by Mark Tufo
TIM 2
Mark Tufo
Electronic Edition
Copyright 2013 Mark Tufo
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Edited by:
TW Brown
Cover Art:
Shaed Studios, shaedstudios.com
Electronic Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Dedications:
To my wife, she suffered through another go-around with Tim and we’re still married!
To Vix Kirkpatrick, my peanut butter supplier and beta-reader, thank you for your hard work.
To Joy Buchanan, my beta and proof reader, her attention to detail making this as clean a book as possible, Thank you!
To the men and women of the armed forces and all first responders, thank you for all of your sacrifices.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Tim 2
CHAPTER ONE
My name is Timothy and I AM alive...I think. The last thing I remember with any clarity was the stupid little fucking kiddie party, the hot red-headed bitch, and eating my dad. Wait rewind that last part.
My fucking head is killing me. Feels like I took a bullet to the brain. I have really got to stop sticking cheap vodka in that old Grey Goose bottle. Live it up! You only live once. But wait, that’s not right either.
GOD! I hurt!
DYING! ripped across my brain plate like steel-tipped fingernails over a megaphone-amplified death metal scream.
“What...the...fuck...was that?” I asked myself – I was also asking the unknown voice in my head.
“HUGH DYING!”
I first thought he said ‘You dying!’ And it sure felt like that; but no, he…it…was specific in his reference to Hugh. And like a wave crashing over a beach or an oversized offensive lineman crashing into a cornerback, it slammed into me. The whole entire fuck-fest slammed into me. The kid party. The getting sick. The screwing and sumptuous eating of Gina, my dad, a few other unlucky bastards. The most beautiful woman – nun or not – that I had ever encountered, and then Danielle. Had I saved her? Was she still alive? And then what; I saw two men, one a black man easily equal or better my size and a feisty wo...bitch shot me! THE BITCH SHOT ME! I’m fucking dead! But I wasn’t, not yet anyway. Close though.
My mind was frying like in those sci-fi movies you watch after the hero’s ship has been slammed with some photon bombs or some shit and the lights are flickering and sparks are arcing wildly all over the place, everything is at a forty-five degree tilt and short-circuiting sounds are happening all over the place. Only this wasn’t some ship in deep outer space; this was my fucking mind. MY fucking mind…well…and Hugh’s I suppose. We were technically buddies now.
“Woo-wee! Look at the size of that fucking zombie! Must have eaten a village, kind of like Clarence here,” I heard someone say. Might as well have been from the surface of the moon it was so far sounding away.
“I hate clowns,” I heard a young female voice say. Even from the depths I was in I could tell there was a tremor in her voice.
“Think it has still got its nose under that body somewhere? I really want it, kind of like a souvenir,” I think the original speaker said.
“Don’t go near that thing, Tyler!” the girl shrieked. I wanted to eat her kidney just to make her shut up. Well, that and it sounded good.
“Clarence, go check for a red nose,” Tyler said.
“Fuck that. I’m not going near that thing,” Clarence stated.
Hugh was able to slowly roll up our one good eye. Crusted blood had nearly caked it shut and actually helped to keep the action from being noticed. I was now looking at the world through rose-colored glasses – or more likely a thin film of blood.
I was staring at a kid in his early twenties: skinny as a scarecrow and looked like a stiff breeze would take him for a ride. The girl was a few years younger. From the looks of her frame, she was related to the Straw Man.
“EAT....SAVE!!!!” Hugh screamed. I initially thought it was so loud that our potential dinner guests would hear it and leave before we had a chance to get to know each other better.
“Don’t move, Hugh!” I told him. “Do not move!”
They needed to get closer. There wasn’t any way on God’s brown, disease-riddled world that I’d be able to catch them. I wasn’t even sure I could move my mouth if given the opportunity.
Then hope surged (or is it sprang) eternal as – I assumed it was Clarence, the third of the party – came into view. He was huge! In the ‘I live in my momma’s basement and play Xbox 360, 24/7 kind of way.’ Or maybe Warcraft…whatever. He had enough nourishment on him to allow Hugh to fix ALL that ailed us.
“Steady, Hugh,” I said, trying to calm us both down. If my heart could have taken it, it would have been slamming in my chest. He looked like a giant meat-and-blood-filled cupcake and I wanted to dive in face first.
“Come closer, you fat bastard,” I hissed internally. I don’t think I had enough energy to push air over my vocal chords.
“He smells like shit,” Clarence said, taking a step closer, then stopping.
“Duh…look at his pants,” the girl said. “They’re filled with it.”
“Come on, man, check his pockets. I want the nose, then we got to get back with these supplies,” Tyler told his large traveling companion.
“Come on, Tyler, I’m not checking that thing.” Clarence’s voice quivered.
“Listen, Clarence, Staid said I was in charge of this expedition. If I tell you to do something…you have to do it,” Tyler said with all of his Napoleon complex leaking through.
