bigger and bigger. Yesterday was kinda funny though. I slept in a ditch beside some road. Just got tired and laid down. Woke up with a load of fungus growing in my ear and soaked to the bone. Wasn’t shit to me. Might as well have been a nice Sunday morning waking up at momma’s house.
I guess it was the girl brought me around. I could hear her yelling. Screaming, really. Far off, I thought, but I was just waking up. Or at least coming back. Shit, let’s don’t forget, I’m dead already. I sat right up in the mud, the fucking sun shining down like it was tryin to burn what little hair I got left off my head. Again, fuck you, I don’t care.
There it was again. Screaming. No doubt a girl. I came rolling outta the ditch like a booger off a fat woman’s chin and looked around. There were a lotta trees, just short of a forest so it took me a second. Then, right over there I saw the movement. Not a lot at first but when I got serious about looking it was right there in front of me. Looked like a lot of whatever it was. But there was definitely a girl screaming.
I finished crawling out of the ditch and creep-walked across the cracked roadway. I tell you, I try to concentrate on the walking but it’s damn near impossible not to lurch around like a goddamn imbecile. All that lurching and dragging….hell, it feels like ballet.
Around a couple of big trees was where all the ruckus was coming from. Looked like a bunch of em, whatever it was, and there was still the screaming although that was startin to get less hopeful, I guess. In the old world? I’d tuck tail and run my white ass outta there. Now? I walked over like a blue-hair checking out dishes.
Side-note: it is really hard to feel sorry for anybody. I know that probably sounds a little harsh from your place on the sidelines, but hell to me, it ain’t really much. So you get your fucking guts pulled out and thrown all over Hell’s Half Acre. You scream a little bit. Aw hell, you scream a lot. Then whatever got you eats what it wants and leaves you alone. Ain’t a politician in the world would do that shit. And you lay there for a while and then you get up.
And you start walking around like me.
Like I’ve said before, it ain’t the best of times but I guess things could be a helluva lot worse. Let’s face it, that bunch back at my house? We slept together and dripped all over each other and I burned the motherfucker down with them in it. Didn’t feel nothing about it then and don’t feel much now.
Again, I digress but there really ain’t no telling what kinda shape my brain’s in. Listen or don’t. I’m still dragging through.
Well, what I was looking at was something a little…harsh. I think I even winced. What it was was a bunch of babies. I know…, but it was. Musta been about twenty of em, some in old toddler uniforms dirty as all hell but most of em naked. I was there and I’m telling you, wasn’t a diaper in the world coulda stayed on one of them slimy somebitches. Scooting around like a bunch a rats. One kinda strayed my direction and I kicked it square in the chin, sending it back where it came from. Just the sight of it made my skin crawl.
And the screams were all but gone now. They were too far into her to make much difference anyway because somehow this little tribe of miniature motherfuckers had either found or hunted down an actual live woman. I guess she musta been about twenty, twenty-five. They’d damn near pulled all her clothes off by then and I’m telling you, it just reinforced the idea I told you earlier about horror movies and sex. It ain’t for me.
Or at least it ain’t for me yet.
I looked around for a minute. Walked over to a tree and pulled off the end of a pretty stout branch. Like I said, we may be rotten but we ain’t no slouch in the strength department. Walked back over to the pile and started cleaning house on those little motherfuckers. Knocked em high and low. Saw a few of em come apart but I just kept on wading in. The last couple, I threw the branch down and grabbed em up as good as I could. It was two of em and it was like wrestling greased turds. Chunked em off to the side and watched em roll in the leaves. Then I looked down.
There she was. Or what was left of her.
Musta been a time she was something to look at, but them days were over. She was fucked beyond all repair. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around her screaming for so long. Had a great pair of lungs, though, to speak to her advantage. And I know. I was looking at what was left of em.
Just a piss-poor mess. Those little bastards had been hungry. Wasn’t much to speak of except her head. It was still attached to a neck that wasn’t doing all that bad considering. But the rest was just a mess.
