by D. M. Guay
He was almost on her now. Oh shit. Was he gonna eat her? Was he moving in for the kill? This was just like my dream. I had to save her. I couldn't let her die. “DeeDee, run! Run! ZOMBIE!!!!” I screamed. “SAVE YOURSELF!”
Sadly, I only screamed it in my head, not out loud. My mouth opened, but no words came out. The sight of her boobs, combined with abject terror, had completely immobilized all of my higher brain functions. Shit! Shit! No! Speak, dumbass. Speak! But nothing. Well, now I knew why every dude in every single slasher movie stood there like a wide-eyed idiot while the killer cut up his naked girlfriend. No man could think straight with a hard on. There just wasn't enough blood in our brains. For real.
DeeDee pulled on her clean shirt, and must have caught a glimpse of Chef, because a second later she jump-spun toward him and had her fists up. “Oh. Chef. You scared me. How did you get out?”
She slumped, relaxed. Relaxed? Hello! ZOMBIE! RUN!
A bit of blood must have freed up, because I moved. Well, just enough to drop my clothes, stumble and fall on my butt. Again. Jesus. This was becoming my signature move.
DeeDee stepped to Chef, rolled down the collar of his crisp, clean white uniform, and checked that weird electric bondage collar he always wore. There was a tiny row of lights on it, all green. “Well, your collar's working. I'm not sure how you got out, though,” she said. “Come on. Let's get you back in the kitchen. It's too hot out here. You've got to stay cool, or you'll rot.”
She grabbed his shoulders and turned him back toward the lounge.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
He tromped back down the hallway. That's when I figured out why he was so loud and how he was walking. He had a weird black exoskeleton support brace thing running from his chest all the way down to his feet. Man. They'd snapped him back together and put him in some sort of sci fi mech suit. Wait. Did that make him a super zombie boss? I'd played enough video games to know the bosses always get you in the end. Every. Single. Time.
And zombies are real, so I'm sure this will all end well. I felt the urgent need to put on clean clothes. I did not want to be covered in mayonnaise when the zombie apocalypse started. It's like a chicken nugget dipping itself in barbecue sauce. Why make yourself more delicious?
Yep. I could use one of those magic showers right about now. I gathered up my clothes and pushed the bathroom door open with my behind, as I scooped up the stray clean sock I'd dropped on the floor. Brrr. Man, it was cold in here.
The door thumped closed. I stood up, turned around and bumped straight into a man. “Oh, excuse me.”
Wait. Why was there another guy in the bathroom? I looked up at him. And plup. That was the sound of my guts hitting the floor. Because, oh shit. Wrong door. This wasn't the bathroom. I had walked into some sort of cold storage locker. A dozen men in coveralls stood inside swaying. Their noses sniffed the air aggressively. It was the cleaning crew. The zombie cleaning crew. HERE? AAAAAAH!
This chicken nugget had landed right on the buffet line. I backed right into the door. It was ice cold. “HEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLP!”
I screamed, loud and clear. In my head, at least. In the real world, all that came out was a squeak. Which was probably good, because, dude, you don't scream when you're surrounded by a zombie horde. I'd played enough Resident Evil to know that much.
The cleaning crew wore giant black Terminator sunglasses like Chef's, but I could tell they were looking at me, even under all that black plastic. Like looking looking. With piqued interest. Their lips curled back, exposing a dozen sets of rotten teeth. They were drooling.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Aaaaaaaaaaaar. Uuuuuuuuuuhhhh.
Uh oh. That was an excited moan, a “Hey guys, pizza's here!” kind of moan. They shuffled closer. I ran my hand along the door, fumbling, searching for a handle. But it was smooth. Nothing but metal. Oh God. I turned around. There wasn't a handle! NO HANDLE!
The cooler only opened from the outside! Aaaaaaaah!! I panicked and did the only thing I could think to do. I pounded on the door, hoping that DeeDee—anybody—was still out there and would hear me.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Aaaaaaaaaaaar. Uuuuuuuuuuhhhh.
“Help MEEEEEEEEEE!”
Pound. Pound. Pound. No one came. I was alone. I was screwed. The noise only gave the zombies a firm target.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Aaaaaaaaaaaar. Uuuuuuuuuuhhhh.
They moved in, pressing me against the door. I had nowhere to go.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Aaaaaaaaaaaar. Uuuuuuuuuuhhhh.
