Made sense. The ultimate goal of a Zee was probably to stop being a Zee, even if they didn’t necessarily know that. They just had this one simple drive, the one basic menu request which, when satisfied, chilled them out for a bit.
But the tide was already changing, Tim could see. After a week or so, the squealers had moved from being on the defensive — running away, holing up in houses — to forming roving bands of attack parties. They pretty much kept to daytime hours, but the Zees took it on the chin pretty badly when they came out. Since the average Zee didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain — much less shuffle out of the way of a truckload of hicks with pistols, rifles, machetes and cans of gasoline — there wasn’t much hope for them.
Not that there ever was. But Tim, as a genius Zee, a higher order of some sort with a slightly less fucked-up brain, would be able to take advantage of the raiders’ attack parties, would he not?
After stumbling away from the garage after Marilyn was shot, he’d made his way to higher ground and had spent some time literally walking in circles. For some reason, he wasn’t ready to venture out beyond the farm, and he kept ambling, hoping for a kill that would never come.
He wasn’t alone. Like the humans they were before, Zees had proclivities and, perhaps, the faintest hint of personality. Some were herd-like and more likely to be down there by the house with the group. Others were content to work the periphery, and it was among this group that Tim saw some of what might considered some of the “harder cases” — tough hombres who looked like the first ones in on a kill. Some of them had even come up to Tim and gotten in his face, sniffing at him and shoving just a bit. He’d shove back and they’d back off, but he didn’t appreciate the attention. He wanted, more than anything, to be left alone.
He was leaning against a tree, trying to keep a little bit dry as a cold rain fell while observing the Zees clustered around that white farmhouse — the one that emitted lead from its upper windows on a regular basis. Even if it didn’t make much of a dent in the Zee population, he supposed it made them feel like they were doing something. And, as Tim knew from watching many a zombie movie, the inhabitants would, at some point, need to come charging out. They would need food, or water, or they’d just feel like the time had come to bail. And that’s what the Zees were waiting for: either to figure out some way in or for the squealers to come out.
Tim was looking for Marilyn Monroe in the crowd, wondering if she’d recovered OK from being shot in the shoulder the other day. Or was it the other week, or even a month ago? He couldn’t tell. But Zees typically didn’t go far if they knew squealers were around, and he’d spotted her blonde wig a few times in the previous days.
But where was she today? She seemed to favor the garage as a hangout, but there wasn’t any sign of her. No, wait: There she was, shuffling around the corner of the building. For a brief moment, she was in the clear enough that Tim could see her head to foot. She looked good, overall, even though the 30.06 slug had torn away part of her shoulder and bloodied her nice white dress. She had some leaves in her wig, which was even more askew on her head. Tim marveled that it was still there at all, after all she’d been through. He could see her natural hair underneath – looked like a chestnut brown with a little bit of red in it.
Marilyn was missing a shoe, and her short dress revealed twin trails of shit and blood down her legs. If Zees still could digest food and expend calories, Tim thought, did the females still menstruate? Made no sense. From what he’d seen, Zees didn’t have much blood in them – or what was left was dark and congealed. Sure, if you blasted one in the head with a high-powered rifle, there would be stuff flying out. But it wasn’t like regular liquid blood; it was more like a vile gel, dark and thick.
But the blood on Zombie Marilyn Monroe’s leg was red, fresh. And if she was still having periods, Tim thought, maybe they could hook up and have zombie babies? He felt the two poles of the laugh center in his brain be activated, then go flaccid as the thought fizzled like a sunken soufflé.
But maybe she just got lucky and got hold of a squealer, some of the blood landing on her legs. She just looked kind of pathetic, and Tim had worked up this ridiculously idealized visage of her in his mind in the days since he’d seen her last: the hot zombie, one who retained some of her sex appeal even through the degrading, humiliating, disgusting life of a Zee.
