Monster Burger: A zombie horror comedy (24/7 Demon Mart)

by D. M. Guay

  The little jerks high fived and hugged above me, celebrating like they'd just David and Goliathed this shit. I rolled onto my side and started plucking jacks out of my butt cheeks. Plink. Ouch. Plink. Ouch.

  A pixie man fluttered down and landed on my knee. He looked right at me and popped a squat like a dog on a nice green lawn. Oh. Hell. No. He was not gonna—oh wait. Yes. Yes, he was. He locked eyes with me and honked out a brown snake. Oh, it's on, brother. It's on! Kevin was right. Pixies are disgusting!

  I thwapped that pixie right into next week. He hit the oil funnels so hard they practically exploded off the shelf. I picked one up and clubbed him with it.

  Angel eight ball rolled over. “Thou shalt not—”

  “Thou shalt NOT poop on my pants!”

  The pixie squeaked with every hit, and I would have kept going if angel eight ball hadn't dropped on top of him to shield him. “Do NOT kill him.” His triangle turned. “All you have to do is shoo them outside. How hard is that?”

  “Outside, huh? Okay.” I grabbed the pooping pixie by the wings. He was a little droopy from the ass kicking I'd just handed him. I held him out so the others could see. Of course, they immediately sported their best cute innocent little sad eyes, begging me to let him go. I mean, I think. I don't speak pixie, but hand wringing and sobs are pretty much universal. “I'm not falling for it!”

  The pixies shot me the evil eye, then swarmed, looping up and down in circles around me, wings buzzing like angry hornets. But I was not giving in. I did not drop the pixie.

  Chink. Chink. Zzzzzzzt.

  Uh oh. That didn't sound good. I turned around. A handful of pixies fluttered in the air where Bubby's television used to be. One of them held a screwdriver, tag still on it, that he'd filched out of the hardware section. The TV was face down on the floor, in pieces. In the middle of a pack of zombies, who were now disappointed and confused because they would never know how Tiger King ends. The only entertainment left was to eat me.

  Fuck. I dropped the pixie. Time to run.

  Yes. Running was a great plan. Yes. It would have worked. Except that tiny naked Ed McMahon had just led four zombies into the other end of the aisle. They plugged up the aisle, following that hairy, precancerous mole like it was an unwrapped Hershey's Kiss.

  My guts hit my shoe. That pixie had won. He'd put me in the one place you did not want to be in the zombie apocalypse: surrounded on all sides by zombies.

  “Hurry, DeeDee!” I yelled across the store. “I don't want to die—i—i-eee. Herp herp ha herp.”

  I kept that second part on the down low. No need to die with DeeDee thinking I was a coward.

  But yeah. I totally blubbered, okay? There were eleven flesh-eating zombies closing in on me and all I had to fend them off was a grandma can grabber and some bacon-scented car spray. Which had spilled all over my pants. Great. Just great. Ten bucks says you wouldn't be able to Rick Grimes your way out of this either.

  “I'm working on it!” DeeDee yelled back.

  The desire to survive was strong, so I wiped my tears away. I had three options: Fight them off, let them eat me, or climb over the rack into the next aisle. Oh. Yeah. I could totally do that.

  I dropped the grabber and knocked all the weird gas tank additives off the top shelf. I gripped the back of it and used the bottom shelf as a step stool. Or tried to. It collapsed the second I stepped on it, sending bottles of motor oil rolling. Really universe? I wasn't that fat!

  Uuuuuuuuuuuh. Uuuuhrrrrrrrrr.

  Zombies. Closing in.

  I had no choice but to double down and pull myself over that rack. I held on tight and pulled as hard as I could. My biceps—and plenty of muscles I couldn't identify—burned and flexed. Almost there.

  Oh, who was I kidding? I barely moved. The metal edge of the top shelf dug into my armpits, so sharp I was pretty sure it was about to slice my nipples off. I wasn't more than six inches higher than when I started. Wowza. I really needed to work on my upper body strength.

  I kicked my legs and managed to plant one knee on the second shelf. Hazzah! Leverage! Then it collapsed. There was a crash, and everything fell to the floor.

  Angel rolled through aisle five and stopped in front of me. “If you worked out, you'd be in aisle five already.”

  “Shut up!”

