Deadcore.

4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas.

Edward M. Erdelac.

DEAD JUJU.

By Randy Chandler.

Randy Chandler is the author of the two solo novels Bad Juju and h.e.l.lz Bellz, and auth.o.r.ed Duet for the Devil with t. Winter-Damon (G.o.d rest his soul). Randy has been a magazine editor/publisher, a freelance book reviewer, a mental health worker, a gas-pump jockey, an ambulance attendant, a soldier in Vietnam and a funeral home flunky. He often haunts fields of carnage where angels and devils do battle.

PART I.

f.u.c.k ME DEAD.

For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and wh.o.r.emongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

-Revelation 22:15.

1.

The Big Blink.

Starving herself to death wasn't cutting it so Peg Pope decided to jump off this Tucson bridge and onto the railroad track in front of an oncoming train. It wasn't much of a bridge but it would do the trick. Less drama the better. n.o.body would see her gory remains on the tracks but the poor slurps who would have to investigate and clean up the mess. Slurps was Peg's word for the slobs whose purpose in life was slurping up all the s.h.i.t the world dished out to them with a wink and a nudge and a f.u.c.k You Very Much.

She leaned so far over the concrete rail that she got dizzy and almost took an accidental header. That would not do. It had to be an act of will to take her out of s.h.i.t World. A thumb-in-G.o.d's-eye act of great deliberation. And here came her ticket now. Chugga-chugga choo-choo grinding up the tracks. Right on time. Dead on time.

A chorus of sweet-faced devils from her childhood chanted: Jump, Piggy p.o.o.p! Jump!

She couldn't see them now but she knew well their devilishly cherubic faces with the thick green mucus dripping from their noses and their crooked teeth and dirty skin. The little f.u.c.kwads had followed her all the way from her grade-school years and were always close by to cheer on little Piggy p.o.o.p whenever Peg Pope was feeling the full force of s.h.i.t World's latest dump on her unbowed head. Well guess what, dirty little devils! Piggy p.o.o.p's head is no longer s.h.i.tty but unbowed. Slurp it up, suckers! Check the bowed head. She's ready to grab her Golden Ticket out of here right out of the f.u.c.king air on the way down to the tracks. And if the impact on the tracks doesn't finish her, that hulking locomotive sure as s.h.i.t will.

The train whistle blew and the sunny day suddenly darkened as Peg glanced left, then right (Look before you leap!) and cursed when she saw the white-haired old man hobbling along the bridge's sidewalk with a cane, coming toward her on her side of the street, talking to himself. Or was he talking to her?

"Hope you got a strong heart, old dude," she muttered to herself. "Tough s.h.i.t you gotta see this but here comes my train."

She looked at the looming train and knew she had less than a minute till jump-off. But then the scrawny geezer did something so unexpectedly odd that Peg had to react. He stopped short, looked up, pointed his cane up at the sky and screeched: "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed!"

Lapsed Catholic Peg recognized it as a Bible quotation. Corinthians?

"Look up, d.a.m.n you!" the old man yowled.

She looked up. "Holy s.h.i.t," she half whispered.

Awestruck. Mindf.u.c.ked. She forgot for the moment her date with death, the tracks and the train. The thing filled her mind as it filled the sky. Im-f.u.c.king-possible, but there it was, nearly blotting out the sun like an immense s.p.a.cecraft.

A colossal eye. Perfectly rendered on the canvas of the sky as if painted there by a supernatural hand with a gigantic paintbrush in sparkling clouds and rainbow colors.

Peg knew in her heart that this was no random formation of clouds. No, this was a sign. An omen ... but of what? The train pa.s.sed under the bridge, its whistle shrieking like a thousand banshees.

"You see?" shouted the old man with the raised cane. "It by G.o.d sees you!"

The crazy old coot's rant was beginning to harsh her sudden high and she was about to look away from the huge eye in the sky long enough to tell the old fart to shut up and f.u.c.k off but then the awesome eye blinked and Peg p.i.s.sed herself.

2.

