30th January 2007, 6:48 AM
Hey guys, just putting this up here if any one wants to take a cursory glimpse at it. Its a comparatively short humor piece I wrote 2 years ago, but only just finished refining yesterday. It'd be much, much more readible if 'twere in a downloadable Word file, but I'm too fallible and only human to upload it anywhere.
Also, some of my art work is to be found on my myspace pictures, at
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fus...id=7710900
A Zombie Story
By B. A. Carr, Esq.
You don’t know me, but my name is Ben, and over the past few days I have gone through situations the likes of which the human mind can only peripherally comprehend. Yea, that’s right, peripherally. But, like I was saying, I used to just be another normal guy... working, paying my taxes… just another gear in the capitalist machinery that drives our economy. But that was before. Before the… well, you’ll see.
Like I was saying, I had just been another average Joe.
Only my name wasn’t so much Joe as it much as it was Ben.
But who ever heard of someone just being an “average Ben”? Thus, I shall presently assume the false identity of Joe, if only for the sake of this idiomatic expression. Only you, the reader, and I will know this secret.
But there I go off again, on another tangent. Ugh, writing this narration will be so much effort---but I shall endeavor.
It was mid March when the troubles began… I remember it so well! My memories still lie fresh within my mind, not unlike newly trodden footsteps over a particularly snowy world. Speaking of snow, it’d been snowing a lot that month---most recently, all of Friday morning. Some 6” had amassed, and the world had just been freshly blanketed in a layer of crispy coldness. Yes, sheer miles of unbroken arctic tundra encompassed my house----when the zombies came…
It was 9:20pm by the little clock on my computer, which for the story’s sake we shall assume was accurate. If it weren’t, I’d never have known any better, and it could not affect my anecdote in the least… but that’s another story.
Any-who, I’d just come home from my job up at the precinct. Yea, that’s right---the precinct. I’m a cop. Got a problem with it? Well bugger off! What do I care that you hate cops. I hate them too.
Assuming that you’re still here--yes sir, I was the newest cop to hit the mean streets of Middleborough, Massachusetts. The ‘ol 02346. Cranberry capital of the world—and former shoe capital, for those chaussure enthusiasts of you out there. A nice, quiet town; and being a police officer, I was large and in charge… yet barely six months had passed since I’d first donned my black tunic and revolver.
But I digress…if I’m using that word right.
I’d just gotten home on that Friday evening, after a twelve-hour shift of keeping my hometown safe and boring.
Okay—I’ll admit that I wasn’t the best cop on the force, if only through being so new. And yea, the others did kind of mock me. And I guess I deserved it. In my six months, I’d only made one actual arrest. But don’t laugh---it was an important one. That lady had been giving me faces, really sick, twisted ones… there’s no question about it. It was just one of my cop hunches. Senior citizens have no respect for the fuzz these days! She pleaded innocent, and got off Scott free--but we cops don’t make mistakes of that nature. Yea, I got made fun of for that down at the station---but I still maintain to this day that she was dirty. Yes, she was dirty all right, that little old lady… dirty like a sanchez.
Ugh—digressing again! All right, here I go:
It was approaching 9:30pm. I’d just gotten home, to my small one-bedroom studio flat, on the third floor of the Peirce Building, at the corners of Center and East Main Streets. Yea, like I was saying, my hometown used to be pretty small and quiet… a sleepy little cranberry-growing municipality, tucked down in south shore region of Massachusetts, New England. A burg of roughly 20,000 people. A nice, quiet town, with tree-lined boulevards, and a couple of really nice historic districts if you like old nails, and antiques stores. But I don’t.
It was dark out. Only the gentle orange fluorescence of the downtown district, and the silvery glow cast down by the full moon, shed any light upon the packed snow tundra. I turned on the TV as soon as I walked into the world’s flat, and hastily discarded my uniform. That done, I set about to rummaging around therein for something to gnaw at in way of nocturnal sustenance. I found a bottle of cranberry juice, and some Taco Bell from the weekend before. Taking this into my hands, I smiled smugly, and returned to the cozy shelter of my favorite armchair, and to the warm white glow of my TV. I believe that my cat, fluffy & white Mr. Cuddles, came over from my bed at this time, purring just like an adorably plush motor engine, as he brushed past my leg in a frisky mood… his feline way of welcoming me back home. But I just kicked him.
Just as I was about to dig into the delicious course before me, my eyes shifted upwards towards the TV… something had caught my eye, and the news just happened to be on.
What--the news?, thought I with a queer glance, on at 9:30? And on VH1?
This odd occurrence having ensnared my curiosity, I set dreamily down the cold quasi-Mexican food, and got up to turn up the volume. A reporter was standing in a city---she looked quite nervous, I promptly deduced, as she frantically shouted her report into the microphone... but with all the ruckus going on around her, I could barely make out what she was saying at all! Behind her there were several police cruisers drawn askew the road, with their flashing reds and blues going at full cycle. Heard beyond these, there was the sound of weapons firing in the distance---all of this blaring and trumpeting, underscored by a rising bass element of screaming and turmoil. The writing on the screen said BOSTON, MASS. What could have caused so much unrest and chaos up in Beantown?
“Man—Yankees must’ve won,” I recall having said with great disdain, and with a sigh I wearily sank my teeth into one of the soggy tacos, and then took a swig of cranberry juice right from the bottle to force down the tired old repast. I lifted my eyes back up to the TV, and saw cops running across the screen—in full riot gear. “Oh man guys, go easy on them!” I recall having protested to the cops on my television, “This is a tragedy!”
But then I stopped dead…
Indeed, I stopped so very suddenly in the middle of my dining experience, that the sudden loss of motion caused the crass taco fillings to plop out---landing upon my rug with a clump sound! A great epiphany had just arisen within the hallowed annals of my Average Ben mind: The Sox hadn’t played the Yankees today at all, they’d played the Toronto Blue Jays…
But if it hadn’t been a rout by the hated New York team, what else could….?
Something wasn’t right, I verily did realize at this time.
I gingerly set the limp little taco back down onto my dusty end table, and scooted closer to the TV----until my face was awash with the fluorescent glow of police lights. I turned it up… the reporter was talking about mass destruction now, and people being dead, and of cops being overwhelmed en masse. This was no Sox-Yankees game, this was worse… and was it just in Boston, or was my own hometown also being threatened?
My mind was racing, and I was so nervous that I couldn’t even finish the glorious fare of my dinner. Queasily, I stumbled to my feet and thence for the phone, and immediately began to dial the local police department—to see if they needed me to punch back in, to see if everything was all right! But—there was no dial tone…
“Oh God—they phone lines are down!” I exclaimed in a gesture of exposition.
But then I plugged the phone line back into the wall.
After it rang busy for about ten minutes, I slammed down the receiver.
I had work to do.
I first thought to go for my uniform, which I’d nonchalantly discarded upon the bathroom floor. I’d just begun pulling the black trousers up past my knees when I decided not to don my uniform after all, but rather to travel incognito, in civilian garb---as I don’t really like cops all that much anyway.
I was, however, sure to grab my service issue revolver from the end table as I headed for the door, and out into the world beyond.
Barely any time had lapsed since I’d last been outside, and yet things seemed different. The streets were empty—and deathly silent. I clearly recall having felt an arctic wind blow by me, as I stumbled outside into the snow, and from somewhere in the not-too-far-off distance, I heard the ferocious barking of dogs---and yet there wasn’t a solitary soul to be found!
In retrospect, it was kind of reminiscent of one of those creepy horror movies, or of a Resident Evil game.
Fortunately for mankind, I lived almost across the street from the police station, so getting there wasn’t really much of a trouble.
I jogged up the snow-covered stone steps to the Middleboro Police Department, and promptly entered through the front door.
As always, I was greeted by the acrid aroma of cheese Danish and simmering coffee… this, and something else, that didn’t immediately register upon my nasal palette… but I’ll come back to that in a bit.
Officer Doodles was the pudgier, balder member of the force. He spoke with an amusing lisp, and he was the first person I saw inside the department office… there he was standing behind the counter on the right, watching TV in his dark little alcove. And normally, my first reaction would have been to greet my comically inept friend, but I couldn’t help but notice something off about his appearance. He was in uniform, sure enough, yet his round jaw was hanging wide open, tongue just protruding---and his eyes, they were glazed over. Now, Doodles was a nice guy, if not always too quick on the uptake, so I figured he’d just had a late night, which wasn’t all that uncommon of a thing for we thin blue line folk.
Smiling as I rested my friskily tapped my hands on the counter, I said,
“Hey Doodles, what’s going on out there, man?”
He didn’t respond—his eyes were all but glued on the TV monitor, which was emitting nothing but crackling static. It was dark behind the counter, not permitting me to see anything beyond the arc TV’s glow. This uncommon darkness cast Doodles in an all together creepy manner, and I’d have sworn that if I didn’t know better, that he’d fallen asleep on the job!
Hmm.
“Doodles, man, what’s going on?” I asked again, determined to get across to my friend. “Is this because I’m not in my uniform? Is that why you’re ignoring me?”
And he just kept on sitting there in his chair, mute as a carp in heat! And what’s more, he was even drooling a little bit. What a cold shoulder, I thought—and all because I wasn’t in uniform.
I couldn’t help but feel a tide of resentment boil up from within my very soul!
“Well, Doodles!” I said angrily, “some of us have a life beyond these walls! Try and meet a girl sometime!” And with that, I showed Doodles my back. I’d have expected him to burst forth out of his stupor, and embrace me as a true friend, all the while apologizing---but, no! Fed up with his childish antics, I passed along into the inner sanctum of the Middleborough Police Department, all the while kept company by the light humming of the perpetual fluorescent lighting.
The next room was the “den”, as we called it—a nice, large room for gathering with tables and chairs, TVs and donuts. It was light and lively, and we blokes of the force spent a lot of on-duty time in there, just waiting for something to happen, or going over old cases. You know, police stuff. At any given time, there were usually a few of Middleboro’s finest inside this cozy hall, sipping coffee and talking at a casual pace while on the clock at over time rates. At this particular time, there were two such men inside: Detective Grumpus, and Chief Davis.
At this juncture in my narration, it would be altogether inappropriate if I did not venture to go into more detail about these two fine, young men. And the plain, blunt truth was that they weren’t fine, young men at all. They were both round, fleshy blokes, in their mid forties, with insatiable appetites for pulling pranks on me. My easy-mannered sorrows provided a bottomless buffet of gravy-splashed laughs for them! Yes—well, they were actually a lot alike, the two of them. Both seniors on the force, both with credentials and merits up the ass, yet not a shred of common humility between the two of them. Donut munching pencil pushers is just what they were.
As I entered the den, the visages of Detective Grumpus and Davis were standing perfectly still in the middle of the room. They didn’t flinch a muscle, or bat an eyebrow—they were completely without motion of any kind, as cold as statues. The funny thing was, as I crept around to the other side of the room to get a better glimpse of them, was that they shared the same glazed-over kind of look in their eyes as old Doodles. Neither man uttered a single word of, neither of greeting nor of retribution. Rather, their fleshy mouths were hanging open loosely… hell, if they hadn’t been shallowly breathing, I couldn’t have even been sure that they were still *living. And even then, about their breathing—it didn’t seem quite right. Now, I’m not physamasician, but I know that people should breath more than thrice a minute, ‘least ways I think that they should.
It was at this moment, as I observed my two bellicose mates that I noticed the status of the den itself. And that, was chaotic at best. Chairs were over-turned, some of the lights were flicking (how had I missed that when I’d walked in?), and some immature rapscallion had gone and dragged what appeared to be a bloody handprint across the whitewashed wall.
To the motionless detective and chief, I turned and offered in way of words,
“Hey guys, how’s the graveyard shift going for ya?” interposed I, light-heartedly.
“…”
“Have you guys noticed anything… “off” about Doodles tonight?”
“…”
“That guy’s bugging me out! Just glued to the boob tube in there… its not right.”
“…”
“What, you guys aren’t talking either? What is this, a prank?”
“….ungh…” moaned Davis in a deep, raspy voice that sounded altogether inhuman---so much so that it surely would have made my very blood curdle, had my blood been composed of milk at the time.
Well, by this time I was quite fed up! I’d been there six months, thought I, and these tired old pranks were beginning to get real old, real fast. I mean, that one time when they’d filled my shoes with thumbtacks had been kind of funny, I’ll admit… and when Sergeant Murray had spray painted “dumbass” on my squad car, that’d been a real side-splitter too…hehe… but this whole cold-shoulder deal was the straw that broke the clown’s back! In any case, there was no just cause for rudeness, after all. They’d just gone too far.
Davis groaned deeply, and some green goop bubbled out of Grumpus’ mouth, whilst he uttered a disgusting gargling sound. Rolling my eyes at their immaturity, I turned my back on them, and passed into the officer’s lounge next door. Maybe there was someone in there who would tell me what was going on around here! Someone who was above these childish antics.
I opened the door.
Three uniformed patrolmen were in the lounge---Doughy, Snidely and Popowicz. Three young policemen, three good ‘ol boys, just like me. Their duty was still walking the beat and doing all the dirty work around town, (just like me), but they weren’t working ANY too hard right then, let me tell you---the same glazed-over look as on everyone else that night! There they were, just standing around, all lazy-like.
I first noticed Doughy. He was standing over in the corner of the room, his clothes torn to shreds, with his face borrowed into the joining of the two walls like a disobedient child might be… Snidely was rhythmically beating his forehead up against the soda machine, and then ‘ol Popowicz was… well, come to think of it, he was just lying sprawled on the floor in a puddle of his own crimson, a deep gash torn across his torso.
