by Jason Beech
“We are hungry now.”
“There will be emergency food supplies in the medic room. If not then we take drugs to suppress the hunger?”
“What kind of drugs?”
“SSRI’s Ritalin, whatever we find,” Johnny smiled. “Trust me, I’m a doctor.”
They unlatched the cabin door and swung it open. A lone tree squirrel stood upright.
“Conner, is this part of the experiment?”
Conner walked over to the squirrel and brought his boot down on the animal. It crunched underneath his sole. “It was.”
“I hope they’re all as easy as this,” Beth said as she advanced.
“You’re on your own now. I’ll wait for an hour.” Conner smiled.
At the end of the corridor and took a left.
They heard it before they saw it.
A strange gurgling sound twisted into yelps of primate laughter. Johnny felt the hairs on his arm twitch. His hand gripped on the spear.
Twisted the door open.
Johnny took a swipe at the first, a chimpanzee, its mouth open, horrible yellow teeth. Saliva drooled from its black gums. Eyes dead, closed, walking forwards like a drunkard stumbling around after hours. It moved towards them with baby steps. Johnny advanced with the spear and caught it on the left cheek. Blood dripped down to its mouth. The creature’s eyes widened as the blood tricked down to its mouth. It charged Johnny knocking him to the ground. It came at him, lips drawn back. Johnny went for the eyes, pressing his fore-fingers into the sockets. The creature wrestled free, enraged. Johnny saw the flash of silver color as Beth took the creature with the hunting knife from behind, slicing at its jugular, the blood splatted the corridor covering Johnny’s face. He rolled over and picking up the spear drove it through the beast’s chest puncturing the heart.
“The medic room, get inside.”
They worked quickly without wasted movements. Johnny pointed towards boxes as they stuffed the contents into the rucksack. Johnny picked up a box full of disposable syringes.
Unlocking the door and heading right to the end of the corridor Johnny sealed the left entrance and Beth sealed the other right. This gave them the three cabins and the medic room plus the corridor. Beth shuddered at the sound of crying apes and the beating of fists on the walls outside.
“The walls and doors are the strength of a tank. We are safe here until we decide to make a break for the life rafts.”
They walked into the lounge where Conner was nursing a glass of whiskey.
“Here.” Johnny duped the drugs and vitamins on the table. “We have secured the floor. I suggest we sleep and take the bridge tomorrow at dawn. Johnny checked his watch, adjusting a dial. His mind thinking as a film director’s thought. Each scene had to be carefully planned.
SEVEN
CONNER AWOKE to the vision of a woman standing at the foot of his bed. She was naked with reptilian green skin, long legs and breasts pronounced and firm. Hair long hung in curls. She walked towards the bed and he pulled back the sheets for her to enter. Her body was cold to the touch. Perhaps he did have malaria. Perhaps the whole monkey project was a hallucination. Perhaps he had never been born. He put an arm around the creature and let it nuzzle at his neck as he widened her legs and entered her. She felt cold inside as he worked away and when he awoke she was gone and he was shivering in the lonely cabin. Conner walked to the bathroom and examined his neck. Too tiny puncture marks. He ran the shower and stepped under the stream of hot water in an effort to wash away the dream.
EIGHT
EXT. CARGO VESSEL. DAWN.
INT: [BACK IN the cabin Beth twisted the door to lock it. Outside the yelps and screams of undead monkeys.]
Conner: The file. I forgot about the file. Maybe there’s a clue in the file. I picked it up at the scientist’s lab.
Beth: Well, open it. Open it, let’s see what’s in the file.”
Johnny: Wouldn’t hurt to take a look.
[Conner opens the file. They began to read.]
1st page.
CONFIDENTIAL
2nd page.
DEAD MONKEY SUCK GOOD. SUCK GOOD DEAD MONKEY. MONKEY DEAD SUCK GOOD. GOOD MONKEY DEAD GOOD. MONKEY GOOD DEAD NO. DEAD GOOD MONKEY SUCK. DEAD MONKEY GOOD SUCK. DEAD GOOD MONKEY SUCK. SUCK GOOD DEAD MONKEY. SUCK DEAD MONKEY GOOD. SUCK SUCK MONKEY. MONKEY SUCK GOOD. DEAD NO GOOD DEAD MONKEY. MONKEY SUCK MONKEY. ………………---------------------------------------------
WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH MY BRAIN?
