Errol nodded his head gravely. Randall turned around.
“Look, Sam, I can explai—”
Sam didn’t give Randall the chance. He flung his body headfirst at Randall and brought his teeth mere millimeters from the old man’s neck with a guttural groan.
“Randall, duck!” Errol yelled.
Randall obliged, dropping his body to the ground as if his bones had vanished. Errol swung the club full force into Sam’s head, splitting a wide crevice in his skull that spewed meaty chunks of brain. Sam’s body crumpled to the ground next to Randall, who rose wearily back to his feet.
“Why the hell is everyone trying to eat me today?” he asked.
Errol leaned in toward Randall’s neck and for a second Randall was concerned that he was about to pull the same shenanigans as Sam just had, but Errol only sniffed. “It’s your cologne,” he said. “It’s magnetic.”
“Oh yeah, now’s a great time for one of your jokes,” Randall said, pushing Errol away.
“I’m just trying to alleviate some of the stress caused by the arrival of a zombie apocalypse.”
“What? Get out of here.”
“I’m serious.”
“You really think that guy and Sam were zombies?”
“Absolutely,” Errol said.
“Which means . . .”
“We’ll have the course to ourselves.”
“Nice,” Randall said.
The crow above cawed once more before taking flight, knowing that more bloody carnage would be found in many other places on that fateful day.
The fairway of the fourth hole turned 90 degrees to the left 112 yards from the tee, carried on for 134 yards in that direction, then turned 90 degrees to the right and ended 40 yards farther at the pin, a zigzagging double dogleg almost as menacing as the pair of zombies who had attacked them three holes before.
After watching Errol drive his ball with the perfect amount of spin to draw it around the first dogleg, Randall felt slightly diffident. He flubbed his drive and shoved his club hastily back in the bag.
“Damn. I’m seriously considering giving up golf.”
Errol stepped on the gas pedal and asked, “What’s stopping you?”
“I’m married,” Randall said without a hint of amusement. His glib joke had reminded him of his previous desire to retire from the game, if only he could muster up the courage to break the news to Errol. Randall had never beaten Errol in a skins match, and the joy in their weekly game had begun to fade. Today was a little different, however. He was still playing like crap and getting the snot kicked out of him, but his encounter with death had been exhilarating. The air smelled a little sweeter, the sun was a little warmer and his head felt a little clearer.
“Speaking of Beatrice, how is the old broad?” Errol asked, interrupting Randall’s thoughts.
Randall shrugged his shoulders, in no rush to take his next shot. The course was, as predicted, dead. “Not bad. I just got a new set of clubs for her.”
Not one to miss such a glorious setup, Errol said, “Good trade.”
Randall laughed and slapped Errol on the arm.
In an interview for the local paper conducted shortly after Golden Links opened in the 1950s, Iorek Antokol’skiy, the course designer, jokingly referred to the course’s signature hole, the seventh, as “Hell’s Half Acre, and I hope my ex-wife burns and rots there.”
Squatting on his haunches, his pants riding ridiculously high up his legs, Randall lined up his putt. The green was like a mirage, a small island with edges that sloped down into a sea of undulating mounds of sand and blowing tumbleweeds.
Standing near the hole and holding the flag, Errol said, “Now, remember: real golfers don’t cry when they line up their fourth putt.”
“Shut up.” Randall did his best to block out Errol’s snide remark, but his overactive mind got the better of him and he couldn’t focus. His putt ran a foot to the right of the hole and four feet past, tumbling down into the sandy abyss, the jaws of Hell’s Half Acre.
“Son of a—” Randall yelled as he raised the putter above his head and heaved it straight down into the patchy green. He tore it free from the ground, loosening a chunk of dirt, and brought it down again.
A zombie crawled its way onto the green from the surrounding sand trap. Modifying his attack on the earth, Randall freed the putter again and slammed it deep into the skull of the ghoul, its eyes squirting blood from the tear ducts. With much effort, he pulled the putter free, loosening a chunk of zombie brain, and turned to face Errol, who was beholding his crazed friend with a mild air of confusion.
