by Mark Tufo
I saw her head whip up, eyes wide, maybe surprise…maybe shock.
“He would have come himself but he’s been banging your neighbor, Mindy-something, I think he said. So you got me instead.”
Laurie started to crawl towards the open doorway. I just watched. I felt very much like a cat playing with a mouse. I would let her get so far before I allowed her to get away. She was almost to the opening, and to her credit, she was damn near silent.
She froze as I spoke. “You know I can see you right?” I spoke directly to her. “Grab a light and come over to the table,” I told her. She looked over quickly, but didn’t move in my direction. “I can see you perfectly, you’re about a foot from the doorway, you have a small butterfly tattoo on your inner thigh and you shaved a landing strip with your pubes. Did Nick like that, or was it your husband?”
She sobbed. “Nick,” she said breathlessly.
“So do as I told you or I’m going to twist your tits until one of them pops off.”
She got down on her knees fumbling for the lantern. When she found it, she turned it on. She gasped in abject horror when she saw me. I smiled.
“Sit, sit,” I said, pointing to the chair across from me. Her legs were shaking so hard she was in potential harm of shattering her kneecaps.
“Bet Nick looks like George Clooney right about now,” I said as I leered at her. She sat down, swiveling the chair as far as possible without making it appear overtly rude, she had one hand over her breasts and one over the promised land.
“Move your hands…now!” I said, with force when she didn’t acquiesce immediately. “You’re not really hot enough by my standards, but I’d do you in a pinch.”
She alternated between anger at my slight and horror at my insinuation.
“Relax, sex doesn’t hold the same importance it did for me once upon a time. I think with some work I could get this body’s junk into a usable fashion, but I’m failing to see the point.”
“What...what do you want with me?” she asked, again trying to cover herself up before I motioned with my hands for her to keep her arms by her side.
“I’d really like to say something evil like ‘your soul’ and then have this death metal music play as a soundtrack, but in reality, it’s a much baser need. Even more base than sex.”
I think Laurie would have darted away if she could have trusted her legs to support her body.
“Why? What are you?” she asked, tears falling from her eyes. “Do you know my husband?”
“Typical fucking chick, you ask rapid fire questions before I can even respond to the first one, you’re on to the next. We’ll start with the husband part, no I don’t know the poor bastard…and honestly, I hope he’s dead, because if he realizes you were fucking that fat fish over there, he’d cut his own wrists. As for what I am? I’m not entirely sure, I’m part zombie and I’m part Timothy. We’ve got this coexisting thing going on that seems to be souring, but that’s neither here nor there, nothing for you to worry your somewhat pretty head about.”
“Fuck you,” she spat.
I raised an eyebrow. “Nice, by the trembling in your hands I had figured there wasn’t much scrap left in you.” She thrust her chin out at me. “Then the most fun answer of them all, why? I guess you want to know why I’m doing this. Because I’m starving,” I told her as I grabbed her thigh and quickly dragged her office chair over towards me.
The wheels making her slide effortlessly towards me. She screamed as I sank my teeth down into her breast. “Well at least they’re real,” I said, coming up with a mouthful of the fatty tissue. She was shrieking. Her hands flew up to her damaged breast and she stood in panic trying to get away. I reached around and grabbed her by the ass, pulling her tight. I bit deeply into her soft, office-induced muffin-top belly.
I held her tight as she beat around my head and shoulders. “You really should have eaten more granola or something,” I told her as I swallowed my latest bite. The blows from above became less forceful as I continued to meander my way through her midsection.
“You were superb,” I said as I pushed what was left of her away. She tumbled to the floor.
“Man, eating sure does build up an appetite. Your turn, fat boy,” I said as I got onto the ground with Nick’s rapidly cooling remains.
He tasted as bad as he looked. I had no clue how fibrous moles and warts were, it was a lot like chewing through raw stew meat. The sun was making its daily journey when I finally poked my head up to take a look.
