by David Moody
We came up with a plan. Gramps would take one for the team with one of the sister-wives. She was the worse one, too. This chick looked like she literally ate cigarettes. Gramps got her to slip Zamora a Mickey so they could be together. Then he was to get the codes to the freezer, garage, and the weapons room from her, and we’d be outta there lickety-split. Turned out Zamora was so paranoid that his wives didn’t even know the code to the weapons room. So we had to settle for two-outta-three. We left that night while everyone slept. We left that shitty name behind, too.
The deadfucks were out in droves. It was a diverse crossroads of folks wandering around like awestruck tourists without an itinerary. Holly made a joke about racial harmony coming at a price, and another about the van’s off-road grille guards being the great equalizer or something. We moved through Jersey on slow steamroll, making forced conversation to distract from the constant bumpity-bump of soft bodies against the grille guards, the squishy crackling when the tires rolled them over, the pounding of hundreds of fists against the sides of the van, and the sound of as many voices grunting, and growling, and moaning, and wailing, and sounding all kinds of pissed that a hearty meal was very slowly getting away.
The windshield wipers couldn’t move fast enough to clear away the blood before another coat darkened the glass. We could barely see through. We chartered a course with each sway of the wiper-arm, our faces pressed together like a ‘Three Stooges’ bit, waiting for a peek through the temporary triangle of clarity, past the swell of deadfucks, at the road beneath their feet. The damn things were so tightly packed that it was hard to tell where the road ended and the dirt-shoulder began. That was when we first saw her; our number one fan. She was hanging out with the stragglers a few layers into the woods up ahead where the road curved hard left. She appeared to be looking right at us, which, at the time, fit right in with the general deadfuck groupthink.
If it weren’t for her groupie digs, and the concert Tee, we might’ve looked right past her. Just another deadfuck, albeit one who maintained a certain degree of beauty, even in death. A glimpse was all we could afford as there were far more pressing matters to attend to.
We were so slogged down with bodies… the under carriage, and wheel-well so mucked up with loose flesh and shattered bone and tangled in guts that, for a moment there, it seemed like we might not make it. And for the first time since this whole thing started, I worried that I might actually experience what it’s like to be eaten alive. You can’t imagine the rush of unholy terror that thought brings about. Not unless you’ve been there.
No sooner did things clear up than we stopped to help some ‘injured’ couple on the side of the road and nearly got ambushed by a group of scavengers.
Shoulda known… Shoulda fucking known...
Gramps was halfway outta the van when Holly stepped on the gas. The fuckers appeared from the trees seconds later. Like ninjas. Or is it ninja? It must’ve been a dozen of ’em, armed with automatic weapons. Gramps had to hang on for dear life as they fired at the van. Thank God for Spectra Shield, Ballistic Nylon, and bulletproof glass. We laugh about it now. At the time we seriously considered returning to the Grotto.
We ultimately decided to head to my place in Chestnut Hill where I had a considerable gun collection stored in a safe behind a fake wall in my bedroom closest. It was nothing compared to Zamora’s arsenal, but I’ve been shooting since I was a kid, so I had my share.
The place was completely ransacked. It broke my heart to see it that way. This was my home. It looked like someone had gone through it with a sledgehammer and then celebrated with the party to end all parties. Graffiti everywhere. Broken glass. Holes kicked or punched in the walls throughout the house. A few bodies. Thank God they hadn’t found the safe. We grabbed the guns, and a few other things, and booked.
Thanks to the Stone show, we had the latest settlement list from the emergency broadcast system. So we headed toward the nearest settlement and crossed our fingers. We came across those scavengers again. Someone had left their heads on sticks on the side of Township Line Road. What goes around comes around, I guess.
The thing about celebrity is that people feel like they know you. And familiarity carries a lotta weight these days. It allowed us to sidestep that initial period of mistrust people talk about when you arrive at a new settlement. Sometimes they’d ask us to play, and we would gladly oblige with an acoustic set. Nine times outta ten they’d invite us to stay, and for a while things would go smoothly.
