Lizzie chewed her stick of peppermint quietly so as not to rouse the smallish zombie horde. Of course, floating in a bubble of silent and invisible invulnerability basically negated the need for such measures, but Lizzie was nothing if not careful.
Having been raised by a family of cross-bred dingo wolves in the far reaches of the Australian outback, Lizzie learned stealth and caution practically as soon as she could snarl. When a svelte Adonis wearing naught but loincloth first walked into a clearing where she was bathing many years ago, her instincts allowed her to completely disappear, such that he saw nothing of her, though she was naked in the water not twenty feet away.
She followed the mysterious stranger, for she had never seen one of his kind before. One of her kind. After two days of tracking the strange but beautiful man, she could no longer help herself. She jumped him. Her appearance and her devastating beauty affected him like a sparkling hammer to the groin. Which is to say, he doubled over, moaning in orgasmic agony.
Lizzie decided this was probably a good effect to have on people.
When the stranger recovered, he told her his name--a name that would change when the stranger changed a few years later, obsessed with his experiments and the magic Lizzie offered him. To her profound disgust, Selig Retsuc would be born, a loathsome blob with a wanker one tenth the size of his original equipment.
Sigh, maybe Lizzie didn't have such a good effect on people.
The trouble was, by being raised purely in the natural world, free of all human contamination, Lizzie learned about the extraordinary magic that underlay all things, the magic humans had disowned and forgotten when they became civilized, when they became infected with the idea that any human could know the mind of the magic, could tell the difference between good and evil. While this infectious idea liberated man from the rhythms and constraints of the natural world, it also plunged him into a despairing fog of violence that would only escalate over the coming years as competing ideas about good and evil met and clashed.
Lizzie, however, was innocent of such things. She only knew the stories the rocks and trees told of mankind's fall. She did not know she had only escaped such a fall by being abandoned by her feckless mother on the eve of her birth. When Selig, whose former name was once music to her ears, told her of his high minded ideals and began to infect her with his own moral disease, Lizzie didn't know what was happening. She told Selig about the magic, showed it to him, not knowing that doing so would cost the human world everything.
Now, years later, she had come to reset the natural order. Her plan had been simple. Selig gained his magic from being inside Lizzie and thus it was concentrated primarily in his pocket snake. As he began to use the magic for himself, draining its powerful concentration from his chief of staff and infusing it into his increasingly putrescent form, said powerprawn shrunk to pinkie-size and came close to falling off. After Lizzie stopped allowing him between her legs, the fat lug took off for America to find another source. Apparently, he mistook Lizzie's sister for Lizzie and thus lost his Admiral James T. Cock.
Making an unholy pact with her wretched mother, Lizzie managed to get hold of the calcified wrinklebeast and was prepared to cast a spell ending Selig Retsuc's reign forever when a gentleman walked in to the burnt-down house she was occupying. This was not just any gentleman. This was a man so beautiful he smashed a sparkling hammer into her groin.
He then lifted Lizzie's poor crispy sister and walked with her into the desert to bury her. So moved was she by this man's beauty and handsomeness and intelligence and perfect ass and grace and great sense of humor and--perhaps most of all--his humility, Lizzie nearly forgot the zombie zipper ripper in her hand. Instead she watched as her hunka hunka burnin love set fire to an entire plateau's worth of bombies simply by singing in his peculiarly wonderful voice. Then, she looked into the man's mind as he began, slowly but surely, to unravel the mysteries of the universe. When Lizzie's mother's evil cookie magic took over once more and the man was forced to go commit an act of unspeakable atrocity against a raven-haired wizardress's furry companion, Lizzie intervened. Teleporting the wizardress back to her home and to a tray full of zombie guts, Lizzie took the woman's place on the plain. Apparently, she was a sometimes lover of this man, this scion of all that was good and holy, this Virgil. Pretending as best she could to be the raven haired wizardress, Lizzie did her best to work a spell to save her dear love.
She then followed at a safe distance until he arrived at her mother's cookie bunker. Floating in her bubble, Lizzie hovered over the bunker and listened. When the dialogue became unbearable she took over one of the zombies to try to straighten things out a bit, but...unfortunately...as was too often the case with zombies, her mouthpiece was eaten before he could really accomplish anything.
Finally, a moment of truth came. Having laid out his diabolical plan, Selig Retsuc reached out a claw to Virgil. If Virgil shook it, her love for him would disappear like a twinkling snowglobe smashed by a sparkling hammer, but if he resisted...if only he resisted, she would do all in her power to save him and to at last set right the evil Selig Retsuc had wrought.
Unfortunately, so caught up was she in the tension of the moment, she didn't notice that her magic--that which had been with her since birth--began to swiftly drain away.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
ZA 22: Someone finally gives Virgil a hand
Rubbing Meg's feet in the cookie bunker had its perks. First--and perhaps most importantly--it allowed Virgil to soak the bottom part of Meg in a highly flammable oil that would make her coming encounter with The Cleaning Lady rather...eventful. Second, it gave Virgil a chance to think about Jesus. Jesus, after all, was a foot washer, which--in Virgil's unfortunately less than humble opinion--was perhaps the most powerful lived metaphor in the Bible.
Of course, maybe Jesus just dug on feet, which is all the more unpleasant when you think about how funky feet must have been in the age of homemade leather sandals. But no, Virgil had too much respect for Jesus (the man, not the deified sacrificial cow) to believe that. Instead, Virgil truly believed that Jesus had figured it out--solved the mysteries of existence that, to this day, eluded Virgil. One of the mysteries Jesus had solved was the mystery of purity. Or rather--he realized that all the purity rituals ensconced and entwined in the religion of his day were bullshit (or sacrificial cowshit, if you'd prefer).
When Jesus "changed" the water into wine at the wedding at Cana, he probably did nothing more than fill jugs meant for water with wine--something that would have been perceived as phenomenally blasphemous given the purity laws of the day. When he consorted with lepers, tax collectors and women (of all repute--not just low), he broke generations of ingrained custom. When he washed the feet of beggars, he washed away the sins of centuries of religious discrimination. In The Time Before, the conservative Christians had become the Scribes and Pharisees of old, painting homosexuals, counterculturals, and foreigners with much the same brushes as used by their philosophical forebears centuries earlier. These fools obsessed with purity demonstrated the clear end of institutionalized religion--the zombification of a horde of followers who would eat at themselves and each other through a series of aggressively discriminatory and life defeating purity rituals in the mistaken belief they were saving their souls. J-dog wasn't down with that.
"Lick it," Meg said, cocking her big toe at Virgil's chin.
"Excuse me?" Virgil asked, startled from his reverie.
"What do you mean, 'excuse me?'" Meg snapped. "You are my servant, you do as I command without question. Are the cookies wearing off so soon?"
"No ma'am," Virgil replied, cursing himself for not obeying faster. He bent his head, hoping against hope Cam would choose that moment to appear--the moment before he ran his tongue over the well oiled toe of his foe. But no. His bro was so, so...not there. He licked.
"Now suck it a little," Meg commanded.
Virgil sucked--which, if you haven't guessed--sucked.
"Slurp it..."
Virgil slurped.
"Good, now eat another cookie."
Virgil gulped. If he did as Meg ordered, he would be back under her spell and poor Cyrus (or was it Billy Ray? Virgil never could tell the difference) would have died in vain. Come on, Cam. Pull out of whatever hussy you're inside of and get your zombie-scorching ass down here. A bang at the door startled Virgil, leading him to drop the cookie he'd just grabbed and dive for cover behind the kitchen island. Cam had come!
"What odd behavior, child," Meg said, not the least bit perturbed by the knocking. "Tsk. Tsk. Very odd indeed." She then went to open the door.
"Nowhere near as odd as what's about to happen to you, cookie witch!" Virgil shouted from behind the island as Meg turned the handle.
The door opened.
Virgil peeked out. No Cam. Instead, the blubbulous mass of Selig Retsuc slithered into the room, bearing with him his trademark stink of fermented diapers. Strangely, he walked with one arm behind his back, a pompous pseudo-Napoleonic pose the likes of which Virgil would not have pictured on the putrid villain.
Selig raised an eyebrow at Virgil who now wanted desperately to rewind the clock to the part where he was sucking on Meg's big toe (or preferably just after, or maybe well before, or really any time in the 32 years of Virgil's life not including this moment).
Meg clucked her tongue. "I had him bound, Master. Most assuredly. But somehow he got free. I suspect Glinda Goodwitch or perhaps the cursed monkey he killed had something to do with it."
"You allowed him to perform a killing?" Selig asked, voice dripping with disdainy slime.
"Of course. How better to prove my ownership of his soul? The boy recoils at flyswatting and even has moral qualms about bug spray."
"Virgil has moral qualms about everything. For chrissake, the guy's a walking qualm. All you had to do was make him lick your big toe or something. But letting him kill the monkey? No doubt Lady M made a proper Sacrifice of the whole affair and liberated the boy's soul in the process. Indeed, she might have even attached a rider spell. A short while ago, this fool," at which point Selig gestured to his zombie minions out of which rabble emerged a zombie Cam, drooling and clawing at a bacon-sized patch of bubbling flesh on his shoulder, "came popping out of a bar in town like a prairie dog on high alert. No doubt he was in the midst of being summoned."
During this speech, Virgil watched Meg's face go from looking fucked to shamed to triumphant. Virgil, on the other hand, mostly just stuck with fucked.
"Well, isn't that a lovely turn of events," Meg smarmed. "Would anyone like a cookie?"
"Put your shoes on, woman," Selig snapped and blobbed over to stand before Virgil, naught but a frail kitchen island between them.
"This is actually perfect," Selig said, beginning to sound unattractively perky--which is not to say Selig ever sounded attractively anything, just that "perky" and "Selig" were about as proper a match as ice cream and diarrhea flavor. "It's perfect because we can leave Virgil with his free will while I tell him of my master plan. Then we can force feed him a plateful of Slavecaroons and make him act out the very vilest of my instructions." Selig cocked his head back to laugh maniacally when one of the zombie minions cleared his throat.
"Umm, sir, pardon a moment," the zombie said. Selig, Meg and Virgil all swiveled to stare gape-mouthed at the zombie. It had bits of flesh dangling from its neck like a turkey gizzard. One of its ears had long ago been chewed most of the way off, and a couple of its ribs were poking out of its tattered rag clothing. This was not the kind of being that should be expected to use the word "pardon," let alone use it in a sentence. All zombies were supposed to say was "rrrggh" and "ggggahhh" and "republican."
The room hushed as the zombie cleared his half-eaten throat. "So sorry to interrupt, sir, but this just smacks of cliche--you know, with the whole speech and the cocked head and the laughter and whatnot."
"H...h...how did you speak...?" Selig stuttered (an unusual thing for the normally eloquent zombie overpope).
"Not sure, just suddenly felt compelled to, sir. Perhaps a gust of animating wind has been blown through my windpipes by some Divine Author displeased with the progress of events."
"But... but..." Selig said. "But I was being ironic. You know, I was like consciously milking the whole trope of the bad guy master speech for effect. Sort of a postmodern commentary on bad guy speeches. I meant for there to be some humor to the whole situation."
"Sure, but isn't that just playing on another trope? I mean, begging your pardon again Mr. Overpope, but the postmodernists have been deconstructing classical motifs for some years now, such that it's now become a cliche again to use such a cliche in conscious ironic mockery-slash-celebration of said cliche. I mean the whole bad guy speech was new once, but then it got old, and then it got new again with the irony thing, but now we're back to old, arent we? Unless of course you were expressing yourself more out of true sincerity, in which case--although this is dicey--we'd be back to the really, really old, which at one time was so original and sincere it had no choice but to become a cliche, and in so doing maybe the old-new-old cycle can be renewed once more."
"Let me just be clear," Selig clarified. "If I say the words while trying to be edgy about trying to be sincere about trying to be diabolical, it's a no go because what was once old that became new has become old again, but if I say the same exact words whilst trying to be sincere about not trying to be edgy about trying to be diabolical, then that's okay because I'll be restoring that which is lost thus making that which was new and then old and then new again and then old again, new again? And, for the record, how are you not an already worn out postmodern cliche yourself--with your unexpected talking and your confusing old-new business and your neck gizzard? Sorry, that wasn't fair. Your neck gizzard was just impossible not to stare at and I just had to mention it. I mean, Jesus, the way it kind of dangles there. Kind of flabby but also bloody. A little fleshy, a little meaty. What is that anyway? Neck? Chin? Is it like a muscle that's popped out. Whatever that shit is it's very unappealing. I think you should probably have something done with it. I'm just saying, is all."
The zombie looked puzzled. Selig had a way of clarifying things all the way back to their primal muck stage.
With a sigh, Selig reached over and yanked the animated zombie's head off and tossed it to the others for a snack. He then turned back to Virgil.
"Let's just make this quick. Here's the deal. I've just left Lucy Tisdale, the only hope for humanity, buried in a cage under a rising mountain of zombies. Basically, they've been surrounding and climbing on top of each other since I left, trapping her with the weight and stink of their thousands of bodies, sort of a living pyramid thing, such that if she does manage to shriek or kill the zombies or set them on fire or whatever her Ancients allow, they'll just go from barely-alive and wriggling weight above her to pure dead weight all around her. Mostly, I suspect, she'll be able to fashion a crude chamber at the very base of the pile. This will be no good to her, however, because she will be all alone in the bottom of a zombie pyramid, which--if you hadn't guessed--is not particularly conducive to sanity. Now-- assuming she does survive her initial burial and finds a way to begin digging out without going completely bonkers, new zombies from all around are on their way to continue adding to the pile. By morning, we should have something to rival the Pyramids of Giza. By the following evening, the smoking skyscrapers of Denver will be dwarved and then--assuming I can get a good group deal bringing in zombies from Canada and Mexico--not even the finest Malaysian or Dubaian skyscrapers will compare."
"Ahem," came a noise from the midst of the snacking zombies. It was the head, mostly debrained at this point. "Sir, honestly, wasn't there an easier way to just kill Lucy Tisdale and get it over with. I mean, are you being ironic again, leaving the hero alive but imperiled? I mean there's only so far irony or even sincerity can carry you before it just seems sloppy or perhaps overly convenient. After all, unlike her mother, Lucy's not immortal or anything, and given that you got close enough to her to block the voices of the ancients, you could have just killed her."
Selig's flabby upper lip began to quiver and he blinked a couple of times, but to his credit he didn't address the head.
"I'm just saying, is all," the head continued as Zombie Cam slurped its left eyeball out of the socket.
Selig took a calming breath and then continued.
"Lady M, meanwhile, is being seduced by a rather unique minion of mine. He's a trained chiropractor, acupressurist, and bodyworker with your Keanu-good looks, Virgil, as well as your perfect ass. This gentleman also has seven tattoos, eight piercings and one or two body modifications you can't see when he's wearing all his clothes. He's also into monkeys and bondage and doesn't have a nasal voice or mantis arms. In other words, Lady M should be rather tied up for the foreseeable future."
The head let out one last groan before the rest of its jaw was crunched to bone meal by Zombie Cam.
"Now for my plan. And while you may not believe it, by the end of this telling, Virgil, you may in fact not need any Slavecaroons to join my cause. You might just choose to do so willingly. You see, I did not set out to fill the world with zombies. They're merely a byproduct, or rather--a chrysallis stage. The virus I've infected humanity with is designed not to end evolution, but rather to kick-start it. Over the next few weeks, the zombieism will begin to fade as the poor, wretched creatures either die off--a fate that awaits most of them--or transform into superior beings--which, in point of fact will probably happen to your old friend Cam. Some will be shape shifters, freely transmogrifying from human to beast and back again. Others will be wizards--like Lady M--open at last to the powerful currents of magic that have so long been dormant in the world. Others will be epic heroes possessed of extraodinary strength and courage. Still others will be, well, functional morons, but you always need a proletariat, right? And finally, there will be some who will take forms you and I could barely imagine--so strange and different as to be entirely inhuman. This, my dear amoral Virgil, as you can surely begin to see, shall be a profound accomplishment of aesthetics. I will have purified humanity and made them beautiful once more (while also dramatically reducing crowding and lessening the burden on overstressed ecosystems, I might add). So, old friend...will you join me?"
With that, Selig finally revealed the arm that he had been holding behind his back the entire time, only instead of a slimy, sausage fingered, puffy pink skinned hand, he extended a glossy, green-and-gold-scaled dragon's claw.
Of course, maybe Jesus just dug on feet, which is all the more unpleasant when you think about how funky feet must have been in the age of homemade leather sandals. But no, Virgil had too much respect for Jesus (the man, not the deified sacrificial cow) to believe that. Instead, Virgil truly believed that Jesus had figured it out--solved the mysteries of existence that, to this day, eluded Virgil. One of the mysteries Jesus had solved was the mystery of purity. Or rather--he realized that all the purity rituals ensconced and entwined in the religion of his day were bullshit (or sacrificial cowshit, if you'd prefer).
When Jesus "changed" the water into wine at the wedding at Cana, he probably did nothing more than fill jugs meant for water with wine--something that would have been perceived as phenomenally blasphemous given the purity laws of the day. When he consorted with lepers, tax collectors and women (of all repute--not just low), he broke generations of ingrained custom. When he washed the feet of beggars, he washed away the sins of centuries of religious discrimination. In The Time Before, the conservative Christians had become the Scribes and Pharisees of old, painting homosexuals, counterculturals, and foreigners with much the same brushes as used by their philosophical forebears centuries earlier. These fools obsessed with purity demonstrated the clear end of institutionalized religion--the zombification of a horde of followers who would eat at themselves and each other through a series of aggressively discriminatory and life defeating purity rituals in the mistaken belief they were saving their souls. J-dog wasn't down with that.
"Lick it," Meg said, cocking her big toe at Virgil's chin.
"Excuse me?" Virgil asked, startled from his reverie.
"What do you mean, 'excuse me?'" Meg snapped. "You are my servant, you do as I command without question. Are the cookies wearing off so soon?"
"No ma'am," Virgil replied, cursing himself for not obeying faster. He bent his head, hoping against hope Cam would choose that moment to appear--the moment before he ran his tongue over the well oiled toe of his foe. But no. His bro was so, so...not there. He licked.
"Now suck it a little," Meg commanded.
Virgil sucked--which, if you haven't guessed--sucked.
"Slurp it..."
Virgil slurped.
"Good, now eat another cookie."
Virgil gulped. If he did as Meg ordered, he would be back under her spell and poor Cyrus (or was it Billy Ray? Virgil never could tell the difference) would have died in vain. Come on, Cam. Pull out of whatever hussy you're inside of and get your zombie-scorching ass down here. A bang at the door startled Virgil, leading him to drop the cookie he'd just grabbed and dive for cover behind the kitchen island. Cam had come!
"What odd behavior, child," Meg said, not the least bit perturbed by the knocking. "Tsk. Tsk. Very odd indeed." She then went to open the door.
"Nowhere near as odd as what's about to happen to you, cookie witch!" Virgil shouted from behind the island as Meg turned the handle.
The door opened.
Virgil peeked out. No Cam. Instead, the blubbulous mass of Selig Retsuc slithered into the room, bearing with him his trademark stink of fermented diapers. Strangely, he walked with one arm behind his back, a pompous pseudo-Napoleonic pose the likes of which Virgil would not have pictured on the putrid villain.
Selig raised an eyebrow at Virgil who now wanted desperately to rewind the clock to the part where he was sucking on Meg's big toe (or preferably just after, or maybe well before, or really any time in the 32 years of Virgil's life not including this moment).
Meg clucked her tongue. "I had him bound, Master. Most assuredly. But somehow he got free. I suspect Glinda Goodwitch or perhaps the cursed monkey he killed had something to do with it."