  Still. He had a point. This was totes not working. Time to abandon the plan. My fat ass was not gonna make it across. Okay. Plan B. Get through the four zombies loitering by the unicorn stuffies and glitter scrunchies end cap. (Remind me again why we sell this stuff?) I mean, it had to be easier to get through four zombies than it was to get through seven. Right?

  Right?

  I didn't have much time. Both groups had shuffled considerably closer during the shelf climbing incident. Which we will never speak of again because it was too humiliating.

  Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Aaaaaaaaaaaar. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

  I felt a little wobbly. I didn't know if it was the fear or the strain of attempting a shelf climb, but my legs turned to noodles, and my heart kicked my ribs. This was my worst nightmare. Zombies. Behind those cheap black sunglasses were milky dead eyes and an insatiable appetite for human flesh. My flesh. Their stiff arms reached out for me.

  If I was gonna do this. I'd need a weapon. But what? All I had were random bottles of automotive supplies. Which was great because some of the zombies were tripping on them and stumbling. But bad because hello. I'd never once seen or heard of anyone killing a zombie with a bottle of bacon air freshener. Which, now that I'm thinking about it, probably wasn't the best thing to spray in an aisle full of meat-eating zombies.

  Aaaaaaaaaaaar. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

  I grabbed the closest thing. A can of Turtle Wax. Yep. I'm gonna die. Oh well. No time to whine about it. I leaned in like a linebacker and charged at the leader of the unicorn end cap gang. Plan: Hit him like the one pin, and he'll bowl the other three over.

  Except I was neither a linebacker nor a bowling ball. In fact, I'd never played football. Not even at recess. And I sucked at bowling, like lucky to break a hundred.

  I charged and landed a shoulder in his chest. Thunk. Ha. Direct hit. Yes!

  Uuuuuuuh? He moaned.

  I hit him hard, but he barely budged. It was like hitting a cold rock wall.

  He grabbed me. I pushed back, but then stepped onto a rubber bouncy ball and fell. He landed on top of me. I was even worse off than I was when I started.

  His glasses fell off, revealing the milky white eyes underneath. He opened his mouth, wide. To eat me. No!!!! The guy who falls down never survives. NEVER!

  I panicked and beat his temple with the can of Turtle Wax. I grabbed him by the hair, holding his bitey rotten mouth just far enough away.

  Thunk Thunk Thunk. I whacked that Turtle Wax against that zombie skull like an otter beats an oyster shell at lunch time. Thunk Thunk. Thunk.

  Jesus. How thick is his skull that I haven't hit brain by now?

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  OMG. My arm is so tired. Die already. Die!

  Thunk. Shplack.

  A yellowish liquid, like nuclear pond water, leaked out of his temple. Ugh. Disgusting! But it's working. So yay. Shplack Shplack. Shplack. Crunch.

  That last hit was a winner. He went slack, mouth open, inches from my nose. Holy crap. I did it! That's right. Lloyd Lamb Wallace. Zombie slayer! Ha! Containment can eat my butt.

  Unfortunately, he wasn't the only zombie. The faces of the dead guy's two other friends appeared over me. They bared their rotten black teeth and fell on top of us.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaah!” I rolled side to side, using the dead zombie as a shield against the others, but I knew I couldn't keep this up forever. The weight of all three of them was too much.

  Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Aaaaaaaaaaaar. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

  “Don't move!” DeeDee screamed. A black and blue blur flashed behind the zombie puppy pile. Then I heard the most disgusting sound I had ever heard, like a pencil poking in and out of Jello. Shhhpppppppplllll
lllllllllllr.

  The zombies flailed and looked around, mouths open, growling.

  Something round, sharp, and black emerged from the shoulder of the zombie directly on top of me, pushing out, longer and more.

  Shhhppppppppllllllllllllllllr.

  It went straight through his coveralls and hit the linoleum next to me.

  “The grabbers are multipurpose, you know.” DeeDee stood behind the zombies, holding tight to the end of a long black metal rod. Huh. She'd popped the grabber off and jabbed the stick part through all three of the zombies, skewering them like freaking kabobs. Genius! She turned it to the left and the three of them peeled back like wiggling fat pancakes spatulaed off the griddle. “Hurry up, Lloyd. More are coming.”

  She didn't have to tell me twice. I scooted on out of there, toot suite. She let go of the rod and pulled me up, right as the rest of the zombies fell on the spot where I was lying a moment before.

