Zombie Kong

by James Roy Daley

  “Did you come in the front door?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, take the hallway the opposite direction. Again, you can’t miss it.” She handed a key to Candice, and then she said, “Before you go, two things. First, I have business cards in my glove box. My phone number is on them. Phone me when you’re done so I can get my car back.”

  “Okay.”

  “And the hospital on George Street is gone. Kong knocked it down a little more than an hour ago.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive. I was there when it happened. You’re going to have to go to the one––”

  “The hospital in Whidbey,” Candice said. It was a forty-minute drive if traffic wasn’t too bad. She could probably do it in less than a half hour if she ignored stoplights and speed limits.

  “Yes,” Tobi confirmed. “The hospital in Whidbey.”

  “Okay. This key… it opens––?”

  “It opens the door and starts the ignition. Now go.”

  “Thank you.” Candice said, snagging Jake by the hand. “Come.”

  DALE

  I would never say that I wasn’t afraid while I was inside Zombie Kong, but I will say that the fear hit closer to home while I was lying on the floor inside the apartment building waiting for my wife to return. In some ways, being inside Kong was like suffering through a car accident: things happened so fast that the fear had no time to become entrenched. Lying on the hallway floor wasn’t like that. It was more like treading water in the middle of the ocean: the danger wasn’t immediate, but I couldn’t tread forever. I had time to think about my future, time to worry, and time to be afraid. My lungs were definitely closing, and soon enough they’d be closed. When that happened, I would die. Of this I had no doubt.

  My head became cloudy, my vision faded, and eventually I passed out. When my eyes opened again, they were burning. My body was aching all over, my throat was raw, and my lungs felt like they were being squeezed in a vise. If pain was a liquid, I was swimming in it. Candice, yelling something, was standing over me, forcing me to my feet. Jake was there, too, crying and terrified. I tried to tell him things would be okay, but the words failed to come. I loved him then, which is to say… at that moment, even though I was suffering, I realized how much I loved my son. I loved him with all my heart and I wished I could have made the situation better for him, but sadly, some things cannot be controlled.

  I allowed myself to be escorted down the hallway, through a couple of doors, and into a parking lot. The sun seemed much too bright and the heat was frying us. My slimy body was loaded into the front seat of a car I had never seen before––it wasn’t ours, but for some reason, Candice had the keys. We had barely pulled out of the parking lot when she said, “St. George’s Hospital is gone; we can’t go there. That leaves us with the hospital in Whidbey. Do you want us to drive straight there or do you want to go home and get your inhaler?”

  St. George’s Hospital was gone? What? What does she mean, ‘gone’? When did that happen? I tried to answer her question, but I couldn’t. My lungs wouldn’t allow it.

  She said, “Home? You want to go home?”

  I nodded, not sure which option was best. I was starting to think it didn’t matter. I could hardly breathe, and I could feel myself fading into oblivion.

  “Okay, we’ll go home,” she said, rolling down her window. The stench wafting off of me was enough to kill a hundred men. I was vaguely aware that Jake had also rolled down his window before locking himself into his seatbelt. The car would never smell the same.

  I was trying to apologize for my appalling odor, when Candice said, “Where is it, Dale? The inhaler, I mean. Is it in the bedroom? It’s inside the nightstand beside the bed, isn’t it? In that top drawer?”

  Again I nodded. Sometimes having someone who knew all your dirty little secrets was fantastic. Candice knew what I needed and where to find it, which was good news for me, if she hurried.

  She drove quickly. The roads weren’t too bad, considering the circumstances. When she pulled into our driveway, she said, “I’m going to run in and out. I’ll be back in two seconds. Just stay here!”

  From the backseat, Jake said, “Do you want me to come with you, Mom? I sort of need to use the bathroom, anyhow.”

  “Stay with your father, Jake! I mean it. You can use the bathroom later.”

  As Jake’s shoulders slumped, Candice jumped out of the car, and I managed to whisper, “Hurry.” It was the last real word I would say. And as I looked down at my hands, consumed in fear, I noticed that color, as I had always known it, was becoming something different––something less vibrant. Perhaps I was going colorblind.

  Or maybe, just maybe, I was about to die.

  CANDICE

  Before leaping from the car, Candice reached across the seat for her purse, but then she remembered that she had lost it. Even though she felt no joy in thinking about all the items she needed to replace, a lost purse, in view of the situation, was no big deal. There was a spare key hiding beneath a rock in the backyard that she didn’t use often, but on occasion, it was a lifesaver.

  She ran up the driveway and flung open the gate leading into the backyard. As she was racing past the side door, she noticed that the inside door was open. Why is it open? she thought, but dismissed that line of thinking while skidding to a stop. She grabbed the exterior door handle, swung the door open, and bolted into her home. Making excellent time, she weaved through the house and into her bedroom. Within milliseconds, she had the top drawer of the nightstand open and Dale’s puffer in hand. Relief, delicate and frail, touched her briefly as she spun away from the nightstand. Things were going to be okay, she was almost sure of it.

  Kirby was there, standing in the doorway with dried blood caked on his face. Once again, his head was cocked in an outlandish, predatory manner. He wore a grin that reminded her of a sick cat.

