Zombiez! (5 page)

Albiers gave her a wobbly scolding look. He
spoke out loud again: “You're crazy, baby!”

The groaning became audible and started
moving towards them from all sides.

“Who's there?” Albiers said, looking around
violently as his assistant tried in vain to cover his big stupid
mouth.

breaking>

A nightmare had come to life in these woods
for the two of them, and Jennifer was frozen. Her brain was trying
to make sense of the terrible noises coming from the black woods
all around her. It was probably just deer and squirrels, she said.
Nobody was ever out here in the middle of the night, so nobody
probably knew what deer and squirrels did in the dark, or what it
sounded like.

breaking>

Albiers and Jennifer looked at each other
with terrified eyes, and this shared look of panic made both of
their hearts jump into their respective pharynxes. Albiers handed
her the non-nose-assaulted briefcase and grabbed her by the
hand.

“Where the hell are we going, Albiers?” It
was the first time she had ever called him by his first name.

the plural for the alive human English word “brain”>

Jennifer screamed and followed her drunk boss
through a narrow path between some trees. Albiers ran face-first
into a half-rotted human skeleton-man, which was somehow upright
and walking and saying words with its half-rotted vocal cords. It
clawed at his neck. Albiers backed away too quickly for Jennifer to
avoid, and they both ended up laying on their backs on the dirty
woodland floor. Another walking dead man appeared next to the one
the congressman's face ran into, and he also seemed quite
interested in the culinary aspects of their brains. Jennifer swung
her briefcase wildly at the second zombie's leg, knocking it down
and breaking it into a thousand pieces of flesh and bones. Some of
them were obviously not very sturdy.

“Stop! It'll open and all the money will
spill out!”

III

The scientist's brain was on the move again,
but this time it was just following the rest of his body. A giant
beclawed and bemuscled gray arm came out of the
now-slightly-uncovered stone box in the front of the chapel and
slammed upward into his sternum, lifting him off the ground and
directly towards the ring of windows. Before anyone could react,
the very smart man was crashing though a stained glass rendition of
a lake of fire (or blood, it was hard to tell) and disappearing
into the moaning darkness outside the evil chapel's walls.

The Irish man, now more concerned with the
scientist-smashing demonic arm and less about his aversion to
vomit, dove out of the arm's reach as it grabbed for him. Outside,
the groaning had intensified into a veritable frenzy. The sound of
a powerful brain separating from its skull could be heard. The
brain's last thought was, “Actually, those zombies do appear to
have climbed up out of the grave in various stages of
decomposition,” and then it was just food.

What did I just say about the lid to the
crypt?
The doctor mumbled to himself as he readied his shotgun
for whatever might come crawling out of that stone box. He felt
oddly calm for a man who knew he was probably about to die.
There has to be a way out of this, right?
Why do I feel
like there has to be a way out of this? What's wrong with me?
He spied the nauseous woman crying in the back of the chapel. He
ran past the outstretched demon-arm and made his way back there to
make sure she was ok. He could never take seeing a woman cry. It
was his Achilles' heel as a doctor.

The thing inside the crypt flipped the stone
slab end-over-end and stood up. The slab shattered on the back
steps of the altar area with a huge and terrifying crash. The beast
was at least 10 feet tall, and muscular, and gray, and scaly, and
piscine, and wearing a giant red beret on its toothy head.
“Hi
everyone – I've been expecting you,”
it growled.
“Well,
actually, I was expecting more of you to have been eaten by those
zombies. But, more fun for me hoo hah!”

Its voice was low and throaty, and it
reverberated though the ribcages of everyone in the room. As it
talked, the zombie noise outside swelled to a thunder.

“
I want you to know that you all deserve
to die. I know of your evil deeds, and have pronounced your death
sentence with you in absentia. You scum didn't deserve a trial!
With your deaths, I will finally awaken the many-tentacled beast
you see in these windows. The Eater of Worlds will shatter this
chapel and take its rightful place as the Devourer of all, with me
as his sidekick! You will finally be useful in death, as you never
were in life! You...wait.”

