concrete, my pinky now pointing back the way I’d come.
I had it up and in my mouth before I could even think straight. My head was a maze of stars shooting off galaxies and all these pretty colors blooming and dancing before my eyes. I could feel my jaw chewing, could feel the bone in my throat easing up ever so wonderfully as I fought past the fur. And I swallowed.
And screamed.
Threw down the corpse and crabbed away from it trying to scream again as the bone lodged back. And then I got up and ran, just ran again as far and as fast as I could go.
That’s most of three weeks now. And I know a lot more than I did then. But it’s taken some getting used to, if that’s what you can call it. Realize I was always a ne’er-do-well. Shiftless, sponging off my mother, eating junk food and concerned with nothing except what was on TV tonight. No moral compass, so to speak. I did like horror movies, vampires, werewolves, the whole shebang. I saw all that zombie shit, from the fleet-of-foots to the shambling goons, but it’s nothing like that. How we got it, yeah, that’s straight outta George Romero but everything else…no relation. Anyway, the reason I bring it up, the kinda person I was, is because I was a fringe-dweller. You couldn’t get much farther outside the mainstream as I was.
But now I am the mainstream.
This shit hit everyone. Babies all the way up to blue-haired old ladies, and let me tell you, the latter are quite a treat these days. We all go around pretending at our old lives. The post office, a trip to the grocery store. But now it’s like some B-movie version of Zombie Andy Griffith. Everybody still lives in their houses, if they want to, the mail still runs.
But everything’s different, repulsive, terrible. And speaking of the mail: the Fed Ex guy fell out of his truck yesterday, scrabbled around in the street for a while, and delivered an eviscerated dog to my front door. I was standing just inside watching. I’d managed to trick Momma outside to the garage with a beef steak a couple days ago and I still hear her shambling around in there time to time, breaking shit up, screaming. But I’m in the house, looking out, trying not think about her.
The stumbling, bumbling Fed Ex shit collapsed a few times getting back to his truck, got pissed on by a dog and lost a finger in the process, but he did get back inside the truck and floored it down the street. Taking out mailboxes, Mrs. Vichie from down the street. But she wasn’t down long. While I was still standing there at the window I watched her slink away to the ditch like something that had been stepped on, disappearing into the blackness like a swamp rat.
I took the car but came back at the first intersection. The power hasn’t been working and nobody’s got any fucking sense left. Fucking wrecks everywhere, and you know it, where there’s wrecks there’s blood and of course that sets em off. One spash of blood and it’s like Vulture Nation. Fucking cops gnawing on legs at car wrecks. Really crazy shit, something I never even entertained as possible before. Now, it’s everyday.
People dragging heads around like dogs, slopping down intestines. All the violence and stumbling accidents, busted limbs. And all the while the sun goes up and comes down, goes up and comes down. Sometimes you hear some hot rod zooming by a couple of streets over. Kids laughing digging through the days-old carcass of something someone forgot. Things ain’t right.
And I’m still a fringe-dweller, even here in this Special Hell. Because I’ve still got that damn bone stuck in my throat.
Here’s why.
I don’t have to. I could feed anytime I want. Nobody seems to mind. You can walk right up to someone these days and take a huge chunk out of his arm and it’s like nothing. You just stop for a minute, fill up, and then you’re on your way. Maybe he’s nibbling your ear off in the process. I’ve seen it. It’s like a couple stopping to watch flowers grow. Just another way to pass the time.
But not me.
I can’t do it. I still have the compulsions. I can’t walk past some wet puddle of rot without salivating like a dog, but I try to turn my head. God I try. Because when I do give in, when I finally say ‘what the hell, let’s get this party started’, it’s like all bursting colors and sweet dreams. But I can’t do it.
Not anymore.
I’m ready for this holiday to end.
But what do you do when you’re the Living Dead? It’s not make-up and blood packets. It’s real. And it just goes on and on. Everyday I stumble out of this closet, upstairs in my bedroom, along with all the rest who’ve shown up during the night, and I shuffle around in the morning dawn and try to think of how it was. How I used to sleep regular right there in this bed and here I am now, pouring out of this closet like the Stink of a Million Years.
What’s to say?
