MIDNIGHT SNACK
It's
roughly 11:45 PM in Stereo Falls. All the families are in for the night, all
the children nestled away. Household pets are curled up somewhere nice and warm.
Everybody in town's been in bed since nine or nine-thirty and will be up early
to go to work at their offices, factories, and what have you. It's July as well
so the kids either don't have to get up early or have summer jobs; none the
less, everyone's in bed. Most houses in the neighborhood look the same; some with
nice fences out front, some without. Everyone's lawn is cut the same as the
person's next to them. All the neighbors’ hedges are trimmed nicely. All the
cars, trucks, and minivans are washed, waxed, and sitting in garages. There's
no trash in the street. There's no vandalism done to anyone's property. No
stray animals roaming about. No homeless people waiting for their break. No
barking dogs. No sounds from their downtown area since it's dead by six. Nobody's
having trouble sleeping and everyone's in their nice little dream lands. The
only thing going is a 24 hour gas station across town where the night clerk
wonders why it's open twenty-four hours when nobody comes in after seven, but
he doesn't say anything because he likes having a job. That and the train on
the far side of town makes its nightly run. Yes, everything in Stereo Falls is
pretty much the same all the time and usually runs entirely on schedule. ...But
not tonight...
Tonight is different.
The recent rain has loosened the ground,
enough for the Earth's flesh to be moved that is; and so it is moved. First
his fingertips and then his fingers sprout up like weeds. His hands reach up to
separate its soggy crust allowing an opening. The mud squishes between his
fingers as he claws at the ground, pulling himself out of his grave. Like being
birthed from an earthly cocoon. Of all things to happen tonight, a return from
the grave wasn't on the list of 'might happens'. The living dead climbs out of
the pit he once called home and aimlessly moves forward. He crawls along the
ground, not yet able to stand, his mouth slowly creaking open. He's hungry. So
hungry he couldn't rest. Couldn't sleep. And now he's out for a snack... A meal.
The grave behind him, now a muddy hole with broken shards of coffin sticking up.
The casket pieces have blood and bits of scraped flesh on the ends of them from
his escape.
His fingers grip into the land in front of
him pulling himself forward. Owls watch as this once-man crawls across the
ground. Raccoons and possums keep their distance. A gurgling hiss comes from
his mouth. What and who he once was doesn’t matter anymore. Lit by the moon,
the slime of his decomposition reflects the light. His clothes are wet from his
decay and torn from the broken coffin. At the nearest headstone he reaches up
with the resistance of a rusty limb grabbing hold of its top. With all his
might he pulls himself up and places one foot on the ground followed by the
other. His stance stabilizes and he’s steady. Looking up to the night sky he
lets out a horrific screech as birds vacate their homes including the watching
owls.
His steps are forced and slowed as one
moving through water. He walks forward slowly, one foot in front of the other
with subconscious muscle memory. It’s coming back. His pace picks up. He
grumbles and groans, although that sound
might just be his stomach rumbling. The cemetery is cold and empty yet
simultaneously full. He comes to a halt and slowly scans his surroundings, his home. Though there are enough people
around him to form their own town he finds himself utterly alone, yet
loneliness is not really on his mind…if he indeed has one.
After viewing his surroundings he spots
the front gate of the graveyard and starts to march in that direction. The wind
is slight, no doubt carrying his stench to the nearby neighborhoods. Flies and
gnats crowd his space. Maggots and various insects drop from his body with
every step splatting to the ground. His body creaks and his clothes slip with
the wet sounds of the slime. He walks as though it’s his first time, unstable
without much direction or solid footing. He reaches the gate and opens it, its
rusty creaking sound catching his ears as he stops to look at it before moving
on.
