Zombie Kong (3 page)

Within seconds the man was behind the counter with her, getting close, reaching for her milk.

God damn, what the hell was he trying to do?

“You’re not allowed back here!” he announced. Lines materialized in his forehead as he slapped the container across the restaurant. The container soared, turning circles, leaving a splattering of bubbly chocolate in its wake.

Candice managed to say: “What––?” before his hands––both of them––wrapped around her neck.

He began choking her.

She backed into a corner, struggling to free herself. The bulk of her thoughts centered around a common theme:
Why are you doing this? Why would you do this? Why is this happening? Why do you want to hurt me? Why are you attacking me?

Why, why, why?

Then a new thought came:
How can I make this stop?

Overwhelmed, she looked towards the counter, searching for a weapon––a knife, preferably.

Her eyes widened.

There was a knife––two of them, in fact––but they were too far away to be useful. There was a spoon, however, and it was well within her grasp.

She reached her hand out and her fingers tickled the spoon’s long handle. As her fingers were making contact with the would-be weapon the man shook her violently and the entire world seemed to fade out of focus. The man’s hard-looking face and undersized eyes grew faint. The room darkened. The air thinned. She would soon pass out.

The man said, “Did you see what happened? You should have done something! I know you! You’re the reason things are like this!”

“I don’t––”

There was a scream––

Jake was screaming, standing on the other side of the counter with his eyes the size of beer coasters and his mouth wide open.

Beyond the screams, Candice could hear the clatter of gunfire mingled with the sound of the beast’s roar. Little stars began appearing in the darkness of her eyes. Jake’s words of protest shrank into mumbles. Her body felt weak, worse than the moment before. She wanted to tell Jake to get away from the man, not to worry about the gunfire or the monster on the street. She wanted to tell him that things would be okay. But things might
not
be okay. What would happen to Jake if the man successfully choked her to death? And… was that his objective? Did he plan on killing her because of the things that were happening outside, or stranger yet, over a glass of chocolate milk? Really? Why would anyone want to do a thing like that? Comprehending the situation was like trying to inhale a baseball.

The knife. She needed the knife.

Wrong.

There were two knives, neither one close enough to grab. What was that other thing she was trying to snag from the counter, a fork?

No… a
spoon
. A long-handled spoon.

She whacked the counter with the palm of her hand and shifted her body’s weight. The man tumbled back a step and for a moment his grip weakened. Then his teeth pressed together and his face seemed to age a dozen years. He was squeezing hard now, as if he was trying to make her head pop from her neck.

Candice wrapped her fingers around the oval end of the spoon and lifted it from the counter. She had it. She had a weapon. The handle end of the spoon seemed like the world’s dullest blade but that was okay. It wasn’t meant for carving a Christmas turkey at the White House; it was meant for serving up a big old pile of whoop-ass right here in The Lunch Room.

Putting smiles on faces since 1968!

As she lifted the weapon she noticed the man’s nametag. It said: KIRBY.

A muffled grunt came. She thought––
Well, Kirby... I’ve got a little somethin’ for ya––
and a second later she slammed the spoon into the man’s face, just below his temple. She could only assume it passed through his nasal cavity, and bone, and whatever muscles were in that general area.

The man fell away from her––stumbling, tripping, staggering like a drunken barfly at closing time. Mouth opening and closing, nose running; his eyes glossed over. And with that came the screams, and the blood, and a look that was one part shock, one part terror, and three parts pain.

Coughing. Coughing. Candice was free of his grip and coughing… but she was breathing again, and not a moment too soon. With less than an athlete’s agility, she snailed her way over the counter, took Jake by the hand, and made for the door.

“You corpse-fucker!” Kirby managed to shriek, pivoting towards her with blood parading down his face. His hands clenched together… again, and again. His fingernails were biting his palms.

Once Candice and Jake were outside, they felt the ground shake beneath them, as if a miniature earthquake were taking place.

It was no earthquake, they soon realized. But it was
something.