"You allowed him to perform a killing?" Selig asked, voice dripping with disdainy slime.
"Of course. How better to prove my ownership of his soul? The boy recoils at flyswatting and even has moral qualms about bug spray."
"Virgil has moral qualms about everything. For chrissake, the guy's a walking qualm. All you had to do was make him lick your big toe or something. But letting him kill the monkey? No doubt Lady M made a proper Sacrifice of the whole affair and liberated the boy's soul in the process. Indeed, she might have even attached a rider spell. A short while ago, this fool," at which point Selig gestured to his zombie minions out of which rabble emerged a zombie Cam, drooling and clawing at a bacon-sized patch of bubbling flesh on his shoulder, "came popping out of a bar in town like a prairie dog on high alert. No doubt he was in the midst of being summoned."
During this speech, Virgil watched Meg's face go from looking fucked to shamed to triumphant. Virgil, on the other hand, mostly just stuck with fucked.
"Well, isn't that a lovely turn of events," Meg smarmed. "Would anyone like a cookie?"
"Put your shoes on, woman," Selig snapped and blobbed over to stand before Virgil, naught but a frail kitchen island between them.
"This is actually perfect," Selig said, beginning to sound unattractively perky--which is not to say Selig ever sounded attractively anything, just that "perky" and "Selig" were about as proper a match as ice cream and diarrhea flavor. "It's perfect because we can leave Virgil with his free will while I tell him of my master plan. Then we can force feed him a plateful of Slavecaroons and make him act out the very vilest of my instructions." Selig cocked his head back to laugh maniacally when one of the zombie minions cleared his throat.
"Umm, sir, pardon a moment," the zombie said. Selig, Meg and Virgil all swiveled to stare gape-mouthed at the zombie. It had bits of flesh dangling from its neck like a turkey gizzard. One of its ears had long ago been chewed most of the way off, and a couple of its ribs were poking out of its tattered rag clothing. This was not the kind of being that should be expected to use the word "pardon," let alone use it in a sentence. All zombies were supposed to say was "rrrggh" and "ggggahhh" and "republican."
The room hushed as the zombie cleared his half-eaten throat. "So sorry to interrupt, sir, but this just smacks of cliche--you know, with the whole speech and the cocked head and the laughter and whatnot."
"H...h...how did you speak...?" Selig stuttered (an unusual thing for the normally eloquent zombie overpope).
"Not sure, just suddenly felt compelled to, sir. Perhaps a gust of animating wind has been blown through my windpipes by some Divine Author displeased with the progress of events."
"But... but..." Selig said. "But I was being ironic. You know, I was like consciously milking the whole trope of the bad guy master speech for effect. Sort of a postmodern commentary on bad guy speeches. I meant for there to be some humor to the whole situation."
"Sure, but isn't that just playing on another trope? I mean, begging your pardon again Mr. Overpope, but the postmodernists have been deconstructing classical motifs for some years now, such that it's now become a cliche again to use such a cliche in conscious ironic mockery-slash-celebration of said cliche. I mean the whole bad guy speech was new once, but then it got old, and then it got new again with the irony thing, but now we're back to old, arent we? Unless of course you were expressing yourself more out of true sincerity, in which case--although this is dicey--we'd be back to the really, really old, which at one time was so original and sincere it had no choice but to become a cliche, and in so doing maybe the old-new-old cycle can be renewed once more."
"Let me just be clear," Selig clarified. "If I say the words while trying to be edgy about trying to be sincere about trying to be diabolical, it's a no go because what was once old that became new has become old again, but if I say the same exact words whilst trying to be sincere about not trying to be edgy about trying to be diabolical, then that's okay because I'll be restoring that which is lost thus making that which was new and then old and then new again and then old again, new again? And, for the record, how are you not an already worn out postmodern cliche yourself--with your unexpected talking and your confusing old-new business and your neck gizzard? Sorry, that wasn't fair. Your neck gizzard was just impossible not to stare at and I just had to mention it. I mean, Jesus, the way it kind of dangles there. Kind of flabby but also bloody. A little fleshy, a little meaty. What is that anyway? Neck? Chin? Is it like a muscle that's popped out. Whatever that shit is it's very unappealing. I think you should probably have something done with it. I'm just saying, is all."
The zombie looked puzzled. Selig had a way of clarifying things all the way back to their primal muck stage.
With a sigh, Selig reached over and yanked the animated zombie's head off and tossed it to the others for a snack. He then turned back to Virgil.
"Let's just make this quick. Here's the deal. I've just left Lucy Tisdale, the only hope for humanity, buried in a cage under a rising mountain of zombies. Basically, they've been surrounding and climbing on top of each other since I left, trapping her with the weight and stink of their thousands of bodies, sort of a living pyramid thing, such that if she does manage to shriek or kill the zombies or set them on fire or whatever her Ancients allow, they'll just go from barely-alive and wriggling weight above her to pure dead weight all around her. Mostly, I suspect, she'll be able to fashion a crude chamber at the very base of the pile. This will be no good to her, however, because she will be all alone in the bottom of a zombie pyramid, which--if you hadn't guessed--is not particularly conducive to sanity. Now-- assuming she does survive her initial burial and finds a way to begin digging out without going completely bonkers, new zombies from all around are on their way to continue adding to the pile. By morning, we should have something to rival the Pyramids of Giza. By the following evening, the smoking skyscrapers of Denver will be dwarved and then--assuming I can get a good group deal bringing in zombies from Canada and Mexico--not even the finest Malaysian or Dubaian skyscrapers will compare."
"Ahem," came a noise from the midst of the snacking zombies. It was the head, mostly debrained at this point. "Sir, honestly, wasn't there an easier way to just kill Lucy Tisdale and get it over with. I mean, are you being ironic again, leaving the hero alive but imperiled? I mean there's only so far irony or even sincerity can carry you before it just seems sloppy or perhaps overly convenient. After all, unlike her mother, Lucy's not immortal or anything, and given that you got close enough to her to block the voices of the ancients, you could have just killed her."
Selig's flabby upper lip began to quiver and he blinked a couple of times, but to his credit he didn't address the head.
"I'm just saying, is all," the head continued as Zombie Cam slurped its left eyeball out of the socket.
Selig took a calming breath and then continued.
"Lady M, meanwhile, is being seduced by a rather unique minion of mine. He's a trained chiropractor, acupressurist, and bodyworker with your Keanu-good looks, Virgil, as well as your perfect ass. This gentleman also has seven tattoos, eight piercings and one or two body modifications you can't see when he's wearing all his clothes. He's also into monkeys and bondage and doesn't have a nasal voice or mantis arms. In other words, Lady M should be rather tied up for the foreseeable future."
The head let out one last groan before the rest of its jaw was crunched to bone meal by Zombie Cam.
"Now for my plan. And while you may not believe it, by the end of this telling, Virgil, you may in fact not need any Slavecaroons to join my cause. You might just choose to do so willingly. You see, I did not set out to fill the world with zombies. They're merely a byproduct, or rather--a chrysallis stage. The virus I've infected humanity with is designed not to end evolution, but rather to kick-start it. Over the next few weeks, the zombieism will begin to fade as the poor, wretched creatures either die off--a fate that awaits most of them--or transform into superior beings--which, in point of fact will probably happen to your old friend Cam. Some will be shape shifters, freely transmogrifying from human to beast and back again. Others will be wizards--like Lady M--open at last to the powerful currents of magic that have so long been dormant in the world. Others will be epic heroes possessed of extraodinary strength and courage. Still others will be, well, functional morons, but you always need a proletariat, right? And finally, there will be some who will take forms you and I could barely imagine--so strange and different as to be entirely inhuman. This, my dear amoral Virgil, as you can surely begin to see, shall be a profound accomplishment of aesthetics. I will have purified humanity and made them beautiful once more (while also dramatically reducing crowding and lessening the burden on overstressed ecosystems, I might add). So, old friend...will you join me?"
With that, Selig finally revealed the arm that he had been holding behind his back the entire time, only instead of a slimy, sausage fingered, puffy pink skinned hand, he extended a glossy, green-and-gold-scaled dragon's claw.
Chapter 21 - It Takes Two, Baby
We have to get to my body!
There’s no time to get you back in your body, we don’t even know how—
Without another moment’s thought-argument, Cam silenced Lucy’s protestations and took control of her body. He didn’t even stop to think about how he did it, he just did it. Sheer force of will, baby. He leapt her onto the table, meaning to continue jumping, using several of Selig’s minions as leap-pads if he had too.
There was his body. Look at that. Huh. He was sprawled on the ground beyond the rotting, grey heads of the zombies.
We don’t know how to get you back in! Lucy was yelling inside their heads.
Fuck getting back in! I just want my goddamn Cleaning Lady! I gotta do something about all these goddamn . . .
. . . zombies.
The zombies . . . his body . . . rotting . . .
“OH SHIT!!!” Cam screamed through Lucy’s throat, and was surprised at the delicate sound that all his force had managed to produce. Fuck, a goddamn cricket might have squeaked.
Lucy realized his fear at once. OH SHIT!!! She screamed inside him. Inside herself. Whatever. This whole fucking situation was so fucked up, and if he didn’t do something real fucking quick, it was about to get worlds worse. But what could he do?
“Fuck no! Fuck no, fuck no, FUCK NO!” Virgil, where the FUCK are you when I need you?!
But as much as Cam believed in his friend, he knew even Virgil wouldn’t be able to come up with something quick enough to stop what was happening. Virgil was in his own tight spot – tighter than a virgin whore’s pussy OR pocketbook. And Cam couldn’t get to him. Even as Cam watched, his own body staggered to it’s feet, like it was drunk. It’s face hung slack like a limp dishrag, saliva dripping like dirty dishwater from his open mouth.
“Awww, shit, FUCK NO! Fucking zombie bacon!”
Stop bitching! Lucy’s voice came tinkling inside his head. Her head. Whatever. We’ve got to get out of this! Selig thinks you’re dead! We can’t let him know you’re in here with me! And then Cam was along for the ride as Lucy sprang into an ultra-aerial somersault and landed on the other side of the zombies, next to the spot where Cam had recently been lying. She fell to the ground and grabbed the Cleaning Lady as the zombies turned to face her.
Lucy aimed the Cleaning Lady. Cam let her hands slide, quickly but sensuously, over The Cleaning Lady’s curves. Cam put his finger on the trigger. Lucy held her breath.
Then they both stopped as they realized what they were about to do.
Zombie Cam was at the head of the pack of undead shuffling toward them.
If there was anything lucky about this moment, and there were very few things that could be considered so, it was that, due to the inexorable yet apallingly slow pace at which the zombies shuffled, Lucy and Cam had an inordinately long time for some cathartic dialogue which would take their bond to an even deeper level, if that can also be considered possible in this moment.
If there is one thing the zombie apocalypse had taught both Lucy and Cam, it was that anything is possible. So, as the zombies lurched toward them, Cam’s finger eased off the trigger. Then tightened again.
No, Lucy thought.
That’s not me over there, Lucy, Cam thought. It’s a fucking undead zombie bastard. I’m still a Queller of Hell. And I’m gonna waste myself.
That’s your body, Lucy thought. Don’t you want it back?
Damn straight I do, but—
I want you to have it back. Not as a zombie. Alive.
There was a moment in which both of their minds experienced a deep, dramatic pause of all thought, which neither of them had ever achieved during their days as individuals. It could have been the first true moment of meditation either of them had known.
And the zombies continued shambling forth.
It’s not me. Cam’s finger tightened again.
We can’t. Cam, listen to me.
How can I not?
You’re doing a pretty good job of it. Listen. This is perfect. Inconvenient and freaky, maybe, but the awesomeness of the perfection is actually kind of . . . wow, the ancients really know what they’re doing!
How is it possible that I hate you more now than before? His finger tightened again. He wouldn’t want to watch his own body, barely even rotten with the zombification, charred by the beloved Lady it had once depended on, but he would do it. He was a goddamn motherfucking Queller of Hell. He would do it.
No! Cam! I know Selig’s grand plan! I know the ins and outs of what he intends to do, and what his strengths and weaknesses are! I can show you everything now – everything. Cam – I said we should join forces. This is better than anything I could have imagined.
There was another of those pauses.
I gotta admit that kinda has some sense to it. You seriously are one fucked up bitch.
I have a feeling you’ll get to know that better than you ever hoped, Lucy thought.
As Zombie Cam closed in on them, Cam removed his finger from The Cleaning Lady’s trigger. Sorry, baby, no fire tonight.
Relief washed through Lucy as her arms obeyed HER will, and strapped The Cleaning Lady to her back.
Cam’s voice came in her head. So what now?
Now? . . . Now we let them take us. I wonder what it’ll be this time . . . Selig doesn’t have his dick anymore, so you don’t have to worry about rape. I really don’t think you could handle zombie sex, Cam.
Now the zombies surrounded them, but, as Lucy had expected, they did not attack. Instead they parted, and Selig Retsuc stepped through to stand at Lucy’s feet where she still lay.
“Well, young Lucy. You have some thing that belongs to me, I believe.”
Keep quiet, let me handle this! “I don’t have anything that belongs to you,” she said.
“We shall see,” Selig Retsuc said, “about that.” He got to his knees at her feet and, in a move weirdly fast for a zombie – but then, he never was one of the flock – grabbed her ankles. “Anyway, you had better hope you have something that belongs to me.” Another one of those quick moves and he wrenched her legs apart. “If you don’t, you are in for a much less pleasant experience with me than we shared last time.”
Zombie Cam held her right ankle while Selig reached between her legs and pulled the crotch of her panties aside. His thick, wormy sausage finger pushed up inside her and felt . . . nothing.
She wished she could say his face fell.
“Ahh,” he gargled. “This is going to be fun.” He stood up and waited. Lucy felt him send some command out into the ranks, and she pushed the feelings of degradation aside, waiting to see what she would have to face.
No. What she and Cam would have to face.
Several of the zombies dragged forth the same cage she had been suspended in at the school. “You remember your old nest, little bird?” Selig gargled. “I am sure you will find it as comfortable as your last stay.”
She found it exactly as comfortable as her last stay.
Now, as the zombies dragged her cage to wherever they were dragging her cage to, the degradation returned. It was as if Selig had her again, just the way he wanted, and even though she had the satisfaction of detaching his dick, and even though she knew she was going where she was most needed, and even though she had Rambo deeper inside her now, his power joined more completely to hers than she had ever imagined, it did not make her feel better. She felt horrible.
So did Cam.
Shit, Cam’d never known what being violated felt like. Now that he did, he didn’t much like it. No wonder this bitch was such a freakshow. Being inside her – funny how that still turned him on – he knew that she was just doing her part. Her part was more fucked up and grossed out than any part he’d ever played, but she was doing it and she was doing her best, too. It wasn’t her fault that she was hot. She was just strong enough to bear being that hot.
Was he feeling . . . sympathy?
Cam . . . Cam, I need you. She was calling to him with her mind. Her raw, naked need called to him. This lust was more powerful than the lust to kill zombies, more than any lust he’d ever known.
I can’t, I have to get to Virgil, he thought. He oughtta be able to find some ancient spell or something to cure my body.
There’s no way out of this. Trust me, I’ve been here before. And we can’t leave your zombie body behind . . . Cam, everything has changed. Cam . . . I need you. Haven’t you ever thought about what it’s like for a woman?
Cam never had thought about that, actually. Now that he was thinking about it, he thought it had to be hot. Okay. This would be weird, but it also just might be the hottest thing he’d ever experienced in his life, including The Cleaning Lady. Fuck yeah. He used her hands. Lucy lay back against the cool iron grid of the back of the cage, and let go of all control. There was nothing she could do, but she could still feel. They could take her free will. The ancients could have her soul. M could have her mind. Selig could have her body – so could Cam. But no one could take her ability to feel. It was like her hands were not even hers, like it was someone else entirely touching her body, sliding her own hands over her naked breasts (since her blouse was not only dirty with zombie goo, and not only ripped to shreds, but also very far behind them on the floor of the café. And since it always seemed that Lucy spent an inordinate amount of time naked, and since zombies were not sentient, she was not self-conscious about touching herself in front of them.) Her delicate fingers pinched the tips harder than she would have done herself, and she gasped. Her nails raked over her smooth belly, leaving raised red marks, then rubbed gently over the ravaged skin. She moaned with longing. After she was aching with the lust, after her body was sensitized and swollen, her hands finally slid down her belly to the soft, warm, sopping cleft between her legs.
“Yes . . .” she said aloud. The cage lurched steadily along. The zombies with their stink surrounded her, and she cried out with pleasure. “Oh, GOD YES!” Never had her own fingers moved with such fierce demand, seeking the most sensitive spots, and when the pleasure became too much they did not let up but forced it in deeper. She was shaking and whimpering, and when the orgasm rocked her she realized with horrified excitement that it was not going to stop – he was not going to stop. “Cam,” she whimpered, falling back and surrendering to it again, “everything I have is yours. Listen . . . listen while you love me.”
Taking her time about it, finding solace and safety in Cam’s continued presence and touch, Lucy thought over every moment of her time with Selig Retsuc. Each touch, each shiver, each truth revealed in the dank stink of undeath’s dark embrace, brought Cam closer to grasping the full scale of Selig’s grand plan.
There’s no time to get you back in your body, we don’t even know how—
Without another moment’s thought-argument, Cam silenced Lucy’s protestations and took control of her body. He didn’t even stop to think about how he did it, he just did it. Sheer force of will, baby. He leapt her onto the table, meaning to continue jumping, using several of Selig’s minions as leap-pads if he had too.
There was his body. Look at that. Huh. He was sprawled on the ground beyond the rotting, grey heads of the zombies.
We don’t know how to get you back in! Lucy was yelling inside their heads.
Fuck getting back in! I just want my goddamn Cleaning Lady! I gotta do something about all these goddamn . . .
. . . zombies.
The zombies . . . his body . . . rotting . . .
“OH SHIT!!!” Cam screamed through Lucy’s throat, and was surprised at the delicate sound that all his force had managed to produce. Fuck, a goddamn cricket might have squeaked.
Lucy realized his fear at once. OH SHIT!!! She screamed inside him. Inside herself. Whatever. This whole fucking situation was so fucked up, and if he didn’t do something real fucking quick, it was about to get worlds worse. But what could he do?
“Fuck no! Fuck no, fuck no, FUCK NO!” Virgil, where the FUCK are you when I need you?!
But as much as Cam believed in his friend, he knew even Virgil wouldn’t be able to come up with something quick enough to stop what was happening. Virgil was in his own tight spot – tighter than a virgin whore’s pussy OR pocketbook. And Cam couldn’t get to him. Even as Cam watched, his own body staggered to it’s feet, like it was drunk. It’s face hung slack like a limp dishrag, saliva dripping like dirty dishwater from his open mouth.
“Awww, shit, FUCK NO! Fucking zombie bacon!”
Stop bitching! Lucy’s voice came tinkling inside his head. Her head. Whatever. We’ve got to get out of this! Selig thinks you’re dead! We can’t let him know you’re in here with me! And then Cam was along for the ride as Lucy sprang into an ultra-aerial somersault and landed on the other side of the zombies, next to the spot where Cam had recently been lying. She fell to the ground and grabbed the Cleaning Lady as the zombies turned to face her.
Lucy aimed the Cleaning Lady. Cam let her hands slide, quickly but sensuously, over The Cleaning Lady’s curves. Cam put his finger on the trigger. Lucy held her breath.
Then they both stopped as they realized what they were about to do.
Zombie Cam was at the head of the pack of undead shuffling toward them.
