Zombie Kong - Anthology (7 page)

Nor would applying at Agri-Verse.

The wheeze of a pneumatic hinge announced the opening of the bathroom door. Thomas froze as footsteps shuffled inside and stopped in front of his stall. Its door creaked as someone pressed against it. Thomas’ heart pounded. A pair of hands appeared below the door as the person went to their knees to peer through the gap. The face belonged to a seventh-grader. Drool fell from his purple lips as he spotted Thomas.

Thomas erupted off the toilet tank, pushed aside a ceiling tile and pulled himself into the crawlspace. He managed to worm on top of an air duct, which squeaked and shook, but held his weight. An additional problem presented itself––the crawlspace was filled with smoke, which stung Thomas’ eyes and made him cough.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire…

The flamethrower Mr. Jablanski used was meant for the porthole at the front entrance, not the interior of the school. Thomas guessed insulation in the crawlspace ignited, and the fire would burn through the whole building, not reducing it to cinders, but filling it with poisonous fumes. Even now, Thomas felt his head go light and nausea uncoil itself in his belly. He hurriedly worked his way down the duct until he guessed he was over the hallway. The smoke grew thicker even in those few moments. Holding his breath, Thomas rolled off the air duct, broke through the ceiling tiles and dropped back into the lunch-line hall.

Mr. Jablanski stood before him.

Speak of the devil,
Thomas thought.

Mr. Jablanski had a hard time standing on his shredded right leg. The flamethrower’s gun dangled from his hand, ending in a torn hose. The man once had given Thomas purpose. Thomas appeared in Mr. Jablanski’s physics class at 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Reading assignments and problems followed. Now the dynamic was reversed. Thomas gave Mr. Jablanski purpose. How quickly things changed. Mr. Jablanski lurched forward to take a bite. Thomas darted back and then around Mr. Jablanski’s flailing arms.

The halls were starting to fill with smoke now. Thomas avoided three infected students and headed for the band room. It was a designated rally point. Coughing, he turned by the library and reached the goal moments later. Thomas banged on the band room door. A slot opened and a pair of eyes looked him up and down.

“Are you bit?” the owner of the eyes asked.

“No.”

“Do the drill.”

Sweating, Thomas dropped his pants and pulled his shirt up around his neck. He turned in a circle, eyeing the Zs staggering closer, closer…

“Okay, you’re clean.”

The band door opened, and Thomas ducked inside. The place was packed with perhaps forty kids. Thomas quickly scanned the faces and was grateful to see Danielle sitting on the far side of the room with a group of friends.

“Anyone else coming?” Larry Berlin asked.

“No,” Thomas shook his head. “And we need to get going.”

“The rules say we wait for help.”

“We can’t this time.” Thomas pointed at the smoke that had started to spill out of the ceiling vents. “The crawlspaces are burning. We’ll be poisoned.”

Murmurs went up among the students.

“But we
can’t
get out,” someone said querulously. “We’re in lockdown.”

“There’s a way,” Thomas insisted. Before panic could spread roots into the group’s psyche, he explained. Once he presented his idea, everyone agreed to it.

As a member of the Student Zmergency Council, Larry took charge and ordered the students to dismantle the room’s music stands. This left them with narrow pipes about four feet long. Besides clubbing, the weapons could stab soft things.

“We’ll move like a circle of wagons,” Larry directed. “Everyone with a pipe will be on the outside. Unarmed people will keep to the middle. Before we go, does anyone have a gun? I know you’re supposed to check them in at the office, but I won’t report you.”

Three boys raised their hands.

“Save your bullets for the target,” Larry advised.

The group exited the band room in a serpentine line that tripled up in the hall. Drills allowed them to move fast even though the smoke made it difficult to see. Many of the students had removed T-shirts and tied them around their faces. Thomas tried to stay close to Danielle. She was unarmed; he held a pipe; and they were running the gauntlet.

Hands reached out of the smoke as Zs converged on their still-living classmates. Shouts. Moans. Flailing clubs. And screams as some were dragged into the smoke. Rebecca Meyer advanced, a pale apparition whose skin was almost invisible in the cloudiness. She snagged the shirt of the girl next to Danielle, and Thomas beat the clutching limb away. The train of them stayed in motion, to stop was to have their ranks overcome.