I stood there and looked at her for a while. I knew it was coming. I waited and the minutes ticked off one, two, three. Then her eyes started taking on that look, like a fish you’d just polished its eyeballs. Then she closed her mouth. Wasn’t long before it came open again and you could just see the tongue rolling around in there. I shook my head and looked around for the branch. She was moving her head back and forth by then, and I looked at her again and caved her head in. Hit her again for good measure. Chunked the hunk of wood at one of them damn babies.
And then I shuffled off.
Plodding along like some no good motherfucker, racked out of his brain in the wrong neighborhood. Not that that wasn’t the real me. As I said before, there wasn’t a whole lot about me before all this bullshit that would’ve put me on any poster except by the Law and now that ain’t even the game played in this ballpark.
Sometimes when I was dragging along I’d catch myself swiping at branches and such shit, maybe even grunting a little. It was these times I’d try to collect what little is left of myself and try to act normal. That’s what I always say, act normal. And here I am grunting and swinging at vines. Shit, if not for the stink I’d be a goddamned movie star.
But you don’t want to hear this shit.
I was on a mission. Out with the bad in with the good. Time to make a change for the better. The grass is greener and all that fucking bullshit. Me thinking this, the fucking zombie shuffling around nowhere in the woods. I stopped right then and looked around, back at all that mess left in the woods. I shuffled around till I was facing it and kinda lifted my hand up like a little wave. Why? Fuck if I know. I just didn’t feel real good about myself right about then and any little bit helps in a pinch. Or so the other saying goes.
I looked around a little more. Saw one of them goddamn babies tracking me way back there by a little scruff of underbrush. Well that sent a little chill to me, I tell ya. Usually the Dead I find don’t feel much of a need to contemplate. It’s all like low-grade TV to them. Walk around a little bit, get some food, climb in the closet and curl up in the funk. I tell ya, really, when you get right down to it, there ain’t much different! But there is the odd few. The ones that when they look at you, they’re looking at you. Not some cloudy brain fuck job but something that could be damn dangerous if you don’t watch your ass. I haven’t seen many but I have seen some. And let me tell you, that fucking baby fit the general description.
There wasn’t nothing else I could do about the girl and I damn sure wasn’t up to corralling all them babies so I thought move on. Beat your feet the hell outta here. Babies crawling around in the bushes. Shit, for all I know there could be a whole mess of em up in the trees. Just the thought got me looking up. Didn’t see shit but of course that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
Well, at first, with the woods and all I figured I’d wandered into the nature preserve that hadn’t been far from momma’s house. Course, I didn’t rightly remember on the count of my hazy brain but I couldn’t see how that was gonna throw me off anyway. I was getting out, going somewhere. Why not the woods?
But then I saw the house. More like a mansion really but somebody had about triple fucked it. Burned the porch off, broke a lot of windows and one whole side of the wall was plastered with brains and gore. Bullet holes all over the fucking place. I gotta tell you, that caused me a little pause. There ain’t much can wipe our asses out but a shot to the brain will do it every time. And not that that’d be a bad thing on most occasions, like I said thi
s life ain’t much to speak of, but I guess it does get familiar after awhile.
Besides there was a whole shitload of mudheads walking around the yard right then. Not a Liv-er in the bunch but a lotta new people. Just by looking around I could tell you weren’t gonna discover any great secrets of the universe from this bunch. Just a buncha fucking idiots. And again, this coming from me. Some sad ass mooch fresh off his momma’s couch. But it didn’t take a fucking Einstein to get me wondering about why all these motherfuckers were milling around back here. One or two no big deal but twenty?
Then I noticed the smell. Like I said, my thoughts ain’t the swiftest things on wings. That’s what had pulled all these motherfuckers in. And it was coming from inside the house. Now that I had it in my head there weren’t no doubt. That fucking house was crammed stem to stern with meat. Rotten as hell but it do ring a bell in the head. I guess if I hadn’t been thinking so much about the shredded girl and the pack of babies I’da recognized it earlier. As it was I guess I’d just been following my nose. Probably before I laid down in that ditch.
A couple Deaders were up on what was left of the porch, scraping against the windows and smearing themselves against the walls. I walked over