by Mark Tufo
From the sound of her voice, I could tell Anne was turned towards her brother as she talked. Now or never, I told myself as I leapt to my feet. Anne had turned at the sound of my rustling. While Anne was surprised, Tyler was far from caught unawares. He was already raising his weapon to this new threat. He was a survivor, he had adapted well to the change in the world.
Anne was young and fast and may have been able to get away had not my new face completely frozen her. Her eyes looked comically big as she tried to process what she was witnessing. She was hearing Clarence’s voice but looking at my distorted features.
“Get the fuck out of the way, Anne!” Tyler shouted. He had seen enough to know he needed to blow my head off. Here was a true warrior, shoot first and sort out all the details later. I admired that in him and maybe I would have a little of that trait infused in me as I ate his gallbladder.
Anne wasn’t going anywhere; her brain was stuck in vapor lock.
“What happened?” she babbled.
“Did a little home plastic surgery, ordered a kit from a late night infomercial,” I said as I grabbed her.
“Anne!” Tyler yelled in panic. He had the rifle up at his shoulder.
“Be careful,” I told him. “Wouldn’t want to hurt this delicate flower.” I pinched her shoulder hard, making her wince; I also ducked down to give less of a target. “You should put that gun down before I chew through her spine,” I said as I gnashed my teeth.
“What the fuck are you?” Tyler asked, not putting his rifle down.
“It’s your old pal, Clarence,” I told him. “I mean…sure, with some upgrades and all, but the shell is all Clarence.”
“The shell?” Tyler asked, clearly confused.
“We could talk all day, but I’m getting hungry. Put the fucking weapon down or I’m going to disembowel your sister right in front of you. How pissed off would your parents be if they knew you let me spill her intestines all over the ground.”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Tyler said angrily.
“Then don’t make me. Put the rifle down.”
His survival instinct was strong, so strong in fact that he was debating the loss of his own sister to save himself. He hadn’t got where he was by being stupid; he knew if he put the gun down he was as good as dead.
“Tyler, please. He’s hurting me,” Anne squealed as I tried to dig my fingers completely through her shoulder. I licked the back of her neck and bit down gently on her ear. Her bladder released.
“Fine!” Tyler said as he quickly put the rifle down and put his hands up in the air.
My haste to end his life almost cost me my own. I shoved Anne up against the side of the house and came at Tyler. I could tell he thought about fleeing, instead he reached into his coat and pulled out a weapon he must have had stashed in a shoulder holster. I charged in and pushed his arm down. The resulting shot caught me square in the stomach. It felt like a charging rhino had made contact in my mid-section. I drove forward into him and that caused him to fall over with me on top, my weight knocking the air from his lungs. He was momentarily stunned as I wrenched the pistol from his grip.
“That fucking hurt! Let’s see how you like it,” I told him as I placed a round in roughly the same location as he had drilled me. His body convulsed as it accepted the high-speed projectile. Blood started to come from his mouth. “Guess I’d better do this fast,” I told him as I removed his shirt. I could eat it and Hugh would make sure to pass it through the pipes, but why bother. I mashed my face into his stomach like I was going to eat the bullet out.
“Oh shit, did you have pancakes for breakfast?” I asked him as I came up for air. His eyes were glassed over, but he was still awake – shock was close. “I taste maple syrup,” I told him as I went back in for seconds.
Anne was trying to knock the cobwebs from her mind. The shock of Clarence’s extreme makeover, and Tyler being eaten were taking their toll on her. Tyler was rapidly cooling as his life left him. I stripped him of all his internal organs, save for the heart, I found those to be a little too tough. I was the top of the food chain. I’d eat whatever I felt like eating, no matter how much Hugh protested the waste of food.
“Is he okay?” Anne asked me as I stood and turned to her. I thought she was kidding, but nope she had gone over the edge.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” I assured her, as I helped her up. “We should get you back to your home.”
“We’re just going to leave him here?” she asked as we stepped over his semi-deflated carcass.
