I posted a thread about this particular novel about a week ago, so I apologize for posting about it again so soon. Two things have changed, though: there's a new chapter attached to it, and I'm simply going to post the text here for critiquing instead of linking to a blog. Not having a lot of blog experience, I only realized how much of a pain in the ass it was to read in that format AFTER I had posted it.
Some quick background since this is a sequel (it's self-contained, though, so there shouldn't be many issues with people not understanding what's going on). The main character of the book, Mitch, is an intelligent zombie. Wait, no, come back, don't click on the Back button. Both this book, The Word of Mitch, and the first book are meant to be humorous and take place in first person perspective, so there's actually a purpose to it. I wanted one of the books in the series to be from a zombie's point of view, so what was I supposed to do, write from a normal zombie's perspective? "I wandered around a lot today, and I bumped into some stuff, and I think I saw a squirrel, and..." Yeah, no thanks.
The cause of the zombie outbreak is unknown. There are extremely few intelligent zombies (somewhere in the neighborhood of two to five) as they are a product of the undead plague mixing with an experimental drug trial. There may be typos and whatnot because this is the first draft and I catch all the little things during later drafts and editing. There, that should cover the need to know stuff.
I've been told by a friend of mine that I might be in the process of creating the first Buddy Zombedy. He went on to say that he felt like it was a Night of the Living Dead remake written by Kevin Smith. I...think he meant that as a compliment. Thanks for taking the time to read and be sure to post what you think. I don't care if it's positive or negative feedback; it's all helpful and I have thick skin (heh, I said "thick"). Besides, I realize that not everyone is going to like what I'm doing every single time. Here's the prologue and the first two chapters.
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PROLOGUE
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
A guy walks into a college medical facility to be a paid guinea pig for an experimental inoculation for mad-cow disease. Everything goes fine during the procedure except for the part where an excessively large needle is jammed into him; that part kind of sucks. The guy collects his money and is already mentally spending the loot as he leaves the clinic. Suddenly, without warning, he is viciously attacked by a zombie.
It’s common knowledge that a zombie bite is fatal. It kills you while you experience a rather agonizing full-body pain, and then it reanimates you into a genuine non-living, non-breathing member of the undead. There is no cure, and a bite from one of the living dead boasts a one hundred percent fatality rate.
This particular gentleman is no different. While he manages to break free of his attacker, he suffers a bite that goes through his shirt sleeve and takes a chunk out of his shoulder. This is before the actual announcement that zombies are wandering the Earth has been made to the public, however, so he mistakes the facts of the situation and screams at his assailant, “What the fuck are you doing, you homeless freak! You fucking bit me! Now I need a goddamn tetanus shot!”
The man runs away just as fast as his legs can carry him. Unbeknownst to him, a campus security guard heard the commotion and comes over to investigate. He is truly an imposing figure at the spry age of sixty-eight and is armed with an awe-inspiring flashlight and a shiny whistle. Zombies, of course, don’t feel fear, so despite his mastery of the art of calling a tow truck to remove a car parked in a fire lane, he is quickly devoured.
The wounded science experiment makes it to his car without further incident and gets in. He drives himself to the nearest hospital and seeks medical attention for his injury. Even though blood from his wound drips all over the receptionist’s window, he is told that he will have to wait in line because it is simply packed in the ER that night. His eyes dart back and forth between the group of doctors and nurses standing almost directly behind the woman discussing the latest episode of America’s Got Talent and the completely empty waiting room. Not wanting to be a bother, he takes a seat and picks up the November 1991 issue of People from the table next to him.
Six hours later, he dies and reanimates while idly flipping through the pages of a magazine declaring Aerosmith to be the hottest up-and-coming new band in the country. His final thought as a human being is the following:
“Did I remember to put the cap back on the toothpaste this morning?”
Truly he would have become one of the world’s most profound philosophers with thoughts as insightful as that one if he hadn’t tragically passed away.
Hi, my name is Mitch, and I want to brutally murder you and feast upon your flesh. No, seriously, I do. I don’t know why you’re smiling like you are, but just as soon as I figure out how to get to you, I’m going to kill you. Afterwards, I’m going to throw all sense of propriety out the window and stuff my face full of your tasty skin before washing it down with a soothing cup of your blood.
Just the thought of it makes me giggle like a school girl. Tee hee! See? I told you that I’m giggling.
Being the nice guy that I am, I’ll let you in on a little secret. You know the story that I just told you? It was about me. I know what you’re thinking. What a shocking twist so early in this instant classic of a manuscript!
Fun Mitch Fact #1: I’ve killed and devoured three different game show hosts. There have also been five of the hot chicks those shows used to introduce worthless prizes while smiling and generally looking mildly stupid.
I was going to use a different word that ‘stupid’, but on the off-chance that someone who is actually concerned with something as idiotic as political correctness has survived the zombie apocalypse to this point, I decided to switch it at the last second. Also, to anyone who is a moron that I may have offended by using ‘stupid’, I sincerely apologize. I’m deeply sorry that I might have accidentally pointed out your lack of intelligence.
