Zombie Bitches From Hell Page 8

  “I think you’re a sick fuck, Doc,” said Tim.

  “Are you a homosexual, Tim?”

  “How about you go fuck yourself,” said Tim.

  “Listen, chill, Tim. I’m sorry, Doc. We’ve been through a lot. Tim’s not himself. I think your work is important but we’ve got other fish to fry, you know. But don’t think we don’t appreciate…”

  “You fucking bitch!” one of the soldiers shouted. He was on top of her and she was twisting so hard and giving out the raspy voice; she managed to spit on his face and hiss like an alley cat. He punched the girl in the face and she screamed, a shrill “noooooooooooo” that made my blood run cold. The black ooze spilled from her mouth and from her nose and dripped to the floor like tar, teeth floating in it.

  The guard in the lifeguard chair aimed and fired a stuttering volley of lead that blew the soldier right off of her. This set the other women screeching and snorting; the room was like the monkey cage in a zoo. Half the guy’s arm and shoulder got blown away and landed on one of the unchosen girls who started chewing at it ferociously. Part of his head and brain sprayed all over one soldier who was orgasming in a woman while she licked the blood and brain that had landed on her face. He was cumming and vomiting at the same time. Put that on “Maury” and see how the fucking audience likes it.

  “Everyone out!” shouted Doc Walters. “Every one of you, out of here! Get them out of here, Ted. Now!! Right now!! Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Dr. Walters, immediately. You, there, pack it in. We’ll resume later if you’ve not finished.” Ted was the lab coat guy but he sounded like this hairdresser that Jen took me to last year. He led the soldiers out like they were naked school kids that got caught by Sister Mary Patricia in a circle jerk. The attendants and orderlies rushed around dabbing here, picking up there, calming the screams and being careful not to get near the gaping chomping mouths. The lights came up. It was a slaughter-fuckhouse in hell. There’s really no way I can describe it any more. And if I could, I don’t want to. Maybe some things are better left unsaid. Unseen. Undone.

  ***

  Tim and I left and sat in the lobby of that hospital and couldn’t say a word. All I remembered was Mrs. Walters coming into my room the night before. I thought she wanted to get laid. She crept in—must have been 3 A.M. “What do you want, Mrs. Walters?” I asked.” I’m engaged to be married and you’re already marr….”

  “I don’t want to sleep with you, you idiot. Listen. Don’t go to the hospital with Paul. Don’t. Please. They do things there. You won’t want to see them. You’re a nice boy, Kent. And Tim too. This world is gone. It’s over. God has judged us and it’s the End of Days. Save your souls and don’t go.”

  “Sure. Of course. Whatever you say.” I lied to her. She made me want to see it even more. Man, that was some mistake. Don’t know if I can forgive myself. But if I don’t, who will?

  CHAPTER 14

  “I could use a joint,” said Tim. “Laced with PCP.”

  “Don’t let it in,” I said. “Let’s just play this game and move on.”

  The Doc came out of the ward and said, “I’m a little disappointed in you boys. We need all the help we can get. A lot of these fellas here are shooting blanks, as they say, and some of them are…well, you might say genetically defective. I’m going for something big, you know, something that will serve and save mankind.”

  “I get it, Doc,” I said.

  “I don’t think you do, my boy.”

  “We do,” said Tim.

  “What you two boys do not know is that on the current course of the disease and the attrition rate of human males, the species homo sapiens will be off this planet in about twenty years by the Pentagon’s best guess.”

  “Yeah, that’s a bunch of fucking geniuses,” said Tim. “They’re always right, aren’t they?”

  “Well, perhaps I can invite you boys to stay and help out as any patriotic American would feel compelled to do without needing a great deal of convincing. After all, we owe our country a debt of gratitude. Come this way.”

  He took us to a door that had his name on it and under his name it said “Coroner.” Now I’m getting the picture. The door leads to a down stairway. It’s the morgue. You know, with all the stainless steel doors and cabinets, the cabinets fitted with long drawers to hold the stiffs. Only the stiffs ain’t stiff anymore. They are quite pliable and running around like the crazies instead of behaving and staying in the deep cooler. Naughty bitches, I’m thinking. Dead is dead, now girls, isn’t it? Come, come now! Back in your nice sanitary if somewhat chilly drawers. You’ll get a spanking and won’t have any pudding tonight. Then I think, I’m losing it. My mind has flown the coop.

