“Okay dokay.” John spoke in an odd sing-song voice that made him seem even less intelligent.
John skipped ahead as he moved towards the darkness. Gary called out, “You take good care of him…you hear me boy.”
“Okay Daddy.” John answered as he turned on his flashlight.
Gary smiled as he watched his son lead the other man into the forest, “Good boy.” Then he gave Ashley a grin and let her snuggle in. “Alright let’s get back to the story. Terence was dead. The zombies were still moving in towards New Orleans, and Danior was planning…”
***Meanwhile***
Todd followed the large man as he skipped along. Then after a few minutes John had to stop skipping and just walk. He was breathing hard, and just didn’t have the endurance of a younger, skinnier person. As they walked John sang strange versions of popular songs that almost always involved bodily functions. The longer they walked, the more annoyed Todd got with the man.
“Can you please shut up?” Todd questioned.
“Why you so angry? You gotta go poop?” John asked.
“No I don’t have to poop…I’m angry because I’m stuck out in the woods with a retard, and I’m angry because we’ve been walking for almost an hour and I’m pretty sure we’re lost.”
“We not lost.” John answered in a sing song voice. “Daddy says you ain’t never lost as long as you know where you’re going.”
“Then your Daddy is a fucking moron.” Todd snapped.
The large man stopped beside a barbed wire fence. “You’re a meanie.”
“Yeah…well you’re the retard that got us lost. So fuck you.” Todd snapped. John’s lower lip quivered and his eyes watered. He looked ready to cry. “Aw shit…I’m sorry.” Todd said, but the big man was already sniffling. Todd took one look at the man and then had to look away. He felt like a real heal.
“That okay.” John said, but his voice cracked with sadness. It only served to make Todd feel worse.
The teen stared at his shoes, “No…it’s not okay. I’m sorry I called you retarded. That wasn’t very nice.”
“Are you kidding? It just means I’m a hell of an actor.”
Todd’s eyes shot open with surprise, “Wha-“
*Thump*
The flashlight broke against the young teen’s head, and he crumpled to the ground. “Man this was a long fucking walk.” John laughed. Every hint of mental deficiency was gone. Instead the man had the cold predatory detachment of a rattlesnake as he began going to work on the young man.
“Wh-wh-where am I?” Todd asked as he woke up.
“Do you mean your actual location? That would be near Big Bend park in Texas. To be more specific, it’s where the land for you camp runs up to some farmland. Do you mean where are you specifically in relation to your current circumstances? If so then the answer is fucked.” John answered with a sly grin.
“You…you aren’t retarded?” Todd asked.
“Wow…perceptive aren’t you.” John answered and then pulled a multi-tool out of his pocket. He snapped open the blade on the multi-tool. “So I’ve answered your questions. Now my question is this? Do I let you scream?”
Todd felt pain in his neck, arms, and torso. He looked down, and saw barbed wire wrapped around his body. He was tied to a fence post with barbed wire. “Please let me go. I won’t say anything. I promise.”
John shrugged, “Oh…well okay. Gee, now I feel so silly. Here, hold this while I untie you.” The large man stuck the blade of the multi-tool into the teen’s leg. It tore through the cloth, and then punctured the skin. Todd screamed, and John closed his eyes and savored the sound.
“Why are you doing this?” Todd sobbed.
“You mean why am I killing you now, and not later?” John shrugged, “Dad hates critics. They just drive him fucking nuts. I mean we were going to kill you anyway, but when you started talking smack about his story…well you were pretty much fucked right then. Didn’t your momma ever teach you that if you can’t say something nice…don’t say anything at all?”
“I just wanted to go to the camp.” Todd cried, “The zombie story scared me. I just wanted to be safe in my bunk at the camp.”
John shook his head, “Oh…and a liar too. You’re momma has got to be disappointed in you. Oh well, if it’s any consolation…there isn’t a camp left anyway. I burnt that down after I killed everyone there. Well mostly everywhere. I’m pretty sure a few of the little bastards ran off when I hung Marvin upside down on the flagpole and lit him on fire.” John’s face curled into a smile, “He was a twitcher.”
