Read Zombie Kong - Anthology Online
Authors: TW; T. A. Wardrope Simon; Brown William; McCaffery Tonia; Meikle David Niall; Brown Wilson
Zombie Kong - Anthology
ZOMBIE KONG
- BOOKS of the DEAD -
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, events, dialog, and situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Zombie Kong
Collection copyright 2012 by James Roy Daley
All stories in this collection are original for this anthology
Cover Art by Daniele Serra
Edited by James Roy Daley
Copyedit/Proofread by Ashley Davis
Graphic design by Derek Daley
Interior design by James Roy Daley
FIRST EDITION
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Great books from:
BOOKS of the DEAD
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (VOL. 1)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (VOL. 2)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (VOL. 3)
BEST NEW VAMPIRE TALES (VOL. 1)
MATT HULTS - ANYTHING CAN BE DANGEROUS
JAMES ROY DALEY - 13 DROPS OF BLOOD
JAMES ROY DALEY - THE DEAD PARADE
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING II
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING III
TONIA BROWN - BADASS ZOMBIE ROAD TRIP
* * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dr. Steven Rutgers - Understanding Zombie Kong
David Niall Wilson - In Today’s News… (Meanwhile In Suburbia, Part 1)
Simon Mccaffery - The Boys In Company Z
Adrian Ludens - The Elephant In The Room
Amanda C. Davis - Escape From Ape City
Mark Onspaugh - Dear Fay Wray, We Need Your Help…
Gustavo Bondoni - Shadow Of The Gorilla
Megan R. Engelhardt - The Beast That Would Not Die!
Tonia Brown - My Life Was Saved By Coffee… (Meanwhile In Suburbia, Part 2)
Michael O’neal - Kooking With Kong
Trever Palmer - Reach For The Sky
William Meikle - The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of
T. A. Wardrope - The Upright Gorilla
Preview: Gary Brandner’s - The Howling
Preview: Gary Brandner’s - The Howling II
Preview: Gary Brandner’s - The Howling III
Preview: James Roy Daley’s - Terror Town
Preview: James Roy Daley’s - Into Hell
Preview: Paul Kane’s - Pain Cages
* * *
DR. STEVEN RUTGERS
Understanding Zombie Kong
The average size of a small intestine in an adult human male is approximately twenty-three feet long and three centimeters wide. It’s not uncommon for an intestine to reach a length of about thirty feet if the person is considered obese. Once a person dies that same intestine can measure up to 50% longer due to the loss of muscle tone within the tissue. With such losses, a three hundred pound man that has been dead for a few days can have a small intestine reaching a length of approximately forty-five feet. A three hundred pound gorilla that has been deceased for the same amount of time will have a small intestine that is similar in both width and length.
The average height of a male silverback gorilla is 1.7 meters, or about 5’ 7”. A gorilla at this height typically has a weight of approximately 390 pounds, or 5.82 pounds per linear inch. Most experts agree that the gorilla, now referred to as ‘Zombie Kong’, was slightly more than 52 feet tall and had a weight nearing 20 tons (40,000 pounds), or 64 pounds per linear inch. I have tried to find some facts and figures regarding the actual pre-death anatomy of the great beast, but so far I have been unsuccessful. It should be noted that my own investigations have led me to believe that Zombie Kong’s small intestine was close to 30 cm in diameter and more than 400 feet long. 400 feet, for reference’s sake, is roughly 14% longer than the soccer field inside Wembley Stadium.
SHELLEY ONTIS
Manny’s Candy
Cesar wrung out his mop and swiped the last corner, not quite getting all the way into the crevice and not caring. They got enough work out of him––more than they paid. Break time, anyway. The mop sloshed water over the side of the bucket as he dropped it in, sending up the chemical smell that still made Cesar feel woozy, even after all these months.
“Man-
ny
,” he said. “I know you’ve been watching me, buddy.” Manny sat in the front of his cage, bouncing a little, looking as much like an excited kid as a gorilla. “Want something?”
Manny grunted and raised a thick black finger to his cheek, then twisted it back and forth.
“You want candy?”
The gorilla held his hands out, palms up. He pulled them toward himself, then repeated the sign for ‘candy’. He brought his fingers to his lips.
Want, candy, eat.
“Yeah, I know, I know,” Cesar said, pulling a caramel out of his pocket and unwrapping it. He slipped it through the metal grate. “You’re a good little man, aren’t you?” Cesar had noticed that about him from the beginning, how good he was, how he seemed so human sometimes. He’d started calling him Manny since he didn’t have a name, just a number. He thought ‘little man’ was clever, since Manny was easily three or four times his weight, and at least a couple heads taller.
He glanced up at the camera in the corner to make sure it was pointed toward the exit and hadn’t been moved. Lindstrom would have twenty kinds of fits if he knew Cesar spent so much time with Manny every night, but they only ever watched the exits with the closed circuit TVs, never the animal cages. Cesar guessed it was more important for them to know who came and went than what they did while they were here.
