Midnight Movie: A Novel (20 page)

I haven’t slept in I don’t know how long and I’m exhausted but it’s okay because I’m happy for that matter happier than I’ve ever been because I walk around in what I’ve decided to call a Perpetual State of Arousal or PSOA and this PSOA is amazing and I wish that everybody could feel what I feel and I’m trying to get everybody to feel what I feel but it’s getting tiring like I sometimes think my pussy is getting destroyed by all the cock it’s been getting but I’m not sure because it feels fine while I’m fucking but it hurts when I’m walking around but it’s kind of a nice hurt and once in a while I even have an orgasm while it’s hurting which is why PSOA is sometimes difficult so I thought it would be a good idea to give it a rest but I needed to come and it’s not the same when I do it myself so I decided to find a girl because it never hurts to experiment so I called my friend jennifer and asked her to come over and she said it’s after midnight and I hadn’t even noticed so I apologized and told her I was going to visit her and she tried to talk me out of it but I told her it was important and I needed her and she said she’d never heard me sound scared like that so I should come on over so I get over there about twenty minutes later and she’s wearing a
robe and slippers with nothing underneath and before we got in I told her how pretty she looked and she thanked me then asked me what was wrong and I told her to give me a hug and she did and then I kissed her and then the same thing happened that had been happening which was she melted into me and I think she came right away and then I pulled her into her apartment and threw her down on the sofa and took her robe off and I was right she wasn’t wearing anything underneath and I licked her tits and they tasted like candy and then I licked her pussy and I’d never tasted a pussy before and it tasted like blueberries and then after she came like three more times I sat on her face and she licked and licked and licked and I came and came and came and then I got up off of her and her face was covered with blue stuff and she looked so pretty and I kissed her on the cheek and then she stopped breathing and I got the fuck out of there and I called 911 and I hid in the bushes by her house and I watched the ambulance take her away and then I called the hospital when I got home to find out how she was doing and they asked me if I was family and I told them that I was her cousin and they told me that she died and I started screaming and crying and I couldn’t stop so I called janine’s doctor and told him I needed him and he came over because they all come over after I’ve fucked them and I fucked him and he came forever and his come was blue and then his face turned blue and then he died and I couldn’t help it but I bit off his ear and ate it and I threw up all over the place and when I was done throwing up I ate his other ear and I can’t believe I’m writing this all down but for some reason I can’t stop but it doesn’t really matter because nobody’s going to think this is real anyhow and I have to make myself come again or else I’m going to die so I’m going to jerk off then I’m going to call that guy I met at coyote ugly and I’m going to fuck him until I kill him and I can’t wait because it will be the most beautiful thing in the world

Welcome to the Truth About Zombies

To all the other folks out there who think they’re going crazy …

You’re not.

I haven’t slept in like a week. I’m afraid to. I’ve guzzled about a zillion cans of Red Bull because nobody sells speed around here anymore. You can get all the weed you want, but good luck finding a handful of pills. As much as I’d love to get baked, I’m afraid that if I fall asleep, I’ll stay asleep. If you could call it sleep.

I’m at an all-night Internet café right now. They say there’s safety in numbers, but based on what I’ve seen, it’s not about where you are or who you’re with. It’s about paying attention. It’s about using all of your senses, especially hearing and smell. Because those fuckers aren’t subtle.

I didn’t know jack about zombie mythology until last week. After you see your brother get attacked and eaten by a gray guy with exploding boils on his face, and after you hear that you aren’t the only one who lost a family member or a friend, you kind of want to see what you’re up against. So I read what Wikipedia had to say about it, and I went to a bunch of horror chat boards, and I skimmed through a Brian Keene book, and I even watched the remake of
Dawn of the Dead
, and I came to one conclusion: None of these people know shit about zombies.

First of all, they don’t all shuffle. Some of those fuckers can move fast, like Usain Bolt fast. The one that got my brother came after me, and if he hadn’t tripped over the curb, and fallen into an oncoming bus, and gotten his head crushed like a grape, I’d be one of them. Second of all, they function at a higher level than you’d think. It’s not like they wander around with their arms out in front of them and moan, “Braaaaaaains! Braaaaaaaains! Braaaaaaaains!” No, they come after you, and even though they aren’t exactly Einsteins, they can track you down.

Third of all, some of them are scared of us. This is why I stay awake. This is why I swill down all that nasty-ass Red Bull. If you’re awake, you can defend yourself, and if you can defend yourself, that’ll keep at least half of them away from you. Fourth of all, they can be killed, and it’s not like you have to do it in any special way. If you get them in either the head or the heart, they’re toast. And you don’t have to use a platinum axe or a silver bullet to do it.

So if you’re in the Denver area and you’re having problems with zombies, please e-mail me at [email protected], or call my cell: (303) 846-****. Let’s get a bunch of us together and figure this shit out.

John from Denver, CO

June 8, 12:10 AM

John, I’m outside of Phoenix, and I’m dealing with the same stuff as you.

