by Jack Geurts
“The fuck are you doing here?” Ron says.
“Just having a drink.”
“Well, take it somewhere else, pal. You ain’t wanted here.” He lifts the cup to his bottom lip and spits into it. “Also, I’ll be taking that cave back. Your wife can stay, but you’re gonna have to find somewhere else to rot.”
Abe’s hand grips the cup tighter and he tries to stay cool. “I’m not leaving.”
The whole tavern goes quiet.
If jukeboxes had been invented, this is where we’d hear one scratch and stop playing.
Ron leans forward. “What was that, pal?”
“I said, I’m not leaving. You sold me that cave for two-thirds of a blow job and a reach-around. Remember?”
A few glances in Ron’s direction like, “What the fuck?”, but Ron shakes his head like this dude’s crazy.
“Prove it,” Ron says. “I didn’t sign no contract.”
“This is my home now,” Abe says. “Whether you like it or not. Whether I like it or not.”
At this point, Ron stands up, and all his biker friends stand up with him like some shit’s about to go down.
“You better get, boy,” says Ron. “Before things get ugly.”
Abe looks around the room and decides that’s probably a good idea. He finishes his drink and turns to Kitty.
“You wanna come meet my son?” he says.
She smiles, thinking he’s taking her up on her father-son offer. They leave. Ron and his boys sit back down to resume drinking.
“What was that guy talking about, Ron?” one of them says. Ron ignores him. Spits.
About thirty seconds later, they hear wagon wheels outside. Then, they hear something tap lightly against the outside of the building.
One of the bikers goes over and opens the door to see what it is...
Turns out, the entire doorway has been blocked by the back of a wagon...
And on top of that wagon is a cage...
And the door to that cage is open, lining up perfectly with the doorway of the tavern...
And inside the cage is a figure, crouched in the moonlight filtering in through the bars...
The biker barely has time to notice the figure’s grey skin before it leaps at him, tackling him back into the tavern and onto the ground.
He tears the guy’s face off and he screams.
“Mother of God...” Ron says, in a terrified whisper. “It’s Ike!”
Everyone else shouts and backs away, knocking over tables and chairs.
Ike leaps off post-op-Nicholas-Cage-before-he-gets-John-Travolta’s-face and latches onto the next guy, tearing out his beating heart like freakin’ Temple of Doom.
Outside, Abe and Kitty stare at the tavern, listening to the carnage going on inside.
“That’s my boy,” Abe says, with a warm smile.
He turns to Kitty. “You wanna go for a walk?” he says.
“Is it alright to leave him there?”
“Yeah, he’ll tucker himself out eventually. Besides, the only place he can go is back in the cage.”
Kitty shrugs, and off they go, holding hands. Walking down the moonlit street with the blood-curdling screams of biblical bikers filling the night air.
GENESIS 24-25
Virgin Territory
Barney’s been on the road a while.
The big, dopey bastard’s riding an even bigger, dopier camel, and they’re making their way east, to Haran.
There, he’s promised Abe that he’ll find a wife for his undead son, Ike. But it has to be someone that’s related to him – that way, Ike will smell his own blood in her veins and hopefully, decide not to eat her alive on the spot.
Hopefully.
He did maul his own mother to death and then straight away try to kill his dad, so there’s really no reason to believe it’ll work, other than God saying that once Ike’s consummated the marriage, he should calm down and stop trying to kill everything.
Fingers crossed.
Eventually, Barney arrives in Haran and gives his camel a drink at the well. It’s evening, so all the women of the town are coming out to draw their water. Looking around, he realises he has no fucking idea how to tell which one is related to Abe.
So he does the only thing he can do.
He walks through the crowd, being like, “Are you related to Nahor?”, “Are you related to Nahor?”, “Are you related to Nahor?”
(Nahor being Abe’s brother and therefore, Ike’s uncle.)
Now, it helps to picture all these women as being from the Jersey Shore, so as he moves through the crowd, they’re all like, “No,” “Eww,” “Gross,” “Fuck off,” “Fuck off, you creep,” “Fuck off and die,” or otherwise just flat-out ignore him.