“OH GOD SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE!” Todd howled.
“Do you really think I’d take you out here to kill you if I wasn’t reasonably sure we wouldn’t be interrupted?” John asked. Todd ignored him and kept screaming. After a few minutes John walked around behind the fence post and grabbed a stick wedged in the barbed wire around Todd’s throat. He started twisting it until the barbed wire tightened enough to finally quiet the teen down. The barbs were poking into his skin, and blood was running down his shirt, but at least he could still breathe…barely.
The barbed wire cut off Todd’s ability to talk, but he still kept mouthing “Help me!” John walked back around.
“Oh…this won’t do at all.” John said as he looked at the one bloody pants leg. He reached down and withdrew the knife. “Don’t worry…I’ll fix it.” Then John slammed the knife into the young man’s other leg. “I fixed it.” John grinned. Now both of the pant legs had bleeding knife wounds. “Nothing makes me crazier than when stuff just doesn’t match.”
Todd could only grunt in pain. His eyes plead for John to show some basic human decency. What he saw in those eyes was anything but human. There was an evil glee burning in John’s green eyes. John pulled the knife out, and then wiped the off the blood from the blade on the man’s shirt. “Man, I could do this all night, but frankly I have to get back so that Dad and me can finish off your friends. So as much as I’d love to spend the rest of the night playing the home version of Saw…I think we’re just going to have to skip ahead to the brutally gruesome death. That is unless you have something to say to change my mind?”
Todd tried to beg for his life, but he couldn’t force enough air out to do anything more than croak. John sighed, “Damn shame…I mean Dad and me have been doing this for years, and in all that time I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting the screamers. You my friend are definitely a screamer.”
John walked around to the back of the fence post. He gave the stick attached to the barbed wire around Todd’s throat one more twist so that now Todd had to strain to get even the slightest bit of oxygen. Then John moved to the barbed wire wrapped around Todd’s body. It went around the young man’s forearms and across his stomach. A thick branch the length of John’s forearm was used to tighten the barbed wire. John began twisting the barbed wire, and it began constricting around Todd. As the barbed wire tightened…it began to cut into his arms, and press in on his stomach.
The radius and ulna on both arms snapped under the pressure. The barbs kept tightening. The veins in Todd’s neck bulged as he tried to scream, and John giggled as he kept twisting. As the pressure on the teen’s midsection increased, the young man felt his bowels trying to loosen. Todd clenched his anus, and John kept tightening the wire. Eventually the wire broke the skin on Todd’s arms, and with each twist the wire started cutting through the flesh. John cranked down on the wire some more, and it eventually cut through both arms. Two hands flopped onto the ground. John laughed, “Oh…we’re about to get to my favorite part.”
The wire was squeezing on all sides of the young man. The barbs poked him on all sides. The blood loss was making Todd weak. He tried to stay conscious, but that got harder and harder as the blood poured out. Eventually he couldn’t clench anymore, and his body started to relax as it weakened.
That’s when Todd farted. It was from all the pressure of the wire. “Oooh…someone’s a stinky boy. Hahaha! Whew! Jesus! Someone’s
been holding that one in for the ladies.” John twisted the branch again, and an even louder fart came out. “Damn! We keep this up it’s going to start smelling like a bathroom in a Mexican restaurant.” He twisted again, and another powerful blast of gas erupted out from the teen’s anus. “You know. One time Dad did this, and he set a candle in front of the guy so we could watch his farts shoot flames. Funniest damn thing I ever saw.”
Every new twist pushed out another bit of flatulence, and the wire finally started cutting through the flesh of the stomach. Blood initially seeped out through the slit the wire made in Todd’s stomach, but as it cut deeper the blood flowed even more freely. Todd had found a new world of pain. He started trying to banging his head against the fence post to try and knock himself unconscious, but the barbed wire around his throat kept his head pinned back against the post. John leaned in to whisper in the man’s ear, “You know there’s one thing I’ve learned after all this time. Everyone’s a critic…but some of you are just really full of shit.” John gave another twist, and the wire finally severed the intestines inside the teen. There was a sound like someone letting al the air out of a balloon, and suddenly feces bubbled out from the slit in Todd’s stomach. Todd’s eyes went wide, and he looked out into the night for someone to explain why this was happening.
