4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas (2 page)

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
shit
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, Señor Hoodie Lord of Flies rolled the door down with slamming finality.

The winged demons’ shrill drone in the enclosed space became a buzzsaw roar.

Chaos reigned in the dark confines of the truck as people bumped 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.

“C’mon, bitch,” she said, “fuck 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
fucking
me harder.”

“I
am
… fucking you harder.”

She laughed. “Say it like you’ve got a pair, bitch.”

“Ridiculous,” he said, panting. “I obviously do. Have a pair. And don’t call me
bitch
.”

“Sure thing, your holiness. Or should I say your ass-holiness?”

“Oh, you are a wicked woman,” he said, explosive passion building deep in his balls.

“Fucking right, Reverend. I got the devil in me and you’re trying to fuck him out.”

She pumped her hips harder, her belly slapping his to accentuate each word: “Even … if … it … costs … you … your … fucking … soul.”

“Oh Lord,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You fuck your wife like this?”

“Shut up, whore.”

She slapped his ass. “That’s it,” she taunted, “get me right with God. Save this wicked sinner, Preacher Thomas. Fuck the hell 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.

“I’m
so
bad,” she said, dipping her tongue in his ear. “I think Satan’s still in me.”

“No,” he said, stifling a yawn.

“Oh but he is. And you’re going to have to slip in the back way to root him out. That’s the only way that will work now.”

“Jamie, no. We can’t.”

“It’s the only way, I promise.”

She clamped her vaginal muscles on him and his penis responded with an involuntary twitch. She said, “See? The little bishop knows I’m right. You have to fuck me in the ass.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Okay. I won’t say it. We’ll just do it.”

“No. It’s wrong.”

“Everything we’re doing is wrong. Don’t kid yourself that it isn’t. What’s the point of sinning if you don’t go all the fucking way with it? Only then can you be purified by the fires of hell.”

“That’s nuts.”

“No it isn’t. And you know it. Follow St. Augustine’s sterling example. Know sin from the inside out. And right now that means
inside my ass
.”

She pushed him off her and rolled onto her tummy. She raised her ass, reached back with both hands and parted her cheeks. “Do it, Tommy. Don’t tease me.”

She slid her fingers into her sopping vagina and then lubricated her anus with them. “You know what they say? No, I guess you wouldn’t. They say once you go anal you can never go back. It’s true too. Which is why I’m begging you for it. It’s a different kind of orgasm. You work the clit and put your fingers in my pussy while you fuck me up the ass. Do that and I’ll be crazy for you forever. You’ll own me body and soul.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he said, looking away from her tempting rear. “It turns me off. It’s beneath you.”

“What? The dirty sex talk or the ‘body and soul’ part?”

“Both. I don’t want to own anybody.”

“Sure you do. What man wouldn’t want a sex slave? That’s why you’re with me and not your wife. Because she’s a dried-up prude who can’t satisfy her man. Saving it for Jesus, right? You don’t measure up, not in her book. How can you compete with Christ? With me you do. Measure up. And right now I want every fucking inch of you up my horny ass.”

He turned away from her, grabbed the remote and turned on the plasma TV. Carnal images filled the wide screen. Soft-core porn in HD. He quickly changed the channel.

“Tommy …”

He pulled the sheet up to his waist so he wouldn’t have to see his sex-slick penis.

“Let me tell you something,” Jamie said. “Don’t fuck with me. Or I’ll fuck with you and you’ll lose. Only one of us is going to be the real sex slave here and believe me, buddy, it ain’t me. You’re the one with a holier-than-thou wife and a whole lot to lose. Not me. I can ruin your life. I’ll stand up in your church in front of your whole congregation and
testify
, brother. Give me what I want or by God I’ll do it.”

He stared at the TV screen. He punched up the volume.

“Are you listening to me?” Sitting up now, Jamie slapped his shoulder. “You’re going anal. You just don’t know it yet. You’re well on your fucking way.”

“Shut up. I want to hear this.” He cranked the volume still louder.

Onscreen was what appeared to be a brilliant bit of CGI, an eye so big it filled the sky. It looked as if it had been painted on the clouds. Or somehow sculpted out of clouds. And yet it looked so real, so lifelike that it might be the actual eye of an immense angel.

“What the fuck?” Jamie said.

As if in answer, the cable news anchorwoman said: “It appeared overhead this afternoon and it hasn’t moved since. Not only is it visible across all of America, it’s reportedly visible over half the planet. No one at this point knows exactly what it is or how it came to be there. No one has claimed responsibility. Already there is talk of miracles and of the Apocalypse. If this isn’t a natural phenomenon, then it must be supernatural in origin, so the speculation goes. All we know for certain at this point in time is that the big eye in the sky does not show up on Doppler radar, which means it isn’t moving at all and might even mean it’s there only in the sense of an optical illusion. It’s apparently higher than aircraft can fly. Higher than clouds are supposed to be. And as we just reported to you, our contacts at the Defense Department tell us that the military has detected absolutely nothing to indicate that the thing in the sky poses any sort of threat or is anything other than benign. The only real problems so far have been the traffic jams and accidents its sudden appearance has caused.

I think it’s accurate to say that thus far there is no physical evidence that the eye is there at all. For now, the phenomenon is entirely visual. Perhaps it will turn out to be nothing more than a fantastic optical illusion. There are nevertheless intriguing, perhaps even
disturbing
reports that the big eye actually appeared to blink at one point.”

