by D. M. Guay
I stepped closer, gripped the axe, and took aim at the one in the middle. It was the short fat dude who was theoretically lounging on a beach in Heaven. I raised my axe. And nearly dropped it on my head. Jesus, this thing is heavy! How was DeeDee swinging it around like that? She's half my size!
“Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain.” Angel eight ball rolled right through some zombie legs. “And, this would be easier if you'd even once bicep curled something heavier than a potato chip.”
Clunk. I dropped the axe right on beach bum zombie's head. And it went halfway through. Okay. That was too generous. The tip stopped about an inch in. His head didn't split like a melon. His face didn't cut in half. Not at all. It was kind of a letdown. And he was still moving. Alive? Well, this was awkward.
“You have to swing it with actual force,” angel eight ball said.
“Shut up!”
DeeDee grunted and yelled behind me. “You want a piece of this? Do you? Huh? Bring it!”
Yep. She was kicking way more ass than me. This was embarrassing. I needed to step it up. I tugged my axe handle as hard as I could, trying to yank the blade out of this guy's head, but it didn't budge. His head moved forward with every pull. His milky white eyes stared at me while I tried to dislodge the axe. Man. I'd gotten it in there pretty good.
Unfortunately, the third zombie kabob grabbed my arm and pulled himself down the rod, closer to me. He opened his mouth to take a chomp of forearm. I tried to buck him off, but the beach bum lurched, the axe handle hit me in the shoulder, and I ended up flat on my butt. Ow! Jesus. That hurt.
Then a zombie came from behind and tried to eat me while I was down. He ran at me, and I put my legs up. My feet planted in his hips and for a second there, he looked like Superman flying valiantly in mid-air, as I kicked him over my head and straight into the zombie kabobs.
Wow. That was an epic move. Too bad it unstuck the kabobs from the cooler door.
At that point, with the kabobs and their plus one on the loose, something inside of me snapped. I clicked into some sort of Chuck Norris instinct mode. I charged the loose zombie and used his body to push the kabob guys back back back, to the other side of the store. Until they tripped on Bubby's TV and fell flat on the floor. I jumped on top of them. I had three zombie kabobs facing me, two of them still undead and writhing on the floor, and I had the fourth, loose zombie pinned face down on top of them.
That same kabob zombie once again slid down the rod in a bid to bite my arm. But nope. No way. Not today. I snatched a screwdriver off the floor. The one the pixies used to unbolt the TV and had just dropped there because pixies were fucking slobs who didn't clean up after themselves ever.
“Now you know how your mom feels.” Angel eight ball rolled past me.
I lifted that screwdriver above my head, then stabbed the bitey kabob guy right in the eye. Yellow liquid shot out as his eyeball exploded. It hit me right in the face.
Blech! Spppllltl. Spllltt. Splttt. Yeah. That was me spitting. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. You'd spit too if there was so much as a one percent chance a single drop of zombie goo could land in your mouth.
I dislodged the screwdriver, then sunk it deep into the back of zombie number four's skull. It crunched in, making a little skull volcano crater around the shaft. Man, this is gory.
He went limp. Take that! Lloyd Wallace, ultimate zombie killer!
One left. Except the screwdriver was stuck. I couldn't get a grip on the handle. Too slippery. Shoot.
Splllllllurrrrrrrp. Oh Jesus. That poor dead fat dude on heaven's beach? The one with my axe half in his head? He wanted to eat me so badly, he had nearly pulled himself off of the metal rod. The hard way. Up not out. The rod got hung up on his clavicle.
I didn't have time to waste. I grabbed the closest thing. A yellow oil funnel. Shit. Really? We needed to stock deadlier items in the hardware section.
He looked at me like “Uh oh” as I brought the oil funnel straight down into his eyeball. It exploded, funneling optical mush the wrong way UP through the spout and into my face with one unholy spluuuuuuuuuuuup.
Vlurp. Oh my God. So gross. But it worked. He stopped moving. He was dead dead.
“Lloyd! I lost one. Watch out!” DeeDee screamed across the store. I could see her, axe held tight at the ready, looking...down?
