Zombie Bitches From Hell (14 page)

I count four girls; the oldest is maybe
fourteen. Their backs are to me and clearly the pack has left
making a wide swath through the cornfield. I’m thinking this is my
time to make a break for it. I can see where my boots have landed
and I creep on hands and knees to where they are. I’m in the tall
grass covered from view when I hear a wheezing sound, maybe more of
a whistle like you make when your nose is full of snot but louder.
One of the pubescent bitches has sensed me somehow. I can see
through the grass that they are on their feet quick as cats that
have spotted a mouse.

I stand and start to run but have not planned
this part of it. The house is no man’s land so I head toward this
ramshackle old barn, gray wood with faded blotches of red paint and
a sign that says MURPHY’S OIL SOAP in big white letters that are
also very faded and worn. I’m running toward the barn although why,
I don’t know. One of the little girls tackles my legs like a
defensive back and I fall flat on my face, my mouth full of dust.
She starts tearing at my calves with her teeth and I turn and kick
her with the heel of my boot and strike her full in the mouth
knocking out all her front teeth. She doesn’t make a sound, just
goes down again for another chomp but it’s nothing. Feels more like
a pinch so I kick her again this time connecting with her eye which
caves in along with the side of her face. She yelps. I see others
coming on slowly but steadily. I try to get up but the little one
has a death grip on my leg. I kick at her maybe three or four more
times until my heels have made a meatloaf out of her once cute as
apple pie fucking face. Now others are standing over me watching
and drooling, inhaling deeply as if smelling me before the
eats.

A shot rings out and one of the bitch’s heads
explodes leaving a stump and a piece of jaw with nice white teeth.
Guess Mommy took her to the dentist; the braces are very shiny and
clean except where a tatter of the old dude’s meat is stuck and
hanging. She drops. Another shot and the second bitch goes down, a
huge hole where her little sweet tummy used to be. Two more fall
flat as their heads bloom open. One is still over me, and too many
more to count at the tree. I see Tim running over with his rifle
but the thing is jammed and he’s running and cursing and yanking on
the bolt action but it is stuck.

The last one sees this, looks at me stuck on
the ground with my legs under the first bitch, looks at Tim and
charges him. He sees her coming, raises the rifle butt to smash her
goddamned head in but misses and she leaps through the air, pushes
him down, crouches ready for the chomp at his neck. He’s screaming,
“Get the fuck off of me!” when an arrow from out of nowhere whizzes
through the air and goes right through her head from ear to ear
like one of those dumbass fake arrows with the wire hoop that used
to make people laugh but now it’s just stupid, plain stupid. She
topples over; Tim raises the butt again and smashes her face in,
her teeth stick to the butt.

Tim says, “Hey, little girl, I like your
scrunchies,” and then smashes her head in some more. She quivers
and then stops. The silence is very cool.

I turn to the direction of where the arrow
came from and I see an old dude with a fat belly and white whiskers
up in the hayloft. He’s holding a bow and signaling for us to come
over. It’s either Robin Hood or Santa Claus. Either way, I’m a
believer.

CHAPTER 18

In the loft of the barn we found a group of
old guys. Well, it was a group only in the loosest sense of the
word. It was four geezers who had hidden in the barn and then
discovered they could survive on a stash of canned goods that had
been put in the barn by its previous and now almost fully digested
owner. They were armed with a pitchfork, a garden rake, two shovels
and the bow and arrows that had saved Tim. All in all, it was an
interesting crew of geezers that had saved the day.

“Come on up,” said a plump red-faced geezer
to us pointing at the handmade ladder that was used to access the
loft. “I’m Artie.” Artie looked like he had drunk most of the
scotch in Scotland and had been on his way to Ireland when the
plague had interrupted him. His thick skin literally glowed in the
dark, pocked and pimply the way only the most seasoned drunk could
get it to be. His hair was white and he had a two month’s growth of
beard. He had long johns on that sagged where they’re supposed to
be tight and tight where they’re supposed to sag. They were
irregularly yellow and stained, especially on the top of his
bulging paunch. He had a Santa Claus twinkle in his eye; a Santa
Claus that lived in the dry-out tank at the local jail.

