Screaming out war cries of fury, smiles still stretching the haggard lines in their faces, they ran into the army of the undead, firing.
Epilogue: Many Months Later: Things Aren’t Good, Ray
“Ever hear of the hog nosed snake?” Tim asked in his crisp, British accent as he studied his partner’s face. He was running his fingers through his thick, blonde hair, a wide smile on his handsome features. “It can play dead so well that its mouth can actually give off the stench of death.”
Ray sighed. This crazy bastard was truly beginning to rub him the wrong way. “And you’re telling me this because?”
Tim pulled absently at his perfectly clipped mustache and looked down. “I’m telling you this because that poor bloke is not dead.”
Ray groaned tiredly. The man lying before them had a bullet hole in his head the size of a golf ball—you just didn’t get any deader than that. A massive pool of blood was congealing around his head like an obscene scarlet halo. Ray leaned down and pulled the blood-soaked T-shirt up slightly. The shirt felt hard, as if it was doused in red paint and then left out in the sun for a few hours. Five clean bullet holes could be seen dotting the chest. He pushed on the corpse’s arm, but it was stiff, well into rigor mortis.
Ray snickered. “Not dead? You could use his arm as a hockey stick if you wanted to.”
Tim just smiled enigmatically, cocking his head slowly to the side like he was listening to a beautiful song that only he could hear. “One moment please.”
Ray moved away and watched the strange man. He had heard a lot of bizarre stories about Tim. The story went that he had once found himself lost in alternative realities and had engaged in a blood-soaked battle with different versions of himself. He had supposedly lost his last partner Francis in the “Reality War” as he had called it. Tim claimed to have whacked over forty-seven versions of his own self. Ray was pissed that Pope had sent him out on a hit with such a lunatic. Ever since they had partnered up last week, his world seemed to have turned into a David Lynch movie starring the cast of Goodfellas and Fawlty Towers.
Tim nodded his head as if in agreement with some invisible companion. He glanced over at Ray dramatically. “Watch this.” Pulling a mirror from inside his trench coat, he placed it over the open mouth of the corpse. The mirror fogged up instantly. “Well, well.” He looked up at Ray and winked. “What do you make of that, my friend?”
Ray tapped his fingers nervously on his shaved head. “You are one creepy fucker, Tim.”
Tim looked up at him, and for a second Ray could swear the pupils in his eyes were spinning around in circles, like a psychotic Warner Brothers cartoon character. “You should have seen the last version of me. Compared to him, I’m saner than a priest.”
“I beg you to stop referring to yourself in the…what person is it?”
Tim smirked. “The forty-seventh.” He pulled a small hacksaw from his trench coat.
“Is there anything that you don’t keep in there?” Ray asked.
Tim pulled out a pack of mint gum and tossed it to Ray. “Freshen yourself, mate.”
Ray sometimes wondered if his partner was in fact merely trying to appear crazier than he was, but watching Tim singing in a soft voice, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’’” while casually sawing off the head of a corpse, he had to guess Tim was really out of his fucking mind.
Finished, Tim stood up, holding the dead man’s head by its black hair and studying the face with a scholarly expression. The tongue protruded from its mouth, thrust between yellow, nicotine-stained teeth. Tim reached into his trench coat, grabbed some wire and tossed it to Ray. “You better tie him up.”
“You fucking kidding me? You just cut his head off. Why the hell would I tie him up?”
Tim set the head down on the desk, facing it against the wall. He flicked the back of the head with his forefinger then turned to face Ray. “Do I look like I’m kidding you? If you don’t want to tie him up, then don’t. Just don’t come crying to me when things get trippy.”
Ray frowned. “Tim, I don’t understand. What the hell is going on here?”
Tim pulled a date book out of his jacket and wrote something in it. He put the book back in his jacket and looked up at Ray. “Well, how about the total breakdown of reality?” He sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring. “I can smell it coming.”
Ray actually sniffed the air, then grew angry with himself for doing so. If he wasn’t careful he would let himself get dragged into this crazy bastard’s world.
