by Mark Tufo
“Holy shit, Vern, do you see that one?” I heard a man shout from across the street.
“That is one big fuckin’ zombie,” came another voice that I could only imagine belonged to Vern.
My head turned to look at two older men who both looked like they had just ransacked an Army surplus store. How they figured their camo outfits were going to make them blend in with the coffee shop front was beyond me.
Hugh, yeah that’s what I’d call my body. Seems fitting somehow. Hugh picked up their scent and was off to the races. The look of surprise on Vern and the other guys face was pretty hilarious right up until the other guy lifted his huge rifle into place.
‘Hugh, whoa!’ I screamed. ‘Fucking stop, you ape! You’re going to get us killed!’
“That sum’ bitch is fast, Darryl. You’d better hurry up and shoot it.”
“Sum’ bitch?”
“You know what I meant. Shoot that thing.”
“Did you mean son of a bitch?”
“Whatever! Shoot the fucker!” Vern screamed.
I was halfway across the street, Darryl had a bead right on my forehead, I swear I could feel the laser dot painting me like an Indian bride. I told Hugh to sidestep just as the first shot rang out. I was pulled to the side as the bullet crashed into my shoulder. I hesitantly waited for the onrush of massive amounts of pain. What came would barely be considered as painful as a mosquito bite.
“The head, Darryl! The head!”
“I did shoot him in the head—he moved. He’s so fast.”
Darryl dropped his weapon down, pulling the bolt up. The hot brass tinkled to the ground. He was struggling to put a fresh bullet into the action. Who the fuck brings a bolt action rifle to a zombie fuck fest?
Darryl had a look of triumph on his face as he brought his rifle back to bear, unfortunately for him it would be a short lived. Hugh was already past the barrel of the rifle and used Darryl’s body to stop our forward momentum as we crashed into the store front window. Shards of glass, some as big as flagstones, rained down all around us, Darryl seemed to have gotten the worst of it. Between the pieces of glass sticking out at odd angles and his fleshy lips being chewed up in my mouth he wouldn’t live long.
“Darryl! Fuck, Darryl! You alright?” Vern shouted behind me.
‘Yeah, dipwad, he’s fine,’ I thought as Hugh ripped through his left eye. ‘And he’s getting better all the time.’ There was no reason on Earth that I should be getting used to eating people, but hey, I was just along for the ride.
‘Darryl would be alive now if you hadn’t shown Hugh the way out.’
‘Who the fuck said that?’ Great, another mouth to feed, so to speak. For solitary confinement, it was beginning to get real crowded. There was still the chance that all of this was insanity; maybe one of the many skanks I had used had returned the favor and given me a virulent dose of syphilis. And if you didn’t already know, I’ll tell you—untreated syphilis rots your brain. So let that be a lesson to you kiddies brought to you by Spangles the clown. I was cracking myself up right until Hugh chewed through the man’s lower intestine. I could have gone the rest of my life, such as it is, without ever having to have seen Darryl’s half digested hot dog. ‘Ever hear of chewing!’ I screamed at the corpse that I had my head buried in. What was worse was when Hugh ate it. Images of my head buried in a toilet bowl flooded my mind. Hugh picked up on the plethora of images and he also began to vomit.
Eating a raw human was absolutely disgusting, puking one back up was beyond description. I slammed the door to my ‘room’ and all my senses just as Hugh began to dive back into his work, throw up and all. If I knew where my knees were I would have been in the corner holding on to them rocking back and forth. Could this really be happening? Vern had called me a zombie, sure I had watched Dawn of the Dead as a kid but I don’t remember there being any exposed breasts in the movie I had quickly lost interest in the genre. I started to rattle through my extremely limited information relating to this new development. I was fairly certain they ate brains, but Hugh had already proved that wrong, he ate everything even that fucking half a hot dog. I almost hurled again.
