by Jim Couper
Purpose number two of Vladimir’s Bar could be ascertained by visiting the basement and carefully looking in the back of large coolers that had cases of beer stacked at the front. Licensing officials attributed surplus stock to bad management, but that problem did not appear on their inspection agenda. Sanitation and health matters did, and in those categories the bar always managed a passing grade.
The owners constantly feared that an overzealous inspector would pop open a bottle from the very back of the cooler and pour a rich red substance that did not taste like an alcoholic beverage of any kind. During the best of times gallons of blood resided in recapped bottles of dark ale, but now only two bottles remained for the direst of emergencies. Behind a cooler that could only be moved with a combined effort from four regular men, or six vampires, a heavy, soundproof door opened to reveal a chamber named, The Vault. It served no purpose, but instilled a sense of security as a place to hide if one ever needed to disappear. Of late The Vault had received considerable thought and discussion, but no use.
After the awakening, the vampires installed a big TV in Vladimir’s drinking room so they could keep up with breaking news about flesh-eaters. They did not hang it behind the bar where patrons could enjoy a full view, but put it around the side in a dark spot where vamps tended to huddle when they visited the establishment they owned. Customers craned their necks to view the screen since it constituted the sole entertainment on tap. Placement may have been done sub-consciously to give thirsty vamps a view of patrons’ pulsing jugulars as they twisted to see the TV: the same way a male might find an elevated seat to better view a woman’s cleavage as she bent over a drink.
Because of the six-foot screen, more vampires than usual dropped by to talk about recent happenings and discuss future plans. Some even bought a drink or two although alcohol had little appeal: no bloodsucker had ever been able to get drunk.
Leadership could not be listed as a vampire asset like faithfulness or patience. The fiasco on the dock served as proof that trying to lead would always have disastrous results. An adage about time curing all ills served them well and was often repeated like a mantra.
While regulars sat sipping wine and slurping beer, a coterie of vamps quietly gathered around the TV that customers craned to see and the world got its first glimpse of exactly what it faced. A stern voice from the dozen surround-sound speakers warned, “What we are about to broadcast is shocking and disturbing and under no circumstance suitable for children. If there are children in the room please have them leave. The images that follow are real and contain extreme violence. To protect privacy we have blurred faces and edited, but even so, it is disturbing.”
Everyone watching saw a teenage boy gesturing to a shadowy male figure standing about six feet from him. A voice that sounded like it came from another teenager offered commentary, encouraging the boy to attack the dark figure. A video camera captured images of the boy stabbing at the droopy figure with a thick, sharp stick. He then dropped the probe and threw lighted matches at the creature. The commentary was sarcastic, mocking a newscast from 50 years back. “And now we will see if the new citizen in our community is flammable. First a little lighter fluid is applied...” Then came a scream, jumpy camera action and footage of the sky as if the camera had flown into the air and fallen. The camera appeared to come to rest on the ground and pointed directly at the unseen boy who had been filming and providing commentary. He screamed horrendously as a mutilated adult fell on top of him, ripped apart his stomach and stuffed its mouth with bits. The camera had good focus and sufficient night lighting that blood and gore could be seen dribbling from the attacker’s mouth. The eater looked like he had walked away from a flaming train wreck. Patchy burned skin, missing hair, misshapen teeth, flat yellow eyes and slow mechanical movement all showed clearly on the big screen.
After 20 seconds of unrelenting horror the announcer cut in, “This appears to have happened last night. The camera that took these pictures was recovered this morning by one of our employees on her way to work. It has since been handed over to the army. As you can imagine there was heated discussion in this studio about whether we should air copies of this video. We concluded it is in the best interests of the people of Peachland and Canada to know what they are up against. What you just saw, I’m sorry to say, was a zombie. It’s hard to believe in this day and age. It’s also hard to believe what happened to this innocent young man. Let me assure you that what you saw is only a small portion of what is on the memory card. There is no way to explain this delicately, and again, make sure no children can hear or see. Following what you viewed, the young man’s head was smashed open and his brain consumed by the creature. Now, over to reporter Marlene Whyte who has been trying to get a reaction from army personnel.”
