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

by D. M. Guay

  Tink. Tink. Tink. The sound of breaking glass echoed through the store.

  “We're out of time. We need a plan,” she said. “It won't be long until they're all inside. We can't stay back here. We'll be trapped.”

  Or would we? The window was a rectangle about the same width as a pizza box. A medium pizza. I wouldn't fit through it, but DeeDee could. I mean, her boobs might get stuck. Unless maybe she could fold them or tuck them under her arms. Can chicks do that? Do boobs smoosh in an emergency? I wasn't exactly clear on how boobs worked, but in my experience they were both versatile and amazing, a wonder of nature, so anything was possible.

  My voice shook. I was about to be a hero. I was about to sacrifice myself on the altar of true love. DeeDee must live. “I'll stay. You should go.”

  “You should stop staring at her tits already, pervert. Jesus, you're as bad as Morty.” Kevin stood with two legs on his hips tisking me and two legs rubbing his temples. “Man. My head feels like Larry Bird's been tap dancing on my eyebrows. I haven't felt this bad since that necromancer roofied me back in ninety-seven.”

  We looked at Kevin. Kevin looked at us. “What are you two dumbasses staring at? Holy shit! What did you do to me? Why am I so fat?”

  He ran his legs over his carapace. Yep. Roach muffin tops all around.

  “Kevin. It's you!” DeeDee slid down off the window ledge and practically hurdled everything between the lockers and the table to get to him.

  “Of course it's me. Who else would it be? What? Did y'all suddenly get stupid? What time is it? Who's watching the store? Why are we all back here? Is this like an employee meeting or something? Where's Faust?”

  “Kevin,” DeeDee said. “What's the last thing you remember?”

  “Waking up in this pile of shitty salt-covered fries. I'm looking at you, dipshit.” He moved his fingers back and forth from his eyes to mine. “I know you ruined my food with your damn hippie ocean pellets. You trying to kill me? I have high blood pressure, you know. I'm on a low-sodium diet for a reason!”

  “Before that,” DeeDee said.

  Tink. Tink. Crash. More broken glass out front. The moans were getting louder.

  “What the hell was that? Did some asshole just break into my store? Oh, hell no. Go get me the taser. I'll show those bastards.”

  DeeDee paced and tapped her lip, muttering to herself like she was thinking. “Serpent and the Rainbow. The Magic Island. White Zombie. Aha! I think I've got it.”

  “No way.” Kevin huffed. “We aren't listening to nineties industrial bands on my shift. You listen to that crap on your own time. Now let's go show that robber who's boss.”

  “Not the band. Kevin. I'm talking about voodoo zombies. I hate to tell you this, but you were turned into a living walking zombie controlled by some outside force. But the spell broke.”

  “Voodoo? Did Doc mess up again? I tell ya, he's slipping since he got that fat, sassy girlfriend. Guy's a chubby chaser, for sure. Wait. What zombies? What are you talking about?”

  Man. Kevin really had been out of it.

  “Uh. There are like a hundred fat guys trying to break in the front door to eat all of us right now,” I said. Hey. Might as well pull the Band-Aid off, right?

  “Great. Just great. We're open two weeks, and the place goes to shit again. I just moved my whole record collection here because I caught my stupid broke dickhead roommate pawning them for cash. Whatever you do tonight, you stay away from my records, do you understand? My Dio and Zebra are mint. Original labels!” Kevin paced—okay, waddled—agitated at the thought of it. “Go grab me a water, kid. I gotta wash all this damn salt out of my mouth. Mmm. It's as drier than the butt end of Nevada in there.”

  DeeDee's perfectly tweezed eyebrows furrowed. “That's it! Lloyd. You're a genius!”

  “Wait a minute. Did I wake up in Bizarro world?” Kevin thumbed an arm at me. “Did you just call this one a genius?”

  “Chef. Make us french fries. All of them. Every single one you've got,” DeeDee said. “Lloyd, Kevin. You guys gather up as much cooking spray, salt, and paper clips as you can find. Meet me back here in five minutes. I have a plan.”

  Chapter 24

  Ten minutes later Kevin, DeeDee, and I stood between the counter and aisle four, heavily salted. I was armed with two five-gallon buckets of fries, one by each foot, and two old-lady can grabbers, one in each hand.