The saddest thing about Marilyn, Tim saw, was that the rifle shot had torn away part of her chest, and it appeared clear that the massive set of tits she was sporting was part of her Halloween night costume. Her left boob was still a healthy D cup, even if it was a fake, shifted upward and rubbing against her chin. But her right was deflated, mostly gone, giving her the appearance of a listing ship about to go under.
She didn’t care, though. She just shuffled out in front of the garage door, gaping up at the sky as she always did. To Tim, though, that gave some hope, like maybe she was an optimistic Zee who knew there were better days ahead. Watching her standing there, he felt a sudden urge to go down and join her. Maybe lift up her dress again, or see if he could shove her remaining tit back into place.
That was the kind of thing that simply had to pass for romance in this world.
Suddenly, though, there was new activity down there: The garage door started moving up, and as the Zees slowly reacted to the phenomenon, a large, black pickup truck gunned its engine and came roaring out. The cab had guns poking out of the windows, and the bed contained five or six guys bristling with weapons.
Their first Zee was Marilyn, who was flattened by the grill of the truck as it mowed her down. Tim watched as if in slow motion as she started to turn to see what was coming at her. The truck hit her and her head snapped back like a crash-test dummy. She was sucked under the truck in a flash, and Tim saw her broken body lying there for just a few seconds before the mass of Zees closed in around her to stare at the truck now bouncing across the field.
Shot after shot dropped Zees left and right, and Tim noticed with a start that the thing was heading right for the copse of trees in which he was hiding.
Made sense. It was higher ground, and just to the right of the grove was an open area where the raiders could survey the field of Zees below.
Tim played dead. He let his legs fall out from under him and landed in a heap at the base of his tree. He very much wanted to continue watching to see if Marilyn was OK (her head hadn’t come off, so far as he could tell, so she should be alright, in a relative sense). But he dared not move as the truck skidded to a halt not 20 feet from where he lay.
Well, at least this is something I’m good at — playing dead.
He then mentally kicked himself for making such a cheap, obvious joke. In life, he’d been the guy always ready with the irreverent take. Zombie dead jokes when you’re a zombie was like shooting fish in a barrel. And damn, there’s another cliché! Tim hissed in frustration, then quieted himself when one of the armed men looked in his direction.
Shit! Did they hear me? But the man turned back around.
Zombie hissing was something Tim not only hadn’t mastered, he wasn’t comfortable doing it. Many of the other Zees spent a lot of time hissing or moaning or groaning or making what would be known and heard by the squealers as “inhuman” or “ungodly” sounds. Even so, being struck mute — as an expected side effect of death — was unpleasant, to say the least. At least hissing was an outlet of sorts, even if Tim felt it beneath his dignity as only a partial Zee.
The flesh-eating ghoul part of him, though, was on red alert as the scent of the nearby men wafted in his direction. There was cigarette smoke, gun powder, sweat and cologne in the air, not to mention palpable notes of deep fear. For all the deadening of other senses, Tim had noticed his sense of small had grown to bloodhound levels, and a sixth sense for fear had also manifested itself. All the gun-waving and Zee slaying aside, these guys were scared shitless, Tim knew, and he slightly opened one eye to see if it looked like they were formulating some kind of plan.
They were. Maybe. They were outside the truck, five of them, and speaking loudly and pointing. To Tim’s ears, though, it sounded like they were speaking Malay or Portuguese or something. It was a series of indecipherable whines, pops and moans that Tim recognized as language and nothing more.
He closed his eye. It was true, then: Zees couldn’t understand human language. He’d suspected it from some previous encounters with squealers. But none of them really spoke much English as they were being dismembered, disemboweled and eaten alive. What would one say in such a situation anyway? “No! Stop! Please! Have a heart?” Made no sense. Even if the forces that created Zees were a mystery, their intentions were always strikingly obvious to the squealer: I want to kill and eat you, now, and nothing you say or do will dissuade me from that.
Tim continued to lie still and thought about his here-and-now, populated as it was by two groups of people — one of which spoke Portuguese and wanted badly to shoot him in the head; the other which hissed and grunted and wanted only to eat the Portuguese speakers.
