Weekend at Vidu's: A Dead Drunk Short

Weekend At Vidu’s

A Dead Drunk Short

By Richard Johnson

Copyright ©
Richard Johnson 2014

All rights
reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in
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This is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events
or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Weekend At Vidu’s…
A Dead Drunk Short

An obnoxious
ringtone blaring an old Steely Dan song woke Vidu up from a booze-induced
slumber. Rubbing his eyes, he checked his pockets for his car keys, wallet and
cell phone. This was a ritual many drunks perform the morning after a wild
bender, and one the sketchy purveyor of used cars did often. Check, check, and
check. That was a positive.

In a bit of a
haze, the Sri Lankan native tried to recall what happened the night before at
his friend’s insane bachelor party. There was the massive amount of liquor, the
girl that randomly bitch slapped him for absolutely no reason, the giant cup of
soda thrown into his face by a bike rider, the waitress that wanted to “fuck
his balls out,” and more drinking. Much, much more drinking. Vidu’s head
throbbed and he vaguely remembered his “friend” Trent pissing on his shoes in
the bathroom of a seedy strip club. All in all, it had been an awesome night.

The morning
was turning out to be decidedly less awesome, however, and as his stomach
roiled, Vidu bolted from his friend Charlie’s couch and headed for the
bathroom, knocking over empty and not-so-empty beer bottles along the way. Most
of his puke made it into the toilet, but there was some definite spillage.

“I can’t
believe how many Cheetos we ate at four in the morning,” Vidu said with his
thick accent while searching under the sink for some cleaning solution.

Trent, the
other inhabitant of the crappy Chicago apartment, peeked over Vidu’s shoulder
with narrowed eyes and a curled lip. “Those were nachos, you dumb bastard.
Seriously, how long have you been in this country? You’re like a tanned Forest
Gump without the retard strength.”

“Long enough
to impregnate your mother,” Vidu replied while scrubbing away at the floor with
bleach and a paper towel. Nobody had cleaned the linoleum in some time, and
layer upon layer of grime lifted off with the fresh vomit.

“If somebody
has to fuck my mom, might as well be a guy with a micro-dick like you. She
probably wouldn’t even notice.”

“Who’s
talking about dicks in there?” somebody called out from the living room.

Trent ignored
his friend, nicknamed Gay Mike for obvious reasons, and walked to the kitchen
wearing only a pair of tighty whiteys that didn’t have much white left in them.
The sight was made even more charming by the amount of body hair sprouting in
every direction from the police officer’s voluminous body. He grabbed a
Gatorade from the fridge and then pushed around takeout containers as he tried
to find something edible for lunch. Trent had to go to work soon even though he
was still technically drunk and it was his day off. But some kind of rioting was
going on, and the chief made it quite clear that saying no was not an option.

Vidu flushed
the toilet and followed Trent into the kitchen with a determined look on his
face. “I want my forty dollars back, by the way. After all, the stripper never
showed up here last night. I paid for titties. Where are the titties you had
promised?”

“I’ll have to
get it to you later. I gave the whore-wrangler money up front,” Trent said and
subconsciously rubbed his nose. This was a clue as to where the money actually
went, but knowing Trent, it wouldn’t take a detective to figure that out.

“This is
unacceptable. You never end up paying me back,” Vidu said, his voice rising and
his hands clenched.

“Ah, do you
want some lotion for the butthurt?” Trent said.

“I’ll take
your lotion and shove it where—”

“Apu, we’ve
gone over this several times, but let me reiterate,” Trent said. “You couldn’t
fight your way out of a wet vagina, so you’d best simmer down. I said I’d pay
you back, now fucking drop it.” Trent shoved his head inside the fridge and the
hairy sight he left behind was a clear and gross indication that the discussion
was over.

Disappointed
in the outcome but realizing he had no leverage over the bully, Vidu focused on
his plans for the rest of the morning. He would rally any friends that wanted
to go with him and walk to the nearby 5k race to see a girl he’d been trying to
date.

Vidu
convinced his mild-mannered friend, Jim, to go with him. His other friend, Matt
– also known as Left-Nut because of a health issue caused by a lightning-strike
– decided to tag along uninvited. Left-Nut had struck out with the ladies
numerous times the night before and was seemingly in the mood to extend the
streak. He said he wanted to scout the local talent and that girls in spandex
would cure his hangover.