If there was anything lucky about this moment, and there were very few things that could be considered so, it was that, due to the inexorable yet apallingly slow pace at which the zombies shuffled, Lucy and Cam had an inordinately long time for some cathartic dialogue which would take their bond to an even deeper level, if that can also be considered possible in this moment.
If there is one thing the zombie apocalypse had taught both Lucy and Cam, it was that anything is possible. So, as the zombies lurched toward them, Cam’s finger eased off the trigger. Then tightened again.
No, Lucy thought.
That’s not me over there, Lucy, Cam thought. It’s a fucking undead zombie bastard. I’m still a Queller of Hell. And I’m gonna waste myself.
That’s your body, Lucy thought. Don’t you want it back?
Damn straight I do, but—
I want you to have it back. Not as a zombie. Alive.
There was a moment in which both of their minds experienced a deep, dramatic pause of all thought, which neither of them had ever achieved during their days as individuals. It could have been the first true moment of meditation either of them had known.
And the zombies continued shambling forth.
It’s not me. Cam’s finger tightened again.
We can’t. Cam, listen to me.
How can I not?
You’re doing a pretty good job of it. Listen. This is perfect. Inconvenient and freaky, maybe, but the awesomeness of the perfection is actually kind of . . . wow, the ancients really know what they’re doing!
How is it possible that I hate you more now than before? His finger tightened again. He wouldn’t want to watch his own body, barely even rotten with the zombification, charred by the beloved Lady it had once depended on, but he would do it. He was a goddamn motherfucking Queller of Hell. He would do it.
No! Cam! I know Selig’s grand plan! I know the ins and outs of what he intends to do, and what his strengths and weaknesses are! I can show you everything now – everything. Cam – I said we should join forces. This is better than anything I could have imagined.
There was another of those pauses.
I gotta admit that kinda has some sense to it. You seriously are one fucked up bitch.
I have a feeling you’ll get to know that better than you ever hoped, Lucy thought.
As Zombie Cam closed in on them, Cam removed his finger from The Cleaning Lady’s trigger. Sorry, baby, no fire tonight.
Relief washed through Lucy as her arms obeyed HER will, and strapped The Cleaning Lady to her back.
Cam’s voice came in her head. So what now?
Now? . . . Now we let them take us. I wonder what it’ll be this time . . . Selig doesn’t have his dick anymore, so you don’t have to worry about rape. I really don’t think you could handle zombie sex, Cam.
Now the zombies surrounded them, but, as Lucy had expected, they did not attack. Instead they parted, and Selig Retsuc stepped through to stand at Lucy’s feet where she still lay.
“Well, young Lucy. You have some thing that belongs to me, I believe.”
Keep quiet, let me handle this! “I don’t have anything that belongs to you,” she said.
“We shall see,” Selig Retsuc said, “about that.” He got to his knees at her feet and, in a move weirdly fast for a zombie – but then, he never was one of the flock – grabbed her ankles. “Anyway, you had better hope you have something that belongs to me.” Another one of those quick moves and he wrenched her legs apart. “If you don’t, you are in for a much less pleasant experience with me than we shared last time.”
Zombie Cam held her right ankle while Selig reached between her legs and pulled the crotch of her panties aside. His thick, wormy sausage finger pushed up inside her and felt . . . nothing.
She wished she could say his face fell.
“Ahh,” he gargled. “This is going to be fun.” He stood up and waited. Lucy felt him send some command out into the ranks, and she pushed the feelings of degradation aside, waiting to see what she would have to face.
No. What she and Cam would have to face.
Several of the zombies dragged forth the same cage she had been suspended in at the school. “You remember your old nest, little bird?” Selig gargled. “I am sure you will find it as comfortable as your last stay.”
She found it exactly as comfortable as her last stay.
Now, as the zombies dragged her cage to wherever they were dragging her cage to, the degradation returned. It was as if Selig had her again, just the way he wanted, and even though she had the satisfaction of detaching his dick, and even though she knew she was going where she was most needed, and even though she had Rambo deeper inside her now, his power joined more completely to hers than she had ever imagined, it did not make her feel better. She felt horrible.
So did Cam.
Shit, Cam’d never known what being violated felt like. Now that he did, he didn’t much like it. No wonder this bitch was such a freakshow. Being inside her – funny how that still turned him on – he knew that she was just doing her part. Her part was more fucked up and grossed out than any part he’d ever played, but she was doing it and she was doing her best, too. It wasn’t her fault that she was hot. She was just strong enough to bear being that hot.
Was he feeling . . . sympathy?
Cam . . . Cam, I need you. She was calling to him with her mind. Her raw, naked need called to him. This lust was more powerful than the lust to kill zombies, more than any lust he’d ever known.
I can’t, I have to get to Virgil, he thought. He oughtta be able to find some ancient spell or something to cure my body.
There’s no way out of this. Trust me, I’ve been here before. And we can’t leave your zombie body behind . . . Cam, everything has changed. Cam . . . I need you. Haven’t you ever thought about what it’s like for a woman?
Cam never had thought about that, actually. Now that he was thinking about it, he thought it had to be hot. Okay. This would be weird, but it also just might be the hottest thing he’d ever experienced in his life, including The Cleaning Lady. Fuck yeah. He used her hands. Lucy lay back against the cool iron grid of the back of the cage, and let go of all control. There was nothing she could do, but she could still feel. They could take her free will. The ancients could have her soul. M could have her mind. Selig could have her body – so could Cam. But no one could take her ability to feel. It was like her hands were not even hers, like it was someone else entirely touching her body, sliding her own hands over her naked breasts (since her blouse was not only dirty with zombie goo, and not only ripped to shreds, but also very far behind them on the floor of the café. And since it always seemed that Lucy spent an inordinate amount of time naked, and since zombies were not sentient, she was not self-conscious about touching herself in front of them.) Her delicate fingers pinched the tips harder than she would have done herself, and she gasped. Her nails raked over her smooth belly, leaving raised red marks, then rubbed gently over the ravaged skin. She moaned with longing. After she was aching with the lust, after her body was sensitized and swollen, her hands finally slid down her belly to the soft, warm, sopping cleft between her legs.
“Yes . . .” she said aloud. The cage lurched steadily along. The zombies with their stink surrounded her, and she cried out with pleasure. “Oh, GOD YES!” Never had her own fingers moved with such fierce demand, seeking the most sensitive spots, and when the pleasure became too much they did not let up but forced it in deeper. She was shaking and whimpering, and when the orgasm rocked her she realized with horrified excitement that it was not going to stop – he was not going to stop. “Cam,” she whimpered, falling back and surrendering to it again, “everything I have is yours. Listen . . . listen while you love me.”
Taking her time about it, finding solace and safety in Cam’s continued presence and touch, Lucy thought over every moment of her time with Selig Retsuc. Each touch, each shiver, each truth revealed in the dank stink of undeath’s dark embrace, brought Cam closer to grasping the full scale of Selig’s grand plan.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
ZA Chapter 20: Say a Little Prayer for You
Lucy strutted away, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder. She knew she had a mission. She had to find Selig Retsuc. She had to ensnare him with her young body and bring him to Lady M so that she, and the ancients, could break this icky zombie cycle. She shouldn’t be wasting time on Rambo, but…
She glanced down at the green-black stripe across her blouse and the spittle on her Mary Janes. How could a zombie master compare with that? Lucy’s senses were enflamed. She wanted to moan as Cam bit her ear and savaged her naked body. She wanted him inside her. Deep, deep inside her. Without thinking, she sent a mental prayer to the ancients.
Cam's annoyance at her incessant chatter –born of this sudden, undeniable need to have his eyes on her, his hands on her– only heightened the flames of her desire. She hadn’t been this turned on since Bobby took his finger and-
No wait. Come to think of it, she’d NEVER been this turned on.
Oh hurry up, you muscle-bound rock-for-brains, she thought, turning her strut to the left, where there was a cozy little café that would be perfect for what she had in mind, with a shattered picture window and crumbling brick wall. She stopped at the half-a-door sagging on its hinges and there –finally– turned to look back at her quarry.
He was following. Of course he was following. She’d put a strong dose of you-know-you-want-some-o-this-bubble into her strut, didn’t she? And men were so predictable.
Except Cam wasn’t so predictable, was he? He might ravish me. Or he might kill me.
Lucy’s body shivered. Yes. Oh god yes.
She entered the café, put her hands flat on one of the tables and arched her back as Cam stomped through the door.
“I’ve been thinking,” she purred.
“What’s the point o’ that?” Cam growled.
She smiled. “Oh, you took the words right out of my mouth.” She gyrated her hips, just a little bit. “What is the point of that?”
Cam’s furrowed gaze went from her face to her ass, then back to her face. He swallowed, then snarled.
“Can’t you take a break?” she asked. “Just a little break from zombie killing?”
Cam shouldered The Cleaning Lady and strode toward her. He drew his dagger in a flash, his knuckles white where they gripped the handle. Lucy closed her eyes. Which would it be? Big death or little death? The anticipation rocked her body, and she shivered again. She felt the cold steel against the small of her back, and she tensed.
A quick rip and her blouse fell away.
“Yes,” she moaned. His rough hands slid across her belly, up over her ribs. She thanked the ancients. Yes, she thought. Further. More. Please. She wanted him inside her.
He stopped.
“Don’t stop,” she murmured, looking over her shoulder.
But Cam stood up straight, neck erect and head turned to the side as though he was listening to something.
She grabbed his thick belt and yanked him toward her. “Don’t stop, Rambo.”
But the big dolt looked like a giant meerkat sniffing the wind.
“Virgil needs me,” he said.
“Fuck Virgil. I need you!” she said.
He glanced down at her with glazed eyes that looked right through her. He shook his head, sheathed his dagger, and stooped to pick up The Cleaning Lady.
Lucy ground her teeth. Jesus H. Christ, didn’t ANYthing go right in this fucking world? She pushed off the table and grabbed his T-shirt, but he shrugged her off, and she stumbled to her knees.
Cam kicked the half-door off its hinges and marched into the street. He looked left, looked right.
Then his whole body spasmed, and his head snapped back. The Cleaning Lady clanged on the concrete as Cam dropped like a sack of stones.
Something smacked Lucy in the forehead, and she doubled over. She couldn’t see for a moment, and put a hand up to what she figured would be the bloody mangled bits of her torn-open head. But there was no blood. Her eyesight returned in time to see Selig Retsuc shuffle through the doorway, a horde of zombies at his back. Half of them moved to surround Cam’s body in the street.
“Oh hell…” she groaned, gritting her teeth at the pain.
“Dear Lucy,” the shredded, burnt fat man said, lurching forward. “How lovely to see you again. I’ve missed you so.”
Lucy put both hands on her head. She felt like she had to hold her brains in or they’d come spilling onto the floor.
Selig continued, his slightly British-accented voice tapping on her tender skull like a hammer. “I’ve felt incomplete since I last saw you. It’s almost as if you took the most important part of me with you when you left.”
Lucy said, “Rrrggflf.”
“Things were going quite nicely until that meat-headed jock opened your cage and set you free. I didn’t expect to see him, you see. I thought he would have become one of my flock long before now, but it appears the brainless bastard can carve on himself like a Christmas turkey and like it. The infection wasn’t getting anywhere.”
Voices carombed off the walls of Lucy’s skull, and she hummed through gritted teeth, rocking back and forth.
“So I sucked his soul out of his body. Quick, quiet. No fuss. It’s one of dear Lady M’s tricks, you know. Well, except reversed. Isn’t it wonderful that the most benevolent treatments can always be twisted into something nasty?” Selig sighed, and his crispy belly shreds jiggled. “I won’t have to worry about dear Mr. Sparks mucking with my plans anymore. Things will go back to normal with Dar, Captain and Virgil leading the charge.”
He shuffled closer. “And now, dear Lucy, though I do like this particular subservient posture on you, we can get to that later once certain pieces have been put back in their proper places.”
The painful voices in Lucy’s head coalesced into one as Selig’s pale, bloated hand lifted her chin up to face him.
“I have some questions for you, young Lucy.” His zombie army shuffled into the café behind him, stinking of dead flesh, petroleum and cookies. “And I do hope you’ll answer them, otherwise this encounter is likely to be much less pleasant than our last one.”
“Go fuck yourself, ya goddamned zombie whale!” Lucy head-butted Selig straight in the chin. He stumbled back into the arms of his zombies. Lucy jumped to her feet, reached for her knife-
-and smacked her bare thigh.
“Where the fuck am I?” she said in a gravely voice, staring down at her body.
“Holy hell,” Lucy said again, this time in her own voice. The realization crashed in on her with shocking clarity.
The ancients had answered her prayer.
She glanced down at the green-black stripe across her blouse and the spittle on her Mary Janes. How could a zombie master compare with that? Lucy’s senses were enflamed. She wanted to moan as Cam bit her ear and savaged her naked body. She wanted him inside her. Deep, deep inside her. Without thinking, she sent a mental prayer to the ancients.
Cam's annoyance at her incessant chatter –born of this sudden, undeniable need to have his eyes on her, his hands on her– only heightened the flames of her desire. She hadn’t been this turned on since Bobby took his finger and-
No wait. Come to think of it, she’d NEVER been this turned on.
Oh hurry up, you muscle-bound rock-for-brains, she thought, turning her strut to the left, where there was a cozy little café that would be perfect for what she had in mind, with a shattered picture window and crumbling brick wall. She stopped at the half-a-door sagging on its hinges and there –finally– turned to look back at her quarry.
He was following. Of course he was following. She’d put a strong dose of you-know-you-want-some-o-this-bubble into her strut, didn’t she? And men were so predictable.
Except Cam wasn’t so predictable, was he? He might ravish me. Or he might kill me.
Lucy’s body shivered. Yes. Oh god yes.
She entered the café, put her hands flat on one of the tables and arched her back as Cam stomped through the door.
“I’ve been thinking,” she purred.
“What’s the point o’ that?” Cam growled.
She smiled. “Oh, you took the words right out of my mouth.” She gyrated her hips, just a little bit. “What is the point of that?”
Cam’s furrowed gaze went from her face to her ass, then back to her face. He swallowed, then snarled.
“Can’t you take a break?” she asked. “Just a little break from zombie killing?”
Cam shouldered The Cleaning Lady and strode toward her. He drew his dagger in a flash, his knuckles white where they gripped the handle. Lucy closed her eyes. Which would it be? Big death or little death? The anticipation rocked her body, and she shivered again. She felt the cold steel against the small of her back, and she tensed.
A quick rip and her blouse fell away.
“Yes,” she moaned. His rough hands slid across her belly, up over her ribs. She thanked the ancients. Yes, she thought. Further. More. Please. She wanted him inside her.
He stopped.
“Don’t stop,” she murmured, looking over her shoulder.
But Cam stood up straight, neck erect and head turned to the side as though he was listening to something.
She grabbed his thick belt and yanked him toward her. “Don’t stop, Rambo.”
But the big dolt looked like a giant meerkat sniffing the wind.
“Virgil needs me,” he said.
“Fuck Virgil. I need you!” she said.
He glanced down at her with glazed eyes that looked right through her. He shook his head, sheathed his dagger, and stooped to pick up The Cleaning Lady.
Lucy ground her teeth. Jesus H. Christ, didn’t ANYthing go right in this fucking world? She pushed off the table and grabbed his T-shirt, but he shrugged her off, and she stumbled to her knees.
Cam kicked the half-door off its hinges and marched into the street. He looked left, looked right.
Then his whole body spasmed, and his head snapped back. The Cleaning Lady clanged on the concrete as Cam dropped like a sack of stones.
Something smacked Lucy in the forehead, and she doubled over. She couldn’t see for a moment, and put a hand up to what she figured would be the bloody mangled bits of her torn-open head. But there was no blood. Her eyesight returned in time to see Selig Retsuc shuffle through the doorway, a horde of zombies at his back. Half of them moved to surround Cam’s body in the street.
“Oh hell…” she groaned, gritting her teeth at the pain.
“Dear Lucy,” the shredded, burnt fat man said, lurching forward. “How lovely to see you again. I’ve missed you so.”
Lucy put both hands on her head. She felt like she had to hold her brains in or they’d come spilling onto the floor.
Selig continued, his slightly British-accented voice tapping on her tender skull like a hammer. “I’ve felt incomplete since I last saw you. It’s almost as if you took the most important part of me with you when you left.”
Lucy said, “Rrrggflf.”
“Things were going quite nicely until that meat-headed jock opened your cage and set you free. I didn’t expect to see him, you see. I thought he would have become one of my flock long before now, but it appears the brainless bastard can carve on himself like a Christmas turkey and like it. The infection wasn’t getting anywhere.”
Voices carombed off the walls of Lucy’s skull, and she hummed through gritted teeth, rocking back and forth.
“So I sucked his soul out of his body. Quick, quiet. No fuss. It’s one of dear Lady M’s tricks, you know. Well, except reversed. Isn’t it wonderful that the most benevolent treatments can always be twisted into something nasty?” Selig sighed, and his crispy belly shreds jiggled. “I won’t have to worry about dear Mr. Sparks mucking with my plans anymore. Things will go back to normal with Dar, Captain and Virgil leading the charge.”
He shuffled closer. “And now, dear Lucy, though I do like this particular subservient posture on you, we can get to that later once certain pieces have been put back in their proper places.”
The painful voices in Lucy’s head coalesced into one as Selig’s pale, bloated hand lifted her chin up to face him.
“I have some questions for you, young Lucy.” His zombie army shuffled into the café behind him, stinking of dead flesh, petroleum and cookies. “And I do hope you’ll answer them, otherwise this encounter is likely to be much less pleasant than our last one.”
“Go fuck yourself, ya goddamned zombie whale!” Lucy head-butted Selig straight in the chin. He stumbled back into the arms of his zombies. Lucy jumped to her feet, reached for her knife-
-and smacked her bare thigh.
“Where the fuck am I?” she said in a gravely voice, staring down at her body.
“Holy hell,” Lucy said again, this time in her own voice. The realization crashed in on her with shocking clarity.
The ancients had answered her prayer.
Friday, February 20, 2009
ZA Chapter 19: In which Lady M figures it out…
Lady M was elbow deep in zombie guts, trying to detect exactly what it was about this particular zombie that made it different from the other garden variety zombies she was used to dealing with, when Cyrus came bounding in from the Vast Wasteland with another meaningless trinket. M's little monkey jumped to the dissection cart, rattling the stainless steel knives, picks, and spoons, and held out a small scorched chunk of meat as though offering a tasty sausage link to her mistress. It was an appendage of some sort—possibly human, probably zombie—with a gold ring (at least 24 carat) pierced through one end of it.
Lady M wiped her brow, smearing zombie viscera across her nose and cheek. But she was used to that, being a zombie dissector and all, and she was a firm believer in the phrase "if you can't swallow the smell, get the hell out of the perfume factory!" Or something like that. See, the stench of zombie rot caused severe headaches in most people, right behind the eyes, though some got addicted to the euphoric high and ravenous hunger the stench created, which caused all manner of chaos in The Fringe. Addicts went berserk for it, scraping zombie bacon from any flambéed undead flesh they could find, chopping it into a fine black powder, and snorting it right up into their mushy brains, eventually necrotizing the gray matter and zombifying the user from the inside out. Even getting it on your skin could have an eventual zombifying effect. Once the shit worked its way into the central nervous system, you were done, cooked. Dead, damned, and doomed to forever seek out live flesh to satiate your eternal hunger. Think about that for a moment, willya? Never knowing the loving embrace of another human being or the sight of a beautiful sunrise … no more feminist porn at 3 a.m. … no more Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt with extra chocolate chips from the bag … no more rolling Meg's orgasmic hot caramel chip devil's food cookies around in your mouth like the tongue of a gentle and particularly generous lover (because this entry is all about hunger and food, and by extension, sex) … endless reruns of Oprah, Wife Swap, The Bachelor, and Jerry Springer…. It became all about the glut. And the gut.
