ZOMBIE'S DOOM? "Chronicles of Jack Doom" (16 page)

"That makes sense, maybe I'll start calling them that too," Cassandra, concurred.

"Which way is it to your sister's house?" I asked, as I started the truck and put it into gear.

"If you go straight down this road for about two miles and then hang a left and go a couple more blocks we'll be there," Cassandra answered, pointing the way.

"Then we move," I said, pushing down on the little pedal on the right. "But don't let me stop you, please continue with your story."

"Well, on the way to Carla's house we were attacked again, that's when we ran inside the warehouse to hide. It was kind of small, but with the metal walls and roof, it was pretty secure from the resurrected ones, I mean eaters, and from the dogs, and we hadn't seen any normal people for awhile so we felt kind of safe there.

I don't know what kind of business used to be in it, it was empty when we got there. Just a couple of workbenches and an old refrigerator filled with mold.

We couldn't go outside to gather food and water or anything else. So we spent most of the time just sitting around inside that big metal shed.

After a couple of days we needed food and water really bad, especially the baby, he wouldn't stop crying. And his constant screaming was the reason that the resurrected ones. Damn, I mean eaters, stayed in the neighborhood for so long, and literally had us trapped in the building."

As Cassandra relayed the story to me, tears began to run down her cheeks. I wasn't quite sure why at the time. Her story so far sounded like a typical zombie apocalyptic nightmare that we had all been going through for over a year now.

Everyone was surrounded by a pack of bloodthirsty dead demons in a feeding frenzy, it sounded pretty normal to me.

However, I was about to find out what had her so upset.

"On the third day we decided to make a run for it, and that's when it happened.

Besides the constant badgering outside by the resurrected ones... eaters, the never ending howling and screaming by my sister's baby had us all at our wits end.

That's when Dick, my sister's boyfriend, but not Kyle's father said."

******

Several weeks earlier...

"Will you shut that brat up, it's going to get us all killed," Dick yelled, over the baby's screams.

"He won't be quiet, he's hungry and thirsty, he hasn't had anything to eat or drink in days," Pam said, flustered.

"If he would just shut the fuck up for a couple of minutes maybe the zombies would go away, and we could get the fuck out of here, did you ever think of that?" Dick screamed, as the rage in his eyes became apparent.

"Well I don't know what to do, we don't have any food or water to give him, and that's why he's crying, he's starving and dehydrated," Pam screamed back.

"I heard you the first time bitch, now did you hear me?" Dick demanded, still screaming. "The little bastard is going to get us all killed if he doesn't shut the fuck up!"

"Both of you shut the fuck up, before
you two
get us all killed," Cassandra interrupted in a loud whisper.

"Well then, if you don't get Kyle some food and water, I guess we'll all just get killed then," Pam stated to Dick in a snotty tone.

"I'm not going sit in this metal container like spam in a can waiting to get eaten by the undead, just because you can't control that God dammed screaming bastard of yours!" Dick now whispered loudly as well, just before snatching Pam's baby from her arms.

Now Kyle screamed even louder as Dick pummeled the child with his open hand, slapping the holy shit out of the kid and screaming in his face.

"Shut the fuck up!"

"What are doing to my baby?" Pam yelled, as she lunged forward and tried to pull her baby from Dick's arms.

Dick side stepped the charging women and shoved her to the floor.

"I'm gonna shut this fucking brat up, somebody has to, and since you and your stupid-ass sister over there won't do it, I guess it's up to me to do the heavy lifting around here," Dick explained, gesturing toward Cassandra.

"Shut up Dick, and give me that baby before you really hurt him," Cassandra ordered the infuriated man.

"Fuck you Cassandra, I told you two I'm not going to die because of some out of control brat," Dick shrieked, tucking little Kyle under his left arm and grabbing a hold of the crown of his little head with his right hand.

By now Kyle had reduced his caterwauling to a mere whimper, because even at his young and tender age of only a few months, he had sensed that the severe pain associated with the proper beat down that he was receiving from Dick, was correlated to his incessant howling.

However, being clenched under the hairy arm of his pissed off knuckle-dragging attacker, the baby Kyle was helpless to do anything except realize that without a doubt, he had fucked up royally.

Unfortunately for Kyle, the realization of his situation came too late, and although he had now completely stopped his unsettling yowling and adopted a demeanor of total calm and silence, Dick had already began his grisly deed.

The two women watched in horror, as Kyle's eyes began to bulge out of their sockets as Dick slowly twisted his head clockwise one hundred and eighty degrees.

A sickening and slight crunching sound was heard as Kyle's immature neck bones were stretched past their limit and began to separate from one another.

Kyle had died almost instantly when his head reached 94°, his almost non-existent neck muscles being no match for Dick's strong twisting grip.

However, Dick didn't stop there.

Letting go of Kyle's limp drooping head, which was now 180° awry. Dick quickly renegotiated his grip on the small head and began twisting it another 180° further.

Then with a forceful tug on Kyle's light brown hair, the maniacal bruiser wrenched the child's head from its body and a muffled popping sound ushered in a split second of total silence inside the warehouse.

Kyle's lifeless small frame that was being cradled in Dick's left arm like a football, leaked his life's blood onto the floor, and his decapitated head that Dick now held in right hand similar to the way a basketball player palms a basketball; was dripping the same crimson liquid onto the floor as well.

Within seconds, the headless body of the eight-week old child began to squirm in Dick's grasp as the toothless jaws of the infant started to open and close and its eyes rolled up and down and back and forth, glazing shortly at each adult before moving on to the next one.

Cassandra, speechless and paralyzed with shock, stood there with her mouth hanging wide open.