BRAIN WHAT
HAVE THEY DONE
WITH
IT
WITHDRAW THE CASE
ALL SUBJECTS
DESTROY
ALL SUBJECTS
DESTROY
ALL SUBJECTS
[CAMERA PANS ACROSS CABIN. CONNER STUBS OUT A CIGAR IN A MOTHER OF PEARL ASHTRAY.]
Conner: The scientist must have lost her mind.
Johnny: You think so?
Conner: This is impossible.
Johnny: It doesn’t matter. [Johnny flicks through the file.] The most useful thing we can do with this file is wipe our assholes with it. The captain is down and the monkeys have taken over the ship. Who needs to go?
Beth: That’s if we find anything to eat.
Johnny: There’s time, we have enough water and booze to see us through to the life rafts. On the rafts we have supplies. Rations. We have to get to that raft.
Conner: We just need a way to get past those things.
Beth: I never did tell you what I did, why I was in Malaysia.
Johnny: Does it matter now?
Beth: Very likely. I transport things, across border, I started with a small job here and there, and well it is the most easy way… Customs office at the docks is a drunk man in a shed. They just stamp your passport and up you climb. The other side is just as easy…
Conner: What? What are you saying? You’re a narcotics smuggler?
Beth: Well…
Conner: This is beautiful. I’m going down with all hands, a junked up eco-warrior bitch, a comic book writer and a dozen zombie monkeys. All we need now is a troop of clowns and a fireworks show. Who’s got the Valium, Xanax, benzodiazepines of any freakin description?
Johnny: [hand taps the table] But wait, what are you carrying, Beth? Smack?
Beth: China White.
Johnny: You can get to it?
Beth: Right over there in my suitcase. The syringes are on the table.
Johnny: Then we have a chance. You know how to cook?
Beth: Sure as shit. I was on that shite for ten years.
Johnny: So here’s the plan. We load up the syringes and cook up enough hits to knock out a Harlem hooker’s convention and take the raft.
NINE
THE GIBBON’S arms wind-mills as it shrills out a blood-curdling scream. Every white hair stood up on end as its long limbed body swings from the rope. Throws its body at Conner and sinks its teeth into his arm.
Conner swings his body in an attempt to release the animal’s grip. It holds tight with its teeth and gripped the agent’s arm. It climbs up to his head and gorges his eyes out with its fingers. He falls to the floor.
Johnny advances and plunges the syringe into the animal. It falls to the ground and draws its putrid final breath. Another gibbon leaps onto Conner and feeds on his nose, tearing a lump from his cheek. Grips the dead man’s head in its hand and smashes the head against the deck as if opening a coconut. The animal screams as the skull breaks and brains spill out purple matter onto the decking.
Undead monkeys lap up the pink, purple brain matter and freeze for a second. A larger animal approaches. A Silverback gorilla sensing a free meal charges at the smaller apes and grips Conner’s body, holds him aloft and then brings his body down onto the deck with a tremendous crash. The silverback tears the head from his neck and sucks away at his remaining juice, before abandoning the agent and moving toward Beth.
She advanced the creature with a loaded syringe in each hand and ran before springin
g up in the air and landing with the spikes aimed at the gorilla’s neck she pushed the plungers down and rolled to the left in the creature. It looked at her and then at the two syringes protruding from both sides of its neck, and pulled at them with its large hands. The creature stumbled forward and onto the hunting knife which found the rib cage cavity. Beth twisted and withdrew the blade.
&&&&
Inside the container a banging sound followed by an inhuman wailing sound.
“The fuck?” Johnny muttered.
“I was afraid this might happened?”
Johnny spun around. Conner’s dismembered head was speaking to him. A gibbon had crawled inside his body cavity and tore its way through Conner’s decapitated torso nourishing itself with squeals of delight before its head emerged through Conner’s rectum and leaped up onto the cargo hold.