Huh. Oh. Wait. Never mind. Mystery solved. A zombie rounded the unicorns and scrunchies display and came crawling down the aisle straight at me. Crawling was generous. More like dragging himself. See, in order to crawl, you have to have legs. And this dude was half a man. Literally. He'd been chopped off at the belly button. He had nothing but a gray, rotten bag of intestines dragging along the floor where his legs should be.
Oh my God. Totally gonna barf. So gross.
But nope. I swallowed that bile down. I didn't have time to barf.
That zombie moved fast for half a dead dude. He slid across the polished linoleum, pushing cans and bottles aside, gliding along like a freaking Olympic speed skater. Except dead. With black teeth, growling because he wanted to eat me.
I didn't even have time to grab a weapon. I only had time to stand up, lift my foot and crunch down on his zombie face as he opened his mouth like a boa constrictor, ready to swallow my foot whole.
I stomped, and I stomped.
Raaaaahrrrr.
Huh. The jerk isn't dead. So I stomped some more.
Raaaaahrrrr. Stomp. Uuuuuurh. Stomp. Uuuur. Stomp.
Jesus. Die already! Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
Raaaaahrrrr.
He bit into the end of my Puma like a rabid dog, mouth foaming. He wouldn't let go. I could feel the pressure of his teeth through the fabric. Now I knew why DeeDee wore boots. Pumas weren't built to save the world. I had to get him off me before he bit my toes off.
I did a quick scan. The closest thing? A single bottle of bacon scented air freshener lay by this guy's temple. Really? Fuck me. I grabbed it and sprayed the air around the foot-chomping zombie.
Raaaaahrrrr?
He opened his mouth. I slid my shoe out, and he started biting at the air. Huh. Who would have guessed? I spritzed the air a few more times to keep him busy while I found a more suitable weapon. Which wasn't easy. Because everything was on the floor. Even parts of the shelf. But we will never speak of that again, remember? Only one thing was left on an actual hanger in this aisle. An emergency road flare kit. Huh. Well, worth a shot!
I spritzed more bacon spray in the air to keep the half zombie busy while I opened the pack and scanned the instructions. I took one out, popped the cap and struck the tip like a match. A bright red flame kicked to life, and molten bits of chemical ick jumped out the end. Well. Here goes nothing.
I jammed it straight into his ear, lit side down. Oof. Good thing he's dead, because some of that burning goo landed on his face and burned right through his skin. I pounded the flare in like I was hammering a nail.
“Die! Die! Die!”
Yes. You heard that. A switch had flipped in my brain, turning me into a desperation-fueled killer. I mean, come on. If I lived through this, I would not be able to show my face around here ever again if I couldn't even kill half a zombie. The math was already emasculating enough. DeeDee had killed way more zombies than me, and mine had mostly been incapacitated.
The zombie stopped biting. His mouth went slack and his eyes twitched, darting back and forth in their dead sockets. His milky eyes glowed red for a split second, then popped like overripe zits. Liquid that I could only guess was hot brains oozed out. It flashed pink every now and again. Because holy shit. That flare was still lit.
His green, dead fingers finally stopped wiggling. I stomped on the flare one more time, just to be sure. “Have fun on the beach in heaven, asshole!”
“No. I'm pretty sure this guy went downstairs, if you know what I mean,” angel eight ball said.
Didn't matter. Because I was a zombie killing machine. I had done it. And not on Xbox. For real! Because I am totes awesome.
Or not. Nope. Never mind. I rounded the corner only to see DeeDee standing in the middle of a pile of headless, no-longer-living dead bodies, soaking wet with whatever unholy liquid was inside of them. One lumbering zombie remained. He moaned and came at her, tripping over the bodies of his comrades. As he fell, reaching for her, her axe cut through him like butter, separating the top of his head from the bottom, right at the jaw. The force of the blow sent the top half flying. Right at me. Face first. Like a demon bowling ball. His dead milky eyes stared at me, still shocked, as he zoomed past my head and smacked into the beer cave door.
“Hit the shutters will you?” She picked a piece of guts off her face. “That door isn't gonna hold much longer.”
Chapter 23
That was an understatement. The front door looked like thin ice that someone had tap-danced on in moon boots. Cracked. All over.
Hungeeeeeee. Eeeeeeeeet. Hungeeeeeee. Eeeeeeeeet. Hungeeeeeee. Eeeeeeeeet.
