by Steve Wands
We turn to go up the stairs, and we find Matt lying by the stairs, passed out. We grab hold, and lift him up the stairs; thankfully Matt is one of the smallest guys I know!
We lay him down on my favorite couch, where I know he’ll be ok; I’m momentarily jealous. There’s more gunfire from downstairs. Lisa runs into the bathroom to grab the first aid kit, while I break Jimmy’s firebox and grab the ax. A different kind of adrenalin washes over me, it’s of the “I’ve watched one too many movies” variety. I take a few quick deep breaths, give Lisa a big kiss, tell her to call the cops, and run back downstairs. I momentarily wonder if Lisa knows anything about the brick wall, but I file it for later and brace myself for the worst…
John has emptied the gun into the zombies; the smoking barrel outstretched towards the corpses that refuse to stay down.
“Headshots aren’t keeping these guys down, Vin, and this piece is done,” says John without looking at me, his gaze focused on the rising dead men. I step forward with my ax ready to chop these fuckers into cold cuts.
John finally looks at me, then at the ax. “Huh, that might work.”
Before Halfa-Head is completely up, I swing the ax and try to lop off the rest of its head. I catch it at about the jaw joint though, and halfway through the ax gets stuck! Instrumental, the other zombie, grabs hold of the ax handle, maybe trying to help his brother, and that thought hits me hard. These guys are brothers. I let go of the ax as John smashes a chair over the Instrumental’s head. The force of the chair-shot finishes the job, turning Halfa-Head into No-Head!
To our mutual dismay, the fuck is still coming. The old lady flashes before my eyes. She did something, placed a curse or something. An old Sicilian curse maybe. I remember my grandparents talking about such things in the old days. This is what I think about.
There’s a scream from Chapel 1. Emilio. Part of me doesn’t care, but if this is a curse, then it’s Emilio that these guys want, not us.
Well, possibly me for my involvement, who knows.
“Come on!” I yell, partially to John, partially to the zombies, as we bound into Chapel 1. I can imagine what’s happening. There’s an airshaft that leads to the backyard here, behind the altar area, it’s the only way to get out there since Jimmy had our backyard door replaced with a wall. The asshole didn’t want to promote visitors going out there. More symmetry, I know. Anyway, it’s not easy to go through there, believe me I’ve tried, and I’m pretty sure Emilio is stuck in there.
As we move around the altar, I see that the casket has been toppled over, and Mrs. Fesko’s body is gone. I gulp as Emilio is indeed stuck; only his lower half can be seen sticking out of the shaft…
“HELP!!! YAAAH!!! HRRLLP!!!
…but the now the zombified woman is feasting on his rear-end! For some reason, after all we’ve seen already, this makes John instantly vomit. I guess literally eating someone’s ass is way grosser than expected for him!
Mrs. Fesko turns to us, distracted by the hurling. We give each other a look that means ‘time to go!’, but the zombie brothers have entered the room. We grab a couple of folding chairs and toss them their way. John’s is a direct hit, mine isn’t.
“If we can get them behind us, we can lock ‘em in here!” I think out loud, not trying to wonder if the zombies can understand me at all. Meanwhile, she-zombie is closing in behind us. John picks up another chair and backs her up, giving one final push into Emilio’s flailing bloody legs.
Grabbing a couple more chairs we make our move. We split up, each of us going around either side of the brothers. This works better than expected, as neither of us even have to swing our chairs. We simply go around them and get out into the lobby. I quickly close the chapel doors, locking them in. They seemed to be going towards Emilio anyway, not even looking at us as we ran out. Maybe the curse really has marked him.
“Disgratziata…” …we hear the doomed mobster cry. I almost feel bad. Almost.
We then turn around and there’s a new zombie right in front of us! Angelo has risen from the dead, giant gaping hole in his chest and everything! His mouth is gaping as well, as it looks like that chicken cutlet sandwich wasn’t enough for him, and we’re next! How we didn’t see him I don’t know…
Our moment of hesitation is all Dead Angelo needs to grab both of our throats. As the air rushes out of me all I can see is the big man’s hole, and I think of how Halfa-Head put his hand through it. I start blacking out, thinking of Lisa as I do, but then…
Angelo lets go. Everything is blurry. I sort of see John holding his throat, struggling to breathe. Something is happening above me, I try to focus, but everything is spinning. Angelo goes down with a massive thump; someone is on top of him. Oh my God…Lisa?!
