Zombies & Other Unpleasant Things

by William Bebb

  “You can't stay here. They're liable to start torching the buildings soon. If you stay here you'll die,” Vito said impatiently.

  George started to say something but someone ran past the door firing a shotgun and laughing maniacally. He gave Vito a shrug and walked back toward the kitchen as the overhead sprinklers continued to pour down icy cold water.

  Vito bit his lip and stared outside as the stream of men heading for the gate grew thicker. But some of the inmates seemed more insane than usual. There were several who were tackling and knocking others to the ground and biting them. Vito stepped further back into the cafeteria and decided George might have the right idea; Find a hiding place and just wait until things calmed down.

  He followed George through one of the doorways that led to the kitchen.

  The vast majority of the prisoners were understandably heading for the open main gate, but Captain LaShod was still cautiously moving in the few shadows afforded by the work shop building. The reporter was being less than quiet, with her occasional whimpers whenever a gunshot or yell was heard nearby, and he could tell she was probably even slightly more terrified than he was; and he was plenty scared.

  He heard noises coming from inside the workshop and paused long enough to peek through one of the thick mesh covered windows. At least half a dozen prisoners were gathering up hammers, medium size lengths of metal rods, and other things he couldn't easily identify. They were located near the large roll top garage door, which was open, at the rear of the building. To reach the cafeteria and then the power station they'd have to pass by them or circle around toward the cell blocks where there were hundreds of escaping prisoners.

  He could tell the men inside were skin heads that belonged to Rommel's Regiment; a gang made up of young violent racists who sometimes liked to create chaos by randomly attacking and sometimes killing fellow inmates who happened to be black or Hispanic.

  LaShod squatted back down and held his dark brown colored hand out to the young white reporter. When she took his hand he whispered, “We might have to run. Do you feel up to it?”

  She nodded but her face looked full of doubt.

  Sighing, he looked around on the ground but there was nothing there to inspire him. He whispered to the reporter, “What do you have in that purse?”

  She looked confused as she opened it and showed him a hairbrush, a notepad, three pens, half a pack of gum, and a set of car keys. The hairbrush gave him an idea and when he asked to borrow it she handed it over without asking why.

  “Wait right here. If something happens to me, you run for the athletics field,” he whispered and pointed toward the south wall.

  She nodded as he cupped his hand over the brush's bristles so the dark handle looked somewhat like a gun barrel.

  He shouted, “Gunderson, you and Mathis, follow me to the workshop! Remember shoot first!”

  He then trotted around the rear of the workshop and swung toward the open door with the hairbrush clutched tightly in his hand. Pointing it at the surprised skin heads had worked sort of how he’d hoped.

  Most of them were running, but the two closest men took one look at the captain's 'gun' and laughed.

  The bigger older one everyone called Scar, because of the numerous knife wounds he'd gotten that made his face look like a nightmarish patchwork of skin, held a long piece of metal in both hands and said, “I'm gonna shove that thing you're holding up yer ass. Then I'm gonna shove this thing up there until it comes bursting out of your filthy lying nigger mouth.”

  The other one was a young kid holding a hammer and he didn't say anything as they both approached LaShod.

  Carl watched the monitor as hundreds of men ran towards the open gate. If the number of guards hadn't been so much less than normal they'd most likely be able to stop or at least slow down the mass exodus. But even tossing down dozens of stun grenades and canisters of pepper spray, and firing fully automatic weapons into the crowd did almost nothing to even slow down the flow of escaping inmates. Several guard dogs were running through the crowd and savaging those prisoners they brought down, but other men kicked and hit them with whatever they had handy. Some of the others who had guns simply shot the dogs.

  Two guards on the front wall had already been shot. One appeared dead, and the other one seemed more angry than seriously hurt by the rifle wound in his leg. The other uninjured guards were quickly running out of ammunition.

  Some of the convicts began climbing the metal staircases toward the guard's positions atop the wall. And then Carl saw the guard he thought had been killed stand up and stagger toward the large guard that had been shot in the leg as he continued firing at the men climbing the east metal staircase.

  The big guard felt someone jump on his back and yelled as teeth bit down into his shoulder and neck. He dropped the rifle, grabbed the undead guard with both hands and pulled at his head. The hands scratched and tore at his face, but he managed to pull him off his back. In great pain and confusion he didn't even recognize his attacker as a fellow guard and threw him from the top of the wall, over the gate, to the pavement below.

  Blood was pouring from his torn neck as he started reaching for the dropped rifle, but someone below fired and hit him in the chest. Clutching the catwalk railing, he shuddered for a few moments before collapsing; dead.

  Carl saw the remaining guards atop the wall run for one of the towers and lock themselves inside. They continued firing through slits in the walls, but were either running out of ammo or conserving what little they had left because very quickly the number of shots lessened.

  As the shots decreased even more inmates streamed through the gate. A few had apparently hot wired cars from the parking lot because vehicles were also joining the exodus.

  Carl kept his eye out for the bookmobile, but it had either already gone out or Bobby was waiting for the stream of escapees to lessen.