Looking through the room, it saw someone it
wasn't expecting.

“
Who are you? I didn't invite you to this
party! How did you get here?”
the beret-topped monstrosity
roared as it pointed its right claw in the doctor's direction.

The doctor looked up from the back of the
chapel. He gamely offered, “I was planning on hunting deer, but
then there were these zombies...”

“
You don't belong here!”
It roared
again, pausing its prepared speech and looking up at the windows in
exasperation.
“What day is it? Is it Juneteenth?”

Everyone there started looking at each other,
not exactly sure how to react. Only one of them even knew what that
was.

The doctor picked up the kneeling woman and
sat her in the back pew. She was still crying, and looked up at him
with exhausted and sad eyes. He brushed some vomit out of her long
blonde hair, looked her in the eye, and whispered, “When I nudge
you, stand up, run the other way, and yell as loud as you can.” She
looked at him with a cocked eyebrow, then sniffled and nodded in
agreement.

“Yes, it's June 17th,” answered the doctor as
he patiently sat.

“
The planning was perfect, I don't
understand. Wait, I don't see Rose. Where is Rose? Are you Rose?
Did you have some sort of sex-change operation in the last month?
No, you're way too tall to be Rose. And that still wouldn't explain
the shotgun...”

It trailed off, trying to make sense of it
all. The fish demon's distractedness allowed all the people in the
chapel to slowly creep towards the back, giving anyone with a
firearm a clear shot at its confused evil head.

“
So I go through all that trouble...all
those invitations and lures...chanted all those
incantations...learned how to pronounce ancient Sumerian...and
still, things get screwed up. This is surely why Sumeria is no
longer a viable civilization.”

The doctor rested the shotgun on pew next to
the shoulder of the still-snoring Congressman.

“
Well no matter. You're dead, too, whoever
you are. Hopefully the Eater of Worlds will take you and not Rose.
We've come this far – it's worth a shot, right? I really, really
want to at least kill all of you, especially since I'm now a giant
fish-monster.”
it admitted, and then bellowed a bellow that
filled the chapel and compressed everyone's hearts inside their
bodies.

“You're right, it
is
worth a shot.”
quipped the doctor, nudging the blonde woman next to him in the
ribs. She stood up and ran to her right, screaming at the top of
her lungs. She only got a few steps before tripping over the
outstretched head of Mr. Sunglasses, who had been quietly scoping
her legs out while again hiding under a pew. The yelling, running,
and tripping attracted the demon's attention, giving the Doctor an
unimpeded shot at its solitary eye. The shotgun rang out with a
flash, and not even the demon's evil-fueled reflexes were fast
enough to prevent the bullet from piercing its eye, its brain, and
the back of its skull. The giant gray mass snapped back as its head
exploded in a fireworks display of gray goo. It then slumped
forward and came to its ultimate rest hanging half-out of the
crypt, its fishy sidekick dreams squashed forever on account of no
longer having a head in which to keep those dreams.

Congressman Albiers Burnett awoke with the
shotgun's boom, screamed like a little girl, and instinctively dove
for cover. The blonde woman saw him, thought of how awful he had
always been to her, and just barfed all the heck over the back of
his designer suit. She wiped off her mouth and turned to face the
doctor. “I feel so much better now.” she told him.

“I'm glad,” the doctor said, smiling but
retching a little at the smell.

She threw the money-filled briefcase into the
pile of gastric juices on the Congressman's back, and yelled at
him, “I quit, you big jerk!”

As the briefcase bounced off the Albiers'
cowering body, its locks became dislodged. It opened wide as it
spun through the air, spilling $1000 stacks of bills all over the
two piles of puke that the blonde woman had produced. Mr.
Sunglasses and the idiot saw this, and knew they had found another
thing to compete over.

The congressman yelled,
“Noooooooooooooooooooo!” as his worst nightmare somehow got even
worse. He really did love money most of all.

