Trixie’s
Audio-capture Log
Day Twenny-Five. I
still havn’t managed t’make the damn thing understand my sexy southern drawl.
Its mechanical incomprehension baffles me.
We’ve been cooped up
inside this bunker too damn long now. Outside, we hear the screechin’ sounds
them darn things make, their constant clawin’ at our thick met’l walls, the way
they try to chew through the wirin’.
Sum of the other girls
are gittin’ antsy, what with that cacoph’ny an’ all. Deirdre’s been tryin’ to
amuse ‘em, hasn’t ‘ad much luck.
One a’ the girls threw
a tin can o’ soy beans halfway through her act. I tol’ her Hamlet was a bit
much, what with them zombie ‘pocalypse goin’ on an’ such, but she woulnd’t
lissen. Said “Hamlet’s jes’ what them poor sows need” only she said it more
refined-like.
Twenny-five days,
twenny-five gals, alla us cooped up in one well-built hole in the ground.
Plenty food, plenty water. Not a man in sight.
Wonder how long’s it
gonna be ‘fore we turn on each other.
Dearest Augustine,
I am greatly saddened
to inform you that our correspondence is nearly at an end, since I am running
out of menu parchment with which to write my musings upon and also because this
is my very last pencil and I can’t, for the life of me, find a pencil sharpener
worth a damn.
Also, because you
never write back. This could be mostly attributed to the fact that you are a
construct of my imagination but come on, woman, couldn’t you even bother to
drop me a line? Not even a hello?
I am currently on my
twenty-fifth day of trekking through the ruins of Porbeagle, my city of birth
and one true home. I have found that the agents that had hounded me since my
escaping the project’s installation have ceased their attempts, most probably
because they were eaten by zombies.
I have finally grown
accustomed to the loss of my hands and feel completely at home with using my
lips and teeth to write. Also, my appetite has returned. My appetite for
literature, that is. I have found it so much easier to focus on the classical
works that I loved before the end times, under silence’s welcoming silence
welcoming caress. At times, the pleading of the hungry dead threatens to break
my concentration. For example, at this very moment, one of the shambling
creatures has entered my abode and stands behind me, breathing its foul breath
upon my neck, thinking itself unnoticed.
Excuse me for a
minute.
The creature has
perished. I am safe, as long as its rotting brethren have not heard the rumble
of my chainsaws.
One moment.
Apparently they have.
Dearest Augustine, I am afraid I will have to depart.
Thank you for nothing,
Lloyd Beatrice Hoigleheimmer, Esquire.
Lloyd Beatrice Hoigleheimmer, Esquire.
“Can you hear that?”
said the buxom woman they called Evangeline, as she rested with her back to the
concrete reinforced door of the bunker.
“Hear what?” said
Tanya, a blonde woman with eyes of such a strange and deep hue they looked like
bruises on heaven’s cheek.
“Ssh!” said
Evangeline, as she heard the endless moaning of their undead tormentors stop
for a moment, and then rise to a horrible crescendo.
“Sounds like rumbling”
said Tanya, who made out a very clear sound, one she recalled from the
snow-capped forests of her home. “No. Not rumbling.”
Evangeline strained
her ears, as she heard it too. The growl, the deep, metallic shriek, the sound
like a great steel tiger purring as she lay beside her ravaged kill. “Then what
the-”
“Revving.” Tanya said,
smiling. “Ripcrusher series 2001, stainless steel base, titanium teeth,
separate hudraulic pumps, gas-powered.”
“Say what?”
“It’s chainsaws.”
“Chainsaws? Who could
be using chainsaws at a time like this? What could he be using them on?”
“You don’t watch
movies much, do you?”
*
Lloyd called it
‘Crimson Mist’. Anyone else who found out about it called it ‘Battle Vision’.
He wasn’t clear on how
he had acquired this, exactly. The result of the project’s tampering on his
broken body? Some fluke of his mind, brought about by his brush with death
under the Ferris wheel? Either way, it did not matter. What mattered to Lloyd
was that it kicked ass.
The creatures milled
around him, claws outstretched, gaping maws opening and closing, bits of flesh
dropping from their bodies, falling on the ground with an audible plop. To anyone else, they would seem like a
living wall of flesh, a ring of slow death brought about by teeth and claws,
punctuated by moaning.
To Lloyd, it was just a series of puppets, each with its own coloring,
denoting its strengths and weaknesses. A red bar floated over each one’s head,
that ebbed and moved every second, depicting what he called its ‘essence’ and
anyone else would call ‘hit points’. At the lowest corner of his vision, he
would see a string of symbols, commands that arranged themselves in a linear
fashion, constantly shifting, calculating the proper sequence of attacks. At
the highest, digits that counted in a seemingly random fashion. Lloyd called it
‘tribulations’. Everyone else would have called it ‘high score’.
His vision locked to a group of zombies, the place where the herd of
undead was weakest. Bright halos surrounded their rotting heads. Flashing
lights highlighted them against their brothers. Lloyd called it ‘sign of the
wicked’. Everyone else would have called it ‘lock-on’.