Pam on the other hand was now hysterical with grief; and let out a blood-curdling scream and then yelled breaking the momentary quiet.

"What have you done to my baby? You monster!"

Dick, startled by Pam's sudden high pitched squeal and the feeling of Kyle's bobbing head trying to escape the hold he had on it, released his grip on both the dead baby's body and head and let them drop to the floor as he stepped back.

Kyle's head dropped straight down and landed neck first on the smooth concrete floor of the warehouse.

A low bass-toned squirting sound reminiscent of a fat woman's diarrhea fart shot out into the room as the air in the small neck was forced out between the concrete floor and the torn flesh that comprised the rim of what was left of the little baby's neck.

The release of the bubble of air out of the neck caused a vacuum that attached the ogling infant's head to the floor like a suction cup.

Pam who was beside herself and not thinking clearly, allowed her maternal instincts to skew her clarity in the matter, as most mothers would, and almost before her bone-chilling screech had stopped echoing throughout the empty warehouse, Pam dove to the floor toward Kyle's decapitated head like a professional baseball player might slide into second base headfirst.

As she scooped the head between her arms and drug herself to Kyle's face using her elbows to pull her along and the vacuum-sealed skull as an anchor, the chomping head attached itself to Pam's lower lip by clamping down on it with its toothless gums, as it would have done with a nipple during breast-feeding.

Now, with Pam and her baby seeing eye to eye (do I have to say it?), Pam's maternal instincts turned to panic and she stretched her captured lip to its limit as she tried to pull away from the anchored head that was determined to suck the life from her lower lip.

However, Dick was still pissed because even though the kid had stopped howling, he felt that his girlfriend had taken up where her little brat had left off.

So, Dick took a half step forward and kicked the seven pound wallowing infant's carcass (with the head attached it would have been closer to ten or eleven pounds) toward Cassandra.

With his other foot he proceeded to launch a full soccer style kick to the back of Kyle's small head, detaching it from its hold on the floor, and forcing it to smash hard into Pam's face, breaking her nose and flattening it against her face, while splitting both her upper and lower lips in the process.

The powerful kick crushed the soft bones of the baby's skull, allowing the toe of Dick's boot to penetrate into part of the neonate's brain, killing it dead, and sending Kyle to the train station with a one-way ticket to hell.

The broken bones in the back of Kyle's now caved-in head, were crunched together by Dick's impromptu boot battering, causing the tiny jaws to clamp down even harder on Pam's swelling bottom lip and lock into place.

The impact from the collision when the two faces collided, caused not only Kyle's head to be mutilated even more, but also did serious damage to Pam's face and lips as well, leaving both her and her baby with open lacerations on their faces, and unintentionally trading bodily fluids with each other.

Even more panicked now, with the crumpled head of her dead baby seemingly permanently latched, and dangling from her broken and bleeding face and lips. Pam stood up and began to swat at the crinkled head, bitch slapping it back and forth as if she was playing tetherball, Kyle's head being the ball, and her lower lip being the tether, and her body serving as the pole.

The horrendous sight of Kyle's crushed skull being swung around and spattering blood in all directions, along with pieces of his small pink brain that wasn't stuck to the top of Dick's boot, snapped Cassandra out of her shock induced trance as she watched Pam wallop the swinging cranium, trading hands with each whack, like a New York City pimp slapping the shit out of one of his stable whores for trying to hold back a fifty-dollar bill on a Saturday night.

As Pam pummeled the lip-locked head around the room, both Cassandra and Dick realized that the saliva coming from the dead baby zombie's head, mixing with the open cuts on Pam's bruised and battered face, and especially her split lower lip, was akin to her being bitten by one of the undead.

As a result of the infant's spit entering her blood stream, it wouldn't be long before she too would turn into one of the diseased cannibals that she was busy slapping silly as they watched.

Soon after that she would turn to
them
for her first meal in three days.

Dick who was still angered by the continued noise that Pam was making as she screamed and relentlessly continued to slap at the head of her dead son. Now was fearing that he might lose his life to his (now former) girlfriend, didn't hesitate to step up to the plate so to speak, and put an end to the macabre display of mayhem.

Grabbing the flailing Pam by the scruff of her neck with one hand, and lifting up on the back of her pants by her belt with his other, thereby lifting her feet off the floor. He used her face (and Kyle's still attached head) as a battering ram, running it headlong into the skinny side of one of the I-beams used as part of the structure's supports.

The bones in Pam's face were crushed, her forehead was split open like a ripe watermelon that had been hacked into with a large butcher knife, and now she too was dead.

Cassandra had been fearing for her life as well, not only from the likely forthcoming zombie sister that was soon to be present within the walls of their sanctuary, but also from the crazed baby killer in her midst.

Now with one of the potential threats eliminated by the other, Cassandra knew that she would have to act fast if she wanted to live.

After all she thought.

"
If he would do that to a defenseless baby just because it was crying, what does he have in store for me?
"

As Dick dropped Pam's limp body and watched it collapse downward, the two sides of her brain squeezed the steel beam, causing her to slide slowly towards the floor. The slow movement of her sister's body slipping down the support, gave Cassandra enough time to rush toward Dick with her knife in hand, (the knife she had lost just before meeting Jack).

Waving her knife over her head to compensate for the height difference between the two adults, Cassandra attacked her would be murderer with a violent fervor.

Dick never saw his demise or Cassandra coming.

As he watched the fingers on Pam's lifeless body beginning to twitch, while both hemispheres of her dissected brain still squeezed the thin side of the vertical steel I-beam, the last thing he remembered seeing was two inches of Cassandra's eight-inch butcher knife blade which she had stuck through the back of his skull, now protruding out of his forehead.