  All the Larries locked vines. We had lined their pots up in a row that gently curved from the front door, parallel to the counter, blocking the entrances to all the aisles. We'd essentially made a chute, a bottleneck, so the burger zombies only had one way to go and could only move in two or three at a time. Unfortunately, that chute led directly to me.

  Maybe I should back up and explain.

  While Chef deep fried every potato in the building, we'd changed into some extra coveralls from the zombie utility closet. We sprayed the fabric down with cooking oil and generously salted it. Then, DeeDee used a dozen packs' worth of paper clips to hook single french fries like worms on a fishing lure. We dipped each fry in salt and hung them all over the suits, front and back. We looked like cheap Christmas trees covered in potato ornaments.

  “Explain the plan to me one more time.” I tried hard to keep my knees from trembling.

  “Salt breaks the spell. Use the grabber to drop french fries in their mouths. They eat the fry, they're neutralized. They bite the suit? It's salted. They're neutralized.” She recounted the plan as she strapped a shaker of Morton's to each of my hips like they were six guns in holsters. “We've got a pretty good coating on us, so it should be enough. But this will only work if we keep them in the bottleneck. We're outnumbered, so we have to play this like the Spartans at Thermopylae.”

  “Ther-what?” I looked around, wondering if that was another weapon I was supposed to use. She didn't notice.

  “If too many get in at once, they could trample us to death or rip us apart before we salt them all. Stay on your feet this time. Don't fall down.”

  “Are you sure this is gonna work?” Gulp. Nope. Totally not gonna work. We're doomed. “I mean, it's just salt.”

  “Caroline's mystery partner removed the salt from the recipes the minute they bought the restaurant. You salted your Monster Burger before you ate it, and you didn't change. Kevin hates salt. He ate the food. He changed. You salted Kevin's food. He turned back. A lot of ancient cultures believed salt was magic. Doc uses it all the time. There has to be something to it. Kevin! Stop. Spit it out! We need every last one of those. Don't you think you've had enough?”

  He was neck deep in one of my buckets, chowing down. The fry level had dropped at least an inch. “Hey. A man's gotta eat. I'm starving!”

  “How can you possibly be hungry?” DeeDee asked. “You've eaten nonstop for two weeks!”

  “I don't know. Maybe I'm going through a growth spurt or something. Why are you complaining? More of me to love. Heh. Heh.” He shoved another fry, whole, right into his mouth. “Mmmmm. Nummm. Num. Mum.”

  This plan was definitely not going to work.

  “Okay. Places everyone.” DeeDee clapped her hands and inspected the row of baby Larries like a drill sergeant.

  They interlocked vines, creating a hopefully impenetrable spiky red wall of vegetation. If you're wondering how a bunch of newborn plants could make an effective line of defense, yeah. I wondered that, too. But normal earth rules don't apply to hell creatures. The babies had grown. They were nearly as tall as me now. Because they'd had a midnight snack. While we were holed up in the back, they'd nommed that pile of cleaning crew zombies down to nothing. (And killed a dolly stacked with Schlitz.) One of the baby Larries still had a leg, from the knee down, work boot still on it, hanging out of his mouth. It moved up and down as he chewed. Because this was Hades' hedge of nightmares. And, you know, they couldn't eat those zombies when they were chasing me. Not that I'm angry about that. (I totally am.)

  DeeDee jumped up on the counter and stood by the register, gr
abbers in hand, flanked by her own buckets of salty potatoes. Kevin crawled up the wall and across the ceiling, a row of picnic sized salt shakers strapped around his waist like grenades. He hunkered down on an acoustic tile, upside down, ready to sprinkle salt on any unsuspecting open mouth that passed underneath.

  “All right,” she declared. “Let them in. Slowly.”

  Big Larry, looking moderately livelier and currently sucking on the tail end of his third full keg of beer, pushed the hot dog station back two feet, peeled his leaves away from the front door, and dragged his pot behind the wall of Baby Larries. His job was to pull the recently de-possessed people onto the other side of the hedge, out of the line of fire.

  As soon as he moved, the throngs broke through the glass. It shattered, sending chunks crashing and sliding all over the floor. People pushed in around the hot dog station, squeezing like toothpaste out of a tube. The Larries stiffened. I loaded my grabbers with fries.

  Go time.

  Huuuuuungggggeeeee. Eeeeeeeeet. Eeeeeeeeet. Eeeeeeeeet. Eeeeeeeeet.

