“I agree. In fact—”
A double-barrel shotgun blast from the hallway suddenly tore the door half apart, the whizzing buckshot dotting the wall between the two men. As the door exploded inward, it showered them with wood fragments. Another shotgun blast erupted from the doorway, sending pellets so near to Tim they messed up his hair. They also tore off the top of Francis’ head, sending it sailing out of the window behind, trailing blood and gore, comet-like, in its wake.
“Francis!” Tim shrieked, spittle flying from his mouth, both hands already shooting his guns into the mangled door. He fired until his barrels were empty—teeth gritted, screaming, his eyes bulging wildly. He let the empty magazines drop to the floor simultaneously and quickly stuck two new ones in like a well-tuned machine, his hands a violent blur.
A gasp came from the hallway and Adrian Lime crashed into the broken door, shattering what was left of the wood and falling into the room with a wet thud. A red pool of blood spread out around him as he bled out.
“Fuck!” Tim hissed, turning to stare down at his dead friend, tears forming in his eyes.
Francis’ skull was an open bowl of blood and brain, his head gone from the bridge of his nose up. Francis’ chubby legs still twitched inside his blood-drenched khakis.
The rattling of bone outside reminded Tim that the dead were still lurking about, and had most likely surrounded the house.
Tim fell to his knees, oblivious to Francis’ warm blood soaking into his pants, and tried to keep his mind from shutting down. I can’t face this alone, Francis, he thought, taking his dead friend’s hand. There is way too much to deal with here.
Chapter 5: Tim Two, The Scary Bitch, And The Bastard
Tim heard someone talking downstairs. He slipped quietly to the broken door, a gun in each hand, and listened. A drop of sweat fell from his brow and into the puddle of sticky blood below with an audible plop. Moving as one with the flickering shadows, he stepped through the broken door and into the hallway.
He almost screamed out loud when he saw the woman at the end of the hall. It was all he could do to keep from emptying his guns at her. Instead, he waited.
Lime’s mistress stood like a statue, her doll-like eyes staring past Tim into the dim hallway beyond. An icy smile creased her full red lips. She held an obscenely long knife clutched in her left hand, her delicate white fingers wrapped tightly around the pearl handle. She looked like a feral Betty Page. Her perfectly parted dark hair hung to her shoulders. She eyed Tim ferociously, seemingly ready to attack.
But Tim knew she was frozen stiff, just like the rest of the loonies and crazies lurking around the house. The voices from the first floor drew him forward and he carefully inched his way past the frozen madwoman.
“God, if you are there, please, please don’t unfreeze her ass until I go by,” Tim whispered as he walked, too scared to appreciate the irony in a hitman praying to God.
Passing Lime’s mistress—who he had dubbed The Scary Bitch in his mind—he hugged the wall, sliding by her with breath held, his eyes squinting as though she was a ticking bomb. For a moment he considered snatching away the knife, but decided against it, fearing she might spring to life.
By the time he reached the elaborately carved balcony, the voices were clear. Ducking down in the shadows, keeping one eye on Lime’s mistress behind him, he peered into the gloom downstairs.
Below were exact replicas of himself and Francis, arguing in front of the massive and cracked grandfather clock. Splattered with blood, the doubles looked haggard and tired.
“We can’t just keep fighting these doubles, Timmy,” the Francis-double said. “Fuckers are everywhere. We need to figure out a way to get out of here. I’m about five minutes away from completely losing my bloomin’ mind.”
The Tim-double chuckled. “Francis, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a choice in the matter. They are attacking us.”
“Don’t play word games, Timmy. You know what I meant. We’re going to have to make another break for it.”
Tim-Two looked at his watch. “We have a bit of a wait until sunrise, partner. I suggest we go upstairs and hole up in one of the bedrooms.”
Tim felt a rush of adrenaline at the last statement. No way he would be able to handle the both of them.
Francis walked over to one of the windows. “Why don’t they come inside, you think? They just wait out there for us to come out.”
