by Mark Tufo
‘If I still am a man,’ a distant thought rang out.
Fred was easily double my age and half my size but the crazy bastard still put his rifle to the side. “Alright, I’ve done my part,” he said, holding his hands up to prove he hadn’t concealed anything.
“Move away from it, Fred,” I said calmly. He did as I asked and I laid the passed-out Anna down gently. It wasn’t that I cared a shit for her safety, I just didn’t want to bruise my meat. I stood to my full height; the wide eyed stare from Fred let me know that he instantly regretted his decision and his gaze kept shifting towards his now discarded rifle, my guess was in an attempt to see how quickly he could get to it. “A deal’s a deal, Fred. Or would you renege in the house of the Lord?”
“Let’s do this,” Fred said, trying to psyche himself up.
I raised my gun-toting left hand up, the barrel shone a dull blue. “What the fu—” Were Fred’s final words as my trigger finger obediently obeyed and three times no less. I impressed myself with my grouping, the first shot caught him square in the Adam’s apple and before he could even react I placed another in the bottom half of his jaw and the third ripped open the top of his face, but to be fair he was dropping fast, it wasn’t that my point of aim had wavered.
“Did you kill the fucker?” Zak asked from atop the stairs.
“Why yes, Zak. Indeed I did,” I replied as I approached Fred’s still jerking body. At some point Anna had come up to my side and was looking down at Fred. She was murmuring something, could have been the Lord’s prayer or a peanut butter cookie recipe, I didn’t really give a shit either way. Hugh wanted to eat Fred but I liked the blood to still be pounding through the veins in my food.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” Zak said, close to panicking. “Listen, mister, I don’t have a beef with you.”
“That’s funny that you should word it that way, Zak, because I actually consider you my beef.” Wild, unaimed shots rang down the stairwell. I was fairly certain that if I walked slowly up the stairs Zak couldn’t hit me, but ‘fairly certain’ was still a big chance to take when one was dealing with one’s life. “Zak, you come down here and give yourself up. I’ll make it relatively painless.” Well as painless as having your liver ripped free from your still warm body could be, anyway. More wild shots, unless his bullets could make a ninety degree turn I should be fine.
Anna was still murmuring under her breath, an unnoticed Rosary in her hands. So much for the peanut butter cookie recipe theory. She was looking better and better by the minute. My stomach growled so loudly she momentarily stopped her praying and Zak let loose some more bullets. The sound of the loud ‘click’ as Zak fired the last bullet in his magazine was immediately followed by a loud clatter and an ‘Oh Jesus’ as what I figured was the empty magazine of Zak’s gun fell down the stairs to come resting on the first landing.
‘Dinner is served!’ I thought as I swept into action. I pushed against the wall as I rounded the corner to get onto the base of the stairs. I was halfway up the first set of stairs before Zak knew what was happening. He was midway down the second set as I rounded the turn on the landing; the surprise of seeing me froze him in indecision, but only for a split second. He reached for a large bowie knife strapped to his hip. I launched up the remaining few steps as he pulled the knife free from its sheath. He brought it up as my mouth opened in anticipation of a meal. The pain was excruciating as the blade caught the edge of my eyeball ripping it clean from its moorings in my orbital socket. For a moment I had the duality vision of looking at Zak’s terrified face and the red carpet runner on the stairs; not a pleasant sensation.
I was screaming or maybe it was Hugh, quite possibly both of us. I staggered back and almost fell the three steps back to the landing. Zak had let go of his knife which was stuck in my sliced eyeball, now hanging precariously down to my navel. The weight of the foreign object snapped the optical nerve, sending my eye rolling down the rest of the stairs. My head snapped slightly back as the nerve recoiled back into its socket like an over powered tape measure let go from twelve feet.
I could hear Anna screaming to mimic my own; she must have come across my wayward eyeball. Zak was upstairs rummaging around for something, another weapon most likely. Fire bursting pain in my head or not, I had to get up there and finish him off before he found something to do me in with. Now it was personal.
