by Wilson, David Niall; Brown, Tonia; Meikle, William; McCaffery, Simon; Brown, TW; T. A. Wardrope
He was a master of his game. And he owned Zeek like his dog.
“A cooking show?” Zeek said.
Eston shrugged. “Yeah. Why not? Got to give the people what they want. And the people are hungry.”
“I don’t know anything about cuisine.”
“You’ll learn. Besides, it doesn’t really matter what you cook.” He flipped open his cell. The device was more like a laptop than a phone. “We’re already getting the numbers returned from the initial pitch commercial. Our C3 Nielsen rating is at the top of the charts. The undead masses have lined up around the block to catch a peek at you. I mean, literally. I had to rundown more than a dozen in my armored Ferrari just to get in the studio gates.”
“You mean this.” Zeek pointed at the huge dome of his skull. “That’s what they care about. The size of my brains, not me. Not my talent. You think it’ll be enough? I don’t.”
Zeek glanced at his make-up team while they struggled to fix his face. He couldn’t be certain, but he swore they were staring at his head with way too much drool on their decomposing lips. There was no hiding the fact that he was well-endowed (in terms of what turned on a zombie), more so than every possible human counterpart.
“I mean, I’d like to say, ‘Hello? My eyes are over here,” Zeek said.
“Don’t be that way, Kong. You’re a head above the rest. Several, in fact.”
“And Kong? Did you have to go that route? I have a real name.”
“No flash, no gas. Besides, Zeek doesn’t rhyme with cooking.”
Neither does Kong, Zeek wanted to add. Instead, he kept his big mouth shut.
Eston clapped his hands together angrily. “And where the hell is my boy’s hors d’oeuvres?”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“Nonsense. You eat, you’ll be happy. Besides, I’m starving.”
Several of the production assistants that had been loitering immediately broke into a sprint. Within minutes, another set of doors to the far side of the studio opened, and they wheeled an oversized candy bowl that could’ve doubled for a millionaire’s jacuzzi into the room. Inside lay half a dozen bound, uninfected humans. They struggled only mildly against their bonds. Most were too drugged to put up a fight; their resistance consisted of little more than a mild seizure.
Eston snapped his fingers until a PA lugged a small one from the tub, cracked it over the head, scooped out its brains, then neatly placed them in a saucer with a sprinkle of oregano and a dash of paprika. Eston ate them with his pinky poised in salute.
When the PA yanked a second human from its kin, Zeek waved for them to put it back. The morsel looked tempting, but his stomach wasn’t in the mood.
“I don’t know if my heart’s in this, Mr. Eston,” he said.
“Of course it is. I can see it right there.”
Eston pointed to the gaping hole in Zeek’s left side that exposed his ribcage and part of his sternum. One of the make-up crew had crawled inside and was polishing the ribs with a steel-toothed brush to make them shine. Above his head, Zeek’s blackened heart didn’t beat––it quivered, most likely filled with grubs. This time of year. the pests always established a residence in the worst possible places.
“That’s not what I mean, Mr. Eston––”
He paused, not really sure what he meant, or what he might get away with saying. Eston acted casual at the moment, yet rank would be pulled upon a single wrong word. If that happened, the conversation was over; all hope of escaping this mess, dissolved.
Carefully, he chose his next words, “I’m worried I won’t do a good job.”
Despite his caution, the battle was lost. Eston’s face finally soured and he tucked his phone into his jacket pocket. He only did that when he was about to lay down the law.
“Listen, ape. You’re my property. And you got two options. You’ll do exactly what I tell you to do, and you’ll do it fantastic. Or––option numero dos––you’ll make one hell of a barbecue. Either way, I hop the wave to the top. Whether you ride my coattails… or my entrails… I leave to you to decide.”
With that, he turned his back, flipped open his cell again, and began to scream at someone more important. Zeek watched him stride across the sound stage as if he owned the place.
