Our Dead Bodies [Anthology]

by Wright, Jerry

  “Who’s making all that racket outside?” old Tom Barnett asked with a half drunk voice.

  “Just some bikers Tom,” the pretty bar lady answered and looked in the mirror behind the bar counter to adjust her blonde hair. It wasn’t often they got so many visitors to the little bar all at once and, who knows, Mr. Right could still walk in there one day and save her from this dead end watering hole in the middle of the desert, Brenda thought as she smiled at herself in the mirror.

  “How can I help you,” she asked in her friendliest voice as an attractive blonde haired biker in his mid-thirties walked in next to a slutty woman with long black hair.

  “Trust a slut like that to catch the pick of the litter,” Brenda thought as she looked at the dark-haired female biker with poorly disguised animosity.

  “Just want something to drink,” the attractive young biker said, “and is there a police station nearby?”

  He’s not much of a conversationalist, Brenda thought, and there’s something oddly incoherent in the way he speaks…but who cares, he’s gorgeous and perhaps I can take him off that slut’s hands by getting her all pissed or something.

  “No cops around for miles so you can be just as bad as you want to be,” she said and winked at the blonde biker. She really hoped that he was going to warm up a bit later. Perhaps she could offer him a couple shots of free Mexican Tequila to get his juices flowing.

  “Why don’t you invite all of your friends outside to come in too?” she asked, reasoning that it was best to hedge her bets and see if there wasn’t perhaps some sexy young biker amongst the rest of the gang to take upstairs to her bedroom, just in case she couldn’t manage to steal the blonde haired biker away from his girlfriend.

  Old Tom Barnett looked outside with obvious anguish when Brenda suggested that the rest of the bikers should also enter the bar.

  “Think I’ll be leaving, for now,” old Tom said and hurried out of the bar, leaving a half full glass of beer behind. He wasn’t in the mood to find out what a bunch of drunken bikers had in mind for fun after a couple of stiff drinks. He also didn’t like the cold calculated way the young biker and his girlfriend were looking around the bar as if they were planning a robbery or something.

  “Did you hear that darling? We have the entire bar to ourselves and not a cop around for a hundred miles,” the slutty biker chick said and the blonde guy almost smiled.

  “I will get the others,” the blonde biker announced and walked outside to get the rest of The Zombies.

  “Are you thirsty my dear? I got some really strong Mexican tequila for you to try out,” Brenda suggested and took an extra tall glass from the shelf before filling it to the brim with tequila. “Have to get her pissed as soon as possible to leave me the best possible chance to take the blonde guy off her hands,” she thought as she pushed the glass of tequila across the bar counter.

  “Thank you so much,” the dark haired woman said as she picked up the glass of liquor. “Would you mind if I tried that on for a second?” she asked and pointed to the necklace the bar lady was wearing. It had a large cross dangling from a silver chain. Brenda had gotten it from her mother as a gift when she’d turned 21.

  “I really can’t take it off, I promised my mother I’d always wear it for good luck,” Brenda answered as she held the cross between her fingers.

  “Really? What if I did a good word for you with my brother, I saw the way you looked at him when we walked in,” the dark haired woman said with a sly smile.

  Brenda felt the excitement well up in her chest. So this woman wasn’t competition for her at all; in fact, she could be the key to landing in the blonde biker’s arms!

  “Oh well, now that you put it that way…I guess you can try it on for a second,” Brenda said and slowly took off her necklace before handing it to the dark haired woman.

  “Thank you so much,” the dark biker chick said and reached across the counter, “we’re all dying of hunger.”

  Brenda looked at the swinging doors of the bar and the last thing she ever saw was the blonde man of her dreams leading a group of menacing looking bikers inside.

  THE ZOMBIE EFFECT by Michael Bowen

  Tuesday

  “Another useless day,” Jaime said as he turned the radio up.

  The asshole behind him was honking his horn like Jaime could actually do anything about the endless row of cars in front of him.