  In the center of the room, there are three gurneys, stainless steel jobbers that have those whirligig wheels. Each sits under a lamp hung from the ceiling, the kind that throws down a cone of light like over a pool table, only no one is shooting pool. On each table is a ReGen, strapped at the wrists and ankles like the lovelies in the ward. But that is where all similarities end and the Twilight Sick Zone begins.

  “This ReGen here you see has been vivisected from pubis to tracheal bifurcation,” Doc says—his way of saying cut from neck to cunt. “I’ve removed the inner organs, the lungs the heart the digestive vitria, what you might call the tummy and intestines. The liver and kidneys are gone along with the bladder, uterus and ovaries and vagina. While she is still animate, she has no hunger and no craving. Here, put this soup bone in her mouth,” he says handing a cow leg bone to Tim.

  “No thanks, Doc, this is your show and tell. Teach me, Mr. Rogers, teach me do,” replies Tim in a voice almost as insane as the Doc’s but I’m thinking, this is important shit I’m looking at. Words like insane or crazy or psycho don’t apply anymore. When your pal thinks his girlfriend is possessed by the devil, he’s a psycho; when you think your girlfriend is, you’re a theologian. It’s all a matter of perspective, only the looking glass has tilted and bent and we are all seeing a brave new fucked up funhouse world. Minus the fun.

  He takes the bone and puts it in her mouth. She had that vacant milky white-eyed look but stares dumbly up at the ceiling as if absorbed in the light bulb hanging over her. She does not bite down, but licks it gently with her black tongue.

  “For those of the men who prefer oral sex, she has been a delight. I know you think this is some kind of hideous perversion. I’ll admit, I thought so too. But science in its crawl forward has often had to go against the contemporary morality and what might seem perverse in one moment in time, becomes genius in another. Hildy here, as I have named her after the star of my favorite Ingmar Bergman film, is a reward to those men who are faithful, diligent and above all, successful performers in the ward. But enough of Hildy. There, there, dear, thank you again,” he says, patting her thigh. Hildy does not say “You’re welcome.”

  The middle gurney has a spectacular redhead splayed and vivisected in the same fashion as Hildy.

  “Who’s this?” I ask, with the same tone I’m thinking a man would use when he’s strolling through an orphanage pondering which kid to adopt.

  “Oh, this is Katrina. I’ve named her for that hurricane that devastated New Orleans. She has killed and eaten at least a hundred and twenty-odd men that we know of. Got into a men’s dorm at Kansas State University a few days after the disease first appeared but before its severity became apparent. She was a Teaching Assistant in the English department. Had most of the fellows in that dorm as her students. I like to think she was rather fed up, if you’ll pardon the pun, with their off-handed obnoxious sexist remarks which I am most certain they made and somewhere in her twisted second phase brain she sought out a bit of revenge along with a good high protein meal. Security cameras recorded her every bite and swallow. After killing at least fifty and castrating them and ingesting the bits, the police made the strange assumption she should be captured and imprisoned. Thought she was a whack job with loony bin written all over her. Some cops fancy themse
lves like that Clarice chick from the Hannibal Lector movies, want to capture the psychos, not kill ’em. Caught her in a net used to capture rabid dogs. When she got to the jail, she berserked again and killed I don’t know how many officers of the law. She was crafty enough to wait for them to return from patrol duty. A great number just bled to death after the castration. She was well-disposed to eat only penis and testicles as long as the supply was undiminished. We’ve discovered that any other parts of the male anatomy are only eaten when the GaGas are famished or in a frenzy. Given time and opportunity, they are strictly genital eaters.

  “Now Katrina here seems to have undergone the same treatment as Hildy but there is a vast difference. She still has her reproductive organs. Note these here,” he says pointing at what I guess is a uterus. He puts his bare finger in her guts and rubs a thing that looks like a walnut wrapped in ten layers of kitchen wrap.

  “This is one of her ovaries and I think the secret of the progression of the disease lies within these two female organs. Of course, this is just a guess, a well-educated guess, to be sure, but it’s the only thing I’ve come up with so far.”

