Mort: Deluxe Illustrated Edition (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  When Pete was finished, he leaned over the table and asked, “You ever had a blowjob, Mort? Be honest!”

  “Yeah,” Mort answered, a little offended. He wasn’t that pathetic!

  “Tell me. What was the craziest blowjob you ever had?”

  Mort smiled, blushing a little. “Well… this one time, a girlfriend gave me a blowjob in the backroom of my comic book shop.”

  “And…?”

  “And… that was it. That’s the story. She gave me a BJ in the backroom of my shop.”

  “Oh.”

  Mort shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” Pete thought about it a moment, then asked. “Did you cum in her mouth?”

  “No!”

  “Give her a pearl necklace or something?”

  “No. She didn’t like that kind of stuff.”

  “Oh.” Pete got up and walked to the bedroom to get dressed. “You’re a real buzz kill, man.”

  It was always tempting to stay somewhere safe and comfortable, but they knew they couldn’t linger at Magnolia Village. Maybe later, when they were far away from the city, someplace remote, someplace safe, they could think about settling in. Find a little farmhouse in the country. Fence it up. Make it into their own little Mad Max fortress, and try to figure out how to live off the land. Raise their own food like the pioneers did, survive without the luxury of supermarkets and internet shopping, cable TV and electric appliances. Farmer Pete and Farmer Mort. It would be like Green Acres, but without the Gabor.

  The two men washed in the kitchen sink, turning the water in the basin dark gray, then wriggled back into their stiff, filthy clothes and made a circuit of the apartment, stuffing anything that looked useful into their tattered backpacks. They grabbed food, a couple knives and a can opener, batteries, a roll of toilet paper. Mort found a half bottle of antibiotics in the medicine cabinet and snatched them. There was also a bottle of prescription pain killers. That was a good find. Aspirin, vitamins, and a little brown bottle of iodine also went in his backpack. He filled his canteens with clean water in the stinking bathroom, holding his breath. He tried not to look at the toilet brimming with feces. The smell was awful enough. I’ve finally discovered something that smells worse than zombies! he thought.

  Returning to the kitchen, eyes watering from the stench in the bathroom, Mort caught Pete sliding the lifelike dildo into his bag.

  Pete shrugged, unembarrassed. “We might need it.”

  Mort let it go with a sigh. Pete had a new toy. Mort could expect some dildo-related pranks in the days ahead.

  “How much time do you think we have left before the plant goes up?” Pete asked, standing near the front door now. He asked that a lot.

  Mort shrugged. “Who knows?”

  The truth was: Mort did know. They were on borrowed time already. It had been something like six or seven weeks since the Phage spread across the globe. Almost two whole months of horror, bloodshed, and pandemonium. There had been nuclear weapons strikes in attempts to “cauterize” infected populations. On the West Coast. The South. Several more had fallen in Europe. Mort had listened to that particular gem of a news story on a portable radio before the last of the local broadcasting stations fell silent, feeling his guts drop out his ass, thinking, That’s it. It’s all over now. We’ve destroyed the world!

  By all accounts, the DuChamp nuclear power plant should have gone critical already. The emergency diesel generators, which circulated cooling water to the nuclear reactor core, should have run out of fuel inside a week. Mort had no idea why their city was not already a big smoking crater in the middle of Massachusetts, but he was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Mort had discussed all of this with Pete shortly after they met. After Pete saved him from a mob of deadheads. Pete had battened down in the basement of a big brownstone and was prepared to wait out the disaster, but Mort had convinced him that the two of them needed to get out of the city before the power plant went nuclear. Pete, who had a very keen instinct for self-preservation, had grasped the situation quickly enough and agreed to accompany Mort through the zombie-infested city.

  It was dangerous, and their progress was marked in city blocks per day, at best, but they had to escape into the countryside. It was that, or stay and fry. And neither of the men were fond of being cooked alive.

  “I was thinking we should cross that little park out back. I believe there’s some empty lots on the other side. We can probably get two or three blocks without exposing ourselves,” Mort said.