  “Yeah, we all have places to be, buddy!” he shouted at the rear-view mirror.

  The asshole flashed him the finger, and Jaime could feel his face grow hot with anger. He almost reached for the door handle, but gripped the steering wheel tighter instead. Getting out of his car to have a screaming match with some penny pusher would make the day infinitely worse, and it was a shitter already.

  The car in front of him moved about an inch forward, and the asshole behind him blared his horn again when Jaime didn’t close the gap quick enough. He eased off the clutch of his 1969 Shelby Mustang and let her roll forward. He half expected the idiot behind him to ram the Jeep up his ass, but it looked like the driver was having a screaming match with his cell phone.

  “What the hell is going on?” he shouted at the cars in front of him out of pure frustration.

  He skipped through the channels on the radio, looking for a traffic report, or news report, or something to explain why he’d been wasting the last fifty minutes of his life staring at the same street in lower Manhattan.

  “…in the central area. Motorists should remain calm and stay in their vehicles at all times.”

  “Remain calm, my ass,” he snorted as he cast a quick glance at old horn-friendly behind him.

  He jumped to another station.

  “…today. Shots have been fired by the police, and all members of the public are advised to avoid Downtown Manhattan and the surrounding areas.”

  Jaime looked at his radio like it had grown human appendages. Shots fired? At who?

  A loud tap on his window nearly made him lose his breakfast. Eggs and toast would not have looked great running down the front side of his suit.

  “Hey, man,” the teenager standing by his door shouted through the glass, “you know what’s going on?”

  Jaime rolled the window down.

  “No idea,” he replied, “I just heard some shit on the radio, gunshots or something Downtown.”

  “Freakin’ terrorists, man,” the teenager said, staring over the surrounding cars with that look of absolute knowing wisdom reserved for members of his age.

  Jaime didn’t reply.

  “Hey, you got a smoke?” the teenager asked, shoulders suddenly hunched forward like he was doing a drug deal.

  “Sorry, kid,” Jaime replied, “I quit. You should, too.”

  The acne scars on the boy’s face contorted slightly in a combination of disappointment and what the hell do you know? Jaime cringed on the inside. If he had given an adult that same look when he was this kid’s age, he’d have gone to sleep with a broken rib and a busted lip. He was glad to see the little shit skulk away to bother someone else.

  Fifteen minutes later and he had progressed about another two inches or so. Perfect. He couldn’t wait to get to work to see his boss’ bright red face explode in a flurry of spittle and curse words. It’s not like Jaime had been working his ass off for the last six months, doing three people’s jobs all by himself, right? The amount of time he spent at work was sickening. It really was true what they said – what’s the use of having a lot of money if you never get to enjoy it? He suddenly appreciated being stuck in traffic if it meant he didn’t have to be in his office.

  Jaime’s head shot up when heard someone scream.

  The usual sounds of traffic surrounded him as he switched the radio off. Everything looked normal – people sitting in their cars, staring off into space with that special why-am-I-even-alive look in their eyes, kids in the back-seat texting or fighting with their siblings, women checking their make-up, a cabbie picking his nose. Was he the only
one who heard it? The thought of imagining a thing like that caused a trickle of sweat to run down his back. The scream had sounded way too much like his sister, Claire. He’d often thought about how utterly messed up it was to know the sound of your sister’s scream off by heart. Even now, fifteen years after he’d moved away from Redding Falls and all the memories embedded in its very streets, he sometimes still jerked awake at night in a cold sweat, Claire’s screams ringing through his head like it was a bell tower. He couldn’t deal with this shit now. He reached for the glove box and the serenely mind-numbing prescription meds within it, but stopped cold when he heard the scream again. This time he wasn’t the only one. People got out of their cars to see what the commotion was about.

  Jaime started to open his door but it was slammed shut again as the scar-faced teenager came sprinting down the street between the cars.

  “Little shit,” Jaime cursed.

