Beach Blanket Zombie. Mark McLaughlin
The Painter
The Priest’s letter came at a good time. I was getting quite a bit of negative publicity. Isn’t it always the way? A person can work for years at their craft and no one gives a rounded fuck. But the minute people start going crazy en masse—! The priest and I found a way to have my addled art lovers corralled into vans and shipped to that little town in the Midwest.
The Poet and I have so much in common. Sometimes we start talking and before we know it, a couple days have passed and we haven’t had a bite to eat or a minute of sleep.
The Boywhore
The priest invited me to move the production company out to Toad City. The fuck program operates off of an intricate headset: we had dozens manufactured, and then we hitched them to those sad cretins that the Poet and the Painter trucked in. We stood the poor things in a tank to catch the goop.
The Priest’s zombies follow directions fairly well, so we taught them to mix the paste with powdered plastic to make salmon-colored bricks. Lovely. They give slightly when you squeeze them. And they hum, too. I used to carry one of the bricks around with me, just to hear it hum. But then my hands started hurting, so I had to leave the brick in my quarters, under my pillow. My hands finally stopped hurting after these little flaps opened up on my fingertips. Now my hands can taste textures.
The Priest
For a while, I was writing to dozens of people: business folks and culture vultures with checkbooks and of course, the Historian—we’d met back in college, and we saw eye to eye on so many points. He shared his thoughts on the Babel Tower with me and I thought: this was the missing piece in my fantastic puzzle. And so I wrote to the Poet, the Boywhore and the Painter. I’d heard about them on the TV news, and for that, I must thank this country’s marvelous electronic media.
The reborn dead have been a joy to work with. They are so good at taking orders. Some of them are beginning to show signs of actual personality, and that’s good: I want them to enjoy their work, and embrace the new way with glad hearts.
The Historian
Well, let’s see. I had been corresponding with the Priest and the Scientist: the Priest wrote to me about his little town in the Midwest, and the Scientist told me all about his friend, the Boywhore. So, first thing, I went to Toad City and shared my ideas with the Priest. The perfect combination: I had the plans, he had the manpower—or rather, corpsepower. The Priest wrote a few letters, made a few connections, and soon, we were on our way. This time, the Tower of Babel would be done right.
Society is an organism: it has to change and grow. Evolve. Old cells die. New senses emerge. Extraordinary.
The Scientist
I’d been in touch with the Historian (a brilliant man) and the Boywhore—I was one of his technical consultants. According to the Historian, the problem with the original Tower of Babel was that it was phallic. To embody the Expressionist Aphrodite, it should have been an architectural womb. A holy place.
The zombies built a magnificent temple out of the salmon-colored bricks. The Expressionist Aphrodite is the queen bee of intellect. Upon completion, the living womb began the process of parthenogenesis. And it’s still going strong.
Still, that doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. I’ve always been what you’d call results-oriented. Like I said, I have some studies lined up. I’m going to begin a whole new line of research in a few weeks. By then, this lump on the side of my head will have become... Something. Maybe another brain. I’ve got my fingers crossed.
The Director
The Babel-womb continuously sprouts monsters-in-pain: the living tears of the glorious Expressionist Aphrodite. Fantastic creatures with...with just everything: hundreds of knowing eyes...swollen sex organs blossoming like giddy flowers...wagging tongues and bell-like ears and dripping, snuffling noses...sensuous hands with dozens of soft fingers. Experience nourishes them, and reality twists to accommodate their passage. I doubt that civilization as we know it can withstand such an onslaught of change.
And speaking of change: I can’t help but wonder what will become of me. I suppose I’ve been in Toad City too long. This must be how a tadpole feels. New bits keep popping out here and there, and I’m not at all sure what they’re for. The Priest keeps talking about embracing the new way...
The Boywhore told me I looked sad this morning and gave me a chaste hug. It took us the better part of an hour to separate. Our flesh had grown together as he held me in his arms.
Arlene Schabowski of the Undead
(with Kyra M. Schon)
Really? Right now?
Okay.
Let me tell you about a nice lady, who lives not too far from here. She was in the movie. And still is, in a way.
Her name is Lorraine Tyler—and also Arlene Schabowski. Lorraine is in her early forties, though you couldn’t tell by looking at her. She has long, wavy blonde hair. Arlene is nine years old, and she has long, wavy blonde hair, too. Most people would agree that she looks quite dead.
Lorraine played Arlene, all those years ago. Lorraine stopped, but Arlene kept right on playing.
After the zombies swarmed the building, Arlene devoured most of her parents—they were hers, so she certainly deserved the best parts—and then simply wandered off into the night. And the night was filled with shambling, ravenous corpses, feasting upon the flesh of the living. But the undead knew she was one of them, so she was safe from their hunger. Her body held no warmth, no nourishing spark of life to entice the other zombies. That was the last the viewers ever saw of her.
But she needed food, for she was—and still is—always hungry. Deliriously hungry. For there is a deep black coldness within her that constantly needs filling. Sometimes, right after she has eaten, she actually feels alive again. Perhaps even better than alive. She felt that way after she ate her parents, and she wanted to feel it again. So she wandered through the woods, through the darkness, until she came to another farmhouse.
Now at this point, one might ask, “They never showed what happened to the little girl after she wandered off. Didn’t the police get her when they came and shot all the zombies’ brains out?”
Obviously not.
One might also wonder, “’Fear-Farm of the Undead’ was only a movie, wasn’t it?”
Well, yes and no.
Lorraine Tyler’s father was one of the producers and stars of the movie, which was made on a shoe-string budget. The money her family put into that movie back then wouldn’t even buy a decent new car these days. Her father, mother and some of their friends wanted to make a movie, so they pooled their resources, found a few more investors and did it. And Lorraine got to play a little girl who gets bitten, turns into a zombie and eats her parents.
Lorraine went on to become a school teacher with a cool website selling “Fear-Farm” memorabilia. Teachers get time off during the summer, so she started going to conventions, meeting fans, doing a lot more to promote her memorabilia sideline. She did that for years. Made good money, too. Last year she made enough to buy a nice little vacation in Mexico.
People still watch that movie all the time. Still think about it. “Fear-Farm of the Undead” has spawned hundreds of knock-off versions, most of them released direct-to-video. And Lorraine has watched every one of them. Because she is also Arlene Schabowski, and wants to know what other zombies are doing.
Somewhere out there, it is always night, and a little dead girl who is also a living school teacher is always hungry.
Anyway. Back to that other farmhouse.
Arlene could hear cows mooing in the distance. The sound made her hungry. She crept up to the house and looked in the window, into a quaint, tidy living room, with knick-knacks on little cherrywood tables and furniture draped with lace doilies. An old woman was sitting at her desk, reading some papers. She had