  I know Jen is already way past this. Her research team knew all this shit at the git-go but I’m not going to burst this weirdo’s balloon. I’m going to play his game and move on. I hope Tim can keep it together, though. He worries me.

  The third gurney also has a ReGen on it but she’s covered up and there are straps that cross her body, not just the ones at the wrists and ankles.

  “This is Mallory,” he says proudly. “She is my pride and joy.” He gently removed the sheet that was covering her. The ReGen seemed to be sleeping, something I had not seen and thought was impossible without wondering why it would be. She too was cut open cunt to neck but her organs were still intact, far as I could tell. Her uterus was huge and distended.

  “She is carrying my child,” said Doc. We could see the uterus, something looking like a roast beef blown full of air or stuffed with something to the bursting point and that something was slowly moving within turning, rotating, lazily squirming.

  “It was a happy accident,” he continued. “I was particularly fond of her. We had met a few years ago when I was speaking at a forensics convention at the Denver Hilton. She was a student. It was one of those love at first sight moments for me. Perhaps she as well. I like to think so. It would not be out of the question. After all I was a city coroner and that type of powerful position would impress any woman. I think she recognized me as an alpha male. I’m not talking over your heads, boys, am I? Well, let’s say we had a meeting of the minds. She was very coy of course, avoiding eye contact, but I could tell how she pulled her sweater closed when I came near her that she was secretly giving me the signal to mate with her. I was married—but these are conventions that lie outside the natural rhythms of the universe.” He stroked her leg and I could see her flesh rise in goose bumps. She was not asleep, but pretending to be. I nudged Tim back from the table.

  “She is very beautiful, Doc,” I said like a lame brain. “I can see the attraction. It’s obvious.”

  “You’re a thoughtful and considerate lad,” he said. “If my son that is currently within her turns out like you, I’ll be quite proud.”

  “Well, that gives me the warm fuzzies,” said Tim. A greenish slime oozed from Mallory’s nipples. Doc put his finger in it.

  “Interestingly, this has more nutritive value than a human female’s breast milk. We’ve not determined all the positive compounds in it—we’re terribly understaffed here—most of these men have barely graduated from high school. That is, in fact, my greatest fear, that their genes are not…well, to be frank, up to snuff.”

  “Bummer,” said Tim.

  “Oh, it’s a bummer all right,” the Doc said. “That’s why I was hoping Kent would stay here with us. You, too, Tim, if it would make a difference to Kent; help him to be persuaded to stay. I think you’ll see there are unlimited possibilities for fun as well as work. Don’t tell me now. Think on it. We’ve all the time in the world. Well, maybe a little less than that, but you get my drift. I’ve got one more thing to show you here before we move on. Step this way.”

  He led us up the main stairs from the lobby of the hospital. All those stupid posters were still up, asking people to donate blood for the Red Cross, safe sex, obesity, all the major defects of body and mind. What a bunch we were, I’m thinking. Maybe Old Lady Walters was right about the end of the world. I was beginning to not give a fuck.

  At the end of a long hall on the first floor, a dark green double door with armed guards on both sides opened to another ward room like the one downstairs. Women were milling about behind a wire fence. Some were strapped to the walls. A sign said, BEWARE! ELECTRIC! with a yellow lightning bolt. The women were, of course, all victims of the virus, but they were all pregnant. The more advanced they were, it seemed, the more likely they would be strapped to the wall.

  “I’ll wait outside,” said Tim. I could see that memory was overpowering him.

  “Stay out of trouble, my boy. We’re not patient with trouble makers,” Doc said. He chuckled. “I’ve made rather a bad pun, haven’t I?”

  “Yeah, that’s a funny one, Doc. Ha!” I responded. “Patient. Get it, Tim?”

  Tim left without a word, went into the hallway.

  “Don’t worry about Tim,” I said. “He’s a good guy…just been through a lot, ya know.”

  Doc Walters stood there eyeing me like I was sitting at a poker table and just raised him twenty grand and he’s thinking, “Is this donkey bluffing me or does he have the nuts?”

  “These are the ReGens who have been successfully impregnated by our men. Each one of them receives the best care we can give which, admittedly, is not the best for obvious reasons. But they are fed and seen to. We clean them up periodically and check on their progress by anesthetizing them. It’s a simple matter to release nitrous oxide into the ward and while they are under, we do our servicing. Very humane and very productive.”

