with broken legs, had little risk and a few pints sustained years of dormancy in crypt or cave, if that was the life choice. Integrating into society and watching everyone except themselves grow old and die remained the other dreary option.

  Several dozen vamps lived patiently in Peachland, passing their time with Scrabble, movies and electronic games. On rare occasions when they gathered with others of their kind little happened, for all knew their destiny, which was no destiny at all. Peachland leeches were not party people. They laughed little and did not find joy in living through eternity. That attitude changed after the electrical storm, sun spots and radio-wave-reversal charged somnolent bodies and gave a slight energy jolt that lethargic vampires had never before known.

  The unexpected emergence of dormant vampires from crypts and caves, because of the charge, required an infusion of new blood. The zombie invasion made that simple task extremely difficult. After flesh-lovers had torn apart a body, the remaining blood had all the nourishment of sun-ripened pig piss.

  Vamps possessed limited deductive reasoning, their mental acuity dulled by the tedium of time. Conversely, they had complete awareness of who they were and total understanding of the circumstances of their complex situation.When the radio wave shocks of October 8, 2015 woke their sleeping comrades, many vamps believed the apocalypse had arrived: an apocalypse their kind had been awaiting for millennia. Although most had turned atheist, given up on change and abandoned all spirituality, the new energy provided hope that a future with promise awaited just around time’s only corner.

  A small group of bloodsuckers emerged from basements, crypts, graveyards and other hiding places, and joined up with regular Peachland resident-vamps who strolled to the downtown. Their nose for bloody nectar directed the search of refreshments. They sniffed out desiccated bodies belonging little folk: gnomes upon whom vampires depended for a stealthy sip of sera from time to time. The poor elfin creatures they encountered had been destroyed and their limited liquids spilled uselessly: they would never serve again. Mary’s body, spread on back steps, proved equally disappointing. Ghastly mutilation spilled her valuable fluids: not a drop remained for the lady in black who stooped over her, testing the waters.

  Vamps exhibited great caution when dipping their straws into humans as the temporarily living had both strength and intelligence. A blood-thin vampire moved painfully slowly, barely able to walk more than hundred yards and not able to think clearly enough to devise a plan to get blood, other than to fall upon someone recently deceased or severely injured and slurp enough drops, spilled or otherwise, to infuse sufficient energy to track down a full tank. Trying to suck a healthy human, when near empty, could be extremely dangerous. Temps did not react favorably to their necks being groped by a darkly dressed weakling: a punch in the face, kick in the gut or knife in the heart could result. Vamps found no value in gratuitous violence so their motto was Drink before you get thirsty.That maxim couldn’t apply to the recently revived who woke thirsty yet felt unexpectedly vigorous.

  New vamps gathered at the Peachland waterfront charged and ready to go, but blood had to be obtained in order to maintain their new state. Sinking teeth into someone felled by the zombie attack on the trailer park nauseated and humiliated them. Humiliation fit better than nausea so they cleaned up fresh dribbles and splatters before police arrived. Vamps siphoned red drops from window panes, kitchen floors and cupboard doors like degenerate dogs. While far from tidy, the zombies were thorough: no living blood source could be found. They did not look under beds.

  For two days the new blood suckers hung in the background, licking leftovers and getting steadily weaker. Like hyenas without confidence, courage or carcasses their energy declined and with it their inclination to satisfy their needs. When the flashlights of zombie-chasing police darted through trees, vamps knew the time had come for action. A pudgy cop − a doughnut eater − waddled behind while his mates jogged forward. Sweaty, panting and out of breath, the laggard managed a stalwart defence when five straws fell upon him. He knocked several aside, but with all the arms dragging at him and all the fangs sinking into him, his hands could not get to any of his weaponry − not taser, revolver or night stick.

  The leader, Victor, more than a millennium old, wet his canines first and drew from the right jugular while others pushed and pulled to share the left. Some bit at wrists and drained from ankles. Victor took only a demitasse since desperate times called for diminished measures. He looked directly at his pal Vanessa, ravishing in black leather with sufficient waves of quivering cleavage to drown a ship. She siphoned a little while the others dug in with hollow teeth. Even those getting just a few drops from veins on the chubby blue legs felt better. The cop, white and flaccid, fell like a wrinkled sheet. He would not recover. Guidelines had been violated.

  When the fat one’s absence was noticed a young policewoman volunteered to go back and look for him, but the commander ordered another officer to accompany her.

  Dry vamps, admiring the suddenly ruddy complexion and energetic pace of Victor and Vanessa, grew desperate and reckless; characteristics seldom seen in vamps. They sprinted towards the two police who came back in search of their missing partner. The male cop drew his gun while the female aimed her taser.

  "Stop right there," they shouted, almost in harmony.