  “Hello, Candice,” he said, with his chicken-eyes bolted to her and his smile growing wider all the time. “What do we have here?”

  Candice screamed.

  He’s here… in the house. The maniac from the restaurant is inside the house! But how did he know where to look? And how does he know my name?

  There were so many questions, too many questions, and all of them seemed to come pouring in at once.

  He must have followed us home. Is that what happened? Maybe… but no, that doesn’t quite fit. If he followed us home there was no way he could have gotten inside the house so quickly. Not without running in after me. He didn’t do that, did he? I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t hear him racing into the house, following me. He must have been inside already.

  Of course. The door was unlocked.

  He unlocked it, but how? How did he know which house was mine? How did he know I would come? How did he know which bedroom I would run into? Did he break a window? The door looked all right, didn’t it? No broken frame; no hammer marks on the doorknob. Could he have found the key beneath the rock? How would he know where to look, unless…? Have we met before? Is that it, or is today the first time we’ve met? Maybe it isn’t. Maybe he has been watching me for months, or years. That would explain what happened in the restaurant, at least a little. Is this freak of nature a peeping Tom, upset for some unknown and illogical reason?

  What about the front door? Did he come through the front door, and then unlock the side door later? That has potential; perhaps it is likely. I didn’t waste one glance when it came to the front door, because I didn’t have the key to the front door.

  I lost the key––

  He had the key. He had everything.

  The key was in my purse and I left the purse in the restaurant. My wallet was in the purse, loaded with identification––driver’s license, birth certificate, insurance information… who knows what else. Yes, of course. It all makes sense. He unlocked the side door with my key, the one that was inside my purse. If only I had remembered to grab it before running out of the restaurant! If only�
�–

  “You’re dead, corpse-fucker. Any questions?”

  Candice released a groan.

  She needed to escape, but Kirby was standing in the doorway. She glanced towards the window––curtains, blinds, and a ten-foot drop to the garden outside… at least a ten-foot drop. Maybe more. What was she going to do, jump through two sheets of glass? Unlikely. If she tried to be a Hollywood stuntman, chances are she would break her neck, so what were her other choices?

  Kirby was holding something in his hand––

  A baseball bat.

  Oh shit, he had Jake’s baseball bat––the one Dale had bought for Jake’s birthday last summer. It was expensive, too, if she remembered correctly. Expensive things didn’t break easily. They were durable, built to last. Especially when their only bona fide use was hitting things.

  She was in trouble.

  “You’re scared,” Kirby said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “What do you want? What are you doing here?”

  Kirby took a step forward. His free hand was opening slowly and snapping shut. “I’ll tell you what I’m doing here. I’m doing whatever the hell I want.”

  The psycho seemed to be more in tune now than before, Candice realized. She wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad. The fact that his thinking was more coherent meant he would have the ability to be more devious, more cunning, but it also meant she would have a better chance of rationalizing with him. Maybe she could talk him down, make him understand that she wasn’t the bad guy here. She didn’t do anything wrong… aside from stabbing him in the face, that is. She wondered if it were possible to have him see things her way.

  Slim to none, she thought. My odds are slim to none, and Slim left town.

  Any questions?

  Is that what he said? Any questions? What kind of bug-shit inquiry was that? She wanted to throw something at him and make it count, but the only thing in her hand was Dale’s inhaler and she didn’t want to throw that. Dale needed it. In fact, now that she thought about it, she didn’t have time for this… any of this. Dale was waiting.

  She needed to do something, but what?

  There was a clock on the dresser, ticking away irrelevantly. Maybe she could reach out and grab it before the psycho knocked her block off. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one she had.

  Stepping towards the dresser she switched the inhaler from her right hand to her left. She swallowed back her fears and leaned in.

  Kirby said, “When I was child––”

  Terror pushed into her, making Candice nervous. She stepped back, afraid to do anything but listen to his voice.

  “––I had a baseball bat,” Kirby continued, his chicken-eyes narrowing. “It wasn’t as nice as this one. It was old and dirty and very well loved. I gave it a name: Smasher. I used Smasher a lot. Mostly, I’d use it to go suckerfishin’ down at Cooper’s creek with a boy named David Camions. David was a mean little bastard who liked fighting kids that were smaller than him… when he got a little older, he was in and out of jail more times than I can recall, which everyone expected. But a few years ago, I ran into David and we got to talking about the good old days, back before jail, those long days when we’d spend the summertime fishin’. He changed his name, David did… he was calling himself Elmer Wright, if I remember correctly. Anyways, David––Elmer, if you prefer––he’d hold the net and I’d swing the bat. We had it down to a science. Do you know what suckerfish are?”

  Candice shook her head, whispering, “No.”