Eventually, Barney gets frustrated and goes up to a nearby hill, cupping his hands around his mouth and calling out in a booming voice, “Is anyone here related to Nahor?”
A torrent of abuse is hurled up at him – abuse implying he has sex with guys and animals and little kids, as well as a few things he’s never heard before that truly shock him.
When it all dies down, Barney’s about to give up hope.
Then he sees a single woman with her hand raised.
He rushes down to talk to her, wading through the sea of women who shove him and hurl insults at him – not a real enlightened crowd, the Haranites. The woman with her hand raised says her name’s Rebekah (but we’ll just call her Becca), and that she’s Nahor’s great-granddaughter (so Ike’s third cousin, twice removed, or...something).
Barney breathes a sigh of relief. He says he’s Abe’s servant and that he’s come all the way from Canaan. Becca invites him back to her place.
After he stows his camel in her family stable (not a euphemism), Barney goes inside to meet the parents. But before he gets there, Becca’s douchebag older brother, Laban, cuts him off.
“You wanna fuck my sister?” he says.
Laban’s the kind of guy who never moved out of home, but still acts tough – like it was his choice not to leave.
“No, sir,” says Barney. “I’m just trying to find a wife for my master’s son.”
“You better not be trying to fuck my sister, man. If anyone’s gonna fuck my sister, it’s gonna be me.”
Barney’s not quite sure how to respond to that, but Laban goes on, “I catch you trying to fuck my sister, I’ll cut your cock and balls off and shove ‘em down my throat.”
Another confused reaction from Barney. “Aren’t you supposed to shove them down my throat?”
But Laban gets all up in his grill, like, “Yeah, that’s what you’d expect, wouldn’t you? But I don’t roll that way, man. I’m all about subverting expectations and fucking with the system.”
“Alright...” says Barney. “That’s...cool, I guess.”
“Yeah, it is cool. It’s really cool. I don’t pander to the masses, man. I say what I want, when I want, and society just has to sit there and deal with it.”
Laban’s about an inch from his face now, staring him down like Barney’s actually arguing with him.
Finally, he’s like, “I’m watching you, buddy.” Then he does that thing where you point two fingers at your own eyes, then those same fingers at whoever it is you’re looking at, just in case they’re deaf.
Then he goes inside.
Barney takes a moment to process the confrontation, then follows him in.
Ten minutes later, they’re all sitting around the table and Barney’s making his sales pitch. Kind of like a biblical Don Draper, but bigger, dumber, less charming.
“So he’s not...dead, exactly, but...not alive, really, either. But, y’know, he’s got a lot of goats. Sheep and stuff. And tents. Man, they’ve got tents...to, to, to spare, y’know?”
Needless to say, Becca’s dad, Bethuel (Huell, for short), isn’t sold on the idea.
Barney’s a Canaanite, after all.
And, as Huell says, “Canaanites are fucking animals. Why should I trust you?”
<
br /> “Well, sir...I might be a Canaanite, but my master’s your uncle. Surely, you can trust him.”
Huell stares at Barney for a long moment.
“You wanna fuck my daughter?” he says.
“No, sir.”
“Good. ‘Cause if anyone’s gonna fuck my daughter, it’s gonna be me. Or Laban.”
Laban nods, like, “Damn right” – like this is just some unspoken agreement between them.
The whole time, Becca’s mom is just eating, sipping her wine. Barney gets the impression that this kind of shit happens all the time, and she’s either blocking it out or she’s just gotten used to it. If this were the modern day, she’d be drinking white wine and popping Xanax like Skittles.
Barney shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He goes, “Look, I got no interest in your daughter, sir. I’m just a delivery boy.”
Huell and Laban continue to glare at him.
“I got money,” Barney says.
Huell raises an eyebrow. “How much?”
Next thing you know, Barney’s emptying out a pouch of silver and Huell and Laban’s eyes light up. They clamber up onto the table, crouching there, counting it out like a couple of Gollums.