But then we’d eventually end up on the wrong end of a deadly weapon, usually in the hands of some rightly pissed-off boyfriend or husband out for blood because his lady fell under Gramps’ spell. Most of the time the kid wasn’t even trying. It’s like a bonafide superpower, that fucking charm-a-his. Even at 48. And it ain’t just the groupie types that fall victim. I’ve seen it work on educated women. Doctors. Corporate CEOs. Assistant District Attorneys. The kinds-a-chicks you’d think would consider themselves above spreadin’ for a rock star. Once he works that serpentine swagger, flips that hair-a-his, and flashes that crooked smile, they all drop their drawers. It’s the damndest thing. Even the dead ones…
Nah. I’m just fucking around. But damned if Gramps didn’t occasionally spot some chick he’d bagged wandering around post mortem. I shit you not. That boy got around.
If it wasn’t Gramps’ charm, then we’d wind up in the middle of some internal squabble that turned violent and/or led to some act of sabotage, and we’d have to book on a moment’s notice. It never failed. Ever.
Altogether we had been asked to leave, thrown out of, or escaped from seven settlements. It became obvious to us that we needed our own place.
We had our instruments, a few guns, a 5lb bag of Idaho Russets and a case of outdated Spaghettios to our name. The food was compliments of our last place of residency. A real shithole group in Somerset, Pa.
‘Looks like liquid shits on the horizon for us,’ I joked.
Holly gets all pissy, goes, ‘At least we have food.’
We took a vote and decided that our best option was to head back to the Grotto. It was two-to-one; Holly being the odd man out.
It had been roughly six months since we left the place. In that time, there was no way in hell that band of fucktards hadn’t killed each other or, in some way, gotten themselves killed. No fucking way. It was a statistical impossibility.
Holly was butthurt about finding our ‘friends’ – and I use the term lightly – walking around all deadfucked.
I kept busting his balls on the ride there. ‘No gig is too small,’ I go. It used to be our motto when we were starting out. Now it means any fucked up, shitball situation where we’re faced with less than favorable odds.
Holly had a point, actually. It’s always worse when it’s someone you know behind that deadfuck gaze. Especially when you have to waste ’em. It messes with your head in the way that you never get used to. I don’t give a fuck how desensitized you think you are. You start to second guess yourself as you lock them in your sights. It may have only been hours ago that you were having a conversation with this person. And now they want to eat you. And not in the good way.
You wonder. ‘Was that just recognition I saw in their eyes? Is there some hint of the person I knew just hours, minutes, seconds ago, begging me not to shoot?’
Everyone hears the voice. But again, I would hardly call anyone at the Grotto a friend. Maybe Zamora, in the beginning. Maybe... But even he had an agenda, which was…
To promote his girls. We stocked all our early videos with the bimbos.
To jam with us. Zamora had rock-star aspirations without a lick of talent in that regard.
‘And what if they did survive?’ Holly goes on to say. ‘You think Zamora’s just gonna welcome us back? You think he’s gonna let it slide that we stole his van or that we took food from the freezer? And let’s say he’s in a forgiving mood… Would you honestly want to live with those junkie, psychos again? What’s your solution then? Huh
? We just gonna ask them to leave? Er kick ’em out? Er kill them if they don’t? You prepared for all that?’
Holly has a knack for the dramatics, if you haven’t noticed.
We held out hope that whatever had gone down at the Grotto after we left, that they hadn’t completely destroyed the place. Between the three of us, we were handy enough to make it livable as long as the damage wasn’t too severe.
The generator was still running when we got there. Zamora kept it hidden under a row of fake shrubs on the northeast side of the estate. Solar panels posed as skylights above the kitchenette. The front door to the main house had been left wide open. No sign of forced entry. Not good. Inside a few deadfucks wandering like prospective buyers at an open house. No sweat.
The entrance to the Grotto was locked from the inside, which meant they were still down there. The door was located underneath the fireplace. We knocked, but got no answer.
There was a back entrance upstairs in the master bedroom; a fake wall inside the armoire. It opened onto a stairwell that led to Zamora’s room in the bunker. He let mention of it slip one night when the alcohol/oxycontin cocktail had him tripping balls.
Actually, that was every night.