Manny chewed the sticky candy slowly and Cesar felt a little pang of guilt. Lindstrom caught Cesar giving Manny a caramel one day and rode his ass about it, said it wasn’t good for his teeth. “Gorillas do not find candy in the wild,” he’d said. “Human junk food isn’t good for him at all.”
Cesar told Manny later not to worry—he’d still bring candy. If they were going to keep the poor guy cooped up in that cage, poking and prodding him, he ought to have candy and girl apes and disco music and tequila, if he wanted. Especially since whatever they did to him made him feel bad sometimes––Cesar could tell, and it wasn’t because of any candy. It was whatever they shot into him. He had that sick look about him tonight, too.
“Poor little man,” Cesar said. When Manny touched a finger to his lip and drew it down,
red
, Cesar gave him a piece of red, strawberry-flavored hard candy, another of Manny’s favorites. “Teeth are the least of your goddamn worries, aren’t they?” He slipped his fingers into the cage and Manny leaned forward to have his forehead rubbed. “I gotta fuck around in the fish room for a while, but I’ll be back.”
Cesar hated the fish room. Fish shouldn’t get that big unless they were dolphins or sharks or something. These were mostly the type of little fish that he might give his nephew or niece in a glass bowl, but they looked blown up enough they could eat half of him in one bite. He avoided their saucer-sized, dead-looking fish eyes as he cleaned the glass. One fish in particular––it looked like a huge goldfish that someone had boiled long enough for its outsides to bubble, but not quite burst––followed his hand a little too closely when he cleaned. He’d thought about dropping some sort of poison in the water more than once, just to save himself the creeps every night and put that poor, deformed looking thing out of its misery. But maybe it liked the way it was. Cesar couldn’t bear the idea of hurting anything, not even a fish that probably wouldn’t know it. But sometimes he didn’t clean the outside of the aquarium. Too many nightmares about the fish breaking out the top and munching into the hand it had been eyeballing for so long.
By the time Cesar finished in the fish room, Manny was in the corner, his forehead against the wall. His back moved up and down a little as he breathed, like he couldn’t get enough air.
“Man—”
The gorilla spun, its lip curled back, and it lurched toward him, roaring. Cesar jumped back. “Manny! What the hell?”
Manny stopped, seeming to come back to himself. He sat, started breathing slower, and leaned his forehead against the door.
“What’s up, little man? You scared me.” Cesar put his hand on his chest, his heart thumping. He felt the urge to pee.
Manny put his fist on his chest, swiped it down.
Sorry
.
“That’s okay. Maybe you had a rough day, eh? Friends forgive,” he said, but his heart still hadn’t slowed.
Manny lifted both hands and hooked the fingers together, shaking them a little.
“Yeah, friends,” Cesar said, showing him the right way to do it, hooking the index fingers together then flipping them to hook the other way. Manny had never quite gotten the hang of that one, but Cesar figured it didn’t matter since they both knew what he meant. He wasn’t supposed to know any signs. He’d been sent here from another lab because of his inability to learn sign language. They’d called him a failure because he couldn’t talk, which Cesar thought was a shitty thing to do to a gorilla that wasn’t supposed to talk, anyhow.
It still amazed him that all those educated highbrows in the white coats couldn’t teach Manny sign language, with all their computers and their fancy degrees, and he’d done it in no time. All it took was a little patience, a smile or two, and some candy.
Manny, with his big forehead against the cage and those woeful eyes, clearly wanted his forehead rubbed. But Manny had never acted that way with him before, like he could have just chewed his head off. Cesar lifted his hand, pulled it back an inch or so, deciding it might not be a good idea, but then looked into those sad, black eyes again, and reached into the cage.
“All you ever needed was a friend, isn’t that right, little man? A trusting friend.”
Manny closed his eyes and hooked his index fingers together, while Cesar rubbed his head.
The vomiting started a few hours later, not long before Cesar’s shift ended in the morning. He knew there’d probably be hell to pay—night people weren’t supposed to be there for more than 10 minutes off the clock—but he waited far longer than that to make sure they knew exactly what had been happening with Manny overnight. He hoped it wasn’t Rico. That bastard would probably put his own grandmother in a cage and poke her if someone paid him enough, so Cesar didn’t think he’d care about a puking gorilla.
Dr. Lindstrom was first through the door. His blonde hair was slicked back so smooth that he almost looked bald. His whole face puckered in on itself when he saw Cesar.
“I know it’s past my time, but Manny’s sick, he’s been sick for hours.”
“The proper thing to do would be to leave a note, not break protocol.”
“I know that, Dr. Lindstrom, and I’m sorry. But I-I don’t write English so good, and I wanted to make sure you knew everything.”