“We’ll send help back.”
“You promise, Clarence?” She was looking into my face but focusing on nothing. Her eyes – much like her mind – were a million miles away.
“Oh yeah, cross my heart,” I told her, making my free hand do a crisscross across my chest.
“You were always such a good friend,” she said as she gripped my arm.
This chick is out to lunch! I told Clarence. Is that why you like her?
I’ll kill you for this! Clarence threatened.
Whatever.
Hugh was in full on repair mode, fixing the damage the bullet had caused. The pain was still fairly intense. But the thought of being led back to Anne’s safe-house and its occupants bolstered my mood.
“Are you sure I should take you back with me?” Anne asked.
“Why wouldn’t you? I need help,” I told her.
“But you’re different.”
“Listen, you little twat, you get me back to those people so I can eat...I mean meet them. Do you understand?”
Her head nodded up and down, but there didn’t appear to be anyone at the controls.
“Shit,” I said as I smacked her hard across the face. All she managed was an ‘unh.’
“Ha!” Clarence smirked in the background. “It doesn’t look like you’re going to get what you want!”
“One way or the other I’ll get what I want Clarence. You’ll see. Tell me where the safe-house is.”
“Fuck you,” was his response.
“Fuck me? How about I fuck her?” I told Clarence as I abruptly escorted Anne to the ground by way of a hard punch to the side of the face.
“Don’t you dare, Tim!”
“Come on, what’s a little rape among friends. I’ll even let you watch. Odds are she won’t even know I’m inside her with this pea shooter,” I said as I began to untie my pant belt. “I could always eat her out.” I started laughing. “Hey that’s some funny shit, Clarence, because it’s true!”
Clarence was silent, I was waiting for him to say or try and do something. “Listen, I know you’re a deviant psychopath, sociopath, compulsive liar, but if you swear to me that you’ll let her live I will tell you how to get to the other people.”
“How many people are there?” I asked eagerly.
“Eleven now, I guess.”
I’d potentially be handing over one girl for a football team’s worth of food. “You just called me a pathological liar. What makes you think you can believe anything I have to say?”
“I’ll know if you’re lying or not.”
“Good point.” I was stalling; trying to think of a way to have my cake and eat my dessert, too. “I can’t just let her go. What if you’re shitting a bull shitter?”
“You’ll be able to tell the same way I will be able to.”
“Makes sense. Have you seen your potential girlfriend, though? She’s looped. I leave her out here and she’s a goner within an hour.”
“You need to find her a house.”
“What the fuck do I look like, Red Cross?” I yelled at him.
“Find her a house or no deal.”
“I don’t like having my hand forced, Clarence,” I growled.
“I don’t really care,” he replied. “You do this my way or we don’t do it at all.”
“Weird. She’s simultaneously your Achilles heel and your backbone. Fine, Clarence, I’ll let her live. You give me the others and I won’t touch a hair on her head.”
Clarence was quiet for a while; he was trying to ascertain if I was feeding him any lines. “I can’t find any deception in your words Tim, but they feel so slick, greasy even. I feel like I’m making a deal with the Devil and he’s a used car salesman.”
“We good then? Because these negotiations are starting to eat away at my stomach.”
“As soon as she’s safe, I’ll lead you to them.”
“Fucking tricky,” I said to him. “Didn’t see that, bet you didn’t think I was going to either. You’d really lead us into a trap? Dying is for the weak, Clarence.”
“I’d rather be dead than whatever this is,” Clarence bitched.
“Well if I’m gonna go out, it’s going to be with a smile on my face.” I pulled my pants down and started twiddling my dick between my fingers, as I stared down at the prone form of Anne. It started to do what all manipulated penises do – that was right up until images of some hundred and twelve-year-old crone began to dominate my mind. I thought my dick was going to crawl back up into my belly. I started playing harder, more mental pics of old people peppered my brain.
“What the fuck, Clarence!” I said, finally letting go of my mini-me.
