Debra mouthed thank you, and then looked to B.J. and mouthed hello.
“What the fuck?” B.J. screamed, and then covered her mouth in embarrassment. She’d never cursed in front of her father before. “Sorry.”
Bobby laughed, “No…if this isn’t a what the fuck moment then I sure as shit don’t know what is. By the way, Colton’s downstairs. We need to get down there pretty soon.”
“Uncle Colton? Downstairs? Why?”
Bobby shook Debra’s head a little, “This…mostly. There’s also some cops down there that think we’ve sort of lost it. So he’s trying to straighten that out. We can’t stay long. Me and Colton have to get back and look after Sarah, and try to figure out how to get this under control.”
“Well what exactly is…this.” B.J. said as she gestured at Debra’s head. Debra took offense at being called a “this” and made an angry face at the young woman. “Sorry ma’am.” B.J. apologized, and Debra mouthed a very terse thank you.
Bobby chuckled, “Well I’m pretty sure this cutie here is a zombie. We’ve ran into a bunch of them back home. The fire department is all zombies, the paramedics, both of Colton’s deputies were zombies. Even his dispatcher got turned into a zombie. There’s probably a shitload more of them now, but we thought maybe bringing this one to you might go a long way into finding a way to stop it.”
“Stop it? I’m not sure I even know where to begin.” B.J. said as she looked at the head. “I mean she’s got no body. There is no reason I can think of that she’d still be able to move like that.”
“Zombie.”
“Dad…there’s no such thing as zombies.”
“You said the same thing about unicorns, but I still got you a unicorn ride for your fifth birthday.”
B.J. sighed, “Supergluing a bull horn to a horse doesn’t make it a unicorn dad, and if you remember we both got thrown out because of it. I mean you nearly went to jail.”
“You were five…I figured you wouldn’t know any better. Besides, you had the biggest smile.” Bobby grinned unapologetically.
“It was sweet, but that’s not the point. What I’m trying to say is that zombies don’t exist.”
“But there’s one right there.” Bobby pointed at Debra’s head.
“I can see that, but what I mean is that there’s nothing like this in science.”
“So you’ll be the first. That’s gotta be good for one of those Noel prizes.”
“It’s Nobel prize dad. Noel is the Christmas song.” B.J. laughed.
“Well either way…we brought it to you. Colton’s got his hands full with zombies, I sure as hell can’t figure out what to do with them. I mean besides shooting them in the head.”
Debra glared at the man and mouthed, “Bring it on.”
Bobby explained everything that had happened up until now, and then he loaded the head back into the sack so they could go down to check on Colton and the campus police. When they got there Colton was still explaining everything, but this time he was talking with Herbert Hocks, the chief of police. He was a tall ebony skinned man with a heavy walrus mustache. Colton standing toe to toe and eye to belt buckle with the man.
“So I need a teletype sent out to the state that basically says I haven’t gone bat shit crazy, and to stay away from my police station.” Colton explained.
“Well we can do that. I’m sorry we can’t come with you. It’s out of our jurisdiction, and the school would have my head if they knew I sent my men off campus.” The chief grumbled.
Colton thought about it and then nodded, “That’s okay. The teletype is a big help, but if you can get the National Guard to assist it would make me feel a hell of a lot safer.”
The chief nodded, “I can certainly try. Anything else?”
Colton looked over to B.J. and her dad, “Have two officers guard the zombie head. B.J.’s going to study it. She’ll need access to one of the school labs. Keep people away from the head. It’s dangerous.”
Herbert picked out two of his men and ordered them to guard B.J. and the head. Then he started talking with his dispatcher. Two minutes later he had the National Guard on the speakerphone. Their response was less than helpful, “We need the governor to authorize any deployment.”
Herbert tried to get the governor’s authorization, but instead he got redirected to FEMA. FEMA redirected him to Homeland Security, and Homeland Security redirected him to the CDC. Allen Conner answered in a tone that was far too chipper to be healthy, “CDC, this is Allen Conner. How can I be of service to you today.”
“Oh fuck, just hang up.” Colton groaned.
Herbert eyed the little man, but continued explaining the current situation. Ten minutes later police chief Hocks was screaming at the phone. Finally Bobby reached out and took the phone, “Hi Allen…it’s Coonass again. Did you miss me?”