But hey, consider this: we zombies are the most politically correct people the world has ever seen. White, black, Hispanic, Asian…it doesn’t matter to us. We’ll gladly feast on every nationality with equal joy. The list of things that we view as irrelevant includes, but is not limited to:
Race (everyone’s the same color when they’re in our intestines)
Religion (or lack thereof)
Tax bracket
Height
Weight (although given the choice, we’ll go with the fatties every time)
IQ
Type of car owned (as long as you drive nice and slow)
Taste in music
Diseases infected with
Political affiliation (we’re the true bi-partisans)
Favorite sports teams (I refuse to eat Cubs fans, though; they’ve been through enough)
I’m so proud of the Brotherhood of the Undead when I think of how we’ve accepted every walk of life into the fold. It would bring tears to my eyes if my body was still capable of pushing fluid through my tear ducts.
Despite the fact that I am indeed a zombie, no, I do not know what started this wonderful little zombie apocalypse. I want to make that clear right from the very start since it’s the most common question that I’m asked. Everyone seems to be surprised that I don’t know, which makes zero sense when you actually think about it. It’s not like there’s a copy of The Big Book of Undead Trivia stapled to you when you reanimate.
Well, it appears as if you and I are going to be stuck with each other for a while. I suppose that you could always opt to put down this book and walk away, but let me say with all do respect that you will regret doing so. Not just because this is going to be one of, if not the, greatest novels ever written by an Undead American (that’s a pretty safe bet), but also because I will come to your house and eat your dog. If you don’t have a dog, I’ll eat your cat. If you don’t have a cat, I’ll eat your hamster. If you don’t have a hamster, I’ll eat whatever pet you do have. And if you don’t have a pet, I’ll…um…I dunno, maybe I’ll download virus-filled porn onto your computer.
That’s right, something is going to die, whether it’s Muffy the Poodle or your computer’s hard drive. So I’d strongly suggest that you keep reading until you’re dismissed and/or devoured.
One thing that you’ll probably notice right away is that we zombies don’t really notice the passage of time. Why would we? It’s not like we’ve got any pressing appointments on the horizon. We just tend to go with the flow, wandering aimlessly until we find something that peaks our interest. We can’t eat time, so we don’t notice it.
Even though I’m obviously a bit of an atypical member of the undead, I find myself often falling prey to the same disinterest. I urge you to keep this in mind as we proceed. If you’re looking for exact dates and times, you’re search is going to be futile. Besides, being that anal about things isn’t good for your health or your ass.
So come, Sherman, step into the Wayback Machine with me and journey to a time long ago, when humans were still the dominate species on Earth and people were concerned with such minor things as government-granted bailouts and whatever the hell a Glee was. Be sure to keep all hands and feet inside the Wayback Machine until it comes to a complete stop, and thank you for your patronage.
Flashback sequence go!
CHAPTER ONE
The story of my coming into zombiehood is also the story of how I met Thomas Jefferson.
See, that’s what we in the business call a teaser sentence. If that’s not what it’s actually called, it damn well should be. The reader sees the name “Thomas Jefferson” and the wheels start turning. Am I talking about the third President of the United States, or is there another individual that I’ve encountered that just happens to share the same name? Maybe there is something more sinister afoot, something so horrible that it will rock the very foundation of everything that we hold near and dear. There’s only one way to find out, so press on, brave soldier, press on!
So there I was, sitting in a chair in a hospital waiting room and attempting to come to grips with the fact that I had died and had gotten better. I felt like the punch line of a Monty Python gag.
I was absolutely sure that I had died. Believe me when I say that dying isn’t something that you’ll mistake for something else any time soon. When you die, you know that you died.
What made things worse was that the vast majority of my memories hadn’t come back with me. I still knew who I was. I was the always lovable and completely irrepressible Mitch Mylastnameisntanyofyourfuckingbusiness. I remembered getting the swine flu inoculation hours earlier, and I remembered my encounter with the vicious hobo afterward. Beyond that, though, it was just a hazy fog full of disjointed images and snatches of conversation. Even stranger than my death-induced amnesia was that I didn’t give a shit about my past or the loss of it.
You would think that it would have bothered me not to remember the details of my life, but it simply didn’t. I had died just moments before; compared to that, not knowing when the electric bill was due didn’t quite make my list of Top 100 Things I Needed to Know. After all, now I was a…
Um, what was I, anyway? Well, I had been bitten by a stranger on a dark street, died, and reanimated (I never thought that I’d be using that term with regards to myself), so if television and B-rated movies were any indication, I was probably a zombie. A vampire had to suck blood out of me while being a whiny bitch complaining about having to be alone and falling in love with a human, right? I would have gotten a lot fuzzier if a werewolf had bitten me, and besides, it wasn’t a full moon that night. The only thing that fit was that I was now a zombie.
It was best to make sure, however, so I ran a quick check.
Breathing? Negative.
Pulse? Negative.
Erection caused by a mental image of naked Jessica Alba? Negative. This one surprised me more than the first two combined.
Huh, I had been turned into a zombie. I did not see that one coming.
Wait a second, weren’t zombies supposed to be mindless corpses that shambled around aimlessly and ate brains? I looked down at the magazine still clutched in my hands. I could read the words on the page, and I could still grasp their meanings. With the exception of the memory loss thing, my brain seemed to be up to speed.
