It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

by Kurtz, Matt; McKenzie, Shane; Strand, Jeff

  Jim stared downward and concentrated on his swing. He had to get the blood splatter perfect if he wanted the fairy wings to look right. Last time it looked like a little bat.

  ***

  “Oh man, oh man,” Shane whispered to the darkness.

  Just as Jim predicted, the pothead had gone in the opposite direction of camp, and had only gone about one hundred yards before stopping to lean against a tree. “Man, I wish I weren’t so high.” He moaned, his bloodshot eyes trying to peer through the darkness. He looked around and shivered. An owl hooted in one of the tree tops. Shane jumped backward, impaling himself on a large tree branch. Blood pulsed down his stomach, pooling at his feet.

  “Damn it. How the hell am I going to meet my quota now?” Jim lisped as he stepped from behind a tree, his voice raising an octave higher in his anger.

  “Dude…you sound…totally gay,” Shane said as he died.

  ***

  “Blake, I couldn’t find anyone,” Megan called out.

  The campsite was empty, just as Jim planned. He smiled as he watched her looking around the clearing. He clenched his teeth to hold back his giggles of excitement. As soon a she opened the car door, she would get a big surprise. This was the best part of his night, even better than killing douche bags. The Last Kill. Soon it would be time to go home, kick his shoes off, and take a bubble bath. After that, it would be time to watch Sally Fields and Dolly Parton in the greatest movie ever made.

  “Blake? Goddamn it. He left, too. Probably jacking off in the woods or something,” Megan grumbled as she sat on the log next to the fire and began pounding tequila in earnest.

  Jim wanted to scream in frustration. Nothing ever went right. She just had to move two feet to her right and open the car door. But no, she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t make Jim’s life any easier, couldn’t let Jim have any fun.

  He watched for twenty minutes, but all she did was drink more. And while her capacity to drink straight tequila was amazing, it wasn’t why Jim was there.

  Jim’s crestfallen face loomed up out of his hiding place. Kids these days had no respect for tradition. She should have known to check the car, it was a classic move. He had even scrawled a warning across the passenger door in blood to draw her attention.

  “Ish that writing?” Megan looked across the campsite at the car, her words slurring. She read the words out loud. “Beth comes for you. Blake, who the hell is Beth? If you think I’m gonna make some girl cum, you can think again. You’re fuckin’ sick.”

  “It’s death! Death comes for you,” Jim shouted across the campsite.

  “What? I can’t make out what you’re saying. Are you Beth? I don’t know what Blake told you, but I’m not into that.” Megan stood up and stumbled toward the car.

  Jim grunted, jumped to his feet, and strode across the campsite. He might as well get it over with. Everything was ruined.

  A tequila bottle smashed into his head with unexpected force. The girl must play softball or something, Jim thought clutching his head.

  “You wanna get crazy? Let’s get crazy!” Megan pulled a large hunting knife out from behind her back.

  Jim backed away disgusted. She was one of those. That was all he needed. A fighter. Could this night get any worse? First he had been bored out of his mind, then he didn’t meet his quota, then she wouldn’t open the car door, and now she wanted to fight back. Some nights you just couldn’t win.

  Megan howled like a banshee and ran straight for him.

  Jim shrieked and jumped to the side, just avoiding the thrusting knife. Maybe he would just let her live. You were supposed to do that once in a while. Let someone live to spread the word about your presence. When it came to mass murder, nine-tenths of the advertising was by word of mouth...unless you made the FBI’s most wanted list. But Jim could only dream of being so lucky.

  “Stand still! I’m going to gut you, you bastard!”

  Jim whimpered. That was it. He would let her live so she could tell everyone how scary he was. He spun around and ran for the woods, ignoring the IMMA guidelines about running. There was time to follow the rules and there was time to run like hell.

  “You better run, you little bitch,” Megan shouted after him. Yep. Time to run like hell.