Lord of Flies

Bobby Cruz took an immediate dislike to the mescal-drinking coyote and liked the looks of the man's partner even less. At least Cruz a.s.sumed the creepy dude was the coyote's partner. It was hard to know for sure because the guy-the probable partner-wore a blood-red hoodie that covered his head and most of his face and he never said a word, just grunted when El Coyote said something to him in Spanish as the dozen crossers milled about like voodoo zombies awaiting word to get their a.s.ses back in the truck.

Cruz had the feeling that the hooded dude could see right through him, see into his heart and know that Bobby Cruz wasn't really a Mexican looking to cross illegally into Arizona from this stark stretch of Sonoran Desert, that Bobby Cruz was a U.S. citizen and a laid-off American newspaper reporter looking to score a book contract off this Wetback-Like-Me undercover escapade. And if that wasn't enough to give Cruz a case of the crawling creeps, Senor Hoodie had a squadron of big black flies buzzing round his head and shoulders, almost as if guarding him. Dude never swatted them away. The buzzing f.u.c.kers didn't seem to bother him at all. Lord of the flies, Cruz thought and shuddered.

But there was something else about the spooky guy. Some other thing that disturbed him, though he wasn't sure what it was. He only knew something was off, a.s.s-over-tea-kettle wrong.

The wind carried the rumbling of a motor vehicle and Cruz turned to see a pickup coming up the road from the south. Then he realized what the other wrong thing was. Those noisy flies...o...b..ting Senor Hoodie's head were not affected by the desert winds. It was as if they were protected by an invisible shield. Something else too. They were bigger than horseflies. The biggest G.o.dd.a.m.n flies Cruz had ever seen. What the h.e.l.l were they, mutants? Wouldn't want one of those behemoths to bite you, he thought.

El Coyote said, "Listen up, my little chickens." Bobby Cruz knew just enough Spanish to catch most of what the man said. The coyote told them that at their next stop they would get out and walk across the border. A man would meet them there and he would lead them into the land of plenty. Once across the border, a van would take them to a stash house in Tucson and the very next day they would be put to work at the chicken ranch.

"But first, we have something to give you," the coyote said as the dirty pickup pulled up and stopped behind the painted-over U-haul truck Bobby and the other crossers had ridden this far in. "You will be given a backpack full of very valuable merchandise. We know to the exact ounce how much is in each one. You will be responsible for your pack. Don't even think about opening them. OK. Someone will collect them from you at the house in Tucson. Consider it part of your fee. It's still a good deal, no?"

El Coyote's pollos shot each other nervous glances. A couple of them looked as if they might go ahead and s.h.i.t their pants then and there. One, an attractive woman in her thirties, said, "I will not do it. I never agreed to smuggle drugs."

El Coyote walked up to her, got right in her face and said, "Crossing the border is a criminal act. What's one more broken law?" Then he pulled the knife from the sheath on his right hip, put the blade to her cheek and flicked his wrist. The woman yelped and backed away, her hand flying to her face to stanch the blood. "You will do what I tell you," he said with a teeth-baring grin, "or I will gut you like a f.u.c.king rabbit. And then I will murder your family. That goes for all of you." He brandished the knife.

Cruz pulled a folded bandana from his jeans pocket and offered it to the wounded woman. She accepted it with downcast eyes and held it to her cheek. "Keep it," Bobby said in pa.s.sable Spanish.

A dark-skinned man in filthy dungarees and a plaid shirt got out of the pickup and gave each of the crossers a fully loaded backpack. With El Coyote standing by with his knife, the dirty drug distributor made sure everyone accepted a pack and slipped it on. Bobby did not doubt that the coyote would gut him if he didn't. A part of him was pleased with this unexpected turn of events. It would make for very dramatic reading-if he lived to write the d.a.m.ned story. That was the other part of him, the pessimist whispering that he would be lucky to live through the oncoming night.

"Back on the truck, my little chickens," El Coyote said with a dry laugh.

