Zombie Bitches From Hell Read online

  “Come on, Laurie, now push. Be a good fucking girl and push goddamn it!” shouted the guy at her head. “Push you motherfucking cretin bitch!” He slapped her real hard on the side of her head. She turned to snap at him but bit into empty air coming away with nothing. His shredded shirt cuffs were proof positive that he had had some close calls in the delivery room in the past.

  “You know her name?” I asked the Doc with a considerable tone of surprise. This was a first.

  “Oh, yes. She was my receptionist. Lived with a man named Gaffney in unholy

  un-matrimony. She complained about him almost every day. He was very short and, shall we say, minutely endowed. She would call him ‘DIY’ because he refused to pay anyone to do anything. He’d rake the leaves, clean his own chimney, haul his own garbage—a cheapskate. I suppose that’s why they never married. He was a lucky one; he’d been a forest ranger when the disease struck this area, chasing around in some state park counting bear turds or some other important government funded project.

  “He had impregnated her before one of his week long absences. She’s the first case of a GaGa being pregnant during the course of the disease although there are a lot of rumors about that unfortunate situation; a good many in maternity wards all over the world were infected with disastrous results, of course. Most of them were killed as far as anyone knows, but little Laurie here was not. I saved her by putting her body in a locked morgue vault just when she died. You should have heard the racket when she woke up in a drawer with the body of a wino that the cops had found dead in a refrigerator box in Stanley Park downtown. She struggled for a good five days. Ate most of the wino. When the food ran out, she went into the hibernation state. How her unborn baby has survived is a miracle yet to be explained. But you’re about to witness medical history right here, right now.”

  “Is her husband here? The forest ranger, I think you said,” I asked.

  “Oh no. Poor chap. They found him near his Ford pick-up. Seems a troop of Girl Scouts were studying the great outdoors where Mr. Gaffney was working. They came across him deep in the woods but he almost made it out of there. Tracks of his were found leading to his vehicle. Unfortunately, the girls were hot on his trail. Troop 29 out of Forestdale. Seven little tykes and a troop leader named Mary Rose LaBossa. They got him just when he reached the truck. Yes, they did. Did quite a job on him. Ate all the good parts, left his intestine full of his previous night’s dinner hanging in a pine tree. Took his head with them. Might have been a snack. Ate the thing clean; brains, eyeballs, tongue. The whole shootin’ match, and dropped the skull from an overpass on I-767. Trucker ran over it. Authorities only found the jaw. Mr. Gaffney was identified through his dental records. Of course, by the time all that happened, the world had pretty much gone to hell in a bitch’s hand basket. Great detective work though. So, no, the little asshole won’t be here to see his wifey give birth to…who knows what.”

  We both turned to watch the grim scene unfolding in the room. The bitch was grunting regularly, sounding like a race horse coming in toward the finish line. One of the orderlies was spreading her legs apart by pressing on her thighs, softly saying, “Come on, push, that’s it, push.” It would have been quite a regular scene, I imagined, that had played out for millennia, but this was different. The grunting in between the snapping, the smell from the bucket and a new peculiar odor—a smell of sweetness something like sweet and sour pork sauce was filling the already too hot, too humid and too stinking room.

  The Doc went over and pushed the orderly out of the way.

  “Let me take over,” he said

  “Be my guest, Doc. She’s a tough one. Not like the others.”

  “You bet. This is medical history, boy, and we’re making it.” The orderly looked at him like he was nuts, which he most definitely was.

  The Doc grabbed the baby’s head and started turning it. Blood was oozing, the dark dead ones’ blood, that I had gotten to see more times than anyone should have to. He was literally unscrewing the kid from the ReGen’s vagina. The shoulders appeared and Laurie or whatever her fucking name was, gave a scream that could have curdled milk in every supermarket within a fifty mile radius. I put both hands over my ears to muffle the ungodly sound of it.

  “Come on, you fucking bitch,” the Doc shouted. He put his foot on the edge of the gurney and gave a final tug. The baby slipped out with a resounding floop sound like someone pulling his stuck boot out of three feet deep of mud. The force of the pull caused the Doc to lose his balance and he fell backward onto his ass, then flat on his back. The umbilical cord was stretched taut as a tightrope. The bitch screamed and oozed more blood from her snatch than I thought one undead woman could hold. The placenta plopped into the bucket on top of the turds and the new GaGa mother went silent emitting only a deep groan like the sound you make when you’re trying to scare someone by making deep, bellowing sounds into a paper towel cardboard tube.

  An orderly started for the Doc to help him up but the Doc started to holler almost as loud as the bitch. He stopped in his tracks.

  “Get it off me! Get it off me!” Doc shouted. The baby, unfortunately for the Doc, was not a boy as he’d surmised. It was a girl. Born with a full set of teeth that were razor sharp. The baby bitch attacked the Doc and bit through his pants into his balls. She was a piranha, a very hungry eight pound, six ounce one and was feasting on the Doc. His blood was pouring out through the tears in his pants.

  “Get her off me,” he shouted, but it was too late. I reached down to pull the baby off of him, but her head had already made its way into his lower abdomen. He was grunting like someone who hadn’t taken a crap in a year and was finally letting it go. Nothing I could do. I wasn’t touching anything. I wanted out of this place fast.