“This is bullshit,” Clarence said as he approached. “Oh…gross, oh gross,” he said as he pulled his shirt up over his nose. By the way his eyes crinkled and watered up, I don’t think that was a very effective odor shield.
“Tyler?” Clarence turned just as he got close.
“Do it!” Tyler shouted, a twinkle of mischievous evil in his eye. He loved forcing the bigger kid to do his bidding, especially something as distasteful as this. I loved myself and I don’t think I would have approached me.
Clarence pushed his rifle into my belly to see if he could get a reaction.
“There’s a bullet hole in its fucking noggin, you dipshit. It’s dead, just get me the nose,” Tyler cajoled.
Clarence prodded further with his rifle, not accepting his ‘friend’s’ less than accurate description on my state. It seems that word of my demise has been grossly exaggerated. When Clarence realized he wasn’t going to be able to roll me over with his rifle, he put it over his shoulder and reached down. The look of wretched terror and stomach quavering sickness dominated his features as he placed one hand on my shoulder and the other on my hip.
He was so close that I could feel my saliva glands shooting jets of liquid in expectation of sliding his meaty parts down my gullet.
“Zombies!” the girl shouted.
Clarence and Tyler turned to follow her pointing b
ack the way I had originally come. Clarence’s forearm was less than an inch from my mouth; I could smell the essence of him. It was like sweet ambrosia. I almost ended everything when I sent my tongue out. I licked the salty, iron taste from his skin.
“What the fuck!” Clarence shrieked.
Too late! My head was on the move. I bit hard, just catching a pinch-worthy piece of him in between my teeth. I tasted coppery blood and a bit of skin that wouldn’t have fed a hungry maggot.
Tyler moved faster than I would have expected when he heard Clarence cry out. He whipped out the pistol he was wearing on his hip and, for the second time that day, I caught a bullet in my head. I couldn’t imagine anything being more painful than that as my head was slammed into the ground with the force of a sledgehammer.
At the same time that was happening I have to go back to the science fiction description, I felt like I was being whipped through a tunnel much like when the starships go into that faster-than-light bullshit that scientists say is impossible. Back into blackness. It was peaceful and, even better, it was pain free. Maybe death wasn’t so bad.
***
“Did he bite you?” Tyler was screaming the question at Clarence.
“I...I don’t think so.” Clarence was looking at his hand. “I mean…he was dead, right? How could he have?”
“I saw its fucking head move!” Tyler was almost shrieking hysterically.
“Tyler, you have to shoot him,” Anne told her traveling companion.
“Wait,” Clarence said, standing up. “I just caught its tooth with my sleeve, that’s all. I pulled his head…that’s it.”
“Let me see your hand!” Anne asked.
Clarence held out his hand.
“He’s bleeding, Tyler. You have to shoot him,” Anne said coolly. “And then we gotta go.” Zombies were fast approaching.
“Look, Tyler!” Clarence pleaded. “It’s a scratch. It’s not even a bite, you have to be bitten, man!”
“Fuck. I’m not going to shoot you. But you can’t come back with us. If you’re still alive tomorrow I’ll come get you. Do not show up at the store or I’ll have to shoot you.”
“Tyler, you can’t leave me out here, I’ll die!”
“You’ll die if you follow us. Let’s go,” he said to Anne.
Clarence started to follow. He didn’t know what else to do.
“You stupid fuck,” Tyler said, turning and putting a bullet into the side of Clarence’s thigh.
Clarence began to cry.
“Go hide, you stupid fat fuck. If you live, I’ll come get you tomorrow!” Tyler shouted as he and Anne were in full retreat mode.
Clarence turned to look behind him; the zombies were within a hundred yards and closing. He headed back to the convenience store they had been raiding. The door was still mostly intact and he thought he could barricade it enough to keep the zombies out. The problem now was going to be getting there before they did. The muscle in the thigh that had been shot was twitching spasmodically. He could no more control it than he could those stupid remote control helicopters they sold in the middle of the mall every Christmas season. For five years he had been duped into thinking that the new and improved design would allow him to fly it like a pilot. After an accumulated flying time of twenty-seven minutes, he was out close to three hundred dollars, two lamps, and an antique vase of his mother’s that he’d never fessed up to.
He dragged his leg uselessly behind him and began to hyperventilate from the exertion. He had lost twenty pounds since the zombie apocalypse started, but he was easily still close to three hundred and fifty pounds and endurance had never been his strong point unless one were talking about his thumbs which were legendary as any opponent in Halo would attest to – if any of them were still alive.
He hazarded a look behind him. The zombies had halved the distance and he still had a good fifty yards to go. At this point, he had a better chance of losing his virginity than of making sanctuary, and the closest living girl was about a quarter mile away by now.
“I don’t want to die!” he huffed as he moved. His injured leg seized up, the spasms so crippling he was afraid to move it for fear that he would tear something. “I’m dead.”
He had completely forgotten about the rifle on his back. He could hear the zombies closing in. He dared not look, he didn’t think he could take it if his last vision on earth was of a zombie biting through his neck.