Was it possible, just possible, that Hollywood hadn’t gotten something right? I mean, I knew it was a stretch, but I couldn’t see any other possibility. Could something that close to an impossibility have actually occurred?
I had somehow managed to become one of the undead, so stranger things had indeed happened. In fact, stranger things had happened in the last seven hours alone.
What about that other part, the part about eating brains? I glanced over at the receptionist seated behind her little pane of glass. Yeah, you know what, I could totally go for eating that chick’s brain. The rest of her looked quite tasty as well. It wasn’t some burning desire that overrode everything else like the zombies in the movies, but I definitely wanted a piece of that hot skin-chewing action.
I licked my lips in anticipation. Was I really going to do this? Did I have it in me to eat a living human being?
Of course I did! I was a zombie, you twat! I was contractually obligated to attack and consume people.
The only question mark was how I was going to go about doing it. I didn’t have a wealth of people-eating experience under my belt, and if I did I had inconveniently forgotten it. Should I just walk right up and take a bite? That seemed so, I dunno, barbaric. Being a zombie didn’t mean that I had to be uncivilized. Maybe I should knock politely and inform her of my intentions in a calm and reassuring manner.
One thing was for certain: I wasn’t going to accomplish anything by sitting in the rather uncomfortable waiting room chair. I stood up slowly and took a deep breath, belatedly realizing that, since I no longer required air, it was a rather pointless action. Almost timidly I walked over to the window and tapped on the glass.
“Yes?” the receptionist asked, not bothering to look up from her computer screen. From the reflection on her glasses I could see that paperwork had taken a backseat to YouTube.
“I was wondering” if you’d mind if I tore a chunk out of your intestines “how much longer before a doctor can see me.”
She glanced up with an expression of disdain. “We’re very backed up tonight, sir. You’ll just have to be patient. Please go back to your seat and wait to be called.”
I opened my mouth to respond when a question presented itself. How the hell was I talking if I didn’t breath? I almost failed high school biology, but I was fairly sure that vocal cords needed air to make noise. I dismissed it as being irrelevant.
Before I could continue on with the line of query that was clearly striking terror in the heart of my soon-to-be victim, a loud crashing sound from behind me interrupted the proceedings. I turned to find something that restored my faith in Hollywood: a real honest-to-goodness zombie. It appeared to have once been an employee of the fast food restaurant across the street, as it was still wearing the cheesy (pun intended if it’s funny, no pun intended and you’re reading too much into it if it wasn’t) red and yellow uniform complete with the somewhat creepy smiling clown logo. Now, though, the former woman and current animated corpse was clearly a card-carrying member of the undead, right down to the intestines hanging out of its torn open stomach and the huge chunk missing from its face.
And it was even stumbling towards us slowly with its arms outstretched while moaning loudly! As a fan of slightly terrible and extremely terrible movies, I now felt somehow vindicated for my questionable taste in cinema. The zombie would probably be terrifying to anyone that was still alive, but I felt no fear. I was already dead; what was it going to do to me, make me deader?
It meandered right past me and began to pound on the glass window separating it from the receptionist. The woman stared at it for a moment as she assessed the situation. Finally, she simply shrugged and typed a few keys on her computer.
“Before we get to your paperwork, I’ll need to know if you have insurance,” she told the animated corpse.
The zombie moaned in reply as it continued its battery of the window.
“I didn’t quite catch that, ma’am. Did you say that you have Medicaid?”
Another answering moan.
The receptionist gave the zombie a stern look. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I don’t appreciate that kind of language. It isn’t my fault that you’re sponging off the taxpayers by being on Medicaid.”
I blinked. “Um, I think that you might have misheard,” I put in.
“Sir, this isn’t any of your concern. I told you to go back and sit down until it’s your turn.” She turned back to the clearly dead being standing before her. “Now then, what’s the medical issue that you’re here for today?”
One by one, more zombies began to file in through the doorway. All of them completely ignored me and instead focused on the rather rude and yet strangely fascinating receptionist. More and more hands began to bang on the glass, and small cracks began to form along the edges.
“Folks, I’m going to have to ask you all to wait your turn,” she yelled sternly over the noise. “Please have a seat in the waiting room and I’ll call you up one at a time.”
In a moment that would forever prove that having a medical degree had no bearing on if you’re an idiot or not, a doctor opened the door separating the waiting room from the emergency room itself. He took one glance at the situation developing before stepping out into full view and drawing himself up to his full height. There was a hint of past muscle in his physique, and quite a bit more of a hint of a lack of recent exercise in his stomach region.
“You people need to keep the noise down!” he demanded in a tone reminiscent of a father scolding children. “We’re trying to save lives in here!”
The dozen or so zombies that had piled into the waiting room immediately turned their attention to the licensed professional that had stumbled into their midst. As they approached hungrily, the man seemed to loose a bit of his confidence. Perhaps his years in medical school had taught him that people shouldn’t be up and walking around while horribly mutilated.
“You really don’t want to be doing this,” he told his admirers. “I played football back in high school, and I won my share of bar fights when I lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.”
