Weekend At Vidu’s
A Dead Drunk Short
By Richard Johnson
Copyright © Richard Johnson 2014
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with others, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use, then please return it to Amazon.com and purchase a copy for yourself.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Weekend At Vidu’s… A Dead Drunk Short
An obnoxious ringtone blaring an old Steely Dan song woke Vidu up from a booze-induced slumber. Rubbing his eyes, he checked his pockets for his car keys, wallet and cell phone. This was a ritual many drunks perform the morning after a wild bender, and one the sketchy purveyor of used cars did often. Check, check, and check. That was a positive.
In a bit of a haze, the Sri Lankan native tried to recall what happened the night before at his friend’s insane bachelor party. There was the massive amount of liquor, the girl that randomly bitch slapped him for absolutely no reason, the giant cup of soda thrown into his face by a bike rider, the waitress that wanted to “fuck his balls out,” and more drinking. Much, much more drinking. Vidu’s head throbbed and he vaguely remembered his “friend” Trent pissing on his shoes in the bathroom of a seedy strip club. All in all, it had been an awesome night.
The morning was turning out to be decidedly less awesome, however, and as his stomach roiled, Vidu bolted from his friend Charlie’s couch and headed for the bathroom, knocking over empty and not-so-empty beer bottles along the way. Most of his puke made it into the toilet, but there was some definite spillage.
“I can’t believe how many Cheetos we ate at four in the morning,” Vidu said with his thick accent while searching under the sink for some cleaning solution.
Trent, the other inhabitant of the crappy Chicago apartment, peeked over Vidu’s shoulder with narrowed eyes and a curled lip. “Those were nachos, you dumb bastard. Seriously, how long have you been in this country? You’re like a tanned Forest Gump without the retard strength.”
“Long enough to impregnate your mother,” Vidu replied while scrubbing away at the floor with bleach and a paper towel. Nobody had cleaned the linoleum in some time, and layer upon layer of grime lifted off with the fresh vomit.
“If somebody has to fuck my mom, might as well be a guy with a micro-dick like you. She probably wouldn’t even notice.”
“Who’s talking about dicks in there?” somebody called out from the living room.
Trent ignored his friend, nicknamed Gay Mike for obvious reasons, and walked to the kitchen wearing only a pair of tighty whiteys that didn’t have much white left in them. The sight was made even more charming by the amount of body hair sprouting in every direction from the police officer’s voluminous body. He grabbed a Gatorade from the fridge and then pushed around takeout containers as he tried to find something edible for lunch. Trent had to go to work soon even though he was still technically drunk and it was his day off. But some kind of rioting was going on, and the chief made it quite clear that saying no was not an option.
Vidu flushed the toilet and followed Trent into the kitchen with a determined look on his face. “I want my forty dollars back, by the way. After all, the stripper never showed up here last night. I paid for titties. Where are the titties you had promised?”
“I’ll have to get it to you later. I gave the whore-wrangler money up front,” Trent said and subconsciously rubbed his nose. This was a clue as to where the money actually went, but knowing Trent, it wouldn’t take a detective to figure that out.
“This is unacceptable. You never end up paying me back,” Vidu said, his voice rising and his hands clenched.
“Ah, do you want some lotion for the butthurt?” Trent said.
“I’ll take your lotion and shove it where—”
“Apu, we’ve gone over this several times, but let me reiterate,” Trent said. “You couldn’t fight your way out of a wet vagina, so you’d best simmer down. I said I’d pay you back, now fucking drop it.” Trent shoved his head inside the fridge and the hairy sight he left behind was a clear and gross indication that the discussion was over.
Disappointed in the outcome but realizing he had no leverage over the bully, Vidu focused on his plans for the rest of the morning. He would rally any friends that wanted to go with him and walk to the nearby 5k race to see a girl he’d been trying to date.
Vidu convinced his mild-mannered friend, Jim, to go with him. His other friend, Matt – also known as Left-Nut because of a health issue caused by a lightning-strike – decided to tag along uninvited. Left-Nut had struck out with the ladies numerous times the night before and was seemingly in the mood to extend the streak. He said he wanted to scout the local talent and that girls in spandex would cure his hangover.
Vidu was unable to convince Left-Nut otherwise, and so minutes later the three men exited the smelly apartment just in time to see their other friend, Charlie, walking up the porch stairs. He was barefoot, shirtless and sporting a black eye. The balding substitute teacher was tightlipped about what had happened, but after some prodding they convinced him to grab appropriate clothing and go with them.
They had a long walk ahead of them, but it was a gorgeous summer morning – except for the heat – and they knew some fresh air would do them all good. The group of thirtysomethings had been friends since their fraternity days in college, and the bachelor party was a good excuse for everyone involved to cut loose and relive some of their glory days.
For most of the gang, the years since college had been unkind in a myriad of ways. Vidu was desperately seeking citizenship, Charlie was living paycheck to paycheck while losing his confidence, and Jim had gotten trapped underneath his overbearing wife’s thumb. And then there was Left-Nut, who had more issues than Playboy.