Clarence closed his eyes in preparation for his painful departure from earth. He wondered for a moment if he would be ‘reborn’ in another locale much like his characters in the video games. He didn’t have much true life reference to go on. He thought in school that one of his teachers had talked about reincarnation; maybe the teacher had gotten the idea from the games. It could be based on fact, he thought.
He squealed in fear as a zombie came up behind him. The zombie was sniffing around his head, even licking his skin once. Another zombie got down by the bullet’s exit wound and was also sniffing excessively. Clarence was sniveling as he was surrounded by no less than seven zombies, all of them vying for a spot around him. They were in varying degrees of sniffing and smelling him, but none of them were biting him.
What the hell? he thought. A long stain of urine flooded down the front of his sweat pants. That seemed to send the zombies around him into a sort of frenzy.
Oh God, oh God!
***
“What the fuck?” I put my imaginary hands up to my imaginary head. The world around me was in complete blackness. “Is this hell? I’m not impressed!” I shouted.
I was figuring on brimstone, fire, lava flows, the screams of the damned, all of that. I started to think about the Devil. What the hell…it looked like I had time to kill. Was he truly a being of evil? I mean, hear me out. His job is obviously to torture and torment all of the sinners that the world has produced. Doesn’t that make him a saint? I mean, he’s paying back all the assholes on earth that never got their due. He’s the final hand of karma. I think the whole ‘falling out’ thing with God was just a story of convenience. God just really doesn’t like to get his hands dirty is what it comes down to. Tough to preach about love, kindness, and forgiveness while you’re pulling someone’s intestines out through their asshole. Hell of a visual.
I bet God and the Devil meet every Saturday night and drink a little Sacramental wine. The Devil probably fills him in on the newest bunch of ass-wipes he’s received and what he plans on doing with them. At least that’s my take on it. Maybe God lives vicariously through the Devil. Wouldn’t that be something?
“Hey! Let’s get this show on the road!” I shouted again.
“Who’s that?” rang out.
I tilted my hallucinatory head. “Hugh?” I asked cautiously. It couldn’t be Satan unless he was scared of meeting me. I know I’m an asshole and I’ll have my fair allotment of things to atone for, but there were far worse monsters that roamed the world.
“Who the fuck is Hugh?” the voice asked again.
“Who the fuck are you?” I shouted. “This is my death, don’t ruin it for me!”
“I’m...I’m Clarence,” he responded, the trembling in his voice making the words difficult to understand.
“The fat fuck?” I asked. “What are you doing in me?”
“In you? You’re in me,” he answered. I began to feel quaking in body parts.
“HUGH!” I screamed.
“Who-who’s Hugh?” he repeated. I was pretty certain he was crying.
“It’s someone that has a shitload of explaining to do.”
“W-w-who...who are you?”
“Please tell me you’re not a stutterer, I can’t take those Porky Pig sounding idiots.”
“Tyler!” he shouted.
“Not sure what’s going on yet, kid, but I can guarantee you Tyler’s not going to be able to help you.”
“Oh God,” he wailed.
“Him either by the way.”
He was blubbering. I could feel his gelatinous sto
mach bobbing up and down.
“Am I dead?” he asked.
“I was wondering the same thing…about me, of course. But unless I’m completely off the mark, you’re not and neither am I. Although I can pretty much assure you that you’re going to wish you were before this is over,” I said as I laughed.
I’m not going to get all technical because, first off, I can’t; but I’m thinking that Hugh pulled us into this new meat bag. He didn’t eat the fat fuck because nothing short of a Lazarus event was going to get me off the ground, so he transferred his virus into Clarence, but that didn’t explain my consciousness. How could that be transferred by a bite? Are we now that intermingled that we’re indistinguishable from each other? Are we one in the same? And then reality slammed into me: if I was corporeal I would have fallen over. The body that had housed me was dead – MY BODY WAS DEAD. I loved my body!
“Hey, fat fuck!” I shouted.
“Clarence,” he blubbered.
“Whatever. Are your eyes closed?”
He sniffed. “Ye-yes.”
“Open them, dummy.”
“Zombies all over the place. I don’t want to see them.”
“Open your eyes! Or I’ll shove your brains out your nose!” Idle threat I think, but it scared the hell out of Clarence. Light flooded in as his eyes took in the stark ugliness of the world. “Turn around.”
He was much more pliant. From this vantage point I could see my shoes. “Look lower.”
He immediately panned to his own feet.
“You’re an idiot. Look at the perfect beast BY your feet.”
He hesitated.
“Squish squish, tardo. Do it!” My heart – if I had one – would have stopped. I was looking down on myself and I looked like shit. I mean, even more so than a dead guy should, but it was still me. I had one missing eye and two bullet holes in my head. I was covered in filth and…oh shit! I just remembered that I had even lost my penis. That is not something easily forgotten about or gotten over. I was truly going to miss myself.