“Popowicz, don’t lie down on the job!” I recall having said with a chuckle and a good-natured wag of my finger. He didn’t laugh. Come to think of it, he really didn’t do much of anything—he just lay there, his skin kind of a pallid, chalky-white color.
Sensing that the gentleman was simply exhausted and fast asleep, I opted to leave him to his own devices and turned my attention next to Doughy and Snidely.
“Hey guys, what’s going on? Everyone’s acting strange tonight, huh?” I said to them with a friendly smile, as I went ahead poured myself a cup of black coffee at the table that served as the precinct’s kitchen area. Humming to myself an old Christopher Cross song, I heard a deep groan, not unlike those I’d heard from Grumps and Davis… had it come from Snidely…? I glanced over my shoulder, midway through pouring out my steaming hot coffee, but he hadn’t moved from the soda machine. He was still tapping his forehead up against it. Maybe he was trying to keep the beat to my humming?
“No, Snidely,” I said condescendingly with my back turned, setting down the coffee pot back onto the burner, “I believe this song is sung in quarter-time, your rhythm is much too slow.”
I went to sip my coffee, but as I brought the Styrofoam cup to my lips, I recalled just in time that I abhor the taste of coffee. So, down the drain with it, and took an apple from a bowl of “fresh” fruit.
Sinking my teeth in the crunchy Gala apple, I turned around. None of my three companions had moved, nor budged, nor said anything more.
And then Doughy suddenly collapsed down onto the floor like a bundle of slack rags, all of a sudden. It’d happened so quickly, I hadn’t even had time to tell him to tell him to watch out for the corner of the table---oops, too late! He bashed his forehead right on it. A shower of blood splattered out from the incident, and then with a loud thud, Doughy fell perfectly still onto his back.
I stood rather still, staring down at the second person on the floor, eating my apple and scratching my head in deep thought.
Don’t think poorly of me, oh reader, because I didn’t bother asking him if he was all right. I’d had it up to here (I’m motioning to my shoulders right now, which you can’t see, but that’s how the extent to which I’d had it, up to my shoulders) with all of the hazing around here. Would you have honestly done differently? Come on now, be honest. That guy wasn’t a total jerk, but I couldn’t be bothered with him now. And besides, Popowicz was already down on the floor with him. So, I asked Popowicz to take a look at Doughy for me. Finishing the apple, I dropped the core on the floor and turned to leave. Things seemed to be in order in the precinct, so my job there was done. They obviously didn’t need me.
Crossing the street back over to my building, I was nearly run down by a car that bolted past me. Let me take some time to describe this to the reader, because it scared me so much that I nearly deuced my pants. There I was, having just come down from the police station. Like I said before, all cold and dark out, it being night and all, and snow and all that… so, I burrowed my hands into my pockets for warmth and set out across Route 105. I’d just about reached the median strip when two headlights leapt over the hill, squealing straight at me! Without time for thought, my porcine reflexes sprang into action—and I leapt out of the way. The car (a Camry, I believe,) didn’t even stop. No, it just whizzed past me, doing probably sixty… the driver screaming maniacally, while another pale-skinned gentleman was reaching his way through the shattered windshield as if to grab the bloke who was driving.
Back inside, I kicked off my shoes and shut off the TV. Not having to work in the morrow, I felt like the king of the world… I love sleeping in. Without doubt, by the time I would be up in the morning, everything will be back to normal. And this is how I left the world that Friday night, whilst I passed to the cradling arms of Morpheus, into land of peaceful slumber. Mr. Cuddles came over and curled up next to me before I swatted him off.
I awoke in a much better mood. The sun was shining and it was sometime about ten in the morning. I can’t be sure, you see, because there was no power. And yes, I made sure that my clock wasn’t just unplugged this time—there was absolutely no electrical current running to my building whatsoever.
Yawning, I dragged myself out of bed. The first thing I did was finish the half-eaten taco that I’d left on the table the night before. If nothing else, at least the taco was warm now, even if it didn’t settle all that well after the fact.
Pale morning light filtered into my otherwise dark room through the closed Venetian blinds. It was nice out, I gathered, and maybe even kind of unseasonably warm. It’d been such a cold, snowy winter---as winters can sometimes be---and the change in weather was a welcome one.
So, I went to take a shower but---again, no power. Throwing on a change of clothes, I strapped on my belt with attachable holster and revolver, and went outside into the landing between floors. Silence there, so I trotted down the stairs and out the front door onto Centre Street.
I was in a good mood—the world was at my feet, and I had the day off to spent as I saw fit. Fixing a pair of cool sunglasses upon my noses, I broke out singing some Beatles… Lady Madonna¸ if I recall correctly---either way its entirely inconsequential to the narrative, so just ignore my having mentioned it. Anyway, it was a gorgeous Saturday morning, and the world was my pearl. Or… was it my oyster? Well, however that old cliché went, THAT was what my world was on that day.
I walked halfway across the street, stopped, and looked around. The sun was brightly shining overhead, and the sky was crystal-clear and beautiful. The light was reflecting quite powerfully off of the layer of snow, but my eyes soon adapted. Once they did, a few things struck me as odd, whilst I stood there on the sidewalk, about my environment. These observations were as follows: firstly, there wasn’t a solitary person in sight. I mean, last night is understandable. Who the hell wants to be out on a cold, windy night like that? But today was warm, sunny and beautiful. Secondly, I’d accidentally put on two left-footed stockings before leaving. And thirdly and finally, but probably least importantly, I’d forgotten to give Mr. Cuddles anything to eat at all that week. He’d gone longer without food.
But regardless.
“Hello?” I called out loud, determined to make peace with the world after my embarrassing antics of the night before.
My charmingly baritone voice echoed off of the buildings interposed around me, but there was no other reply. Was there really no one out today? Was everyone in town sleeping in by coincidence, or were they all at home watching Saturday morning cartoons? Maybe—but that wouldn’t explain the flaming cars that lined the boulevards.
I shrugged my shoulders, and started off along the street. But, I hadn’t gone very far before I came to a cloudy red impression in snow. There was a trail, leading off around the corner onto the next street.
At this time, I rubbed my chin in deep thought. I walked briskly the short distance to the trail of blood, caked in with the dirt and mud of the town’s central artery... gray, off-white, and red. The mix of colors made it look like an old raspberry cheese Danish. But then I started to get hungry for confectionaries, so I had to force that out of my mind.
Presently, I glanced up, and saw a person lying in the snow: the source of the blood! Ah-ha! You see, I’m not THAT bad of a cop. I have good reasoning and deduction skills after all; like here. I’d already found the cause of the bleeding.
I jogged over across the way to the bloke, waving one arm.
“Excuse me, Sir,” I said, my breath hanging in the chilly morning air, “but you can’t sleep in the middle of the road. And you might want to get some medical attention for that wound. Is your arm missing?”
It was. His right arm was gone—detached at the shoulder. Blood had been absorbed into the snow all around him.
“Ouch—I bet that stings, but please move along. Vagrancy is an arrestable offense.”
The chap, who was lying face down in the snow, had the nerve to ignore me--a police officer! Angrily, I reiterated:
“I am an officer of the law, and you will respect my authority!”
And that fellow had the sheer, brazen nerve to continue ignoring me. Missing an arm or not, that was rude. I knelt down alongside the chap in the snow. His clothes were tattered rags, and there were deep, bloody gashes and bruises all over his body. One of his eyes was missing, and it looked as though something had been chewing on his ear—there were deep teeth marks in it. After surveying the situation, and examining all of the evidence, as well as the grizzly state of the man, I made the only logical deduction. I said,
“Sir, have you been drinking?”
It was so clear to me now.
This tipsy rogue had had a bit too much of the happy juice last night, and had passed out right here in the snow. It all added up now. Except for the arm.
“Public drunkenness is a crime, Sir. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take you into custody.”
So, I did what any smart cop would do: I cuffed the jerk. It wasn’t too hard to do; he didn’t at all resist me. Actually, he just lied there, really *stiff-like. Him not having a second arm would normally have made it difficult for one to handcuff him, so I had to improvise and be creative. They train us for these situations at police academy. After a moment, I flipped his raw body over in the snow, and went about placing both cuffs around his one remaining wrist. He wouldn’t be getting away from me now.
Well, he may have cooperated while I cuffed him, but he sure didn’t all the way to the police station! Thank goodness it was just a short distance up the street, but this public offender didn’t want to go in easily. I had to drag his limp, cold body all the way up the steps, and inside the department!
Finally, I got him inside the front door, and dropped him like a ton of bricks on the rug.
Doodles was just as he’d been the night before, eyes glued on the monitor (which was all static, by the way.) Only today, his skin seemed darker… brown, or green… and his eyes had sunken considerably into his skull. It was as though he’d aged noticeably over night. All in all, it wasn’t a good look for him, and I told him so. Doodles didn’t offer to help me with the culprit as I dragged one-armed body across the room and down the flight of stairs, heaving and panting all the while (he was a heavy guy, and frozen solid!) for lockup in the basement.
Go figures.
Because I can’t.
Downstairs, where we kept the town’s misdemeanor offenders for their brief stays, all of the cells were empty. Now, that did give me a moment of pause, when I’d first turned around from the criminal in hand. When I’d left work last night, we’d had three people under key for the night: a teen vandal who’d been caught writing graffiti behind Victory, a wife-beating lowlife, and a democrat. Yet today the cell doors were all wide open, and body parts were strewn all over the place! The three lock-ups were nowhere in sight. In fact, the only person I saw was Officer Doughy.
Doughy was obviously better since he’d passed out and banged his head on the table the night before. He was crouched in a dark corner at the far end of the basement, shrouded in darkness, gnawing on something large that he held up to his mouth with both hands. Eyeing him curiously, it sounded as though he were ripping chunks of meat off of a large let of mutton, or something of that nature… the gluttonous sounds he made! Like a dog.
“G’morning Doughy, how’s the head? All better?” I asked, returning to the laborious burden of the drunkard. I dragged the bugger into cell number three, and let him lay where he’d fallen on the cement floor. Sliding shut the barred door with a loud clang, I locked it up, and turned around to face Doughy.
The small cellblock was a marvelous mess! Someone had apparently spilled a can of red paint over the floor… and there, at my feet, lay a detached human leg.
Picking it up, I examined it.
I opened cell number three back up and tossed the body part to the drunkard, figuring that he could make some use of it in lieu of his arm, but he was apparently still out cold from his night’s dealings. The new limb hit him in the head, and landed on the floor next to him.
Turning back around, Doughy was standing on his feet now---the arms hanging loosely at his sides, and his back uncommonly erect… as if he were trying to seem taller than he was.
“Hey, Doughy!” I called over, and whistled.
Slowly, he turned and faced me---ketchup and what must’ve been mutton meat dripping from his face---and let me tell you, he had gotten UG-LEE! His cheeks had sunken into his face, his skin had begun to turn dark and chip off, and he had no product in his hair whatsoever.
It was now that I noticed what he had in his hands. Why—it wasn’t a leg of mutton at all! It wasn’t even a brisket of mutton! It was a leg of democrat!
I was totally caught off guard by this… stumbling backwards; I was soon up against the cell behind me—abjectly horrified, covering my mouth with my hand, as I uttered a little burp.
“Excuse me… Charles! What the hell are you doing, boy?” I screamed over at him, more angrily than anything else. Not only had he killed and began to consume one of our prisoners, but it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. There was bad, and then there was just plain wrong.
And then he took a lanky, unbalanced step towards me.
“Charles, get back!” I barked defensively, drawing my service revolver. I cocked the hammer (which sounds funny to say, but it just means I got it ready to fire) and pointed the Smith & Wesson in his direction. “Get back from that ignorant gentleman, now! I understand that you’re upset with his voting policies, but there are other ways! I’m sure there must be!”
As he crept ever closer to me, I noticed his eyes… they appeared to be altogether without pupils! And his face---it seemed to be in an advanced state of decay, as if he’d been laying several months in a grave somewhere before showing up for work. The wound from the table the night before was still open and raw, with chips of fragmented bone snowing plain to the light… that whole side of his face was coated in a light coating of blood that’d dried over night. This, and blood and gore were dripping from his jagged yellow teeth, and then went and uttered a low, raspy moan at me! And so, shuffling slowly, one foot after the other, with his arms stretched out as if to grab at me the moment I got within reach, he crossed the cell. And me, I just watch on, horrified, my revolver shaking in my unsure hands… what could I do?
Well, what the hell was this? What could this possibly be? In all my six months on the force I’d never experienced anything like this before, not even during the hectic days of bagger-led communist revolution that’d fermented to power at the Stop & Shop that past June. This topped it all in my book.
“Don’t make me shoot you, man! Back off!” I snapped, between clenched teeth.
“Unggh…” he muttered in my general direction, shuffling ever closer.
“I’m warning you man! Sit down and cool it! Just chill, man!”
Despite my more than fair warning he shuffled closer… and closer… and closer.
“I won’t warn you again!”
“Mugghhh…”
“This is your last warning, Charles B. Doughy!”
More incoherent mumbling and groaning from him.
“Okay—this is the REAL last warning!” I said, a bit of emotional distress showing through in my voice… I mean, I didn’t really want to shoot him—he was kind of my friend. You go through life thinking that shooting people will be fun and cool, like it is on TV and in the movies… I mean that’s why one joins the police, right? That’s why I did. But not to shoot my friend… not my friend…
But, finally, I had to be rather firm with Doughy, and draw the line.
“This is it, man!” I squealed between my clenched teeth, the revolver bobbing in my hand as I gripped it so tightly that my knuckles were turning white. He was almost close enough to tackle me now, if that was his intention. But fuck that—he wasn’t getting my brain!
