The Fucking Zombie Apocalypse

by Bryan Smith

  Then I belch loud like a frat douche halfway through his first game of fucking beer pong. “Thanks for the beer, motherfucker.”

  Satan chuckles. “You are very welcome. Have some more if you like.”

  I’m pretty sure I’ll take him up on that offer, but meanwhile I’m curious. “So what’s your deal, Mr. So-called Satan? How the fuck do you know my name?”

  “We have a mutual friend.”

  “Yeah? And who would that be?”

  But even before he answers, I finally fucking get it.

  He smiles. “Why, Sue, of course.”

  Of course.

  My patience with this clown and his shitty Dr. Gonzo impression is wearing pretty thin all of a sudden. I feel a stirring of anger. “Look, dude, you get that she’s not quite all there, right?”

  He looks confused. “What do you mean?”

  I tap the side of my head and go, “As in, she’s kind of, well, unbalanced. Up here. She probably needs professional help, if I’m being honest. You know what wouldn’t be even a little bit fucking cool, your royal satanic fucking majesty? Taking advantage of someone like that, that’s what.”

  Satan reaches for another of the six-packs and tears a can from the holder. He taps the top of the can with an index finger and says, “Well, see, taking advantage of vulnerable people is sort of an integral part of the whole devil thing. Shit, I do it all the time. But your girl called to me, sought me out.” He shrugs as he pops the tab on the can. “And, son, listen, you’re underestimating her. Sue’s in total control of her faculties. I have not taken advantage of her. She’s got an unconventional point of view on a lot of things. I find that interesting.”

  I glare at him, that anger building. “Is that so?”

  He gulps down some beer and burps. “Yep,” he says, wiping foam from his mouth. “Matter of fact, if anyone’s been mistreating the lady, it’s you.”

  “Stand up.”

  He laughs and gulps more beer. Then his eyes lock on the stained crotch of my pants. “Shit. Did you piss yourself?”

  He laughs again.

  I’m madder than ever and I’ve had enough. “Stand the fuck up, you fucking charlatan, so I can knock you the fuck out.”

  He pushes the brim of his panama hat up higher and gives me this giant grin. It looks a bit broader than it should, his mouth maybe containing slightly more than the usual number of teeth. But I shake this impression off, figuring it’s the fresh infusion of booze fucking with my already thoroughly pickled brain.

  Not bothering to set his beer down, he gets up from the lawn chair and comes closer. “Go ahead. Take your best shot.”

  I don’t hesitate.

  I swing as hard as I fucking can. My fist connects with his bulbous red nose. I should hear a crunch of bone. There should be a spurt of blood. But there’s none of that. And it feels like I haven’t hit a man at all.

  It feels a bit like I’ve punched a goddamn concrete wall.

  It hurts.

  And the smiling bastard doesn’t even flinch. “Feel better now that you’ve defended the fair maiden’s honor?”

  “Fuck you!”

  I’m gasping in pain and walking about in a circle, shaking my stinging hand and wishing I could hit the bastard again.

  Satan laughs and sits back down in that fucking lawn chair, stretching his legs out as he rests the beer can on that potbelly. “Calm down. It’s all good. I know this is all some tough shit to swallow. So, I’m gonna give you a pass on this here display of aggression. Go on up and see your girl. She’s waiting for you.”

  The ache in my hand is pretty fucking severe, but I stop walking around in that circle and glare at him. “You’re not the real devil. No fucking way.”

  Satan sighs. “Whatever, man. I’m done arguing with you. You’ll accept the truth soon enough, anyway. Now get your ass up to your girl.”

  “What are you even doing here?”

  He waves a hand in the general direction of downtown. “Keeping that shit at bay until you can sort shit out with Sue. But, hey, man, even I have my limits. I won’t be able to maintain this shit forever. So, go talk to her before I actually start to get a little ticked off here.”

  I sigh.

  Whatever.

