Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (16 page)

Ron’s grip on him had loosened as he watched the elongated appendage vanish back into the inky darkness of the car, and the other man broke free, twisting away, running for the front.

“Greg!” Wendy cried.

Her voice snapped Ron back to attention, and he bolted after his friend, rounding the corner in time to see Greg vault the counter, half-leaping, half-falling off the other side.

Where now over
thirty
customers shuffled about the main room, falling into lines before each of the registers!

Ron watched with paralytic wonder as they turned on Greg in unison.

Before the man even managed to regain his balance, the customers tackled him to the ground, dropping over him like bloodthirsty monsters in a zombie film. Ron stepped forward, about to lunge after him, but several of the closest patrons turned on him, each holding something sharp.

He froze in place behind the counter, covering his mouth as he heard what sounded like ripping carpet arise from beneath the pile.

Followed by a piercing scream.

He watched the things tear and gnash and snarl, and finally spun away when he saw the creatures begin passing around severed limbs and handfuls of dripping crimson gore. Fresh blood drooled from their mouths.

Wendy shrieked the entire time, crying out so powerfully that Ron’s ears rang with each new exhalation. Without looking to the feasting masses, he clutched her to his chest and guided her to the kitchen.

“Oh, God!” she sobbed. “They’re crazy! They’re going to kill us! What do we do?”

Ron peered through one of the heat lamp stations, looking at the motley collection of customers now churning shoulder-to-shoulder in the dining room. Those who hadn’t attacked Greg clustered at the counter, no longer content to stand in orderly lines. They pressed forward, leaning over the edge, searching the cashier area.

A wrinkled old man crawling with bugs jabbed a pitchfork at a register. A one-armed lady whose eyes glared through a net of bandages threw a rock at the menu. Behind her, a pair of suit-clad young men wrestled over a dead rat.

But none of them followed us
, he thought.
Why not?

“Because customers aren’t allowed behind the counter,” he whispered to himself.

Wendy’s sobbing slowed. She gazed at him as though a third eye had opened on his forehead. Ron met her eyes, thinking of the green hand that had tried to seize Greg, stretching out to reach him like something from a nightmare. He sensed a revelation teetering at the edge of his understanding.

“We have to get cooking,” he said. “Before they eat us, too.”

A small smile ticked at the corner of the girl’s mouth, like a seam about to come undone.

“Cook…” she echoed in a tone of disbelief.
“For them?”

Ron nodded, eyeing the sign over her shoulder, the one Greg had spotted earlier.

Feed the Customer… Obey the Rules
!

He looked to the crowd once again, his gaze drifting over a dozen ghastly sights: a man with no eyes; a woman half-enshrouded by mold; a pale sexless figure covered in ants.

They were something else, he realized, something super-natural, and he and Greg and Wendy had somehow become trapped here, held specifically for their servitude.

But Greg had broken the rules…

Wendy was already shaking her head, fresh tears brimming in her eyes. “You’re crazy!”

Before he could explain himself, a chair from the seating area smashed against the opposite side of the wall, shattering two of the heat lamps, pelting them with hot glass. He looked up and saw the crowd massing before the registers like rioters lined up against a barricade. A hundred voices hollered, “Food!”

“Trust me,” he said, hauling Wendy to her feet. “We need to feed them! Start looking for anything we can use!”

Together they attacked the kitchen, clawing open cabinets, searching shelves, rummaging through the detritus scattered throughout the room. Ron had no idea what eatables they could possibly find—if any—but as they searched the building, they discovered hidden caches of all imaginable ingredients: buns, condiments, spices, vegetables, canned fillings, pre-made mixes that declared:
Just add water!

Ron went to the walk-in freezer, certain that there couldn’t be anything salvageable inside—not with that horrid smell seeping from the door—but when he looked, he found row after row of plastic-wrapped hamburger patties waiting for the grill. The temperature inside the freezer easily rivaled that of the kitchen, and though Ron knew the patties had to be rancid, he snatched up a bag in each hand and called for Wendy to come help him.

Something growled.

The sound made him jerk with fear, dropping the bags of hamburger as he drew the butcher knife from his belt.

Wendy ran to his side, reaching him in time to witness a cloudy white eyeball pop open on the gigantic pile of reeking meat heaped against the freezer’s far wall.

Her scream ripped across his eardrums at the very moment a lopsided mouth tore a hole in the huge mound of ground beef staring back at them. The meat-pile yawned as they looked on, displaying teeth made from broken bones and disgorging a huge bovine organ that must’ve been its tongue. Five smaller eyes surfaced at various points around the first one.

The thing’s attention focused on the knife in Ron’s hand. Its eyes narrowed.

A second later it coughed up a watery stream of red-brown liquid that struck Ron dead-center in the chest, soaking his shirt and hair, spraying in all directions.

He slammed the door and threw the locking pin in place, looking at Wendy, meat juice dripping off his face. Her mascara traced the paths of her tears down both cheeks.

“Co… come on,” he said, picking up the bags of patties. “We need to hurry.”

At the stove, he fired up the burners, switched on the deep fryer. Overhead, the malfunctioning lights had ceased flickering and now glowed bright and steady. Readout LEDs flashed to life on almost all the other appliances.

They completed sixty orders at an average rate of four minutes per meal, a miracle time born of high-pressure stress and good ol’ fashion terror. The customers came, ordered, and paid whatever they felt like paying. Currencies from around the world disappeared into the cash drawers, along with shells and stones, bones and teeth. At one point, a skinny girl with blue-grey skin dressed only in fishnet stockings and a frayed leather dog collar offered Ron a “freebee” in exchange for her chocolate milkshake, to which he politely replied, “It’s on the house.”

