Chapter Three *Hung Over*
Chapter Three
*Hung Over*
Note to self: NEVER eat another drunk again! As if having the hunger wasn’t bad enough, now I’m hung over and not just a bad headache either. Opening my eyelids was a chore, they felt heavy and stiff like they could break of at any moment. The only thing I can see at the moment was a bright blue sky and not a cloud in sight. Every move I make feels like my body will literally fall to pieces. My body was stuck against a downed tree that toppled over into the narrow water canal. I guess I should be grateful for that because who knows where this canal would have taken me to.
So alcohol dries out a zombie’s body so now I have to find a way to rehydrate. Too bad the water that flowing against my body wasn’t capable of doing this for me or I’d simply roll in. Time to eat someone but I need to make sure they aren’t drunk because I’m literally a walking, croaking piece of undead beef jerky. Snap into a SlimRob! Groaning, I roll over onto my belly to lift myself up and the pain seemed to intensify a hundred fold. My body was starving for food despite me eating Mr Stinky completely last night. The alcohol in the man’s system was having a terrible reaction to my body and it felt like he was getting the last laugh. As I stand up, I can feel different areas on my body protest and the skin ripped open like I was being slashed by a thousand knives.
Panic streaked through my rapidly decaying brain at the thought of never being able to catch another meal and end up living the rest of my undead days in pain and agony. The sounds of screams and gunfire catch my attention as well as the hunger, which lurches me forward whether I want to go or not. Ow! Ow! Ow! I feel like a puppet under the control of the world’s worst puppeteer. Each step I take, I let out guttural growls of pain and frustration. I so want to step in front of a shotgun right now and be sent back to my grave for a second time because the pain is becoming too much for me. The only thing that comes to mind that I can equate it to is like having chronic pain times ten and that’s on the conservative side too.
I see that I’ve was swept down to a larger city and there wasn’t much of an urban feel to it like the one I was in when I woke up in that cemetery. There were large building and a lot of skyscrapers surrounding them, creating a plethora of hiding spots for both the living and the dead to play hide and eat. There were a lot of people running everywhere like roaches with lights turned on, desperate to find a safe haven from me and my brothers and sisters. Some chose to fight while others fled and seeing this helped ramp up my hunger even more so. Like I needed more pain at the moment. It put me in such a foul mood that I didn’t want to chase anyone, just go biting anyone that got stupid enough to get close to me.
About a hundred yards in front of me was a guy in a police uniform, haphazardly aiming his large caliber gun at a small cluster of zombies. He was both tense and scared, a combination that seem to excite my hunger more. As he fired his gun, the shots hit several zombies in the forehead, blowing out the backs of their skulls but that didn’t slow them down at all. Huh, that’s definitely different. They appeared confused and had issues with depth perception as they lunged for the man but fell way short. The man was in the middle of reloading his gun and never saw me coming as I bit down hard on the side of his neck. I dug my jaws deep and ripped as much flesh and muscle away as I could before moving away from him. The man dropped down to the ground, clutching his neck and trying to prevent the carotid artery I nicked from spraying all his blood from his body. Serves him right for shooting my people. Having my first meal of the day was helping some, but not quite. My mood was still foul but at least with the fresh blood in my mouth it helped rehydrate it. My body was slow to react to it which meant I needed A LOT more.
From between a few parked cars, a small child darted out and ran into my waiting arms. Wow, I didn’t know I ordered delivery. The child couldn’t have been more than four years old and was crying and calling out to his mommy. A hors d’oeuvre before the main course? I was practically squealing mentally as the child kicked and screamed when it saw me lift him up to my salivating mouth. I took a big bite out of the little boy’s stomach as a cradled him in my arms like any loving father would do. The child is now screaming bloody murder and all I could think of was this had to be the worst case of pink belly this kid will ever have in his short life.
As I tear another lovely chunk of soft flesh from the child, I can hear a woman screaming hysterically. I glance in her direction and can see the tears flowing down her cheeks like the water in the canal that swept me away last night. Her youthful face contorted into rage when she saw me and what I was feeding. The woman bolted towards me with a tire iron in her hand, already reared back to swing at my head. She was very top heavy in the chest area and as she ran up to kill me, I couldn’t help but stare at her bouncing breasts. I suppose things don’t change too much after death because they looked good enough to eat.
I dropped the child like a sack of potatoes to meet the woman head on. The child in my belly was granting my body better movement as the pain lessened and my skin felt a little more hydrated. I never knew children were so good for you, until now. The angry yelled at me, “NO! Get away from my son, you monster!”
Hell it’s not my fault she let her son go play in the streets during the zombie apocalypse. Typical, blame me for eating your child and not take responsibility for your bad parenting skills at keeping them safe from me. Her words hurt my feeling. I can’t help it that I’m a zombie, but that doesn’t make me a monster does it? I stepped over her child’s prone body and prepared for her attack. It seemed obvious from where it was going to come from so as soon as she swung her arm, I latched onto her forearm with my left hand and with my right hand, I wrapped my boney fingers around her hair at the top of her scalp.