  It turned from moan to chant as soon as they saw us. They came, quick and lots of them. But the lane was narrow and the baby Larries strong, so they immediately squeezed into a tight line of wriggling bodies, bouncing between the Larries and the counter.

  DeeDee was the first line of defense. Despite our best attempts to slow the inflow, she was quickly surrounded by moaning zombies grabbing and biting at her legs. Unruffled, she swung her grabber around, dropping fries into open mouths then sinking those grabbers into buckets, reloading lightning fast.

  Big Larry was on top of his game. He spread his leaves and vines across the ceiling, and he dipped down and grabbed people the second a fry dropped in their mouth. The bastards were still chewing as they flew up and over the Baby Larries into the candy aisle, which we were using as a holding pen while we figured out if this was actually gonna work.

  Kevin was the second line of defense. As soon as a burger zombie made it past DeeDee, Kevin swooped in. Literally. I watched with horror as he dropped down off the ceiling straight into the open mouth of a Lululemon soccer mom. He waved his freshly salted behind around in her mouth yelling, “you like that, huh?” as she tried to eat him.

  Holy shit. Any second now, she's gonna crunch down and roach guts were gonna squirt straight into her tonsils. Or not. She stopped chewing, stopped moaning, and stared into space, confused. Then she spit Kevin out, right onto the next guy's shoulder. A second later, Larry grabbed that soccer mom by her ankle, flipped her upside down and dropped her in the candy aisle.

  I was the third line of defense. Anyone who got past DeeDee and Kevin came to me. DeeDee was so fast on the draw, there weren't many stragglers. Five minutes in, I'd only dropped one grabber's worth of fries into three or four mouths.

  Hellz yeah. We were totally rocking the plan.

  We salted and fried, and salted and fried. Big Larry snatched and dragged. The candy aisle filled up with very confused, out of it people. DeeDee had nailed it. As soon as those people swallowed, their moans changed. Their arms stopped reaching, and they stopped trying to bite us and eat us. It was totes working. Except they were still hungry. We had about thirty people blocked into the candy aisle, ripping open candy bags and pouring Skittles, gummy bears, M& M's, you name it, straight into their mouths.

  Screee. Tink. Tink. Tink.

  Uh oh.

  That sound was bending metal and breaking glass. A wave of bodies pushed through the front door. The force of them pushed the hot dog stand completely clear of the frame and shattered all the glass.

  The little Larries held tight, but couldn't hold the line with the force of all of those people pouring in at once. A few of them fell over, pots rolling as the burger zombies rushed past them. Big Larry stopped snatching newly salted customers, opting to protect his babies instead.

  Huuuuuungeeeee. Eeeeeeeet. Eeeeeeet. Eeeeeeeeet.

  The moans were loud, angry. The burger zombies spilled into the area between the slushies and the beer cave, and a swell of them rolled into what was left of the chute. I had to give the baby Larries props. The ones that were still standing tried hard to hold the wall.

  “Look out, kid!” Kevin screamed. He was upside down. Shaker furiously shaking. “Incoming!”

  Big Juicy ran straight at me. You couldn't miss him, in those overalls and that stupid red hat. He popped at me like a champagne cork, propelled forward by the desire to eat me. Oh. Shit. I lunged and parried, fry and grabber out, like I was a freaking musketeer. I aimed straight for his mouth, and I hit him. Right in the eye. But before I could slide that fry down into his gaping maw, he snatched my grabber and twisted it so hard, it flipped out of my hand, up and away, curlicuing through the air. It landed on the other side of the Larries, who struggled to contain the swell of people running in behind him.

  Big Juicy tackled me. As the two of us fell, the world seemed to move in slow motion. The fry buckets tipped, spuds spewed all over me and the floor.

  Kevin screamed “Banzai!” and dropped off the ceiling, right onto the face of the lady who'd coasted in on Big Juicy's wake. I couldn't see DeeDee for the crowd leaning across the counter, arms out, chanting “Eeeeeeeet. Eeeeeeet. Eeeeeeeeet.”

  I hit the floor. Big Juicy landed squarely on top of me. Pffft. Uuuuuuh.

  Yep. He was a big one. He squeezed all the air right out of me. Big Juicy opened his mouth and tried to bite me. It took all my strength to hold his face away. I bucked and squirmed, but dude. This guy didn't budge. Big Juicy was a really, really big boy.

