For one irrational moment, Vince was tempted to race out front to the sidewalk, try to flag the bikers down, beg them to let him come with them, join their gang. There were only two Eos left. Everyone knew there was safety in numbers. Then he remembered Johnny Morris, who had gone rushing outside to flag down a military convoy. He remembered how Johnny’s brains had splattered across the sidewalk, like an abstract impressionism painting.
That aborted his impulse to chase after the bikers. Aborted it like a morning after pill.
As the rumble of the motorcycles receded into the distance, Vince heard a guttural moan. His heart jumped into his throat at the keening of the deadhead. He realized his cigarette was still smoldering and put it out quickly, smashing it beneath his heel even though he was barefooted. Deadheads hunted by smell as much as sound and sight. He didn’t know if they would be attracted to the smell of cigarette smoke, but he wasn’t taking the chance.
The pain of the ember under his foot was as purifying as the cold.
The groan was joined by another, a high-pitched feminine wail. Then another. Then a whole chorus of groaning and yelping and snarling.
A herd of deadheads was chasing the bikers!
As the groans of the deadheads grew steadily louder, he put his eye to the gap in the fence again. He was pretty sure none of the zombies would be able to spot him through the privacy fence, and he wanted to see.
Three or four minutes after the bikers roared past, a shuffling herd of zombies began to stumble by in the street. He counted them at first, until there were far too many of them to count anymore. When there were so many that he couldn’t see the houses on the far side of the street, he began to question the wisdom of lingering outside. What if they sensed him standing there watching? They’d flatten the fence in seconds if they all came rushing at him.
The fence to his left rattled as something bumped against it.
Vince almost yelped, stuffed his hands in his mouth to stifle it.
Heart thudding hard and fast in his chest, he retreated as quietly as he could to the back door. Each step he took hurt—he’d broken some toes when he kicked Brody the other night, and he’d burned his heel smashing out the cigarette. He also realized, in some distant corner of his brain, that he had gotten an erection. His cock was as hard as a railroad spike.
Fear arousal, he thought with chagrin. We’ll ponder that one later.
The saplings on the other side of the fence shook. The deadhead doing the shaking groaned. Vince turned the doorknob carefully, fearful of the least little squeak. The knob, of course, squeaked. It was an old knob, rusty and loose in its mounting.
Vince eased the door open, freezing as the hinges squawked. He could feel the ground rumbling from the passage of the zombie herd. His cock throbbed, tenting the front of his tighty whities.
He got the door open enough to slip through. A spark of pleasure shot up from his pelvis as his swollen cockhead thumped against the doorframe. He grabbed his dick without thinking, and then gasped as he climaxed involuntarily.
He stumbled down the hallway to the den, prick still twitching in his hand, caroming from wall to wall as he ran. He kneeled down in front of the window and peeked out at the zombie herd.
Oh my god, he thought, his underwear warm and wet, there’s so fucking MANY of them!
They stumbled past, pilgrims from hell, their clothes as tattered and colorless as their flesh. Men, women, children. Young and old. Black and white. Some of them crawled because they were missing a limb. Some shuffled. Some ran. A handful of the revenants glanced toward the Epsilon Omega chapter house as they passed, but none of them seemed to sense him watching from the barricaded window. A couple of them stumbled through the front yard, but none ventured any closer than that.
He watched the parade of the damned until the herd thinned out—and the jizz in his underpants was sticky and cold—and then he turned and flopped onto the floor. He rubbed his face with a trembling hand, then looked down at his crotch with a grimace of disgust.
Can’t believe I did that, he thought.
He had read about it on the internet once—a blog post about physiological arousal and the fear response. It was an article entitled “Sex, Death and Cinema”, and posited that horror movies were popular date night destinations because of the tendency for adrenaline to engorge sexual tissue with blood. Filmmakers knew it—the good ones, anyway, the ones who were worth their salt, like Hitchcock, Scott, Cronenberg and Argento. Why else have Ripley strip down to her skivvies when she should have been getting the fuck off the Nostromo? Why else have Norman Bates fuckstab pretty Janet Leigh to death in the shower, instead of, say, the back parking lot of the Bates Motel?
