Get Zombie: 8-Book Set (52 page)

I lived on the bottom floor of a two-story house owned by two
60-year-old Hawaiian-Filipino brothers. The
house
got into
trouble even before I could get to work. If memory serves me right,
one brother got drunk, died of a heart attack, turned into a zombie,
and tried to eat the other. Much screaming. I remember being in bed,
trying to read, looking up at the ceiling and thinking,
What the F
is all that damn noise?

To escape being bitten, the still-human brother jumped off the roof
and broke his neck. I saw tears in his eyes. I like to think it was
due to a broken heart. After he, too, turned 'sour', I killed them
zombie brothers with a sharpened shovel. Seeing as how I had to get
paid, I searched them. Not finding anything, I went upstairs and
looked around. The place was strange. The walls were covered in
newspaper, and animal hair was all over the floor, and I kept hearing
a soft whining sound, like a dog was behind a wall or somethin'.

In any case, I found my money in an empty honey jar and got the heck
out of there before the fuzz came and threw me in jail. Sure enough,
as I walked down the sidewalk, cops sped by. I kept my head down.
Works every time....

The house still looked the same, except for the plastic covering the
windows and all those boards nailed over the front door. Took me an
hour to get them off. I could've smashed through a window, sure, but
I wasn't in the mood to hear
shattering.
I placed each board in a nice pile and opened the door. I expected no
one to be home, and I was wrong.

Two dead, old women were on the couch. The looked somewhat ethnic,
and they smelled like fish.

I took them out back and buried them under a mango tree.

I was hungry, and a sick part of me started getting some ideas. But I
wasn't interested in cutting them old people all up and eating them.
I'd KILL myself before I ate another person – living or dead or
living dead.

I turned on the TV and got nuttin' but static. I knew that would
happen. It was just that I always hoped to see a news reporter. “Good
news!” she'd say. “Everything's back to normal! The ghost
portal is gone!” And if you were lucky, you'd see my commercial
right after:

Aloha. My name's Dr. Boss. I can help soothe you – help get
rid of your walking dead problems. Just pay my murdering fee and we
can do business. Oh, and let's not forget my cleaning fee and
depression fee....

All that right there was what you heard on my commercial. It would
air at (if I'm remembering correctly) two in the damn morning. It
didn't bring any business. A thousand dollars. Down the drain. Good
grief. Running a business is hard. I thought I was supposed to be
making
money? I wasn't living, I was surviving. That's no way
to go. Money was tight. Everything I ate was Spam. Spam, Spam, Spam.
Meals like fried Spam, boiled Spam, microwaved Spam, chilled Spam,
and liquified Spam.

It's all that damn ghost portal's fault. See, that's when the zombies
stopped coming! I don't get it. They just...
stopped
...
coming
.

Well...now let me tell you a little about this here ghost portal. I'm
looking up at it now as I write this. Look at it...ghosts flying in
and out, carrying white souls, black souls, yellow souls. (Five
minutes later.) I just spent five minutes yelling at that damn
portal. I was venting. It never listens to me. It just does what it
does...stealing souls at
random
.

It showed up over Honolulu in 2010 – a big hole in the sky that
sucked in the clouds all the live-long day. It was like an upside
down, giant sink drain, but for clouds. At first, people were happy
to see it. The hole was interesting. People pointed and many clapped.
Japanese tourists took pictures, and when even
more
tourists
started flying down, we all thought,
Good. Better for Hawaii's
economy.
The Governor even held a big Downtown party: Rock bands
played; girls with painted, naked bodies danced and jiggled their
fat; kids ran around naked and free; parents got drunk and
breakdanced on cars; and Governor Sherripa was seen running topless
through the crowd of drunkards, screaming something about aliens –
but in a good way. She was then seen swimming in a bathtub full of
whiskey on the back of some pickup truck. She was taken to the
hospital as a result of alcohol poisoning. Later in an interview, she
apologized for her sick actions and vowed never to suck a drop of
alcohol again. (But that's what they all say. I should know.)