“Sir, please remember this is a recorded line.” Allen begged.
“Did you pass on my last message to the Secret Service?” Bobby asked.
“Y-y-yes sir.” Allen said nervously.
“Wonderful. Well Allen…it’s been a busy day. So I hope you won’t mind if I cut this call short.”
“Oh thank God…I men no sir. I won’t mind at all sir.”
“Wonderful, have a good night Allen.” Bobby grinned, “And Allen?”
“Yes sir?”
“Please make sure the first lady knows I always wash my balls so they won’t taste sweaty or anything. She’s going to be lonely after I kill her husband, and I want her to know I’m a real gentleman, and considerate of her needs.” Bobby laughed as he hung up.
“Dammit Coonass!” Colton growled. B.J. just stared at her father in shock.
“What? I still say she’s a sexy woman.” Bobby grinned and handed the phone back to Chief Hocks. “Well, it looks like it’s just us.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“We have a problem.” Lisa Kaye said as she read the teletype warning all other agencies to stay away.
“What’s wrong?” Esteban asked.
“Apparently our fat little redhead persuaded another agency that he isn’t the threat we said he was. Well...so much for that plan.” Lisa stood up and walked over to the hole in the front of the building.
Esteban sighed, “So, most of your coworkers aren’t coming, the mutual aid is being ignored, and I’m getting bitten up by bugs. It seems like things are going downhill pretty quick.”
“Not necessarily.” Lisa turned around smiling. “I may have an idea.” Lisa started to explain, but the young woman Esteban was holding was screaming too loudly for anyone to hear her. Esteban moved around the desk to hear better, but the young woman he had a hold on kept trying to jerk away. She begged, and cried to be let go so loudly that she kept drowning out the conversation the two zombies were trying to have. Finally in frustration Lisa asked, “Jesus Rebekka, would you please just the hell up for one minute.” Rebekka just kept screaming. “Esteban…can you shut her up please?”
“Oh fine.” Esteban rolled his eyes and pushed the young woman against the wall. Then he reached over and grabbed the heavy metal three-hole puncher. The first blow shattered her jaw. Her mouth hung open. The jaw was deformed and misshapen so badly that she couldn’t move it. The second blow made her slump to the floor. She started crawling away. “Now we can’t have that.” Esteban dropped the hole punch, and stomped down on the woman’s leg just below the knee. There was an audible pop, and the woman made a garbled scream. Esteban wasn’t done though. He moved to the other leg and stomped on it. Now both legs were useless, but she was determined. Esteban grabbed one arm, and lifted it. He tenderly held her fingers in his hand, and then kicked her elbow. The elbow shattered, and bent backward into a ninety degree angle. He then took her other arm, and twisted it until the bones popped and shattered. Esteban kept twisting until the meat began to tear off the bone. He kept twisting like he was trying to wring water out of a towel. The bones in the arm were destroyed. As he continued twisting the skin ripped at the should
er from the strain. Blood began to ooze at first, but then came faster with more tearing.
Rebekka looked up at him weakly. Shock was already setting in. She tried to beg, but couldn’t form the words. Instead she just gave a mumbled mewl, and watched in horror as her arm was slowly twisted off. Esteban pulled her arm away like it was a chicken leg and began to eat it. Blood spurted from her shoulder in heavy blasts. It coated his shoes, and soaked into the carpet. Heavy spurts kept coming. The other zombies that hadn’t eaten yet saw the blood and scrambled to feed. Esteban had to jump out of the way, or be trapped in the dog pile of inhumanity. The stronger ones fought their way to the body, and the weaker ones were content to lap up the blood from the carpet.
“That reminds me…doesn’t this place have a cleaning crew?” Esteban asked between bites.
“They come in early every morning, but I wouldn’t count on them arriving. If Colton was able to call the others and tell them to stay away, he probably got ahold of the cleaning crew as well.” Lisa answered.
“That fat midget is really ruining our day.” Esteban growled.
