Genesis

by Jack Geurts

  Only thing is...Sarah isn’t in there.

  When they come out again, there’s a zombie standing at the entrance to the cave. Kitty’s the only one who recognises him.

  It’s Ron.

  Only he isn’t called Ron anymore.

  He’s motherfucking Roy now.

  Grey-skinned and white-eyed, but also looking like the human version of one of those scratching posts you give to cats. Clearly, he got his ass handed to him in that tavern brawl with Ike.

  “Where’s Sarah?” Barney says.

  But Roy says nothing...because he’s a zombie.

  Two seconds later, Sarah walks into view.

  Only she isn’t called Sarah anymore.

  She’s Susan now.

  Why?

  Because she’s a motherfucking zombie, too!

  Her throat’s been ripped out and her stomach’s sliced open and totally hollow, yet somehow she’s still walking.

  “Jesus Christ...” Barney says. “Sarah...”

  Then, about a dozen other zombies come to stand behind Roy and Susan, all with minor variations on their human names.

  Needless to say, some serious shit’s about to go down.

  “Take the others and get out of here,” Ishmael says to Barney. “I’ll deal with these guys.”

  “There’s too many,” Barney says. “You can’t beat all of them.”

  Ishmael just gives him a look, like, “Can’t I?”

  Then he draws two swords and charges at the zombies. They lunge at him, but he ducks and spins and dodges, swinging the swords and taking off heads in a blur.

  Barney hustles the others away, back towards the wagon.

  Roy and Susan get away from Ishmael and run after them.

  Barney looks back, sees them coming. “Run!” he shouts. “Run!”

  But Susan jumps onto Barney and sinks her teeth into the back of his neck, like a vampire bat – or a Vampire Zombie™ bat (see below).

  Barney screams, and staggers for a few more steps before dropping to the ground with a thud.

  Debbie turns, just in time to see Roy diving at her. He grabs her neck in his teeth and shakes her like a dog with a chew toy until she goes limp.

  Just as this is happening, Susan leaves Barney’s corpse and latches onto Kitty, dragging her to the ground like a lion with a sick antelope, chomping down on her windpipe.

  They always seem to go for the neck, huh?

  I guess these are, like, vampire zombies.

  Holy shit...

  Did I just create a new genre?

  Don’t even think about stealing it – I’m trademarking ‘vampire zombies’ right now.

  Like, as we speak.

  Alright...

  There it is. Done.

  I now own Vampire Zombies™ as a concept.

  Go on, I dare you to write a Vampire Zombie™ novel. I dare you.

  Oh, shit...what about werewolf zombies?

  Man, I’ve got so many good ideas to trademark.

  I’m even going to go back and edit the mention of vampire zombies above to include the little trademark logo. Which...I guess means that in the finished version, it’ll play like a punchline-before-the-setup kind of joke.

  Wait, is that even a thing? Would it work?

  You know what, I’ll sort it out later.

  Or...maybe I won’t.

  Probably shouldn’t be typing this in the main document. Might be a good idea to create a separate document for notes and then people won’t have to read my stream-of consciousness tangents.

  Okay, checklist for today:

  Learn comedy. See if punchlines have to come after setups.

  We’re running low on milk. Get some.

  And Doritos.

  Goddamn it! Is this still The New Old Testament doc? I’ll edit that out later.

  Now, where were we...?

  Oh, yeah.

  So, Ike and Becca are the only ones who make it back to the wagon. They’ve just started moving when Becca sees Susan running at them, full-speed.

  “Ike...” she says, panic in her voice. “Ike!”

  Just as Susan leaps into the air, an arrow bursts out through her forehead and she goes down.

  Behind her, Ishmael stands there, lowering his bow like a fucking boss.

  Cue cool music.

  He runs forward (with/without slow-motion – either way) and cuts Susan’s head off before she comes back to life.

  “Get outta here!” Ishmael says, and Becca whips the donkey into action.

