Zombie Kong - Anthology (20 page)

“Fantastic––”

A third loud bang echoed through the cavernous room. The noise erupted from somewhere close, in the direction of the mammoth display, he thought. A wrenching noise followed, like a spring popping.

Moody grabbed his baton, but then replaced it with his phone.

In case of an emergency, Eddie had given him instructions to call 911. He didn’t. Instead, he clicked on the phone’s camcorder. If something was breaking, he wanted proof that it wasn’t his fault.

He sprinted around the displays, toward the front of the lobby. Sure enough, the back end of the mammoth skeleton was swaying from the support cables.

The flashlight beam passed through the elephant’s ribs. In the crisscrossed shadows beyond, the darkness on the wall shifted. The movement made him freeze. The sound of several pairs of feet clapped across the marble floor.

Had some stupid kids broken into the museum after all?

“Hey, hold it!” he shouted, trying not to sound as frightened as he felt. He heard the feet scrambling on the far side of the display.

Maneuvering around the elephant’s hind legs, he saw the great double doors of the building’s entrance. One of them was ajar, and the door wedge had fallen out, keeping it from shutting completely. Must be how the flies had gotten inside.

If it was kids, how did they get past the security system?

Might not be kids; might be worse than kids,
he thought. Could it be an actual burglary?

There was enough damage to consider calling the cops. Part of the skeleton’s right leg was missing. He found the femur a couple of feet away from the exhibit, broken into three pieces. Several smaller bones lay scattered on the floor, which explained the bang and the creaking.

Moody swiveled the light through the mammoth’s ribs. The room was too big and open for the intruders to get far. There wasn’t any place to hide, unless they fell flat on their bellies behind an exhibit.

The light illuminated a furry patch on one of the stuffed, long extinct animals that flanked the mammoth. As he moved the light beam, the hairy model trembled.

Moody looked again.

The model appeared wet and dirty––patches of fur were tangled and discolored. And what was that next to it…
attached
to it?

Connected to the fur was something shiny, though rusty in spots, and painted sky blue. The top of a Volkswagen beetle was somehow melded into the fur. Its windows were gone, but the curved dome of the car was unmistakable.

“Well, that’s new,” he mumbled.

The car roof and the fur turned away. What came in its place made Moody drop his flashlight and scream.

For an instant, before darkness swallowed his sight, a huge round eye peered at him through the skeleton.

On instinct, he snatched up his light and took off the way he had come.

He heard bare feet racing along the marble after him. By ear, he knew they’d outrun and circle him, blocking his escape.

He tried to press the emergency code on his phone, but his hands shook and he fumbled the buttons twice.
Why can’t 911 be one number instead of three?
he thought.

Ahead of him, the feet-sounds stopped.

Moody screeched to a halt and lifted his flashlight, which he almost dropped again before planting the beam on the impossible thing towering over him.

Words escaped him; he couldn’t make sense of what he saw. The thing was huge, standing a few feet short of the vaulted ceiling. It filled the area between the displays with its girth. Pieces of it were made of metal, like the car top. Bits of it were furry, like the display beasts. But its head, for the most part, was a gorilla––a giant one, with a metallic jaw big enough to swallow him whole. Two massive eyes bore down solely on him, squinting. Their pupils shrank in the glare.

“Would you mind not doing that?” the gorilla said.

Moody’s legs quivered. He shifted the light out of the giant’s face, more from a loss of motor control than the monster’s instruction.

“Much appreciated,” said the gorilla. The thing’s voice was hoarse and had an accent––British, maybe, like some rejected Muppet gone horror show.

Behind Moody, the doors were still open. He could run that way; however, the thing had already exceeded his speed once. This time, it would have a clear path to snatch him up and devour him.

As if reading his mind, the monster said: “Please don’t run again. I wouldn’t want to be forced to eat you, if at all possible.”

