Flesh Ravenous : A Zombie Horror Series -Book 2

by James M. Gabagat

  Lawrence took her by the shoulders, pulled her in, and held her as she dribbled out her sobs. He gave up and allowed himself to weep. They held each other tighter. He kissed the side of her head, held his lips there, and smelled her hair. She had a warm scent that seemed to comfort him. He moved his lips to her cheek, feeling the wetness of her tears. Then their lips met. They began with gentle nips. They paused as their eyes met. The kissing resumed, with more fervent pressure on one another. Lawrence felt hungry for her now. Their tongues touched and lips pressed harder together as Sonya mounted his lap. He lifted her sweatshirt to feel her, to search the curves of her hips and back. His mouth went to her collarbone, then back to her lips, then to her neck, where he tasted her skin with his lips and tongue. She let out a soft moan that made him grow and stiffen. He pushed her sweatshirt up. She pulled it over her head and tossed it aside. She then pulled off the shirt she wore beneath to free her breasts. Though not large, they were perky and a good enough size to fill the hands. Lawrence felt the softness of them against his face. He took one into his mouth and savored her. The feel of Sonya’s nipple on his tongue helped him forget about Tristan.

  16

  Life and Death and Tasty Casserole

  Lawrence

  Lawrence awoke atop the mattress. Feeling hungry, he got up, went out to the hallway, and started down the stairs. He passed the family room. The house was silent. Odd, he thought. He didn’t hear his housemates inside, or hear those monsters outside. There was only silence. Odd indeed.

  Well, whatever. Lawrence decided not to care about the unusual silence and continued to the kitchen. He was starving. He opened the fridge. There was nothing inside but Tristan’s severed hand. Lawrence didn’t want to eat that. What he wanted was a burrito.

  Maybe there’s a burrito in the pantry.

  Lawrence turned around and saw Sonya standing on the counter, staring down at him. She looked grim, like she wanted to murder him.

  “Why are you standing on the counter?” Lawrence asked.

  Sonya’s eyes narrowed. She gave Lawrence a suspicious look. “…I don’t know.”

  “Sonya, you’re some kinda Hispanic, aren’t you? Do you happen to have a burrito anywhere?”

  Sonya crossed her arms. “I hate you, Lawrence.”

  “You hate me? That’s funny, because last night, you were loving me. Your love was rough and slightly painful.”

  “I hate you, Lawrence,” she repeated.

  Lawrence was getting annoyed. “Sonya keep your Borderline Personality problems to yourself, or go bug someone else with it. I’m really hungry for a burrito, so I’m not in the mood.” He sighed, feeling ashamed of his words. Maybe his remarks were insensitive. “Why do you hate me, Sonya? Did I finish too early with you?”

  “You ate all the tasty casserole.”

  “I…what?”

  “You ate all the fucking tasty casserole!” Now she was screaming. Lawrence was frightened. “You FUCKING ASSHOLE!”

  “No, no, I didn’t, Sonya, honest to God. I don’t even know what I casserole looks like, or what ingredients a casserole contains. It wasn’t me who ate it. It was Charlene. Yeah, it was Charlene who ate it all.” Lawrence didn’t feel bad about lying to Sonya. He wanted Charlene to take the blame, because he thought it was funny. “You should go murder Charlene—but, first ask her if she has a burrito—and then you can murder her, I don’t care.”

  “Hey, Lawrence,” Sonya’s anger was suddenly gone. “After much deliberation, I’ve decided to forgive you for eating all the tasty casserole.”

  “Well, that’s good news, I guess.” Lawrence grabbed Tristan’s hand from the fridge and tossed it on the counter at Sonya’s feet. “Why don’t you eat that instead? Go make a tasty casserole out of that.” He remembered that there wasn’t electricity. The oven wasn’t going to work to bake casserole. This is a dream. I’m dreaming right now. I still want a burrito, though. “I’m aware that I’m dreaming, Sonya.”

  Now, dream Sonya looked sad. “Lawrence, I need to tell you something…”

  “Hey, Sonya, since this is a dream, can you just fucking produce a burrito right now? I’m so fucking hungry.” Lawrence looked in the fridge. It was still empty. He expected a burrito to appear out of thin air, but it wouldn’t. Then he looked back at Sonya, and the bitch still didn’t have a burrito with her.