Something big.

Candice saw it first: Zombie Kong.

The monster was less than ten feet away.

And looking directly at the boy.

DALE

Once I was inside the small intestine, I thought I was going to die.

If you can imagine yourself wrapped head-to-toe in cold, rancid deli meat, you might be able to comprehend that moment of my life. Kong’s intestine was clinging to my body like a wetsuit made of liver. There was no free space––none, aside from a little bit of room around my neck.

I opened my mouth––perhaps to scream, perhaps to breathe… I honestly don’t know––and that’s when chunks of wet slop pushed onto my tongue.

In a desperate attempt to eject the foul tasting filth, I coughed and spat, but every moment my mouth was open, things became worse for me. My mouth was becoming packed full. My nose was, too. With my elbows bent, I pushed my hands away from my chest, trying to create a pocket of freedom. It wasn’t working. I began to swallow, and suffocate. I realized that I was
being
eaten; I
had been
eaten. The fact that I was still alive was nothing short of a miracle, and if things didn’t soon change I would pay the ultimate price.

Which is one of the reasons I believe God was with me that day.

Growing up, I had never believed in God. But now I do.

God is the resurrection; He brings us eternal life.

You see, as I was pushing my hands away from my body, I felt a hard object touching my fingers, and before I had a chance to comprehend what the object was, I found myself reunited with my keys.

Blunt as they were, I decided to cut myself free.

Freedom, it seemed, was in the palm of my hand.

Jesus, as it is so often said, saves.

KIRBY

The gunfire and the screaming mingled with the sound of a siren blaring. The woman had turned her head away from the sharpest of the sounds before latching onto the boy’s hand and rushing down the street, through the dust and the smoke, away from Zombie Kong, dragging the child along at a speed that could not be comfortable for either of them. In return, Zombie Kong pounded both fists against his chest, raised his head away from his lumbering shoulders, and roared. His left hand swung wide, inadvertently swatting the restaurant with his knuckles, causing the walls to shake and the large windows near the front door to shatter. Glass collapsed to the floor and sprayed into the building, some landing near Kirby’s feet, as the monster trudged away.

Kirby dismissed the broken glass and the chaos on the street, for his thoughts were elsewhere: on that
bitch
who
stabbed
him!

Carefully, delicately, he took hold of the spoon. Holding his breath in his throat, he pulled the handle from his face. Once the task was completed he released the spoon, allowing it to fall to the floor by his feet. Touching the fresh wound with shaky fingers, he smudged a line of sweaty blood along his tender skin; a gasp escaped. His nose began bleeding and tears rolled from his eyes.

That corpse-fucker,
he thought.
That dry-cunt-slut is going to die.

How do you like those tomatoes?

Looking towards the broken window, Kirby paused. Then he began to laugh, but it was a cold laugh, devoid of happiness, almost emotionless in its tone.

Tonight the world would fear Zombie Kong, but tonight that
BITCH
would fear
him!

He walked towards the table the bitch-woman and the boy had occupied. He picked up the bitch’s phone, which had been left unguarded. He squeezed it like he hated it and flung it across the room before picking up her purse. Looking inside, he found her keys and her wallet. Inside her wallet he found her driver’s license, which let him know that the bitch-woman had a name: Candice Wanglund. Apparently Candice lived at 726 Mower Street, a mere three blocks away.

Oh, this was good. He had been waiting for years to deliver a little payback for all those times he had been lied to, and laughed at, and picked on. Ever since the third grade, bitches like Candice had been getting the best of him, making him feel stupid, making him feel like an outcast. Only back then they weren’t bitch-women, they were bitch-girls––bitch-girls that grew up to be bitches… like Candice… the bitch. He was sick of it. If only they knew how nice he could be, how sweet, how goddamn pleasant. But bitch-women like this Candice cunt never want to see the good side of people; they only wanted to see the bad. They only wanted to push you down, point fingers at you, treat you like a second-class citizen. Bitches only want to hurt people. Nice people. Nice people like him.

