Zombie Pulp

7

Truth was, we weren’t alone.

Tommy and me were staked-out in a stand of dark bushes that bordered a family plot of leaning marble headstones. Roughly dead center of the graveyard. Two uniforms were hiding out by the north wall and two more near the gates. Tommy’s instructions were simple: nobody moved until the ghouls were in place and digging. It was a clear, cloudless night. Cool and breezy, but with a big old moon riding high in the sky and painting down the cemetery in a white, even glow. It was a good night to do what we were doing.

I lit a cigarette, cupping it in my hands to cut the light same way I was taught in the Navy. “This is a hell of a date, Tommy,” I whispered to him. “No wine. No steak. No music. Not even a goddamn movie. You think you’re getting into my pants, guess again.”

“ Shut your yap, Steel,” he said.

I had an ugly feeling I wouldn’t be seeing my bed this night. I wasn’t sure if this was going to work or not. I just kept watching the headstones dotting the hills, jutting from the dark earth like teeth, angled and white. A sudden gust of wind blew leaves in our faces.

And then we heard gunfire.

Someone shouting.

A police whistle.

Screaming.

It was coming from the north end. Tommy and I were already running, ducking through the marble forest of tombstones. I leaped over slabs and leapfrogged markers. Guns were still shooting and men were still shouting. We came around a stand of gnarled elms and saw shapes in the darkness.

I pulled my. 45 out of the speed rig under my left arm and almost started pumping metal into a pair of stone death angels flanking some rich guy’s grave. And then suddenly there was a third angel, only it was no angel. The guy advanced on me with an upraised shovel. I yelled at him to drop it, but he waded right in. I put three slugs in him and it dropped, but he didn’t. I tried a fourth and fifth but I might as well have been plugging a bag of wet cement for all the affect it had. Suddenly he was on me and I was bathed in a putrid stink like a morgue drawer full of spoiled beef. He took hold of my arm and nearly broke it he was so goddamned, unnaturally strong. He tossed me around like a scarecrow stuffed with straw. And at 6’3 and over 200 pounds, I’m no lightweight. I punched him and he didn’t even notice so I went for his eyes, clawing at his face…and it came apart under my fingers like dry, rotting plaster. My nails scraped the skull beneath and then he tossed me through the air and my head struck a stone and Goodnight, Irene.

A few minutes later, Tommy was pouring a flask of whiskey into my mouth. I came awake coughing and gagging and swinging, completely disoriented. I felt like I was sewn up in a bag of black velvet. The mists parted and Tommy helped me up.

“ They got away,” he said in a hopeless voice. “Never seen nothing like it. I gave one of them four rounds, point-blank, and that meateater went through me like nobody’s business.”

He brought me on a quick tour of the carnage. One cop was dead. His head was nearly twisted from his shoulders. He was laying on his back, a broken arm tucked under him. But to see his face, you had to flip him over. Two other cops were beaten and busted-up.

Tommy scanned the area with a flashlight. In the distance I could hear sirens. We came up to a body sprawled in the grass, arms outstretched to either side. There were so many bullet holes in it you could have used it as a watering can. Tommy put the light on the face. It was decayed, gray, and flaking, eaten away in places as if by insects. There were tiny worm holes in the nose. One glazed eye stared up at us.

Tommy looked at me. “You know this guy?”

I nodded dumbly. “Yeah…I think…I think it’s Johnny Luna.”

“ Yeah, it’s him, all right,” Tommy said in a dry voice. “And Johnny Luna died six months ago.”