My left eye socket seared in pain. Hugh was in the background, frantically doing damage control. He would stop the bleeding but we’d never see out of that eye again. I was going to start with Zak’s eyes for this! He was at the far corner of the room holding a baseball bat.
“Don’t make me use this,” he begged, his arms shaking like a vibrator left on an oak nightstand.
“I can’t just walk away now, Zak. You took my eye, now I’m going to take yours.”
He swung the bat violently even though I was a good fifteen feet away. I slowly approached. Zak backed up even farther but unless he could incorporate himself into the structure of the church he wasn’t going anywhere.
“End of the line,” I told him evenly.
This was a lesson I wouldn’t soon forget. Cornered animals are unpredictable. Zak began screaming as he ran toward me. I had not even enough time to raise my hands up as he swung the bat. My height was the only thing that saved my life as my shoulder caught the brunt of the swing, but even as the bat struck my shoulder and struck the side of my head I could feel my skull break in a couple of places.
‘DON’T!’ Hugh screamed. ‘PAIN,’ although this mostly translated as the color Red.
Thick blood poured from the hole in my head. Another shot like that and Zak would be standing over my prone body. My head was reeling, Hugh was screaming and Zak was pressing the attack. He pulled the bat back and struck again, this time I was able to raise my arm up. My forearm splintered as Zak caught it with the fat part of the Louisville Slugger.
“Fuck you!” he spat. “Just fucking die!” He pulled the bat back into the cocked position again.
‘Move or die, move or die’ kept flashing through my head like a neon sign.
Anna took this the most opportune of times to save my life, even if it was not her intention I appreciated it immensely. Zak hesitated for a millisecond as she came to the door, screaming to know if I was dead, I didn’t know she cared, I thought sarcastically.
I moved in biting Zak’s left thumb clean off, he dropped the bat as I chewed noisily on the digit. I spit out some bone bits as Zak was hunched over trying to staunch the flow of blood.
“Betcha that fuckin’ hurts,” I said. He was full on sobbing now, the fight bitten out of him.
“I’m so sorry,” Anna kept repeating over and over, but she wasn’t willing to come and console him personally.
“That’s alright. I forgive you and most likely so will your God,” I told her.
She looked up at me with rage in her eyes and then turned to go downstairs.
“God, I’m so hungry,” I told Zak as I ripped through his ear. Anna’s footfalls were masked by the renewed efforts of Zak’s pleas. But just like God, I had turned a deaf ear and a blind eye!
‘Pretty fucking witty,’ I thought, rending the flesh from his nose. I was really enjoying the elasticity of the cartilage; it made for some serious chewing, reminded me somewhat of jerky. I pulled the white mass that was Zak’s nose and dipped in to the wound by his ear. Zak’s shoulders were pumping up and down as he sobbed quietly. Shock must have set down deeply into Zak, that was the only reason I could figure why he wasn’t fighting back. “Few more minutes, half hour tops and you won’t be able to feel a thing,” I told him. Zak began to suck on his still present thumb. “Aw, how cute,” I told him as I pulled his remaining ear off, first sucking the blood then nibbling the flesh off so that I could get to the chewy center.
‘Didn’t they do a lollipop commercial eerily similar to this?’ I asked Hugh. No response. ‘Yeah there was an owl with glasses I think.’
‘Eat. Fix,’ Hugh r
eplied.
“I get it—you need food to fix all of the injuries our dinner guest inflicted,” I said aloud.
Zak was too busy rocking back and forth sucking his thumb to take any more note of the external world.
“Bye, Zak. It’s been a pleasure to eat you,” I said picking up his discarded bat and smashing his skull so that I would have easier access to his juicy brains. I peeled away the large fragments of splintered skull matted with blood and hair and drove my hand deep into his skull cavity coming up with a large succulent fistful of brain. Warm brains sounding like just about the best damn thing on the planet right now.
