Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology (49 page)

It gave under the pressure of his fingers, like stale cheese. He sniffed. It was sour, rather akin to
the smel of an eggshel in the trash, with no insides.

Wormboy popped it between his lips and bit down before his brain could say no. He got a crisp
bacon crunch. His mental RPMs redlined as flavor bil owed across his tongue and fil ed his meaty
squirrel cheeks.

His mom would not have approved. This was… wel , this was the sort of thing that was… just not
done.

It was… a rush of liberation. It was the ultimate expression of revenge, of power wielded over
Duke the dick-nosed shitheel. It was the nearest thing to sex Wormboy would ever experience. It
was damned close to religious.

Once Wormboy was old enough, he began to work part-time for Old Man Tompkins after school.

By then his future was cast, and his extra weight gain attracted no new notice.

At the National Guard armory he had tucked in quite a few Type-A boxed combat meals. The gel-packed mystery meat he pried from olive-drab tins was more disgusting than anything he had
ever sliced off down at the morgue.

BONE appetit!

Wormboy’s wet dream was just sneaking up on the gooshy part when another explosion jerked him back to reality and put his trusty .44 in his grasp quicker than a samurai’s
katana
. It was getting to be a busy Monday.

His mountainous gut fluttered.
Brritt
. Lunch was stil in there fighting. But what the binoculars revealed nudged his need for a bromo right out of his mind.

Two dozen geeks, maybe more, were lurching toward the front gates of Val ey View. Wormboy’s jaw unhinged. That did not stop his mouth from watering at the sight.

The Right Reverend Jerry unshielded his eyes and stared at the sinner on the hil top as smoking wads of Deacon Fatty rained down on the faithful. He’d been in front. Something fist-sized and mulchy smacked Jerry’s shoulder and blessed it with a smear of yel ow. He shook detritus from his shoe and thought of Ezekiel 18:4. Boy, he was getting mad.

The soul that sinneth—it shal die!

Deacon Moe and Deacon Fatty had bitten the big one and bounced up to meet Jesus. The closer the congregation staggered to the churchyard, the better they could smel the sinner… and his fatted calves. The hour of deliverance—and dinner—so long promised by Jerry seemed at hand.

Jerry felt something skin past his ear at two hundred per. Behind him, another of the born-agains came un-glued, skul and eyes and brains al cartwheeling off on different trajectories.

Jerry stepped blind and his heel skidded through something moist and slick; his feet took to the air and his rump introduced itself to the pavement and much, much more of Deacon Fatty. More colors soaked into his coat of many.

The Right Reverend Jerry involuntarily took his Lord’s name in vain.

At the next flat crack of gunshot one more of the faithful burst into a pirouette of flying parts.

Chunks and stringers splattered the others, who had the Christian grace not to take offense.

Jerry scrambled in the puddle of muck, his trousers slimed and adherent, his undies coldly bunched. Just as wetly, another born-again ate a bul et and changed tense from present to past.

Jerry caught most in the bazoo.

It was high time for him to bul in and start doing God’s work.

Wormboy cut loose a throat-rawing war whoop—no melodrama, just joy at what was heading his way. The guy bringing up the rear did not twitch and lumber the way geeks usual y did, so Wormy checked him out through the scope of the high-power Remington. He saw a dude in a stained suit smearing macerated suet out of his eyes and hopping around in place with Donald Duck fury.

He wore a Red Cross arm band, as did the others. End of story. Next case.

Wormy zeroed a fresh geek in his crosshairs, squeezed off, and watched the head screw inside out in a pizza-colored blast of flavor. With a bal etic economy of motion for someone his size, he ejected the last of the spent brass and left the Remington open-bolted while he unracked his M60. Zombo was hot for mayhem. Zombo was itching to pop off and hose the stragglers. Wormy draped a stretch belt of high-velocity armor piercers over one sloping hil ock of shoulder. The sleek row of shel casings obscured the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles logo on his T-shirt.

Dusting was done. Now it was casserole time. Zombo lived. Zombo ruled.

The next skirmish line of Bouncing Bettys erupted. They were halfway to the moat. The stuff pattering down from the sky sure looked like manna.

Jerry let ’em have it in his stump-thumper’s bray, ful bore: “Onward, onward! Look unto me, and be ye saved, al the ends of the earth!” Isaiah 45:22 was always a corker for rousing the rabble.