The bartender clicked his remote: the screen went black. Barstool Bob vomited a half-gallon of yellow, chunky beer across the counter and onto the floor. Farting Fannie quit working on her nose, stood up and announced, “If that’s the kind of movie you’re going to show then you won’t be seeing me again.” She knocked over a chair on her way to the door. Two women at the back solaced each other with tight hugs. Two athletes sat silent, staring, mouths agape.
Quietly the vampire contingent shuffled away from the TV. When they reached a long table, a focal point for discussion before the introduction of the huge screen, they had little to say. A female broke the silence, “We have to do something.”
No one picked up on her lead. The quiet became embarrassing. Another woman added, “Anyone have ideas?” Quiet continued until the barkeep turned on the television and it showed a static head-shot of the monster that devoured the teen. A new voice-over announced, “Colonel Mayhew-Shostakovich, in a news release, says the Canadian Army is offering a $1000 reward for any zombie brought in dead or alive. To be declared dead the zombie must have its head detached and the head must be in a separate container from the body. The army has set up receiving stations in Peachland’s waterfront park and at the foot of Mission Hill Drive. They will be open during weekday business hours, closed Sunday.”
The announcement satisfied the need for something to be done immediately. One vampire commented, “That should help get rid of them.” Another added, “We could chip in an extra $1000 to speed things up.”
The first vamp responded, “Good idea but it would raise suspicions. Why would a bar that hardly anyone knows be interested in getting rid of zombies? We don’t even sponsor a kids’ hockey team.”
“Because they’re bad for business?”
“The flu is bad for business but we don’t sponsor a walk-in clinic.”
“They are not bad for that business,” a woman said as she pointed to the TV. A commercial started with the sound of hand clippers trimming a hedge and an image of a zombie mob, from an old black and white movie, surging forward. The voice-over alliteratively announced,
“Bullets, burns, bruises and bombs won’t stop a zombie, but a Z-D-Capper will.” A man with an oversize tree pruner pushed scythe-like blades around a watermelon, pulled a trigger-release and the fruit fell in two pieces dripping blood-colored juice. The voice continued, “A Z-D-Capper reloads in seconds with a time-honored cross-bow mechanism. It has enough power to take the head off an alligator. We’d demonstrate, but regulations prohibit. It’s the only way to stop a zombie. The first time you turn in a beheaded victim the Z-D-Capper pays for itself with the reward and leaves you with enough to buy a second. Only $500: supplies limited.”
The commercial ended and the TV again went dark. One of the vamps, a dentist wearing a charcoal trench coat commented, “If the army’s reward doesn’t stop them, that decapper thing should. I’m getting one. Might get one for my mate.” Assorted nods, mumbles and “Me toos” ended the discussion.
Response to the reward offering came next morning. A stout boy, age 15, dragged a tarp along the sidewalk to the army’s waterfront payout post. A bloody axe dangled from his belt. “I’ve got a live one,” he declared, explaining
to gathered media that he had dug an eight-foot hole in his yard and disguised it with a 16-foot tarpaulin covered in leaves. In the small hours of the morning he heard a zombie fall into the hole and the tarp snapped closed. He didn’t venture out until sunrise and then he whacked his prey, winched it out of the hole and dragged it along the sidewalk to the payout station. A crowd gathered as the boy raised his axe and aimed at a spot between two bulges in the tarp, which was already stained red. A corporal raised his arm to stop the chop and started unravelling the tarp. While the boy stood guard the army man tugged at a pair of arms and out came a bleeding, sweaty, semiconscious body, within a gasp of its last breath. The boy stepped backwards in shock at the sight of his father.