The zombies didn’t appear to be all that impressed. The doctor, finally seeing the folly of tossing meaningless threats at this particular audience, turned to dash back through the door he had opened.
He would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for that meddling Mitch. I leaped forward and slammed the door shut. One of his arms was already through the gap, and the sound of bones snapping as it became trapped between the door and the frame was audible even over the zombie choir. He let out a shriek that sounded strangely like a squealing pig. I pushed harder, and the limb was torn from his body.
Blood spurted out of the stump, and even as he was staring at the impromptu fountain gushing from his body he slipped on some of the red stuff that had sprayed onto the floor. The zombies surged forward and he disappeared from view beneath the pile of bodies. Goodbye, Mr. Fancy Pants Former Football Player Doctor Man.
Curiously, I opened the door and picked up the arm that had been severed. Almost gingerly I took a small bite out of it like I was eating from a turkey leg and chewed thoughtfully. Hey, this was pretty damn good! If I were a judge on Iron Chef, I would say that it had a husky flavor, a boldness that really made it stand out while still being refreshing on the palette. I would also say other pompous jackass things such as how it reminded me of warm summers in Tuscany.
“Jesus mothafuckin’ Christ, you’re just gonna fucking eat that poor bastard’s arm?” a distinctly male voice demanded from behind me.
I turned with the scrumptious limb to find a disheveled-looking individual dressed in an old military jacket and sporting a black Red Sox cap. A lit cigarette was perched precariously between his index and middle fingers, and as I watched he took a drag off of it. The smoke churned around in his mouth for a moment before floating out the right side of his face; his cheek was completely missing and the teeth underneath were exposed for the world to see.
“Well, um, yeah, that was the plan,” I replied uncertainly.
“Mothafucka!” He shook his head violently. “Why the fuck would you do that, son?”
“I’m, uh, a zombie and stuff. This is kind of what we do. Plus it tastes really good, and-”
“For fuck’s sake, boy, maybe you didn’t notice while you were fucking eating an arm, but I’m a goddamn zombie, too! Do you see me breaking off a doctor’s arm and munching it down?”
“No, sir, I don’t see you eating a doctor’s arm.” I felt like a child being scolded.
“You’re damn right you don’t!” He took another hit off the cigarette. “That’s fuckin’ disgusting, that’s what it is. Cannibal bullshit. It’s not like you have to do it. Your belly isn’t growling, is it? You and me, we’re the only ones like this that can think for ourselves, we have to set a fucking example, you hear me?”
I dropped the arm that I was holding. It fell to the ground with both a thump and a squish. “Hey, look, man, don’t judge me. I’m a zombie, I can eat people if I want.” I felt my temper beginning to flare. “I don’t even know your name, and you’re trying to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do?”
The man raised his hands. “Hey, you know what, that’s fair. I tend to get a little preachy sometimes. I don’t want to come off as one of those preachy church mothafuckas that talk about love and acceptance before he beats you over the head with his fuckin’ Bible.” He held out one of the hands to me. “The name’s Thomas Jefferson.”
Without thinking about it, I shook the offered hand. “Thomas Jefferson?” I repeated. “As in President of the United States Thomas Jefferson?”
“What, just because I’m black I can’t be named Thomas fuckin’ Jefferson? Just because he was a white aristocratic asshole that owned slaves, I can’t be named after him?” He waved the hand holding the cigarette. “Nah, I’m just fucking with ya. The name really is Thomas Jefferson, ‘though most of my friends just call me Jefferson.”
“I’m Mitch,” I replied, still not sure how to feel about the sudden arrival of my intelligent zombie colleague. “Mitch [Name omitted from the manuscript]. Good to meet you.”
He pointed at the swarm of zombies, now about twenty strong, that had finished with the doctor and were proceeding through the doorway into the emergency room. “Look at those fuckers go,” he commented with a shake of his head. “Just got done eating a modern day healer and already looking for more food.” He spat something black onto the floor.
I stared at him for a moment before recognition kicked in. “Hey, wait a second,” I said slowly, “I know you. You were at the swine flu inoculation trial.”
“Right in one,” he beamed. “I’m guessing that little prick of a shot is why you and me are standing here having this conversation instead of stumbling around and moaning like a couple of fucking morons.” He snorted. “Prick of a shot. See what I did there? Un-fucking-believable. Let’s head on outside. It’s getting a little cramped in here.”
That it was. The flow of zombies had picked up steadily, and it was becoming obvious that the hospital staff was going to have its hands full. We made our way against the current of bodies and stepped out into the cool night. It was strange; I knew that it was chilly outside, and I knew that I should be shivering without a coat on, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on me like it normally would. I supposed it was one of the perks of being dead.
When I had arrived at the hospital it had been a rather peaceful night, but now it appeared that all hell had broken loose. People were running in every direction, screaming in panic and terror as they attempted to avoid the undead wandering the streets. A few of the nearby buildings were on fire. As flames shot out of the windows, plumes of smoke billowed into the black sky.
As we watched, a fire engine came roaring down the street, its lights flashing and siren blaring. It had to have been a good seventy miles an hour, and the driver was using it almost like a battering ram to clear the zombies out of the way. It drove away out of view.