So this is it, huh? This is how I'm gonna go out? This was God's big plan? I slunk down to the floor and balled up, making my body as small as possible. I was surrounded.
Err Err Err Err Err.
I covered my ears. An alarm sounded, and yellow lights flashed.
Uuuuuh?
Yeah. You heard that. They moaned in a way that sounded more like a question. The zombies looked up at the light.
Clunk fwoooooooooo.
No, that was not a new martial art. That was the sound of the cooler door unlocking and all the air going out as it opened. I rolled backward right on out of the cooler into the hallway. The zombies shuffled out after me. I was too scared to do anything but scream. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!”
They were closing in. All of them. They moaned again, and my survival instinct flipped on. Finally! (Apparently, it was a late bloomer, like me.) I kicked up off the floor and ran faster than I ever had before. I pushed through the door out into the store, screaming, “Zombies! RUN!” as loud as I could.
I ran. I tripped. And I fell, smack on my face, right into a pile of something hot, steaming and wet. I flailed, trying to get up, still screaming “Zooooooooooombeeeeeeeeeeees!”
“Well, duh,” Kevin stood on the counter carefully easing his Zebra album back into the sleeve. “Who else is gonna clean up this mess? Where you been? You missed all the action.”
“What?” I rolled over. I was lying in a puddle of white slime. Wait. Was that mayonnaise? No. It was a chunk of what looked like ruffly jellyfish tentacles, thick and rubbery. “Jesus Christ!”
And boy did it stink. It smelled like thirty pissed-off skunks wrestling in a steaming pig pen. Vlurp. Gonna barf. I covered my mouth.
“Relax, kid. It isn't gonna hurt you,” Kevin said. “The rest of him got away.”
“What happened?” Wait. Scratch that. Didn't want to know.
Kevin decided to tell me anyway. “We opened the gate at midnight, and this poor sucker got sucked through. Routing error. He was just as surprised as we were. Then the portal closed up and accidentally cut off one of his legs. Well. Whatever this is. Poor dude. Long story short, gate malfunction. Wait 'til I get a hold of Steve. His half-ass gate repair almost cost me an album. The needle skipped and almost scratched it!”
I scurried out of that pile of ick ASAP. Good thing, too. The zombies descended on it like a fat kid on a Happy Meal. They chewed and groaned. Mmmmmmm. Aaaaaaaa. Mmmmmmm. Myum. Myum. Myum.
“Get over here before you're zombie lunch.”
I didn't move. I was too scared.
“What's wrong with you?”
All I could do was point. Zombies. Come on. Did he really have to ask?
“Relax. As long as the collars are on and the lights are green, they won't hurt you. You don't register as food. Don't put your fingers anywhere near their mouths, though. Better safe than sorry,” Kevin said. “If they bite you, you're screwed. Unless you want to spend your afterlife working for the devil for free.”
Chapter 8
“Get up, kid.” Kevin leaned over the counter to look down at me. “We aren't paying you to hide in the corner.”
Okay, yeah. So I'd spent the last forty-five minutes curled up on the floor behind the register. It was Tuesday, the gate opened in thirty minutes, and I hadn't quite recovered from last night. It was only a matter of time before a pixie or some other nasty horrible beast popped out of somewhere. I closed my eyes. It's okay. You only have to stay alive until God lets you o
ut of this. It's fine. It'll be fine.
I had been pep talking myself nonstop ever since I came back to work. It didn't seem to be helping, because I couldn't understand what God wanted from me or why He wanted me to come back here. Did God want to kill me? Why would He want to kill me? Oh, man. I think I'm having my first existential crisis.
“Nah. You've either got PTSD, or you're a plain-vanilla chicken shit,” Kevin said. “Don't overthink it. Now get up.”
“No.”
“Your loss, kid. You definitely want to see this. Hubba hubba.” Kevin lifted an impossibly tiny pair of binoculars and trained them on the front window. “Hey, baby. Mmm. Come to papa. Man, she is stacked! Her tits are the size of Thanksgiving turkeys!”
I stood up and looked out the window. What? I'm a man. I have needs.
Kevin was scoping out the grand reopening of Monster Burger. Which, if I must say, was seriously grand. The place was absolutely packed. The drive-thru was closed, but there was a line of customers waiting to get in. The line spilled out the front door, snaked around the sign and all the way down the block. I didn't know how the new owners had done it, but they'd drawn the first crowd in Monster Burger history.