The woman was surprised, to say the least, and then she screamed in pain and started kicking at me as I lifted her up of the ground by her hair. I eyed her manically as I opened my blood soaked mouth and uttered the words, “BREAASSSTSSS….” The woman watched in horror as I leaned down and engulfed her left breast into my mouth. With one swift chomp, I had ripped it from her chest and then I leaned down and did the same to her right breast. The woman screamed like a banshee as she wrapped her free arm around her now lighter chest. Just to ensure she didn’t try to hit me with her tire iron, I squeezed and twisted on her forearm, snapping the bones. She howled in pain as she dropped her weapon at my feet.
I let the woman drop in a massive heap on the street, rolling around in pain and still trying to reach her child that was now dead because of me. The woman’s breast tasted funny to me. Some pieces felt soft and exquisite but the rest had a chewy rubbery feel in my mouth. I reached into my mouth and pulled out the woman’s breasts to examine them. I cocked my head and could see that through the blood and bite marks that they were the man-made kind. No wonder they tasted so unappetizing to me, they were fake! Mental note: fake breasts are not fun to eat and taste like a rubber ducky!
I was starting to feel better but the pain was still there. My beef jerky skin was looking better, if you can call bluish gray skin normal looking in the first place, and I could feel the food I’ve been consuming trickling throughout my entire body. The one thing that will bring me back from the brink would be some delicious brains so with only a slightly better mood, I began the hunt. With a large city like this one, I’d have plenty to pick from. Man, it’s just like going to one of those large chain grocery stores or a massive buffet.
To my right I see a woman staring at me like I had grown two heads. As our eyes lock onto each other, it almost felt romantic. Ah love was in the air and it smelled like….brains! The hunger within me increasing in intensity and excitement as the woman gets entangled with another zombie. Why do people stop and forget that they are surrounded by hordes of the undead? Was it fear that caused this? I sniff the air as I shamble forward towards her. Maybe she witnessed what I did to little miss fake boob bad mom and thought her breasts was next? She was practically oozing with fear and terror as she managed kick the knee out of her would-be attacker, dropping the zombie to the ground.
The woman was wearing a filthy white lab coat and had a blood-stained silk blouse and a beige skirt with matching footwear. Her hair was cut short and looked like it had seen better days and she wore red trimmed glasses. She spun around looking for a place to hide just as her zombie attacker lunged at her from the ground, barely snagging her panty hose. The woman shrieked as she yanked her leg free as her hose ripped and pulled on the nearest door but nothing happened as I stepped up onto the sidewalk.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she tried the next door and it too didn’t budge. As delicious as her brain is smelling to me with all the fear and adrenaline pumping throughout her body, I kind of felt sorry for her. My body is dead and decaying everywhere and it was stalking a living person like a cat playing with a mouse. Even her frantic squeals of panic reminded me of a squeaking mouse stuck on a glue trap. The hunger and well as my movement increase, wanting to snatch this terrified woman and eat her alive. I think that I might be getting to be more like my old self in my thought processes but there’s nothing I can do to stop the hunger from making meals out of people.
I suppose the best way to describe my existence is like being in a dream in which you can’t awaken from and have little to no control over the outcome. Only when the hunger is sated do I feel like I’m me again and can choose whether I want to eat a person or not. The woman yanks on yet another door but this time it opens for her and she darts inside with me hot on her trail. As the front door closes in front of me, I notice two things. The first was my reflection. Man, I look…whoa I can see why everyone is running away from me. Despite my dressy death suit, I can say for a fact that I would be winning the sexiest man alive award. My face had more creases and patches of missing skin than an elderly retirement home for leprosy. My hair was matted and still damp from my ride down the canal and my eyes were cloudy white to the point that I wasn’t sure what my eye color was before I died.
The second thing I noticed was the words on the glass door. Mackenzie’s Mortuary and Crematorium, the irony didn’t escape me as I let out a guttural chuckle. I guess if she was going to die, why not here? Good choice lady, at least she didn’t need to be brought here by a hearse but then again, I seriously doubt that service was available during the zombie apocalypse. Cue the dramatic chase music once again as I slam both my fists into the glass door. Why don’t I just open the damn door? Is it really necessary to do this when I could grab the door handle like she did? With my next hit the glass shatters and explodes on the carpeted floor.
Deep inside the mortuary, I heard the woman let out a startled gasp as the sound of the glass clattered. What did she expect, enter here and me give up the chase? This place has an odd odor to it. I can smell her juicy brain as well as other brains too, but their aromas were all the same: dead. I found my own personal mini-mart! I have to remember this for later, especially if I can’t find my fast food. The glass crunches beneath my feet as the hunger pulls me towards a set of free-swinging wooden doors that were still moving, only slightly. I can feel the saliva pooling in my mouth as my jaw quivers in anticipation as move shuffle through the wooden doors,
The room is a small chapel with cushioned pews and white folding chair turned over. The room looks like a tornado hit it and by the looks of the empty casket at the end of the room by a small metal pulpit. There were several bodies on the floor, picked clean so to speak. Something tells me that people’s broken hearts and prayers were answered when Grandpa Jim Owens rose up and ate his grandchildren. Boy I bet they were surprised. He wasn’t the only one to have risen on that day because there were too many bodies for that so all the inhabitants that were being prepared for burial or cremation stood up and joined in the potluck wake.