Vidu was
unable to convince Left-Nut otherwise, and so minutes later the three men
exited the smelly apartment just in time to see their other friend, Charlie,
walking up the porch stairs.  He was barefoot, shirtless and sporting a
black eye. The balding substitute teacher was tightlipped about what had
happened, but after some prodding they convinced him to grab appropriate
clothing and go with them.

They had a
long walk ahead of them, but it was a gorgeous summer morning – except for the
heat – and they knew some fresh air would do them all good. The group of
thirtysomethings had been friends since their fraternity days in college, and
the bachelor party was a good excuse for everyone involved to cut loose and
relive some of their glory days.

For most of
the gang, the years since college had been unkind in a myriad of ways. Vidu was
desperately seeking citizenship, Charlie was living paycheck to paycheck while
losing his confidence, and Jim had gotten trapped underneath his overbearing
wife’s thumb. And then there was Left-Nut, who had more issues than
Playboy
.

The friends
walked down picturesque Damen Avenue while Charlie begrudgingly filled them in
on his unsavory adventures. In summary, he’d unwittingly slept with a hooker,
didn’t have the money to pay, and fled the woman’s Polish pimp after getting
pummeled. So yeah, it had been one of those kinds of nights.

After
receiving the obligatory round of shit-talking from his friends, Charlie
briefly returned fire with ample ammunition and then quickened his walking
pace, bringing the group to the finish line of the ongoing 5k charity race.

Here they
waited for Julia, Vidu’s alleged love interest and first-time runner. He
assured them she would be crossing at any moment, but more and more people
finished the race and Julia wasn’t even in sight.

Left-Nut
quickly got bored and decided to strike up conversations with several
attractive women, immediately earning threats of restraining orders and
ass-kickings. Nonplussed, he returned to his friends and shrugged. “Lesbians.
I’ve been running into a lot of them lately.”

“Yeah, I’m
sure that’s what it was,” Charlie said, peering at the man’s “Orgasm Donor”
t-shirt while shaking his head. “Nice shirt, by the way. And you wonder why
girls look at you like a turd with frosting on it.”

“Blow me.”

Vidu ignored
his squabbling friends and rudely pushed his way to the front of the crowd,
stepping on toes and shoving children aside. Then he spotted his crush coming
down the road at a slow but steady pace. “Go, Julia!” he yelled. “You can do
it, you’re almost there.”

Sweating
profusely, the chubby yet surprisingly attractive woman slowed down while
waving at her friend, happy for the support. Then, suddenly, a man burst from
the crowd and tackled her to the ground.

Assuming it
was a mugging, Vidu ran to Julia’s aid, and although he was terrified, punched
the man square in the face. He reached back to hit the stranger again but
stopped mid-swing as the pain in his hand radiated outwards. Two of Vidu’s
fingers had been bitten clean off, and as he screamed in pain and horror,
several other men knocked him down hard. They instantly tore him to pieces
while the panicked crowd took off in every direction.

On his stomach,
surrounded and helpless, Vidu could hear Charlie yelling as he locked eyes with
Julia only feet away. He wanted to comfort her, to say something, anything. But
tunnel vision kicked in and his consciousness poured away like water down the
drain.

Charlie
grabbed his friend’s squirming legs and pulled him from the dog pile, but Vidu
simply used the freedom of movement to trip a nearby woman and spared no time
feasting upon her with gruesome efficiency.

That was
enough for Charlie and Jim, and they took off as well, quickly catching an
already fleeing Left-Nut. Minutes later they reached Charlie’s apartment after
dodging countless infected maniacs. But like poor Vidu, their nightmare had
only just begun.

*                      
*             
         *

Zombie.
Infected. Demon. Moron. It didn’t matter what you called him. With one bite,
Vidu had morphed from a mild-mannered loser to a remorseless killer. The
modest-sized part of the man’s brain responsible for thinking had shut down,
leaving his frequent thoughts of boredom, confusion and sexual frustration a
thing of the past.  In their place was one overriding obsession: the need
to eat. No candy bar, cheeseburger, or even his favorite dish of curried mutton
from back home would do. What Vidu craved was human flesh, and the drive
pushing him to get it was more powerful than any addiction modern man had to
contend with. The hunger was all encompassing and downright primal.