I pulled the trigger, just once. The loud crack of the revolver roared, and the flash of the muzzle lit up all the basement. And in a split second, it was done. At such close range, the gunshot had smashed in his forehead—it just crumpled inward, whilst showering me in gore and brains.
And poor Doughy, he muttered one last soft groan, and then collapsed, nearly at my feet.
“I fucking said not to do it but you wouldn’t listen, would you! Always trying to be funny! Well look where it got you this time, Charles!” I cried out, almost in tears… and cops don’t really ever cry, what with our lack of tear ducts, and our generally being assholes, but this was serious… I’d had to blow my friend’s head off. He was dead, but damn it it, it’d been his own fault!
Wiping at my eyes with my hand, I chased the tears away, and holstered my revolver.
But, back to business.
I cleaned up all of the loosely scattered body parts, (all that remained of our three prisoners), and deposited them in an open trash can. Usually on Saturday mornings, the trash barrel would be overflowing with empty beer cans and old titty magazines, from our wild precinct sex parties, but that morning it had to pull double duty for those messy body parts as well.
Shutting off the lights, and depriving the basement of all light but that which filtered through the narrow windows, I jogged back up the steps to the street level.
Doodles was just as before. Just as earlier, and even just as last night.
“Man, that TV’s going to rot your brains if you sit that close!” I warned him, while I shut the door to the basement.
“Br-brains…” mumbled Doodles, pointing at me.
Whoa—he’d spoken! Finally, I recall having thought, someone on the force had spoken to me! The lame ‘Let’s not talk to Ben!’ prank was over at last. What a relief.
“Hey—thanks, man. I’ve always prided myself in being pretty smart, but I appreciate hearing it from time to time.” I mean, I hate to toot my own horn, but, toot-toot!
But somehow, in retrospect, I’m not sure that was what Doodles had meant to communicate to me. The more I think about it now, the more I think he wasn’t really trying to compliment me on my intelligence. Somehow, the sunken-in eyes, and the rotting green tint of his flesh causes me to have serious reflection.
But anyway, on with my narrative! I’ll bet you’re saying to yourself right now, as you read my story, “man this poor Ben guy just isn’t getting any breaks!” But don’t you worry about me, my friends. As an intrepid young man, with a sharp wit and a youthful vitality, I was more than able to take care of myself… so, just keep on reading.
After Doodles’ compliment, I left the station. It was probably about eleven in the morning by this time. I’d been hoping that things would have gotten back to normal outside, but—no luck there! The burnt-out car wrecks still dotted the streets, and there wasn’t a single person about.
Way to go, Ben—wasting your day off by going to work! So, I hopped back over to my flat, grabbed my wallet and keys, and then ran around to back of my building, and got into my car. I turned the ‘old gal on, cranked it into reverse, and back onto the street. All that work had made me hungry, so I headed for McDonalds: if not to get something to eat, at least to hit on one of the cute girls who would be working the counter.
As I drove along, my mind reflective upon how to spend the balance of my day off, I turned on the radio. Normally, I have one of my swell eighties mixes going, or if I was in the mood for radio, 98.5, or 106.1. They usually play a nice mix of all the music with which I identify myself. But not today!
Was NOTHING going right for me?
98.5 was nothing but incessant, crackling static. Assuming that it was a new hip hop song, I turned to 106.1… but it wasn’t much better; they were playing a long, flat, monotonous beeping sound—kind of like that test broadcast of the emergency something-or-another that they sometimes have. So I shut off the radio, and throttled along East Main, onto South Maine, and on towards McDonalds.
Now, you might know if you live in Middleborough, but in case you don’t I’ll tell you. South Maine is a nice little street, lined with quaint old houses, broad sidewalks, and well-kept lawns. All in all, it was a pretty nice neighborhood. But today, the quiet atmosphere was anything but quaint. There were fire hydrants spraying columns of water into the air, all up the street. I saw that a police cruiser, #55, had crashed into a tree on the left—its horn was still going, and the entire front end was crumpled in like tin can.
But things got progressively weirder as I went.
There were more crashed cars lining the street, and people lying right on their lawns. If I were on duty I might have pulled over and arrested them for some traffic offense or vagrancy, but hey—I WAS OFF TODAY! So, I just carefully pulled around the pedestrians whom dotted the road, and pressed on.
I crossed the usually busy juncture of Routes 105 and 28 without even having to stop. The traffic lights were blinking yellow, as they swayed in the gentle morning breeze. Furthermore, there weren’t even any other cars on the road—at least none that were in driving condition.
Finally, I pulled into McDonalds, and went around the drive thru. I rolled down my window and leaned out a little bit.
What to order?
Now normally I don’t eat at McDonalds, and---well, you don’t really care about where I eat, so I won’t bore you with that. This is, after all a story about zombies, not about Taco Bell.
So here I found myself, with the car in neutral.
“Hey—I’d like---uh jeeze… what do you call it? The… thing there, with like cheese on it… is it a cheeseburger?”
There was no reply from the other end of the line. Not even a polite “May I take your order?”
“Hey? Umm, can you take my order?” was my curt request.
Finally, I heard some commotion on the other end of the microphone.
“Yes?” hissed a dry, old man’s voice.
“I’ll take a cheeseburger.”
“Unngh…,” he moaned, “is that all?”
Creeped out by the strange man, I said that it was.
“Would you…(moaning sound) …like f-fries with that?”
“No, I wouldn’t like any f-fries with that!” I said, mocking his stutter.
There was a pause while he calculated the total.
“That’ll be…uuhhhghh… brains… two-thirty-eight. Please pull…brains forward to the next… window.”
Curious to see just what this guy looked like, I drove around to the first of the two windows. The first window was closed up tightly. Unperturbed, I proceeded to the second window—this one was also firmly sealed. Well, I thought, that just sucks! What kind of a place are they running around here anyway? So, I pulled aside and parked. Slamming my door, I briskly jogged inside, and went straight to the counter.
No one was in sight, and the lights were flickering on and off all throughout the place.
“Hello? I’ve come for my cheeseburger!”
This was totally weird, you have to understand. I mean, where was everybody? Normally there would be something like five or six people working the counter at McDonalds, and five or so more in the back, pouring bags of greasy french-fries into the cooking oil vats. Normally---but not today.
I glanced around the rest of the dining area. The large bay window was shattered, I noticed… shards of the decal-applied McDonalds emblem lay sprinkled all around. There were a few partially eaten meals on a couple of tables, but no people in sight. Who would buy McDonalds food and then just leave it behind, half-eaten? Someone in a terrible hurry, perhaps—but not likely. Not in this case.
The sound of something metal, perhaps a pan falling down from a rack, resonated from behind me. Spinning around, I faced across the counter, into the dark kitchen beyond.
I could hear my heart pounding in my chest, in the silence of the moment. So—I wasn’t alone after all. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but something made my hair stand on end just then. The strange voice at the drive thru, the broken window, the bad service… I instinctively drew the revolver, and cocked the hammer (tee-hehe).
“Hello? Is there anyone back there? Don’t be alarmed—I’m just looking for a cheeseburger.”
I crept along, slowly, around the counter and towards the aisle of shiny steel food preparation equipment. I turned the corner, pistol drawn before me, and in the far back of the kitchen I saw a tall man—staring right back at me, perfectly still, as if he’d been watching me the entire time. At once, he stepped forward, and then began to shuffle in my direction. His face was torn up rather badly, and his skin was very, very pale. This guy, just like the guys back at the precinct, had something altogether very wrong with him, and I simply couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
“Are you the manager?” I asked. Although (surprise, surprise) he didn’t say anything to me, I could tell that he was: he was wearing the shirt, forlorn expression and soiled slacks of a McDonalds manager all right.
“ugghh…” he whispered.
“Yea, that’s what everybody’s been telling me all day,” I said to him, perhaps a little short. “Now, can you please make me a cheeseburger?” I implored of him, moving out of the kitchen and over to a booth, “and hold the onions.”
But, the manager only repeated the monosyllabic expression, and continued to drag his cold, moist body towards me. Quite firmly, I added:
“Sir, I am a trained law enforcement agent, and as such I will not hesitate to kill you if you do not make me cheeseburger this instant!”
Despite this, the manager continued to creep closer and closer, his face contorting into a warped look of horror and angst… his glossy eyes stayed fixed on me, while he licked his chapped lips.
Gross.
Whereas I had waited for Doughy to get really close before I’d shot him, I just got really tired of waiting for this jerk to drag his slowpoke ass across the kitchen. Thus I shot him a good ways’ off. The first shot perforated his chest, but he just absorbed it and kept on approaching! That’s right! How do you figure, a shot square to the chest… a stream of crimson spurted out from his wound, but he didn’t even express the slightest notion of any pain.
Rolling my eyes, I fired a second shot, this one dead into the brainpan. That time, the force of the blow knocked him out cold, and he sprawled backwards onto the kitchen floor with a soft whimpering sound.
It was with a heavy sense of regret that I finally realized that I would not be getting any food around that place that morning. So, returning my Smith & Wesson to my trusty holster, I took one last glimpse around the trashed McDonalds, and headed back outside for my car.
It was as I walked towards my Stratus this time that I heard it: screaming! Loud, shrill screaming---that of a young woman. Off duty or not, I had to do something about this: she sounded really hot.
Immediately, I broke into a run in the direction of the screaming. I rounded a brown fence, and climbed a shallow hill, to the Exxon station next door. There were two cars pulled up to the pumps--one was still being fueled---the owner lying slumped against the blue Subaru, his hand still clamped on the trigger, while gas flowed out of the fueling port. It ran down the hill in a veritable stream, and flowed right into the street gutter. Such a disgusting waste of gasoline mortified me, and I was going to hang up the pump for the gentleman, but I the sounds of screeching returned my mind to the task at hand: the hot chick!
In truly heroic fashion, I yanked open the door to the gas station, and leapt in, revolver drawn, ready for action. Turning towards the left, I met eyes with a young blonde girl crouched behind the counter. It was her who’d been screaming; at the large, unshaven fellow who was grasping at her from across the counter.
As soon as the beautiful young lady saw me, her eyes lit up, and she pleaded in my general direction,
“Oh my God--help me! Shoot him! Shoot him! Shoot him!”
So I just shot the guy, like the cute girl told me to do.
Bang—another lead slug in the brainpan, and this one flew backwards into a display of candy, which collapsed under his weight. He too, I noticed, was of a green complexion, and dressed in tattered rags. Odd. Must be the new style, I cleverly reasoned, as I returned my handy S&W to its holster, still smoking as it was. At this time, I also made the grave reflection that there were only four more lead-tippers in my revolver.
Ah, yes: the girl was indeed quite hot, as I’d guessed… and she now got to her feet, tears streaming down her red face, and veritably tackled me! Seeing that the putrid jerk who lay in a mess of salty confections would be bothering her now mores, she flew at me, arms wide open. She took me into her deep embrace and hugged me tightly, repeating ‘thank you, thank you’… and was it so wrong of me to hug her back? I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed deeply. Oh it feels so good, doesn’t it? The warmth, the feeling of another person’s heart beating next to yours---but it’s twice as good when the person is wicked hot.
“Thank you, you saved me!” she said, looking up into my face, hot tears streaming down her soft cheeks.
“Yea,” I said softly to her, “that guy was a total doucebag.”
She turned to me, smiling thinly as if what I’d said had thrown her off. Now that she was calm, she said with a chuckle,
“No, he was a zombie I think. He was going to eat my brains.”
“Ah-hah,” I said with a wise glare of deduction. “Well, my dear, it’s been nice, but I’ve got to be going. I’m a cop, you see, and it’s my day off.” With this, I took her silky-smooth hand into mine and bent down to kiss it, adding, “But it was nice meeting you!”
And with that, I left as quickly as I’d entered.
“Wait,” she called after me, running out of the small shop, take me with you!”
Total chick magnet, I thought of myself with a sly smile. She was willing to leave her job in the middle of the day to run off with me! I’d always been a chick magnet, I recall now in retrospect… as far back as seventh grade, when I kissed a girl on the cheek on a dare. Every since then, what can I say---some of us are born with it, and some of us aren’t.
So, I said to her,
“Well sure you can come with me, but I don’t know where I’m going.”
“There’s nowhere safe anymore—I thought I could lock myself up in the store for a few weeks, and live off of the junk food until help arrived, but that creep broke the window and came after me. It’s terrible! Everybody’s like that!” sobbed the young woman, as we linked arms and strolled along, taking in the pleasant warmth of the sun.
As she said this to me, I ventured to steal a deeper glance at my new companion. Oh yea, she was a cutie all right… beautiful figure, great bust… soft skin, a radiant glow… dirty blonde hair that ran to her shoulders. I could definitely have drank her in right about then. But, being not only a cop, but also a gentleman, I had an obligation to shelf my more primitive desires.
“So what’s your name?” I asked as we reached my car.
“Julie,” she said, getting in shotgun.
“I’m Officer Benjamin Carr, MPD… I’m a real police officer now, so you’ll have to respect me, all right?”
“Umm---all right,” she replied slowly, fastening her seatbelt.
I turned on the ignition and backed away from the gas station. As I turned out of the parking lot, we both noticed at the same time, that there were two people just ahead. They were slowly walking towards us, and from the looks of things, they too were up to no good. Raggedy, torn clothes, glazed-over eyes—the whole nine yards.
Julie screamed and pointed at them.
“Do something!” she pleaded with me.
“I can’t arrest them for jay walking, I’m not on duty!”
“No, kill them, quickly! Hurry!”