“What’s the matter? Big strong virile man like you can’t get a hard on?”
“I’d be fine if Grandma Moses would leave me alone. Listen, pinhead, I don’t need a hard-on to kill her, although I’ll probably get one later on thinking about it. You get me safely into that safe house and our deal stands. You’ve got five seconds or I’m going to crush her pretty little face with a rock, and while she’s still warm I’m going to strip her clean of flesh. Tick fucking tock, clocks a-ticking.”
I went a few feet over to my right, it wasn’t a stone like I’d promised, but I figured a cinder block would do the trick. I straddled Anne and raised the heavy cement block above my head.
“My God, no! I swear I’ll get you in there, NO TRICKS, please don’t!” Clarence was sobbing.
“I thought you’d come around, although right now I’m kind of wishing you hadn’t, that could have been some fun,” I said as I tossed the block to the side, I grabbed Anne’s blouse and hefted her up onto my shoulder. “Your chariot awaits, madam,” I told her as we walked to any house that would satisfy mine and Clarence’s agreement.
An even baker’s dozen later I found something acceptable: a small two-story number with bars on the windows, a bit of food in the pantry, and a bed. There were no regular dead people or irregular dead people. Whoever lived here had never made it back once the zombies came and the place looked unassuming enough that looters hadn’t been desperate enough to bother with it.
I tossed Anne into the queen-sized bed in the master bedroom, her red hair fanned out over the dusty pillow. I was pretty close to saying ‘fuck the deal’. There were things I wanted to do to her that would have made a Thai hooker blush. Clarence and I both stared longingly at her but for very different reasons.
“You swear to me now, Tim, that once you get that store you will forget about this place. You tell me now.”
“I already told you, I wouldn’t touch a hair on her head. What more do you want, I’m not a fucking animal.”
“You’re worse.”
“What?”
“You’re worse than an animal, Tim. Animal’s kill to eat.”
“I kill to eat.” I answered him.
“Maybe a part of you does, the Hugh part. But you, Tim, you kill for the fun of it. You love the devastation it causes and the chaos that ensues. You love taking what people cherish the most; their lives or their loved ones. I saw, man, I saw how excited you were when you killed Tyler. A big part was the thrill of the hunt, sure. But the bigger part was how you knew what it was going to do to Anne…how it would affect her. You got your fucking jollies off watching her have a breakdown. Who does that to other people? What happened in your life that you derive happiness from inflicting suffering on others?”
“Holy shit, Freud, you talk a lot. Can we get this show on the road?”
“Someday, Timothy, someone’s going to come to collect and you’re going to come up short in payment.”
“Deep, man, deep. Get me my fucking dinner!” I roared.
Clarence’s heart was heavy as we walked. More than a few times I could feel him weighing his actions. Sacrificing the many for the one was not the way we were wired, at least most of us. But there’s a huge caveat to that line of thought – how much weight does the one have if we love them? As a parent, would you sacrifice five of Johnny or Jill’s classmates if it meant your child came home? How about ten maybe twenty? When does it become too much? Is guilt a stronger motivator than personal happiness? I don’t think so. You altruistic fucks can kiss my ass, you might sacrifice yourself, but you sure as shit aren’t throwing the kiddie to the wolves.
I don’t know if Clarence was religious or not, but he was praying to anyone that would listen to forgive him for what he was about to do.
“He doesn’t care,” I said nonchalantly.
He prayed louder.
“Suit yourself. Praying is worthless, you pray for things you want but are out of reach, or you pray for forgiveness for sins committed. Both are just to make you feel better. There’s no huge puppet master in the sky pulling strings, sometimes letting a winning lottery ticket fall in your lap or absolving your sinful actions. We do shitty things and then we ask for absolution from an imaginary being and think everything’s going to be alright. Well, you know what, Clarence old buddy, you’re half right. It will be alright, but not because we prayed, but because there isn’t a final tally somewhere. There is no gatekeeper that weighs our actions while we were alive. The whole fucking religion thing was created by man to reign in the chaos, that’s it. We’re thinking apes, that’s it. We were running around caving in skulls with clubs and someone had the bright idea to say ‘If you keep doing that, Big Spirit in Sky will make you pay!’ And the funny thing is, for some insane reason, the guy swinging the club believed him. It’s horseshit! Religion, civilization, it’s just a means of control.”
