

Date of the Dead

Copyright 2013 by John Debellis

Smashwords Edition

The Date

I remember the day like it was yesterday, or possibly like it was the day before yesterday, or maybe earlier today. Time has lost its relevance. We were walking along the street, well truth be told I was being dragged by what remained of my hair, when the frenzied individual suddenly stopped. I don't think he meant to stop, but we'll never know; the truck that hit him ran over his head. The trucker kept driving--well, that's not entirely true either; he stopped, saw that the guy was dead, then ran over a few more people, well not really people, they were zombies.

Yes, I said zombies. And I mean zombies--the annoying creatures with diets that vary between live humans and other live humans. I never had any contact with zombies prior to that day, but it seems to me that chewing on, swallowing, and digesting, without acid reflux, no matter how late (at night) or how many people (of all races) they've eaten, although impressive, doesn't make a good first impression—a lasting one, yes. Maybe I'm being judgmental, or even a bit prejudice, which comes from my upbringing. My parents didn't like people who used organic kale in their salads, or wore self-winding watches, or had too many calcium deposits, but I didn't have time to ponder that thought, I had my blind date to rescue. Well, not really rescue--it was more a matter of survival. I know we didn't really hit it off, especially when she turned her back on me, and like a donkey, kicked over the table, disgusted that none of the punches she threw had landed on my face. She had just told me I had the personality of a melted bingo chip (which I don't understand to this day) and a face that looked inside out.

I was about to apologize for letting her say "hello" first, when I heard groans, off key trumpets, and whiny guitars, then glass shattering and saw several ill-mannered maniacs.

Their stomachs were ripped open, which I didn't think was a fashion statement, and they started munching on patrons (some happy to get out of paying the check).

My date, Laura Lee, (that's the name I later saw on her Wisconsin substitute psychiatrist license), was about to smother me with the desert menu when she noticed the commotion-- an approaching cannibalistic Mariachi band, and yelled to me, almost poking my eye out with her finger, "Are those flesh eating things your idea of a romantic evening?"

Before she could blind me, I screamed, "This isn't a Mexican restaurant, I'd never hire a Mariachi band. If it were Italian I might have hired a couple of violinists, but we're in a diner."

She stopped, shook her head, actually understanding my logic, then ran towards the kitchen, her 7-inch spiked heel landing in my mouth and halfway down my throat. By that time the diner was a mad house, people running in every direction, waitresses following, trying to prevent them from running out on their bills. I had finally started breathing after the heel had left my windpipe, when a narcissistic zombie grabbed my hair and dove out the window and started up the street, I guess looking for a quiet place to dine alone. That's when the truck shortened the zombie's dead-span and I went looking for my date.

By then the diner had been almost abandoned, most of the patrons gone or partially digested, resting in pieces. I had seen enough zombie movies to know you needed to kill their brains in order to kill them. I kept wondering if that applied to zombies who (when alive) read Sara Palin's book. I grabbed a large knife from behind the counter, almost stopped to clean it, when I remembered that zombies aren't germ-a-phoebes, mainly because they probably died from a germ or a virus. I stealthily walked into the kitchen, didn't see a creature, nor hear any off key instruments. I hoped my date was alive; she was deadly enough, as a zombie she could probably eat her way through the entire male population, clothes, helmets, combat boots, automatic weapons, and armored vehicles without breaking a tooth. I didn't know her, name as yet, so I shouted, "Hey you, my date, are you here?" I yelled it several times when I finally heard a noise from inside a kitchen cabinet. I stepped back when I realized it was a muted trumpet.

Then I heard a voice what may have been a voice. As I crept closer I was sure it was a voice, an annoyed voice that said, "Let me out of here so I can kick you in the balls or punch in your dumb ass face."

It was my date. I walked over to the cabinet, opened the door and quickly moved far enough away from her, so she couldn't land a punch or kick. When she climbed out, she did neither, except throw the damaged trumpet toward my groin. I was surprised she didn't spit, or shout anything nasty. The zombie attack had somehow changed her. She looked at me and softly said, "I don't want to kill you any longer."

"Really?"

"Yes, really, because you'd only come back as a zombie and try to eat me, you misogynist middle to lower class, left wing liberal, food stamp-collecting fraud."

I ignored her remarks figuring they were just a lucky guess. "I think we should try to get out here and find some place safe within walking distance, flagging a cab now would be impossible, especially since it has started to rain," I suggested.

Going for a Stroll

"I agree. You go first. I don't care that you walk ahead of me like a chauvinist abolitionist pig, especially if you get bitten."

I might have misinterpreted her remarks as insults if I let my imagination run loose, but I was using all my cognitive brain to stay off the zombie menu.

Outside the diner the streets were quieter than I anticipated. No zombies. Knowing you can turn into a creature that will eat strangers (who may be stuffed with juicy tumors), friends, family, or even yourself if you chew faster than it takes for you to completely die, you grow introspective. You look at the choices you made in life, or the hand you were dealt. That's when Laura Lee started telling me about her life.

"My father was a mad scientist who raised me and my sister from embryos in leak proof plastic Baggies. Later on, when we grew, he kept us in 36 gallon trash bags until we were able to stand on our own, which was difficult because of the 7-inch spiked high heels he made us wear, and the leash he attached to a ceiling fan. Thus we had terrible balance and little sense of direction and had the tendency to stand on our toes and revolve around each other. Once we were able to walk, well we didn't so much as walk, but rolled on the ground, he put us in old sewer pipes, which he spun every hour to make us feel at home. For a while we were both under-nourished because he fed us nothing but condiments until he taught us how to chew, by making my sister and I rip open the packets of ketchup and mustard with our teeth. We eventually escaped when our dad, after a few too many drinks, rolled the sewer pipe on himself." By now she was crying. "I can't go on with the story, I'm becoming a little too sentimental."

I'd heard enough, I had seen the documentary about her family on the Cruelty to Children's Channel, which had been renamed The Tic-Toxic Family Station, to draw a wider audience and had recently been bought out by the producers of America's Abused Have Talent and The Platonic Pet World, with their partner, the creators of the controversial hit, Father Knows Incest Best, and changed the stations name to The Rumba Network.

Sure her story was true, but she didn't mention the human trafficking of girls hidden in department store dummies by her mom. She was almost caught when a dummy's arm fell off and a tattooed arm of the leader of the lesbian garden gang of freedom fighters hung out., She also didn't mention the Sunday dog fights that ended when the losing dog chased its tail and chewed itself to death. It was a sad time in Paris, once the city of love, and now the city of canine savagery, lesbian loyalists (with weed whackers) and roaming hordes of Cuban National hookers forcing people to have their bodies waxed and their gall bladders removed for safe keeping. Or was that part of a different documentary about how adopted children cope with being raised by washed-up singer song writers, or maybe it was all of the above. It didn't matter, because that combined craziness was just a prelude to what was about to happen to our world.

As we carefully walked the deserted streets our conversation revolved around the use of incorrect grammar, especially the use of mixed metaphors in pastry recipes. That's when we heard them. It sounded just like the start of the Newark Gimpy Leg three-and-five-eighths quarter Marathon, but we knew it wasn't that, wrong time of the year, wrong city, and marathoners--even the ones who trip over their own lame feet and land face first in the gutter--don't groan, not that loud and at that pitch,—a pitch that reminded me of a slowed down, loudly played, badly warped vinyl Tom Waits album.

We had just turned the corner and if it weren't for me turning too soon and bumping into the wall we may have been their next meal. Laura Lee pointed to a dumpster and I got the message and dove in headfirst. Of course, she meant for me to hide behind it, but I wasn't taking any chances. Besides, I've always loved the inside of dumpsters, the smell of decaying scraps of food and the touch of oily paper products and plastic garbage bags brought back memories. I spent much of my youth in dumpsters searching for shopping lists. We grew up poor and I always fantasized about buying things from an actual store rather than leftovers that richer family members faxed pictures of to us.

The Building

The first 50 or so zombies in the horde passed us before one must have sniffed our scent or heard Laura Lee yelling at me not to come near her until I washed up, got a haircut, and a new passport photo. Before she could get out the name of a dry cleaner, the zombies attacked. There must have been at least fifteen or twenty staggering in our direction. I just jumped out of the dumpster and despite her protests I grabbed her hand to start running down the street. Laura Lee caught on when I yanked her off her feet and dragged her a dozen yards. By then, she was limping and they were within a sour smelling burp from us. There was no place to hide and we couldn't out run them, so I pushed Laura Lee through a storefront window and followed. That move even caught the zombies by surprise. They stopped deader in their tracks, while I picked up Laura Lee, who was too busy pulling glass out her face to yell at me. It didn't take much for me to carry her, she was on the lean side, not skinny, no, she had lots of well-formed and well-defined curves in the places they were designed to be kept (and away from me).

The escalator to the second floor was still running so I hopped aboard and used some of my own steam to get us up even faster. We were lucky, not far from us was an elevator so we only had to walk through about thirty or forty feet of the store. It was the women's section and as we passed the mannequins, Laura Lee now in shock, kept pointing, saying "Momma, lesbo momma." She was strong and it took all I had to keep her in my arms. We made it to the elevator with Laura dragging one dummy along with us. She kept up the whining, "My momma, my lesbo momma... Daddy's divorced dyke."

I wanted to tell her to stop talking and what she was saying was politically incorrect, but the elevator arrived and I shoved her in while pushing the dummy out. Laura glared at me, a flame-thrower present in her eyes, then calmed down and said, "I hated the butch broad anyway." She started to laugh like she'd seen an old lady slip on a banana peel and fall into raw sewage. I let her laugh and hit forty-forty, the last floor in the building. We never made it there. Laura, now in hysterics, flung her head back and kept laughing even though the elevator had stopped. It would probably have kept going up if the doors hadn't closed on her throat.

We were lucky. The elevator doors opened on the floor where the corporate offices were, so I didn't have to worry about any store dummies, but I kept on the alert for zombies in business suits. I set Laura Lee down, who by now was now berating me for being the worst date she'd ever had.

"I mean, you take me out, do I get a nice romantic diner, at an up-scale restaurant? No you take me to a diner and I get zombies who want to make me the blue plate special. This might be the last time I get to eat at a high-class restaurant or any restaurant and what I get is monsters with the munchies. Who set us up anyway? Don't answer that! I know, it was a computer dating service and I hate every one of those four eye bastards. I hope they have been eaten, digested, and eaten again by a zombie chewing on the first zombie's intestines. They do digest food don't they? Look who I'm asking, as if Mr. cheap-skate, who smells like a city dump, would know."

I tried not to pay attention to her and went searching for a safe place to stay until we figured out what our next move was. I opened a door, which I thought led to a full-grown room, but turned out to be a janitor's closet complete with a janitor who for the first time in his life was on equal footing with his bosses. He was a zombie, not the brightest zombie on the planet, because he must have thought the mop that he was chewing on led to a head. When he saw me he looked down at his mop and then back to me as if making comparisons, and decided I was the juicier more delectable target. He charged at me, and would have taken a nice chunk out of my person if he hadn't stuck his foot in the bucket and fallen on his mop, breaking the handle.

Laura Lee then saved my life, well not so much on purpose, but she tripped when her shoe fell off. This time the zombie stumbled on the broken broom handle and fell head first into her 7-inch spiked heel, which quickly pierced his skull and emerged out the back of his head, like a humane thought through Rush Limbaugh's mind.

For a few seconds I stood there frozen with guilt, not knowing if killing zombies required a license or if it was even in season. Laura woke me from a moment of pondering in my own stupidity, by telling me that she'd prefer dating the zombie janitor over me because the color of her high heels went better with the red veins in his eyes, but unfortunately he was just a little too dead for her. Plus when she removed the high heel from his skull the hole in his face reminded her of the first man she'd seen killed. He was a dyslexic, ex-boyfriend who made the mistake of pointing a drill in the wrong direction. She always felt guilty about that because she shouldn't have ignored him when he asked if she thought the drill bit was the right size for the gold ring he was about to insert into his wooden penis. She also should have told him that his penis had not become wooden because of a spell a gypsy urologist cast on him for not having health insurance, but had become hard when she dumped a carton of Viagra in his eggnog. Of course, she didn't confess this to me at that moment, but later told me the story when dying her hair so the zombies we had escaped from in the street wouldn't recognize her.