She didn’t come after me, because I ran away after she turned my parents. How do I know my parents were turned? Because when I got home an hour later, they were gone, and from what I’ve seen, the creatures don’t carry around their victims, so Mommy and Daddy must have left on their own. So I grabbed my Daddy’s Winchester from the box under his bed, took some food and water from the kitchen, went into my bedroom, and locked the door. Great plan, right?

Then I read your posting, and I figured it was time to do my part. It’s not like I had anything to lose. So I put every bullet I could find inside my backpack (and there were a lot, because Daddy was kind of paranoid) and hit the streets.

I took down twelve of them, and it felt great. I’m back home now, but I don’t know what to do. Should I go out and keep killing them? Should I stay at home until it blows over? Will it blow over? The stories on the news are dismissive and barely detailed, so I don’t know if it’s only happening in a few places or if it’s happening everywhere and they’re covering it up.

My e-mail address is [email protected], and my cell is (480) 481-****. And don’t call me just to be an asshole. Call me if you can help, or if I can help you.

Alyssa from Mesa, AZ

June 9, 2:16 PM

Speed Kills, Now More Than Ever

How Texas Has Become the New Hell

BY KATHLEEN NESBIT

Like most high schoolers, Corky Davidson has facial issues. The craters are a good three millimeters deep. His scars and scabs could’ve been the result of chicken pox, or measles, or a wasp attack. Then there’re the purplish splotches, and the reddish scratches, and those thumbprint-sized yellow things on his cheek that defy description.

I’m going to just go ahead and say it: Corky Davidson’s complexion is fucked.

Now, I’m not the kind of writer to pass judgment on a subject. In 2003, I even wrote an article about the Bush administration that didn’t contain a single discouraging word. (Okay, maybe there were a few discouraging words, but nothing so bad that it required a trip to the principal’s, er, the editor’s office.) So why, you may ask, am I dumping on this poor high school kid from Austin? Why am I using the kind of language and attitude you’d normally only get from the sophomore-class bully? Why, why, why?

Because Corky Davidson is an idiot who deserves to be ridiculed by his favorite magazine. And quit laughing. I’m not kidding.

Corky is 16, the youngest of three. His 20-year-old brother, Craig, is off in Iraq, and his 18-year-old sister, Danielle, is getting ready for her freshman year at the University of
Miami. Corky’s parents are as all-American as you can get: Mel Davidson is a history teacher, and his wife, Jori, makes fresh fruit pies at the local bakery. So how did Corky—“the Corkster” to his friends—become such a douchebag?

Simple: drugs.

Now, I have no issues with illegal drugs in general. I’ve done my fair share—a little weed here, a little X there—and I like them. I like them a lot. I think we should legalize the hell out of them.

Well,
most
of them.

The one mind-alterer that should be eradicated from the face of the earth is methamphetamine, a.k.a. dextrometh-amphetamine, a.k.a. methylamphetamine, a.k.a. N-methyl-amphetamine, a.k.a. desoxyephedrine, a.k.a. the douchebag drug, a.k.a. crystal meth.

I can speak with authority on this. I’ve tried meth. Several times. More than several times. Like maybe several dozen times. And each time I smoked it, or snorted it, or stuck it in a brownie, I became a raging jerk. I screwed over my friends, I stole from my parents, my writing became horrible (some would say it didn’t have far to fall), and I had lots and lots of idiotic sex.

The weird thing about meth is that even though you know it’s turning you into a piece of trash, you want to share it with your friends. Or, at the very least, sell it to your friends, so you can have some extra pocket change to buy some of your own.

Corky—who, it should be noted, is an athlete and used to be considered one of the big men on campus—first smoked meth after a basketball game in which he was held to six points and two rebounds. (He averaged 10.2 points and five boards. What a traumatic comedown that must’ve been for him. The perfect time to spark it up.) The story then becomes familiar and, frankly, a bit tired: He tried it again, and again, and again; then he got kicked off the basketball team; then his grades took a nosedive; then he started missing classes, then entire days; then his parents threatened to put him in rehab, but, like many addicts, he charmed his way out of that; and so on, and so on, and so on.

Here’s where things went off the rails.

After Corkscrew got canned from his job at Pizza Hut, he met a 20-year-old meth head known only as “Scary Barry” and fell into the manufacturing end of things. Meth is easy to make, and even though his brain was becoming further eroded each day, Corky managed to put together batch after batch, which he sold. Then he used the profits to do whatever it is that moronic meth heads like to do.

One sunny Monday afternoon, Scary Barry—who sounds like a real piece of work himself—brought Corkenheimer a new recipe. Corky says, “I was like, ‘What the fuck, dude, the other stuff was working fine.’ ”

According to Corky, Scary Barry said, “Use this, or, I swear to sunny Jesus in heaven, I will kill you. And I’ll have fun doing it.”