Outside, the zombie bitches were now moving
off, somehow befuddled by our escape. Before we closed the loft
doors I saw the hick who’d stolen my boots was gone from the tree.
They’d torn him limb from limb and left nothing to stay tied up.
The two hick boys were gone as well. Like ghosts, the undead women
sank back into the tall grasses and corn fields till I could see
nothing of where they’d gone.

“Pleased to meet you, Artie,” Tim said in an
uncharacteristically friendly way. I realized that Artie was still
holding the bow which had saved Tim’s life. No wonder he was being
friendly.

We carefully made our way up the ladder. The
loft was quite large and well stocked with bales of hay which the
geezers used to craft a make-shift fort. What good it would have
done had the bitches found them up there, I couldn’t say. But I’m
guessing that geezers this age think a whole lot like kids, and a
fort…well, where could you be safer than in a fort if you have a
brain like a six-year-old?

They had undone a bunch of bales and had made
some very cushy-looking beds. A hole in the floor in a corner,
surrounded by bales was a latrine. They simply sat over or stood
over the whole and it dropped down to the floor below. Someone had
emptied out a few bags of lime and turds and pissed just plopped
right into the lime. Sanitary, easy and not bad for a bunch of
oldsters, the youngest of which, now that Tim and I were upstairs
with them, could not have been a week under seventy.

Artie introduced us to his band before even
learning our names.

“This is Jerry,” he said pointing with an
open hand to guy with dyed hair that had grey roots about half-way
up the length of it. He had one ear pierced and had a hoop earring
in it; he wore two shirts, both collared with a dinner jacket that
looked like it fell off a scarecrow.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” he said, shifting his
pitchfork back and forth between his hands. “Well, aren’t you the
cutest things that the cat dragged in.” This was followed with a
wink and a smile that revealed a straight row of deep yellow teeth.
“I’d offer you a cigarette and a martini, if I could. But no
smoking allowed up here.” He giggled. “Artie would have a
conniption. Hee-hee. May I do the further honors, Artie, Sir?”

“Jerry, not now. Aren’t you supposed to be on
guard duty? Go to your post.”

“Aye, aye, Captain Meany,” Jerry replied with
a mock salute and off he went to sit by the hayloft door which was
half opened and had a panoramic view of the fields below and
beyond. Jerry was mumbling something under his breath.

“Don’t mind him,” said Artie. “He’s a good
guy at heart. Had a tough life. Queers didn’t do so well when he
was out cruisin’ for trouser trout. Got beat up more times than
Cassius Clay’s sparring partner. Oh, I mean Mr. Mohammed Ali, that
uppity, good for nothin’ draft dodgin’…”

“I’m Chaz,” said a crusty old salt who sat on
a bale with a long piece of straw dangling from his lips. His head
was mostly bald and he, too, was flushed a sickly pink. I’m
thinking there’s a stash of booze around here somewhere and these
old fucks are partying while the world is sliding down a giant
toilet. Maybe they got it right. Chaz is wearing a black t-shirt,
with what looks like snot stains on the front of it. The shirt says
“Viagra” across the front. “Used to in the insurance business. I’m
also a prize fighter so if you’re thinking of fucking with me, you
better not. I will fuck you up, both of you.”

“Now, is that any way to talk to our guests,
Chaz,” said Artie. “These are fine young boys in the same
pickle…”

“Fuck ’em,” says Chaz. “If they think they
can share our food, I say fuck ’em.” Chaz takes out a notebook and
starts writing, turns his back and stays hunched over, writing.

“Chaz is our historian,” Artie explains.
“Actually,” he says under his breath, “Chaz thinks he’s a novelist.
Gonna write the next great American novel. Thinks this will all be
over one day and people will say, ‘Have you read the latest Chaz
Bennett masterpiece?’ Oh, did I tell you his name is Bennett,
Charles Bennett. But everyone calls him Chaz. Makes him sound less
the mick than he really is. He still takes Viagra, carried a
hundred pill plastic jar with him in his supply pack. Was quite the
ladies’ man, he says. Talks about it every night…and every day. Got
a new girlie story for every day of the week and two on Sunday.
Every now and then he punches out little queer Jerry over there.
Jerry doesn’t seem to mind. Chaz doesn’t hit very hard. Did you
notice his sparring gloves? Still wears them even though no one
thinks he ever set foot in a real boxing ring. Knocked a
psychologist out cold at the home, flat on her ass. Beat the shit
out of a few lady nurses, too. We were all there, in the same home,
that is, Easy Glades near Scranton PA. A shithole of a town if
there ever was one, but, yes, we’re all from there. Exceptin’ Big
Fat Dick Gumbert over there,” he says pointing to a huge fat guy in
denim coveralls, stroking the handle of a garden rake and looking
at us like we’re duck souffle.

