Never ask a zombie ‘You want Fries with that?’
Zombie Meth
By Adrienne Ray ©2008

Pungent.

The smell of death is something you never forget and never get used to. It sickened me, but I have to deal with it.

So he’s dead. My brother-in-law is dead. The smell of blood is overwhelming. Head wounds bleed a lot.

Yeah, he’s dead. But it’s not my fault.

He came over to my house, drunk as usual. But this time his sister and our kids weren’t at home. They’re at his mother’s. I’m supposed to be cleaning the gutters. Instead, I think I’ve killed my brother-in-law.

“Help me, Brady. You gotta save me,” he had said. As usual, he wasn’t making any sense.

I came down off the roof, mad as hell. The idiot was pacing back and forth in my drive way, muttering something. I was afraid he might do something to my truck.

I said, “Go the hell home, Steve. Don’t come back until you’re sober.”

He reached out to me and I thought the fool was going to hug me, being all drunk and mushy. Instead, he wrapped his hands around my neck and tried to choke me.

I hit him with my head and he fell backward. He must have cracked his head on the sidewalk because blood spurted everywhere.

I thought that would stop the stupidness but he was back on his feet in seconds. He was screaming that I had to help him. All the while he was trying to bite me.

I really hit him then. He has a glass jaw, so he went down again. But he came right back. He wasn’t begging anymore. It was more like a growl. Now he was trying to rip my throat out. It came down to either me or him.

I felt his neck snap under my fingers. His body went limp and slithered to the ground.

Oh God.

Guess we won’t be having Christmas dinner at my mother-in-law’s.

This thing could go down two different ways. I could hide the body in the woods and my wife might think her stupid brother left town. If someone found the body later, it wouldn’t be hard to convince her family that one of his no account friends had killed him. A fight over drugs, maybe.

But that was probably illegal…..or immoral….or something.

Maybe I should just call the cops and tell them what happened. No jury would convict me.

‘Yes, your Honor, I killed my brother-in-law. Have you ever met my brother-in-law, Your Honor? That’d be the same brother-in-law that owes me 500 bucks, that always drinks all my beer- the same brother-in-law that left a stash of marijuana in my father-in-law’s deer stand and said it was mine. If it would please the court, Your Honor, I’d like a show of hands of who wouldn’t have killed this brother-in-law.’

To my amazement, Steve got up again!

I hit him as hard as I ever hit any man. His head hung to one side, as if the bones were completely disconnected. Still he came after me.

I picked up a log from the wood pile I had stacked on the front porch and swung hard. He went down again. He thrashed on the floor, then he was still. Dead…again.

I ran into my work shed and found some duct tape. What I did next, you might not agree with, but it’s what I did. My reasoning was, he’d come back to life twice when I didn’t expect it. I didn’t want to be taken by surprise again. I duct taped him to the maple tree in front of my house.

He woke up while I was doing it and tried to bite me again. So I duct taped his mouth.

Yeah, that part was kind of satisfying.

The bones in his neck were coming through his skin. He whipped his neck around like a poisonous snake. I think he still would have bit me if he could.

Something fell out of his pocket during all this thrashing around. It was a small plastic bag with a bit of masking tape on it. On the tape was written two words:

“Zombie Meth.”

What kind of moron labels their illegal drugs? ‘Wait a minute, officer, that’s my mom’s oregano you got there, not marijuana. Now this stuff here is an illegal drug called zombie meth.’

I left him and went into the house to dial 911.

Wouldn’t you know it? The line was busy. I’ve never called 911 before and the first time I call it, it’s busy. I called the local sheriff, Barney Shrieves. I went to school with him. He’s a fellow you can count on.

“I’ll get him out to your house as soon as I can,” Mabel, the dispatcher, said. I went to school with her too. She‘s some kind of cousin to me, I think. “But today has been kind of crazy. Him and Pete are down to a migrant camp. Tommy Garcia’s camp. Those Mexicans are going nuts.”

Great. So now what? Is my name on the waiting list for whenever the cops get time? How many people are ahead of me?

Something crashed through my picture window. Standing in the middle of my living room, bleeding all over my carpet, was one of Steve’s no good associates-a huge black guy called Skinner.

Skinner was about 6’4” and 200lbs. I never liked him. I’m sure he didn’t like me. It was pretty clear he didn’t like very many white people. He blamed every problem in his life on the fact that he was black and therefore disadvantaged.

I guess it was just such a disadvantage that caused him to not know that rednecks like me keep a loaded shot gun over their fireplace. Mine is a double barreled, over and under 12 gauge. He charged me and was about a foot away when I shot him with the first barrel. It caught him square in the chest. He fell against the back wall and bounced back on his feet. Then he got the second barrel.

Something inside me told me to reload my gun. Maybe it was my guardian angel.

Rev. McKinley would tell me, ‘Son, there ain’t no guardian angel that would tell a white man to reload after emptying both barrels into a black man.’

