Cutthroat Chicken (7 page)

The Viewer’s victory was imminent.

His heart very nearly thumped with an excitement that was almost akin to joy as he stared down at his creation. He could practically taste a surge of pride rise through his bosom.

Of course, neither his heart, nor his emotions permitted such a thing. He had to be content with nearly feeling his triumph. It had been many long years since his heart had even attempted beating. Excitement and adrenaline were a thing of his past.

Victory, regardless, was his.

Fred wanted to crow out his victory. He wanted to pump his wings and belt out with a fury that the whole world would hear. The world would tremble at the sound.

If only he could have held his breath, those agonizing moments, waiting for the fruition of all of his greatest desires. Anticipation just wasn’t the same without hypo and hyper ventilation. Sadly, breathing was another thing that he found to be completely unnecessary. He wasn’t sure he even remembered how to breathe, if he desired to try.

Humans didn’t appreciate their ability to emote. They were ridiculously expressive creatures, with their mobile mouths and eyebrows.

Chickens sadly lacked eyebrows and their emotive superpowers.

How could he, Fred the Zombie Chicken, hope to express his excitement?

Crowing was his only option.

It was time for Fred to celebrate.

Yes! His plan was working!

Before him lay his masterpiece. His own wonder of the world. It was beautiful to him, this grand accomplishment, this crime against Mother Nature. He clucked over it as if it were his own chick. He was a proud papa, that’s for sure.

It was almost ready.

It wasn’t alive!

It was undead.

Fred wished he had the vocal chords to cackle wickedly. Even a silkie rooster could get tired of crowing.

What a shame there was no audience. There should have been someone to see and admire Fred’s greatness. He wished he could see those expressions of awed horror.

Well, soon enough.

My sweet. My fair zombie.

Fingers shifted, cracking the battered exterior of its flesh. Some fell to the hard floor, but most stuck, as had been intended. The rich aroma of spice-laden meat filled the air. The creature shifted its arm again, first with too small a motion, then a wild flailing of the limb.

That first movement was followed by an awkward kicking of a pair of equally battered legs. The movement was disjointed and awkward. It roared with frustration.

His baby was not a graceful thing.

It lifted its head.

Blank eyes met his.

“Maaaaasterrrr,” moaned his creation.

If he had hands, he would have rubbed them together. He had to settle for yet another triumphant crowing.

He ran circles around his creation as it staggered until it was very nearly upright. It leaned forward, its arms drooping towards the floor. One shoulder was already starting to break away from the body. That arm could almost reach the floor. It gave his creation a lop-sided unsymmetrical look.

Damn it. Perfectly cooked always meant falling off the bone.

Oh, well. It would do. He thought it was beautiful, and it would be perfectly serviceable, too.

His little victims, the players of his new style of cooking show, didn’t know it yet, but they had just added chicken-fried zombie to their menu.

“Do you hear something?” Abe Braun raised his head, looking back over his shoulder.

Goldie Locke grimaced at him as she pulled and pried at the exit she was hoping they’d be able to somehow yank open so that the few survivors would be able to escape.

And then she’d deal with Fred herself.

She hadn’t told her plan to the others. She knew that they would protest. They wouldn’t want her to go back and face her doom.

But, it was her responsibility. If she had kept a closer watch on Fred, he never would have be able to kill fourteen people in three hours. Fifteen, counting the light technician who’d lost it.

The door just wouldn’t budge.

“I hear it,” she said through gritted teeth. “Come on, there has to be something we can do to get this open. Why doesn’t this place have any windows? At least we’d be able to shatter the glass and get out that way.

“It’s a studio,” Abe Braun said, grunting as he slammed his shoulder against the door, to no avail. “We like to be able to control our own lighting. Sunlight doesn’t make for reliable television.”

“Nobody expects the zombie apocalypse to start indoors,” one of the crew, a young man with a baseball cap and an impressive black eye, quipped. He kicked the door with a ninja kick, but it didn’t even shift.

“It’s just like it’s wall, not a door at all,” Chef Aire-Craft muttered.

Goldie Locked turned to him, her mouth slightly open. “Oh. Good point. I guess this could just be an illusion of a door, or… or, I suppose it could be completely sealed up.”

