Anything but Zombies: A Short Story Anthology Read online

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  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Night of the Living Dolls by Tim Curran

  Down in a Hole by Armand Rosamilia

  The Sentient Cherry Cola That Tried to Destroy the World by Jeff Strand

  PC by Rebecca Besser

  Crew Chief of the Damned by MontiLee Stormer

  The Shoal by Lee Moan

  Jack and the Bean Stalker by Tonia Brown

  The Rider by Jake Bible

  Out of Mind by Faye McCray

  The Takers by Gerald Dean Rice

  Mister Poo Poo by Jimmy Pudge

  FOREWORD

  The Undead who? Seriously, who even cares about zombies anymore? Are they even a thing still? Back in the 1980s, they were fun to watch and run from. They were wild things, like somebody’s loose pit bull, slobbering mouths clicking at your heels. But then they got a job. And not just any job. They became movie and TV stars, and all of a sudden our little secret was out. Rotters used to be the working man’s monster, a creature that was too slovenly to ever get the girl in the end, not sad enough to pity like Frankenstein (and yes, you can call him Frankenstein considering Victor was his father), and didn’t have the luxury of turning off the monster by daylight like werewolves.

  But somehow, they made it. I suppose you could say they already had made it considering Jason Voorhees is technically a zombie and he got twenty sequels and a mash-up with Freddy Krueger. And what is Freddy, by the way, a ghost? Is he a ghost? Whatever he is, he’s not a zombie, but he is another monster that’s achieved rock-star status.

  The point is that zombies were never meant to be the stars like some other monsters. The first stumbling block was apparent: there were too many of them and it was far too easy to dispose of them.

  I mean, in a hand-to-hand situation, the hero could dispatch a walker, no problem. Even if he’d been bitten and was bound to become one, he (or she—it is 2015, after all) could destroy a couple more. Hell, in all likelihood, once a person was doomed to change, the hero would probably be good for at least a dozen or more. Zombies on an individual basis aren’t particularly strong, smart, or particularly durable.

  Zombies have been content to be the squishy, oozing, rotting background in their own movies. While man has struggled against man, as is standard fare in postapocalyptic the-dead-are-here-for-dinner-type movies, the main focus of the story has always been a group of people who find someplace to hole up and en route to establishing a severely reduced community, some other group or person comes along (or reveals themselves amidst the original group) to be apple-cart upsetters. The walking dead have gotten only a nibble here and there until the whole thing falls apart in the end and just about everyone gets eaten, save for the guy, the girl, and the cute little kid (or dog).

  For decades, we, the hard-core, dedicated horror fans and zombiephiles were the only ones who were there, through good and bad movies (and “meh” ones, too) while the rest of the moviegoing audience watched crap that got nominated for “Academy Awards” (heavy emphasis on those air quotes, by the way). We always went back to Night or Return of the Living Dead or dug up gems like I Was a Teenage Zombie or Dead Alive. It wasn’t until after getting married that I discovered the original Dawn and Day of the Dead movies. I don’t know how I missed those, but my wife and I rented both movies several times over before I finally got the bright idea to buy them.

  What happened, though? When did we go wrong? I’d say 2004. Even though 28 Days Later came out in 2002, it was only one movie and they weren’t zombie-zombies. They were just really angry people, infected with weaponized monkey anger. A bullet to the chest could have killed one of them. Of course, it was meant as a sort of homage to the Undead, and plenty of people interpreted it that way, but even so, it was only one movie.

  One really good movie.

  And then came the Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004. I remember seeing an extended preview (like the first ten minutes) on USA and looking at my wife. “That looks really good,” one of us said. Probably me. Though whichever one of us said it, the other immediately agreed. And of course it was. But then came Shaun of the Dead, which, while resistible as a go-see-it-in-the-theater-type movie, we both loved it on video and wished we’d seen it in a theater.

  Apparently, a lot of people agreed with us.

  And between 2002 and 2004 the comic book The Walking Dead began. I noticed it in the bookstore and browsed through an issue or two. Admittedly, I didn’t get it. It was a comic book about zombies. I’m a self-professed, half geek when it comes to men in tights—wait, that didn’t come out right. But comics were supposed to be about supernatural men and women in incredible situations. This was some sort of drama with zombies sprinkled all over it.

  So I was late to the party on that one. But when the TV show was announced, I was fully onboard for some really hokey undead post-apocalyptic hack-and-slash action.

  What I got was a drama with zombies sprinkled all over it.

  And it was good. Really good.

  This was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, zombies had finally staggered their way to prime-time TV. Kudos. On the other, an actual well-conceived television show meant more people were going to like it. Just as people who liked House of Sand and Fog and The Sopranos. At first blush that might seem like an odd statement, but consider that the average horror fan has been long abused into watching serialized slasher films that annually kill the monster only for him to have a new and improved return the next year. But a television program filled with monsters that is not only watchable, but that—for many Americans—is must-see TV is . . . well, odd.