The group reached the gymnasium relatively intact. The ZK still lolled on the floor with the remains of its hunger. It had tried to free its ankle of the rafter, but succeeded in doing no more than breaking it; a bone jutted out of the joint like a snapped tree limb. Gunshots rang out as the armed students went for the ZK’s eyes. Nine-millimeter bullets wouldn’t penetrate to its brain, but maybe they could at least blind the monster.

Thomas joined the team jabbing their makeshift spears at the ZK’s face. It reminded him of a Ray Harryhausen movie––
One Million Years B.C.,
where the characters fought a giant purple turtle. The beast’s teeth chomped, and its great paws swept. One assailant was thrown against the wall with bone-crunching force. Somehow, Curt Johnson found an opening and charged. Instead of an eye, he stabbed a nostril. Thomas saw what was going to happen and dove out of the way. The beast, still governed by reflex even if it was dead, sneezed. Rotten snot doused several boys, and they ran screaming, trying to rip their clothes off before the fluid soaked into their system and infected them.

Meanwhile, the unarmed students stood caught between a rock and a hard place. The battle with the ZK happened in front of them while Zs simultaneously attacked them from behind. A few kids with spears tried to hold the infected teenagers back, but Thomas could see it was a losing battle. Danielle was tossed back and forth as the unarmed kids tried to move as one to stay out of the way of everything.

The clock in Thomas’ head ticked into the red. Screaming, he ran forward, ducked a giant hand, rolled away from the other and come up in front of the ZK’s face. The monster’s breath seemed bad enough to sear his skin. Ignoring it, Thomas plunged his spear into the beast’s eye and shoved it as far as he could. The ZK roared, going rigid like bolts of electricity shot through its body. Then it simply went limp and stopped moving.

“Come on!” Thomas shouted.

The students scrambled onto the ZK’s back. They climbed its snagged leg, using the monster’s fur as handholds, and onto the school roof. By the time Thomas joined them, some were already filing down the fire escape.

Determined, Thomas sought out Danielle and budged into line behind her as she climbed onto the ladder. “Danielle,” he said.

She looked up, all beauty and possibility. “Yes?”

“Would you go to prom with me?”

Danielle paused, and Thomas felt like he lived a hundred lifetimes in that few seconds of silence. Finally, she answered, “I guess that would be okay.”

“Great!” Thomas smiled. “Call you tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Danielle nodded and descended. She reached the street, walked toward home and disappeared around a corner.

Thomas remained on the roof. The sun shone down, and trees threw dappling shadows. There was the water tower, the church steeple, Main Street, the pool and softball fields. The town’s volunteer militia was finally organized and heading toward the school in fire trucks and APCs. Surrounding the town were corn and soybean fields. Farm sites stuck up like odd rock formations, and ZKs wandered on the horizon.

As Thomas watched, another began to stomp near…

ADRIAN LUDENS

The Elephant In The Room

I.

“A Fly on the (Circus Tent) Wall”

“Hurry, hurry! Step right up, friends! Beyond this point you’ll find everything you’ve ever dreamed about and so, SO much more! Dare to meet the Human Piranha! Cast your eyes upon the Two Thousand Pound Albino! Arm-wrestle the World’s Strongest Dwarf! Just five dollars, ladies and gentlemen; don’t delay!”

Simmons paused to mop his brow. The Louisiana humidity had soaked his tattered tuxedo and pasted it to his skin. He felt claustrophobic, constricted by his own clothes. He was about to renew his pitch upon the jaded masses when Hobart, a roustabout for the Freak Show, came hurrying up from his left.

“Mr. Simmons, sir, Mr. Quincy wanted me to pass along an urgent message.”

“Well make it quick, man,” Simmons hissed. “I’m making my pitch.”

Hobart put his mouth up to the barker’s ear. “Quincy says not to mention the gorilla act because the gorilla has up and died.”

“Oh Christ!”

Plato the Gorilla was always a good draw. ‘Smarter than most men’, Simmons would say of the old silver-backed primate. Plato accounted for at least twenty percent of tickets sold. The wheels spun in Simmons’ brain. As he rose to face the street again, those wheels found traction.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I have just been given some very sad news.” He paused for effect. “Our beloved friend and performer, Plato the Gorilla, is DEAD.”

