Man Meat

Don’t forget to check out my zombie short story, “Man Meat.” It’ll be posted w/in the next 24 hrs. http://thrillskillsnchills.blogspot.com/

Hoarders

Thank God for them hoarders, Wil.  That’s all I can say.

I guess our grandmas told us such horror stories about the Depression and all, a lot of us got scared and started saving every stupid string and box and rubber band we got our hands on.

But them hoarders, they saved more ‘n string, didn’t they?

They saved old clothes.

They saved rope.

They kept slivers of soap and near-empty bottles of shampoo and every last drop of laundry soap they had.  And sometimes they just saved the empty containers, but you can swish a little water around in them sometimes and get another couple of uses out of ‘em.

I don’t know if they were cheap or just scared, but all that junk they kept sure comes in handy, don’t it?

Wood to burn from old crates.

Buckets for our water.

Old rags for wipin’.

There’s no end to the favors they’re doin’ us, so lesson learned.

Everything has a use.

I guess that’s how them sons of bitches at the shelter started figuring out we could eat each other in the first place.

Equal Opportunity

The two of them were jumping up in the air when we rushed down the steep stairs.  Wil had a smile on his face a mile wide, and he tells me we’re back in business, that we’re a beacon of hope again.

And we were, if only for ourselves.

But the world’s a savage place, and even the staunchest believer must realize by now there wasn’t gonna be no divine intervention.  There ain’t no right or wrong no more, and man’s at the bottom of the food chain.

Hell, there ain’t even the devil to contend with.

Just them amoral shitbags.

Equal opportunity at its finest.

You think them bastards care who they eat?  If they recognize you as human, by whatever mechanism they use, you’re lunch.

It’s a sad fact, and time everybody left recognized it.

I remembered a pamphlet them church guys were giving out at the very first shelter I found, back when it still seemed like we might have a chance.  Now I’ve never been much for religion, so I just sort of scanned it.

What it said was, “God is kind and merciful.”

What it looked like it said was, “God is kind of merciless.”

Been nearer to the truth to just stick with that.

For all you believers out there.

Ronnie

The boy Ronnie ain’t been the same since he seen his mother.

I ain’t blaming him, neither.

Anyway, to keep him busy, to keep his mind off things, we put him to work.  Mostly he works with Wil, still tryin’ to get that damn foglight lit.

All of a sudden, Matt and I hear a whoop and holler.

“Yay!” I heard Ronnie call up the stairs.  “We did it.  Me ‘n Wil did it!”

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High Surf

Weather was bad last night. The surf was high and it washed a couple of those bags of shit up on our little island here.

We’re going to have to take them out before we can do anything else.

I’m trying to teach the older boy to shoot, so I figured as soon as I cleared the island, I’d let him target-practice with a couple of the ones up on shore. I showed him how to cock the gun and all of that, and I made him stay just inside the door while I went out.

There was a female and two males, and I put ‘em down sweet and easy, a routine kill. When I knew it was all right, I called Ronnie out.

“Come on, boy. You can come out now. Help me drag these son of a bitches over to the cliff, though. I don’t want ‘em up here, even dead.”

He didn’t say a word. He was staring at the corpses with such a look of awe and horror I thought I must not’ve got one of ‘em all the way.

I whirled around, weapon ready, but they were just laying there.

I looked over at the boy.

“Something wrong, son?”

“Yeah,” he told me, pointing at the dead woman. “That’s my mom.”

Vector

This isn’t an Old Joe story, but I hope you enjoy it.

 

Why are you fellows so interested in flies?

I hate them, to be honest.

You mother fucker, you son of a bitch, you, I’ll twist your goddamned head around backwards, I ever see you again!

Oh, my God, I can’t believe I just thought that.

 

Oh, I said it?

Wow.

I’m really sorry. I never used to be this way. I don’t know what’s come over me lately, really I don’t.