Tim tied a white handkerchief around the severed head, muttering something about the future, then turned it around to study it.
“Are you sure you and Pope aren’t playing some kind of sick trick on me?” Ray asked, looking at the head in horror. “I swear you guys are filming my reaction to this shit and laughing about it later. Why the hell do you have it blindfolded?”
As if on cue, the mouth on the head began moving up and down, its teeth snapping together in loud clicks. Tim flicked its nose and the mouth gnashed wildly. “It’s just better this way,” Tim explained. “When they can see they can be dangerous.”
Throughout all this, Ray had been unconsciously backing up, not noticing until he suddenly bumped against the wall behind him. He moved forward again so as not to appear scared out of his mind. Seeing this sort of thing in a horror movie had not prepared him for how it feels when it happens for real. He felt like someone had poured a bag of live tarantulas into his stomach and now they were scurrying around violently in a vain effort to get out.
The foot of the corpse lashed out and kicked his shin. Ray literally turned around and ran straight into the wall, smacking his forehead brutally. In a daze, he fell backwards, landing heavily on the body like it was a soggy cushion. Blood soaked into his shirt from the many bullet holes in the chest of the corpse. Tim pulled Ray to his feet, giggling like a madman.
The corpse stood up, feeling around blindly. Tim watched it as it stumbled about, rubbing his hands together gleefully.
“Did I not tell you?” Tim asked. “Stay back, this is the fun part.”
The corpse started touching the walls blindly, probably looking for its own head.
Backing away, Ray watched in absolute terror as Tim engaged in a macabre combat dance with the headless corpse, slapping it on the shoulders, then twirling away gracefully before the dead thing could hit him back. He tapped the body’s chest with the hacksaw and manipulated it into running right into the wall. The body spun around spastically, then fell onto its stomach. Tim pinned it down with his foot, grinning triumphantly.
From the tabletop, the blindfolded head hissed in anger, bubbles of saliva falling from its mouth into a slimy, red puddle.
He turned to Ray. “What would you do without me?” he asked, his eyes burning madly. “Isn’t the irony sickening, partner?”
Ray ran his arm over his sweat-drenched forehead. “What do you mean?”
“Well, here we are, hitmen trying to survive in a world where the dead walk again.” He slammed his boot down into the corpse’s back and grinned when the bullet holes shot six fountains of blood into the air around him. “Doesn’t the irony just…” He stared down at the crimson spray on his pants leg. “Bleed?”
Tim bent down and began working with his saw while his partner watched in disgust. Within minutes, Tim was surrounded by five hunks of flesh, four limbs and a torso. “There, now it will stay dead. It will probably stop moving in a few minutes.”
Ray was pale and sweaty. “Tim, please tell me that you’ve been slipping drugs into my Coke all week. I can’t take this. I want to be back in a world that when you whack a guy, he stays fucking whacked.”
Tim nodded. “Well speaking of that, we have to go kill Psycho Mike-O.”
“Um, I heard he got whacked two weeks ago, by you in fact. What the fuck are you—” Then it registered. “Oh.”
“Yep,” Tim said, kicking a severed arm under the table. “I whacked him a few weeks ago. It’s a
ll my fault, really. I shouldn’t have been messing with the structure of reality I suppose.”
Ray had no idea what Tim meant, but didn’t have the energy to ask. Silently, he followed Tim out to the car and got inside. Thinking about all the men he had whacked over the past year, he wondered how many were coming back to life and just how pissed they might be. He turned to Tim, who was toying with the radio. “Where the hell did you put the corpse of Psycho Mike-O?”
Tim found a station with Fisting Laura singing “You Know I Can Break You, My Love.” He began bobbing his head to the menacing beat. “In the cemetery, of course,” he said. “In the same coffin as his dear old mum.”
Ray thought of Psycho Mike-O and shuddered. He had only met the deranged fucker once, but that was certainly enough. Mike-O could only be described as a nuclear version of Charlie Manson. Although he was small, his bulging muscles more than made up for his height. Word was that Mike-O was whacked for disobeying one too many of Pope’s orders. Killing him once must have been hard enough.
