Zombie Bitches From Hell (15 page)

“Like a Hitler type?” asks Tim.

“Here, let me show you something I wrote.
It’s a way of getting people interested in new ideas. I call it a
‘Memoir of an American Dictator.’ It’s a short chapter. I got the
whole thing written and then this disease hits all the women and
now instead of heading up a new political party, I’m holed up in a
goddamned hayloft with a bunch of old farts.”

Dick shuffles through a mass of yellowed
typed pages and picks a few. I lean back on a hay bale and
listen.

“January 20, 2109: My name is Big Dick
Gumbert and I was the first American ‘dictator.’ After winning
election as President for the maximum 2 terms allowed by law, a
popular referendum enabled me not only to be elected to a third
term but that this term should run ‘until [my] resignation or
death.’ I served as President for nearly 43 years. I want these
memoirs to be published after my death as an example of what one
man chosen by destiny can accomplish if fate and God is truly on
his side. There were times, I will admit, when I had to do things I
would not ordinarily do. But isn’t that how we Americans define a
“hero”? With the Constitution in one hand and the Bible in the
other, I managed to make our nation great again. It was my life’s
work and I did it because someone needed to.

“I saw drugs as one of the greatest ills of
our country. Not only were they rotting the brains of our youth,
but they were filling the coffers of foreign hostile governments,
foreign illicit cartels and forcing, through the power of
addiction, our own citizens to rob each other, often with mortal
consequences. Our prisons were filled to overflowing with users and
dealers alike. The Drug Act of 2088 in my second term made
marijuana legal and gave a monopoly to tobacco companies to grow
and sell it in exchange for their ceasing the production of tobacco
products which became illegal by the same Act. To discourage the
use of ‘hard’ drugs such as heroin and cocaine, I had the Army and
Navy Joint Task Force intercept large shipments. These stores were
poisoned (what we called, ‘deleterious amendment’) and the drugs
replaced in the usual course of the illicit trade. Initially, tens
of thousands of addicts died. After a time, as the interceptions
and poisonings increased, those hopelessly addicted died and those
who were not simply stopped. While only 5% of all drugs were
actually ‘amended,’ no one could tell which ‘hit’ might be his
last. Those addicts who preferred a sober life to a drug-addled
death sought out effective recovery programs. Younger people who
toyed with the idea of ‘experimenting’ sensibly decided not to
bother. In less than 18 months, import and sale of those drugs came
to a virtual halt, all convicts doing time for drug sale/use
offenses were released and only small amounts of “amended” drugs
were distributed. Robberies, burglaries and other street crimes of
an economic nature dropped 94.6%.

“Terrorist organizations which were funded by
the illegal trade found themselves without capital and nearly every
country in the Western world followed suit by using the same
procedures and laws. And without money, terror can be neither
organized nor effective. Funds generated from the opium trade in
the Middle East, were no longer available as reward money to
suicide bombers’ families. Despite the notion that suicide bombers
act as a matter of faith, something I will not deny, the lack of
funding to enable them to purchase materials and to ensure the
economic safety of their families after their death simply brought
terrorism to a halt. I will discuss in later entries other methods
I used. People who produced hard drugs in local ‘factories’ for
personal use or sales to locals were summarily executed shortly
after arrest and conviction in ‘Drug Abuse Tribunals’ established
by the Act. There was no right of appeal from these convictions.
After less than a year, the DATs had so few cases to try that only
one full time court was set up in Oklahoma City to handle the
caseload of the entire nation. My greatest satisfaction came when
my grandson, Carlton III said, ‘Thanks, Grampa, for making my
future safe. I don’t just have to say ‘No;’ no one even asks!’”

Another senile motherfucker, I’m thinking.
Maybe the bitches aren’t such a bad idea after all. Hey, God, did
you do this on purpose? Or are you as senile as these old farts?
All due respect, sir.

***

So here I am stuck in this shithole
farmhouse with Tim, and a bunch of retirement home rejects – one a
Rocky Balboa wannabee who wants to kick my ass, and outside a
boatload of screaming women who want to eat me and jump my bones –
and not in a good way!