  Uuuuuur? Urrr? Huuuurrrhhh?

  They seemed a bit confused that dinner had suddenly disappeared.

  She yanked me out of that aisle in a split second, past that fourth zombie, which she had roped around the neck with another grabber. He was trying to scratch it off like a dog in a neck cone.

  “Never fall down. Never let them get on top of you. Never let them surround you.” Her voice was calm, but forceful, like she was scolding a toddler. She marched me right back to the weapons safe. “Bad news: The collars can't be fixed. We don't have any spares. Help isn't coming, so it's up to us to contain this.”

  Wow. That was a lot of bad news to process all at once. Did your knees just turn to pudding? No? Just me?

  Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Aaaaaaaaaaaar. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

  “Aaaaaah!” Too late. Too late. Too late!

  The two zombie kabobs lurched into the space between the beer cave door and the end cap, dragging their limp and lifeless—for realsies this time—comrade along with them. Lucky for us, the pole got stuck, one end in a beer cooler door handle, the other in the nacho cheese dip end cap.

  Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Uuuuuuhhhh.

  Run! I tugged DeeDee's sleeve but she was too busy rooting around in the cabinet. Gotta run!

  Uh, no. The rest of them rounded the corner between us and the front door. They had us surrounded. Again.

  Big Larry, baby free and recovering from child birth—Well, whatever you call it—had his giant pumpkin head sprawled out on the hot dog station. “Help us. Eat them!” I screamed and pointed at the shuffling herd.

  Larry lifted a few leaves and shrugged. Shrugged!

  Dude. “I know you eats zombies!” He couldn't do me a solid and eat one or two right now? I screamed at the baby Larries, lined up and snug in their pots. “What about you?”

  One curled up a tendril and showed me his open, yet toothless mouth. “You guys are useless!”

  DeeDee handed me another can grabber. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Yeah. I admit I was salty.

  “Containment, remember? We can't kill them, or we'll be short staffed forever. Besides, there's no danger. Well, not to the world, as long as we keep them inside, away from the general public,” she said. “Relax. We'll lure them into their cooler and lock the door. Easy peasy. Huh. Do you smell bacon?”

  Don't even get me started on the smell. This was just my luck. I couldn't grab a normal air freshener in the apocalypse, like pina colada or something. Nope. Not me. I had to be trapped with zombies smelling like a big strip of Lloyd bacon.

  “Well, anyway, here's the plan,” DeeDee said. “You hold the stockroom door open, I'll lead them into the cooler. Okay?”

  Scrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  The piercing sound of scraping metal echoed around the store. “What's that?” DeeDee looked up and around.

  But it didn't take long to figure out where the sound came from. The metal storm shutters slid slowly up up and off the window.

  Uh, that wasn't part of the plan.

  Kevin stood on the control panel. He stared at us with wide blank eyes, one leg still on the red button.

  “Kevin!” DeeDee yelled. “How did you get out?”

  But I already knew. A handful of pixies hovered in midair, carrying the glass dome. They looked right at me, dropped it on the floor, and flipped me the bird as glass shards flew everywhere.

  The zombie cleaning crew, lurching toward us, arms outstretched, preparing to eat us was no longer our biggest problem. There, pressed against every inch of glass—the doors, the windows—were people. And not just any people. People with eyes so wide they were circles, staring blankly, moaning. People who acted like zombies, but were alive. And they were trying to get in.

  They were Monster Burger customers. The over-inflated runner who ate too many Dolly's doughnuts? He'd found another cheat food. He clutched an empty Monster Burger bag in his fist. Big Juicy, the guy in the overalls and the red hat who stared at a six-pack of beer for an hour? He was nearly flat up against the glass as a throng of bodies pressed in behind him. Big Juicy stared blankly at me and moaned, “huuuuuuuuunnnnnnggggeeeeeee. Eeeeeeeeeeaaaaat.”

  Chapter 22

  “We better hurry. We can't let the zombies anywhere near these people, or the world will be halfway to Dawn of the Dead by morning.”

  A zombie—a dead one, just so we're clear—lunged for us. DeeDee didn't miss a beat. She roped it with her grabber and held him out and away, turning him this way and that, using his body as a shield to hold the other zombies back.

