by Mark Tufo
“This isn’t so bad; we can live forever.”
“Exactly how insane are you? No, really? Were you ever diagnosed? Because you are certifiable. You can spew all you want about the desire to live at all costs. But this? What you’re doing, this isn’t normal. People do not eat people. And shut up, I already see you about to say that it’s the zombie eating people, but that’s bullshit. You’re showing him how to do it and you’re actively participating as well.”
“If the desire to survive is not in the forefront for you, why haven’t you just given up? Why don’t you just die? Wouldn’t that be easier? I know why, Scarlett. Because you’re a fighter, that’s why. You want to save your kids, you want to kill Manny, and more importantly, you want to kill me. Isn’t that right? Killing us is the most important thing to you, maybe more important than seeing your kids again.”
“Killing you both gives me the chance to see my kids again. You’ve already proved it can be done, Tim-Tim; now I just need to figure out a way to do it.”
“Don’t you ever call me that again.” I shook with rage.
“You don’t like that, Tim-Tim?” She was laughing, the bitch was laughing at me. She was directing a rush of liquid past me. I went from wanting to destroy everything in sight to a blubbering baby. I didn’t know it then. In fact, I wouldn’t know it until it was too late. It was estrogen, a chemical I had no previous experience or defense for. Scarlett walked by as I pooled into a great blubbering mass.
Chapter 4
I was in the third grade, and even then I was big for my size. Almost as big as some fifth graders, but not the sixth and certainly not as big as Neil Donohue and his two friends Eddie Kilsner and Pat Jacobs. I was walking home, happy to know that it was the weekend and my favorite cartoon of all time, He-Man, was on tomorrow morning. I was swinging my He-Man lunchbox around, whistling, not paying much attention to anything as I made my way home. I felt a shove to my back, and the box was ripped from my hand. I landed on the right side of my face, leaving a raspberry that would last for more than a week on my cheek. I turned to see Neil and his friends looking down at me, they were all laughing.
“What happened, Timmy? Did you fall down?” Neil leaned down and held the lunchbox out. I reached out to grab it, and he pulled it back quickly. “Not yet.” He smiled. I didn’t know that smile then, but I’d know it later because I’d donned it enough to recognize it. The sick sneer of the twisted.
“Come on, Neil, can I have my lunchbox back?” I was on the verge of tears.
“I think the chubby fuck is going to cry! Freak,” Eddie said almost gleefully, as if my tears would make his whole week.
“Come and get it,” Neil said, turning and walking away. He made sure to keep an eye on me as I stood and slowly followed. If I ran a little faster to catch him, he would match my pace. I didn’t get an uneasy feeling until I found myself behind the old textile mill. The broken windows looked like the chipped teeth of the homeless. Even at eight years old, I realized I’d stumbled into a shit pile. My mother would have to buy me a new He-Man lunchbox. I turned and was going to run away from there as fast as I could. I would have too, if Eddie and Pat hadn’t been there to prevent it.
“What’s the matter, Timmy? Don’t you want your lunchbox?” A film of black had passed over Neil’s eyes as he said the words. The evil inside of him had taken the driver’s seat, and I think for a second Eddie and Pat were a little afraid. But that’s the thing about evil, it has the ability to make the weak fall in line. Those two would have made fine Gestapo officers, following every sort of order handed down.
“Yeah, Timmy.” Pat pushed me closer to Neil, most likely so when Neil popped, he wouldn’t be the one within range. “Don’t you want your lunchbox back?”
“You … you keep it,” I told him.
“I don’t want your crappy box.” He smashed it against the side of my head. I didn’t know if it was my skull or the box that cracked. I fell over, crying harder than I ever had, most was from the pain, but a good amount was from the thought I might never see a He-Man show again. Neil was “whooping” over me like he’d just won the heavyweight belt.
“Boys, help him up.” Rough arms propped me up. I felt sticky fluid running down the side of my face. Blood was dripping to the ground; it seemed my lunchbox and my head had suffered some damage. I was wobbly on my feet, but I stayed standing.
