uselessness' Stories

Zombie Refugees

2008-07-17T17:27:36Z

“You’re damn right I want to talk about this.” Joe was a seething cauldron of crankiness. “You ever been in the bush with nothing but a Colt pistol and a machete between you and a million undead Viet Cong?”

“Well…”

“Have you, boy?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“You’re saying Vietnam was about zombies?”

“I’m saying there’s a lot you don’t know about zombies. Fact, it was only a matter of time till they came to America.”

“You knew this was going to happen?”

“Why do you think I’m still alive?”

“So what’s with getting to DC all of a sudden?”

“Strength in numbers. I got some buddies in Congress that were there too. They know what’s going on. They’ll have shelter, connections. We’ll get the Marines involved—”

“If your friends are still alive,” I added.

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

“What about Nicole? Would you risk her life too?”

“Look son, unless you’ve got a better idea…” He was interrupted by a scream from his wife. The car was surrounded.

Zombie Centralization

2008-07-17T15:05:38Z

We’d been driving for an hour.

Joe and I hadn’t said a word since the gas station, but the women were quietly chattering about due dates and diapers and maternity wear. As if the zombie apocalypse wasn’t upon us at all. I sighed and turned my thoughts toward the matter at hand.

The plan was to hide in the country. Well here we were, in the heart of rural Maryland. Just beyond the fence along the road was a small farm, where rows of tomato plants were being tended by a goose-stepping horde of Zombie Karl Marxes. I swore under my breath; there was no escape.

Suddenly Joe came alive in the backseat.

“Go to DC,” he shouted.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“We’ve got to get to the Capitol,” Joe exclaimed. “I seen this before, back in ‘Nam. I know one thing, we ain’t surviving this by ourselves. Go to DC.”

“Joe, going to a city that big would be suicide! No way am I taking my wife there now.”

“We’re at war, dammit! Go to DC!”

I pulled off the road in front of the farm. “You want to talk about this?”

Zombie Resistance

2008-07-08T19:15:02Z

Arms full of junk food, I dropped a twenty on the counter and led the way back outside. To my surprise, I found Nicole driving the car in frantic circles around the gas pumps with a frothing zombie in pursuit just behind her.

“Honey!” I shouted. “Brake check!”

With a nod she slammed the brakes and the monster collided against the back of the vehicle before slumping to the asphalt.

Suddenly Joe roared. He turned to the big cooler next to the door and retrieved two large bags of ice, one in each hand. I watched in horror as he swung them around like a pair of nunchaku and thundered toward the fallen zombie with the cry of an aroused barbarian. “Aiiiieeeee!” He smashed the ice bags into the zombie’s head over and over again, brutally, pulverizing it until nothing was left but a magotty beard and a dark red smear on the pavement.

He stood up with a crazed smile. “It’s an ice day to die, ain’t it, Red?”

“Let’s get out of here,” I called. I wasn’t sure what I thought of this guy yet, but he was unstoppable.

Zombie Activism

2008-07-08T18:05:00Z

“Joe, get off that man!” cried a woman’s voice. From the cooler emerged another person, a worried-looking matron who at least had the sense to use a proper door. Limping with a makeshift PVC pipe cane, she hurried over as best she could and pried the beer from my attacker’s hands.

The man’s face changed from gruff to less gruff when he realized I wasn’t yet a zombie.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

After we had pulled ourselves up from the floor, drenched in sweat and sticky soda, the woman made introductions. “My name’s Jenny,” she said, “and this is my husband Joe. You’ll have to forgive him, he’s been rather emotional lately.”

Joe scowled. “There are no emotions, only cold death. I am a zombie killer.” He had the steely look of a middle-aged mercenary.

“He’s a lumberyard manager,” corrected Jenny.

“Either way, those zombies sure as hell ain’t taking over my country. I’ll rip their damn heads off!”

I took a step back. “Well, I’m Chris, and my wife Nicole’s out in the car. Maybe you two should come with us?”

Zombie Capitalism

2008-07-08T16:33:30Z

The convenience store was empty. I ran down the aisles, not wanting to leave Nicole alone at the car longer than I had to. Pausing, I grabbed two tins of StarKist and a package of Reese’s and hoped that would be good enough to satisfy her pendulous appetite, until we could get some real food.

I made my way to the glass cooler doors along the far wall. An iced coffee for me, a Snapple for Nicole. Better yet, two Snapples, in case she didn’t like the first one.

Behind the drinks I thought I noticed a hint of motion in the walk-in fridge.

He leaped without warning through the shelves with a scream, a flurry of blue polyester and exploding soft drinks in every direction. “Die, Commie bastard!” raged the man, who was distinctly not a Zombie Karl Marx, but at this moment was just as dangerous. He pinned me to the floor in a puddle of Pepsi beneath broken shelves and bottles and jammed his knee into my stomach, raising his arms to assault me with a six-pack of Bud Light.

“Stop!” I howled. “I’m on your side!”