  An orderly shoved me out of the way, reached down and grabbed the gnashing undead baby by the feet and pulled. She came away with the Doc’s intestine still in her maw, uncoiling like a garden hose from the hole that used to be his dick and balls.

  The bitch on the gurney lifted her head and started to laugh. Not a Ha-Ha kind of laugh like you’re doing when you’ve had a few drinks and some lame stand-up comic is making his jokes. It was a high-pitched hooting, almost a howl that got inside your spine and made you think, maybe we’re all better off dead. Another lesson for today. GaGa bitches could laugh. And if they could laugh, they could reason. This was not good, not good on anyone’s planet.

  We heard shots being fired. Laurie continued squirming and hooting, kicking like mad and snapping her jaws frantically. The slop bucket got knocked over and one of the orderlies slipped in the spilled mess and fell onto the Doc’s dead body. The guy in the green smock grabbed two scalpels, one in each hand, and came down on her abdomen, drove those things right through; I could hear the points hit the metal table top. She rasped and inhaled like a vacuum cleaner with a too-full bag and stopped her squirming. The other orderly who still held the newborn by the feet lifted her up as if to smash her head against the wall, when the door burst open and a guard rushed in.

  “They’ve gotten out. The bitches are out. Save yourselves!” As he said this, a bitch flew through the door and attacked him from behind, biting the back of his neck. The two of them spun around and slipped in the slop shit on the floor. Two others rushed in and got the baby from the orderly and then attacked him, tearing his guts out and breaking his ribs by pulling them from the outside in. Yet another bitch entered and took the baby and ran out with it like a running back looking for the goal post. I ran into a closet which was not a closet at all but a small room that held the elevator running gear with a service door for the elevator itself. The shaft was wide open and when I looked over the edge, the elevator was sitting down below at the lobby level twenty feet away.

  I had no choice. Either slide down or wait for the bitches to break in and gut me.

  I shimmied down the greasy cable, made it most of the way before I lost my grip, and fell the last five feet. Found the hatch door and jumped thro
ugh into the elevator. I could hear screaming and gunfire, but I thought it best to make a break for it. I guessed that the bitches were going to win this fracas and I was in no frame of mind to be lunch.

  CHAPTER 15

  The parking lot where we’d landed the balloon lot looked like a pond under the light of the half moon. Hadley held my hand tightly and the hairs on the back of my arms stood straight on end. I know it was a mistake to bring her. I don’t know why I did. Funny her mother didn’t complain. But she was, literally, a time bomb. I thought that I might be able to keep her from contamination. It was just a matter of thought and planning. She needed to stay in the gondola no matter what and to never be indoors where GaGas had been within the previous twenty-four hours, which was the rumored incubation period. It was, under those circumstances, not impossible. Maybe I was just thinking of myself as some sort of hero. It never entered my mind before. I don’t do heroic things and I don’t believe in risk. I never skied or bungee jumped and I was not even the type that wanted to ride a roller coaster. I had been cautious all my life—even in relationships. Why engage in an activity for fun if there is even a remote possibility that you could get seriously injured or killed? I lived in ski country, had visited the slopes many times, even took a lesson one season with a girl named Sue. Even the bunny rabbit hill was evidence to me that I could mangle my ankles or smash a femur. For what? To slide down a fucking hill that I had to pay to go up? Surely you jest.

  My uncle who was a car salesman at the local Caddy dealership once told me, “there was an ass for every seat.” Watching people rocket down those slopes while I sat in the lodge looking at tit-filled sweaters and newly plastered casts, I told myself, “there is an asshole for every sport.” Give me a pool cue and that’s as risky as I’m going to be. You do it. Enjoy. I’ll watch and then fuck your girlfriend while you’re in the recovery room. ‘There, there now sweetie cakes; he’ll be okay. Just don’t be alone for the first night; it’s a real downer. Come up to my place. We can watch old movies and you won’t be lonely.’ It never failed.

  But Hadley was different. I could not leave her back there. Even if she was doomed to turn into a GaGa bitch, it would not be because I didn’t try to stop it. Fuck heroism; I did what I needed to do. No moralizing. The world is too far gone for that.

  Tim didn’t look happy about Hadley either and maybe didn’t feel that putting his neck on the line literally for a future monster who might now be a sweet little girl was worth it. I used MG’s collar and created a makeshift bell to attach to it. I could hear Tim’s argument already:

  Listen, Kent. I’m conceding that you’re brain damaged, bringing this kid along, but you got to make this concession: she wears this ding-a-ling collar at all times, twenty-four-seven or I’m outta here. I may end up dead somewhere in the woods or on the road, but it will be through no fault of my own. The kid is dangerous, way dangerous. If she turns while I’m sleeping and I wake up dead, it will be my fault mainly because I let you talk me into it and then not taking a precaution. I agreed to do it. A deal’s a deal for now. And I owe you. But I…

  She didn’t mind after I told her that: one, the collar was so we wouldn’t lose her in the dark and two, it was a way cool fashion statement. Hadley became a jingler—that’s what I called her. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be dreaming of Santa and Rudolph when she came near.