They said it over and over. Moaning. And moaning. And moaning some more. Okay. We get it already. You want to eat us!
I hit the red button on the console.
Screeeeeeeeeeeee.
Yes! The metal shutters slid down.
Screeeeee...oooooop.
Shit. The shutters slid back up as soon as they tapped the top of Big Juicy's head. It must have a safety sensor like a garage door. And yes, like a dumbass, I hit the button a couple more times hoping it would magically roll down and stay down.
Click. DeeDee leaned hard against the push bars and turned the lock. She looked at me and shrugged. Yeah. The door hinges were creaking from all the pressure and the glass was gonna give out any second. We both knew locking it wouldn't do much good, but it couldn't hurt to put lipstick on turds at this point.
“Help me.” DeeDee ran to the hot dog station. “We can use this to block the door.”
Big Larry was gracious enough to move off the top and lie down on the floor directly under the slushy machines, mouth open. One giant leaf worked the levers, splurping a sugary midnight snack straight into his gaping maw.
We pushed as hard as we could. Scrruuuuu. It moved maybe an inch. Jesus. Did we really need a thousand pound stand to hold a couple of hot dog rollers? Speaking of. One more sad push sent all the hot dogs plopping off the heat rollers, straight into Big Larry's mouth. He spit them out. Huh. Guess he didn't like hot dogs.
Wait a minute. He was big, strong, and from hell. “Can you give us a hand?”
Big Larry huffed at me, then reared up and hit the hot dog stand with his giant pumpkin head. Judging from the look he was giving me, he only did it to get me to shut up and leave him alone. It shot across the room and chinked right into the door. The glass cracked more. And the next hand that pounded on it nearly broke all the way through.
“Well, that's not good, but thanks, Larry,” DeeDee said. “Can I ask you another favor? Can you sit on top of it? It'll buy us more time.”
Big Larry looked put upon, but relented.
“I know, buddy. I wouldn't ask if it weren't important.” She patted him on the melon. “Lloyd, help me move him.”
DeeDee and I draped a couple of big leaves over our shoulders and heaved, helping him to the door. His white wiggling roots spilled out and around the pot, pushing him along like creepy toes. Jesus, he was heavy. Moving Larry fifteen feet felt about as easy as that Hercules plane pull in the World's Strongest Man Contest. I mean, I'm guessing. I've never personally done it, but I saw it on YouTube once.
But we made it. Big Larry laid his head on the hot dog station and collapsed, exhausted. He unfurled his leaves and tendrils, which covered most of the door.
“Thanks, Larry. I know it's hard, but we need to keep those bad people outside. They could hurt the babies.” She glanced at the baby Larries, then at the clock. “Oh shoot. It's dinnertime. Lloyd. Can you look for Kevin while I feed them?”
Um, okay?
Against a nearly non-stop soundtrack of “hungeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeet,” I stepped slowly through the pile of zombie bodies looking for Kevin. If there was one silver lining, it's that he was way bigger and fatter than usual. Because I'd never find a regular size roach in this haystack of guts and gore and upended shelves.
DeeDee disappeared into the beer cave. She emerged a few minutes later rolling a dolly stacked with forties. She handed each baby Larry two forties of Schlitz malt liquor—the kind with the blue bull on the label. She popped the caps, put what looked like a nipple on the bottle, and patted each one of them on the head. They clugged and jugged and sucked those forties like human babies with a bottle of milk. Their spiky teeth were already growing back in, and they'd all doubled in size already.
DeeDee then went back into the cooler and came back out with a big silver beer keg, which she rolled up next to Big Larry. She unfurled a clear plastic tube and Larry put it in his mouth like it was a twisty straw.
I did eventually find Kevin. He was behind the counter, mindlessly circling his Monster Burger takeout bag. “Hungeeeee. Eeeeeeeet.”
“Yeah yeah. We know.” I scooped up Kevin and the bag, then retreated to the employee lounge. DeeDee came in behind me, locking and securing all the doors.
Gulp. The employee lounge. Posh, like a Vegas nightclub. Filled with any kind of food or drink you could ever want. Heaven right? Nope. It's hell, because there's always a catch. Like dead people cooking your food. I hadn't been in here since I found out Chef was a—
“Uuuuuuuuuuh,” he said.