Fucking parasites, sucking the life out of humanity, turning us all into automatonic mushy-brained mushbrains! They weren't just fuckers. They were undead zombie fuckers. They were zuckers.
M took the ring and its appendage (obviously) from Cyrus and placed it under the microscope lens. Cyrus chattered, annoyed and impatient, tossing up her little monkey hands in exasperation.
"I know, I know" Lady M said. That monkey sure had a thing for sparkly stuff. The more blue and twinkly, the better. "Just give me a sec."
Cyrus sat back on her haunches and crossed her arms, looking admiringly at the shiny bauble on her wrist. She bobbed her head from side to side, staring at her reflection in the shiny-silvery zirconia, and smiled that mischievous capuchin smile that could win over any zombie with half a necrotized brain. Even Virgil.
"Uh-oh." Lady M straightened and looked at her monkey. "Where did you get this, C-baby?"
M listened as Cyrus chattered and screeched in capuchin-speak, tossing in some street slang because the tiny primate often fancied herself a spotted leopard, a sleek and stealthy wildcat, a delusion that got her into a pickle from time to time. (I would tell you exactly what Cyrus told Lady M but capuchin is a bitch to translate).
Lady M's expression darkened. She looked again into the eyepiece of the microscope, saw that familiar green-black goo writhing in worm-like fashion, thickening, transforming, healing, regenerating the tissue right before her eyes. She knew this already from the many statistical analyses and careful dissections she'd been performing in her lair since the beginning of The Zombie Revolution so long ago. But what was it exactly? What made these second-wave zombies so stinking hard to decapitate? What made these more resilient than the ones that came before? And, more importantly, what was that delicious, intoxicating smell?
M's stomach growled. She glanced at Cyrus, who was still admiring her reflection in the bauble, pulled off her zombie gut-covered, arm-length, black rubber gloves and tossed them into the basin in the corner as the room filled with the aroma of fresh baked goodness and … and … and … chicken. Yeah. Lemon chicken. With just enough tang to make it sweet and sour at the same time. And roasted new red potatoes. Soaked in butter and garlic. Ginger baby carrots … and … and … cookies … warm right-outta-the-oven devil's food caramel chip. With a scoop of Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt on top, and …
M shook herself and brought a trembling hand up to wipe the sweat from her brow, the drool from her chin. She was prone to bizarre psychic breaks, sure—you know, visions from the ancients and all—but what the hell was that about?
Then she noticed something. She looked at her narcissistic little monkey.
"C-baby, where's your brother?"
Cyrus pouted, grabbed her tail (which had a pretty purple ribbon tied around it) and began obsessively grooming, something she did only when she got into trouble or there was trouble brewing somewhere in The Fringe.
A deep dread filled Lady M from marrow to flesh. "Cyrus Christine. Where's Billy Ray?"
Cyrus began chattering. Something about a wild-haired dingo, or a hairy wild child with a pet dingo, or a dingo-wolf-man hybrid with hairy armpits, or a baby-eating dingo wearing a cape, or a crazed capuchin-munching mantis, or a were-dingo wearing a bathrobe in the outback, or a chocolate-covered primate-eating hairy-pitted robed mantis, or a monkey-masticating much-maddened mantis-macking Meg-monster … like I said, hard to translate.
Thinking only of Virgil and his perfect ass—if he’s betrayed me like all the others, there will be hell to pay!—Lady M bolted across the room, grabbed her satchel, tapping stick and ink, and skinning knife, and, leaving behind the regenerating love-shaft and a pile of cold zombie intestines, set out to find her monkey, an unsettling realization forming at the edges of her mind …
It's the marinade that's making the zombies more flame resistant and regenerative! Damn Selig Retsuc! He's in cahoots with the Masterful Mixologist Meg Monster and her miraculously maniacal macerated metastasizing marinade! That cowardly, contrary, cunning cootie-concoctor is contaminating contemporary culture with coercive crack-like cookies containing corrupted, crumbly, cruddy zombie corporeality!
In other words, there's frackin' zombie dust in the cookies, people!
M set her jaw, narrowed her catlike eyes, and strode out of the lair into the Vast Wasteland. If anyone knew anything about Lady M it was that one surefire way to piss her off good was to eat her monkey.
Meg would pay dearly for this. If she thought Billy Ray was yummy, wait till she got a taste of Lady M's flying monkeys. They would not be kind or merciful in their slow, sadistic torture of Meg. Indeed, Meg would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, never ever be the same again. And that's just too bad, because that bitch could whip up a rockin’ Irish cream milkshake.
Lady M wiped her brow, smearing zombie viscera across her nose and cheek. But she was used to that, being a zombie dissector and all, and she was a firm believer in the phrase "if you can't swallow the smell, get the hell out of the perfume factory!" Or something like that. See, the stench of zombie rot caused severe headaches in most people, right behind the eyes, though some got addicted to the euphoric high and ravenous hunger the stench created, which caused all manner of chaos in The Fringe. Addicts went berserk for it, scraping zombie bacon from any flambéed undead flesh they could find, chopping it into a fine black powder, and snorting it right up into their mushy brains, eventually necrotizing the gray matter and zombifying the user from the inside out. Even getting it on your skin could have an eventual zombifying effect. Once the shit worked its way into the central nervous system, you were done, cooked. Dead, damned, and doomed to forever seek out live flesh to satiate your eternal hunger. Think about that for a moment, willya? Never knowing the loving embrace of another human being or the sight of a beautiful sunrise … no more feminist porn at 3 a.m. … no more Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt with extra chocolate chips from the bag … no more rolling Meg's orgasmic hot caramel chip devil's food cookies around in your mouth like the tongue of a gentle and particularly generous lover (because this entry is all about hunger and food, and by extension, sex) … endless reruns of Oprah, Wife Swap, The Bachelor, and Jerry Springer…. It became all about the glut. And the gut.
Fucking parasites, sucking the life out of humanity, turning us all into automatonic mushy-brained mushbrains! They weren't just fuckers. They were undead zombie fuckers. They were zuckers.
M took the ring and its appendage (obviously) from Cyrus and placed it under the microscope lens. Cyrus chattered, annoyed and impatient, tossing up her little monkey hands in exasperation.
"I know, I know" Lady M said. That monkey sure had a thing for sparkly stuff. The more blue and twinkly, the better. "Just give me a sec."
Cyrus sat back on her haunches and crossed her arms, looking admiringly at the shiny bauble on her wrist. She bobbed her head from side to side, staring at her reflection in the shiny-silvery zirconia, and smiled that mischievous capuchin smile that could win over any zombie with half a necrotized brain. Even Virgil.
"Uh-oh." Lady M straightened and looked at her monkey. "Where did you get this, C-baby?"
M listened as Cyrus chattered and screeched in capuchin-speak, tossing in some street slang because the tiny primate often fancied herself a spotted leopard, a sleek and stealthy wildcat, a delusion that got her into a pickle from time to time. (I would tell you exactly what Cyrus told Lady M but capuchin is a bitch to translate).
Lady M's expression darkened. She looked again into the eyepiece of the microscope, saw that familiar green-black goo writhing in worm-like fashion, thickening, transforming, healing, regenerating the tissue right before her eyes. She knew this already from the many statistical analyses and careful dissections she'd been performing in her lair since the beginning of The Zombie Revolution so long ago. But what was it exactly? What made these second-wave zombies so stinking hard to decapitate? What made these more resilient than the ones that came before? And, more importantly, what was that delicious, intoxicating smell?
M's stomach growled. She glanced at Cyrus, who was still admiring her reflection in the bauble, pulled off her zombie gut-covered, arm-length, black rubber gloves and tossed them into the basin in the corner as the room filled with the aroma of fresh baked goodness and … and … and … chicken. Yeah. Lemon chicken. With just enough tang to make it sweet and sour at the same time. And roasted new red potatoes. Soaked in butter and garlic. Ginger baby carrots … and … and … cookies … warm right-outta-the-oven devil's food caramel chip. With a scoop of Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt on top, and …
M shook herself and brought a trembling hand up to wipe the sweat from her brow, the drool from her chin. She was prone to bizarre psychic breaks, sure—you know, visions from the ancients and all—but what the hell was that about?
Then she noticed something. She looked at her narcissistic little monkey.
"C-baby, where's your brother?"
Cyrus pouted, grabbed her tail (which had a pretty purple ribbon tied around it) and began obsessively grooming, something she did only when she got into trouble or there was trouble brewing somewhere in The Fringe.
A deep dread filled Lady M from marrow to flesh. "Cyrus Christine. Where's Billy Ray?"
Cyrus began chattering. Something about a wild-haired dingo, or a hairy wild child with a pet dingo, or a dingo-wolf-man hybrid with hairy armpits, or a baby-eating dingo wearing a cape, or a crazed capuchin-munching mantis, or a were-dingo wearing a bathrobe in the outback, or a chocolate-covered primate-eating hairy-pitted robed mantis, or a monkey-masticating much-maddened mantis-macking Meg-monster … like I said, hard to translate.
Thinking only of Virgil and his perfect ass—if he’s betrayed me like all the others, there will be hell to pay!—Lady M bolted across the room, grabbed her satchel, tapping stick and ink, and skinning knife, and, leaving behind the regenerating love-shaft and a pile of cold zombie intestines, set out to find her monkey, an unsettling realization forming at the edges of her mind …
It's the marinade that's making the zombies more flame resistant and regenerative! Damn Selig Retsuc! He's in cahoots with the Masterful Mixologist Meg Monster and her miraculously maniacal macerated metastasizing marinade! That cowardly, contrary, cunning cootie-concoctor is contaminating contemporary culture with coercive crack-like cookies containing corrupted, crumbly, cruddy zombie corporeality!
In other words, there's frackin' zombie dust in the cookies, people!
M set her jaw, narrowed her catlike eyes, and strode out of the lair into the Vast Wasteland. If anyone knew anything about Lady M it was that one surefire way to piss her off good was to eat her monkey.
Meg would pay dearly for this. If she thought Billy Ray was yummy, wait till she got a taste of Lady M's flying monkeys. They would not be kind or merciful in their slow, sadistic torture of Meg. Indeed, Meg would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, never ever be the same again. And that's just too bad, because that bitch could whip up a rockin’ Irish cream milkshake.
ZA 18: Just Deserts...followed by Just Desserts
Watching the Bombies burn whilst they writhed in spastic fits of pop abandon moved Virgil. First, it moved him about fifty yards away behind an outcrop of rocks where he wouldn't be completely covered in exploded Bombie goop. Then it moved him to a realization. The realization was that nothing--nothing in The Time Before or The Unfortunate Since was quite so beautiful as a hundred thousand dancing zombies bursting into flame on a desert wasteland in the first purple moments of sunrise. Virgil understood, in that moment, that he had found a new purpose in his life.
In seminary, in The Time Before, Virgil had been often perplexed by the assumed interchangeability of morality and religion--as though the two were not just of one fabric but of one thread--as though no person could be moral without religion and those with religion were innately moral. This, in Virgil's mind, constituted perhaps the greatest corruption in the thieves den of institutional religion.
Ironically, the truth of the corruption was aptly, if misleadingly, described in Genesis as the source of the Fall. When Eve ate from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she did not sin against God by violating His command (for how could a creature ignorant of good and evil be expected to understand that it was evil to violate a command of God's), but rather she sinned against her nature by taking upon herself the damning responsibility of morality. While Virgil disdained any literal interpretations of ancient scriptures and despised how insecure penis-bearers used such narrow understandings to deny the power and validity of the vaginaed, he relished this story of the Fall--for in it lay the very seeds of institutional religion's undoing.
He knew that most saw naught but virtue in judging good from evil, Right from Wrong, but to Virgil the entire enterprise was fraught with soul-killing peril. When is it wrong to steal? to kill? to commit adultery? For every single argument in one direction, there is an equal and opposite justification in another, both framed in absolute terms by starkly oppositional personal moralities. The institution of religion, meanwhile, mindful always of its own importance bends its endlessly limber interpretational weight not toward the noble but toward the nobility, toward those with the means to enrich and endow, thus further muddying the black and brackish waters of moral judgment.
In The Time Before, if someone dragged out the tired trope of the holocaust to argue the case for an objective moral compass, Virgil would always reply that the holocaust was only possible because of moral judgment. Hitler could never have persuaded his thousands to exterminate millions without the unholy power to define evil at his command. Morality does not prevent murder, it justifies it.
In the Time Before, Virgil was convinced that if he could only communicate this message sufficiently, if only he could teach people the danger of ascribing to themselves the poison power of judgment, he could free them. He longed to shout from rooftops, "spit out the fruit! Renounce morality! Judge not!"
Of course, Virgil's quest to unmake the institution of religion, destroying its power while saving its spirit, was a bit derailed when the zombies came along and ate religion along with everything else.
The sun rose fully over the desert plain, washing the land in light.
Resurrection. This must have been what Virgil's intuition was telling him. Watching the zombies burst beautifully into flames had reminded him of his quest and its true importance. It wasn't really that Virgil wanted to wreck religion. There were plenty of religious zombies doing that for him even before the actual zombies came along. Instead, Virgil wanted to suggest a replacement for morality--aesthetics. Ethical, informed aesthetics--by which he meant that instead of determining Right from Wrong, Good from Evil, people should instead seek after beauty and happiness. In a world dependent on human connection, happiness was only sustainable in the presence of kindness and honesty, art and truth and mindful being.
When the zombies came, Virgil forgot all his high-minded striving and instead surrendered to the tooth-and-claw imperative--the day-to-day fight for survival, but now his aesthetic sensibility had been reborn. He would kill all the zombies in the world not because they were evil and he was good, not because he sought life and they sought his edible parts, but because it would be beautiful to do so, and he wanted to share the sight with his friends. Cam, Meg, Lady M, Lucy if only Virgil hadn't let her die, perhaps even a redeemed Selig Retsuc.
Just as Virgil was racing off to tell his friends of his plans, that still small voice that had saved him earlier spoke to him again. He stopped, his pulse thundering in his ears, overwhelming the divine communication. While Virgil despised what the scribes and pretenders had made of holiness when they imprisoned prophets' truths in the marble and gold hem of institutional religion, he trusted the prophets nonetheless. He believed in, sought after, longed for a relationship with the mystery of that which lay beyond. And this still small voice was a force he could not--or rather, would not--ignore. But what was it saying now? He listened harder, straining his inner ear to pick out the exact pitch of truth...
"Kill the monkey."
Virgil shook his head. Surely, he'd misheard. Surely God hadn't just told him to kill one of Lady M's precious, hirsute companions. But there again, the command came, as clear as the Killers song that had saved him a few short hours before. "Kill the monkey."
Perhaps this was like God speaking to Abraham, urging him to prove his faith by placing on the sacrificial block that which was too dear, too essential to part with. After all, Virgil loved those monkeys. And by "loved," he meant he really, REALLY liked the monkeys and wanted them to ALWAYS be with Lady M in every scene...umm...moment. To kill one would be an offense of the greatest magnitude against that ineffable presence some might call The Divine, others of a more poetic bent--The Story. But no, the call was undeniable. Virgil had to kill the monkey. It was as clear as if it had been written.
So, Virgil went to find Lady M, which turned out to be much easier than it typically was since--at that very moment--Lady M was watching a resurrected Lucy Tisdale wading through mounds of smoking zombie flesh on the very plain Virgil had just been observing.
"Lucy!" Virgil cried, but Lady M hushed him, casting a spell of both invisibility and silence over his head. That and containment. Virgil could have sooner walked on his lips as gone to hug Lucy.
"Lucy's got work to do," Lady M said, her voice echoing in Virgil's head even though her mouth did not appear to move. "She has to clean up your mess."
"My mess?"
"Aren't you the one who half-killed all these zombies?"
"Well, technically, they half-killed themselves."
"Pish posh, Virgil. Stop gerrymandering reality and embrace the truth of your half-assedness."
"Yes, Mistress," Virgil said, bowing his head, because Virgil had learned that was the only way to deal with Lady M when she started saying things like "pish posh."
"I can tell that you want something, Virgil. Out with it."
"I want one of your monkeys."
"Why?"
"God told me to kill it. I'm hoping He'll change his mind, though, once He sees how faithful I am."
Lady M sighed--not visibly, but in his mind.
"First--Virgil--I'm sure you understand how you've just completely exposed your faithlessness and thus ruined all hope of heavenly pardon, thereby making you a fool as well as a half-ass. Second--though this makes you no less a fool or half-ass, just a lucky half-ass fool--that command was not from God."
"It wasn't?"
"Nope."
"But...it was still...and small...and a voice."
"Not God," Lady M said and he could almost see her shake her head with disdain.
"What was it then?"
"Cookie."
"Cookie?"
"Yes, Virgil, a goddamned macaroon."
"I'm not following."
"You've been minionized by that nasty, albeit clever, cookie witch, Meg Tisdale."
"What are you talking about? I'm nobody's minion!"
"You wouldn't be if you weren't such a sugar whore, but apparently that lovely brain of yours is no match for your sweet tooth."
"Can you fix it?"
"If you'd only eaten one cookie, maybe, but you had to go back for seconds. Cookie magic is pretty strong stuff."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying what I've already said, you've been minionized. Pretty soon, you're going to be massaging callouses and kissing asses."
"Don't forget, killing monkeys," Virgil said, trying to instill some urgency and indicate precisely why Lady M might want to step off the high horse for a moment and join Virgil down in the miniony mud.
"You touch one hair on even one of my monkeys and I'll reach up and pull your tongue out through your pee-hole."
"You don't understand, Lady M. It is written. I can't help but kill your monkey. You'd have to kill me to stop me."
Lady M's lower lip twitched--which, when you're as unflappable as the Lady, is like screeching at the top of your lungs and pulling all of your hair out.
"As tempting as that option is, Virgil," Lady M said, her voice cold as Kelvin's basement. "I can't kill you. While I prefer the monkey in just about every way to your sorry ass, there are three problems. #1: You're right--destiny's pull is damn near undeniable at this point. #2: You're also right that I can't stay mad at your perfect ass, and #3: I understand your vision even if you--despite your best efforts--do not. At least, you don't understand it yet. Apparently, Virgil, your continued place in the divine order--The Story if you will--seems assured, whereas my dear beloved Cyrus seems to be on his way out."
"But wait, maybe Cyrus doesn't have to die. Can't you just conjure up a substitute? Let's beat Meg at her own game."
"Cookie magic is too powerful, particularly when you go back for seconds. No. Meg has won this round, but my Cyrus won't die in vain. As the ancients knew, the one kind of magic that can, while not defeating cookie magic, at least subvert it, is sacrificial magic. When you return to Meg, you will indeed kill my beloved monkey, but you'll do so with a special knife I give you and you will chant the special words I tell you. This will free you from Meg's spell and--as a bonus--send a psychic signal through the ether like a distress beacon to your closest ally alerting him to your need."
"My closest ally?"
"A man whose depth has yet to be fully revealed, whose value goes far beyond the weapons he so artfully handles and the thoughts he so artlessly thinks. While no one can hope to kill Meg yet, he can at least cause her some pain."
Virgil took a moment to relish the thought of Meg looking down the cold steel pipe of the Cleaning Lady. Indeed, as soon as Virgil got to Meg, he would do everything in his power to make sure that when Cam bashed in the doors of the cookie bunker, Meg would be if not wholly vulnerable, at least highly flammable. And not because it was the right thing to do, but because it would be lovely to watch her burn.
In seminary, in The Time Before, Virgil had been often perplexed by the assumed interchangeability of morality and religion--as though the two were not just of one fabric but of one thread--as though no person could be moral without religion and those with religion were innately moral. This, in Virgil's mind, constituted perhaps the greatest corruption in the thieves den of institutional religion.