  Jim sprinted through the forest until his lungs burned and his legs ached. Finally, after a long while, he stopped to catch his breath and leaned against a tree.

  “She…can spread…the Terrifying Legend of Jim,” he said in a breathless, high-pitched squeak. He glanced at his watch. It was early. He could catch Sleepless in Seattle and Steel Magnolias if he hurried home. He would have to put in a few extra hours later in the week to meet his quota, but he was already resigned to the fact.

  “I got you now!” Megan tackled Jim to the ground. The knife slashed downward, slicing through Jim’s hands and stabbing into his chest.

  Jim howled like a little girl as his blood sprayed through the crisp night air.

  “I guess no one told you…I get a little crazy when I drink,” Megan growled, her eyes shimmering with a maniacal light. She stabbed downward again and again. Jim’s blood splattered across the nearby trees and covered Megan’s face. The tiny droplets seemed to spur her to even more dizzying heights of anger.

  Jim’s arms fell to his sides, too weak to be lifted. His eyes scanned the blood spatter on the trees.

  “You’ve got absolutely no style,” Jim whispered as consciousness slipped away from him.

  Don’t (My Buddy Benny)

  by M. S. Gardner

  “She’s been bitten,” I yelled back into the alley to Benny.

  Jenna, his wife, had just been bitten by their deceased child. This was all just a series of events gone horribly wrong. Events that could have easily been avoided…

  ***

  There are certain things in life that you learn vicariously. For me, it was experiencing death through watching horror movies. Good or bad, I had an appreciation for them all. It wasn’t just the intensity of watching my favorite Slasher cutting his way through a whore, her skin splitting like the seams on an overused baseball, fake blood gushing out and staining everything in sight—though I do appreciate that “placed” scene. The nude kill, it’s classic. At least as far as I’m concerned. But ever since I was a child I’ve been enthralled with the dark, the macabre. Evil in its purest form is fear. H. P. Lovecraft had once been quoted with saying, “The oldest and strongest emotion of all mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

  I always believed that.

  Still do.

  It is what we don’t know that scares most of us, and I guess that’s what happened to Benny. If he’d just listened to me, just once, he and his family might still be alive, passing the time with yours truly. Oh well, I guess I was meant to spend the apocalypse alone.

  As a child, my mother told me “don’t” quite a few times. More so than I’d like to discuss really. It always seemed, at the time, pestering and unnerving, an attempt to outwit my youthful mind. But Momma was right, a whole hell of a lot of the time—though it’s not a fact I let her know. No one’s perfect, but my mom was close.

  As we grow older, we become aware of things. Often you’ll hear someone say that “with age comes wisdom.” Who hasn’t heard that before, right?

  Well, let me tell you about my buddy Benny. Actually, he wasn’t really my buddy—notice the past tense. “Buddy” is more of a sarcastic, cynical term that will hopefully bring some humor into the light of the recent weeks of my life. Humor, I fear, is the only thing keeping me sane—and I’m not that good at it. But they say that laughter can cure just about anything, if only temporarily.

  Fuck medicine, right? That’s never done anyone any good. Hell, it was because of some medicine or “cure” that brought the damned dead back to life. On a side note, I wonder if those suited assholes are still alive, watching through their satellites as the entire world crumbles to the core—maybe that’s what their true intentions
were. There were a lot of Bennys out there.

  Anyway, it seems, in hindsight, that Benny hadn’t been brought up in a stable environment. He’d probably never even seen—or at least never paid attention to—a horror movie. The girl that always falls when she’s running away. The overweight bastard who thinks that a devilishly sexy woman really wants to have sex with him. Those kids that can’t just leave well enough alone. Or, as is the case with Benny, never seen how to survive in a world where the dead won’t stay dead, infecting or consuming all that cross their path. The slow ones, the fast ones, it was as if the man hadn’t even read the Guide.

