Living Dead at Zigfreidt & Roy (3 page)

Fresh screams
erupted from the back of the kitchen. The cowboy carefully lifted
himself up, one eye fixed on the giant white killer still tearing
through it's meal by the windows. He crawled back to the counter
and dragged himself up to the stool and collapsed onto the counter,
his left hand scrabbling for the gun as he turned his head to see
Tommy scrambling on all fours across the floor toward the counter.
He was desperately trying to escape a crawling mass of voracious
fiends clamoring for a grip on his legs. Tommy pushed himself
forward and onto the wreckage that was once his left leg, now
terminating in a bloody stick of bone, scratching at the floor six
inches below his knee. He staggered, off-kilter, leaving a river of
red behind him as he lurched forward with a scream for each
step.

The old man
struggled for the breath and strength to warn the boy about the
tiger, but he could only watch, helpless, as Tommy collapsed mere
inches away and was set upon by the crazed tumbling heap of limbs
and mouths tearing at his legs. Tommy cried out and flailed wildly;
beating at the creatures with his fists, but it had no effect. They
began to drag him back into the kitchen as he dug his fingernails
into the linoleum, his fingers raw and bloody and betraying him
with every scrambling reach for a better hold. The old man watched
as Tommy managed to wrap one arm around the bottom of a prep table,
kicking and twisting to get free of their weight, clinging
desperately as he coughed out his pleas.

“Help!. I
Tried to find help... Please! Oh God! Please!”

The cowboy
sucked in a deep, wheezing breath and pushed himself back onto his
stool. He stared down at Tommy holding to the bottom of the sink
for dear life. A dozen grimy, bleeding hands clawed at Tommy’s legs
and dug into the flesh of what was left of his calves, but the
ghoulish figures would only clamber as far up as Tommy’s thighs,
then stop to sniff the air, sensing the nearby tiger and shying
away, back into the shadows.

Tommy was
slowly losing his grip, his fingertips slipping further away from
each other each time the creatures clawed their way farther up his
legs. The old man took a short, tight breath and reached out for
the pistol. He knocked the hat aside and heaved the gun’s weight up
as he fell forward, catching his wrist with his other hand as he
steadied himself. He sighted down at Tommy on the floor and
squeezed the trigger. Tommy screamed as the shot pounded against
the walls of the diner. The cowboy slumped against the edge of the
counter and lost his hold on the butt of the gun, throwing his hand
out in vain as the pistol clattered to the floor. He heard Tommy’s
sobbing pleas fade off as the monsters dragged him back into the
darkness of the kitchen.

“Sorry, kid,”
he whispered, closing his eyes tight and praying for the screaming
to stop.

In a single
rush of willpower, the cowboy twisted out and dropped down from the
stool to crouch against the counter. He heard the whimpering
screams fade as In a single rush of willpower, he twisted out and
droppeddown from the stool to crouch against the counter. He heard
the last of the boy’s whimpering screams as the monsters dragged
their prey back outside, through the heavy back door. The cowboy
heard the door slam, and then the kitchen was silent. The cowboy
hunkered back against the counter as the lights began to flicker
and the soft, tinny echo of the overhead speakers began to sputter.
The cafe was dead quiet except for the one last phrase from the
speakers, something about gold doors and the ‘Lord’s burning rain.
Then the lights flickered out with a hum and a click, the music was
gone, and all was darkness and silence.

The cowboy’s
fingers fumbled blindly to regain their grip on the pistol, as the
hot stench and low rush of heavy animal breathing crept toward him.
The old man shuddered and curled into his chest, desperately trying
to inch away from the tiger, like a child hiding under the covers
from a boogeyman. The tiger edged closer until the cowboy could
feel the gore-ridden moisture of its breath, and see the strips of
purple silk and bloody flesh still dangling from its jaws. The
cowboy closed his eyes tight and shriveled further into the tiny
space between the stool and the counter, still struggling to get
his fingers in the right places to handle the weapon.

The shot
thundered through the silence and the tiger shuddered and fell back
on it’s haunches in perfect synchronicity, as the air around the
cowboy hung thick with the smell of cordite and the heat of burnt
gunpowder. At the familiar scent and deafening sound of gunfire,
the cowboy opened his eyes, flush with adrenaline and bolted out
from his niche and spun to dive over the counter, holding the gun
aloft as he leapt. He threw himself forward, his momentum carrying
him over the tabletop and bringing him crashing down, face first,
to the blood-pooled linoleum. He scrambled to his knees, wiping
Tommy’s blood from his eyes as he felt around him for the gun,
which was half-hidden beneath the edge of the counter. He reached
carefully to retrieve it, and fumbled with the handle that was now
slick with blood and the oily scum that lived in the corners of the
kitchen.