  “Suckerfish are about a foot long and they have these big Mick Jagger lips. If it weren’t for the lips, they’d kind of look like a trout or a bass, but you can’t eat ’em. Don’t ask me why. Fish are put on this earth for one reason and one reason only… to be eaten. And if you can’t eat ’em, do you know what they’re good for? Nothing.” Kirby brought the bat up and sat it on his shoulder. His free hand continued opening slowly and snapping shut. “We’d go down to Cooper’s creek with David’s net and my old bat and hunt suckerfish. I’d club ’em and David would scoop ’em up. Then we’d lay ’em on a rock and beat the shit out of ’em. Sometimes, if you hit ’em in the right spot––the sweet spot––their guts would squeeze out of their mouths like toothpaste from the tube. When we were finished, we’d toss what was left of the bastards back in the creek. It was friggin’ awesome.”

  Thumb between her teeth, Candice started thinking about that window again. Maybe she could jump through it after all. Or maybe she could charge full steam ahead and knock the psycho on his ass before he knew what was happening. Yeah. That was a better plan. Maybe she could do that.

  “Anyways,” Kirby said, still grinning, “I figure this bedroom here makes a pretty good net, and this bat may not be Smasher, but I think it’ll do the job just fine. I’m going to beat the shit out of you, bitch. I’m gonna hit you right in the sweet spot, and when I’m finished I’m gonna throw your remains in the creek.”

  Kirby’s chicken-eyes widened as he tightened his grip and lifted the bat from his shoulder.

  And that’s when Candice charged him.

  JAKE

  Locked in his seatbelt, ignoring the terrible smell that was radiating from his father, Jake flinched at the unexpected sounds coming from behind him. When he spun around, he saw Kong standing between two bungalows, intestines hanging to his feet, slamming fists against both houses. One of the houses was hanging tough and taking the beating like a champ, the other… not so much; it was making a quick transition from home to scrap heap. With the monster facing the opposite direction, fighting a battle with the citizens from one street over, Jake couldn’t see the look of fury on Kong’s face. But it was there. The beast was angrier than a nest of wasps getting swatted by a stick. Jake couldn’t help wondering where Kong would go next, and how safe he was sitting in a borrowed car a few hundred feet away.

  After watching the battle for nearly two minutes, three cars came racing down the street. All three cars parked in unusual angles on the street between Jake and Kong, creating an unintentional roadblock for oncoming traffic. Jake counted six men jumping out of the three cars––every one of them armed. They opened fire on the beast without hesitation.

  After being shot several times, Kong spun around and rushed the nearest car. He slammed a foot on top of it, destroying the front end. Men scattered like roaches.

  This startled Jake, making him appreciate the fact that he wasn’t watching some new form of entertainment, but instead was seeing the real thing. He was in a dangerous place, a place he would be smart to get away from, a place that was getting more and more dangerous all the time.

  He turned away from the chaos and shouted, “Dad! Dad! We’ve got to get out of here! Dad!” He unbuckled his seatbelt, slid forward, and grabbed his father by the shoulder. “Dad!”

  Dale wasn’t moving.

  “Dad––?”

  Jake pulled his hand away as if he had touched something foul, and he inched his way back into his seat. He looked at his hand and then looked at his father once again. What’s happening here? Why isn’t Dad responding? Jake opened the car door and stepped outside slowly, like a boy who didn’t want to know what would transpire next. Almost cautiously, he looked at his father through the passenger door window. The window––still rolled up––was clean, allowing Jake a crystal clear view of something he didn’t want to see. Dale’s eyes were open, but there was nobody home. The man was dead, and if he wasn’t dead, he looked dead. His chest wasn’t moving, his head was skewed to one side, and his bottom lip was hanging away from the rest of his mouth in a way Jake had never seen before. He almost looked plastic, sitting frozen in place like a human replica in a wax museum.

  “Oh no––” Jake said, as the reality of the moment came crashing down on him. Before Kong arrived, his father had been moving around quite a bit, struggling to breathe, trying to find a position that allowed a greater amount of air into his lungs. Now he was motionless––a silent and stagnant obj
ect, a piece of meat.

  Things were bad. No, not bad. They were so bad… so terribly wrong for so many reasons. How long had he been sitting in the car with a corpse?

  Jake leaned his forehead against the window and stayed still for a long moment, his eyes heavy with tears.

  What’s taking Mom so long?

  Suddenly he needed his mother. Yes… his mother. That was a good plan. Mom would know what to do, and maybe Dad wasn’t even dead. Maybe he just looked dead. Maybe he could be fixed.

  Kong roared as Jake ran across the yard to the front door. He was surprised to find the door locked. Mom went through the other door, he thought. Then he remembered her opening the gate and running into the backyard. Like a man on a mission, he bolted across the yard a second time. He pushed open the gate door, which had swung shut on its own, and zipped into the house through the side door.

  “Mom!” he shouted. “Mom, come quick!”

  And that’s when he saw the man from the restaurant, covered in blood, holding a baseball bat in his hand. The man grinned, and his little chicken-eyes seemed to dig holes right into Jake’s heart.

  DALE

  When I woke up, things were different: the air had no smell, I was afraid of nothing, and, more importantly, the aches and pains in my body were gone. I can’t say breathing was easier, but I can say it was no longer an issue.

  My lungs were no longer an issue.

  There was no color in my world; everything had turned black, white, and gray. Sounds were muffled, like I was wearing earmuffs over ears packed with cotton. I could still hear things, but sound seemed far away and irrelevant.