Liquor Zombie

 

After the Iridium wars I was a provocateur dressed as Che Guevara, prowling the scorched hotlands of E-merica drunk as a skunk, ambling up an Orleans avenue as space-jazz circumambulated my cranium.  Bathed in liquor, suffocating in sweat, sweating liquor, eluding bathwater, yet thoroughly drunk, and smelling like liquor, the last thing I remember is being mugged and subjected to a misbegotten inquisition in which a rapscallion eunuch was interrogating me through the mist of an acrid room.  He wore a bandana on his head, which looked to me like an upside-down baby’s diaper, giving me cause for calling him shit for brains.  Who the fuck was he? 

“Drink more liquor”, he offered.  “It will help you clear your mind.” 

No sooner had he finished the sentence than I grabbed the goblet and saturated my tongue with a wine that returned sweet glossolalia to my speech.  Turbulence rattled my head, and I came to the consensus that these people, who had been so hospitable and considerate to me, had been violently rude in making me feel ungrateful and unable to compensate for their benevolence, like an opportunist jack-hole.  Even though I had been kidnapped without authorization, they had fed me, clothed me, tucked me into bed, and always gave me the thing I wanted most: endless bottles of liquor. 

“Failure to comply will result in the expiration of your residency here at the Rosalyn Institute.” 

Outside, fat rockets were lighting up the sky with a celebration of warfare, and I couldn’t resist mocking this fine gentleman for all his regurgitations of order and banal perfectionism.  Anyone who talks like that either isn’t getting any or has seen too many episodes of Robot Queens.  I looked around frenetically, unfamiliar with my surroundings, when all the sudden I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I was doing in this shithole.  “More liquor, please.”  Silence.  “MORE LIQUOR, PLEASE!” 

Chardonnay, flowing like the Seine, drained down the tunnel of my esophagus; I became immediately sober, and the Lord said it was Good. 

“There’s a tattoo on my love machine.  It is the Tetragrammaton, placed there by some Jewish bohemian with fetishes for fellatio and masochism.  Don’t ask me how I was able to maintain an erection through the course of the operation.” 

The interrogator threw over the table between us in abject frustration, tossing empty bottles of liquor all over the room.  I was hit over the head with a 2 by 4, beaten savagely, and taken to a gas chamber, where a surgeon was busy extracting the cybernetic organs of a rebel assassin.  Fuzzy phosphenes disassociated my eyesight, and through the mucus of my wine-saturated lips I felt my voice requesting to be given more liquor, legions of it, enough to submerge the Louisiana Bayou in glorious alcohol. 

They didn’t think I was serious, until they actually saw it.  A cryptogram for the dead was unlocked by my Tetragrammaton, and at once the portal between life and death was shattered by some cursed necromancy which I have no scientific explanation for.  Crooked zombies were bred by my kind benefactors, the ones who’d always supplied me with liquor when I needed it most.  Pain from the wounds pounded on my skin and the withdrawal was tightening my arteries.  Why had they done this to me?  I had given them the damn code, now I deserved more liquor!  For the first time in my life, I prayed for deliverance: to be taken from this infernal oblivion by none other than the hero of my masturbatory fables, the Princess of Pornographistan.  I begged them for more liquor to relieve me from this torture, but they had left me to tame the malevolent, resuscitated corpses that had been buried underground in the catacombs of the city.   

 

Alas, the institute informed me that because they had solved the cryptogram, they no longer needed me, so they bandaged my wounds and I was released.  Where was I going to get my liquor now?  After being thrown out of a moving vehicle, I rolled around on the street, in absentia, unable to determine whether it was night or day. 

“Liquor, please, where is the liquor?”  I kept asking to no one.  If any passersby heard me they shook their heads in pity.  I was ignored, abandoned, and left to rot in the shadow of radioactive buildings that stretched to the sky.  

In the wee hours of the evening, a man approached me, picked me up, and took me to a zoo.  He threw me in a pool with hippopotami, bathing me in some horrendous substance called water, then pulled me out and put me to rest in his home for the night. 

I woke up sober, but I needed more liquor.  Egad!  When attempting to move, I found out that I was paralyzed and tied to the bed in confounded bondage.  My “master”, a homosexual monk, waltzed into the room.  I tried to curse at him, but he had stuffed an old sock in my mouth, and I couldn’t spit it out. 

“Why did they release you from the institute?  Tell me the truth or I’ll cork you in the ass.” 

He took out the sock and I shouted several obscenities before telling him I didn’t know why they’d let me loose.  It was probably so they could secretly follow me with their army of zombies back to the counter-revolutionary base I’d been sent from.  He immediately extracted a tracking device that had been camouflaged by my tattooed penis: presumably something he’d found while examining it when I was unconscious.  Then he replaced it with a device of his own. 

“They’re watching you, but I’m watching you more.”  After he winked, I shook my head in disgust.   

“No shit, now get me the fuck out of here. 

“Take my truck.” 

“What’s a truck?” 