  ***

  I tell Hadley that I’m going to scout for food.

  “Don’t wake Tim up. Let him sleep. I’ll be back before morning,” I tell her. She hugs me around the waist.

  “Don’t do anything crazy. Please, Kent. Tell me you’ll be extra careful. Please. Promise.”

  “I promise,” I say meaning it. I’m actually feeling like I need to live not for my sake but for hers. It’s not a feeling I’m used to or comfortable with. I leave her by the campfire and go to the river. The boat is waiting for me. I get in and start paddling.

  CHAPTER 16

  My boat was drifting with the uncertain currents through the night, clouds obscuring the moon and stars as if a moldy quilt had been cast over the world by a careless innkeeper not realizing I was adrift and alone at the whim of the inky river. Black froth licked at the prow and pregnant thuds knocked at the hull as the boat glided, circling over submerged stones, the forgotten eggs of long-dead sea monsters. I held tightly to the sodden seat, looking up and praying to any god that might listen to the prayers of anyone left in this hideous world. My clothes were ragged and the only thing I owned untouched by the world’s nefarious tricks were the beautiful bullhide boots that I had stolen awhile back, back before the balloon, from some damnable itinerant preacher. I regretted having to kill him, but he awoke just as I had snatched the boots from his bedside. What sin this might have been, seemed nothing to me compared to the sin that God had committed in sentencing me to a life like this.

  I hadn’t thought of that moment for a while. Killing a man. A man who wanted to kill me. The world is changed now, but I assure you it doesn’t make taking a life easier. I chose not to think of it anymore.

  The river calmed after a time and I could make out the silhouettes of reeds and cattails along the edge, black as if poisoned by the darkness and bent and broken like a giant had stumbled in the dark, his oafish hands breaking his fall near the shore. The slim current led me toward the bank and I leaned over and started paddling, feeling the nibbles of invisible fish on my hands. After a time, about a hundred yards downstream, I saw a fire glowing through the reeds, a cyclops eye of orange and red with jellyfish tendrils of smoke escaping to the sky. Three men sat near the fire, one standing and holding a rifle. I called out for help. They turned in unison toward me and immediately I had regretted my outburst. One called out to me and I thought I heard another say, “should I shoot him now?” but my mind was playing tricks on me, I was sure. A rope was tossed out and I thought for a moment to forgo its welcoming hand, but I was near starved and shivering uncontrollably. I grabbed it and was pulled to shore, fending my way through the brittle grasses that felt like skeleton arms and legs, sere and stiff, the smell of dead things in the air.

  “Thank you,” I said. “My name is Walter,” I lied. “Yours?”

  “We have no names here. To name something is to control it. And, anyway, what’s it to you?” the tall one said. He was clearly the oldest, the other two looking no more than in their teens, but drawn and sallow, the dim light of the fire swallowed by the dark sockets of their sunken eyes. One of them held the rifle, his thumb caressing the stock rhythmically.

  “Nothing really. Just being friendly.”

  “There ain’t no friends out here either. What are you doing on the river in such a state?”

  “I was upstream a few days’ ride back when a storm hit. Lost my oars in the rapids from the cloudburst and had my rudder crushed on the rocks. Lucky I’m alive.”

  “Lucky, yeah.” The tall man spoke like a Southerner, the others were voiceless but all three were thin as wraiths. The youngest had on a tattered shirt with sleeves unevenly short as if something had been chewing on them.

  “Might I sit by the fire a spell. I’m soaked through to the core.”

  “Sure. Sit.”

  I sat uneasily feeling the warmth of the fire immediately. A light rain began to fall and spatter on the coals. A large skillet was balanced on a few rocks and in it were a few lumps of meat, black and dry, an indeterminate feast.

  “Have a piece of meat. Hand him a plate,” said the tall man to the boy standing to my left. “You could probably use something to eat if what you say is true.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  The boy, whose hair I could now see was a knotted mass of red, went to the fire and with a long thin knife, stabbed a chunk of the flesh and placed it in a tin plate with a thud.

  “It ain’t pork,” said the tall man.

  “Beef then?” I said.

  “No,” he replied.

  I tore off a piece and chewed its tasteless fibres, thick and dusty dry,
my teeth gnashing it as best I could, flavorless, foreign, cooked through like a stone. One boy stood behind me, the other squatting, the rifle butt on the ground, the barrel held so that he could lean his face against it.

  “Them is nice boots you got there,” the tall man said. “Where’d you get ’em?”

  “They were a gift. From my father,” I said looking down.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” he said.

  “I don’t care what you think.”

  I looked at his boots and saw they were torn and held together with bits of string and bailing wire, a dirty toe peeking out between the two lips of a split in the leather.

  “Them boots look like they too big for you,” he said.

  “I like ’em that way. Room to grow,” I smiled without a response from any of the three who were quiet as pallbearers, the light tapping of the rain a somber drone.

  “Where was you headin’?” he asked.

  “ ’Cross the river to Mecklenburg.”

  “What for?”

  “My family is there. My father.”

  “The same what give you them boots, huh?”