Zombies were slower than that lineman after I had destroyed his knee. No, that’s not right either because we had been flat out running across that street after Vern and Darryl. So everything I knew about zombies was false or Vern was wrong. I couldn’t really ask him for clarification now, could I? I started to laugh and so did Hugh. Only when a giant clown covered in blood and gore does it, it’s not nearly as funny. After what seemed an appropriate time I lifted the shades to my senses, Hugh was almost at a blissful balance between sated and hungry. But he was worse than a Hummer traveling down the highway at eighty miles an hour, I could watch as his hunger gauge began to tip.
Hugh looked around, Vern had departed to places unknown once he realized his friend was not quite alright.
‘Hungry,’ formed in my thoughts, followed by the feeling of vast emptiness.
‘They’d never let you in to an all you can eat buffet,’ I told him.
‘Food,’ Hugh thought.
‘Go fucking get it,’ I told him. ‘There’s nothing in your way.’
‘Hungry.’
He wanted me to take a more active role in our hunt. I could damn near rationalize showing him how to open the door and sidestepping the bullet but this was a whole different thing altogether. This was active participation in savagery, in cannibalism, in murder. According to the two things on my checklist I was not a zombie no matter what Vern and Merle thought, what harm could come from my helping Hugh out? Maybe it would make me wake from this nightmare quicker or submerge me deeper so I wouldn’t have a self left either way was better than this limbo.
‘Get up, asshole.’
He did as I said. I stretched out my senses a bit more. Damn, I was heavy. Vern was easily two hundred fifty pounds and I had consumed at least a hundred fifty pounds of him, hotdog and all. I might be strong but hefting another man inside my belly was only going to slow me down.
‘Waste elimination,’ I told Hugh.
He formed a crude ‘?’ in reply.
‘Fine, have it your way,’ I told him, I projected my thoughts to show him how to take a proper shit, magazine and all. He didn’t get the irony as I made sure to be holding a Fine Dining periodical I thought it was hilarious. Bricks of shit began to fill up in my pants, bulging the already stretched fabric to its limit. I was going to interrupt Hugh in this most private of endeavors, I really was, but I thought better of it, not because I gave a fuck about him, but I still had my standards, and running across the city with shit-filled pants was way better than being naked from the waist down. Dignity I would hold on to for a little while longer.
Runny blood-brown liquid began to seep through my pants, the gold coloring of the pants had long since vanished, replaced completely with a color close to that of three day old road kill. Didn’t much matter the animal they all turned the same color eventually.
A twenty second long burst of aroma that would kill a skunk tore through my anus, signifying an end to the evacuation of Vern from my bowels.
‘Hungry,’ Hugh repeated.
‘You’re going to have to work on your vocabulary,’ I told him as I turned him to face a direction I knew would be stockpiled with food. The weak-minded always thought their God would protect them during the end of times; Hugh and I were about to show them otherwise.
‘Eat now.’
‘Much better, Hugh! Don’t worry, my friend, church will be packed this time of day,’ I said, laughing maniacally. Hugh was too determined to enjoy in the revelry. ‘You missed a good one,’ I told him, wiping an imaginary tear from my eye.
I wasn’t the only one with this idea the church was surrounded by some of the foulest creatures this planet could produce. I won’t lie, I got pretty scared first that they might try to eat us and when that didn’t happen that they might notice Hugh wasn’t exactly the same as them and still try to kill him. We
passed some zombies (I’ll use that for lack of a better term) who were in some serious state of disrepair. One looked like he had been sawed in half and still he dragged his exposed spinal column across the pavement. A woman zombie was bent at the waist, looking like she had been hit by a car and it had fractured her back or hip—something—but still she shuffled to the feast. Some had bite wounds, others blunt trauma wounds, knife stabs, sword slashes, and most of the injured had bullet wounds.
How could any of them survive this much damage? It was then that I remembered the shot we had got from Vern. I forced Hugh to look down at the wound it wasn’t bleeding. Hugh wrenched control back so that he could approach the front doors. I made him move his left arm, there was no pain. No grinding of bone on bone, no sprung leakers, it was as if it had never happened.