Yeah. That.
He stood in his usual spot behind the grill in his crisp white uniform, chef's hat perky and spotless, sniffing the air. I craned my neck, trying to get a good look at his collar. Green lights. Phew. Still on.
“Normally I would never suggest coming back here in a zombie outbreak. Holing up where they can corner you should always be the last resort.” DeeDee double checked the locks on the door. “But at least we can see what we're up against.”
She pulled a chair over to the row of employee lockers tucked in the corner at the end of the drink coolers. She stepped up on the chair, put a boot in the high shelf of her locker and foisted herself up. She sat on top, messing with a black rectangle on the wall. It looked like the cover of an electrical box, until DeeDee opened it up, and there was a window behind it. Huh. Who knew?
She looked through it for a long time before she said anything. “Okay, so there are thirty of them outside the pawn shop and another twenty outside of Henrietta's. And we've got thirty, forty...about a hundred right outside. Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
Uh. Good news. Only good news. Please let there be good news.
“These people are basically zombies, but they're alive. Which is good. For them. Not so good or us. If they were dead, we could chop their heads off and be done with it. But these people are alive, so store policy is de-possess. No casualties. We can't kill or injure any of them. The bad news is I don't know how to de-possess them, because I don't know anything about the magic spell that made them this way in the first place.”
“What's the good news?” I didn't remember hearing any good news, did you?
“They're alive. That was the good news.”
Oh. Great.
Suddenly, I felt a tiny sharp pain on my neck, like a mosquito bite. I put my hand up to it and found Kevin. “Ow! He tried to eat me! Stop it!”
I grabbed his portly body and pulled him off of me. His legs wiggled. His eyes were wide circles, nearly round. He looked like one of those cartoon hypnotism victims, with the swirling black and white eyes.
He moaned, “hunnnnnnnnngeeeeeeeee.”
“Well, don't bite me. I'm not lunch!”
Then he chomped down on my knuckle. That's it! I flicked him onto the nearest table and tipped his Monster Burger bag upside down, showering him with fries. “Eat this.”
He immediately bit down into the closest fry.
Mmm. It did smell good. It couldn't hurt to carb load before the next round of zombie slaying, rig
ht? I popped a fry in my mouth. Blech! Healthy sucks! “Sorry, Kevin. I know you don't like it, but dude. Fries need salt.”
I grabbed the shaker out of the tabletop caddy and went to town. I let that salt rain like it was monsoon season. I salted the fries, the burger, even lifted the bun to get it all over the patty. Tiny white salt grains bipped and bopped and bounced around in a cascade of deliciousness. I mean, I drowned that food in salt. Probably three times as much as I would have usually sprinkled on, but I had to make up for what Earl wasn't allowed to put in it anymore. I grabbed a fry, dumped more salt on it, and ate it. OMG. So good! Now that tastes like Monster Burger.
“Nommmmm. Mooommm. Mummmmm.” Kevin put two whole fries in his mouth and swallowed them. Wow. He must really be out of it if the salt didn't stop him.
I stuffed a handful of fries in my mouth. That's when I noticed DeeDee had been talking this whole time. Oops. I nodded and pretended I had followed the entire conversation.
“...I'm sure the Monster Burger zombie curse is on the food. Why else would they give it away for free?”
I immediately spit out all the fries. Curse? On the food? Fuck me.
“Oh, what was that? The evil magic curse was IN THE JUNK FOOD? THAT I TOLD YOU NOT TO EAT?” Angel eight ball rolled into the pile of fries, like he was standing on the bodies of his slain enemies. “See? You should listen to me. Mysterious ways indeed.”
Great. He was right. And he'll never let me forget it.
DeeDee looked at me. I still had a french fry in my hand. She looked at the fries on the table, and at Kevin, munching away. “Oh no. How much did you eat?”
“Just a couple?” This time. A pit opened up in my stomach. I had eaten Monster Burger, not as much as Kevin, but still. Did that mean I was gonna be one of them? Shit. I was gonna turn, wasn't I? I'd played the games. All it took was one bite. Okay. Usually something or someone biting you, not you biting something, but still.