The cowboy
rolled back into a crouch and crabwalked a few steps back through
the ocean of red around him. He continued to creep backward, slowly
cocking the pistol as he made his way back towards the end of the
counter. The cowboy heard the rumbling roar of the tiger, scrambled
and fell back into the shadows of the dark kitchen as the
gargantuan beast flew over the counter and landed on all fours,
circling slowly before raising its snout to test the air for its
prey. The cowboy stifled his own scream and began fumbling through
the dark recesses of the kitchen for somewhere to hide.

Tommy’s
attackers had dragged him clear through the kitchen and back out
the rear exit. The heavy metal door had locked behind them, leaving
no sign of the struggle but the copious amounts of blood and a
single disembodied hand near the back exit. That left the old
cowboy and the tiger. The cowboys feet went out from under him as
he slid across another slick puddle of Tommy’s blood. He hit the
linoleum with a sickening thud, moist and heavy. He could hear the
pads of the huge paws slapping the wet floor, the tiger slowly
stalking him in the darkness, seeking out his smell and his warmth
with each rushing breath.

The cowboy
felt his way back into a corner of the kitchen, beneath a stainless
steel table and waited, breathless. The beast came within a foot of
where he was hiding, sniffing the air and licking its red chops,
trying to search through the darkness with its dead grey eyes. The
cowboy sat hunched under the table, holding his breath and fighting
the mounting pain in his chest. He held the pistol out with quaking
arms, waiting for the animal to get close enough for what he hoped
would be a kill-shot. Coming into the Diner, he’d known the world
was ending, he was ready to die. Now, with the tiger practically
tasting him in the air, he was possessed with an instinctual need
to survive. As the razor-sharp pain in his chest began to explode
into his temples and eyeballs, the old man could feel his tongue
swelling and a cold sweat poured down his face. The darkness of the
kitchen began to deepen and what he could see of the room began to
spin. He let out a burst of air, followed by a long wheezing suck
of air back in to his burning lungs as necessity finally outweighed
his will. The tiger pushed its head in under the table and roared,
bathing the old man in a hot stinking shower of gruesome air. He
threw the pistol up purely out of instinct and fired, glancing a
bullet off of the animals skull with a moist ‘thwack’ and causing
the tiger to stagger back on its back legs, shaking its head in
confusion. The old man pulled himself out of the space under the
counter and turned to run, then felt his legs give out beneath him
as he fell in a heap mere feet from the tigers deadly maw.

A wave of
pure, unrelenting, maniacal panic gripped him as he tried to claw
his way across the floor and will his old legs to work. He felt
lightning race up his spine and into the base of his skull, and
heard a small snap as the tigers paw came down on the small of his
back, pinning him to the floor. He pulled and clawed and swing his
arms in every direction, desperate for some purchase that might
give him a last chance at escape. The paw lifted and, before the
old man could find his grip on the floor, he was batted across the
wet linoleum to the other side of the kitchen. The tiger growled
from deep in its throat and stepped towards him through the
shadows.

He tried to
roll, and found the bottom half of his body completely lifeless. He
twisted his torso until he could face the animal and then unloaded
three more thundering shots from the pistol, lighting up the room
just long enough for the cowboy to see the true horror of his own
certain death, black blood oozing from the corner of one eye, flesh
and gore matted into the fur of its face, blood still dripping from
its jaws. The tigers eyes had sunk back into its head and gone near
black. Its lips had been torn away from the gleaming jagged teeth,
giving the implication of a twisted demons grin. The Cowboy dragged
himself to sit, propped against the wall, as he sighted down the
cylinder of the old six-gun, and rolled the last bullet into the
firing chamber.

“Lord, help
me,” the old man said “but I guess it’s better goin’ out as meat
for a beast - even a devil-beast the likes of you - than turnin’
into one of them damn cannibal freaks out there.”

The old man
sobbed as he brought the gun, shaking, into his open mouth, the
heat of the barrel singeing his tongue and bringing a gag from his
throat, as tears began to stream from his weary eyes. As the final
shot thundered in his ears, he felt the searing heat of hungry
teeth tear into his chest, and the world vanished into
darkness.

