Zombie Bitches From Hell (23 page)

My stomach is nauseous with the strength
behind Rex’s punches, with the slickness of his greasy skin on the
side of her head, with the gleam in his eyes as he held nothing
back while unloading his massive strength directly at her face.

Tim swallows audibly and Rex zeroes in on
it.

“You like her, pal?” Rex barks, dropping back
into his seat with a healthy sheen of sweat glowing across the many
skull and naked women tattoos covering his shoulders and arms.

I nudge Tim under the table, still uncertain
as to whether we’ll stay in the small, quasi-military camp, but he
stoically nods.

Rex leans in conspiratorially and explains,
“You can have her after dinner. One of the boys will show you to
the Cat House on the edge of camp.”

“You m-m-mean?” Tim stammers, no need to
finish his sentence as Rex nods. “B-b-but how do I pay for her? I
ain’t got no money, Rex.” I can see that Tim is playing the game
for higher stakes.

Rex fixes him with a steady eye, licking his
lips as he rubs the swollen knuckle of one hand with the other.

“None of us do,” he explains. “Labor is the
only currency here in this camp. For a prime filly like Buffy
there, you need to work two days.”

“Sold,” Tim blurts before Rex can finish,
causing the table of greasy men with shaved heads to bray with
laughter.

Tim, all 105-pounds of him, laughs back,
aware they’re bawling at him, not with him. I’d defend him but he’s
just my traveling partner, not my friend, as far as these idgits
know—I got to play along. We ran into each other on a hunting party
awhile back and since we were both headed the same direction
decided to team up. That’s the story for now. And we’ve probably
said less than two dozen words to each other since. I figure if
they think we’re just two unrelated stragglers, they can’t use one
against the other. That’s what I’m hoping. Tim looks sideways at me
and I know we’re in synch. Still, I think Tim is out of his depth
here. If Rex can barely control Buffy with his massive fists and
the use of a stun gun, what’s Tim going to do?

“What about you, pretty boy?” Rex barks in my
direction, his calculated leer sizing me up like the runt of the
litter. “You willing to risk two days of hard labor on one of our
work crews for an hour in heaven with the sorority girl of your
dreams?”
I shrug and say, “I don’t know, Rex; I’ve never made it with a
zombie before.”

“Zombie?” Tim asks, looking at me as if I’ve
just told him there’s no such thing as Santa Claus. “What? You
never said nothin’ ‘bout making it with no zombies, Rex!”
Rex barely looks at him as he asks, “What’d you think she was? A
debutante? You know any human women can take a beating like that
and stay standing?”

Then he ignores him, looking at me with his
dead, soulless eyes. “How’d you know, smart boy?” he asks, massive
fists clenched atop the table.

Only then do I notice the rough, homemade
letters tattooed between each knuckle of his massive, sausage like
digits. On the fingers of his left hand is spelled out the word
“W-H-I-T-E” while, on the left, the fingers spell out
“P-O-W-E-R.”

I shrug again and say, “I’ve seen that
phenomenon on the road, Rex. For some reason the female zombies
regenerate their form, even their warmth, allowing them to look
beautiful even as they crave human flesh. I never imagined they
were trainable, though.”

I’m in this BS up to my nuts and sinking
fast.

“Trainable and doable,” Rex boasts, as if he
himself is the cause for this medical mystery. “Plus they have a
little extra talent in store for us after dinner, if y’all agree to
stick around, that is.”

“Extra… talent?” I ask of Rex and the rest of
the chrome domes.

They murmur among themselves giddily, like
drooling dogs around a bone, but Rex is thoughtfully quiet, his
question still on the table as he continues to glower menacingly in
our general direction.

The mood in the room is civil but cloyed,
Rex’s large eyes hooded but also masking a not-so-hidden
undercurrent of violence and psychosis. I’ve seen his type before
on the road in the good old days. Men who once were powerless,
despite their massive size. Whose lack of education or formal
breeding made them servants to smarter, wiser men; in many
instances, men like myself.

But once the infestation started, once
violence prowled our streets, ate our families and threatened life
and limb, men like Rex – crazy, violent, scary, angry men like Rex
– became leaders.