‘How?’ I asked Hugh.
Hugh stopped walking for a moment as he tore through my memories. ‘Fix. Eat now.’
‘Fucking-A, you’re an insurance company’s walking wet dream.’
We were halfway through the throng of flesh-worshippers, when I realized that not a one of these monsters gave a rat’s ass about us. But the multitude of rifles pointing through the now smashed stained glass windows surely did, and as tall and brightly dressed up as I was, I was quickly going to become a target.
‘Turn!’ I shouted to Hugh.
‘Hungry!’ he screamed like a spoiled child.
‘Dead soon if you keep going.’ I flashed images of our body lying in a pool of blood with a caved in skull.
‘No dead,’ Hugh said. ‘Hungry.’
‘I’ll get you your damn food but we’re going to do this my way!’ I said.
Hugh reluctantly agreed and turned away and not a moment too soon. The zombie that thought he had just won the lottery by getting our spot fell to the ground with a bullet hole in its forehead. Hugh never turned around as the dead zombie’s body slammed into ours. ‘Faster,’ I urged. Hugh obliged, but only because he knew this meant food sooner. Someone sure had a hard-on for us. Zombies all around us began to take on wounds even as we pulled away from the major push of them. I knew we’d attract attention but shit we were easily a hundred yards from the church and still I had to make my hulking frame weave and dodge to avoid the stinging missiles as they zipped by. As it was, Hugh’s minions were going to be busy fixing the two or three that had caught up to us. Hey, I was an offensive lineman, not a running back. Either the guy was out of bullets or we had finally pulled out of his effective range. I waited until we were out of sight of the church before I made Hugh turn around, this time we were going to come up from behind.
Hugh might be hungry but I was plain old pissed off. What the fuck had I done to make that guy try and kill me, unless he was the boyfriend of some girl I had boinked, who was I to him? I sure as hell didn’t ask to be a flesh-eater. Or maybe he just hated clowns; I actually found that more acceptable reason to loathe me. I was going to pull out and eat his liver while he watched! Holy crap where did that thought come from?
‘Hugh? Did you do that?’
‘Hungry.’
‘Quite the conversationalist, aren’t you?’
Amateurs, I thought as I had Hugh open the door at the back of the church. I’m no military man or even one of those half-crazed survivalists, but hell, even I know enough to watch my six. The corridor was darkly lit and narrow, depictions of Jesus in varying forms of torture lined both walls. Good thing he died for the sins I was about to commit. It was so dark we nearly stumbled over the ‘guard’ they had put at the back entry. The guy looked more like a zombie than half the ones out front. He was so friggin’ old, a super market wouldn’t hire him to be a greeter at their store. You know the guys I’m talking about, one foot in the grave and the other dangling precariously over the edge. They’re about as intimidating as a new born with a rattle, who do they think they’re fooling, I don’t give a shit if they were once a cop or a war hero, makes no difference, they’re old and useless now.
I almost had to laugh as Grandpa Moses eyes got nearly double their size as he saw me coming down the hallway at him. Geezer might almost be worm food but he brought his gun up faster than I would have thought possible, fucker still had a little juice in him after all. The first and only shot he got off nailed me in my pecker. ‘You’re going to pay for that!’ I screamed in my head. Hugh crashed into the guy at a full-on sprint. I felt multiple bones crack under our assault as we drove him into the heavy wooden oak door that led into the church proper. Hugh had hit him so hard I didn’t think there would be anything left to eat when he pulled back. I figured we’d just pressed him in to the wood. To forever become embedded in the grain. Somewhere in the fragmented pieces of my memory I was crying out in pain, the piece of my anatomy that my entire former life revolved around had suffered a grievous injury and Hugh didn’t care as he bit down hard on Geezer’s face, ripping off a strip of raggedy cheek meat.
‘Eat,’ Hugh said damn near gleefully.
“Jonas you okay?” a voice asked.
