DEADFELLAS

David Whitman

First Digital Edition

September 2010

Darkside Digital

A Horror Mall Company

P.O. Box 338

North Webster, IN 46555

www.horror-mall.com/darksidedigital

Deadfellas © 2010 by David Whitman

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter 1: Tim, Francis and Lime

Tim Machen studied the brown curls on the back of Francis’ square shaped head as the two walked between the gray tombstones of the Victorian cemetery. The ground was carpeted with a deep layer of dead leaves. “Do you know what you want your epitaph to say?” Tim asked his slightly smaller friend. He spoke with a clipped British accent.

Francis O’Connor stopped dead, Tim almost running into his back. Francis’ chubby cheeks were flushed red from the cold late afternoon air. He smiled, showing off his crooked teeth. He was carrying a small black suitcase in his right hand. “Epitaph? You mean like a statement that you put on your tombstone?”

Tim removed the dark fedora from his head and scratched at his blonde hair. “Yes.” He grinned back, his perfect white teeth gleaming underneath his immaculately clipped mustache. Striking blue eyes glittered mischievously below his arched eyebrows. He carefully straightened and smoothed his expensive, black trenchcoat. “Knowing you, I bet you never even thought of it.”

Francis stared around at the various gothic tombstones, running his fingers absently over his overly thick muttonchop sideburns. His long brown trenchcoat waved around softly in the fall breeze. He had always liked cemeteries. Back in his youth in Ireland, he had spent many an afternoon wandering the graveyards and making up stories about different headstones. Beyond the surrounding iron fence of the cemetery stood a thick forest, the colorful leaves spinning into the air as the breeze took them. He looked down at the nearest headstone and read it:

Willis Mayhue

1823-1890

“No epitaph for Willis here,” Francis said, dusting some of the leaves off the edge of the tombstone with his finger. “So why should I have one? What makes me a more important man than Willis? We’re all worm food when it’s said and done, Timmy.”

Tim kneeled down to study the headstone. “Well, perhaps Willis was a man of very few words. Maybe he was not well read.” He looked back up at his partner. “But you, Francis, you are well read, my friend. You have almost as many books in your personal library as I do. There has to be at least one bloody sentence that you feel touches you.”

Francis thought about it and then broke out into a wide smile, the hot air escaping from his mouth and into the cold air like steam. “You tell me yours first.”

Tim put his hat over his chest and turned to the pink horizon, letting the setting sun reflect theatrically on his face. “And all men kill the thing they love, by all let this be heard.” He paused melodramatically and wiggled his thin eyebrows, forcing a laugh from his portly friend. “Some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word, the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword!” As he said the last word, he lunged his fist forward, miming a deadly stab.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Francis said, a pained frown creasing his round face. “Besides, how the fuck you going to fit all that on one tombstone?”

“What do you mean it doesn’t make sense?” Tim asked, putting his fedora back on his head and adjusting it slightly. “What doesn’t make sense?”

Francis frowned. “Oh fuck all, Timmy! You are a fucking hitman! Hitmen do not go around quoting dead homosexual poets! So what are you telling me? That you love our victims?”“No, I’m not saying I love them. I’ve just always liked that poem, that’s all.”

“It still doesn’t make sense. You love your dear old mum, do you not? Would you kill her?”

Tim sighed. “You take things too literally, my friend.”

Francis shrugged. “I think your tombstone should say ‘I’m an annoying and pretentious wanker sometimes, but other than that, I’m an okay chap.’”

“Ha, fucking ha,” Tim said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Tell me what your epitaph will say.”

Francis started walking again, Tim following just behind. “I want mine to say ‘This fucking sucks’ or ‘I didn’t think it was loaded.’”

They both erupted into laughter as they walked towards the end of the cemetery. They were going to the house of one Adrian Lime, a person they had been paid a good sum of money to exterminate. Lime was a bookie that had stepped on way too many dangerous toes over the last couple of months.

The house was out in the country, hidden away in the middle of the wilderness. Both Tim and Francis knew that everyone would remember them if they took the main road, so they had parked about two miles away and hiked in cross-country.

They exited the graveyard through the creaking iron gate at the rear. It closed behind them with a dull clang and they stopped and looked ahead. The sun was setting in front of them, silhouetting a massive Victorian house on the pink horizon.

