Zombie Angst

by Jim Couper

  Danger always instilled a nauseating feeling vamps didn’t like and took great pains to avoid. They didn’t stand at the edge of a cliff, they didn’t dislodge toast with a fork and they didn’t drive with the gas gauge below half.The long-tooths recalled how a mere prick into a zombie’s neck sickened them. Sucking from a tube that dipped into the mire below an outhouse would have been an improvement over the contents of an undead’s carotid. Vamps secured their long term existence by killing zombs, but zombs gained nothing by killing vamps. The fight was motivationally unfair: precisely the type of battle vamps would willingly wage. Zombies couldn't even smell them coming or sense their presence in any way.

  A recranked Z-D-Capper snapped on a zomb who turned too slowly. Like a coconut falling from a tree, the head hit the ground and rolled into a ditch. The trio of battling police saw the head fall and gave a wave of welcome to new, dark allies.

  Killing zombies was like shooting fish in a barrel, thought Veronica although she had never actually shot a fish in a barrel. She wondered why fish would be in a barrel. If you missed the fish the barrel would drain anyway and you could just lift the fish out. She puzzled over the size of fish that could occupy a barrel then thrust her cutters at a tall zombie who stuck up a hand in defence and lost it. That appeared to annoy the victim. With its remaining hand it grabbed the cutter from Veronica and attempted to whack her with it. Hand-eye coordination disappeared somewhere between cradle and grave so the swinging of the cutter seemed more random than directional. Veronica smirked at the ineptitude and a blow landed on the side of her head and turned her smirk to a grave stare of disbelief. She had never been hit in anger and knew nothing of a wound inflicted by another. A dark purple foamed from the cut like juice from a hot blueberry pie and streamed down her astonished face.

  The fight paused when an armored carrier with screaming siren roared into the midst of the battle knocking bodies left and right. Standing on top, pointing a shoulder-launch missile, the new colonel shouted directions to the driver. The heavy vehicle rumbled up behind a zombie and drove over her. Despite two squishing sounds when tires flattened her breasty chest she rose and started clambering aboard the vehicle. One soldier Swiss-cheesed her with a barrage of machine gun fire and another landed the pointed end of a pick-axe deep into her skull, where it remained after she pulled her head back. The wounds and the weight of metal and wood atop her head did not hinder her in any way and she lifted herself onto the tank-like truck and wrapped her hand around the ankle of the new colonel. He held her at bay by grabbing the wooden handle of the axe in her head and steered her around the truck’s bed. A soldier held his bazooka at the zombie’s head, but the colonel screamed not to fire, “The gas tank is right under us.” The soldier jumped to the road, aimed his shooter so it paralleled the ground and severed the attacker’s head in a single blast.

  “Baaahzoook,” thecolonel hollered as the slime-covered shell continued through the truck’s soft metal and into a house that erupted in flames. The shooter paused to admire the destruction then hopped back on as the vehicle rumbled to the nucleus of the fight to help the surrounded police. As far as vampires were concerned his pause refreshed and allowed them to step back to reassess their position. Speed and dexterity kept the vampires away from the outreaching arms of zombies who saw what they did with the de-capper and now would kill them despite their bad taste.

  Help from the army allowed Jane, Donald and a police recruit to descend from the arms of the bronze statue and take an offensive position. They used an assortment of traditional weapons plus a Z-D-Capper to battle Doogie and the horde that oozed into the park. V’s worked in the background, excitedly decapping whenever a zombie turned his scabby back. Attacking from behind suited them: it reduced risk.

  The carnage, plus the cacophony of gunfire, pretty much ended Peachland’s Halloween party to celebrate the end of zombiedom that supposedly came with the bombing of the school. The resumption of sirens, loudspeakers, gunfire, news bulletins and the roar of tanks alerted all to the resumption of a war they thought had been won. Mothers hurried home with crying, disappointed children, dropping candy behind them. Angry fathers followed the noise of gunfire: they weren’t going to take it any longer. The local police had been forced into inaction by an inept army, an army that had blown up houses, set stores afire and bombed an empty school.