He walks down the road, step after step. He’s
hungry, starving. His senses almost make
him hungrier by the minute: the smell of living things in the air (cutting
through even his own foul odor), the heightened sound of heartbeats and blood
flow. His stomach grumbles. On his walk, he steps on garbage on the side of the
road with no thought. He steps on a broken beer bottle that plunges up directly
through his foot. No reaction, he can’t feel it nor does he notice it. The
wound leaks fluids on the ground behind him. The Zombie’s done walking on the
side of the road and walks clear over to the middle, walking in the same
direction. The piece of broken bottle lodged in his foot clanks on the road. Raspy
creaking sounds emit from his rotten decaying mouth. He sees something in the
distance - lights. A truck is coming down the road. He’s lit by the headlights
in all his grotesque glory. The Zombie’s eyes light up and jaw falls open. The
car swerves by the dead man, “Hey, get outta the road, asshole!” His head turns
briefly watching the truck fade in the distance before turning forward and
continuing.
The being that used to be a man (perhaps
even a respectable man) moves forward
with thirst, with hunger. He can feel it, the only pain he can feel. Stopping
dead in his tracks, his head creaks to his left and his body soon follows as he
takes to the roadside woods. Any light from the moon or streetlights is gone,
swallowed by the darkness of the woods. The Zombie walks through the sea of
trees as the surrounding brush scrapes and scratches him in his passing. His
clothes tear but he doesn’t notice, paying no attention. His stiffened hands
come up slowly to pull branches out of his way. Birds flutter away. Woodland
creatures scurry just sensing him.
Music plays up ahead, however faint. Alternative
rock, not that he could distinguish genres if he’d even care to. He moves
towards it with stronger strive, stronger drive. He gets through the woods to
find a clearing where a car’s parked - the source of the music. It seems to be
rocking, swaying a bit. Along with the music, sounds of passion and pleasure of
human tones are heard. He walks into the clearing closer and closer to the car.
Pulses are felt. The warmth and sound of the heartbeats radiate as his body
senses it, feels it in the air. Sticks are stepped on in his trek snapping
beneath his feet. Of course, the inhabitants of the vehicle don’t hear his
movement over the music and their own
movements.
He approaches the car, more specifically
the backseat where he feels the energy coming from. Pressing his hands to the
window, the bones of the tips of his fingers scrape down the glass. In an
instant he smashes his hand through the glass to an audible surprising scream. He
pulls back a young man by his short dark hair who yells out in fear. The guy’s
head is pulled back out of the window while his date, a young woman, screams
bloody murder. Their cries mean nothing to him; he’s a walking stomach on a
mission to appease his hunger like a drug addict looking for a fix. The Zombie
looks down at the man, shivering with hunger. The man can’t blink; his eyes
frozen open with terror and his hair streaks white with fear.
The Zombie’s fingers dig into the man’s
eyes and, with ease, he pulls off the top of his head splitting the man’s
cranium in half. Within the car, the woman continues to scream and cry unable
to look away. The skin splits, the ligaments and muscles tear and the skull
cracks as the head opens. Blood spills out releasing the savory scent into the
air. For someone, something, so stiff
and fragile, the Zombie’s strength is remarkable as he tears the mortal man’s skull
apart. He reaches in and plucks out the young male’s brain along with his
eyeballs dangling before stuffing it in his mouth. He gobbles up the brain and
eyes with the hunger of a man who’s been lost at sea. Blood and fluid runs down
his rotting chin after the eyeballs pop in his jaws. Shoveling in his food,
belches come in between mouthfuls.
The young lady continues to yell before finally
getting out on the other side. She’s of average build, blonde, naked, and
screaming for her life. With her adrenaline pumping, she runs not thinking of
the pain of her bare feet on the sticks and rocks beneath her. The Zombie looks
up and then over to her as its mouth creaks open. He lets out his blood
curdling screech stopping her instantly. A paralyzing sting caused from its
call, she learns the answer to a common question of “How do people get caught by such slow moving creatures?” Fear,
debilitating fear.
She cries and tries to move but can’t
budge. Her body tries to fight past this force that’s holding her as he
approaches, each step with heavy footing. He’s right next to her. She sweats
and cries in terror. Standing to her side, he lets out another screech, her
eyes go white with fear. Her heartbeat rises and her blood races, pulsating out
to the dead. Like her mate, her hair turns white from sheer fright. The pulsing
energy tantalizes his senses. He bites into her neck with the same hunger and
thirst as with the dish before her. He bites hard, pushing through the raw meat.