“Yeah, but we might be able to make use of him. If we take some of these guys with us and go to his house we can set a trap. He has that pretty wife, and you just know he’s going to have to go check on her the first chance he gets. So we wait on him to get home, and then we make him one of us. Then we get him to give the all clear, and have him ask the other agencies for mutual aid. So then we’re back to having meals delivered. Of course we can eat that pretty wife of his once we get ahold of Colton, but we’ll need to lay low until he gets home. We wouldn’t want her to warn him off now would we.” Lisa smiled.
Esteban started to grin, “That’s downright brilliant, and I sure would like a mouthful of his woman. Sweet Jesus she’s a piece. What’s a woman like that doing with the a fat little redheaded turd like Colton? Does he have money or something?”
“Nope, and it doesn’t make any sense to me either. Who knows?” Lisa shrugged.
“Peanut? Where y’at?” Esteban had to scream over the sounds of the zombies fighting over Rebekka’s body. The poor girl couldn’t move with all of them on top of her. They went after the easiest things first. One ear was torn off and swallowed whole, and the other one was being eaten away one bite at a time. One of the zombies grabbed her nose, and pulled it away until only a small bit of cartilage remained. Some of them were eating her legs, and a few her arms.
Peanut stuck his head up from the pile, “Awrite.”
Esteban looked down and took another bite of Rebekka’s arm. Then after swallowing it down he said, “Hurry it up. Road trip.”
“Okay boss.” Peanut answered and then said to the other zombies, “Let’s turn her over. She’s a skinny one. There’ll be more to eat on the other side.”
The pile of zombies immediately rolled her over. They weren’t gentle. Her already broken arm popped out of joint, and folded underneath the body. All of Rebekka’s most tender parts were now available. It didn’t take long. They tore her clothes off to get to the fleshy parts underneath. A man and a woman latched onto Rebekka’s breasts and started gnawing away. One of them ate her toes. One woman looked as if she was trying to kiss Rebekka, but instead she pulled away with a chunk of her lower lip. A man put his mouth over one of her eyes, and sucked until it came out in his mouth. He bit down, severing the optic nerve, and it fell back across her face like a piece of fettuccini. The man kept chewing the eye like it was a hardboiled egg. Finally he swallowed, and then made his way to the other eye.
They grabbed and tore at her skin. Fingernails pulling off small sheets of skin, and if they couldn’t rip the flesh off by hand, they just leaned in and bit off chunks. One of them even lay down between her legs and ate at the inside of her thigh. Eventually several of them turned their attention to her stomach. They buried their faces in her soft tummy, and began gnawing at her as though it were a state fair pie eating contest. By the time one of them was able to reach in and pull out her liver, she was dead.
Eventually they began trying to get to the brain. A woman reached for it first, and was attacked by three others. They even bit off one of her fingers. Next a large black man put Rebekka in a headlock and started to try and tear her head away, but they pounced on him. Peanut grabbed the hole punch off the floor and bashed the man’s head in. Blood splattered in arcs as the heavy metal hole puncher smashed its way through the man’s cranium. The other’s threw the dead man’s body out of the way, and they all continued fighting over Rebekka’s head.
*Bang*
“I’ll be taking her brain if you please.” Lisa said as she leaned over the desk. The pistol had made a clean hole through one of the other zombie’s forehead, and sprayed brain matter all over the two zombies behind him. They all backed away, and Peanut wrenched Rebekka’s head off. Then he handed it to the blonde. “Thank you Peanut.” The others watched as Lisa cracked the skull against the edge of the desk until the skull was broken enough for her to just reach down and tear off the top. Lisa reached in to Rebekka’s head like it was a bucket of popcorn, and pulled out a handful. She greedily shoved the first bite into her mouth. “Oh God…it’s so good!”
“Can I have a bite?” Esteban asked.
“I’ll think about it.” Lisa answered, but it was clear she had no intention of sharing. It wasn’t long before she was scooping out the last bit of medulla oblongata. She then tossed the remains to a young brunette woman that had been scraping the floor to try and get a few drops of blood, “Here, you can have the face.” The woman snatched the head out of the air and began gnawing on Rebekka’s cheek.
“So the plan is we head to Colton’s house and wait? It seems easy enough.” Peanut said.
