APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (40 page)

             
“You are now Bludglutton and I have dominion over you; though you are my general you are also my slave,” said the Lich with a laugh.

“What have you done to me?” Thomas rose again and faced his king.

“I have taken away the unnecessary and replaced the flawed with something better than a simple golem,” said Baliel.

             
“
Who
are you?” asked Thomas forcing himself to keep the hatred from his voice and to sound submissive.

             
“You will call me Lord. This day we begin to take this land and convert its inhabitants into our kind, which are neither quite living, nor not quite dead.”

             
Thomas Walters, being a cunning individual, nodded his head in agreement even though he would try to find a way out of this mess and land on his feet. Walters always landed on his feet. “Where do we start?”

             
The Lich pointed at a castle on the hill. “That is a good place to begin,” he said with that hideous laughter. “I think we should introduce you to your men first, don’t you?”

             
Walters bowed his head “Whatever you say.”
And I will take that crown of yours in due time, mother fucker.

             
As if reading his thoughts, the Lich added in a low, grave tone, “See to it that you serve me well, Bludglutton. If you have plans of disloyalty then
she
will burn for eternity.”

             
Thomas saw a ragged form staggering toward him from behind Baliel, of Ba'al. She was old and frail and dead. She was also Thomas’ mother, Enid. He looked back to the giant corpse in flowing robes. The Lich smiled, and the flesh around his lips ripped slightly as he did so. “Do you recognize her?”

             
Thomas nodded and hatred for the Lich filled his heart. “What are you going to do with her?”

             
“Oh, that is not my decision, it is yours. Serve me well and I will release her. If you do not serve me well, then…do you recall the pain of your flesh being seared from you?”

             
Thomas nodded.

             
“Good. Now imagine that pain continuing for as long as I choose. I am patient and do not grow bored easily; hers would be an eternity of agony.”

             
Thomas looked again at his reflection in the pool and saw what few others have ever been given a glimpse of. Mortality; all that remained of that innocent child he’d been so long ago was utterly gone.

             
After his release from prison the second time he had sworn that he’d never go back again, but now, his heart, an atrophied muscle, lay dormant in this prison where the bars were made of bones. He deserved this fate, he knew that. The life of a prisoner was nothing new to him. As a child he had been at the mercy of an alcoholic father that had beaten him for the slightest infraction. At eighteen he’d done his first stretch in the joint and he had been paroled only to become a prisoner to the same master his father had served. Once again he had been a prisoner in another state correctional facility and then after his eventual release he had become the willing servant of envy toward his brother, a cellmate to rebellion and self-centered motivations, greed and hate. He had called it ‘hustling’ then, but now he saw that he had just become a prisoner within a cell of his own making.

             
Walters knew that he deserved to be a prisoner to a dead man. It was only fitting.

             
The one person he truly loved, the one person who had given up so much for him, who had never given up on the hope that one day he would be a good man, was his mother, and now she was a prisoner whose only release could be paid for by Thomas’ own incarceration.

             
Two-time Tommy had become a lifer; a dead man walking.

             
For the first time in his miserable life came the thought of redemption. But which path would lead him to that mythic realm? Should he further the will of evil in order to save the life of a just woman? Or should he sacrifice a righteous woman by refusing to do something that he had been molded to do?

             
Confusion was another form of prison and Thomas rotted in them all.

             
The Lich laughed. “I thought the decision would be easy, but I see that this woman means nothing to you. Very well, I will flay the flesh from her bones and play the nerves of her spinal cord like a lute and see if she screams on key.”

             
Thomas raised his head and looked at the Lich. “I will serve you,” he spat angrily. “Goddamn you. I’ll serve you.”

             
“Serve me…
what
?” asked the Lich, looking at him with an air of superiority.

             
“My
Lord
…I will serve you well,
my Lord
.”

             
“That is much better.” The Lich turned to the old woman who gaped at them and groaned softly. “You may go now, my dear.” The old dead woman in thin house coat and orthopedic shoes walked away from them in a stumbling uncoordinated gait, the ravaged refugee swaying right to left as she walked.

             
The general looked into the pool of water as his reflection rippled before him like a dream sequence in a cheap television show. It would be the last time he saw his own face.

                                                               
Chapter 44 - Traffic Jam

Cincinnati, Ohio 

              John Walker made his campsite for the evening in the trailer of a Roadway semi. He would have slept in the cab, but one of the doors hung open with a bent hinge and wouldn’t close. He needed to find some shelter soon or he would end up being an entrée or other treat for the zombies to crunch on. He tore open his pack and opened a can of pre-cooked mac and cheese and ate it cold. He ate and drank some water before wrapping himself in the seat covers from the cab of the rig. It would have been nice to sleep in one of those decked out big rigs with the built in sleeper, but no dice. Evidently Roadway didn’t believe in sleeping, just driving. His knee, the one that Marine had shot, was killing him; his earlier jaunt to get away from the woods full of dead had about done him in. As comfortable as he could get, he slipped into his dreams and his mind painted a picture for him, like it did every night; it was a portrait of that black, woman Marine that had given him the permanent limp. He thrashed and groaned in his sleep as he dreamed of her giving him water to drink and telling him that everything would be alright, then she delivered them straight into slavery. The ‘16’ tattooed on his troubled forehead creased as he frowned in his sleep.