The once-living-now-not-man pulls back tearing the flesh from her neck as her
white body is painted red.
He continues to chew at her neck before
pulling at her head. The spine gives him some resistance but he tugs harder,
breaking it off at the neck. With her body still standing frozen, stiffened
with fear, he tears into her head eating out her brain, eyes, and then the rest
of her face until there’s nothing left but a naked skull. The empty cranium is
tossed to the side and he tends to his hunger eating the rest of her from the
neck stump on down. He takes the headless and lifeless body down to the ground
to feast. The sound is wet and messy as he slimily gorges on her flesh. The
cartilage is tough but he doesn’t care; his jaws power through it as he does
with the tendons. The suit he was buried in is now not only torn up but covered
in blood, the blood of the youth. It would appear to be a picnic for the Zombie
as he eats this woman’s entire being (save for the bones) in this open clearing
in the woods.
It doesn’t take him long to finish the
first course of his meal and she’s down to a bare skeletal structure. His
breathing, if one could call it that, has elevated in his excitement for
feeding. The bones are wet but anything that once covered them is gone. He
leaves her skeleton a pile as his bloody mass turns his attention back towards
the young man with the mangled head dangling from the car window. Approaching
the car, he pulls the rest of the man through the window down to the ground and
drops down tearing into the man without a future’s flesh. More of his blood
pours when the skin is broken and the red is vibrant against his naked white
skin. The Zombie tears large pieces of meat off of the man’s person by the
handful. The sound is slimy, wet, and thick as it often does with the tearing
of raw meat. He rips through the human with ease and the meat peels like bloody
Velcro. Lapping up as much DNA as he can, the Zombie chews through the muscle
before digging into the organs; everything from his intestines to his genitals.
Blood leaks from his less-than-whole
stomach and digestive system as he continues to eat. If his meal continues to
fall through his rotting body he may be hungry again sooner than expected. He
must be able to feel it as his hand drops down to wipe and scoop up excess to
once again swallow it. Not wasteful by any means, he drops down to lick blood
from the dirt and rocks before going back to his food.
His head pulls, cocking to the side, jerking
meat from the bone with his jaws. He eats like a sloppy child smacking on his
food. He chews through fat without trouble and, when he’s through with the
skeleton’s coating, all that’s left of the bloody skeletal structure is bloody
cartilage and ligaments in which he sucks and picks out to finish it off. Much
like the man’s pretty date, all that’s left of him is a pile of bones sucked
dry by the hunger of the night lit by the moonlight. Coyotes couldn’t have
picked them cleaner. It won’t be long before the insects have their way with
the dry lifeless bones on the ground. The smell of blood fills the air and will
no doubt attract wild animals as well as bugs. This was certainly not the night
the youthful couple had planned for the evening.
So, with his belly full, it’s time for
rest and he turns back towards the woods. The Zombie treks back through the
scratchy brush without the drive he once had when the dead was awoken by the hunger.
He crosses that familiar road beneath the streetlights leaving slimy footprints
and blood trails behind him. He sluggishly moves down the road. Back at the
gate, upon entering the cemetery (this rest home for the deceased), he stops
and scans the land before turning back and shutting the gate with its rusty
squeak. Slowly, he saunters through the graveyard back to the hole from whence
he came. At his grave he looks at the headstone attempting to make sense of its
writing, cocking his head. He crawls back in the dirty, muddy hole pulling dirt
back over him. After his craving for a midnight snack is taken care of the
Zombie is now home.
…And graves over, in this very cemetery,
at another seemingly peaceful plot, the earth begins to separate and the
ground’s surface breaks open.
Originally titled The Zombie, I wanted to do a zombie story that didn't focus on survivors in a zombie apocalypse or even an outbreak but on a zombie itself going through its motions. This was set to be the first story in Stereo Falls.