I might be slow but I figured out quickly who Jonas was as Hugh ripped through his neck.
“Jonas, answer me,” a scared woman’s voice demanded.
That’s women, always demanding.
“Ben, Jonas isn’t answering.”
“Old turd is probably sleeping,” Ben replied.
“Didn’t you hear the gunshot?” the woman asked.
“Shit, Anna, if you haven’t noticed there’s about a million gunshots going off.”
“From behind us?” she shot out.
“Well, check it out,” Ben yelled to her.
“I don’t have a gun.”
“Fine, I’ll be down in a sec to check, but I swear if he’s sleeping, I’m kicking him outside.”
‘Hugh!’ I was trying to gain his attention. Ben was coming and if he saw what was going on here we were both dead. Hugh was having none of it, though. He was pulling muscles off Jonas’ thighs like they were succulent crab leg meat.
‘Hugh!’ I yelled again.
‘Eating!’ he yelled back.
‘Very good, asshole using the present tense and all, but we’re about to have company. And if my dick is still serviceable and I can somehow get control back from you I would like to make it through the next five minutes.’
Hugh was ripping the meniscus off of Jonas’ knee. At this age I was surprised the old fuck still had any left.
“Jonas, Ben is coming. If you’re asleep, please get up or he’ll kick us both out.”
“Oh no, not you, honey,” Ben said. “You’re entirely too fuckable and we’ll need good hipped women like you to repopulate the planet.”
“Pig,” Anna cried. I could hear her retreating down the aisle way.
“Last chance, old man!” Ben shouted.
Hugh snapped his head up as Ben turned the door handle.
“What the hell?” Ben asked as he looked my hunched over form square in the face. I’m sure it was a hell of a sight with all that blood and gore dripping off me. Ben had initially let his weapon fall by his side from the shock but was now rapidly recovering. I launched Hugh forward trapping Ben’s arm in the crushing vise of my body weight against the heavy door. I was almost able to shut the door once we had broke through the bones in Ben’s arms. The rifle clattered to the floor. Hugh began to chew through Ben’s arm as we kept our pressure on the door. His cries should have been drowned out by the shooting upstairs, but that bitch Anna saw what was happening and was screaming her lungs out. I was going to give eating her pussy out a whole new meaning.
Ben’s major screaming had subsided it was mostly whimpers at this point but I’m sure someone on the other end was going to think something was a little fishy with one of their own trapped in the door. While Hugh was busy munching away, I wrenched the door open, grabbed a handful of Ben’s head and pulled him into the hallway with us, but not before I gave little miss Anna my best ‘Here’s Johnny’ gaze. She froze—it was brilliant!
“Anna, w
hat’s the matter?” somebody from upstairs yelled.
Nothing. Maybe she died of fright.
“Anna!” The voice yelled.
“There’s a… there’s a clown,” Anna said softly.
“Anna, look at me!” the voice commanded. “There’s a lot worse than clowns out there.”
‘Not this clown,’ I thought. Hugh was crunching through one of our two victim’s eyeballs.
“Where is Ben?” the voice asked.
Anna was in shock. She whimpered much like Ben had only moments before.
“In the hallway?” the man guessed.
Anna must have been pointing, maybe she was little tougher than I had given her credit for. As long as her flesh was tender that was all that really mattered right now.
“I’m going to come down and check.”
Anna was hot, that was how she was getting two guys to come down and do a job she should have done. That’s why the military didn’t want women in combat. Guys would be pushing other guys out of the way so that they could fall on a grenade to impress the girl. Dipshits, the key to getting a girl is to be the one to throw the grenade at her, she’d come running at that point.
‘Danger coming, Hugh.’ Damn thing paid me no attention. I started flashing him images of guns and bullets.
‘Pain… hurt,’ Hugh thought.
Wow, so something does bother it besides hunger pangs. Hugh stopped rending through the old man’s genitalia to look up at the door.
‘Good boy, Hugh. More food coming.’