by Mark Tufo
The line at the downstairs bathroom was eight people deep. Why I didn’t just go outside eludes me to this day. I instead found my way to the stairs, a couple of the doors were closed and I could hear the tell-tale moans of those in the throes of orgasm, I normally would have jumped into the doorway and pulled a major coitus interruptus but I could almost taste piss in my throat I was so full of it. I walked into the master bedroom which was thankfully empty and opened the bathroom door.
“Aw fuckin’ shit,” I said as I was fumbling with my zipper to pull my dick out. Donna was sitting on the vanity smoking a cigarette. “You about done?” I asked her, trying to stuff it back in my pants, the added pressure causing me to squirm.
“Don’t mind me,” she said puffing away. “Unless you have stage fright.”
I had stopped listening the second she said she didn’t care. I pulled my buddy back out of my pants, it seemingly weighed a couple of pounds from the added fluid. I arched my back and let loose, the sweet release was invigorating. Donna had hopped down and was now standing next to me as I went.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked her, more than a little peeved that she was ruining this religious experience.
“That’s a nice cock, what else can it do?” she asked lustily.
“Go away,” I told her.
“I know you’re going out with Sandra Dee. Her legs are tied together at the knees, have you even felt her tits yet?”
“Fuck off, Donna and let me piss,” If I didn’t have one hand around my manhood and the other braced against the wall keeping me standing, I would have pushed her away.
“Listen, no one needs to know. I want it and you need it. Fuck, Tim your balls are so blue it looks like you’ve been storing them in a freezer.” She laughed. “And it does look like you’re interested.” She was looking at my burgeoning penis.
Donna was a slut, no argument there, but she was hot and I was a high school kid. Of course I was getting hard. “No one finds out Donna. I’ll fuck you up if this gets back to Danielle.”
“Scout’s honor,” she said as she placed her two closed fingers to her mouth and kissed them. As I finally and blissfully finished up one basic human need, I went for a second one. She closed the toilet seat and sat down on the lid. Luckily the bathroom wasn’t too big; as I spread out my arms, bracing myself against two walls. Donna’s ministrations were in a word, fantastic. I’d always believed my coach when he said practice makes perfect, and she’d sure had her share. I was close to coming when I heard someone enter into the bedroom but unless it was the President I didn’t give a shit and even then he’d have to wait until I was done.
“Tim?” I heard from the open bathroom door.
“Oh—oh fuck!” I shouted as I came. Donna had pulled away at that moment, my baby batter arced out and splashed onto her hair and the toilet.
“Oops,” Donna said. “Probably should have shut the door.”
“How… how could you?” Danielle cried, her eyes huge, taking in this ultimate betrayal.
“Wait, wait. This isn’t what it looks like,” I said as I pulled my rapidly diminishing cock from Donna’s hand and tried to chase her. But she was much smaller and had not been drinking, by the time I bumbled my way down the stairs and through the throng of partygoers she was long gone. She would not accept my phone calls and did not show up to school for the entire school week.
I’d had enough. I was going to wait outside her house until she talked to me, eventually she would have to. I was wholly unprepared for what I witnessed when I went to her house that Friday after school. Two police cruisers were on her front lawn and an ambulance was in the driveway. Mrs. Hoegler was sobbing and she was wrapped up tight in Mr. Hoegler’s arms.
Someone was being wheeled out on a gurney, the sheet was pulled up past the face so I couldn’t see who it was. It couldn’t have been much of an emergency, the men weren’t hurrying and the lights to the ambulance weren’t even on. Maybe Grandma Hoegler had died, but in all the time we had dated Danielle had never said anything about her. And then the slow dim evil light of dawning came upon me. It started out as a peach pit in my stomach to become a raging alien within me in a matter of moments. The hammering in my chest did little to quell the boiling acid in my stomach, my head felt feverish, my feet were rooted to their spot by the curb.
“Get out of here!” Mr. Hoegler was screaming from his front porch. “You’ve done enough already, you bastard!” Rage issued forth from every fiber of his being and I had yet to figure out who he was directing his diatribe to.
A cop was heading my way, another was trying to calm Mr. Hoegler down. “Son—Tim right?”
I nodded at him, still not entirely sure what was going on or maybe not willing to acknowledge the truth.
“I think it would be best if you left here right now.”
“What’s going on?” I asked him with dread.
“Danielle’s dead,” he said bluntly. Next thing I realized I was looking up at the face of an EMT. And pushing the nasty smelling salts away from my face.
“Did we win?” I asked him.
“He’s fine,” The EMT said standing back up.
The cop came back and helped me sit up. He sat down next to me on the curb.
“Are you sure you’ve got the right girl?” I asked.
He nodded, his eyes full of kindness and sadness. “She didn’t say what you did but she hung herself because of it.”
I sobbed until my soul seemed wrung out.
“I hope you choke on it!” Mr. Hoegler said as the other cop moved him inside his house.
I never got the cop’s name but he sat with me the whole time, until I felt my head was going to split.
