Z
Unprocessed food spills from the gash in the salesman’s stomach, filling the immediate air with a putrid stench that only the zombis can tolerate. Some feed on the salesman’s fresh corpse, others ramble after the corpse’s family. The floor around the body becomes slick with the blood and grease of human flesh as the zombis continue to chew on the meat and gnaw on the bones; a revolting feeding frenzy that would sicken the soul of any mortal man.
Screams soon drown out the sounds of chewing food as the salesman’s wife is pulled from under the bed by the scavenging jaws of two flesh eaters, and when the woman’s entire form is revealed others fall upon her; fingernails digging into skin like claws, teeth ripping through flesh like fangs. In less than a minute her remains resemble that of her husband’s and the feeders leave to join the others in the pursuit of the couple’s two children.
The first to get caught is the teenage boy; cowering in a corner, begging for his mother and father to save him, praying to his god to spare him. But the words are drowned out by the excited grunts and snorts of the flesh feeders as they reach for him and tear him to pieces. Little remains to show that Davey ever existed, save for his blood that paints the room a sickening shade of red.
One human left in the house, twenty zombis hunting her down like an animal. She is hiding in the bathroom, but her crying gives her away, and zombis begin beating their meaty fists on the locked door. Poor little Kathy; never to finish school, never to know the joys of love, of marriage, or of motherhood. Never to step outside again, to feel the warm sun on her face, to laugh and dance in the rain with her friends, to be with her family. Never ever again to breathe another breath.
The wood begins to splinter, and the feeders are now able to see bits and pieces of the little girl sitting there with watery eyes and face, and holding her dolly, which works them into a frenzy as they hurl their weight against the door until it shatters, leaving nothing between them and her. And as they reach out to rip her flesh from her bones they are assailed by an unseen intruder, who tears his way through their ranks as though they were made of paper. When the feeders in front meet their demise at the intruder’s hands crushing their skulls, there is now nothing that stands in the way between it and Kathy. But this is no savior, no hero come to rescue her from the clutches of hell. This is the one they call “Z”; father of the feeders. The girl’s high-pitched scream is broken in a second when Z crushes her skull as though it were a grape. He yanks the limp form to his lips, where he drinks the juices from its neck. Sated, he tosses the corpse aside like a rag doll and turns to walk from the scarlet bathroom, as the broken zombis can only stare at his hellish form.
It was in his lab that Dr. Zycheck finally made the breakthrough discovery he’d been searching for all his life. In school they called him “nerd” and “faggot”, but if they knew of his power now they would kneel before him and pray for forgiveness, for he, Daniel Zycheck, fifty-two year old nerd, faggot and world renowned chemist, had discovered the elixir of life. He grasped the serum in his hand, eyes glazed with victory, smile reveling in smugness, and contemplated its many uses for the good of humanity. This serum could lead to discoveries and miracle cures the world so desperately needed and before now could only dream of. All he had to do was place the serum in its safety container, lock up his notes for safe keeping, and make the call. But he was drunk with power, intoxicated with his success, and he unknowingly undid the entire fabric of humanity as he drew the vial to his lips and gulped the liquid down.
Z watches emotionless as the feeders relentlessly pound on the front door of the cottage with their fists while chunks of rotting flesh drop to the ground around them. At first their efforts appear fruitless and the door does not yield, but as more and more of their kind join in, their sheer weight and persistence wears it down, and the door eventually gives way. Z knows there must be food inside. The boarded windows, the fully gassed truck in the garage, and the stubbornness of the front door are all signs of life, hiding away in a tiny shelter from his worldwide fallout.
Gunshots escape from the cottage, and screaming soon follows. But Z waits, letting the feeders scramble for their meal. When the gunshots have died away, and when the cottage utters no more sounds save for that of chewing and moaning, Z enters to see what is left. The parlor rug is awash in the blood of three victims, all former gun-toting males in their teens; maybe, but now just lumps of food to be greedily eaten. The bathroom reveals nothing, but farther down, at the end of the hall, is stacked a pile of feeders, all with their skulls blown open, covering the doorway to the room beyond. Z knows that the remaining feeders are too stupid to figure this for a barricade, and grins a sickening smile as he rips through the pile of bodies until the barricade is no more. With satisfaction on his lips, Z steps into the darkness to grab his assumed prize, but is instead jolted by the blast of a shotgun shell to the left side of his skull at close range. Another immediately follows, spinning him around to face the doorway in time to see dozens of feeders clambering down the hall toward the room. Three more shots are fired: two into his back and one at the back of his neck. Z falls to the floor, either under the weight of the massing zombis, or because of the damage sustained from the shotguns, or maybe from both. As the room explodes with flashes of light and the sounds of shotgun blasts, screaming and tearing flesh, Z remembers.