Eston stopped in the doorway. “We start shooting in two days, ape. Get your act together. I got some cooking books for you to peruse and study ’til then. My assistant will drop them off within the hour. Prepare to be a star, baby boy!”
And he left.
When Zeek was sure the prick was gone, he growled and beat his fists against his chest.
“Hey!” The polish guy, still stuck inside his ribs, flipped him the bird.
“Sorry,” Zeek said.
He had less than forty-eight hours to figure out how to be a master chef. Or, if not a master, at least entertaining enough to keep a million mindless zombies enthralled for sixty minutes, minus commercials. Maybe the miracle workers laboring on his face had a spare chef stowed in their sleeves.
Two days.
Two days, until either fast fame or a slow roast.
* * *
They’d left him locked in the sound stage overnight, though an unlucky PA was only a button press away if he needed anything urgently. His crew had long gone, leaving him alone to prepare. Thankfully Eston’s assistant had indeed dropped off a few books on cooking.
From one of the hors d’oeuvres, Zeek retrieved a hand attached to an amputated arm and used it to flip through the pages, his massive digits far too clumsy on their own.
“I’m never going to learn this before the show airs,” he said.
There was nothing but cookbooks––lists of ingredients and recipes, a few glossaries of cooking terms, and pictures of beautified foods he’d never hope to understand. They all showed what to cook, not how. And what the hell was a colander?
Zeek rubbed his face, then scratched his noggin. It sent a flurry of maggots tumbling from his fuzzy scalp like dandruff. One by one, he absentmindedly picked them off the ground and pitched them into his mouth. He always ate when he got nervous.
Mr. Eston’s going to feed me to the masses.
It was that simple. This endeavor, this lunacy of making him a television persona, was futile from the beginning. But his agent slash master wouldn’t care. Either way, he’d turn a profit by the end of this.
The evil bastard took Zeek into his slavery a year ago, after his last owners, the bigwigs at J. Hill Pharmaceuticals, apparently lost him in a researcher’s ill-fated card game. Eston nurtured a lot of vices, and he was damn good at all of them.
Zeek had to admit, he had thought his new Hollywood agent would be his ticket to a better life. That hope didn’t last long. Like everyone in the world with a brain that still worked––fame, fortune, and adulation remained lusts worth striving toward. Only now, he understood the truth.
Yet it seemed better than being in a cage, though the sound stage was most likely locked, too. Of course, even if he did break free, where could he go? He might as well have been on the moon or under the sea. Despite his size and the strength that went along with it, the backlots were surrounded by the undead hordes, kept out only by the electric fences and drone-controlled machine gun bunkers (in case the adoring public got too uppity). And past the first wave of mouths, were thousands, nay, millions more––an ocean of tiny ravenous jaws ready to devour him down to the crunchy parts before he gained more than a few feet of freedom.
That aside, he was glad there were no more tests.
The memories made Zeek cringe––the researchers prodding, sticking, and inserting God-knows-what into God-knows-where. Even today, his pink shaven rear felt as if they’d filled it with landmines and sent a blind schizophrenic to find them with his teeth.
He should be thankful. If it weren’t for the scientists, he’d still be a normal runt of a gorilla, maybe cozy in his space at the zoo. Healthy, uninfected, dumber than a rock, and, more than likely, zombie food.
&nbs
p; The wealthy had been searching for a cure, a drug to fix the virus they themselves had created, to make it give them the immortality they sought without all the annoying side-effects, such as death, putrefaction, grave crotch, zombie musk, etcetera, etcetera. They’d found a way (if you had the money to afford it) to keep the brain functional enough to retain intelligence. But while it made the organism as a whole close to immortal, it didn’t stop the virus from eating away living tissue.
So they started their trials for a better drug on animals.
The first had been Spencer, the iguana. Zeek used to pet him when they caged them together. He remembered the first series of shots they gave the poor lizard. Boy, were they in for a surprise.