Abe Braun shook his head. “There has to be ventilation somewhere, or we would still be breathing in smoke. No, there’s fresh air getting in here somehow.”

They all looked up at the ducts in the ceiling, a good fifteen feet over their heads.

“I don’t know how we’d even get up there,” Goldie Locke said. “I might be a witch, but that doesn’t mean I can fly.”

She ignored or simply didn’t see the shocked expressions of her companions. She rubbed her chin thoughtfully as she stared at the ducts.

“One way or another,” she muttered. “I guess we need to try and find a ladder.” She stopped in her tracks and spun back around, her mouth dropped open and excitement in her eyes. “I have an idea,” she said eagerly. “This is a cooking show, right?”

The cast and crew did their bests not to roll their eyes. Some succeeded better than others.

“Your point,” Chef Aire-Craft said dryly.

“Vents,” Goldie Locke said. “It’s fire code. Stoves and ovens and deep fryers… they all have to have exhaust hoods, right?”

Her optimism was contagious. They grouped together so they could make the trek back to the kitchen.

The site of the fire was even worse than they had suspected. No one had been eager to check out the area the fire had wiped out. Now, they had to walk out into the middle of it.

One of the crew whimpered at the sight of the five curled up, burnt bodies that were all that was left of the competitors and those that had tried to put out the fire.

Goldie Locke pulled herself up onto one of the counters that hadn’t been too badly damaged. She stood on tiptoe, under the hood that sucked the smoke away from the stovetops.

She came out with a wrinkled nose. “I think we know how he started the fires now,” she said. “The hood just stinks of lighter fluid.” She hopped down from the counter. “I’m too short to reach anything,” she said. “Maybe one of you guys can see if there’s any way for us to get out of here?”

The two tallest men took her place on the counter and soon the group was more focused on arguing about what was the best way to handle getting into the ducts than the fact that they were all in mortal danger.

Goldie Locke bit her bottom lip. They were making a lot of noise. If they weren’t more careful, they were going to attract attention from Fred, which was the last thing any of them wanted.

It worried her that there had been so much time between attacks. She knew better than to think that Fred was done with tormenting them.

No, she had a hunch that he had something even worse in store for them.

“Hurry,” she hissed. She craned her neck, wondering if she was hearing things, or if there really was something out there in the shadows, moving around.

Something big.

A sheet of metal, the grate over the mouth of the stove hood, fell down with a huge clang. The two workers let out a shout.

“Shhh,” Goldie Locke warned.

But it was too late.

Goldie Locke knew that he was there, even before one of the men working on the hood let out a shout.

They group turned as one.

There, stepping out from behind the curtains, his shadow making a giant out of him, was Fred. He puffed himself up to his full height as his victims caught their first view of their assailant.

“Damn,” Abe Braun whispered. “It really is a chicken!”

“He’s a silkie rooster,” Goldie Locke whispered.

He was smaller than anyone had expected, maybe not even a foot tall. Fluffy white feathers puffed up around him in a cloudlike halo. His whole body was one big poof, from his oddly-dark feet, all the way to the giant poof that was the top of his head. Each of his cheeks had another ball of fluff.

His victims hadn’t expected him to be… cute.

Only the angle of his head and the patchiness of parts of his coat gave away the fact that he was, indeed, a zombie.

That, and the baleful evil stink-eye he was giving them. His eyes were terrifying. They sparkled with intelligence and malevolence. His eyes glowed with undead triumph.

He knew that he was going to win.

Fred raised up his scraggly wings and crowed.

The group of humans flinched at the sound. The crowing had been tormenting them for the past hour. It made their bones feel like shards of ice.

One more crow like that, and the whole group of them was going to go stark raving mad. They couldn’t take it anymore. They were on the breaking point.

Abruptly, things got a lot worse.

Out of the shadows came a pink army.

A pink, naked army.

Naked chickens were on parade.

The desecrated chickens from the pantry were on the move. Their lack of brains did not seem to concern them in the least bit. They marched in file, three abreast, pumping their little drumsticks as they moved along. They marched in a military rhythm, featherless wings swinging to the same tempo.

How should someone respond to a vision like that? A silkie rooster and an army of undead naked chickens?

Bad comedy was truly terrifying.