Guess it’s true, Vince thought. Or you’re some kind of sicko.
He laughed shakily, tried to get up, fell down and had to get up again. He stumbled toward the staircase, thinking he better get cleaned up before Steve saw his sticky britches and wondered what the hell he was doing. He didn’t want to explain why watching a herd of zombies thunder past the house had made him squirt about a quart of man-mayo in his jockey shorts.
He dragged himself up the stairs to the second floor landing. Steve was standing outside his room at the end of the hallway. Steve was in tighty whities, too.
Vince froze, staring at his frat brother.
Steve just stood there staring at him. His shoulders rose and fell slowly.
Vince thought: If this were a horror movie, there would definitely be some homosexual undertones in this scene!
“Steve?” Vince said, a nervous grin on his face. “You okay, buddy?”
Steve’s lips twisted back from his teeth. Green zombie goo dribbled down his chin. He bolted at Vince, hands out in front of him, fingers hooked.
“Shit!” Vince yelled.
He waffled for a second, unsure whether he should retreat back down the stairs or dodge into one of the rooms. He started toward his room, but he had hesitated just a fraction of a second too long. Steve threw himself on Vince, sank his teeth into the meat of Vince’s shoulder.
Vince screamed as they pirouetted down the corridor. He stumbled past the stairwell and toward the bannister at the end of the landing. Steve waggled his head back and forth, tore off a big chunk of Vince’s flesh, chewing and swallowing with an ecstatic expression. Blood washed down Vince’s chest and stomach. There was blood all over Steve. Vince grabbed his frat brother by the upper arms and pushed as Steve lunged forward to bite him again, but his hands were slippery with blood. Vince lost his grip.
Steve’s teeth raked across Vince’s neck.
“Fucker!” Vince snarled, and he twisted around, heaving his frat brother over the railing.
Steve fell with a meaty thud to the foyer floor below.
Vince slipped in his own blood, fell down hard on his ass.
He rolled over and crawled to the edge of the landing. Pulling himself up by the balusters, he peered into the foyer.
Zombie Steve had broken his neck in the fall. Head flopping bonelessly, the revenant bucked and spasmed in the middle of the foyer. His frat brother wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t get up either. It reminded Vince of his grandmother’s chickens. The way they flopped after Granny wrung their necks.
“Sorry,” Vince panted. “I’m so sorry.”
He released the balusters and rolled onto his back. His shoulder throbbed where his frat brother had bitten him. Need to stop the bleeding, he thought, staring at the ceiling. Then he wondered if he should even bother. He’d been bitten. He was as good as dead now. Why not just let himself bleed out? It would probably be a blessing.
You don’t know that, he said to himself. You might be immune or something.
But he could already feel the Phage working inside him. It was a numbing cold, expanding outwards from the bite wound, spreading through his chest and stomach and legs. His legs twitched spastically. His skin itched all over, like a million tiny insects were biting him all over.
How long did he have? Min
utes? Hours? Surely not days. Not after getting bitten.
You’ll have to hurry if you still want to Die Laughing, he said to himself.
Vince heaved himself up and stumbled toward his closet.
22
“I am one wild and crazy GHOUL!” Vince cried, standing in front of his mirror. He grinned and shook his upper body back and forth as he said it, even though it hurt his shoulder, waggling his arms at his sides like his favorite comedian.
Somehow, it wasn’t as funny when he did it.
Not even with the arrow through his head.
For a moment, he thought he’d lost it—the arrow. He was sure he had brought it with him from home. He had almost despaired, searching through his closet for it. At the end, he was nearly frantic, throwing the contents of his closet back over his shoulders--clothes, empty beer bottles, dirty magazines, a used condom.
(Ew!)
He didn’t have any other ideas. He wasn’t a naturally funny person. He knew a few jokes, but he couldn’t come up with anything good on such short notice. Improvisational comedy was not his forte. Never had been. He had never liked surprises.
Then he found it, lying on the floor beneath a pair of ratty sneakers.