  Ignoring the order, the leeches continued forward, the ones behind pushing without concern for safety. "We'll shoot," the cops sang again, like a barbershop duet, but their words had no meaning. "Final warning," came as a falsetto, even from the baritone male. The surge continued and the policeman fired first, his bullet going into the abdomen of the closest assailant, out the other side and into a tree. The target pulled his pink shirt from the tight belt of his navy pants and saw a hole from which thick sepia syrup slowly seeped. He pushed his finger into the hole and when he took it out the high-viscosity leakage ceased and he continued forward.

  Gunshots spoiled the quiet of the forest and bullets went through arms, legs and abdomens with little effect. The female officer fired her Taser X3 at a leech who closed to within a few yards and the bolt of electricity hit him in the chest. He started dancing wildly. The next vamp, a woman in a tight crimson dress, also started a weird satanic dance when struck in the neck by a taser. She leapt in the air to some unheard beat, legs flailing like a puppet controlled by electric stings. More bullets passed through bodies and within a minute every vampire, save Victor and Vanessa, who skulked to the background, had been hit by gun, stun gun or taser.

  Having learned that their prime weapons didn't repel the attackers, the two police reached for night sticks, but this reaction of last resort came too late as bodies and bicuspids swarmed them until they fell to the forest floor as pale sacks of skin and bones.

  While others imbibed, Victor picked up a stun gun, looked it over and hit Vanessa who was initially
shocked, but commenced a demonic highland fling with a big smile on her face. Vamps who had previously been tasered demanded a hit and soon all were twirling and laughing as if the guns had been loaded with amphetamines and nitrous oxide. When Victor decided he should take a hit the depleted weapons had fired their last and he missed his shock therapy.

  When the band of shambling undead cannibals reached a small cemetery, to which it had been instinctively drawn, it discovered nothing more than a tiny native burial ground. This cemetery found use on rare occasions when a chief's reign on Earth ended. That had not happened for more than a year.

  Mort listened for scratching, looked for movement and found a little. He and his companions pushed away rocks and scraped dirt as they dug towards a source of slight vibrations. They unearthed skeletal remains, held together by sinews, that could barely stand, let alone lurch. An ailing centenarian with a walker could have made better bipedal progress than what emerged from the soil. A head-dress of feathers, beads and bones had outlasted his an elder's body, yet his jaw snapped in a quest for flesh.

  Five RCMP members, tracking the zombies, reached the native burial ground and saw three partly fleshed skeletons wearing headdress, beads and belts. Cops’ mouths hung open while the resurrected native zombies’ mouths chomped up and down. From behind rocks, on opposite sides of the cemetery, vampires watched and zombies watched.

  The skeletons staggered towards the police and the first native lost his delicate balance and clattered down after just two steps. The next pair tripped over him and formed a heap of rattling bones. Stupefied police stepped slowly towards the reeking pile. One grabbed his radio, reported their location and what they saw. Then they laughed at the seething mess before them, bragging they had tracked down the murderers and corralled them.

  With pointing, pushing and gesturing Mort directed his fellow zombies to use trees and rocks for cover and hide from the police. The zombs drooled at the distant sight of Victor and Vanessa, rich with recently siphoned blood, but the pair didn’t smell right or look right.

  Laughing cops caught a wave of stench then turned and spotted Mort’s half-hidden gaggle. Vampires stepped into the clearing and approached police from the opposite side.They heard groans, halted and pulled at a pile of stone slabs, unearthing an ancient cavity. From the cavity wobbled a sorry creature wearing pink feathers, chartreuse leggings and a light blue vest of bone and shell − the first gay vampire Indian chief. After being shocked into life by the earth’s electrical waves, he badly needed a transfusion.

  Mort stared at the vamps and his fuzzy thoughts could not figure them out. It didn’t help that a leech launched straws into the farthest cop and the uniform screamed like a pig at the slaughterhouse. Police put dozens of bullets through the deathly denizen while backing towards outstretched arms of zombs. The vamp hung from the neck of the policewoman like a bloodsucker in a swamp, until both went down and only one came up. The cop lost blood so fast she never knew what bit her.

  Three remaining constables fled as if departing a deli with salmonella. Eaters lurched after them with no hope of catching unless a cop suffered cardiac arrest within 10 yards.

  Straws had not only speed, but stealth. As the three cops raced blindly downhill, zigging and zagging to avoid imagined pursuers, suckers took a circuitous route and intercepted them at the lakeshore. Bullets did nothing so the three police unholstered tasers and fired. With palpable relief charges stopped leeches in their tracks and got them bounding into the air with heels kicking. A police boat, siren wailing, came to their call. Before its prow touched pebbled sand tasers ran out of energy and the boat crew could do little but haul aboard three ashen bodies that weighed less than expected. A big hospital on the other side of the lake prepared for their arrival.