No, Lisa is now next to me, getting me to my feet. I feel John clinging to me as well. We help him up, and then all stare dumbfounded at the struggle going on in front of us.
It’s Tim’s body, what’s left of it at least, fighting off Angelo. The curse has brought him back, too, but apparently nothing will stop him from being our friend.
Lisa snaps us back to reality, “We have to get back upstairs!” She’s right. That’s the best place to either try to get out of here or make our last stand. I follow Lisa to the stairs. John is still staring; Tim was his best friend after all. I wait to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. He doesn’t, and we both get upstairs, and lock the door.
Matt lying face down on the floor is about the last thing I wanted to see right now. I pray he’s not dead. Ok, he’s not, but he’s delirious, burning up with fever. The thought that he might turn into one of those things crosses my mind, but I focus on getting him back on the couch.
John grabs the phone, but the line is dead. Of course. Lisa says her cell isn’t getting a signal. None of ours are. It doesn’t surprise me, though, I mean, the dead have friggin’ risen, nothing surprises me!
John puts forth the theory that it’s the end of the world; he’s getting hysterical. I calm him down, and tell them about the old lady and the curse I’ve convinced myself this is. It makes perfect sense to me, if only this made any sense at all!
We hear rustling on the stairs, and time is shortening. I wanted to ask Lisa about the wall, but who cares at this point. All we care about is survival. I suggest that slowing them down may be a good idea. I’m honestly not sure what a good idea is at this point either, but they think it sounds good.
We grab some chairs, open the door, and see the brothers zombie and Mrs. Fesko halfway up the stairs. I imagine Angelo and Tim locked in immortal battle elsewhere.
I fire my chair down hard at the first brother, hitting him square in the chest. The force drops him back onto his brethren, sending them all down at very awkward angles; crunching bone and rending flesh. They automatically start getting up, though. John tosses his chair, nailing the lady in head, the force snaps her head back, clearly cracking her thin neck. The gruesomeness of tonight’s event is definitely lost on all of us by now.
We grab whatever’s not nailed down, and throw them down at our antagonists. It’s a mess down there, and for a moment, I wonder how I’m going to clean it all, but only for a moment.
And as I toss down a file cabinet with all my might, I shout, “Fuck it, I quit!” surprising both John and Lisa. While John is confused, Lisa gets it right away, and plants a huge kiss on me. I take it all in, and give it right back.
It may be the last fleeting moment of happiness I ever have.
We’re out of furniture to toss and the fuckers are still coming.
John suggests we try to make a jump for it. We’re a couple of floors up, but the considering the alternative I’ll take my chances with the concrete. Lisa agrees, but there’s one problem:
Matt.
He’s out cold, and not waking. Again I fight the urge of thinking of him turning into one of those things. We’d have to toss him down, but he may die in doing so.
“It’s too risky. You guys have haveta go without me, get help.
I’ll fend ‘em off as long as I can.” Lisa is not going to let me do it. She’s staying with me, urging John to go instead. John is losing it, and clearly uncomfortable with this decision. He wants to go, sure, get the heck out of here, but he’d rather stay and give his friends a chance. He also knows I won’t leave Matt. It’s a dilemma for all three of us, but soon just for two.
From behind, No-Head grabs hold of John! I can’t believe we let it get up here that fast! Time is melting away, John is going to get squeezed to a pulp, and I’m frozen. John kicks back with all his might, and manages to get the zombie off of him for a second. The other zombies join the first at the top of the stairway, and John gives us a half-crazed look.
“Good luck!” And just like that, he bum rushes them back down the stairs. The sound of the four of them fumbling down the stairs is deafening. I run over and look for a second to see John fruitlessly fighting for his life at the bottom. It doesn’t look good. He looks up at me.
“Go, you asshole, go!”
