by Bryan Smith
He fished a rag from a rear pocket of his jeans and held the wet bit of cloth over his face. Then he reached for the dead girl. Enough was enough. Get the bitch in the ground. That’s what he had to do. Right now. He seized her by a wrist and got up on his haunches. He gave her a tug and she rolled onto her side. Then a very surprising thing happened.
To understate on an epic level.
The dead girl twisted out of his grip and seized him by the wrist. This was so far beyond the scope of anything Everett would have considered possible that he could only gape and watch in numb disbelief as she pulled his hand toward her face. He only snapped out of it when she drew his fingers into her mouth. By then it was too late.
Everett tried to yank his hand away, but her grip was surprisingly strong. She held him fast and bit down on his fingers. He screamed as teeth penetrated flesh and began to grind away at bone. She thrashed her head violently, like a dog with a piece of raw meat. At that point Everett was doing some thrashing of his own. Desperation triggered an adrenaline burst that hit his veins like lightning. He managed to get free of her and fell backward onto his ass. He held his mangled hand up and saw bright arterial blood spurting from the place where three of his fingers had been. The pain was immense. He covered the wound with the cloth he’d used to keep out the fumes, clamping down hard. That ratcheted the pain up many more notches, introduced him to a level of soul-shearing agony he wouldn’t have imagined possible prior to this night.
He looked at the not-dead girl. She looked like a wild animal chewing on his severed fingers. Her eyes were dull and glassy, like those of a wax figure. On some level, Everett realized that although her physical body had reanimated, her mind was still gone. This wasn’t a human being that had attacked him. Not really. It was a thing. A monster.
It was a…oh hell, it was a fucking zombie.
And if there was one thing Everett knew about zombies, it was that they never stopped being hungry.
If you believed all the movies, that is.
And right now, Everett fucking believed them.
Dawn of the Dead?
A goddamn documentary.
The zombie girl stopped chewing and a large lump—his masticated fingers—slid slowly down her gullet. The sight of it sent a fresh wave of revulsion through Everett. It occurred to him those were the very fingers with which he’d probed her pussy. There was a kind of poetic justice at work there, if you could look at it objectively.
Everett began to realize how light-headed he was feeling. Whether it was from blood loss, the toxic fumes he’d inhaled, or a combination of both, he didn’t know. And didn’t care. He had to get out of these goddamned woods. Pronto.
Then the zombie’s head turned toward him and its dull eyes fixed on him. The creature got to its feet and began to move stiffly toward him, hands reaching for him as it groaned and drooled. Instinct caused Everett to scoot backward, an act that caused him to slam his injured hand against the ground. He howled in agony and flopped onto his side. But that old survival instinct wouldn’t allow him to surrender to the inevitable just yet. He rolled onto his stomach and used his good hand to push himself to his knees. The zombie wasn’t moving too fast. He could outrun it if he could just get up.
This was what he was thinking as another improbable thing occurred nearby. A section of earth three or four feet to his left began to shift. He recognized the patch of ground as being a place where he’d dug a grave for one of the skinny whores. His mouth dropped open as he watched a scrawny hand punch through the wet earth.
He groaned. “Oh, fuck me. This isn’t happening.”
But it was.
The prostitute clawed her way out of the grave with stunning swiftness. Though somewhat decayed and covered in muck, she was still recognizable. She’d called herself Candy Caine. Caine as in cocaine. Street name, of course. Sybil Huffington had choked the life out of her only a month ago. He recognized the tight black vinyl hot pants and tube top he’d buried her in. Though much of her flesh remained, some burrowing, underground thing had chewed her eyes out. She nonetheless was able to get a fix on him as she came the rest of the way out of her grave. She opened her mouth and spit out dirt as she staggered toward him. He noticed with dread that her teeth looked to be in fine shape. Just his luck. The only streetwalker in all the world with perfect movie star choppers happened to be the one bent on devouring him.
Distracted by the awful specter of Candy’s improbable resurrection, he’d momentarily forgotten all about the threat approaching from the rear.
Anna Kincaid seized his arm and clamped her mouth over the meaty part above the elbow. He screamed again and tried to tear free. His flesh stretched like taffy, muscle and sinew tearing as a fresh eruption of bright red blood spattered Anna’s face. Then she wrenched her head and tore loose a big chunk of Everett meat. He screamed yet again and fell away from her as she worked on this tasty new morsel.
Candy pounced on him then, and he screamed one last time.
The scent of decaying flesh filled his nostrils as Candy’s questing mouth found his throat and savagely ripped it out. The zombies savaged the rest of his body while he was still warm. While they worked on him, two more zombies—both quite a bit riper than Candy—clawed their way out of their graves. In a while the dead girls, guided by some instinct they wouldn’t have been able to understand even if they’d been able to think about it, staggered out of the clearing as a loose group.
Toward the SIMRC.
Before long, what remained of Everett got up and followed them.