“That’s it ahead in the distance,” Tim said, pointing to the house. The sun was just behind it, sinking slowly into the skyline. “I guess we should wait here until the sun goes down.”

Francis parked himself up against the gate, settling in for the wait. “I’m not going to have any trouble killing this bastard. Who the hell deserves to live in a house like that anyway? It’s a bloody crime, I tell you.”

“There are scumbags on both sides of the fence, my friend. I’ve met some rich people with hearts of gold and I’ve met some poor who I actually had to kill just on principle.”

Tim studied the surroundings, noting that the forest surrounded the house. Once the sun had set, they would be able to walk along the trees, coming at the Lime mansion from the side.

Tim joined Francis against the fence and they sat in silence as the sun slowly dropped from sight. It almost looked like the house itself was swallowing up the sun. The air had grown noticeably colder.

They waited until it was completely dark before walking towards the house. Two windows on the second floor were already lit up, like square eyes staring through the gloom.

Tim always checked a house first, as he was the most graceful. If Francis brought his large, chubby form onto the porch he would be creaking the boards and that was something that could be quite dangerous. The trick was to get in and out, usually taking a photograph of the corpse or severed head before leaving.

As they reached the porch of the Lime residence, Tim removed his handgun, and cocked it. He turned his head to the side and listened. From within the house, he heard a woman laughing and the muffled voice of a man.

The first floor window was lit only by candlelight, so Tim crept up carefully and peeked inside. He could see that the room had once been nicely furnished, but now the expensive lamps and chairs were scattered about and overturned. Beyond, a staircase led up to where he could see some light.

Tim looked over at Francis’ portly, shadowy form and pointed rapidly towards the entrance. With the grace of an animal, Tim moved silently towards the door and turned the handle. It was unlocked.

“I’m going inside,” he hissed at Francis. “If anyone comes through the front door, kill them.”

“Will do, Timmy,” Frances said, placing the suitcase quietly on the wooden porch floor, and removing a gun from his trenchcoat.

“And take a cough drop. We don’t want a rerun of what happened last weekend.”

Francis had a chronic cough, most likely the onset of emphysema brought on by a lifetime of smoking. He had quit a year ago, but the cough remained. Last weekend he had coughed in the middle of a hit and almost got the both of them killed.

Tim opened the door a crack and listened for any sounds, then slipped inside and shut the door behind him. Standing calmly, he scanned the room for any signs of movement. The house smelled strongly of decaying flowers and blood, a stench so cloying that it actually gave him a headache. He walked over to the candle and put it out with his fingers. Sucking in his breath, he moved up the staircase.

The top of the landing was dark and he peeked around the corner, letting his eyes adjust to the dim lighting. There were four doors along the corridor. Blood splattered the walls, giving the hallway the appearance of a horror movie. He walked cautiously, careful not to take large steps. He could still hear a soft female titter as he moved discreetly across the carpeted floor. Then the laughter stopped abruptly. Up ahead he saw a sliver of light underneath the fourth door.

The house suddenly became engulfed in an unnatural silence.

From behind the door he heard a soft popping sound, like someone pulling a cork from a bottle of wine.

Feeling more nervous than he had ever felt on a job, Tim leaned down and peeked into the keyhole. He could see nothing but the calf of a woman’s leg. Gun in his left hand, he casually opened the door, swinging his gun up to shoot the first thing that moved.

His first thought was that he had gone completely mad. A woman was seated on a canopy bed, frozen in mid laughter, her hand held in the air before her stiffly. A bearded man stood by a table to her left, staring down at her angrily. He too seemed frozen in place like some bizarre mannequin. The woman leaned to one side, away from the man. The man’s hand was drawn back, as if he was just about to slap the woman.

Tim moved closer to study the man. As he did, the man’s dark eyes slowly turned to watch him, but he otherwise remained frozen. Tim waved his hand back and forth in front of the still man’s face and pretended he was going to stab him with a Three Stooges style eye poke. The man remained frozen, not even blinking, though his eyes followed Tim’s movements. Tim glanced at the woman nervously, but her eyes remained on the man.

Tim pulled out a photograph and compared it to the frozen face. There was no doubt whatsoever that the lanky bearded man in front of him was Adrian Lime.

Tim did what he always did when confronted with a complex problem—simply pushed it into the back of his mind and continued his job. The bizarreness of the situation could be dealt with later when he was on safer ground and had more time to think.