  Sonya stroked her belly, which seemed to have gotten larger. “…Lawrence, I’m pregnant.”

  Lawrence felt a pang of intense terror. He started to doubt this was all a dream. The terror in him felt real. “That’s impossible. Women don’t get pregnant after one day, I don’t think. That’s inaccurate. I also pulled out, because you told me to. You told me you’d fucking kill me if I got any inside you, so, I pulled out and…I guess I won’t be using that quilted blanket anymore. I should probably throw it out the window, or I’ll put it on Charlene’s pillow or something. That’d be hilarious.”

  Sonya’s belly grew bigger, ridiculously bigger, as though she hid an exercise ball under her shirt. “What are we gonna name our child, Lawrence?” She smiled.

  “Eww, no, no,” Lawrence started to panic. “I don’t want a kid. Lawrence, wake up! You need to wake up!”

  Come on, wake up.

  Lawrence opened his eyes.

  He was on the mattress. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Sonya wasn’t next to him, she wasn’t even in the room. But Lawrence wasn’t alone.

  Standing before him was a skeleton with rotting flesh on its bones.

  “Hey there, bud,” the skeleton said. It sounded like Kyle. Only Kyle called Lawrence bud. It was short for buddy, of course.

  Lawrence wasn’t surprised to see a skeleton before him. He was dreaming one of his vivid dreams, the kind he’d have when going to sleep troubled. “Why are you a skeleton, Kyle?”

  “Because I’m dead.”

  “It’s only been a few months, you wouldn’t be a skeleton yet.”

  “You some kinda scientist now?” In one second, the skeleton became Kyle in flesh form. Except this Kyle had a stream of blood down his face, which came from the bullet hole in his forehead. He also had globs of blood around his mouth. “Is this better, Lawrence?”

  “It could do without the bullet hole.”

  Kyle smiled and shrugged. “You can’t control everything in your dream.”

  “So, um…” Lawrence thought of what to say to Kyle. He had much to say to his dead friend, but he couldn’t think of anything. “Do you have a burrito with you?”

  “Nope, sorry, bud.”

  Lawrence saw something behind Kyle. He craned his neck for a better view.

  Charlene was on the floor, on her back. Dead. Motionless with eyes open. Her torso bloody and mangled, organs a mess, ribcage exposed.

  “Kyle,” said Lawrence, “were you eating Charlene?”

  Kyle chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I was craving Japanese.”

  “Have you turned into one of those things?”

  “You mean a zombie? Maybe. I wouldn’t know, because I’m not the one dreaming. Why don’t you just call them ‘zombies.’ I don’t understand why movies and TV shows and books never call them zombies. Seriously, what the fuck?”

  “I’ve always wondered that, too.” Lawrence saw an urn in Charlene’s dead grasp. “Why is she holding an urn?”

  “Oh, well, you see, Lawrence, that’s not an urn, that’s a thermos.”

  The longtime friends laughed.

  “Because Charlene was heading to Antarctica,” Kyle added.

  Lawrence and Kyle laughed harder and louder.

  “Oh, wait.” Kyle stopped laughing. “I almost forgot, Lawrence. I’m mad at you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you screwed my girlfriend. That’s so fucked up, banging your best friend’s girl. How could you do something like that?”

  “Hey,” said Lawrence, “first of all, Kyle, you’re dead. Sonya doesn’t belong to a fucking dead guy. I’m g
lad I screwed her, because it beats jerking off. Would you prefer I screw your sister? I admit I’ve thought about it a lot, and it’d be easy. I’m aware of how she looks at me.” Lawrence instantly felt like shit talking about Ally that way. “I sure as hell ain’t touching Charlene.” He didn’t feel like shit for saying that. “Yuck.”

  “Oh, you’re glad you screwed her?” Kyle was riled up. “If I were alive, I’d kick your ass, man. That’s how you treat the memory of your dead friend?”

  “Fuck you, man. You don’t think I knew that you were also banging Jessica and that you were getting blowjobs from Laurie, while you were supposedly committed to Sonya. You fucking prick! Sonya never knew about it because I never told her. I actually felt bad for her—you didn’t. Even though Sonya was a cunt half the time, she didn’t deserve any of that. Fuck you. Everyone in this house has such fond memories about you just because you’re dead, but I remember how much of a douchebag you were.”