Zombie Emancipation

2008-06-17T19:40:06Z

I grabbed the squeegee by the handle and carefully extracted it from the zombie’s head. It slid out with a squelch and an outpouring of maggoty gray matter on the curb. The creature was dead, again.

“Look,” Nicole said, “he’s turning back to normal.”

We watched as the corpse’s belly deflated to a reasonable size and its beard slowly fell out, hair by hair. Soon enough he looked just like a gas station attendant ought, quaint and jaunty. And also thoroughly rancid.

I swept away the bristling beard bits and noticed he was wearing a nametag. “Patrick,” I read. This man was an individual with a real family and a real past. Not some nameless Marxist zombie. “We can’t leave him here,” I said, picking up the body. “Honey, can you open the trunk for me?”

“We’re taking him with us?” Nicole was incredulous.

“Patrick needs a proper burial. It’s the right thing to do.”

I set the body in the back of the car and grabbed the tire iron before closing the trunk. There were more zombies about.

“Still hungry?” I asked.

Zombie Hegemony

2008-06-17T15:19:45Z

Zombie Karl Marx was holding the gas pump nozzle in his right hand and my collar in his left. “I think it’s about time you joined our glorious cause, comrade,” he growled with ferocious breath. In a blur he pulled my face down into his coveralls and wrapped the hose around my throat.

Gagging, I swung my arms, hoping to find something, anything to grab onto. My fingers found their way into the zombie’s wiry beard and pulled with all their might.

Bad idea. Zombie Karl Marx stumbled forward with a roar, falling on top of me. The hose tightened its chokehold under the monster’s weight; I could feel my life slipping away from me. Worse, his teeth had started chomping and were now making their way toward my skull. “You will give me your brain,” he moaned.

Suddenly there was a terrible chunking noise and the zombie flopped over, wheezing, to the concrete. Sticking out of his head was a bloody squeegee.

“Nicole!” I shouted. “I said stay in the car!”

“Sorry Chris,” she grinned. “This is a full-service station.”

Zombie Reification

2008-06-17T02:09:53Z

“Honey, I want some tuna.”

I looked over at Nicole, who was making hungry eyes at me in the passenger’s seat. She was beautiful, smiling patiently despite the rather untimely invasion of zombie communists. Then she added, “and maybe some peanut butter.” She was also extremely pregnant.

“Alright, I’ll stop someplace,” I said, glancing at the fuel gauge. “I need to fill up, too.”

After driving for an hour, it was becoming clear that the zombies were an unstoppable force. Resurrected bicyclists creakily pedaling along the freeway. Rotting haberdashers hoisting the hammer and sickle. Cripes, bearded babies crawling toward pubs. Could you even get vodka out here?

I pulled into an old Union 76 and turned off the engine. “Nicole, I’ll just be a minute.”

“I’m coming with you…” she started.

“No, you stay in the car. No matter what happens, stay in the car. I’ll be right back. I love you.”

Before she could protest, I opened my door and stepped into the putrid arms of one zombie gas station attendant Karl Marx.

Zombie Proletariats

2008-06-06T17:13:06Z

“We’ve got to get out of the suburbs,” I told my very pregnant wife as I escorted her to the car. Thankfully the vehicle was still in the driveway.

A mob of undead bearded housewives was forming in the cul-de-sac. One of them spotted us and the group began to lumber forward.

“What’s causing all these zombies?” asked a worried Nicole.

“The specter of communism,” I said grimly. “The only safe place is as far from the city as possible.”

We stepped in a wide circle around the inflating corpse of the Zombie Karl Marx that had fallen from the trellis. It was swelling to the size of a small shed and suddenly burst as we passed, like a huge gory water balloon. Sprinkler-drenched chunks of stomach and kidney rained on us from across the lawn.

“When doing yard work on a hot summer day,” Nicole observed, “it’s important not to get dehydrated.” She was always looking out for the hired help.

We got in the car and I threw it in reverse, plowing through the crowd of approaching Zombie Karl Marxes before heading out.

Zombie Struggle

2008-06-06T14:34:21Z

I grabbed the mug from the nightstand and heaved open the window. Zombie Karl Marx had the crazed look of an undead Soviet landscaper in his eye (and the infested look of an angry maggot horde in his beard).

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” I asked, throwing the scalding liquid in his face. It sizzled, searing his decaying flesh away from the bone like the worst kind of chemical burn.

“Hey, I was drinking that,” protested Nicole.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” I rebutted.

Zombie Karl Marx was screaming what I could only assume were very naughty words in Russian. I gracelessly wrestled the weedeater from his arms and pushed the monster from the trellis with my free hand.

He fell, zombie limbs flailing, for about a second and a half before partially impaling himself in the back on an in-ground sprinkler head. The corpse began to bloat as it filled with water. I turned away.

“Baby, it’s not safe here,” I told my wife. “Don’t worry, I sort of have a plan. Now let’s go.”