Monkeys will fly out of my ass before I become a seaman.
“But how?”
Conner’s decapitated mouth spoke: “It wasn’t in the original plan, Johnny. They weren’t supposed to do it. How were we to know that they would do what was never supposed to be done? It wasn’t in the report. They said they would stick to animals. What have they done to my body, Johnny? What have done to me?”
The eyes were gouged out, ears torn from his face, the skin from his cheeks flapping in the wind, yet somehow Conner, transitional, had the ability of speech.
Johnny brought his boot down on the mouth, making a squishing sound as he twisted the heel. Brain particles splattered the deck like a Jackson Pollock. “Never did like ya.”
Johnny could hear that there were more. The first appeared from inside the container. It was once a young man of Southern India or Sri Lankan descent, dark-skinned.The creature sniffed the air and took in the carnage on deck. Conner’s destroyed remains twitched in the morning sun. A pack of marques advanced. Gibbons swung from the containers.
Johnny and Beth had a syringe each
“I’m going to sedate this one. You release the life raft behind us. There is a release cord, pull it. Don’t wait for me.” Johnny ran at the zombie, side-stepping as the creature lunged towards him, he ducked and attacked from the rear pushing the needle into his neck and pressing down the plunger. The creature’s jaw slackened emitting green bile that dripped from its blackened incisors and down onto his chest. The eyeballs rolled back as the smack coursed through the undead body, the shoulders dropped and the legs slackened. It fell to the floor like a sack of shit. Johnny checked his watch before he noticed what was left of the crew advancing. The Captain wobbled towards them. Johnny knew that he would have to take him as a matter of principle. The Captain must go down with the ship.
Beth leaped onto the life raft and threw him a flare before she pulled the release cord. The raft crashed into the ocean. Johnny looked at the captain, now within a few paces. Johnny aimed the flare as best he could and fired.
The captain took the flare in the face lighting up his face like a roman candle. Face aflame the Captain advanced at Johnny, arms swinging a hammer by his side. Within striking distance the hammer swung and Johnny ducked. He heard Beth scream below. He hadn’t ducked low enough. His hand brushed his head as he rose and he felt a piece of scalp loose. It was wet to the touch. He lifted up his foot and kicked at the captain who fell back onto a row of undead marques. The creatures screamed as the flames engulfed them. Johnny checked his watch and stood watching as the flames lapped at the creatures, their primitive screams coursing through the morning as the fire tore the skin from their bodies.
He looked down to a drop of fifty feet where Beth drifted in the lifeboat. He would have to dive.
The fire spread as Johnny dove from the ship and into the ocean. He swam to the raft and climbed aboard. As they drifted away from the vessel they watched the ship ablaze and then keel over before it sunk to the depths of the Indian Ocean. In its place a vast open ocean. Johnny wondered if there were a way to remember the exact location where the vessel had submerged but all around was only the blues and turquoise of ocean and sky. Perhaps it was best like that.
&&&
In and out of sleep Johnny thought the sliver of land was an illusion. As the raft drifted closer he realized that it was an island somewhere in the pacific. No man-made structures just mountains, palm trees and the movement of what appeared to be giant creatures, perhaps centipedes, their oily exoskeletons shimmering below the tropical sunlight. His mind was feverish and his stomach hungry. They both checked themselves for bite marks under the dawn sun before collapsing into a fitful slumber. Johnny awoke first and checked his watch. Beth was laid with her arms and legs spread out making small contented sighs as the raft bobbed atop the ocean. Gulls swopped down collecting small silver fish in their bills. It was quiet, although the sounds of the undead cargo still echoed in their minds. Before long they were both wrapped up in each other riding the waves as the island approached. It was a natural act, a celebration of being alive, having brushed with the dead, and the undead.
After they had finished, Johnny, took off his watch and examined it. He shook it. Beth looked at him quizzically.
“4G waterproof spy camera. It’s also a watch,” he said. “When we hit dry land we have a new blockbuster on our hands. The Zombie Dinner Party was just a practice run, baby.”
