I saw many, many familiar faces. Neighbors and friends and enemies. Most were horribly disfigured and missing chunks of flesh from their faces or necks or elsewhere on their bodies. A good number were actually naked and I shudder to think of the pieces they were missing. Gaping holes stood where flopping penises should have been and empty sacks of flesh hung below where even more sensitive parts should have. My stomach gave a great lurch and if I weren’t completely terrified I might have thrown up everything within me and passed out right then and there. I could feel every hurt and bite out there before me. Ever watch a guy wince when he sees someone else get kicked in the balls? Imagine what that guy would feel seeing another guy missing his equipment entirely.
Not pretty.
I looked through the crowd for Barrett, but I didn’t see him in there. Granted, he’d been so torn up that it was difficult to recognize him, anyway, and now I was staring at a crowd – a horde – of wet, glistening madness and open wounds. It kind of distracted the eye. But Mason… yet Mason… stood there before me with almost no wounds at all.
His head still cocked at that weird angle that made you immediately realize his neck was broken. His clothes and hands were covered in dried blood and his mouth was completely disgusting. There were bits of flayed skin hanging from his teeth and black blood coated everything. His mouth was opened at me in a semblance of a grin and I wanted to go over there and floss that crap out of his mouth. What did he want with me? Was this his final bit of revenge for killing him? His final little ha-ha moment to show me what horrors my acts had wrought? Screw him. Shit all over that.
I could feel anger and rage finally begin to overcome the fear and silence that was hanging over us.
“What do you want?” I spoke the words that broke the spell the dead had cast over me.
The zombies did not answer me, of course, but at this point I wouldn’t have been surprised if Mason could speak. His head cocked even more, if that were possible, and he took a shambling step toward me. I let him come. Maybe we could talk and I could put him to rest and this would all be over. Maybe if I killed him they would all fall to the ground. I desperately hoped so. It worked in Silver Bullet and The Lost Boys. How could Corey Haim be wrong?
In case you missed it, the Haimster was in both. The first was about werewolves and the second was vampires. Zombies weren’t so different, right?
It didn’t even occur to me to raise the shotgun until it was too late. Mason was acting so normal, so human that I didn’t even think that talking was not on his mind. But when he got within a couple steps of me his arms finally rose up toward me in that normal zombie fashion and reached for me. I cried out and panicked for a second, feeling my arm throb from the motion and dropping the shotgun in my effort to keep his hands from reaching me.
It fell with a clatter and I gripped his hands in my own. We did a weird zombie dance, but he just kept closing the distance between us. He hadn’t been dead long enough for his muscles to waste and rot away. They were still there and as strong as iron. No longer caring if he hurt himself by over-exertion he just keep pushing forward more and more trying to get me.
Our eyes were inches apart and I could smell his fetid breath. The rotted flesh hanging in his mouth made what little air wheezed out rancid and the whole thing wafted into my face with every push that he made. He wasn’t breathing, but something about the motions he was making pushed air through his lungs and made me want to gag.
The only sound during our silent struggle was the breath wheezing out of my throat. My arm was burning from the gunshot and my leg was beginning to burn from the nutshot Mason had given me Friday night. I didn’t think I had that much left in me with which to fight. My will was ebbing with my strength and I was even beginning to think that maybe being a zombie wouldn’t be all that bad. I could be with my friends and we could go around chomping on people. No more school. No more parents. No more anything. Just the hunger and the inexorable need to feed.
Wait a minute. Shit all over that.
I looked around me for anything I could use before my strength gave out. We were standing a few feet in front of my trailer and there was nothing handy. There were the chairs a few feet off to the side that Fannie Mae, Barrett and I had used what seemed like 20 years ago, but they were little crappy metal chairs that wouldn’t help, not to mention they were too far away. The shotgun lay at my feet, but it might as well have been a million miles away for what good it would do me right now.
I grunted with the effort and used my hands as leverage and pushed against Mason, trying to get him off balance. He moved back an inch, but nothing else happened. He held my hands tightly in a vice grip. My hurt arm began to shake with the exertion of holding him back and I could feel sweat rolling down my face. I only had a few more seconds before all my strength would be gone and he would be on top of me.
Wait. On top of me?
I chanced taking a step back with my left foot and pulling him back in my direction. His teeth snapped at me and I barely whipped my head back in time. Still going through the motion of pulling him back toward me I quickly reversed direction and moved my left foot forward and rested it behind his, following it with my shoulder. It hit him right in the chest and the final shove I gave him pushed him back into my foot. His balance was less than a newborn puppies and he went over backwards without a sound, his hands still gripped tightly on mine.
“Oh, shit!” I cried out and followed him down to the ground, landing on top of him with a whoompf. If he’d still been breathing – or alive – that would have knocked the wind out of him. As it was it still almost took all mine away. He didn’t try to regain his footing or try to push me over to gain leverage or anything a normal person would have done. He just reached with his face to try to bite my nose off. Fortunately the hard, crooked angle of his broken neck got in the way and wouldn’t bend quite the way he needed it to. So he let my hands go and reached for my head to bring it that final inch closer.
That’s what I was waiting for.
I braced my hands on his chest and pushed off, rolling sideways. I landed on my back with a grunt, sliding a few inches on the gravel. My eyes closed instinctively to keep anything from flying in them. The gravel scratched and rubbed against the back of my neck, bringing a gasp of pain from my lips. Dammit, was every inch of my body going to be scarred from this?
Mason’s hand crawled across the gravel and the tips of his fingers grabbed at my shirt. Rest time was over. I did another quick roll onto my stomach and pushed off with my hands, pulling my foot so that I could propel myself to my feet. I’m not quite sure how I managed the acrobatic feat, but I did it and somehow I was standing. Mason was still reaching for where my shirt was moment ago. I spared a quick glance for his zombie army but they were all standing there like dumb automatons.
I said a quick prayer and closed the distance between me and Mason, reaching down to grab my shotgun. I lined it up on his head and it was like time slowed down again. He slowly turned his head to face me and his ever-reaching hands were held out toward as if in supplication. I knew that all he wanted was me. I was only food to him. I screamed at him and aimed the sights on his head, feeling a savage relief when I pulled the trigger and felt the shotgun press sharply back into my shoulder.