The second reward claimant arrived in a beater BMW and said a bound body was in his boot. The post commander’s confused, downward look forced the driver to explain he had arrived from England a year ago and boot was storage space in back of a car. From his trunk he hoisted two duffle bags and disdainfully dumped them on the sidewalk. He opened the smaller to reveal a head with severe scarring, scabs, clumps of missing hair and split lips. The corporal in charge called the police and Jane Dougherty and her deputy arrived a few minutes later. She identified the man claiming the reward as a known drug dealer from nearby Kelowna. The head belonged to his motorcycle gang rival. Jane escorted the Englishman to her cruiser’s back seat and ordered Jesse to guard him and write up an arrest. Before they drove off a farmer turned up with something that moaned and groaned under a canvass in the back of his dusty pick-up. He proudly pulled back the tarp to reveal a half-dead, half-man that stank atrociously. Enough duct tape to seal the venting of a skyscraper held its arms and legs together. Despite the fact the head had not been separated from the body the farmer collected his cash reward and didn’t have any inkling a second reward from the police was his for the asking so he drove off. Jane noted his plate number so she could hand over the money when she figured how to get funds. In the meantime the army had to deal with the problem of what to do with a live zombie that had a cavity in the back of its head where a brain should be and a hole in its abdomen where its stomach should be. Although tape covered its mouth and circled its head, the zombie hummed its theme-song, brain.
No one anticipated handling a captured zombie so they rolled it onto a tarp and dragged it to Jane and Jesse/s parked cruiser. Two army men started to stuff it into the back seat, causing the English passenger to scream like his clothes were on fire. Jesse halted them, popped the trunk and the soldiers folded the body in and slammed the lid on its thrashing ankles. At the jail they put it in a cell next to the Englishman who whined loudly about the stench and demanded a lawyer. Jesse told him the duck-taped guy in the cell next to him was a lawyer: talk to him.
With legs taped together, the zombie banged into bars, fell down, rolled on the floor and mumbled something that might have been … brain.
The army paid out two more rewards and delivered two more undead to Jane’s jail. She booked them as Zombie Doe II and Zombie Doe III and added them to Zombie Doe I’s cell, making sure double handcuffs snugly secured wrists and ankles. The drug lord protested that being in a cell next to three stinking zombies was cruel, unusual, unjust and violated his rights. Jane told him he was correct and she didn’t care. Civil rights went out the window several days ago.
A semicircle of men and women with cameras and mikes blocked the police station doorway. Jane told them there would be no entry, no pictures and no interviews with prisoners, zombie or otherwise, so they may as well go away.
She called forensics and informed them her cell swarmed with live specimens.
22
Early morning light put a pink tint to twisted trees with gnarled roots that clawed into an arid mountainside where Mort trundled, looking for the shallow grave of the slain soldier. He had wandered all night, unsure of where he scraped the unmarked grave. Crepuscular morn proved to be a good time for movement: soldiers had packed up after a night of protecting townsfolk and daytime patrols began slowly an hour later.
Mort toted his rotting rucksack of odds and ends picked up on his walks. His cranium cracking tool had been jettisoned because it clanked, in time with his lurch, against a hubcap he found. Bits of hair and dried blood had stuck to the rusty steel rod and gave bad vibes. He didn’t enjoy being a killer: particularly a premeditating murderer toting the tools of the trade.
All traces of the grave had vanished in the night. One rock looked like another and all the tall trees had similar branches and needles. He rounded the same corner for the fifth time and saw a soldier’s arm push through dirt and shove at rocks and rubble: the very rocks and rubble Mort had piled. With a pull from his hand the soldier got to her feet, staggered a few steps, bumped against a tree and clung to it for a moment. Then she shuffled in circles, each a little wider than previous. As Mort watched he felt he had conceived and given birth to a beautiful baby although he harbored guilt about the back of her head that he had knocked asunder. The sock didn’t stop dark fluid from leaking down her neck while bits of gut dangled from a hole he had made in her torso. But she had life: reborn into the new world order. She should thank him for that.