By now, after the bitch takeover, that power
has gone to their heads, their every wish catered to by weaker,
greedier men, their every desire fulfilled by the complete and
utter breakdown in order, rules and laws. Now these men make the
laws, enforce the laws, have become judge, jury and executioner.
And men like me, to say nothing of men like Tim, are at their
mercy; what’s worse, they know it – and so does everyone else at
this table.

Tim looks at me, and I see the decision
already made in his eyes; so does Rex. The others look at me
expectantly, hands on the butts of their sawed off shotguns,
bellies full of fresh meat and vegetables, as if daring me to say
“no.”

I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m weak and, frankly,
I’m numb. Life after the outbreak has been brutal, unkind and
bleak, and to say I’m not aroused by the bevy of beauties tending
to Rex and his partners in crime, however crude, would be to lie
openly – and loudly – to myself. Besides, I’m not sure Tim and I
really had a choice the minute the lookout caught us in his sights
less than an hour ago, stumbling and dirty from the road.

I nod quietly and Rex’s graveyard smile of
big, rotten teeth and dark, fleshy gaps barely manages to conceal
his contempt at my presence. He may not be glad I’m here, but if
I’m still alive, there must be a reason for it.

I only hope I can convince Tim to escape
before I find out what that is.

From beyond the thick walls of the canvas
tent an alarm sounds, one of those hand-wrung numbers with the
tripod and the crank that sounds like an old air-raid siren from
one of the first world wars; you know, the wars between humans.

The men of Camp Alpha stand abruptly, most
slapping their hands together and wringing them excitedly as they
stream through the canvas tent flap. Rex sits with us, the first
sign of life springing into those dark, liquid eyes as his crooked
smile splits over those hideous teeth to announce, “Trust me, you
boys are gonna be glad you decided to stay. Come on, let’s check
out the main event.”

With that, he stands, knees hitting the edge
of the table as he rises and pivots in one fluid motion. Tim
follows quickly while I linger behind, stuffing a few stale rolls
and snack cakes into the pockets of my pants.

Outside the tent the camp is in pandemonium,
the sound of the siren wail ever present and mingling with the
cries, grunts and curses of nearly a hundred men, most baring
tattoos of swastikas on their arms, shoulders, some even at the
back of their clean-shaven necks, grimy with dirt and sweat but
clearly visible as they scream across the open area in the middle
of the camp to a high, fenced wall at the far end.

Tim springs ahead, desperate to keep up with
Rex who has all but forgotten us in his hurry to be the first
inside the circular fencing.

I call out, “Tim,” but he rushes forward
intently, waving me forward without looking back.

I slow to a crawl as rough, sweaty bodies
stream past, grunting impatiently as I move slightly to the
side.

Left behind, ignored, I use the precious time
to recon the encampment. It is bordered on all four sides by a high
fence. The base of the fence is chain link, but it’s been
buttressed over with everything from road signs to car bumpers,
from license plates to metal doors. Across the top runs several
rings of rusty barbed wire, stopping only at the four rickety guard
towers from which armed snipers aim klieg lights and rifles at rare
passersby.

Even if the fence itself weren’t
impenetrable, the camp’s inhabitants create an “inner wall” amongst
themselves. It only took me a few seconds inside the high,
patchwork wall to realize that the camp is full of white
supremacists; neo-Nazis who used the outbreak as a platform to fuel
their psychotic ideas about America’s growing race war. As such
they have taken natural selection to the extreme. Every man inside
is white, although it’s hard to tell from the filthy layers of
sweat, dust and lust that cover every inch of their half-naked
bodies. Their preferred form of dress is jeans or khaki cargo
shorts and they all wear sweat-stained wife beaters, the better to
show off their offensive tattoos and bulging muscles.

Taking up the rear, I give up on the idea of
escaping tonight and follow Tim into the enclosed circular area,
around which the grunts of the Camp have erected “bleachers” of a
sort; six-feet wooden platforms on top of which the entire camp
sits in a smattering of broken, leaning, rusty picnic chairs.

Most stand anyway, leaning against rickety
metal railing as they look down into a sandy pit about as big as
half a high school football field. I follow Tim up a warped flight
of stairs to stand at the edge of one raised platform, watching as
Rex wedges his way to the best seat in the house directly in the
middle of the nearest platform.