He jerked his hands,
making his twin chainsaws rev. The zombies took a step back, then moved closer.
Lloyd knew he only had one shot at this. He squinted close and saw the pattern
emerge:
Down, left-down,
left, slash, follow through with up, up-left, left, kick-kick, split-kick, stab
through number 13-16, use them as leverage to break formation, assume Prowling
Tiger Stance.
It wasn’t called
Prowling Tiger Stance, but Lloyd like to shout its name out loud when no one
was around and do a bit of karate howl in the end. He was halfway through
thinking how awesome he looked doing that, when the first zombie reached out to
grab his shoulder. Lloyd crouched, then brought his chainsaw up in an arc,
slicing the creature in twain, allowing the momentum to somehow carry him into
the air, as he twisted like a dervish, blades spinning, severing the tops of
half a dozen heads. Halfway through falling, he kicked at one of his undead
enemies, the sole of his boot crushing through his jaw and nose twice, before
pushing himself in the air and doing a pretty cool split kick, which knocked
two more off their feet.
They were halfway
through skidding across the asphalt, when Lloyd stretched his left arm and ran
the zombie quarterbacks wearing vests number 13 to 16 through, his right hand
flailing through the mass of their allies, chopping limbs and heads alike.
Switching off his left-hand chainsaw, he whirled the skewered creatures and
then released them, letting them tumble into a mess of flesh, bone and hair
along with their allies.
Lloyd bent his knees
and screamed:
“PROWLING TIGER
STANCE!” while whirling his chainsaws around for added effect. He had assumed a
pretty cool (by his witness-less standards) pose and was halfway through
shouting “WWWWWooooohhhh” when he heard the shot.
The zombie’s brains
splattered all over his cape. He saw, through the considerably large exit
wound, the distant figure of a woman brandishing a hunting rifle, perched on
top of an inconspicuous mound.
“HEY! YOU THERE!” she
shouted, her southern drawl lending her voice a wonderful inflection.
“WHY, HELLO MADAM!”
Lloyd screamed back, waving his arms.
“YOU BIT?” she
screamed back.
“I ASSURE YOU MADAM, I
MOST CERTAINLY AM-” the rifle thundered again, splattering another zombie’s
brains.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?”
“I SAID, I MOST
ASSURDELY AM-” the rifle thundered again, killing a zombie that looked like it
had once been a cheerleader or a stripper catering to a very exclusive
clientele.
“I SAID, I MOST ASSUREDLY
AM N-” screamed Lloyd, but he noticed that the woman had no intention of
letting him finish, what with her rifle raining sure-kill shots at the
regrouping zombie crowd every couple of seconds.
“JUST GET OVER HERE,
WHY DON’T YOU?” she shouted and Lloyd complied.
He stared at her as
she unloaded cartridge upon cartridge at the undead beings, slaying one with
every bullet. He marveled at her skill, her bravery, the cut of her jaw, her
long, supple neckline, the marvelous shapes of her-
Lloyd suddenly realized
that he’d been deprived of female company since the beginning of the zombie
apocalypse.
He slid down the hatch
after his attractive savior and watched the automated doors slam shut, dimming
the cacophony of the ravenous hordes outside to something barely over a
whisper.
“That was a close
call, stranger. Mighty brave of you to rush all them zombies by your lonesome.”
“’Twas but a trifle,
madam, I assure you.”
“No, I was the one
with the rifle. You had them chainsaws in your hands. Look good on you, have to
admit.” She smiled at him in the half-darkness, reaching her hand out. To her
dismay, she noticed that Lloyd did not reach back.
“The heck is this?
Think you ain’t good enough to shake hands with me?” she grumbled, as the
lights turned on. The man blushed and raised his arms, shrugging.
“Afraid not, madam.
See, I’m currently indisposed in the…hands department.”
Trixie took a step
back. Evangeline, Tanya and half a dozen other girls who had rushed to meet the
first living man they’d seen since the apocalypse, stared, screamed, fainted
and gasped in unison at the sight:
Chainsaws for hands.
The man had chainsaws for hands.
“Lloyd B.
Hoigleheimmer, madams.” He took a big bow. “At your service.”
*
Trixie’s audio capture log
Day Thirty.
There’s a man in the
bunker.
Dear sweet Jesus,
there’s a man in the bunker, hallelujah!
*
Lloyd’s personal journal, written on an actual piece of paper with a decent pen.
Dearest Augustine,
Despite my claims of
never bothering with our correspondence again, I could not restrain myself from
telling you of the marvels of this bunker.
It’s full of food, has
an abundance of stored water and a large library, overstocked with a number of
books, most of them classical works of young adult literature for women. I find
them very hard to peruse, which gives me more time to busy myself with the
women of the bunker.
The women. Oh dear
God, Augustine, the women. The harem I so desired since my very first bubonic
fluttering, finally at my disposal. A harem like no other (considering the
recent destruction of civilized society, therefore eliminating any
competition). My life’s work, finally completed.
Boo-ya!
Sincerely yours,
Lloyd B. Hoigleheimmer, Harem Master.
Lloyd B. Hoigleheimmer, Harem Master.