  Mort was their navigator. He’d lived in and around the city of DuChamp most of his life. Pete was from out of town and didn’t know DuChamp from Dublin. That was part of the reason he’d hunkered down when the shit hit the fan.

  Pete nodded, then put his ear to the door. Hearing no zombies shuffling around on the landing outside, he cracked the door open and peeked outside.

  “The coast is clear, dude,” he said.

  Mort gripped his crowbar and they snuck out onto stairwell.

  4

  The Last Living Pimp

  His name was Lavender Baasim, and he was the world’s last living pimp.

  Lavender and his goons, the Pussy Posse, had been keeping their eyes peeled since the previous evening, when they heard low voices echoing through Magnolia Village’s grim gray alleys and courtyards. He’d sent his homies to investigate, but it was close to dark. Whoever they’d heard sneaking around their digs, the M.F.s had holed up for the night, and searching for intruders apartment by apartment wasn’t just impractical, it was dangerous. Lavender’s boys had come back empty-handed.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Lavender had said. “Just stay on your toes. If they’s somebody on our turf, we’ll catch ‘em.” And he was right. The next morning, his boy T-Rex spied Mort and Pete as the two men snuck through the drizzle toward the outskirts of the complex.

  Mort and Pete had originally planned to cut through the weedy park behind the apartment complex, but they had spotted some of the high grass rustling down there, heard the low moans of a wandering deadhead, and decided to try a different route. They were getting ready to make a run for the convenience store across the street when the pimp called out to them from behind.

  The convenience store was called the Pack-N-Tuck, whatever that meant. It looked deserted, its dark windows starred with bullet holes, the front door dangling from one hinge. There didn’t seem to be any deadheads shuffling around inside, but there was about fifty feet of open street standing between them and the convenience store.

  Gas stations were golden. Their stocks, intended for travelers, made good survivor supplies: jerky, candy, bottled water, flashlights, batteries, cigarette lighters. The only downside was they were also the first places to get looted, but there was usually something the two could use inside. They were rarely stripped bare.

  But the street... that had them nervous.

  There didn’t seem to be any zombies in the street, but sometimes you didn’t see them. Sometimes they were just around the corner, or hiding behind a bush. You’d think the coast was clear and then, three or four steps out in the open, you heard those chilling groans. And then more of them in the distance, responding to the first. That’s when you knew your goose was cooked.

  The two men were so intent on checking the street for zombies, they didn’t hear Lavender and his bodyguards creep up behind them.

  “Don’t move, biatches!”

  Pete and Mort spun toward the high-pitched voice, adrenaline surging. Mort was so startled he slipped on the wet sidewalk and fell. Pete cursed and cocked back his baseball bat, ready to swing for the fences.

  The voice, they saw, belonged to a rail thin black man in a lime green leisure suit and platform shoes. The lanky man was accompanied by two massive bodyguards, each with an automatic weapon.

  Lavender grinned, waggling his fingers at the two startled men. He was dressed like every black stereotype known to man. There were big jeweled rings on every finger. Three-four
ths of his teeth were gold caps, the other quarter rotten. He was wearing wide round shades, the lenses beaded with rain, and two braided pigtails angled out from beneath his knit Kufi skull cap.

  “We thought we heard some white boys sneaking around here yesterday,” Lavender said. “Didn’t we, T?” He took his shades off and slipped them in his suit pocket.

  “Sho did, boss,” one of Lavender’s guards glowered, his voice deep and resounding. The man named T stood about seven feet tall and was so fat his features looked like they’d been molded into the center of one massive lump of brown Play-Doh.

  The three black men were standing in the middle of the commons, their bright clothes conspicuous in all that grayness: the misty rain, the sidewalk, the grim apartment complex. Lavender’s vintage suit was bright enough to sear the eye, and his bodyguards were dressed in burgundy track suits.

  Despite his shock, Mort was outraged by their attire. You could see them from a mile away! he thought.