Corky was a follower, a spineless weenie who’d do whatever his meth guru told him. So on May 4, Corky toodled over to the apartment of fellow meth dork and Scary Barry acolyte Al Darnell, mixed up a batch of the stuff, and boom goes the dynamite. The ensuing fire burned down Darnell’s entire apartment building. Three people were killed, 12 were injured, and the property damage was ugly. Even a month later, the place still reeks.

But here’s the weird part. There was no evidence of a meth fire.

Austin, Texas’s chief fire officer, Dennis Leary—and yes, that’s Dennis Leary like the fireman-worshipping comic, except with an additional “n” in Dennis—says that meth fires are almost always easy to detect. “They have a distinct odor, almost like human hair, and that smell stays around for a good long time. Additionally, the people who cause these sorts of fires aren’t generally the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, so they tend to leave evidence everywhere.”

The investigators who checked Darnell’s building after the fire came away with the belief that the conflagration was caused by faulty wiring. The investigation ended about 45 minutes after it started, and Cork-A-Doodle-Doo went right back to work.

Davidson took his wandering minstrel show over to his
girlfriend Antonia Beresford’s house. (Antonia is 25. The only reason she dated Corky is that she, too, was a tweaker. I didn’t have a boyfriend when I was 16, nor when I was 25. Some meth heads have all the luck.) Same recipe, same result, except this time, lives were lost, specifically those of Beresford’s two roommates. Beresford, who was on the other side of the room when the meth “lab” went kerflooey, suffered only minor burns. Corky, however, ended up with his first dose of pizza face.

But that didn’t stop him. His hair was still smoking when he went back to work the next week.

At this point in our tale, you may be asking,
Why would this kid, this tweaker, this dipshit, keep cooking his junk
?

Simple: It was some good shit. According to the locals, it was the
best
shit.

Tweaker #1, female, 21: “It was so much mellower than the stuff we’d been getting in the ’hood. It sped you up while slowing you down.”

Tweaker #2, male, 28: “The best thing about it was there was no hangover, and meth hangovers can be, like,
crippling.
”

Tweaker #3, female, 20: “Not only was it good, but it was cheap. They were practically giving it away.”

Fantastic. Just fan-fucking-tastic.

Turns out that Corky wasn’t the only person using Scary Barry’s recipe. Fires raged across town—Chief Leary said there were 47 of them, and those were the ones that were reported; he’s convinced there were more—and the local fire experts were baffled. Their theory was that it was the work of a very clever pack of arsonists, but they didn’t have any evidence to support that. They brought government experts from Washington, DC, and civilian experts from New York, and came up with bupkus.

So how did they catch Corky? Here, I now offer you the reason that I keep referring to Corka-Cola as a moron.

Corky wasn’t a moron because he did drugs, although tweaking is pretty moronic.

Corky wasn’t a moron because he made drugs. After all,
Pizza Hut wasn’t going to rehire him—would you?—and the guy had to somehow bring in
some
money.

Corky wasn’t a moron because he burned down four buildings, killing two people and causing several thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Sometimes, y’know, shit happens.

No, Corky was a moron because he bragged about it on Twitter.

This Tweet from Corky to Scary Barry:
Burn baby burn disco inferno!

This Tweet from Scary Barry to Corky:
you do well my son. keep up the good work. newer and better recipe to follow
.

This Tweet from Corky to Scary Barry:
To quote Beavis and/or Butt-Head: FIRE FIRE FIRE. Man, I’m good at this stuff!

This Tweet from somebody called GTownRepresent to Corky:
Was that apartment deal yours
?

This Tweet from Corky to GTownRepresent:
Hell to the yeah! E me at CorkyDeeTX (at) msn for deets
.

And there it is. An e-mail address. Give it up for Corky Davidson, ladies and gentlemen, a genius for the ages.

The FBI hunted down Corky. The five agents I spoke with refused to discuss how, and I have no problem with that, although I’d bet that whatever they did involved some computer tracking and would have some folks kvetching about that whole personal rights thing. If that’s the case, I have no problem with it. If the Feds want to track
my
Tweets, fine, I have nothing to hide.

The bad news is that they haven’t found Scary Barry, and that’s becoming a problem, because Barry is clearly the mastermind, and Austin continues to burn. Sixth Street has all but closed up, and to my mind, Sixth Street
is
Austin. Without Sixth Street, Austin is Texas, and Texas is, well, it’s Texas. Nuff said.

From his cell at the Gardner Betts Juvenile Center in Austin, Corky told me they’ll never catch Barry. “The dude’s practically invisible. I met him once, but to be honest,
I probably wouldn’t even recognize him if I tripped on him. But even if I did, I wouldn’t turn him in or anything. I think what he’s doing is great. I wish
everybody
could take a hit of his stuff, because it makes you feel like you’re kissing God or something. And as soon as I get out of here, I’m going to find Barry and help him. We can change the world, one tweaker at a time.”

Seriously, what an idiot.