I must have passed out or fallen asleep or maybe just went into a deep fugue state as I devoured Zak but by the time I snapped out of it we were down to the bowels of our host and sunshine was streaming in through the windows. My head had stopped leaking, but my eye was never coming back, Hugh hadn’t even seen fit to pull the optic nerve all the way in before sealing the wound shut. Now it looked like I had a tapeworm hanging from my face. I was going to have to really step my game up if I ever wanted to get me some again.
It was Anna’s screams that got me moving, Hugh wanted to take a legendary dump. I told him he had to wait; he was not enthused but he acquiesced. I ran down the stairs which was cumbersome considering I was carrying another human inside of me but wasn’t pregnant, though I was eating for two, I mused. I turned from the stairs, the stupid bitch had unlocked the church doors in a vain attempt to get away from me, did she miss the four or five hundred zombies perched outside that were now streaming in like lost souls clamoring for forgiveness.
Anna was picking her poison as she stumbled back from the flesh worshippers, she turned and ran full speed past me and up the stairs. The zombies were only seconds behind. Dammit, I had never played well with others and I wasn’t about to start now. Anna was my prize, I had paid dearly for the right to eat her and I’d be damned if I was going to let these slobs spoil it for me. Hugh started a buzzing in my head, I was thinking this was the beginning of his plan to be rid of me. It was an incapacitating sound, I couldn’t think—it was all encompassing, I felt like drowning in the hum.
‘Well played,’ I told him as both my body and my mind fell to our knees. Hugh did not respond, he didn’t owe the defeated anything I thought as I rolled over onto my side. ‘Just finish it,’ I thought, ‘I’ve got no defense for this.’
Funny thing was Hugh wasn’t doing anything to me, he was communicating with the zombies in the church. Whatever he was saying it involved telling them to not go up the stairs. The zombies had stopped no more than two or three feet from where I had collapsed, they were looking eagerly at the stairwell but they did not come any closer.
‘Eliminate. Eat female,’ Hugh said.
‘Shit, Hugh, what the hell did you do?’ I asked, like usual he didn’t answer. I think I could kind of get used to the little guy, he didn’t say much but he sure packed a mean punch, I thought as I stood up. I felt the old familiar rigidity coming on, I asked Hugh to stop. Again he listened.
“I just want to do this right,” I said aloud. I pulled my clown pants down to my ankles which was no easy feat considering the poundage of shit and human debris stuck to me. I squatted like a germaphobe female in an overflowing port-a-pottie. I’d never had stage fright before but taking a shit in front of a hundred or so zombies was intimidating. My asshole was puckered tight, until Hugh decided enough was enough, I think a bowling ball would have fit easily once Hugh loosed it. Zak remnants flowed from me like a brown river of mud. The smell was horrific ambrosia. The closest zombies were ankle deep in my offal, it seemed to excite them as they began to sniff enthusiastically. It felt so good it was like having an anal orgasm if such a thing were possible, no matter what I’d told all the girls before that I’d convinced to have that type of sex with, I had never believed in it before now that is.
A few minutes later I was gleefully pulling my pants back up. ‘That was thoroughly enjoyable, buddy,’ I told Hugh. If this was what having a friend was like I could get used to it. The zombies were watching as I began to go up the stairs but not a one of them broke the invisible barrier Hugh had set up.
‘Any chance you could tell me what you did back there?’ I asked.
No reply was forthcoming for such a long while I didn’t figure one was coming at all and when it did I sure wasn’t expecting it.
‘Fuck off,’ Hugh said.
I stopped ascending the stairs, at first shocked that my friend had turned on me and then to laugh uncontrollably when I realized he had been telling the zombies to ‘fuck off’ not me.
‘That’s rich, buddy!’ I thought as I wiped a phantom tear away from my empty eye socket. Hugh didn’t say anything, but I got the distinct impression that he was pretty pleased with himself.
I traveled the rest of the way up with what I would imagine was a very large smirk plastered across my face, although I’m not sure if anyone could have noticed through the blood and bile on my face. I was not prepared for what greeted me at the top of the step. Instead of cowering in the corner, Anna was in the middle of the room standing naked. My old self quaked with desire; she was sculpted as if from the hand of God himself. I had bedded some beauties through the years and not a one of them could hold a candle to the creature that stood before me. The slight knocking in her knees only made her that much more attractive. Compound that with the fact she was a devout virgin married to Christ and Him not being much into conjugal visits made her fucking perfect.