“Did you learn anything here, son?” The cop asked with concern.
I nodded and I had. Never fall in love. I killed Donna Sorji’s two Yorkshire Terriers, poisoned them with arsenic. I didn’t care that they had nothing to do with the whole thing or that they were really her parents’ dogs, I needed to strike out against her and it was either them or her. It was not long after that she became one of those homeschooled kids, my growling menacing looks at her more than likely sped the process up.
***
“You haven’t aged at all,” I told the girl in the back of that SUV. Higher reasoning wise I absolutely knew this wasn’t Danielle, but that part of me was run completely over by the tide of feelings I had suppressed all these years. I retracted myself from the car, my need to feed momentarily forgotten. The dad let out a large wincing gush of air as I stepped on his stomach. I kicked him out of my way. My higher self knew that the illusion would be shattered once I opened up the rear door and got a closer look, but if anything it only reaffirmed my initial belief. She was beautiful and she even had that slightly lopsided smile that I had come to love.
“I knew they were lying!” I said as I gently picked her up from the seat. “Your father just didn’t want me going out with you,” I picked her up and cradled her in my arms. “You’re so cold, Danielle,” I said hugging her tight so that she could garner some of my body heat, although looking back that was probably a lesson in futility considering I was undead.
I kicked open the side garage door and into the day I went with Danielle in my arms, she didn’t stir and she was as pale as a winter moon, but I knew she wasn’t dead because of the way she was attracting zombies.
Fuck the pain. ‘Hugh tell them to fuck off!’ I screamed. No response and the zombies were closing in. “I will not lose you twice,” I shouted, as I began to run, a full contingent of zombies in tow. I had put a fair amount of distance between us when my right leg stopped moving. ‘What the hell! Hugh I need that!’ I demanded.
Hugh was screaming some sort of high pitched cry, it sounded like torturous pain, a wailing cat being dragged upside down across glass. ‘No… eat… dead!’ he screamed. ‘Other Hugh!’
‘What does that mean? But I got it, even an offensive lineman can figure some shit out. I had eaten a dead infected h
uman and now another virus or whatever the hell Hugh was, was now vying for control of this body and by my dead dragging right leg I could figure that my Hugh was losing.
I was still ahead of the horde but now I wasn’t making anymore distance and unless Hugh rallied and began to win there was a very good chance I was going to lose function of another limb soon. I could not, would not fail Danielle again. I turned onto a side street hoping to lose a few of my denser pursuers, a white Ford pickup truck was parked up ahead at a convenience store the back was full of supplies that the people walking in and out of the store were filling it with.
I was close maybe fifty yards away when I made the turn and I could hear those people speak.
“Dad company!” A boy of about seventeen shouted looking over his shoulder. His gun was already at the ready.
Another man came out of the store, maybe somewhere in his mid forties, followed by a giant black man that made me look like Olive Oyl.
“Talbot, what the hell is that thing?” The black man asked his traveling companion.
“It’s a clown. I hate clowns BT.”
“Is there anything you do like?”
“I like you just fine.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet.” A small female said as she came out of the store. “Is there something you need to tell me, Talbot?” she asked who I guessed was her significant other.
The man named Talbot pointed my way. I was going to shout but the invader worms/ Other Hugh had wrenched that control away also. Couldn’t talk and dragging one leg behind me, might as well hang a placard over my head saying ‘zombie’.
“Oh my God!” The woman cried. “Is he carrying someone?”
“I can smell him from here,” the Talbot man gagged out.
“There’s more of them Dad. A lot more.” The boy yelled.
I had not fooled a single one of the zombies trailing me.
“Looks like he wants to eat that one all by himself,” the giant BT said.
“Are you two going to help?” the woman asked.
‘Yes, thank God. Please help me—us!’ I thought.
I was within fifteen feet of the truck now and they weren’t backing up but they weren’t coming forward either.
“Mike, it’s carrying a girl,” BT said.
‘IT!’ I screamed indignantly in my head. ‘Who the fuck is an IT, I’m TIMOTHY!’
Talbot’s rifle was fixed squarely on my forehead. I could almost feel the laser etching into my skin. “I’m afraid the bullet will go through and hurt her.”
“You sure she’s not already dead?” the big black man asked him.
“Why don’t you two debate about it a little longer?” the female said as she started to walk up towards me.
“Tracy what are you doing?” The man named Talbot asked her.
“I’m doing what it takes.” The woman told her traveling companions, her resolve seemed less steeled as she approached.
She saw something in my one remaining eye which prodded her on. It could have been the spark of insanity, or tears of pleading for this to end, whatever it was she quickly closed the five feet that separated us and placed the muzzle of her pistol to my temple.
“Come on woman we have to go.” Talbot shouted.
I didn’t hear the shot and blissfully I didn’t feel it as the bullet tore through my brain, all that you have read here are my last thoughts of the final split second I spent on this earth before eternal darkness and damnation clenched my soul forever in its cold cruel embrace. My name is Timothy and I am dead.
