Author: Andre Duza
Date: 2016-06-28 00:00:00+00:00
Description: A Serpentine Films Production in Association with the Martin Stone Show… In the 80s, nobody was bigger than Serpentine. They filled stadiums and performed to sell-out crowds. They lived at the top of the charts, winning award after award. But a life of excess soon took its toll and the band called it a day in 1991. 24 years later, the members of Serpentine put old feelings aside and made plans for a comeback. A documentary was scheduled to chronicle the group’s return. New album. World Tour. But then… THE DEAD WALK! Chaos in the streets! The breakdown of society! But even the end of the world
Publisher: Infected Books

RIDE THE SERPENTINE

by Andre Duza

Copyright © Andre Duza 2016

All rights reserved

The right of Andre Duza to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters,
organisations and events portrayed in this novel are
either products of the authors’ imaginations
or are used fictitiously.

First published in 2016 by Infected Books

www.infectedbooks.co.uk

@infectedbks

Cover design by David Naughton-Shires
www.theimagedesigns.com

www.houseofduza.com
facebook.com/andreduza

TABLE OF CONTENTS

YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

RIDE THE SERPENTINE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

ALSO FROM INFECTED BOOKS

MONTH SEVEN

RIDE THE SERPENTINE

A Serpentine Films Production in Association with the Martin Stone Show…

Video

A circular stage seemingly afloat in a sea of heads and shoulders. Hysterical feminine adulation directed toward the trio of lanky, androgynous rock stars power-posing at centre stage. Pyrotechnics erupt behind the men. The crowd approves. Their cheers are deafening.

A montage of concert venues as a tour bus arrives. Fans waiting in parking lots. They run screaming alongside the bus.

Narrator (Voice-over): What started out as three friends passing the time at a local band camp, became one of the most influential rock bands of a generation. In mid-to-late ’80s nobody was bigger than Serpentine.

Concerts.  Backstage.  Champagne celebrations. Wet T-shirts. Fake tits.  Serpentine at the number one spot on the Billboard Music Charts. Awards shows.

Narrator: They filled stadiums and performed to sell-out crowds. They lived at the top of the charts and garnered award after award.

Drugs. Booze. Fast women. Drunken performances.

Narrator: But a life of excess eventually took its toll on the trio and the band once named the most influential rock group in the last decade officially split in 1991.

The group, older now, rocks out on a small, intimate stage in a packed nightclub. The crowd goes nuts.

Narrator: Decades of hard feelings were put aside when the boys came together for a charity event in early 2014. Reaction from the crowd was overwhelmingly positive and it quickly became obvious that the time was right for a comeback. A documentary was planned to help kick off the return of Serpentine. The film would chronicle the daily lives of the band mates while they worked on their new album.

An ambush of newspaper headlines dated 9/6/2014: THE DEAD WALK! Chaos in the streets. The breakdown of society via security camera footage from around the world.

Narrator: But fate had other plans…

People fighting back against the dead. Landfills full of bodies. The evolution of settlements. The Martin Stone Show.

Narrator: What started as a peek into the lives of three friends who became rock Gods, has evolved into a video diary chronicling humanity’s struggle to survive, and Rock ‘n’ Roll’s place in the resurrection of our once great society.

A title fades into view…

Ride the Serpentine!

A Rockumentary

Video:

Friday, May 17, 2016

The interior of a modified van. All black. Plush, leather seating fit for a private jet in front. The rear seating has been removed, giving the illusion of space. A leather bench spans the length of one side. A console reminiscent of a newsvan embedded in the opposite wall. A small monitor in the centre. A short counter below. Several boxes stacked against the back doors. A duo of guitar cases rest against the boxes. Tinted windows dim the natural light. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution’ by AC/DC blasts from the speakers.

A heavily inked Viking of a man (Jules Yeager, 51) is seated on the bench. A living stick-figure with a face full of wisdom (James ‘Holly’ Hollister, 50) behind the wheel. An effeminate, seemingly ageless pretty boy with long dark hair and sharp features (Graeme ‘Gramps’ Gunz, 48) riding shotgun.

Jules blindly fingers an acoustic guitar, his eyes glued to the blank monitor across from him. Graeme is equally focused on the scenery outside the passenger-side window.

Graeme: These backroads are all starting to look the same.

Hollister: Tree lines and farmland.

Graeme: …and messages spray-painted on water towers.

Jules (V.O.): Welcome to the apocalypse of the apocalypse, folks! I’m your guide, Jules. You may remember me as the axeman and song-writer extraordinaire from the baddest band on the planet, Serpentine. And if you remember me, then you definitely remember that Skeletor-faced bag-a-bones at the helm, James ‘Holly’ Hollister on drums, and to his right, the long, tall serpent himself, Graeme Gunz on bass and lead vocals. We call him Gramps. (Whispers) His real last name is Fischback, by the way.

Graeme: There’re less of ‘em out in the open.

Hollister: The tree line…

Graeme leans closer to the window. His eyes narrow.

Graeme: I see ‘em.

Graeme swivels in his chair and motions for the camera. The scene shakes as Jules hands the camera to Graeme, who then lowers the passenger-side window and points it out.

Tree lines and farmland. Pockets of recovery sprinkled with reminders that the days of living death are far from over. Skeletal remains wrapped in tatters sprout from thriving grassland like calcified weeds. Buildings and vehicles abandoned and burnt out and vandalized.

A handful of undead amble eastward. One or two of them cast curious eyes toward the sound of the passing van’s engine. The camera moves in, past the eastward march, toward the tree line, further back. An indelible shape haunts the open spaces between rows of trees; people, once living, now living-dead. They stand half-hidden by wooden stanchions and the lower shrubs that congregate at the trees’ bony, finger-knuckled roots.

Jules (V.O.): They stay mostly in the tree lines now, almost as if they’ve learned to fear open spaces where they could be easily picked off. You get enough of ’em together – like in the big cities – and it’s a different story.

Jules: Musta been some activity come through here recently. Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

Hollister: Nobody’s gonna fuck with us in this beast.

Jules (V.O.): Holly was right to call this thing a beast. What you have is essentially a Ford Sportsmobile four-wheel-drive wrapped in Spectra Shield, Ballistic Nylon and bulletproof glass, and off-road front and rear bumpers with full grille guards. A rear-mounted 12-Volt winch with an 18,000 lb capacity. Full perimeter LED light bars. You name it. All sitting on top of Rugged Compound Runflat tires. Whatever the fuck that means. We clipped her from Alex Zamora, the East Coast Porn King, when we high-tailed it from his bunker in Princeton. He was the guy behind those, ‘Plump Asses Sitting on Opened Palms,’ videos that were the shit in the late ’80s. Don’t act like you never heard of ’em.

The van was built on a lark to navigate a theoretical post-apocalyptic wasteland. Some car-mod show that never aired because Zamora’s affiliation with pornography spooked the advertisers. The thing had been sitting in his garage ever since along with his collection of classic cars.

The car-mod show was produced by the same team behind Guitar Godz. They did an episode where Graeme and Holly surprised me with a replica of my old axe GiGi. You remember GiGi? She was my first electric guitar. A candy apple red Les Paul Standard that I swore was alive. I liked to imagine that she was infused with the soul of some tortured musician who never realized her dream. Maybe she died of a freak accident while GiGi was being built.

I lost my GiGi when the Holt Sound Studios in Philly burned down in 1989. That shit hit me hard, man. She was my first love. The diehards will remember all the flack I got about the ’68 Strat with the maple neck that I used from then on. The critics whined that it affected our signature sound. They blamed it for our ‘decline.’ In hindsight, maybe they were right. But it was the favorite guitar of one James Marshall Hendrix. So, at the time, my thinking was that any change had to be for the best.

Live and learn...

The backroads give way to turnpike townships. The battered old ghosts of chain restaurants and gas station mini marts. Tumbleweeds of man-made refuse. Twice dead bodies piled in parking lots.

The undead meander on the sidelines. A brave few wander in the open. They react to the approaching van. They turn, and sway, and oddly lurch toward the engine’s smooth bellow. Some make moves toward the nearest shelter.

The boys talk over the images.

Graeme (re: piles of bodies): Probably not a good idea to be piling them up this soon.

Jules: People are in a hurry to wake up from this nightmare. I don’t blame ’em.

Hollister: Long time before the disposal trucks make it out this far. They’re just gettin’ started in the big cities.

Jules: I don’t know. It seems to be keeping the rest of ’em back. Maybe they’re onto something.

