Zombie Bitches From Hell (10 page)

The orderly told them, “Pick your mate, boys.
You’ve got sixty seconds.”

The men wandered quickly through the grid of
beds, some looking at faces, some squeezing breasts and thighs, a
few looking under the sheets.

“Make it snappy,” shouted the Doc, making me
nearly jump to the ceiling.

“Calm down, Kent,” he said. “This is just
part of life. We’re making life here. This is where the human race
will begin again. I’ve even thought of calling this hospital ‘The
Eden Institute.’ Get it? This is the new Garden of Eden and while
we have a number of Adams and a great many Eves, it’s basically the
same thing. Don’t you see?’

Tim coughed one of those coughs that actually
says, “Bullshit!” but the Doc, he was too into the glory of this
mess to notice the comment. I scowled at Tim with that same look
your mother gave you when you were in church and you farted and
giggled. You know, the look that says, “Make another sound, Junior,
and you’ll be pushin’ up daisies.”

Eventually the guys all chose the girls they
wanted and stood at attention. The guard with the AK-47 tightened
his grip on the gun and with a signal to an orderly, the lights
went on half power which, if you know anything about fluorescent
lighting, makes some of them flicker on and off like a coming
electrical storm.

“This is part of the mood we like to
establish,” said Doc Walters. “We’re not animals here.”

The guys undraped the women who were still
tied down. The girls were unbelievably beautiful—at least from the
neck down. They were chronologically college girls, 18 to 21 or 22.
But their skin was even younger. They had rejuvenated to the
extreme. Perfect skin as if it had never been touched. I guess it
hadn’t except in the herding process. Each man approached the task
at hand in a different way, each slathering his hard-on with a
dollop of jelly. But in no time, the guys were on top of them or
yanking them awkwardly up so their knees were pointed upward,
oozing black where the straps dug in. Something inside me was
completely revolted. I’ve been to frat house parties that were
certainly as close to a Roman orgy as you could imagine. But this
was sick. Real sick and I did not want to watch anymore. Tim stared
dumbfounded. But the Doc, he was taking notes and periodically
checking his watch. The girls were moaning or squeaking and the
ones who were present but not involved picked up the sound until
the room was filled with a drone like a humongous beehive. I put my
hand over my ears but it didn’t help. I started to leave and Doc
said, “Want a turn? It’s not bad, you know. It’s a cold cunt, but I
remember in my youth that I would gladly have taken…And think of
it, you’ll be contributing to humanity. Maybe a session in the prep
room would help. Eh?”

“What’s the prep room?” I ask.

“Just a TV and some porn vids. Nothing
outrageous. Believe me, just about everyone here has had a go. It’s
for the good of mankind. Even myself. Nothing personal. Just
science in its most forgiving manner.”

“I think you’re a sick fuck, Doc,” said
Tim.

“Are you a homosexual, Tim?”

“How about you go fuck yourself,” said
Tim.

“Listen, chill, Tim. I’m sorry, Doc. We’ve
been through a lot. Tim’s not himself. I think your work is
important but we’ve got other fish to fry, you know. But don’t
think we don’t appreciate…”

“You fucking bitch!” one of the soldiers
shouted. He was on top of her and she was twisting so hard and
giving out the raspy voice; she managed to spit on his face and
hiss like an alley cat. He punched the girl in the face and she
screamed, a shrill “noooooooooooo” that made my blood run cold. The
black ooze spilled from her mouth and from her nose and dripped to
the floor like tar, teeth floating in it.

The guard in the lifeguard chair aimed and
fired a stuttering volley of lead that blew the soldier right off
of her. This set the other women screeching and snorting; the room
was like the monkey cage in a zoo. Half the guy’s arm and shoulder
got blown away and landed on one of the unchosen girls who started
chewing at it ferociously. Part of his head and brain sprayed all
over one soldier who was orgasming in a woman while she licked the
blood and brain that had landed on her face. He was cumming and
vomiting at the same time. Put that on “Maury” and see how the
fucking audience likes it.