  When he switched back to a wider camera view Carl thought he was losing his mind. The big guard that had his neck and shoulder ripped and bitten open, and was then shot in the chest, was chasing and tackling prisoners. But then he saw the guard that had been thrown from the top of the gate was also hobbling around on an obviously badly fractured leg. Shards of bone and pieces of bloody meat were protruding through his left pant leg and apparently he felt no pain. He grabbed onto an old man who was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole and dragged him down to the pavement.

  Carl rubbed his chin while staring at the screen in confusion for several seconds before spotting the bookmobile puttering through the open gate and into the darkness beyond the flood lights.

  “Hmm,” was the only thing he could think to say before reaching for the power button and turning the video monitor off.

  The old man saw a flashing red button on the computer screen warning that the prison's cistern atop the water tower was down below twenty percent capacity. There were also the words Shut Off Sprinklers on the screen? He clicked the icon that had the word yes.

  Several more computer prompts came up and he began sorting through them.

  Public address speakers throughout Bayonne played another prerecorded message that announced the fire had been extinguished and order had been restored.

  “Hear that, George? Time’s running out. If we don't head for the gate now we could be stuck in here?” Vito said while following his overweight friend through the prison kitchen as the overhead sprinklers finally shut off.

  George paused for a second and the sound of more yells and gunshots outside could be clearly heard. He raised a skeptical eyebrow and shook his head.

  “I don't get it. Do you like prison life so much that you won't even try to escape?” Vito grunted and slammed a fist down on one of the kitchen counters.

  George found a long stainless steel ladle and picked it up. He swung the three foot long kitchen utensil experimentally a few times before answering. “You were watching the news on TV last week in the day room. Remember the rioting in Japan and all the bad G
odzilla jokes and crap? I heard that cities all over the world are having the same troubles and it's spreading. Maybe there's some kind of sickness that makes people go nuts and start killing everybody.”

  Vito laughed and said, “Bayonne has had people with that particular illness for decades, pal.”

  George walked toward the pantries and didn't bother to answer.

  Vito sighed and followed.

  As George looked at the soaked cases of canned food Vito whispered, “Did you hear that?”

  George looked back toward the end of the kitchen nearest the dining hall and nodded. There was someone yelling a mixture of English and Spanish profanities and something clattered loudly in the dining hall. The voice sounded familiar.

  Jose was bleeding badly as he burst into the kitchen and grabbed a very large cooking pot. He dumped out the soggy mashed potatoes on the floor then spotted Vito and George. “Hey you guys, quick, get something! They're coming!” He shouted as he ran around the stainless steel counters toward them.

  When he was almost where they were standing, two men came through the swinging door.

  Vito recognized one of them as a new guard named Gunderson, even though he was wearing a crimson blood stained doctor's lab coat. The guard was looking and sniffing at the floor, following the trails of blood spots Jose had left.

  None of them recognized the chubby Reverend Stevens dressed in a suit with what looked like a priest’s collar around his neck. He may or may not have been religious at one time, but upon spotting the trio of prisoners Reverend Stevens climbed quickly over a metal counter, knocking several clattering items to the floor, and trotted toward them.

  George grabbed a large can of corn and threw it at the guard in the bloody doctor’s coat. It missed, but Vito grabbed several others and started throwing them too.

  His aim was much better, but the impact of the cans had little discernible effect.

  Jose climbed up on one of the wooden shelves. It was awkward and took a while to do because he hadn't let go of the very large cooking pot.

  George saw the guard in a doctor's ripped and bloody lab coat had a gun holstered at his side and handed Vito the ladle. “They're fucked up. You hit them,” he said, before running deeper into the pantry between the floor- to-ceiling shelves containing a wide variety of food provisions.

  The reverend reached up for Jose and apparently hadn't noticed Vito.

  Jose turned the large pot upside down and dropped it on the reverend's head.

  The pot was large enough to typically hold twenty five gallons of food, such as mashed potatoes, or to accommodate the head and shoulders of an apparently insane reverend. The impact of the large heavy pot knocked him to the floor and Vito paused long enough to whack the bottom of the pot a few times before running past the reverend.

  George heard the gong-like sound and slid across the wet tiled floor as he ran and nearly fell.

  Fat people don't run particularly well or very fast under the best of circumstances, but being chased by a seemingly crazy guard wearing a blood stained lab coat just made matters much worse.

  He didn't think or try to develop any sort of strategy. All George wanted was to get as far away from the crazy looking guard as possible. Having never been assigned to the kitchen at Bayonne Prison, he quickly found himself lost after running through a maze of tall pantry shelves.

  After a minute of running, he broke out into a large open section near the rear of the kitchen and tripped over several large cardboard tubes of powdered pudding mix that someone had left on the floor beside a long counter.

  He grabbed onto the counter and felt it rolling away before falling hard to the wet floor. His knees took the brunt of the fall as he yelled incoherently and rolled through the spilled powdered pudding mix.

  A nasty phlegmatic sounding cackling laugh came from off to his right.

  George looked up and over while struggling back to his feet.

  An old skinny man wearing an apron was smoking a cigarette. He was leaning against a long row of large metal sinks that reminded George of the restaurant he briefly worked at as a dishwasher when he'd been a teenager and trying to save money for college.