“Just like J.F.K!” A frantic voice yelled
from downstairs. The crazy lady came running into the room, her
face beaming with excitement. “His body wasn't shot from the front,
but still lurched forward, just like John F Kennedy did! You killed
Kennedy! I'm free!” She danced around the pews, trampling unseen
deviled-ham mascots underneath her best high heels. Even if the
others knew what she was talking about, it still wouldn't have made
any sense.

The groaning outside had completely ceased.
Not only that, but the sun was now out and shining as only it can
shine. It had instantly become daytime when the fish thing's head
exploded. The doctor was the first to make his way to the door and
remove the barricades. The Irish man put a hand on his shoulder. It
was strong enough to stop him in his tracks.

“Nyeece Sho-at, doctar,” the hooligan said,
“But are ye so shu-are it's sayaf out theyar?”

He nodded, wordlessly brushing the hand away
and throwing open the wooden doors. All around the chapel, the dead
lay dead on the ground. The smell of rot was strong, but none of
the bodies were moving, which was a welcome change. The doctor just
kept on walking, relishing finally being outside of that stone
prison and away from those annoying people. He had to move gingerly
while climbing over some of the bigger cadaver piles, but
eventually he got past them and onto the naked forest floor. He
paused and felt the cool breeze of the free world, and delayed for
a little while longer processing everything he had seen. There
would be plenty of time for that in the days to come. Against his
better judgment, he looked back in the direction of the chapel. The
attractive woman was the only one who had followed him outside. The
rest were still in there doing God only knows what, but probably
fighting over those stacks of money. Their eyes met, and she waved
her arms and promptly fell on her face.

“I NEED TO THANK YOU!” yelled the woman as
she tried unsuccessfully to get up.

She was struggling to climb over a
particularly tall and squishy pile of formerly-undead, and he
sighed.
A doctor's job is never done, even after basically
preventing a zombie apocalypse single-handedly
, he thought.

“SOME OF THOSE BODIES AREN'T REAL STURDY, SO
BE CAREFUL,” the doctor yelled as he carefully climbed back towards
her.

He reached her position, and noticed that the
heel of her left shoe was stuck in some dude's ribcage. He stuck
out his arm, and she grabbed it and held on for dear life. He
pulled her safely beyond the mass of bodies, but she did lose a job
and a shoe.

EPILOGUE: THE IDIOT II

Watching the raw footage of the Unaired
Incident in the dark comforts of his living room, it was not hard
for the man in the red beret to see why the producers of
Frat
Blast Season 3
decided to settle out of court before the jury
ever got a chance to see it. He imagined juror eight, a recently
widowed 72-year-old grandmother, watching as one of the defendants
handed Gator a bottle of tequila and a syringe filled with what
Gator would testify was a Grade-A top-shelf designer P.E.D.
specially brewed to produce rage, then instructing him to “not hold
back – even if Phil cries or screams,” and “make sure Phil never
has any more kids.” That's some civil liability right there.

The
man couldn't figure out why the Ancient One, otherwise known as the
Eater of Worlds, put the Mark on Gator rather than this producer
fellow. The producer seemed much more guilty of ongoing crimes
against humanity, but the Mark was immutable and the Ancient One
knew all, or at least most
^1
.
Perhaps Gator's soul
was stronger or had some higher quality of hidden guilt. How did
the saying go? His was not to question why...his was
(something
something)
die. But still, it gnawed at him even though he knew
that delaying the Great Awakening was no longer possible. His risk
would either pay off beyond his wildest dreams, or it was all a
lie. These thoughts of ultimate risk exhilarated him endlessly.
This was so much better than snowboarding down K-2 (which was Plan
B, in the event the World Eater project fell through).

Anyway, he further imagined juror eight, the
genteel granny, watching in horrible anticipation as Gator walked
over to the “Circle of Pain” where the final contest of atomic
wedgiement was to be held. The host of
Frat Blast Season 3
,
former extreme sports competitor Billy “Bobby” Wengston, was
standing in the circle looking at his gel-infused hair in a
hand-held mirror and waiting for the finalists to arrive. The
unnecessary theatrics of the actual edited show were missing, so
any juror, including granny, might have been bored or confused
here.