What a world! Forming that phrase in his mind, Tim felt the barest hint of a smile cross his face. Well, if this was what it was, he’d best play his role, and the beast inside him was near-crazed with hunger. When the men started to fan out from the truck in a semi-circle, leaving one scared-looking teenager behind as some kind of guard, Tim waited another few moments and slowly got to his feet behind the tree.
The guard was standing in the bed of the pickup, shuffling in a constant circle with his gun raised and a lit cigarette dangling between his lips. This was a bad idea to start with, Tim thought. Zees, which above all others could afford to power down a carton of smokes a day, did not smoke. Putting a cigarette in your mouth and lighting it was like ringing the dinner bell. The smell of it said only one thing to any Zee in the area: live human nearby!
Unlike the other Zees, Tim had something resembling patience on his side, and he was peering out from behind the tree, timing his rotations to coincide with when the kid was facing away from him. After a few minutes, the kid settled down and kept his focus on his partners, who were walking down the hill shooting Zees. Before long, he was laughing and shouting encouragement. And he lit another cigarette.
Tim moved out from behind his tree.
Chapter 4. Meat
Up until this moment, Tim had not had a solo kill. He’d always been part of the mob, and on the periphery at that. He’d end up with miscellaneous blobs of flesh, bones to gnaw on or other not-so-prime cuts like scalps, hands or ears. Whatever is was that made a Zee charge in first for the best stuff, Tim didn’t seem to have it. The Reluctant Zombie, he though, that’s me.
But the gnawing in his core after supping only on offcuts the past several days was about to to change. When the kid with the gun turned toward the slowly advancing Tim, he popped up from behind the wheel well, grabbed the kid by the legs and hauled him over the side. The gun fell from his hands as he landed on his back, his head striking a rock. Tim was ready with another rock, which he brought down between the kid’s eyes.
Kneeling over the still-breathing victim, Tim took in the body and sized up vulnerabilities. He was wearing a down vest and sweat pants and boots. The only exposed flesh was face and hands, so Tim started there, sinking his teeth into a faintly bearded cheek and tearing away a lump of flesh.
At this, the kid woke up and looked into Tim’s eyes and screamed. Then, out of nowhere, he produced a pistol and shot Tim in the shoulder.
Dumb ass thought Tim of himself. You should’ve gone right for the carotid artery. Now you’ve got a live one, a squealer. The other assholes will be running up the hill any minute.
He knew he had to work fast. He hissed, reared back and found the kid’s neck with his teeth. Bull’s eye! He felt the pulsing artery underneath his incisors and clamped his jaw down tightly. The skin broke, the kid wiggled wildly beneath him, and then his teeth found each other on either side of the artery, which exploded into Tim’s mouth with a gush of hot blood that just about choked him.
He jerked away, a chunk of flesh and part of the kid’s artery still gushing in his mouth. The wiggling stopped immediately and Tim watched the light disappear from the kid’s eyes as he stopped wiggling.
It was that easy.
Looking over the top of the pickup bed, it looked like the other Zee hunters hadn’t noticed the kid’s screams or the gunshot — they were thick in a crowd of Zees a hundred yards away, firing as fast as they could.
Tim turned back to his lunch. He probably didn’t have much time, but at least now he’d get more than a scrap of cheek and neck. He put his mouth on the gaping neck wound and allowed more of the still-pulsing blood to jet into his mouth. This, as he was now learning, was the good stuff, zombie gold. Fresh arterial blood like this made him feel a warm glow inside after so much time in the cold, and he could feel a life-giving energy from it. Who said vampires and zombies didn’t have anything in common? He stayed on the neck wound as long as he dared, sucking at it when the heart stopped pumping it in for free. He then tore off some more chunks from around the kid’s neck and face, then gave him a big French kiss that resulted in the prize of a fresh tongue. He tore off the lips and swallowed them, then grabbed each hand and tore off the meatier bits of flesh around the thumbs and palms.