Kevin had his binoculars zoomed in on an incredibly busty woman in a low cut, flowing white dress standing on the curb. Her hair was black and ratted into a tall, thick beehive with a white stripe running up both sides. Her skin had been painted green, and she had a glowing bolt on each side of her neck. She held a sign that said, “FREE food today. So good it's scary.”
“Mmm. I'm definitely gonna get some of that,” Kevin said.
In your dreams. Chicks don't dig roaches.
“I meant the food, dumbass.”
Great. He'd zoned in on my brainwaves again.
“Yeah. I did. And I'll have you know I was quite the ladies' man in my younger days. I had girls like that falling at my feet.”
Surely, he meant girl roaches.
Kevin looked at me like I was the stupidest person on earth.
“What?”
He didn't answer. He resumed staring at the hot chick on the corner. And so did I. Kevin wasn't exaggerating. She was all woman and so top heavy I was surprised she could stand up.
“Wow. Nice cans.” A voice came from behind us.
I whirled around, ready to fight. Never mind. It was Morty. He was dressed like a firefighter, in a tight white T-shirt, heavy tan pants held up by suspenders, and waterproof boots. “Move over and let me get a look at Frankenhooker.”
Kevin handed him the teeny binoculars. Morty put them to his eyes and squinted. “Oowee. I like my ladies a little more lively. She's a dead lay, for sure, know what I mean?” He punched me in the shoulder. Ow. “So, chubs. A little voice told me your mom is a piece. A-1 MILF. Is she into firemen?”
My jaw dropped. I knew exactly what little voice. Kevin. Stop ogling my Mom!
“She's hot. Deal with it.” Kevin shrugged. “Hold up. How did you get out, pervert? It's not midnight yet.”
“The door was wide open,” Morty said.
“Shit.” Kevin rubbed his eyes like he suddenly had a headache. “And you came through anyway?”
“You know it. There are lonely ladies hungry for love next door, and I'm the meal. Why make 'em wait?”
“Real classy, Morty,” Kevin said.
“Don't hate the player. Besides, I'm anxious to try these babies out. You like 'em?” Morty lifted his T-shirt to reveal a rippling eight pack of abs. Seriously. His stomach had segments like a Hershey bar. Human dudes couldn't compete with demon bods like that.
“Did you paint those on?” Kevin said.
“Sure did. There was a video tutorial on DemonTube. What do you think? A little contour to highlight my natural assets? It's the little touches that please the ladies. Speakin' of, where's my future ex-wife?”
He looked around.
“DeeDee's fixing Chef's baby gate. It's broken. He keeps wandering out of the kitchen. If you hadn't noticed, everything's busted around here,” Kevin said. “Which reminds me, kid. Go guard the beer cave. If this jackass can get out, God only knows what's next.”
My legs turned to Jello, barely able to hold my chunky midsection aloft. Beer cave? Me?
“Nut up, kid. Now, shoo! Before anything worse than Morty comes through. I gotta make a call.” Kevin pushed the phone off the hook and started jumping up and down on the keys, dialing six six six.
Gulp. Terrified. But I did as I was told, because I really didn't want anything to sneak up on us. Be prepared, right? I walked straight to the safe. Man. Even with DeeDee's reorganizing, it was a mess in there. I grabbed a sword out of the jumble. My bad. It wasn't a sword. It was a giant hammer. I just couldn't see the top until I pulled it free of the mess. Oh well. It'll do.
I stepped up to the beer cave door, muscles tense. I could see an eerie light illuminating the craft beer. The blue glow of an open gate to hell. It flipped off. Then it flipped on. Then off again. Over and over, like a strobe light.
“The gate is blinking.”
“Then go in there and see what's wrong!” Kevin stood on the telephone receiver. “Can't you see I'm busy, kid?”
In? There? Woah boy.
My hands tightened around the hammer. I honestly don't know how I did it, but my body somehow overcame every “Hell no!” circuit in my brain and stepped in. The edges of the gate expanded then receded, quickly, but not in a predictable rhythm. More like a short circuit, like some sort of glitch. The gate spread, the light pulsed, and then the edges suddenly shrank, as if the gate had flipped off.
Crunch. Something hissed. Uh oh. Something was here.
I took cover behind a stack of Milwaukee's Best.