Ironically, the truth of the corruption was aptly, if misleadingly, described in Genesis as the source of the Fall. When Eve ate from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she did not sin against God by violating His command (for how could a creature ignorant of good and evil be expected to understand that it was evil to violate a command of God's), but rather she sinned against her nature by taking upon herself the damning responsibility of morality. While Virgil disdained any literal interpretations of ancient scriptures and despised how insecure penis-bearers used such narrow understandings to deny the power and validity of the vaginaed, he relished this story of the Fall--for in it lay the very seeds of institutional religion's undoing.
He knew that most saw naught but virtue in judging good from evil, Right from Wrong, but to Virgil the entire enterprise was fraught with soul-killing peril. When is it wrong to steal? to kill? to commit adultery? For every single argument in one direction, there is an equal and opposite justification in another, both framed in absolute terms by starkly oppositional personal moralities. The institution of religion, meanwhile, mindful always of its own importance bends its endlessly limber interpretational weight not toward the noble but toward the nobility, toward those with the means to enrich and endow, thus further muddying the black and brackish waters of moral judgment.
In The Time Before, if someone dragged out the tired trope of the holocaust to argue the case for an objective moral compass, Virgil would always reply that the holocaust was only possible because of moral judgment. Hitler could never have persuaded his thousands to exterminate millions without the unholy power to define evil at his command. Morality does not prevent murder, it justifies it.
In the Time Before, Virgil was convinced that if he could only communicate this message sufficiently, if only he could teach people the danger of ascribing to themselves the poison power of judgment, he could free them. He longed to shout from rooftops, "spit out the fruit! Renounce morality! Judge not!"
Of course, Virgil's quest to unmake the institution of religion, destroying its power while saving its spirit, was a bit derailed when the zombies came along and ate religion along with everything else.
The sun rose fully over the desert plain, washing the land in light.
Resurrection. This must have been what Virgil's intuition was telling him. Watching the zombies burst beautifully into flames had reminded him of his quest and its true importance. It wasn't really that Virgil wanted to wreck religion. There were plenty of religious zombies doing that for him even before the actual zombies came along. Instead, Virgil wanted to suggest a replacement for morality--aesthetics. Ethical, informed aesthetics--by which he meant that instead of determining Right from Wrong, Good from Evil, people should instead seek after beauty and happiness. In a world dependent on human connection, happiness was only sustainable in the presence of kindness and honesty, art and truth and mindful being.
When the zombies came, Virgil forgot all his high-minded striving and instead surrendered to the tooth-and-claw imperative--the day-to-day fight for survival, but now his aesthetic sensibility had been reborn. He would kill all the zombies in the world not because they were evil and he was good, not because he sought life and they sought his edible parts, but because it would be beautiful to do so, and he wanted to share the sight with his friends. Cam, Meg, Lady M, Lucy if only Virgil hadn't let her die, perhaps even a redeemed Selig Retsuc.
Just as Virgil was racing off to tell his friends of his plans, that still small voice that had saved him earlier spoke to him again. He stopped, his pulse thundering in his ears, overwhelming the divine communication. While Virgil despised what the scribes and pretenders had made of holiness when they imprisoned prophets' truths in the marble and gold hem of institutional religion, he trusted the prophets nonetheless. He believed in, sought after, longed for a relationship with the mystery of that which lay beyond. And this still small voice was a force he could not--or rather, would not--ignore. But what was it saying now? He listened harder, straining his inner ear to pick out the exact pitch of truth...
"Kill the monkey."
Virgil shook his head. Surely, he'd misheard. Surely God hadn't just told him to kill one of Lady M's precious, hirsute companions. But there again, the command came, as clear as the Killers song that had saved him a few short hours before. "Kill the monkey."
Perhaps this was like God speaking to Abraham, urging him to prove his faith by placing on the sacrificial block that which was too dear, too essential to part with. After all, Virgil loved those monkeys. And by "loved," he meant he really, REALLY liked the monkeys and wanted them to ALWAYS be with Lady M in every scene...umm...moment. To kill one would be an offense of the greatest magnitude against that ineffable presence some might call The Divine, others of a more poetic bent--The Story. But no, the call was undeniable. Virgil had to kill the monkey. It was as clear as if it had been written.
So, Virgil went to find Lady M, which turned out to be much easier than it typically was since--at that very moment--Lady M was watching a resurrected Lucy Tisdale wading through mounds of smoking zombie flesh on the very plain Virgil had just been observing.
"Lucy!" Virgil cried, but Lady M hushed him, casting a spell of both invisibility and silence over his head. That and containment. Virgil could have sooner walked on his lips as gone to hug Lucy.
"Lucy's got work to do," Lady M said, her voice echoing in Virgil's head even though her mouth did not appear to move. "She has to clean up your mess."
"My mess?"
"Aren't you the one who half-killed all these zombies?"
"Well, technically, they half-killed themselves."
"Pish posh, Virgil. Stop gerrymandering reality and embrace the truth of your half-assedness."
"Yes, Mistress," Virgil said, bowing his head, because Virgil had learned that was the only way to deal with Lady M when she started saying things like "pish posh."
"I can tell that you want something, Virgil. Out with it."
"I want one of your monkeys."
"Why?"
"God told me to kill it. I'm hoping He'll change his mind, though, once He sees how faithful I am."
Lady M sighed--not visibly, but in his mind.
"First--Virgil--I'm sure you understand how you've just completely exposed your faithlessness and thus ruined all hope of heavenly pardon, thereby making you a fool as well as a half-ass. Second--though this makes you no less a fool or half-ass, just a lucky half-ass fool--that command was not from God."
"It wasn't?"
"Nope."
"But...it was still...and small...and a voice."
"Not God," Lady M said and he could almost see her shake her head with disdain.
"What was it then?"
"Cookie."
"Cookie?"
"Yes, Virgil, a goddamned macaroon."
"I'm not following."
"You've been minionized by that nasty, albeit clever, cookie witch, Meg Tisdale."
"What are you talking about? I'm nobody's minion!"
"You wouldn't be if you weren't such a sugar whore, but apparently that lovely brain of yours is no match for your sweet tooth."
"Can you fix it?"
"If you'd only eaten one cookie, maybe, but you had to go back for seconds. Cookie magic is pretty strong stuff."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying what I've already said, you've been minionized. Pretty soon, you're going to be massaging callouses and kissing asses."
"Don't forget, killing monkeys," Virgil said, trying to instill some urgency and indicate precisely why Lady M might want to step off the high horse for a moment and join Virgil down in the miniony mud.
"You touch one hair on even one of my monkeys and I'll reach up and pull your tongue out through your pee-hole."
"You don't understand, Lady M. It is written. I can't help but kill your monkey. You'd have to kill me to stop me."
Lady M's lower lip twitched--which, when you're as unflappable as the Lady, is like screeching at the top of your lungs and pulling all of your hair out.
"As tempting as that option is, Virgil," Lady M said, her voice cold as Kelvin's basement. "I can't kill you. While I prefer the monkey in just about every way to your sorry ass, there are three problems. #1: You're right--destiny's pull is damn near undeniable at this point. #2: You're also right that I can't stay mad at your perfect ass, and #3: I understand your vision even if you--despite your best efforts--do not. At least, you don't understand it yet. Apparently, Virgil, your continued place in the divine order--The Story if you will--seems assured, whereas my dear beloved Cyrus seems to be on his way out."
"But wait, maybe Cyrus doesn't have to die. Can't you just conjure up a substitute? Let's beat Meg at her own game."
"Cookie magic is too powerful, particularly when you go back for seconds. No. Meg has won this round, but my Cyrus won't die in vain. As the ancients knew, the one kind of magic that can, while not defeating cookie magic, at least subvert it, is sacrificial magic. When you return to Meg, you will indeed kill my beloved monkey, but you'll do so with a special knife I give you and you will chant the special words I tell you. This will free you from Meg's spell and--as a bonus--send a psychic signal through the ether like a distress beacon to your closest ally alerting him to your need."
"My closest ally?"
"A man whose depth has yet to be fully revealed, whose value goes far beyond the weapons he so artfully handles and the thoughts he so artlessly thinks. While no one can hope to kill Meg yet, he can at least cause her some pain."
Virgil took a moment to relish the thought of Meg looking down the cold steel pipe of the Cleaning Lady. Indeed, as soon as Virgil got to Meg, he would do everything in his power to make sure that when Cam bashed in the doors of the cookie bunker, Meg would be if not wholly vulnerable, at least highly flammable. And not because it was the right thing to do, but because it would be lovely to watch her burn.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
ZA 17: Immortalization, Deboobification, Brainwashed Minion Footrubs and Backstory
Meg flossed her straight, white teeth, getting the last of the meat from between them.
Mind-read this, Lady M: Monkey tastes good! A little like bacon.
Meg idly wondered if it was Billy Ray or Cyrus that was currently being digested by her stomach acid. Not that it mattered. The message had been sent either way. The war with Lady M was on. But Meg secretly hoped that she'd ingested Cyrus. He was M's favorite, whether Miss "I don't have favorites" M would admit it or not.
Damn do-gooder. And to think, they used to be best friends, back before M was a "Lady." Back before M's good-doing instincts had caused her to ruin Meg's plans to be the Queen of the Dead. Or the Un-dead, rather.
It had happened like this....
One rainy evening in the distant past, Meg had been wallowing in the gangrenous blubber of her one true love, Selig Retsuc. They were in the thralls of passionate consummation, at the peak of the ultimate act that would make her Selig's Queen forever. His lips formed a very large "O" around her very large, milky-white breast, and his pointy brown teeth were poised for de-boobification. As they neared climax, Meg was anticipating the glorious pain that would seal her regal fate. That's when Miss M had deigned to appear, purporting to "rescue" her best friend Meg.
M, hopped up on her studies of the ancients and self-inflicted hot-needle acupuncture to increase her spiritual awareness, had ripped Meg from Selig's embrace, nearly severing his calcified member--a deed which may prove Selig's undoing in the end. M spirited Meg away to the Vast Wasteland, thinking she'd receive Meg's undying (no pun intended) gratitude, and perhaps they'd enjoy a little girlfriend-bonding with a latte and some shoe shopping. (Though Meg knew that M actually preferred bondage to bonding, Meg didn't indulge her fantasies. Often.)
Instead Meg cursed her so-called friend for foiling her secret plan, interrupting the most incredible night of her life just before the best part, and nearly severing her man's glorious (though somewhat putrified, and according to Virgil, "minuscule") parcel of joy-flesh. Meg pinned M to the sand and pulled her head back with her long black braid exposing her slender neck. Meg whipped her favorite pearl-handled dagger from the sheath attached to her garter, and brought the razor-sharp tip to the pale, thin skin that Meg knew veiled M's carotid artery. (Meg had been in med school when the zombies invaded, and though her knowledge of human anatomy had come in handy on occasion--like this one--she was secretly gleeful that she was spared the drudgery of using her medical knowledge for good.) Just as the dagger pierced M's skin and the first drop of ruby red blood oozed from the puncture, M cried out in an unearthly language that sounded vaguely like the names of movie stars from before the zombie era--
"Uma oprah lohan cruise. Jolie swayze, klum pitt-rourke. Phoenix close knightly, keanu-keanu-keanu!"
Lightning streaked across the night sky, illuminating the swirling cauldron of storm clouds in an amber glow. Thunder crashed, drowning out the obscenities flying forth from Meg's red lips. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten to muzzle the bitch. Now M had called down some kind of hell-fire--or was it heaven-fire?--on both of them.
Meg thrust the dagger hard and fast into M's throat, but it was as if M's neck had turned to stone. The point of the blade snapped off--oh no, not her favorite dagger! Now the voodoo princess was really going to pay. Meg tossed aside the useless weapon and wrapped her fingers around M's neck. But M just smiled at Meg, a sad smile full of pity. That really set Meg off. She squeezed M's throat and slammed her head into the ground--
But the ground was gone. They were ten feet above the sand. Levitating. The witch was even more powerful than Meg had given her credit for.
M did some hinky move with her forearms that broke Meg's grasp on her neck, then flipped around so she was on top. Without M below her, Meg dropped to the ground like a lead mannequin. M hovered above her looking like a goth-ninja doing water ballet, except in the air. She was laughing.
"This is rockin!" M said.
"This sucks nails!" Meg said.
"The power. The POWER!" M said, skyrocketing backward through the air as she shot laser-bolts from her fingertips. "Who knew?"
"You're ruining my life!" Meg shouted, trying futilely to dislodge an irritating sand wedgie.
"I wonder what else I can do?" M said pirouetting and somersaulting in the black sky as the laserbeams changed from red to green.
"You can mind your own goddamned bees wax, is what you can do. Do you have any idea what you interrupted between me and Selig Retsuc? ANY IDEA? I was about to be made Queen of the Zombies. Before long the whole world will be populated with zombies, so that would make me Queen of the World and All Who Live In It. Or All Who Are Undead In It. Or something like that. Whatever. You fucked it up."
"The powers of the ancients flow through me," M intoned in an unusually deep voice. "You should try it, Meg. It's like one great big orgasm that never ends!"
M squealed like a pig, which only made Meg madder. Who knew how long it would take to find Selig and re-bed him so she, too, could experience an unnatural orgasm and the power to rule the world.
"I'm outta here," Meg said, tromping across the sandy vastness toward what she hoped was the ruins of Denver.
"Hey, where are you going? Don't you want to try this flying thing? I could hook you up," M called.
"No, you enjoy your little ancient carpet ride. I'm going back for some hard Queen-making zombie flesh. And don't even think about interrupting again."
"What? Are you serious? That Selig action is nothing compared to this," M said, swooping down alongside Meg. "Come on, you've got to try it."
M grabbed Meg's hand and pulled her into the sky. The laserbeams from M's fingers were pink, now, and tickled as they skittered up Meg's arm and permeated her body.
They were about fifty feet in the air when M realized what she had done. "My Gods, what have I done?" she said, looking at her pink-glowing hand. Of course she'd had to let go of Meg's hand in order to do this, so Meg was now careening toward the desert floor.
M shot toward the ground like a rocket, but she wasn't fast enough.
Meg lay in a Meg-shaped crater in the desert floor.
"You bitch!" Meg said.
"You're alive!" M said.
"Do you know what this means? Do you know what you've done?"
"No, not really," M said, looking awfully confused for someone empowered with the knowledge of the ancients.
"That stupid pink laser has made it impossible for me to die," Meg said, rolling her sparkly blue eyes.
Now M looked really confused. "So what are you mad about? Isn't that a good thing?"
"No, you idiot. If I can't die, I can't become undead. If I can't become undead, I can't become a zombie. And if I can't become a zombie, it follows that I can't become the Zombie Queen. NOW do you see why I'm a little ticked off?"
And that's when the friendship ended between Meg and M.
That's also when the ancients took away M's ability to fly as punishment for her carelessness. The act of making Meg immortal, no matter how unintentional, had kinda fucked up the ancients' plans, too.
In order to compensate for this unforeseen and quite unfortunate circumstance, the ancients promoted M to "Lady" M, gave her the ability to read minds, and made her talk like a cryptic motivational speaker.
Which brings us back to the monkey flesh in Meg's teeth. Meg knew that her once-best-friend, M, loved her precious monkeys more than anything. More than body-modification, endless orgasm, or even organic red wine. Meg knew that the one sure-fire way to piss off the Lady was to eat her monkey. And no doubt about it, Meg wanted to do some pissing off. Heck, she wanted war. It was bad enough making your ex-best-friend immortal against her wishes. On top of that, everyone knows you don't just go resurrecting someone's daughter without parental permission. That crossed the line.
Oh yes, Meg knew what M was planning to do to Lucy in the Vast Wasteland even before M knew it. She knew M was going to re-flesh the little bitch, not just to piss Meg off, but to steal the Member of Power out of her hoochee. That's why Meg had magically summoned Lucy's twin sister Lizzie, who was somehow Australian and had been raised by wolf-dingo hybrids after having been kidnapped at birth unbeknownst to almost everyone. To think, Meg had been worried about how--and even IF--she'd be able to find Lizzie, when all along the power to summon her had been right there in her recipe for fresh, hot caramel chip devil's food cookies.
So summon Lizzie she had, right to the side of her dead twin, Lucy. With more than a little melancholy for what might have been, Meg pulled the paltry, petrified penis from her daughter's little hidy-hole and handed it to Lizzie.
"Now, don't try to use this on your own," Meg had warned. "Take it to Selig, unless you want to end up a charred mass like your sister." Here she laughed manically for some unknown reason.
After Lizzie nodded and scampered away, Meg had turned just in time to see Virgil sneak back into the cookie-making fortress. He thought he'd gotten away with spying on her, but this was exactly what Meg had hoped would happen.
She slunk back inside the cookie bunker and whipped up a batch of macaroons for Virgil. Magical macaroons that would make Virgil do her bidding, like a long-distance puppet. While they were baking, Meg taught Virgil to dance, playing that annoying song by the Killers "Are We Human or Are We Dancers?" over and over as they practiced.
When the oven timer chimed, Meg brought the steaming coconut cookies to the table, and let the sumptuous aroma waft into Virgil's aristocratic nose.
"Go on," she said. "No need to wait until they cool." She knew that just the scent of the magical mounds would make it impossible for Virgil to refuse her suggestion.
Virgil ate two in rapid succession.
"That burned my tongue," he said.
Meg smiled and nodded. The cookies were just as powerful cold as they were hot, but she had a sadistic itch that needed scratching, and watching Virgil burn his own tongue was just the ticket.
"Now go," she said. "Do what you need to do with Lucy's body--I'd rather not know any details--then put what I've taught you to good use in the Vast Wasteland. After that, lay in wait for Lady M. Stay hidden until she's done with her magical bullshit--you wouldn't be able to stop her if you tried, even with your powerful mantis arms. Then when she's basking in the afterglow of her ancient arts, steal one of those goddamned monkeys and bring it back to the cookie fortress. Do you understand?"
When he returned with the monkey--Billy Ray or Cyrus, he wasn't sure--Meg made Virgil skin and cook it himself. This neatly accomplished three things: she didn't have to get her nails bloody, it proved that she had complete control over Virgil (who was a vegetarian and absolutely squeamish when it came to any kind of non-zombie flesh), and it ensured that M would despise Virgil until her dying day. M really loved her monkeys.
And that REALLY brings us back to Meg removing the monkey flesh from her teeth in the cookie-baking fortress while Virgil rubbed her feet with oil humming "Are We Human or Are We Dancers," and the heavens outside churned with Lady's M's fury.
"Bring it on, my mind-reading sista," Meg said.
"Huh?" Virgil said, looking up.
"Nevermind, honey. Just keep rubbing."
"When can I have another cookie?" Virgil asked.
Meg patted his head. "Soon, dear. Soon."
Man, she loved a good footrub from a brainwashed minion as she anticipated an impeding war.
Mind-read this, Lady M: Monkey tastes good! A little like bacon.
Meg idly wondered if it was Billy Ray or Cyrus that was currently being digested by her stomach acid. Not that it mattered. The message had been sent either way. The war with Lady M was on. But Meg secretly hoped that she'd ingested Cyrus. He was M's favorite, whether Miss "I don't have favorites" M would admit it or not.
Damn do-gooder. And to think, they used to be best friends, back before M was a "Lady." Back before M's good-doing instincts had caused her to ruin Meg's plans to be the Queen of the Dead. Or the Un-dead, rather.
It had happened like this....