The End
Read on to discover more zombie books and read free excerpts of Necrophobia, The Living End and White Flag of the Dead
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NECROPHOBIA
Book #1: Wake the Dead
By
Jack Hamlyn
“Given the greater number of dead than living on this earth,
a revolt of the dead against the living who had buried them
would certainly end in defeat for the latter."
—Ornella Volta
CLOSING IN
It was the end of July and the air was hot and thick like boiled molasses. Ricki was in the kitchen whipping up some breakfast and I was in the living room, sweat running down my face as I tried to wire in the new air conditioner. I had just fished a Philips screwdriver from my red toolbox when I heard the screaming.
It went through me like a knife.
It was loud and cutting and absolutely shrill. It didn’t even sound human. More like an animal being flayed alive. I stood there for maybe three or four seconds shocked into inaction, then I stepped out onto the porch.
By then, Ricki was at the screen door looking out. “What is it, Steve?”
“I don’t know. I heard screaming.”
“So did I.”
But what I saw in the neighborhood was…nothing.
Absolutely ordinary. Old Lady Hazen was out tending to her flowerbeds. Jimmy LaRue was up on his roof, hammering. Cars were passing in the street. The mailman was walking up the sidewalk with his bag of letters, pausing now, maybe listening as well. Jimmy LaRue was pounding too goddamn loud, so he didn’t hear anything. Mrs. Hazen…well, she couldn’t hear cymbals crashing next to her ear let alone dogs barking.
I looked over to the mailman.
He had put his earbuds back in and went on his way.
The scream came again and it was wet and gurgling. By that time, people up and down the block were out on their porches wondering what in the Christ was happening.
“Should I call 911?” Ricki asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe I better go look.”
“Steve…”
“I’ll be right back,” I promised.
Then I ran up the sidewalk, listening for the scream, and it came again. Though this time it was weak and broken, more liquid than anything and I didn’t care for that much. It was coming from Rommy Jacob’s backyard. I was sure of it. Rommy was a widower. He lived for his garden. He made offerings to us each summer of tomatoes and cucumbers and snap peas. I jogged around the side of his house, almost tripped over a wheelbarrow full of black soil, and that’s when I saw him.
He was lying on the ground, twisting and squirming. It looked like someone had painted his throat and face a bright, Technicolor shade of red. He saw me. He looked right at me and there was more than agony in his eyes, there was horror. Sheer horror. His red-stained fingers were at his throat and when he opened his mouth to speak, blood came out. It bubbled out of the side of his throat…which was missing, I saw, like a tiger had taken a bite out of it.
I just stood there.
My stomach rolled over and I got dizzy. The smell of blood was heavy, sweet, metallic in the air. I don’t have a weak stomach. I spent a year in Iraq with a Stryker Brigade. I saw men die. I saw them die in numbers. I pulled pieces of them from Hummers when they caught IED flak. Yet…to see it here, in my neighborhood…it made it all that much more brutal and devastating and unreal. I had to force myself to move. Rommy was my friend, for godsake. But this was more than I could handle. He needed medical attention right away.
“Hang on, buddy,” I told him, part of me wanting to run home for my cell to call 911 and another part telling me I should stay because Rommy wasn’t going to make it until an ambulance showed and I didn’t want him to die alone.
That’s what was going through my head.
Then I heard something behind me and Rommy’s eyes, which were beginning to get the glazed look of near-death, widened. I turned and there was a man standing there. His skin was horribly pale, mottled with gray patches, his eyes white, completely white. He was smiling at me: lips shriveled back from narrow teeth. It was no smile, it was a rictus grin. He came at me, snapping his teeth like a crocodile rising from a river, pushing a black wave of damp decay before him. It smelled hot, nauseating.
He opened his mouth to say something.
Rommy made a gurgling sound.
I took one step backward
, shaking my head.
You see, that thing reaching out for me, I knew him. His name had been Bill DeForest. He’d been buried nearly a week before. Now he was back and he was no longer human.
“Bill…” I heard myself say, knowing it was ridiculous and pointless, but I couldn’t help myself. Bill had been my next door neighbor. When Ricki and I moved into the neighborhood six years before, Bill was the first one to knock on the door to see if we needed anything. He came over with a six-pack and a strong back. His wife, Pearl, showed with fresh-baked cookies and a good heart. Bill helped me re-shingle the roof. He did wiring and windows for me. When I was in Iraq, he made damn sure that Ricki and Paul never went without.
Six days ago, we’d buried him. Heart attack.
I was one of the pallbearers.
Now he was back.
He went right for my throat with bared teeth. I tried to push him back, then he lunged. He almost put me down. He was trying to bite me, to get at my throat. He was wild and snarling and stinking of the grave. I shoved him away and he came right back at me. I had no choice. I hit him. I hit him hard. He staggered back and went down to one knee, staring up at me with a feral, fixed hatred. He didn’t just want to kill me. He wanted to slaughter me. He wanted to gut me and lap up my blood.
He came again and I hit him.