  “We looked for you fellas for a little while yesterday, but I guess you broke into one of our apartments. We figured we’d wait and keep an eye out instead of searching for you room by room.” Lavender laughed, his eyes rolling in their sockets. “We cleaned out most of the zombies here in the Village, but you never know what’s going to jump out at you when you go poking around after dark, am I right, T?”

  “Yeah, boss,” T said dutifully.

  Lavender laughed. “That’s never a good thing! Lord, no! So… my question to you honkies is this: whatchu crackers doing on our turf?”

  “We were just looking for a safe place to sleep. That’s all,” Mort stammered.

  “What ya gonna do?” Pete asked, eyeing the weapons. “You thinkin’ about robbing us? We ain’t got much o’ nothing.”

  “Heavens, no!” Lavender exclaimed, looking horrified. He placed his hand to his heart, like someone’s prissy auntie. “No-no-no! That’s so racist! You believe that, T? That is so racist! You think, just ‘cause we’re men of color, we gon’ rob you? Pshaw! We just thought we’d invite you boys to the crib. You know. Shoot the shit. Maybe do a little bidness.”

  “Well if you ain’t gonna rob us, you mind not waving those Uzis in our faces? Machine guns make me nervous.”

  Pete had balls. Mort had to give him that.

  Lavender pressed the barrels of his bodyguards’ weapons toward the ground. “Of course. Of course. A pimp’s got to be careful this day and age, you know what I’m saying? How do we know you ain’t packin’, too? You might try to rob us.”

  Lowering his bat, Pete said, “Well, technically, we are armed… but, fair enough.”

  “That thing?” Lavender said, gesturing toward the bat. He sniffed. “What good is that?”

  “We got guns, too,” Pete retorted. “We just try not to use them. Gunshots bring those deadheads running like flies to shit.”

  Lavender arched an eyebrow.

  “I’m Mort,” Mort said, putting his hand out. He’d climbed back to his feet as the other men conversed.

  Lavender looked at his hand but didn’t shake it. He crossed his arms instead, tucking his jeweled fingers under his armpits. “Lavender Baasim,” he said, scowling at Mort. His sallow eyes rolled toward Mort, looked off into the distance over Mort’s shoulder, then rolled away. “Now that ever’body’s gone to dat Big Bar-B-Q in the Sky, I guess I’m the last living pimp. Dis here’s my homies. I call ‘em the Pussy Posse. Dis fella’s T-Rex. And dis my boy Landslide.” The big men nodded. “Let me ask you honkies something before we head back to my crib.”

  “Shoot,” Pete said.

  “Not literally!” Mort added jokingly.

  Lavender flared his nostrils at Mort, unamused, then smiled again at Pete. He leaned in and asked, “Whatchu boys say to getting some pussy today?”

  It was such an unexpected question Pete and Mort didn’t answer for several seconds. They stood in the drizzle, staring at Lavender as thunder rumbled in the distance. Lavender grinned back, eyes rolling from Pete to Mort and then to Pete again. Water dripped from the muzzles of his guards’ Uzis. Finally, Cactus Pete grinned and declared, “I say ‘hell yeah!’ Where’s the women?”

  Lavender bowed, sweeping his arm toward one of the buildings behind him. “Dis way, gentlemen! Dis way!”

  As he followed the others through the courtyard, feet splashing in the puddles, Mort was overcome with a sense of impending doom. Lavender and his Pussy Posse couldn’t possibly be on the level. They were either crazy, fucked up on drugs or they were up to something nasty. Mort felt like he was walking to the gallows. He was certain the three men were leading him and his redneck companion into a trap.

  Lavender seemed friendly enough, but there was something about him that set Mort on edge. Maybe it was his constant dreamy grin, or the way his eyes rolled loosely in their sockets, never really focusing, never lingering on any one thing for more than a moment, like they had somehow become disconnected from his brain. Or maybe it was just the way he spoke. His jive-talk was so thick and exaggerated it couldn’t possibly be authentic.

  But how could he warn Pete without alerting Lavender and his bodyguards?