“Now, I’m not saying that we don’t ever fucking eat people,” Jefferson said as if the end of the world wasn’t happening around him. “If we start getting hungry or something, sure, let’s do it. Bon appe-fucking-tit. I’m just saying that if there’s no reason to do so, we shouldn’t be doing it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You said that eating people was cannibal bullshit,” I reminded him.
He shook his head. “Nah, see, it’s only bullshit if you’re doing it for the hell of it. If you’re eating to satisfy your stomach, that’s just survival, man. Fucking Animal Kingdom, you know? It’s the survival of the fittest shit that Darwin was talking about.”
I stared at him for a long moment before finally saying, “You’re a complicated guy, Jefferson.”
He tossed the cigarette butt on the ground and fished a pack of fresh smokes out of a coat pocket. “I’m zombie that smokes and still thinks for himself. You’d better fucking believe that I’m complicated.” He lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “I don’t suppose you remember anything before the shot?”
“Not a thing. You?”
“Nope.”
We watched as a car attempted to duplicate the fire engine. Its wheel caught the edge of the street corner, however, and in a moment worthy of a Bruce Willis movie it flipped over and smashed down on its roof. It skidded for quite a distance, farther than I would have guessed that it would have gone, and finally came to rest up against a mailbox. The undead were swarming all over it even before it stopped moving.
The driver didn’t emerge, but the passenger kicked out the glass that remained in her car window and slithered out through the opening. The nearest zombie reached out and managed to grab her long hair. She twisted her head violently and freed herself, leaving quite a bit of her blond locks clenched in her attacker’s fist. She looked around wildly and, upon seeing the two of us standing there watching her, she began to run towards us.
“Dumb bitch thinks we’re alive,” Jefferson said with a chuckle.
I surveyed the situation. The woman was on the opposite side of the street from us, and there was a lot of undead between us and her. She was an agile little minx, I gave her that, but the odds didn’t look good that she would make it.
“If she makes it here we’re going to kill her,” I told him.
“Of course we’re going to fucking kill her. She’s a human. We’re zombies. It’s what we fucking do.” He paused. “We’ll toss her back into the street for the fucking vultures out there. No sense in wasting the meat.”
“If there’s anything left, maybe we can wrap it up in some packing paper and store it in a freezer. Then we’d have some on hand to make burgers or maybe some stew.”
He turned to me with a wide grin that probably would have looked more jolly if half his face wasn’t gone. “I guess that was some ‘waste not want not’ shit, wasn’t it? I hope that I wasn’t a fucking tree hugger when I was alive.”
As it turned out, we didn’t have to apply the Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle principles to our charging admirer. She managed to dart through the zombies blocking her path without so much as a scratch. At one point she fell to the ground awkwardly and I was sure that she had twisted an ankle, but she proved me wrong as she scrambled back to her feet. With a smile mixing hope and triumph she put one foot on the curb.
That’s when the taxi slammed into her and threw her a good twenty feet.
“Well there you go,” I said. “The problem solved itself.”
“The universe works in mysterious ways,” Jefferson answered. “So what do you want to do now?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Want to go destroy the human race and make zombies the dominate species on Earth?”
He thought it over for a moment. “Sounds like a fuckin’ plan to me.”
CHAPTER TWO
“See, the way I see it, humanity brought this on themselves,” Jefferson told me as we strolled down the street.
“You’re going to have to explain that one,” I informed him, casually sticking out my foot to trip a person that was limping away from a group of six zombies. The undead seized the opportunity to catch up and tear him to shreds.
“Okay, try to follow me on this one. The way I figure it, there’s only three ways this shit could have gone down: man-made virus, some sort of natural plague, or God’s fuckin’ pissed off at everyone.”
“In Night of the Living Dead, the zombies were created by radiation from a space probe or satellite or something that blew up.”
“They were? Fuck Night of the Living Dead. Fuck George Romero. This is real life we’re talking about, not some movie shot back in the fucking sixties. Of course he used radiation. It was during the Cold War, and all anyone could think about was the Commies dropping the damn atomic bomb on our asses.”
He dug out yet another cigarette and lit it up. “Nah, what we’ve got here is something viral. That’s why it can pass from person to another through a bite. A virus. Or maybe a bacteria. I don’t know the fucking difference, I never paid attention during high school biology.
“Only three ways to have a virus running around as far as I can tell, and that brings me to the first option I mentioned. Maybe some crazy mothafucka mixed it up in a lab somewhere. Maybe it was to use it as a military weapon, maybe it was supposed to do something else that would be beneficial to mankind, or maybe he was just a sick fuck that did it just because.
“The second option, that this is all something natural that just happened to rear its fucking head now, well, humanity’s fault again. They’re putting all those fucking growth hormones and shit into the animals they eat. They’re shooting up their kids with all these inoculations and shit, killing off the need for the body to make certain antibodies. What the fuck did they think was going to happen over time?”
“It was one of those inoculations that made it so that we didn’t end up like one of them,” I pointed out, waving a hand towards some zombies trying desperately to force their way into a pharmacy. “We should be glad that kind of scientific progress goes on.”