  There was hurt in Kyle’s eyes. He got down on the floor and sat, not looking at Lawrence. Though this was a dream, Lawrence felt bad for the outburst.

  “We’ve known each other for a long time,” said Kyle. He looked up at Lawrence. “We’re like family, Lawrence, and family members fight and have arguments. It’s normal. All that bullshit we had against each other in the past…All that aside…I’m glad you’re still alive, and I really miss you, bud.” He was saying all this with a bullet in the head, blood on his face, and Charlene sprawled out dead behind him, but somehow Lawrence took him seriously. “I miss talking to you and joking with you. I just miss seeing you.”

  Lawrence felt tightness in his throat, but he fought the need to cry. He didn’t want to cry over a dream, a situation that wasn’t reality. “I really miss you, too, Kyle.”

  “I’m sorry about Tristan.”

  “Yeah, he…” Lawrence let out his tears, not wanting to fight anymore. “He’s gone. Have you seen him, Kyle?”

  Kyle shook his head. “This is just your dream, man. This isn’t heaven or anything. Let me tell you something, Lawrence, and you know this is true. Tristan was weak. If you go on hiding in this house, all of you will end up like him. You’ll all die in some tragic way.”

  “Tristan was weak? Are you the strong one, Kyle? Look at you, you’re dead. Isn’t that tragic?”

  “I died, because I risked my life. I wanted all of us to have a better chance out there. Lawrence, for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been in a shell. Did you ever go after your dream? You wanted to create cartoons, didn’t you? But your parents thought it was stupid, so you never went through with it. That hurt you, didn’t it, Lawrence? That your mom and dad never believed in you? When’s the last time you loved a sweet, beautiful girl? Never. Instead, you stuck with the easy, no self-respect type of chicks, because you used to claim you didn’t want or need any love. Why? Scared to get your heart broken and your fragile, pussy feelings crushed? And now, you’re still afraid to make a move out of this house. I mean, you gotta get out of your fucking shell. You can’t stay here forever. This isn’t a life, this is death.”

  “I’ve been out there!” Lawrence shouted. He cried more, feeling ashamed of his life, how he was afraid to gain or even try for any real happiness, how he always had to hide his true self because he was a weak person inside. Right now, his dream was a safe place for him to cry. So, he did. Dream Kyle wasn’t going to tell anyone how Lawrence cried, because he was dead in real life. “I’ve risked myself. You’re trying to tell me I don’t have balls, that I need to get out of my shell? I came with you that night to find the guns, even though I believed it was a stupid idea. I went out there to watch your back, asshole. Today, I went out there with Sonya, Ally, and Tristan, and we all risked our asses to get more supplies. We’ve seen the most terrible kinds of shit. What do you mean I gotta get out of my shell?” He stared at Kyle’s face. It was truly Kyle he spoke to—or, maybe the dream, his mind, fooled him into thinking he had this moment with his dead friend. “Am I really talking to you, Kyle? Are you really here? Or am I talking to myself in my head while I’m sleeping?”

  Kyle reached over and patted Lawrence’s knee. “It doesn’t matter, bud. Whether it’s really me, or you wishing I were here talking to you. I’m telling you what you should hear. Maybe, you’re really telling yourself what you need to tell yourself.”

  “This is fucking confusing.”

  “Dream’s never make sense.” Kyle shrugged. “I know what you’re saying about you getting out there and taking risks. Every time you’ve taken a risk, it was always for someone else. Everyone in this house knows you’d do anything to protect them. They all know that, don’t you see? If you lead them out of here, they’ll follow you.”

  “Where should we go? Where would I lead them?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Lawrence. There’s a better chance out there to find some form of hope. In here…Sure, it’s safe, but this is a dead end. In time, everyone will feel that it is a dead end.”

  Lawrence understood the feeling of isolation, the anxiety that came with it, the lack of freedom and fresh air, the limited sense of hope from being hidden from the world. Not to mention, the boredom, the stir-craziness, the hunger…It would soon drive him mad, drive everyone in the house mad just like Therese and Tristan. “But I have to keep everyone safe,” was all he could say to Kyle. “It’s not safe out there. All the terrible shit we’ve seen and experienced in one fucking day…”

  His dead friend looked at him with sadness. “I’m gonna go now, Lawrence. You’re about to wake up. It was nice seeing you.”