Beth smiled. They did it again.
THE END
BONUS MATERIAL
THE AUTHORS MEET ON A DESERT ISLAND….
The writes meet in a rude construction nailed together from palm timber and corrugated iron. They are on a tropical island somewhere in the pulp pacific. A well-stocked bar and a floor covered with cushions, ashtrays, and old pulp dime store titles piled, Ace double backs, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales. A three-legged beach dog with terminal dermatitis sits beneath a hammock where JOHN BRUNI rests. JAMES NEWMAN fusses behind the bar while JASON BEECH flicks through the aforementioned pulp titles. Jim's business partner JOHN DAYSH is out by the bay gathering crabs.
NEWMAN: First question, straight of the bat, is what can we get you from the bar? And what record should we put on? We have this old gramophone that still plays like the day it was born and the bar is comprehensive.
BRUNI: I think this calls for a double Wild Turkey 101 neat and some Tom Waits. Maybe HEART ATTACK AND VINE
NEWMAN: Got it. Mine will be the Singapore Slag, a cocktail I invented myself. Kicks like a mule.
BEECH I’ll have a River Horse Milk Stout. It's filling, so I can drink all day without wasting time with food. We should do the Nutty Dance to Madness' Bed and Breakfast Man before the alcohol makes us look silly
NEWMAN: I'm on it, Madness and Wild Turkey, often mentioned in the same sentence. I’ll slip on Waits first while the booze takes her time to take effect. Now let's cut to the chase and talk about reanimated flesh... My story in the Zombie Triple Spanking is about undead monkeys who escape and run wild on a cargo ship….We all know that the zombie stories go back to Voodoo and I’ve managed to dig up various stories about people going into drug like trances following spells and intoxication…This shit is interesting….[Newman downs his Singapore Slag and begins to prepare another.] Can you guys sum up your contributions in a sentence or two? And why, why, did we decide on zombies? Is there a revival? A resurrection or something blowin’ in the breeze?
BEECH: While Frank is blowing zombie heads to pulp, Lizzie's view that she is now the world's mother is ballooning. She doesn't much like Frank, but she'll trigger bloody mayhem when she realizes there's a rival Eve out there. Zelmer Pulp's C'mon do the Apocalypse gave me the itch to write a zombie story. Try not to run when you see me scratch. Ryan Sayles' contribution blew me away. Then there's Shaun of the Dead, a film I've seen about twenty times. There's some gut-punching terror mingling with the comedy. Could you shoot your mum? Even if she did want to eat your brains? I need another stout to ponder that terror. I'm not sure it's a zombie revival. Zombies have seemed a permanent fixture ever since the Romero remakes. Tom Waits' voice would make great zom
bie ambiance.
BRUNI: I agree with Jason. There is no zombie revival. The undead shamblers have been with us for a while, and they're here to stay. That said, there are very few zombies in my story, despite the fact that it happens during the zombie apocalypse. I always try to do something different with a trope, and I hope I've succeeded here. My story is really about a slacker who used to work as a pirate captain on the Treasure Island Adventure Show in Florida. Except now he's a real pirate, and he's saved a lot of lives on his quest for a zombie-free zone. Rumor has come down to him that Chicago is just such a place, but he doesn't know why until it is too late. You see, a former junkie/drug dealer, Captain Meth-Mouth, fancies himself a pirate. He has made Chicago safe, but only from zombies. He is a ruthless, vicious leader, and his one true dream is to battle another pirate at sea. He is about to have this dream fulfilled in Captain Meth-Mouth on the High Seas of Chicago.
NEWMAN: Hear what you saying, and must say that Romero was a big influence on me as a nine-year-old… The Dawn of the Dead -shopping mall - "When there's no place left in hell the dead will walk the Earth" made a huge impact on my pre-pubescent years. I want to thank you guys because I probably wouldn't have written a zombie story without reading your stuff first. Before we kill this bottle of Wild Turkey, tell what other coals you have in the fire? John - you and I are doing something similar. I've been working on a book called Rich Fuckers for a while and you have something called Poor Bastards and Rich Fucks.