“Pull your pants down Tim-Tim.” He was sneering at me again.
“Huh?” I asked. The bell was still ringing within my head.
“Pull your fucking pants down!” he screamed.
“Neil, man, what are you doing?” Pat asked.
“Shut the fuck up, fag,” he shouted at his friend. “Now, Tim-Tim, pull your pants down or I’m going to slice your throat.” He pulled out a small but wicked looking butterfly blade.
Eddie had stepped up and then stepped back. I think he wanted to say something, but Neil turned on him with the blade and it all went back to that self-preservation shit. Better I was to die than him. Altruism is a lie. I did as he asked, better he saw my green Hulk underwear than stick that knife in my gut. So there I was, my face and head bleeding and my blue chinos around my ankles. Tears and snot flowed freely from me.
“The underwear too, you freak!” he spat.
All I could think at the time was that he wanted them for some reason, that maybe he wanted to feel strong with his own pair of Hulk underwear. That wasn’t it at all. He just stood there staring at me. I was so afraid a steady stream of pee began to pour out of me. Neil had to jump back in order not to be splashed by it.
“What the hell is wrong with you!?” He was yelling so hard, it hurt my ears. “Stop pissing or I’ll kill you!”
There was not one part of me that did not think he was serious. I grabbed the head of my penis and pinched as hard as I could, something I’d learned when I was in the car with my father. He would not stop driving no matter how bad I told him I had to go.
“Look guys, he’s playing with himself in front of us! Not only is he a freak, Tim-Tim’s queer too!” His friends were noticeably quiet. This had gone past what they were prepared to be involved in. Insanity didn’t give a shit though; it could easily be its own audience.
“Pinch it harder, Tim-Tim, pinch it until your fingers are touching!”
I wanted to cry out from the pain, but someplace inside of me told me that this would be a bad idea, that this was what he wanted. The false-strong like him preyed on the weaknesses of others. If I showed him any, it would only bolster his powerful impetus. He was rapt by the pain he was causing me. I don’t know what he ultimately had in store for me, as we were interrupted by a siren in the distance.
“Someone called the cops!” Pat shouted. “We need to get out of here, man.”
Eddie was already running away. Neil looked from the knife in his right hand to me and back again.
“You’re lucky, Tim-Tim.” He put the knife away, but before he left, he reared back and kicked me as hard as he could in the balls. Even at that age, it is one of the most tender spots on a boy’s body. I was puking before I hit the ground for the third time that day. I hitched, cried, and threw up for another half hour on that glass-strewn, broken parking lot behind the defunct factory. Whoever the cops had been called for, it wasn’t me. It was two hours after school when I finally got myself back home. My clothes were covered in blood and vomit, my junk still ached deep in my belly, and my head was a cluster of pain where the lunchbox had struck. My dear old dad, who was halfway through a bottle of Jack or Jeff or whatever the fuck he was drinking back then, looked over at me with his bleary watery eyes.
“Pussy” was the only thing he said as he turned away and took a big sip of his drink.
Pat and Eddie devolved into a life of petty crime as they grew up. In and out of prison for a variety of offenses. Neil, though, he won the prize, a lifetime stay at the big house. He’d only missed lethal injection by a year as the state had voted to remove the death penalty the y
ear before he was caught with a ten-year-old’s penis in his pocket. He’d done it in a bathroom stall in the mall. Just walked in on the poor kid, cut it off and walked out as if it were the most normal thing in the world. The kid had bled out and died, and Neil had his souvenir. At least until the mall security cameras were checked and a suspect identified. They’d found Neil at a bar, with his prize. He hadn’t lasted a year in prison, his death sentence being delivered by the inmates themselves. Prisoners have their own sense of justice, and those that mess with kids and women receive the worst of it. So this basically comes down to why I hate being called Tim-Tim; how Yorley knew to use it is beyond me. Scarlett and I share a mind so that’s easy enough to see. I feel like that scared eight-year-old every time I hear it, and I don’t know whether to piss or run.