Jules (V.O.): There were other signs that Project Reboot was taking hold out here in the sticks. The roads had been cleared in a few of the counties we passed through. Bright colored collages painted on abandoned cars and buildings dressed up the horizon. Even the watertower prophets were showing signs of hope. I get caught up in the vibe.

Graeme hands the camera back to Jules.

Indecipherable dark tones... Flashes of muted daylight... The image clears on the interior of the van. Jules is right up on the lens working to secure the camera to some kind of base. His bulk darkens the frame.

He leans away, hesitates as if half-expecting the camera to topple over, and then settles into his seat. He slides the guitar across his lap and gently fondles the strings. Hollister and Graeme in the driver and passenger-seats respectively.

Jules (V.O.): A year ago I had all but accepted the fact that the world was ending and we had front row seats to it. And now here we are on our way to the Weather to rock the fuck outta this deadfuck-infested planet. That’s the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Facility in Bluemont, Virginia. Compliments of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Martin Stone Radio Show.  In case you live on Mars – which don’t sound like such a bad idea at the moment – Martin Stone was a controversial Shock Jock who ruled the airwaves for as long as I can remember, and hands-down the best celebrity interviewer on the planet.

Holly must be feelin’ it, too. He turns up the volume on the stereo and starts rocking out to Sugerloaf’s ‘Green-Eyed Lady.’ We used to cover the shit outta that tune in the old days. For the next 7:25 we rock out with him.

Our lives have been a series of close calls since 9/6. We were celebrating our comeback album at Alex Zamora’s place in Princeton when the shit hit the fan. It was going to coincide with the release of the film. We hadn’t written a lick of music for the damn thing yet, but the fact that we had finally put aside all the bullshit for the sake of the group was a feat worth drinking to. Zamora was one of those guys whose obsession with preparation seemed a little nutty before 9/6. Nowadays you’re lucky if you know someone like that.

He had this badass bunker that no one knew about underneath his four acre estate. He called the place The Grotto. That’s where we stayed until things got, well… complicated. Try to imagine being stuck in a single-story, 2800-square-foot space dressed up like an upscale condo along with the current queen of porn, who we nicknamed Cinderella, three washed-up, junkie actresses who were part of Zamora’s current harem of sister-wives. Then you had two animated mannequins who used to fuck these chicks on film. One of them couldn’t get it up anymore and the other one’s claim to fame was working as ‘stunt cock’ for two A-list actors. Rounding out the group were four random associates of Zamora’s who were each about as trustworthy as a record company exec on a good day. Top it off with one stoned-out-of-his-mind porn kingpin with a considerable arsenal at his disposal and a messiah complex that would’ve put Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now to shame, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Did I mention that one of the fucking associates was the porn queen’s Star 80 boyfriend?

It was doomed from the start. Me, Holly and Gramps seemed to be the only ones aware of that fact. Zamora would stay in his bedroom surrounded by his sister-wives, who hated everything about Cinderella, especially all the attention she got from the other guys, including their husband. The mannequins and associates had each made a play at fucking her despite the best efforts of her Star 80 boyfriend to derail that process. Of course, Cinderella only had eyes for Gramps. The sister-wives wanted a piece of him, too. But Gramps wanted no part of it. Between the three of us, we’d bagged enough top-shelf pussy during our run that a few months without it didn’t seem to affect us the way it affected the others. Especially when the alternative is sticking your cock in the garbage, which is what screwing any of Zamora’s girls amounted to.

It was too bad really. The place itself was fucking balls out! Zamora had spared no expense. Solar powered generator. A fully stocked walk-in freezer. Flatscreen monitors made to look like windows. They worked together to broadcast a continuous outdoor scene. Sounds silly, but they helped you forget that you were actually sealed up in a box seven feet underground. There was an elaborate security system, which we later found out Zamora had been using to spy on everyone. A gym. A weapons room. Tons of camera equipment and a state of the art editing suite/screening room where he shot, cut, and screened some of his more controversial films. The Hatefuckers series comes to mind.

We used his equipment to put together this little ditty you’re watching, in fact. Gramps’ idea. That was Gramps doing his best Jim Forbes in the intro. Forbes was the voice behind VH1’s Behind the Music. Always hated the one they did on us.

Zamora had this antique Celtic throne in his bedroom, just to give you an idea… He would go on and on about the damned thing.

‘Just imagine the asses that’ve warmed that seat,’ he’d say. And I’m thinking, Not enough to make it worth the 200k you shelled out for it.

He had this ritual where he’d sit in the thing. An assortment of hardcore narcotics laid out buffet-style on this fancy-pants, stone coffee table. Then he’d go down the line from right to left until he was so fucking smashed that he’d sometimes forget who you were.

Me and the guys had been clean for almost a year up to that point and we had no intention of falling back into the shitstorm of addiction, even if the idea of escaping reality was more appealing than ever. These days a clear head is essential to your survival.

The three of us had initially tossed around the idea of mutiny rather than leave our cushy accommodations. It was a few months in. The height of the collapse. It was starting to look like the deadfucks had won. Information from the outside world was minimal. The last we had heard from the Emergency Broadcast System was essentially, ‘You’re on your own, folks.’

Gramps gasps... yells ‘Shit,’ so loud I heard it over the music.

Graeme leans out of the window in a sudden burst of movement, his face pointed at the road behind them, his tangled mane whipping in the wind.

A startled Hollister whips his head toward Graeme.

Hollister: What?

Jules (V.O.): I could tell who it was by the way Gramps’ voice cracked and, as usual, it sent chills down my spine.

Graeme leans back into the vehicle, looks to Hollister, then Jules. A mixture of frustration and mild shock on his face.

Graeme: Her again.

Jules (V.O.): Our number one fan... I dare myself to look, thinking that maybe the tinted rear window would somehow lessen the impact of seeing her again. It doesn’t. She’s standing at the side of the road; a dead girl wrapped in soaking wet clothing – ripped jeans, boots, and a sleeveless concert Tee from our ‘Ride the Serpentine’ Tour back in ‘88. Wet blond hair clinging to her porcelain-white face. Even at a distance I could tell that her eyes were locked on the van. Maybe she could even see me looking at her through the small, tinted square.

As usual she steals the moment and we sit there marinating on her spooky ass to the music. I wonder about her eyes. If they’re in fact green, like the song…

‘Green-Eyed Lady’ skips and then cuts off. A skittering, whirling sound pours from the van’s speakers. Hollister angrily jabs a button with his finger.

Hollister (re: CD player): No fucking way!

Hollister ejects a compact disc and looks it over. He blows on one side, rubs it against his shirt, and then slides it back into the console. He pushes a button and waits. The disc skitters and whirls. Silence...

Hollister ejects the CD and tosses it over his shoulder. It lands in a cardboard box on the floor near Jules’ feet. The box is full of discarded CDs collected from various places along the way.

Hollister: So much for tunes, fellas.

Graeme: Shit, man. I need something to get my mind off the girl.

Jules (excited): Stone Show should be on.

Hollister fingers a few buttons.

A soothing female voice (Raven Tremble – African American, 41) fills the interior of the van. She’s the former co-host and current host of the Martin Stone Radio Show.

Jules (V.O.): I fall under Raven’s spell as soon as I hear her voice. It’s a comforting feeling, like the warmth of a woman’s naked body on a cold night. A live woman, that is. Gramps was right there with me.

The telethon was in full swing at the Weather. The goal was to find more virus resistant donors to grow the government’s vaccine supply. They were in the middle of a survivor story from some celebrity whose voice none of us recognized.

Later, Raven gets choked up when a random caller mentions Martin Stone. They cut to commercial. Same fucking ads as last week. The Consortium of Able-Bodied Volunteers. Hager Portable Shelters. We quote the ZOM-B-GONE ad verbatim. Even Holly – Mr. Too-mature-for-that-kinda-shit – gets in on the fun.

…ZOM-B-GONE STICKY BOMB PERSONAL EXPLOSIVE DEVICE! ZOM-B-GONE STICKY BOMB PERSONAL EXPLOSIVE DEVICE! ZOM-B-GONE STICKY BOMB PERSONAL EXPLOSIVE DEVICE!

We have a good laugh. It’s a nice break from the tension.

‘We should cover that shit,’ Gramps jokes.

Raven apologizes when the show returns from break. She makes a few statements about the search for Martin Stone, which as of this moment, has been unsuccessful. It’s been 11 months since he called in to the show. Raven plays the infamous phone call for what must be the millionth time. We listen on pins and needles… again.

Heavy Static. Three words. ‘Raven. It’s Martin.’  Dialtone.