“Yeah, let me get some keys for the other Explorers. We’ll park a mile away and then make our way up to his house. Then we’ll attack when he gets out.” Lisa walked to where they kept the keys for all the vehicles, and came out with four keys. “Well that’ll take sixteen of us. That should be plenty. Esteban, pick whoever you think can do the job, and we’ll get them a gun from the armory. The rest of you can stay here and wait for food, or go hunting for something to eat.”
Esteban took Peanut and they sized up the others. The fat ones that might get seen too easily were immediately disregarded. They asked who had military training, and two of the men raised their hands. One was in the reserves. His name was Ted Dotry, but he answered to T-Dot. The other had been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. His name was Freddy Cox, and he was an older man. Esteban wasn’t going to take him, but then Freddy said, “I’m fit enough to keep up with you kids, smart enough to stay hidden, and strong enough to pull a trigger. What else could you want?” Esteban just liked that the man could call him a kid with a straight face, and so he decided to let him come.
A few of the people Esteban would have wanted to come had to be excluded because it wasn’t practical. Either they’d been bitten somewhere like their leg that made it where they couldn’t really move well, or they had fingers bitten off and couldn’t even hold a gun. Out of what he had left, Esteban picked the best eleven. They each took a gun and then went out to the SUV’s.
Esteban, Lisa, and two men sat in one Explorer. Peanut took three men with him in the second Explorer. T-Dot drove the third, and Freddy brought up the rear. They left the station, and headed towards Colton’s home. Esteban and Peanut’s Explorers weaved all over the road. “Shit…it’s like I’m drunk.” Esteban growled.
“Peanut doesn’t look like he’s doing much better.” Lisa said.
“I know what I want to do, but it’s like my body isn’t really listening to my mind.” Esteban explained.
“I know what you mean.” Lisa said as she watched Peanut nearly veer into a telephone pole. “I was typing those teletypes, and by the time I finished the last one I was having fits with typos. I type ninety words a minute, and I don’t think I was typing six by that last one. Maybe whatever’s done this to us has screwed with our fine motor skills
, and hand eye coordination.”
“You think so?” Esteban asked.
“I wasn’t a great shot to begin with, but I really had a hard time aiming when I pulled the trigger last time. Frankly I was as surprised as anybody that I actually hit the guy in the head.” Lisa said with a shrug.
The first two Explorers continued to snake back and forth across the road. By the time they were halfway there the last two Explorers were beginning to weave as well. Lisa sighed, “Well I think we’ve got our answer. Now we’re all driving like we’re drunk.”
“Is this going to get worse?” Esteban asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a tradeoff. I mean we can survive almost any injury except to the head. Maybe whatever makes us so tough to kill also takes away our coordination.” Lisa exhaled noisily in frustration. “Either way we stick with the plan. Just don’t drive too fast. The last thing I want is to get in a car wreck and be messed up where I can’t move or anything.”
The four Explorers parked at a farmhouse a mile north of Colton’s home. “Why don’t we slip inside and grab a bite to tide us over?” Esteban smirked.
“Okay but we have to be quick. No telling how long we have until Colton gets home.” Lisa responded.
They all piled out of their SUV’s and walked up the driveway. When they reached the door Esteban knocked, “Fire department. We had a report of a gas leak.” There was no answer, and so Esteban knocked harder, “This is the Livingston Parish Fire Department. We had a report of a gas leak in your area. We need to inspect your gas line.”
There was the sound of a chain being removed, and then several locks were disengaged. Finally the door opened, and an old woman peered out. She was easily ninety. Her hair was thinning and white, liver spots covered her body. Thick glasses that made her eyes look enormous stared back out of the doorway at Esteban. Her voice trembled a little as she asked sweetly, “Can I help you.”
Esteban leapt through the doorway and tackled the old woman. They landed with a hard crunch as her ribs gave way under the weight of the much larger man. The others stormed their way into the house. They immediately went scrambling throughout the house looking for anyone else. Peanut found her husband snoring in his La-Z-Boy with Law and Order on the television. He leapt on top of the man, biting his face as the recliner tipped over. The grandfatherly man screamed as teeth scraped the skin off of his forehead. Two more pounced on the old man. His screams stopped before the show went to commercial.
Uncle Gary's Campfire Stories: Bayou Zombie Werewolves Page 22