  He got out of his car and checked the side of the door for any scratches before staring angrily at the back of the kid’s blazer.

  The teenager turned his head for only a second, but what Jaime saw in his eyes made him whirl around in the direction from which he was running. More people were sprinting down the street, criss-crossing between the cars. Some were even running over the cars. The screams were louder now. Maybe there really were terrorists.

  Jaime looked around nervously. The people around him were succumbing to that primal instinct which demands that you run when you see other members of your species run. The occupant in the Jeep behind him was still screaming into his cell phone, though, blissfully unaware that people were abandoning their cars and making a break for it.

  Jaime stood rooted to the hot pavement. His legs were practically vibrating, itching to be off. The primal instinct wasn’t lost on him, but the thought of leaving the car he’d basically built from the ground up just sitting in the street while God knows what had its violent way with it, suppressed mother nature for the time being.

  The sound of gunshots was getting louder now. Warm bodies shoved past him on their way to safety. He tried to ask a few of them what the hell was going on, but either they didn’t know, or didn’t feel that he needed to know. Some of the people streaming past him had bloody faces and torn clothes, their faces fixed in an expression of perpetual shock.

  “I’ll be coming back for you, baby,” he said to the car as he grabbed his briefcase from the back-seat.

  He cast another quick glance in the direction from which everyone was running. A policeman was running down the narrow lane created by the cars on either side.

  “Officer, what’s…”

  Jaime’s words died on his lips as a woman tackled the policeman from behind. The cop’s face smashed into the road as his gun slid over the tar and came to a rest at Jaime’s feet. The woman was writhing on the cop’s back like she was doing a mechanical bull ride. The noises coming out of her mouth were nightmare inducing, reminding Jaime of the sounds his grandfather had made just before he died of lung cancer. In one horrific motion, the woman slammed her face into the cop’s neck, causing him to scream out in pain. He clawed at the tar beneath him, reaching out to Jaime with fierce desperation.

  This can’t be real, Jaime thought as the woman’s teeth ripped chunk after chunk of flesh from the cop’s neck. Her face and hands were covered in the blood streaming out of the wound.

  The eggs and toast he had for breakfast ended up on the front side of his suit after all. A moment of clear thought dedicated to self-preservation made Jaime pick up the gun lying by his feet before he ran for his life.

  Wednesday

  “Mom, pick up the goddamned phone!” Jaime screamed at his mother’s voice mail before flinging his cell phone onto the bed.

  He shoved more things into an open backpack, his brain frantically trying to think of items he couldn’t do without. It disturbed him to think that the first thing he threw into the bag as soon as he made up his mind to go check on his mom, was the bottle of pills he’d come to rely on so much the last couple of years. But he needed them, now more than ever. The world was going to shit around him, and he couldn’t deal with it by himself. In fact, there were lots of things he couldn’t deal with by himself, and most of them were in Redding Falls. Christ knows why he was racing to get back there – he didn’t even know whether his mom was home or not.

  A few minutes later he was roaring down the littered street on his dad’s 1981 Harley Davidson, the only good thing he’d ever gotten from the man. At first he thought he’d be able to head back into the city to get his pride and joy from where she was sitting pretty in the street, but after the news reports, helicopters, fires and riots from the previous night, he’d made peace with the fact that he would probably never see the car again. The only thing anyone knew for sure, was that some sort of virus had broken out in the city – a virus which seemed to turn people into crazed lunatics. The actual word zombie wasn’t mentioned, but Jamie wasn’t an idiot. He knew what he saw in the street the day before wasn’t just some woman with a swollen brain or something. She’d been eating that cop like he was a buffet dinner. And from what he could tell from the constant news reports, the cop hadn’t been the only victim. Not by a long shot.

  To be honest, there were worse ways to get out of town. All four lanes of the highway were stuffed full of cars stuffed full of people, but the bike whizzed past in the emergency lane. Sirens were blaring somewhere in the distance, but Jaime honestly didn’t give a shit about road rules anymore. That damned car was the only reason he hadn’t bugged out of there the day before already, and he was itching to be as far away from the city as possible.