  The people outside grew more agitated by the minute. In their bid to get in, they pressed so hard the poor guys up front were practically steam rollered to the glass. They pawed at the windows and the door.

  “What do they want?” I squeaked.

  “I don't know. I've never seen anything like this. But we have to keep those people outside, no matter what.”

  So wouldn't you know it, that's when that spiteful old pixie landed right on the knob and unlocked the door. I raised my fist and yelled, “Damn you, Ed McMahooooooon!”

  Seriously. I had a zombie kabob on my left, a zombie horde held at bay by a grandma can grabber in front of me, and this guy unlocks the door? Haven't we suffered enough?

  Thankfully, the door opened out, not in—we have fire codes, you know—so that clump of people didn't spill in through the door like The Blob. Well, at least not right away. They'd have to back up first. Or rip the doors off the hinges. Yeah. Probably that. The metal edges heaved under the weight of all those bodies. Those doors wouldn't hold forever.

  “Maybe they just want some chips?” Hehr herp ha herp. Yeah. I was desperation sobbing again. On the inside. Not out loud. No way would I let DeeDee see that.

  Chink. Chink. Chink. The door glass split into tiny crystal snowflakes under the force of so many bodies.

  “Hungeeeee. Eeeeeeet.” They moaned. All of them.

  I felt something press on my toes. It was Kevin, chewing the tip of my Puma. He moaned, joining the chorus of creeps outside, “hunnnnnngreeeee. Eeeeeeeet.”

  Okay, then. They were definitely not here for the chips. Great. Who else wanted to eat us tonight? Raise your hands!

  The undead zombies had noticed the living ones on the other side of the door, and half of them had turned toward the pile of potential meat steaks on the other side of the glass.

  Yep. This would definitely end well. What could go wrong?

  Morty stepped out of the beer cave and waltzed up to us. He looked at the zombies—dead and alive—flipped his butterfly collar, said, “Nope,” then walked right back into the beer cave and back through the portal.

  Gee, Morty. Thanks for the assist.

  “New plan.” DeeDee handed me the grabber with the undead zombie on the other end. “Kevin's incapacitated, so I'm in charge. I'm calling it. This situation presents too much risk to the public. Kill the zombies. Well, the dead ones. Only the dead ones. Remember, aim for the head.”

  She rifled around in the weapons cabinet for a minute, then handed me a big red
axe. An axe? No way. You had to get close to use one of these. “I want a gun!”

  She looked at me. “We don't have guns. Too dangerous.”

  Too dangerous? Was Demon Mart totally kidding me right now? We've got zombies on the payroll, but a gun is too dangerous?

  “This is a great weapon. See?” She took my axe.

  She jumped in the air, raised that axe over her head and brought it down smack in the middle of a zombie head. The grabber yanked right out of my hand as that zombie dropped like a stone. His skull split like a cantaloupe. A putrid yellow liquid splurped everywhere as she planted a boot in his shoulder and heaved the axe out. She raised that axe again, twirled it around her head, and chopped a second zombie's head clean off his shoulders.

  Holee. Shit.

  She handed me the axe. “You take the triplets. I'll get the rest.”

  She was smiling. Smiling! Why is she smiling? This isn't fun!

  “Steve will just have to get over it,” she said as she dug around in the weapons safe again.

  Uuuuuuuuuh. A zombie lunged for her. DeeDee, without hesitation, picked up her stool and jammed it right in that zombie's face. Which for most people would not be a kill shot, but she sunk one of the legs right into that guy's eyeball, and he dropped like a stone. Well. Not quite. Because the leg was still stuck in his eye socket, so he just dangled there. She shook it a few times—the dude was stuck on there pretty good—before she dropped the stool and started looking for a real weapon. She noticed me staring at her, jaw on the floor. “What? I've been training for this since the day I found out Night of the Living Dead was a documentary.”

  She filched something out of the weapons safe and tucked and rolled right at a gaggle of zombies.

  Alrighty then. So we're doing this. This is happening.

  Uuuuuuuuuuh.

  I turned around. The zombie kabobs were closing in. Okay. Not really. They grabbed at me, but they couldn't really move forward, because one end of that metal rod was still stuck in the chip rack and the other stuck on the cooler door handle. And they were dragging along a whole man's worth of extra dead weight. And they kept bumping into each other, hampering their efforts to lurch. They were kind of like a zombie three stooges.