He smiled viciously and put his handgun to Lime’s forehead. Lime’s gaze moved up to stare into the barrel of the gun. Closing his eyes to protect them from splattering blood, Tim pulled the trigger, and the exploding sound of gunfire shattered the silence of the house.

The bullet went through Lime’s forehead and out the back of his head, shattering the window behind him.

A neat little bullet-sized hole was drilled in the center of Lime’s head, but he remained standing nonetheless. Tim leaned forward and looked through the wound, gaining a clear view of the shattered window beyond. No blood exited the hole. As he watched with morbid fascination, the wound closed up, leaving no sign of the bullet’s passage through the flesh. The still frozen Lime looked upwards toward his forehead, then back to Tim.

Francis came rushing into the room a few seconds later, brought by the sound of the gunshot. Tim was standing before the frozen bodies in fascination.

“Have I gone mad, Francis?” Tim asked, not bothering to turn around.

Francis touched the woman’s hair and pulled back realizing it was hard, frozen like ice, only it was not so cold. “I don’t like this, Timmy,” Francis said, backing away slowly as if he was standing before a wild animal. “And you know when I say that, bad things happen.”

Tim considered Francis’ statement. It was indeed a true one. The last time Francis had voiced such an opinion it was back on the Frey job in Miami. Francis had lost his brother Colm. It was the fourth time Francis had said such a thing and all four had ended badly.

“Well, if we don’t kill Mr. Lime here then we will be dead anyway,” Tim said, leaning against the dresser. “We already spent half of the fifty thousand we got from Ripley to pay off Pope. There is no way we can just get it back.”

Francis sighed. “Aye, but how in the hell do you propose to kill him?”

“Aye?” Tim looked over at his partner and smirked, arching one eyebrow. “What are you some seventeenth century pirate now?”

“This is not the time for jokes, Timmy,” Francis stated flatly, his eyes never leaving the frozen bodies.

Tim grabbed the suitcase from Francis, set it on the bed, and opened it. Pope had wanted Lime’s head, so Tim had brought a small handsaw to do the dirty work. He pulled out the saw and held it before him, grinning wickedly.

“What, you’re going to just do it while he stands there?” Francis asked, his face filled with horror.

“You have a better idea?” Tim asked, setting the saw against Lime’s neck and mentally readying himself for the surreal act.

Francis looked away as Tim began to saw into the flesh. Surprisingly, the blade cut as if he was slicing through bathroom soap. Within fifteen seconds, the blade was completely through. Tim pushed the head and it fell to the floor with a hollow thud. There was no blood.

Lime’s headless body continued standing where it was, its hand still held in the air. Tim picked up the head with both hands and tossed it on the bed. “This is cleaner than I thought, my friend. No blood, no mess.”

Francis was watching the headless corpse closely. “Look, see it?”

A ghostly version of Lime’s head was forming atop the severed neck. It shimmered slightly, like an old Polaroid, gradually becoming more solid. Within minutes, the head had reformed.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Tim exclaimed, looking back at the bed. The vague outlines of Lime’s body had already begun to form below the head. After about thirty seconds, the body had almost fully formed. It was nude.

They now had two versions of Adrian Lime.

Francis started to giggle, then erupted into full-blown laughter. “This is too rich!”

Tim kicked at the nude body sprawled on the bed. It was indeed solid. “I’m so glad you find it humorous. What in the hell are we going to do?”

“How the hell could you not laugh?” Francis asked between giggles. “Not only did we not kill Mr. Lime, but we created a second version of the bastard. Can you just see us explaining this to Pope? He’ll fucking kill us.”

“I should have taken a photograph of the head. Now I’m going to have to cut off another head.”

Francis looked down at the frozen body. “You can’t be serious. But then we’ll have—”

“Three. Yes, you bloody bastard, I know,” Tim said, his voice full of irritation. He began sawing on the version of Lime that was standing up. Francis watched in fascination as his partner cut through the neck with ease. Tim removed the head, threw it on the bed, and snapped a photograph.

A few moments later and they had three versions of Adrian Lime.

“Okay, let’s get the hell out of here,” Tim said, slipping the camera into his inside pocket and walking towards the door.

“That’s it, then?” Francis said, staring at the three Adrian Limes.

Tim stopped in the doorway. “What do you mean THEN? What else can we do?”

“Well, don’t you think that when, or maybe I should say if he comes back unfrozen, then it might be found out that we didn’t kill him?”