The rotten smell he’d mistaken for the toilets was coming from the creature. From a close distance, the smell was like a wall of heat, making him nauseous. Flies tickled his face, but he didn’t dare make any sudden movements to swat them away.

“I assume you have plenty of questions, but are too terrified to ask. Am I correct?”

After a long pause, Moody realized the question wasn’t rhetorical. After a longer pause, he regained control of his tongue and lips. “Uh…
maybe
?”

“Relax. I didn’t mean to scare you. I simply need a few things, then I’ll be on my way.”

Slowly, Moody’s senses returned enough for him to understand what he was being told. If running wasn’t an option, what was he supposed to do? He spoke with caution and sincerity, in case the monster decided it
would
have to eat him. “How’d you get by the alarm?”

“My boy. If you don’t want anyone to get into this collection of relics, you should choose a keypad code other than
12345
.”

Eddie should’ve changed those damn numbers; Moody kept telling him they were dumb.

The gorilla continued, “I could have simply knocked the doors down, but I was trying not to disturb anyone while I got what I came for.”

“You need something… from the museum?”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask what?”

“You may.”

Moody thought about that one for a minute, then asked.
“What?”

The gorilla began moving, but it didn’t walk on two legs. It only had one: a crippled limb it dragged along. When it moved, it used its two extra long arms, with its fingers propping it up high. The feet-like sounds, Moody realized, were the gorilla’s fingers and knuckles.

Halfway to the mammoth, the creature paused, saying, “Are you coming?”

Now that the monster had moved, Moody could see the hallway leading to the mummy exhibit. The thing might not be able to follow him if he ran––

Moody yelped as the monster slid a hand around his torso and lifted him from the ground. It held him in one hand while dragging itself toward the mammoth with the other, leaving a trail of greenish slime on the floor. The vibrating ooze was filled with tiny worms and maggots. No wonder flies were everywhere.

The creature set Moody down beside the exhibit, then grabbed the unbroken left leg of the mammoth skeleton, yanking and twisting it until the femur snapped free. The monster made a happy noise and shook the femur to throw off the loose bolts.

“We didn’t break this one. Cheers!”

Moody dodged the limp leg as the gorilla positioned it.

The creature wiggled the bone against its flaccid thigh until the it found an opening. Carefully, it slid the femur through its flesh until its upper leg went rigid, and then pushed its fingers into the hole all the way to the wrist. After fooling around inside the flesh for a few seconds, it found a secure fit, and removed its hand.

The monster smiled. “Much, much better. Too bad I buggered the other bone or I might have been walking out of here on my knees.”

“Are you going to… eat me now?” asked Moody.

The gorilla shook its head. “No, I’m not going to eat you. I promise. You’ve been far too civil for me to repay your kindness by way of the tooth. Please don’t be afraid.”

Moody surprised himself with a laugh. When you lost it, everything must be funny, he figured.

The gorilla chuckled with him, a guffaw that echoed like thunder.

“
I’m nuts!”
Moody shouted.

There was no way this was happening: a giant part-monkey, part-machine, part-fake mammoth was talking to him in the museum? There was probably angel dust in his last joint. If they didn’t slap him in a cuckoo asylum, he’d have to strangle his dealer.

“That has to be it,” he said. “I’ve flipped. I’m grade-A almonds. Nuts!”

“Bananas,” added the gorilla.

Moody clapped his hands together, laughing harder. He reached into his pocket for his wallet, retrieving a joint from inside. He lit it with his Zippo.
Might as well enjoy myself in this little freak-fest
, he thought.

“I’m glad to see you’re in better spirits,” said the gorilla.

“Me, too. Any minute now I’m going to wake up on top of Mr. Tutankhamen’s crypt.” Moody offered a puff, but the gorilla shook its head. “By the way, you’re not real.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.”

The creature thought about that for a minute while Moody swiped flies from his face. The little pests had begun to congregate on his pants, some actually finding their way into the burnt hole in his crotch. He smacked them dead but more took their place.