  Armed with sticks, stones and fighting words, local men and women marched into town, merging with like-minded citizens as they strode along. The noisy mob raged into the centre of town to finally face the forces of evil. Their offensive contribution constituted a divergence, rather than a force to be feared. Baseball bats, shotguns, rakes and hoes were not going to eradicate anything enjoying a second coming. Had they held lanterns, a comic book caption would have read, “The angry villagers march forward to confront the enemy.” To zombies and vampires alike the vigilante mob represented food and drink in the bank. Minutes after the citizens poured through the streets, Mort’s battalion lurched forward and merged with Doogie’s group.

  Looking down on the pathetic town, a pale, albino pair paced ferociously, trying to make sense of a scene without precedent. Who could have imagined such horror as police fighting zombies fighting army fighting vampires fighting citizens? Spectators couldn’t tell the players without a program.

  The Sasquatch duo considered all the possibilities and all the possible outcomes and realised they could not accurately extrapolate Peachland’s present into its future. In February an avalanche could bury the entire town: no greater balance existed than zero. But no snowy solution existed at the end of October. If the invasion continued for months that option would come up for consideration: the town could always be rebuilt with restored equilibrium. Other troubled mountain communities had seen their problems and their lives vanish beneath 20 feet of snow.

  The house that had been set ablaze by the bazooka alerted a fire brigade that returned to work the moment the school’s bricks turned to dust. Their wailing sirens added to the chaos of the battle for control of the town. With attention directed to dousing the inferno the fire fighters proved easy prey for Doogie’s band. His group abandoned the more challenging task of overpowering Jane and Donald’s elusive group, which received support from the pathetic posse and a few soldiers. The zombs turned on the rain-coated firefighters whose attention was divided and who expected protection from the army. Two firefighters, devoted to dousing flames, lost their lives and organs. Their co-workers on the truck used their only weapons on the carnivorous crowd. The force of water expelled from heavy hoses knocked whoever it hit off their feet and the hosers took pleasure in using their unique weaponry to push back waves of attackers.

  Army snipers, safely firing from rooftops, finally found a weakness in the zombie attackers. When they shot them between the eyes – not an easy target − their sunglasses broke and they were stunned by the battery of light that flooded the town. One brained zomb carried a bag of spare shades and quickly stuck them on the faces of those without. However the marksmen shot up the bag of glasses, forcing zombs to rummage until they found glasses that would stay on a face.

  Tanks churned through town, ripping up streets and trying to get zombies into their slow-moving sights, but the ponderous machines manoeuvred even too slowly to get a bead on creatures that moved as if quicksand had a grip on them. The tanks did most damage when they rolled over zombies who didn’t fear the tread and tottered in front. Flat, corrugated creatures sat up like snakes from a wringer, but failed to walk. With eyes and teeth crushed into the pavement they had neither bite nor sight and were easy prey for vigilantes who removed their flat heads with saws, hedge trimmers and electric carving knives.

  Zombies swarmed the tanks and made steering impossible for drivers who couldn’t see ahead. Some drivers tried to dislodge the zombie cloak by swivelling the turret, driving under trees with low branches and running into brick structures. Nothing cleared zombies who gripped like leaches on skin. Ghoul drool slid down the
metal, dripped inside and soaked occupants. Tanks that drove on regardless went over cliffs and into the lake. This helped the cause as the clingers who drowned outnumbered the crew.

  Armoured personnel carriers proved to be the best army weapon. Loaded with a dozen soldiers armed with grenade launchers, flame throwers, mortars, bazookas and machine guns, they used unlimited ammunition to riddle attackers with so many holes they could no longer stand. Once the monsters went down, a grenade or two separated head from body in an enormous splat from which no creature could recover.

  Zombies swarmed the transporters and many soldiers died horrific deaths. Lives did not end quickly or quietly, rather the prone soldiers had to watch their entrails dangle in front of their eyes as strong creatures kneeled on them, pulled them apart and ingested them. Sometimes their screaming awareness did not end until putrid hands reached into split skulls and slopped out brains.