It was a long trip down that staircase. We wet some towels and held them over our faces to block out the smell. It was so fucking bad that it stung your eyes. If you think you’re immune to deadfuck b.o., try to imagine it after being sealed in an enclosed area for three months. It gets in your clothes. Your hair. Up your nose. And it haunts you for days. Just the thought of it makes me wanna heave.
I found myself reexamining my feelings toward the Grotto group on the way down. If we weren’t friends then why was my stomach all knotted up at the thought of seeing them deadfucked?
‘Having second thoughts?’ Holly goes. I must’ve had a look on my face.
The smell was even worse in Zamora’s room. Thicker. Like it had weight to it, if that makes any sense. ‘Fruiting shit wrapped in rotten cold cuts,’ was Gramps’ take on it. And he wasn’t far off. It was the kinda thing you had to prepare yourself for. You couldn’t just run in. Even with the towels over our faces.
It took a second to register that the thing squeezed into Zamora’s throne was even human, let alone the man himself. The Goddamned thing had to be three, maybe four times his size, and swollen from a mixture of food and death-bloat. His face was like an unflattering caricature made into a mask and pressed against the front of a much bigger head. There was a column of rolls as wide as his fattened head where his neck used to be. Loose fat pushed through open spaces in the chair and spilled over the arms like rising dough.
The throne was surrounded by an altar of garbage. Empty cans. Plastic wrappers. Water bottles. Half-eaten meals on plates. Several of the plates were broken from the slide down the garbage slope.
We approached him from behind. Holly goes, ‘That you, Alex?’
Sounds funny in retrospect.
Zamora’s reaction was delayed. Like he had overheard one stranger calling out to another across a crowded room and was mildly curious to put faces to the voices. His eyes eventually found us. They were clouded over and bugged out of his head in way that seemed to suggest life. For a split second I wondered. ‘Is he…?’
Then Gramps gets all Captain Obvious and lays it out CSI-style. ‘Looks like the weight gain put so much stress on his heart that he couldn’t handle his usual drug cocktail,’ he goes.
Zamora’s eyes light up. ‘Food!’ I didn’t think they could get any bigger.
If wood could scream it would sound something like the noise the throne made when he leaned toward Gramps, who was closest to him, and tried to grab him with his big sausage arms and hands that literally looked like over-inflated surgical gloves.
Holly walks up and plants a screwdriver right in his skull. Bye bye deadfuck-Zamora. We shared a quiet moment as you often do when it’s someone you know… er knew. Something I forgot to mention earlier.
A fire lights under Holly’s ass. He looks up, goes, ‘The others!’ And we all have the same thought.
Did he eat them?
Nah… I think I actually said it out loud.
Me and Holly head for the door to check for the others when Gramps yells, ‘Wait!’
He’s got the TV remote in his hand. He points it at the screen and pushes ‘play.’
There they were; what was left of the group, duct-taped to chairs in the screening room. Cinderella. A sister-wife. The stunt cock and an associate. They were seated side-by-side. Clearly deadfucked. A movie played on a loop on the screen. Scenes from Zamora’s latest, and probably his worst.
‘Sick son of a bitch,’ Holly goes.
Zamora would have these ‘movie nights.’ It started off as a good thing. We’d watch mostly upbeat flicks to escape from reality. Zamora would slip in some unused stuff from his archives and then pester you for your opinion afterward. The smart move was to lie. As time went on ‘movie nights’ turned into the Alex Zamora film festival. Attendance mandatory.
Graeme rewinds the footage.
Jules (V.O.): Holly goes, ‘I’m not sure I wanna see this.’ But he doesn’t look away when Gramps pushes ‘play.’
Video
The Screening Room (No Sound)
A small screening room. Movie theatre-style seating. A screen spans the entire length and width of the front wall.
An obese, pyjama-clad Zamora leads Cinderella, a sister-wife, the stunt-cock, and an associate into the room at gunpoint and instructs them to sit next to each other. They look weak, malnourished. The men appear to have been beaten. Their heads hang low. Shoulders slack. No fight left in them. The stunt-cock appears to have received the worst of it. He can barely stand and has to be helped into his seat.