He snatched it up with a gust of relief, one that was out of all proportion to the toy’s apparent value.
It was just a gag gift he’d bought for himself during a visit to the mall, a cheap plastic arrow with a head-shaped curve halfway through the length of the shaft. You slid it onto the back of the skull, and voila, instant arrow through the head! Yuck-yuck!
But it was more than that now. It was a link that bound him to his fallen brothers, the four young men he’d shared the last few weeks of his life with: Rudie, Brody, Lance, Steve. Fraternity had always been important to him, even before the end of the world. He had eaten vomlets for it. He had jerked off in a kiddie pool full of shit and piss and let them dunk his head in it. Without fraternity, a man was just a man, but with it men were a society.
They had laughed at death in their final hours, his fellow soldiers of the apocalypse, and now he would, too.
Brothers for all eternity.
And if anyone might think he was being melodramatic—well, then, fuck ‘em! Let them catch the Phage and see how maudlin they got!
Vince limped from his room with the arrow through his head. He had cleaned up, bandaged the bite wound on his shoulder, washed all the blood off. He had changed into a white dress shirt and khaki pants, put on his red tennis shoes and the only tie he owned. The boxers he wore beneath the khakis were Lance’s. He didn’t have any boxers of his own. He didn’t think Lance would mind, though. In fact, he probably would have cracked wise about it. Something about crabs, or their boys hanging out together. He didn’t know. Lance was the funny one.
“Three frat brothers go to a ski lodge,” Vince muttered as he started down the stairs. “The place is really full so they have to share a bed. In the middle of the night, the brother on the right wakes up and says, ‘Wow! I just dreamed I was getting a hand job!’ The brother on the left wakes up, too. He says, ‘What a coincidence! I just had the same dream!’ Finally, the frat brother in the middle wakes up, and he says… He says, ‘That's funny, I dreamed I was skiing!’”
Grinning, Vince moved carefully down the staircase, hanging onto the railing. He didn’t trust his wobbly legs not to spill him halfway down. He detoured around Steve, who was still flopping around in the middle of the foyer, snarling and gnashing his teeth. He went to the door, peeked out to check the neighborhood.
All clear.
Vince stepped out onto the porch. It was nearly dusk, the sky bruised and bloody, the shadows long and narrow. There were no crickets chirping, not at this time of the year. The air was chilly and still. It was probably going to frost tonight, he thought. Old man winter was definitely coming.
If everything had been normal, if there was no such thing as the Phage, he’d probably be up in his room studying right now. Or hanging out with Mary. Maybe they’d walk down to the Dairy Barn and have themselves a couple burgers later. It would have been nice, the two of them walking hand-in-hand, their noses red, wearing sweaters and scarves, probably.
If only.
Shivering, little puffs of steam blooming from his lips, Vince grinned and said, “Jimmy answered the frat house phone. The voice on the other end of the line said ‘Hey, dude, this is Chuck. Come on over, we're having a wild ass party here tonight.’ Says Jimmy: ‘I’d love to, bro, but I got me a bad case of the gonorrhea,’ to which his frat brother says, ‘Well, bring it with ya! These crazy fuckers will drink anything!’”
Vince groaned as pain lanced through his guts. He doubled over for a moment, the pain threading its way through his guts like red hot wires. He forced himself to stand straight and worked the buttons of his khakis. Breathing raggedly, he shoved the khakis down his legs and shuffled over to one of the chairs.
He flopped down, adjusted the arrow on his head, then took his googly-eyed glasses from his front pocket and put them on. He watched the sun go down in snatches as the plastic eyes bounced up and down on their springs.
He realized he’d forgotten the duct tape, but he was too dizzy to go back inside and look for it. He didn’t think he’d pose too much of a danger to anyone, though, shuffling after them with his pants around his ankles. And if they couldn’t outrun him like that, they deserved to get eaten.
He tried to think of another joke to tell, but drew a blank.
No big loss.
He hurt. He hurt bad. He also wanted to bite someone. He was just so mad all of a sudden! He hurt, and he was mad, and he wanted to bite!