I could tell the gate stayed small, because the light was dim, barely a glimmer of blue, but it was undulating. Moving. I peeked around to take a look, hammer held tight to my chest.
There was a dark shadow in the gate. It was stuck there, as if the gate had crunched down and trapped it. It lifted its head to reveal luscious red lips and cleavage. Yes. I said cleavage. So deep I could get lost in it. Holy cow. It was a woman!
She looked at me and said, “Can you give me a hand, cowboy? I'm late for work.”
This wasn't just any woman. She was one of the succubus strippers that worked at the Sinbad's gentleman's club across the street. FYI the term 'gentleman' was a stretch. You'd know what I mean if you saw the place.
Anyway, she was stuck. Half of her body in and half of her body out of the gate. I dropped the hammer and ran to help her. She held out her delicate, manicured hands, and I pulled.
Eeehp. Eeeehp. Phew. I'm out of breath already!
Eeehp. Eeeehp. Man. She was really stuck in there.
That's when I noticed that one of her legs, up to the knee, was stuck, poking out the wrong way. The heel of her shoe was looking right at me. It was five feet away from the rest of her. Eek. She was bent like a pretzel. It didn't look like it tickled.
“Keep pulling,” she said.
Eeehp. Eeeehp. Eeehp. Eeeehp. I pulled. She kicked. Her shoe moved up and down furiously. The gate suddenly flung wide open, engulfing the entire back wall of the beer cooler, mid-pull. She flew out of the gate and crashed into me with such force, the two of us slid across the icy steel floor and skidded to a stop when my head rammed hard into a stack of Bud Light 12-packs. Ow.
“My hero. How can I ever thank you?” She had landed on top of me. She smiled and ran a painted red fingernail down my cheek. Her body was soft, and her warm breath tickled my cheeks. She had me pinned. “I have a few ideas. Tell me. What's your fantasy?”
Woah boy. I'm pretty sure there are some pornos out there that start like this.
She put her head down and when she lifted it again, she had turned into the sign girl at Monster Burger. Big black beehive, green skin, glowing bolts, low cut dress. She ran her finger down my chest and moved in close like she was about to kiss me. She looked at me with white, milky eyes, and grinned. With rotten yel
low teeth. “Mmm. So that's what you're into. Dangerous. Kinky,” she purred. “I like it. I'm game if you are.”
Nope. Not game. Definitely not game. Zombie! Zombie! “HELP! Aaah!”
“Too much, sweetheart? Let me try again.” The zombie babe wiggled and transformed into DeeDee. She pressed her body into mine and grabbed my behind. I mean, she really had a death grip back there. One cheek in each hand, squeezing hard. I could feel her hot breath on my mouth. Oh Jesus. Hard on in three...two...one.
“Mmm. You're happy to see me. That's quite a hammer you're wielding.”
And she didn't mean the wonky hammer I'd pulled out of the weapons safe, you feel me? That was still on the floor by the Milwaukee's Best.
“Twila? Is that you?” DeeDee stepped into the beer cave. Uh oh. Busted. “You know the rules. Employees are off limits.”
“Only if they say no,” Twila purred as she slipped out of her DeeDee suit. She transformed into the curvalicious redhead stripper from Sinbad's. She licked her lips and said, “Are you telling me no, cowboy?”
Twila? Jesus. Even her name was hot. And trust me when I say it'd be hard to convince her that no means no. Because my tent was pitched. She licked my face. Oh boy. Say no, Lloyd. Come on. You can do it. DeeDee is standing right there. You have to say no! Eyes on the prize.
Twila and DeeDee both stared at me, waiting for an answer.
Logic alone wouldn't be enough to override my reptile brain, so I tried really hard to remember what Morty looked like in his regular skin. Red. Wings. Claw feet. Flying. Twila was not a human woman. She looked like Morty under all this. “No?”
I should have sounded more firm, but these were difficult circumstances.
“Sorry to hear it, cowboy. I will catch you next time,” Twila said. Emphasis on catch. She slid off of me, smoothed out her dress, and swished her hair back. She waltzed over to DeeDee and said, “Saving him for yourself, hot stuff? I get it. The innocent ones are always the most fun to corrupt.”
Twila blew me a kiss, then sashayed off, hips swinging.
DeeDee stared Twila down as she clip clopped away. “Kevin, how did these two get out before midnight?”
