It’s Me

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Was it time for me to tell Dr. Bliffover that he was a hero, a medical genius, the savior of mankind, or should I wait to see what these beings would become and if the change were permanent?  The world may have been saved, but at what price?  Would former deceased man-eating fellows become functioning members of society or would they form a new Tea Party? (I know that was at least the second Ted party reference, but I’m just trying to get them the recognition they deserve.) That last thought made me charge for the elevator and to tell Dr. Bliffover and then wait with the others to witness the outcome.  When I arrived at the floor I was greeted by Bliffover and company, all holding make-shift weapons, except for Mander. 

 “Hey, it’s me. I’m cured,” I said, doing the best impression of me I could muster. 

Dr. Bliffover held up his hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three.  See I’m fine.”

“What’s the capital of New York?” Shrimp asked.

“Uh…Albany.”

Laura Lee’s stuck her finger in my face with such ferocity that it could never be mistaken for affection or even humane. “Do I look fat in this outfit? When I hesitated she got annoyed and added. “Go ahead answer chicken sh--.”

    “--No, you don’t. You flatter the outfit.” I shot back as she violently pulled down one of my ears pretending my head was a slot machine.

 Dr. Bliffover jumped in.  “What’s my favorite color?”

“How do hell do I know?”

“Correct-a-mundo, I’m color blind.” He shouted and started laughing. .

Skim Milk didn’t want to be left out.  “How old do you think I am?”

Even if they bashed my brains in and liquefied my private parts and forced me to drink them artificially sweetened, I would refuse to answer that one.  “Enough! I’m cured.  Look no bite marks.  I even grew some more ear hair, “I said, hoping Laura Lee would suddenly fall in love with me or drop dead with the thought she might find me attractive.  “Oh, can one of you help me get the false teeth out of my neck? They’re in pretty deep.” I said hoping that Skim’s question had been averted.

Dr. Bliffover smiled, tore out the teeth, along with a piece of my neck and said, “He was smart enough not to answer Skim’s question.  He’s cured. “

The others, except for Mander, weren’t so sure and backed up as I left the elevator and walked to the window. “Doc, it looks like it’s working on the zombies, they’re turning back into people again, one is even selling bottled water.”

“I don’t care how cute any of the guys we cure, I won’t go out with them, until they shine their shoes,” Laura said and broke into an Indian war dance. 

Doctor Bliffover, followed by the group, decided not to put on war paint, looked out the window. The cure quickly made its way outside. As zombies turned to humans and were bit by other zombies, they too turned to humans—most immediately began searching for their wallets and accusing each other of stealing their cash.”

“Doc, is there any danger that the cure could weaken as more zombies turn human?”

“Kill joy!” The Doc spit out. 

“The jerk has a point.” Laura Lee replied.

The Not So Clinical Trial

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The next thing I remember was hearing, “On three.  One. Two. Three.”  My eyes opened and I saw their faces as they tossed me in the air.  I turned, to see Mander by the elevator door, her face holding the zombies at bay, until I landed in the middle of them and it was feeding time. 

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been chewed up by a group of zombies, but it’s not something you’re likely to forget, like surviving a plane crash by eating your parents and five siblings, and then having the Heimlich maneuver performed on you because you were choking on a your twin brother’s pelvic bone, nor is it anything you’d like to experience more than once, like being forced to shave your pubic hair with a blow torch. 

Zombies, by nature, are sloppy eaters without regard for manners or personal hygiene.  I held out a toothbrush and mouthwash, but there weren’t any takers.  Had I thought about it, I would have worn a bib—blood and chunks of my flesh rained on my gabardine reversible t-shirt (I’d won in at a fund raiser for unsweetened shredded wheat workers) and then on to my relaxed fit spandex pants, in essence my entire wardrobe, since I left without packing a suit case.  

Before the zombies could rip out all my intestines, Laura Lee gaily yelled out. “Dinner is served,” and then started taking photos of me getting feasted on.  She looked at her photos on her phone and then, while she proudly showed them to the others, she shouted gleefully, “If you die, I’ll always remember you like this!”   I took a quick glance back at her, she waved goodbye, gave me the thumbs down sign and then happily pushed the elevator buttons.  I saw Mander, next to her, and I thought tears had formed in one of her eyes, but couldn’t be sure if it was a tear or just clear pus, or even if it was an eye that caused the oozing. The elevator doors closed and I was alone and wondered if I’d soon be a member of the horde or just a mound of minced gabardine, spandex and body parts.  I really didn’t think Dr. Bliffover’s cure would work, but sometimes the most idiotic of miracles happen.