By now each and every born-again had scented the plump demon on the hil top. He was bulk and girth and mass and calories and salvation. Val ey View’s iron portals were smashed down and within seconds, a holy wave of living-dead arms, legs and innards were airborne and graying out the sunlight.

“Onward!” Jerry frothed his passion to scalding and dealt his nearest disciple a fatherly shove in the direction of the enemy. The sinner. The monster. “
Onward!
”

The flat of Jerry’s palm met al the resistance of stale oatmeal. A fresh cow patty had more tensile strength and left less mess. He ripped his hand free with a yelp and gooey webs fol owed it backward.

The born-again gawped hol owly at the tunnel where its left tit used to be, then stumped off, sniffing fresh Wormboy meat.

The explosions became deafening, slamming one into the next, thunderclaps that mocked God.

In the interstices, Jerry heard a low, vicious chuddering—not a heavenly sound, but an evil noise unto the Lord that was making the faithful go to pieces faster than frogs with cherry bombs inside.

He tried to snap off the maggot-ridden brown jel y caking his hand and accidental y boffed Deacon Moe in the face. The zombie’s nose tore halfway off and dangled. Moe felt no pain. He had obediently brought the pet caddy, whose occupants writhed and waxed wroth.

Zombo hammered out another gunpowder benediction, and Jerry flung himself down to kiss God’s good earth. Hot tracers ate pavement and jump-stitched through Deacon Moe in a jagged line. The pet carryal took two big hits and fel apart. Moe did likewise. His ventilated carcass did a juice dump, and the Right Reverend Jerry found himself awash in gal ons of zombie puree plus four extremely aggravated rattlesnakes.

He never found out who was the first to betray him. The first bite pegged him right on the bal s, and he howled.

Deacon Moe, his work on this world finished, keeled over with a splat. It was like watching a hot cherry pie hit a concrete sidewalk.

Wormboy rubbed his eyes. Zombo had
missed
. It wasn’t just the salt sting of sweat that had spoiled his aim. His vision was bol ixed. The oily drops standing out on his pate were ice cold.

It was probably someone’s something he ate.

Zombo grew too heavy, too frying-pan hot to hold. Zombo’s beak kept dipping, pissing away good ammo to spang off the metal spikes crowding the moat. Wormboy gritted his teeth, clamped his clammy trigger finger down hard, and seesawed the muzzle upward with a bowel-clenching grunt. He felt himself herniate below his weight lifter’s belt. Zombo spoke. Geeks blocked tracers, caught fire, and sprang apart at the seams. Those in front were buffaloed into the moat by those behind. They seated permanently onto the pungi pipes with spongy noises of penetration, to wriggle and gush bloodpus and reach im-potently toward Wormboy.

Zombo demanded a virgin belt of slugs.

Wormboy’s appetite had churned into a world-class acid bath of indigestion. This night would belong to Maalox.

It took no time for the air to clog with the tang of blackened geek beef. One whiff was al it took to make Wormboy ralph long and strenuously into the moat. Steaming puke pasted a geek who lay skewered through the back, facing the sky, mouth agape. It spasmed and twisted on the barbs, trying to lap up as much fresh hot barf as it could col ect.

Zombo tagged out. Wormboy unholstered his .44 and sent a pancaking round into Barf-eater’s brain pan. Its limbs stiffened straight as the hydrostatic pressure blew its head apart into watermelon glop. Then it came undone altogether, col apsing into a pool of diarrhetic putresence that bubbled and flowed amidst the pipework.

Now everything looked like vomit. Wormy’s ravaged stomach said heave-ho to that, too, and constricted to expel what was no longer vomitable. This time he got blood, shooting up like soda pop to fizz from both nostrils. He spat and gagged, crashing to his knees. His free hand vanished into the fat cushion of his stomach, total y inadequate to the task of clutching it.

The Right Reverend Jerry saw the sinner genuflect. God was stil in Jerry’s corner, whacking away, world without end, hal elujah, amen.

Jerry’s left eye was smeared down his cheek like a lanced condom. Little Paul’s fang had put it out. Must have offended him. Jerry seized Little Paul and dashed his snaky brains out against the nearest headstone. Then he began his trek up the hil , through the val ey of death, toting the limp, dead snake as a scourge. Consorting with serpents had won him a double share of bites, and he knew the value of immunization. He stung al over and was wobbly on his feet… but so far, he was stil chugging.

