Zombie Pulp

8

Once we had shoveled out the remains of our visitor and incinerated them, scrubbed down the entry with caustic antiseptics, and disposed of Earl’s corpse, we were faced with a new problem. Murph had been number six in the lottery and that meant we had to play again. We had to go through that insanity again scarcely a day later. Usually, there was a month and sometimes three, I was told, but here we were again, gearing up to play Doc’s sadistic little game and learn all about the creepy-crawly things that lived inside each other’s heads.

There was nothing quite like the lottery to bring them slithering out.

Maria and Shacks were probably the only two that were on my side, ready to mount an armed insurrection at my say so. But I wasn’t saying so. What I didn’t want here was some violent purge that would not only destroy Doc’s half-assed utopian society but leave a trail of bodies. These people had to simply refuse to play. I was pretty sure that Ape and Sonny and Conroy, Doc’s would-be goons, would stand with us if it came to that. They were not evil men any more than the rest of us. They were scared, is all. They were following Doc because Doc had a plan and they had spent their lives as good little soldiers doing what they were told. None of them were particularly well-practiced in the smarts department.

But like I said, I didn’t want bloodshed.

And if I swung them my way…what then? I had no plan other than a half-baked possibly suicidal idea of us loading up in the trucks and buses outside and making a run up for Canada. I had a feeling the Wormboys and Wormgirls and all the wriggling, drooling Wormkids wouldn’t do real well in sub-zero temperatures when their limbs started locking up.

I was your basic anarchist in that I wanted to destroy the government but once everything lay in ruin I had no idea what to do next.

So lacking a cohesive plan we went about business as usual.

We played the lottery.