“I am offering everything of me so that you will not kill me,” she said with a slight retching hitch to her words.
“What makes you think, Sister, that I would not just take what I want and discard the rest?”
Her eyes widened in alarm. She moved closer, her breasts swaying enticingly. She was trying to hold her breath and when that didn’t work she was filtering air through her nearly closed lips and clenched teeth as if that would do anything.
“I can do things for you that you’ve never had done,” she pleaded.
“Oh, I doubt that,” I told her. She seemed fairly practiced for someone of the Cloth and her trimmed pussy hair was making me doubt her professed occupation, but I was not yet ready to shatter the illusion.
She openly gagged as she moved even closer, if she could have turned her head all the way back she would have as she pulled my clown pants down. She added her vomit to the mixture already on my clothes, to her merit she didn’t skip a beat. She gasped as she stood back up coming face to face with my one eyed monster.
I laughed at her. “Not much you’re going to be able to do with that Sister,” I told her as I grabbed the base of my cock, the top half black and barely hanging on. I shook it violently until it dropped to the floor with an audible plop. I was pretty impressed considering that was only about half my penis.
Anna began to vomit anew spewing stomach butter all over my decapitated manhood.
“I’d really like to help you out, Sister, I really would, but it looks like that’s just not in the cards.”
Anna’s ploy for life was over and now she knew it. Not that I was ever going to let her live, even as a kid I used to like to play with my food before I ate it.
“How could God let something like you live!” she spat.
“We are the wrath of God!” I answered her harshly.
She must have thought I was talking about the zombie collective when in actuality I meant me and Hugh.
Anna began to back up, searching frantically for anything that resembled a weapon.
“Should I wait a few minutes more and see if you come up with anything?” I asked her mockingly.
Her eyes flared as she looked over to me, and for the second time Anna surprised the hell out of me. She dropped to her knees, hands clasped in front of her, head bowed, she was reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
“Get up!” I yelled at her. She was infuriating the hell out of me and I didn’t know why. I wanted her to be scared and cowering i
t just made it that much more enjoyable for me. Maybe the endorphins and adrenaline combined with the meat made it taste better.
I ran up on her, my heavy footfalls causing her to move slightly as the floor yielded to my weight, but she did not look up or stop her prayers.
“Your God will not save you!” I yelled, and still she continued. “Oh, I get it, you’re trying to save me! Well here’s a newsflash—I don’t need saving because zombies never die! I’m as right as rain!
Hugh was screaming at me as I turned and walked back down the stairs and through the throng of zombie brethren. They watched as I left the church before they headed up the stairs. Anna never screamed out as she was eaten alive, I stayed on the lawn looking up at the sky. Hugh had finally relented after a solid hour of letting me know how he felt about losing a meal. Zombies began to come back out through the church doors as they must have realized that all the potential food source within had been depleted. Some stood still like me, some headed off, but the majority just kind of milled around aimlessly. With no job, hobby or external obligations there wasn’t a whole bunch to do.
I looked at my peers. We were a sad lot; I was missing half my penis and an eye and I was far from the worst. There was one old lady zombie who must have awoken from a deep sleep to realize she had become the undead, she had not had the foresight to put her dentures in, just thinking of the cravings she must be going through hurt my stomach.
‘What now, Hugh?’ I asked my only friend.
‘Eat,’ he told me.
And really, what other option was there? I could hear gunshots in the distance, so that meant food was available, but like all great predators it was time to minimize risk to my health, such as it was, and maximize sustenance. The young, the old and the infirm would offer the least resistance and probably the least taste but I couldn’t keep taking damage—Hugh could only stitch together so much. A hospital sounded like the most opportune place to ransack, but when the outbreak hit that would be where the first zombies showed up, meaning the larder would likely have been emptied on that first day.