“Everyone out!” shouted Doc Walters. “Every
one of you, out of here! Get them out of here, Ted. Now!! Right
now!! Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Dr. Walters, immediately. You, there,
pack it in. We’ll resume later if you’ve not finished.” Ted was the
lab coat guy but he sounded like this hairdresser that Jen took me
to last year. He led the soldiers out like they were naked school
kids that got caught by Sister Mary Patricia in a circle jerk. The
attendants and orderlies rushed around dabbing here, picking up
there, calming the screams and being careful not to get near the
gaping chomping mouths. The lights came up. It was a
slaughter-fuckhouse in hell. There’s really no way I can describe
it any more. And if I could, I don’t want to. Maybe some things are
better left unsaid. Unseen. Undone.

***

Tim and I left and sat in the lobby of that
hospital and couldn’t say a word. All I remembered was Mrs. Walters
coming into my room the night before. I thought she wanted to get
laid. She crept in—must have been 3 A.M. “What do you want, Mrs.
Walters?” I asked.” I’m engaged to be married and you’re already
marr….”

“I don’t want to sleep with you, you idiot.
Listen. Don’t go to the hospital with Paul. Don’t. Please. They do
things there. You won’t want to see them. You’re a nice boy, Kent.
And Tim too. This world is gone. It’s over. God has judged us and
it’s the End of Days. Save your souls and don’t go.”

“Sure. Of course. Whatever you say.” I lied
to her. She made me want to see it even more. Man, that was some
mistake. Don’t know if I can forgive myself. But if I don’t, who
will?

CHAPTER 14

“I could use a joint,” said Tim. “Laced with
PCP.”

“Don’t let it in,” I said. “Let’s just play
this game and move on.”

The Doc came out of the ward and said, “I’m a
little disappointed in you boys. We need all the help we can get. A
lot of these fellas here are shooting blanks, as they say, and some
of them are…well, you might say genetically defective. I’m going
for something big, you know, something that will serve and save
mankind.”

“I get it, Doc,” I said.

“I don’t think you do, my boy.”

“We do,” said Tim.

“What you two boys do not know is that on the
current course of the disease and the attrition rate of human
males, the species homo sapiens will be off this planet in about
twenty years by the Pentagon’s best guess.”

“Yeah, that’s a bunch of fucking geniuses,”
said Tim. “They’re always right, aren’t they?”

“Well, perhaps I can invite you boys to stay
and help out as any patriotic American would feel compelled to do
without needing a great deal of convincing. After all, we owe our
country a debt of gratitude. Come this way.”

He took us to a door that had his name on it
and under his name it said “Coroner.” Now I’m getting the picture.
The door leads to a down stairway. It’s the morgue. You know, with
all the stainless steel doors and cabinets, the cabinets fitted
with long drawers to hold the stiffs. Only the stiffs ain’t stiff
anymore. They are quite pliable and running around like the crazies
instead of behaving and staying in the deep cooler. Naughty
bitches, I’m thinking. Dead is dead, now girls, isn’t it? Come,
come now! Back in your nice sanitary if somewhat chilly drawers.
You’ll get a spanking and won’t have any pudding tonight. Then I
think, I’m losing it. My mind has flown the coop.

In the center of the room, there are three
gurneys, stainless steel jobbers that have those whirligig wheels.
Each sits under a lamp hung from the ceiling, the kind that throws
down a cone of light like over a pool table, only no one is
shooting pool. On each table is a ReGen, strapped at the wrists and
ankles like the lovelies in the ward. But that is where all
similarities end and the Twilight Sick Zone begins.

“This ReGen here you see has been vivisected
from pubis to tracheal bifurcation,” Doc says—his way of saying cut
from neck to cunt. “I’ve removed the inner organs, the lungs the
heart the digestive vitria, what you might call the tummy and
intestines. The liver and kidneys are gone along with the bladder,
uterus and ovaries and vagina. While she is still animate, she has
no hunger and no craving. Here, put this soup bone in her mouth,”
he says handing a cow leg bone to Tim.

“No thanks, Doc, this is your show and tell.
Teach me, Mr. Rogers, teach me do,” replies Tim in a voice almost
as insane as the Doc’s but I’m thinking, this is important shit I’m
looking at. Words like insane or crazy or psycho don’t apply
anymore. When your pal thinks his girlfriend is possessed by the
devil, he’s a psycho; when you think
your
girlfriend is,
you’re a theologian. It’s all a matter of perspective, only the
looking glass has tilted and bent and we are all seeing a brave new
fucked up funhouse world. Minus the fun.

He takes the bone and puts it in her mouth.
She had that vacant milky white-eyed look but stares dumbly up at
the ceiling as if absorbed in the light bulb hanging over her. She
does not bite down, but licks it gently with her black tongue.