And this bad comedy was converging on them more quickly than could be expected from a chicken army.

Thump. Slide. Thump. Thump. Slide.

It was the sound that Goldie Locke had heard, coming from the shadows. Now, it filled her with dread and panic. What could Fred have come up with that would sound like that, so lumbering and large? That sound didn’t come from a chicken, not unless it was a chicken that weighed over a hundred pounds.

Gasping in horror would have been wonderful, but no one had enough breath for it.

The chicken army was not alone.

They had zombies on their side.

Real, human zombies.

Well, zombies that had been human once.

Zombies that had been human
recently.

The Naked Chicken Army was followed by Chicken Fried Zombie and Gravy Smothered Zombie.

It really was like the punchline of a bad joke. A really bad joke.

The kind that weren’t actually funny.

The larger zombies were uncoordinated. The bumbled around, stumbling over their own feet… and arms, in the case of Chicken Fried Zombie. The group couldn’t think of it as having anything remotely to do with Sarah Bellam. That would be far too terrifying.

Not that the zombies could be blamed for their condition. One had been fried, the other partly stewed. That had to be hard on muscle function. No wonder Chicken Fried was on the verge of losing an arm… and an eyeball.

The zombies that had once been contestants of the show, flailed their arms and legs, half-dragging, half-walking towards their enemies. They made slow progress, but there was nowhere to go.

Goldie Locke glanced behind her. Nowhere to go, but up.

The crowing continued. It was getting closer. Fred’s army was advancing.

“Run,” Goldie Locke shouted, shoving at the host and the judge. She stared over her shoulder at the approaching army. “Run, you fools! Get into the ducts! It’s your only hope!”

Goldie Locke fought back against the army that had advanced on the group of humans. She’d grabbed a long skewer and a long knife from the decimated kitchen. They weren’t the best weapons, but they only had to do the job long enough for the others get to safety.

Fred was angry. In his mind the humans fell before him, each one too exhausted to plead for their souls before he cut them down. They were grateful to go, by the time he was done with them. In his mind success was easy.

So much rested on this battle.

If he won, in very little time he would have a full zombie army. His power would spread. He would take revenge on all people and creatures who had abused chickens so cruelly.

But, somehow he was not winning!

Goldie Locke chopped and tossed chunks of the Naked Chicken Army in all directions. She skewered one and pinned it to one wall, where it mindlessly moved its wings and legs like it was still trying to march.

An army was only as good as its soldiers.

Well, at least Fred had Chicken Fried and Gravy Smothered. They could only make matters more difficult for the little blond woman.

Why wouldn’t she just die?

Now, most of the other humans had climbed into the air ducts, trying to escape from him.

He would deal with them later.

Now there was only one real foe left to conquer, and he could start his campaign against the world.

She fought off Chicken Fried and Gravy Smothered, dancing out of the reach of their flailing limbs, chopping at them with her knife. She grabbed the wrist of Chicken Fried’s bad arm and yanked. The shoulder separated neatly.

Goldie Locke grabbed up the arm and threw it into the still-bubbling deep fryer.

She knew she could not fight them forever. She only had to keep the zombies distracted long enough to save the others.

She pulled out her secret weapon. This kitchen had already seen too much fire, but it was about to see it one last time.

Goldie Locke squeezed the bottle of lighter fluid with her hands, trying to douse the zombies in front her. For some reason, she couldn’t get the lighter fluid to stick. Maybe it was because Chicken Fried was already greasy and Gravy Smothered was, well, smothered in gravy.

Then the worst thing possible happened.

The air duct, full of panicking people, separated from the roof. People screamed as they fell in a pile on the floor.

Their screams caught the attention of the zombies. Goldie Locke tried to engage them again, but someone else was waiting for her.

Her plan had failed.

Game Over.

Fred won.

She ran from him, her blond hair streaming behind her, bright even in the unreliable flickering of the last surviving lights above them. She was quick, but he was quicker. Her feet slid on the slick floors, covered in gravy and oil and… other things. She scrambled to her feet, trying to get away from him. When she realized that she couldn’t move fast enough, she threw her arms up to protect her face.

She tried to beg, but he had no mercy for her.

Mercy was not on the menu.

“Fred,” Goldie Locke screamed. “Fred!”

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