  Wake up? Lawrence wasn’t looking forward to waking up. There was nothing to look forward to. Maybe he’d get a chance to bang Sonya again. Yeah, that’d be nice. But there wasn’t anything to feel good about in that house with boarded windows. No hope. Stop it, he told himself, shut up. Don’t think like that. That must’ve been how Tristan felt. “I understand. I’m gonna get them out of here, Kyle. I will. I’ll do whatever it takes and whatever I can for them.”

  Kyle smiled a little. “Goodbye, Lawrence.”

  “Goodbye, Kyle.” Lawrence sniffled and wiped his eyes dry. “Rest now.”

  Rest now.

  Lawrence woke up. Again.

  His eyes opened. He was on the floor, alone in the room, only in his boxer briefs. He could tell this wasn’t another dream, as he felt the sting of cold air on his mostly bare skin. He got to his feet, grabbed his clothes off the bed, and got dressed.

  It was around six o’clock in the morning, judging by the purple dimness of twilight through the window. Lawrence came out of the master bedroom and noticed the quiet within the house. Usually the housemates slept through this hour. As for outside the house, those…zombies made their usual noises. They were louder than ever it seemed. Lawrence wondered how he ever got used to it and managed to sleep through it on past nights. In near-darkness, he went down the hallway and went into Tristan’s bedroom. He found a lighter atop the dresser and started lighting every candle in the room.

  After the room was properly lit, Lawrence looked around. So much bloodstains on the carpet. He was going to make it his task to get the blood cleaned up later today. He caught sight of one of Tristan’s drawings on the desk, a pencil sketch of him, Sonya, Ally, and Tristan in their cosplay armor, posing with their weapons, as though it were a cover of a superhero comic. Their faces in the drawing were in lifelike detail, but their bodies were a bit exaggerated. Overexaggerated, really. Lawrence and Tristan’s bodies in the picture were heavily muscular, and as for Sonya and Ally, their boobs and asses were ridiculously huge. Though the paper was partially bloodstained, Lawrence stared at the sketch with fondness. It made him smile when he thought of Tristan. What an artist my friend was. Truly talented. To better appreciate the drawing, he pushed the window curtains open to get more light in the room.

  Lawrence gasped. “Oh, my God. No.” He caught a view of the outside. In front of the house was a horde of the dead, the largest he’d seen so
far. Nearly a hundred of them crowded against the house, pounding fists and heads against the walls and window barriers, hoping to break in for a feast within. The house was surrounded. “No, no, no.” Lawrence shook his head, panicking. He knew this wasn’t another dream. “How did this happen?” An army of the dead was outside. The housemates were surrounded, trapped. There’d be no way out for them now.

  End of book two.

  And now a tale about a tiny man…

  Duwende

  The tiny man must’ve entered Santiago’s home through a rat hole, or through the toilet. The being was a filthy thing, with crude, grimy rags and a grey beard, stained and encrusted with muck. Santiago had been standing in his kitchen, staring down at the tiny man for nearly a minute, intrigued. The tiny man stared back with a surly demeanor, while ranting belligerently in an unknown language. Santiago recognized a few Spanish words, yet the jabbering was still incoherent.

  “What are you?” Santiago said.

  The tiny man grunted and spat. “I am a duwende.” He pointed at Santiago. “And you’re a stupid monkey.”

  “You understand me?”

  “I’ve lived many centuries. I know many tongues.”

  If this oddity continued his insolence, Santiago wouldn’t hesitate to kick him like a soccer ball. But Santiago wanted to ask more questions. “You’re a sprite?”

  The duwende scoffed. “I hate that word.”

  “Why are you here, duwende?”

  “I will make a home in your home. You are not to tell a living soul of my existence. There are men searching for me in the fields, threatening to torture me if I don’t grant them wishes. I will eat your rats and roaches, and you’ll provide me with liquor and smokes each week.”

  “That supposed to be a fair exchange of service?” This duwende’s an asshole, Santiago thought. He was now tempted to kick the tiny man like a soccer ball.