  Ike looks back at his brother as they trundle off, seeming for the first time to recognise him. Ishmael stares back, and the two share a quiet moment before the Old Testament Road Warrior/Scottish Highlander continues lopping heads.

  Once he’s killed them all, he walks over to Barney, who’s choking on his own blood, gurgling. It sounds like he’s trying to say, “Help me...”

  But Ishmael can’t take that chance.

  He knows there’s no coming back for this guy, so he cuts his fucking head clean off.

  No hesitation. No regret.

  Because that’s what a hero does. He gets the job done even when it’s not glamorous or glorious. Even when it’s dark and gritty, and the lines are blurred between hero and villain. Even when he can clearly see that Ike’s been mostly rehabilitated and doesn’t seem to pose a danger to society anymore – so therefore, the same might be possible with Barney.

  But that’s not cinematic enough.

  That requires time and patience, and Ishmael doesn’t have the time or the patience. It’s easier to just kill him and get it over with, so that’s what Ishmael does. He does it, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because he’s lazy, and it looks heroic, and maybe, just maybe, he kind of likes killing people. He likes the rush it gives him. He likes the stories he can tell later on to score free drinks and get laid. He likes hiding behind the mask of ‘anti-hero’ because it makes him seem complex and brooding and morally-grey, when really, he just can’t be bothered going through the process of rehabilitating poor, old Barney, because rehabilitation doesn’t drop panties.

  Murder drops panties.

  Ishmael proceeds to behead Kitty and Debbie in the same ruthless fashion, as they, too, beg for their lives.

  “No! No!”

  Chop.

  “No! Please...”

  Chop.

  Suddenly, everything’s quiet.

  Ishmael stands over a dozen headless zombies, breathing hard. He looks up at the wagon receding into the distance, and smiles. Then he walks off in the other direction like a total fucking badass.

  Don’t worry – we’ll get back to Ishmael.

  Meanwhile, Ike and Becca travel back to camp and do what all young couples do after their loved ones have been mauled to death by zombies and had their heads cut off.

  They fuck to replace them.

  They fuck, and fuck, and fuck again.

  They continue to fuck until they realise Becca’s just about as barren as her mother-in-law was.

  Now, in the midst of all this fucking, Ike’s recovered the ability to speak, and he’s told her about God and everything, so she prays to God, being like, “Dude, you better let me get pregnant, or else...”

  So, God comes down and he’s like, “Or else what?”

  And she’s like, “Holy shit, you are real. Never mind that, I was just testing you. But seriously, man – are you gonna let me have a kid or what?”

  And he’s like, “Yeah, I guess.”

  So, he snaps his fingers and, suddenly, she’s not barren anymore.

  Nine months later, she’s giving birth to twins. But it wasn’t an easy pregnancy.

  No, sir.

  Those fetuses fought each other like her womb was a goddamn MMA cage – just constantly going at it.

  So she calls out to God again, like, “Seriously, man, what’s wrong with these fucking kids?”

  I should note that God had been smoking weed with his on-again, off-again boyfriend Enoch
, so when he comes down this time, he’s pretty baked.

  He goes, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.”

  And Becca’s like, “What in the effing fuck does that mean?”, but God just coughs, and takes another hit from his joint.

  Then he just kind of wanders off, and Becca’s left sitting there, even more confused than before.

  Finally, the big day arrives. The happy couple are very excited to welcome their beautiful children into the world.

  Well...more eager to get it over with than anything else.

  Becca’s about two weeks overdue, so she’s starting to get really fucking uncomfortable. Ike’s been having an even tougher time, because he’s had to block all of that out.

  Now, there’s no doctors or midwives around, so the job of actually delivering the kids falls on their undead father (Zombie Dad™).

  Ike crouches down like a baseball catcher in front of Becca’s splayed-out legs, only without the mitt or the mask. He’s not quite sure what to expect, but it’s certainly not what happens next.

  As the kid begins to crown, Ike tilts his head, confused.

  Slowly, it emerges...

  I say ‘it’ because, at this point, Ike’s not even sure if this thing is human.