Tim frowned. He knew Francis was the reason he was getting all these unsightly creases in his face. The bastard was making him resemble Hugh Grant—age ninety. “Do you have a better idea?”

“Yes,” Francis said, joining him at the doorway. “We can burn this place down and then no one will ever have to know we stepped into the fucking Twilight Zone.”

Tim and Francis walked cautiously down the long hallway, both of them expecting a door to burst open any moment. They both breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the stairs.

“This is getting very messy,” Tim commented as they walked quietly down the dimly lit stairwell. “And it seems such a shame to burn down a house as beautiful and delightful as this one.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, Timmy,” Francis muttered as they walked towards the kitchen. “We need to find something flammable, perhaps something in the basement.”

But before they even reached the kitchen, they spotted the two dark shapes lurking within. Instinctually, they both pulled their guns.

“Don’t fucking move,” Tim told the shapes as he cautiously approached. In the back of his mind, he knew by the way they stood that the strangers in the kitchen suffered the same affliction as Adrian Lime and his lovely mistress.

When he got to the doorway, he felt the wall for a switch. His heart thumping almost painfully in his chest, he flipped on the lights and felt the air rush out of his lungs in a slow hiss.

Francis’ hand dropped to his side, the gun falling to the linoleum floor with a loud clatter. “What…the…fuck.”

They stared at carbon copies of themselves.

The Tim-double had just pulled the trigger of his gun, sending a bullet through the Francis-double’s head. The splattered blood that exited the left side of his head was frozen in midair like a spidery flower. Francis’ mouth was open in an anguished scream, his tongue protruding slightly. His eyes had rolled so far back into his head that only the whites could be seen. Tim’s face was full of fear and confusion. Francis was falling towards the floor, frozen in mid-air.

“If we get out of this alive, we need to tell Pope we want more fookin’ money,” Tim said, petting the barrel of his gun like a kitten—a nervous habit he had picked up after many a stressful hit. “That’s us, Francis. Frozen in time or something. And why the hell is my double shooting you like that? It’s bloody bizarre.”

Francis shook his head back and forth comically, as if it would somehow shake sanity back into his head. Looking at the sight before him actually gave him a severe pounding headache. His brain, ill-equipped to cope with such stimuli, continued to try and put it together. As a result, he was seeing slight movements coming from the frozen doubles, though he could clearly see they were dead still. He reached up and began to scratch the hair behind his ear.

Tim reached out and gingerly touched the frozen blood with the tip of his finger. It felt like a piece of rubber, bending slightly.

“You know, my friend,” Tim observed. “I think this is the only time in my life I have ever felt pure and unadulterated panic.”

When Francis didn’t answer, Tim turned to face him nervously, holding his breath.

Francis was frozen solid, his hand held up as he scratched his head.

Tim waited to see if his friend would breathe, praying silently to an unknown god.

“Francis if this is a fucking joke, I swear to Jesus Christ himself I am going to shoot you in the face,” Tim said, approaching carefully, gun in hand.

Tim stopped when he was just in front of Francis. He blew air into his friend’s curly hair. The hair did not move, as if it had been heavily hairsprayed.

Francis, paralyzed, watched as Tim moved up and blew into his face, but he felt nothing. It was like he had been disconnected from his body. From behind Tim, he saw a figure gliding out of the darkness of the basement. Every circuit in Francis’ brain fired to scream, but all he could do was watch, horrified, as it moved behind his partner.

The thing looked like a man without any skin, its eyes bugged out grotesquely without any eyelids to cover them. It was naked and appeared sexless. It grinned madly, due to the fact that it had no lips. Its skinless upper body was nothing but muscle, thick veins snaking up and down its arms, pumping a glowing blue liquid that pulsated with every beat of its heart. The legs were covered with fur, ending in hoofed feet. The hooves clicked quietly on the linoleum floor as it moved. Its bright crimson head was moist and glistened in the florescent-lighted kitchen.

“Oh damn,” Tim whispered as he studied his friend, still unaware of the advancing creature. “For the love of God, please wake up.”

The thing was just behind Tim now, its long, sharp nails dancing in the air like will-o-wisps. It leaned forward and sniffed delicately at Tim’s scent. It seemed amused and fascinated by the man before him.

