Zombie Bitches From Hell (26 page)

“I’m thinking fifteen miles. Could make it
easy in a day…or a night. I’m not sure which is safer. Seems pretty
dead around here, no pun intended. I mean you got to figure that
the bitches have all headed toward food town which would be west of
here no matter how you slice it. There are likely some guys holed
up but from what we’ve seen, my Captain, they’re no better than the
bitches.”

Of course, he’s right. Hadn’t thought of it
quite that way. It’s sort of like thinking your family is really a
nice bunch of people but after a while you realize they’re just as
big and bad a bunch of assholes as anyone else only you’re stuck
with them because they came out of the same hole—no offense to my
mamma or yours.

We can see some fishing gear tied up near the
dock that’s part of the lighthouse and a small cabin cruiser likely
used to save people or some shit like that. There’s also a small
cabin about fifty yards off to the west.

“That’s where they sleep,” says Tim. “The
lighthouse keeper and his wife and kids. Some life, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Let’s bed down up here. I ain’t going
exploring anymore tonight. And I don’t know who or what is in that
house. Fuck ’em for now. Let’s go secure the door,” he adds.

We wedge some two by fours against the door
and it is solidly closed. I find some padded water tarps and life
jackets and we use the coats for blankets. The temperature is
dropping faster than Rhoda Schwartz’s panties at the senior prom.
We drag the stuff up to the light box and bed down, the wind and
the waves lulling the world to sleep.

At about 2 AM, I awake and huddle under the
covers. Tim’s steady breathing is a reassuring sound, the wind
hissing through the chinks in the glass. I get up and look out the
glass. The clouds have scudded off the sky and a half moon sits
near the horizon casting a milky silver light on the ocean that
looks cheesy enough for a postcard, one of those “wish you were
here” things your girlfriend sends you when she’s off on spring
break getting humped by some Mexican stud in Puerto Vallarta while
you’re whacking off to the latest porn vid from Netwank.

I imagine I can see dolphins breaking the
surface of the water in schools, having a celebration now that all
the fishing boats are docked and the fisherman have been eaten.
Who’da thought? they must think, praying to their sea gods and
saying thank yous galore, fucking each other and laughing with the
tuna and cod. Fuck them, they’re thinking. What goes around comes
around. They know the whales are all hanging around Tokyo listening
to the screams from those whaling bastards as the little geisha
girls with their deformed feet and clown make-up chow down on those
tiny dicks and hairless balls. Millions upon millions of eaters and
eaten. “Hey, listen to that one howl,” says one whale to the other.
“Those fuckers have had it coming to them. Ain’t it so?” I know it.
And I never liked sushi, either, even though I pretended so people
would think I was cool. I’d talk about China too, if I gave a shit.
Talk about food. A billion motherfuckers all eating each other.
Enough for the bitches to eat for years. Nothing like Chinaman
liver with a nice bowl of rice. On the other hand, bitches, hold
the rice. Go for the brains. They’re on sale this week and extra
small in bite-sized pieces. Just watch out for the lead and PCB
content.

I lie down under the covers again and begin
to doze off with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head when I
hear a creaking hinge and footsteps on the iron stairwell.

“Tim,” I whisper. But he doesn’t hear me.
“Tim….” I figure if I’m quiet, it or he or she will get too tired
to bother coming all the way up those goddamned stairs. How’d it
get in?

It gets quiet. I reach for my pistol, but
it’s gone. Fuck. Where did I leave it? There’s a shadow in the
doorway. A short bitch that’s moving real slow, like a cat creeping
up on a mouse. I try to scream to wake Tim up but my voice is
frozen. I’m fucked. That stupid sleeping sonofabitch Tim is next on
the menu. What a way to go, I’m thinking, after all this bullshit.
What a way to go.

“Uncle Kent? It’s me, Hadley,” the shadow
says.

I find my voice. “Hadley, baby, how’d you get
in? Are you OK? I really missed you”

“I know, I know,” she says softly. “I missed
you, too. Can I stay with you? I’m so cold.”

“Sure. Come under the covers,” I say, lifting
the tarp and raincoat. She crouches down and curls up next to me,
colder than an icicle. “You’ll warm up in a minute,” I reassure
her, putting my arm around her.

“I missed you, too,” she repeats, shivering.
“It’s a long way from there to here. I’m so glad I found you. I
couldn’t bring MG, though. I’m sorry. I lost him in the fog.”