The Lord of Flies wordlessly watched from his shadowy cowl. The sun westered. A ma.s.sive raft of ominous clouds darkened the sky. Cruz and the other pollos climbed back into the truck. The coyote rolled the door down and latched it and Cruz found a corner and sat down in darkness, thinking he and his fellow crossers were no longer chickens. The contraband on their backs made them mules.

The truck jolted into motion and resumed its journey over the desert road. Cruz wondered what the s.h.i.t was. Smack, meth, weed, crack? He would have to find out later for the sake of the story. He relaxed a little and closed his eyes, thinking that a catnap wasn't a bad idea. He had a long night of hiking across the border ahead of him and he wasn't in the best of shape.

A few minutes later the truck lurched to a stop. Cruz's head bounced against the corner walls. He cursed. There were thuds and m.u.f.fled cries as others were thrown to the floor. Doors slammed. Excited voices rose over the rumble of the truck's engine but Cruz couldn't make out the words. What the h.e.l.l was going on out there? A run-in with the Border Patrol? A throw-down with a rival outfit of outlaws?

Then El Coyote's voice cried out clearly: "Es el ojo del dios!"

Cruz understood that simple Spanish well enough and it gave him a chill: It is the eye of G.o.d!

Then another voice, louder, closer, said: "No, amigo, es el ojo del diablo."

Eye of the devil? Cruz impulsively pounded a fist against the truck's wall and yelled, "Hey! What's going on out there?"

Realizing he'd called out in English, he said, "Mierda," as if saying s.h.i.t in Spanish might cover his slipup.

The truck's engine died. The suddenly silent world seemed to catch its breath. Cruz held his breath as well and waited for ... what?

The door all at once rolled up with a clatter and a bang and evening light flooded the interior and made him squint in irritation.

The mystery man in the hoodie stepped up into the rear of the truck, the Lord of Flies himself, making disturbing gestures with long fingers. Then he said something in a language Cruz didn't recognize and the squadron of black flies summarily swarmed forth and attacked Cruz and the other crossers.

The flies seemed to have doubled in number and their bites were fiercely painful. Cruz swatted and slapped, as did his companions, but the insects did not relent. Their wings seemed to cut like razors. Cruz thought the insects might be products of genetic engineering gone wild because these things could not be of the natural world.

Then everyone in the back of the truck belatedly got the same idea at once and bolted for the open door but before they got there, Senor Hoodie Lord of Flies rolled the door down with slamming finality.

The winged demons' shrill drone in the enclosed s.p.a.ce became a buzzsaw roar.

Chaos reigned in the dark confines of the truck as people b.u.mped into each other, slapped each other as they tried to swat the vicious flies, and screamed as the ravenous swarm fed on their flesh. The women's screams were the worst.

Cruz quickly found that he could scream with the best of them.

3.

Going a.n.a.l

"C'mon, b.i.t.c.h," she said, "f.u.c.k me harder. You won't kill me."

"I am," he said.

"Am what?" she prompted.

"Doing it harder," he said, pounding his pelvis into hers.

"Say it. Say you're f.u.c.king me harder."

"I am ... f.u.c.king you harder."

She laughed. "Say it like you've got a pair, b.i.t.c.h."

"Ridiculous," he said, panting. "I obviously do. Have a pair. And don't call me b.i.t.c.h."

"Sure thing, your holiness. Or should I say your a.s.s-holiness?"

"Oh, you are a wicked woman," he said, explosive pa.s.sion building deep in his b.a.l.l.s.

"f.u.c.king right, Reverend. I got the devil in me and you're trying to f.u.c.k him out."

She pumped her hips harder, her belly slapping his to accentuate each word: "Even ... if ... it ... costs ... you ... your ... f.u.c.king ... soul."

"Oh Lord," he said through gritted teeth.

"You f.u.c.k your wife like this?"

"Shut up, wh.o.r.e."

She slapped his a.s.s. "That's it," she taunted, "get me right with G.o.d. Save this wicked sinner, Preacher Thomas. f.u.c.k the h.e.l.l out of me."

"Yes. Yes. Yes!"

They came together, hard and fast and very messy. Then they were quiet for a while. He remained inside her, semi-erect.