“Didn’t you kill Mike-O’s brother, too?” Ray asked.
“I’ve only been back for three weeks. Another Tim must have killed him.”
Ray gave up. “I don’t think I want to know any more about you.”
Tim grinned. “Trust me, sometimes I’m not even sure if I’m myself. It gets kind of confusing when your reality continues to fall apart. I’m not sure if I’m the original Tim, but I’m definitely an earlier version. Maybe Tim five, maybe six.”
Ray just shook his head. After tonight, Tim’s words didn’t seem quite as fantastic. As they drove towards the back woods graveyard, he watched the yellow lines in the road like they were the lit fuse of a bomb. He froze suddenly, realizing something truly frightening. “We’re going to a cemetery during the same week when the dead are walking the earth?”Tim nodded. “Yes, but we don’t have to worry about the others. Just Mike-O.”
“But what if Mike-O already got out of the coffin?”
“That’s doubtful, he’s in a stone mausoleum, no windows.”
“Well, then why don’t we just leave him there then? Let him rot?”
“Because we can’t take the chance anyone can let him out and I don’t like to leave a job unfinished. Pope already paid me to kill him and if he’s suddenly back alive, Pope’s going to be pretty pissed. Pope is one man I want to stay on the good side of.”
Ray chuckled. “That’s funny. You have no fear of fucking zombies, dancing around with headless corpses, fighting with your own alternate selves and yet you’re afraid of Pope.”
“Well, as you can see, I have enough enemies as it is.”
“This is insane. It’s going to be swimming with fucking corpses.”
“If you were a prisoner and you somehow escaped the prison—would you stick around right outside the place? Or would you go as far away as possible?”
By the time they arrived at the graveyard, most of the corpses were already off to wreak havoc or avenge themselves. Dozens of empty holes dotted the graveyard, a reminder of how surreal the world had become.
Tim parked the car and popped open the trunk, removing two obscenely large double-barrel shotguns. He tossed one to Ray. “Make sure you don’t fire that thing if I am even twenty feet to the side, it’s like a bloody elephant gun. You shoot that at one of the zombies and it will probably cut the poor bastard in two.”
Ray nodded weakly and stared out into the darkness of the graveyard. The tombstones jutted into the air like warning signs, giving the place a menacing edge that he would rather not have felt. Every time he saw a shadow move across the moonlit cemetery he had visions of a walking corpse. They started walking through the tombstones.
“How many people have you buried here?” Ray asked, scanning the hazy blackness as they walked through the wet grass.
“How many have I buried here literally, or technically?” Tim asked, lighting up a cigarette nonchalantly as they moved towards the end of the burial grounds.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Ray asked.
“Well, literally, I’ve buried about ten or so people here. It’s the perfect place to do it. Cops just don’t think about looking for a dead man in the most obvious place. As to how many people I have caused to be here, I have no idea. I’m sure it’s a lot.”
They came across a zombie stuck halfway out of its grave. It clawed at the dirt when it saw them, hissing and growling in fury. Tim shined a flashlight into its face. The zombie squinted and began to snarl and slash at the light. Although very decomposed, its eyes were still almost normal. It stared at Ray furiously, eyeing him like a predator studies its prey. Moaning, it pulled its lips back and exposed yellow, mud-covered teeth. Its hair stuck out in matted tufts and tiny, tick-like insects were crawling out of the bullet shaped hole in its forehead. Tim turned the light on the tombstone behind the zombie.
“Gabriel Walker,” Tim read. “Died only two months ago. I remember him! Snuff film maker and star! Cops shot him!” He shined the light back into the zombie’s face. “Pretty well preserved for being down there eight weeks, don’t you think?” He clicked the light off and continued walking. “Let’s move along.”
“You’re not going to kill him?” Ray asked, his voice filled with alarm.
“He’s already dead, fool.”
“Man, you can be such an annoying prick.”
“That, my friend, is true. Doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Why is that?”