“That’s OK. He’s a good dog. He can fend for
himself. When I get out of here, I’ll find him. Maybe you can help.
Would you help me find him?”

“Sure I will,” she says. “I gotta sleep
now.”

“Yeah, get some sleep, sweetie. We got a ton
of food. I’ll make you breakfast in the morning. OK?”

“Yeah,” she says. “That would be great. I’m
so hungry, Uncle Kent. So hungry and so tired.”

My grandmother always made me say my prayers
at bedtime. “Now I lay me down to sleep….” Didn’t like it then.
Like it even less now.

***

I feel like I’m in a blast furnace when I
wake up. The sun is hitting the reflector on the light housing and
it’s focused on me like ten million watts of tanning bed. I put my
hand up to shield my face. “Fuck!” I say to the world.

“Top o’ the mornin’ to you, too, Cap’n,”
sings Tim.

“How about you go fu….”

“Now Cap’n, is that anyway to talk to the
galley slave what just made you some fresh canned peaches and
cornflakes over easy with a fresh pot of instant coffee and home
fries from real potatoes and thinly sliced canned ham?”

The smell of cooking had risen up that
stairwell like it was a chimney. It did smell good. It was then I
notice Hadley is gone.

“Where’s Hadley?” I ask Tim. He looks at me
and doesn’t answer. Shakes his head annoyed. He always thought she
was bad luck or something. That poor kid. Didn’t stand a chance and
when she got shot…. That’s right, I think. She was shot. What am I
thinking?

I look at the place in my makeshift bed where
she was supposed to be sleeping. There’s a small c-shaped indent in
the water tarp. Or is it my imagination?

Tim is looking at me sideways as he pretends
to look out at the risen sun. Gulls are circling the lighthouse and
dropping clams on the rocks, diving to pick up the sweet
innards.

“I’ll be right down. Sorry I overslept. It
wasn’t a good night,” I say.

“Any night we live till the morning is a good
one, Mon Capitan,” he responds. He heads down the stairs whistling
some stupid ’60s song. I’m hoping it’s not “Up, Up and Away in my
beautiful balloon.”

I’m pulling up my pants when I see a red dot
in the distance. There’s something coming up the road from the
direction of P-Town.

“Tim,” I yell down. “There’s someone coming
our way.” I rub my eyes to make sure it’s not a trick of the light
or a floater in my vitreous humor. Go look it up if you don’t know
what I’m talking about. It could happen to you.

Tim comes running up the stairs like a
gazelle.

“Where? Who? What?”

“Look there,” I say pointing. It’s clearly a
red car of some sort. It’s moving fast and birds that were sitting
on the road are scattering out of the way and shredded bits of
paper and leaves are flying up behind it.

“Get down,” I say. We both crouch just
peeking a bit over the edge. “They must have been by here or the
place would have been emptied out, right?”

Not right. It’s a red Jeep, one of those
Wranglers with a black ragtop. There are three, no four, bitches in
the fucking thing and they go racing by us and I’m thinking, holy
shitstains, they’ve remembered how to drive! Tim says, “That was a
close one,” but the brakes get slammed on and the backup lights
brighten and the fucking thing backs up to the driveway of our
lighthouse. It stops and I can see the bitches looking at us like
we’re hanging out on the roof.

“Fuck. Get the rifle,” I tell Tim. He rushes
down the stairwell and I hear him running back up, all out of
breath and wheezing like he smoked eight packs a day all his
life.

“Sorry, chief,” he says. “It was the cooking.
There’s a small smokestack over the stove and I guess the smoke
attracted the bitches.”

He guessed right. He cocks the rifle and sits
next to me. “Let them come for us. We can pick them off in the
stairwell.”

“Right,” he says. “Maybe it would be better
to pick them off from here. I got a clear line of fire.”

“Wrongo,” I say. “If they don’t all get
killed, they can race back to wherever they came from and bring a
horde with them.” I’m imagining us getting eaten in a lighthouse in
Cape Cod. If somebody told me this shit on graduation day in high
school I woulda said…. Fuck, what does it matter what I would’ve
said? I was a bigger dumbass then than I am now, damn it all to
hell.