“Show me the scientist that came up with the shit that was in that syringe and I’ll suck the mothafucka‘s cock,” he agreed. “That doesn’t mean that every fucking inoculation or vaccine or Flintstones fucking vitamin is a good thing, though.”
“Let me take a stab at the third option. If God is pissed off at humanity and is using this undead plague thing as a reset button, it’s because people made him angry in the first place.”
Jefferson bobbed his head. “Exactly. Hit the fucker right on the head. If there’s a God up in the clouds watching down on us, he’d have to be pretty fucking mad to call in the apocalypse. That’s what this whole thing is, you know. It’s a goddamn apocalypse, and we’re right in the middle of the fucker. A couple of witnesses walking through the Book of Revelations.”
“So you think God decided that he screwed up somewhere along the way and is, what, purging the human race from the face of the Earth?”
“Nah, man, that’s not what I’m fuckin’ saying.” He stepped aside to avoid a teenager peddling a bicycle for all it was worth. “What I’m saying is, if that’s what is happening, it’s their own fucking fault. You dig?”
“Do I dig?” I raised an eyebrow. “Did you walk out of a seventies porno?”
“You know what I’m fucking asking.”
“Yes, I understand what you’re saying. I don’t know if I agree with it, but I understand it.”
“What’s there not to agree with? It’s airtight.”
“Maybe. On an unrelated topic, it looks like the police have decided not to come out of the station to play.”
We had aimlessly wandered within sight of the town’s police station. The whole “Protect and Serve” credo had apparently been tossed out the window; people were trying to get inside the building, but the doors had been locked and metal gates had been lowered to keep both the living and the dead out. Viewed from a purely logistical standpoint it was a pretty good idea. There wasn’t enough room for everyone, and there wasn’t a way of knowing if the person that you were letting in had been bitten. When you put the emotion back into it, well…it was kind of a douche thing to do.
Seated on the roof in what appeared to be lawn chairs, three members of Kentwood’s finest were firing down into the crowd of approaching zombies that had decided that a group of panicked people gathered in one place was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Most of the shots hit their marks, but very few of them were kills and a couple of the bullets managed to wind up in a live person’s head or chest instead of the intended recipient.
Without a word, I veered towards the commotion.
“Where are you going?” Jefferson demanded as he kept pace with me.
“I’m going to kill those cops and let the zombies into the station, of course,” I replied absently. There didn’t appear to be any ladders or things of that nature that led up to the roof, which meant that the only access to it had to be an internal ladder or stairs.
“And just how do you plan to do that? In case you haven’t noticed, those fuckers are up on the roof, and we’re down here on the ground. I don’t remember the zombies in the movies being able to sprout wings like fuckin’ sea gulls.”
“Just give me a minute to…” I paused. “Sea gulls?”
“What’s wrong with sea gulls?”
“Out of all the birds in the world, you went with sea gulls?”
“What, do you have a problem with sea gulls or something?”
“No. I don’t have a problem with sea gulls. I’m pro-gull. It’s just…sea gulls? Really? I mean, they don’t even fly so much as they glide. You could have chosen to finish the sentence with robins or sparrows or crows or even fucking parakeets, but you went with sea gulls?” I shook my head dismissively. “Okay, whatever, we can’t fly like bloody sea gulls. But I’m pretty sure that I can break through one of those metal gates in the windows and make our way inside.”
“Those people up there don’t seem to be having much luck with that,” he pointed out.
“I tore a guy’s arm off by slamming a door on it twice, remember? We’re not exactly weaklings. Just stay here and I’ll go see what I can do.”
There were a good forty to fifty zombies surrounding the building as I approached the crowd. The humans that were trapped between them and the fortified police station were doing their best to fight off the inevitable, but they seemed to realize that there wasn’t any hope of avoiding being forced to join the undead horde.
I tried to politely maneuver my way through the mass of bodies, but when that didn’t work I threw politeness to the wind and just started pushing zombies out of my way. Judging from the distance they skidded I was certainly packing a bit more strength than a living human. Another side effect of the inoculation combining with the whole undead thing, perhaps?
I found out that I was also quite a bit more durable than the vast majority of my brethren when a bullet fired from one of the officers on the roof impacted directly with my skull. It wasn’t a glancing blow, mind you. The bullet struck me in the forehead. It was a hell of a shot, and by all rights I should have been dead.
Obviously I wasn’t. The bullet ricocheted into the shoulder of the zombie next to me. Somehow it hadn’t managed to penetrate the bone. I reached up and tentatively examined the wound with my fingers. The bullet had certainly broken through the skin (no pain, by the way, which was a definite advantage of not being a living meat bag) and assorted other tissue, but when bullet met skull my body went all Superman on its ass.
I looked up at the shooter. He looked down at me. Slowly, ever slow slowly, I gave him the finger.
Turning back to the matter and hand, I finally made it to one of the police station windows and surveyed the situation. The glass was extremely thick and more than likely bulletproof. Behind the pane was a heavy steel caging that had been lowered to provide an extra layer of protection. Ignore how that last bit sounded like a condom commercial; the point is the building was extremely secure and would be able to withstand almost any assault not involving a tank.
But was it Mitch proof?