Becca goes to take a piece of silver, but Laban hisses and slaps her hand away.
Becca’s mom continues to eat and sip her wine, blocking out the world.
Finally, Huell looks up at Barney and smiles. “I think we can come to an arrangement,” he says.
So they break out the good wine and celebrate.
They celebrate so hard that at one point, Laban’s standing naked against a wall with an apple on his head, while Huell prepares to throw a knife at it. He’s completely hammered, swaying on the spot. Laban’s in a similar state.
“Do it, you fucking pussy,” Laban says, slurring the absolute shit out of his words.
Barney’s sitting off to the side with Becca, and they’re passing a jug of wine between them. At one point, she puts her hand on his leg and he looks over at her with an eyebrow raised, but then Huell throws the knife and misses the apple by a mile.
Hits Laban right in the stomach.
Laban groans and goes down.
“Oh, shit...” Barney says, and rushes over to help him.
Huell laughs, then goes to wake his poor wife up. When she sees her son lying there with a knife in his belly, she sighs, like, “Not again,” and proceeds to patch him up.
Huell’s too drunk to do anything except continue drinking, so he just sits there, calling his son a pussy and criticising his wife’s first-aid skills, despite the fact that she’s literally saving the kid’s life.
Meanwhile, Barney says he’s got a big journey ahead of him, so he staggers off to bed, Becca showing him the way.
He wakes up in the morning with Becca draped across him and freaks out.
“Oh, shit,” he says, but the second he sits up, the hangover hits him. He holds his head, groaning, thinking, “What did I do last night?”
Becca rolls over and she’s like, “Mornin’, handsome.”
He tells her to be quiet and they get dressed, then creep out into the living room.
Clay jugs are scattered and broken everywhere. Huell’s passed out naked on the floor, Laban on the table – his stitches looking infected as fuck.
Clearly, a stab-wound didn’t put an end to the night.
Barney and Becca tip-toe across the room, steal some supplies, and are about to leave the house when they see a woman standing ominously in the doorway like an axe murderer.
Barney jumps in fright, like, “Jesus Christ!”, but Becca’s like, “Don’t worry, she’s just the nurse.”
The woman who Becca lovingly describes as ‘just the nurse’ is Deborah (or Debbie, for short), and she’s not a nurse like we’d think of a nurse today. She was basically a maid who breastfed Becca as a baby because her mom either couldn’t or didn’t want to, or was just too consistently drunk.
The three of them head out to the stable, load up Barney’s camel, steal another two camels for Becca and Debbie, then hightail it out of there, heading west, back to Canaan.
Barney’s not only afraid of Huell and Laban discovering that he stole two of their camels...
Or that he inadvertently had sex with Becca...
Or that he left without saying goodbye...
It’s more that the silver he gave them was counterfeit.
Hopefully, that wouldn’t come back to bite him or any of Abe’s descendants in the ass.
(Don’t worry, it will.)
The journey back is a long one, and against Barney’s better judgement, he and Becca bang a few more times. Debbie even joins in on one occasion. He knows he’s supposed to be delivering Ike a virgin bride, but surely the kid won’t notice – he is a zombie, after all.
And since Barney’s done it once, he figures a few more times won’t hurt. It was the first one he shouldn’t have done, but now that he did, he might as well keep going. Becca’s certainly up for it, and now that Sarah’s dead, it looks like he’ll be stuck with his hand for a while. Unless, of course, Debbie’s interested, which she seems to be.
Real romantic, that Barney.
Finally, they arrive back at Abe’s camp, where surprisingly, Ike’s no longer in the cage. Abe’s throwing chunks of meat and the kid’s running out on all-fours to get them, then running back to crouch patiently in front of his dad.
Abe makes him sit, roll over, gives him a scratch behind the ears and calls him a good boy, then throws another chunk of meat and Ike bolts after it.
Since Barney’s been gone, Abe’s got the kid at least partially-trained. He salvaged a few mutilated bodies from the tavern after Ike fell asleep, which he now uses to coax the kid back into his cage and make him do tricks.