Not everyone is convinced that the voice on the phone belonged to the real Martin Stone. But Raven had made up her mind. And that was all most people needed. Myself included.

She urges people to have hope and not to believe the rumors. There were three popular rumors going around.

Rumor #1: Martin Stone is dead, killed soon after the call.

As much as I loved him, Martin would be the first to admit that he’s a giant pussy who wouldn’t last a minute in the trenches with the deadfucks. Maybe he’s even walking round with the rest of  ’em. There are people out looking for him, if you can believe that.

Rumor #2: Martin has been kidnapped and is currently being held hostage to use as a bargaining chip for the Lazarus vaccine.

LZ is more valuable than gold these days. The government caravans are constantly being raided. Virus resistant donors kidnapped on their way to the Weather. But if this one was true, I think we would have heard from the kidnappers by now.

Rumor #3: Martin is safe and sound at the Weather where he’s been since soon after the call. The government is manufacturing the ‘missing’ angle to rally support.

There was no denying Martin Stone’s role in getting us through this thing. Who woulda thought? Radio Shock Jock Martin-fucking-Stone, savior of the human race. It was no accident that Raven and the survivors from the fall of the Brand Compound were allowed into the Weather and that the show was currently broadcast from there. The government meant to use that influence to reconnect with the nation. But as far as manufacturing the ‘missing’ angle…? Not likely.

We didn’t know about the Stone Show until the night of the big blowout at the Grotto between Cinderella and one of the sister-wives. I mean, we had developed a good rapport with Stone from the few times we did his show in the late ’80s, early ’90s, so we obviously knew who he was, but we had no idea that he was still broadcasting. Zamora had kept us in the dark. He wouldn’t let anyone else into the communications room, so we got all our info second-hand. At the time, we had no reason not to trust him.

The fight between the girls was over whose room they were going meet in to listen to the Stone show. I’m like, ‘Stone Show? As in Martin Stone?’

The girls agreed to let us listen under the condition that we not reveal to Zamora that they had been ‘borrowing’ the satellite radio without his permission.

By the time we tuned in, the show had already become a movement. We learned about the other survivors out there. Heard their stories. I had no idea there were so many. People fighting back. Forming settlements. Trying to move forward with some sense of normalcy.

Things were going downhill fast at the Grotto, so we created the ‘gigs for food/supplies’ ads that aired on the Stone Show. The idea was that we’d secretly try to work those gigs into an extended residency (hopefully permanently) at a decent settlement. We told Zamora that we just wanted to work out some new material. He was too obsessed with his filmography to listen to the Stone Show. He let us use his equipment under two conditions.

Condition #1: We had to let Cinderella contribute during the sessions.

That girl was to music what granny porn was to hard cocks – unless you’re some kinda weirdo. Three failed albums – all produced by Zamora – and they still didn’t get the hint.

Condition #2: We had to change our name to AntiRot.

Zamora thought it was so fucking clever. ‘You need a name people can get behind,’ he goes. We fought him on it, but it was obvious that short of killing him – which we considered – we would have to give in.

Before anything could pan out from the ads, things came to a head between Zamora and the Star 80 boyfriend. Shots were fired. People took sides, which only made things worse. Dumb fucks never learn. There was only one side at the Grotto.

We came up with a plan. Gramps would take one for the team with one of the sister-wives. She was the worse one, too. This chick looked like she literally ate cigarettes. Gramps got her to slip Zamora a Mickey so they could be together. Then he was to get the codes to the freezer, garage, and the weapons room from her, and we’d be outta there lickety-split. Turned out Zamora was so paranoid that his wives didn’t even know the code to the weapons room. So we had to settle for two-outta-three. We left that night while everyone slept. We left that shitty name behind, too.

The deadfucks were out in droves. It was a diverse crossroads of folks wandering around like awestruck tourists without an itinerary. Holly made a joke about racial harmony coming at a price, and another about the van’s off-road grille guards being the great equalizer or something. We moved through Jersey on slow steamroll, making forced conversation to distract from the constant bumpity-bump of soft bodies against the grille guards, the squishy crackling when the tires rolled them over, the pounding of hundreds of fists against the sides of the van, and the sound of as many voices grunting, and growling, and moaning, and wailing, and sounding all kinds of pissed that a hearty meal was very slowly getting away.

The windshield wipers couldn’t move fast enough to clear away the blood before another coat darkened the glass. We could barely see through. We chartered a course with each sway of the wiper-arm, our faces pressed together like a ‘Three Stooges’ bit, waiting for a peek through the temporary triangle of clarity, past the swell of deadfucks, at the road beneath their feet. The damn things were so tightly packed that it was hard to tell where the road ended and the dirt-shoulder began. That was when we first saw her; our number one fan. She was hanging out with the stragglers a few layers into the woods up ahead where the road curved hard left. She appeared to be looking right at us, which, at the time, fit right in with the general deadfuck groupthink.

If it weren’t for her groupie digs, and the concert Tee, we might’ve looked right past her. Just another deadfuck, albeit one who maintained a certain degree of beauty, even in death. A glimpse was all we could afford as there were far more pressing matters to attend to.

We were so slogged down with bodies… the under carriage, and wheel-well so mucked up with loose flesh and shattered bone and tangled in guts that, for a moment there, it seemed like we might not make it. And for the first time since this whole thing started, I worried that I might actually experience what it’s like to be eaten alive. You can’t imagine the rush of unholy terror that thought brings about. Not unless you’ve been there.

No sooner did things clear up than we stopped to help some ‘injured’ couple on the side of the road and nearly got ambushed by a group of scavengers.

Shoulda known… Shoulda fucking known...

Gramps was halfway outta the van when Holly stepped on the gas. The fuckers appeared from the trees seconds later. Like ninjas. Or is it ninja? It must’ve been a dozen of ’em, armed with automatic weapons. Gramps had to hang on for dear life as they fired at the van. Thank God for Spectra Shield, Ballistic Nylon, and bulletproof glass. We laugh about it now. At the time we seriously considered returning to the Grotto.

We ultimately decided to head to my place in Chestnut Hill where I had a considerable gun collection stored in a safe behind a fake wall in my bedroom closest. It was nothing compared to Zamora’s arsenal, but I’ve been shooting since I was a kid, so I had my share.

The place was completely ransacked. It broke my heart to see it that way. This was my home. It looked like someone had gone through it with a sledgehammer and then celebrated with the party to end all parties. Graffiti everywhere. Broken glass. Holes kicked or punched in the walls throughout the house. A few bodies. Thank God they hadn’t found the safe. We grabbed the guns, and a few other things, and booked.

Thanks to the Stone show, we had the latest settlement list from the emergency broadcast system. So we headed toward the nearest settlement and crossed our fingers. We came across those scavengers again. Someone had left their heads on sticks on the side of Township Line Road. What goes around comes around, I guess.

The thing about celebrity is that people feel like they know you. And familiarity carries a lotta weight these days. It allowed us to sidestep that initial period of mistrust people talk about when you arrive at a new settlement. Sometimes they’d ask us to play, and we would gladly oblige with an acoustic set. Nine times outta ten they’d invite us to stay, and for a while things would go smoothly.

But then we’d eventually end up on the wrong end of a deadly weapon, usually in the hands of some rightly pissed-off boyfriend or husband out for blood because his lady fell under Gramps’ spell. Most of the time the kid wasn’t even trying. It’s like a bonafide superpower, that fucking charm-a-his. Even at 48. And it ain’t just the groupie types that fall victim. I’ve seen it work on educated women.  Doctors. Corporate CEOs. Assistant District Attorneys. The kinds-a-chicks you’d think would consider themselves above spreadin’ for a rock star. Once he works that serpentine swagger, flips that hair-a-his, and flashes that crooked smile, they all drop their drawers. It’s the damndest thing. Even the dead ones…

Nah. I’m just fucking around. But damned if Gramps didn’t occasionally spot some chick he’d bagged wandering around post mortem. I shit you not. That boy got around.

If it wasn’t Gramps’ charm, then we’d wind up in the middle of some internal squabble that turned violent and/or led to some act of sabotage, and we’d have to book on a moment’s notice. It never failed. Ever.

Altogether we had been asked to leave, thrown out of, or escaped from seven settlements. It became obvious to us that we needed our own place.

We had our instruments, a few guns, a 5lb bag of Idaho Russets and a case of outdated Spaghettios to our name. The food was compliments of our last place of residency. A real shithole group in Somerset, Pa.

‘Looks like liquid shits on the horizon for us,’ I joked.

Holly gets all pissy, goes, ‘At least we have food.’