  He had to do some off-roading as he approached the apparent cause of the traffic jam – four cars were overturned, blocking all the lanes. Jaime tried not to look at the bodies lying in the road, especially the ones who didn’t look like they had gotten there because of the accident. Ambulances and police cars were parked next to the road, but no one slowed or stopped him as he wound his way through them. After that, the highway was just an empty stretch of asphalt under the scorching sun.

  Thursday

  Jaime rapped his knuckles on the screen door before ringing the doorbell for the hundredth time.

  “Mom?” he called.

  No one answered. The house was locked up tight, mail piled on the “Welcome to our Home” matt. Home indeed, Jaime thought a bit disdainfully as he glanced around at the brightly painted flower pots and the spotless white walls. The house had never looked like this while he was growing up. Back then it had been a shit hole, the screen door dirty and broken, the windows unwashed, dog shit on the front lawn, motor oil staining the driveway – all the things which disappeared as his mom rebuilt her life after Jaime Snr was finally locked up. He knew his mom still missed his dad, even if she would never admit it to anyone, especially not her new husband. His dad was a drunk, and a violent one at that. The only people who suffered under his fist more than his mother did, had been Jaime and his sister. But his mom had that incomprehensible affliction most women in abusive marriages seemed to suffer from – she always protected the son of a bitch. Even when he had beaten Jaime half to death for skipping school, or when he had broken Claire’s arm after he caught her making out with a boy behind the shed. His mom just cried, and told the kids to be quiet, to go to their rooms, to go to sleep, to stop crying. Everything was always hushed up, swept under the rug with all the other garbage littering the place. It had been the story of her life. It wasn’t the first time Jaime wondered if his mom blamed herself for what happened to Claire. He knew he definitely blamed himself for it.

  He waited another few minutes before getting back on the bike and heading into town. The same old run-down buildings of Redding Falls were baking in the heat of the midday sun, their paint peeling off like they were melting. There were no manicured lawns here, only weeds and dirt and junk. Jaime knew all the secret places, all the spots you could get away from the sun, or hide from your drunk father and his budd
ies. He hadn’t been into the town proper in well over fifteen years, and God knew he hadn’t missed the place.

  He pulled into Joe’s parking lot and pulled the keys from the bike’s ignition. For a while he just sat on the motorcycle’s roasting leather seat, sweat running into his eyes. If there was anyone who knew where his mom was, it was Joe, but his bar was the local watering hole for all the assholes Jaime had had the displeasure of sharing a high school with. He felt just like a kid again, sitting there, baking in the sun, not sure why he was afraid of going into the dark dingy interior of the bar. He thought he’d left all this shit behind, including his sense of worthlessness. But your past has a way of sneaking up on you, yelling surprise! and punching you in the gut.

  He could feel the heat coming off of the pavement as he made his way to the bar’s entrance. The iconic rock ‘n roll music was streaming through the door in an incoherent garble of noise.

  It was the middle of the week, the middle of the day, but the bar was packed. In a small town like Redding Falls, drinking was the only thing to do to pass the time. If you didn’t drink, you didn’t belong. Jaime forced himself to walk straight to the counter. He didn’t so much as glance around to see whether he recognized any of the faces.

  “Jaime!” Joe called as soon as he spotted him.

  Jaime smiled in spite of himself. Joe had always been a massive man, but Jaime remembered him to be taller, more intimidating. He seemed to have aged a hundred years since the last time Jaime saw him.

  “Hey, Joe,” he said as he shook the barkeep’s hand over the polished counter.

  “Look at you!” Joe said, throwing his hands into the air, “It’s been, what, ten years?”

  “Fifteen,” Jaime replied, shifting his feet uncomfortably.

  The bar had gotten a lot quieter since he walked in. He still refused to look around.

  “What brings you back home, kid?” Joe asked.