His heart was galloping in his chest. It was racing so fast he couldn’t count the beats. He could feel it ticking in his temples, in the veins running down his neck.
And then he thought of it. The best joke of all. The funniest fucking joke he’d ever heard in his life.
“A frat walks into the house with an alligator. It’s about ten feet long. His brothers all freak out when they see it… They say, ‘Dude, get that thing out of here… before it kills someone!’” Vince clenched his teeth, groaning, then breathlessly went on. “The brother with the alligator says, ‘Naw, bros, he’s tame, and I’ll prove it.’ Then he throws the alligator on the table, takes out his dick and sticks it in the alligator’s mouth. They all think… the alligator is going to bite off their frat brother’s dick… but it doesn’t. It just sits there with its mouth open. After five minutes-- Ah, god!—after five minutes, he pulls his dick out of its mouth and says... ‘Who else wants to try it?’ Then the pledge… the pledge standing in the corner… raises his hand and says… ‘Yeah, I’ll try it, but I don’t… I don’t…”
Vince felt his racing heart suddenly stop. A horrific pressure squashed down on his chest, a great invisible weight that seemed to squeeze his mind right out of his body.
He tried to finish the joke, spit out the punch line, die with a laugh on his lips, but he couldn’t seem to make his mouth work anymore. He couldn’t breathe.
Good one, God, Vince thought.
23
If ever there was a bitch that needed smacked upside the mouth, it was Brit, but Maurice had never laid so much as an angry finger on his wife, not in all the years they’d been married, and he didn’t intend to start doing it today-- no matter how much he was tempted. For Maurice Perry, the son of a wife beating, alcoholic son-of-a-bitch, such a thing would demean him. It would make a mockery of the principles he believed a man should uphold: work hard, never cry, and never touch your loved ones in anger.
Instead, he tightened his fingers on the steering wheel of the SUV—tightened them until the knuckles turned white-- and said in his most reasonable tone, the tone that let his wife know just how crazy she was acting: “Honey? Please stop frightening the children.”
“STOP FRIGHTENING THE CHILDREN?” Brit blared, right into his ear, and he almost lost it. His hand nearly flew upside her mouth before his brain could veto
the action. “I’m scared too, Maury!” she squalled, runny mascara circling her eyes like a raccoon’s mask. “I’m scared out of my WITS!”
He gripped the steering wheel with all his might, thinking, Oh, you bitch! You are purposely trying to make me hit you!
“I told you, Maury! I told you we should wait another day!” she babbled, wringing her hands and swiveling her head like a garden sprinkler. “We’re going to DIE out here! We’re all going to DIE!”
He pressed his lips together, clenched his jaw, and leaned over the wheel, trying to navigate the Kia through the abandoned cars lining their street.
They had just left home. They hadn’t even made it out of the cul-de-sac and already half a dozen zombies were pelting down the road behind them, like dogs chasing a wiener wagon. Brit was already in hysterics. The kids were steadily crying in the backseat, their cherubic faces crumpled with terror. And if they got stuck behind a pileup, or got surrounded by enough of those horrible things, it was all over for the Perry family of Westland, Illinois.
Maurice thought: I’m going insane, Ma! Watch me go insane! WHEEEEE!
Brit shrieked: “OHMYGODMAURYLOOKOUT!”
Maurice instinctively stomped on the break pedal, swerving, but the zombie she was pointing at was still half a block away.
Mrs. Pepper, their neighbor from up the street, jogged toward them across her lawn, dressed in just a ragged nightgown, the lower half of her face chewed off.
She was a big gal, though. It might take her a good two or three minutes to make it to the street—if she didn’t knock herself down with one of her massive, bouncing breasts first.
“Damn it, Brit!” Maury snapped. “Stop yelling at every single zombie you see! You’re going to make me wreck this car!”
He gave the SUV some gas and wheeled around Mr. Nesbit’s big blue Ford.
Mr. Nesbit, lying in the gutter, reached toward the Perry’s as they passed, his body just bones below the waist.
They ate him real good before he came back, Maury thought.
Die Laughing (The Fearlanders) Page 7