“Kill them for jay walking? This isn’t Texas…”
“No, kill them before they eat our brains!”
Now she looked like a fool. Why would these upstanding, prominent townsfolk be interested in eating our brains? I mean, Doodles had said something about brains back at the station, but he’d been complimenting my intelligence! This was different. But still, what could I do? A really cute young lady had just asked me to kill two guys for her.
“All right,” I said looking over at Julie, “hold on!”
And I slammed my foot on the gas pedal.
The back tires screeched and burned, and then in a cloud of burnt rubber we went speeding straight ahead. We must have been doing something like sixty as we peeled out! The two guys made no effort to get out of the way—and we plowed right through them. The force of the hit-and-run was pretty intense all right… one of the two guys got between my 95 Contour and the road, and wound up flatter than a Mexican pancake. He made for a bumpy driving surface, but once we were past him and his friend, we were in the clear.
Well, there we were.
Having escaped from the Mobil station, with prestige intact, I found myself chauffeuring this pretty little lady around town, and on such a lovely day too. I was in such a good mood that I rolled down my window and let the cool summer air blow through my car. Adding to the laid back atmosphere, I turned on the radio for a few minutes, before the same old emergency broadcast began to wear thin on my patience.
It took some doing from my part, but soon enough Julie began to calm down. I offered her a Kleenex from out of my glove compartment to dry those tears, and asked her if there was anything I could do to ease her misery. At this point, the pretty little thing began telling me her life story, but unfortunately I’d just popped in my Boston’s Greatest Hits CD, so I didn’t get too much of it. Something about cats, I think… it wasn’t very important, anyway, and she was a lousy story teller.
We cruised along comfortably at sixty, passing Victory on the right, and then MHS a short distance further along. Route 105 was peculiarly empty for that time of day… discounting the wrecked cars which lined the street, and all of the bodies which dotted the rural townscape. Young Julie suggested that we should find a way to keep safe, and I agreed; and she further suggested that we would need weapons with which to defend ourselves. Of course I had my standard-issue revolver, but she explained, and I quite agreed, that more guns of larger caliber and bore were absolutely better.
A few more southerly miles along 105, and then I pulled into a small two-shop plaza on the left, at the corner of East Grove and Wareham streets. There were a few cars already parked there, but I didn’t have any trouble finding a space.
“We need to be quick, Ben, and keep on moving! We’re not safe as long as we’re stationary!” said the beautiful young woman. She got out of the car, and looked around in a dream-like daze.
“I need to pick up some stuff first.”
The gun store was unlocked, to my surprise—it usually wasn’t open this early on a weekend. So I nonchalantly proceeded within, and glanced all about the place. Things were kind of messy… a whole aisle of gun accessories was spilled onto the floor, and there was a guy lying down in the midst of the mess.
He was missing his left foot.
Not wanting to disturb him, I quietly crept around that aisle, and made for the counter.
“Hello?” I called, “shopkeep?”
“Who is it!” barked the voice of an older man. Oh good, I thought, at least there’s somebody here who hasn’t caught the idiot-bug that’s going around town! I turned towards the voice, and saw a man, perhaps in his mid-fifties. At the time, the gentleman was crawling out from behind the counter, with a sawed-off lever action shotgun in his hands… and a whole arsenal more strapped and around him. At least six handguns dangled loosely from his clothes, and I noticed a two foot-long machete strapped to his back. Talk about Rambo!
“Officer Carr, MPD,” I said, proudly displaying my badge. “I’d like to make some purchases.”
“Really?” asked the shop owner, getting to his feet and smiling broadly, “you mean you’re not one of them? You’re not changed yet? Y—you’re still human?” oh, how his voice seemed so enthused to see me—as though he hadn’t seen another person in so long, and it was some great thrill for him! I smiled feebly.
“I may be a cop, Sir, but I am still human, I assure you.”
“No—I mean you’re not a zombie!”
At that ridiculous assertion I threw back my head and laughed.
“A zombie? Someone’s been watching too many horror movies.”
“It’s true! I had to kill twelve of them last night! They were in the restaurant next door, and they came in here---chanting ‘BRAINS! BRAINS!’ So, I did what any red-blooded American would do: I shot them all! Each and every one! Bam!” exclaimed the well-rounded gentleman with glee, with a particularly loud emphasis on the onomatopoeia.
I looked around the store, and noticed several more bodies lying on the tiled floor.
“If I were on duty, I’d have to arrest you for murder now.”
“Murder? Damn it, kid, they’re already dead! They’re zombies! The whole town has changed over! It’s the end of the world!” exclaimed the gentleman, motioning broadly with his hands.
“It’s true,” added Julie softly, approaching from the door.
“People, please! I know things have been weird lately---but come on now!”
“It’s true, Officer!” pleaded the gun shop owner. But I just rolled my eyes.
“Well, whatever, friend. But at any rate, I still need to make some purchases.”
“You came by to stock up?” he asked, looking around his gun-filled store.
“Yes.”
“Please, take whatever you want—whatever it is you want---but I’m coming with you! Take me away from here!”
Dude—gross! It was hot when the blonde was hitting on me, but this was a fifty year-old guy. Why was everyone drawn to me so much lately? Don’t get me wrong, reader! I’m not a gay-basher, but come on… I’m not gay, and even if I were, this guy was like fifty! If I were gay, I’d like to think I could do better than that.
“Thank you, friend, but I’m not interested. I’m not like that.”
He just looked at me funnily, and then exchanged a confused glance with Julie, who just shrugged her shoulders. Finally, he said,
“Officer—just take whatever you want. After, we’ll need to find someplace to hold up until the marines come.”
“Marines?” asked Julie.
“Yes. Before the radios all went out, I heard that the government was declaring a ‘regime change’ against the zombies… the military was regrouping further down south, near Mexico. President Bush was being evacuated to somewhere safe, along with most of the government. ”
Again with that loony zombie story! But whatever—if this guy wanted to give away half of his inventory to me, I’d be glad to take it.
At this time, I grabbed a large green duffle bag from one of his displays, and then hopped right over the counter. The shop owner stood idly by as I slid open the glass cases underneath, and began putting a dozen different handguns into the sack. After a moment, the owner started helping me, too, by tucking cases of ammunition into my bag.
What a generous guy, I thought to myself!
Next, I got up and turned to face the wall of rifles and shotguns. Once, I ran my eyes along the length of the display, and saw every make and type that I’d ever known to have existed, or could have ever wanted. Oh, the power! So, not to get off on another tangent, I began selecting from the variety before me. Naturally, we skipped over the pussy Boy Scout guns, like the .22s, and went for the large bore hunting guns. In all, the gentleman shopkeeper and I deposited five shotguns, and then five quality rifles of different bores and manufacturers, into the duffel bag---which was, I assure you, quite full by this time.
“Is that all we need?” Julie said, roaming up and down the aisles.
“Yea—trust me, we could hold off an army with this stuff!” boasted the gun store owner, as he threw a few last items into the bag, and zipped it up. It took both of us to lift it, but we managed to get the heavy thing into my backseat.
It was noon by the time we’d managed that, on that unseasonably warm winter day. All around us, the world was otherwise quiet—no vehicular traffic, no pedestrians. Now, I recall from that moment, as the Republican and I made final our preparations for departure, that I was feeling a certain fish-out-of-water anxiety. The entire world seemed peculiarly different from my perspective... people acting radically different, there being no traffic on what should have been a somewhat busy day... the entire police department had been pulling a prank on me… the service at McDonalds was worse than ever… and then Julie and this old guy had started hitting on me. What a weird life I live! All of that strangeness, unfolding over the course of just one day. Well, surely at this juncture, the reader can understand my vexation.
But, enough with the tangent.
My companions and I boarded the car, and then got back onto Route 105, heading westerly. But, where would we go? A car full of guns, a respectively attractive girl riding shotgun, and no one else in sight—the world was surely my oyster, but whither? Oh, whither, pondered I, harkest thou, in somewhat accurate Middle English-speak. The middle-aged gentleman suggested that we make haste towards the Taunton mall, or the super Wal-Mart in Raynham. There, he argued, we could hold out indefinitely for any extended period of time—years even. Julie seemed to like the plan, and indeed it did seem quite logical, but on the other hand, I argued, I had to be up early and back to work in the morning. They told me not to worry about going back to my old job anymore for a while, which was more than I had to hear.
Eventually, we decided on holding up at the mall.
Well, it’d been John’s idea (John was the gun shop owner’s name, by the way.) On top of all of the noteworthy merits of holing up inside a mall, I had been needing to stop by their pharmaceutical shop and pick up a prescription of feline sterilization pills for my cat, Mr. Fluffy, who had been marking his territory in places that were quite clearly not his own to claim. For this same convenience, I’d kind of been leaning in favor of hanging out at the Wal-Mart, but John correctly recalled that in Dawn of the Dead, they’d barricaded themselves up at a mall. And that was such a cool movie, what with that guy in it... what’s his name, that big black guy... Bill Cosby I think... but anyway, we’d all agreed that it was a cool movie, so: to the mall we went.
None of us could remember how that movie had ended, though.
Chapter IXV
SO, there we were. I was making good time, what with there being no other traffic--other than the occasional wandering, slobbering, groaning jaywalker--and all the way we talked about things, and got to know one another a little better. I can’t recall the exact, specific conversations now... they were kind of boring anyway, but I can still sum them up. Julie was nineteen, and a commuter from Massasoit Community College, a few towns over. John was fifty-five, and the life-long owner of Middleboro Gun Shop—and an avid Republican, as it were.
We took Route 28, up to the Middleboro rotary, and then followed Route 18 into Lakeville. There, we cut up some scenic back roads.
When finally we crossed over 140 and came down into the valley of parking lots around the Taunton Mall, it was maybe 12:30 in the afternoon. There were lots of cars there, I noticed… well, about as many as there would be on any other shopping day... which was quite a few. I parked my car around the back, by the movie theater, and then we got out, and took in our surroundings with extreme caution.
Silence prevailed all around us. Nor was there any sign of a solitary soul from inside the mall, either. John and I labored to wrestle the duffel bag out from the back seat, and then we sweated and grunted all the way to the door with our heavy burden. Julie ran ahead to open the glass doors, but alas! They were locked.
“They’re locked!” she cried out in angst, even as she struggled to pull them open.
“That’s not a problem,” John said, as he unzipped the duffel bag and shuffled through its contents. Normally, as a cop I’d have tried to stop him from shooting through the glass, but not today! People had been jerks to me since I’d gotten up that morning, so the world can just deal with it.
John retrieved a solid black finish Remington 12 gauge. He took just a moment to slide a full inventory of shells inside, and then pumped it once to clear out any residual casings. I love that sound!
He leveled off the shotgun in the direction of the door. Julie and I dashed out of the way, just as he let loose a flight of lead shot that shattered the doors.
I naturally assumed the lead, drawing on my service revolver, as we slowly ducked through the newly-crafted point of ingress.
Ah yes, the Taunton Mall—has there ever been a better teen hangout? Where better to go and waste an otherwise useful day? One could grab a taco, go make faces at the puppies in the pet store window, and then thumb through all the magazines at the bookstore without dispensing of a single copper. What living!
John and I began to jog, and Julie tried to keep up. We were in the heart of the two-story mall, between a nest of jewelry stores and Old Navy. Soft 80’s music was playing in the background, but other than that, silence prevailed inside the vast commercial complex.
“Hello?” John yelled.
“Where did everyone go?” Julie asked, as redundantly as possible.
“I don’t know man, but I’m going to go grab some Taco Bell.”
“Are you crazy!” protested John curtly, turning to face me. “We have to stick together and look for more survivors!”
“Then you guys come with me!” I retorted—and he couldn’t really argue with me on that point, so the three of us turned towards the right, walked the course of the first floor, and then jogged up the motionless escalators. We hooked left at Sears, and then right into the food court, and there stood the golden mecca shared by all the world’s potheads, college students, and poets laureate: Taco Bell. How many times had I eaten there over the years, I wondered. Countless times, nigh on infinity, or at least numbering in the upper dozens.
But I began to lose heart: for by the time I’d reached the Taco Bell kiosk, it’d dawned on me that there was nobody behind the counter manning it. What frustration! Can you imagine? No, seriously---stop reading this for a second and ask yourself: How much would it suck to drive all the way to the mall, only to discover upon arriving that the local Taco Bell was out of commission? That’s right—you’d be pissed too! And rightly so. But it should have come as no real surprise to me, all the rest of the mall seemed eerily quiet, dark, and empty today. I’d never before seen it so lifeless and still. Quite frankly, it freaked me out—and I’m not easily freaked out, being a cop and all.
The three of us slowly walked deeper into the food court, and towards one of the hundreds of tables contained therein. There, we took a seat, and a break from all of our running. John and I set the heavy duffel bag down onto the floor next to our table, and the three of us looked around our cold environment. This wasn’t the same fun, happy mall wherein I’d met Mark Bellhorn and Johnny Damon. This was a totally evil mall, a mall from hell!
Or at least Missouri.
We couldn’t decide on an awful lot to do just then, so we just sat there and waited.
Isn’t it every kid’s fantasy to have all the mall to his or herself? The possibilities are limitless—and yet there we were, unable to think of a solitary thing to do or steal.
So picture this: there we were, three normal people loitering in a dark and very eerie mall, with a duffel bag full of guns just itching to be fired. Myself, a brave and noble enforcer of the law, a svelte piece of ass called Julie, and a fifty-something gun jocky…
By one, the sun-filled sky had ebbed away, to be replaced by a cloudy, overcast one. By two, it’d begun to rain softly outside. Thank god we were safely indoors. But how safe were we really?