“That’s a pretty good stress reliever,” Randall said, trying to catch his shortened breath.
“You feel better now?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Errol had a chance to test Randall’s peculiar stress reliever on the next tee. The short eighth hole was rife with perils such as a maddeningly sloped green and a treacherous pin position, far too close to both the edge of the dance floor and the small pond that waited beside the lip. Blessed with this foreknowledge, Randall and Errol often chickened out and clubbed down from a one-wood to a three-wood to safely lay up their drives.
Randall watched in stunned silence as Errol, glaring down at his ball with a three-wood in hand, swallowed loudly and his knees began to shake.
Exhaling loudly Errol tore his gaze from the ball and took a step back, which turned out to be a fortuitous move. Otherwise he might not have seen the bloodied woman who sauntered out from the woods. She attempted to groan, the universal language of zombies, but failed magnificently—an angry gaping hole had been torn from her neck and her vocal cords were hanging limply from the bloody breach. Aside from the neck wound and an ankle bone that was protruding from her skin, she seemed to be fairly unperturbed and single-mindedly hell-bent on her newly discovered prize: the two tasty-looking golfers.
“The three-wood’s all wrong,” Errol said, shaking his head. “Would you mind handing me my driver?”
Randall willingly obliged and Errol thanked him for his aid. Gripping the club tight, Errol exercised his disciplined backswing and sped up on the downswing. The follow-through was a thing of beauty, slicing through the air with a clean whistle, catching the female zombie directly under the chin. With a neck that was already mostly severed, her head easily lifted from her shoulders and rolled deep into the woods. With a final gust of blood spurting high from its exposed jugular vein, the body wavered in place and then toppled to the ground beside the tee.
Errol laughed. “You know what? You’re right. That is a good stress reliever.” He laughed again, drove his ball with a sublime ping, and watched his shot reach the edge of the green. “I haven’t played this well since I was twenty.” He slapped Randall on the shoulder and wiped the blood from his driver on the grass.
Randall scowled and imitated Errol’s voice perfectly. “I haven’t played this well since I was twenty.”
The next three holes played out exactly as one would guess. Errol scored two pars and a birdie while Randall displayed a raw talent for placing his ball in precisely the worst place to be on each hole.
On the ninth, Randall’s drive landed under a bush and Errol gleefully informed him that he had to play it where it lay. The tenth found Randall’s third shot roll off the green and stop directly behind a tree. Errol shrugged his shoulders under Randall’s baleful look and didn’t allow him to move his ball. The eleventh hole, however, presented a completely new and radical challenge for Randall, and perhaps for the history of golf. His ball had somehow perched itself on the eye socket of a dead golfer.
Randall opened his mouth to protest vehemently but Errol cut him off. “Sorry, Randall. You know the rules.”
Deflated, Randall sighed and swung his club without his typical three-minute routine of stretching and judging and practice-swinging and wiggling. He swung a tad short and the iron’s face struck the corpse’s nose bridge and high cheekbone, sending painful reverberations up along the sha
ft and into Randall’s wrists. He howled in pain and threw the club to the ground, then looked up to see where his ball had gone. To his surprise, he spotted a small white object headed straight for the green with a dream-worthy arc. “Hey, look at my ball go!” he proclaimed triumphantly.
“That’s not your ball,” Errol said. “Your ball went there,” he added, pointing at the fairway ten feet in front of them.
“Then what’s that?” Randall asked, gesturing wildly at the object flying through the air.
“That, my friend, is an eyeball.”
Thunder rumbled tumultuously on the distant horizon, warning of its imminent arrival.
Sam had been wrong. They would not finish their round before the storm broke. Although to be fair, he could not have predicted the slowdown caused by Armageddon.
The fourteenth hole was a superlative use of angles, forcing the golfer to weigh risk/reward scenarios for every shot necessary to reach the green, with a large lake on the right and a nefarious string of bunkers on the left. Of course, the raging wind from the lake put all the golfer’s best intentions out to roost and the ball typically ended up traveling wherever it desired, which often happened to be the water.