It didn’t seem like only a few hours ago
when all hell broke loose, and now here we are holed up with the
“Gray Berets”. It looks to me like this Artie is the de facto
leader of the bunch. But I think his hold over this rag-tag band is
tenuous at best. Jerry the queen, is his puppy dog, he’ll do
whatever Artie asks, I’m sure. Chaz there is another story, all
latent hostility, wrapped in a veneer of bravado. He could step up,
or just as easily cut and run to save his own tail. And the Big Guy
in the corner, I just can’t seem to get a read on him at all yet.
He’s a mystery, and I don’t like mysteries. If things get dicey and
I am sure they will, things can get ugly in here, fast. I need to
figure him out, and quickly. He’s a random element, and random
elements can get you killed. As Sun Tzu said in the
Art of War
– “Know yourself and know your enemy, and you need not fear the
battle.” That, and always be able to withdraw to a defensible
position!

“
Thanks for the shot back there, Hawkeye.”
I said to Artie. “But I don’t think you and these geriatric jokers
have any idea what you’re up against. We need to fortify this place
– now.”

“
And just who the fuck put you in charge,
Priss,” said Chaz, brandishing his shovel.

“
Look, Rambo 27, I saw a bunch of those
harpies tear apart a bar full of dudes half your ages – if those
bitches get in here you and the Geritol Brigade are toast!”

“
Why you little pissant!” - and he swung
the shovel at me, but before I could react, it stopped just before
my face – held fast in an enormous hammy fist. The Big Guy pulled
it from Chaz’s hands, nearly lifting him off the ground in the
process.

“
He’s right”, he said, in a rumbling voice
that was somewhere between Darth Vader’s and my aunt Gladys’ who
smoked four packs a day.

“
Thanks,” I said

“
Name’s Dick, as you know, but my friends
call me ‘Tiny,’ he said, and tossed me the shovel.

“
Tiny”, I said raising an eyebrow. “Say,
wait a minute – I know you, you’re ‘Tiny the Terrible’. Shit, when
I was a kid I used to watch you every Saturday afternoon on
Wrestling Roundup with my Pop and brothers!” So the brooder just
became an asset. With a little luck we may just survive the night,
but I still wasn’t quite sure what we had to fear more, those
things outside or each other.“That was a long time ago, kid, come
on I saw some two by fours back over this way, help me find some
nails – and let’s see what we can do about boardin’ this place
up.”

Chaz hocked up a big wad of phlegm, and spat
on the floor. “Watch your back, you little Fucker.”

“
All right that’s enough, Chaz, why don’t
you make yourself useful and try to find a hammer or some other
tools we can use,” said Artie.

“
Why don’t you get stuffed”, Chaz
replied.

“
Fuck him, he’s useless – I’ll go,” said
Tim.

Tim was a modern day hippie. Wore his hair
long in a ponytail, scruffy beard,
Birkenstocks,
Tie-dye, Greenpeace stickers on
his Prius, the whole works, but he was an all right guy, and a good
friend.

Artie turned to me and said, “Why don’t you
go see if you can help your friend find some of the boards and
things we need – I’ll see what I can do to unruffle Chaz’s
feathers; he’s really not such a bad guy, once you get to know
him.” I nodded and walked off after Tim.

“
You know, Chaz,” Artie said, you really
aren’t making this any easier.”

“
Look all I know is, we were doing a lot
better off until you started taking in all these strays – first the
big guy, but him, he didn’t bother me much, he just kept to
himself, but these two – they are going to be trouble, mark my
words. We were doing just fine when it was just you, me, and Jerry
cooped up in here. Even them things out there didn’t seem to care a
lick about us – now since they chased those two here they, got all
riled up, and suddenly we have to worry about boarding the place up
and all. Like I said, things were just fine around here till they
showed up. And you just let ’em waltz right in.”

“
And what would have had me do, Chaz? Just
leave them out there, to be torn apart, left to die?”

“
You mean like we was all left to die at
Easy Glades? Seems to me the world out there don’t much give a shit
about guys like us, Artie. To them, we are just yesterday’s news.
Lock ’em up, shut ’em up, drug ’em up - forget about ’em and worry
about your own.