We searched the entire upper level and never found another zombie or a living person, or a living person about to become a zombie. We did manage to find a coffee machine and several hundred packets of sweet and low, three hundred and fifty two to be exact—Laura examining every single packet. It turns out that Laura Lee was a calorie counter, obsessed with counting calories in anything that had the potential to be eaten. I wondered if she'd do the same thing with me if she eventually turned into a zombie. We both wondered what happened to the people. There weren't any dead bodies or any carcasses of executives that we'd have to guess if they were zombies or just gifted negotiators (always ready to take advantage of a situation).

It finally hit us that maybe the stock market had dropped crashed in the last two days and that most of them had probably jumped out the windows. That led us to look out the window. We saw several hundred zombies, many in business suits standing on the street in front of the building. I actually made Laura Lee laugh when I climbed on the ledge and mooned them. I know it was taking a risk and maybe stirring up zombies who had a hunger for rump meat, or were jealous of people who hadn't invested their life savings in the market, but getting Laura Lee to laugh made it worth almost falling and becoming the feast at my own last supper.

We knew it was only a matter of time when a few hundred of them found their way up the stairs or maybe even figured out how to operate an elevator, or worse yet the coffee machine without realizing that they had to use a cup. As a youth I had a traumatic coffee stain experience mistaking it for my shadow. The odd shape of the stain caused me to become catatonic and then I convinced myself I was undeserving of an accurate reflection. When that stain refused to follow me, I panicked, losing my identity completely, thinking I was the shadow. It took a shrink who specialized in reflections and floor blemishes to convince me that I was not the offspring of a hand puppet's silhouette. After being forced to stare into a cup of black coffee until I could see my reflection even after the shrink dropped in a teaspoon of Creamora I emerged from my stupor. For two weeks I walked around my goose down padded cell, staring into that cup of java, until I instinctively added milk and two sugars and drank my reflection symbolically ingesting my own caffeinated soul -- no longer considering myself a victim of life's take out--heavy stuff for an everyman's zombie story.

Laura Lee and I had to find a way out and some place to go, someplace where there were other people, other people like us, two people who hate each other's guts, but have come together to survive and maybe, just maybe reclaim the earth for living restaurant goers.

More of the Building

We didn't want to search the forty or so floors above us so Laura insisted that we take the elevator straight to the roof where we could observe what was around the building and get a tan. The elevator only went to the floor beneath the roof, so we cautiously climbed the stairs, and slowly opened the door in case there were any zombies soaking up the rays. There weren't. In fact there weren't any rays either, the day had long since grown into evening. Laura realized she'd forgotten to take a nap and insisted on lying down for twenty minutes, because she hadn't waited for her eyes to get used to the city being so dark she almost feel off the roof. It's a good thing she threw her jacket down to lie on and saw it drift towards to ground.

It took a few minutes but our eyes finally adjusted to the dark. A small portion of the city was still lit, but was slowly losing electricity building by building. Laura Lee and I, still in zombie apocalypse denial, debated whether or not people were turning off the lights to get a better picture on their large screen TVs, or they all bought light bulbs that all needed to be changed at the same time. It was a fun debate. We weren't constricted by political party bickering over rules, or any time limits for our responses, other than the disqualification of a debater for passing out, not caused by a stroke, heart attack, or collapsing from low blood sugar. In our effort to avoid the new reality, we left out "eaten by a zombie" because that would only bring up the point of whether the zombie could continue in the debater's place until the debater themselves had turned zombie, which would open up a whole other can of worms. The debate, although heated at times kept our minds off the savagery going on around us. The debate ended on its own when we realized nobody could declare a winner because if that decision were left up to us it would only start another debate.

Our spirits lifted enough to actually get our minds working on a plan. The first stage of our plan was simple, see if our cell phones worked and if they did, answer any texts or emails, then call for help. We knew we probably couldn't get a cab to come for us, not for a while, so I suggested ordering a pizza where it's guaranteed to be delivered within thirty minutes or you get your money back. Laura wanted mushrooms and anchovies and I wanted mine plan with extra sauce even though it would surely mean a bout of heartburn. Instead of ordering two, which might take longer and more for the pizza boy to carry up forty-four floors (if the zombies managed to take over the elevator), we decided we'd each order a half the way we liked it. The first pizza place I called there wasn't any answer. The same happened for the next thirty-seven places. I finally got one, but they didn't deliver to our building, or even our state. I offered to pay for gas and not hold them to the half hour since they were in Puerto Rico, which was only a territory, and would require a boat, a plane flight or both, not to mention the possibility of driving for 1OOO miles. So we hung up, discouraged, so much so we started to call Chinese restaurants, this time keeping within our own area code. No dice or should I say, at the risk of being corny, no rice. We figured they must be so busy no one was answering. Ok, we knew we were fooling ourselves, trying to put a positive spin on things, but we were also letting our own hunger cloud our judgment. We needed to find food and another plan or a plan we could eat. That's when all hell broke loose.

Zombies from the Bank of Japan building next to us, which was 15 or 16 or maybe 17 floors above us, I kept losing count-- it was dark and all those foreign made windows look alike-- from the taller buildings next to ours started landing on the roof. At first I thought they might be business men who had just gotten the news about the stock market crashing, but changed my mind when they splattered all around us and started to rise as if the stock market has just recovered and had hit a new high. These were hungry zombies with dead man size appetites.

The Stairway and the Sexists

It was time to run. Laura Lee was first to notice that they indeed were zombies, when none of them whistled or made catcalls because her skirt had blown up from the wind. I followed her back into the building, making both catcalls and whistles. Hey, times might be tough, but I'm still a man and I have needs.

We panicked and pressed the elevator button so many times, I think it got confused—the doors would open and then suddenly close as it rose and then would stop and come down again, finally just leaving our floor altogether. We were so frightened we practically jumped down the stairs, flight after flight, not caring if the zombies were lying in wait or were just too damn lazy to climb a few thousand stairs. We must have made it down 20 flights when we started to lose our breath and noticed we'd passed our floor – the one floor we knew didn't have any zombies. It was too late to go back; the zombies from the roof were on their way down. In fact several with damaged legs, hips, knees, or had night blindness, had tripped and were rolling down—very close behind. In fact one had rolled past us. He crashed into the wall on the level blow, rose, brushed himself off, and started climbing towards us. Others were now either rolling past or crashing into walls just above. We were surrounded. Their moans chilled my bones especially my weakened right femur, the result of a tennis brawl. A few high notes cracked the screen on my iPhone 17S, one that not only answered your questions but did blood tests, urine analysis, and checked your dog for worms. I could hear teeth chomping on the stale air in their rancid mouths. Their stench was so bad Laura Lee couldn't smell my garbage-soiled clothes. A tall zombie, with tattoos of steroids being injected into muscles covering his mammoth biceps, pounced on me, while other zombies were tearing at Laura's Lee's clothes. I tried not to look as one tore off her blouse, revealing a see through lace bra. Ignoring the zombie who was about to swallow me in large delicious bite size chunks, I turned toward Laura Lee and her zombie attackers and yelled. "Rip off her skirt!" A set of teeth, taxi cab yellow, yet unusually straight, was about to make me one of their brethren by oral initiation, but stopped. A dart sunk into his head and he fell. Darts, pool balls and cues smashed through skulls and zombies fell and rolled down the stairs.

Then I heard a real voice, slightly drunk, but human said, "Come on, get out of there, and grab a few of the darts, we didn't finish our game yet."

I yelled back, "How about the pool cues?

"If you play pool, you're going to need your own cue."

I grabbed a couple of cues, any darts I could find, and then helped Laura to her feet. Although, it was easily within reach, I left her blouse. OK, I'm a sexist pig. But at that moment I needed something to think about ravaging as opposed to being ravaged myself.

A tall guy, who would be a distant loser in a beauty contest with a zombie burn victim, but only if he won the talent portion of the show, pushed us through an open door into a hallway. He was followed by a six -pack of guys who would have certainly lost a smell competition with zombies even if they rose from the city dump. They led us to the open entrance of a bar. People, actual living people, were drinking alcoholic beverages and playing bar games as if life were still going on as usual. I was not in my normal state of confusion. I had entered a myriad of thoughts swirling around, blending with each other like hair down a drain after a mixed race orgy in an all men and women's shower. I was about to ask my saviors a question, which Laura Lee stole before it could leave my mouth. "Why do you guys stink like a zombie's afterbirth?"

She didn't use the same words as I would have, in fact I was thinking of using Spanish, since I'd spent all that dough on Rosetta Stone and it might be my last chance to use it.

"Sorry, but that's what happens when you leave southern politicians in the same small space for too long. We piled into a closet when the dead starting rise to the supper bell," he said with a mile long drawl and a voice that wasn't used to telling the truth.

"Yeah, we were at a political fund raiser and had stopped here to spend our bribe money on a few beers. We heard some screams but thought it was just a woman getting raped who was pretending like she didn't enjoy it," he laughed a lecherous snarl suited for a dark alley.

I held Laura Lee back from stream lining this guy's body, so he wouldn't be weighted down with genitals, but I couldn't stop myself from kicking him in his field of dreams. He collapsed like a coal miner's lung. The other's just laughed and then the lead savior spoke out. "Bobby Bob, I told you not to talk like that. Northerners don't think women enjoy involuntary sex."

I was ready to do my Rockette thing again when Laura Lee jumped in front of me and spoke out. "Yes, we northern ladies are spoiled and not used to be beaten into submission." She was being sarcastic and knew these guys were too dumb to notice and would see it as a peaceful gesture.

"If more northern gals would think like that it would make slipping Rohypnol in gal's drinks a lot more fun."

"Actually, I'd prefer getting raped on Ketamine, I enjoy it even if the guy has a small dick. I bet you know that from experience," Laura Lee said and then winked and did a pirouette.

The guys laughed and eyed her up and down and even walked around her. One guy pulled out a tape measure but before he could wind it around her, Laura Lee said, "You don't' have to measure your dick, I'm sure it's nearly two inches," then mimed like she was trapped in a box.

The guys laughed slapping each other on their backs and then the big guy spoke up, "Here, if you ever get tired of saying no to him." He handed her a business card.

I was quickly losing my temper so I segued into another subject. "I'm going to buy my little lady here a drink."

The tall guy spoke up. "Bloody Mary goes with any kind of roofie. The little lady here won't even taste it," a fellow misogynist stated.

I thought he had to be joking and was about to come back with a witty retort, but the look on his face said he was dead (brain cell) serious.

Laura Lee, not wanting to see me get beat up until she could record it on her iPhone, which she later used to take some award winning photos, blew them a kiss and then dragged me away from the group singing, "I'm A Woman," correctly figuring they didn't like a gal who could spell woman.

Meeting Our Crew

We found an empty spot at the end of the bar. Bartending was a woman whose breasts hung out of all three dimensions. I gave her my order and then asked Laura Lee what she wanted, but her answer surprised me. "We can't stay here."

"Why not? We're safe." I was starting to think this date was not going to work out.

"You are, but I need to go to an AA meeting." She said and then for no reason started to tap dance.

"You want to leave now!" I said as I was started to do the Twist.

"If we stay I'll fall off the wagon and I've been sober now for thirty-one years if you count the nine months in my mother's belly." Laura said, and then started the bunny hop."

"That means you've never even had a drink. Why would you need an AA meeting?" I joined the bunny hop line a few people down from her. "Were your parents alcoholics?" I shouted.

"No." She said as she segued into the hokey pokey.

"Drug addicts."

"No," she stammered as she stopped and stuck her right leg out— the line following her lead.

"Then why?" I stuck my left foot out and was immediately shoved out of the line into a table that fell over along with the chairs.

"Because, they were addicted to coffee and it's one of the few places where I can smoke." She jumped out of the line, which continued around the room.

The bartender with the rack for all ages threw a pack of cigarettes to her. "We got some coffee made and you can smoke here, I won't let anyone toss out a cute thing like you."

Laure Lee caught the cigarettes and spoke up. "I don't want to mislead you, but I'm not a lesbian, I just have sex with girls because I like it better than having sex with men."

The bartender at first looked disappointed, but fought it off. "Hey, I understand, sexual preference is genetic, something that we're born with like the obsession for orange Jello."