We took a vote and decided that our best option was to head back to the Grotto. It was two-to-one; Holly being the odd man out.

It had been roughly six months since we left the place. In that time, there was no way in hell that band of fucktards hadn’t killed each other or, in some way, gotten themselves killed. No fucking way. It was a statistical impossibility.

Holly was butthurt about finding our ‘friends’ – and I use the term lightly – walking around all deadfucked.

I kept busting his balls on the ride there. ‘No gig is too small,’ I go. It used to be our motto when we were starting out. Now it means any fucked up, shitball situation where we’re faced with less than favorable odds.

Holly had a point, actually. It’s always worse when it’s someone you know behind that deadfuck gaze. Especially when you have to waste ’em. It messes with your head in the way that you never get used to. I don’t give a fuck how desensitized you think you are. You start to second guess yourself as you lock them in your sights. It may have only been hours ago that you were having a conversation with this person. And now they want to eat you. And not in the good way.

You wonder. ‘Was that just recognition I saw in their eyes? Is there some hint of the person I knew just hours, minutes, seconds ago, begging me not to shoot?’

Everyone hears the voice. But again, I would hardly call anyone at the Grotto a friend.  Maybe Zamora, in the beginning. Maybe... But even he had an agenda, which was…

1. To promote his girls. We stocked all our early videos with the bimbos.

2. To jam with us. Zamora had rock-star aspirations without a lick of talent in that regard.

‘And what if they did survive?’ Holly goes on to say. ‘You think Zamora’s just gonna welcome us back? You think he’s gonna let it slide that we stole his van or that we took food from the freezer? And let’s say he’s in a forgiving mood… Would you honestly want to live with those junkie, psychos again? What’s your solution then? Huh? We just gonna ask them to leave? Er kick ’em out? Er kill them if they don’t? You prepared for all that?’

Holly has a knack for the dramatics, if you haven’t noticed.

We held out hope that whatever had gone down at the Grotto after we left, that they hadn’t completely destroyed the place. Between the three of us, we were handy enough to make it livable as long as the damage wasn’t too severe.

The generator was still running when we got there. Zamora kept it hidden under a row of fake shrubs on the northeast side of the estate. Solar panels posed as skylights above the kitchenette. The front door to the main house had been left wide open. No sign of forced entry. Not good. Inside a few deadfucks wandering like prospective buyers at an open house. No sweat.

The entrance to the Grotto was locked from the inside, which meant they were still down there. The door was located underneath the fireplace. We knocked, but got no answer.

There was a back entrance upstairs in the master bedroom; a fake wall inside the armoire. It opened onto a stairwell that led to Zamora’s room in the bunker. He let mention of it slip one night when the alcohol/oxycontin cocktail had him tripping balls.

Actually, that was every night.

It was a long trip down that staircase. We wet some towels and held them over our faces to block out the smell. It was so fucking bad that it stung your eyes. If you think you’re immune to deadfuck b.o., try to imagine it after being sealed in an enclosed area for three months. It gets in your clothes. Your hair. Up your nose. And it haunts you for days. Just the thought of it makes me wanna heave.

I found myself reexamining my feelings toward the Grotto group on the way down. If we weren’t friends then why was my stomach all knotted up at the thought of seeing them deadfucked?

‘Having second thoughts?’ Holly goes. I must’ve had a look on my face.

The smell was even worse in Zamora’s room. Thicker. Like it had weight to it, if that makes any sense. ‘Fruiting shit wrapped in rotten cold cuts,’ was Gramps’ take on it. And he wasn’t far off. It was the kinda thing you had to prepare yourself for. You couldn’t just run in. Even with the towels over our faces.

It took a second to register that the thing squeezed into Zamora’s throne was even human, let alone the man himself. The Goddamned thing had to be three, maybe four times his size, and swollen from a mixture of food and death-bloat. His face was like an unflattering caricature made into a mask and pressed against the front of a much bigger head. There was a column of rolls as wide as his fattened head where his neck used to be. Loose fat pushed through open spaces in the chair and spilled over the arms like rising dough.

The throne was surrounded by an altar of garbage. Empty cans. Plastic wrappers. Water bottles. Half-eaten meals on plates. Several of the plates were broken from the slide down the garbage slope.

We approached him from behind. Holly goes, ‘That you, Alex?’

Sounds funny in retrospect.

Zamora’s reaction was delayed. Like he had overheard one stranger calling out to another across a crowded room and was mildly curious to put faces to the voices. His eyes eventually found us. They were clouded over and bugged out of his head in way that seemed to suggest life. For a split second I wondered. ‘Is he…?’

Then Gramps gets all Captain Obvious and lays it out CSI-style. ‘Looks like the weight gain put so much stress on his heart that he couldn’t handle his usual drug cocktail,’ he goes.

Zamora’s eyes light up. ‘Food!’ I didn’t think they could get any bigger.

If wood could scream it would sound something like the noise the throne made when he leaned toward Gramps, who was closest to him, and tried to grab him with his big sausage arms and hands that literally looked like over-inflated surgical gloves.

Holly walks up and plants a screwdriver right in his skull. Bye bye deadfuck-Zamora. We shared a quiet moment as you often do when it’s someone you know… er knew. Something I forgot to mention earlier.

A fire lights under Holly’s ass. He looks up, goes, ‘The others!’ And we all have the same thought.

Did he eat them?

Nah… I think I actually said it out loud.

Me and Holly head for the door to check for the others when Gramps yells, ‘Wait!’

He’s got the TV remote in his hand. He points it at the screen and pushes ‘play.’

There they were; what was left of the group, duct-taped to chairs in the screening room.  Cinderella. A sister-wife. The stunt cock and an associate. They were seated side-by-side. Clearly deadfucked. A movie played on a loop on the screen. Scenes from Zamora’s latest, and probably his worst.

‘Sick son of a bitch,’ Holly goes.

Zamora would have these ‘movie nights.’ It started off as a good thing. We’d watch mostly upbeat flicks to escape from reality. Zamora would slip in some unused stuff from his archives and then pester you for your opinion afterward. The smart move was to lie. As time went on ‘movie nights’ turned into the Alex Zamora film festival. Attendance mandatory.

Graeme rewinds the footage.

Jules (V.O.): Holly goes, ‘I’m not sure I wanna see this.’ But he doesn’t look away when Gramps pushes ‘play.’

Video

The Screening Room (No Sound)

A small screening room. Movie theatre-style seating. A screen spans the entire length and width of the front wall.

An obese, pyjama-clad Zamora leads Cinderella, a sister-wife, the stunt-cock, and an associate into the room at gunpoint and instructs them to sit next to each other. They look weak, malnourished. The men appear to have been beaten. Their heads hang low. Shoulders slack. No fight left in them. The stunt-cock appears to have received the worst of it. He can barely stand and has to be helped into his seat.

Zamora puts the gun to Cinderella’s head. She shrinks, face tightened, eyes squeezed shut. Tears stream down her face as she anticipates her demise. ‘Will it hurt? Will it be quick?’ Zamora savors the moment, and then yells something to the group. They flinch at the sound of his raised voice. He continues to yell and gesture toward the screen. Afterward, he leans closer to Cinderella and mouths something in her ear. He points to a plastic bag on the floor. Several rolls of duct tape inside. The girl grabs a roll and moves reluctantly to tape the others to their chairs. Zamora scrutinizes her technique along the way and threatens her several times for moving too slowly. She is trembling, weeping heavily. Afterward, he tapes the girl to the aisle seat using the same technique. He makes a point to do it twice as quickly as she had done. He makes a speech punctuated with big, sweeping arm movements, and then leaves the room.

Cinderella and the sister-wife struggle against their restraints and attempt to rally the others, but the stunt-cock is barely conscious and the associate is paralyzed by fear. He sits there, staring straight ahead and babbling something to himself. The sister-wife eventually yells at him to, ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’

The group looks toward the ceiling, reacting to the dimming lights. Nightvision kicks in and colours the view a putrid green. The movie-screen comes alive and startles the group. The Zamora Films logo fades to a shot of Zamora seated in a director’s chair dressed like some relic from Hollywood’s golden age. He makes a high-minded speech and then unleashes a haphazard montage of extreme sexual acts on the audience.

Cinderella and the sister-wife curse at the screen and continue to struggle. Some of their own scenes appear in the montage. The associate has awakened from his fear-coma and is talking to the stunt-cock, who doesn’t respond, but just sits there, motionless. Head sagging. Hang-jawed. Drool.