So, as Barney and Becca and Debbie roll in to camp and dismount, Ike runs over to them.
In a warning tone like you’d use with a dog, Abe says, “Ike...”
The kid cowers a little, then shuffles cautiously over to the newcomers and sniffs at them.
“It’s alright,” Abe says. “He just takes a little while to get used to new people.”
Ike growls at Barney and Debbie, and Abe’s smacks him on the nose, saying, “No! We don’t growl at people.”
The kid stops growling and moves on to Becca, sniffing her. Immediately, his face softens. He doesn’t growl.
“Oh, he’s adorable,” Becca says, leaning down to pat him. “Yes, you are. Yes, you are.”
Ike closes his eyes, enjoying the pat. He then grabs Becca’s hand and leads her away.
Becca laughs. “Oh, my goodness. You’re very forward.”
Abe laughs too. He’s like, “You crazy kids. Go have fun.”
Ike leads Becca into one of the tents and they proceed to, as his dad put it, have fun.
The tent actually belonged to his dead mother, so out of all the tents, I’m not sure why he chose that one. Kind of fucked up, if you think about it, especially since he’s the one that killed her and has got a perfectly good tent of his own.
Soon enough, Kitty calls out from where she’s standing by Abe’s tent, asking if he’s coming or not.
Abe’s like, “Oh, yeah, right. She’s ovulating.”
“Ovulating?” Barney says. “You’re almost 200 years old.”
“Yeah, but Kitty’s almost 32. Her biological clock’s ticking.”
As Abe shuffles over to fuck the woman young enough to be his great-great-great-great granddaughter, Barney’s thinking not only about how messed up that is, but also how quickly he’s moved on after the death of his wife.
Anyway, pretty soon, both tents are shaking, and Barney and Debbie are standing there awkwardly by their camels.
They look at each other, shrug, and start making out, because why the fuck not?
Time passes.
Ike and Becca continue to fuck.
Abe and Kitty continue to fuck.
Barney and Debbie continue to fuck.
And when t
hey get bored of that, they swap partners and even push the tents together to have a six-way.
Eventually, it proves to be too much for poor old Abe to handle. He has a heart attack during one such orgy and dies at the ripe old age of 175, in the exact same way his dad did.
Both of them doing what they loved.
The next day, Ike, Becca, Kitty, Barney and Debbie take his body to the cave where Sarah’s buried.
They even send word to Ishmael, who meets them at the cave to pay his respects. Ishmael’s a full-grown man now, and a hardened desert warrior. He can shoot a bird out of the air at full gallop and fight thirty men armed with human femurs.
Sorry, that’s ‘fight thirty men armed with nothing but a human femur.’
Either way, it’s impressive.
I want you to picture a cross between Braveheart and Mad Max when you picture Ishmael.
So...Mel Gibson in his prime, basically. But brown-skinned and black-haired, because this is the ancient Middle East, not Hollywood.
Ishmael glares at Ike.
Initially, Barney thinks it’s because Abe chose the son he had with Sarah, while Ishmael and his mother were cast out into the desert to die.
And while that might have something to do with it, it’s mostly because he’s a zombie.
As it turns out, Ishmael’s mother had recently been killed by a zombie.
Well, she’d been bitten by a zombie.
Ishmael was the one who actually killed her. He had to.
Tried a bunch of different ways, too – before he figured out you have to cut their heads off. He stabbed her, beat her, burned her, drowned her, stoned her, staked her, crucified her. He cut her in half, but she crawled towards him like the Terminator. So finally, he cut her head off, and that seemed to do the trick.
Not sure how you get to crucifixion before beheading, but anyway...
Now, Ishmael’s glaring at his brother, Ike, thinking he might have something to do with how this whole zombie plague started. Ike, for his part, doesn’t even seem to recognise Ishmael. He’s just sniffing at their dad’s body, considering a quick, pre-funeral snack and wondering if anyone would mind.
But Abe isn’t getting any less decomposed, so all six of them head into the cave to lay his body down beside Sarah’s.