All were merry.

That is...until the ghosts came down and started “attacking”
people. But they didn't just scare the living daylights out of
everyone. They took their
souls –
r
ight done yanked them out and took them up, up, up...back
into the portal. The cemeteries were filling up fast. Many bodies had
to be put in big freezers by order of the Governor. Families were
pissed. But as they say, “Better to be pissed off, than pissed
on.” And it got me thinking....
Why didn't people just
cremate their dead?
Why keep the bodies lying around? What is
WITH these families that insist on holding on to rotting corpses?
They're insistent! What is this sick fascination? Are they crazy?
Daft? Mental???

The first police officer to shoot up at the portal got his legs
pulled off by a ghost. Some Irish tourist caught it all on tape. It
was all over the news. Jesus....The cop looked very confused.

Then more police attacked the portal...then more ghosts came...then
the military attacked...then MORE ghosts came. The message was clear:
Leave the ghost portal alone.
Nothing could be done. Not even
those priests could help. One day, they all got together under the
portal and held hands and complained to God about the hole in the
sky. Long story short, ghosts flew down...ate their faces off for
some reason...and stole their souls back up to the ghost portal. The
zombies slowly stopped coming. I wasn't getting many calls. Few
people needed my help. I felt useless. It was at this point that I
started my crying phase. All hope was lost. I quit my side-job
folding clothes and stayed in my room for days. Didn't matter anyway.
The mall was closing. ALL stores were closing. The tourists weren't
flying in – not after being attacked by atrocious spirits.
People were dying on the streets. Once, on the news, I saw a row of
people just fall over like dominoes. It was amazing. After that
broadcast, everyone stayed HOME.

One thing did benefit from the ghost portal, though.

A game show called
Ghost
City
.

The commercial went something like this: “Would you explore
Hawaii's most haunted places for hundreds of dollars? If you think
you've got what it takes, we want
you
for...
Ghost
City
! Hawaii's first ghost hunting reality show.
Sign up now to be a contestant!”

And yup, people came like farts in the wind.

But only 10 were selected.

ME being one of them.

Good thing, too. I was jobless. Again, the zombie busting business
was pretty much dead. I didn't understand why the dead weren't coming
back to life. Something was wrong. It was like all the zombies just
gave up and stayed dead.
It had to do with the ghost portal.
It
showed up, and that's when the zombies stopped coming. I needed
money. Big-time. That game show thing seemed so easy. All we had to
do was make our way to the rooftop, where a briefcase filled with
money was waiting. No problem. Seemed easy enough. In my mind, ghosts
had to be easier than zombies. I don't know why I thought that. I
just did. And I was friggin' so wrong.

All
of us were wrong.

Contestants were getting killed left and right – ghosts
disemboweled them, tore their limbs off, skinned them alive, fried
their bones, stripped away their nerves....Damn ghosts. One of the
contestants kept giving me static, kept insulting me, kept trying to
intimidate me. It was some big guy who shall go unnamed. Fool! He
thought he knew everything; thought he had it all planned out. What's
worse than an arrogant fool? An arrogant fool that's also a ghost
hunter. Screw that guy! I don't even wanna say his name. Let him cook
in Hell. But anyway....

I made the mistake of making pals with one of the contestants.

Her name was Lacey Zoolu.

She was Russian.

We all had to survive a night at an abandoned place called Lord
Hannigan's Hospital. I didn't tell anyone, but I already went to that
place the past year to take care of some zombie business. I don't
remember his name, but some guy that lived in the woods called me,
complaining about a zombie terrorizing his family. I went to his
house and found the living dead girl riding on their large dog. The
family watched in horror, pointing, screaming, demanding me to do
something about the terrifying spectacle. The zombie girl saw me and
tugged on the dog's left ear and headed right for me. I yanked out my
trusty sledgehammer and swung a big, heavy one. Her head came off
messy, hitting that guy's wife right in the face; then the head
rolled around on the grass – teeth chattering – and the
husband lit it on fire with his lighter; then they hugged one another
and cried while the flames cooked.