I think it all started when that fucker, fucking kill him! fly bit me.

It hurt like all get-out for about twenty minutes, then I sort of forgot about it until I started feeling a queasy. All I wanted to do was barf my brains out, but it was like a drank-too-much puke, you know?

I mean, I felt way better after.

Prick son of a bitch!

Sorry.

Sorry. Did I say that out loud? Maybe I have that thing, that Tourette’s or whatever it is.

Do you think you can catch it from flies?

What happened after he bit me was, I went into the kitchen and I saw another fly.  Maybe it was the same fly, I don’t know.  I just remember wanting to claw someone’s eyes out, and I was like, what the hell?

Anyway, I saw this fly and all I wanted to do was kill the little bastard, smash it into a shapeless blob, take someone’s teeth out one at a time with a pair of pliers.

 

I know.

I totally know how that sounds, and it’s really not me, I promise you. But flies are disgusting creatures who spread lots of germs and oh, God, I hate those bastards, walls punched in and windows all broken!

Did you know they could bite?

Neither did I.

Was it my neighbor who complained? I mean, I only tore up my own property, so I don’t see what business it is of hers.

I swear to God, that woman’s a total bitch sometimes.

Anyway, total bitch, I know you told on me! I guess they can. Or melt your skin through their mouth, or whatever it is they’re supposed to do quit asking me all these bullshit questions before I cut out your lungs, God damn it!

He did me up, that fly.

But this was no ordinary fly bite you piece of shit, you all deserve to die! This fly bite was red and throbby for a couple of minutes, then it turned kind of …yucky.

Like one of those goddamned skin boils son of a bitch! Dickhead! Why the fuck are you people harassing me?

Oh, man, it’s hard to focus sometimes.

What was I saying?

I think that fly-bite bastard did this to me, because I haven’t felt right since.

Would you fellows like a cup of coffee? It wouldn’t take me any time to make some.

No?

Okay.

Well, anyway, I ended up catching that little God damn it, I’ve got to break something now, you little fucker! and I smashed and smashed when I got hold of him.

Sorry.

Sorry.

I’ve never done that before.

I really didn’t mean to do that. I hope I didn’t hurt you. I never knew my hands were so strong, ha ha. You’d think I grew up wringing chickens’ necks or something.

Sorry.

Let me…yeah, maybe you should go sit over there.

I didn’t mean to do that.

I don’t know why I’m so excitable these days, when I’ve never so much as harmed a fly before.

Oh, wait.

I guess maybe I have.

Hey, did I ever tell you about my neighbor?

She’s a total bitch.

Until You See

Hey, everyone.  This is not an Old Joe story, but I thought you’d all like it anyway.

Kill a zombie?

That’d be an excellent thing to do.

Shut up, asshole.

You don’t know until you see.About six drinks in, you’ll realize.

About six drinks in, you’ll smell that weird fresh-air smell that reminds you of hanging out with your friends all night at the quarry, or whatever ass-wipe place you used to hang out, you fucking poseur, because I’m telling you the truth, you don’t know until you see.You can’t.What I’m saying is, we were at some place the cops would never want to look, and yeah, we were getting fucked up.

We were doing drugs.

We were drinking.

Some of us were even puking, but the thing is, in the morning, we were all supposed to wake up and all be equally in some hangover hell. I mean, you can’t know until you see. You can’t imagine anything ever going wrong, other than your parents or the law finding out. You can’t fathom coming across the single-car accident you came across after you accepted that ride home ‘cause you were cold. You can’t even grasp how it is when the biggest derelict in your group stops to help the victims.

Even when the guy who pissed his pants at the moment of collision gets out, even then you never expect to see them.

And when you and your buddy Tommy pull that mangled door off to help the driver, you’d never dream you’d see her tear his arm off right in front of you.

You just can’t imagine.

Maybe tear isn’t the right word.