Tim-Two sighed and started to move up the steps. “It’s a scary thought to think they can come in at any moment. Maybe whatever has us held here merely wants to toy with us a bit. They’re just out there like guards, so we can’t get out.”
Tim crawled over to the staircase, moving as quiet as humanly possible. When they were half way up, he stood up in the darkness and shouted, “Freeze!”
Tim-Two and Francis looked up, both of their hands instinctually moving towards their guns.
“That’s one of you up there, Timmy,” Francis said, his hand slipping around his gun.
“Francis, don’t you fucking dare,” Tim hissed. “I’m not having a very good night here and I don’t need to see you die twice.”
“You’re just a double,” Tim-Two said, casually scratching his left hip.
“Take you’re hand away from your hip,” Tim said. “I’m you, don’t you remember? I know you keep the extra gun there. And I’m not a double.”
“You look like a double to me,” Tim-Two said, a hint of humor in his tense voice. He let his hand drop to his side.
“I’ve never been killed,” Tim said, almost pulling the trigger. “I’m the same version of myself that I was when I came to this hell house.”
“I can tell you’re a younger version of myself,” Tim-Two said, chuckling. “Things don’t work like that. Just because you have a memory of arriving here doesn’t make you the original Tim. Doubles seem to come from different time tracks or something. They aren’t really doubles, but the same version of ourselves at different points in time. Pretty fucked up, eh?”
“How the hell do you know this?” Tim asked.
“Because Francis and I have been fighting these things for two weeks now. We’ve had a lot of time to theorize. We’ve learned a lot about that alien thing with the goat legs. Its name is Farron, we call him The Bastard. It’s known as a Manipulator. It toys with us and generally fucks things up. There is another Manipulator called Hawthorne that seems decidedly less menacing. Turns out Lime was some sort of religious nut. Lime used the Necronomicon to let it into our world.”
“How long do we have till one of us goes batshit?” Tim asked, his brain not comprehending anything but the fact that he wanted to stay alive.
“Usually around two hours,” Francis answered. “We teamed up with about three Timmy doubles yesterday. We were able to fight alongside each other for at least fifty minutes. You have no idea how annoying Timmy can be times two.”
“There is a dead version of you upstairs,” Tim said. “In the second bedroom. Your whole head is blown off. Fucking Lime. And his mistress is frozen over here in the hallway.”
“Um…she’s not frozen,” Tim-Two said, his voice rising in panic.
Tim felt his saliva suddenly dry up. “What?”
“She does that all the time. She acts frozen and then comes alive to whip ass.”
Chapter 6: Pope And Grundy
Benny tapped his fingers over the top of his shaven head nervously, a habit he had picked up years ago playing high stakes poker. Grundy’s soggy body lay on the ground before them, his frog-like eyes bulging deliriously, his fingers opening and closing with a watery squishing sound. Grundy’s skin was wrinkled, ripped open in many places.
As Benny watched, choking down the urge to puke, a beetle crawled out of the bullet hole in Grundy’s forehead and fell to the ground. Grundy himself watched the insect exit his head, face purple with rage as he watched the bug fall to the moonlit ground. Grundy shrieked, spewing milky water that splashed Benny’s leg.
&n
bsp; “We’re gonna have to call the Pope and see what he says to do,” Benny said, biting his Zapata mustache with his bottom teeth nervously and dancing back when Grundy kicked out a waterlogged leg.
“He ain’t gonna believe us,” Rico said. “He may even put out a hit on us for fucking around.”
“Then maybe we should just take Grundy directly to him. Let him see this crazy shit for himself.”
“How the fuck we gonna get him into the car?” Rico asked. “I don’t want to touch this smelly fuck.”
“I don’t want to touch him either,” Benny said, staring down at the living corpse with disgust. “I got plastic in the car.”
They put a plastic bag over Grundy’s head and managed to get his sour and rancid smelling corpse into the trunk of the Mercedes with little trouble. Grundy’s muffled shrieks could still be heard from within.