While the neonate practiced her circular walk Mort stumbled back to the outskirts of the cemetery, frustrated at his inability to walk with good speed. At best he could ploddingly place one foot 12 inches in front of the other. His hiking boots, swollen from time under water, dragged in the dirt, bumped against rocks, snagged on fallen branches and pointed towards each other.
The graveyard where he had neutralized the young soldier now resembled an abandoned battlefield with trenches, mortar holes and a mess of exploded body bits. Pieces of meat and bone dangled from trees and jagged tombstones. At his feet Mort saw guts he could not identify. Mort lifted soft chunks of brain and pushed them into his mouth, anticipating an ecstatic rush. He spat them back to the ground.
How low can I go, he thought. Words formed like a yellow, flickering, 15-watt bulb in the back of his dull cranial cave. Eating another’s leftovers was worse than dumpster diving behind a food bank. He scooped brain and bits into his pack and waddled back to his fallen soldier. The young lady’s walking circle now measured several hundred yards in diameter and it took a few minutes to locate her. Mort looked at her ID tag again and wondered about the middle initial H. Heady would be her newborn name. With his hands on her shoulders he looked into her snotty, bloodless eyes. His gaze seemed to bring her a moment of inner peace. “Me Morth; you Heathy,” he said, then sat on a felled tree trunk. Heady lowered herself beside him. She didn’t flinch when he pulled the sock off her head, but his hands reacted too slowly to catch the back of her skull as it fell to the dirt. From his pack Mort grabbed gooey gobs of mushy brain and stuffed her cranium as he would a thanksgiving turkey. The dirty skull fitted in place like a last jigsaw piece and her sock slipped over top, containing seepage. He operated slowly, without anaesthetic, and Heady was a patient patient, rather than the impatient inpatient she would be if her cancer was examined in a hospital.
Her tunic opened easily, however Mort’s selection of parts for her innards was limited to what was in stock. He stuffed her with liver, spleen and odds and ends including an eyeball plus something that was either a battered thumb or masticated penis. Several yards of old tape held everything inside. Heady stood up and looked like the poster girl for zombie cosmetic surgery. Finding employment as a model, except maybe as before for a makeover ad, would be difficult, but at least she had the essential organs that made a person.
“Brain,” she pleaded and Mort, feeling fatherly, fed her some of his excess. His fingers found cranial slop at the bottom of his bag and he slapped it onto her hand. Heady shoveled it quickly in the direction of her mouth and grey mush mashed against her cheek. On the second try she got some into her gaping cavity and moaned. Her eyes twitched, her body trembled, an indistinct murmur emerged from her mouth and a trace of a smile wisped across her face. Mort wondered if brain gav
e her an orgasm.
Her reaction disappointed Mort because he hoped to give her speech by giving her a brain. He yearned for words, not moans and groans. He yearned to discuss mortality, the meaning of death and the plot of Spiderman comics.
As sunlight flitted through upper branches they trod downhill. Heady shielded her eyes and grimaced as though she had an excruciating headache. The light pained Mort too, but it was a small price to pay for freedom from the danger of being hunted down in the night like an animal.
Ahead three other lurchers moved in the morning light and he regarded that as suspicious. Most disappeared for the day. Could they be decoys? He worried about that and worried that his worrying took him in the wrong direction. Thoughts, ideas and concerns oozed from his mind like warm tar.
Cautiously Mort moved towards the figures and just as cautiously they moved towards him, a few shuffling steps at a time. The male, who appeared to be leading, looked like a shrunken whale: a grey, bloated body supported puffy appendages that stuck out like fat fins. Within 10 yards Mort could see that the whale used a lot of duct tape that matched his skin color. Whale and accomplices all sported a variety of trendy sunglasses. Mort hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t thought of much to counter environmental discomfort.
“Doo yooo talk?” the whale asked and the words startled Mort. He didn’t know the correct answer as his only conversing, since arising, had been a few stunted words tossed towards Melody.