  The ReGens were moaning and chittering—a sound like the clicking of teeth together. They began to gather at the electric fence and stare at us. Beautiful women with eyes the color of white house paint, hair long, unkempt straight. They would gather and stare—not quite blankly but as if trying to understand. One of them looked at me and clenched her teeth, started to reach for the wire but was stopped by another. I thought for a moment it was a random act. I hoped it was. But were they regaining something lost. If they were regenerating their bodies, why not their minds as well? No way, I thought. No way.

  Then I remembered those nuns. The way they were able to speak and coordinate an attack.

  “Look, Doc, we got to get going,” I said.

  “Not yet, boys. I’ve asked you to stay and I think you should see all the work we’re doing here. You can’t judge a book by its cover, can you?”

  Without waiting for us to respond or, more likely, not giving a shit, he walked down the hall holding me by my arm.

  “Tim, my boy. Wait here for us a moment, won’t you. Jack here will bring you to the reception area,” Doc said. As if on cue, a tall, beefy orderly showed up. In felt tip pen his name “Jack” was written on his white shirt which was three sizes too small. His arms bulged like they had yams under the skin.

  “No, I think I’ll stay with you two,” said Tim.

  “Not this time, me boy,” Doc responded. “Now don’t fret yourself. Kent will be down in a minute. I just need to have a private chat with him. Jack, take Tim here down to reception. Get him a donut and coffee.”

  “We haven’t had donuts in three months, Doc,” said Jack through his teeth.

  “Well then, get him some refreshments. Now.”

  Tim made a pretense of not going along with the Doc’s plan, but Jack’s iron grip was persuasive.

  “I’ll be right down, Tim. It’ll be all right. We’re among friends here. Right, Doc?” I said knowing full well that dividing the troops, even if there were only
two of them, was not a good strategy. I had to bet that Doc Walters was not going to kill either one of us. Not yet anyway, and time was on our side. Even if we had to stay a while, we’d eventually get out of here.

  Tim reluctantly went with Jack. The Doc took my arm again and led me to an adjacent ward. As he opened the door, a scream so shrill came from a room across the hall that for a moment I imagined that MG would be the only one to be able to hear it.

  “Oh, this is wonderful,” said the Doc. “Miss Wilkinson is giving birth. Come this way.” I followed him through a red door with a hand-scrawled sign that said, “Delivery—No Admittance---This means U!”

  There was a gurney in the middle of the room under a huge flying saucer-shaped light that intermittently flickered between too bright and too dim. On the table with her feet strapped into stainless steel stirrups was a totally naked Miss Wilkinson, a zombie bitch if there ever was one. She was lanky as a beanpole, with flat tits that were both oozing the same green mucousy slime that we had seen before. She was tied to the table with bright orange bungee cords that looked fresh from Casey’s Hardware down the street. Her body, despite its thin, emaciated appearance—she must have looked like a walking stick figure before the GaGa claimed her—was wiry tough but covered in that very pink, very healthy looking skin that I’d come to see as the distinguishing feature of the ReGens. Her face had teeth that were too big for her mouth, that gave her a skull-like look, and her mousey brown hair, the color of dust you find behind a five-year-old entertainment center in your den the day you move out, was tied with duct tape. The milky eyes were another reminder.

  My first view of her was her wide open vagina, ringed by matted, dark brown hair. What looked like a coconut stuck between her pussy lips was the top of the head of a baby about to be born. Surrounding her were two dudes in white lab coats that looked like they had been on duty at a Chicago slaughterhouse. Just below her gaping snatch was a red plastic beach bucket. She raised her head and let out a banshee scream and two turds squeezed out of her ass and fell with a thick plop into the bucket. The room filled with a cesspool odor that would have made any mortal man vomit his last three meals. But men in the times of the GaGa have grown immune to such improprieties. And I learned that zombie bitches still had to shit, which meant she had been feeding, but on what or whom I had yet to discover. Another guy in a green operating room smock stood near her head, but clearly out of reach of her snapping jaws which were chattering and gnashing in between bouts of screaming and grunting, grunting that sounded like an empty rubber garbage can falling down cement steps.