One rainy evening in the distant past, Meg had been wallowing in the gangrenous blubber of her one true love, Selig Retsuc. They were in the thralls of passionate consummation, at the peak of the ultimate act that would make her Selig's Queen forever. His lips formed a very large "O" around her very large, milky-white breast, and his pointy brown teeth were poised for de-boobification. As they neared climax, Meg was anticipating the glorious pain that would seal her regal fate. That's when Miss M had deigned to appear, purporting to "rescue" her best friend Meg.
M, hopped up on her studies of the ancients and self-inflicted hot-needle acupuncture to increase her spiritual awareness, had ripped Meg from Selig's embrace, nearly severing his calcified member--a deed which may prove Selig's undoing in the end. M spirited Meg away to the Vast Wasteland, thinking she'd receive Meg's undying (no pun intended) gratitude, and perhaps they'd enjoy a little girlfriend-bonding with a latte and some shoe shopping. (Though Meg knew that M actually preferred bondage to bonding, Meg didn't indulge her fantasies. Often.)
Instead Meg cursed her so-called friend for foiling her secret plan, interrupting the most incredible night of her life just before the best part, and nearly severing her man's glorious (though somewhat putrified, and according to Virgil, "minuscule") parcel of joy-flesh. Meg pinned M to the sand and pulled her head back with her long black braid exposing her slender neck. Meg whipped her favorite pearl-handled dagger from the sheath attached to her garter, and brought the razor-sharp tip to the pale, thin skin that Meg knew veiled M's carotid artery. (Meg had been in med school when the zombies invaded, and though her knowledge of human anatomy had come in handy on occasion--like this one--she was secretly gleeful that she was spared the drudgery of using her medical knowledge for good.) Just as the dagger pierced M's skin and the first drop of ruby red blood oozed from the puncture, M cried out in an unearthly language that sounded vaguely like the names of movie stars from before the zombie era--
"Uma oprah lohan cruise. Jolie swayze, klum pitt-rourke. Phoenix close knightly, keanu-keanu-keanu!"
Lightning streaked across the night sky, illuminating the swirling cauldron of storm clouds in an amber glow. Thunder crashed, drowning out the obscenities flying forth from Meg's red lips. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten to muzzle the bitch. Now M had called down some kind of hell-fire--or was it heaven-fire?--on both of them.
Meg thrust the dagger hard and fast into M's throat, but it was as if M's neck had turned to stone. The point of the blade snapped off--oh no, not her favorite dagger! Now the voodoo princess was really going to pay. Meg tossed aside the useless weapon and wrapped her fingers around M's neck. But M just smiled at Meg, a sad smile full of pity. That really set Meg off. She squeezed M's throat and slammed her head into the ground--
But the ground was gone. They were ten feet above the sand. Levitating. The witch was even more powerful than Meg had given her credit for.
M did some hinky move with her forearms that broke Meg's grasp on her neck, then flipped around so she was on top. Without M below her, Meg dropped to the ground like a lead mannequin. M hovered above her looking like a goth-ninja doing water ballet, except in the air. She was laughing.
"This is rockin!" M said.
"This sucks nails!" Meg said.
"The power. The POWER!" M said, skyrocketing backward through the air as she shot laser-bolts from her fingertips. "Who knew?"
"You're ruining my life!" Meg shouted, trying futilely to dislodge an irritating sand wedgie.
"I wonder what else I can do?" M said pirouetting and somersaulting in the black sky as the laserbeams changed from red to green.
"You can mind your own goddamned bees wax, is what you can do. Do you have any idea what you interrupted between me and Selig Retsuc? ANY IDEA? I was about to be made Queen of the Zombies. Before long the whole world will be populated with zombies, so that would make me Queen of the World and All Who Live In It. Or All Who Are Undead In It. Or something like that. Whatever. You fucked it up."
"The powers of the ancients flow through me," M intoned in an unusually deep voice. "You should try it, Meg. It's like one great big orgasm that never ends!"
M squealed like a pig, which only made Meg madder. Who knew how long it would take to find Selig and re-bed him so she, too, could experience an unnatural orgasm and the power to rule the world.
"I'm outta here," Meg said, tromping across the sandy vastness toward what she hoped was the ruins of Denver.
"Hey, where are you going? Don't you want to try this flying thing? I could hook you up," M called.
"No, you enjoy your little ancient carpet ride. I'm going back for some hard Queen-making zombie flesh. And don't even think about interrupting again."
"What? Are you serious? That Selig action is nothing compared to this," M said, swooping down alongside Meg. "Come on, you've got to try it."
M grabbed Meg's hand and pulled her into the sky. The laserbeams from M's fingers were pink, now, and tickled as they skittered up Meg's arm and permeated her body.
They were about fifty feet in the air when M realized what she had done. "My Gods, what have I done?" she said, looking at her pink-glowing hand. Of course she'd had to let go of Meg's hand in order to do this, so Meg was now careening toward the desert floor.
M shot toward the ground like a rocket, but she wasn't fast enough.
Meg lay in a Meg-shaped crater in the desert floor.
"You bitch!" Meg said.
"You're alive!" M said.
"Do you know what this means? Do you know what you've done?"
"No, not really," M said, looking awfully confused for someone empowered with the knowledge of the ancients.
"That stupid pink laser has made it impossible for me to die," Meg said, rolling her sparkly blue eyes.
Now M looked really confused. "So what are you mad about? Isn't that a good thing?"
"No, you idiot. If I can't die, I can't become undead. If I can't become undead, I can't become a zombie. And if I can't become a zombie, it follows that I can't become the Zombie Queen. NOW do you see why I'm a little ticked off?"
And that's when the friendship ended between Meg and M.
That's also when the ancients took away M's ability to fly as punishment for her carelessness. The act of making Meg immortal, no matter how unintentional, had kinda fucked up the ancients' plans, too.
In order to compensate for this unforeseen and quite unfortunate circumstance, the ancients promoted M to "Lady" M, gave her the ability to read minds, and made her talk like a cryptic motivational speaker.
Which brings us back to the monkey flesh in Meg's teeth. Meg knew that her once-best-friend, M, loved her precious monkeys more than anything. More than body-modification, endless orgasm, or even organic red wine. Meg knew that the one sure-fire way to piss off the Lady was to eat her monkey. And no doubt about it, Meg wanted to do some pissing off. Heck, she wanted war. It was bad enough making your ex-best-friend immortal against her wishes. On top of that, everyone knows you don't just go resurrecting someone's daughter without parental permission. That crossed the line.
Oh yes, Meg knew what M was planning to do to Lucy in the Vast Wasteland even before M knew it. She knew M was going to re-flesh the little bitch, not just to piss Meg off, but to steal the Member of Power out of her hoochee. That's why Meg had magically summoned Lucy's twin sister Lizzie, who was somehow Australian and had been raised by wolf-dingo hybrids after having been kidnapped at birth unbeknownst to almost everyone. To think, Meg had been worried about how--and even IF--she'd be able to find Lizzie, when all along the power to summon her had been right there in her recipe for fresh, hot caramel chip devil's food cookies.
So summon Lizzie she had, right to the side of her dead twin, Lucy. With more than a little melancholy for what might have been, Meg pulled the paltry, petrified penis from her daughter's little hidy-hole and handed it to Lizzie.
"Now, don't try to use this on your own," Meg had warned. "Take it to Selig, unless you want to end up a charred mass like your sister." Here she laughed manically for some unknown reason.
After Lizzie nodded and scampered away, Meg had turned just in time to see Virgil sneak back into the cookie-making fortress. He thought he'd gotten away with spying on her, but this was exactly what Meg had hoped would happen.
She slunk back inside the cookie bunker and whipped up a batch of macaroons for Virgil. Magical macaroons that would make Virgil do her bidding, like a long-distance puppet. While they were baking, Meg taught Virgil to dance, playing that annoying song by the Killers "Are We Human or Are We Dancers?" over and over as they practiced.
When the oven timer chimed, Meg brought the steaming coconut cookies to the table, and let the sumptuous aroma waft into Virgil's aristocratic nose.
"Go on," she said. "No need to wait until they cool." She knew that just the scent of the magical mounds would make it impossible for Virgil to refuse her suggestion.
Virgil ate two in rapid succession.
"That burned my tongue," he said.
Meg smiled and nodded. The cookies were just as powerful cold as they were hot, but she had a sadistic itch that needed scratching, and watching Virgil burn his own tongue was just the ticket.
"Now go," she said. "Do what you need to do with Lucy's body--I'd rather not know any details--then put what I've taught you to good use in the Vast Wasteland. After that, lay in wait for Lady M. Stay hidden until she's done with her magical bullshit--you wouldn't be able to stop her if you tried, even with your powerful mantis arms. Then when she's basking in the afterglow of her ancient arts, steal one of those goddamned monkeys and bring it back to the cookie fortress. Do you understand?"
When he returned with the monkey--Billy Ray or Cyrus, he wasn't sure--Meg made Virgil skin and cook it himself. This neatly accomplished three things: she didn't have to get her nails bloody, it proved that she had complete control over Virgil (who was a vegetarian and absolutely squeamish when it came to any kind of non-zombie flesh), and it ensured that M would despise Virgil until her dying day. M really loved her monkeys.
And that REALLY brings us back to Meg removing the monkey flesh from her teeth in the cookie-baking fortress while Virgil rubbed her feet with oil humming "Are We Human or Are We Dancers," and the heavens outside churned with Lady's M's fury.
"Bring it on, my mind-reading sista," Meg said.
"Huh?" Virgil said, looking up.
"Nevermind, honey. Just keep rubbing."
"When can I have another cookie?" Virgil asked.
Meg patted his head. "Soon, dear. Soon."
Man, she loved a good footrub from a brainwashed minion as she anticipated an impeding war.
ZA16 - Shut the Fuck Up
Cam proceeded slowly through the deserted streets of Once-Denver, his knife held at the ready in a white-knuckled fist. The Cleaning Lady was strapped to his back, dry as a bone, beautiful as the husk of a scorched wedding bouquet. He had to admit, there were a few advantages to his knife. Well, one. It never needed reloading.
"So what happened to your squadron?" Lucy asked.
He ignored her.
"Did they all die or did you go off on your own?"
He ignored her.
"How many zombies do you think you've killed?"
He tried to remember, couldn't, then remembered to ignore her.
"Can you even remember?"
He gritted his teeth.
"Okay, so maybe you can't remember how many in your life, but what about how many this week?"
He TRIED to ignore her.
"How far ahead do you thnk the next gas station is?"
"Shut up!" Cam said, flecks of spit flying from his lips to land on her mary janes.
She made a face at him, which he did not see. He was too busy focusing on what might be around the corner of the building that had once been a bank, before the rising of demonic forces had ended ninety-nine percent of all life on earth and rendered capitalism obsolete. Lucy put her hand carefully on his bandaged bicep and peeked around the bulge. His muscle twitched under her touch, and he jerked her off.
"I don't see anything," she said.
"If you don't shut the fuck up I'm going to carve your larynx out of your throat," he told her.
"Pshah," she said. "Like the Five Romantic Chemical Lords would allow that!"
If the ministers of Hell had conjured a demon designed specifically to torment him with her tasty hot bod, minty-fresh breath, endless yapping, and possible affiliations with the underworld, she would be it. He felt like he was being herded. He was sure she would have zombies or some other goddamn Hell-borne thing waiting for him around every corner and with every step he was just playing into her hands.
What other Hell-borne thing? Who knew. This little bitch could have vampires, werewolves, or who knew what other goddamn necromantic scum hidden up that tease of a skirt.
"Want me to go first?" she asked.
He should just kill her.
He sighed. "No," he growled. "No, you do not get to go first. How many times have we been over this? You do not go first. I go first. You follow. Now shut the fuck up."
"I'm just saying, I mean, you seem a little keyed up, and we've only made it, like two blocks in the past half hour. So if you want me to go first-"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Cam yelled. His voice bounced off the buildings, echoed in the empty alleys.
Lucy gaped at him, then a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. "Geez, Cam, now that's what I'm talkin' about!" she said. Then she strode out into the middle of the street, her hips swinging and gum popping, heading north. Or south. Or . . . well, Cam wasn't really sure what direction she was going, but judging by the prime view of her barely-skirted ass he was getting, she was headed away from him.
"Hey! Dammit Doublemint! What did I tell you about going first?"
"I'm tired of waiting for you," she said, and kept on walking. She sang. Loudly. Just to piss him off. Cam's rippling bicep reached for The Cleaning Lady, only to jerk to a halt, remembering his real Lady was dead. For now. Leaving him with this gum-popping zombie-loving bimbo.
"Teenagers scare the living shit outta me!
They could care less as long as someone'll bleed!
So darken your clothes
And strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone
But not me!"
"You know what, Cam?" she called. Cam didn't even want to know, but she didn't wait for an answer. "I think it's good we came together." She giggled. He grimaced. "We should really join forces! With your fire and my power, we could make some real sparks!" She stopped. She turned. She put her hands on her hips and popped her gum. "Whatddaya think, Sparky?"
"I think . . . Shut the fuck up!" Cam said. Screw thinking.
"Uh-huh. By the way, there's a gas station right over there."
He hated it that she'd seen it before him. Being the keeper of The Cleaning Lady had always meant that Cam had petroleum radar. This little skank was messing with his petroleum radar. She had to be from Hell. He should quell her.
Fuck caution. It wasn't like he couldn't deal with any shit Doublemint could deal out, with or without his Lady. However, it would be hella sweet to let his real Lady devour this babysitter whole.
They went to the gas station. He went first. He didn't even look to see if she followed. She did though. Jesus fuckin' Christ this little bitch was like a dog yapping at his heels.
"What are your plans, Cam? Really, have you thought anything through at all?"
"I'm going to refuel the Lady," he said, as he began refuelling the Lady.
"And then?"
"I'm going to quell you."
"Hm. Could be fun. But how 'bout this? You come with me. I know Selig Retsuc's grand plan. We find him. We stop him from regaining access to the source of his power -- it may look tiny, but he knows how to use it, trust me. We save the fucking world."
Cam didn't even consider. Barbie here was full of shit. He closed the Lady, hefted her sweet, smooth curves lovingly in his calloused hands, and aimed for Barbie.
"Or, you could just torch me," she said. "If you think that's going to be new and fun for me, though, you've got another thing coming." She turned and began walking away, then tossed a look over her shoulder. "Your call, Sparky," she said, and continued going first.
"So what happened to your squadron?" Lucy asked.
He ignored her.
"Did they all die or did you go off on your own?"
He ignored her.
"How many zombies do you think you've killed?"
He tried to remember, couldn't, then remembered to ignore her.
"Can you even remember?"
He gritted his teeth.
"Okay, so maybe you can't remember how many in your life, but what about how many this week?"
He TRIED to ignore her.
"How far ahead do you thnk the next gas station is?"
"Shut up!" Cam said, flecks of spit flying from his lips to land on her mary janes.
She made a face at him, which he did not see. He was too busy focusing on what might be around the corner of the building that had once been a bank, before the rising of demonic forces had ended ninety-nine percent of all life on earth and rendered capitalism obsolete. Lucy put her hand carefully on his bandaged bicep and peeked around the bulge. His muscle twitched under her touch, and he jerked her off.
"I don't see anything," she said.
"If you don't shut the fuck up I'm going to carve your larynx out of your throat," he told her.
"Pshah," she said. "Like the Five Romantic Chemical Lords would allow that!"
If the ministers of Hell had conjured a demon designed specifically to torment him with her tasty hot bod, minty-fresh breath, endless yapping, and possible affiliations with the underworld, she would be it. He felt like he was being herded. He was sure she would have zombies or some other goddamn Hell-borne thing waiting for him around every corner and with every step he was just playing into her hands.
What other Hell-borne thing? Who knew. This little bitch could have vampires, werewolves, or who knew what other goddamn necromantic scum hidden up that tease of a skirt.
"Want me to go first?" she asked.
He should just kill her.
He sighed. "No," he growled. "No, you do not get to go first. How many times have we been over this? You do not go first. I go first. You follow. Now shut the fuck up."
"I'm just saying, I mean, you seem a little keyed up, and we've only made it, like two blocks in the past half hour. So if you want me to go first-"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Cam yelled. His voice bounced off the buildings, echoed in the empty alleys.
Lucy gaped at him, then a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. "Geez, Cam, now that's what I'm talkin' about!" she said. Then she strode out into the middle of the street, her hips swinging and gum popping, heading north. Or south. Or . . . well, Cam wasn't really sure what direction she was going, but judging by the prime view of her barely-skirted ass he was getting, she was headed away from him.
"Hey! Dammit Doublemint! What did I tell you about going first?"
"I'm tired of waiting for you," she said, and kept on walking. She sang. Loudly. Just to piss him off. Cam's rippling bicep reached for The Cleaning Lady, only to jerk to a halt, remembering his real Lady was dead. For now. Leaving him with this gum-popping zombie-loving bimbo.
"Teenagers scare the living shit outta me!
They could care less as long as someone'll bleed!
So darken your clothes
And strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone
But not me!"
"You know what, Cam?" she called. Cam didn't even want to know, but she didn't wait for an answer. "I think it's good we came together." She giggled. He grimaced. "We should really join forces! With your fire and my power, we could make some real sparks!" She stopped. She turned. She put her hands on her hips and popped her gum. "Whatddaya think, Sparky?"
"I think . . . Shut the fuck up!" Cam said. Screw thinking.
"Uh-huh. By the way, there's a gas station right over there."
He hated it that she'd seen it before him. Being the keeper of The Cleaning Lady had always meant that Cam had petroleum radar. This little skank was messing with his petroleum radar. She had to be from Hell. He should quell her.
Fuck caution. It wasn't like he couldn't deal with any shit Doublemint could deal out, with or without his Lady. However, it would be hella sweet to let his real Lady devour this babysitter whole.
They went to the gas station. He went first. He didn't even look to see if she followed. She did though. Jesus fuckin' Christ this little bitch was like a dog yapping at his heels.
"What are your plans, Cam? Really, have you thought anything through at all?"
"I'm going to refuel the Lady," he said, as he began refuelling the Lady.
"And then?"
"I'm going to quell you."
"Hm. Could be fun. But how 'bout this? You come with me. I know Selig Retsuc's grand plan. We find him. We stop him from regaining access to the source of his power -- it may look tiny, but he knows how to use it, trust me. We save the fucking world."
Cam didn't even consider. Barbie here was full of shit. He closed the Lady, hefted her sweet, smooth curves lovingly in his calloused hands, and aimed for Barbie.
"Or, you could just torch me," she said. "If you think that's going to be new and fun for me, though, you've got another thing coming." She turned and began walking away, then tossed a look over her shoulder. "Your call, Sparky," she said, and continued going first.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
ZA Chapter 15: All Squidgy
Cam leveled The Cleaning Lady at the hotty in the skirt. What the hell was the postergirl from Playboy’s College Coeds doing walking zombietown? Well scratch all o’ that shit, anyway. That wasn’t the first question that jumped to mind. There was so much wrong with this goddamned scene that it made his ears hum. If Cam wasn’t hallucinating, that was the gum girl from the zombie school.
“Ya better fuckin’ answer my question, Doublemint!”
She raised her slender, tanned arms high over her head. “You didn’t ask a question.”
Cam’s lust for undead death was twitching something terrible. If she was a zombie, he was aching to kill her, aching so much that his arm hair vibrated and his muscles palpitated. If she wasn’t, he wanted to roll his eyes and walk away. But his kill switch was caught on toggle somewhere in-between.
Cam Sparks got a boner.
“I did so ask you a question!” he blurted, not liking the feeling. His zombie bacon should be itching, not-.
“Please repeat it,” she said, her voice far too calm for someone who was a half-second away from becoming a bubbling, greasy stain on the floor.
“You got a twin or something?” he yelled.