6: VIDEO NASTY
Though she maintained a separate residence in a nearby affluent neighborhood, Sybil Huffington spent the bulk of her leisure time in the lavish apartment adjacent to her SIMRC office. The house was just for the sake of appearances. She held a position of respect in the community. Certain things were expected of one in her position. The house, of course. Also, a woman of her stature within the conservative Christian community was expected to have a husband, preferably a wealthy one.
Sybil Huffington did not want a husband.
Or even a boyfriend.
She’d endured one sham of a marriage for ten years. Never again, she had sworn. However, by the time she was finally able to be honest with herself about her true preferences, she’d become too invested in the world of Christian activism to start over again from scratch as a…what, a gay activist?
Absurd. Impossible.
She was stuck.
She’d accepted this years ago. But one of Sybil’s strengths had always been her problem-solving skills. She simply needed an outlet, a discreet means of indulging her true desires while maintaining her public persona as a paragon of conservatism. Hence her recruitment of the ex-convict. Her carnal encounters with the whores he’d found had thrilled her in the beginning. The thrill was twofold, a long sought after physical release, as well as a weird psychological kick derived from being intimate with women so far below her station in life. Bottom line, she was slumming. She was their better in every way. Richer, prettier, and smarter than all of them put together. And yet she’d been the one paying them to provide physical pleasure. What was truly amazing was how there was virtually no limit to what the whores would let her do to them as long as she paid them enough. She found she liked being rough with them, even abusive.
Liked it a bit too much, as it turned out.
The first death rattled her, was nearly her undoing. She had even considered calling 911. But the prospect of the sure-to-ensue scandal trumped any notions of doing the “morally right” thing. So she’d summoned Quigley. An arrangement was made. The ex-con received a very nice bonus in his next paycheck. Weeks passed. Then months. After a while she began to realize she would get away with the whore’s murder. There would never be a price to pay.
Eventually the desire to experience those same thrills again became too much. Quigley delivered another whore, who she treated almost as roughly as the one she’d killed. The experience emboldened her, left h
er craving a new level of thrill. Thus began the tentative process of identifying who among the female population at the SIMRC might be open to certain possibilities. It didn’t take long. Delinquents were not hard to bribe. Of course, there was a greater level of risk involved. The parents of these children were paying good money to have their offspring restored to a morally righteous path. Any allegations of impropriety would bring her world crashing down. But Sybil did it anyway. And she treated the SIMRC girls as roughly as she’d treated the whores. It was crazy. She knew that. But the higher risk level only made it more exciting. She sometimes wondered whether some secret part of her hoped something would go wrong. Certainly she was pushing the envelope harder than ever, with two SIMRC girls dead by her hands.
Speaking of which…
Sybil turned on the television in her living room and popped the videotape into the VCR. The tape was new and bore a label with the handwritten words GIRL 4. Her not-so-subtle code for fourth dead girl. She of course taped all her sessions with both the whores and the SIMRC girls. The actual physical experiences were the best, but getting to relive them all endlessly via the modern marvel of videotape was almost as good.
She settled into a leather sofa and opened the front of her bathrobe. On the screen there was an initial moment of fuzzy static, but this quickly resolved itself into a shot of the desk in her office. The videotaped image showed her sitting behind the desk as she pretended to read a file. Sybil picked up the remote and fast-forwarded through several moments of this tedium, then pushed play at the point when Anna Kincaid stood up and walked around the desk. She set the remote down and slid a hand between her legs, felt the moistness that was already there. Her breath grew short as she watched herself stand and left the hem of Anna’s dress.
Then the phone rang.
“Shit!”
The phone sat on an end table to her left. She glared at the device as it rang again. And then again. One more full ring and her answering machine would pick up. She wanted to let that happen. But if the person calling was who she suspected…
She snatched the receiver up and barked at the caller: “What!”
Masculine laughter, unperturbed and casual. Insidious. The sound of it made Sybil want to vomit. “Sybil, darling, have I caught you at a bad time?”
She suppressed a groan.
It was Mark Cheney, one of the instructors in her employ.
“I’m busy, Mark. What do you want?”
He chuckled. “Oh, I think you know.”
Fuck.
This man was the bane of her existence. One day a month or so back he’d walked into her office late in the work day and caught her in the company of one of the hookers. Nothing had been happening. The woman was just there, seated in a chair opposite the big oak desk. But the whore’s mere presence in her office had been proof enough of impropriety.
She’d been impatient and hornier than usual that day. Utilizing a degree of stealth worthy of a special forces commander, Quigley had managed to smuggle the woman in ahead of the technical end of the work day. However, in her haste to get laid, she’d neglected to lock the outer door to her office. Cheney had been out of line for walking into her office unannounced, but she blamed only herself for what had happened. The door should have been locked, end of story.
So far, she’d been lucky. Cheney hadn’t told anyone of the incident. And he had vowed to stay mum on the subject—for a price.
And he was a greedy bastard.
He’d gotten a raise and his hours had been cut.
He had the use of a company car, and, when he felt like it, the use of Sybil Huffington’s body.
Sybil sighed. “I’m tired, Mark. It’s been a long day.”