I balled my right hand into a fist and punched the window as hard as I could. The glass shuddered in the frame, a small crack appeared in the corner…and nothing else. There was a nice series of bloody smudges where my knuckles had made contact, though, so I guess that was something. The frontal approach didn’t seem to be working. I stepped back and thought through my options.
It was time to employ all of my cunning. If I couldn’t go through the window, I would have to find another way in. But besides a window, what other way was there to gain entry into a building? A porthole? No, wait, those were only on ships. Some sort of cleverly disguised emergency hatch? Hrmm…
Wait…perhaps…I could go through the…door?
It was crazy, but it just might work.
I forced my way over to the door, noticing that there didn’t appear to be any surviving humans but quite a few more zombies. It only took one glance to realize that I wasn’t going to gain access through it, either. The door was actually barred off with a metal gate. Did these people think that they were living in medieval times or something? Was the designer of the police station convinced that there needed to be defenses put in place that could be used to fend off the Viking barbarians?
Okay, you know what? Fuck this. I coiled my legs and jumped straight up, managing to grip the edge of the roof and pulled myself up. It was a leap that no living person could have made, but it certainly wasn’t any “leap tall buildings in a single bound” feat.
Even before I could orient myself on my new high perch, I felt a number of hard thumps across my body. If my sudden appearance had surprised the officers, they had quickly recovered and were now peppering me with gunfire. I stared at their scared faces behind the flashes of their gun muzzles. I had just taken a bullet to the head and all it had done was prompt me to offer a rude gesture. What exactly did they think a hail of body shots would do?
There was any number of things that I could do in this particular situation, but I went with one of the more obvious ones. I slowly walked over to the nearest cop and waited for his gun to run out of bullets. As he frantically tried to load another clip into his pistol, I reached out, grabbed the collar of his jacket, and tossed him off the side of the roof to the zombies waiting below. The same fate befell the next one as well.
Number Three, though, that was going to be a different story. He was the gentleman that had seen fit to shoot me in the head, and I’m the kind of guy that takes that sort of thing personally. I approached extremely slowly, letting him contemplate exactly what was going to happen. He backed away with wide eyes, his finger still clicking away at the trigger of his sidearm which no longer had any bullets to send my way. With a chuckle I reached out and snatched the weapon away from him and tossed it over my shoulder.
In a rather surreal moment, the cop suddenly froze and squinted at me. “Mitch?” he asked in shock.
“You know me?” I asked, blinking. So much for the unknown angel of death routine.
“Mitch, it is you! Holy shit, man, it’s me, Jed! What the hell happened to you?”
Regaining my composure, I grabbed his shoulder and pushed him off to the side. He fell hard and landed on his back, and I heard the air whoosh out of his lungs. I knelt down, pushed his pant leg up, and took a bite out of his thigh. He attempted to scream, of course, but it’s hard to scream when you don’t have any air in you. Well, except in my case, which apparently defied everything from logic to common sense as I could talk without it.
“Mitch, please…” he wheezed out. “Don’t do this!”
“I’m sorry, the Mitch you knew isn’t here right now,” I answered around the meat in my mouth. “You can leave a message after the tone if you like.”
Number Three/Jed produced another gun from inside his coat and fired point blank into my face. Once again, my skull proved to be more powerful than a speeding bullet. It was a valiant attempt even though he must have realized that the first bite had doomed him, and I mentally gave him credit for not giving up. It didn’t impress me enough to stop me from reaching up and snapping his neck, though.
I spent the next five minutes or so eating various parts of his body. At first I only did it because I was curious about the flavorful qualities of the different parts. When I noticed that consuming the flesh was actually causing my wounds to slowly stitch back together, however, I gave the meal my full attention. Oh my, what a strange and wonderful little concoction that was residing in my dead body.
Jefferson had wanted a reason to eat people before he indulged himself. Now he would have one.
I searched around for a few moments before I discovered the hatch built into the roof. I gripped the handle and pulled it open. A ladder was bolted onto one side of the hole, connecting the rooftop with the police station’s second floor. Whatever it was that waited for me below was certainly well-lit.
Forgoing the ladder, I simply dropped through the opening and looked around. I was standing in some sort of sleeping area; four bunk beds were pushed up against the walls and a round table with four chairs around it sat in the center of the room. The surface of the table was covered in boxes of ammunition.
Apparently my playmates upstairs had been read to rock and roll all night, while leaving open the possibility of partying every day. Of course, that was before I welcomed them to the jungle with my brand of fun and games.
Not only did that last paragraph suck from an entertainment standpoint, it also created some sort of unholy KISS/Guns & Roses hybrid reference. I’d like to apologize to the fans of both bands for that. In addition, I would also like to apologize to fans of good rock for KISS and Guns & Roses even existing. It wasn’t my fault that they were created, of course, but they’re just so terrible that I feel like someone should have to say sorry. As usual, I’m the one choosing to man up.
Millions of records sold, blah blah blah. All that proves is that millions of people are wrong.
Why did I reference those bands if they suck so badly? Jefferson isn’t the only complicated zombie out there.