There is a man
who works in my office; he has a wooden leg.

It is not an
ultra-realistic, fully-articulated and scientifically-designed
prosthetic.

He has a real
wooden leg, a one-and-a-half foot stump below his knee.

A polished oak
coffee-table leg, standing surreptitious beneath his blood-red
pantaloons.

I come in
early most days - 5:45 - and hide behind my cubicle wall just to
see him as he enters the floor.

At 6 a.m. I
hear his card key as it buzzes through the door, awakening the
sleeping electronic guardsmen that keep us safe from the outside
world. Six on the dot, he is never early and never late.

Punctuality is
a rare quirk in a man who sails by the tempers of the Seas.

His galleon
floats effortlessly down the width of still-empty halls, shrouded
in a pea soup fog, and smelling faintly of crab and the detritus of
ancient ports of call.

The huge boat
comes to rest directly across from the small kitchenette, with its
gleaming steel sink and towering coffee dispenser. He drops anchor
and wades ashore, a cold gleaming cutlass in one gloved hand, a
thermal mug adorned with the image of a mermaid in the other.

With his
tankard filled and his eyes brimming with thoughts of bosomy
wenches and bountiful golden booty, he reboards his vessel and
sails on, drifting slowly down the hallway, past the fax and the
copier, and turns left around a dark and mystic corner. The dark
flag, with its facetious snarling skull, curls in the soft ocean
breeze and disappears, swallowed up in the pre-dawn mist as a bell
buoy tolls lonely amid the waves.

By 6:30 the
fog has melted away, seeping out through cracks in the outer walls,
and the carpets are dry and salt-free. As the first of our
coworkers arrive, I emerge from my hiding place and see him - the
Office Pirate - limping ever-so-slightly as he joins the morning
banter by the laser printer. Adjusting the lapels of his charcoal
grey suit and straightening his Brooks Brothers tie.

No one seems
to notice the smell of rum still seeping from between his sharp
Pirate teeth, and no one raises an eyebrow when he pays for his
bagel with a tarnished gold doubloon.

“The fuck is
this bullshit?”

“I'm
sorry?”

Tammy stared
down at the terrifying man at table three with a fear born of
network news and Cinemax movies about biker gangs. It also didn't
help that her boyfriend, Bobby, had just bought a box set of that
show Sons of Anarchy, or whatever it was called. Seemed like a
whole lot of motorcycles and sex and tattoos and no real story. Not
like the shows Tammy liked. NCIS, now that was a show. Mark Harmon.
He was plain old dreamy, and never disrespectful like this punk.
Dirty Mister California biker.

“I said, What.
The. Fuck. Is. This. Bullshit. Question mark.”

Oh he had a
potty mouth, this one. He also had a couple of arms like like a
bear, all covered with black ink, like some kind of wild man in the
National Geographics. His eyes were a bottomless pit of darkness,
evil and mean.

“We don't go
for that kind of talk in here, young man.”

“Young? Do I
look fucki... I am probably old enough to be your brother-daddy!
Where is the goddamn manager?”

“Well, I will
get him right now, and you'd better hope he doesn't throw you right
out of here on your butt, mister!”

Tammy stepped
carefully back to the counter, eyeballing the beast-man all the
way. No way was he sneaking up on her, tearing her clothes, having
his way with her, like they did on the TV. She let him know she was
wise to his demon ways. Two fingers, her eyes to his direction. I'm
watchin' you, fella. He sat there, shaking his grey-black head,
throwing his arms up and swearing a long stream of curses. Tammy's
feet ached, swollen and tired and probably, maybe, just a little
too fat. Have to lay off the amaretto shakes and double-chili
fries. Tammy set her wide pink ass on a tiny stool, eyes still
sharp as a hawk on the musclehead jerk and his black-coal eyes. His
eyebrows were like live caterpillars, he probably had that coat of
dark brush hair all over his body, like her uncle Cal. Lord, how
she hated uncle Cal and his stale beer-and-cigarette breath, always
grabbing her softies under her Sunday school dress. And what was
with that brother-daddy crack? Big meanie sounded like a
northerner, or worse, Californian. Keepin' these eyes on you, devil
fiend! Tammy carefully worked her long pink nails through a
wandering tuft of pale yellow, cotton-candy hair and shouted back
into the kitchen.