Maybe what I really mean is, chew.You don’t know ‘til you see ten pints of human blood pooled on the asphalt what you’ll see.

Until you see it.

Trust me, though, you won’t even see all that ‘til you’ve seen your buddy hopping around the empty back road you took so you won’t hit a DUI checkpoint. You won’t know what it’s like to see him with one arm, screaming worse than any Jamie Lee Curtis ever could, veins hanging out while his blood hit the ground.

You can’t even help him, but you’ve always been a lucky son of a bitch, and the piss-pants guy is stupid enough to get between you.

‘Til you see a hundred-and-ten pound girl rip a man to shreds, you won’t know.

There’s no way you could.

Until you see.

What you won’t dream of is, how pale Tommy gets.

What no one could imagine unless they’ve been through it is, how his voice gets weak, how he’s laying on the ground begging someone–anyone–to help.

The thing you’ll never believe until you see is, how the girl keeps biting. Tommy’s down and you’re shitting yourself ’cause you don’t know what to do, and she just keeps biting. And I’ve been to dozens of scary movies, and this is the part where you’re screaming at the dumb fuck on-screen to run, but what you don’t know is, you can’t. Your feet won’t go.

It’s just like one of those goddamned nightmares, where you want to run away but you can’t, only this is ten times worse ‘cause this is real, this is your real-live friend getting eaten up by this raggedy fucking cunt while you stand there, almost as bad as the pants-pissing guy who’s twitching on the ground.

You want to say holy shit.

You wish someone else was there to watch it with you, ‘cause by now your brain is so distorted you can’t even trust your own eyes.

Maybe you drank too much.

Maybe you’re finally seeing the modern version of the pink elephant, even though you never even got close before, never even believed anyone could hallucinate like that.

It could be someone gave you some acid at the quarry, and this is all some really fucked-up elaborate joke that failed.

What you want to happen is, you want one of those guys to come out with the camera crew and tell you you’re on some dumb-ass show.

What you’ll never, ever bend your mind to is, this is all for real.

But you still can’t move.

Tommy’s on the ground with those wide staring eyes, and you know for sure he’s dead, but you simply cannot make those piece-of-shit feet of yours move.

Until you’ve been there, you won’t know how fast your mind can work, how fast you’ll wonder if there really is a God, and if there is, how the fuck could something like this be happening?

Until you’ve seen the twitchy pants-pissing guy get up, you won’t know.

You won’t guess.

Until you hear that sound coming out of your own goddamned mouth, a sound like a little girl screaming, you’ll never get close to the terror of seeing pissy-pants come after you, and if you really believe you can’t be scared by a skinny white girl, you’re in sad shape, ‘cause when they finally get here, to where we’re at, they’re going to eat you alive.

You might want to run.

You might want to scream.

Go ahead.

No one’s stopping you.

Hell, anyone who’s been there, we’ll all join you, probably.

We’ll scream with you.

We’ll run.

Everybody here will understand. No one will be making fun of you, because we all know, everybody here knows what it’s like to wish you could grow wings, ‘cause the thought of that painful first bite is so terrifying you can’t even think.They’re fast, though.

Fast but stupid.

Burned-out shells of humans, who want nothing more than to satisfy some desperate craving for human flesh, who won’t even care how bad it hurts you, like a bunch of Nazis in a concentration camp.

They won’t give a shit how much you beg and squirm and scream.

They’re fucking zombies!

What they do is, they eat people for a living, and I hope you’re quick or smart enough to get away.

Of course, you won’t know until you see.

Spreading the Disease

Here’s what I think happens, Wil. I think it’s sort of like a relay race, except instead of passing a baton, they just pass on their disease. Maybe get about halfway here or something and bite someone on their way before they fall apart, and then that guy finishes the journey for them. Maybe they’re going from town to town, feeding off pockets of survivors.

Like us.

Thank God these ain’t no smarter than the originals. I’d hate to think what it’d be like if they knew how to do anything real.