We collectively decided to live out of the food court for a while. At least, until a better place presented itself to us.
Julie went off to collect f...
Also, some of my art work is to be found on my myspace pictures, at
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fus...id=7710900
A Zombie Story
By B. A. Carr, Esq.
You don’t know me, but my name is Ben, and over the past few days I have gone through situations the likes of which the human mind can only peripherally comprehend. Yea, that’s right, peripherally. But, like I was saying, I used to just be another normal guy... working, paying my taxes… just another gear in the capitalist machinery that drives our economy. But that was before. Before the… well, you’ll see.
Like I was saying, I had just been another average Joe.
Only my name wasn’t so much Joe as it much as it was Ben.
But who ever heard of someone just being an “average Ben”? Thus, I shall presently assume the false identity of Joe, if only for the sake of this idiomatic expression. Only you, the reader, and I will know this secret.
But there I go off again, on another tangent. Ugh, writing this narration will be so much effort---but I shall endeavor.
It was mid March when the troubles began… I remember it so well! My memories still lie fresh within my mind, not unlike newly trodden footsteps over a particularly snowy world. Speaking of snow, it’d been snowing a lot that month---most recently, all of Friday morning. Some 6” had amassed, and the world had just been freshly blanketed in a layer of crispy coldness. Yes, sheer miles of unbroken arctic tundra encompassed my house----when the zombies came…
It was 9:20pm by the little clock on my computer, which for the story’s sake we shall assume was accurate. If it weren’t, I’d never have known any better, and it could not affect my anecdote in the least… but that’s another story.
Any-who, I’d just come home from my job up at the precinct. Yea, that’s right---the precinct. I’m a cop. Got a problem with it? Well bugger off! What do I care that you hate cops. I hate them too.
Assuming that you’re still here--yes sir, I was the newest cop to hit the mean streets of Middleborough, Massachusetts. The ‘ol 02346. Cranberry capital of the world—and former shoe capital, for those chaussure enthusiasts of you out there. A nice, quiet town; and being a police officer, I was large and in charge… yet barely six months had passed since I’d first donned my black tunic and revolver.
But I digress…if I’m using that word right.
I’d just gotten home on that Friday evening, after a twelve-hour shift of keeping my hometown safe and boring.
Okay—I’ll admit that I wasn’t the best cop on the force, if only through being so new. And yea, the others did kind of mock me. And I guess I deserved it. In my six months, I’d only made one actual arrest. But don’t laugh---it was an important one. That lady had been giving me faces, really sick, twisted ones… there’s no question about it. It was just one of my cop hunches. Senior citizens have no respect for the fuzz these days! She pleaded innocent, and got off Scott free--but we cops don’t make mistakes of that nature. Yea, I got made fun of for that down at the station---but I still maintain to this day that she was dirty. Yes, she was dirty all right, that little old lady… dirty like a sanchez.
Ugh—digressing again! All right, here I go:
It was approaching 9:30pm. I’d just gotten home, to my small one-bedroom studio flat, on the third floor of the Peirce Building, at the corners of Center and East Main Streets. Yea, like I was saying, my hometown used to be pretty small and quiet… a sleepy little cranberry-growing municipality, tucked down in south shore region of Massachusetts, New England. A burg of roughly 20,000 people. A nice, quiet town, with tree-lined boulevards, and a couple of really nice historic districts if you like old nails, and antiques stores. But I don’t.
It was dark out. Only the gentle orange fluorescence of the downtown district, and the silvery glow cast down by the full moon, shed any light upon the packed snow tundra. I turned on the TV as soon as I walked into the world’s flat, and hastily discarded my uniform. That done, I set about to rummaging around therein for something to gnaw at in way of nocturnal sustenance. I found a bottle of cranberry juice, and some Taco Bell from the weekend before. Taking this into my hands, I smiled smugly, and returned to the cozy shelter of my favorite armchair, and to the warm white glow of my TV. I believe that my cat, fluffy & white Mr. Cuddles, came over from my bed at this time, purring just like an adorably plush motor engine, as he brushed past my leg in a frisky mood… his feline way of welcoming me back home. But I just kicked him.
Just as I was about to dig into the delicious course before me, my eyes shifted upwards towards the TV… something had caught my eye, and the news just happened to be on.
What--the news?, thought I with a queer glance, on at 9:30? And on VH1?
This odd occurrence having ensnared my curiosity, I set dreamily down the cold quasi-Mexican food, and got up to turn up the volume. A reporter was standing in a city---she looked quite nervous, I promptly deduced, as she frantically shouted her report into the microphone... but with all the ruckus going on around her, I could barely make out what she was saying at all! Behind her there were several police cruisers drawn askew the road, with their flashing reds and blues going at full cycle. Heard beyond these, there was the sound of weapons firing in the distance---all of this blaring and trumpeting, underscored by a rising bass element of screaming and turmoil. The writing on the screen said BOSTON, MASS. What could have caused so much unrest and chaos up in Beantown?
“Man—Yankees must’ve won,” I recall having said with great disdain, and with a sigh I wearily sank my teeth into one of the soggy tacos, and then took a swig of cranberry juice right from the bottle to force down the tired old repast. I lifted my eyes back up to the TV, and saw cops running across the screen—in full riot gear. “Oh man guys, go easy on them!” I recall having protested to the cops on my television, “This is a tragedy!”
But then I stopped dead…
Indeed, I stopped so very suddenly in the middle of my dining experience, that the sudden loss of motion caused the crass taco fillings to plop out---landing upon my rug with a clump sound! A great epiphany had just arisen within the hallowed annals of my Average Ben mind: The Sox hadn’t played the Yankees today at all, they’d played the Toronto Blue Jays…
But if it hadn’t been a rout by the hated New York team, what else could….?
Something wasn’t right, I verily did realize at this time.
I gingerly set the limp little taco back down onto my dusty end table, and scooted closer to the TV----until my face was awash with the fluorescent glow of police lights. I turned it up… the reporter was talking about mass destruction now, and people being dead, and of cops being overwhelmed en masse. This was no Sox-Yankees game, this was worse… and was it just in Boston, or was my own hometown also being threatened?
My mind was racing, and I was so nervous that I couldn’t even finish the glorious fare of my dinner. Queasily, I stumbled to my feet and thence for the phone, and immediately began to dial the local police department—to see if they needed me to punch back in, to see if everything was all right! But—there was no dial tone…
“Oh God—they phone lines are down!” I exclaimed in a gesture of exposition.
But then I plugged the phone line back into the wall.
After it rang busy for about ten minutes, I slammed down the receiver.
I had work to do.
I first thought to go for my uniform, which I’d nonchalantly discarded upon the bathroom floor. I’d just begun pulling the black trousers up past my knees when I decided not to don my uniform after all, but rather to travel incognito, in civilian garb---as I don’t really like cops all that much anyway.
I was, however, sure to grab my service issue revolver from the end table as I headed for the door, and out into the world beyond.
Barely any time had lapsed since I’d last been outside, and yet things seemed different. The streets were empty—and deathly silent. I clearly recall having felt an arctic wind blow by me, as I stumbled outside into the snow, and from somewhere in the not-too-far-off distance, I heard the ferocious barking of dogs---and yet there wasn’t a solitary soul to be found!
In retrospect, it was kind of reminiscent of one of those creepy horror movies, or of a Resident Evil game.
Fortunately for mankind, I lived almost across the street from the police station, so getting there wasn’t really much of a trouble.
I jogged up the snow-covered stone steps to the Middleboro Police Department, and promptly entered through the front door.
As always, I was greeted by the acrid aroma of cheese Danish and simmering coffee… this, and something else, that didn’t immediately register upon my nasal palette… but I’ll come back to that in a bit.
Officer Doodles was the pudgier, balder member of the force. He spoke with an amusing lisp, and he was the first person I saw inside the department office… there he was standing behind the counter on the right, watching TV in his dark little alcove. And normally, my first reaction would have been to greet my comically inept friend, but I couldn’t help but notice something off about his appearance. He was in uniform, sure enough, yet his round jaw was hanging wide open, tongue just protruding---and his eyes, they were glazed over. Now, Doodles was a nice guy, if not always too quick on the uptake, so I figured he’d just had a late night, which wasn’t all that uncommon of a thing for we thin blue line folk.
Smiling as I rested my friskily tapped my hands on the counter, I said,
“Hey Doodles, what’s going on out there, man?”
He didn’t respond—his eyes were all but glued on the TV monitor, which was emitting nothing but crackling static. It was dark behind the counter, not permitting me to see anything beyond the arc TV’s glow. This uncommon darkness cast Doodles in an all together creepy manner, and I’d have sworn that if I didn’t know better, that he’d fallen asleep on the job!
Hmm.
“Doodles, man, what’s going on?” I asked again, determined to get across to my friend. “Is this because I’m not in my uniform? Is that why you’re ignoring me?”
And he just kept on sitting there in his chair, mute as a carp in heat! And what’s more, he was even drooling a little bit. What a cold shoulder, I thought—and all because I wasn’t in uniform.
I couldn’t help but feel a tide of resentment boil up from within my very soul!
“Well, Doodles!” I said angrily, “some of us have a life beyond these walls! Try and meet a girl sometime!” And with that, I showed Doodles my back. I’d have expected him to burst forth out of his stupor, and embrace me as a true friend, all the while apologizing---but, no! Fed up with his childish antics, I passed along into the inner sanctum of the Middleborough Police Department, all the while kept company by the light humming of the perpetual fluorescent lighting.
The next room was the “den”, as we called it—a nice, large room for gathering with tables and chairs, TVs and donuts. It was light and lively, and we blokes of the force spent a lot of on-duty time in there, just waiting for something to happen, or going over old cases. You know, police stuff. At any given time, there were usually a few of Middleboro’s finest inside this cozy hall, sipping coffee and talking at a casual pace while on the clock at over time rates. At this particular time, there were two such men inside: Detective Grumpus, and Chief Davis.
At this juncture in my narration, it would be altogether inappropriate if I did not venture to go into more detail about these two fine, young men. And the plain, blunt truth was that they weren’t fine, young men at all. They were both round, fleshy blokes, in their mid forties, with insatiable appetites for pulling pranks on me. My easy-mannered sorrows provided a bottomless buffet of gravy-splashed laughs for them! Yes—well, they were actually a lot alike, the two of them. Both seniors on the force, both with credentials and merits up the ass, yet not a shred of common humility between the two of them. Donut munching pencil pushers is just what they were.
As I entered the den, the visages of Detective Grumpus and Davis were standing perfectly still in the middle of the room. They didn’t flinch a muscle, or bat an eyebrow—they were completely without motion of any kind, as cold as statues. The funny thing was, as I crept around to the other side of the room to get a better glimpse of them, was that they shared the same glazed-over kind of look in their eyes as old Doodles. Neither man uttered a single word of, neither of greeting nor of retribution. Rather, their fleshy mouths were hanging open loosely… hell, if they hadn’t been shallowly breathing, I couldn’t have even been sure that they were still *living. And even then, about their breathing—it didn’t seem quite right. Now, I’m not physamasician, but I know that people should breath more than thrice a minute, ‘least ways I think that they should.
It was at this moment, as I observed my two bellicose mates that I noticed the status of the den itself. And that, was chaotic at best. Chairs were over-turned, some of the lights were flicking (how had I missed that when I’d walked in?), and some immature rapscallion had gone and dragged what appeared to be a bloody handprint across the whitewashed wall.
To the motionless detective and chief, I turned and offered in way of words,
“Hey guys, how’s the graveyard shift going for ya?” interposed I, light-heartedly.
“…”
“Have you guys noticed anything… “off” about Doodles tonight?”
“…”
“That guy’s bugging me out! Just glued to the boob tube in there… its not right.”
“…”
“What, you guys aren’t talking either? What is this, a prank?”
“….ungh…” moaned Davis in a deep, raspy voice that sounded altogether inhuman---so much so that it surely would have made my very blood curdle, had my blood been composed of milk at the time.
Well, by this time I was quite fed up! I’d been there six months, thought I, and these tired old pranks were beginning to get real old, real fast. I mean, that one time when they’d filled my shoes with thumbtacks had been kind of funny, I’ll admit… and when Sergeant Murray had spray painted “dumbass” on my squad car, that’d been a real side-splitter too…hehe… but this whole cold-shoulder deal was the straw that broke the clown’s back! In any case, there was no just cause for rudeness, after all. They’d just gone too far.
Davis groaned deeply, and some green goop bubbled out of Grumpus’ mouth, whilst he uttered a disgusting gargling sound. Rolling my eyes at their immaturity, I turned my back on them, and passed into the officer’s lounge next door. Maybe there was someone in there who would tell me what was going on around here! Someone who was above these childish antics.
I opened the door.
Three uniformed patrolmen were in the lounge---Doughy, Snidely and Popowicz. Three young policemen, three good ‘ol boys, just like me. Their duty was still walking the beat and doing all the dirty work around town, (just like me), but they weren’t working ANY too hard right then, let me tell you---the same glazed-over look as on everyone else that night! There they were, just standing around, all lazy-like.
I first noticed Doughy. He was standing over in the corner of the room, his clothes torn to shreds, with his face borrowed into the joining of the two walls like a disobedient child might be… Snidely was rhythmically beating his forehead up against the soda machine, and then ‘ol Popowicz was… well, come to think of it, he was just lying sprawled on the floor in a puddle of his own crimson, a deep gash torn across his torso.
“Popowicz, don’t lie down on the job!” I recall having said with a chuckle and a good-natured wag of my finger. He didn’t laugh. Come to think of it, he really didn’t do much of anything—he just lay there, his skin kind of a pallid, chalky-white color.