“Something that will get you through the city as easily as possible.  They don’t make them anymore.  An old relic from a time long ago.” 

I couldn’t thank him enough, but I had to have more liquor.  Before my departure, we celebrated my emancipation with a toast of Cognac, which turned into consecutive toasts, and more toasts further, continuing until I was drunk enough to let him sodomize me in return for his help.  If a man like this is the closest type to God, then this world is in a whole lot of trouble. 

Cassandra Gemini began as I revved up the old rig.  The music was annoying, but I liked it anyway.  To my amazement, the passenger side was occupied by my best friend: an unopened bottle of Brewmeister Armageddon.  I took a swig and set off down the Cassiopeia Highway, with the stars as my cheerleaders and the city at my mercy.    

I’d never driven anything like it.  With my large frame and wheels, I was able to drive through anything and anyone at will.  Commercial hovercraft, defenseless pedestrians, and flimsy garbage cans stood nervous like coons in the headlights of my super-sized fender.  The engine was loud and rattled my ears, so I turned up the music even louder.  When the puny jet-cruisers from the Institute of Defense caught up with me and tried to ram me with their turbo charged mainframes, they bounced off my truck like bullets hitting titanium.  From the sidewalks, turgid meth dealers, drunken whores, and phosphorescent mimes stared in wonder at my vehicle that had seemingly been unleashed from the underworld.  Was I scared?  No.  I drank more liquor.    

Finally, the institute grew restless and started firing at my truck with lasers.  Several of them impacted the red paint of my vehicle and I had to swerve into buildings to avoid the incoming fire.  Despite the destruction caused by my reckless driving and the pervasive antics of the jets, they kept firing anyway.  It occurred to me that to them my demise was even more important than the maintenance of the city, so I took the easy way out; I drove through the lobbies of the buildings, right through the brittle infrastructure as if there had been nothing there.    

They lost sight of me.  Now I was in a classy part of the city, where the flamboyant atmospherics of high-class parties, neon billboards, and stylish architecture served as the beacon of Cassiopeia Highway.  Neurotic vixens chewed out disheveled husbands as I rolled down my window and spat out phlegm.  When Cassandra Gemini peaked, I cruised through the maze of giddy spectators with shades over my eyes and my liquor bottle half empty- the strange fusion of jazz and bongo-rock intoxicating me even further, transforming me into a speed demon on a celestial Saturday night.   

On the bridge leading out of the city my truck ran out of gas, and I had nothing to fill it with, so I used the remainder of my liquor.  This helped me go even faster than before, but unfortunately the military had set up a road block some miles away from the bridge.  It was a bonafide old-fashioned concrete wall, so I had to slow down.  Knowing I had become an easy target, I braced for the impact of more lasers, but this time I was served a dosage of rapid shellfire and my faithful steed finally toppled over, drowning the night in resolute quiet. 

 

Back at the Rosalyn Institute of Defense I was tortured with incisions of glass, and my wounds were inoculated with liquor.  When they were finished, a tall, dark figure entered the room, and it met me with a snide grin. 

“Tell us who helped you.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, you pilfering ape.” 

“The tracking device we gave you was replaced; who was it?” 

The silent treatment is bitter revenge. 

“You’re an agitator Wallace, plain and simple.  Guys like you are the reasons guys like me don’t rule the world.  But we’ll break you, yes, we will.  We’ve got cameras up all over the city now, and there’s no hiding from us.  I’m watching your every move; you just don’t know it yet.  Soon you will be on your knees, bowing before me as the first reigning Emperor of Orleans." 

“So you like to watch guys on camera and make them get on their knees in front you?  Your idea of the future sounds like homoerotic despotism at its worst.” 

He smacked me upside the head: the blisters of veins around his eyes punctuated by a seizure of anger.  “Tell us who helped you or I’ll wipe that stupid grin off your face with a star-shooter!” 

“Shoot me to the stars and I won’t be able to thank you enough.” 

“Wallace, I have had just about enough of your cosmic buffoonery.” 

I looked at him crookedly and instigated, “Eat vermicide, wormhole.” 

Suddenly the building shook with a ferocity it had probably never felt before.  The idiots had led me back to their own hideout.  No one could believe how quickly the monk had assembled an ambush.  The tall figure flew into a torrent of rage, storming out of the room with his troopers to counter the attack.  I was left alone in the dark, liquor-less and piss-stained, praying that my comrades wouldn’t destroy me in the process if the ambush succeeded.  Suddenly, the eerie moaning of zombies filled the chamber, and I nearly passed out from the dreadful excitement.    

On the table there was a book.  I had read it before; its contents took hold of my inundated brain.  A distant understanding came to form after I glimpsed at the title, and a flood of sober memories engulfed my conscience.  A major strategy of the Iridium Wars was the use of over-stimulants to breed addictions so strong that the consequent withdrawals were meant to brainwash individuals who wouldn’t yield to the social order.  The design was created by the same power-hungry, industrial shitheads who thought they were rich simply because a bank note told them so, yet failed to realize that power is an overcompensation for a weak self-image, and that the money they’d invested in for their riches had simultaneously put them millions of dollars in debt.  Things became clearer without the liquor, but I still wanted it.  I knew that if I survived this holocaust, it would be the first thing I’d return to, plunging me back into the bliss of distortion that my story began with.    