Turning to the pair of doubles, the creature began moving its hands through the air rapidly, so fast its fingers blurred. As Francis watched, the doubles seemed to move backward in time. The spiderweb of blood retreated back into the double-Francis’ head, as did the bullet. Then time stopped again, just before Tim’s double had pulled the trigger. The thing looked back and studied Tim, as if waiting for a reaction. It held its finger in the air and then let it drop. Instantly, the doubles came to life.

The gunshot exploded the still air like a bomb as the hoofed creature dashed back into the basement. The Francis-double collapsed with a sickening thud, blood pouring out onto the white linoleum floor.

The Tim-double’s eyes widened when it saw the other version of itself and it held the gun up quickly, eyes narrowing.

Tim aimed his gun at the double of himself. “Drop it,” both Tims said at the same time. They paused for a moment; the only sound their panicked breathing.

“You first,” they said again simultaneously, guns shaking in their hands.

Francis suddenly felt himself falling back into his own body. He dropped to the floor, too weak to stand. The Tim-double seemed about to flee, its eyes rushing from Francis to the mirror image of himself.

“I swear I am back at my flat and doing some heavy acid,” the Tim-double said, still holding his gun at Tim and Francis like a gleaming talisman. “I feel like I’m a character in a bloody Philip K. Dick novel or something.”

“You’re telling me,” Tim said, grinning despite the situation.

Francis pulled out his gun and aimed it at Tim’s double.  “Drop it, fucknut.”

Both Tim and the double broke into laughter. “Fucknut?” they said at the same time and then started laughing again like a bizarre human stereo.

The Tim-double let his gun fall to the floor where it landed on the leg of Francis’ double’s corpse. “Would you believe I killed ten Francises already?” he asked.

Francis looked towards the open door of the basement, remembering the demonic creature. “There was something in here before. Trust me, you don’t want to see it.”

Tim looked at his partner, still holding the gun on the double. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Before when I was frozen, I was still able to see, Timmy. A…I don’t know what the fuck it was. It had hoofed legs like a demon.”

“Yep, that would be The Bastard who’s been terrorizing us for the last week or so,” the Tim-double said, his voice dropping to a tired whisper as he stared at the blood-covered floor. “It likes to toy with us. Francis is around here somewhere, too. Or at least some version of himself. Things got a little confusing. It seems that hoofed fucker, who Francis and I call The Bastard, is spawning different versions of us. Let me guess, you just got here around twenty minutes ago, ready to whack good old Lime up there?”

Tim and Francis nodded, their faces sickly white.

“Please continue,” Francis said, desperate for any explanation of events.

“It seems The Bastard has control of reality. It can do anything it wants. If Rod Serling took some acid and then fathered a child with William S. Burroughs, then let Sam Raimi raise him, this thing is what you would get.” The Tim-double flipped on a light switch and pointed to the window. “There, look out in the backyard.”

Tim looked through the window and tried not to scream. Living corpses dotted the yard like an outlandish B horror movie set. None of the zombies ambled about like they did in the movies, but instead seemed to walk about with calculated and patient intelligence—some even appeared to be conversing. In the far corner of the yard, three zombies were sitting on a log enjoying a nice fat leg of Francis. One skeleton sat in a rocking chair on the back porch, bobbing back and forth languidly, its hollow eyes glowing eerily. There were several versions of Tim and Francis scattered about the yard as well, some of them missing limbs. In the center of the yard was a crucified Tim, festive Christmas lights flashing merrily around his corpse.

“It seems our little reality-manipulating friend likes to animate the dead from that old cemetery we walked through last week,” the Tim-double continued. “Well for you, it would be around twenty minutes ago. That’s good old Willis Mayhue on the porch there. Francis and I have been fighting them all week. There are a couple of Adrian Limes around here as well. They’re fond of a double-barreled shotgun, and his mistress up there is pretty good with a knife.” The Tim-double shook his head. “If it wasn’t for all the doubles, I swear I would have run out of ammunition days ago.”

“How do we know that you are really Tim and not some creation of that thing down there?” Francis asked, picking up his gun and pointing it at the basement.

The Tim-double laughed. “Hell, I don’t even know if I’M myself.”

“This is incredibly fucked up,” Tim said, leaning against the counter.

The Tim-double chuckled. “I said that exact same thing to Francis yesterday.”

“So what now?” Francis asked. His hair drenched with his own sweat. “Can’t we just leave?”