“For those of the men who prefer oral sex,
she has been a delight. I know you think this is some kind of
hideous perversion. I’ll admit, I thought so too. But science in
its crawl forward has often had to go against the contemporary
morality and what might seem perverse in one moment in time,
becomes genius in another. Hildy here, as I have named her after
the star of my favorite Ingmar Bergman film, is a reward to those
men who are faithful, diligent and above all, successful performers
in the ward. But enough of Hildy. There, there, dear, thank you
again,” he says, patting her thigh. Hildy does not say “You’re
welcome.”

The middle gurney has a spectacular redhead
splayed and vivisected in the same fashion as Hildy.

“Who’s this?” I ask, with the same tone I’m
thinking a man would use when he’s strolling through an orphanage
pondering which kid to adopt.

“Oh, this is Katrina. I’ve named her for that
hurricane that devastated New Orleans. She has killed and eaten at
least a hundred and twenty-odd men that we know of. Got into a
men’s dorm at Kansas State University a few days after the disease
first appeared but before its severity became apparent. She was a
Teaching Assistant in the English department. Had most of the
fellows in that dorm as her students. I like to think she was
rather fed up, if you’ll pardon the pun, with their off-handed
obnoxious sexist remarks which I am most certain they made and
somewhere in her twisted second phase brain she sought out a bit of
revenge along with a good high protein meal. Security cameras
recorded her every bite and swallow. After killing at least fifty
and castrating them and ingesting the bits, the police made the
strange assumption she should be captured and imprisoned. Thought
she was a whack job with loony bin written all over her. Some cops
fancy themselves like that Clarice chick from the Hannibal Lector
movies, want to capture the psychos, not kill ’em. Caught her in a
net used to capture rabid dogs. When she got to the jail, she
berserked again and killed I don’t know how many officers of the
law. She was crafty enough to wait for them to return from patrol
duty. A great number just bled to death after the castration. She
was well-disposed to eat only penis and testicles as long as the
supply was undiminished. We’ve discovered that any other parts of
the male anatomy are only eaten when the GaGas are famished or in a
frenzy. Given time and opportunity, they are strictly genital
eaters.

“Now Katrina here seems to have undergone the
same treatment as Hildy but there is a vast difference. She still
has her reproductive organs. Note these here,” he says pointing at
what I guess is a uterus. He puts his bare finger in her guts and
rubs a thing that looks like a walnut wrapped in ten layers of
kitchen wrap.

“This is one of her ovaries and I think the
secret of the progression of the disease lies within these two
female organs. Of course, this is just a guess, a well-educated
guess, to be sure, but it’s the only thing I’ve come up with so
far.”

I know Jen is already way past this. Her
research team knew all this shit at the git-go but I’m not going to
burst this weirdo’s balloon. I’m going to play his game and move
on. I hope Tim can keep it together, though. He worries me.

The third gurney also has a ReGen on it but
she’s covered up and there are straps that cross her body, not just
the ones at the wrists and ankles.

“This is Mallory,” he says proudly. “She is
my pride and joy.” He gently removed the sheet that was covering
her. The ReGen seemed to be sleeping, something I had not seen and
thought was impossible without wondering why it would be. She too
was cut open cunt to neck but her organs were still intact, far as
I could tell. Her uterus was huge and distended.

“She is carrying my child,” said Doc. We
could see the uterus, something looking like a roast beef blown
full of air or stuffed with something to the bursting point and
that something was slowly moving within turning, rotating, lazily
squirming.

“It was a happy accident,” he continued. “I
was particularly fond of her. We had met a few years ago when I was
speaking at a forensics convention at the Denver Hilton. She was a
student. It was one of those love at first sight moments for me.
Perhaps she as well. I like to think so. It would not be out of the
question. After all I was a city coroner and that type of powerful
position would impress any woman. I think she recognized me as an
alpha male. I’m not talking over your heads, boys, am I? Well,
let’s say we had a meeting of the minds. She was very coy of
course, avoiding eye contact, but I could tell how she pulled her
sweater closed when I came near her that she was secretly giving me
the signal to mate with her. I was married—but these are
conventions that lie outside the natural rhythms of the universe.”
He stroked her leg and I could see her flesh rise in goose bumps.
She was not asleep, but pretending to be. I nudged Tim back from
the table.