The zombies attacked me like a pack of cannibals ending a 43 year hunger strike.  The first zombie, whose teeth were still in my neck, started to rattle, finally letting go of his grip.  Unfortunately he had dentures and they remained around my esophagus. The change began to happen to the others dining on me.  One by one they started to shake, rattle and murmur.  Their once frightening roars had turned turn into feeble minded mumbles –they were becoming annoying humans.  Intestines and other organs that were hanging out like broken VIP ropes were being sucked into their bodies. Eyeballs dangling from threads of muscle reeled back in like the second yo in yo-yo.  Yellowish gray skin, barely strong enough to keep their insides from falling out, transformed into flesh color, some even a healthy tan and with enough tinsel strength to even keep a gut full of alien beings from blasting out.

I was consumed watching their conversion back to human that I didn’t notice I was no longer in pain. The bite marks on my neck, head, shoulders, legs, feet, hands, back, tongue, kidney’s, spleen, enlarged cysts, herniated dicks, canker sores and areas that no medical specialist had gone before (or since), were healing.  Doc’s cure was actually beginning to work.  As zombies healed, their peers would bite them and then they’d heal completely--saving a ton on reconstructive surgery. 

The Formula and the Volunteer

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 “Skim found her notes on the formula.  I mixed a batch, by hand, but I think it might have come out smoother if I had a blender, but there aren’t any lumps that I could see.” That’s when I noticed that Dr. Bliffover’s face was turning red from the strain of holding a twenty-five gallon barrel. 

“Doc, I don’t mean to talk out of turn, and I say this with all due respect, and I don’t mean to be offensive, but why don’t you set the barrel on the floor?”

“Good idea.  Sometimes we don’t think of the obvious like the time a guy in a dark green vest crawled into my office bleeding from every orifice, his legs severed, his face smashed in and I tossed him my keys and told him to bring my car around.”

“We just can’t run into a horde of zombies and start injecting them.” Laura Lee said, examining Shrimp’s ear hair.

“We could fill water balloons with Doc’s elixir and throw it on them,” Jo offered. 

“Maybe we can drink it and pee on them,” Shrimp said excitedly.   

“We won’t.  We don’t need to.  All I have to do is inject all of us.  Then we can walk out there get bit and they’ll get disinfected by us.” Dr. Bliffover said like he actually had no idea of what he was asking us to do. 

“How do we know it works?” Shrimp and Skim Milk asked at the same time.

“Yeah, how do wees know da damn ting work?” Jo or Joe, and I said simultaneously.

“Vot makes you tink it vil verk? ” Laura Lee, Maria, and Klaus said concurrently.

“Whaaaaagutha mmmmaaakeeesseeee yuuu-eeee-uuuuu—“ Mander said all by herself,  one end of the duct tape now hanging down her face— the other end stuck to the roof of her mouth.. 

“Shut your trap!” Everyone said all at once, while Laura Lee shoved the tape in Mander’s mouth and smacked her a few times.  Then we all took our turns.  It felt good, darn good.  I think Mander actually liked the attention; she sort of smiled, or maybe she was having a stroke.  To this day no one really knows. We deliberated on sending her to a doctor who specializes in ugly people’s strokes, but that would have to wait, we had some less disgusting dead people we had to bring back to life.

“We’ll just have to try it with one of us.  Any volunteers?” Dr. Bliffover asked.

At first no one answered. The silence seemed to go on forever when in reality it was just 4-and-a-half hours.  A few of us killed time by whistling the Notre Dame fight song in Latin several hundred times until that got boring and we sang vol. 1, 2 and 3 of The Sudoku Song Book for Lovers.  Jo borrowed my entire porno collection, concentrating on the Girls Who Like Girls Who Like Guys Who Like Guys Who Like Girls Dressed Like Guys Who Like Girls Dressed as Guys Who Like Girls Who Like Girl Guys Who Like Guy Guys And Girl Girls Who Like Girl Girl Guys Who Like Guy Guy Girls That Hate Guys, Girls and Girl Guys and Guy Guy Girls Girls and Guy Girl Girl Guy Girls Who Don’t Know Who to Like Guys or Girls, or Girls Guys and Guys Girls Who Like Gooses, Girls or Goose Girls, or Guy Goose Girls, Series Part 1 and 2.