Chapter 5
It was the shouting that pulled me from the miasma of misery I had found myself in.
“Bubbs, Raoul! Come on, man! Hester says we gotta go!” This was coming from downstairs.
Manny perked up from his meal only because there was another meal. Zombies are a strange fucking creature. Who the fuck is thinking about their next feast while they’re feasting? That’s insane, isn’t it?
“Manny, you have to get up. He’s going to kill us if he finds us like this,” I told him.
“No one kills Manny!” He stood.
“Grab the gun.”
Manny was clearly confused. Scarlett was not.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“What’s it look like I’m doing?”
“You cannot show a zombie how to use a gun.”
“Sure I can, it’s easy.”
“You were human. At least once. You do realize that zombies have the ability to talk to each other right?”
“Yeah, so?” I really didn’t give a shit what she had to say.
“He’ll tell others how to do it.”
“Again. So?”
“More people will die!”
“We ain’t people no more, Scarlett. You and me, we’re zombies. The better chance he has at living, so do we. That’s all I give a rat’s ass about.”
“Narcissistic doesn’t begin to describe you. I think they’d have to invent a new word just for you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Now pick up Raoul’s rifle, Manny.” There was a picture of a question mark as he tried to figure out what I was asking. “Pick up the meat’s rifle.” That he got. Whoever was coming was getting closer.
“Guys, come on man. We gotta go.” The man was more tentative, coming slower, looking for threats. Practical jokes were frowned upon when people were in survival mode. Jumping out of a closet and saying “surprise” was ten times more likely to get you shot than get a laugh these days. With Raoul and Bubbs not answering, this guy knew something was up. Now it was just a matter of how much he would risk before turning around and either leaving or getting help.
“Manny, I need the upper half. There’s not enough time to show you what to do.”
Again, he was scanning, looking for deception. When he was satisfied there was none, he let go. Before I could take the reins, we completely folded at the waist so that I bounced our nose off our knees.
“Fuck, you’re flexible, Scarlett. Your husband must have loved bending you like a crazy straw getting all up in those hidden crevices.” I smiled.
“You sick fuck.” She was disgusted, I was delighted. Felt good to be more like myself.
I reached out and grabbed the rifle and stood quickly—felt almost like a marionette pulling strings, trying to figure out how all of these things worked. I mistakenly thought women were just unfortunately born without a penis and half a brain; I’d not known that they were just about an entirely other species. Luckily, they were close enough, kind of like an orangutan that I could get the gist of it quickly enough. I clicked off the safety lever and brought the rifle to my shoulder just as the man came to the doorway, his own firearm out and ready to deliver its lethal payload. I unloaded six rounds into his chest, neck and face at point blank range. Manny had not given me access to the legs and had not moved his feet apart at all in preparation for the recoil of the heavy round. We fell back onto the bed. There was no worry about the man we’d shot; half of his head had blown against the far side of the hallway. Now we just had to contend with whatever offense those remaining wished to muster.
“The window, Manny, the window.” He got back up and did what I asked. Stupid fuck, though, didn’t have the presence of mind to bend his knees and duck down. There we were, standing for all to see us, and they were looking. The only good thing about it was that after killing three, only four remained. I busted the rifle through the glass and started firing. I nailed at least one, his leg shattered. His femur was broken clean through. He fell over, his leg bent under him at an angle that wasn’t normally possible. His screams were so loud I could hear them over the sound of the bullets and the revving of the motorcycle engines as the three departed, leaving their friend behind.
The rifle fell from my hands as Manny pulled control back easier than if I were a newborn and had grasped my father’s finger only to have him yank it away. I was powerless to prevent it. At no point did I think I could have offered up any resistance.
“You should have killed us when you had the chance,” Scarlett said.
“Why the fuck would I do that?” I told her, although deep down I was thinking maybe she was right.