The friends walked down picturesque Damen Avenue while Charlie begrudgingly filled them in on his unsavory adventures. In summary, he’d unwittingly slept with a hooker, didn’t have the money to pay, and fled the woman’s Polish pimp after getting pummeled. So yeah, it had been one of those kinds of nights.
After receiving the obligatory round of shit-talking from his friends, Charlie briefly returned fire with ample ammunition and then quickened his walking pace, bringing the group to the finish line of the ongoing 5k charity race.
Here they waited for Julia, Vidu’s alleged love interest and first-time runner. He assured them she would be crossing at any moment, but more and more people finished the race and Julia wasn’t even in sight.
Left-Nut quickly got bored and decided to strike up conversations with several attractive women, immediately earning threats of restraining orders and ass-kickings. Nonplussed, he returned to his friends and shrugged. “Lesbians. I’ve been running into a lot of them lately.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what it was,” Charlie said, peering at the man’s “Orgasm Donor” t-shirt while shaking his head. “Nice shirt, by the way. And you wonder why girls look at you like a turd with frosting on it.”
“Blow me.”
Vidu ignored his squabbling friends and rudely pushed his way to the front of the crowd, stepping on toes and shoving children aside. Then he spotted his crush coming down the road at a slow but steady pace. “Go, Ju
lia!” he yelled. “You can do it, you’re almost there.”
Sweating profusely, the chubby yet surprisingly attractive woman slowed down while waving at her friend, happy for the support. Then, suddenly, a man burst from the crowd and tackled her to the ground.
Assuming it was a mugging, Vidu ran to Julia’s aid, and although he was terrified, punched the man square in the face. He reached back to hit the stranger again but stopped mid-swing as the pain in his hand radiated outwards. Two of Vidu’s fingers had been bitten clean off, and as he screamed in pain and horror, several other men knocked him down hard. They instantly tore him to pieces while the panicked crowd took off in every direction.
On his stomach, surrounded and helpless, Vidu could hear Charlie yelling as he locked eyes with Julia only feet away. He wanted to comfort her, to say something, anything. But tunnel vision kicked in and his consciousness poured away like water down the drain.
Charlie grabbed his friend’s squirming legs and pulled him from the dog pile, but Vidu simply used the freedom of movement to trip a nearby woman and spared no time feasting upon her with gruesome efficiency.
That was enough for Charlie and Jim, and they took off as well, quickly catching an already fleeing Left-Nut. Minutes later they reached Charlie’s apartment after dodging countless infected maniacs. But like poor Vidu, their nightmare had only just begun.
* * *
Zombie. Infected. Demon. Moron. It didn’t matter what you called him. With one bite, Vidu had morphed from a mild-mannered loser to a remorseless killer. The modest-sized part of the man’s brain responsible for thinking had shut down, leaving his frequent thoughts of boredom, confusion and sexual frustration a thing of the past. In their place was one overriding obsession: the need to eat. No candy bar, cheeseburger, or even his favorite dish of curried mutton from back home would do. What Vidu craved was human flesh, and the drive pushing him to get it was more powerful than any addiction modern man had to contend with. The hunger was all encompassing and downright primal.
Vidu took another sloppy bite from his latest victim and stood up. The man before him had undergone the change himself, and no longer appeared as a food item. In fact, as far as Vidu was concerned, it was as if the guy had vanished into thin air.
Instantly Vidu’s hunger returned in earnest, and he was back on the prowl. With hundreds of spectators and runners surrounded by an ever-growing pack of cannibals, it was a target rich environment before him. The hapless stragglers were like baby turtles crossing a beach, beset by predators on all sides while being picked off one by one. The end result for them was much the same, with only a handful breaking through to “safety.”
Soon the finish line area experienced an odd calm once everyone there was either dead or infected, and the sound of chewing created a dull but rhythmic chorus. Vidu’s stomach roiled once again, but it was not filled with greasy super-nachos this time. He was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, but far from satiated. With no prey in sight he was forced to test his newfound zombie powers. Similar to the way that a blind person’s other senses become heightened, Vidu’s brain shifted power to the remaining areas responsible for the primitive tasks of long forgotten ancestors.
His nostrils flared as he breathed in deeply, picking up scents and aromas once too subtle to detect. Likewise, Vidu’s hearing range had grown considerably. The thinly built man was no super-villain by any stretch of the imagination, but he was quite deadly. Several people talking in a nearby alleyway found this out in short order.
They had stepped outside a quiet café to grab a smoke, completely unaware of the horrendous scene unfolding around the corner. When Vidu approached, ominously silent in his orange Ed Hardy shirt covered in blood, the two men thought it was a prank from their zany boss. It wasn’t.
Vidu bit one man’s shoulder and absorbed a punch to the eye from the second man without blinking. He chased both of the waiters out of the alley and into the street where they were met by a roadblock of teeth.
Robbed of his meal, Vidu took off in search of other opportunities elsewhere, and boy did he find them. Other than a few bullets whistling past his head from a survivalist trapped on the roof of an Argentinian steakhouse, he met no other resistance. And so Vidu leisurely snacked, munched, and murdered his way down the middle of the road.