The conversation about sexual preference went on for another twenty minutes before it was decided that being a bi-sexual hermaphrodite was the way go, especially if you're a teenager just experimenting, necrophilia came in a close second considering what might be left of the human race.

Their sexual preference debate morphed into a heated conversation on how long would take zombies to be considered part of society, and if so, at what point should they be required to file for taxes. I drifted off into my own thoughts, wondering how and why most people had become zombies and we hadn't. I was sure I hadn't missed a flier or an Internet ad asking us to join a new movement that involved cutting edge eating habits. Why hadn't I become a zombie? What had I done or not done? Was it something I ate? Was it a medication I was on? Was it because I was a left-handed switch hitter who only batted from the right side? Was it because I could never whistle during rush hour, or triangulate phone signals, or is it because I have never seen an episode of Law and Order? What the hell was it? I guessed it could be anything and that there was a good chance I'd never find out the truth. Right now, we had to survive, and I had to make sure I had enough money to leave a decent tip.

I did see something that made me wonder if we weren't any better than those things chewing on our friends, family, children, and munching on sider orders of newborn infants. Some of the bar guys had caught a couple of zombies and had them chained to the wall. But that's not what disgusted me. No, it the midst of this chaos, my human brothers and sisters had tied a zombie up to a mechanical bull and were betting on how long it could stay on while they shot body pieces off of it. It was savagery, it was in humane, and it was frustrating since I had left all my money as a tip.

Laura Lee came over to me and gently broke a glass on my face which made me forget about my gambling addiction and how it caused me to lose, my eight wives, my family, my friends, my duck hunting dogs, my toiletries and eventually every cent I'd ever had, not to mention, all the broken bones I endured, plus the loss of one kidney, one lung and a portion of my liver I had to hand over to the mob.

"We need to get out of this place," Laure Lee said. "You can stay if you want, I'm just asking out of politeness."

"I was told that they have plenty of coffee and cigarettes. Why leave?"

"Marcy Phyllis Carolla," she said pointing to the bartender. "Everyone calls her Skim Milk, because it makes no sense, says that the clientele here are nuts and it's only a matter of time before they get so drunk they get us killed. One of the guys was talking about having a zombie wet t-shirt contest. The winner gets to eat the first one of us who dies. Skim Milk and two of her coworkers are leaving tonight. She knows how to get into the elevator that runs from a chief executive's office, on this floor, to the sub-basement, which is closed from the outside by large metal French doors. Are you coming or should I say goodbye and tell you how I wished I could be here to see you turn into a zombie." She smiled, winked, moved each ear separately, feigned sticking her finger down her throat, did twelve jumping jacks, five squat thrusts, a one arm handstand, a counter clock wise pirouette, and one poorly executed summersault—crashing into several bar stools, knocking herself unconscious for a few seconds. How could resist someone so adorable?

"Count me in, I'm going," I stated, figuring Laura Lee's display of dislike for me was just a way for her to disguise her hatred.

Following Skim Milk

The plan was for Laura Lee and me to walk behind the bar pretending we saw a skunk. It worked like a charm--no one wanted to help us find the critter. Skim Milk's two co-workers came armed with handguns with silencers, several kitchen knives, and a complete set of silverware for eight. The man was squat and looked like he was stretched and widened to fill a 70-inch flat screen TV. His name was Joe, which he decided to shorten to Jo because he didn't trust silent letters. Next to him stood, Maria, a woman whose large round butt made me think she was sitting on a globe.

We snuck out the back door and down the hall, Skim Milk holding a flash light steady in her cleavage. In each hand she held a kitchen knife ready to slice up the first dead thing she saw. She didn't see any and neither did we. When we arrived at the CEO's office, she slowly opened the door, made a sound like a crow, and never explained why. Then swinging her breasts into the room, like they had tassels stuck to them, she sent the shaft of light in circles until she was sure there were no zombies. Skim Milk turned on the office light and led us to the private elevator. As the elevator door slid open a zombie in a three and half-piece business suit, wire-rimmed glasses, and a bad toupee lunged out from behind a cabinet, knocking me to the ground. He would have taken a chunk out of my shoulder, if his toupee hadn't slid over his head, which blocked his view. When he tried to push the toupee away he knocked his glasses off. He leaned forward to bite me and stepped on a lens—the crunching sound distracted him like a tantalizing appetizer. With each bite of air his teeth got closer to removing part of me. Just as he was about to simultaneously make me both a meal and a brother, his head exploded off his neck, in too many pieces for even a show as unreal as CSI could reconstruct. That's how we got the idea that Jo was a good shot, which was soon confirmed when we tossed zombie body parts out the window so he could demonstrate his shooting skill. When the last appendage was blown apart, Skim decided it was time to try the elevator. Jo, of course, shot the elevator and was dejected when it didn't bleed. Skim sat Jo down and using charts on anatomy, scientific periodicals on the chemical make-up of DNA, and string theory, plus a quick game a Pictionary was able to convince him that elevators are not a life form.

I pressed the button on the wall and the elevator opened immediately, since it was left on our floor. At first we entered the elevator in alphabetical order, then Jo insisted we go by height. Maria thought weight would better, since she always carried a scale. I've always hated scales. I found them difficult to stand on long enough to get my correct weight since one of my legs was ten inches shorter than the other. I tried to keep it a closely guarded secret, even though I tended to lean severely to the left. They were adamant that I take off my custom shoes, which would have made my body nearly parallel to the ground. I refused to cooperate and insisted that instead we enter by the lowest social security numbers first, which put Maria, who was an undocumented worker at a distinct disadvantage. (She did argue that not having a social security card made her number the equivalent of zero.) Even though under normal circumstances Maria spoke perfect English, under this stress of being eaten alive, she began speaking Albanian every other word. Rather than try to understand her or find another solution, we just piled in.

The elevator was fast, since it didn't stop at any other floors. Whatever weapons we had were pointed toward the opening of the door. When the door opened there was no one to kill or even ask if they knew if the Yankees were now over paid zombies. Curiously enough there were lights on in a few sections of the basement, which normally worked as a garage for executives.

The Basement and Bliffover

We didn't split up to search the basement, all of us too afraid that we'd either end up a zombie or be the only living person – at least temporarily. We selected to search the left first because that's the way my body was leaning, which I took as a good sign. After about an hour and finding most of the basement zombie-challenged, so to speak, we stumbled onto them. Not a horde of zombies, or a coffee klatch, or even duet, and not a group of either friendly or evil people, or even a pack of wild show dogs. Older show dogs were the new preferred watchdogs since they become bitter, thirst for attention, thus make the most noise, and are ravenous from not ever being fed table scraps, so they tear apart unwanted visitors, especially those that carry blue ribbons. What we found gave us something new to think about. There were two of them, but only one concerned us. The normal guy, Dr. Herbert Bliffover, was a well-dressed man, suit, tie, recently shined shoes, and carrying a leather brief case. With him was a creature, who Dr. Bliffover thought might be the new missing link, a being that was half-man and half-zombie. It was as if someone had drawn a vertical line down the middle of this person. His right side was all zombie, his left all ugly man.

"I'm Klaus's doctor, well, his psychiatrist. If you stay on his right he's harmless and don't worry he won't try to turn around to bite you. He has a permanent case of whiplash from an old bumper car pile-up. He also is aware of his condition and so far has control over his zombie half, except when chewing on a living person. I try not to feed him, but look at that milky eye, so sad." Doctor Herbert spoke firmly.

"How can that be? I mean isn't his other half-dead?"

"Almost, but not entirely. When I first came upon him he was about to have sex with a woman while eating her intestines. Luckily his human half, still able to talk then, turned and asked me for a condom. I was able to wrestle him away without getting bitten. I have three-quarter feet of small intestines in my brief case to keep him nourished."

"Why is his human half still alive?" I asked making sure to pronounce my words correctly. This was no time to mumble.

"At the same carnival where he had his bumper car tragedy, Klaus was working the game where you swing a hammer down to make a weight rise up and hit the bell. Well, that morning he forgot to bring the weight to work and not wanting to lose his job, he took the place of it. It was bad timing he was greeted by a group of Viking reenactors, who specialized in emulating the Huscarls, the elite guard of King Harold the Second's body double, whose main weapons were two-handed axes. They chose that day to demonstrate their strokes with the giant hammer. Klaus must have hit his head on that bell two dozen times. That coupled with his whiplash, caused both a physical and psychological break and also made him lactose intolerant. His zombie half has bad gas when eating a person who's had dairy. If he starts eating you try to stay in front of him."

"You mean he has a split personality," Skim Milk asked.

"So to speak, yes," The doctor replied and then made the crazy sign by running his fingers in a circle near his temple.

"Any idea what caused the zombie outbreak and why we're immune?" Laura

"No and No. Although some of the more popular theories on the cause are antidepressants taken with boutique coffees, exposure to an abundance of poorly written Amazon reviews, remote control confusion, bad ink from Bed Bath and Beyond coupons, and hormone spikes when looking at or wearing thongs. In other words, no one really knows." Dr. Herbert acted as if he hoped we believed every word he said.

"What if Klaus turns completely? Is it possible?" Laura Lee said, running her hands under her clothes checking herself for ticks.

Skim Milk piled on. "Maybe we should just kill him. And not take any chances."

Klaus tried to speak, but the words that came out were mixed with the guttural sound of his zombie side, so none of us knew what the hell he was talking about, although we tried to guess and even use hand signals.

Dr. Herbert tossed his words at us like we were playing with the wrong kind of kiddy explosive. "Don't you asshole see, you fucking, brainless, morons, and I say that with only the best of intentions. If we can find out why his other side didn't turn, we can...."

Jo interrupted, "We can become half-zombies ourselves?"

"No butt brain, we find a cure that can prevent it from happening again." Dr. Herbert this time didn't hide his disrespect.

"So we would be all zombie then?" Jo didn't try to hide his stupidity.

"OK, let's say that's the case or not the case, or both, what do we do now?" I said.

"I need to find an AA meeting!" Laura Lee shouted "or a yoga class, maybe one with a juice bar." Then she started to laugh.

"What's so damn funny?" I said.

"I was thinking of our zombie half-breed doing yoga and was picturing him being so flexible he starts eating himself."

The half-breed started to make noise, his human half didn't like Laura Lee's remark.

"Then we need to get out of here. I could use a gambler's anonymous meeting also." I was ready to bet on how long it would take the half-zombie to eat his own intestines and when he'd turn.

"Yeah," the doctor nodded, "and I need to find a lab, so I can do some tests."

Skim turned dreamy-eyed, "I sure would like to find a good Lesbian Rodeo, maybe with a western bar, a yoga class and a box of Turkish taffy, but not the imported kind."

We needed to get out of the garage, which meant we needed a vehicle. I was the designated driver since I was the only one who had insurance that covered hit and run driving. It was a popular clause in Little Italy. There were several cars, most of them, difficult to get into, without breaking a window, which we needed to keep the zombies out, and (as we were to find out later), we needed to roll down when Skim Milk flashed her breasts and Maria her circular rump. We didn't know it at the time that they had met at a meeting of flashers anonymous, a popular program in New Orleans after Mardi Gras.

Jo found a van that was open, but had a dead battery, so we pushed it so he could pop the clutch to get it started. It might have started if he the engine didn't crack when the car fell off the cinder blocks. Laura Lee was luckier. She found an SUV, which was out of fuel, but she quickly volunteered to siphon gas from other cars. Laura told us she didn't even need a hose she had such a powerful suction reflex. In fact when she was a baby and was breastfed by her mom, she chocked on a rib. She siphoned gas from several cars, while we refrained from making too many oral sex jokes, because Laura Lee threatened to toss a lighter in a gas tank and really blow us to bits.

Leaving the Basement

The next thing we had to do was the biggest risk of all --raising the door and hoping there wasn't a mob of zombies waiting to greet us. I wasn't expecting a marching band, although at one point in my life I thought about being a musical arranger for a local organist, but lost the opportunity by the sudden death of his monkey. Soon after, I joined a marching band, but that was short lived because my short leg would cause me lean over and knock a row of my fellow band members to the ground. I was my high school track team's lap counter so it was only natural I turned to running numbers for the local Buddhist crime syndicate. They'd just moved in from a poor black neighborhood in Martha's Vineyard and were a rough crew who collected debts, not just by breaking bones, they also gouged out welchers' middle eyes.