This must be hel , he thought dazedly when he saw most of his congregation sliced, diced, and garnishing Val ey View’s real estate. Tendrils of smoke curled heavenward from the craters gouged rudely in the soil. Dismembered limbs hung, spasming. A few born-agains had stampeded over the fal en and made it al the way to the moat.

Jerry could feel his heart thudding, pushing God knew how much snakebite nectar through his veins. He could feel the power working inside him. Blood began to drip freely from his gums, slathering his lips. His left hand snapped shut into a spastic claw and stayed that way. His good eye tried to blink and could not; it was frozen open. The horizon tilted wildly. Down below, his muscles surrendered and shit and piss came express delivery.

As he neared his children, he wanted to raise his voice in the name of the Lord and tel them the famine was ended, to hoot and hol er about the feast at last. He lost al sensation in his legs instead. He tumbled into the violence-rent earth of the graveyard and began to drag himself forward with his functioning hand, the one stil vised around the remains of Little Paul.

He wanted to shout, but his body had gotten real stupid real fast. What came out, in glurts of blood-flecked foam, was
He ham niss ed begud!

Just the sound of that voice made Wormboy want to blow his bal ast al over again.

Jerry clawed onward until he reached the lip of the pit. The born-agains congregated around him. His eye globbed on his face, his body jittering as the megadose of poison grabbed hold, he nevertheless raised his snake and prepared to declaim.

Wormboy dragged his magnum into the firing line and blew the evangelist’s mushmouthed head clean off before the mouth could pol ute the air with anything further.

“That’s better,” he ulped, gorge pistoning.

Then he vomited again anyway and blacked out.

* * *

Weirder things have happened
, his brain insisted right before he came to. None of it had been a dream.

One eye was shut against the dark of dirt and his nose was squashed sideways. Over the topography of regurgitated lunch in front of his face, he watched.

He imagined the Keystone Kops chowing down on a headless corpse. Meat strips were ripped and gulped without the benefit of mastication, each glistening shred sliding down gul ets like a snake crawling into a wet, red hole. One geek was busily chomping a russet ditch into a Jerry drumstick with the foot stil attached. Others played tug-o-war with slick spaghetti tubes of intestine or wolfed double facefuls of the thinner, linguini strands of tendon and ligaments—al marinated in that special, extra-chunky maroon secret sauce.

Wormboy’s own tummy grumbled jealously. It was way past dinnertime. The remaining geeks would not leave, not with Wormboy uneaten. He’d have to crop ’em right now, unless he wanted to try mopping up in total darkness and maybe waiting until sunup to dine.

He saw one of the geeks in the moat squirm free of a pungi pipe. Its flesh no longer meshed strongly enough for the barbs to hold it. It spent two seconds wobbling on its feet, then did a header onto three more spikes. Ripe plugs of rotten tissue bounced upward and acid bile burbled forth.

Wormboy rol ed toward Zombo, rising like a wrecked semi righting itself. His brain rol ercoastered; his vision strained to focus; what the fuck had been wrong with lunch? He was no more graceful than a geek, himself, now. He put out one catcher’s-mitt hand to steady his balance against a massive headstone memorializing somebody named Eugene Roach,
Loving
Father
. Mr. Roach had himself lurched off to consume other folks’ children a long time ago.

What happened, happened fast.

Wormboy had to pitch his ful weight against the tombstone just to keep from keeling over.

When he leaned, there came a sound like hair being levered out by the roots. His eyes bugged and before he could arrest his own momentum, the headstone hinged back, disengaging from Val ey View’s overnourished turf. Arms windmil ing, Wormy fel on top of it. His mind registered a flashbulb image of the tripwire, twanging taut to do its job.

The mine went off with an eardrum-compressing clap of bogus thunder. Two hundred pounds of granite and marble took to the air right behind nearly four hundred pounds of Wormboy, who was catapulted over the moat and right into the middle of the feeding frenzy on the far side.

It was the first time in his life he had ever done a complete somersault.

With movie slo-mo surreality, he watched his hunky magnum pal drop away from him like a bomb from a zeppelin. It landed with the trigger guard snugged around one of the moat’s deadly metal speartips. The firmly impaled Deacon W.C. was leering down the bore when it went bang.