That’s when they learned how the new drugs also affected growth rates. Little Spencer became big Spenzilla, over three times Zeek’s size now, more than a hundred back then. The media televised his rise to fame and subsequent escape. It made good TV, so who could blame them?
Next, they discovered the new drugs also amplified specific traits in their hosts. In Spencer’s case, it was his predatory instincts and base aggression. The lizard managed to trash an entire city before they got him to calm down. Last Zeek heard, they’d dropped him off in Japan and he’d gotten a movie contract.
Then the scientists descended the evolutionary ladder and experimented with the serum on a moth. Damn thing got bigger than Spencer. The drugs highlighted the moth’s sensory perceptions. One day, it broke free, too, and flew toward the sun, like most of its kind would flutter toward a campfire or a bug zapper. He made it out of the stratosphere, maybe actually into outer space.
Wherever you are, my fuzzy friend, I salute you, Zeek thought. One of us made it to glory.
A monkey came next. It was hard to get a chimp, as usual (chimps were no longer readily available, since the zombie poachers would rather eat their finds than sell them), but the local zoo exhibit held a gorilla in wait.
Learning from their previous failures, they’d managed to downsize the after-effects. Zeek only grew marginally compared to the others, though still enormous by normal standards. And his augmented characteristic turned out to be his smarts. Lucky him.
So here he was, in his last days on earth, stuck in another cage, where his choices of escape led to death and dismemberment, no matter what he chose. Except this go around, because of the drug’s blessed gifts, he was humanly aware of his approaching demise.
Whoopee.
“C’mon, Kong. Learn this stuff!”
Christ, Eston had him calling himself Kong now, too.
“If you don’t learn this, it’s all over. Your brains will only take you so far…”
Brains? That’s it!
He wouldn’t be able to absorb enough culinary knowledge to be convincing as a chef, but what if he gave them something better?
Sure, they’d booked him as a cook, that couldn’t be changed, yet maybe he could twist the idea, morph it into something other than straight food preparation. Like Eston said, it was more about his looks, more about his gorgeous cranial measurements than his skill. Perhaps there was another angle he might take it. Some shtick that carried him through this disaster and prolonged his existence. It worked for Tim Allen on Tool Time, and that bum knew nothing of fix-it; he got away with the lie through comedy.
Zeek knew zippo about jokes, either, so what next? What did people want more than to laugh?
Fame. Fortune.
The public, despite their undead drudgery, still stared at pretty, famous faces longer than normal ones. That was why celebrities continued to exist, why television continued its rule––because the people in charge needed a method to keep the other ninety-nine point nine percent in line and quiet, catatonic, and docile.
It seemed zombies were zombies’ worst problem. Without some way to occupy the moronic masses’ hunger for whatever they could fit into their mouths, the elite wouldn’t be able to force them into the factories and utility plants, into their mills and sweatshops. The undead didn’t work for any kind of wage; they simply had to have their appetites filled, then be led like lemmings. Big money came from zombie-tech, since it was the only kind of tech truly left. And television was the key.
What about the real bigwigs? They already had fame or fortune, or both. What did they want? Why should they be interested in watching his show––because even they enjoyed wasting brain cells on inane crap?
Critically, they could vote his show down quicker than no ratings. He must appeal to them all.
Immortality. That was their answer.
If you have everything, you surely want to be able to keep it, right? That was how the damn zombie infection started in the first place. The rich were not happy with having it all, then dying, and having all their toys fade away. So they invented––or rather, attempted to invent––something that might help them avoid sharing forever. They wanted a taste of what it was like to be a god…
Zeek snapped his fingers. A glorious epiphany burst into his head on how he could save his ass and the show. Even Eston would be proud of this doozy.
It was crazy.
It’d take a reformatting of the show entirely, though it would remain within the confines of his pilot commercial.
Most importantly, he’d need approval from the guys over Eston’s head. From what he had heard, they might not be that difficult to convince, as long as they knew there was more money in it.