The Buddhist enforcers were a gruesome bunch. The sound of breaking bones did not drown out their horrific chanting, which sounded like a mix of a homeless broad's nails on a chalkboard and a yodeler's falsetto played backwards. Their chanting when hitting a pitch not only broke glass but splintered Tupperware. It also pierced both my eardrums and rendered me deaf, dumb, blind, and in a coma for three and half seconds. It was actually one second, but the doctors induced the coma for another two and half because they wanted to reduce the swelling in my brain, but soon realized my brain could actually use a few more inches. I never witnessed a middle eye being torn out by the Buddhist muscle, but heard stories of followers who spent their entire lives unable to meditate and grew deathly ill from sweat and rain pouring through the holes in their foreheads.

I hit the button, the door rose, and as luck would have it there wasn't a zombie in sight, but there was a marching band and a female group of Iranian ululation wedding singers, whose sound was probably responsible for keeping the zombies away. That led us to another problem; what were we going to do with the marching band and the ululation vocalists (whose voices could match any helium breathing Apache raiding party)? Laura Lee, who not only saw the glass half-empty, she saw it being shattered over her head, had an idea.

"Why don't we have the screech sisters and the band play and march before our car? That, and feeding the zombies the majorettes, would keep the zombies off us until we couldn't stand their playing and run them over." She screamed the suggestion, but not loud enough that we could hear it over the band's heavy brass version of "Sweet Georgia Brown."

We loaded up the car and the band and the ululation singers played on and on and on and on and on like a badly scratched record—zombies fleeing in every direction. Those that had their ears torn off earlier in the day and didn't run, we fed majorettes to.

In the vehicle we turned the radio up, to block out the band and singers, and to listen for reports of any camps, forts or cheap motels full of survivors. There was one report about a group survivors that had fortified a co-op building, but the requirements for getting in were stiff – let's face it they had their pick. We knew, especially with a half-zombie, half-person we never get even the most liberal board's approval. Skim suggested that we threw the half-breed out, but the doctor reminded us that he might be the key to a cure. My dating problems prior to the human race turning into deceased flesh eaters was bad enough. The only head to be gotten now would be mine and if there wasn't a cure, I'd probably find myself looking for a zombie hooker without teeth. This thought gave me an idea of setting up a brothel full of good-looking zombie women who still had most of their insides, then pulling out their teeth, and starting my own dead chicken ranch. It was just a dream--the kind of dream that kept hope alive and made me feel closer to God.

The Jingle and the Times

After about three miles the band members and Iranian singing group started to tire, so we rotated them (and our tires) and tried to think of songs that we could convince ourselves they were performing. It was while I was imagining them playing a loud, drum and bugle core version of a Bach string quartet accompanied by a troupe of eunuch parrots, that it happened – a live radio broadcast. Many who've never gone on a blind date and had it turn into a zombie nightmare, with a woman who hates your guts at first sight, might not have realized what the broadcast meant. It was a man's voice and he was definitely live, not a recording, since he stuttered and stammered and said he was live, also gave us the time and an accurate three-day local weather report. He asked if any survivors out there wanted home delivery of the New York Times. Sure it might be a few days late and have several of the pages chewed out and there wouldn't be a sports or entertainment section, but we'd get the latest on who was eaten and if the chewing was done by a dead relative. And best off all we'd save 50% off the first four weeks delivery. Like I said it didn't sound like much, in fact the guy sounded out of his mind, but he gave an address, a phone number, which didn't do us any good since there was no cell power, and then he put a group of assistants on to sing a jingle. "You're family may be eaten, but it doesn't mean you're beaten. So get the Times delivered to your door before you are never ---never more." It was a horrible jingle sung out of tune, and I thought I heard a back ground chorus of "Chew-Wop, Chew-Wop," but it was people--live, tone deaf people. Enough to put out a newspaper and stupid enough to deliver it, but hell, stupid is much better than dead, smelly, and lusting after your tasty flesh.

Believe it or not, our GPS actually worked, and we were only a few miles from the only remaining home of the New York Times. I kept wondering if now was a good time to ask them if they would review my novel. It was a science fiction/ brush fire cookbook/ historical novel about a Cinnamon breath mint empire. I know it's not a new idea, but I figured by including a gumball trade show, a fructose for Finland marketing convention, and a bulimic eating and throwing up competition to the story it might put a new slant on an old genre.

We could make it to the Times building, all we had to do was keep the band and the singers alive and playing for another few miles. Skim Milk had an idea that just might save our lives. We'd ask the guys and gals carrying the heavier instruments to come into the vehicle for a rest, and then we'd toss them out to the zombies—keeping them off us, as our band, thinned out and our ululation gals ran out of energy. At first it looked as if the plan wouldn't work when Klaus, our half-breed, tried to bite the bass drummer's head off causing the other band members to back away. Skim Milk, had her wits about her and shouted, "April Fools," instantly squelching their fears, while we pulled Klaus away. As the band climbed in and we selectively starting feeding members to the zombies, Dr. Bliffover explained Klaus's reaction. He had lost his family to a base drummer high on animal tranquilizers laced with silly putty. The guy beat to death his wife and then tried to bounce his kids off the walls and tile floor in the bathroom. The drummer himself took his own life by diving out the window, six floors, then three floors and then two floors to his death.

About a mile into our final lap one of the ululation divas, who called herself Snara with a Snar, told us that they'd run out of songs and they never ever repeated themselves. I said, "Snara—"

She quickly corrected me. "Call me Snara with a Snar."

"Ok, Snara with a Snar, can't you just do this once, after all, to us all your songs sound alike!"

"That's it. We quit! I will not stand here and be insulted. Next you'll want to know why we all only have one wisdom tooth," Snara with a Snar shouted.

Before I could say Snara with a S--- Skim Milk tossed her out the window and then proudly exposed her own celestial breasts. Maria, not to be out done, pushed her aside and double mooned the zombies that had just started to eat Snara with a Snar. Snara was about to sing, but before she had a chance to scare them away her vocal chords were chewed out. A few zombies looked up at our exhibitionists, but at the moment preferred to join in on the feast

The other singers, who were outside marching with the band began singing what could have been an ululation version of "Jingle Bells" or "Whiter Shade of Pale," or "I Did It My Way," or quite possibly an up tempo "Lady of Spain." All I know is that Skim Milk's deadly trick had worked. The band did their best to match whatever the hell the girls were screeching, which scattered any zombies that dared approach our vehicle.

Another mile and half and we would arrive at the New York Times building and maybe from the home of the best newspaper in the country we'd start a new better read civilization that featured home delivery.

First one of the girls lost her voice and made the mistake of trying to reach our vehicle. I held the door open, grabbed her hand and did my best to pull her in, she had just got one foot inside when a mob of zombies pulled her to the ground, and ravage her to the bone. I don't know what she looked like, because of that Arabian beekeeper's stage outfit (or maybe it was just a Arabic prom gown possibly for bee keepers), that she wore. I imagined she was cute—a women I'd probably easily be rejected by—one who would laugh in my face, make her tongue sound like a cop's siren being played sideways and then call her brother over to cut off my head. In spite of my good old red blooded American male thoughts, I still managed to feel bad for her, even a rooster with vocal chords made from broken banjo strings deserved better. I was lost in thoughts of the shriek of Arabia when an older zombie in a hotel bathrobe, which wouldn't be a pleasant sight even before his private parts were rotting, reached in and grabbed my shirt collar. My leg was caught under the seat as his face came kissing close, his breath smelled like rubber being burned in a vat of Medieval sewage—a scent that would later be bottled and sold on the black market. His jaws widened, ready to break his five minute fast. I slugged him in the side of his face, but he didn't take notice. When his teeth started their final decent Jo shot him, not dead, but just enough to knock out most of his choppers and a decaying bridge and crown. He gummed my shoulder like a red neck giving a hickey. No skin was broken, not until Jo's next shot which tore his head apart like a Piñata full of tripe parmesan. I quickly slammed the door shut –- I can take a hint.

"Thanks, Jo." I said, although I also felt compelled to ask what his hat size was.

"Any time, by the way I wear a size seven and half hat," in case you were wondering." In the heat of battle sometimes men can finish each other's thoughts.

We were now only about a half mile away. The band's rhythm was somewhere between a waltz and the hum of an old refrigerator. The girl's voices were now only slightly more annoying than a great accordion player. We had a real dilemma. Do we just run over the band and singers and hope that the SUV can plow through the remaining zombies or do we stay with the status quo and hope enough live to get us to the New York Times Building? The decision would have been made easier if someone in the band hadn't stopped muting his trombone with a duck caller. That would have been motivation for me to throw the car into overdrive and make the musicians one with their instruments.

We decided to weigh our options, which didn't work because we couldn't agree on an appropriate rating system, so we tried to write down the positives and negatives, but that was even harder without a pen and pencil. After three tries we finally figured out that odd finger doesn't work well with over three people. We didn't have dice or cards, so we used our old standby and played a game of charades. The driver, who at the moment wasn't me, didn't have to participate. Movie titles we found too easy, the names of presidents too hard, so we settled on popular surgeries. We were all stumped on pubic hair transplants, even Laura Lee, who was good enough to go pro, but by that time we were just a block away and decided to let the exhausted band play on until eaten. I know it sounded cold-hearted, but these musicians weren't in a union yet, and why wait till they tried to organize?

When we got close to the building the band members stuffed the plume from their hats in the mouths of ululation vocalists and then tossed them at the zombies and ran for the entrance. We had driven the car to the only available parking space, about ten yards from the home of the New York Times and dumped some coins in the meter. I wasn't taking chances—who knows what parking fines might mean in these days of deadly choices. With the zombies only a few yards behinds us, the doors of the Time's building flew open and a gang of Times' workers started knocking off our stalkers. They're aim was amazing, zombies fell prey to flying rolls of daily newspapers and the ones that managed to move closer got flattened by thick stacks of the Sunday edition.

The Times Building and Shrimp

The entire band also made it to safety, but thankfully none of the female singers went uneaten. In the band members' haste to live, they left all their instruments lying dormant in the street. Twenty of us joined the Times army of thirty-five, not exactly Woodstock in numbers, but in this environment, it was going be harder to feed 55 of us, well 54 and a half if you count our mixed breed. He wasn't noticed at first, but his attempt to say hello came out as a growl. The Times people grabbed rolls of newspaper and backed away. Trying to alleviate their fears the doc spoke up. "Just keep to this one side of him and he's harmless. He also might be the secret to a cure."

A guy big enough to house a dictator's ego stepped forward holding a stack of papers over his head. "What if he isn't a cure but one of the reasons this whole thing started?"

It was a good question, not game show good, but one that we hadn't thought of nor did any of us have an answer to. Laura Lee jumped in front of the Times guy and said, "You don't look like Dear Abbey."

The big guy wasn't ready for that and didn't utter a word.

"In fact how do I even know you work for the Times? I didn't see any identification."

Again the big guy didn't have an answer. I think he thought he was thinking but wasn't sure how.

"Have you ever even had a date before?"

This time he was as confused as the rest of us.

"What is 5025 times 6398 divided by 4.987?"

The big guy put down the paper and started counting on his fingers.

"You don't have that many fingers dumb ass, although if you counted synapsis and nerve endings in your spine--" Laura Lee left the end of the sentence to our imaginations.

The big guy stopped counting and started to feel around his spine.

This time a little guy, just tall enough not to be crawling, came forward and with a voice that sounded like it had springs on it said, "You can stop counting, Ben." Then he turned Laura and spoke. "Ben's OK. He can handle himself in a fight, but hasn't quite figured out how to think yet."

"Yes, he's on both sides of dumb. So squirt, where, when, and how do we start building our new civilization, free of war, disease, health insurance, car payments, state, local and federal taxes, not to mention match.com." Laure Lee said looking at me.

Before her looks could eat through me I deftly defended my online dating honor. "So, I used a picture of a male model who looks nothing like me, is a different race, and doesn't have a double chin, a broken nose, cauliflower ears, a cleft pallet, scars on both cheeks, and isn't crossed eyed. And I'm not the CEO of Proctor and Gamble and Exxon..."

"Yes and what else?"

"I don't own a private jumbo jet, my own island, a few slaves from the third world and have never climbed Mount Everest in sandals. We all fib a little."

