Zombie Bitches From Hell (4 page)

More soldiers show up and pot-shoot at a few
stragglers. It seems contained but unbeknownst to anyone at the
scene, the smoke is carrying the human ash up and out where it is
settling like tiny bits of soot everywhere in the region. One of
the American scientists with a wry smile that he sorta hides like
he’s pretending to be the Mona Lisa, says that the population of
the Middle East has been reduced by almost ninety-five percent.
What the idiot didn’t take into account was the fact that there are
a whole lot of our guys in uniform over there and what has happened
to them cannot be guessed but we all know it’s not good. We’re
hoping they’ve safely holed up but Jack Larson, one of the interns,
says, “Hey, guys, don’t forget that there are a lot of women in the
military. They got guns and ammo and know how to use it. Wonder if
the GaGa makes them forget their training.” No one answers but we
all hope that the disease makes the bitches lose their human nature
and just makes them mad with the hunger. What if they do get
organized, I think. Crap, I sure hope I don’t ever see that day
arrive.

CHAPTER 5

I’ll admit I could not sleep the night before
we were going to leave. I went outside and sat next to a rock and
looked up at the sky. There was no moon and every star you could
imagine was shining and little meteorites shot past like bottle
rockets I had set off when I was a kid. I could see the red tips of
the guards cigarettes, hear them shuffling over the gravel as they
made their rounds. The transmission tower that I was so impressed
with when I got this job loomed up, black steel against the blue
velvet sky. Sometimes I still think this is all a dream, a
nightmare that perked in my brain because I saw too many horror
flicks when I was a kid. Maybe this is a dream and I’ll wake up or
maybe this whole world is a computer game in someone’s CPU, someone
who’s alive in the year 2500. And he’s fucking with us. Makes us go
through shit just to see what we’ll do and knows that he can hit a
key and we’re all erased along with the seven seas, the seven
continents, the eight planets, the milky way and the
universe—that’s it all in some supernerd’s new game that he got for
Christmas and he dreamed up the GaGa because he’s bored with all
the usual wars and cancer and AIDs and heart attacks and ragheads
blowing shit up. “Hey,” he says, “I’ll turn all the females into
flesh-eating raving lunatic monsters. Maybe that will be fun to
watch. Those concentration camps were cool and I loved Hiroshima.
But this is going to beat all. Hey, Fred, come here. You gotta see
this. Check it out.” Well, fuck him and his mother and his father
and Fred and anyone who knows the prick. Fuck them all to hell.

So you see I’m not into wondering anymore and
I’m not going to philosophize. No point and it isn’t me. I’m biding
my time until dawn when Rick and Tim and MG and yours truly get in
that fucking balloon and head east to find Jen or whatever is left
of her and if that doesn’t work, maybe we’ll just keep floating
over the Atlantic or wherever to whatever.

I’m looking for the constellations and cannot
pick them out easily because at this altitude and lack of humidity,
there are so many stars that even the Big Dipper is buried in them.
I look out over the valley and the purple glow of dawn is simmering
on the horizon. I can see the city which is now just a bunch of
dark cubes and rectangles like some kid’s blocks left in a ditch
overnight. No lights, no sounds, no cars, none of the reddish glow
over the Mile High City that you could see from a hundred miles
away just a year ago. I know there must be pockets of men hiding
out in basements or attics or in the hundreds of mine shafts that
pock the foothills. But I also know that most guys are going to
bring their wives and daughters along, maybe a girlfriend. It only
takes one and then they’re all at it; the tearing, the biting, the
gouging, the swallowing. The blood, the death. Just take one of
them along and it’s the end. My mom told me that the devil can’t
come in if you don’t invite her. It’s the most natural invitation
any dick swinger could make.

I’m interrupted in my reverie. This guy named
Alan opens the bunk door, steps out and lights a cigarette. Wearing
a red and white striped shirt that looks like a barber pole. He
starts walking to the perimeter and sees me, comes over.

“Hey, kiddo, how’s it hangin’,” he says. Alan
is at most five years older than me but I guess he can call me
“kiddo” if he wants. He was a copy editor—the guy that took the
news from the wire service and translated it into the
teleprompter.

“Beautiful night. Can’t sleep much. We’re
leaving tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I know. She must be something. That’s
a lonnnnng way through hostile territory for poontang. No offense.
I’m sorry. Guess it’s getting to me.”

“No offense taken.”

