THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
by Noah Cicero
twenty-three
The next day.
Everyone is sitting around the bar.
“Here’s the plan. We’re gonna go get Frankie’s lab equipment and some food. We need someone to stay so the can open the door when we get back. So Layla you stay here,” says Esmeralda.
“Okay, I’ll stay by the door,” says Layla.
Everyone gets a gun but Esmeralda. She sticks with the machete.
“Listen you can’t kill them with a bullets. So just shoot them in the knees or shoot their heads off. Their heads will fly off. And they won’t be able to see. They are very slow and stupid. They will say things though. Don’t listen to them, they are full of shit.”
They go out the door.
There are stinky ass dead people everywhere.
Tony shoots some in the neck. Their heads fly off and bounce on the ground.
Frankie shoots them the knee caps. He likes to see them stumble then fall.
Esmeralda hacks one of their heads off.
There are body parts scattered all over the parking lot.
They get in Esmeralda’s hoopty.
The parking lot is bumpy with body parts.
The undead are all over the road.
Old women wearing Sunday dresses stagger, maggots eating their eyeballs, missing an arm.
Hot cheerleaders in their panties, their young firm tits decomposed.
Upper class businessmen wearing ties, their penises have fallen off. They keep grabbing at their crotch wondering where their cocks are.
Mechanics are eating their wives on the sidewalks. The wives keep yelling, “I never loved you.”
Small children are lynching each other for fun. The children dangle giggling singing Britney Spears songs.
There is nobody there. They slowly go into the house. They don’t see anybody in the kitchen.
They arrive at the house.
There are more of the undead.
They are shot and chopped up.
They enter the house.
Frankie and Esmeralda go in the basement to retrieve the shit.
Dave and Tony are left upstairs.
They hear something in the living room.
They slowly sneak into the living room.
There is a lot of silent tension.
They run into the living room, point their guns.
The crack head that bought some crack off of Frankie is sitting on his couch almost fully decomposed. He cannot move, he is the final stages of decomposition.
The crack head says, “What you want mother fuckers? You act like you’ve never seen a man almost completely decomposed before.”
Tony and Dave stare at him with weird freaked out looks on their faces.
The crack head gives a slow very emotional monologue, “When I was four they sent my mother to the mental ward. And my dad was already in the pen for killing the neighbor. So they sent me to my grandpa’s house. I used to sit on the porch with him in the summer and we would drink Dago Red together. He would pour me a big glass. I would sit there and drink until I fell off that goddamn porch. My grandpa would laugh and tell me about when he fought in the South Pacific."
Daves yells at him, “Shut up crack head! What do you think we should do with him Tony?”
“I don’t know. Shoot his mouth off.”
“Wait, can’t I have a last request.”
“Bitch, this is war.”
Dave walks up to him.
Places the gun on his decomposing mouth.
Fires.
His mouth flies across the room and hits the wall.
It splats on the wall like a tomato.
Frankie and Esmeralda in the basement.
They walk for a little bit in the basement and go up to a box.
Frankie flips the lid off and sees that the equipment is in there.
They do all this in silence.
Then Frankie picks it up and they run upstairs.
They are all standing in the kitchen.
“What was that shot?” Says Esmeralda.
“Don’t worry. We shot it,” says Tony.
They head outside to the bar.
A dead person jumps on Tony and bites him.
Esmeralda slices the zombie’s head off.
Tony lays on the ground.
His face contorts into frenzied manic hell.
He looks pissed and in a panic.
Tony says in a very pained voice, “The fuckers got me. They fucking got me. This is bullshit. I can’t die like this. I fought so hard, only to die like this. This is what a man gets at the end. He gets turned into a fucking undead fuck head. This is bullshit.”
The others stand there and stare at him.
“He’s going to turn.”
“I know,” says Esmeralda.
‘Do you want me to shoot him?” Says Frankie.
Tony holds his wound.
Tony says frantically, “Kill me you pussies! I’m the enemy now. I’m the undead. I’m not a man now. I’m not even human. I’m a freak. I’m dead. You must kill me, I’m the enemy. I am treasonous to the cause. I am Benedict Arnold, I must be executed. This is war! Shoot me you coward! Kill me while I’m still a man!”
Esmeralda cuts his head off.
They stare down at his body.
Everyone gets in the car disconcerted.
They don’t like that Tony died.
They didn’t really know Tony.
Tony is dead now. They have to deal with it.
Everyone they know is dead.
They must deal with these facts.
Tony’s death symbolizes their own death.
Perhaps they will be bitten too.
They imagine their deaths.
They know it is coming.
It has to come.
They don’t quit though.
They know suffering.
Suffering is the fruit of human existence.
They get back in the bar, head back the strip club.
When they get out Dave’s mother is there, undead, walking around in a torn nightgown with maggots coming out of several gashes in her body.
Dave sees her.
He looks like he is going to cry.
Dave runs over to her.
He stands in front of her.
Dave’s mom says, “I knew you would be here you filthy boy! I knew you would be here with these floozies. You are such a dirty boy, a dirty nasty boy. How could you do this to your poor mother?”
“I’m sorry mommy,” says Dave pathetically crying.
“You better fucking be! Now come here and give your mom a kiss.”
Esmeralda yells at Dave, “Don’t Dave, she’ll bite you.”
Dave looks at Esmeralda.
Then he looks at his mom.
Dave is desperately trying to think. But he is having a terrible time.
Dave thinks about when he was little and his mother jammed a giant piece of ham in his mouth. How he almost choked on the ham and died.
Dave says, “It’s my mom. I love her.”
“That’s right boy. Come over here and give your mom a great big kiss.”
“Dave if you over there I’ll cut both of your fucking heads off!”
Dave’s mother says, “Don’t you touch my boy! Kill her Dave. She’s a floozie bitch. She should die, she’s a sinner.”
“Don’t Dave. I’ll kill you.”
Dave is trying to make a choice. He looks deep into the abyss of his mind to find a location where there is a set of directions on how to make a good choice. But there isn’t. There are razor wire fences, guards with machine guns, watch towers, rifles sighted on his forehead. No area of his mind was left untouched by the incessant bitching of his mother and 8 o’clock sitcoms.
Dave’s mom says, “Dave, she’s a floozie whore bitch. I’m your mother, I love you. I would never bit you. You know that. I love you, I’m your mother.”
“I know mommy.”
Dave goes closer to her.
His mother grabs him and bites him.
“Mommy you fucking bit me,” says Dave surprised.
Dave stands there.
He is crying.
His mother is laughing hysterically.
Dave is standing with his back to them. He lifts up his gun. There is silence. There are close ups of sweaty faces. Then he shoots his mother.
“Fucking bitch!”
Then he lifts up the gun, puts it in his mouth and fires.
Esmeralda and Frankie just stand there paralyzed.
“Dave was stupid. But he didn’t deserve that,” says Frankie.
“No. His mother did though.”
“You could say that again.”
Esmeralda runs over and cuts his head off.