Before Laura Lee could beat me into something liquid the squirt interrupted. "Can you two stop this bickering, we have newspapers to deliver."

"Delivering newspapers? Are you out of your mind, squirt?" I yelled.

"It was a joke. And my name is not squirt--it's Shrimp."

"That can't be your real name, who would name their kid shrimp?"

"Of course not. It's nickname. My real name is Teeny Weenie. Teeny Little Weenie is my full Christian name. I think it's Italian, although with the vowel at the end can also be Corsican."

We were waiting for him to say it was a joke. When he didn't, I don't know how we did it, but we held in our laughter. It's tough to do when you're rolling around on the floor, pounding your fist, and trying to hide tears and a red face.

As we picked ourselves up from the floor, everyone started introducing each other by our full names and handing out business cards, a few even had resumes, so it took quite a while.

They had fortified all the doors and windows and had just painted a phony address number outside so we felt pretty safe. They found us rooms and places to sleep, which I did as soon as I hit the wet men's room floor. I dreamed a lot, mostly about zombies, Greek swim suit models sloshing around in a vat of out of date yogurt, headless vegetarian strippers taking literacy tests, discount miniature hookers eating Quaker Oats, naked female locksmiths and the dental students they love, and the occasional transsexual rodeo clown in white go-go boots." Except for the zombies it could have been any regular night.

One of the Times' workers, whose name I'd forgotten, and whose business card and resume I'd already lost, woke us up and took us to the cafeteria. The food was free, probably because they couldn't tell you what the hell you were eating. But I was hungry and I ate, fooling myself into thinking I wouldn't throw up. One good thing, at least I might taste bad if a zombie got the worst of me.

We had a pow-wow, which comprised of myself, Laura Lee, Skim Milk, Dr. Bllifover (I think I got his name right, but does it really matter) Shrimp and a woman who might have been gorgeous in a previous life, but in this one she was making up for being given too good a hand in an earlier lifetime. She wasn't just hideous. She was drop dead ugly. I mean her shadow, which had pockmarks, even looked the other way. Her misshapen head looked like a bomb had exploded inside. I'd be surprised if her face, which could be mistaken for a gas-mask, didn't scare a zombie into vegetarianism. Her name was Jeraminder or Jeramander (again does it matter), they called her Mander.

Mander and the Plan

The plan was to leave this place because food and ink were running low and Dr. Bliffover had convinced us that if we could find a lab, he could study Klaus, our half and half human, and come up with a cure. The Times had a great resource department, but the maps of the building drawn by a former one-legged ballerina, who later spun herself to death, just led us around in circles, so it took us half the morning to find it. There we discovered the locations of several nearby labs and decided to go to the one closest to an adult video store. Hey, after looking at Mander for more than five minutes we males needed something to keep our minds from accidentally drifting her way during an apocalyptic sexual fantasy where we died of fright at the end.

The plan was simple, load us up in a few newspaper trucks and if the street got clogged we'd use the band to clear a path. We also loaded each truck with plenty of Sunday editions in case we needed to flatten any zombies who got too close.

It only took an hour or so to load up the trucks, the Times' workers union met and stated that they were off the clock so there was no need to drag things out. We left through the rear loading bay and didn't run over a zombie until we made it to the street. I wish I could say that about the Times' worker who was changing the oil.

By the time we reached the street there were hundreds of zombies, so in order to clear some space, we opened the windows and rear door so the band could scare them away. That's when we realized a small over sight. The bands instruments were left on the street, when they ran for the Times' building. Unfortunately for a few band members we had prepared ourselves for their musician ship and were wore earplugs. We didn't notice they weren't holding instruments until a few guys playing the air trombone and air tubas were pulled from the truck. Luckily what was left of the marching band realized that they also weren't holding instruments and started tossing Sunday Times at the zombies, then closed the back door and pelted the monsters from the windows.

Laura Lee, a quick thinker, but not very diplomatic, shouted, "Let's put the ugly broad on the hood like a freak show ornament.

Mander wasn't pleased about that, "Hey, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder."

Skim Milk growled, "If the guy who made that statement took one look at you he'd scoop his eyes out."

"Beauty is also only skin deep." Mander said, as tear snaked around the crags on her face.

Laura Lee countered, "They could dissect you and they wouldn't find one cell that wouldn't crack the lens on a microscope."

"She does have a good point there, whatever it was." Dr. Bliffover stated while I tried to remember if that was his name.

Skim Milk warmed up to the challenge. "I'm a Lesbo who's slept with some toothless inbred horse face hillbilly bull dykes and I'd jump on the biggest ugliest cockeyed uncircumcised gorilla rather dick than touch you."

Even Shrimp gave the insults a whirl. "Yeah, if a clock had your face on it, it would stop time and make it go backwards."

I'm sure Mander had many other beauty quotes she wanted to say in her own defense but only got as far as "You can't judge a book by –"before we wrangled her and then tossed her onto the hood, I'm pretty sure it was face first.

The zombies immediately backed away covering their eyes, including the eyeballs lying loose on the ground. Some threw up. It was working. Even zombies have their limit.

It was touch and go at times; we had to drive fast and make quick turns without Mander falling off the hood. I think at one point she was getting into it, enjoying seeing zombies try to form the word "Ugly," but not able to pronounce it.

The entire trip took less than twenty minutes. Mander had scared the zombies so far away there weren't any in sight when we made it to the lab. We all congratulated Mander, keeping our backs toward her face. I saw her reflection in a shattered window and I think she looked proud or radioactive. I asked her to stand guard while I took orders and headed for the adult video store. I took a large almost machete size knife into the store in case there were any like-minded zombies browsing the dead girl section. The others unloaded the vehicles and carefully entered the building through the revolving door -- checking for zombies and loose lab rats. Laura Lee was deathly afraid of rats. At the diner, before the zombie invasion, she told me she once went to a Halloween party dressed as a hunk of Swiss cheese and got caught by a guy dressed as a mousetrap and then was assaulted by three guys dressed as white lab rats. Luckily a guy, dressed as a needle and his brother, dressed like a scientist, subdued the rats. But by then Laura Lee said she was traumatized and to this day won't go out wearing a yellow dress that had even buttonholes in it.

Porn, the Lab, and the Experiment

I was pleased to see that the porno store had a wide range of selections, from weird fetishes to religious triple x priest on priest, nun on nun, nun on priest, bishop on priest and nun, priest on cardinal while being watched by a pope who was dry humping a steeple. I was even happier to see that they didn't carry priest, nun, bishop, cardinal, or pope on altar boy videos. It almost made me forget that I was assaulted by a priest and a nun. Of course, I was twenty-eight and dressed as an altar boy and it was a Halloween party thrown by an atheist hate group. Laura Lee and I were on the same page in our loathing of Halloween, although she also despised Christmas, Easter, New Year's, July 4th, Mother's day, Father's day, Valentine's day, Martin Luther King's birthday, Lincoln's birthday, as well as Presidents day, Memorial day, Bastille day and everyone's birthday. She especially despised the anniversary of Eisenhower's niece's friend's Bar Mitzvah. She did however like March 5th when it fell on the first or third Tuesday in June (at least that's what she had tattooed on the bottom of each foot ).

We decided to make home base on the third floor near where the actual lab was. They hadn't found any zombies, which seemed odd, so we kept a sharp look-out. We did find one zombie, a former doctor who in his haste must have sewn his shirt tail in the stomach of a chimpanzee. The chimp was alive and pulling the zombie around the operating table. The zombie would lunge for us, then get pulled away by the monkey, who he would chase. If zombie-hood had not gone viral, the video we were taking certainly would. Before shooting the zombie doctor we took still photos we'd hoped to make into post cards.

It took me five trips, three of them with two other guys to get all the porn up to the fourth floor, which didn't have any zombies either, but had lots of screens we could hook the DVD players up to and doors we could lock from the inside.

I had to get back to saving the world, so I set a ten video limit, five if I found myself pausing and replaying sections. When I got back to the fourth floor, I was satiated, hungry and for obvious reasons Laura Lee didn't turn me on, and Mander was almost lookable.

I wandered into the lab, searching for the cafeteria. Dr. Bliffover, with the help of a few of the Times' workers had strapped Klaus to an operating table and were running tubes and electrodes to both his arms. I asked the doc what he was doing and he told me in layman's words.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? What do you have going into his veins?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out." Dr. Bliffover said as if I should have known. "It's either one of two types drugs, one will make him sleepy and the other will make him tell us anything we want to know. If you have any questions feel free to ask. He had a picture of his wife in his wallet and she was smoking hot so I have few personal questions."

"Is that ethical?" I asked.

"What do ethics have to do with it? I'm a doctor. I heal the sick. Okay, sometimes I make mistakes and kill them. Like the time I gave a woman a lobotomy instead of tracheotomy, or was it a hysterectomy, although it may have been a colonoscopy. She, like Mander, although not in her class, was a hideous creature. It was tracheotomy, I remember I gave her a hickey or a yeast infection to mark the spot. What does it matter that the woman died and I was out a ball point pen?" Dr. Bliffover stopped and checked his own pulse. "I'm alive! I'm alive! Sorry, I'm a big Gene Wilder and I love saying that." He sighed. "It's something I could never say after working on a patient. I'm pretty sure it was me who likes Mr. Wilder. I'll have to ask myself later in private."

"Are you sure you're a doctor?" I asked sarcastically, but as the words came out I dreaded what his response might be, good thing he started to hyperventilate while he was crying.

Before he could recover enough to answer, Laura Lee, Skim Milk, Jo, Maria and Shrimp walked into the room asking if I had found any American Idol DVD's.

"No, it was a porno store, all they had was American Oral, or American anal, or Dancing in the Stirrups–"

Laura Lee interrupted, "Sorry, I forgot you were, over sexed, insensitive, and perverted enough not to like reality shows."

I didn't have answer for her so I started to sing the theme song to the "Courtship of Eddie's Father," in the original language it wasn't written in at the time.

When the zombie half of Klaus started to roar, everyone turned thinking he was trying to sing along. In fact Dr. Bliffover had started to play the air guitar and Jo had begun to clap to the rhythm (I found out later this was a group of avid clappers). It wasn't until the zombie roar got too loud did they stop clapping and started sporadic skipping.

"I think Klaus' zombie half is reacting to whatever the hell I put into his veins. I suppose I should find out, huh?"

Klaus's zombie half was growing more irritated. Dr. Bliffover, who couldn't find his glasses asked Laura Lee to read the label on the solution that was attached to his IV.

"I think it says Lemon Margarita mix but I could be mistaken since I have a learning disorder and can only read labels at a second grade level," Laura Lee said through a blush that was egged on by embarrassment.

I wanted to make fun of her, but I knew this wasn't the time, so instead I just called her a dumb bitch.

Laura Lee must not have been used to such wit because she didn't react badly or insult me back. Sure hitting me a chair could be interpreted as a negative reaction, but I chose to see the silver lining in getting my nose broken in three places. The swelling that spread across my face made up for not having check bones.

The doc never found his glasses, but finally remembered that he didn't need them to read. According to him the solution he gave Klaus was either a mild sedative or speed, mixed with an out-of-date histamine. The more he gave Klaus the angrier the zombie got, the reason became obvious – the zombie half was getting hives and since his zombie hand was strapped and partially eaten off he couldn't scratch himself.

The Good News

The doc told us the news. "The bad news is that he's miserable and suffering and probably wishes he weren't dead. The good news is that hives are living cells and so whatever this solution is doing, it's converting dead cells into living ones-- extra itchy ones and not attractive even on a zombie—oh, and I didn't kill him yet. He may end up as one giant hive, but he'd be alive." Then he started shouting. "It's alive. It's alive!"

We all looked at him. "Sorry, in the last fifteen minutes I've become obsessed with Young Frankenstein. Remember the scene where--"

I interrupted him. "Doc, what does that mean?"

"Gene Wilder was Dr. Frankenstein and he"

"No, what does this mean for us, now!

The doc stopped, scratched an itch on the roof of his mouth and spoke. "It means that his zombie half is producing living tissue, other than that I'm stumped."