I run back over to Lisa who’s struggling to get Matt over to the window. I grab hold of his other hand, and suddenly he grips back, and pulls me tight to him. At first, I think he’s been zombified, and I gasp, but he hasn’t…
“This…place got gas…right?” He pulls out a lighter, and I think I know what he’s getting at. My heart sinks.
“Pull me to…pull me to a pipe, Vin. I don’t have much time.” He doesn’t, that much I’ve figured, but what if we can save him?
I look him in the eye, and I know I’m not going to have any choice in the matter. Lisa helps me get Matt up and over to the gas pipe that runs from the basement, through our small kitchen area in the rear of Cotton Glass, and up through Jimmy’s office to the roof.
“Now…how about getting me a drink?” I oblige with the wine that my all but departed friends had brought me. I’m glad I will have that memory to think back on, if I can get out of here myself.
Matt chugs down the last of the wine, and then quickly smashes the bottle against the valve head jutting out of the pipe on the floorboard. The cap pops off and a stream of gas whistles out. Matt looks at his lighter and smiles at me. Lisa hugs him tightly, and then I follow.
Lisa and I get back to the window. We open up the double windows and stare down. It’s about two stories down. Some broken bones, or worse are on the menu, but it’s better than getting eaten alive.
“I want you to know that no matter what happens to us now, it doesn’t matter. You’ve more than made up for everything, Vinny. You stepped up when it counted. I love you.”
“I hate to shatter the moment, but ahem…” Matt thumbs back to the stairwell where the zombies have made their way up.
I nod, grab hold of Lisa by the waist, and jump! I imagine Matt saying something witty as I do, and his gas explosion rockets us all the way past the sidewalk, and to a park car where we smash down onto its hood!
Everything is swirling blue and purple. I can’t focus, the wind’s been knocked out of me, my back is burning, my thigh going numb. I feel something soft on my lips, and I focus on that. My vision slowly returns. Lisa is crying, but suddenly starts laughing.
I painfully sit up, Lisa looks OK, she confirms that. The hood had give the concrete wouldn’t have. I cough up blood and phlegm. The block is stirring, lights are coming on, windows are opening. Smoke is swirling out of the second floor of Cotton Glass; fire can be seen behind it.
“Holy crap! Jesus! What the fuck happened here?! What did you do, you friggin’ piece of shit!” No. No. NO! The last thing I need is to hear it from Jimmy after all we’ve been through. I don’t even know where he came from, the fuck!
I stand up, physically shaky but confidently pissed. Jimmy is fuming, too, foaming at the mouth, snotting at the nose as he continues his barking. I clench my fist so hard, I’m sure my nails have drawn blood.
I grab him by the shirt, and his demeanor changes completely. The smell of shit momentarily rises up to me. I rear back, but there’s a whoosh, and Jimmy is ripped away from me with a horrid crunching sound, which is followed by me and Lisa being covered in blood and gore. Again.
I look down to see a flaming mass of flesh. I make out one of the zombies. Neither is stirring. Lisa grabs my hand.
We turn as a black limo pulls up. The back window slides down, and the old Sicilian woman pulls up her dark veil within. She does the sign of the cross, and the limo pulls away. We walk to the middle of the street and watch it turn the next corner. Jimmy was the last part of the curse. Makes sense somehow.
I yawn, a groan really, but for once it’s most certainly not out of tedium.
*
The Doom that came to Black Water
By Desmond Reddick
The way the dust kicked across that landscape, you’d think he materialized outta thin air. He came with the storm that night. He came on a horse black as sin.
Which is funny, him bein’ a preacher man an’ all. We were drinkin’ the night away. Wasn’t much else to do in late summer what with the crops gone and the days being so long and hot. It was still bright out when he came to town and the sky was beginnin’ to go all shades of pink.
Now, Black Water ain’t always a quiet place. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. But that night things were quiet. Just the usual ruckus, but nothin’ outta the ordinary. A coupl’a shitheels started making trouble and some of my boys took ‘em out back and kicked the shit outta their heels before anything got too messed up.