Finally the gorilla replied, “But what does
real
mean? Are any of us
truly
real?”

“Touché,” Moody said, as if he comprehended the creature’s meaning. “So… my name’s Virgil Moody. What’s yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean,
you don’t know?”

“I mean,
I don’t know.
I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those. I’ve had a lot of things, but never a name.”

There was writing on the gorilla’s chest, beneath the fur. No, not fur. There was dried seaweed around its sternum. The breastbone was shiny.

Moody turned the flashlight on it and read:

PROPERTY OF KONG-TV, SEATTLE, WA.

Below, several cables and electrical wires dangled like spilled guts.

The creature wasn’t one, but many. A conglomerate. Nowhere, except in its face, did it have two parts that were the same. Every section of fur resembled a patchwork quilt––some grey, others mahogany, most black, a few even rainbow swathed. Between them, Moody could see stitches, made partly of rope, partly of twine, partly not stitches at all, but gleaming staples. Metal had also been fused to the heap of its body: some bits were unknown, others he recognized, like the car hump on the gorilla’s back, the aluminum sign on its chest, and the metallic sheen of its jaw.

Its face was one piece, maybe an animatronic from a giant gorilla robot. Or part of an attraction at a theme park. Its rubber and latex skin had fallen off the jaw, though the rest was intact.

“Okay, not who…
what
are you?”

Again the monster shrugged.

Moody asked, “You don’t know that, either?”

“Nope.”

“Then where?”

“Where did
you
come from?”

“Tennessee, originally.”

“And before that?”

“Uh… from my mom?”

“And before that?”

Moody paused. The gorilla’s point washed over him like a cold shower. “
Whoa
…
I don’t know.
”

“Exactly.”

“So you don’t remember anything?”

The giant scratched its head and pondered the idea. “I remember the sea, the crabs in my brains… fish fell from my fur, but the fur isn’t mine. I use new pieces to replace those I’ve lost. I pick them from the sea, from beaches, from stuffed animals and dead dogs, from parked cars and amusement parks. I pick them out of trees and from under rocks. But something must have been there before, because… how did I know to replace them?”

The gorilla pinched two fingers into its side and pulled out something long. It was an oar. The wood was splintered and soft, bending from its own weight. The gorilla dropped the oar and sighed.

“Seems I’m falling apart faster than I can maintain. My legs went yesterday. At the beach, I saw the museum’s flyer, and I thought I’d sneak in to get some replacements. Maybe the journey overextended my resources.”

The beach was only a few miles from the museum, but it was a long walk on one’s fingers.

“Can you walk now?” asked Moody.

The gorilla shook its head. “My other leg’s gone entirely. I have to build it from the ground up.”

Moody took a deep puff and held it. “Maybe… I can… help.”

“Really?”

Moody coughed a plume of smoke.
Why the silly son of a bitch not? This is a dream, and a kooky one, at that. I didn’t pay for the trip, but I should get my money’s worth, despite the fact.

The gorilla waved its hand to clear the air. “That’s a nasty habit,” it said. A finger fell from its hand. “Oh… that’s not good.”

“Can I give you a name?”

The gorilla picked up the lost finger and sighed. “That would be nice.”

“Then I’ll call you Kong.” He pointed to the television station call letters on its chest.

“Brutish, but okay.”

“One last question.”

“Fire away.”

“Did you say you’re made of
dead
things?”

“Some. Some were never alive to begin with.”

“Like a zombie.
Zombie-Kong
.”

“Zombie… returned from the dead. Let’s hope so. By the looks of things, we may soon test the theory. Maybe you can be my Messiah?
Zombie-Messiah!”
The gorilla, now named Kong, grinned. “Enough sad talk. We’re all just pieces of a whole, I suppose. If this is it for me I want to go out with a bash. You like to party?”

“Does a hooker turn tricks?”

Kong reached into the gash in its stomach. With its thumb and forefinger, it pulled on a cord. “You’re going to love this.”