Nobody talks. Just a lotta head-bobbing and sweating blood, dripping bodies headed outside for another round. I wander around in the bedroom with my wall-eyes until they’re all gone and then I go and pound my fists through the walls for a while. But I know it will just go on and on. And…and here’s the thing that really shakes me, even while crammed in here among the monsters in my closet. This… what the hell if it did end?
What if I did wake up one morning, or have the same blinding headache again, and find the world back to Normal? What the fuck then? Sweep all the shit out the house, toss the corpses off the yard, burn down the shed and get back on with it?
Get back on with what?
What’s gone is gone and I’ve had it. I’m done, at least with here. While all my grisly companions are out making their munch quota I’m gonna fill this motherfucker up with gasoline. They won’t notice. One smell’s pretty much like another here, with the exception of funk, that is. Funk has a really special place here in the Whatever Hell This Is.
No, I’m not worried about all that. There’s too much other stuff, like why I haven’t gone all the way over like the others. I haven’t and as long as I’m able, won’t.
I’m gonna fill this motherfucker up with gasoline and when they all come back and get settled in good I’m gonna light it up and dance around the house while it burns. I don’t give a shit. I’m gonna dance and I might even sing…if I can. And when it’s finished, I’m out.
I’m going somewhere. Anywhere.
I’m gonna work on getting this bone out of my throat, though. Maybe try something different like fried chicken. At least it’ll give me something to keep an eye out for. Anything not to eat a pile of bloody flesh in the street, huh? But like I said before: it is what it is.
So, preparation for the vacation. What to take? Where to go? Well the first question is easy. Nothing. Hell, shitty clothes weren’t much to me before, now, they’re really nothing. An old spiderwebbed, bloody shirt, a tag of pants hanging off my ass, that’s about all I need. And shoes? Fuck. I could walk a lifetime across broken glass and not give a damn. I tell you, I’m easy. So that part’s potatoes and gravy. But not the next one, a destination. Here it gets a little harder. See, the TVs been gone for weeks, radio likewise. Now you just look outside to get the news and brother, if you thought it used to be bad, you better hope you’re pushing up daisies now. The mudheads and the few straggling Live-ers making godawful noises outside. But that still doesn’t solve the problem.
And it’s not that I’m worried about the danger. That’s just about another fucking joke. I’m the monster. I’ve got free range. Tear into a house, break into a store, maybe even have a motherfucking tree fall over on me. It don’t mean shit. I’d just crawl out from underneath that motherfucker and continue along my merry way. But I digress.
I had to ask myself, what do I like? Music, food, sex. Simple shit. But the power’s gone bust and I know as much about electricity as I do about unplugging a clogged artery with anything but my teeth. Food? Hell, it’s walking around in the street or hunched right up against me in the closet I spend most nights in. A little gruel drizzling out of somebody’s head? Man that’s like a lollypop. But like I said, I try to stay away from that sort of thing. At least as long as I can. There always comes a time, though, when I can’t avoid it. That damn
chicken bone in my throat seems to get a little bigger and bolder each day and even if my throat seizes up entirely, I just keep right on ticking. And, I almost want to say, the most fucked up thing about it is it ain’t comfortable but it ain’t gonna kill me either. I know, I’ve tried. Holding off the urge until I was dizzy inside and my throat swelled up like an elephant’s nut sack. Eventually collapsing on the ground and leaving a lot of teeth behind. Thinking I was dead.
I wasn’t. Here I still am.
Point three, sex. Now call me monster or not, I still haven’t been able to take that one over the fence. As I said, in the Old World, I was a horror movie fan. But I wasn’t any kind of pervert. And now with all the blood and guts and rot I can’t really see it as anything else. Getting a hardon, even my weird little shiny poker, makes the bone in my throat swell up like that bastard Grinch’s heart.
Strike, strike, strike.
Zombie Holiday. It’s cheap but it’s a bitch.
Regardless, I’m getting the hell out of here. Enough’s enough. I’ll hit the road, fuck a car. Shamble around in the woods for a while. See how things are in the real world. If this ain’t the best we got.
So this is out.
How many days? Shit if I know. Just endless walking, drifting. Smelling every smell, feeling that goddamn bone just get