  You might think someone who has spent decades in prison would be grateful to have freedom and that he or she would do everything possible never to return. But for horror fans, the rate of recidivism—after we’ve been presented with good horror to going back to those tried and true, run-of-the-mill, schlocky scary flicks—is probably around 100 percent.

  You may also wonder why the complaint. Entertaining zombie movies and television shows are a good thing, right? Yes and no. They are good in that we can now put quality programming and zombie in the same sentence. Bad in that they no longer qualify as horror. We’ve accepted incoherent story lines and monsters that emerge through inconsistent means. Much like we’ve accepted the bloody machete, chainsaw, and creepy mask as iconic symbols for fright. Make no mistake about it, The Walking Dead is not horror, it’s a drama. There have been episodes almost devoid of our good rotten friends. Not that the show could survive without them, but there is conflict apart from the living dead.

  Let me explain it in a simpler way. You’re a thirteen-year-old geek. You hang out with a small group of geeks. One of them is a lanky, bespectacled girl with braces, but she’s just as much a geek as the rest. You all take the same advanced classes, get your lunch money stolen together, and sit at the same table in the cafeteria. Though there are other girls in your class who are much prettier or who aren’t flat as a board, she’s your girl and to you, she is pretty. Hell, beautiful even. One of the reasons you secretly pine away for her alone in your bedroom is because all the other boys ignore her. She’s a diamond in the rough and you prefer to keep it that way.

  The school year ends and the summer flies by. You and the gang link up on the first day of school but something
is obviously wrong. Girl-geek is there but she’s geek no more. She’s grown four inches and blossomed like a perennial. Suddenly, that metallic smile you secretly cherished has been replaced with perfectly straight white teeth. She’s let her hair out of those pigtails and has a long mane like a lion. That beanpole to whom you’d planned to profess your love in your senior year has taken a giant step into her womanhood and left you behind in the nerdy muck. Even before any of the cool kids start circling like sharks, you know. She’ll still say hi to you in the hallways, but rather than sitting at the table with the gang in the middle of nowhere at lunch, now she’s a part of a much bigger and cooler community.

  She’s not yours anymore.

  That’s what it’s like now that zombies are the new in thing.

  * * *

  * * *

  That’s what this anthology is all about. This book is one long letter on how we move on from the monsters that have moved on from us. We can still be friends and speak when we see each other on the street, but the relationship has changed. There’s not a single zombie in any of these stories in a traditional undead role. No brains get eaten, no flesh stripped off and stuffed into hungry, nonliving mouths. Make no mistake, there is creepiness and death and everything else that makes good horror stories amongst monstrous legions, but what all the authors within have written shows that we can survive without the Undead.

  Before asking these authors to participate, I had read something by all of them. Each has shown they can write the kind of stories that would exemplify things zombie-adjacent. From monsters that spring up from imagination, fast-food cults, murderous fans, to monsters made out of cherry cola, this anthology is a zombie alternative to all the disenfranchised geeks who loved the subgenre back before it was cool.

  So go ahead and dive headfirst into the first story. Swipe or page through until you find a monster you feel you can call your own. I’m kind of partial to “The Takers,” but don’t let me influence you.

  NIGHT OF THE LIVING DOLLS

  * * *

  * * *

  Tim Curran

  One: The Coming

  Tracy fell into her shtick as soon as they got to the cemetery because that was pure Tracy. If she found a way to make Barbara nervous or uncomfortable, she went with it. In high school, she had snuck into the boys bathroom and wrote Barbara’s cell number in the stalls along with vivid descriptions of the services she was willing to perform. And in college, Barbara hadn’t been able to get a date for nearly six months after Tracy spread the word about the fungal colony in her pants. Well, Jim Beamer asked her out, but only because he’d heard about her infestation and wanted to mate it with his own in hopes they would together breed a monstrous hybrid the likes of which the world had never seen.

  Cemeteries made Barbara uneasy, so she put the flowers down on Aunt Camelia’s grave quickly, and that’s when Tracy, giggling under her breath, said, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara! They’re coming for you . . . why, there’s one of them now . . .”

  Barbara sighed and cast her so-called best friend an evil stare, but the look on Tracy’s face made her turn around to see what she was looking at. It was standing about ten feet away.

  “That’s sick,” she said. “Why would someone put one of those here of all places?”

  The object in question was an inflatable love doll whose mouth was a bright red oval like the business end of a lamprey. It had scraggly blond hair, a blue thong covering its somewhat pronounced vagina, and pasties secured over each nipple. The air must have begun to leak from it because the once perky breasts were beginning to sag.

  “I’m taking it!” Tracy said.

  “You are not.”

  “Yes, I am!”

  “Not in my car.”

  “Then I’ll put it in the trunk.”

  Barbara knew there was no point in talking her out of it. She was nothing if not impulsive. As Tracy reached out to take hold of the doll, it moved. It flinched. Its sagging breasts rose and fell as if it were breathing, its mouth sucking open and closed with a disturbing rubbery sound.

  Barbara didn’t know whether to laugh or scream, so she started with the former until it became the latter as she watched the love doll seize Tracy and smash her head repeatedly against a tombstone. It all happened very quickly.