  “Eeeeeeeet. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.” He snapped his teeth.

  He opened wide. He put his weight into it, and he sunk his teeth into me. Into my sleeve. At the elbow. Because I was a total chicken and had covered my face. His wide eyes looked even more confused when he realized my elbow was so deep in his mouth, he couldn't move his jaw up and down to chew. Ha! Take that!

  I slid my other hand across the floor, gathering as many fries as I could, and I was just about to smoosh some into the corner of Big Juicy's mouth when the faces appeared. A dozen people, eyes wide and vacant, leaned down over me and moaned. “Eeeeeeeeeeeet”

  Oh. Shit.

  They had me surrounded. They were on me in a split second, biting into my coveralls, clawing at me. Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. They're gonna rip me open! Dear Baby Jesus, please don't let them eat my guts!

  Yep. I was gonna die.

  Eaten by a giant hillbilly. And a bald guy in a tweed blazer. And a chick with a bright red beehive and rhinestone glasses. And a bubba in a camo baseball hat. Then the beefy jogger addicted to doughnuts stepped up to the Lloyd buffet. Shit. If I had sold him the doughnut, he wouldn't be trying to eat me right now!

  The store filled with moans. And screams. DeeDee's screams. Tears welled up in my eyes. My heart felt like a lead weight. And not just because a four hundred pound hillbilly was steam rollering me. This was the worst feeling ever. I was being eaten, sure, but worse: I'd let DeeDee down. I couldn't save her. I wasn't a hero. I couldn't be her hero. I would die as I had lived: A failure. I should have pushed her out that tiny window and done this alone. At least she would have survived.

  This was destined to end badly from the start. How many people actually get to save the world twice?

  Chapter 25

  Lying there, trapped underneath a four hundred pound man who'd clamped his teeth around my elbow like an alligator, I made a decision. I was not going to give up. Sure. It seemed hopeless. I had a dozen people chewing on my legs, trying to eat me, and a dozen more waiting behind them to slurp up the scraps, but there was still hope, right? I was going to fight. I had no other choice. I had to save DeeDee—and the world—or die trying.

  I scrambled, trying desperately to grab the Morton's off my holster, but Big juicy had rolled onto my one free hand. I couldn't get it out from under him. I was trapped.

  Mouths pressed into my body. I felt the sharp edges of their teeth, the pressure of their lips and jaw
s as they bit me, but I didn't see any blood or feel my guts spilling out. Not yet. It's like they couldn't get their incisors all the way through the coveralls. The fabric was too thick.

  I grunted and wiggled, and my breath formed a white cloud. The temperature had seriously dropped in here. Kevin's dickhead roommate probably messed with the thermostat again. My teeth were chattering it was so cold, but that sure didn't stop Big Juicy. He chewed on my elbow like it was his job.

  They all kept chewing. “Mmmmmm. Nummmm. Ummmmm. Nummmm. Mmmmm.”

  And more burger zombies joined them, gathering around me like I was the prime rib station at the Golden Corral. Faces—so many faces—looked down at me. “Hungeeeee. Eeeeeeeeet.”

  I had no way to fight them off. I was pinned. Gulp. This was it. This was the end.

  A shadow blocked out the light above me. The faces closed in, eyes wide and hypnotized. They moaned. “Eeeeeet. Eeeeet. Eeeet.”

  I closed my eyes and braced to be eaten to death.

  Crunk. Thunk. Thud.

  Any minute now. Wait for it. But no new teeth bit into me. I opened one eye, just to scope out the situation, but the faces were gone, replaced by another face. Bright. Translucent. Blue. With eight white eyes and giant pincers.

  Bubby, the two story tall jelly centipede from hell stood where the zombie faces used to be. He had knocked them away. He looked confused by the whole situation. He wore an impossibly large yellow and green flower print Hawaiian shirt and held at least eight margaritas with salted rims in his claw arms. Oh. He must be fresh back from Jamaica.

  Bloop blup. Click?

  “Help me.”

  He looped his claw arm through Big Juicy's overalls and lifted him off me. He dangled there in the air, teeth still biting, wiggling around. He was so big even Bubby had a hard time holding him up.

  “Salt,” I sucked in air, finally able to breathe. “Feed him salt.”