Zamora puts the gun to Cinderella’s head. She shrinks, face tightened, eyes squeezed shut. Tears stream down her face as she anticipates her demise. ‘Will it hurt? Will it be quick?’ Zamora savors the moment, and then yells something to the group. They flinch at the sound of his raised voice. He continues to yell and gesture toward the screen. Afterward, he leans closer to Cinderella and mouths something in her ear. He points to a plastic bag on the floor. Several rolls of duct tape inside. The girl grabs a roll and moves reluctantly to tape the others to their chairs. Zamora scrutinizes her technique along the way and threatens her several times for moving too slowly. She is trembling, weeping heavily. Afterward, he tapes the girl to the aisle seat using the same technique. He makes a point to do it twice as quickly as she had done. He makes a speech punctuated with big, sweeping arm movements, and then leaves the room.
Cinderella and the sister-wife struggle against their restraints and attempt to rally the others, but the stunt-cock is barely conscious and the associate is paralyzed by fear. He sits there, staring straight ahead and babbling something to himself. The sister-wife eventually yells at him to, ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’
The group looks toward the ceiling, reacting to the dimming lights. Nightvision kicks in and colours the view a putrid green. The movie-screen comes alive and startles the group. The Zamora Films logo fades to a shot of Zamora seated in a director’s chair dressed like some relic from Hollywood’s golden age. He makes a high-minded speech and then unleashes a haphazard montage of extreme sexual acts on the audience.
Cinderella and the sister-wife curse at the screen and continue to struggle. Some of their own scenes appear in the montage. The associate has awakened from his fear-coma and is talking to the stunt-cock, who doesn’t respond, but just sits there, motionless. Head sagging. Hang-jawed. Drool.
Cinderella and the sister-wife join in. Before long they are yelling at the barely conscious stunt cock to ‘HOLD ON! WAKE UP! STAY ALIVE!’ No response. No movement. The associate leans in trying to get a look at the young man’s face. The stunt-cock flinches, startling the associate. His head bounces. He looks up slowly, dead, but alive.
Undead stunt-cock drunkenly pivots his head from side-to-side as if to ascertain his s
urroundings. His eyes widen at the sight of food. He lunges toward the associate, and then the sister-wife, teeth snapping shut inches away from them. They panic, screaming, and fighting the restraints with more vigor. The undead stunt-cock thrashes against his restraints as if angered by them. He lunges at the sister-wife without warning. She leans away, but not fast enough, and he bites her on the shoulder. She cries out in pain as Undead stunt-cock snatches his head away from her, his mouth attached by elastic strands of flesh. Blood everywhere.
Fast Forward...
…the sister-wife’s body is slouched in her seat, her head slumped toward the stunt-cock who devours the left side of her face, biting, and whipping his head, and snatching it away from the chewed visage. Cinderella weeps in her seat. The associate thrashes against his restraints.
Fast Forward…
…A frantic Cinderella leans away from Undead sister-wife’s half-headed snarl and snapping teeth. Her face twisted in palpable terror. The stunt-cock similarly pursues the associate.
Fast Forward…
An audience of four seated side-by-side, seemingly content with each other and with the rapid-fire montage of depravity on the screen. They stare with slack-jawed wonder, mesmerized by the colourstorm and the noise or maybe by the sight of warm, edible meat blown up to giant proportions. Cinderella and the associate are no longer interested in fighting. Their wounds tell the story of their demise – Cinderella with her left ear missing and her left arm dangling by sinewy strands from her shoulder. The associate with his entire face eaten away.
End video
Interior of van. Jules seated in back thumbing through a magazine. Acoustic guitar in his lap. Hollister and Graeme in the driver and passenger-seats respectively. Graeme has the window down. His arm rests on the frame.
Jules (V.O.): We got the codes to the entire place by watching footage of Zamora skulking around while everyone slept. Gramps’ idea. We spent a whole day disposing of Zamora’s body, which we had to freeze first, and then cut into pieces. Another day on the rest of the group. We drew straws to see who would have to… de-deadfuckify them, shall we say. And who would have to cut up Zamora. The honors went to Gramps and Holly, respectively. In the end, we did it together. No way I was gonna let them have all the fun. Goooo teamwork!