I sat with my back against the conference room wall, my hands placed contentedly over my belly. It was high noon by the time the pleasure of the eat was starting to wear off and I remembered why I had come here in the first place.
“Yorley!” I said a little loudly, getting up quickly.
She could have stomped in here playing the trombone and I might have missed her and her buddy. Then it dawned on me, she wasn’t coming back here. Why would she? Her family wasn’t here. Shit, nobody wants to be at work, especially when the world ends, right? Not quite a dead end though, I thought as I headed to her cubicle. Post-It Notes were plastered all over her computer monitor, company knick-knacks dominated her desk space, and her fake walls were covered with calendars and ‘helpful’ tips.
I shuddered at the nightmare that was corporate America. And they say I’m the scary one; I don’t make people sit in conference rooms listening to me rant about how ‘we need to diversify our synergy so that our paradigm shift will be in line with...’ I’m sure you know the drill.
I pulled open the top drawer to her desk. She was so fucking OCD that her pushpins were in order by color. “You were a busy little bee weren’t you?” I hastily shut the drawer, screwing up her pencil filing system. There wasn’t anything in there except office supplies. The larger drawer on the bottom looked promising as I pulled it open. There were numerous folders hanging there, all of them labeled. Five minutes later and I was no closer to the information I wanted. The files were all customers, and by the looks of them, the problem children.
There had to be a million people I could eat within the next few days, but I was fixated on these two. What is it about zombie nature that makes me want the one that got away? I sat down heavily in her chair, twirling around lazily. Inspiration came in the form of a Post-It Note I had looked over at least a dozen times: ‘Sexual Harassment training, Monday 10 am.’
“That’s it!” I yelled, standing up quickly sending the chair crashing into her desk. “Now where did they stick HR?”
It took two go-arounds of the entire floor before I found the office. I had thought it was a supply closet by how far removed it was from the rest of the work environment. I tried the handle and of course the door was locked.
“Privacy until the end.”
I leveraged back and hit the door as hard as I could with the sole of my foot and the damn thing hardly shivered. My leg would crack and my welded ankle would shatter long before that door gave way. Plus there was a serious dosing of pain that went along with the attempt.
“This is really pissing me off,” I said, staring at it like it gave a shit.
“Tim, I really think you’re letting all this meat go to your head,” I said aloud. I really hope I wasn’t going down that road of psychosis, the one where I started to refer to myself in the third person. “I’ll be fine.”
I went back to the original cubicle I had been hiding in when I discovered Naughty Nick and Lascivious Laurie – not really fitting for her but I like alliterations. I had my two weapons and was pretty sure the door lock wouldn’t stand up too well to a 9 mm round. I placed the muzzle of the weapon right up against the lock, in retrospect or hindsight or after-fucking-thought…it was a bad idea. The round came out as expected, slammed hard into the handle and then took a hard turn downwards and into my shin.
My head slammed into the wall as the mushroomed round rebounded into me. I could write how many times I said ‘Fuck’ but what’s the point? I was now on the ground rocking
back and forth holding my leg up against my chest. I could feel Hugh; the little bastard was standing in the background kind of shaking his head, like ‘what has the little scamp gotten into this time?’
“Any damn day, Hugh!” He let me linger in misery a lot longer than he needed to. “Better get your ass in gear there, buddy!” I said as I placed the gun up against my forehead, “Or I’ll take your slimy little ass out!” He reluctantly began to mend the wound. “I figured you’d see it my way,” I said as I pulled myself back into a sitting position.
“EAT.” Hugh said in his normal articulate and eloquent prose.
“That’s what I’m trying to get accomplished. But me and you aren’t going anywhere until you get me fixed up proper. Maybe you should throw a little dopamine into the mix.”
Food is a powerful motivator. As Hugh turned on the pain killer jets, I was immediately flooded with feelings of wellness and happiness. “That’s the ticket,” I told him, letting my lids droop a bit.
“EAT now,” Hugh said as he wrapped up.
“Hugh, there’s like a billion words for EAT. Do you think you could vary it up a bit? Maybe, get a bite? That actually seems much more fitting, don’t you think?”