  ***

  It all started about three-and-a-half weeks ago. I woke up to a violent pounding on my door—at my age, it takes a little time to actually get up. When I first saw Benny, he was halfway through my kitchen window. And Benny was a very impatient person. Two cars in the driveway, the dog on the leash outside, and he still had the nerve to make his way in like no one was home. I guess he thought I’d heard the news and bailed. Well, I didn’t.

  “Freeze, you son of a bitch,” I said to the frail bastard and I pumped one in the chamber to prove how serious I was. I had known about an infection, but had yet to discover just how close it was. But at that time, it didn’t matter. Though I am a forgiving person, my Remington isn’t. She has the temperament of an infant, and he was lucky I could control her.

  Benny screamed, high-pitched and pathetic, much like a teenage girl who had just been caught naked by the next door neighbor, and his limbs went slack. I still remember the thump the back of his head made on my window. It knocked the little guy out. It was then that I heard the shrieks in the backdrop.

  “Oh, I told you not to go through the window,” a beautiful, twenty-something woman said. Even by my standards she was a looker. She rushed to the intruder, Benny, and began rubbing his head. The woman looked through the window to see an old man and his shotgun, with my golden retriever, Donut, barking in the background. I guess a nap was not in my fortune that day. Immediately I saw the fright in her face, and quickly rested my weapon out of sight. The barrel of my shotgun was not meant to be pointed at a woman, or a child for that matter, which is what I saw not a moment after.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “The infection’s made its way to the city. We were just…”

  I’d heard enough. Seeing the little girl was all I needed. Minutes later Benny was coming to on my couch, and his wife, Jenna, and daughter, Marissa, were on my love seat. Me, well I was in the Captain’s Chair, Donut at my feet, watching in amazement as the news flooded every channel.

  “Two children have been rushed to the hospital, showing signs of…”

  “The first child has died, the second in critical condition…”

  “Both children have reanimated but the situation is being monitored by a delegate from the CDC…”

  “We’ve just been informed that there’s been an incident. The entire school has been shut down. We urge all parents who still have children in the building to do your best to stay as calm…”

  “A riot has broken out in front of…”

  Then it all spiraled into pure chaos. We’ve all seen the movies.

  “Please refrain from leaving your homes.” The reporter was in tears, barely able to get the words out.

  “Avoid any and all contact with anyone infected,” another station’s anchor instructed.

  “If you or a loved one has been bitten, scratched, or has come into contact with the Infected or their secretions, lock yourself in a separate room until the proper care can be administered.”

  “If there’s anyone left out there, we’re evacuating to…”

  They thought they could contain it. I’ll bet my life that someone in that school knocked over something, or accidentally poked his colleague with a tainted syringe. Something miniscule, so minute that it probably boggles God’s mind as to how it actually happened. I wonder if that person was related to Benny…

  ***

  Most of the city had to be evacuated just as that day began. All surrounding counties had reported incidents as early as dawn. My house has prime location on the outskirts, in the woods, secluded—I guess I’ve always been preparing for something like this. My pantries were and are stocked with canned goods and bottled water, several months-worth of supplies. And my armory, well, let’s just say I have a gun or two. I was going to kick this thing’s ass, if that’s what the situation called for.

  But my buddy Benny, that wasn’t good enough for him. Only five days after he tried breaking in, he wanted out.

  “Are you fuckin’ with me, Benny?”

  I mean, I had already sealed off the basement and first floor. Even drew up an escape route after positioning both my vehicles so that we could head either east or west, if the situation called for it.

  “But…” his voice cracked as the television fell into a hailstorm of static, “I thought we would head to that shelter the news was talking about.”

  He was a man that was never satisfied. Probably had a small dick, which made me wonder if that was why Jenna kept giving me that look. She needed a real man, we both knew it. And at forty-seven, with two ex-wives, I think I fit the description. But that’s not what little Marissa needed, and that kept my head on the level.

  “We’re fine here, Benny,” Jenna contested, her eyes lit with irritation.