No need to wait, he told himself. No better idea would ever come.
Zeek lumbered to the call button where a PA waited somewhere on the lot. He pressed it repeatedly until a disgruntled sigh came over the speaker. Every person in showbiz wanted the same thing, so he knew just what to say to get his new best friend’s help completely.
Zeek spoke into the receiver, “I need a big favor. If you help me, I think I can make you a star.”
After a short pause, the voice asked, “Whatcha need?”
Zeek answered, “A miracle. And you’re my Jesus.”
* * *
The lowly PA had proved to be a godsend. With the promise of fame, he’d broken into the studio manager’s office and had gotten the right numbers to call. Zeek had told him exactly what to say to lure those he reached into this secret meeting. And now he stood before three of the most powerful people in television––nay, the world.
The network execs of ZTV.
They were actually dumber than he thought. None of them appeared to be on a steady regiment of the drugs that kept most of the wealthy sentient. Each had a team of servants that poured bile espressos over their lips, filed their overgrown nails while their arms dangled, clipped the inch-long nose hairs that curled along their nostrils, and vigilantly kept the maggots on their waxed faces to a pristine minimum. Hell, each had one servant who was simply devoted to keeping them propped upright.
If people were willing to wipe your ass, why did you need to worry about anything else, Zeek supposed. He kind of expected them to be this way. After all, he’d seen a lot of what they put on the air, even before the Apocalypse. It took someone being an absolute bonehead to make those kinds of decisions in the first place.
During the wait for their arrival, Zeek had constructed a makeshift set out of the old furniture left in the sound stage from old shows and movies. The food the caterers had left to hold him over the next two days, he placed out for his ingredients, using the ground up bone meal as imitation spices. He had almost everything he needed.
Zeek took a deep breath and gave them his idea.
And like clockwork, at the precise moment he’d planned from the second the PA gave his agent a ring, Mr. Hollow H. Eston burst open the sound stage doors and stomped inside.
“What the fuck is going on in here, ape––?”
Eston noticed Zeek’s company and stopped dead in his tracks, so to speak. At such levels of debauchery before him, even Eston stood in awe.
He whimpered. “Mr. Execs… a pleasure to be in your presence… ” He turned to Zeek. “Why are they
here, Kong?”
“I called them,” said Zeek. “With a little help from a friend.”
Eston glared at the PA. The PA strategically scooted out of his line of view behind Zeek’s enormous foot.
“And why did you call them?” asked Eston.
“Because I have an idea for our show.”
“You should’ve contacted me first. Chain of command. The talent begs the agent, the agent tells the director, the director asks the producers, the producers beg the execs. That’s how it works, ape.”
“I may be an ape, but I’m not a damn, dirty ape, Mr. H. Eston.”
“Cute pun.” Eston strolled through Zeek’s crude set, examining it as if he knew a thing about design. “Well, I see you learned something from the books I gave you. Maybe you’re not as stupid as you appear, either. But it looks like all you have is condiments and no food, all side dishes and no main course. What do you plan on using for your main ingredient?”
“It just arrived.”
Eston yelped as Zeek squeezed his spine and chest between two fingers and lifted him into the air. With satisfaction, Zeek heard his agent’s ribs snap, though that didn’t stop his curses.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Eston screamed.
Zeek smiled. “Adding the final ingredient.”
* * *
Zeek was a star. Or rather, his alter ego, Kong, became a star. He had to give the late Mr. Eston some credit. The name did go better with kooking.
Before the scheduled shoot was to begin, the stage crew went through the last few minutes of preparation, checking the lighting to make sure his rot patches didn’t attract too much attention, fixing his blush so his black cheeks looked rosy flush, re-taping his lazy glass eye to keep it staring directly into the camera. Everything had to be perfect. They shot the show live now. If something got screwed, they wouldn’t have a second chance to make it work, mainly because of Zeek’s holy idea, the one that propelled him and his show to the number one slot across the board.