Tim slides open one of the vent windows and
pokes the muzzle out, takes a second, and fires at the driver of
the Jeep. The window shatters and the bitch behind the wheel
collapses, blood splattered everywhere. The doors open up and three
bitches tumble out.

“Hey, you dumb motherfuckers, what are doin?”
says one of them sounding very much a baritone. I peek out and see
her legs belong to a running back. A blonde with shoulders bigger
than a door, shakes her fist. “I’m going to beat the livin’ crap
outta you!”

Tim wisely fires another shot into the dirt
and some pebbles and dust fly up. He turns to me and says, “Thems
ain’t zombies, Captain, thems is drag queens.”.”

“Listen, girls,” I yell. “I’m sorry, but we
thought you were women or, more accurately, zombies. You were very
convincing. I’m sorry for your friend there but we didn’t want to
end up on a bitch-from-hell menu. I hope you understand.”

“Understand? You shot Helen right through his
head! I’ll admit the make-up was good and he just waxed his beard,
poor dear. But did you have to kill him?”

“Well, I guess you know what’s been happening
around the world. Can you blame us?” I say. “I mean, you’re dressed
like women. Think about it. Not like we feel good about it
now.”

They whisper to each other.

The brunette shouts, “Okay, dammit. It’s a
truce. Accidents happen and we can’t blame you guys. Well, we could
blame you. You shot a hole in her fucking head. But I might’ve done
the same thing if I was in your shoes. Come on down.”

Tim says to me, “What do you think?”

“I think we’ve got no options; no real
options anyway. Let’s go.”

We pick up our stuff and fill our backpacks
with food. I open the door and Ryan, as I learned his name to be is
standing there. He says, “Don’t need supplies. We’re chock full for
now but if it suits you to bring your own, be my guest.”

Standing next to him is Greg, a tall lanky
dude in a tight dress and yellow heels the size of banana boats. He
puts out his hand all limp-wristed and says, “Pleased to
meetcha.”

“Likewise, I’m sure,” says Tim getting into
the routine. “I’m Tim. This is Kent.”

“Hi guys,” says Greg. “I’m Greg; this is
Ryan. That’s Darlene over there,” pointing out the beefy brunette.
“I mean AJ. But he prefers Darlene. You can call me whatever makes
you happy.” He winks.

Ryan, sounding suddenly masculine and in
charge, says, “All right, girls. Let’s get back to camp. Darlene,
you stay here. I’ll send Edna for you with a pick-up. We might as
well get the stuff that’s stored here now before it falls into the
wrong hands. Be a dear and help clean up this mess that Annie
Oakley just made in our limo.”

Darlene says nothing in reply but shuffles
over to the lighthouse in his chiffon gown and engineer boots. I
know he’s going to eat my breakfast.

“Guess he’s gonna eat your chow, dearie,”
says Ryan as if reading my mind. “Your fire was a little smoky. And
a lot careless. There are still undead whores running around. Not
many, but a few. We go scouting every now and again just to see if
maybe the military is back in control or something good is in the
news department. We’re pretty isolated out there in P-Town. Don’t
want to miss anything.”

“We get it,” says Tim.

“No, Miss Thing, I don’t think you do. That
cooking fire of yours could have brought all hell down on you. If
you do that careless kind of shit at our camp, I’ll shoot you
myself.”

Before we all get in the Jeep, Ryan announces
he has to “take a leak.” He pulls up his dress and unrolls his
dick. It looks a foot long.

“Now you know why she’s in charge,” says
Greg.

***

After Darlene and Tim clean the remains of
Helen out of the car; they drag his body off behind one of the
dunes. Everyone says a word or two and a silent prayer and we all
pile into the Jeep. Death has become just a way of life now.
Everyone moves on pretty quickly, though it doesn’t make me feel
better about accidentally shooting someone. Greg drives and makes a
quick U-turn and we are on our way to P-Town. I certainly am not
going to bring up Jen and I look at Tim sitting next to me in the
back and he knows, as usual, what I am thinking.

“So where are you two from and what the hell
are you doin’ here?” asks Ryan.

“We’re from Denver. Worked at a radio
station. We figured the Cape was safe because it was isolated. Knew
the plague was only hitting females and knew also that P-Town was
more than likely to be safe,” I responded.

“I don’t believe that story really,” says
Ryan. “But whatever suits you. We’re pretty harmless, all-in-all.
But how did you get here from there?”