  It’s all red and slimy and covered in hair.

  Meanwhile, Ike’s gone white as a ghost. He vomits right there in front of his birthing wife, recovering just in time to take hold of his freakish, alien offspring.

  He holds it up and vomits again, this time all over the kid.

  Picture a tiny, red, hairy, slimy Quasimodo, and that’s pretty much what Ike’s looking at – all deformed and mangled, making these awful rasping, gargling sounds.

  Not that Ike’s an oil painting himself – he is a zombie, after all – but the kid’s really pushing it.

  Then Becca starts pushing again, and Ike remembers there’s still another one to go.

  “Oh, Jesus...” he says, and holds Quasimodo in one hand, ready to catch his presumably-identical twin brother in the other.

  The second kid’s got a tight grip on Quasimodo’s heel, like they were in the middle of a fight when Quasimodo was suddenly sucked out of the cage and the second kid was like, “Not so fast...”

  But the hand doesn’t look too bad.

  In fact, as the second kid emerges, Ike’s pleasantly surprised.

  He’s not red or hairy or deformed in any way. He’s just a normal-looking kid. A little pale, but that’s alright.

  “Oh, thank God...” Ike says, breathing a sigh of relief.

  But then he notices that the kid’s really pale.

  As he lifts him up to get a look at his face, the kid looks back at him with demonic red eyes.

  “Jesus Christ!” Ike says, almost dropping the kid.

  As they’ll eventually discover, the kid has a very rare condition known as albinism, meaning the pigment in the skin that allows people to get a tan (melanin) – his body doesn’t produce it. That goes for his hair, too. Everything’s ghost-white, except his eyes.

  And in a world where everyone he’s likely to meet is either olive-skinned or darker, the poor kid’s gonna stick out like a sore thumb.

  Ike lays both of them down on blankets and swaddles them up.

  Becca’s just lying there, exhausted. She can’t see the kids yet, and Ike wonders which one he should give her first.

  Either one is likely to give her a heart attack.

  He figures the albino’s more normal-looking, so he’ll use that kid as a chaser – give her Quasimodo first and get it over with.

  Becca’s eyes are half-closed, but when she sees the thing that’s just come out of her womb, they snap wide open.

  Like her husband, Becca’s immediate response is to projectile-vomit all over the kid.

  In time, however, they come to accept the ugly, little bastard. Mainly, because he’s a good hunter and brings them food.

  They call him Esau (pronounced ee-saw), which presumably means Quasimodo in Hebrew.

  The albino, they call Jacob (but we’ll call him Jake), and despite his condition, he’s younger, better looking. He’s got a name that rolls off the tongue a little easier.

  Esau’s all hunch-backed and hairy and looking like he’s just had skin grafts after a fire. But eventually, he learns how to hunt, and that’s where he really shines. It helps that he can blend in with the animals and then hunt them from within the group like Leo in The Departed.

  It gets hard, though.

  Sometimes, he makes friends with the animals. Sometimes, he falls in love. Then, when it comes time to betray them, he can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.

  The last time that really fucked with him was when he infiltrated a pride of lions. The Simba of the group (Lion King II-era Simba) took him under his wing. Esau fell in love with his daughter, Kiara, and was all set to become the future leader of the pride.

  Then, he got hungry.

  He killed Simba in his sleep and Kiara found him the next morning beside the open carcass of her dad. Esau was covered in blood, just ripping chunks of meat off his ribcage and eating them raw.

  When they saw each other, Esau was like, “Wait...it’s not what it looks like.”

  But it was totally what it looked like.

  He still thought about her from time to time, and wondered if she’d ever forgive him. Occasionally, he’d see her out wandering the plains, and she’d see him.

  They’d linger there for a moment, just staring at each other.

  Then she’d turn, and run away.

  After that, Esau learned to detach himself from the work, and stopped getting involved with his targets. Pretty soon, he was a master hunter, despite only having one arm that actually worked. The other one was all shrivelled and just kind of dangled uselessly from his shoulder.