A zombie with flaccid eyeballs and a cranium oozing brain matter entered my chamber.  I told it to fuck off, but it ambled up to my seat, dragging with it a ball and chain from medieval times.  It lunged forward and hefted the weapon with all its might in front of me.  I closed my eyes and cursed myself for ever stepping foot in this foul city.  The spiked ball came down and landed with a crash on the ground, right where the chains that held my feet in place had been.  Then I heard a shot, and my entire body became drenched in disassembled zombie matter.  I opened my eyes to see who my savior was, but another zombie had crept up behind him and impaled his head with a wedged sledgehammer.  Covered in blood, the mucus of decayed organs, exoskeletal skin, and diazoxide flavored uric acid, I lunged out of the chair, evading the charging zombie. 

Running through the corridor, I let my senses be my guide.  Through the muck of nervous tension, I was able to smell my destination, which was brought upon by the lucrative odor of liquor.  Of course, I ran towards it.   

In the fermenting chamber a raw battle was taking place.  Institution guards and zombies waged war with my friends from the west, some of whom I recognized.  To my right I noticed the officer who had interrogated me in a room full of computers, vehemently shouting orders through a telecom device.  Presuming he was a man of great importance, I ran over to strangle him with my cuffs, but a fat zombie lunged at me out of nowhere.  Stopping dead in its tracks, I stared in horror as its mouth opened and maggots dropped from its orifice.  Distracted by the disgusting creature, I was unable to defend myself as it swung a blade and sliced my left arm off.  As I fell to the ground in agony, the zombie braced for another slice, but it was stopped short by the gunfire of one my friends.  This was it; this was the end.  On the ground, momentarily hopeless, traumatized from shock, numb from the pain and staring off into space, my senses were revitalized by the lingering aroma of liquor.  It sprang me back to life in an instant because liquor seemed to be the only thing worth living for.  Looking back towards the officer, I noticed several gears churning the power source of the legion’s telecom control.    

Hastily, I got up and picked up my severed arm with the arm that I still had.  I crept over to the officer unnoticed and wedged my bloody arm in between the gears, breaking all Rosalyn communications from that point on.  The officer heard the noise, looked over and realized who I was.  He called me a son of a monkey’s bitch as I ran for my life.  Luck would have it that the first thing in front of me was a giant vat of liquor solutes, so I climbed the crane they used to hold it up.  From the top, over the rim of the vat, I could see that my friends were taking a severe beating from the Rosalyn guards and the zombie horde.  My saviors had been unaware that they had to face a supernatural force in addition to the military, which had only been possible because of the cursed tattoo on my penis. 

The vat was right behind the zombies, who had formed lines of combat.  The officer was climbing the crane below me, shouting threats I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemies.  I unlatched the vat from the crane that was holding it up and jumped into the pool of liquor as it fumbled forward.  Ruddy light- a lake of bliss- swallowed me whole; it was heaven’s cesspool for my mutilated body.  The drum toppled and crashed to the ground of the chamber, flooding the zombie lines with unpurified alcohol.  To the horror of the Rosalyn fighters, this aggravated the zombies for two reasons: one was that they thought the institution had deliberately tried to drown them, and two, an intoxicated zombie can be the most formidable force on the planet.  At once they turned against their allies and started ripping their bodies to shreds.  Coupled with the rejuvenated offense of the ambushers, it wasn’t long before the guards surrendered and the leading officer was on his knees, begging for his life in front of the victors: a great irony, considering his earlier threat.  

Unfortunately, I had lost too much blood from my wound.  I died shortly after the battle, so I wasn’t alive to celebrate the victory with my comrades.  Nonetheless, I was posthumously recognized as an Orleans hero, and my story was passed down through the history of E-merica for centuries.    

You might be asking yourself, how am I still alive to tell you my story?  Friends, before I died, I consulted a priest about the necromancy involving my cryptogram.  I paid him all the money I had to keep my body preserved for the only potion that could bring it back to life.  After he resurrected me, the priest told me that the code is an anagram for the ingredients of the only solution that could possibly raise a man from the dead.  The ingredients were difficult to extract because they’d been translated from Latin.  Interestingly, they were same compounds used in the distillation of the over-stimulant liquor created by the Rosalyn Institute.  The zombies were born of alcohol, and the alcohol had made them do good.  Humans could die from too much alcohol, and alcohol made them do bad.  Every day I am forced drink the special liquor, and it keeps me alive by behaving well and maintaining moral principles.  The liquor keeps me grounded, stabilized, and focused, unlike the other zombies who were forced to be executed when the positive effects of alcohol wore off and made them loose cannons again.  

Yes, my friends.  You have just finished reading the first story ever written by a former human: a walking, talking, liquor zombie.