  Barbara stumbled over her own feet, backpedaling.

  The doll was coming for her now. Blood-spattered and gruesomely animated, it really was coming to get her.

  She took one look at Tracy’s corpse and started running.

  Two: Dollhouse

  She wasn’t sure where she was even going or what she was going to do when she got there. Then she saw the farmhouse. Thank God. Sanctuary. She started running toward it and fell down twice. It was the strangest thing. She’d been on the track team in college and had been very fast and very sure on her feet, but now, with that thing chasing her, she kept falling down all the time. Odd.

  As she climbed up the porch steps, she saw something that filled her with crawling horror: two more love dolls coming through the field. One was a redhead and the other a brunette. She got into the house and slammed the door shut behind her, locking it. A quick search of the downstairs proved there was no one around. Breathing hard, she went up the steps to the second floor.

  And froze with mounting terror.

  There was a love doll at the top of the steps . . . but it was deflated, slack and empty like a used condom. Somebody had gashed it open. When she got downstairs, a man came at her with a big knife.

  “I killed it,” he said. “I killed the damn thing.”

  He began to sob and she could get no more out of him. At that moment, she heard a car pull up outside. Help was here. Barbara went to the window. It was a white van with X-TREMELY X-CITING X-CSTASIES stenciled on the side. Below that, in script, it read: DOLLS YOU CAN SCREW AND DOLLS YOU CAN DO.

  A man in a garish blue-checkered suit leaped out, brandishing some long pink wand in his hand, trying to scare away the approaching love dolls that were bearing down on him. He got away, but just. God only knew what they might have done to him.

  Barbara let him in. He looked like a stereotypical used car salesman and smelled like Brut. “Chic Mendelhouse, XXX Novelties,” he said, handing her a business card.

  Barbara looked at the card and tossed it. “What would I want with that?”

  “Hey, lady . . . don’t be a prude. Everyone gets lonely in this big bad world of ours. We offer a complete line of fully articulated male dolls as well as the girls.” He winked at her. “And they’re fully functional if you know what I mean.”

  She looked at him with barely concealed disgust.

  On the sofa, the man with the knife was sobbing, his hands over his face.

  “What’s his problem?” Chic asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s a doll upstairs. He said he killed it.”

  The guy on the couch nodded. “I did. I killed it. Oh God, I killed it.”

  Chic shrugged. “Well, what happened?”

  “She . . . it kept me prisoner for twelve hours in the bedroom upstairs,” he admitted.

  Chic winked at Barbara. “Did you have a good time?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” he sobbed.

  Chic looked out the window. “I don’t like this at all. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but after years of taking it, now they’re giving it. Gotta be a dozen out there right now. But the thing that bothers me the most is that they’re not just any dolls, but XXX models.”

  “Does that matter?” Barbara asked.

  Chic narrowed his eyes as if she had just insulted his mother. “Does it matter? Of course, it matters. Would you rather be behind the wheel of a rusty ’76 Ford Fiesta or a sleek Ferrari 458? When you jump in the saddle of an XXX Intimate Companion, there’s a tradition of precision engineering behind you. We maintain the highest possible standards. These aren’t your basic vinyl Fuck-Me Fannies or Suzy Suck-A-Lots you buy at your neighborhood stro
ke parlor that burst their seams after two or three tumbles, but high-end, foam-cored, non-silicone-skinned luxury love units, flexible multiposition erotic thoroughbreds that promise a sensual, spicy, and stimulating encounter. Spirited performance and nimble handling are trademarks of XXX. With our patented Ograsmo-Gel Sin Skin technology and 2625 Lube-R-Matic upgrades, heated orifices and pelvic thrusters, trust me—as the great Alberta Hunter once said—you won’t know the difference after dark. And they’re all 100 percent hypoallergenic.”

  Barbara just stared. “You are one of the most fucked-up people I’ve ever met.”

  “If being fucked-up means a dedication to old-world craftsmanship, then, lady, fucked-up I am.”

  He handed her the pink wand he was carrying. “Gah,” she said and dropped it. “It . . . it’s warm.”

  “Of course it’s warm,” he said. “I just got back from a demonstration of our male Night Rider models at the Ladies Aid Society. What you have here is a ten-inch, five-speed Johnny-Jump-and-Pump 3000 with Hard-Jet Pulsatronic—”

  “That’s enough,” Barbara told him.

  Chic looked back out the window. “Dear God . . . just as I suspected.”

  “What?” Barbara asked.

  He looked back at her, terror edging into his greasy face. “They’re being led by a Model 69, a Two-Hole Trina.”

  Barbara just shook her head. “Is that important?”

  “Could be,” Chic said. “We developed the Model 69 to be accommodating . . . yet rebellious.”

  Three: The Coupling

  About the time Barbara was going to tell Chic that he was not only a sleazebag but a nutcase as well, a door across the room opened and a man and woman revealed themselves. They both looked frightened . . . and disheveled. The man said his name was Bill. He was fortyish, the woman probably in her twenties. Her name was Kasey.