Cinderella and the sister-wife join in. Before long they are yelling at the barely conscious stunt cock to ‘HOLD ON! WAKE UP! STAY ALIVE!’ No response. No movement. The associate leans in trying to get a look at the young man’s face. The stunt-cock flinches, startling the associate. His head bounces. He looks up slowly, dead, but alive.

Undead stunt-cock drunkenly pivots his head from side-to-side as if to ascertain his surroundings. His eyes widen at the sight of food. He lunges toward the associate, and then the sister-wife, teeth snapping shut inches away from them. They panic, screaming, and fighting the restraints with more vigor. The undead stunt-cock thrashes against his restraints as if angered by them. He lunges at the sister-wife without warning. She leans away, but not fast enough, and he bites her on the shoulder. She cries out in pain as Undead stunt-cock snatches his head away from her, his mouth attached by elastic strands of flesh. Blood everywhere.

Fast Forward...

…the sister-wife’s body is slouched in her seat, her head slumped toward the stunt-cock who devours the left side of her face, biting, and whipping his head, and snatching it away from the chewed visage. Cinderella weeps in her seat. The associate thrashes against his restraints.

Fast Forward…

…A frantic Cinderella leans away from Undead sister-wife’s half-headed snarl and snapping teeth. Her face twisted in palpable terror. The stunt-cock similarly pursues the associate.

Fast Forward…

An audience of four seated side-by-side, seemingly content with each other and with the rapid-fire montage of depravity on the screen. They stare with slack-jawed wonder, mesmerized by the colourstorm and the noise or maybe by the sight of warm, edible meat blown up to giant proportions. Cinderella and the associate are no longer interested in fighting. Their wounds tell the story of their demise – Cinderella with her left ear missing and her left arm dangling by sinewy strands from her shoulder. The associate with his entire face eaten away.

End video

Interior of van. Jules seated in back thumbing through a magazine. Acoustic guitar in his lap. Hollister and Graeme in the driver and passenger-seats respectively. Graeme has the window down. His arm rests on the frame.

Jules (V.O.): We got the codes to the entire place by watching footage of Zamora skulking around while everyone slept. Gramps’ idea. We spent a whole day disposing of Zamora’s body, which we had to freeze first, and then cut into pieces. Another day on the rest of the group. We drew straws to see who would have to… de-deadfuckify them, shall we say. And who would have to cut up Zamora. The honors went to Gramps and Holly, respectively. In the end, we did it together. No way I was gonna let them have all the fun. Goooo teamwork!

We piled the bodies out back and burned them. The fire pushed the deadfucks back to the treeline that bordered Zamora’s estate. Fired off a few rounds in the air to remind the hard-headed ones who’s boss. If they had half-a-brain they realized that they had us outnumbered. The fuckers had been creeping since we returned, circling the fringes of the estate like sharks on ketamine. ‘Looks like we’re gonna have to do some cleaning,’ I go.

‘I could use the target practice,’ says Holly.

We all could.

We said a little prayer for the group as the fire raged on. None of us are even remotely religious, but it felt like the right thing to do. We’re doin’ the whole ‘moment of silence’ thing, when Graeme goes, ‘Please tell me you can see that?’

Me and Holly look up, unsure which one of us he’s talking to. He’s looking toward the tree line. So we look, too.

‘Over there,’ he goes. ‘The tree lying on its side...’

But I had already spotted her; our number one fan. The area had been hit with a monster storm a few days before we arrived. An old tree trunk, hollowed out from rot, lay on its side, victim of the wind. The dead girl was standing on top of it like some kinda lookout for the deadfuck army meandering in the woods around her. And, as usual, she was looking in our direction. They all were, in fact. But there was a difference in the way she stared. The others seemed more interested in the flames than the scruffy-looking Rock ‘n’ Roll dinosaurs standing in front of it. But not her.

You could literally feel her eyes on you. It still gives me the chills. Don’t know if you’ve had the privilege of sharing your living space with cockroaches, and I’m talking the big German kind. Just the sight of one haunts you for hours. Especially if it gets away. You know it’s there, but you can’t see it. Meanwhile it sits there, patiently waiting for an opportunity to crawl up your pant leg or across your plate or onto the bed while you’re sleeping. That kind thing.

‘So I wasn’t seeing things.’ Holly goes as if a weight had suddenly lifted off his shoulders. I was thinking the same thing, to be honest.

It took us three more days to get the Grotto back to livable condition. Zamora had put a pretty good dent in the food, but there was a few months’ worth of canned vegetables, Ramen noodles, and oatmeal to go with our supply of potatoes and Spaghettios. Yum!

We gave up on Zamora’s room after several attempts to get rid of the smell, and sealed it off from the rest of the bunker.

During that time we shared stories about our number one fan. Each of us had seen her since that day six months ago when we bolted from the Grotto. Come to find out, Gramps had even attempted to communicate with the girl at one point.

‘It was back at Somerset,’ he goes. ‘Behind the old church, just outside the perimeter of the compound. The one by the lake.’

‘Tha Hell were you doing way out there?’ I say.

‘The black chick,’ Holly says as if I should’ve known.

He’s right. I should’ve known. Her and Gramps’ quickie behind the church was the reason we were ‘asked’ to leave the place. Turned out the girl was spoken for. By whom was the question. There were two people laying stake to that claim. Three if you count the leader’s wife. I often wonder how that ended. Probably not good.

‘Her name was Siobhan,’ Gramps says like he had real feelings for her or something.

Holly throws his hands up in surrender, makes a face. ‘Excuuuse ME.’

‘I bummed a cigarette from her and stayed out there and smoked it after she went back inside. That’s when I saw the girl. She was standing at the edge of the lake looking up the hill at me. This was maybe the third time I had seen her since we left the Grotto. I thought it was all in my head. You know? I was afraid to say anything and have you guys start looking at me sideways.’

We had each arrived at a similar conclusion from our individual encounters with the dead girl in the soaking wet groupie digs and the ‘Ride the Serpentine’ Concert Tee. No use mentioning it to the others and raising concern about your mental state and/or risk losing the trust of the only people in the world that you trust. These days trust is about as rare as deodorant or fresh breath.

‘It was a real secluded spot me and Siobhan had picked,’ Gramps goes. ‘No other deadfucks in sight. So I’m like, “I need to deal with this.” For the sake of my sanity, at least. Right? So I walk closer to the chick. She doesn’t move. I ask her; “Can you hear me? Who are you? What do you want from us?” She looks at me like she wants to tell me something…’

‘Yeah. Come over here pretty-boy and let me eat your lanky ass,’ I say to lighten the mood.

But Gramps was lost in the memory. He talks right over me. The sound of my voice was just background noise at this point.

‘I walk closer,’ he continues. ‘I get within 10-feet of the chick and she starts walking toward me. The look on her face changes. Almost like she’s happy. But happy like a cult-member about to drink the Kool Aid. She’s like… smiling through a peaceful expression. I can see that her eye makeup is smeared from crying. When’s the last time you saw a deadfuck cry? Right? She opens her mouth like she’s about to say something, but it just kinda hangs open.’

Then the son of a bitch trails off with me and Holly sittin’ firmly on the edges of our seats.

‘Then what?’ We say it almost simultaneously.

‘Then I ran is what I fucking did!’

‘Weren’t you packin?’ I go.

‘I had the Glock 19.’

‘Why didn’t you just plug her then?’

‘I don’t know. Something about her. I can’t put my finger on it. I just had to get outta there.’

Remember what I said about cockroaches? Imagine being bitch-slapped by the physical manifestation of that vibe.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I must’ve lay there for hours with the lights on scrolling through the same three questions over and over in my head.

1. Who the hell is this girl?

2. How the fuck does she keep finding us?

3. How is it that she always looks the same?

Six months is a lifetime in deadfuck years. If they even survived that long, you’d expect a certain degree of rot or some gaping, oozing memento of his or her death or of some encounter with the living.

Lights-out in the Grotto was a special kind of dark. Sensory deprivation dark. You want to wait until you’re dead tired before turning in. If you weren’t asleep within the first few minutes then you were liable to be taken places you’d rather not explore. Absolute darkness and absolute silence provides the perfect platform for a fractured psyche to run free. I made the mistake of turning in on half-a-tank. But I was determined to will myself to sleep and NOT to dream. Short of death, it’s the only escape from this Hell.

I was on the waking end of a nod-off cycle when I heard a noise like a faint tapping in the distance. I thought – I hoped – it was one of the boys up for a late-night piss, but there were no residual sounds to support that scenario.