  The old man's smile faded and then disappeared as he looked beyond George.

  Quickly approaching footfalls made the young man look back where he'd just come from.

  The blood splattered guard in the lab coat was bursting out from between the shelves and his eyes were focused only on George as the very obese young man finally got back to his feet. He'd really hoped to lose the crazed guard while running through the maze-like rows of shelves. George was equally dismayed and scared to see him again so soon while panting and feeling more tired than any time in recent memory. His feet couldn't move as the guard ran straight toward him. He was exhausted.

  The old man with the cigarette yelled, “Run, fat boy!”

  George tried to follow his sensible suggestion, but the guard was faster. He leaped forward and grabbed onto his thick flabby right arm at the wrist.

  Until that moment he'd only seen him at a distance, which was bad enough, but up close and personal George could no longer entertain thoughts that he was just a crazy guard. He stared in disbelief at the guard's bloody torn open neck, at the clearly visible glistening network of shredded veins and arteries, and reacted more out of revulsion than fear as he finally accepted the highly unlikely, yet undeniable fact; he was about to be bitten by a zombie.

  George swiftly brought his other arm around and slammed down his large fist as hard as he could on top of the guard's head.

  The guard fell and George staggered toward the line of wheeled counters. There were a few large stainless steel mixing bowls filled with recently prepared chocolate pudding for the prisoners dessert. He picked up the bowls and threw them at the guard that was getting back up.

  The first bowl's contents splattered on the tiled floor between them. The second bowl flew past him and into the aisle between the shelves. The third hit the guard in the head just as he started forward once more. The slimy chocolate pudding filled the guard's face before the bowl clattered loudly to the floor.

  George took advantage of the guard's temporary blindness to retreat toward the row of large sinks.

  “What the heck did you do to piss him off?” The old man smoking a cigarette asked, as George leaned heavily against the row of sinks and tried not to be sick.

  While his stomach churned uneasily, mostly from the sight of the guard's neck, he deeply regretted having eaten so much dinner. Willing himself not to puke, George shook his head and tried to catch his breath.

  The old skinny man tossed the remainder of his cigarette into one of the sinks saying, “Your buddy's coming for you again. See you later, alligator.”

  George saw the old man moving quickly back into the shadows beyond the sinks and turned around toward the guard.

  He hadn't wiped away the pudding, but his impaired vision didn't seem to be much of a hindrance. Snuffling loudly and reaching out blindly, the guard was once more closing in on him.

  God, if I get out of this mess, I swear I'm going to lose some weight! George prayed, while reaching back toward the sink for something to throw. His hand brushed against one of the hoses attached to the sprayer nozzles used for rinsing out various kitchen pots, pans, and utensils.

  He pulled the hose and pointed the sprayer nozzle at the guard. Holding down the handle trigger, he hoped the water was just as hot in Bayonne's kitchens as it had been when he worked at the restaurant. On just his second night on the job he'd accidentally given himself a bad second degree burn while washing dishes.

  The gushing stream of water was both much hotter and stronger than George had expected as it arced out and hit the pudding covered undead guard in the chest then as he adjusted his aim, it hit him forcefully in his face.

  The industrial size kitchen at Bayonne was equipped with mammoth water heaters. The thermostats were set significantly higher than typical home water heaters and numero
us warning placards were mounted around the sinks informing literate prisoners to use caution to avoid severe burns. George hadn’t spotted them and probably would have sprayed the crazy, possibly undead, guard even if he’d seen the warnings.

  The guard's skin turned bright pink within seconds as the not quite boiling hot water hit his face. His bulbous nose quickly erupted as the fluids in the guard's skin heated up.

  George felt even more nauseated as he kept spraying the undead man. He'd still had nagging doubts whether he was truly a zombie before hitting him with the stream of high pressure super hot water. But they completely vanished as the guard's face bubbled into a ghastly looking collection of large ugly swollen pustules.

  A living man, even an insane one, would never be able to take such agonizing pain without turning and running away but the guard only groaned loudly and raised his hands in a feeble attempt to shield his face and continued struggling toward George.

  “Hey, fat boy! What's wrong with that guy?!” The old man yelled from the shadowy corner of the kitchen where he was watching in fascination what was going on

  “He's a damn zombie! Find something to hit it with!” George yelled back.

  Sixty year old Gus Winthrope was serving a life sentence for murder, but seemed to have lost all interest in killing anyone or anything else. Plus, he'd survived twenty-nine years in prison by obeying the unspoken rule of never interfering in a fight and didn't see any reason to change his philosophy now. The old man snatched up his pack of cigarettes before turning and trotting toward the loading docks, thinking, Zombies? Well, shit fire and save the matches. Good luck, fat boy.

  George was having a difficult time looking at the guard as the bubbling blistering red mass of erupting facial skin seemed to begin melting and tearing apart. When the stream of water hit the undead man’s eyes they seemed to grow impossibly large for a few seconds before the left one popped and he quickly sprayed lower.

  George’s stomach bucked and jerked and a foul belch came up into his mouth as the massive amount of dinner once again threatened to reverse gears in his digestive system and come back out.