Sensing that the gentleman was simply exhausted and fast asleep, I opted to leave him to his own devices and turned my attention next to Doughy and Snidely.
“Hey guys, what’s going on? Everyone’s acting strange tonight, huh?” I said to them with a friendly smile, as I went ahead poured myself a cup of black coffee at the table that served as the precinct’s kitchen area. Humming to myself an old Christopher Cross song, I heard a deep groan, not unlike those I’d heard from Grumps and Davis… had it come from Snidely…? I glanced over my shoulder, midway through pouring out my steaming hot coffee, but he hadn’t moved from the soda machine. He was still tapping his forehead up against it. Maybe he was trying to keep the beat to my humming?
“No, Snidely,” I said condescendingly with my back turned, setting down the coffee pot back onto the burner, “I believe this song is sung in quarter-time, your rhythm is much too slow.”
I went to sip my coffee, but as I brought the Styrofoam cup to my lips, I recalled just in time that I abhor the taste of coffee. So, down the drain with it, and took an apple from a bowl of “fresh” fruit.
Sinking my teeth in the crunchy Gala apple, I turned around. None of my three companions had moved, nor budged, nor said anything more.
And then Doughy suddenly collapsed down onto the floor like a bundle of slack rags, all of a sudden. It’d happened so quickly, I hadn’t even had time to tell him to tell him to watch out for the corner of the table---oops, too late! He bashed his forehead right on it. A shower of blood splattered out from the incident, and then with a loud thud, Doughy fell perfectly still onto his back.
I stood rather still, staring down at the second person on the floor, eating my apple and scratching my head in deep thought.
Don’t think poorly of me, oh reader, because I didn’t bother asking him if he was all right. I’d had it up to here (I’m motioning to my shoulders right now, which you can’t see, but that’s how the extent to which I’d had it, up to my shoulders) with all of the hazing around here. Would you have honestly done differently? Come on now, be honest. That guy wasn’t a total jerk, but I couldn’t be bothered with him now. And besides, Popowicz was already down on the floor with him. So, I asked Popowicz to take a look at Doughy for me. Finishing the apple, I dropped the core on the floor and turned to leave. Things seemed to be in order in the precinct, so my job there was done. They obviously didn’t need me.
Crossing the street back over to my building, I was nearly run down by a car that bolted past me. Let me take some time to describe this to the reader, because it scared me so much that I nearly deuced my pants. There I was, having just come down from the police station. Like I said before, all cold and dark out, it being night and all, and snow and all that… so, I burrowed my hands into my pockets for warmth and set out across Route 105. I’d just about reached the median strip when two headlights leapt over the hill, squealing straight at me! Without time for thought, my porcine reflexes sprang into action—and I leapt out of the way. The car (a Camry, I believe,) didn’t even stop. No, it just whizzed past me, doing probably sixty… the driver screaming maniacally, while another pale-skinned gentleman was reaching his way through the shattered windshield as if to grab the bloke who was driving.
Back inside, I kicked off my shoes and shut off the TV. Not having to work in the morrow, I felt like the king of the world… I love sleeping in. Without doubt, by the time I would be up in the morning, everything will be back to normal. And this is how I left the world that Friday night, whilst I passed to the cradling arms of Morpheus, into land of peaceful slumber. Mr. Cuddles came over and curled up next to me before I swatted him off.
I awoke in a much better mood. The sun was shining and it was sometime about ten in the morning. I can’t be sure, you see, because there was no power. And yes, I made sure that my clock wasn’t just unplugged this time—there was absolutely no electrical current running to my building whatsoever.
Yawning, I dragged myself out of bed. The first thing I did was finish the half-eaten taco that I’d left on the table the night before. If nothing else, at least the taco was warm now, even if it didn’t settle all that well after the fact.
Pale morning light filtered into my otherwise dark room through the closed Venetian blinds. It was nice out, I gathered, and maybe even kind of unseasonably warm. It’d been such a cold, snowy winter---as winters can sometimes be---and the change in weather was a welcome one.
So, I went to take a shower but---again, no power. Throwing on a change of clothes, I strapped on my belt with attachable holster and revolver, and went outside into the landing between floors. Silence there, so I trotted down the stairs and out the front door onto Centre Street.
I was in a good mood—the world was at my feet, and I had the day off to spent as I saw fit. Fixing a pair of cool sunglasses upon my noses, I broke out singing some Beatles… Lady Madonna¸ if I recall correctly---either way its entirely inconsequential to the narrative, so just ignore my having mentioned it. Anyway, it was a gorgeous Saturday morning, and the world was my pearl. Or… was it my oyster? Well, however that old cliché went, THAT was what my world was on that day.
I walked halfway across the street, stopped, and looked around. The sun was brightly shining overhead, and the sky was crystal-clear and beautiful. The light was reflecting quite powerfully off of the layer of snow, but my eyes soon adapted. Once they did, a few things struck me as odd, whilst I stood there on the sidewalk, about my environment. These observations were as follows: firstly, there wasn’t a solitary person in sight. I mean, last night is understandable. Who the hell wants to be out on a cold, windy night like that? But today was warm, sunny and beautiful. Secondly, I’d accidentally put on two left-footed stockings before leaving. And thirdly and finally, but probably least importantly, I’d forgotten to give Mr. Cuddles anything to eat at all that week. He’d gone longer without food.
But regardless.
“Hello?” I called out loud, determined to make peace with the world after my embarrassing antics of the night before.
My charmingly baritone voice echoed off of the buildings interposed around me, but there was no other reply. Was there really no one out today? Was everyone in town sleeping in by coincidence, or were they all at home watching Saturday morning cartoons? Maybe—but that wouldn’t explain the flaming cars that lined the boulevards.
I shrugged my shoulders, and started off along the street. But, I hadn’t gone very far before I came to a cloudy red impression in snow. There was a trail, leading off around the corner onto the next street.
At this time, I rubbed my chin in deep thought. I walked briskly the short distance to the trail of blood, caked in with the dirt and mud of the town’s central artery... gray, off-white, and red. The mix of colors made it look like an old raspberry cheese Danish. But then I started to get hungry for confectionaries, so I had to force that out of my mind.
Presently, I glanced up, and saw a person lying in the snow: the source of the blood! Ah-ha! You see, I’m not THAT bad of a cop. I have good reasoning and deduction skills after all; like here. I’d already found the cause of the bleeding.
I jogged over across the way to the bloke, waving one arm.
“Excuse me, Sir,” I said, my breath hanging in the chilly morning air, “but you can’t sleep in the middle of the road. And you might want to get some medical attention for that wound. Is your arm missing?”
It was. His right arm was gone—detached at the shoulder. Blood had been absorbed into the snow all around him.
“Ouch—I bet that stings, but please move along. Vagrancy is an arrestable offense.”
The chap, who was lying face down in the snow, had the nerve to ignore me--a police officer! Angrily, I reiterated:
“I am an officer of the law, and you will respect my authority!”
And that fellow had the sheer, brazen nerve to continue ignoring me. Missing an arm or not, that was rude. I knelt down alongside the chap in the snow. His clothes were tattered rags, and there were deep, bloody gashes and bruises all over his body. One of his eyes was missing, and it looked as though something had been chewing on his ear—there were deep teeth marks in it. After surveying the situation, and examining all of the evidence, as well as the grizzly state of the man, I made the only logical deduction. I said,
“Sir, have you been drinking?”
It was so clear to me now.
This tipsy rogue had had a bit too much of the happy juice last night, and had passed out right here in the snow. It all added up now. Except for the arm.
“Public drunkenness is a crime, Sir. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take you into custody.”
So, I did what any smart cop would do: I cuffed the jerk. It wasn’t too hard to do; he didn’t at all resist me. Actually, he just lied there, really *stiff-like. Him not having a second arm would normally have made it difficult for one to handcuff him, so I had to improvise and be creative. They train us for these situations at police academy. After a moment, I flipped his raw body over in the snow, and went about placing both cuffs around his one remaining wrist. He wouldn’t be getting away from me now.
Well, he may have cooperated while I cuffed him, but he sure didn’t all the way to the police station! Thank goodness it was just a short distance up the street, but this public offender didn’t want to go in easily. I had to drag his limp, cold body all the way up the steps, and inside the department!
Finally, I got him inside the front door, and dropped him like a ton of bricks on the rug.
Doodles was just as he’d been the night before, eyes glued on the monitor (which was all static, by the way.) Only today, his skin seemed darker… brown, or green… and his eyes had sunken considerably into his skull. It was as though he’d aged noticeably over night. All in all, it wasn’t a good look for him, and I told him so. Doodles didn’t offer to help me with the culprit as I dragged one-armed body across the room and down the flight of stairs, heaving and panting all the while (he was a heavy guy, and frozen solid!) for lockup in the basement.
Go figures.
Because I can’t.
Downstairs, where we kept the town’s misdemeanor offenders for their brief stays, all of the cells were empty. Now, that did give me a moment of pause, when I’d first turned around from the criminal in hand. When I’d left work last night, we’d had three people under key for the night: a teen vandal who’d been caught writing graffiti behind Victory, a wife-beating lowlife, and a democrat. Yet today the cell doors were all wide open, and body parts were strewn all over the place! The three lock-ups were nowhere in sight. In fact, the only person I saw was Officer Doughy.
Doughy was obviously better since he’d passed out and banged his head on the table the night before. He was crouched in a dark corner at the far end of the basement, shrouded in darkness, gnawing on something large that he held up to his mouth with both hands. Eyeing him curiously, it sounded as though he were ripping chunks of meat off of a large let of mutton, or something of that nature… the gluttonous sounds he made! Like a dog.
“G’morning Doughy, how’s the head? All better?” I asked, returning to the laborious burden of the drunkard. I dragged the bugger into cell number three, and let him lay where he’d fallen on the cement floor. Sliding shut the barred door with a loud clang, I locked it up, and turned around to face Doughy.
The small cellblock was a marvelous mess! Someone had apparently spilled a can of red paint over the floor… and there, at my feet, lay a detached human leg.
Picking it up, I examined it.
I opened cell number three back up and tossed the body part to the drunkard, figuring that he could make some use of it in lieu of his arm, but he was apparently still out cold from his night’s dealings. The new limb hit him in the head, and landed on the floor next to him.
Turning back around, Doughy was standing on his feet now---the arms hanging loosely at his sides, and his back uncommonly erect… as if he were trying to seem taller than he was.
“Hey, Doughy!” I called over, and whistled.
Slowly, he turned and faced me---ketchup and what must’ve been mutton meat dripping from his face---and let me tell you, he had gotten UG-LEE! His cheeks had sunken into his face, his skin had begun to turn dark and chip off, and he had no product in his hair whatsoever.
It was now that I noticed what he had in his hands. Why—it wasn’t a leg of mutton at all! It wasn’t even a brisket of mutton! It was a leg of democrat!
I was totally caught off guard by this… stumbling backwards; I was soon up against the cell behind me—abjectly horrified, covering my mouth with my hand, as I uttered a little burp.
“Excuse me… Charles! What the hell are you doing, boy?” I screamed over at him, more angrily than anything else. Not only had he killed and began to consume one of our prisoners, but it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. There was bad, and then there was just plain wrong.
And then he took a lanky, unbalanced step towards me.
“Charles, get back!” I barked defensively, drawing my service revolver. I cocked the hammer (which sounds funny to say, but it just means I got it ready to fire) and pointed the Smith & Wesson in his direction. “Get back from that ignorant gentleman, now! I understand that you’re upset with his voting policies, but there are other ways! I’m sure there must be!”
As he crept ever closer to me, I noticed his eyes… they appeared to be altogether without pupils! And his face---it seemed to be in an advanced state of decay, as if he’d been laying several months in a grave somewhere before showing up for work. The wound from the table the night before was still open and raw, with chips of fragmented bone snowing plain to the light… that whole side of his face was coated in a light coating of blood that’d dried over night. This, and blood and gore were dripping from his jagged yellow teeth, and then went and uttered a low, raspy moan at me! And so, shuffling slowly, one foot after the other, with his arms stretched out as if to grab at me the moment I got within reach, he crossed the cell. And me, I just watch on, horrified, my revolver shaking in my unsure hands… what could I do?
Well, what the hell was this? What could this possibly be? In all my six months on the force I’d never experienced anything like this before, not even during the hectic days of bagger-led communist revolution that’d fermented to power at the Stop & Shop that past June. This topped it all in my book.
“Don’t make me shoot you, man! Back off!” I snapped, between clenched teeth.
“Unggh…” he muttered in my general direction, shuffling ever closer.
“I’m warning you man! Sit down and cool it! Just chill, man!”
Despite my more than fair warning he shuffled closer… and closer… and closer.
“I won’t warn you again!”
“Mugghhh…”
“This is your last warning, Charles B. Doughy!”
More incoherent mumbling and groaning from him.
“Okay—this is the REAL last warning!” I said, a bit of emotional distress showing through in my voice… I mean, I didn’t really want to shoot him—he was kind of my friend. You go through life thinking that shooting people will be fun and cool, like it is on TV and in the movies… I mean that’s why one joins the police, right? That’s why I did. But not to shoot my friend… not my friend…
But, finally, I had to be rather firm with Doughy, and draw the line.
“This is it, man!” I squealed between my clenched teeth, the revolver bobbing in my hand as I gripped it so tightly that my knuckles were turning white. He was almost close enough to tackle me now, if that was his intention. But fuck that—he wasn’t getting my brain!