I hear the sound again. I lay there and listen. Was it coming from the main entrance of the Grotto? Maybe someone knocking on the main door? My heart sank. That someone would have to know exactly where to look to find the entrance. Then they’d have to remove the fake fireplace display and lift the panel of steel flooring underneath it to reach the door, which resembled the hatch on a submarine.

Holly appears at my doorway and scares the shit outta me. He’s wriggling into his shirt as he says, ‘Someone’s at the main entrance.’

My brain spits out a stupid question, ‘Who?’

‘How the fuck should I know. A friend of Zamora’s?’

‘That’s just what we fucking need.’

‘Come on.’

He calls out to Gramps as he heads off toward the control room. I jump out of bed and into my clothes. Something on the monitors has Holly and Gramps’ undivided attention when I reach the control room. I shove my way between them and have a look.

It’s her. Our number one fan. She’s down on one knee by the fireplace. A puddle of water on the floor beneath her knee. The fake display is spread across the living room. The steel flooring lifted onto one side exposing the main entrance door. She knocks again.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

And then she waits. We stand there in silence trying to process what we were seeing.

‘I vote we put her creepy ass down before she attracts more of ‘em,’ I go. We had yet to clean up the area and it was getting thick with the deadfucks. That’s when they’re the most dangerous.

‘How do we know this isn’t some trick just to get us to come outside?’ Holly says.

‘A trick?’ I go. ‘Are you fucking kidding me? Orchestrated by who? Rod-fucking-Serling?’

The girl knocks and waits again. Meanwhile me and Holly bicker like a married couple. Afterward she stands up, turns, and looks directly at the camera.

It was like somebody let all the air out of the room. The camera in the living room, which is about the size of an AA battery, is hidden in a vent. There was no way she could’ve known that.

She stands there for a good minute, and then she turns and walks out through the sliding doors on the east side of the house. Holly turns on the exterior floodlights and switches to the cameras mounted high up on the light posts. We watch the girl wander out into the east yard.

Now the argument between me and Holly becomes about whether or not we should go after her and put a period on this whole thing. We hadn’t even noticed that Gramps had left the room until…

Movement on one of the monitors...

It pulls my attention away from the intellectual bullshit falling out of Holly’s mouth. I look and see Gramps taking long strides across the East lawn like a hound-dog locked on a scent. He’s plugging deadfucks like it’s an afterthought, letting them get dangerously close before pulling the trigger, and doing so without even looking. He’s armed with a Glock 19. That’s fifteen rounds versus three times as many deadfucks. At least.

Holly throws attitude my way on his way out the room, ‘Happy now?’

Video

Floodlight Security Camera (East Yard)

An overhead view of a 1-acre field boxed in by Spartan Juniper trees and gaudy Romanesque sculptures atop faux Corinthian columns. The tatters of a volley ball net hangs sadly between rusted steel posts. A gazebo meant to resemble ancient ruins. Floodlights on tall posts impaled in the dirt. Three on each side of the yard, spaced 10-feet apart.

Upright corpses materialize from the spaces between junipers. More pour in from around the front of the estate. They converge in the middle, a sedated stampede, hive-minded, hungry-eyed and salivating at the source of their heightened aggression.

Graeme Gunz moves with purpose toward a gap in the Juniper wall. A trailed of bodies laid out in his wake. An unruly crowd hot on his trail. An ambitious young corpse lunges from the side. Graeme caps it without missing a step. His focus, on the stone pathway winding off into the woods, locked in and unwavering. A headless bust stationed on either side of the pathway. Darkness beyond the trees…

Jules and Hollister explode from the East doors armed with M16s. A canvas satchel strapped across Jules’ torso. They run out into the yard and immediately take aim…

Hollister: GRAEME!

Jules (to Graeme): What the hell’re you doing, man!

They work to thin the herd of undead, starting with the ones closest to Graeme. They move toward Graeme’s position, firing away. A misty cloud-canopy of exploded cerebral residue rains down, painting heads and shoulders red. The herd marches forward like some tribe of stiff-jointed, lead-limbed berserkers worked into a frenzy and covered in war paint. They are unfazed by the bodies dropping all around them and by the obstacles those bodies present. The idea of warm flesh is just too intoxicating. A small faction of undead changes direction, like a deformed tentacle extending away from a larger body and reaching for the two armed men standing on the sideline of the stampede.

Graeme is standing at the mouth of the stone pathway now. His arms hanging by his sides. Shoulders slack. His right hand wrapped around the handle of his gun. Just beyond the junipers, a shadowy figure moves toward the relative light. Seconds later a dead man in blood-stained medical scrubs and a face-mask of third-degree burns steps through the gap. His pace quickens, he reaches out to Graeme, fingers flexing and curling into claws.

Graeme stands there, posture on Mesmer. His body language suggests that he has every intention of allowing the undead man in scrubs to approach him.

Hollister turns his weapon on the approaching undead. He takes out a few before his gun clicks empty.

Hollister (to Jules): I’m out!

Jules reaches into his satchel and tosses a clip to Hollister. He grabs another clip from the satchel. As he reloads his gun…

Jules: GRAAAAAEEEEME!!! (to Hollister) What’s he doin’?

Hollister shakes his head, ‘I dunno…’

Graeme doesn’t respond. Instead, he opens his arms to the undead man in scrubs and third degree burns. The man staggers closer all gums and gnashed teeth shining through an oblong ball of charred meat that used to be a face.

Scrubs is just about on Graeme when Jules takes a shot and then, in one motion, he returns to clearing the herd. Scrubs’ head jerks violently to the right. Blood. Graeme whips his face away from the hard, wet kiss of airborne brain matter. Scrubs crumbles to the ground, leaking moist chunks from the jagged hole in the top left side of his head.

Graeme (re Scrubs): Noooooo!

He turns and charges at Jules, a madman covered in the undead blood. Jules catches wind at the last minute…

Jules (re: Graeme): Hey! What the fu—

…and moves to defend himself against the lanky, pretty-boy juggernaut. The two men tussle.

Graeme: Why’d you have to kill her?

Hollister hurries over and divides his time between separating Jules and Graeme and keeping the herd momentarily at bay. He manages to get between them, wraps his arms around a thrashing Graeme and walks him backward, away from Jules.

As Graeme continues to thrash…

Graeme: Why’d you fucking kill her?! She was trying to communicate with me you stupid fuck.

Jules nonchalantly picks of a few undead between gestures of disbelief.

Jules: Well, excuse me for saving your skinny ass!

Graeme: I had it under control. She wasn’t going to hurt me.

Hollister fires a few rounds with equal disregard and then leans into Graeme’s line of sight.

Hollister: Whaddayou mean, she? She, who?

Graeme points to Scrubs’ expired corpse lying facedown in the dirt.

Graeme: The girl. Our “fan.”

Jules fires without looking. A few more drop.

Jules (to Graeme): Tha fuck are you talking about?

Graeme eyes Jules with suspicion.

Graeme: Waaait a minute, now. I thought we all agreed that she was real.

Hollister calmly drops a few more undead and then grabs Graeme by the shoulders and points him in the direction of Scrubs’ body.

Hollister: We did. But that ain’t her.

End Video

Interior of van/scenery outside windows.

Jules (V.O.): There were so many deadfucks. The damn things were coming out of the woodwork faster than we could plug ‘em. We couldn’t chance having them follow us inside, so we led them away from the estate and ducked into a house down the road where we settled for the night and waited for them to lose interest. Turned out the place used to belong to that basketball player who was outed as a furry by one of the gossip rags. Damn near killed his career. Wouldn’t you know he had a photo of himself with Zamora in his den. Figures.

The place had been thoroughly ransacked and looted to shit, but the doors and windows were mostly intact. We found a stash of liquor hidden in a heap of boxes in the basement. Medicine for the night. Gramps snagged the Patron. Holly took the Jack Daniels and I was packin’ a fancy-schmacy bottle of Absolute Citron.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Gramps goes once the Tequila kicked in and washed away the shock trance he’d been under, ‘But I’m not slipping. I’m fine.’

‘Nobody thinks you’re slipping,’ Holly says.

‘I would if I was in you guys’ shoes.’

‘We all saw the girl on the monitor,’ I go.

‘I’m not talking about the monitor. She was there in the east yard, too. Standing right in front of me. Not more than 10-feet away. I threatened to put a bullet between her eyes unless she came clean. She just gives me this look, same as before. Then she takes off her clothes and starts walking toward me. I knew what was happening was fucked, but it was like I couldn’t move. When you plugged her… It felt like… like being jarred awake from a deep sleep.’