Benny couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of it. He had been in some seriously screwed up situations in the last few years since becoming a made man, but he had to admit to himself that this one was a prizewinner. It had only been recently that he had been paired with Rico, and it didn’t take long for him to begin to harbor a serious hatred for the man. Rico was whinier than a fucking woman.
They got back in the Mercedes, Benny behind the wheel. Benny drove out of the woods and turned onto the dark highway, his brain still trying to comprehend just how the hell this shit could be happening. This was the stuff of horror movies. Not that his life wasn’t a horror movie in itself. He’d seen enough murders and bodies to fill hundreds of movies.
“You hear that Tim and Francis were sent to take out Lime?” Rico asked, lighting up a cigarette and blowing the smoke out of the crack in his window.
“No shit? Lime was stupid enough to mess with Pope? Fucking deserves to die.”
“No shit. And sending Timmy is pretty much gonna guarantee that the man will be dead by sunrise.”
“Shit, that reminds me,” Benny said, pulling the cellular phone out from between the seat. “I gotta call Tim. He wanted me to get him some shit I could dig up on Psycho Mike-O.”
“Ask him if Lime is dead too, if you get a chance,” Rico said, watching him dial the phone.
Chapter 7: Double Call
When both Tims’ cellular phones rang out in stereo, the three men all jumped at once. It was so loud—so normal—in the weird confines of the surreal house. Tim and Tim-Two each took out a ringing phone from their trenchcoats and answered it at the same time.
“Hello,” they said simultaneously.
“Timmy!” Benny exclaimed, happy to hear the British voice of his friend. “I got that info that you wanted.”
“This isn’t a good time right now, Benny,” both Tims said at the same time. Francis watched them talk, still not used to the breakdown of reality.
“Tim? Why does your voice sound so weird? Sounds like I’m hearing two of you.”
The two Tims laughed. “If only you knew, Benny. If only you knew. Listen, things are a little fucked up right now. I’ll tell you more later, but you won’t believe me.”
“Maybe you should tell me now, Timmy. We’re having a little weird shit going down here too. Remember Grundy?”
“Yeah,” the Tims said. “Pope had him whacked….”
“Yesterday,” Tim said.
“Two weeks ago,” Tim Two said.
“Tim what the fuck is wrong with your voice?” Benny asked.
“It’s too complicated to explain right now,” the Tims said. “Just tell me about Grundy.”
“Well, the fucker’s alive. He has a bullet hole in his head. He’s been underwater for at least a day, yet I can hear him screaming in the trunk.”
“This is actually good news,” the Tims said simultaneously. “This means that the whole world is screwed up, not just us. We’re kind of having a corpse problem here as well. It seems Lime keeps popping back up from the dead. Even Francis came back from the dead.”
“Francis is dead?” Benny asked, suddenly feeling numb. He had always liked the cranky Irishman.
“Not entirely,” the Tims said, grinning simultaneously. “He’s standing right here.”
Francis broke in. “I can’t take too much more of this double shit, Timmy.” He anguished, staring back and forth at the two versions of his partners. “It’s giving me a fucking, bloomin’ headache.”
Both Tims laughed, then spoke into their phones, “See, Benny? Still complaining as usual.”
“Timmy, I have no clue what the hell you’re talking about. First it sounds like there is fucking two of you.”
“There is two of us.” The Tims said. “Maybe even three or four.”
“And second,” Benny continued. “You say Francis is dead, but I can hear him talking.”
The Tims chuckled. “I told you it’s very complicated, Benny.”
“Listen, Timmy,” Benny said. “Maybe we should meet up. Try and make some sense of this shit.”
“Well, I’d ask you to meet us here at Lime’s but you won’t be able to get through the army of undead that surrounds the house.”
“Are you fucking serious? We’ll stop at my house, get some guns, and come up there and help your ass.”
“You sure can try,” the Tims said together, simultaneously smirking and scratching absently at their blonde hair like images in a mirror. “But those zombies out there aren’t like the movies, though. They move like the raptors in Jurassic Park. Better bring some serious firepower. Perhaps a flame-thrower would be a handy tool. “
“We’ll use the car like a fucking tank.”