The Tim-double shook his head and grinned. “Well…you can try. Those George Romero extras are bloody everywhere out there. Only they aren’t slow like you see in the movies. The bastards move like lightning. Teeth like razors, too. Not only that, but soon one of us will turn on the other. It seems our doubles can only stay sane for so long. Perhaps it’s because we share the same brain waves. Perhaps it’s because two versions of the same person cannot exist in the same plane of reality. Who knows? Anything you say is theoretical—knock yourself out with theories, my friends. Three days ago, Francis and I had to fight three versions of myself.”

“I think I’m going to start crying,” Francis said, shaking his head.

The Tim-double kicked the corpse on the floor. “We better throw this body down the basement with the rest of them. It seems they have this awful tendency to spring alive at the most inappropriate of moments. I think I actually soiled my trousers the first time one did that.”

The three of them picked the body up and tossed it down the basement stairs. It tumbled down heavily, dotting each step with crimson splatters of blood before falling into an enormous pile of corpses. Francis saw more than one version of himself, Timmy and Adrian Lime and he shuddered before turning away.

“I think Francis and I are going to risk getting the hell out of here,” Tim whispered, staring down into the basement with numb shock.

The double clapped him on the back. “Good luck, brother. I knew you were going to do that. We think alike, remember? We tried the same thing last week. In seven days, you’ll probably be me, who knows.” He offered the trademark Tim Machen grin.

Tim started to say something but stopped. It was just too strange. He felt like if he communicated too much with the double that he would somehow validate the bizarre reality of their situation.

“Well, maybe if we do somehow manage to get out, then you will no longer exist,” Francis said, checking to see that his gun was fully loaded. “That is if you really are a future version of Timmy.”

Tim snickered and elbowed his double. “Can’t you just tell Francis watches his Star Trek? I always tell him he resembles Chief O’Brien on Deep Space Nine. Same accent, same Panda-like body.”

Francis looked pained. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Timmy? Can we not have this bloody conversation again? I do not look like that fat fuck.” He turned back towards the Tim-double. “Okay, so I watch me Star Trek. If this was one of those episodes, you would no longer exist. Being a future Timmy and all.”

The Tim-double nodded and smiled. “That may be, Francis. I sure as hell hope so. Just don’t try and go through the graveyard. That’s exactly what we did last week, and let’s just say things weren’t too pretty. Old Willis Mayhue jumped out of the ground like he was shot from a cannon. That was followed by the rest of them.” He began to laugh almost insanely. “Oh, Francis, you screamed like a woman. It was the funniest thing.”

Tim laughed out loud and turned to his double. “You’re a funny bastard.”

The double nodded. “Yeah. Handsome, too.”

They both detonated into hysteria, once again sounding like an alien stereo.

“Oh man, lets get the hell out of here,” Francis said, shaking his head back and forth in bewilderment.

Tim nodded and they walked towards the kitchen.

Francis stopped and looked at the Tim-double. “Oh and…Timmy? I would never scream like a woman. Fuck you for saying that.” The last statement set all three of them howling.

Tim and Francis looked at each other and nodded tensely as they stood in the parlor. If things were this messed up inside, they knew there was a good chance it would be worse outside. Inhaling deeply, they stepped out the front door, their guns held out in front of them and ready to fire at the first sign of any movement.

Chapter 2: Benny, Rico And The Dead Grundy

“You sure this is the spot?” Benny asked, his eyes scanning the dark water of the lake as he absently rubbed his large belly. The moonlight was shining off his shaven head.

The two men were standing on the shore. The reflection of the full moon undulated softly over the water’s surface, like a brightly-lit skull was rising out of the depths. The warm wind blew through the trees around them, providing a soothing lullaby to the gentle splashing against the shore.

“That’s what Pope said,” Rico answered, pulling rubber goggles down over his abundant eyebrows, messing up his perfectly combed, but greasy, hair in the process.  He wore an ill-fitting oxygen tank strapped on his stocky back. “He said they threw Grundy right in front of the weeping willow.” He pointed at the massive tree hanging over the water. “There’s your willow.”

“Stupid fucks. How could they be so goddamn dumb as to leave the key on him? The purpose of killing him was to get the key.”

Rico started walking out into the black water until he was up to his waist. He spoke without turning around. “Why do you even ask that? You know what a bunch of morons Pope has working for him.”