We must’ve sat there for an hour, taking long swigs and not knowing what to say. With everything we knew about this girl, we had no reason not to believe Gramps’ story. But what did it mean? Holly was the first one to offer up a theory.

‘What if she’s a ghost?’ he says like he expected us to laugh in his face. No one did.

Gramps nods like he’s on the same page and has been there for some time.

‘Why not a ghost, right?’ Holly continues, enlivened by Gramps’ nodding endorsement and half a bottle of Jack. ‘We live in a world where dead people come back to life and eat living people. How fucked is that? So why the fuck not? Why not Chupacabres, too? And fairies. And Leprechauns. And fucking… Bigfoot sitting on a goddamn unicorn, surfing a UFO across the Bermuda fucking triangle?’

I raise my bottle in support. ‘Why the fuck not!’ I take a drink then add, ‘Maybe not Leprechauns, though.’

‘What does she want?’ Gramps steps all over my comic timing like not knowing causes him great pain.

‘I think it’s obvious what would’ve happened if Jules hadn’t taken the shot,’ Holly says.

‘But why?’

‘That’s the million dollar question, kid.’

Holly goes on to theorize that we only seem to see her in the presence of deadfucks, like she somehow uses them to travel around. Sounds kinda cool if it wasn’t so goddamn unsettling.

I take a long swig and grunt away the burning aftertaste. Afterward I whip my head toward an imaginary camera somewhere between Holly and Gramps and go into my best Clint Eastwood. ‘Looks like we got some cleaning up to do,’ I say.

Nobody laughs.

Tough crowd.

Video

Spring Cleaning

Weapons room

Antiseptic lighting. Several long weapons (assault rifles, shotguns, rpgs) mounted vertically on the wall. Another wall for handguns. Another for miscellaneous gear (holsters, slings, vests, shell bags). A cabinet full of ammo.

Quick cuts of Graeme and Hollister reaching into the frame and snatching weapons from the walls.

Garage roof (Floodlight Cam)

A six car-garage the size of a modest house. A wide driveway down in front extends to the edge of the frame and beyond. An overgrown field borders the other sides of the garage. A wooden deck on top. Expensive patio furniture shoved aside. Jules standing in the middle of the deck dowsed in sunlight. A guitar strapped to his chest. A wire snakes from the butt down to a mid-sized amp on the deck. A large speaker in the corner. Chirping chords waft from the guitar as Jules tunes the strings. A loose contingent of undead stumble into the frame from all sides and make their way toward the noise, the slow-lurch parade seemingly in accord with the fragmented rhythm.

Jules (V.O.): I hurt my knee in the tussle with Gramps, so the boys thought I should hang back while they cleaned up. Holly came up with what you see here when I pitched a fit about Plan A. The speaker and amp were compliments of Zamora’s rock star pipe dream. The idea was that I act as a decoy to lure the deadfucks out into the open and help round ‘em up into one location. Then Gramps and Holly would come in and cut ‘em down. It gave me the opportunity to shred, which I had been complaining about not having had in a while.

Weapons room

Graeme and Hollister clad in tactical gear. They strap weapons across their torsos. Slide handguns into their holsters.

Garage roof (Floodlight Cam)

The chirping chords become more succinct as Jules finds his perfect pitch. His fingers dance translating kinetic energy into sound. Slow, seductive chords like foreplay for some monumental sexual event. Jules sinks in the groove. The chords manifest in swaying movement and a rhythmic head nod, scraggy red hair hanging in front of his face. A crowd forms at the foot of the raised stage, growing exponentially through a series of scene dissolves...

Soon the garage is surrounded by a pulsating, undulating skirt of undead, their intent splayed across their rotten faces as they reach upward and claw and bite at air, laying hands on the garage walls as if to find purchase and climb up.

Jules is locked in a symbiotic link with his guitar, seemingly unconcerned with the crowd beneath him. His eyes squeezed shut. Head nodding. Hips grinding air. Fingers doing a dexterous dance on the strings while the bridge squeals to his slow-hand caress.

Shots ring out off-frame. A shift in the undead crowd as bodies begin to drop. The phenomenon spreads out from the rear of the garage, around to the sides…

Graeme and Hollister enter the frame from rear-left and right. They are nearly unrecognizable wrapped in battle gear and brandishing machine guns—an AR 15 and an MK 17 respectively. Several more guns on their person. A designer golf-club (a driver) dangles upside-down from Graeme’s belt. The wrapped handle of an aluminum tee-ball bat protrudes from a long carrying case strapped to Hollister’s back. Bandanas around their necks. Goggles.

The two men press forward, their torsos on pivot like an automatic sprinkler, spraying the crowd with bullets. It becomes evident that they are targeting the lower extremities. A follow up headshot as the bodies drop—if possible.  Graeme moves left, Hollister right. They travel at an arc, around the sides, to the front of the garage, and come together in the middle of the driveway.

Jules continues to play as the bodies fall and lie splayed out, writhing like dying petals on some giant, fleshy flower. Down below Graeme and Hollister have stopped firing to inspect the damage. A few dozen undead remain among the moist, slushy carrion moat at the base of the garage, unable to stand, yet still determined to nab the nearest bite of warm flesh.

Graeme and Hollister strap their primary weapons across their torsos. Graeme yanks the driver from his waist and flips it right-side up. Hollister slides the bat from the carrying case against his back. They pull the bandanas up over their mouths and noses and communicate via nods before wading into the moat. They swing their weapons like bludgeons at the heads of any surviving undead, high-stepping so as not to slip on the soft, squishy chunks that moved strangely underfoot or to become entangled in the intestinal lattice.

End Video

Interior of van/scenery outside windows.

Jules (V.O.): Gramps and Holly both reported seeing our fan during the bitch of a clean-up. Some random deadfuck Holly was dragging to the pile to burn. One of the few that had managed to survive the bullet spray and the blunt object beatdown.

‘This one appeared to be paralyzed from the neck down,’ Holly goes. ‘Just some average-looking fuck dressed like he was dead long before he was walking around jonesing for live meat. I was holding him by the legs. His arms were up over his head, which was turned to the side facing Gramps who was dragging a body next to me.’

Then Gramps chimes in.

‘I look over and there she was staring at me while Holly dragged her,’ he goes.

I glance at Holly who nods, goes, ‘Same shirt. Same ripped jeans. Same boots. All soaking wet. Hair clinging to her face. The whole shebang. It was seriously fucked. I dropped the bitch like a hot potato. Had to ask myself if I had somehow mistaken the average fuck for this chick back at the garage, but I knew there was no way. Meanwhile Gramps goes apeshit and starts stomping the chick’s face and head until there’s nothing left. I had to pull him offa her. When we looked again it was the average fuck laying there with his face bashed in. Seriously fucked, man.’

That was the last we saw of our fan for a long time. We settled on a plan-of-action should we see her again, which was essentially the same set of guidelines for dealing with deadfucks.

1. Keep your distance.

2. Aim for the head.

3. Avoid eye contact

Within a week, she had fallen to the bottom of the list of daily concerns. Within two weeks, she was a haunted memory. We had settled into a routine. Morning stretch/workout. Breakfast with the Stone Show. Jam sessions. Movie night. Long discussions about the meaning of life and lack thereof—we each did time as Debbie Downer and Captain Optimism. We had become the poster children for the Post-9/6 American Family: Rockstar Edition.

Gramps got on this filmmaking kick and starting filming everything. He would spend hours in the editing suite learning how to use the equipment. The ‘Spring Cleaning’ clip is the result of his editorial tinkering. The rest of the time he’d walk around with a camera stuck to his eye. Gramps had an addictive personality. So when he was into something – or someone – he was all in. His face would light up in a way that made his enthusiasm infectious. Like when he would really connect with lyrics I wrote. So you were instantly drawn into whatever he was into at the moment. And his latest addiction was filmmaking.

Within a month we had an album’s worth of new music. I’m talkin’ the best shit we’d ever written. We didn’t even realize what we had until we watched the footage from the jam sessions. Rock ‘n’ Roll was our therapy. It allowed us to work through all the bullshit.

The new stuff was a culmination of everything we had gone through since the world turned upside down put to music. We avoided using our number one fan as inspiration out of fear that we might somehow conjure her up. I wrote a little something for her in secret, though. Just a few lines. My intention was to explore the person she was in life, but I was working with very little info.

We were listening to the Stone Show the morning the Brand Compound came under attack. We grieved when the show went dark. I would equate the feeling with withdrawal. We tuned in to the wannabees and the whack jobs to ease the pain. The general consensus was that the Brand was an inside job. How else could a fortress like that have been overrun so quickly? The dead ain’t exactly known for their organizational skills.