As luck would have it, ten minutes later he ended up right back in front of Charlie’s apartment. Music from a crashed ice-cream truck played eerily as violence and mayhem enveloped the up-and-coming area. Zombification met gentrification head on, and won. There went the neighborhood.
A handful of infected individuals pounded on Charlie’s front door and the racket grabbed Vidu’s attention. He was about to join them when a jukebox kicked on, playing the classic piano score from Bennie and the Jets.
Vidu turned in time to see the neon sign light up at Ned and Eileen’s, the local dive bar and all-around dump. The owner was a slightly deaf one-legged hag that lived above the bar and opened up whenever she damned well felt like it. That morning, first call just happened to be during a zombie apocalypse. Talk about a crummy shift.
The bartender opened the door and Vidu strolled into the smoke-filled bar much as he had countless times before. Only this time, as Elton John hit the high notes, Vidu went berserk.
One local drunk had already saddled up to the bar, having slept there overnight in the basement flophouse. He didn’t even look up from his watered-down draft beer when Vidu bit into the side of his face. The man fell forward and his jaw shattered a glass mug. Even worse, the shards went right through his neck and caused blood to spurt all the way onto the pool table.
Seeing the carnage, the handlebar-mustachioed bartender wasted no time fleeing out the front door where he was instantly devoured by roving cannibals that were not bothered by his questionable grooming choices. The man’s entrails, lungs, and heart glistened in the light of the morning sun as the zombies plucked them from his body in a macabre smorgasbord.
Meanwhile, Vidu gorged on the inebriated loser inside, picking at every soft part he could find. So intent on his meal was he that he didn’t notice the person sneaking up behind him. On one foot.
Wack! A heavy weight smashed into Vidu’s nose and knocked him backwards where he crashed into the wall. A wooden shelf collapsed from the impact and dumped a massive pile of dusty Christmas decorations on top of him. Still chewing on a juicy piece of cheek muscle, Vidu didn’t seem to mind much.
He finished the salty morsel, shrugged off the angel ornaments and snowman knickknacks, and went to stand up. But he couldn’t move. Someone had handcuffed him to a radiant heater.
“Damn, you really did a number on Old Jake there,” the elderly woman said as she reattached her prosthetic leg. Her name was Eileen, a senile eighty-year-old bar owner with eccentricities galore. “It’s a shame too, ‘cause he was my best customer. Boring as hell, but he paid his tab. And he tipped well.”
Eileen walked to the front window and looked outside at the growing pandemonium. She had seen some major shit go down over the years, but nothing like this. No one had.
She calmly turned the neon sign off and twisted the deadbolt before lowering the blinds. Then she walked back towards the bar to pour herself a drink from her private stock. “But this place has seen its share of death before.”
Vidu shot towards her but got yanked back as the handcuff dug deeply into his wrist. His infected blood trickled onto the floor and mixed with Old Jake’s.
Eileen grabbed a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle and poured three fingers of the expensive bourbon into a glass. She looked at Vidu as if sizing him up, and then downed the drink in one gulp. The widower poured another.
“Those handcuffs were my son’s when he was on the force. James was his name, and he passed a long time ago. Before you were even born.” She downed the smooth whiskey and refilled her glass. “Died right there playing pool. His partner reached back to take a shot and the stick smacked James’s revolver. It went off and the bullet severe
d an artery in his leg. That was on Christmas Day, 1977. Same year Elvis died.”
Vidu continued to struggle as Eileen walked back around to the window and peeked outside, just in time to see some of Vidu’s friends shooting zombies before piling into an SUV and taking off at high speed.
She smiled. “Ahh, that’s where I recognized you. You’re the Paki that hangs out with those guys from across the street, aren’t you? So what’s going on? You and everyone else in the neighborhood hopped up on angel dust? Bath salts? Krokodil?”
Of course, Vidu had no reply other than to bite the air and drool like an idiot. “Surprised an old lady knows about that stuff?” she asked and unplugged the extension cord running to the jukebox.
Eileen walked a little closer and Vidu’s free arm shot out to grab her. But the old lady merely caught his wrist and soon had his other arm tied to the bronze bar rail with the cord. She was much stronger than she looked.
“One of your friends, the one called Smokey, has been selling pot in the bathroom here for years. I’ve learned all sorts of stuff from him.” With a wistful look on her wrinkled face, she stopped her monologue to pour and down another drink. “Sweet, sweet Smokey. Anyway, I noticed you never left a tip in all the times you’ve been in here drinking. Now that was rude, maybe even bordering on naughty. And eating my best customer, well, that was just plain rotten.”
Eileen sauntered over to Vidu as seductively as a one-legged octogenarian could and promptly slapped him across his slobbering face. Then she reached down the front of his pants and fished around for a moment. “So it looks like I’m gonna get that tip after all.” Disappointment crossed her face, and then she shrugged. “I guess at my age beggars can’t be choosers, am I right?” She dropped her actual granny panties to the ground as Old Jake’s lifeless eyes looked on.
What happened next was lurid and perverted, but had Vidu been consciously participating, he would have enjoyed every second of it. All fifteen of them.
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