His stony silence let me know in no uncertain terms what he thought of my thesaurus reference. “Fine,” I said as I stood up, thankful that the door handle was destroyed.
I pushed the door open with the heel of my hand. I got a flashback of my principal’s office as I walked into the HR Generalist’s office. They were similar in that they gave off the smell of disciplinary authority; basically you knew you were screwed if you were called to either. I quickly scanned the room; there was a large file cabinet I figured housed the employee files.
“Sweet,” I said right before I ripped a fingernail off attempting to open it. “Fuck what are there, state secrets in here?”
I went over to the desk – top drawer, left hand corner is where the keys sat. “Do they only hire people with OCD in this place? Or are all office workers afflicted with it?” I said, sucking my bleeding index finger. I opened the drawer with so much force I ripped it free from the cabinet almost having it land on my foot. The day was beginning to grate on me, high or not. Some of the files scattered, but not my sweet Scarlett’s: Scarlett Speight, 10325 Tiny Terrapin Lane.
“How quaint, see you there,” I said blissfully as I quickly exited the building.
I wished I could have used MapQuest or something. I was going to need to stop at a gas station and get a map, how 1980s of me. I got back into my previous rust bucket and headed out. The day, which had been kind of taking a downturn, was now looking considerably better.
I spent more time than I cared looking for a fueling station. There were so many road hazards I had to detour that I almost decided to ditch my ride. When I finally came across one, it looked like it had been ransacked and then looted. It was so desolate inside; even some of the shelving was gone. Who takes shelving in an apocalypse? People are fucking weird.
“No maps. Is every friggin’ survivor lost!” I shouted.
I heard some shuffling in the back garage. Maybe the day wasn’t completely a bust. “Son of a bitch,” I said as I looked at a few dozen zombies. There were some lying down and then others began to dog pile on top. It looked like the grossest Roman Orgy I had ever seen. A couple looked over at me. I could sense Hugh watching raptly. I could even sense a sort of pull within him like maybe he wanted to join the juice exchange fest going on over there. I’d been into some strange stuff in my day, but I didn’t want anything to do with that offal pig pile going on.
“Hugh, what the hell are they doing?” I asked.
He did that index card shuffle through Clarence’s mind ripples until he found an adequate explanation. He came up with a brown bear sleeping in a cave.
“Hibernating? They’re hibernating? Why?”
Hugh’s next image was an empty plate.
“No food? How is that possible?”
Because there’s too many damn zombies, that’s why, I thought, shielding that from Hugh.
“Sleep? Eat?” Hugh asked.
“Oh, we’re getting food, buddy, because if that’s the alternative...” I left the rest unsaid. “That sure is a lot of mouths to feed.” Looking at the zombies as they alternated head to toe, laying themselves over each other like a master mason, I knew what I had to do. It was just a matter of how I was going to do it without Hugh knowing.
We were already in an unsteady unstable détente, and if I made all his little friends crispy critters, there was no telling what might happen. Out of the two garage bays, one was rapidly filling with tired zombies, and the other had a tired-looking Ford something-or-other hoisted in the air. I glanced over longingly at the gas tank. Odds were it had some fuel in it. Now the question became could I puncture a hole in it and light the resultant spill on fire without my little piggy backer knowing. Of all the zombies I got stuck with mine had to have integrity.
“Hugh, we need gas for our car.”
He didn’t give a shit.
“So we can eat.”
He perked up like a dog getting promised cookies. He settled back down and I could sense him warring within himself to sleep or eat.
Yeah, you keep yourself occupied while I find a container. There was an empty windshield cleaner jug in the trash. I grabbed it and headed back towards the Ford. I wish I wasn’t this thick, I was actually aiming my 9mm at the tank to puncture a hole before it dawned on me that that might not be the smartest thing I’d done and just today – a day in which I had already shot myself.