He poked his finger hard into Artie’s chest,
“and maybe it’s time you started thinking the same way -- if you
wanna live.”

Artie could see the anxiety in Chaz’s eyes.
It was starting. Artie knew the signs of group cohesion breaking
down all too well. Everything seemed fine, harmonious, but that’s
only on the surface. It seemed a lifetime ago that he was holed up
with another group of guys –isolated, cut off, like this. An
experiment they called it. But that was in the Air Force – before
he washed out of astronaut training, before they said he was unfit
for space duty, before he began drinking... he shut off the
memory.

“
You guys look like you had some luck, let
me see what you got there,” Artie said to us as Tim and I returned
from our rounds with our stash. Dick was still out scrounging. We
had found the 2 x 4’s Dick mentioned, along with a few boxes of
nails, a couple of hammers, a pick axe, and a machete. We took the
boards, and hammers and nails and started reinforcing every
possible ingress to the barn. Artie coughed, as the sound of our
efforts reverberated, and raised plums of dust. Chaz just stood in
a corner – refusing to help, leaning on a shovel.

“
Oh boys – boys, come here you have
just
got
to see this!” It was Jerry, who was on
watch. We all went to where he was looking out of the opening in
the loft he was guarding. There, fifty yards in front of the barn
was a girl, she couldn’t have been more than 19 or so. But too far
away to tell if she was a zombie bitch. What we could see was that
she was gorgeous, dressed in very tight orange shorts, and a
T-shirt with the name of some bar on it – which she was very
playfully lifting up and down to reveal nearly perfect breasts. She
twirled and gyrated to some unseen beat, now taking off the T-shirt
entirely exposing her well-tanned breasts, which she caressed
lovingly, as she slowly licked her ruby lips.

“
Whoa! Would you look at those puppies!”
said Chaz, “I am sure glad I saved a few of these”, he said as he
unscrewed a pill holder he had on a gold chain around his neck and
popped a little blue pill. “Hold on there, sweetcheeks, I’ll be out
in a minute or two.”

The girl continued to dance; she now
wriggled out of the little orange shorts and was completely naked,
the sun glistening on her increasingly sweaty body. She got down on
the grass, would roll back and forth a few times, stop on her back
and arch upward - then rhythmically move her hips up and down, up
and down.

We were all enjoying the show, with the
possible exception of Jerry, who maintained his vigil, shovel held
at the ready, when Chaz tried to push past him, “Let me go,” he
said.

I guess even old guys, stuck in one place
who haven’t had it in while, still think with the wrong head!

“
You big horny idiot, you can’t go out
there.” The girl was now on the ground touching herself, writhing
back and forth. Intermittently she would stop and lick her own
fingers.

“
Look, faggot – I’ve been stuck in here
with you all too long, I know what she wants, and I don’t think I’m
ever getting another chance like this.” Before any of us could stop
him, Chaz pushed past Jerry and towards the nubile young succubus.
She was still rocking back and forth on the ground as he reached
her, and stood over her. We could see from the barn as she slowly
climbed up his legs, and undid his pants, and they dropped around
Chaz’s ankles. We saw his hips rock forward and his head arch back
in pleasure as she took him in her mouth.

Chaz’s scream was deafening as we could see
her head quickly withdraw from his crotch, blood trailing in a
spattering arc along with it. With a shriek two more bitches bolted
from the brush on either side of the shocked Chaz, gripping him by
the arms and pulling-- his arms ripping free as if they had just
made a wish.

Dick, barreled out of the barn like a
400-pound juggernaut, rusted, metal rake held high. The rake tore
into the back of one of the bitches and he pulled her off of what
was left of Chaz, like a sanitation worker would spear and pick up
a candy wrapper from the ground in the park. The second girl
challenged Dick with a hiss and she caught the back end of the
rake, shoved so far down her throat that it came through the back
of her neck. The original dancer got up, and started to run, trying
to flee, but Dick brought the rake down hard on her head and
through her skull, and it wedged there. The momentum of her body
carried it forward as the head stayed imbedded on the rake, her
once pretty face nearly split in two.