But he was stalling, he knew. The real volume was down lower, and Tim turned to the kid’s trunk with a mixture of greedy zeal and lurking revulsion. Fortunately, the sweats were easy to pull down, and he started by ripping off some chunks of thigh and forcing them down his throat.
He then turned to the rest, throwing any other scruples to the wind as he emulated the wolf and went for the soft, easy flesh and organs below.
Having finally crossed that bridge, he let out a victorious hiss with his arms outspread and was about to go for the kid’s ample gut when he saw another man standing in front of him, gun leveled. He said something that was truly insulting in Portuguese and hit Tim full in the chest with a rifle blast.
Tim fell sideways behind the back of the pickup and immediately started to crawl away. The foolish man set down his gun and knelt by his fallen buddy, apparently assuming a point-blank blast to a Zee’s chest bought him a few seconds of grieving.
Tim was on him in a flash, going this time immediately for the carotid and pulling away half the guy’s neck in a geyser of arterial blood. The fountain reached all the way to the pickup’s window, coating it in a grisly shower of red and making Tim think that, if this really were a stealth-filmed zombie flick, the director would be very pleased indeed.
No time for any more feeding, though, as Tim could see the other three guys making it up the hill. They were slow and fat, though, giving him time to rip out the would-be hero’s tongue, waggle it in his teeth at the approaching trio of doomed hunters, and disappear into the woods. He watched the ensuing action from behind some more trees.
They had planned their attack poorly, without enough guys to cover all their flanks, and hordes of Zees were closing in on them. These guys also didn’t seem to have comprehended the No. 1 zombie-killing rule that it’s a shot to the head that really does the trick.
Standing in the trees contemplatively chewing the hero’s tongue, Tim watched the horde close in on the trio, then bring them down in a mass of Portuguese squealing and flying body parts. In previous days, this would have been the part where Tim waded in for his share, but he felt sated now — that arterial blood was like some kind of mega energy drink.
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud, roaring hiss just behind him, which caused Tim to jump aside. Two ghouls lurched past him, headed for the kill.
And 10 steps behind them came Zombie Marilyn Monroe.
Tim watched her approach as if in slow motion, which in fact was not too far from reality. Marilyn didn’t look well, at least relative to what a Zee typically looks like. She was shot up and bloody, with the fake boob pushed up around her neck. She had a Dodge Ram logo tattooed on her forehead from being r
un over by the truck (payback is a bitch — Marilyn, I took care of those motherfuckers for you, darlin’) and her once-white dress was covered in mud and in tatters. One side of it was ripped away enough that Tim could see her chewed-up ass.
As she drew closer, Tim stood and stared at her, wondering if there would be any glimmer of recognition or if she’d just shuffle by. He positioned himself so that he was directly in her path, and she simply walked right into him and stopped, the top of her head coming to rest under his chin.
She didn’t move. It was as if she’d arrived at some predetermined location and simply could go no further. Even with the promise of a feed just before her, Tim thought, she was choosing to be here with me. Either that, or she was so starved and out of energy that any obstacle would cause her to cease forward momentum.
Tim spit out the hero’s tongue into his hand and found Marilyn’s mouth with it. He gently shoved until she opened, and he saw her chew once or twice and swallow.
That’s a Zee box of chocolates, sweetheart. Enjoy.
Tim took a step back and looked at Marilyn, who seemed to have brightened a couple of notches from her snack. He reached up and clumsily shoved the fake breast back into place in her dress, then pulled up the sleeve on the other side to at least partially cover her rifle wound. He then looked into her eyes to see if there was anything there.
Marilyn had bright blue eyes, although the whites were thoroughly bloodshot. They were dead, zombie eyes, but still Tim thought he could discern a distant touch of something in there: sadness, wanting, hope? Then, suddenly, her head snapped up and she hissed at the feeding frenzy scene, which was fully underway. She broke away from Tim and started shuffling toward the pickup faster than Tim had ever seen her move.
Zombie Road Trip Page 2