“Yup, I was the fastest sperm,” I berated myself. I put my gun away and found a screwdriver. The car was so rusted out that I almost ended up putting my fist through the tank along with the screwdriver. A good stream of gas was flowing as I did my best to make it look like I was trying to get it into the jug. No red flags for Hugh yet; he wasn’t putting the puzzle together. I filled the jug up to the top and I let a fair amount of it slosh out as I made a circuitous route around the garage. I told Hugh I was looking for a funnel, and again, he didn’t give a shit. Never did find a funnel, but the car I was driving didn’t need gas anyway. I let more gas spill out before I walked over to the car. I made exaggerated overtones trying to get the fluid into our ride. When I was convinced the Ford had to be close to empty by now I headed back to the garage thankful for the fact I had the foresight to hold on to my lucky lighter from the supermarket.
I did some magic and made sure to not look as I lit the jug on fire. I was almost rewarded with some third degree burns for my effort. When I felt the heat rising off the jug, I turned my head back towards our car and hurled the fire-bomb into the garage. I then walked at a brisk pace away from the burgeoning inferno. A wave of foul fumed heat blew past me, ruffling my oversized clothes as it did so.
Hugh kept flashing an angry red question mark. I ignored him completely. He had an idea what happened, he could tell by the stench. I had not thought to somehow dim that sense. But I made damn sure to not look as glass blew out from the super-heated air. I started the car and hauled ass, being extra careful that I didn’t even look in the rearview mirrors. Hugh was stewing, such a human emotion, I wondered if the longer he stayed in a body the more like ‘us’ he would become. He had an inkling what I had done, no proof by vision, but I was having a difficult time containing my emotions.
I was still driving without a purpose and, pissed off or not, Hugh was going to want to eat soon. There was already some telltale gurgling going on, but of course that could have been the excrescences that had covered Nick’s body. Brainstorm number three of the day, if I was keeping score, I stopped the car and opened the glove compartment.
“You have got to be shitting me,” I said as I unfolded the detailed map of the city. My hands were almost shaking as I tracked down Tiny Terrapin Lane. I turned the car around, very careful to steer clear of the site of my previous barbecue. The smoke from it swirled heavily and mixed with the rest
of the exhaust from a world gone to hell.
By my rough estimates, I figured Sweet Scarlett’s house to be roughly twenty-five miles away. I could see now why she had chosen to not yet attempt to bridge the gap from where she was to where she wanted to be. I was straight out of a horrid dream-turned-rancid; of that there was no doubt, but I wasn’t the only monster that had come out to play. A single female had about as much chance of making that post-apocalyptic commute as a gallon of chocolate ice cream had of surviving a support group for divorced women.
Once we got out of the city, the sailing got marginally smoother. Whatever had happened to mankind had happened fast. There hadn’t even been enough time for mass exodus or for Army pukes to mobilize and really screw the pooch. I was trying to figure out if the women were behind me or had succeeded and were even now in the arms of their loved ones. I didn’t know which scenario intrigued me more. I kind of liked the idea of letting my girl be happy for a few moments before I ripped that away from her.
I was so distracted that I never noticed as a black SUV snuck up on my tail. My head smacked off the headrest as it bumped into my rear end. I looked up into my rearview mirror. All I could see was the grill of whatever was slamming into me. They hit me one more time, causing the nose of my car to drop down and the rear tires to squeal as they nearly came up off the ground. The SUV then backed off a few feet and began to come up on my driver’s side.
“Holy shit, Dad! It’s a clown!” the man in the passenger seat yelled. I wasn’t going particularly fast, so it was easy enough to hear the idiot when he spoke.
I could see him in the side mirror. He looked like he was in his twenties or so; from this angle I couldn’t see his father, but I thought I saw someone else in the back seat, possibly younger by the size of them.
The SUV was coming up quickly. “Why the fuck you dressed as a clown, clown?” the son asked.
I turned and smiled as they came up broadside. The gun he was holding all but forgotten as he looked at my face. At first I could see him trying to reconcile the image, and then wretched fear took over. I wiggled my tongue at him like a lizard.