  But, like all kids with an inferiority complex, he was motivated to be better than his brother, to prove himself.

  So, he succeeded where Jake couldn’t.

  See, Jake’s not really an outdoors kind of guy. He likes staying in the tent, writing Gilgamesh fan fiction and generally staying away from the sun. When he does go out, he covers himself up from head to foot and takes a lot of shit from his brother for it.

  As the kids grow up, Esau’s hunting skills earn him the approval of his dad, while Jake is most definitely a momma’s boy.

  To bring things unnecessarily full-circle, Esau is the Cain of this story. Jake is the Abel.

  Anyway, one evening, Esau comes in from a long day in the field and he’s starving, right? As you would be. Jake’s inside (of course), and he’s cooking up a stew. Been watching Jamie Oliver’s 30-Minute Meals and now he’s thinking he’s some kind of chef.

  So Esau hobbles in, one leg shorter than the other, and he’s like, “That shit ready yet?”

  Jake’s like, “Easy, man, it will be. Have a drink.”

  So, Esau has a drink and puts his feet up.

  When the food’s ready, Jake ladles out a few bowls and holds one out to Esau. Esau goes to grab it, but Jake pulls it back, saying, “First, you gotta sell me your birthright.”

  Esau frowns, glaring at him.

  As we’ll see from here on out, Jake’s one devious motherfucker.

  He knows that Esau’s the older brother. Knows he’s Ike’s favourite. Knows he’s going to inherit everything when Ike dies, and Jake won’t have a pot to piss in.

  But Jake also knows what Esau’s kryptonite is.

  The guy’s a fucking animal. A slave to his appetites. Not the sharpest tool in the shed and not a lot of foresight going on there, either.

  Esau’s like the Incredible Hulk, going, “Esau hungry, Esau eat.”

  Jake, on the other hand...he’s playing the long game.

  He’s also had it up to here with Esau giving him shit for his pigment deficiency, and he wants that self-righteous motherfucker to pay. />
  So Esau says, “Fine, whatever, just give me that bowl.”

  So Jake hands the stew over and Esau goes to town on it.

  The whole time, Jake’s standing there, watching him, rubbing his hands like a Bond villain, going, “Yes...eat up, you fool. Little do you know, you’ve just given away everything...”

  Esau looks up from his bowl and, with a mouthful, goes, “What?”

  Jake shakes his head, suddenly innocent. “Nothing.”

  Esau continues eating.

  Jake starts rubbing his hands together again, going, “Yes...that’s right, gulp it down, you savage. In time, you’ll realise that...”

  Esau looks up again. “What?”

  “Nothing, man.”

  He keeps eating.

  Jake goes to rub his hands together a third time, but Esau looks over at him.

  He stops, waits.

  When Esau continues to stare, Jake sighs and walks out – motherfucker won’t even let him get off a good monologue.

  Only when he’s gone does Esau resume shovelling food down his gullet.

  “Moron,” he says, with a mouthful.

  GENESIS 26

  Whole Lotta Lot

  Ike and Becca are living the ancient Middle Eastern Dream.

  They’ve got their kids, their tents, their livestock. A sweet little spot in the Negev desert, right out in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.

  What more do you need?

  I’ll tell you what you don’t need, and that’s a famine.

  And that’s exactly what happens just as Ike and Becca are getting comfortable in their new lives as parents and survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

  The crops start to die, then the animals, and once they’ve chowed down on their very last goat, Ike’s like, “Fuck....now what?”

  Probably something he should have considered a lot earlier, but Ike’s not really a forward-thinking kind of guy. He’s like his son, Esau, who just sold his birthright to Jake for a bowl of stew.

  He was hungry, he ate.

  Fuck thinking about what you’re gonna eat tomorrow, or the next day. That shit’ll figure itself out.

  Also, we have to remember that Ike’s a zombie. People tend to forget that.

  So, anyway, there they are, camped in the middle of the desert with no food. They send Esau out to hunt, but all the animals have gone off looking for greener pastures. They’re smart.