She cocked her head to the side. “What?”
“You’re the gum girl, aren’t you? From the school?”
“You rescued me,” she confirmed nicely for him.
“Fuckin’ right on,” he muttered, his switch clicking firmly into place. Whatever the hell she was, she wasn’t human. He thumbed on The Cleaning Lady and pulled the trigger.
She yelled, “Apatosaur of Colombe! Stop the spume!”
The Cleaning Lady sputtered and died.
Cam stared at her. He knew he should be intimately concerned with the fact that his beloved weapon had just run out of fuel, but…
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“Something about a dinosaur, I think. I don’t know. Ever since Lady M did her thing, these weird phrases just pop out. It worked, though, right?”
“I have to kill you,” Cam said, frowning and throwing down The Cleaning Lady. He pulled out his knife and strode toward her. “I’m pretty damned sure I do.”
She held her arms out in front of her and backed away. “You don’t sound sure-”
He jumped forward, knocking her to the ground and straddling her belly. He quickly pinned each of her arms under his knees and put the knife at her throat.
“Cam. Cam! CAM!” she said quickly.
He paused. “What?” His boner came back. Goddammit!
“I’m not a zombie,” she said in that soft voice.
The girl had a point. A zombie wouldn’t say "I'm not a zombie". A zombie would say “Rrrrggghrflrf.” Cam's switch clicked back to indecision. Fuck it all.
“What the hell are you then?” he asked.
“I’m Lucy Tisdale.”
“I remember your goddamned name. I asked what you are. Virgil said you fried.”
“I-”
“And how the hell did you get so clean?” he asked.
“I washed myself.”
“Well that don’t make no goddamned sense.”
She shrugged, and it felt good. Cam snarled.
“Do you kill people, Cam?”
“Zombies.”
“Am I a zombie?”
He growled. “No.”
“Would you mind letting me up, then?”
He stood up, frowned at her, then reluctantly held out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. He couldn’t help but look at her long legs and where they disappeared into that tight skirt. He looked away with a twitch of his head.
“You make me feel all squidgy,” he said. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Could be a normal feeling,” she said, winking.
“I think I hate you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It goes like that sometimes.” She ran a finger up his arm, the one with the zombie bacon.
A chair fell over behind Cam, and there was a groan that sounded a lot like “Rrrrggghrflrf.” He spun around to find a half-dozen zombies shuffling toward them. The Cleaning Lady was on the ground, too far away. And the bitch was out of gas, anyway.
“Damn,” Lucy Tisdale sighed with true regret. “I’m afraid that’s probably my fault.” She let her hand fall from his arm.
“You’re a weird bitch,” Cam said.
“You have no idea.”
Cam launched himself at the zombies, knife bared. It was sharp enough to slice clean through the neck of the first and the second. The third and fourth grabbed him, but he head-locked one and popped it’s fuckin’ skull right off. The other one bit him on the shoulder. Twisting, Cam threw it off the building. The last one shuffled toward Lucy Tisdale, who watched it with resigned distaste.
Cam grabbed a chunk of broken concrete, leapt up and brought it down on the zombie’s head. It exploded, and green-black gunk spewed everywhere, including one precise line across Lucy’s white blouse.
She didn’t seem to notice. “That was hot,” she said.
“Fuck you,” he said.
"Yeah," she said, smiling. "Something like that."
“Ya better fuckin’ answer my question, Doublemint!”
She raised her slender, tanned arms high over her head. “You didn’t ask a question.”
Cam’s lust for undead death was twitching something terrible. If she was a zombie, he was aching to kill her, aching so much that his arm hair vibrated and his muscles palpitated. If she wasn’t, he wanted to roll his eyes and walk away. But his kill switch was caught on toggle somewhere in-between.
Cam Sparks got a boner.
“I did so ask you a question!” he blurted, not liking the feeling. His zombie bacon should be itching, not-.
“Please repeat it,” she said, her voice far too calm for someone who was a half-second away from becoming a bubbling, greasy stain on the floor.
“You got a twin or something?” he yelled.
She cocked her head to the side. “What?”
“You’re the gum girl, aren’t you? From the school?”
“You rescued me,” she confirmed nicely for him.
“Fuckin’ right on,” he muttered, his switch clicking firmly into place. Whatever the hell she was, she wasn’t human. He thumbed on The Cleaning Lady and pulled the trigger.
She yelled, “Apatosaur of Colombe! Stop the spume!”
The Cleaning Lady sputtered and died.
Cam stared at her. He knew he should be intimately concerned with the fact that his beloved weapon had just run out of fuel, but…
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“Something about a dinosaur, I think. I don’t know. Ever since Lady M did her thing, these weird phrases just pop out. It worked, though, right?”
“I have to kill you,” Cam said, frowning and throwing down The Cleaning Lady. He pulled out his knife and strode toward her. “I’m pretty damned sure I do.”
She held her arms out in front of her and backed away. “You don’t sound sure-”
He jumped forward, knocking her to the ground and straddling her belly. He quickly pinned each of her arms under his knees and put the knife at her throat.
“Cam. Cam! CAM!” she said quickly.
He paused. “What?” His boner came back. Goddammit!
“I’m not a zombie,” she said in that soft voice.
The girl had a point. A zombie wouldn’t say "I'm not a zombie". A zombie would say “Rrrrggghrflrf.” Cam's switch clicked back to indecision. Fuck it all.
“What the hell are you then?” he asked.
“I’m Lucy Tisdale.”
“I remember your goddamned name. I asked what you are. Virgil said you fried.”
“I-”
“And how the hell did you get so clean?” he asked.
“I washed myself.”
“Well that don’t make no goddamned sense.”
She shrugged, and it felt good. Cam snarled.
“Do you kill people, Cam?”
“Zombies.”
“Am I a zombie?”
He growled. “No.”
“Would you mind letting me up, then?”
He stood up, frowned at her, then reluctantly held out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. He couldn’t help but look at her long legs and where they disappeared into that tight skirt. He looked away with a twitch of his head.
“You make me feel all squidgy,” he said. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Could be a normal feeling,” she said, winking.
“I think I hate you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It goes like that sometimes.” She ran a finger up his arm, the one with the zombie bacon.
A chair fell over behind Cam, and there was a groan that sounded a lot like “Rrrrggghrflrf.” He spun around to find a half-dozen zombies shuffling toward them. The Cleaning Lady was on the ground, too far away. And the bitch was out of gas, anyway.
“Damn,” Lucy Tisdale sighed with true regret. “I’m afraid that’s probably my fault.” She let her hand fall from his arm.
“You’re a weird bitch,” Cam said.
“You have no idea.”
Cam launched himself at the zombies, knife bared. It was sharp enough to slice clean through the neck of the first and the second. The third and fourth grabbed him, but he head-locked one and popped it’s fuckin’ skull right off. The other one bit him on the shoulder. Twisting, Cam threw it off the building. The last one shuffled toward Lucy Tisdale, who watched it with resigned distaste.
Cam grabbed a chunk of broken concrete, leapt up and brought it down on the zombie’s head. It exploded, and green-black gunk spewed everywhere, including one precise line across Lucy’s white blouse.
She didn’t seem to notice. “That was hot,” she said.
“Fuck you,” he said.
"Yeah," she said, smiling. "Something like that."
ZA - Chapter 14 - Lucy - Into the Lion's Den
I stared at the zombie slowly dragging himself toward me down the deserted main street of the city. It used to be Denver. Now it was a graveyard. The cold wind blew against my naked skin, but I ignored it.
Like, seriously, I had the legacies of the fucking ancients on my side, really, what was this slimeball going to do? Ooze on me? Whatever. I stood in the center of the street, still naked, watching his dead-pace swagger. I wished he would just hurry the hell up already and try to consume me. I needed to get into the department store on my left.
“Tick tock, tick tock, Lurch,” I called. “I can wait all night.”
Maybe I should just go get him.
Nah. I could wait. I picked grime out from under my nails until he got close.
"Oh, good, you're here." I said. Slime oozed out of the thing's mouth. "Ready to go?" I said. Then, calling on Lord Beckhamilroy, ancient master of ball-related sports, I hooked my fingers in the zombie’s eye and nose sockets like a bowling ball and ripped his head off his shoulders. So much for getting the grime out of my nails. I hurled the mess through the big Macy’s display window, the hair flying like moldy, sick spaghetti. Ew. The arms were still grabbing for me. “Oh, no,” I said. “I am not even trying to hear that shit,” I said. “She-Ra, ancient lady of power!” I called and ripped both his arms off. He fell on me, trying against all odds to somehow coax my firm, vibrant, taut, naked flesh that Virgil would now never touch, down his exposed esophagus.
“Sorry, Lurch,” I said, stepping out of the way. He fell over, peddling his feet in the street. “Loser,” I said, making the “L” symbol with my thumb and finger on my forehead. Then I stepped through the broken window of the department store, calling on The Nine Gatekeepers of the West to protect my bare feet from the glass. I didn’t even feel a thing.
Kudos to Lady Miraculous, this legacies of the ancients thing was turning out to be pretty freakin awesome.
It was also giving me some insights into my erstwhile "Mother". She was being real loud about how much she missed me. Yeah. Snort. As if. There was someone else with her, but I couldn't get a line on this one. Whatever, they didn't matter. If they were with "Mom" they had to be bad news.
I made my way to the juniors department and picked out something like the uniform I used to wear. A short skirt, knee high socks. I paused before grabbing a white button-up blouse. That would be hard to keep clean. But oh well. Maybe the ancients could help me with that, too.
The ancients rock.
I finished it off with some oh-so-innocent mary janes, then took myself to the beauty department. Time to really get this grime off my nails. And brush my hair. Gah, that took forever, I don't even want to talk about it, I almost just chopped the rat's nest off.
But no. Selig liked it long.
Too bad Macy's didn't have any gum.
After I was pretty like a fairy princess on Sunday, I sat down in the shoe department and centered. "Verizonella! Mistress of the Call! Bring my quarry to me! Let his army bear me on their shoulders to his side!"
Then I just waited.
I didn't have to wait long. In about a half hour, I heard them.
I wasn't too impressed, there were only, like ten of them. Looked like Verizonella didn't have such a great network. But I guessed it would do. These didn't try to eat me. Instead, they clumped around me so that I couldn't get out -- not that they could have stopped me, if I'd really wanted to. But I didn't. I let myself be carried with them like the nucleus of an atom, knowing they'd take me to Selig Retsuc. I hadn't been able to find the source of his power. It was too small, and had somehow gone really, really missing. So the minions would have to take me there.
I was sure we were on the way. They were holding course at a steady, lurching pace, but then, they got a little antsy and changed direction. "What?" I said. "No, where are you going? He can't be that way! What the fuck would Selig be doing in the freakin' Ace in the Hole Motel?" Yeah, right, look at me -- legacies of the ancients and all that; still trying to TALK to zombies. Duh.
Then it hit me. They probably smelled blood. Blood meant someone alive. Someone alive meant . . . well, I wasn't sure what it meant, but during a big goddamn zombie apocalypse, it basically holds true that the living kinda want to stick together. I let them take me along for the ride.
They scaled the side of the building, not bothering with the door. Zombies aren't really planners. They take the most direct route. I climbed with them. The old, crumbling bricks were easy to get a grip on. I wasn't afraid of falling, I had Lord Pandelta on my side. At about the sixth floor, the zombies began trying to shove their way through a window. I heard the person inside yelling, "C'mon you big damn undead bastards! Wooo-hooo!!!"
Right on.
Tongues of fire leapt out of the open window, sending charred zombie falling past me. Great. Now I'd need another entourage. Oh well, dead zombies are never a bad thing.
I clung to the side of the wall, waiting for the zombies to all go in to face the flame thrower. "Meet the Cleaning Lady you fucks!" the person was screaming.
Hey . . . did I know that guy?
After the fire stopped, I put my hands on the sill myself.
"Oh, a straggler, huh, come on, bitch, bring it! Whoo-HOOOOO!!! YEAH!!!! I LOVE this zombie fucking shit!"
"Stop!" I said, as I somersaulted through the window to crouch on the floor. "I'm alive! Stop!"
"What the fuck . . . ?"
I got to my feet and dusted myself off, looking prim. "Don't roast me, okay?"
Cam stood there like a slack-jawed fire-breathing viking. Then understanding dawned in his face -- actually it was more like understanding kicked him in the head and flicked a "go crazy" switch in his mind.
"Holy fucking shit, you ARE one of 'em!"
Like, seriously, I had the legacies of the fucking ancients on my side, really, what was this slimeball going to do? Ooze on me? Whatever. I stood in the center of the street, still naked, watching his dead-pace swagger. I wished he would just hurry the hell up already and try to consume me. I needed to get into the department store on my left.
“Tick tock, tick tock, Lurch,” I called. “I can wait all night.”
Maybe I should just go get him.
Nah. I could wait. I picked grime out from under my nails until he got close.
"Oh, good, you're here." I said. Slime oozed out of the thing's mouth. "Ready to go?" I said. Then, calling on Lord Beckhamilroy, ancient master of ball-related sports, I hooked my fingers in the zombie’s eye and nose sockets like a bowling ball and ripped his head off his shoulders. So much for getting the grime out of my nails. I hurled the mess through the big Macy’s display window, the hair flying like moldy, sick spaghetti. Ew. The arms were still grabbing for me. “Oh, no,” I said. “I am not even trying to hear that shit,” I said. “She-Ra, ancient lady of power!” I called and ripped both his arms off. He fell on me, trying against all odds to somehow coax my firm, vibrant, taut, naked flesh that Virgil would now never touch, down his exposed esophagus.
“Sorry, Lurch,” I said, stepping out of the way. He fell over, peddling his feet in the street. “Loser,” I said, making the “L” symbol with my thumb and finger on my forehead. Then I stepped through the broken window of the department store, calling on The Nine Gatekeepers of the West to protect my bare feet from the glass. I didn’t even feel a thing.
Kudos to Lady Miraculous, this legacies of the ancients thing was turning out to be pretty freakin awesome.
It was also giving me some insights into my erstwhile "Mother". She was being real loud about how much she missed me. Yeah. Snort. As if. There was someone else with her, but I couldn't get a line on this one. Whatever, they didn't matter. If they were with "Mom" they had to be bad news.
I made my way to the juniors department and picked out something like the uniform I used to wear. A short skirt, knee high socks. I paused before grabbing a white button-up blouse. That would be hard to keep clean. But oh well. Maybe the ancients could help me with that, too.
The ancients rock.
I finished it off with some oh-so-innocent mary janes, then took myself to the beauty department. Time to really get this grime off my nails. And brush my hair. Gah, that took forever, I don't even want to talk about it, I almost just chopped the rat's nest off.
But no. Selig liked it long.
Too bad Macy's didn't have any gum.
After I was pretty like a fairy princess on Sunday, I sat down in the shoe department and centered. "Verizonella! Mistress of the Call! Bring my quarry to me! Let his army bear me on their shoulders to his side!"
Then I just waited.
I didn't have to wait long. In about a half hour, I heard them.
I wasn't too impressed, there were only, like ten of them. Looked like Verizonella didn't have such a great network. But I guessed it would do. These didn't try to eat me. Instead, they clumped around me so that I couldn't get out -- not that they could have stopped me, if I'd really wanted to. But I didn't. I let myself be carried with them like the nucleus of an atom, knowing they'd take me to Selig Retsuc. I hadn't been able to find the source of his power. It was too small, and had somehow gone really, really missing. So the minions would have to take me there.
I was sure we were on the way. They were holding course at a steady, lurching pace, but then, they got a little antsy and changed direction. "What?" I said. "No, where are you going? He can't be that way! What the fuck would Selig be doing in the freakin' Ace in the Hole Motel?" Yeah, right, look at me -- legacies of the ancients and all that; still trying to TALK to zombies. Duh.
Then it hit me. They probably smelled blood. Blood meant someone alive. Someone alive meant . . . well, I wasn't sure what it meant, but during a big goddamn zombie apocalypse, it basically holds true that the living kinda want to stick together. I let them take me along for the ride.
They scaled the side of the building, not bothering with the door. Zombies aren't really planners. They take the most direct route. I climbed with them. The old, crumbling bricks were easy to get a grip on. I wasn't afraid of falling, I had Lord Pandelta on my side. At about the sixth floor, the zombies began trying to shove their way through a window. I heard the person inside yelling, "C'mon you big damn undead bastards! Wooo-hooo!!!"
Right on.
Tongues of fire leapt out of the open window, sending charred zombie falling past me. Great. Now I'd need another entourage. Oh well, dead zombies are never a bad thing.
I clung to the side of the wall, waiting for the zombies to all go in to face the flame thrower. "Meet the Cleaning Lady you fucks!" the person was screaming.
Hey . . . did I know that guy?
After the fire stopped, I put my hands on the sill myself.
"Oh, a straggler, huh, come on, bitch, bring it! Whoo-HOOOOO!!! YEAH!!!! I LOVE this zombie fucking shit!"
"Stop!" I said, as I somersaulted through the window to crouch on the floor. "I'm alive! Stop!"
"What the fuck . . . ?"
I got to my feet and dusted myself off, looking prim. "Don't roast me, okay?"
Cam stood there like a slack-jawed fire-breathing viking. Then understanding dawned in his face -- actually it was more like understanding kicked him in the head and flicked a "go crazy" switch in his mind.
"Holy fucking shit, you ARE one of 'em!"
Monday, February 16, 2009
ZA13--Let me explain...
It was while eating one of Meg Tisdale's fresh, hot caramel chip devil's food cookies and listening to that annoying song by the Killers "Are we human or are we dancers?"--an hour after Meg lost her daughter and yet seemed to stage a near complete recovery within seconds--50 minutes after Meg took Virgil to her special cookie-making hideout (yes, she had an impenetrable bunker built entirely for the purpose of making cookies--and listening to old Top 40 tunes from The Time Before)--40 minutes after Meg "stepped out" of the bunker to run back for "something" she "forgot"--25 minutes after Virgil tracked Meg to the house she'd once shared with her daughter Lucy and watched as Meg took something small but impossibly disgusting-looking from her burned daughter's charred crotch and handed it to another girl, a girl who looked vaguely like the kind of Australian who's been raised by dingoes but also kind of like a Tisdale only with frizzier hair and a smell of peppermint--10 minutes after Virgil returned to the cookie bunker, running as fast as his tired legs could carry him to get ahead of Meg, who'd laughed maniacally after handing off the short, tiny, (and did I mention "small") cylindrical package--5 minutes after Meg returned and 30 seconds after first sinking his teeth into the still-steaming caramel/chocolate gooey awesomeness that was a Meg Tisdale Original--that Virgil found God. Again.
In The Time Before, Virgil had been a minister-in-training, an aspirant to a faith that would soon be swept from the face of the earth by the broom of pandemic zombification. In that time he had believed, at the very core of his being, that God was a force of love in the universe--not an omnipotent overseer as some faiths would have it, but a shared interior spark of common good, binding all together and bending the long moral arc of humanity toward justice. When people started eating each other, this became harder to believe. Thus, for the many months that had dragged into years as the zombie wars raged on, Virgil had grown less and less convinced of that meek but omnipresent grace he called God--that still small voice.
And yet, as he bit into the cookie, enjoying its rich notes of chocolate, caramel, and blind, bewildered terror, he heard the voice again. It spoke two words, a cosmic whisper in the uncharted neuron galaxy of his left temporal lobe: arrogance, yummy. While the last word probably had more to do with the cookie than anything else, the first cut to the root of Virgil's being like a steel blade flashing the smile of his dear friend Cam.