He remembers his transformation; the transformation that turned him from a scrawny, pathetic toothpick of a man, into a monstrous flesh-feeding ogre. With bulbous yellow eyes dripping a pink gleaming mucus, pulsating veins that coursed throughout his body on top of the skin, canine ears twitching at every sound, a cavernous hole in the middle of his face where his nose ought to be but where two huge nostrils remained, and a bloated frog-like tongue of extreme length and sensitivity, Z’s senses were heightened to the extreme. His body did not fair poorly as far as strength was concerned either: rippled muscles glistened with the slime and sweat which covered his entire hulking body, all encased in a green film of sticky phosphorescent skin. And, the most significant change of all: a pumping, raging brain five times its former size encased in a skull six inches thick. Once the transformation was complete, it was just a matter of moments before the urge to tear flesh and drink blood overcame him. He destroyed his lab in a frenzy of power-testing that made him revel in his abandon. When he finally came to his senses and began to fully understand the extent of his transformation, he punched his way through the lab’s steel door and devoured his way to freedom.
Z lifts himself from the floor and back to the present. He turns to see a room of death. He stares coldly at the nauseating dead forms that crouch around him, each chewing on its own prize, each eager to scavenge for more. How was he to know that he would pass it on to his victims, and they in turn to others? It may have been to a lesser degree, but they still rose to their feet from their dead state, their bodies still moved forward, their hands still stretched outward, and their mouths still opened in search of the flesh of the living. But he did not care. Why should he? He would rather be master of this world of the dead than savior of the living. They were the ones who were pathetic and weak now, and he was the one who wielded power. It certainly took them longer to figure out what was going on, to piece together what had happened, than it had taken for him to discover its cure. They could try to capture him and extract the information from him if they like, but until then he would spread his malignancy until that chance passed them by. And both he and they were so very close now to their own desperate goals…
In a sudden fury Z smashes everything inside the small cottage, leaving the broken bodies and smashed skulls of his own malignant children to redecorate. When he is finished, nothing remains that is recognizable, nothing moves. Standing alone in a room of crimson, the sudden stillness calms his still heaving form, and enables him to recollect his purpose.
Two years have passed since he swallowed the serum, and the world was wallowing in an unrecognizable, plague-infested pit of shambling flesh-eaters. So few living remained that the feeders often went many days without a meal. Scores of feeders just rotted away altogether after too many weeks in the sun, having gone too long bereft of the flesh that sustained them. At first, the zombis tried to eat each other. And Z tried to eat them. But this only served them up a case of dry heaves and the food would not stay down. Z figured maybe three to four billion of his kind still wandered the earth, while there were probably somewhere between ten and twenty thousand of the living. Their days were numbered, he knew, for both of their kind. But he did not care. When the day comes where he consumes his last drop of blood, and he falls to his knees empty and spent, he will laugh at the world, laugh at the crumbled buildings, stagnant bodies and stinking stench that saturates the earth. Then he will laugh at mankind until the expression is wiped from his face by the finality of his purpose.
As Z stands among his dead, contemplating the end of all that will ever be, three men and a woman, decked out in tattered military garb hunker down in a small shack across the road from the cottage. They set their weapons and hide themselves as best they can, for if they are seen by any feeders, they will lose their element of surprise.
They have been on Z’s trail for several days, and have at last come to a position where they believe they have an opportunity to capture him…or to kill him; their debate has not yet ended. The men’s hearts are filled with hatred and despair and wish nothing more than to grind that monstrous being into dust. The female of the group is a scientist, with the expertise and means to extract the information from Z that could put an end to the hell that scours the earth, to save mankind. And, unbeknownst to either Z or themselves, the woman is the last living, breathing human in the world with the knowledge and skill to do so. The tenseness and stillness of their vigil is broken by cluttering stones being kicked about by a group of feeders who seem to have taken an interest in their hiding place. When one of them reaches the doorway with the intent to step inside, they have no choice but to open fire until their view of the cottage is once again secure.
The gunshots startle Z and extract him from his ponderings. His chest begins to heave again as it swells with fortitude, and his legs drive him from the house ready to eradicate the cause of the disturbance. And when Z leaves the cottage and walks out onto the crumbling stone walkway, the chance to irrevocably change history forever comes to both sides.
Z turns to face his enemy, feeders shuffling around him, now heading toward the threat. The small unit; exhausted, hungry, and weary to the bone, ready themselves and aim their two main weapons at him. One has the power to give life: a cannon containing a specially prepared net designed to capture the monster. The other has the power to end it: a cannon with enough firepower to smash the monster to bits. Z studies them, incomprehensive of their choice, simply diagnoses their weak points before striking. The three men and the woman that make up the tattered unit look upon one another, staring into eyes that have seen more than they can hold. They remember their previous lives and the lives of their neighbors and friends, their homes and their families; all gone. All erased by this mad hellish creature. One by one they turn their gaze back to Z just as he makes his move and bulrushes them. The debate has come to a close and the woman is given the choice of which trigger to pull. She stares at the creature rushing at them, intent to do all she can to save mankind. Her eyes well up in an instant and in her tears she sees her children; her two sons, turned to zombis. She sees her loving husband she so achingly yearns for, turned into a zombi. Her whole family: zombis. Everyone she ever loved or cared for or lived her life for: dead. All dead. And, in the blink of an eye, in an instant that will last forever, she pulls a trigger and seals mankind’s doom.
Copyright (c) John J. Perry Jr.
2006