Benny waited until Rico’s head disappeared into the lake, ran his fingers over his Zapata mustache, and said, “Yeah, and you’re one of them, you fucking asshole.”

*      *      *

Rico, submerging under the water, turned the flashlight on and let the ray arc into the murky darkness like a lightsaber, trying to chase back his feelings of paranoia. Since he was a child and had seen the movie JAWS he had harbored a deep fear of nighttime water. He didn’t like being surrounded by something he could not see. He always felt something was coming at him with the speed of a freight train, getting ready to hit him in the back with voracious teeth.

Old tires and garbage dotted the bottom. Small fish darted around, oblivious to the intruder in their midst. Water plants shimmered in the gloom, like ebony serpents dancing beneath Rico’s light.

Wanting to go back, but knowing he had to finish the job, Rico continued forward, the flashlight beam gliding sluggishly over the bottom. He nodded happily when he saw Grundy’s pale form off in the distance, the bleached white flesh a stark contrast to the inky water.

When he was about ten feet away from the corpse, he stopped swimming, his hand clutching the flashlight so forcefully he feared it would snap into little plastic shards.

The fact that the corpse’s eyes were open had only been slightly unnerving, but when the corpse suddenly blinked, Rico almost fled his own skin. The dead Grundy was smiling, his tongue protruding from his mouth like a pink slug, maybe licking the bottom of his mustache or merely floating into it, Rico couldn’t tell. A bubble slowly escaped the bullet hole in the corpse’s forehead and floated lazily upwards before vanishing into the dark. The corpse’s T-shirt was bunched around his chest and Grundy’s hairy belly bulged out, swollen as if pregnant. Grundy’s head lolled to the side, his stringy red hair floating around his head like a halo of worms.

Rico hesitated a moment, trying to convince himself he had only imagined it, the flashlight trembling in his tight fist. When Grundy blinked again, this time narrowing his eyes maliciously, milky bubbles pouring from his mouth, Rico whipped around and began swimming frantically toward the surface. He was still screaming when he reached the shore.

Benny laughed at his partner’s antics. “What the fuck are you screaming about? Jesus Christ, why don’t you tell the whole fucking town we’re out here.”

“He’s alive!” Rico swore. “That motherfucker is alive!”

“What the hell are you talking about? He was shot in the head and he’s been down there for over a day now. He ain’t alive.” Benny had stopped laughing. He was merely smiling now.

“His eyes were opening and closing!” Rico sputtered. “He was shooting bubbles from his mouth! I’m telling you he was alive!”

“Are you on crack?” Benny wasn’t even smiling now. “There is no way in hell he can be alive. You probably just saw a fish swim from his mouth, man.”

“No,” Rico insisted. “He blinked at least twice and even narrowed his eyes at me.”

Benny groaned. “Listen to what you’re saying, Rico. There isn’t a chance in hell that Grundy’s alive. It’s just not fucking possible.”

“I know how crazy it sounds, Benny. But I’m telling you, he’s alive down there.”

“Rico, we need that fucking key.”

“No way I’m going back in that water. Pope wants the key, let the fat black bastard get it himself.”

“Are you going to go back and tell Pope that Grundy’s alive? Because if you hallucinated what you saw down there, things won’t look good for you in the organization. The Pope will fuck you up good.”

“I’ll tell Pope the truth.”

Benny ripped the goggles off Rico’s forehead. “I’ll go down and get it, you goddamn nutty fuck.”

Rico fitted the oxygen tank on Benny’s back and handed him the diving flashlight. He was amused at seeing the heavyset man in diving gear, but bit back a sarcastic comment.

Mumbling something about “people who smoke crack need to be fucking tortured,” Benny began to walk out into the lake. When the water got to his neck he submerged into the dark depths, the flashlight held before him like a gun.

It did not take him long to find Grundy, scream aloud under the water, turn around, and swim frantically back towards the shore.

When Benny scrambled back onshore, Rico was laughing so hard he was nearly doubled over.

“What the fuck!” Benny managed to screech, the water dripping down his massive belly

“Here,” Rico said, holding out an empty hand, still snickering.

Benny stared at Rico’s hand, confused and wet. “You ain’t holding nothin’.”

“It’s the crackpipe you accused me of smoking,” Rico said and grinned, the moonlight practically shining off his teeth.

Benny slapped the hand away. “Fuck off. What the hell is going on? He’s really down there. The bastard smiled at me!”“No shit. I was down there, remember?”