Laura Lee jumped in. "Doc, is there any possibility that you could induce cells to grow that aren't hives?" "If I knew what the hell I was doing, sure, absolutely. But since I'm basically a quack and had to cheat to pass my medical exams, and have been sued for malpractice by the few surviving relatives of patients, before they contracted incurable diseases from my germ infested office, we'd have to get lucky—very, very lucky. Is it too late to buy a lottery ticket? I've got my numbers right here in--"

Skim Milk shouted at him. "Doc, forget the damn lottery. You need to keep trying -- find some other stuff to stick in him. What do we have to lose?"

"Of course you're right. I'll fill this bastard with so much fluid his insides will float out his mouth."

Laura Lee almost turned my way when she said. "We should keep our things close so we can gather them up quickly, maybe even have a fast garage sale. If Dr. Quack can somehow cure him, we should be ready to roll. Maybe we'll be able to spread the cure. If it works fast enough, there's so many zombies out there, maybe one of them is actually not on Match.com." That's when she turned to me and spit in my face, several times.

I just let it go, I figured she was just overcome with emotion and couldn't verbalize it. Sure, I wanted to spit back, or ask her, Skim Milk and Maria if they wanted to do threesome plus one, but I'm not a man to take advantage of a damsel in distress unless she was too drunk and high on psychotropic drugs to know what's she's doing."

We split up, except for Klaus and his zombie half, all of us gathering our own stuff; my new porno collection was the first thing I boxed up. I had become very attached to those DVD's, in some cases literally; I'm not one to waste paper products. It was the closest I'd ever get to love at first sight. I looked back at that visit to the porno store, and finding the sections on Brazilian Barbarian Broads Bang Gay Gynecologists Gone Comatose, Medieval Masonry Moms with Big Wet Asses, or Self-flagellating Slutty Saints in Penis Penance, as one of my fondest memories from those turbulent days. For the first time, my feelings of absolute doom changed for the better to just plain hopelessness. There was a ray of light, but the glare still blocked my vision of the future, which probably came from sitting too close to the screen.

While I obsessed about my fate: shrimp organized his work force, Laura Lee stood in front of a mirror playing charades and losing (although she won't admit it), Skim Milk and Maria helped Dr. Bliffover find stuff to inject into Klaus, JO debated with himself on whether or not to put the "e" back in his name, and the zombies formed a horde that was about to welcome us to the neighborhood.

Maybe if we were playing closer attention to the zombies only a few of us would have died, but on the other hand maybe that's what saved the human race and left me with the most difficult decision of my life without a Ouija board. Because of the sounds of glass shattering and the nerve biting screams coming from the lobby, Dr. Bliffover and Skim Milk were forced to stop filling Klaus with liquids and pack up—that was when dumb luck saved mankind. We didn't know the exact mixture of the serum until later – Skim Milk had taken detail notes, but encrypted it with a little known cypher that was used to keep the ring sizes of the rich and famous secret during the Second World War. When she heard the roar of the horde of zombies, a sound exactly like heavy metal harmonies, she panicked and misplaced the key code inside a box of vanilla wafers that she had also misplaced inside a large box of recycled heterosexual lesbian greeting cards that she had found inside a huge vat of Canadian trail mix – the Edmonton blend.

The Zombies are Coming!

The change in Klaus happened in phases, his rash unexplainably turned to letters in the Greek alphabet, then to names and addresses of all the members of Tea Party arranged by their IQs, which started at 63 and ended at 65, morphing into Jesus going through stages of the cross wading through Hollandaise sauce, finally becoming one huge blotch that burst open sending out flakes of dried blood mixed with lavender and mauve shapes of famous Korean War battleship nurses like a blizzard of Valentine's Day and D-day confetti. When it settled and the air was clear, Klaus was now all human, who I wound up hating despite the fact that he saved the mankind. He was the most superstitious person I'd ever met. In fact he had become half-zombie because he was bitten by a man, who hadn't fully turned into a zombie, who was also trying to avoid stepping on cracks while walking around a ladder to circumvent a black cat in his path. When Klaus spoke for the first time he had an annoying whiney voice that sounded like the air being let out of stretched balloon. I wanted to kill him and turn him back into a mouthless zombie.

"Am I alive," Klaus whined and then started thanking every possible lucky star.

He was cut off by the doc. "It's alive! It's alive!"

I swore to myself, if we lived, I'd never watch Young Frankenstein again, unless there was a porno version.

The zombies, by their shear mass, had pushed their way through a locked revolving door. At first they just spun completely around and walked back out into the street, until a few finally just pushed through the glass. The guard at the entrance had put on a doorman's outfit that caused him to take his job too seriously. Instead of alerting us right away he kept yelling at zombies asking them who they wanted to see. It was only after he realized that their roar was not a German dialect that he remembered they were zombies and he'd never been to doorman's boot camp. He caught the elevator in time for the doors to close on the zombies before he was tempted to ask what floor they wanted.

I was the first person he saw and he started yelling. "The zombies are coming. The zombies are coming."

At first I thought he was joking especially after I heard him say, "I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner, I thought they were German tourists who were furious because they accidentally went to the holocaust museum. Anybody could have made that mistake, especially when you saw the expressions on their faces."

By then I was laughing and didn't stop till I heard their collective roar from down stairs. There was no mistaking that sound, not even for a slowed down version Van Morrison singing "Listen to the Lion." I ran through the 3rd floor telling everyone that (what better way is there to say it) "The zombies are coming." They must have heard the zombie team chant, and the cries of guards trying to block the stairwells being digested because everyone started to scramble for their gear and makeshift weapons. Laura Lee yelled, "Please, don't kill the cute ones."

Jo or Joe (I'm not sure how his inner debate ended) and Shrimp were prepared. They pushed a handcuffed Mander, whose mouth was covered with duct tape, out in front of them. For an ugly broad she looked good in duct tape.

I ran up to them and ripped a strip of tape off of Mander's mouth, tearing part of her tongue loose so it hung out of her mouth twisted like mildewed red licorice. "You're covering up her disgusting mouth and her crooked teeth." Truth be told her teeth weren't crooked just misshaped and swollen so they looked more like a mouth full of arthritic feet.

"Thank you," she said, although it came out more like "Twank Boo," because a piece of tape had stuck to her bottom teeth and tongue.

"Now my hands please," which came out more like "Na-U myeeee anterss bulleeteeeeeeeezzzzz." I'm not sure of the exact spelling of what she said, but promised if we lived through this that someday I'd find out. Somehow it didn't calm her nerves, but fortunately for us the tape got lodged in her throat and she had to use most of her energy just to breathe.

The big dumb newspaper-man, who Laura Lee had humiliated earlier, said as he counted on his fingers, "We sealed the doors on the uh...uh...second floor,"

Shrimp turned to us "Put Mander in the elevator and press lobby. When the doors open they'll run away from her, which should give us enough time to escape." He saw the look of concern on my face. "Don't worry she'll be fine. You've seen the putrid mug of hers enough to know they won't touch her. I promise we'll come back and get the ugly broad."

"And go where?" I said. That question wasn't one that Shrimp had an answer for, so he said tentatively, "Kansas?"

"This isn't the Wizard of Oz!" I shouted.

"We're not going anywhere," Skim Milk yelled. "Although I'd love to go roller skating or maybe even scuba diving, if I had a parachute I could sky dive off the roof, well maybe not this roof, but..."

Maria and Doc arrived with Klaus at his side. "Ski..." Dr. Bliffover got out before he was interrupted.

"Yes, I love to ski but we'd have to—"

"No....I was not talking about skiing. I was saying Skim, if you let me finish!" Doc yelled. "It was bad enough when AMA barged into the operating room took the Swiss Army knife scalpel, bottle opener and compass out of my hands and moved my patient to the mortuary."

"Okay. Sorry."

"Apology accepted. Do I have any ear hairs?" Dr. Bliffover asked, turning to show us his ears.

Laure Lee walked in and said, "No, I wish you did, then I could dye them. I love dying ear hairs."

"Guys, I think we can talk facial hair later" I said, turning so Laura Lee could get a good look at my ear locks.

Shrimp nodded, standing on a chair and spinning so he could display his ear hair. "We've already lost ten people and have a few thousand zombies down stairs waiting to chew our ears off."

"You're right." The Doc spit out. "Ear hair is nothing to be taken lightly. Another time perhaps."

"What the Doc wants to say is that he has a cure ready now." Klaus' words leaked out of his mouth like a rusty hinge, as he made the sign of the cross with crossed fingers and then prayed to Allah.

The Formula and the Volunteer

"Skim found her notes on the formula. I mixed a batch, by hand, but I think it might have come out smoother if I had a blender, but there aren't any lumps that I could see." That's when I noticed that Dr. Bliffover's face was turning red from the strain of holding a twenty-five gallon barrel.

"Doc, I don't mean to talk out of turn, and I say this with all due respect, and I don't mean to be offensive, but why don't you set the barrel on the floor?"

"Good idea. Sometimes we don't think of the obvious like the time a guy in a dark green vest crawled into my office bleeding from every orifice, his legs severed, his face smashed in and I tossed him my keys and told him to bring my car around."

"We just can't run into a horde of zombies and start injecting them." Laura Lee said, examining Shrimp's ear hair.

"We could fill water balloons with Doc's elixir and throw it on them," Jo offered.

"Maybe we can drink it and pee on them," Shrimp said excitedly.

"We won't. We don't need to. All I have to do is inject all of us. Then we can walk out there get bit and they'll get disinfected by us." Dr. Bliffover said like he actually had no idea of what he was asking us to do.

"How do we know it works?" Shrimp and Skim Milk asked at the same time.

"Yeah, how do wees know da damn ting work?" Jo or Joe, and I said simultaneously.

"Vot makes you tink it vil verk? " Laura Lee, Maria, and Klaus said concurrently.

"Whaaaaagutha mmmmaaakeeesseeee yuuu-eeee-uuuuu—" Mander said all by herself, one end of the duct tape now hanging down her face— the other end stuck to the roof of her mouth..

"Shut your trap!" Everyone said all at once, while Laura Lee shoved the tape in Mander's mouth and smacked her a few times. Then we all took our turns. It felt good, darn good. I think Mander actually liked the attention; she sort of smiled, or maybe she was having a stroke. To this day no one really knows. We deliberated on sending her to a doctor who specializes in ugly people's strokes, but that would have to wait, we had some less disgusting dead people we had to bring back to life.

"We'll just have to try it with one of us. Any volunteers?" Dr. Bliffover asked.

At first no one answered. The silence seemed to go on forever when in reality it was just 4-and-a-half hours. A few of us killed time by whistling the Notre Dame fight song in Latin several hundred times until that got boring and we sang vol. 1, 2 and 3 of The Sudoku Song Book for Lovers. Jo borrowed my entire porno collection, concentrating on the Girls Who Like Girls Who Like Guys Who Like Guys Who Like Girls Dressed Like Guys Who Like Girls Dressed as Guys Who Like Girls Who Like Girl Guys Who Like Guy Guys And Girl Girls Who Like Girl Girl Guys Who Like Guy Guy Girls That Hate Guys, Girls and Girl Guys and Guy Guy Girls Girls and Guy Girl Girl Guy Girls Who Don't Know Who to Like Guys or Girls, or Girls Guys and Guys Girls Who Like Gooses, Girls or Goose Girls, or Guy Goose Girls, Series Part 1 and 2.

Finally Laura Lee stopped folding her laundry, after adjusting the drapes she knitted, but before she vacuumed the rugs she replaced on the entire third floor, she spoke up. "I volunteer my extra-large jumbo asshole of date, whose name I don't remember and don't want to ever know." She gave me a look that made getting bit by a zombie the lesser of two frightening evils. At that point I was willing to do anything to escape her gaze, even go on a cruise. "So what do you say, numb-nuts, piss-brain, Ruby Tuesday molester," which made no sense, but for some reason Mander drooled down her tape. I've always been a sucker for women who drool on any kind of adhesive -- duct tape drove me wild. Like I said before she looked good in duct tape.

I took a deep breath and spoke up. "Okay, I'll do it."

"Do what?" everyone asked.

"Do what!" I shouted incredulously.

"Just kidding," everyone said.

Well at least that's how I remembered it. Who knows if it really happened that way, I was too nervous to take copious notes –I was about to be zombie bait. I wasn't sure if the cure would work, but it would give the others a chance to get away, especially Mander, who with snot joining her drool, at that moment, was so adorable I overlooked that she was the ugliest human being I'd ever seen. "Ok, give it to me Doc."