  Confident vampires laid a beating on random zombies. And then someone got hurt: severely hurt. A zombie, annoyed at having a stick repeatedly jabbed into its eye, took a chunk out of the neck of a V and she dropped to the ground with an explosion of blood such as no hospital had ever seen. To say the victim had high blood pressure would be to say Old Faithful was a small spring.

  Seeing their comrade go off like a gushing oil strike discouraged the bloodsucking gaggle. “We need a new plan,” Veronica intoned, and they stood back fearing what might come. A long silence followed with no offerings from anyone. Relieved, most went home to watch the news in glorious 3D. It was better than being there and you could regulate the volume. A few brave ones stayed and hid behind trees, cars and houses with their Z-D-Cappers cocked and ready to behead any flesh-eater who had the misfortune to pass by with back turned.

  When the battalions of Mort and Doogie merged, and assorted strays and new-risers edged in, the numbers making headway against the forces of good, swelled to several hundred.

  Firemen who responded to blazes caused by wayward bazooka blasts noticed that when a hard stream of water hit a certain squat zombie it seemed to blow off bits of his skin. Other flesheaters felt the fury of hard rivers of water, but the firemen found that only the grey, chubby one suffered from H2O overexposure. For the rest it was water off a duck’s back.

  As firefighters hosed the little man his shoulders and arms slowly washed away and a grey liquid dribbled from under his shirt cuffs. He waddled for cover, but his stubby legs moved him so slowly that his drenched clothing slid off before he could find protection behind a tree.

  “Help, I’m droowning,” he cried, but no help came and little could be done except turn off the water. That had the same likelihood as a snowball surviving Hades in July. A fireman, shooting water from a long hose he dragged behind him, pursued Doogie sensing a kill as he blasted off epidermal layers. Murky, sepia liquid seeped from the bottom of pant legs then the pants dropped to Doogie’s ankles. He tried to move away from the spray, but his bare bone legs tripped over the pants and he fell into a grey puddle that swelled and overflowed into a gutter.

  “I’m blooody melting,” were the barely audible sounds that came from his bony mouth. Flesh flowed like dirt from a leaking dam. The discharge from the hose continued as the fireman moved closer for the kill, a notch in his hose. Six steps away from the writhing, chattering skeleton he blasted the bones and, with no flesh binding them, they scattered in various directions and dissolved into different runoffs. Storm sewers carried the undead effluent into the lake close to the intake for the town’s drinking water.

  There was constant disappointment that the secret, undead-destroying weapon that everyone searched for had not been discovered and the elusive zombie weakness had not been found. Only one creature fell apart under a spray of water.

  Slobbering zombies did not notice or care about the loss of their leader and continued to eat into the enemy. The fireman who chased down Doogie became so fixated on washing away the remains, keeping the street clean and trying to dissolve other zombies that he neglected defence and went down with his hose hissing.

  Mort witnessed the demise of Doogie and knew that he could go the same way: he was made of the same stuff and he suspected he had the same water weakness. Never had he washed his hands, before or after eating, but he knew he had an aversion to water and it would not do him any good to use it in any way. The thought of drinking it made him think of unflushed toilets. As one body among many dozens of flesh-eaters, it seemed unlikely the humans would identify him as a melter unless a spray hit him accidentally. Nevertheless it frightened him. Being frightened pleased him.

  Doogie’s undoing gave Mort a reprieve. His leash had lengthened and he could make decisions on his own. What a pleasure to make a decision, he thought, what a joy to have control over one’s destiny. Inevitably his thoughts wandered to Melody, their children and a reunion. He would bounce Abacus and Calculus on his knees while he told them stories and looked out his front window at the sun’s rays playing on the lake. He would mow the lawn, trim the hedge, make the coffee and … he remembered Melody’s words at their last encounter. His love for her had not been reciprocated. She misunderstood now as she had misunderstood in the past. But always they had patched up leaks in their relationship. Sometimes he had cried and sometimes he had begged, but always they remained united. The recent demise of Uncle Albert and Uncle Walter rushed to the forefront of Mort’s thoughts. Had they lived, they could have protected Melody and the children. Mort could have hired them as gardeners at the house while he negotiated to get his teaching job back. He had to convince Melody he was still a good man, albeit a stinky one with a skin problem. Deeper in the past other uncles lurked. The house often harbored strange men that Melody said she had hired for yard work or painting. He didn’t remember discussing that.