Arrogance. For months now, Virgil had held his arrogance like a shield against those he both longed to embrace yet had to keep away, friends who encouraged in him something he could not bear in a world gone zombie. Faith. His friends, rough-and-tumble (and-then-scorch-twice-over-for-good-measure) Cam, bake-and-plot-Meg, seduce-and-distance Lady M, even whacked out Lucy Tisdale (maybe especially whacked out Lucy Tisdale)--they all called forth in him an unwilling recognition of divinity he longed to ignore. They were proof--cranky and bitter, but throbbing with life nonetheless--that beauty and truth, love and kindness, nobility and goodness could still survive in the long dark winter of a zombie apocalypse. They bore in them the wounded but inconquerable essence of God.
After finishing his cookie (and another, for good measure), Virgil set out on a mission. He would perform an act of common humanity long neglected in these unfortunate times. He would bury Lucy Tisdale. After thanking Meg (careful not to show his hand since he was now well aware that she was neck-deep in secret plots and dingo-raised Australian daughters bearing strange, comically-miniscule cylindrical packages taken from charcoaled hoochies) Virgil took his leave. He then sprinted to the old Tisdale house, lifted up Lucy's body and set out for the Plains--an empty wasteland Virgil had long sensed bore the promise of some form of resurrection--perhaps a resurrection of the human spirit, or maybe a resurrection of hope--it was fuzzy to his inner eye, but it definitely seemed resurrectiony whatever it was.
By the time he found a proper spot, the sun was on its way down. Zombie time. Virgil dug hurriedly, wishing he had more than just a spoon and those darn mantis arms of his to work with. After making a hole of about two feet by two feet, Virgil looked up and wondered if this whole burial thing really needed to be that formal. Maybe Virgil could just fold Lucy up, stuff her in the hole, put some dirt on top, and then say a prayer. The prayer was what mattered, right? Unfortunately, in looking up at Lucy's body, Virgil saw beyond it zombies, shuffling, mewling zombies lumbering toward him in the near distance.
Virgil stood. There weren't just a handful. There was an army. Not just an army. Legions. Selig Retsuc had sent his hordes. What could be so important? Surely not Virgil. Selig had had plenty of opportunities to kill Virgil and would have plenty more. No need to send this many to accomplish that simple end. Was it the girl? Was there something about her that Selig wanted? Something in her? Perhaps he had fallen for Lucy and wanted to make her his zombie queen. Suddenly, Virgil remembered one sultry afternoon with Lady M. She had been running her finger along his bare back, sighing over his Keanu-Reeves-like features (because, if you didn't know this already and you were perhaps interested in casting the movie-version of Zombie Apocalypse, and were a big-time Hollywood director, (because really, who has the time these days for B-Listers, this project is big) Virgil looked a lot like Keanu Reeves (only smarter))--anyway--Lady M was sighing over Virgil, telling him that even if she ever got mad at Virgil she would never be able to stay mad at Virgil when suddenly her eyes rolled back in her head, she shuddered epileptically and her voice dropped three registers. "I see," Lady M had said, "the One. A broken girl, pierced by an awful (if a bit shrimp-like) power, who must be shattered before she can be healed. She will turn the air into light and the light into hope for us all. She is the One." And then Lady M had spasmed twice and snapped out of it. And then they made love, because that's what people did when they weren't killing zombies. And because, even if she didn't want to admit it, Lady M totally had a thing for Virgil.
"Could Lucy be The One?" Virgil asked, speaking to no one in particular unless you counted the slavering legions of undead mutants jerking spastically toward him across the Plains. "But that would mean...that would mean, I let her die! It's my fault!" Virgil then spent a while feeling really bad in a way that was both meaningful and moving, but also strong and masculine, and handsome--but not arrogant. It was definitely not arrogant, since--as should be obvious to all you mouth-breathers, nose-pickers, and knuckle-draggers reading this entry, Virgil is NOT arrogant anymore.
After this very moving scene in which all of you gained an endless amount of sympathy for Virgil, Virgil looked back up at the hordes, who even though they'd been advancing at a threatening pace, had still not arrived and wondered how and indeed if he would survive. If he were Cam, there were even odds Virgil could have just lit up a stogie, slapped on a hero's smile and smashed his way through the legions by brute force. If he were Lady M, he could have simply gathered a monkey on either arm, snapped his fingers and disappeared. Meg, meanwhile, could have baked her way out of it, and Lucy--bless her departed soul--could have cussed her way through. Virgil, however, didn't think he could use his special talent. While sure, if he'd started talking, he would have bored at least the first wave to death, but eventually the horrible moans of the dying would have drowned out Virgil's voice and the next wave would soon enough be dining on his larynx. No, what Virgil needed was a miracle.
He waited.
No miracle. Just zombies. Goddamn, fucking zombies.
But wait, a voice--a still, small voice rose from the depths of Virgil's cortex. Maybe it would carry with it some profound truth, some secret wisdom to elevate Virgil above his circumstance, free him from his plight. He listened, even as he smelled the foul, rotting stench of the first zombies closing upon him. It was... it was... For Christ's sake, it wasn't truth, it was that frackin' pop song, that song which in 2009 made Virgil wonder if the entire radio-listening public weren't all brainless zombies. "Are we human or are we dancers?" I mean, seriously, how stupid were people back then that lyrics so profoundly moronic could perpetrate themselves not on a single listener but on an entire nation?
Of course...the song did have a good beat. He found his shoulder twitching, and then his right big toe, and then his left leg. What was this? Virgil, faced with the end of his being, with the prospect of being eaten alive by a thousand thousand foul-breathed, slime-toothed zombies, wanted to dance? Hmm. What the hey? He started dancing, dancing and singing in his high-pitched, nasal, stepped-on-baby-bird whine of a voice..."Are we human, or are we dancers?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold, and I'm on my knees looking for the answer, are we human or are we dancers?"
Little did Virgil know, but the precise pitch of his unfortunate voice was at the same precise pitch Selig Rutsec had programmed the zombie hordes to receive his commands, such that as he sang, they too began to dance. Now, if you've seen a zombie walk, you can probably imagine how badly they dance--such that as they danced they bumped into each other, turning the Plains into a giant zombie mosh pit. Strike that. A giant Bombie mosh pit. And...well...you can probably guess what happened next.
In The Time Before, Virgil had been a minister-in-training, an aspirant to a faith that would soon be swept from the face of the earth by the broom of pandemic zombification. In that time he had believed, at the very core of his being, that God was a force of love in the universe--not an omnipotent overseer as some faiths would have it, but a shared interior spark of common good, binding all together and bending the long moral arc of humanity toward justice. When people started eating each other, this became harder to believe. Thus, for the many months that had dragged into years as the zombie wars raged on, Virgil had grown less and less convinced of that meek but omnipresent grace he called God--that still small voice.
And yet, as he bit into the cookie, enjoying its rich notes of chocolate, caramel, and blind, bewildered terror, he heard the voice again. It spoke two words, a cosmic whisper in the uncharted neuron galaxy of his left temporal lobe: arrogance, yummy. While the last word probably had more to do with the cookie than anything else, the first cut to the root of Virgil's being like a steel blade flashing the smile of his dear friend Cam.
Arrogance. For months now, Virgil had held his arrogance like a shield against those he both longed to embrace yet had to keep away, friends who encouraged in him something he could not bear in a world gone zombie. Faith. His friends, rough-and-tumble (and-then-scorch-twice-over-for-good-measure) Cam, bake-and-plot-Meg, seduce-and-distance Lady M, even whacked out Lucy Tisdale (maybe especially whacked out Lucy Tisdale)--they all called forth in him an unwilling recognition of divinity he longed to ignore. They were proof--cranky and bitter, but throbbing with life nonetheless--that beauty and truth, love and kindness, nobility and goodness could still survive in the long dark winter of a zombie apocalypse. They bore in them the wounded but inconquerable essence of God.
After finishing his cookie (and another, for good measure), Virgil set out on a mission. He would perform an act of common humanity long neglected in these unfortunate times. He would bury Lucy Tisdale. After thanking Meg (careful not to show his hand since he was now well aware that she was neck-deep in secret plots and dingo-raised Australian daughters bearing strange, comically-miniscule cylindrical packages taken from charcoaled hoochies) Virgil took his leave. He then sprinted to the old Tisdale house, lifted up Lucy's body and set out for the Plains--an empty wasteland Virgil had long sensed bore the promise of some form of resurrection--perhaps a resurrection of the human spirit, or maybe a resurrection of hope--it was fuzzy to his inner eye, but it definitely seemed resurrectiony whatever it was.
By the time he found a proper spot, the sun was on its way down. Zombie time. Virgil dug hurriedly, wishing he had more than just a spoon and those darn mantis arms of his to work with. After making a hole of about two feet by two feet, Virgil looked up and wondered if this whole burial thing really needed to be that formal. Maybe Virgil could just fold Lucy up, stuff her in the hole, put some dirt on top, and then say a prayer. The prayer was what mattered, right? Unfortunately, in looking up at Lucy's body, Virgil saw beyond it zombies, shuffling, mewling zombies lumbering toward him in the near distance.
Virgil stood. There weren't just a handful. There was an army. Not just an army. Legions. Selig Retsuc had sent his hordes. What could be so important? Surely not Virgil. Selig had had plenty of opportunities to kill Virgil and would have plenty more. No need to send this many to accomplish that simple end. Was it the girl? Was there something about her that Selig wanted? Something in her? Perhaps he had fallen for Lucy and wanted to make her his zombie queen. Suddenly, Virgil remembered one sultry afternoon with Lady M. She had been running her finger along his bare back, sighing over his Keanu-Reeves-like features (because, if you didn't know this already and you were perhaps interested in casting the movie-version of Zombie Apocalypse, and were a big-time Hollywood director, (because really, who has the time these days for B-Listers, this project is big) Virgil looked a lot like Keanu Reeves (only smarter))--anyway--Lady M was sighing over Virgil, telling him that even if she ever got mad at Virgil she would never be able to stay mad at Virgil when suddenly her eyes rolled back in her head, she shuddered epileptically and her voice dropped three registers. "I see," Lady M had said, "the One. A broken girl, pierced by an awful (if a bit shrimp-like) power, who must be shattered before she can be healed. She will turn the air into light and the light into hope for us all. She is the One." And then Lady M had spasmed twice and snapped out of it. And then they made love, because that's what people did when they weren't killing zombies. And because, even if she didn't want to admit it, Lady M totally had a thing for Virgil.
"Could Lucy be The One?" Virgil asked, speaking to no one in particular unless you counted the slavering legions of undead mutants jerking spastically toward him across the Plains. "But that would mean...that would mean, I let her die! It's my fault!" Virgil then spent a while feeling really bad in a way that was both meaningful and moving, but also strong and masculine, and handsome--but not arrogant. It was definitely not arrogant, since--as should be obvious to all you mouth-breathers, nose-pickers, and knuckle-draggers reading this entry, Virgil is NOT arrogant anymore.
After this very moving scene in which all of you gained an endless amount of sympathy for Virgil, Virgil looked back up at the hordes, who even though they'd been advancing at a threatening pace, had still not arrived and wondered how and indeed if he would survive. If he were Cam, there were even odds Virgil could have just lit up a stogie, slapped on a hero's smile and smashed his way through the legions by brute force. If he were Lady M, he could have simply gathered a monkey on either arm, snapped his fingers and disappeared. Meg, meanwhile, could have baked her way out of it, and Lucy--bless her departed soul--could have cussed her way through. Virgil, however, didn't think he could use his special talent. While sure, if he'd started talking, he would have bored at least the first wave to death, but eventually the horrible moans of the dying would have drowned out Virgil's voice and the next wave would soon enough be dining on his larynx. No, what Virgil needed was a miracle.
He waited.
No miracle. Just zombies. Goddamn, fucking zombies.
But wait, a voice--a still, small voice rose from the depths of Virgil's cortex. Maybe it would carry with it some profound truth, some secret wisdom to elevate Virgil above his circumstance, free him from his plight. He listened, even as he smelled the foul, rotting stench of the first zombies closing upon him. It was... it was... For Christ's sake, it wasn't truth, it was that frackin' pop song, that song which in 2009 made Virgil wonder if the entire radio-listening public weren't all brainless zombies. "Are we human or are we dancers?" I mean, seriously, how stupid were people back then that lyrics so profoundly moronic could perpetrate themselves not on a single listener but on an entire nation?
Of course...the song did have a good beat. He found his shoulder twitching, and then his right big toe, and then his left leg. What was this? Virgil, faced with the end of his being, with the prospect of being eaten alive by a thousand thousand foul-breathed, slime-toothed zombies, wanted to dance? Hmm. What the hey? He started dancing, dancing and singing in his high-pitched, nasal, stepped-on-baby-bird whine of a voice..."Are we human, or are we dancers?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold, and I'm on my knees looking for the answer, are we human or are we dancers?"
Little did Virgil know, but the precise pitch of his unfortunate voice was at the same precise pitch Selig Rutsec had programmed the zombie hordes to receive his commands, such that as he sang, they too began to dance. Now, if you've seen a zombie walk, you can probably imagine how badly they dance--such that as they danced they bumped into each other, turning the Plains into a giant zombie mosh pit. Strike that. A giant Bombie mosh pit. And...well...you can probably guess what happened next.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
ZA Chapter 12: Zombie Bacon
Cam Sparks finished shaving in the cracked mirror and washed the gleaming edge of his combat knife. He checked his teeth in it, not because he cared at all about his dental hygiene, but because he liked to see himself grinning along the edge of a knife.
Spinning the blade, he shoved it into its sheath like he was stabbing a zombie. V said he was going to impale his leg someday, but V was a thinker. Cam couldn’t hurt himself. That would be silly. His body knew what to do and he didn’t let little things like thinking get in the way of that. Cam only had one thought: See zombie. Kill zombie.
Or was that two thoughts?
He frowned and moved away from the mirror. Falling onto the bed, he slouched against the wall and looked up at the single window above him. It was shattered, of course, from the first zombies that fuckin’ broke in and got fried. He’d kicked out the rest of it and shoved another window into the sill, one he’d gotten from a Home Depot demo, but it didn’t fit very well. Every time the wind blew it sounded like that creepy M lady sucking in a breath through her teeth.
On either side of the window was a thick, sharpened steel sheet. Inset on greased runners, the sheets were held in place by a thin latch that, if pulled, would cause them to slam shut like the legs of a female power-lifter.
Cam grinned at it. He’d built it himself, and it made him happy. Of course, he didn’t have any illusions about his own safety. The zombies would get in. The zombies always got in. But it sure would be a gas to watch the first head pop off like a beach ball.
Cam shrugged his shoulder, raking it against the blackened concrete wall. The itch was back, and he hated it. He’d have to go soon, find some zombies, and torch them. And hey, he thought with a small kindle of excitement, maybe he’d stop by Meg’s house. She always had cookies, and Cam liked cookies almost as much as he liked The Cleaning Lady.
But first things first. He stripped off his olive green T-shirt, exposing the bandage that covered his upper arm from from collarbone to the top of his bicep. The bandage wasn’t white anymore. It had darkened to a greenish black. Pulling his knife from its sheath, he cut that shit away to reveal the mottled black crust of his skin.
Cam grabbed the metal garbage can from the floor and set it on the bed next to him. With meticulous care, he shaved off the layers of black rot. It was like scraping the scum off the bottom of a pan after frying chicken, and he made sure that every crispy flake went into the trash can. At first, there was no blood. As he got deeper, that black-green shit oozed out, but he kept at it, carving one thin strip at a time until the blood ran red onto his blade. That was the trick, the blood. The fuckin’ thing had only been the size of a quarter when he’d first noticed it. But it had stopped growing when he cut down far enough to bleed real blood.
With a grunt, he levered himself to his feet, went to the sink, washed and dressed the wound again. He pulled his shirt on, sat back on the bed and set the trash can on the ground at his feet. The blackened curls of flesh twisted like the little undead worms they were. Cam pulled a bottle of Everclear from the charred dresser poured some into the trash can, then took a swig himself.
He took his lighter, Delilah, from his cargo pants, clicked open the cap and flicked the flame on. He took another swig of everclear.
“Die, zombie bacon.”
He spit a thin stream of Everclear at the trashcan. It turned into flame as it passed over Delilah and engulfed the squirming skin. Cam stared at it unblinkingly as it burned. After a time, he shook his head. He was definitely too pensive today.
It’s like I’m goddamned Virgil all-of-a-sudden, he thought.
Jumping to his feet, he threw on his utility vest and shouldered The Cleaning Lady. He was hungry. He needed him some cookies. Yeah, and then some Zombie BBQ. That's the ticket.
He left his cell and went looking for Meg.
Spinning the blade, he shoved it into its sheath like he was stabbing a zombie. V said he was going to impale his leg someday, but V was a thinker. Cam couldn’t hurt himself. That would be silly. His body knew what to do and he didn’t let little things like thinking get in the way of that. Cam only had one thought: See zombie. Kill zombie.
Or was that two thoughts?
He frowned and moved away from the mirror. Falling onto the bed, he slouched against the wall and looked up at the single window above him. It was shattered, of course, from the first zombies that fuckin’ broke in and got fried. He’d kicked out the rest of it and shoved another window into the sill, one he’d gotten from a Home Depot demo, but it didn’t fit very well. Every time the wind blew it sounded like that creepy M lady sucking in a breath through her teeth.
On either side of the window was a thick, sharpened steel sheet. Inset on greased runners, the sheets were held in place by a thin latch that, if pulled, would cause them to slam shut like the legs of a female power-lifter.
Cam grinned at it. He’d built it himself, and it made him happy. Of course, he didn’t have any illusions about his own safety. The zombies would get in. The zombies always got in. But it sure would be a gas to watch the first head pop off like a beach ball.
Cam shrugged his shoulder, raking it against the blackened concrete wall. The itch was back, and he hated it. He’d have to go soon, find some zombies, and torch them. And hey, he thought with a small kindle of excitement, maybe he’d stop by Meg’s house. She always had cookies, and Cam liked cookies almost as much as he liked The Cleaning Lady.
But first things first. He stripped off his olive green T-shirt, exposing the bandage that covered his upper arm from from collarbone to the top of his bicep. The bandage wasn’t white anymore. It had darkened to a greenish black. Pulling his knife from its sheath, he cut that shit away to reveal the mottled black crust of his skin.
Cam grabbed the metal garbage can from the floor and set it on the bed next to him. With meticulous care, he shaved off the layers of black rot. It was like scraping the scum off the bottom of a pan after frying chicken, and he made sure that every crispy flake went into the trash can. At first, there was no blood. As he got deeper, that black-green shit oozed out, but he kept at it, carving one thin strip at a time until the blood ran red onto his blade. That was the trick, the blood. The fuckin’ thing had only been the size of a quarter when he’d first noticed it. But it had stopped growing when he cut down far enough to bleed real blood.
With a grunt, he levered himself to his feet, went to the sink, washed and dressed the wound again. He pulled his shirt on, sat back on the bed and set the trash can on the ground at his feet. The blackened curls of flesh twisted like the little undead worms they were. Cam pulled a bottle of Everclear from the charred dresser poured some into the trash can, then took a swig himself.
He took his lighter, Delilah, from his cargo pants, clicked open the cap and flicked the flame on. He took another swig of everclear.
“Die, zombie bacon.”
He spit a thin stream of Everclear at the trashcan. It turned into flame as it passed over Delilah and engulfed the squirming skin. Cam stared at it unblinkingly as it burned. After a time, he shook his head. He was definitely too pensive today.
It’s like I’m goddamned Virgil all-of-a-sudden, he thought.
Jumping to his feet, he threw on his utility vest and shouldered The Cleaning Lady. He was hungry. He needed him some cookies. Yeah, and then some Zombie BBQ. That's the ticket.
He left his cell and went looking for Meg.
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