Wendy refused to follow him to the counter, opting instead to watch the grill while he dealt with the horde of unearthly customers up front.

“We’re out of hamburger patties,” she said when he rushed to change the baskets in the deep fryer. She cast a furtive glance at where they’d stacked a dozen canisters of soft drink mix in front of the freezer door.

Ron sighed. “There’s something that looks like meat hanging in the janitor’s closet… I’ll go cut some slabs off that in a minute.”

He reloaded the fryers and returned to the registers, delivering a tray of fish sticks. Ahead of him, a sea of pale-skinned patrons waited their turn at the counter.

A teenage girl dripping mud and seaweed stepped forward.

“How…” he began, then had to stop, trying to work up saliva. He wiped sweat off his face. “How may I…”

But he pivoted away without finishing, leaning against the ice cream machine, which currently churned a mixture of vanilla soft-server and black sludge.

“Screw this!” he cried. “I can’t. I can’t do it anymore––”

“Hello, sir,” a voice said at his back.

Ron flinched and spun around, recoiling at the sight of a tall gaunt figure dressed in a paper hat and apron. Behind it stood a trio of men with wads of bloody gauze taped over their eyes.

“We’re here about the jobs,” the tall one said. He handed Ron a quartet of papers labeled ‘Application for Employment.’

Ron blinked, stammering a string of unintelligible sounds before finally saying the one thing that seemed the most appropriate. “You’re hired.”

“Thank you, sir,” the emaciated creature answered. It immediately took up a position near the deep fryer, causing Wendy to scream when she saw it coming. The thing reached into the bubbling oil with its bare hands, transferring the cooked food to the proper containers. The other men each manned a register, two up front and one at the drive-thru alcove.

Wendy hurried to Ron’s side. “What…” she started, but then trailed off, perhaps knowing he’d have no rational answer for her question.

The hours passed. Customers continued to arrive, flooding the dining room far beyond what would normally be acceptable by state safety regulations—yet the restaurant managed to accommodate them. More employees showed up, as well. They no longer approached Ron, acting out the formalities of regular job applicants as the first few had, but just turned up and went to work.

The rhythm of the restaurant filled the air. Pots clanking, registers buzzing, voices calling out the orders. From the dining room came the constant slavering sounds of snapping teeth and chewing jaws while the patrons devoured meal after meal after meal.

And they were getting stranger, too. As were their orders.

Ron glimpsed a walking jumpsuit with a mass of purple vines sprouting from the neckline; a mound of black fur whose hidden claws clicked against the tile; a skinless beast that reminded him of the malevolent mound of sentient beef in the freezer.

He avoided the front line as much as possible now, busying himself by stocking mundane supplies that mysteriously showed up in the storeroom: plastic forks; paper cups; napkins; straws. Occasionally he’d come across a box labeled ‘Dried Monkey Heads’ or an economy-size can of ‘Powdered Semen’, but at least those items were contained and out of sight. It was when he’d encounter a worker delivering some hideous tray of ingredients to the kitchen that he felt his stomach somersault inside him. Twice he’d vomited on the floor, not having time to find the restroom. The first time a dutiful employee appeared with a mop and bucket; the second time they brought a carryout bag.

He was more concerned about Wendy than himself, though. She followed him like his shadow, crying out each time one of the malformed workers came within arm’s reach of her—which had become a regular occurrence given the cramped conditions. More than once he’d needed to lift her from the floor after she’d slumped into a corner.

Now he looked up as he deposited a fresh container of salt and pepper packets at the counter, shocked to see a normal-looking gentleman in glasses approach the register. He had a nervous, sheepish way about him that reminded Ron of the acting style of Woody Allen, and he almost screamed at the guy to run and find help.

“Wendy!” he shouted. He hurried through the kitchen, pushing past the workers as they went about their chores, but couldn’t find her. He dashed past the freezer. “Fucker!” the thing inside barked—and rushed down the back hall.

He found her in the manager’s office, tucked into the corner beside a plastic potted plant. The small room appeared immaculate, a far cry from when he’d first viewed it. The furniture all looked new now, as did the various office-related supplies and corporate-themed decor. Behind the desk, the picture of the Last Supper gleamed as if just painted.

“It’s my fault,” Wendy wailed when she saw him. “I knew something was wrong when I drove up. The place was fixed! When I first toured it last month, the building was just a burnt out shell. But today… I should’ve said something, anything, but I needed the commission… ”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s like we’ve skipped the Twilight Zone and gone straight to Hell. All I know is that we’re still alive, and if we can stay that way long enough, we’ll find a way out of here… this place seems to need us.”

“Which is why we’ll never get out,” she said. Despite her tears, the words came out soft and calm, sounding frighteningly like acceptance.

He opened his mouth, not yet sure what he planned to say, only knowing that he had to get her back to work before whatever force controlled this place decided she was slacking.

“Look we—” he started, but stopped when he spotted something lying forgotten under the desk. He let go of Wendy’s hands and crawled over to it.

He picked it up and hope instantly charged his nerves.

“Look at this!” he said. “It’s the ID badge of the previous manager.”

When she didn’t move, he returned to her side, holding the badge forward. He tapped the headshot under the laminate. “Wendy, do you recognize this guy?”

She stared at it for a moment, eyes blank, but then a look of understanding enlivened her features. “Al Tolbec,” she whisp-ered, reading the signature on the badge. “Yes! He’s the owner, the one who tried to burn this place down.”

Ron could see a fresh glint of resolve in her eyes, a growing excitement he felt himself.