  Mort feared that when the soldiers of misfortune won the war and ravaged the town, his family would be slop in the food trough known as Peachland. Confusion confused him: he was a zombie with a mission and an addiction. He was a father with a wife and kids. He was a decision-making entity with a befuddled mind and a fear of water. Arriving at the right decision had the same likelihood as turning vegan. So far he had made right decisions by not making decisions. Instinct thrust him forward.

  Jane, Donald, the new Colonel, the disorganized army, a few vampire malingerers, remaining firefighters and remnants of the Peachland posse fought into the night. Guns blazed, zombies ate, Z-D-Cappers snapped, teeth gnashed and a few vampires hid in the background. They hid behind trees, bushes and cars. They hid within vampire costumes that were not costumes at all. They waited until the moment was right and then they imbibed ruthlessly from the wounded and the barely departed.

  So many zombie heads rolled on the road it resembled a bowling alley. So many eviscerated temp bodies paved the road that it looked like a mortuary. Among those were flat, dry corpses that appeared capable of springing to life if inflated with a bicycle pump.

  Whenever the allied forces reached the verge of victory more zombies emerged from doorways and alleys and killed enough fighters that victory, once so close, moved out of range. Whenever the undead approached the sphere of victory, more soldiers and more citizens joined the battle and balance returned. Fire hoses claimed no more victims as only Mort and Doogie, both having ascended from Davey Jones’s locker, had a body structure that water preserved and water could destroy. Mort kept away from the spray.

  Jane and Donald fought at the nucleus and the new Colonel smashed his vehicle through a sea of stench to join them. He fought recklessly and shouted, “Another zombie to hell,” whenever an undead head departed its body. Jane harbored too much fear to make a sound other than the occasional grunt when she put another bullet through a putrid head that refused to go down despite more air passing through it than through a screen door. Donald talked to zombies as he downed them.

  “Good evening Mr. Morrison, aren’t you the green grocer? How about a head of cabbage?” He swung his axe. “Hello Mrs. Saunders, enjoy your new spl
it personality. Goodbye Mr. Larkin. Hope you stay in hell.”

  During a brief pause in the fighting Jane shouted, “I didn’t know you had such a morbid sense of humor.”

  “That’s fear cracking jokes, I’m terrified. It’s a defence mechanism. Right from Freud.”

  Young soldiers proved to be as much a liability as an asset. Most of their bazooka shots missed their targets and hit cars and houses turning them into infernos. A second truck of firefighters, trapped by surrounding zombs, couldn’t put out the blazes and it looked as if not only were the citizens being eaten, but their town was afire. Through the night many citizens joined the melee. Some lost livers and lives and others grew mentally depleted after hours of battling. They sprinted away and several made it through the monster mass and found a safe route home, thankful for being alive. What had possessed them to join the army in a war, they wondered.

  Among the quitters were vampires who could no longer handle the tension. Despite not being in danger of being eaten, they were in danger of being killed because they had sided with the temps and in doing so became enemy. Just before 3 a.m. the last V’s cashed in their chips and wearily dodged homeward to warm, welcoming PosturePerfect mattresses with lifetime warrantees. Their departure did not mark a turning point in the battle. It mattered little, in the big picture, that none remained to behead the occasional stray at the back of the pack. They could not be confused with Green Berets.

  Just before the sky lightened the situation worsened. Civilian casualties and soldiers who had died, fallen into culverts and ditches, and had a layer of dirt pushed over them, returned to life as famished zombies and joined the fray. Desperately, they wanted brain and fought hardest to get it. The playing field tilted in favor of the dead.