Jerry is watching from his post and says,
“Yeah, Dick, tell them how you were a famous book collector. Dick
there collected some very important books or so he says.”

“How about you go fuck yourself,” replies
Dick. Turning to me he says, “It is true. I had a fine shop,
specialized in Americana. Old American books and letters. I had a
letter penned by Thomas Jefferson to Aaron Burr. Sold it to the
Smithsonian. And I had a first edition of the
Book of Common
Prayer
, one of the first books printed in the New World in
English. Yes, and a copy of…”

“Figures the first thing those fucking
Puritans would do would be to print a dumbass prayer book. The dumb
fucks. Instead of telling people how to get along and be tolerant
and work with the Indians they lord it over everybody with a
goddamned prayer book. No wonder they had their glued-tight
assholes kicked out of England. Too bad they didn’t string them up
by their holy balls,” said Chaz. I had to agree with him but I was
in no mood to discuss religion or politics.

“You tell him, Chazzy, boy,” said Jerry,
walking over. “It is definitely, certainly true. If the French had
founded this country or, better yet, some yummy Italians, we’d have
had a great old time. Those people knew how to live!”

“Speaking of living, can we get some grub?”
said Tim.

“Good timing,” said Artie, giving a dirty
look to all his cohorts something like an old school marm. “Today,
it’s tuna and sauerkraut,” he added, rubbing his hands together as
if he was about to serve a banquet.

“Fucking great,” said Chaz. “Stink ‘n zinc.
Just what the doctor ordered before we…”

“Now, Chaz, let’s not get too familiar with
our guests. Jerry, do set the table.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” he replied.

While the geezers fussed about getting the
food together, Tim and I stood by the hayloft door, peeked through
a knot hole in one of the slats. The leaves on the trees far off on
the surrounding hillsides had turned and stood frozen under the
slate sky. The corn, trampled through like cow paths where the
bitches had come and gone, was a glorious pale gold, dried and
papery in spots.

“Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten
me into,” Tim said.

“Make the best of it. I’m pretty sure they’re
harmless and we can bed down here and clear out tomorrow.”

“I wish I could tell Hadley, but she knows
the score. She’ll hold up in that pump house for ten years if she
can. Her and MG making a stand till the end. It’ll be all
right.”

My phone buzzed its sad buzz and I looked at
the dim screen. Jen had texted me again, “HURRY HURRY.” What a
fucking torture, I thought. Almost better if she did nothing, said
nothing. I texted back, “soon.” Wishful thinking. But it’s all I
had.

By the time everything was set up, the sun
had peered below the pot lid of the sky and filled the loft with a
dim orange light. Dust and gadflies floated or darted in the air.
The geezers sat around the makeshift table sitting on hay bales,
the aroma of tuna and sauerkraut filled the air. Not disgusting at
all, I thought. Looked like a Dutch masters painting. Old dudes
sitting at a table, maybe farmers on the Zuyder Zee, pooped after a
long day growing tulips or whatever those boring fuckers did three
hundred years ago in Holland. Still, it wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.
I looked over at Tim and he looked at me. Thinking the same
shit.

“Chow time,” he said. “Let’s dig in.”

After dinner, the guys took turns at the
watch. The rest of us sat and talked about the good old days which,
for these geezers, is so far back I couldn’t give a shit.

Jerry and Artie started a game of chess and
Tim somehow developed an interest in Big Dick’s stories about
American history.

“Yepper,” says Dick. “I had a plan to cure
every major ill this great nation of ours ever had. It’s democracy
that stands in the way. You know, too many dumbasses with too many
stupid opinions. It’s all politics and back slappin’ and blow jobs.
We needed a dictator to pick up the USA out of the shit hole it was
in and drag it screaming and kicking into the new century.”