  I move past him and climb the stairs to Sue’s apartment. She’s waiting for me in the living room. She’s on the sofa with her legs tucked beneath her. The only piece of clothing she’s got on is my ratty old Sex Pistols T-shirt. Cradled delicately against her bosom is George, my hamster. She looks up at me and smiles as I come into the apartment and close the door behind me.

  “Told you I wouldn’t really hurt him.”

  I smile. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

  Then she opens her mouth wide and shoves George inside, making me gasp in shock. “No!”

  She grins wickedly at me as she takes my little buddy from her mouth and says, “I’m just fucking with you.” Her smile fades as she gives me a closer inspection. “Did you piss yourself?”

  “Uh . . .”

  She shakes her head. “Go change out of that shit and take a shower.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not going anywhere, baby. And George will be fine.” She giggles, her face lighting up in a way I haven’t seen in a while. I like it. She’s beautiful. “I won’t eat him, I promise.”

  And now that I’m standing here in her nice, clean apartment, away from the noise and terror holding sway out there in the streets, I’m suddenly a lot more conscious of how nasty I feel in my piss-soaked, blood-drenched clothes. Luckily, plenty more of my duds are still stashed away here.

  So, I do as she says.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m back out in the living room, freshly showered and wearing clean clothes. I curl up with Sue on the sofa and ask her, “So where do we go from here?”

  She looks at me and shrugs, that big smile gone now. “That’s really up to you. I know what I want to happen.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I want you to stay with me. Forever.”

  I don’t say a fucking thing for a minute or two. The silence is uncomfortable. It feels like it’s squeezing me. I look her in the eye and say, “You know what’s going on outside. The world’s ending. How long is forever gonna be, really?”

  She sighs. “The world isn’t ending.”

  I laugh. “No offense, but you haven’t been out there. I have. Sure looked like it was ending to me.”

  Sue shakes her head. “See, but you’re basing that on what you’ve seen in movies. This won’t be like that.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Satan told me.”

  I groan. “For fuck’s sake.”

  She narrows her eyes. “You’ve met him, right?”

  “I met a motherfucker in a loud-ass shirt who says his name is Satan.”

  “That’s him.”

  “Okay.”

  “It really is.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  “I’m not patronizing you.”

  “Bullshit. You didn’t think there was anything even a little satanic about him? Something not quite . . . natural?”

  She’s got me there.

  I shrug. “Whatever. Let’s say that goofy fucktard is the actual, for-real motherfucking devil. That doesn’t mean he knows how this shit is gonna play out.”

  “You’re wrong. He does know.”

  “But how?”

  “Insider tip.”

  “Insider tip?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Another whole minute goes by. I don’t say shit, and neither does she. George makes some squeaky noises. He sounds a little pissed at both of us. Can’t blame him.

  I sigh and say, “And what was the source of this insider tip?”

  “An angel.”

  “Right. Of course. I should’ve guessed. And what did this angel tell Satan?”

  “That the outbreaks will be contained. The zombie uprising won�
��t sweep the globe like in the movies. Humanity will survive. This time, anyway.”

  “And you believe this.”

  She nods. “I do. That’s why I wish I’d told you sooner. We could’ve gotten out of the city and gone up to the mountains or somewhere to ride it out together.”

  I reflect on this another moment. Despite my skepticism, it’s kind of hard not to buy into what she’s saying. Something not natural is definitely happening here. My still-throbbing hand is proof of this. So is this little area’s weird exclusion from the death and destruction engulfing the rest of the city?

  “So, why didn’t you tell me?”

  She frowns. I see pain in the expression. “Because I sensed how fed up you were starting to get with me. I was afraid if I came to you with this, it’d be the last straw. It’d drive you away for good. I didn’t want that. But it was already too late, wasn’t it? You’d already decided to leave me.”

  Tears start rolling down her face.

  Fuck.

  She’s sort of melting my fucking heart here a bit. I feel bad. No, I feel like a piece of shit. But then I remind myself of all the rest of it. Those things that freaked me out and made me afraid to be around her sometimes. All that truly crazy talk about wanting to kill people and cut them up into a bunch of tiny pieces.

  So, I ask her about that.