I pulled the trigger, just once. The loud crack of the revolver roared, and the flash of the muzzle lit up all the basement. And in a split second, it was done. At such close range, the gunshot had smashed in his forehead—it just crumpled inward, whilst showering me in gore and brains.
And poor Doughy, he muttered one last soft groan, and then collapsed, nearly at my feet.
“I fucking said not to do it but you wouldn’t listen, would you! Always trying to be funny! Well look where it got you this time, Charles!” I cried out, almost in tears… and cops don’t really ever cry, what with our lack of tear ducts, and our generally being assholes, but this was serious… I’d had to blow my friend’s head off. He was dead, but damn it it, it’d been his own fault!
Wiping at my eyes with my hand, I chased the tears away, and holstered my revolver.
But, back to business.
I cleaned up all of the loosely scattered body parts, (all that remained of our three prisoners), and deposited them in an open trash can. Usually on Saturday mornings, the trash barrel would be overflowing with empty beer cans and old titty magazines, from our wild precinct sex parties, but that morning it had to pull double duty for those messy body parts as well.
Shutting off the lights, and depriving the basement of all light but that which filtered through the narrow windows, I jogged back up the steps to the street level.
Doodles was just as before. Just as earlier, and even just as last night.
“Man, that TV’s going to rot your brains if you sit that close!” I warned him, while I shut the door to the basement.
“Br-brains…” mumbled Doodles, pointing at me.
Whoa—he’d spoken! Finally, I recall having thought, someone on the force had spoken to me! The lame ‘Let’s not talk to Ben!’ prank was over at last. What a relief.
“Hey—thanks, man. I’ve always prided myself in being pretty smart, but I appreciate hearing it from time to time.” I mean, I hate to toot my own horn, but, toot-toot!
But somehow, in retrospect, I’m not sure that was what Doodles had meant to communicate to me. The more I think about it now, the more I think he wasn’t really trying to compliment me on my intelligence. Somehow, the sunken-in eyes, and the rotting green tint of his flesh causes me to have serious reflection.
But anyway, on with my narrative! I’ll bet you’re saying to yourself right now, as you read my story, “man this poor Ben guy just isn’t getting any breaks!” But don’t you worry about me, my friends. As an intrepid young man, with a sharp wit and a youthful vitality, I was more than able to take care of myself… so, just keep on reading.
After Doodles’ compliment, I left the station. It was probably about eleven in the morning by this time. I’d been hoping that things would have gotten back to normal outside, but—no luck there! The burnt-out car wrecks still dotted the streets, and there wasn’t a single person about.
Way to go, Ben—wasting your day off by going to work! So, I hopped back over to my flat, grabbed my wallet and keys, and then ran around to back of my building, and got into my car. I turned the ‘old gal on, cranked it into reverse, and back onto the street. All that work had made me hungry, so I headed for McDonalds: if not to get something to eat, at least to hit on one of the cute girls who would be working the counter.
As I drove along, my mind reflective upon how to spend the balance of my day off, I turned on the radio. Normally, I have one of my swell eighties mixes going, or if I was in the mood for radio, 98.5, or 106.1. They usually play a nice mix of all the music with which I identify myself. But not today!
Was NOTHING going right for me?
98.5 was nothing but incessant, crackling static. Assuming that it was a new hip hop song, I turned to 106.1… but it wasn’t much better; they were playing a long, flat, monotonous beeping sound—kind of like that test broadcast of the emergency something-or-another that they sometimes have. So I shut off the radio, and throttled along East Main, onto South Maine, and on towards McDonalds.
Now, you might know if you live in Middleborough, but in case you don’t I’ll tell you. South Maine is a nice little street, lined with quaint old houses, broad sidewalks, and well-kept lawns. All in all, it was a pretty nice neighborhood. But today, the quiet atmosphere was anything but quaint. There were fire hydrants spraying columns of water into the air, all up the street. I saw that a police cruiser, #55, had crashed into a tree on the left—its horn was still going, and the entire front end was crumpled in like tin can.
But things got progressively weirder as I went.
There were more crashed cars lining the street, and people lying right on their lawns. If I were on duty I might have pulled over and arrested them for some traffic offense or vagrancy, but hey—I WAS OFF TODAY! So, I just carefully pulled around the pedestrians whom dotted the road, and pressed on.
I crossed the usually busy juncture of Routes 105 and 28 without even having to stop. The traffic lights were blinking yellow, as they swayed in the gentle morning breeze. Furthermore, there weren’t even any other cars on the road—at least none that were in driving condition.
Finally, I pulled into McDonalds, and went around the drive thru. I rolled down my window and leaned out a little bit.
What to order?
Now normally I don’t eat at McDonalds, and---well, you don’t really care about where I eat, so I won’t bore you with that. This is, after all a story about zombies, not about Taco Bell.
So here I found myself, with the car in neutral.
“Hey—I’d like---uh jeeze… what do you call it? The… thing there, with like cheese on it… is it a cheeseburger?”
There was no reply from the other end of the line. Not even a polite “May I take your order?”
“Hey? Umm, can you take my order?” was my curt request.
Finally, I heard some commotion on the other end of the microphone.
“Yes?” hissed a dry, old man’s voice.
“I’ll take a cheeseburger.”
“Unngh…,” he moaned, “is that all?”
Creeped out by the strange man, I said that it was.
“Would you…(moaning sound) …like f-fries with that?”
“No, I wouldn’t like any f-fries with that!” I said, mocking his stutter.
There was a pause while he calculated the total.
“That’ll be…uuhhhghh… brains… two-thirty-eight. Please pull…brains forward to the next… window.”
Curious to see just what this guy looked like, I drove around to the first of the two windows. The first window was closed up tightly. Unperturbed, I proceeded to the second window—this one was also firmly sealed. Well, I thought, that just sucks! What kind of a place are they running around here anyway? So, I pulled aside and parked. Slamming my door, I briskly jogged inside, and went straight to the counter.
No one was in sight, and the lights were flickering on and off all throughout the place.
“Hello? I’ve come for my cheeseburger!”
This was totally weird, you have to understand. I mean, where was everybody? Normally there would be something like five or six people working the counter at McDonalds, and five or so more in the back, pouring bags of greasy french-fries into the cooking oil vats. Normally---but not today.
I glanced around the rest of the dining area. The large bay window was shattered, I noticed… shards of the decal-applied McDonalds emblem lay sprinkled all around. There were a few partially eaten meals on a couple of tables, but no people in sight. Who would buy McDonalds food and then just leave it behind, half-eaten? Someone in a terrible hurry, perhaps—but not likely. Not in this case.
The sound of something metal, perhaps a pan falling down from a rack, resonated from behind me. Spinning around, I faced across the counter, into the dark kitchen beyond.
I could hear my heart pounding in my chest, in the silence of the moment. So—I wasn’t alone after all. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but something made my hair stand on end just then. The strange voice at the drive thru, the broken window, the bad service… I instinctively drew the revolver, and cocked the hammer (tee-hehe).
“Hello? Is there anyone back there? Don’t be alarmed—I’m just looking for a cheeseburger.”
I crept along, slowly, around the counter and towards the aisle of shiny steel food preparation equipment. I turned the corner, pistol drawn before me, and in the far back of the kitchen I saw a tall man—staring right back at me, perfectly still, as if he’d been watching me the entire time. At once, he stepped forward, and then began to shuffle in my direction. His face was torn up rather badly, and his skin was very, very pale. This guy, just like the guys back at the precinct, had something altogether very wrong with him, and I simply couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
“Are you the manager?” I asked. Although (surprise, surprise) he didn’t say anything to me, I could tell that he was: he was wearing the shirt, forlorn expression and soiled slacks of a McDonalds manager all right.
“ugghh…” he whispered.
“Yea, that’s what everybody’s been telling me all day,” I said to him, perhaps a little short. “Now, can you please make me a cheeseburger?” I implored of him, moving out of the kitchen and over to a booth, “and hold the onions.”
But, the manager only repeated the monosyllabic expression, and continued to drag his cold, moist body towards me. Quite firmly, I added:
“Sir, I am a trained law enforcement agent, and as such I will not hesitate to kill you if you do not make me cheeseburger this instant!”
Despite this, the manager continued to creep closer and closer, his face contorting into a warped look of horror and angst… his glossy eyes stayed fixed on me, while he licked his chapped lips.
Gross.
Whereas I had waited for Doughy to get really close before I’d shot him, I just got really tired of waiting for this jerk to drag his slowpoke ass across the kitchen. Thus I shot him a good ways’ off. The first shot perforated his chest, but he just absorbed it and kept on approaching! That’s right! How do you figure, a shot square to the chest… a stream of crimson spurted out from his wound, but he didn’t even express the slightest notion of any pain.
Rolling my eyes, I fired a second shot, this one dead into the brainpan. That time, the force of the blow knocked him out cold, and he sprawled backwards onto the kitchen floor with a soft whimpering sound.
It was with a heavy sense of regret that I finally realized that I would not be getting any food around that place that morning. So, returning my Smith & Wesson to my trusty holster, I took one last glimpse around the trashed McDonalds, and headed back outside for my car.
It was as I walked towards my Stratus this time that I heard it: screaming! Loud, shrill screaming---that of a young woman. Off duty or not, I had to do something about this: she sounded really hot.
Immediately, I broke into a run in the direction of the screaming. I rounded a brown fence, and climbed a shallow hill, to the Exxon station next door. There were two cars pulled up to the pumps--one was still being fueled---the owner lying slumped against the blue Subaru, his hand still clamped on the trigger, while gas flowed out of the fueling port. It ran down the hill in a veritable stream, and flowed right into the street gutter. Such a disgusting waste of gasoline mortified me, and I was going to hang up the pump for the gentleman, but I the sounds of screeching returned my mind to the task at hand: the hot chick!
In truly heroic fashion, I yanked open the door to the gas station, and leapt in, revolver drawn, ready for action. Turning towards the left, I met eyes with a young blonde girl crouched behind the counter. It was her who’d been screaming; at the large, unshaven fellow who was grasping at her from across the counter.
As soon as the beautiful young lady saw me, her eyes lit up, and she pleaded in my general direction,
“Oh my God--help me! Shoot him! Shoot him! Shoot him!”
So I just shot the guy, like the cute girl told me to do.
Bang—another lead slug in the brainpan, and this one flew backwards into a display of candy, which collapsed under his weight. He too, I noticed, was of a green complexion, and dressed in tattered rags. Odd. Must be the new style, I cleverly reasoned, as I returned my handy S&W to its holster, still smoking as it was. At this time, I also made the grave reflection that there were only four more lead-tippers in my revolver.
Ah, yes: the girl was indeed quite hot, as I’d guessed… and she now got to her feet, tears streaming down her red face, and veritably tackled me! Seeing that the putrid jerk who lay in a mess of salty confections would be bothering her now mores, she flew at me, arms wide open. She took me into her deep embrace and hugged me tightly, repeating ‘thank you, thank you’… and was it so wrong of me to hug her back? I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed deeply. Oh it feels so good, doesn’t it? The warmth, the feeling of another person’s heart beating next to yours---but it’s twice as good when the person is wicked hot.
“Thank you, you saved me!” she said, looking up into my face, hot tears streaming down her soft cheeks.
“Yea,” I said softly to her, “that guy was a total doucebag.”
She turned to me, smiling thinly as if what I’d said had thrown her off. Now that she was calm, she said with a chuckle,
“No, he was a zombie I think. He was going to eat my brains.”
“Ah-hah,” I said with a wise glare of deduction. “Well, my dear, it’s been nice, but I’ve got to be going. I’m a cop, you see, and it’s my day off.” With this, I took her silky-smooth hand into mine and bent down to kiss it, adding, “But it was nice meeting you!”
And with that, I left as quickly as I’d entered.
“Wait,” she called after me, running out of the small shop, take me with you!”
Total chick magnet, I thought of myself with a sly smile. She was willing to leave her job in the middle of the day to run off with me! I’d always been a chick magnet, I recall now in retrospect… as far back as seventh grade, when I kissed a girl on the cheek on a dare. Every since then, what can I say---some of us are born with it, and some of us aren’t.
So, I said to her,
“Well sure you can come with me, but I don’t know where I’m going.”
“There’s nowhere safe anymore—I thought I could lock myself up in the store for a few weeks, and live off of the junk food until help arrived, but that creep broke the window and came after me. It’s terrible! Everybody’s like that!” sobbed the young woman, as we linked arms and strolled along, taking in the pleasant warmth of the sun.
As she said this to me, I ventured to steal a deeper glance at my new companion. Oh yea, she was a cutie all right… beautiful figure, great bust… soft skin, a radiant glow… dirty blonde hair that ran to her shoulders. I could definitely have drank her in right about then. But, being not only a cop, but also a gentleman, I had an obligation to shelf my more primitive desires.
“So what’s your name?” I asked as we reached my car.
“Julie,” she said, getting in shotgun.
“I’m Officer Benjamin Carr, MPD… I’m a real police officer now, so you’ll have to respect me, all right?”
“Umm---all right,” she replied slowly, fastening her seatbelt.
I turned on the ignition and backed away from the gas station. As I turned out of the parking lot, we both noticed at the same time, that there were two people just ahead. They were slowly walking towards us, and from the looks of things, they too were up to no good. Raggedy, torn clothes, glazed-over eyes—the whole nine yards.
Julie screamed and pointed at them.
“Do something!” she pleaded with me.
“I can’t arrest them for jay walking, I’m not on duty!”
“No, kill them, quickly! Hurry!”
“Kill them for jay walking? This isn’t Texas…”
“No, kill them before they eat our brains!”