  10

  Claustrophobia grabbed Jane Dougherty as she tried to wedge her way from the front door of the community policing station to her office. In her way were RCMP officers from Kelowna, Vancouver and Kamloops who had set up stations at whatever desk or cardboard box they could procure. Someone had let media reps in and, with that door open, they came and went as they pleased and half the police officers had camera or microphone in their face. A mumbling gypsy-like woman stuffed herself into a corner and a well-dressed gent yelled into two phones. At the back door tracking dogs yelped and every cop who arrived or departed in a squad car felt the need to do so with lights blazing and sirens blaring. Phones rang with buzzes, dings, beeps and wolf whistles. A male voice with a lisp announced over the office intercom, “Tannis Sesame, please come to the interrogation room.” One could not easily forget a name like that but Jane didn't recognize it.

  Jane Dougherty did not know the count for the world's biggest mass murder. She feared Peachland would be getting a top 10 listing on her watch. She had something monstrous on her hands and, as the highest ranking member in the tiny detachment, she had to exert control and take action to halt the murderers in their tracks. To do this she needed clarity of thought.. She couldn’t come to grips with the idea of a band of renegade men, or women even, raiding a mobile park and eating the occupants. The whole thing stretched beyond bizarre. If only it had been a shootout at a poker game, with witnesses and evidence.

  In the hospital a man, missing most of a leg and his genitals, moaned about zombies eating him. Six officers were MIA and the last call from one of them concerned dancing blood suckers and skeletons. She needed help from a higher authority and instead of making an appearance in this Eden turned hellhole, her God had slept.

  Dougherty whacked her nightstick on a wooden counter. The entry room of the police station quieted slightly. "Listen up," she shouted above murmurs, rings and barks. "I need your attention and I want your help. All RCMP members go to the right side of the room, everyone else to the left."

  After confused movement Jane shouted, “I said everyone else move left. My left. Look where I’m pointing.” The horde reshuffled.

  "OK, everyone look left, that’s my right. Those are the people in charge, the ones doing the investigation, the ones with authority: the police. This station is now closed to media, lawyers, hangers-on, do-gooders and anyone else who isn’t a cop. If you've got a camera, recorder, pencil, notepad whatever, it's time to go. No alarmist stories please, everything you know is alarming enough. Tell people to keep inside and barricade their doors. We’ll hold press conferences when we have news. And don't tie up our phone lines with calls. Out you go. Thanks for cooperating."

  Six people with cameras left the police station as did three with voice recorders and a few with no apparent reason for being there. Jane turned to the remaining seven on the left wall. "You, you with the two phones, what are you doing here?" A chubby Oriental man put one phone in his pocket and replied, "I’m with immigration. I’m looking for a murderer who escaped pwison. Very bad man. He came …" Jane impatiently interrupted and told him, "I'm sure you’re doing good, but more than one man is doing the killing and you are on the wrong trail. You can work out of your car or office, we don't have room. Bye."

  As he departed Jane turned to a fit young man with light hair and beige suit that matched both his complexion and the color of the wall behind him to such a chameleon-like degree that she previously hadn't noticed him. "And you?"

  "I'm a senior officer with CSIS; Canadian secret service, more or less. My division investigates alien sightings, UFOs, that sort of thing. Before you kick me out, I think I might be able to help. This is not the first time brains and abdominal parts have been removed from bodies. There have been cases in Germany and Norway and, of course, California. I'm waiting for calls and if you don't mind, I'll keep in the background, out of the way. I'll let you know as soon I get additional info. But I need access to all that you know."

  Jane nodded an OK. She liked his demeanour and looks: no pretensions, strong and fit. He could be an asset if he could procure whatever information he talked about. She turned to others who proved useless or worse. An old man said he was tracing a stolen car.


  "Out."

  A private dick who acted like a dick claimed the wife of his client was having an affair with someone in the trailer park. He had to report if she was a victim and he was hesitant to leave.

  "Out, or into the clink for obstructing police." He sauntered out.

  An undercover cop from Calgary had tailed a motorcycle gangster to a house near Cream Bay Park and needed to be privy to current information to continue.

  "Out."

  A dentist walking past had heard the commotion and wanted to know if she could help.

  "Thanks, but the last thing we need is a dentist. If anyone has a toothache we’ll call. Out."

  The remaining hanger-on looked as useless as those who had been evicted: an older, leather-skinned woman with the appearance of a bag lady. "And you?" Jane enquired impatiently.

  "I'm psychic. I hear the cries of lost souls. I hear them everywhere. I know their names. I came here to help them, to help you."