              The trailer rocked, and there was a loud bang along the inside of it and he immediately came awake. He peeked around the plastic wrapped pallet of boxes and saw that one of the doors at the back of the trailer had been opened. Walker listened and heard a shuffling of feet and tensed, he could have sworn that he heard the dead man sniffing but how was that possible? The dead didn’t breathe. He drew his sidearm and shined his flashlight down the long, narrow enclosure and almost dropped the light when he saw how close the thing was to him. The bloated monstrosity lunged forward and John saw that prior to his death, the zombie had obviously had an eating problem. The dead man had been morbidly obese in life, and it appeared that death’s weight loss program had done him no favors. Now, with his guts festering in the heat of day his belly bulged, the skin was stretched so tight that it shined like polished marble in hues of black, gray and green. It grabbed for John’s foot, but he snatched it back just in time. He kicked out and regretted it instantly. As the heel of his boot hit the dead man’s stomach; the skin ripped and its torso exploded from the opposing forces of impact without and the gasses pressing within.

             
The viscous yellow and green of infection detonated and erupted in every direction covering John in puss and writhing maggots. The stench was unbelievable, even to a man that had grown accustomed to the reeking bodies that lay moldering and those that still supernaturally walked the earth.

             
John’s stomach hitched and he fired back, covering his own boots and the dead man’s empty torso with his previous dinner of mac and cheese, which being partially digested, it was similar in appearance. He took note of that and his stomach convulsed again and finished emptying its contents.

             
The smell of bile and regurgitation didn’t seem to repulse the dead man; instead it appeared to make him hungry. John cursed his luck for having a glutton as the one that would have him trapped.

             
Walker raised the sidearm and pulled the trigger. It clicked but nothing else. “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me?” he said incredulously. The dead man grabbed for his foot again and John threw the useless pistol at it. It cracked into the front of its head, splitting the scalp wide open and a liquid putrescence flowed into its eyes. The zombie roared in anger and ratcheted his jaws wide open.

             
John flung himself into the back corner and grabbed for his pack, searching frantically for his machete. The zombie lurched forward and clamped a decayed but strong hand around his ankle. John pumped his leg back and forth trying to free himself and heard the dead man’s shoulder dislocate with a loud pop, but it still held on. “Oh, Jesus…come on, come on, come on,” he panted, as he patted his hand around the floor and finally found the plastic handle of the machete. He grabbed it and spun onto his back just as the corpse bit down on the exposed flesh just above the top of his leather boot.

             
John screamed and brought the blade down on the back of its head. The blow severed its left ear and sunk into the rotten meat of the back of its neck, but the obese dead man ripped at the flesh, sawing his jaws back and forth, but not releasing it. John swung the blade down again and it sank deeper into the neck, but still the dead man chewed on his leg. He swung again and again and again until the head separated from its body. The body fell with a tremendous thump that shook the trailer where it rocked on squeaky springs. John saw that the zombie’s head was still clamped to his leg and he stuck the blade into the side of its mouth and pried the jaws apart. The head came loose and the jaws snapped shut with such force that several of its teeth shattered as they crashed into each other. He rolled up his pant leg and saw the deep teeth marks lining his shin and the bottom on his calf muscle. The pain was incredible. The dead man’s saliva burned like acid in the open wound and John quickly slipped his belt from its loops and wrapped it around his thigh. He hoped that a tourniquet would stop the infection from spreading, but he could feel the pain aching in his veins as it traveled upward. He put the machete in its sheath and stuck it between his thigh and the belt and twisted the belt tight, tighter and tighter until he felt his leg go cold from lack of circulation. “Please God; don’t let me turn into one of those things. I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t let that happen to me,” he pleaded and promised to change his ways, to let go of his plans for revenge, to help others that needed it.
His mother had been a good woman and that should count for something, shouldn’t it?

             
He gathered his pack and limped from the trailer. It may be a little safer inside, but he couldn’t stand the smell anymore and there was no way he was going to be able to sleep; he had too much nervous energy for that. His nerves were shot and the cool night air might spur him on until he found the next town where he could better tend his wounds. Maybe he would find a Good Samaritan, or perhaps stumble across a doctor that had found a cure.
It was possible
, he told himself over and over. Anything was possible in a world of impossibilities.

                                                               
Chapter 45 - Teddy Bear

Kendall Woods,
West Virginia

             
“Oh, my head,” groaned Shere as she sat up in bed. She got up and cracked open her bedroom door and looked out across the room over at Hito and found him snoring fitfully from his bed. She glanced past him to the opposite side where Annie slept and found that Annie’s usual spot beside Hito was empty, the blankets tucked around Hito’s side.

“Hito?” she asked. He continued to snore. Shere walked to where Hito lay and with her fingertips she lightly brushed his shaggy black hair from over his left eye and smiled. She pulled the blankets over his exposed chest and grabbed one of the blankets from the foot of the bed, wrapped it around her shoulders, covering her nakedness from the morning chill. “She must’ve worn you out good last night,” she said biting her bottom lip with a trace of annoyance. After looking around the room she leaned over him and softly kissed his forehead.