  And she gives me this blank expression and goes, “What about it? I was just fucking with you. Jesus, you didn’t think I really wanted to do any of that, did you? That’s insane.”

  I frown and scratch my head and sort of splutter confusedly for a bit before saying, “But . . . but you’re a Satanist.”

  “So? Doesn’t mean I want to kill people. Killing people gets you sent to jail. Fuck that. Fuck that right in the fucking ass. I can’t believe you ever took any of that seriously.”

  I’m starting to feel sort of foolish and more than a little self-conscious here. Sue is talking sense. “To be fair, I do drink an awful lot.”

  “In other news, water is wet and fire is hot.”

  “Sort of fucks with my perceptions of stuff, reality and whatnot.”

  “No shit. So, like I said, where do we go from here? Do you want to stay with me or not?”

  I give it a few more minutes thought. There’s all the other stuff I could ask her about. The frogs, for instance. But maybe she staged that. To fuck with me. She has a track record of doing that, after all. But then there’s all those weird, veiled threats. The vague “or else” being her favorite. I have a feeling, though, that she’ll brush all this off in the same dismissive way.

  I gingerly take George from her and cradle him in my hands. He chirps excitedly and tries to crawl up my chest. I let him, smiling as I gently scratch the top of his little head. Still smiling, I look at Sue and say, “Yeah, I want to stay with you. I’m sorry for being such a fucking asshole for so long. I’ll change now, I swear.”

  She smiles and kisses me. The kissing continues and steadily gets more and more hot and bothered. No need for a blow-by-blow account. It unfolds the way that kind of thing always does.

  Meaning we eventually go back to the bedroom and fuck each other’s brains out. Just to be clear.

  After it’s over, I drift off to sleep in the arms of the girl I’m now reasonably certain is my one and only true fucking love. Probably not the best idea in the middle of a zombie outbreak, but, fucking hell, I’ve been through a lot and I’m feeling pretty fucking beat. I deserve some kind of goddamn break.

  Right?

  Later I wake up and realize right away something isn’t right. It’s still daylight out, but the light coming through the closed window blind is dimmer now. This is how it always looks right around twilight. The sun is going down. It hits me that I’ve been out for fucking hours.

  I sit bolt upright and immediately start to freak the fuck out. I’m naked and covered in blood. The bedsheets are soaked with it. A quick examination of my body tells me it’s not mine, at least not most of it. I’ve still got all those nicks and cuts from my struggles earlier in the day, but as far as I can tell, those all stopped bleeding a while ago.

  And I realize something else.

  Sue isn’t in the room with me.

  Panicking hardcore now, I get out of bed and stagger out to the living room.

  And that’s when I see them.

  George and Satan.

  Satan is perched on a barstool and leaning back against the countertop bar separating the living room from the kitchen. A can of beer is clutched in his right hand. That fucking Hawaiian shirt hangs open over his now blood-smeared belly. His eyes are glowing red. He grins as he sees me stumble into the room.

  He raises his beer can in a kind of salute. “Yo, Phil. Glad you could join us again.”

  Again?

  What the fuck does that mean?

  I want to scream.

  Sue is flat on her back on the living room floor. The coffee table and everything else has been pushed out of the way. Her body is covered in blood. There’s blood all over the carpet beneath her.

  Positioned above her is George.

  My fucking hamster.

  Only now he’s about the size of a wild boar from the motherfucking Australian outback. And he’s got an erect schlong the approximate fucking size of my forearm. As I watch, he rams it into Sue’s torn-open belly.

  Satan laughs. “She never saw it coming. Can you believe that? What did she think would happen when she started messing about with dark forces and shit?”

  I start to feel woozy.

  Satan slides off his stool and comes over to me. He pats me on the shoulder. I notice his hand now has a bit of a cloven hoof aspect. I could swear it wasn’t like that before. How he’s still holding on to that fucking beer can, I do not know.

  And he says, “Go on, bro. Have another go at her.”

  Another go?

  I titter nervously like a fucking madman. Which is kind of apt, really, because it’s turning out that’s exactly what the fuck I am.