  “Benny,” I reasoned, “if we go out there we’re as good as dead. There are too many things that could go wrong. Think of your wife and daughter, man. We should stay here and try to wait it out, let the government sort things out.” At this point in the conversation I knew I was lying out of my ass, but from the look on that child’s face, she needed some positive reinforcement. But that didn’t change the fact that the infection had reached the borders of Mexico and Canada already, and all planes were downed just hours before. There was no telling how far this thing spread or how fucked everything was going to be. But, stability means survival, and that’s what I’d intended on having. It was, after all, my house.

  “You’ve got food and water. I know we just met, and I’m very grateful for your hospitality, but I’m guessing that you’re the type to have an armory of sorts, no offense—”

  How is that in the slightest bit offensive, really?

  “—but don’t you think it would be better to head to one of the military outposts? There is safety in numbers.”

  Jenna looked at him and shook her head, practically laughing.

  Benny really was a thinker.

  And this is when the horror critic came out. I explained to the short, pathetic man that when an infection like this breaks out there are certain procedures the military abides by. The main thing being this: anyone showing any signs of whatever the symptoms of said infection might be, be it coughing or wheezing or sweating, like being out of breath from fleeing a horde of Infected, would be shot. Those could, and more than likely would, be construed as signs of infection. I mean, put yourself on the other end of the fully-automatic firearm. Countless people unable to help themselves running right toward you, arms waving, some smiling, all crying…each one showing symptoms of what you’ve been warned about. How could you tell them apart?

  You couldn’t.

  I couldn’t.

  And they’d be dead, as we would, or so I tried explaining.

  “We’re all human,” I said, “and in a situation such as this, a pandemic of epic proportions, we need to stay solitary. Let the herd thin out a little before we expose ourselves. Especially when there’s no real need to.”

  “But there is a need to,” smug little Benny argued. “What if we wait too long and they leave us?”

  “That’s what they’re gonna do anyway, Benny. It’s what they’ve always done.”

  Benny didn’t seem to understand that, in order to survive, sacrifices had to be made. And, through experience, a lot of sacrifices needed to be made. It is the design of life.

  “We’ll be fine. They’re the United States
Government. They have to help.”

  Really? This asshole must’ve had it coming since the day he left his mother’s womb. Benny was “that guy,” the nerd in the movie that was too uptight for his own good. I’m not talking about the semi-cool dork that’s too pathetic to hate. No, he’s the guy that dies one of the worst deaths in the movie because he’s too smart for his own good, like the carpenter that gets killed by his own nail gun or something. The one who leads himself to the wolves.

  “Haven’t you seen any movies, read any books? Come on, man. I worked for the bastards. They ain’t worried about you and your family, or me and my dead dog—”

  Yeah, I have a dead dog too. Tinkles. Had to put him down just a week before I met Benny and his family. I’ll give you one guess as to what that dog was good at.

  “—everything’s changed. It did once they declared Marshall Law.”

  But there was no telling Benny. He was set in his ways, a genetic deficiency or something.

  “That’s an extreme way to put it, Mike.”

  I rubbed the stubble on my face, looked to Jenna, who was sitting on the ragged and torn couch I inherited with my father’s passing. She was holding her daughter, cradling her. There was something about that image that will always stay with me. That was what Benny needed to focus on: tending to his own. Not serving some useless plan he’d read in the Idiot’s Guide to Getting Yourself Killed.

  “What do you think?” I asked Jenna what Benny should have.

  There was a brief smile, and a certain glimmer in her eye. “I think we should stay here, like you said, Mike. If we wait here…”

  “But, Jenna—”

  That dumbass cut her off. The look in her eyes spoke volumes, but in a language Benny couldn’t read.

  “—what about our families? Are we supposed to leave them out there?”

  “THEY’RE DEAD,” she said, startling poor Marissa. I could see the sleep yelling at her eyes, begging and pleading for them to shut. “They’re dead, Benny. Can’t you see that?” She started crying.