"Give you what?" everyone shouted.

I actually laughed. Mander, reacting to my good spirits, gurgled and a golf ball of saliva slid down the tape. She knew how ugly she was, and that I was blinded by the knockout combo of duct tape, mucus and drool. She watched my eyes slide down to her wrinkled mouth, full of teeth that now looked like sweating maggots, and was milking it for all she could get. A typical ugly broad ploy, but I didn't care. Hell, I knew my face was also not mirror friendly. I once won a chop meat look-a-like contest.

By now, Doc had pulled out the needle, after trying to remove it by pushing it into and through my body and held it up smiling with delight like a sadist whose partner was tied up, ass in the air and he was holding a long thick broomstick. It was not a "you're taking one on the chin for the team" kind of expression -- uh-uh. It was a "you're going to take it someplace much farther south, and I don't give a damn if you ever recover" expression.

The yellow liquid inside the needle glowed like reservoir water fed by a dozen chemical plants, a few nuclear reactors, and three Great Danes. When he plunged the air out of the needle, I could have sworn I heard it hiss. Then Dr. Bliffover jabbed the plunger into my arm, let it spill into me, slapped his knee a few times and stomped his feet and yelled "Yee-haw!" He left the needle in my arm as he spun around and then threw his other arm out. Laura Lee quickly snatched it and they dosey-doed, while the others immediately started clapping hard and fast like angry percussionists playing conga on Central American prostitute's ass (female of course). I felt the sting of chemicals seep into my body and I might have clapped along if I hadn't passed out.

The Not So Clinical Trial

The next thing I remember was hearing, "On three. One. Two. Three." My eyes opened and I saw their faces as they tossed me in the air. I turned, to see Mander by the elevator door, her face holding the zombies at bay, until I landed in the middle of them and it was feeding time.

Now, I don't know if you've ever been chewed up by a group of zombies, but it's not something you're likely to forget, like surviving a plane crash by eating your parents and five siblings, and then having the Heimlich maneuver performed on you because you were choking on a your twin brother's pelvic bone, nor is it anything you'd like to experience more than once, like being forced to shave your pubic hair with a blow torch.

Zombies, by nature, are sloppy eaters without regard for manners or personal hygiene. I held out a toothbrush and mouthwash, but there weren't any takers. Had I thought about it, I would have worn a bib—blood and chunks of my flesh rained on my gabardine reversible t-shirt (I'd won in at a fund raiser for unsweetened shredded wheat workers) and then on to my relaxed fit spandex pants, in essence my entire wardrobe, since I left without packing a suit case.

Before the zombies could rip out all my intestines, Laura Lee gaily yelled out. "Dinner is served," and then started taking photos of me getting feasted on. She looked at her photos on her phone and then, while she proudly showed them to the others, she shouted gleefully, "If you die, I'll always remember you like this!" I took a quick glance back at her, she waved goodbye, gave me the thumbs down sign and then happily pushed the elevator buttons. I saw Mander, next to her, and I thought tears had formed in one of her eyes, but couldn't be sure if it was a tear or just clear pus, or even if it was an eye that caused the oozing. The elevator doors closed and I was alone and wondered if I'd soon be a member of the horde or just a mound of minced gabardine, spandex and body parts. I really didn't think Dr. Bliffover's cure would work, but sometimes the most idiotic of miracles happen.

The zombies attacked me like a pack of cannibals ending a 43 year hunger strike. The first zombie, whose teeth were still in my neck, started to rattle, finally letting go of his grip. Unfortunately he had dentures and they remained around my esophagus. The change began to happen to the others dining on me. One by one they started to shake, rattle and murmur. Their once frightening roars had turned turn into feeble minded mumbles –they were becoming annoying humans. Intestines and other organs that were hanging out like broken VIP ropes were being sucked into their bodies. Eyeballs dangling from threads of muscle reeled back in like the second yo in yo-yo. Yellowish gray skin, barely strong enough to keep their insides from falling out, transformed into flesh color, some even a healthy tan and with enough tinsel strength to even keep a gut full of alien beings from blasting out.

I was consumed watching their conversion back to human that I didn't notice I was no longer in pain. The bite marks on my neck, head, shoulders, legs, feet, hands, back, tongue, kidney's, spleen, enlarged cysts, herniated dicks, canker sores and areas that no medical specialist had gone before (or since), were healing. Doc's cure was actually beginning to work. As zombies healed, their peers would bite them and then they'd heal completely--saving a ton on reconstructive surgery.

It's Me

Was it time for me to tell Dr. Bliffover that he was a hero, a medical genius, the savior of mankind, or should I wait to see what these beings would become and if the change were permanent? The world may have been saved, but at what price? Would former deceased man-eating fellows become functioning members of society or would they form a new Tea Party? (I know that was at least the second Ted party reference, but I'm just trying to get them the recognition they deserve.) That last thought made me charge for the elevator and to tell Dr. Bliffover and then wait with the others to witness the outcome. When I arrived at the floor I was greeted by Bliffover and company, all holding make-shift weapons, except for Mander.

"Hey, it's me. I'm cured," I said, doing the best impression of me I could muster.

Dr. Bliffover held up his hand. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Three. See I'm fine."

"What's the capital of New York?" Shrimp asked.

"Uh...Albany."

Laura Lee's stuck her finger in my face with such ferocity that it could never be mistaken for affection or even humane. "Do I look fat in this outfit? When I hesitated she got annoyed and added. "Go ahead answer chicken sh--."

"--No, you don't. You flatter the outfit." I shot back as she violently pulled down one of my ears pretending my head was a slot machine.

Dr. Bliffover jumped in. "What's my favorite color?"

"How do hell do I know?"

"Correct-a-mundo, I'm color blind." He shouted and started laughing. .

Skim Milk didn't want to be left out. "How old do you think I am?"

Even if they bashed my brains in and liquefied my private parts and forced me to drink them artificially sweetened, I would refuse to answer that one. "Enough! I'm cured. Look no bite marks. I even grew some more ear hair, "I said, hoping Laura Lee would suddenly fall in love with me or drop dead with the thought she might find me attractive. "Oh, can one of you help me get the false teeth out of my neck? They're in pretty deep." I said hoping that Skim's question had been averted.

Dr. Bliffover smiled, tore out the teeth, along with a piece of my neck and said, "He was smart enough not to answer Skim's question. He's cured. "

The others, except for Mander, weren't so sure and backed up as I left the elevator and walked to the window. "Doc, it looks like it's working on the zombies, they're turning back into people again, one is even selling bottled water."

"I don't care how cute any of the guys we cure, I won't go out with them, until they shine their shoes," Laura said and broke into an Indian war dance.

Doctor Bliffover, followed by the group, decided not to put on war paint, looked out the window. The cure quickly made its way outside. As zombies turned to humans and were bit by other zombies, they too turned to humans—most immediately began searching for their wallets and accusing each other of stealing their cash."

"Doc, is there any danger that the cure could weaken as more zombies turn human?"

"Kill joy!" The Doc spit out.

"The jerk has a point." Laura Lee replied.

Another Volunteer

"Maybe," Maria suggested, "someone should take your vaccine, go out and inject it into a few dozen zombies?"

We stared at her, forgetting she'd even been with us. I found out later that Maria had been silent because she'd temporarily decided that the English language depended too much on words.

"It's a great idea. You go, and we'll watch from here," Laura Lee replied, this time feigning a little known Navajo chant.

Mander shook her head. I think it was her head; it was attached to what I think was her neck, and said, "gee idee, IyeeeGa."

Dr. Bliffover understood her. He turned in her direction holding his hand over his eyes. "We'd have to put a bag over your head, a very thick bag, possibly led lined with spikes.

"But what if the bag fell off?" Laura Lee asked.

"We could use bolts, or we could cut off her head. He turned to Mander, shading his eyes. "It's the style in some Arabic countries." Dr. Bliffover later told me that beheading a person was one of his life-long ambitions well before he was even born. I think it had to with his over sexually deviant and over protective dad who didn't remove his head until his mother gave birth.

"Give me the stuff." Shrimp said, "I'll go, I may be short, with stumpy legs, and a small difficult to find sneaker size, bent toes, webbed feet, and hundreds of fragile broken bones overflowing with arthritis that might me make me collapse at any second, but I'm no coward." He limped around in pain, falling several times.

"You're in no shape to go out there," Skim Milk remarked.

"Okay." Shrimp quickly responded.

That's when my mouth stepped up without consulting the rest of me. "I'll go. I already have the cure in me."

"Any other volunteers? I have a two gift cards for Bed Bath and Beyond." Doc said, hoping he could bribe someone else into going."

"Don't look at me. It's Friday the 13th," Klaus squealed. We all held our ears in case he had more to say. Thank God he didn't.

Doc looked at me, "I guess you're on your own. I'll give you a booster shot first."

I nodded.

Doc tossed the needle in the air, spun around, and with his eyes closed caught it behind his back and then injected me."

The others, of course, broke into applause and began to chant. "More. More. More."

Dr. Bliffover bowed, picked up several needles, juggled them, and tossed them in the air again; this time they stuck in the ceiling. He did a somersault, a quick moonwalk, just as they came lose and fell. He looked up, caught them all with his mouth, and then spit the needles into me. As much as I was in\ pain from the injections, I joined the applause. I've always appreciated real talent. When the clapping died down the Doc handed me a shoulder bag full of needles, but first he pulled a rabbit out of it, which led to more applause and Maria throwing him her room keys.

"If we survive this, I'll tell you where I live," Maria said seductively, while pulling down her pants to show him her behemoth butt.

"I'm there, babe. All you have to do is—"

Skim Milk coughed. "Now is not the time for that, besides it's lent." Her words held more than a hint of jealousy, and she slapped Maria's ass. She kept slapping while Maria moaned and then started to sneeze with pleasure when Skim spanked her to the opening of "Sing, Sing Sing." We all clapped along until Maria pulled up pants, and trying to take all the credit for the funky sound, did a backwards curtsey. It was quite a feat; she broke her spine in six places and became crippled from the waist down, but by then everyone was tired of clapping and turned away from her and faced me. Maria crawled around us making funny faces and sounds like a seal and even pretended to make a snow angel. Still we ignored her, recently crippled or not a person has to learn her boundaries. It was also a good lesson to learn: never take credit for someone else's creativity.

"I guess it's time for me to save the planet," I said, trying to sound masculine. I winked at Mander, she tried to return the wink but her eyelids drooped, got caught on her teeth and then she accidentally pulled out a few molars and one wisdom tooth when she yanked her lids open with fishing hooks.

Saving the World

They all walked me to the elevator, except for Maria who was not a strong crawler and gave up after twenty yards—the Doc making her journey more difficult by smashing several glasses and a Molotov cocktail on the floor. The group wished me luck. Laura Lee was more specific, "I hope you make it back alive, but become deathly ill from food poisoning. Oh, which reminds me. I packed your lunch. Make sure you eat it all," she said as she handed me a brown bag that smelled like whatever was inside died from food poisoning and threw itself up.

The elevator arrived and I stepped into it, well fell in, Laura Lee tripped me. Mander reached in with some part of her, pulled me up, and then tried to kiss me. Instead, she bit a few buttons off my shirt before the doors closed on her head. Luckily I was able to kick her face hard enough so she escaped without leaving her ugly head with me--good thing because the only bag I had was full of needles.

The trip to the lobby took longer than it should have. I stopped at every floor and searched all the rooms, pretending I lost my contact lens, in case the security cameras were still recording. I was stalling, trying to get up my nerve for the task ahead and wanted to finish the Times cross word puzzle that I'd carried in my back pocket for just such an occasion.

When I finally reached the lobby, I was surprised to find a group of cured guys greeting me angrily. "Where the hell is the doorman? I lost the keys to the office!" Another one of them was banging on his locked mailbox.

I pulled him away and said reassuringly, "You can't get in using a thigh bone. Call a locksmith, dumb ass." Before he could respond I ran outside ready to do my duty as a savior of the human race, but made one stop first to get more porno films before the owner got cured and returned.

The street was full, but not with zombies. Hundreds of newly refurbished people milled about in ragged clothes, trying to find their wallets and car keys, several looking for missing body parts. A few fights broke out over some loose eyeballs and limbs, but ended when the missing body parts began to grow back. Yes, I said, grow back. Dr. Bliffover's cure restored what they were missing. The chunk of skin that I'd lost when the Doc had pulled the teeth out of my neck had grown back. I wished I had lost my penis; maybe a brand new addition would work better.