John stopped twisting the branch and walked around to enjoy his victim’s last few moments. He kneeled down and looked the teen into the eyes, “Tell me how much my Dad’s story sucks now? Tell me how it’s derivative and makes no sense. Tell me how much you hate it. Maybe you’d like to discuss the plot?” Todd’s eyes begged for the man to take some pity. John’s lips curled into a vicious smile as he said, “What? Nothing left to say? You had plenty to say earlier. So do you think the story is scary now?” The only response John got was the bubbling fecal matter oozing from Todd’s stomach. The light was starting to fade from Todd’s eyes. Shit and blood ran out from the man’s stomach as his heart started to fail.
Todd’s eyes were dull, and he wasn’t breathing anymore. John stood up, “Well…time to go be a retard again for a while. Put on my best duh face and let’s roll.” He turned and wandered back towards camp. Instead of the winding path he took Todd on, John walked straight back towards the camp. When he reached the camp he grinned and laid down on the ground while he waited for his father to end the story. It was all part of the tradition for their father and son outings.
Chapter Forty-Eight
*** FRIDAY, JANUARY 25th, 2013 – NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA ***
“Come on people. We have a huge area to cover.” Shirley Chisholm Stone said as they entered the St. Louis cemetery. Eighty five people on two tour buses marched into the cemetery behind the forty year old leggy black woman like sheep following their shepherd. She tried to keep the group together, and used the fact that the crypts were packed so tightly in on all sides in the St. Louis No. 1 cemetery to help control her group.
“Are we going to see Marie Laveau.” One of the tourists, a thirty year old man with glasses asked.
Shirley nodded, “Yes, we always stop by the voodoo queen’s crypt before we leave, but we’ll also see Bernard de Marigny, the man that brought craps to the United States. Homer Plessy, the plaintiff from the Plessy versus Ferguson civil rights case.”
“Yeah, but we definitely are going to see the voodoo queen?” The man asked hopefully. “I brought my chalk to put my three x’s and get a wish.”
Shirley shook her head, “Sir, we try to discourage putting x’s on the crypts. It is really just an old wive’s tale that you get wishes. It’s not actually true. People don’t actually get wishes.” The man looked at her suspiciously like he thought she was lying, but he stayed quiet. They wandered through the crypts. Shirley pointed out some of the more ornate crypts, and took the time to explain how some of the crypts are damaged from people marking them up with x’s and graffiti.
The moon was high in the sky, and cast enough light that she really didn’t need a flashlight to navigate, but she kept it on anyway to show some of the names to the people Most of the group stayed huddled together, but some tried to wander off. Most of the wanderers were couples looking for a dark place to make out. It happened every now and then. A lot of the tourists are newlyweds enjoying their honeymoon in New Orleans, and they just can’t help themselves. She tried to keep the group together, but some always snuck off.
“Remember to stay in a group.” Shirley ordered.
“Why…is some ghost going to sneak out and say boo.” An older woman teased, and her two pimple faced teens giggled.
“No, but sometimes people hide out in the cemetery and look for people all alone to rob. We’re completely safe as a group though.” Shirley answered. It was true. Some of the rough neighborhoods really did have a problem with people being robbed in the cemeteries, but she was really telling them to add to the element of danger. It made them all like the tours even more, and it helped discourage them from wandering away.
Shirley was passing her flashlight between the crypts when she saw something move behind a crypt. “Hello?” She asked. “Excuse me…whoever you are, you need to come back and rejoin the tour.” She sighed shined her light between several crypts to see if she could find where the person had gone.
“Ma’am? Should we be staying here? Is it safe?” A middle-aged man from the tour asked as he instinctively began huddling his family together.
“Yes it’s perfectly safe. I think one of our group just wandered off.” Shirley took a quick head count of the group. After seven years she’d gotten pretty good at counting people in a crowd. She was pretty certain that six were missing. Hopefully they’d catch up after they finished doing…whatever.