Years later, Lloyd
stumbled upon his last letter to Augustine, on the eve of the day when the
remaining survivors began the reconstruction of Porbeagle. The undead had
crumbled and rotted years later, destroyed by the humidity and the change of
seasons en masse, faster than he and his chainsaw hands ever could have done.
He read the letter as
he sat near the entrance of the collapsed bunker where he had had his harem and
sighed, as he remembered the bad old days:
There was Angela,
Pamela, Sandra and Rita. And as he reminisced, he knew they’d get sweeter.
There was Evangeline, the buxom towering woman. There was Tanya, the
knowledgable flower of the North. There was Deirdre and Trixie. There were
seventeen more whose names he still recalled fondly.
How had everything
turned so sour? How did his personal Heaven crumble and fall thus? When did the
ventilation systems fail and the generator which powered the bunker’s life
support systems and freezer storages fail? How many days was it before the
twenty-six occupants turned on each other?
He was useless then,
he recalled. He had no hands, could not help them. He merely dragged his feet,
as he watched them turn on each other. His mighty chainsaws for hands could not
help them one bit. He starved and thirsted along with them, while the teeming
hordes of the not-quite dead kept up their siege.
It wasn’t long before
he realized he needed to take action. His plan, to attempt a daring exodus,
tore the harem women apart. Some wished to stay put, to make the most
out of the safety of the bunker. The others (led by Trixie), wanted to risk it,
to take their chances outside.
What had become of
Trixie? He wondered, as he climbed down the bunker’s shaft, inside its once
accommodating, welcoming embrace. What had become of that valkyrie that had
saved him? He remembered how she smelled: like cordite and Trixie. Unlike what
the bunker smelled now, like stale fear and hopelessness.
Some of the women had
stayed. Evangeline, Sandra, Penelope, to name but a few. They were still here.
The dry air had preserved some of their beauty.
There had been a
fight. No one was hurt, thankfully. Deirdre was struck when she tried to break
up two of the girls, but nothing more than that. He stood there and watched as
she licked her split lip, then walked away. Toward him. Toward the man with
chainsaws for hands, who had promised them a mad cap exodus as their last
resort.
He remembered how it
was, when they stepped outside. He remembered the crack of Trixie’s gun, the
revving of his chainsaws turning into background noise, the moaning, the
screams. He never once turned to look (only that one time, when he saw
Elizabeth…no, no time for this).
He was on the second
floor now, overlooking the library. They had burned some of the books. Tore
others. One of the girls was buried under a pile of cracked paper, a brown
stain on the paperback cover that obscured her face. He could not tell who she
was. Didn’t want to check.
They had gone through
the horde, shooting and slashing their way through. His ‘Crimson Mist’ did not
fail him, not even once, guiding him through patterns that slew creature after
creature. When it finally switched off, he saw only half a dozen behind him,
holding little mementos of the slaughter in their shivering hands.
He recalled the
notifications he had ignored at that moment. Shivered at the thought of them.
At their laconic recounting of the terror of those lost during the exodus. He
was near the dormitories now. They seemed to be in immaculate shape, almost
untouched. There was a familiar-shaped lump covered with a sheet over one of the
beds. Her name was Tommi. She laughed at even his weakest jokes.
There was a device in
one of the rooms, very much like an answering machine. There was a microphone
connected to it. Its LED display showed one message, left unheard. He knew
whose room it was. Knew whose voice he would hear, upon pressing this button.
He shut his eyes and
reached his elbow to touch the big red PLAY button. He remembered Trixie, her
drawl drowned out by their moans, never once turning into a shriek, he
remembered how she…
“What are you doing in
there?” Augustine’s voice behind him made him jump.
“I…um, I was just…”
“The boys have been
looking all over for you. Said they wanted to show you a couple spots they
think would be safe to spend the night.”
“Tell them I’ll be right
over. I just need to-”
“Hear her voice
again?”
Lloyd stuttered,
blushed, then said: “Yes”
Augustine smiled and
nodded. Patient Augustine. Who knew some had
found his letters after all? She said “Be quick about it. They aren’t going
to agree on anything without their dad’s okay, you know.”
Sweet Augustine,
patient flower of the Apocalypse, he called her once. He smiled back.
“Be right over.”
His elbow hovered over
the PLAY button for a long while, even after Augustine had made her way
outside, even after it had begun to ache and feel sore. He took a deep breath
and stepped back. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“Goodnight, Trixie.”
He said and walked outside, so he could be by her side, by his sons’ side, this
day after the end of days.
The LED display kept
blinking for a whole season, before it finally flickered and died. Had he
pressed it, he would have heard her voice, saying:
Trixie’s Last Audio Log.
He’s a crazy lil’
basterd. But he’s the best crazy lil’ bastard I’ve ever known.
This is Trixie, signin’
off.
***
Well, what did you think? Positively hraetiful, no?
You may know Master Konstantine from the collaboration we did a while back, but the Cosmic Lord has been more than a little busy on his end. He's got a blog! He's got an e-book! And now, he's got a comic just itching to be read! So go read any one of those things; they're better than porn!
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