There were several doors along the side of the walls that were opened, which meant that my brothers and sisters swarmed over this melancholy gathering. Chaos and blood filled this room at one point and it still lingered as I stepped over the dried up remains of a small child. Little Timmy was eaten all up! I’m sure he was a sweet boy and tender too. As I step up past the casket, I feel my body being pulled towards a doorway with the door ripped off its hinges. I’m guessing there was a lot of zombies rushing up from here.
As I cross the threshold, I look down a see my old nemesis, a short flight of stairs. I’m so not looking forward to yet another stumble down memory lane here. Like my hunger really cared at all as it forced me to step down and as usual, I misjudged the step! When the zombie comes tumblin’ down! When the zombie comes crumblin’, crumblin’! When the zombie comes tumblin’ down! I hummed this little tune as it played in my head while I went head over heels to the bottom. I will eat everyone who has constructed any type of stairs, this I swear! I sit up and snap my arm back into place as I gaze into what had to be the mortuary and saw the woman, staring wide-eyed back at me as she shut herself in a small closet, babbling, “Oh God! Oh God!”
I clamber up to a standing position and instantly I notice that I’m not quite stable and yet the hunger doesn’t care as it drags me unwillingly towards the woman’s hiding place. I really should go raid a bubble wrap factory and make myself invincible to all these stairs I keep coming across. It would be fun too and an easy distraction to my victims. They could pop my little bubbles while I pop open their cranium, win-win if you ask me. It would be like me telling them to “look at the flowers.” I look down and see that my left foot is crooked and the bottom of my foot is facing my other foot. Gotta fix that, again.
The mortuary room was cold and everything was covered in stainless steel except the floor, which was covered in eggshell white tile. There were several steel tables used for autopsies and body preservation. Hmm, I wonder if I was brought here after my demise. As I awkwardly stagger towards the closet door, I can hear the woman hyperventilating and praying at the same time. Yeah lady, I’m sure God will come down and smite me just for the hell of it. I’d welcome it but being risen from the grave makes me believe He is no longer listening or cares. Gotta thin out the population so why not have a zombie plague, it’s not like He hasn’t created plagues in the past.
Just behind me, I could hear moaning and the pitter patter of dead feet. I careened my head around and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. What I saw was the grisly display of my moody feeding right before my eyes. There was the cop with chomped carotid, the belly cavity child, and bad breastless mom, all staring at me intently. Ummm, this is a little unsettling. This must be what David Kessler was feeling when he had to interact with the ghost of his victims from his carnivorous lunar activities. What? I was cranky and hurting! Go away, shoo! This is my kill!
I wanted to scream my head off to make them leave my sight because seeing them all reanimated and partially eaten was not only unsettling me but was making me feel so much guilt at the moment. The gaze of the dead is far more intimidated than I could possibly imagine, no wonder people look like they’re about to crap their pants when I see them. Without warning, my arm raises up and points at the closet. Much to my surprise, I croaked out the words “Open it…” and then my binge bitten victims moved to obey.
The child kicked and clawed at a small vent at the bottom of the door while the dead adults slammed their fists into the door. The woman inside the closet began shrieking and making all kinds of noise which was making my zombie pack attack the door with a reckless fever that only the hunger could create. Seeing it first hand was kind of surreal, the power and strength we have when the hunger takes hold is quiet impressive and scary at the same time. The kid ripped the small vent off with a yank with strength that belied his size and age. He crawled in, which cause the woman scream like a banshee as she threw as many objects at him as he managed to open the door.
The two adult zombies rushed in and grabbed the woman as she swung a broken mop handle at them. They dragged her out kicking and screaming and I commanded them, or rather the hunger did, “On the table…” and they obeyed yet again. They hoisted the terrified woman up and dropped her down hard on the cold steel table and pinned her down. No matter how much she struggled, the woman couldn’t free herself. The kid hopped up on the table and sat down on the woman’s chest and grabbed her by the hair and lifted her head up, like he was presenting me the bounty that was woman’s sweet and juicy brain.
Hell, who could resist such a sweet gift like that? Time to dig in! The woman babbled as she was still praying. No worries ladies, I’m fixing to help you crossover and meet the big guy! The hunger was screaming at me to feed, the pain it was causing was becoming unbearable. I leaned down and inhaled all the fear, terror, and pheromones brewing off her brain. My mouth opened up, saliva dripping down onto the woman’s scalp. My jaws clamped down and the lovely popping sound assailed my ears and her sweet, sweet brain filled my decaying pie hole. My eyes fluttered as bit down and ate more and more, like an addict. I’m secretly praying that she won’t be like the drunken man from the night before because her brain was like Lays potato chips, bet you can’t eat just one!