“AHHHHH-“ It was a woman’s scream that took the professional courteousness and sunny demeanor out of Shirley’s face. She’d heard a few women screaming in the cemetery before, but it’d always been because of passionate lovemaking by an overly amorous husband or boyfriend. This scream was terrified, and it cut out immediately like someone or something had put a stop to it.
“Okay people. Please move carefully back towards the bus.” Shirley said as she reached for her cell phone. Her plan was simple. Get her people back on the bus for safety, call the police, and after the police investigated she would then finish the tour. It was a good plan.
“I would not do that if I were you.” The mechanical voice tore through the night air.
“Who’s there?” Shirley asked nervously, her hand kept searching her purse for the cell phone, but the only response was the sounds of movement all around her. Whoever they were, there were dozens of them. All of them moved in the shadows behind the crypts. She searched fearfully. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of what she thought was a leg, but she couldn’t really be sure.
One of her clients screamed, “They’ve got us surrounded. RUN!”
It wouldn’t have been a bad idea if they’d all ran in the same direction, but they ran in all directions, and scattered themselves. The only one staying still was Shirley. As they all disappeared behind various crypts, Shirley heard scrambling, and what sounded like claws scraping against cement as whomever or whatever had them surrounded went after the tourists.
Bessie Norton ran with her children Buster and Cindy. They could hear something closing in. Bessie held Boomer’s hand, and he held his sister’s hand as they weaved in and out between the crypts. Bessie felt her arm jerk back. She turned around and looked. Cindy’s pig tail was stuck in a rod iron fence that protected one of the crypts. Bessie heard them getting closer. She reached over and pulled the dark-skinned girl’s pigtail out of the metal fencing. Immediately she began running again. They saw the exit. Bessie ran as hard as she could while still dragging her children along. She felt another tug but it was only brief, and they kept going. There was a second quick tug. “Cindy, be more careful! We have to…” Bessie suddenly became aware that she wasn’t dragging her children behind her anymore. There was no resistance at all, but she was still holding
on to Buster. Bessie raised up her hand. “Oh-no-no-no-NO-NO-NO-GOD-NO!” Buster’s tiny ebony hand still clutched hers, but everything past his elbow was missing. Buster was gone. Cindy was gone. Bessie only had another second before three large furry zombie werewolves hit her from all sides. Bessie tore into three equal parts, and they began to eat.
Kyle Wilber ran with his husband Mark into the darkness. The two had come here to celebrate their civil union. Kyle and Mark had promised to love one another “Until death do you part.” They just didn’t realize less than twenty hours later that might be a possibility. Claws scraped across the top of the crypts. Whatever was chasing them was bounding from crypt to crypt. Suddenly it stopped following them and veered off.
“I think we’re going to make it.” Mark smiled one of his beautiful devil-may-care smiles. The man was always the eternal optimist. It was just one of the many reasons Kyle loved him.
“I think you’re wrong.” Johanna laughed as she lead many of her handicapped students out of the shadows. Some moved out on crutches. Some walked clumsily out on leg braces.
“You’ve got to help us!” Mark said. “Something’s chasing us and…” He didn’t finish his statement, because at that moment Johanna and the others began to change.
Kyle had seen some disturbing things in his days as a soldier. He’d seen women’s bodies in Afghanistan after the Taliban finished making an example of them. Their skulls caved in from being stoned. He’d seen children riddled with bullet holes rotting in the sun. He’d even seen a man kill his own daughter to save the family honor after several men raped her. Nothing he’d seen over there prepared him for seeing Johanna and her students changing. As they finished changing they circled the two men. Mark was terrified, and Kyle wrapped his burly arms around the younger man. “It’ll be okay.” He lied. “Just close your eyes.” Tears ran down Mark’s face, and Kyle kissed the man one last time. His lips were soft, and he savored the slight hint of peppermint that still lingered in his husband’s mouth. They held each other closely, Kyle the tall heavily muscled ex-soldier in his forties and Mark the much younger man that had finally gotten Kyle to come out of the closet. For one last moment, in spite of everything, they were happy. Then the zombie werewolves pounced.
Uncle Gary's Campfire Stories: Bayou Zombie Werewolves Page 48