Finally Laura Lee stopped folding her laundry, after adjusting the drapes she knitted, but before she vacuumed the rugs she replaced on the entire third floor, she spoke up. “I volunteer my extra-large jumbo asshole of date, whose name I don’t remember and don’t want to ever know.” She gave me a look that made getting bit by a zombie the lesser of two frightening evils.  At that point I was willing to do anything to escape her gaze, even go on a cruise.  “So what do you say, numb-nuts, piss-brain, Ruby Tuesday molester,” which made no sense, but for some reason Mander drooled down her tape.   I’ve always been a sucker for women who drool on any kind of adhesive -- duct tape drove me wild.   Like I said before she looked good in duct tape.

I took a deep breath and spoke up.  “Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Do what?” everyone asked.

“Do what!”  I shouted incredulously.

“Just kidding,” everyone said. 

Well at least that’s how I remembered it.  Who knows if it really happened that way, I was too nervous to take copious notes –I was about to be zombie bait.  I wasn’t sure if the cure would work, but it would give the others a chance to get away, especially Mander, who with snot joining her drool, at that moment, was so adorable I overlooked that she was the ugliest human being I’d ever seen. “Ok, give it to me Doc.”

“Give you what?” everyone shouted. 

I actually laughed.  Mander, reacting to my good spirits, gurgled and a golf ball of saliva slid down the tape.  She knew how ugly she was, and that I was blinded by the knockout combo of duct tape, mucus and drool.  She watched my eyes slide down to her wrinkled mouth, full of teeth that now looked like sweating maggots, and was milking it for all she could get.  A typical ugly broad ploy, but I didn’t care.  Hell, I knew my face was also not mirror friendly.  I once won a chop meat look-a-like contest.

By now, Doc had pulled out the needle, after trying to remove it by pushing it into and through my body and held it up smiling with delight like a sadist whose partner was tied up, ass in the air and he was holding a long thick broomstick.  It was not a “you’re taking one on the chin for the team” kind of expression -- uh-uh.  It was a “you’re going to take it someplace much farther south, and I don’t give a damn if you ever recover” expression.

The yellow liquid inside the needle glowed like reservoir water fed by a dozen chemical plants, a few nuclear reactors, and three Great Danes.  When he plunged the air out of the needle, I could have sworn I heard it hiss.  Then Dr. Bliffover jabbed the plunger into my arm, let it spill into me, slapped his knee a few times and stomped his feet and yelled “Yee-haw!”  He left the needle in my arm as he spun around and then threw his other arm out.  Laura Lee quickly snatched it and they dosey-doed, while the others immediately started clapping hard and fast like angry percussionists playing conga on Central American prostitute’s ass (female of course).  I felt the sting of chemicals seep into my body and I might have clapped along if I hadn’t passed out. 

The Zombies are Coming!

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The change in Klaus happened in phases, his rash unexplainably turned to letters in the Greek alphabet, then to names and addresses of all the members of Tea Party arranged by their IQs, which started at 63 and ended at 65, morphing into Jesus going through stages of the cross wading through Hollandaise sauce, finally becoming one huge blotch that burst open sending out flakes of dried blood mixed with lavender and mauve shapes of famous Korean War battleship nurses like a blizzard of Valentine’s Day and D-day confetti.  When it settled and the air was clear, Klaus was now all human, who I wound up hating despite the fact that he saved the mankind.  He was the most superstitious person I’d ever met. In fact he had become half-zombie because he was bitten by a man, who hadn’t fully turned into a zombie, who was also trying to avoid stepping on cracks while walking around a ladder to circumvent a black cat in his path.  When Klaus spoke for the first time he had an annoying whiney voice that sounded like the air being let out of stretched balloon. I wanted to kill him and turn him back into a mouthless zombie. 

“Am I alive,” Klaus whined and then started thanking every possible lucky star.

He was cut off by the doc. “It’s alive! It’s alive!”

 I swore to myself, if we lived, I’d never watch Young Frankenstein again, unless there was a porno version. 