“But, ya know, maybe it’s better than hiding
up here, I guess. My wife went to Oklahoma City to help her mom
recuperate from a fall. The old bag tripped on the cat and broke
her hip. Haven’t heard from her in weeks. Maybe she’s hiding, maybe
she’s gone over to the other side. Not much I can do about it. I
dream about her a lot. Sometimes she’s a GaGa and I wake up
sweating bullets; sometimes she’s the beautiful girl I fell in love
with and married. We honeymooned at the Grand Canyon. You know,
that lodge that sits at the north quarter. We’d make love all
night, wake up to hawks hooting the way they do and watch the sun
rise over the eastern rim. When I wake up, I got tears in my eyes.
I know you think I’m a sap or something. But I miss her. So I know
what you’re thinking and why you’re doing it. I’d ask for a lift,
but what would I do when I get there? I guess I’m just a coward.”
He took a long drag on his smoke and exhaled two perfect rings that
floated up like magic donuts into the still night air.

“This whole shit thing no one could imagine.
Whether I make it or not, don’t think it matters. I’m taking it a
day at a time,” I say, making a good effort to not be
judgmental.

“You think we can last up here?”

“I don’t know a better place. At least it’s
out in the open. Not holed up like a rat in trap. Plenty of
supplies. Communication with the outside world. Can’t say.”

Alan sat a while and stared up at the same
starry sky. Didn’t say another word. Got up, muttered something
that sounded like “Good-night” and went back to the tech shed.

My cellphone rings and I jump up from a light
sleep. It’s Jen; not her voice but a text. Says: “Hurry. Need U.
Vaccine.”

Hurry? How the fuck can I hurry. Does she
have the vaccine? Would it be too late? I text her back: “Coming
ASAP. Hang in.” Not exactly Romeo and Juliet, but this ain’t
Verona.

CHAPTER 6

The mountains are turning that dusty violet
color when I see the surface of a foothill about a half mile out
begin to move. I rub my bleary eyes thinking it’s the dust and the
sleeplessness or maybe the updraft winds that own this valley are
playing tricks. But no. It’s none of these things. The skin on that
hill is moving like a rug being pulled by a giant.

Then I realize it’s people. Must be two or
three thousand people moving in a slow swarm up from the city, up
the foothills and inching toward us like lava in reverse.

I run to one of the guards—Jim, I think his
name is. He looks and signals to the guy in the watchtower who uses
his binoculars to verify what I just told them.

“Shit,” he says. “It’s a million of them.
Movin’ slow and steady up here. Don’t make any noise. Alert the
others. Maybe they’ll just pass us by. No one knows we’re up here.”
Right, I think. Pass us by. Sure. And maybe we’ll sprout wings and
fly to Hawaii for a fucking luau.

They do know. I’m up and running back to the
shed where everyone is sleeping, shouting the alarm. I get Tim and
Rick riled.

“Rick, get the balloon ready. Now.”

He looks at me and knows this is not the plan
of the slow rise into the wild blue yonder and the fond farewells.
He also knows if we don’t move quick, some of these guys are going
to try to board the gondola, swamp it and we’ll be fucked. For a
moment, I think maybe better now than later. We’re the dead men
walking anyway. Then I remember Jen, tell Tim to get MG and get in
the gondola pronto.

“Just do it quiet. No panicking or our asses
are finished here,” I say quite steadily considering I’m almost
pissing myself. As I head to the gondola, I remember that scene in
the
Wizard of Oz
flick where they’re all supposed to get in
the balloon with the phony wizard but Dorothy runs after her dog
and misses getting in and the fucking thing takes off without her.
But out back, I see Tim and MG already boarded.

Tim signals with his hand and has his rifle
ready. Rick is firing up the burner. With a few quick steps and a
hurdle jump, I’m in.

“Let’s go,” I loud whisper.

One of the guards—remember these are weekend
warrior National Guardsmen who made it up here at the first sign of
trouble—says, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going? Get to the
barricades.”

“Captain,” I say, knowing full well this is
just an asshole in a uniform who worked at the local Ford dealer
selling shit pick-up trucks to rednecks. “We’re not going anywhere.
Sir, we’ve already cleared the idea with the major. We’re going to
lift off fifty feet and do some reconnaissance. If it’s trouble
those bitches want, we’ll rain down shock and awe on their asses.
Permission sought, sir.” Man, I am slinging it, hoping he doesn’t
realize there is no major here. I salute.

“Permission granted,” he says saluting back.
I’m thinking if we survive all this I’ll carve this jerk-offs head
next to Lincoln’s on Mt Rushmore myself if I have to use a nail
file to do it.