We rejoiced when the Stone Show returned and laughed at the irony that it was now being broadcast from the Government’s official bunker. If you know anything about the Stone Show’s history with the FCC, you’d understand how that was like Superman and Lex Luthor moving in together. Martin’s absence from the show was hard to ignore, but we at least held out hope that he was still alive somewhere.

Then, one morning, we’re listening over breakfast. They were running a segment on people’s daily routines. Some guy named Caleb Kaiser calls in from Upper Marlboro. Says he starts every morning by listening to our song ‘Ride the Serpentine’ in honor of his wife Thana, our ‘number one fan,’ who died 6-months-ago. He goes into their story. They met at a concert during our Ride the Serpentine Tour. Love at first sight. Married for 17 years. One child; a son, Liam. Nine-years-old. Dead. The caller choked up at that point. Deadfucks, I assumed.

‘My Thana,’ he goes. ‘She was never the same after the death of our son. It broke her. She regressed to a happier time in her life to cope with it. Started dressing like she did when we first met. She was a groupie for Serpentine at the time. Real diehard. Followed them all over the country. She would go around calling the lead singer Graeme Gunz her husband. She never even met the guy. That was actually a point of contention during the first few years of our marriage.’

The caller stopped, blew out some air. You could hear the emotion in his breath. I wanted to yell at him to continue, but my head was spinning from his story, mainly the description of his wife, Thana. I suddenly felt cold. Goosebumps. I look over at Gramps. He was white as a ghost – no pun intended.

‘What I wouldn’t give to have her back,’ the caller continued. ‘She had gotten this idea in her head that there was this concert in Baltimore she was supposed to attend. She would take one of the cars and run. We had to start restraining her. It was awful. She begged me to loosen her restraints. She said they hurt her wrists. I didn’t want to, but she begged me. You see. She was in such pain. I couldn’t bear to see her like that. So I did what she asked…’

He paused. No exhale this time. Just dead air.

‘She got out that night,’ he could hardly say the words. ‘We found her car two days later. It was on its roof, half-submerged on the bank of Palmer Lake.’

The caller descends into full-on weeping. And that becomes the background noise for the biggest ‘Holy Shit’ moment this side of finding out that the deadfucks weren’t just part of some elaborate Hollywood promotion.

Gramps blew chunks all over the table. Holly blew chunks at the sight and smell of Gramps’ half-digested breakfast. I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t so fucking shell-shocked. We went through the rest of the day on auto pilot, avoiding eye contact and moving around the Grotto like strangers who shared a dark secret. I finally had enough and suggested the one thing that I knew would get our minds off this shit.

‘Let’s jam.’

It took a little coaxing, but we got a good session in. I let the guys in on the lyrics I wrote about our number one fan. Now I had a title, Thana, and a story to reference from. It didn’t take long for a song to materialize. I approached it from the angle of unrequited love and how far we’ll go to obtain the object of our undying affection. I wrote a version where she got what she wanted. Gramps wasn’t the biggest fan, but he understood the process.

The next day on the Stone Show, a woman named Janice calls in with a few words of support for ‘that poor man from yesterday’s show who lost his wife and son.’ She goes on to describe how ‘Ride the Serpentine’ has special meaning to her as well. She credits the song with giving her strength when she’s feeling overwhelmed and ready to throw in the towel.

Imagine that. I never saw Ride as an inspirational tune. To me it’s just the manifestation of the wave of ‘Fuck Yeah!’ I was riding when I wrote the damn thing. It was ’87, I think. Right around the time when we graduated from famous to God-like status. Back when my head was the size of a frickin’ bowling ball. I defy anyone to live through that shit without it going to your head a little.

On the show, co-host Raven and Janice share legendary rock anecdotes. They name-drop Serpentine in the same breath as the Stones, Zeppelin, Guns n’ Roses, Metallica, Nirvana, as groups that changed the game. They call Gramps the slithery personification of Rock ‘n’ Roll and they call me a bonafide guitar God. I can live with that. They even throw Holly a bone when one of the behind the scenes guys goes into this rant about how it must suck to be the drummer in a successful rock group. ‘You’re like window dressing,’ he goes. ‘…an afterthought...’ They debate the subject for a while.

The Stone Show opens with the song the next day. Somehow it just fits. They open the show with it from then on. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more proud of one of my babies.

Raven jokes about a lawsuit since they hadn’t officially gotten permission to use the song.

Me and the guys decide to prank the show. What better way to let everyone know that we’re still here. Holly calls in as our former attorney Ira Levinthal. Good old Ira. Always wondered what happened to him. He was such a pussy that it couldn’t have been good.

‘It’s my intention to serve you with a Cease and Desist order unless my clients are paid for the use of their song,’ Holly – as Ira – says to Raven on the air. She catches him off-guard when she plays along with the joke. Holly runs out of legal mumbo-jumbo and let’s the cat out of the bag.

Raven seems genuinely happy to hear from us. We spend the next hour and seventeen minutes telling our story post 9/6, affectionately remembering Martin Stone, and waxing philosophical about the power of music in light of recent developments.

We thank the callers and fans and the show for giving them a voice. We end the call with an acoustic rendition of Ride.

A week later, we’re on our way to the Weather to take part in the telethon and to discuss possibly staying on as the Stone Show house band. Gramps’ got this idea about turning this documentary thing into a series. Real World: Mount Weather Edition. Ha!

Stranger things have happened.

Stay tuned…

***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andre Duza is an actor, screenwriter, and a leading member of the Bizarro movement in contemporary literary fiction. His novels include Voodoo Child (co-written with Wayne Simmons), WZMB, King Dollar, Technicolor Terrorists, Necro Sex Machine, Jesus Freaks, Dead Bitch Army, and the graphic novel, Hollow-Eyed Mary. He is the co-author of Son of a Bitch co-written with Wrath James White, and Outer Light, a graphic novel sequel to a Hugo Award Winning episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that was penned by television writer/producer Morgan Gendel.

He has also contributed to such collections and anthologies as Book of Lists: Horror alongside the likes of Stephen King, Edgar Wright and Eli Roth.

www.houseofduza.com
facebook.com/andreduza

ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

My first novel, STRAIGHT TO YOU, was released in 1996 and promptly disappeared from view. 500 copies were printed, and I still have a couple of boxes from the original print run in my garage! The experience taught me several valuable lessons about writing, most notably that both the hardest and most important task for a new author is to find people to read their work. In those dim and distant pre-Internet, pre-ebook days, that was no easy task.

When it came to releasing my second novel, AUTUMN, in 2001, I was already making my first tentative steps online. It struck me that the easiest way to get people to read my book was to give it to them for free, so that was what I did. And with no real plan or design, my first zombie novel generated around half a million downloads, a series of sequels, a radio adaptation and even a (not so great) movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine.

Self-publishing was frowned upon in 2001 (and still is today in some quarters), so I decided to take a different approach. I talked about ‘independent publishing’ instead, and I set up INFECTED BOOKS, my own publishing company. I hit the market at just the right time and managed, through luck more than judgement, to capitalize both on the sudden growth of ebooks, and also on the massive popularity of zombies.

In the fifteen years since AUTUMN was published, zombies have become a global phenomenon. In the same decade and a half, the publishing industry has changed beyond all recognition. Back in the day, myself, Brian Keene and David Wellington were just about the only folks putting out zombie fiction. Now that’s changed and there are many brilliant zombie authors delivering the goods. I thought the fifteen year anniversary would be a great opportunity to celebrate both the enduring appeal of the living dead and the massive success of zombie authors worldwide.

2016 is Infected Books’ YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE, and over the course of the year you’re going to be treated to brand new zombie novellas by some of the very best in the business. Check www.infectedbooks.co.uk at the beginning of each month for each new release.

David Moody

January 2016

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM INFECTED BOOKS

YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE

KILLCHAIN by Adam Baker

THE PLAGUE WINTER by Rich Hawkins

THE YACHT by Iain Rob Wright

Z-HUNT by Mark Tufo

GERAINT WYN: ZOMBIE KILLER by Gary Slaymaker

LITTLE MONSTER by James Plumb

STRANGERS

LAST OF THE LIVING

ISOLATION

THE COST OF LIVING

STRAIGHT TO YOU

AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION

TRUST
by David Moody

GIRL IN THE BASEMENT
by Wayne Simmons

VOODOO CHILD
by Wayne Simmons and Andre Duza

FIND OUT MORE AT WWW.INFECTEDBOOKS.CO.UK

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