I quietly crept out of the room and down the hallway. Reaching another room, I cautiously poked my head around the corner of the open door and peeked inside. Four cops were standing in what appeared to be an armory. They were dressing themselves in SWAT gear, presumably in preparation to either join their (now deceased) colleagues on the roof or to guard against any undead that managed to break through the police station’s defenses.
It would have been a shame to disappoint them. I descended the nearby staircase to the first floor.
I quickly located the front door and assessed the situation. There was a barred gate on this side of the door as well, and it was securely locked at the bottom. I gave the gate a hard tug and it creaked loudly, but the lock held. I scanned the room for something that I could use to break the lock…
My eyes fell on a set of keys sitting on the station’s front desk.
Seriously? Could it…?
I approached the desk cautiously as if I expected it to be part of some elaborate trap. It was possible that it was merely the bait in a diabolic scheme cooked up by Dr. No or Goldfinger or…um…okay, I couldn’t think of any more Bond villains off the top of my head. Although for some reason an image of Count Duckula kept popping into my thoughts. I was pretty sure that he was a cartoon spin-off of Danger Mouse that, despite being a vampire, consumed ketchup instead of blood. Thus he had nothing to do with the Bond franchise.
You have to wonder why I could remember Count Duckula but not my parents’ faces.
I picked up the key ring and stared at it intently. Was it really going to be this easy?
Only one way to find out. I inserted the only key small enough to fit into the lock and turned it in the slot. My hard work was rewarded with an audible click. That was it? That was really it? I tossed the lock off to the side and raised the gate. The world simply didn’t work this way…did it? Surely the door had to present more of a challenge. I reached out and twisted the knob. It wasn’t even locked. Seriously? What the fuck?
I swung the door open and found myself face to face with a mob of zombies pushing up against the exterior gate.
“Hold on, folks, you’ll be inside in just a minute,” I assured them.
You guessed it. The key to the second lock was indeed on the same key ring. Okay, now granted, the police officers probably hadn’t counted on someone infiltrating their little stronghold via the roof and unlocking the gates and door from the inside, but if this key ring contained the magic power to remove all of the building’s defenses (especially if you’re going to leave the fucking door itself unlocked; who the hell does that?), wouldn’t you at least put it into a desk drawer or take it upstairs with you or something? Who just leaves the fucking keys right next to the things that they have locked?
I raised the gate and stepped aside to allow my mentally challenged cohorts to come in and mark their territory. After a couple of minutes I started to get bored of simply standing there, but they just kept pouring in. By the time the first of the zombies managed to make it to the stairs and began making their way up to the gun-toting law enforcement officers located on the second floor, there were at least seventy undead wandering around the police station’s entryway, and there were still more coming inside.
Finally growing tired of standing still like a rotting statue, I pushed into the crowd and slowly made my way against the flow and out into the night. The second that I cleared the doorway I stepped off to one side and out of the way of the hungry horde. Judging from the amount of zombies that were already inside and the others waiting no-so-patiently in line, the four boys in blue were going to have their hands full. Ah well, that was why they got paid the big bucks.
I spotted Jefferson standing on the far side of the parking lot and walked over to join him. He silently contemplated the undead filing into the police station as he smoked. Finally he nodded to himself.
“Nice fuckin’ jump you did there,” he commented as he tapped out some ash. “You looked like fucking Mark Spitz out there.”
“Mark Spitz?” I asked him in confusion.
“Yeah, Mark fucking Spitz. The Olympian guy that jumped a fuckin’ mile.”
“I’m pretty sure that Mark Spitz was a swimmer, not a jumper.”
“Nah, man, he was a jumper. He ran track, too, won a bunch of fucking gold medals.”
I shook my head. “Jefferson, Mark Spitz really was a swimmer. He won seven gold medals in Munich back in 1972. He set something like thirty world records.”
Jefferson took a puff on his cigarette. “Now how the fuck would you know that?”
“The media made a huge deal out of him when Michael Phelps passed up his gold medal record a while back. He was all over ESPN and shit.”
“Well then who the fuck am I thinking of? The guy who ran really fucking fast and jumped really fucking far?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Carl Lewis, maybe?”
He nodded emphatically. “Yeah, Carl Lewis, that’s the fucker! You looked just like fucking Carl Lewis when you jumped up on that roof.”
“He was a long jumper, though, not a high jumper.”
“Who gives a shit? Who gives a shit right here and right now if fucking Carl Lewis jumped straight fucking up or straight fucking forward? Just accept the compliment and move the fuck on.”
“All right, fine, thank you for the compliment.” I paused. “Even if Carl Lewis wasn’t a high jumper.”
He ignored that. “Are there any more of those cops inside? Those zombies are going to be disappointed if there isn’t some sort of payoff for waiting that long.”
“There’s still four cops alive on the second floor. Or at least they were alive when I let them in,” I corrected myself.
He stared at me for a moment. To be more precise, he stared at my forehead. “Didn’t I see you get shot in the head?” he asked as if that was a common occurrence.
I smiled slightly. “Yes, you certainly did.”
“Then how is it that you walked away from that? Every time one of these moaning mothafuckas got drilled in the skull, that was the end of that. Game over, lights out, the fucking end.”
“Well, Jefferson, it seems that you and me…we’re a bit more special than we thought.”
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