Vidu took
another sloppy bite from his latest victim and stood up. The man before him had
undergone the change himself, and no longer appeared as a food item. In fact,
as far as Vidu was concerned, it was as if the guy had vanished into thin air.

Instantly
Vidu’s hunger returned in earnest, and he was back on the prowl. With hundreds
of spectators and runners surrounded by an ever-growing pack of cannibals, it
was a target rich environment before him. The hapless stragglers were like baby
turtles crossing a beach, beset by predators on all sides while being picked
off one by one. The end result for them was much the same, with only a handful
breaking through to “safety.”

Soon the
finish line area experienced an odd calm once everyone there was either dead or
infected, and the sound of chewing created a dull but rhythmic chorus. Vidu’s
stomach roiled once again, but it was not filled with greasy super-nachos this
time. He was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, but far from satiated. With no
prey in sight he was forced to test his newfound zombie powers. Similar to the
way that a blind person’s other senses become heightened, Vidu’s brain shifted
power to the remaining areas responsible for the primitive tasks of long
forgotten ancestors.

His nostrils
flared as he breathed in deeply, picking up scents and aromas once too subtle
to detect. Likewise, Vidu’s hearing range had grown considerably. The thinly
built man was no super-villain by any stretch of the imagination, but he was
quite deadly. Several people talking in a nearby alleyway found this out in
short order.

They had
stepped outside a quiet café to grab a smoke, completely unaware of the
horrendous scene unfolding around the corner. When Vidu approached, ominously
silent in his orange Ed Hardy shirt covered in blood, the two men thought it
was a prank from their zany boss. It wasn’t.

Vidu bit one
man’s shoulder and absorbed a punch to the eye from the second man without
blinking. He chased both of the waiters out of the alley and into the street
where they were met by a roadblock of teeth.

Robbed of his
meal, Vidu took off in search of other opportunities elsewhere, and boy did he
find them. Other than a few bullets whistling past his head from a survivalist
trapped on the roof of an Argentinian steakhouse, he met no other resistance.
And so Vidu leisurely snacked, munched, and murdered his way down the middle of
the road.

As luck would
have it, ten minutes later he ended up right back in front of Charlie’s
apartment. Music from a crashed ice-cream truck played eerily as violence and
mayhem enveloped the up-and-coming area. Zombification met gentrification head
on, and won. There went the neighborhood.

A handful of
infected individuals pounded on Charlie’s front door and the racket grabbed
Vidu’s attention. He was about to join them when a jukebox kicked on, playing
the classic piano score from Bennie and the Jets.

Vidu turned
in time to see the neon sign light up at Ned and Eileen’s, the local dive bar
and all-around dump. The owner was a slightly deaf one-legged hag that lived
above the bar and opened up whenever she damned well felt like it. That
morning, first call just happened to be during a zombie apocalypse. Talk about
a crummy shift.

The bartender
opened the door and Vidu strolled into the smoke-filled bar much as he had
countless times before. Only this time, as Elton John hit the high notes, Vidu
went berserk.

One local
drunk had already saddled up to the bar, having slept there overnight in the
basement flophouse. He didn’t even look up from his watered-down draft beer
when Vidu bit into the side of his face. The man fell forward and his jaw
shattered a glass mug. Even worse, the shards went right through his neck and
caused blood to spurt all the way onto the pool table.

Seeing the
carnage, the handlebar-mustachioed bartender wasted no time fleeing out the
front door where he was instantly devoured by roving cannibals that were not
bothered by his questionable grooming choices. The man’s entrails, lungs, and
heart glistened in the light of the morning sun as the zombies plucked them
from his body in a macabre smorgasbord.

Meanwhile,
Vidu gorged on the inebriated loser inside, picking at every soft part he could
find. So intent on his meal was he that he didn’t notice the person sneaking up
behind him. On one foot.

Wack!
A heavy weight smashed into Vidu’s nose and knocked him backwards where he
crashed into the wall. A wooden shelf collapsed from the impact and dumped a
massive pile of dusty Christmas decorations on top of him. Still chewing on a
juicy piece of cheek muscle, Vidu didn’t seem to mind much.