As I looked for zombies to vaccinate I felt like I was being watched and I was. It started with a small crowd that were staring at me and then soon began pointing and yelling. "He's da man. He's da M-A-N!" I didn't know what they meant, panicked, ran from the crowd, around the corner and right into a massive zombie and a few of his wingmen. I was minutes from saving the world, this nightmare finally over and I was about to be devoured by a mob of very lonely and very hungry zombies. I knew Doc's vaccination worked earlier, but now my resistance was suddenly low, I felt week and got dizzy. Maybe I should never have eaten the lunch Laura Lee prepared for me (good thing I hadn't eaten all of it) I began throwing up, and worried that I was emptying myself of the Doc's magic elixir. My puking worked as an appetizer; the zombies sprayed saliva as they chomped their teeth in anticipation of a new feast. I wondered if Doc's cure would work on minced human meat. I reached for the needles the Doc gave me, but realized I had emptied the bag in the porno store so I could put the entire Bouncing Basketball B-B-B-Butts of Abu bu-bu-bu Ghraib, series parts 1-28 with the bonus DVD, Big Breasted Bosnia Babes Before Being Beheaded. B's are still best sellers in porno's post zombie period.

The massive zombie face was just inches from mine. I was breathing heavy and hoped the garlic in Laura Lee's lunch would make him have second thoughts. I could smell him all right; it was disgusting. Before dying he must have doused himself with Old Spice. That's when I passed out.

I felt like I was floating away and then I plummeted, heading towards blackness. I smashed my head on something hard and wet. I had gained just enough consciousness to realize it was the street. Before I could lift my head out of a pothole full of vomit and flesh, I was pulled up and up and up and then spun around. I caught glimpses of light smearing what left a trail of yellow and white. My eyes finally started to focus and I realized I was being carried around in circles by a flock of people, and those were building lights I was seeing. Recognizing that I was awake, they began chanting. "You Da Man!" "You Da Man!"

Only later from eyewitness accounts and home movies did I find what had happened. Here's what I learned. After an hour or so of looking out the window, Dr. Bliffover and company realized they were facing the alleyway. Doc found a window on the other side of the building that they all agreed gave them the best view. There they waited another 90 minutes. Finally Shrimp started taking bets on when I would be seen outside. Mander tried to place a bet, but because she vainly refused to remove the duct tape, they couldn't understand what she was saying. Annoyed that she couldn't place her wager, since even the most positive bets said I wouldn't show up until the summer solstice, she decided to spoil their fun and sneak down the stairs to look for me. She easily made it through the crowd of second term humans, scaring away anyone who came within eye-shot. When a balding man threw up only a few feet away, she lost it. She had her fill of people vomiting at first sight and was about to head-butt him, when he started to scream that he should have never taken a bite of the half-sandwich he found on the floor in the Badminton Bisexual Bull Dyke Bitches of Beirut section and that it was a good thing he didn't fall off the wagon by the temptation of all those needles lying on the shelf next to the Nearsighted Nipple-less Nymphs of Nicaragua and Nagasaki in 3 Double D. N's were big sellers until the letter "N" was be replaced by the "W" in the post apocalypse English dictionary. The D quickly emerged as the number 1 porno seller thanks to me.

Mander, kicked the Adult video store owner in the shins a few times until she heard a snap, just for fun, raced into the store, picked up as many needles as she could carry in her colostomy bag, which we all had mistaken for a birth mark, and searched for me. She followed the "He's Da Man," mantras guessing they were aimed at me. There she found me about to become nectar to the undead. She stuck her face into the middle of the zombies, who, upon setting their chalky eyes on her, gagged trying to inhale their roars and then turned to run. Zombies are very good at tearing off limbs, chewing raw flesh, smelling any blood type, some might even say they are superior to sharks and most mobsters, but they are not gifted runners, and can barely maintain a slow jog for more than three quarters of a mile.

Several fell, tripping over their own legs, arms, and feet most of which were lying on the ground. Mander injected me again to ensure that the serum was potent to keep me alive and then injected a few dozen zombies until she ran out of serum. The zombies gone, the fledgling members of new society quickly found me—a needle place in my hand by Mander. Mander wanted to give me the credit for the former zombies transiting back to the life—human life. She later told zombie haters as well as sympathizers, much to my chagrin, (I'm still getting hate mail) that it was my bravery that saved the day. The crowd had lifted me up and held me over their heads, spinning me around bellowing, "He's Da Man! He's Da Man! He's Da... Give me and M... Give me an A. Give me an M, no just kidding. Give me an N... What's that spell? It spells M-AAAAA-An." With all the cheering, Manda while fantasizing about an additional D and A in their chant, easily snuck away without scaring anyone and waited in the lobby for the celebration to end. That's when I regained consciousness.

My new fans finally put me down and I shook hands, signed a few hundred autographs, traded eating at Gaelic cafeteria stories, did a poll on what is the preferred method of cranial therapy on Norwegians, and even got promises of phone numbers from female admirers, when and if the cell service resumed. When I'd had my fill of accolades I headed back to the lobby. I would have arrived sooner, but it took me awhile to find all my porn.

Mander and Laura Lee

About fifteen minutes later, when I finally wrestled my way out of the revolving door, (it was one of those times I wished I had my GPS with me), I saw Manda waiting for me, tears sprouting out of every pore in her body like ten thousand geysers. She held her dripping arms wide, hoping that I would run into them, and that they worked properly so she didn't crush any more than four ribs. I would have been the answer to her dreams if I didn't stop to find a towel. Those thirty seconds were all it took for everything to change. The elevator opened and there stood Laura Lee. I was shocked; she was smiling. She hopped towards me on one foot displaying dexterity that she knew Mander would not be able to duplicate. Women have a sixth sense that alerts them when another woman is vying for a man's affection even if her competitor is as ugly as chewed food. At the height of each leap she shouted, first, "You Da Man," and then on repeated hops moaned. "My hero." Leap. "I love you." Leap again. "I to want to spend." Another leap. "the rest of my." A higher leap, this time waiting to stick the landing, before speaking, throwing her hands out to her side dramatically like a bird, or a penguin and sung almost, no exactly-Beatlesque, "date with you-you-you. I want to hold Da Man!" When I didn't respond right away she loosened her ponytail allowing her hair to fall to her shoulders. She undid a button or two on her blouse, put on fish net stockings, took off her 7-inch spiked heels and kicked them to me (one stuck in my face and she laughed) and then pursed her lips like a fish pressing against the glass of a tank and moaned, "No more Match.com for me, b-b-b big b-b-b-boy."

Mander not to be outdone groaned, "Avavaavaa Ewtingo satpu loggoooo," which I don't think she even knew what she said or even got close to the seductive B sound.

Laura Lee smiled coldly and spoke. "I'm wait-ting."

Mander drooled.

On one hand, there was Mander who loved me unconditionally, but when I took a good long look at her, even with the duct tape hanging from her mouth dripping with drool, still made me want vomit on her face so I couldn't see it.

On the other hand I had Laura Lee who loved only herself unconditionally, but made my loins produce smoke, and with a wink or with a picture of her in bed straddling a handcuffed violin and a large black cello, could make me toss away my porn (the stuff still on VHS).

There I was the savior of the human race, standing before a beautiful, sexy, nasty little bitch and a fish-gut faced caring person. We humans were given a chance to start over: to learn from the past, to correct our mistakes, to make wiser choices. It was up to me to choose between the ugly, the good, and the beautiful bad. I swept back my greasy hair, wiped the blood and viscera off my hands and onto my pants, tucked in my shirt, which I should have done before I blew my nose on the sleeve, spit out rancid food that was stuck between my teeth, cleared my throat of phlegm, saliva and hair balls, (I had eaten Chinese food last week), and then turned to the two women. For almost a minute I couldn't utter a word, although I was able to mime playing the banjo. Finally, I smiled and looked toward the women.

Before I could even speak a word, Laura Lee burst out laughing. "I can't believe you'd even think for one second, or even five tenths of a second, I'd go for a lizard-brained low life, mutating sack of DNA like you."

"But you said, I was Da Man and that you love me."

"I was yanking your repulsive chain. You da m-m-m-moron! " She laughed so free and hard, it became infectious. I couldn't help myself and I started laughing, even Mander laughed. We didn't care. Why should we? What the hell, funny was funny.

The laughter went on until Mander began making prolonged gurgling sounds raspy enough I thought she was trying to imitate Rod Stewart under water. That started Laura Lee and I laughing again, this time actually guffawing, both of us holding our stomachs with the same three fingers on our right hands. Coincidence? Who knows? This wasn't the time to investigate.

It was only after Mander, wheezed a gallon of mucous on a half a roll of duct tape, fell, cracked her skull, broke her neck in a couple of places (fortunately not seriously) and turned blue, that we suspected she had stopped breathing. We knew it for sure when the duct tape that hung from her mouth like the dark side of flounder was no longer flapping. Laura Lee, who thought Mander's blue-pallor matched her outfit dashed to her side.

"I've never seen that shade of blue. I'd love a handbag that color," Laura swooned, lifting rolls of loose flesh from the back of Mander's arms and holding them against her dress. I wish I had a knife."

"I think she's choking to death," I shouted as I ran after Laura Lee, trying keep within her shadow because it was at least three degrees cooler.

"It's a shame, it's the best she's ever looked. I'd like to get a picture, so I can paint my room that color," Laura took out her iPhone and starting snapping photos.

"Do you know CPR?" I asked, shielding my eyes from the iPhone's flash.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because maybe we can save her?"

"Oh. I can see your logic," she said admiring the pictures she'd just taken.

"Well, can you?"

"Sure, I taught a class to people who eat a lot of fish. They have tiny bones that get caught in--"

I interrupted. "That's the Heimlich maneuver."

"Duh! I know that. I wasn't very good at it, and most of my student's family members choked to death, so I began teaching CPR. I made a fortune because they all wanted to kiss me. Little did they know the AMA said mouth to mouth CPR doesn't work."

"Can you perform CPR on Mander?"

"Without doing the Heimlich maneuver first? I guess I could try. " She stopped snapping pictures and started videoing while she jumped on Mander's chest--hopping up and down on one foot trying start her heart, unfortunately using the foot with the high heel on it. I attempted to help, but my longer leg got tangled up on the duct tape and stumbled, landing face-to-face with Mander. Before I could vomit or scream for help, Laura Lee's heel got caught in between one of Mander's ribs and she fell on me, causing her to fling the iPhone to the ground.

The high heel must have awakened Mander's heart. Her large ears stiffened and lifted off her eyes, which popped open and she started to breathe, her nose hairs tickling our faces. Laura Lee also infatuated by nostril follicles giggled and then softly moaned. The three of us were all looking at each other and what happened next none of us anticipated. It must have been the combination of our body's chemical reactions to each other, mixed with Bliffover's cure, because the three of us were suddenly bursting with passion. All I know was that it was wild, instinctive, pure ecstasy with various bodily fluids exchanged--mostly from open sores.

Whatever it was, it didn't matter, because we were greater than the sum of us; we were no longer just three lonely people, we were three and seven-sixteenths. No future zombie attack, nor threat of nuclear enemas, or the forced removal of deviated septums, or being run through a wood chipper backwards, could separate us, or break our bond. It wasn't love, no. We were drawn to each other by something stronger and more powerful, the uninhibited sexual desires that we gladly sold to each other.

It's been six months since the zombie epidemic. Bliffover got so famous for the vaccine that saved the world he became the star of his own reality show and was able to rebuild his medical practice despite killing all his patients on the air. Jo kept the silent e in his name but removed the o. Skim Milk and Maria were arrested for indecent exposure and were executed. Klaus was completely cured of zombie-ism, but died when Dr. Bliffover tried to cure his schizophrenia by chopping him in half. Shrimp had an operation that added a foot to his height, but unfortunately a side effect prevented him from standing. Laura Lee paid to have her high heel removed from Mander's heart and replaced by a cheaper shoe. And me? I found Laura Lee's iPhone video, transferred it to DVD and I'm making a fortune with my true to life porno stories, D-D-D-Dates of the Dead.

The End