A few of the animal-lovers in the crowd murmured in dismay. Simmons felt the eyes of the crowd on him, waiting for an explanation.

“Smarter than most men, he was, and now he is gone! But today, ladies and gentlemen, today you may purchase your tickets for the first ever––” Simmons was going to say ‘funeral for a gorilla’, but one of the faded cloth banners hanging to his left caught his eye and inspiration struck like lightning. He felt the tingle of excitement from head to foot.

“The first ever resurrection of a dead gorilla!” Simmons raised his arms with a flourish. A few groans and jeers came from the crowd.

“I ain’t payin’ to see you wake up a sleeping monkey,” one brawny man proclaimed loudly.

Simmons felt Hobart’s incredulous stare but ignored him. “I assure you, the gorilla is dead, my friends. Everyone who attends will have the opportunity to poke and prod the corpse until you are truly satisfied of the validity of my claim.

“We shall call upon Lazarus Houngan on this day! Lazarus is the grandson of plantation workers from Haiti. He is a master of the dark arts of Haitian Vodou, created by African slaves. Lazarus serves the spirits known as the
loa
. He is a
boker
. My friends, I do not expect you to know what a
boker
is, so let me explain further.

“A
houngan
is a vodou priest who serves the
loa
with both hands. That is to say, he performs sacred rites of healing and protection.

“But Lazarus Houngan is NOT a
houngan
at all. Lazarus is a
boker
. He is a master of the darker arts. Lazarus is with us because he was cast out by his friends and family for performing forbidden rituals. Lazarus can use his knowledge of the taboo and his unholy power to restore life to Plato the Gorilla! You will witness this stunning miracle with your own eyes! One show only, ladies and gentlemen. One show only!”

For every one person who moved away down the street, nine others surged forward with money in hand.

* * *

“I won’ do it.” Lazarus said. He crossed his arms in a defiant gesture.

“The devil you won’t!” Simmons growled back at the swarthy black man.

“I practice some little bits of hoodoo, dat’s all. What you ask is too dangerous.”

“I’ve seen you do some crazy stuff in your act. I don’t know how you do it, and I don’t care. As long as you keep the customers interested and coming back, that’s all that matters. Now, I promised the folks buying tickets tonight that you’d bring the gorilla back to life, and by gawd, you’re gonna do it.”

“Mista Simmons, you ask me to dance wit’ de devil this time. I can’t do it.”

Simmons grabbed Lazarus by the collar and yanked him so their noses almost touched. Then he unleashed a torrent of verbal abuse that would have made the cruelest plantation owner blush with shame.

With a peculiar gleam in his eyes, Lazarus agreed to raise the gorilla from the dead.

* * *

Lazarus Houngan’s real name was long forgotten, even by him. But most everything else Simmons told the crowd that day was true. Lazarus was indeed a
boker
of great power, though he admitted the fact to precious few. Things were just easier that way.

But the ugly barrage of words from his boss reawakened old grudges within him. Some injustices run generations-deep.

I serve the
loa
with both hands
, he thought.
But today, one hand is tied behind my back by a white man. Today, I dare to call upon Bondye, the Supreme God. Today, I ask for vengeance.

Lazarus fell to his knees and selected a stone from the dirt. He rose and hurried to his tent. He gathered a few small bottles of liquids and powders; poison extracted from a puffer fish, datura, human ash, and other ingredients better left unnamed. Lazarus chanted and prayed as he smeared the mixture into the cracks and crevices of the stone.

Satisfied with the
pwen
––his object of power for the ritual––Lazarus set about fashioning an
ouanga
bag. The bag would hold the
pwen
and serve as a talisman that he hoped would house the spirits Plato captured.

The misguided man, driven by fear and anger, sought to bring Plato the Gorilla back to life as a sort of avenging spirit. He asked Bondye to give the gorilla the wisdom and strength necessary to kill and capture the souls of any man or woman who felt superior to another race, color or creed. But Lazarus was indeed dancing with the devil, as he had asserted to Simmons earlier.