The feeling in the air reminds me of a prize
fight; men hungry, desperate even, for violence. So hungry they
can’t wait for the main event; mini-fights break out across the
platform as burly Aryans tussle and scrap for the best remaining
seats.

I steer clear of the maddening crowd, throat
constricting with the threat of real violence erupting about me, on
me, at any moment. Fires flicker above the grandstands as the smell
of burning diesel oil fills the air with its pungent stench. Loud
rock music bellows from old-fashioned speakers lashed to high beams
along the length of the grandstands.

Tim nudges me and asks nervously, “Waddya
think’s going on?”

“I don’t know, Tim,” I mumble as the crowd
around us grows more violent with each passing moment.

“Looks like some kind of show or something,”
he says.

Off to the side of the walkway, two guys with
Confederate flags sewn onto the seats of their coveralls are
lasciviously giggling and guffawing at someone tied to a picnic
table in front of them.

“Let’s check it out,” says Tim.

“Oh, fuck it all, Tim. Can’t we just figure
what the hell this is all about and then get outta here?” I
say.

But it’s too much for Tim resist; he is a man
with nothing to lose. We walk over to the table and there is the
most beautiful zombie bitch we’ve ever seen. Naked as a jaybird as
these fucking redneck hillbillies would say. She’s dark haired with
perfect, real tits. Of course, the eyes are that putrid milky white
with the needle hole pupils but when she was alive, she was a show
stopper. One of the grunts is pinching her nipple really hard and
she’s just staring at him, her mouth wide open with two rows of
perfect teeth. She grunting and I notice a funky smell in the air.
The other grunt is saying, “Looky here,” to Tim as he points at her
crotch. They’ve inserted a soldering iron in her snatch and the
fucking thing is plugged in and smoke is coming out. For a minute
I’m thinking this looks like a miniature forest fire for some kid’s
train set, but the smell is burning meat or over-cooked tuna
casserole. Her pussy is literally sizzling and popping, pushing out
puffs of dark smoke.

“Couldn’t do ya when I knew ya, Suzie, baby.
You was all high and mighty, wasn’t’ ya?” says a grunt. “Yer a hot
one now! Ha!” They laugh till they can’t stand it no more. Neither
can I.

“Tim. If you don’t walk away from this, you
can stay here forever, for all the fuck I care,” I say as I turn
and weave my way through the crowd.

Tim catches up. “Sorry, Cap’n. Just checkin’
on the sideshow,” he says.

“This is going to be something fucked up,” I
tell him quietly. “Look at the door across the way. And the weapons
leaning up against the walls down there. If I’m not mistaken, Tim,
this looks like some kind of arena.”

Tim winces, his pale green eyes losing
themselves in folds of wrinkled flesh as he peers closer at the
garage-style door built into the ground floor. I point out the
chainsaw, the axe handle and the ninja sword resting carefully
along wooden pegs at shoulder-height above the ground.

“Arena?” Tim whispers, scratching his scruffy
red beard. “What, you mean like some kind of Thunderdome or
something?”
I look into his eyes and nod: “Exactly.”

I drift closer to the railing, sliding in
between two massive skinheads swilling stale beer out of dirty
plastic cups. They barely notice me as I stand at the edge, peering
down into the dirt field that lies at our feet.

There are several garage doors down there,
now that I can see more clearly. I lift my feet up and tap gently
on the wooden planks beneath my skuzzy work boots; the floor feels
hollow and, if I’m not mistaken, we’re standing above another
garage door or two.

More weapons line the walls, from axes to
spears to sledgehammers to butcher knives. Many are crusted with
blood, as are the walls that surround the circular dirt field. I
notice movement behind the homemade “window” carved into the
nearest garage style door and see a dark, male face peering out; he
looks petrified.

I swallow dryly and drift back to where Tim
leans against the back railing. He looks at me with those fearful
eyes, so uncertain, his skin sallow beneath his baggy shirt.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” he whines
as I urge him with my eyes to keep his voice down. “What are they
doin’ down there?”
I open my mouth to answer when static interrupts the guitar solo of
“Freebird” and Rex’s voice barks out a healthy, “Welcome to the
Fuck You Arena! Tonight we have two of our finest fighters, set to
square off with the loveliest ladies in camp. But enough of this
foreplay, fellas; let’s get ready to
rrrrruuuuuuummmmmmbbbbbbbllllle!”