“What about just common decency, Tim? Being kind to others? What’s wrong with that? Of striving towards the good of all mankind?”
“A billion people and I inhabit a damn tree hugger. Just my luck.”
“Food?” Hugh asked.
“Dammit!” Clarence exclaimed, he had been startled. “What do you know about him or them?”
“We off the theological rant then?”
“Yeah I think so, since you’re pretty much devoid of redeeming qualities,” Clarence replied.
Clarence seemed to be gaining confidence; I knew our time was limited. I was getting sick of the little bastard, but he still had a part to play in the bigger picture, and I wasn’t going to kill him until I had my food source secured.
Keep saying condescending things, I thought in a remote portion of his mind. My hatred for him was festering and seething in some deeply rooted spots. On the surface where I allowed him to play I was calm…maybe even somewhat hospitable if you can believe that.
“Stop!” Clarence shouted.
I pulled up short.
“That’s it,” he said as he mentally pointed at a small grocery store.
If he hadn’t said anything, I would have walked right out into the middle of a street and the armed guard on the roof may or may not have taken a shot at me, the love of clowns had been on a steady decline for a couple of decades now.
“We’ll have to wait until night to get in,” Clarence informed me.
Hugh was beginning to pester me about eating, and something wasn’t quite right with Clarence – he was hiding something and he was hiding it effectively, I was getting pissed off. I pried at his psyche as best I could without him knowing. When I couldn’t find the answer, I dug deeper, but this he could feel. Clarence began to throw up mental images as fast as he could in a desperate bid to hide what he was thinking. I just about killed him when he got stuck on a pink elephant, and then I had finally br
oke through.
“What the fuck are NVGs?” I asked him.
He was obstinate.
“Clarence, one last time. What are NVGs?” A blip of over-engineered binoculars splintered my view and was immediately gone. I still had not pieced it together.
“HUUUUUUNNNNGRY!” Hugh bellowed upon having seen the man on the supermarket roof.
“Well we can fix a lot of problems right now,” I said angrily as I turned around and started walking back the way I’d come.
“What are you doing, Tim?” Clarence asked, fear interjected in his voice.
“I’m starving. I figure I’ll eat at home tonight instead of dining out.”
“You promised!” he cried.
“Yeah and you promised about getting me into that safe-house, but you’re holding something back and I’m done playing.”
Clarence was doing all he could to put the brakes on his body. He would have had an easier time stopping a hippo with a leash made from string. I strode purposefully towards the house where I’d left Anne. I was chewing up the pavement with the pace I was making.
“Stop, Tim! NVGs are night vision goggles, please stop!” he screamed again when I didn’t even acknowledge him.
“Honey, I’m home!” I yelled as I kicked in the front door. Clarence had made me lock it as if that was ever going to stop me. I heard noise from the kitchen. I moved with a cautious purpose down the hallway; who knew if she had found a weapon or was now looking for one. Either way, I saw no reason to take an unnecessary injury.
I walked into the kitchen. Anne had her back to me. There was a pan on the stove and, unless I was mistaken, she was cooking spoiled eggs on a cold range top.
“Looks delicious, honey,” I said.
“Oh, your home,” she replied, a huge smile plastered across her face. It wavered for a moment as she got a good look at my mug and then her eyes glazed over and the happy expression was back.
“Don’t you fucking do this!” Clarence was raging.
“We had a deal, dipshit. I gave you every opportunity to hold up your end of the agreement, but you couldn’t do it. And you call me the greasy used car salesman. Go fuck yourself,” I said as I brushed the hair away from Anne’s neck. She had turned back around to administer to her brown, cold eggs.