  Some of it starts to come back to me. Satan inviting himself in after Sue and I have our reunion fuck. Then the drinking. Satan egging me on in that regard. Sue’s increasing exasperation with both of us. Satan’s subsequent abrupt cancellation of his budding friendship with my girlfriend. Then that bit of black magic he worked, the infernal mutation that turned George into this . . . this . . . monstrosity.

  And, yes, I was so fucked up and delirious that I . . . I . . . participated in this horrific defilement.

  It’s all too much.

  I pass the fuck out again.

  This time when I wake up, Satan and that traitorous fucking hamster are gone. But Sue is still there. She’s still dead. Still a bloody fucking mess. I run, of course. What else can I do?

  And for a while I’m able to stay on the run. It takes months for the governments of the world to fully contain all the zombie uprisings. And then more time to sort out unrelated crimes that happened to occur at the same time. In a lot of cases, it’s hard to tell the difference. Impossible, really.

  But not in my case, of fucking course. Eventually, they do figure out that Sue’s death was some kind of horrific sex murder and not more zombie outbreak collateral damage. And obviously the law eventually came looking for me.

  And obviously they found me.

  “Obviously” because here I am, talking to you, getting fed up with your shit again while you scribble your fucking notes on that stupid yellow legal pad. How very twentieth century, by the way. Never trust a fucking Luddite. I’d love to wad that thing up and shove it right up your tight fucking asshole. Yes, yes, make of that comment what you will. It’s proof of my unstable mental state, my penchant for violence.

  What-the-fuck-ever.

  But I swear every word of what I said is true. It happened exactly the way I laid it out for you, every little detail. My dead girlfriend communed with dark forces. She paid a price for it.

  Holy fuck, did she ever.

  I’m sorry, Sue.
So sorry.

  And now you’re about to lock me away forever because you’re convinced I’m nothing more than a raving lunatic. I’m Crazy Phil, right?

  Crazy Phil telling his brain-fractured stories again.

  But it’s true. All true.

  I swear it is.

  The only thing I can’t figure out is how the devil made me do that terrible thing.

  PART IV

  CLARITY

  SOME TIME PASSES. I SPEND most of it doped to the gills on anti-psychotics and, ironically, more out of my fucking mind than I ever really was before everything went to absolute fucking shit. Even in the midst of that druggy haze, I’m dimly aware of a significant amount of time elapsing. Many months. Maybe years.

  This bugs me.

  Not in a way that makes me overly agitated or keeps me preoccupied. It’s more of a low-key sense of, “Wow. I’ve kinda been here a while. That sucks.” But no one can sense this because for most of that time I show little in the way of discernible outward emotion, nor do I say much to the doctors and staff of the mental hospital, that dreary gray hell of a place where I’ve been stashed away and mostly forgotten. No one visits me. Not my fucking mother, nor any of my old drinking buddies. Like so many other things during that time, it’s hard to know the reasons why. No one will tell me. Maybe they died in the zombie uprising. Maybe they believe the official line about me being some kind of depraved and perverted murdering piece of fucking garbage.

  Who the fuck knows?

  Who the fuck even cares?

  Not me, that’s for damn sure. I’m too much of a drooling, zonked-out lump of flesh to give much of a fuck about anything. I’m kind of like a goddamn zombie, actually, only without the unfortunate craving for warm human flesh. Then something unexpected happens.

  The fog clears. I slowly become cognizant of not only my surroundings but also the basic fact of my continued existence on the mortal fucking plane. To clarify, this process takes a while. It ain’t as fucking simple as the time it takes to say “the fog clears”. The big reason is the drugs have turned me into such a useless lump of nothing. At some point indefinable through the haze, the orderlies stop administering the meds, the effect of which had basically been like having a fucking lobotomy minus the brain-scrambling needle to the frontal lobe. Except not at all like a lobotomy, because this shit is reversible. I’m barely aware of this reversing process happening, except after a bit I do realize I’m not getting jabbed with fucking needles quite so often, and at some gray point that ceases altogether.