Tim grabs my shoulder and smiles at me with a
nod as if to say, “Nice work.” For someone who doesn’t speak much,
he can express himself.

The balloon rises about thirty feet off the
ground and I’m watching the swarm approach. It is a massive horde
of GaGa broads, some looking no more than seven or eight years old.
There must be at least two thousand of them. They’re moving at the
same pace they’d move if they were at a mall looking for a bargain.
The guys below are armed to the teeth and holed up in hidden spots
all around the transmission tower. The perimeter fence is
electrified but I don’t know if it can handle that much resistance.
It was designed to keep teenagers on a bender out. Maybe an
itinerant drunk.

I was amazed that the guys could hold off
firing until the bitches reached the sandbag barrier. They open
fire on them. The barrier slows them down but the bullets do very
little. It’s still mostly dark so the flares from the muzzles looks
like flashbulbs. Tim takes aim and I stop him.

“This battle is not ours anymore. Don’t waste
your ammo. We got a long way to go.”

He looks at me and nods but still keeps the
rifle at hand. MG is wagging his tale like he’s expecting
breakfast. I manage a smile at his dumb face.

“Release the line,” says Rick.

I unhook the grillion from the loop guard and
toss the rope to the ground. Rick hits full fire-up and the sound
of that flame is like an atomic blast. Even the bitches stop in
their tracks. The guys all turn and look up like maybe the Avenging
Angels have descended from the heavens. But, no, it’s just us
running like rabbits for pastures unknown. One of the soldiers
yells, “You traitors, motherfuckers!” and fires at us. We duck and
he misses because the balloon is rising so fast and gets picked up
by a mountain up-current so quickly that only an experienced hunter
could hit us. We’re all knocked to the sides of the gondola and
even MG is flat on his ass quietly whimpering. I stand up and look
over the edge with Tim. The sun has risen and the entire hilltop is
illuminated in broad Rocky Mountain daylight.

The swarm is at the fence and the electricity
is doing its thing. The bitches grab the fence and smoke streams
out of their hands and their hair catches on fire. Large globs of
the black ooze spill out as their faces burst open and the bullets
fly through their dead flesh. (We learned much later on that the
only way to kill a GaGa bitch is to shoot her ovaries. Either
through the belly or through the back. I had seen Mrs. Fark and
Hannah die in this way but I didn’t know then why and can only
guess now. Eggs? The source of the double X chromosome? My biology
is probably fucked up so don’t hold me to it.) And things
change.

The moaning and screaming is filling the air.
MG is huddled at my feet as we float over the scene below. The
circle that was our “fortress” is completely surrounded by the
swarm. At the northern end, where the fence has a slight break in
it to accommodate a huge boulder sticking out of the rockface, the
fence collapses and the bitches pour through. From the air it’s a
narrow breach but our guys just can’t handle the flood. The
shooting almost stops as the ammo gives out—I think—or the guys
just instinctively start to run. But where can they run to? There
is no cave, no shelter, not even a goddamned tree to climb. Some
make it back to the generator shed which has smoke coming out of it
but the bitches are on top of them. A new kind of screaming weaves
its way through the desert air to us up in our balloon.

It’s the sound of men being eaten alive. I
can see the soldiers punching and swinging their rifles at the
bitches but the sheer number of them is overwhelming. As the men
fall, the bitches go first for the dick and balls, ripping off the
pants with nails and teeth and pulling the meat out with a
stretching yank. Red blood is lapped at like cats at a milk-filled
saucer. The balls are fought over, dicks chewed from both ends, the
bitches ending up face to face, lip to lip. Then the men’s faces
and necks when the screaming stops and finally the pulling open of
the belly, intestines dragged out like rope uncoiling, the little
girls fighting over the shit-filled tubes because the bigger
bitches are getting the good parts. Two guys come running from the
tech shed with machetes and they’re hacking away as if they are in
some deep part of the Amazon rain forest and are chopping their way
through the undergrowth. But this is not vegetation; it is a swarm
of mostly third stage GaGa bitches, ravenous as piranhas, numerous
as flies on a buffalo carcass in the Sahara. The machete boys make
a good go of it, bitches’ heads flying off, tits being split open,
guts oozing with the black coagulant that the bitches are full of.
But in no time, the guys are down watching their balls being yanked
off and fought over, dicks being devoured. One guy has his liver
ripped out right through his belly. His head is being held down and
gnawed by two old bitches and the young ones are squeezing the
liver out like a sponge and blood is pouring into their mouths. He
screams, but their teeth find his tongue and then his throat and
all he is now is meat.