Now she looked like a fool. Why would these upstanding, prominent townsfolk be interested in eating our brains? I mean, Doodles had said something about brains back at the station, but he’d been complimenting my intelligence! This was different. But still, what could I do? A really cute young lady had just asked me to kill two guys for her.
“All right,” I said looking over at Julie, “hold on!”
And I slammed my foot on the gas pedal.
The back tires screeched and burned, and then in a cloud of burnt rubber we went speeding straight ahead. We must have been doing something like sixty as we peeled out! The two guys made no effort to get out of the way—and we plowed right through them. The force of the hit-and-run was pretty intense all right… one of the two guys got between my 95 Contour and the road, and wound up flatter than a Mexican pancake. He made for a bumpy driving surface, but once we were past him and his friend, we were in the clear.
Well, there we were.
Having escaped from the Mobil station, with prestige intact, I found myself chauffeuring this pretty little lady around town, and on such a lovely day too. I was in such a good mood that I rolled down my window and let the cool summer air blow through my car. Adding to the laid back atmosphere, I turned on the radio for a few minutes, before the same old emergency broadcast began to wear thin on my patience.
It took some doing from my part, but soon enough Julie began to calm down. I offered her a Kleenex from out of my glove compartment to dry those tears, and asked her if there was anything I could do to ease her misery. At this point, the pretty little thing began telling me her life story, but unfortunately I’d just popped in my Boston’s Greatest Hits CD, so I didn’t get too much of it. Something about cats, I think… it wasn’t very important, anyway, and she was a lousy story teller.
We cruised along comfortably at sixty, passing Victory on the right, and then MHS a short distance further along. Route 105 was peculiarly empty for that time of day… discounting the wrecked cars which lined the street, and all of the bodies which dotted the rural townscape. Young Julie suggested that we should find a way to keep safe, and I agreed; and she further suggested that we would need weapons with which to defend ourselves. Of course I had my standard-issue revolver, but she explained, and I quite agreed, that more guns of larger caliber and bore were absolutely better.
A few more southerly miles along 105, and then I pulled into a small two-shop plaza on the left, at the corner of East Grove and Wareham streets. There were a few cars already parked there, but I didn’t have any trouble finding a space.
“We need to be quick, Ben, and keep on moving! We’re not safe as long as we’re stationary!” said the beautiful young woman. She got out of the car, and looked around in a dream-like daze.
“I need to pick up some stuff first.”
The gun store was unlocked, to my surprise—it usually wasn’t open this early on a weekend. So I nonchalantly proceeded within, and glanced all about the place. Things were kind of messy… a whole aisle of gun accessories was spilled onto the floor, and there was a guy lying down in the midst of the mess.
He was missing his left foot.
Not wanting to disturb him, I quietly crept around that aisle, and made for the counter.
“Hello?” I called, “shopkeep?”
“Who is it!” barked the voice of an older man. Oh good, I thought, at least there’s somebody here who hasn’t caught the idiot-bug that’s going around town! I turned towards the voice, and saw a man, perhaps in his mid-fifties. At the time, the gentleman was crawling out from behind the counter, with a sawed-off lever action shotgun in his hands… and a whole arsenal more strapped and around him. At least six handguns dangled loosely from his clothes, and I noticed a two foot-long machete strapped to his back. Talk about Rambo!
“Officer Carr, MPD,” I said, proudly displaying my badge. “I’d like to make some purchases.”
“Really?” asked the shop owner, getting to his feet and smiling broadly, “you mean you’re not one of them? You’re not changed yet? Y—you’re still human?” oh, how his voice seemed so enthused to see me—as though he hadn’t seen another person in so long, and it was some great thrill for him! I smiled feebly.
“I may be a cop, Sir, but I am still human, I assure you.”
“No—I mean you’re not a zombie!”
At that ridiculous assertion I threw back my head and laughed.
“A zombie? Someone’s been watching too many horror movies.”
“It’s true! I had to kill twelve of them last night! They were in the restaurant next door, and they came in here---chanting ‘BRAINS! BRAINS!’ So, I did what any red-blooded American would do: I shot them all! Each and every one! Bam!” exclaimed the well-rounded gentleman with glee, with a particularly loud emphasis on the onomatopoeia.
I looked around the store, and noticed several more bodies lying on the tiled floor.
“If I were on duty, I’d have to arrest you for murder now.”
“Murder? Damn it, kid, they’re already dead! They’re zombies! The whole town has changed over! It’s the end of the world!” exclaimed the gentleman, motioning broadly with his hands.
“It’s true,” added Julie softly, approaching from the door.
“People, please! I know things have been weird lately---but come on now!”
“It’s true, Officer!” pleaded the gun shop owner. But I just rolled my eyes.
“Well, whatever, friend. But at any rate, I still need to make some purchases.”
“You came by to stock up?” he asked, looking around his gun-filled store.
“Yes.”
“Please, take whatever you want—whatever it is you want---but I’m coming with you! Take me away from here!”
Dude—gross! It was hot when the blonde was hitting on me, but this was a fifty year-old guy. Why was everyone drawn to me so much lately? Don’t get me wrong, reader! I’m not a gay-basher, but come on… I’m not gay, and even if I were, this guy was like fifty! If I were gay, I’d like to think I could do better than that.
“Thank you, friend, but I’m not interested. I’m not like that.”
He just looked at me funnily, and then exchanged a confused glance with Julie, who just shrugged her shoulders. Finally, he said,
“Officer—just take whatever you want. After, we’ll need to find someplace to hold up until the marines come.”
“Marines?” asked Julie.
“Yes. Before the radios all went out, I heard that the government was declaring a ‘regime change’ against the zombies… the military was regrouping further down south, near Mexico. President Bush was being evacuated to somewhere safe, along with most of the government. ”
Again with that loony zombie story! But whatever—if this guy wanted to give away half of his inventory to me, I’d be glad to take it.
At this time, I grabbed a large green duffle bag from one of his displays, and then hopped right over the counter. The shop owner stood idly by as I slid open the glass cases underneath, and began putting a dozen different handguns into the sack. After a moment, the owner started helping me, too, by tucking cases of ammunition into my bag.
What a generous guy, I thought to myself!
Next, I got up and turned to face the wall of rifles and shotguns. Once, I ran my eyes along the length of the display, and saw every make and type that I’d ever known to have existed, or could have ever wanted. Oh, the power! So, not to get off on another tangent, I began selecting from the variety before me. Naturally, we skipped over the pussy Boy Scout guns, like the .22s, and went for the large bore hunting guns. In all, the gentleman shopkeeper and I deposited five shotguns, and then five quality rifles of different bores and manufacturers, into the duffel bag---which was, I assure you, quite full by this time.
“Is that all we need?” Julie said, roaming up and down the aisles.
“Yea—trust me, we could hold off an army with this stuff!” boasted the gun store owner, as he threw a few last items into the bag, and zipped it up. It took both of us to lift it, but we managed to get the heavy thing into my backseat.
It was noon by the time we’d managed that, on that unseasonably warm winter day. All around us, the world was otherwise quiet—no vehicular traffic, no pedestrians. Now, I recall from that moment, as the Republican and I made final our preparations for departure, that I was feeling a certain fish-out-of-water anxiety. The entire world seemed peculiarly different from my perspective... people acting radically different, there being no traffic on what should have been a somewhat busy day... the entire police department had been pulling a prank on me… the service at McDonalds was worse than ever… and then Julie and this old guy had started hitting on me. What a weird life I live! All of that strangeness, unfolding over the course of just one day. Well, surely at this juncture, the reader can understand my vexation.
But, enough with the tangent.
My companions and I boarded the car, and then got back onto Route 105, heading westerly. But, where would we go? A car full of guns, a respectively attractive girl riding shotgun, and no one else in sight—the world was surely my oyster, but whither? Oh, whither, pondered I, harkest thou, in somewhat accurate Middle English-speak. The middle-aged gentleman suggested that we make haste towards the Taunton mall, or the super Wal-Mart in Raynham. There, he argued, we could hold out indefinitely for any extended period of time—years even. Julie seemed to like the plan, and indeed it did seem quite logical, but on the other hand, I argued, I had to be up early and back to work in the morning. They told me not to worry about going back to my old job anymore for a while, which was more than I had to hear.
Eventually, we decided on holding up at the mall.
Well, it’d been John’s idea (John was the gun shop owner’s name, by the way.) On top of all of the noteworthy merits of holing up inside a mall, I had been needing to stop by their pharmaceutical shop and pick up a prescription of feline sterilization pills for my cat, Mr. Fluffy, who had been marking his territory in places that were quite clearly not his own to claim. For this same convenience, I’d kind of been leaning in favor of hanging out at the Wal-Mart, but John correctly recalled that in Dawn of the Dead, they’d barricaded themselves up at a mall. And that was such a cool movie, what with that guy in it... what’s his name, that big black guy... Bill Cosby I think... but anyway, we’d all agreed that it was a cool movie, so: to the mall we went.
None of us could remember how that movie had ended, though.
Chapter IXV
SO, there we were. I was making good time, what with there being no other traffic--other than the occasional wandering, slobbering, groaning jaywalker--and all the way we talked about things, and got to know one another a little better. I can’t recall the exact, specific conversations now... they were kind of boring anyway, but I can still sum them up. Julie was nineteen, and a commuter from Massasoit Community College, a few towns over. John was fifty-five, and the life-long owner of Middleboro Gun Shop—and an avid Republican, as it were.
We took Route 28, up to the Middleboro rotary, and then followed Route 18 into Lakeville. There, we cut up some scenic back roads.
When finally we crossed over 140 and came down into the valley of parking lots around the Taunton Mall, it was maybe 12:30 in the afternoon. There were lots of cars there, I noticed… well, about as many as there would be on any other shopping day... which was quite a few. I parked my car around the back, by the movie theater, and then we got out, and took in our surroundings with extreme caution.
Silence prevailed all around us. Nor was there any sign of a solitary soul from inside the mall, either. John and I labored to wrestle the duffel bag out from the back seat, and then we sweated and grunted all the way to the door with our heavy burden. Julie ran ahead to open the glass doors, but alas! They were locked.
“They’re locked!” she cried out in angst, even as she struggled to pull them open.
“That’s not a problem,” John said, as he unzipped the duffel bag and shuffled through its contents. Normally, as a cop I’d have tried to stop him from shooting through the glass, but not today! People had been jerks to me since I’d gotten up that morning, so the world can just deal with it.
John retrieved a solid black finish Remington 12 gauge. He took just a moment to slide a full inventory of shells inside, and then pumped it once to clear out any residual casings. I love that sound!
He leveled off the shotgun in the direction of the door. Julie and I dashed out of the way, just as he let loose a flight of lead shot that shattered the doors.
I naturally assumed the lead, drawing on my service revolver, as we slowly ducked through the newly-crafted point of ingress.
Ah yes, the Taunton Mall—has there ever been a better teen hangout? Where better to go and waste an otherwise useful day? One could grab a taco, go make faces at the puppies in the pet store window, and then thumb through all the magazines at the bookstore without dispensing of a single copper. What living!
John and I began to jog, and Julie tried to keep up. We were in the heart of the two-story mall, between a nest of jewelry stores and Old Navy. Soft 80’s music was playing in the background, but other than that, silence prevailed inside the vast commercial complex.
“Hello?” John yelled.
“Where did everyone go?” Julie asked, as redundantly as possible.
“I don’t know man, but I’m going to go grab some Taco Bell.”
“Are you crazy!” protested John curtly, turning to face me. “We have to stick together and look for more survivors!”
“Then you guys come with me!” I retorted—and he couldn’t really argue with me on that point, so the three of us turned towards the right, walked the course of the first floor, and then jogged up the motionless escalators. We hooked left at Sears, and then right into the food court, and there stood the golden mecca shared by all the world’s potheads, college students, and poets laureate: Taco Bell. How many times had I eaten there over the years, I wondered. Countless times, nigh on infinity, or at least numbering in the upper dozens.
But I began to lose heart: for by the time I’d reached the Taco Bell kiosk, it’d dawned on me that there was nobody behind the counter manning it. What frustration! Can you imagine? No, seriously---stop reading this for a second and ask yourself: How much would it suck to drive all the way to the mall, only to discover upon arriving that the local Taco Bell was out of commission? That’s right—you’d be pissed too! And rightly so. But it should have come as no real surprise to me, all the rest of the mall seemed eerily quiet, dark, and empty today. I’d never before seen it so lifeless and still. Quite frankly, it freaked me out—and I’m not easily freaked out, being a cop and all.
The three of us slowly walked deeper into the food court, and towards one of the hundreds of tables contained therein. There, we took a seat, and a break from all of our running. John and I set the heavy duffel bag down onto the floor next to our table, and the three of us looked around our cold environment. This wasn’t the same fun, happy mall wherein I’d met Mark Bellhorn and Johnny Damon. This was a totally evil mall, a mall from hell!
Or at least Missouri.
We couldn’t decide on an awful lot to do just then, so we just sat there and waited.
Isn’t it every kid’s fantasy to have all the mall to his or herself? The possibilities are limitless—and yet there we were, unable to think of a solitary thing to do or steal.
So picture this: there we were, three normal people loitering in a dark and very eerie mall, with a duffel bag full of guns just itching to be fired. Myself, a brave and noble enforcer of the law, a svelte piece of ass called Julie, and a fifty-something gun jocky…
By one, the sun-filled sky had ebbed away, to be replaced by a cloudy, overcast one. By two, it’d begun to rain softly outside. Thank god we were safely indoors. But how safe were we really?
We collectively decided to live out of the food court for a while. At least, until a better place presented itself to us.
Julie went off to collect f...
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