I liked an orderly town. Took me months to get it that way once I became sheriff. Winston Pratt was sheriff ‘fore me and he’d grown fat and tired. Too tired to deal with the swindlers and mercenaries runnin’ rampant in the shit-hole Black Water had become. When it came time for me to have the badge, I showed ‘em no mercy. They could leave or they could kill me and stay. Needless to say, I don’t die easy. In fact, I got away scot-free ‘cept for a bullet that tore through my knee. Hurt like the devil at the time, but lately it only aches a bit in bad weather like that night.
I was puttin’ back two fingers of bourbon when that negro boy came in. If you thought things were quiet before. You could’a heard a pin drop once he walked through the door. No one said nothin’ probably ‘cuz no one knew what to say. It was quite an audacious move if I do say so myself. I liked that.
He stood there behind me for what must have felt like hours for the poor boy. Now, I never associated with negroes but I didn’t necessarily dislike ‘em. I don’t really care either way. Most of ‘em stay as far away from troublemaking as possible. This kid took care ‘a half the town’s horses an’ never ran afoul ‘a me. Judging by the fact that there were as many eyes on me as there were on him, I gathered that everyone was waitin’ to see what I was gonna do.
I turned around on my stool and that boy couldn’t’a been wringing that hat of his any harder between his calloused hands than he was right then. I smiled a toothy, dangerous smile. I suppose I liked makin’ people nervous.
“What are you doin’ in here, boy?” I bellowed to him.
“Shu-shu-Sheriff Muh-Mason, suh. Yuh-yuh-yuh – “
“Spit it out, nigger. I ain’t got all night” He was startin’ to piss me off. I had some drinkin’ to do and this stable hand was takin’ me away from that. Worse yet, he was makin’ me look bad.
Rawls, my deputy, started to move in behind him but I shot him a glance that told him I could take care of myself and the stutterin’ negro gathered his wits. Rawls was the first person I brought into town after I became sheriff. I worked with him an’ his daddy out west an’ both ‘a them were as straight a shooter as you’d ever meet. A sheriff and his deputy need to have a trust and I trust Rawls with my life and the life of this town.
“Puh-Preacher Man. There’s a preacher comin’ into town.” He looked proud of himself. Poor fella, probably scared shitless in a bar fulla drunk white folks.
“Tell ‘im Black Water’s already got a Preacher, ain’t that right Wells?!” I shouted in re
tort to cheers of approval. Wells, balancin’ his head on his fist in the back corner, raised his glass in agreement to more cheers.
“This ain’t like no preacher you eva seen, Sheriff.”
I had to admit that my curiosity was piqued. I finished my bourbon and put the glass down on the bar. It was the only sound you could hear ‘cept for the wind howlin’ outside. I followed the boy through the quiet saloon to the batwing doors. Rawls followed close behind me and the bar got back to its usual jovial self once we left with the negro.
The night was electric and the sky still pink. It certainly felt like a storm was rollin’ in. When I looked east down Main Street, I could see him. He slowly made his way into town through the gathering dust storm but sat up tall in the saddle of the blackest damn horse I ever seen. He made as though the storm never bothered him without as much as a hat for protection. And the closer he got, the more I was convinced that he was a ghost.
The settin’ sun behind us illuminated the fella pretty well. But still he almost disappeared set against the deep black cloud behind him. Nothin’ but a blank, pale face on a sea of black.
“Go into Barrett’s. Tell everyone to get home and close up shop. This storm is not gonna be pretty.” Rawls turned to walk into the Saloon. “An’ Rawls.”
“Mason?”
“Tell ‘em they’ll spend the night in a cage if they don’t listen right away. There’s a real hair in the butter tonight. I feel it.”
“Sure thing.”
As the dark horse brought the preacher closer, I could see more and more of his pale face. His sunken eyes, tightly stretched skin and blank expression would have made him for a dead man if his chin wasn’t waggin’ so much. I couldn’t hear what he was sayin’ but it couldn’t be good.
The roilin’ mass of black clouds behind him seemed to creep through the big sky real fast. Unnatural like. The bourbon sat heavy in my belly and my skin crawled before I set off toward the preacher man.