My guardian angel and my gun are equal opportunity employers. If you want to crash through my picture window and try to rip out my throat, I got something for your ass, no matter what color it is.

To my amazement, Skinner let out a horrible hiss and came at me again. I put the gun barrel under his chin and pulled the trigger. What was left of Skinner quivered on my kitchen floor.

If this was drug induced, what the hell was this stuff?

“Brady Hawkins!” called a voice from outside.

Another one of Steve’s no good loser friends. Benny Taylor. He came from a path that led into my woods. What were those jackasses doing back there? On my property?

Benny limped up to my house. He was bleeding from the wounds on his right arm and left ankle.

“You’ve got to help me, Brady-”

I pointed the reloaded shotgun at him and said, “Skinner’s dead.”

“Oh Gawd!!”

“Sit your ass down on the grass. If you come near me, I’ll blow you in half!” I said.

“I ain’t one of them! I ain’t one of them! I didn’t take the zombie meth! That’s what did it to them!”

He saw Steve duck taped to the maple tree. Steve was thrashing around so much, his broken vertebrae had torn a hole in his neck. So how could he keep moving with such a broken neck?

I heard one time about this guy named Jake Albie. He was a body builder. Huge guy. He flipped his Trans Am in a potato field and broke his neck. But his neck was so muscular, it held his head up and his spinal chord wasn’t hurt. Still, I don’t know of anything that could jazz your muscles so much that you didn’t need your spinal chord. What was this zombie meth?

“So why’d you all take this stuff, Benny? Are you stupid?” Benny was sobbing incoherently, but that was okay, as long as he was sitting on the ground.

Benny said, “Skinner always had the best stuff.”

I thought about my wife and kids and wondered if they were safe.

I said, “Did Skinner give it to anybody else?”

Benny shrugged and said, “He killed Tommy Garcia about a week ago.”

He was so casual about it, I thought I’d heard him wrong. But he continued, “Tommy went to Skinner’s house raising hell. He said Skinner was selling his boys bad drugs. He said he was going to call the cops. Skinner slit his throat and tossed him in the bay.”

“You and Steve partied with this guy? Nice.”

“I guess he sold them Mexicans the zombie meth too. What with Tommy not being around and all.”

The Sheriff was having problems with the Mexicans on Tommy Garcia’s camp.

“Why didn’t you take any zombie meth?” I asked.

“Skinner only had enough for two hits and Steve wouldn’t share,” Benny sobbed. “Steve bit me on the shoulder but I pushed him away. Then he ran off to your house and Skinner attacked me. But I got away.”

Steve coughed. A trickle of blood streamed down from underneath the duct tape. He gagged.

“He’s choking on his own blood!” Benny cried. “Take that tape off his mouth!”

“You take it off him,” I said. Maybe that was cold but it was a day that would chill the kindest heart.

Benny reached over to pull the tape off and Steve lunged forward. Benny pulled back his hand and screamed. Steve gurgled, then sneezed. Blood and possibly some cartilage exploded from his nose.

“Just leave him alone!” I yelled. It was starting to get to me. I dialed 911 again but hung up when I saw the sheriff drive up.

Barney Shrieves and his deputy, Jake O’Reilly, got out of the car. Barney was a man you could count on. We used to play together when we were kids.

His deputy looked a little nauseous. They were both spattered with blood.

The sheriff was having problems with Mexicans in Tommy Garcia’s camp.

Barney aimed his 45 and put two slugs in Benny’s head.

“Are you insane?” I cried.

“Don’t worry, Brady, we ain’t gonna shoot you,” Barney said.

“I know damn well you’re not,” I said and aimed my rifle at Barney. Yeah. He’s a good man but I wasn’t gonna let him kill me.

“You weren’t bit,” Barney said. “You won’t turn.”

“You moron,” I said. “This thing is caused by a drug called zombie meth. You won’t turn into a zombie just because one of them bit you.”

I held up the plastic baggie. Barney and Jake looked a little shocked. Their mouths fell open in their own zombie imitations.

“T-then- all those Mexicans….” Jake stammered. “We didn’t have to-”

“Don’t tell me anything,” I said.

Barney was getting agitated. What had they done on that migrant camp? Jake looked like he was going to throw up. But Barney…Barney was real good at thinking on his feet.

I’ve known Barney all my life. When we were kids we used to play cowboys and Indians together.

I was always quicker on the draw.

Jake is bawling his eyes out now, but he won’t shoot me. I doubt he was the one that shot all those Mexicans. He just doesn’t have the stomach for it.

I’ve got to call my wife. You know, make sure she’s okay. Steve has stopped breathing. I guess zombie meth can kill you and keep the body going. Maybe when the drug wears off, the body returns to being dead. I’ll call my wife after the rest of the cops get here and clean up this mess.

Oh yeah, and I got to clean the gutters too.

x x x

Ms. Ray makes her triumphant return to anotherealm with this story. We missed you, Adrienne. Don't stay away so long next time! C'mon, you guys. Show Adrienne how much we missed her with comments on our BBS.




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