Zombie Workers

2008-06-05T22:40:05Z

I arrived at the house around 3:30 and left the car in the driveway. “Honey?” I called as I ran up the stairs. I rounded the corner into the bedroom with more than a little trepidation.

There on the bed sat my wife Nicole, reading a Clancy novel with a cup of coffee and a bag of gummy bears on the nightstand. “Oh, Chris, you’re home early!” She had no beard. She didn’t speak with a Russian accent. She weighed about what one might expect for a woman carrying around nine months of fetus inside her.

Thank God for maternity leave.

“Honey, we’ve got to get out here,” I urged. “Now.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Zombie invasion. I’ll explain later.”

Suddenly I heard a weedeater start up just outside the window. “What was that?” I shouted.

“It’s Thursday, the landscaping guys are here. Calm down.”

“No, that sounded too close.” I marched to the window to find someone had climbed the trellis and was staring right back at me. Someone named Zombie Karl Marx. In a John Deere cap, wielding gas-powered lawn equipment.

Zombie Union

2008-06-05T21:35:09Z

That was too easy. The zombie problem over, I turned on my heel to head back to the office and return to work. The man in the pinstripe suit was standing in the doorway. But something looked… different… about him.

Maybe it was the extra hundred pounds he had put on. Or maybe it was the huge bushy beard on his face with little bits of half-chewed brain tangled in the hairs. There was no doubt about it: he had become a Zombie Karl Marx too.

I found my cellphone and called my supervisor.

“Da,” he answered.

“Uh, Mike? I think I’m going to take the rest of the afternoon off.”

“Very well. See you tomorrow, comrade.”

I hung up the phone, knowing full well that I wouldn’t be coming back to this place. My car smelled like a sweaty crypt, but I cranked the window down and hit the gas anyway. The radio was playing nothing but Prokofiev.

As I drove, I saw the face of Zombie Karl Marx everywhere I went. He was spreading. I was glad he valued labor more than I did, but I knew all hell would break loose after 5:00.

Zombie Manifesto

2008-06-05T20:48:26Z

I darted down the hall, grabbing the company fire axe on the way, and burst into the parking lot behind the building. Where was my car? Crap, I thought, I hope it didn’t get towed.

Suddenly I heard a horn blaring at me from across the lot. I looked up to see my 1997 Honda Civic racing maniacally toward me at a highly uneconomical speed. Behind the wheel… was Zombie Karl Marx.

What the? “That’s my car!” I screamed as I somersaulted out of the path of the speeding vehicle of death.

The zombie screeched to a stop and leaned out the window with a cackle. “Everything is mine,” he snarled in broken English, “including your brain.” With one lumbering motion he had the seatbelt off and the door open and was leaping through the air, teeth bared, in the general direction of my skull.

“Not so fast, Red!” I hoisted up the axe like a baseball bat and swung victoriously. The blade was happy to separate Marx’s head from his shoulders, but not before spraying fresh zombie blood across the front of my best Polo shirt.

Zombie Revolution

2008-06-05T16:32:50Z

Gasp! as the undead walk among us!

Scream! as reanimated corpses hunger for flesh!

Run! when they come after your brain!

“Hold on, you’re blowing things way out of proportion here.” The man in the pinstripe suit smiled his most reassuring smile, which isn’t saying much.

“Are you freaking kidding? The zombies are right there!” I shouted, pointed through the glass.

“Correction: The zombie. There’s only one,” he sneered.

“Okay, fine, there’s only one, but he’s right there!” The zombie was scraping at the office window, hairy and overweight, but still plenty vicious. He looked strangely familiar, with a bushy beard that snaked in every direction from his decaying Russian skull.

“Don’t panic,” said the man. “It’s only a matter of time. Zombie Karl Marx will find you. Why run from destiny?”

So that’s who it was. Gross. “Are you nuts? He wants our brains!”

“He wants everyone’s brains. Equally. It’s perfectly fair. Maybe you should be more generous and just give him yours?”

Screw it. I ran.

Tikbalang's Snare

2008-06-05T00:57:13Z

It didn’t make sense. Ink was supposed to stay on paper exactly how it was drawn. But Nathan was looking at it, and as sure as the trail had disappeared beneath his feet, the ancient strokes had also rearranged themselves on the page.

“The map,” he cried to Leslie, “it’s changed!”

The girl stopped. “What? That’s impossible.”

“No, look! The temple should be over here…” he pointed. “But there it is in front of us, under those dipterocarps. See it?” He took a few steps through the underbrush toward the ruins.

“Yeah. It must be a different one. Look at the carving over the entrance.” A shrieking face was chiseled in the stone, twisted in agony with horrible gaping features.

“Maybe we missed it before?” suggested Nathan.

“No, I would have seen it. I’m sure this is a different one.”

“I know I recognize that face from somewhere… wait! The map! It was in the compass rose!”

“Are you crazy? There’s nothing there.”

“No, remember? You even made a joke about its nose yesterday.”

“Right… so what happened to it?”