  Pete was going on about how long it had been since he’d had a piece. Lavender sympathized, chatting in some kind of ghetto slang Mort had trouble following. Lavender’s big guards said nothing. They watched their rainy surroundings with narrow suspicious eyes as Pete and Lavender talked in loud animated voices, rain beaded on their smooth shaved heads.

  Lavender led them to a single story rec center. It was a long rectangular building with graffiti covering every inch of its gray stone flanks. That graffiti seemed to be the only bright colors in the vast, grim housing project, aside from the fading brown stains of all the human carnage. The plaque beside the door said MAGNOLIA VILLAGE COMMUNITY CENTER. The big glass windows in front were boarded over.

  T-Rex-- the bodyguard who looked like he’d gotten his head stuck in an inner tube—opened the door for them.

  “Right this way…” Lavender said.

  Pete trotted in without hesitation, all but hopping up and down in his excitement. If Mort had been solo, he would have run for his life, but he was with Pete, and Pete went in, so he went in, too. He didn’t want to, but he did.

  He thought of a saying his mother was fond of back before the world died and took all good things with it: “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge, too?”

  I guess I would, Ma, Mort thought sheepishly, looking around the sparsely furnished lounge he’d entered.

  There were a few cheap plastic chairs against one wall. A couple cheap plastic plants beside them. The posters hanging on the bulletin board looked like they were from the seventies. Crack Is Whack! one of the yellow posters declared. Take Pride In Your Community! another exclaimed. The concession window was boarded over in the same slipshod manner the front of the building had been secured: pieces of furniture, cabinet doors, and other odds and ends, nailed crookedly into place.

  “Would you stay out front and guard the door, Landslide?” Lavender asked.

  “Yeah, boss.”

  Lavender whisked past and opened a second, inner door. “This way to paradise, boys,” he cooed.

  Pete went through the door first. Mort heard him cry, “Holy shit!”

  Mort slid past Lavender uneasily. He didn’t want to come too close to the “pimp”, just in case the man’s madness was infectious.

  And now the trap is sprung... Mort thought, his heart racing.

  But there was no trap. He’d entered what appeared to be a large and dimly lit rec room. A quartet of cafeteria tables stood folded against one wall. There were a couple soda machines. A water fountain. A ratty green sofa and a ping pong table. Basketball goals jutted from the walls at the far end of the chamber. The clock on the wall to Mort’s right was frozen at 11:26.

  Also on Mort’s right were two dark hallways leading away from the main room. One had a male ideogram on a plaque above the doorway, the
other a female ideogram. Locker rooms, most likely. The rec center’s only illumination was the gray glow slanting through a row of narrow windows set high up on the walls on the left hand side of the room.

  Mort saw nothing at first that might explain Pete’s sudden exclamation.

  Until he heard the moans.

  Mort froze, his guts dropping out of him, the hair on his arms standing on end.

  Zombies!

  He almost turned and bolted from the room, but then Pete laughed and said, “I don’t believe it! Hey, come look at this shit, Mort!”

  Forcing himself to breathe, Mort leaned cautiously to the side and peered around his companion. His temples were thumping. His fear reaction had been so extreme, he felt a rush of faintness. Adrenaline made his knees wobble.

  At the far end of the room, several women had been duct taped in various lascivious poses to furniture, support posts, even a rolling audio-video cart. And not just any women. Zombie women. A couple of the zombies were fresh-- not too rotten or bloated. Others were in less attractive states of decomposition. One looked like she’d had most of her face chewed off. Another was missing a couple limbs. They were all dressed in lacy undergarments. Stockings, garters, push-up bras. A couple were in high heels. The smell in the room was ungodly. Mort felt his breakfast come up into his mouth, hot and acidic, and swallowed it back down.

  The undead creatures were moaning, hissing and writhing like a nest of vipers, struggling against their bonds. They smelled fresh meat, and they were hungry.

  Pete let out a peal of laughter, delighted with the horrific scene spread out in front of him. “Fuck me, Lavender! You are one crazy sonofabitch!”