The rain fell in buckets and felt like it was hitting Randall and Errol from the side, as if the water was being lifted up from the lake by the howling winds and slapping them in the face. Still, they trudged on, the frequent flashes of lightning illuminating their path on the darkened course.
Having spotted his ball, Randall tapped Errol on the shoulder and asked him to stop the cart. Errol peered at the lake, having noticed a small black shape on the water. Huddled under parkas with thin rods in hand, two fishermen sat in a small rickety boat, trolling for muskies.
“Look at those crazy bastards, fishing in the rain,” said Errol, laughing.
Randall joined in the laughter and shook his head in disbelief, lined up his shot, and swung his club through the downpour. Pleased with his shot even though he lost sight of it within seconds, Randall turned back to the lake and laughed again at the crazy fishermen.
Suddenly, a zombie broke through the water’s surface and latched on to both of the fishermen, dragging them into the lake. It happened so quickly. No trace was left behind except for the now-empty boat, bobbing up and down.
Randall and Errol jumped in alarm and decided to move on.
As they played out the next three holes, the rainfall began to slow, and by the time they had reached the eighteenth and final green, the storm had faded away. The sun poked out from behind the last lingering dark cloud and the only reminders of the storm were the far distant rumbles, the sloshing-wet ground and their sopping-wet clothes. Even the birds were back, their melodic chirps soothing and peaceful.
Randall enjoyed the serenity of the moment as he lined up his shot from the dense forest behind the green, a place he was well familiar with. Errol, waiting out of sight near the pin, had already putted his ball and finished the round with another par.
Randall paused for a moment, distracted by an unearthly zombie moan followed by a loud thwack. With growing apprehension he made his shot and ran out from the woods. A zombie’s unmoving corpse lay at Errol’s feet on the edge of the green.
“What happened?” he asked, a knot twisting in his gut.
“Something . . . very hard to believe,” Errol said. “Your shot landed in the middle of the green and rolled three feet from the hole.” He pointed at the ball. If he hadn’t, Randall wouldn’t have believed him.
Randall sighed in relief. “And you’re okay? I heard sounds.”
“Sure,” Errol said, waving his hand nonchalantly. “Just had one more run-in with a zombie. But I showed him.” He wiped a splash of blood from his pitching wedge onto his pant leg as proof. “Don’t let me keep you from finishing the hole. Make this putt and you’ll close the round with a respectful—if unspectacular—bogey.”
Without further ado, Randall made his putt and the ball plunked down in the hole.
Errol smiled, impressed. “Back-to-back good shots. Well done, old friend.”
Randall was ecstatic. “Thank you! Good match, Errol. Even though I played like absolute crap, I really enjoyed myself.” He held out his hand for the customary handshake.
“Me too,” Errol said, grasping Randall’s hand tightly. “That was the most fun I’ve had with clothes on in years.”
A small trickle of blood ran down Errol’s forearm. “What’s that?” Randall asked.
Errol’s hand quickly retreated from the embrace and he moved his arm behind his back. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” he repeated, as if saying it twice would make it so. “I just scratched myself on a sharp branch back on the seventeenth.”
Randall looked at his friend skeptically. All of his shots had been down the center of the fairway.
“Scout’s honor,” Errol said, raising his non-bloodied arm.
Other than a few bodies lying here and there and two cars that had collided and been abandoned, the parking lot was exactly as they had left it—curiously empty. Although the old men didn’t find that curious anymore.
Having placed their club bags in their cars’ trunks, Randall turned to Errol and asked, “How much do I owe you?”
“Well, let’s see.” Errol coughed into the crook of his elbow and did some quick calculations on the back of their scorecard. “Five dollars per hole, eighteen holes . . . that would be ninety dollars.”
“Can I pay you later?”
“Of course.”
“This is crazy,” Randall said, “but I was close to giving up golf this morning.”