Cheney made a tsk-tsk noise. “And it’s about to get a little longer. I want to do the usual things with you, Sybil. Believe it or not, though, I’ll also have an actual work-related matter to discuss with you.”
Sybil frowned. “Oh?”
“It’s about one of the students, a Melissa Campbell.”
Sybil’s brow creased as her mind worked to place the name with a face. And soon she had it. Melissa Campbell was a cute little blonde from some nowhere town, sent to the SIMRC for all the usual reasons. Sybil could recall nothing at all unusual from the girl’s file.
“What about her?”
“Ah…well…”
It wasn’t like Mark to hem and haw. He liked to get to the point. Something was bothering him. Sybil pushed the pause button on the remote and set it aside. “Spit it out, man.”
Cheney cleared his throat and said, “Well…as you may know, the girl is one of my students. The other day she misbehaved during my lecture and I ordered her to my office. And…well…” He sighed again. He really didn’t want to say whatever it was. Sybil began to smile, relishing her tormentor’s discomfort. “The thing is, I may have been a tad too harsh in dispensing discipline this time.”
Sybil’s smile broadened to a grin. The parents of SIMRC students were all required to sign a waiver authorizing the use of corporal punishment. Paddlings, often quite severe, were commonplace. For Mark to be worried, something truly awful must have happened.
“You better tell me all about it.”
That broke the dam. Cheney’s account of the encounter with Melissa Campbell spilled forth in a rush. And it was every bit as dreadful as she’d hoped. Not as genuinely depraved as her own escapades, but shocking nonetheless. By any normal standards, it would mean the end of his career in the re-education business. It could even mean a stint in jail, should word of it ever get out.
“So that’s why I need to see you tonight. You have to help me figure out what to do.”
Sybil’s eyes glittered with malice. Mark would have shuddered at the sight of it. “Of course, dear. I’ll call down to the guard house, let them know you’re coming.”
“Thank you, Sybil. Oh, and, ah…” He laughed again, and that smooth, oily confidence he’d exuded before was back. “Don’t be wearing any clothes when I get there. I want to do some things to you before we discuss that awful child.”
Sybil’s grin froze in place. She forced a laugh. “Of course, dear.”
She returned the phone to its cradle and picked up the remote again, fast-forwarded to the part where she was sitting atop Anna Kincaid on the bearskin rug. They were both nude, their bodies glistening with sweat. Mark was maybe fifteen minutes away. Sybil knew she would require some stimulation before his arrival, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to perform with him.
She pushed the play button.
And watched herself strangle the life out of a human being.
Then she rewound the tape and watched it again.
7: JAILBREAK
Melissa Campbell waited until she was sure her roommate was asleep. Then she threw aside the blanket covering her still fully-clothed body, reached under the bed to retrieve the bag she’d stashed there earlier, and cautiously began to make her way across the room. When she reached the door, she clicked a button on her digital watch. The LED display lit up and showed her the time: 9:59 pm.
Talk about cutting it close.
She waited another minute. At 10:00 she rapped softly three times on the door and held her breath. A long moment elapsed. The moment lengthened to a full minute. She put a hand over her mouth to muffle a whimper. Then she clicked the button again.
10:01.
She knew she shouldn’t panic yet. They’d agreed on 10:00. They’d even synchronized their watches, like spies in some old war movie. But any number of things could be delaying him. She would give him a little more leeway, perhaps as long as fifteen minutes. After that, it would be clear that something unforeseen had occurred to derail their plans.
Yet another check of the watch.
10:02 became 10:03.
She pressed her ear to the door and strained to hear something, anything. But the hallway beyond the door remained tomb-silent. Melissa sagged against the door and fought hard to push back a burgeoning sob. She’d bee
n so sure she was getting out of this horrible place tonight. She was scheduled to attend another of Mr. Cheney’s lectures tomorrow, and the suddenly very real possibility of again being in his presence filled her with dread.
She’d been stupid to mouth off during one of his bogus speeches about the “corrosive effect” of heavy metal music on the spiritual lives of young people. Talking back just wasn’t allowed at the SIMRC. But corporal punishment was allowed, and its implementation was a given in all instances of disobedience and insubordination. She’d expected a paddling in the wake of referring to Mr. Cheney and his fellow instructors at the SIMRC as “thought police”.
She had not, however, been prepared for what actually did happen in Cheney’s office. It had begun in the usual way, with a request that she bend over and brace her hands against the edge of his desk. Having no choice, she obeyed. He then took his time getting down to business, lecturing her about the necessity of finding her way back to the true and righteous path. Her soul was in peril, he told her. Satan had his claws in her already. If she failed to reject evil in all its guises—such as liberal philosophies in general, and the negative influence of heavy metal in particular—she would wind up in hell, where she would endure agonies beyond imagining for all eternity.
At some point he stopped laying the bullshit on her long enough to unlock a drawer in his desk, from which he removed a long, wooden paddle with several holes drilled in it. He then moved into position behind her and placed the paddle flat against her ass, leaving it there for a long moment.
“Is any of this registering with you, young lady?” he asked in a voice grown suddenly hoarse. “Are you ready to accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?”