No more.

It was time to take a stand.

The time for resolution was today.

As he stepped outside with the bitch’s keys and identification snug in his pocket, another building crumbled to the ground, unloading a fresh cloud of dust and debris across what was quickly becoming a wasteland.

Looking left, he could see several policemen firing at the giant beast while another officer, standing alone among the dead, loaded his weapon. Looking right, he watched the path of destruction continue. Cars were being flipped over. Telephone poles were being smashed apart. The monster was on the move.

And there she was, the bitch-woman: Candice Wanglund, running down the street without a care in the world.

Who did she think she was?

What gave her the right?

Hands opening slowly, then snapping into fists, Kirby followed. With blood flowing down his face and a feverish sweat escaping from his pores, thoughts of committing murder were overwhelming him, making residence in the forefront of his mind.

CANDICE

Guns were firing and people were screaming. There was a giant blaze in the center of the road. Zombie Kong was close to the blaze, trotting along the asphalt, snarling and angry and searching for another mouth-sized meal. The ugliness of his face was absolute.

Candice needed a safe place; that much was obvious. But where?

Without giving it much thought, she made her way past a burning car and towards a three-story apartment building on the far side of the road. It was an older structure; one that was built in the 1920s and had time-weathered gargoyles perched on the rooftop. It didn’t occur to her until she was on the doorstep that the heavy-looking door might be locked. Thankfully, it wasn’t. With a shove and a grunt she was inside, pulling Jake to the center of a gloomy foyer where there was no elevator in sight, only a couple of mystery doors and a dingy staircase that had been walked on a hundred million times.

Upstairs or down?

She began making for the basement before the image of Zombie Kong knocking over the building, burying her alive in the rubble, came crashing in.

She didn’t want to be in the basement.

Upstairs was a better bet, so up they went, all the way to the third floor. After jostling their way through a grimy access door, they entered a hallway that was in desperate need of modern light fixtures and a fresh coat of paint. The run-down building seemed eerily quiet, too quiet, as if––

Pause. “Hello?”

Nothing.

“Hello? We need help!” Candice rapped her knuckles against a door marked 302. Without waiting, she tried her luck with 301 and 303, which were beside each other on the opposite side of the hall.

“Where is everyone?” Jake asked.

“Gone. I bet everyone in the building was evacuated as soon the town became a war zone.”

“What are we going to do?”

Candice’s eyes narrowed. She placed her hand on the nearest doorknob and discovered that the door was unlocked. Pushing it wide, she whispered, “Hello? Anybody home?”

No response.

A shrug.

They stepped inside and Jake closed the door. “How did you know that the door would open?” he asked.

“I didn’t.”

“Oh.”

The sounds of the battle on the street were frighteningly loud. The apartment wasn’t safe. It was, however, small and surprisingly pleasant. A widescreen television was attached to a wall across from a stylish couch. The original hardwood floors had been sanded and stained a warm brown color. There was a laptop computer and a printer sitting on a beautiful oak desk next to a small wine rack that was 90% stocked. In the left hand corner of the room, an old but gorgeous bow window allowed a great deal of light to shine throughout the space.

Candice was surprised.

Jake might not have noticed that the decor was too nice for the apartment, but she did. She couldn’t help but wonder why someone would leave a home unlocked inside of a rundown building if they owned such nice things. But then she looked out the window and figured people had left in a hurry. Her new perspective offered a clear view of the area around her, both east and south. What she saw was terrifying.

The town was destroyed.

Turning away, she said, “Jake, are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m okay.”

“Great. I’m going to––”

There was a monstrous roar, loud enough to make her flinch. She spun around quickly and was taken aback by her view of Zombie Kong. The great beast was standing in front of the window with its arms raised and fury dominating its pure white eyes. A huge trail of intestines littered the area beneath its feet, roping their way from its midsection, along the creature’s leg, down to the road.