Errol feigned concern in good humor, but his act lacked his usual showmanship. His skin looked more like wax than living flesh and beads of sweat coated his forehead. “That is crazy. Did you change your mind?”
“You bet I did.” Randall paused before closing his car’s trunk. “Say, Errol. You never told me what the G-spot is.”
Errol placed a shaking hand on the big man’s shoulder. Once again Randall saw the bloody forearm gash—it smelled rancid and the blood had blackened. “If I told you now I’d be afraid you wouldn’t show up for our next game, so I’ll tell you next Tuesday. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel?”
Nodding in agreement, Randall said, “Absolutely.”
An awkward pause passed between the two men as Errol’s hand rested on his friend’s shoulder a moment too long. His eyes closed and his head drooped.
“Errol?”
Errol didn’t respond.
“Errol? Wake up.”
A crow landed on the clubhouse’s roof and cawed. Randall looked up at it and squinted when he saw the sky. The storm clouds had returned and were flickering with electricity. As if on cue thunder boomed.
“Hey, Errol, we should go.”
Errol looked up and opened his eyes. They were milky white, as if suddenly afflicted by cataracts. His fingers gripped Randall’s shoulder tightly and his jaw opened with a groan.
His zombie-fighting instincts now sharpened after an entire golf game spent fending off the undead, Randall shoved Errol backward. He reached into his trunk and pulled a club out of his bag. The club made a metallic schwing sound like that of a katana being unsheathed. It flashed in the lightning.
“Damn it, Errol,” he said, raising the club above his head and taking a step forward. “Now I’ll never find out what the G-spot is.”
Zombie Errol clearly didn’t care about Randall’s concern or his lack of knowledge regarding the female anatomy. He stood back up and lurched forward.
Randall pulled the club back to swing it into Errol’s skull but was suddenly thrown backward. He slammed into his Grand Marquis and tumbled to the pavement. His head spun, his hearing was muffled and the smell of burnt hair wafted under his nostrils. He had no idea what had happened.
And then he saw something that made him smile. He couldn’t help it. The club he had pulled from his bag was charred black, obviously struck by lightning. It was a one-iron. God had
finally hit one.
The irony in that was only slightly less painful than the feeling of Errol sinking his teeth into Randall’s round belly and ripping off a nice long strip of man meat.
When he died, so too did the game of golf.
For seven days.
Randall, on the other hand, stayed dead for only five minutes before standing up as straight as a putter and leaving Errol without so much as a by-your-leave, stumbling off in search of a little post-game snack.
Exactly one week later, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, Randall stumbled as quickly as possible into Golden Links’s parking lot. His clothes fluttered about him in tatters, he walked with a considerable limp (his left ankle had been violently twisted and his toes were nearly pointing backward) and he had bits of brain stuck in his teeth.
Errol was walking in circles between their two parked cars, trailing bright red blood on the pavement where he paced. He looked up with death-slimed eyes and moaned and groaned, which Randall took to mean “Cutting it a little close, don’t you think, Randall?”
Randall grunted and bellowed in response: “A little close for . . . for what?” He tried to think but his mind was so cloudy.
A series of screeches and wails from Errol. “To satisfy our hunger. To feed our need.”
Hunger. Feed. Need. Randall had been feeding his need all week and as a result was likely the only person to ever gain weight postmortem. He scratched the open wound on his belly and wondered if he and Errol had made plans to go human hunting together.
Then something shiny caught his eye (his right eye—the left one was dangling from his socket by the optic nerve).
Golf clubs. Resting in the trunk of his car as if they had been waiting for him to return.
Suddenly his need flipped. He reached into his trunk and lifted out his bag. He turned to Errol and cackled and squalled. “Another eighteen holes of torture, then?”
“Golf is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of a bagpipe,” Errol growled and hissed.
With a sound like a dying cat in heat, Randall laughed. As they stumbled side by side to the first hole, Randall didn’t even notice the teeth that fell from his mouth when he smiled. “I could do this until the end of time.”
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