Manny walked down the stairs and outside. He strode purposefully onto the roadway, where he grabbed the jacket collar of the man in the road.
“No please!” the man begged as Manny dragged him out of the roadway. “What are you doing?” He screamed as his broken leg unfolded and towed uselessly behind him. The smallest imperfections on the surface of the road caused him extreme pain as his leg jumped. I thought he was going to pass out when Manny heaved him over the curb. That was usurped as the stairs leading into the house jostled his mangled leg around. By the time we were inside the living room, the man’s breathing was ragged and shallow and his eyes had rolled up into his head. Manny let him go, strode over to the door, and closed it before once again grabbing the man’s collar and pulling him deeper into the room and roughly depositing him. He then climbed the stairs, where he could eat his three square meals all at once and in peace. I stuck around for a while, more watching Manny than Manny eating. Hugh had flaws, weaknesses I could exploit; I wasn’t getting that same vibe from Manny.
The differences compounded a little later that day. The first noticeable one was how Manny ate. He took his time, well, for a zombie. Hugh just about had bits of food flying around his head, he ripped through things so quickly. Manny was methodically taking his time to make sure he got every succulent drop, leaving nothing behind for the scavengers of the world. By the time he was done with Bubbs, the sun was going down and all that remained were gnawed at bones. I would have been surprised to find some tough tendons stuck behind a knee. Manny stood, gave a sort of sigh, I guess over a good meal, and then started into Raoul. I’d checked out; I still had some bad memories to work through in regard to Raoul. I was going to start working on my problems in regard to taking control, but instead I found myself sleeping almost immediately.
Manny must have found a slower gear, because he was just finishing up as the sun began to peek through the window. I was happy to note that, from the skeletal remains of Raoul, it was impossible to tell if he had been a male or female. Manny stood and began to evacuate his bowels. For all the advancements he was showing, he still shit like a goat, anywhere at any time, with no concern for what was going on around him. Unlike a goat though, that shot out small pellets or a normal person that laid a pickle or possibly delivered a food baby, maybe with some extra anal leakage, this was a fucking thick sluice of excrement that shot out with force. I think he was shooting shit with enough force that if he bent over, we could have gained propulsion; we would have gone skidding across that floor like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. To be
honest, I would have paid good money to see that. We could have been a rock-a-deuce rocket. Too much? Trust me, you’d be trying to distract yourself if you realized that crap was piling so high it was halfway up your calf, unlike Hugh, who generally had super liquidy Hershey squirts, Manny was dropping hefty dumps that were climbing back up toward their origin point rather than spreading out across the room.
“Why isn’t he moving?” Scarlett was getting alarmed and pretty disgusted.
“He’s enjoying the moment,” I told her.
“He’s shitting.”
She said it in such a way that let me know she had no clue how much men actually enjoyed the evacuation of their bowels. “That’s right, he’s shitting; it’s the one time instead of a woman being all up in his ass he can let shit roll out. For a few moments every day, instead of taking everyone’s shit he can take a—”
“I get it. You’re so gross.”
I’m not going to lie; the feeling of warm steaming human remains touching the back of our knees wasn’t doing me any favors either, but I’ll be damned if I was going to let her know. If this ever solidified, we would be mired here forever. Finally, we started to get the flapping ass sounds of gas escaping instead of solids, and it was voluminous. Legends could have started with how long, deep, and stench-worthy these anal acoustics were. There wasn’t a men’s locker room or gym that every man wouldn’t have stopped what they were doing to admire and then laugh, possibly even applause after this world record breaking ass blast.
“Bravo, bravo!” I gave a standing ovation.
Scarlett was mortified that something like that came from her perfectly toned derriere. I’m thinking she meant to have it toned in terms of fitness not methane music. Manny didn’t care about us other inhabitants; he pulled himself free and headed downstairs to get breakfast started. I was sort of amazed to find out that the biker had made it through the night and had pulled himself over to the couch so his back was propped up against it.