“Who is with you?”
“Rico.”
“Ugh. I know he can handle himself, but he’s such an asshole.”
Benny laughed. “That, my friend, is true. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“We’ll be waiting,” they said and hung up.
“Now,” Tim-Two said. “We need to figure out what the hell we’re going to do about this double situation. One of us is going to go insane.”
Tim was about to answer when the organ music started to play. It came from below their feet, vibrating the floor with a dull rumble.
“Fuckin’ great,” Francis said. “Isn’t that Proud Mary? That’s odd.”
Tim nodded. “It is Proud Mary. And odd, it is.”
“It’s coming from the basement,” Tim-Two said. “And it’s not so odd really, considering the rest of the craziness that is happening here.”
Francis looked over at Tim-One. “Crazy Lime has a church down there. There’s an organ down there, too.”
“Who the hell is playing it?” Tim-One asked.
“Well, both of you know how to play the organ, right?” Francis asked.
“Yes, why?” the Tims asked simultaneously.
Francis was disturbed that they answered together, wincing as if it pained him greatly to be alive. “Do you two have to keep doing that?” he snapped. “I ask because I was thinking maybe it was one of you two.”
Chapter 8: You Don’t Know That They Got A Grundy In The Trunk
Benny hung up the phone. “That was the single most weirdest call I’ve ever taken. Those poor bastards are stuck up at the Lime house surrounded by zombies.”
Rico laughed uproariously.
“I’m not kidding,” Benny said. “That’s what Tim says anyway. I believe him, though. What with Grundy flopping around in the trunk and all. I think reality has left us. We’re going to go down there and help them. Just gotta stop at my house to grab some firepower.”
“You’re serious?”
“Couldn’t be more serious. In fact—” Benny froze in mid-speech, mouth open. Up ahead he could see the flashing lights of a cop car. It was blocking the road and had another car pulled over to the side. A Mercedes.
“Shit. What the hell is this asshole doing?” Rico asked as Benny slowed the car down.
Approaching the Mercedes and the police car, Benny was stunned to see himself and Rico sitting in the parked car—
staring right back at them. The Rico-double pointed at them.
The officer’s eyes widened when his flashlight hit their faces. He had a gun in the other hand. “What the hell is this? You guys some kind of twins?” From the trunk came the sound of Grundy shrieking. “What the hell? Same noise in the trunk? Get out of the car now! Keep your hands up! All of you!”
The Rico-double had been growing increasingly nervous throughout the stop. The Benny-double had cautioned him to stay calm, but after the twin Mercedes with doubles of him and Benny inside pulled up, he snapped. When Benny’s attention was on the cop questioning the doubles, he popped open the door, swung himself out, and opened fire, his gun going off in staccato pops of noise. A bullet went through the back of the cops’ neck, erupting from his throat amidst a misty flower of blood.
As the dying cop fell backwards, he pulled the trigger of his revolver once, then unexpectedly froze in mid-fall just before his back hit the pavement. The cop’s bullet went through the windshield and hit Benny in the forehead. He slapped at it as if stung by a bee.
The dead officer floated about a foot off the pavement, a spray of blood frozen in the air like a twisty demonic snake.
The Benny and Rico who had just stopped turned to see their eerie doubles likewise frozen still. Rico’s double was still firing, gritting his teeth, a flash of light at the barrel of his pistol where the bullet was exiting the chamber. The floating bullet hung just inches from the muzzle. Benny’s double was frozen inside the car, his mouth still open in a howl of anger as he went for his weapon.
Benny and Rico got out of their car.
Benny’s forehead was stinging, and he put his fingers to his brow where he felt something metallic protruding from the skin.
Rico was looking at all the frozen men in awe, his mouth open comically wide. “What in the hell is going on? That’s us, Benny!”
“Rico,” Benny said, his weak stomach turning over in fear. “Can you please tell me what the hell is in my forehead?”
DeadFellas Page 4