“Gabriel didn’t have any legs. That’s why he was stuck.”
When they arrived at the mausoleum that held the body of Psycho Mike-O they both grew quiet. Even Tim seemed nervous for the first time that evening. The door of the crypt was already hanging open and Tim gasped, his wiry frame stiffening, like a metal rod had been shoved up his ass.
“What!” Ray hissed, holding the shotgun as he spun around in a circle.
A body was lying before the mold covered steps of the mausoleum. Tim shined his flashlight onto the body and Ray was stunned to see his own blood-covered face in the glow.
“What…the…hell?” Ray muttered, backing away. “That’s…me.”
“Another reality break,” Tim said, cocking his shotgun. “Things aren’t good, Ray.”
“Godammit, Tim! What the fuck do you mean a ‘reality break’!” Ray shrieked, copying his partner and cocking his shotgun as well. “What the fuck kind of sci-fi shit is that?”
“It happens a lot. My double is here and so is…was yours. When two doubles enter the same reality track one of them goes batshit. I think it has something to do with brainwaves not being able to be shared, but that’s only a theory. And not only that—”
Tim was cut off by the detonation of a shotgun. The blast sent him hurling backwards into a tombstone, a cloud of blood spraying from the massive hole in his chest.
“Ray!” Tim’s double shouted as he emerged from the darkness. “You’re back alive! How fucked up is this? Sorry about shooting that double, but it had to be done. I got Psycho Mike-O too, but you’re going to have to help me cut up the rest of him.” The Tim-double had a large, bloody bag tied to his waist and he patted it. “Got his head in here. Tough bastard, though.”
“Fuck you!” a raspy, wet voice howled from the bag.
“Cocky bastard, too,” he said to Ray, smiling.
“Fuck you!” the bag squawked.
Ray looked over at where Tim’s bloody corpse lay in the moonlight and then let his gaze move slowly back to the double. He tried to speak, but the only thing that emerged from his mouth was a mouse-like squeak. He started crying, his body shaken by sobs.
“You going to help me go cut the rest of him up, or what? Don’t get all upset about me having to kill my own double. It happens at least once a week. You get used to it after awhile.”
Ray swung his shotgun around and fired point blank into Tim’s stomach. The hitman sailed into the darkness, eyes wide with surprise.
“Oh dear God, let it end wi
th him,” Ray said aloud, reloading his shotgun in a panic. “My life was normal until I met this crazy dude.”
Ray’s own corpse sat up from where it lay on the steps of the mausoleum, and Ray’s sanity shattered into little fragments. At the moment, he fully understood what it was like to be Tim, his brain spinning around inside of his skull like a child’s top. He emptied his shotgun into the corpse and grinned wickedly.
He was busily sawing up the corpses into little pieces when the third version of Tim arrived. “You want any help, mate?”
Ray turned to face his partner and laughed maniacally. “Damn straight! We have a lot of work to do! Pope’s gonna be happy when we bring him the head of Psycho Mike-O!”
“Fuck you!” Psycho Mike-O’s head shrieked from the bag.
Tim and Ray both giggled simultaneously. It wasn’t until later that things really got out of hand. Often, they felt that sanity was seriously overrated.
About The Author
DAVID WHITMAN is the co-author of the collection Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed horror novel Harlan.
David’s award-winning short fiction has been published in over 100 publications, including Gothic.Net, The Edge, Black October, Electric Wine, and Twilight Showcase to name a few. He has received several honorable mentions in Ellen Datlow’s and Terry Windling’s Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
Future projects include a sequel to Deadfellas.
INNOVATING DARK FICTION
www.darkside-digital.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Tim, Francis and Lime
Chapter 2: Benny, Rico And The Dead Grundy
Chapter 3: The Lime Graveyard
Chapter 4: Furious Lime
Chapter 5: Tim Two, The Scary Bitch, And The Bastard
Chapter 6: Pope And Grundy
Chapter 7: Double Call
Chapter 8: You Don’t Know That They Got A Grundy In The Trunk
DeadFellas Page 6