The zombies, by their shear mass, had pushed their way through a locked revolving door.  At first they just spun completely around and walked back out into the street, until a few finally just pushed through the glass.  The guard at the entrance had put on a doorman’s outfit that caused him to take his job too seriously.  Instead of alerting us right away he kept yelling at zombies asking them who they wanted to see.  It was only after he realized that their roar was not a German dialect that he remembered they were zombies and he’d never been to doorman’s boot camp.  He caught the elevator in time for the doors to close on the zombies before he was tempted to ask what floor they wanted.   

I was the first person he saw and he started yelling. “The zombies are coming. The zombies are coming.”

At first I thought he was joking especially after I heard him say, “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, I thought they were German tourists who were furious because they accidentally went to the holocaust museum.  Anybody could have made that mistake, especially when you saw the expressions on their faces.”

By then I was laughing and didn’t stop till I heard their collective roar from down stairs.  There was no mistaking that sound, not even for a slowed down version Van Morrison singing “Listen to the Lion.”  I ran through the 3^rd floor telling everyone that (what better way is there to say it) “The zombies are coming.”   They must have heard the zombie team chant, and the cries of guards trying to block the stairwells being digested because everyone started to scramble for their gear and makeshift weapons.  Laura Lee yelled, “Please, don’t kill the cute ones.”

Jo or Joe (I’m not sure how his inner debate ended) and Shrimp were prepared.  They pushed a handcuffed Mander, whose mouth was covered with duct tape, out in front of them.   For an ugly broad she looked good in duct tape. 

I ran up to them and ripped a strip of tape off of Mander’s mouth, tearing part of her tongue loose so it hung out of her mouth twisted like mildewed red licorice.  “You’re covering up her disgusting mouth and her crooked teeth.”  Truth be told her teeth weren’t crooked just misshaped and swollen so they looked more like a mouth full of arthritic feet. 

“Thank you,” she said, although it came out more like “Twank Boo,” because a piece of tape had stuck to her bottom teeth and tongue.   

“Now my hands please,” which came out more like “Na-U myeeee anterss bulleeteeeeeeeezzzzz.” I’m not sure of the exact spelling of what she said, but promised if we lived through this that someday I’d find out.  Somehow it didn’t calm her nerves, but fortunately for us the tape got lodged in her throat and she had to use most of her energy just to breathe. 

The big dumb newspaper-man, who Laura Lee had humiliated earlier, said as he counted on his fingers, “We sealed the doors on the uh...uh...second floor,”

Shrimp turned to us “Put Mander in the elevator and press lobby.  When the doors open they’ll run away from her, which should give us enough time to escape.” He saw the look of concern on my face.  “Don’t worry she’ll be fine.  You’ve seen the putrid mug of hers enough to know they won’t touch her.  I promise we’ll come back and get the ugly broad.” 

“And go where?” I said.  That question wasn’t one that Shrimp had an answer for, so he said tentatively, “Kansas?”

“This isn’t the Wizard of Oz!” I shouted.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Skim Milk yelled.  “Although I’d love to go roller skating or maybe even scuba diving, if I had a parachute I could sky dive off the roof, well maybe not this roof, but…”

Maria and Doc arrived with Klaus at his side.  “Ski…” Dr. Bliffover got out before he was interrupted.

   “Yes, I love to ski but we’d have to—“

   “No….I was not talking about skiing. I was saying Skim, if you let me finish!” Doc yelled.  “It was bad enough when AMA barged into the operating room took the Swiss Army knife scalpel, bottle opener and compass out of my hands and moved my patient to the mortuary.” 

“Okay.  Sorry.”

“Apology accepted.  Do I have any ear hairs?” Dr. Bliffover asked, turning to show us his ears.

Laure Lee walked in and said, “No, I wish you did, then I could dye them. I love dying ear hairs.”

“Guys, I think we can talk facial hair later” I said, turning so Laura Lee could get a good look at my ear locks.

Shrimp nodded, standing on a chair and spinning so he could display his ear hair. “We’ve already lost ten people and have a few thousand zombies down stairs waiting to chew our ears off.”

“You’re right.” The Doc spit out. “Ear hair is nothing to be taken lightly.  Another time perhaps.”

“What the Doc wants to say is that he has a cure ready now.” Klaus’ words leaked out of his mouth like a rusty hinge, as he made the sign of the cross with crossed fingers and then prayed to Allah.