The anchorwoman paused, touched her earpiece, and then said, “My producer is telling me that we are in the process of getting cell-phone video from multiple sources that show the eye actually blinking. We will be showing you these momentarily. What this may mean is anybody’s guess.”

“My God,” Jamie said, anal sex for the moment forgotten. “I’ve got goose bumps.”

“Get dressed,” Thomas said. “We have to go outside and see it before it gets too dark.”

He climbed out of the big bed and into his pants.

“Screw the dark. You can bet your ass that freaking peeper can see in the dark. Probably sees right through ceilings and walls too. Been watching us the whole time, the whole fucking show.”

Magda Menendez was going to die here by the rape tree. It was more bush than tree. And she was already more dead than alive. This was the only taste of life in America she would ever get. The bitter taste of forced sex. A beating so severe that she didn’t think she could even drag herself away from this shameful tree hung with the underpants of the girls the coyotes had raped in recent weeks, or months. The men did it to mark their territory, to prove their manhood, to mock the gringos on land they said had been stolen long ago from Mexico. They worked for one of the drug cartels, so who would stop them? Nobody. The cartels were too powerful and the Mexican police and government were too corrupt.

Her faded blue panties were there on the end of a spindly twig of a limb, a sad tribute to her dream of a better life. It was a painful point of shame that Magda’s panties were the shabbiest ones on the tree. The elastic waistband was frayed and there were two little holes in the crotch where the seam had split.

She reached a hand to the lips of her sex and verified that the bleeding had stopped. She closed her eyes against the glaring Arizona sky and asked God to forgive her sins, minor though they were. She crossed herself. Father. Son. Holy Ghost.

There had been three of them. After the two younger men were done with her, the older one with the evil eyes and the big scar on his face hurt her the most, showing the younger men how to handle a woman. For the scarred man, beating a woman was part of the sex act. Magda didn’t think he meant to kill her or leave her for dead but he had been too rough with her when he picked her up and slammed her to the ground while he was still inside her. The small of her back had struck a sharp rock and everything below her waist went numb. And now she couldn’t even wiggle her toes. She was already half dead, lifeless from the waist down. Naked down there.

Left for dead at the edge of the desert.

Feeling as helpless as an abandoned infant, Magda cried herself to sleep.

When she woke up the sky had opened its secret eye and looked down on her with no pity. A priest had once told her that heavenly angels could “translate” themselves into any shape or size, so it was no surprise to her that an angel’s eye could fill the sky. But then she began to shiver violently and she came to fear that this eye might be the eye of great evil, perhaps of the Evil One himself.

“Diablo,” she whispered.

Magda asked the Holy Mother to help her. As soon as she had spoken the words: “La madre santa del dios, me ayuda,” a shrill voice said: “Si esto está infierno, después somos ya muertos.”
If this is hell, then we’re already dead.

Then they were upon her, a band of bloody men and women wearing backpacks and looking for all the world as if they indeed
were
on a desperate trek through hell. The dozen of them halted when they saw her. She felt as if she should say something, perhaps apologize for her pathetic appearance and for being left to die under the rape tree, herself the ultimate trophy, but no words would come. She only looked at them with her sad eyes. Several of them swatted at big black flies that seemed to be tenaciously dogging them.

A man knelt beside her and asked if she could walk. She said she could not. She told him tearfully that she thought her back was broken. He frowned, then shrugged and stood. He glanced nervously at the sky’s eye, then walked away.

Flies found her. They landed on her face and arms but most of them alighted on the sticky gumbo of blood, dirt and semen between her legs. Their bites stung her face and neck but she couldn’t feel them at all below her waist, which she supposed was a small blessing.

One of the women said, “For God’s sake, cover her.” But no one did. The night would be cold out here and nobody was willing to give up an article of clothing. “Where are your pants?” the woman asked. Magda said she didn’t know. The woman pointed to the tree and asked which panties were hers. Magda pointed them out and the woman retrieved them from the rape tree and was kind enough to slip them on, raising Magda’s hips for her since she couldn’t do it herself. She buttoned her blouse over her exposed breasts.

An older woman with bad skin and wearing a scarf on her head as if she were on her way to church said she was sick and didn’t think she could go on. Then she threw up on the shoes of the man standing closest to her. He cursed her and shoved her away. She lost her balance and fell. She moaned. She did not get up. “Puta,” the man with vomit on his shoes said to the fallen woman.

A man with a pistol on his hip appeared. A mule runner for the cartel. He took the sick woman’s backpack and put it on his own back. Then he looked at Magda and at the retching woman on the ground a few feet from her and said they could keep each other company while waiting for the angel. “El ángel de la muerte.” The angel of death.

Then Magda and the fallen woman were alone. Left behind to die.

The sick woman’s breathing became labored. She rasped, “Es las moscas. Son matanza yo.” Magda thought the woman was delirious. Why else would she say the flies were killing her? Poor woman. Poor
me
. Then she gave thanks that the flies had departed with the human mule train.

The sun set. The moon rose big and red. The eye above was luminous with sinister light.

Magda wanted water. She wondered if she would die of thirst or exposure. Not that it really mattered.

Suddenly the sick woman’s rasping breath ceased. Magda stared hard at the woman’s chest and saw that she had indeed stopped breathing. “Vaya con el dios,” Magda said to the deceased woman.