The dog flung the zombie's headless body high into the air. It landed
on its feet and ran down the dirt road with its arms waving in the
air. It ran all the way to....

Lord Hannigan's Hospital.

It ran into the abandoned place, into some dusty room filled with
gurneys, and right before I was about smash its legs with my
sledgehammer, the thing up and died. I figured the head – the
brain – finally burnt up. I got my monies – my $200 –
from that guy and started my long walk home. Tired, I decided to
sleep the night over at the old hospital and think about my life.
What was it all about? Where was I heading? Did I really love what I
was doing for a living? Was it my
calling
? These were all very
important questions. More often than not, they seemed like problems.
They needed solving, I believed. Or what was the point of it all? Of
living?

Purpose
.

It was all about purpose. What was mine? Maybe it was time to get a
girlfriend. Maybe she could help. Maybe a good sit-down chat with a
lover could help make things clearer.

Cut to: Me and this girl, Lacey, walking the dusty hallways of that
abandoned hospital. She was with some guy that got spooked real bad
by a ghost and ran away like a fancy girl, leaving Lacey all by her
lonesome. That ghost would've gotten her, too. That is, until I came
along and punched that ghost's head. Its face come off and crashed
through a window, and I think it hit a bird. I took Lacey's hand and
ran off with her. She was wonderful! We talked about love, about
life, about politics (which I
thought
I hated talking about),
and we talked about art. But then she had to turn a wrong corner and
get snatched up by a ghost. I grabbed her feet and pulled, but it was
no good. The ghost ripped her neck open, and her soul (along with
much blackish & greenish blood) flew out from her. The ghost took
her soul and flew away with it. I ran to a window and shook my fist
at the ghost, yelling, “Bastard! Come back here with her! With
her souuuuuul!”

It didn't listen.

I assumed it was heading its merry way toward the ghost portal. They
always did. That's what I always saw on the news. Weeping and
sniffling in that crazy, embarrassing way, I walked over to Lacey's
body and embraced it. I didn't care that her neck-blood spurted all
over my face. I held her
close
. She could have been the one.
The ONE. And this ghost portal had to go and screw it all up. I felt
like crawling up into a ball and sleeping all day.

I was more depressed than usual.

But there was no time for it.

I picked myself up and thought about money – all that money
waiting for me on that roof. I was gonna win that money, buy a ton of
beer, go home, and get hammered drunk.

Suddenly, I felt a lot better.

I folded Lacey's body up and stuffed her down a laundry chute as
gently as I could for safe keeping. I then ran screaming, positively,
down some dark hallway.

“Get ready, you damn ghosts! I'mma gettin' my monies and
nothing's gonna get in my way! Yaaaaaarrrrggghhhhhhhh!”

At some point, I was trapped in a room filled with what seemed like
20 ghosts, and that big, unnamed guy I mentioned earlier (the ghost
hunter) locked me in that room. He laughed while he did it, saying
how HE was gonna win that money and “throw” a dollar in
my mouth, because he was such a “nice guy”. So there I
am...all trapped in this room with all these ghosts. It was a mad
fight. I was flinging ghosts here and there. They got in a few good
hits, but I managed to hold my own. One of them ran their fist
through my chest and almost –
almost
– pulled out
my soul, but I punched that ghost IN the face and pulled out
ghost-brain and threw it back in its face and kicked the ghost away.
It crashed through a window, and that's when I got my little
idear
:
Climb out the window!

Which I did.

And was able to climb one of those water drains...all the way up to
the roof.

To my stupid horror, I saw Mr. Unnamed dancing around with my
briefcase of money. He talked to the host of the game show with the
camera guy all up in his face. The host kept calling that ghost
hunter “Winner”.

“Anything you wanna say to your adoring fans, Winner?”

“My mom, dad, all my fans. I want to thank
Ghost City
for this exciting opportunity. And, of course, I want to thank my
lord and savior,” the winner smiled, but he didn't say who
that
was. “Kids, remember...stay off them drugs!”