“What the hell we gonna do? We can’t tell Pope he’s still alive down there—ain’t no way he’s gonna fucking believe us!”

Rico nodded. “Yeah. He might even kill us for coming back with a story like that. We’re gonna have to get that key, man.”

Benny shuddered—his dislike for Rico put to the side now that they had some very common ground to stand on. “I don’t know if I can go back down there. He terrifies me. You see his face down there?”

“Yeah, it looked like a moon shining in the darkness.”

“Exactly! Think maybe if we shoot him again, he might die?”

“I doubt it. They already shot him in the head once. And that ugly bastard was down there for at least twenty hours. Something tells me another bullet ain’t gonna do shit.”

Benny smiled, despite the fact that he was scared shitless. “I suppose you’re right. We need to get that key, though.”

“Remember that scene in Jaws when Richard Dreyfuss was fucking with that tire? The head pops out on his ass?”

“Fuck yeah. Scared the shit out of me.”

They stared at the deceitfully calm surface of the lake, both of them trying to structure a reality that just wouldn’t fit. In the distance, Benny thought he saw bubbles breaking the surface just about where Grundy probably was.

“You know anything about this Grundy fuck?” Rico asked.

“Just that he used to be a made man. The Pope caught him embezzling some money, had him whacked. He was a pretty dangerous dude, too. Heard this story about where Grundy had a man dismembered and mailed him in like five different packages to Africa.”

“Why Africa?”

“How the fuck should I know ‘why Africa’,” Benny said, a pained grimace stretching his face. “Who cares? The point is the man was dangerous.”

It was decided that they would flip a coin to see who would have to go down and get the key.

Rico, the loser, stood knee deep in the water, his hardened gangster face on the edge of tears. “I’m scared out of my fucking mind, Benny,” he whined. “What if he bites me, or something? What if he gets out of them ropes and drowns me.”

“Sucks to be you.”

Rico smiled nervously, placed the goggles over his eyes and adjusted the oxygen tank. “If I come out of this alive, I swear you’re gonna get a fuckin’ backhand for your heartlessness.”

Turning towards the water, his heart beating like a tribal drum in his chest, Rico reentered the lake and made his way back to Grundy.

Benny watched Rico until his head vanished underneath the surface and said, “You are one crazy bastard. I wouldn’t have gone down there even if I lost.”

*      *      *

Rico, floating in the water, was staring at the round, illuminated face of Grundy’s corpse, thinking how perfect Benny’s moon comment was. Grundy’s head nodded, like he was listening to some sort of beat heavy music—the eyes radiating so much hatred that Rico almost turned around. For an unsettling moment, Rico had the impression that Grundy was bobbing his head in time with the beating of his terrified heart.

One of Grundy’s hands was free and he was digging around in his pants. With a vicious grin, he pulled out the key Rico sought and held it out before him, letting it gleam in the flashlight’s beam before shoving it in his mouth and swallowing it.

Rico’s eyes widened and he resisted the urge to swim over and choke the dead man. Stifling a scream, Rico swam down and picked up a piece of rusted metal off of the bottom, floated closer to Grundy, and began poking him in anger.

Grundy grabbed the metal rod, bubbles streaming out of the bullet hole in his forehead, eyes bugging out furiously. Rico, realizing the dead man was not going to let go, began the laborious process of dragging him towards the shore.

Grundy shot an arm out, clutching his pale, worm-like fingers at Rico’s face. A wave of water pressure shot into Rico’s face as the hand sailed by. Rico could hear Grundy’s bubbling screams, yet he resisted the urge to drop his burden and flee. Dirt clouded the water around them, making it nearly impossible to see.

Rico doggedly continued swimming towards the shore, Grundy’s enraged screams boiling the water around him.

Chapter 3: The Lime Graveyard

It seemed unusually quiet in the front yard. Tim and Francis walked about one hundred yards and then looked back at the Lime house. Both of them were silent.

Tim studied the second floor window, surprised to see a silhouette of a woman. He tried to think of an episode that even remotely resembled the events inside the house, and failed, miserably. Even the time Psycho Mike-O accused me of stealing his mother’s corpse doesn’t come within shooting distance of this, Tim thought, shaking his head as the silhouette moved away from the window.

“Timmy, did that just happen in there?” Francis asked. “I want to know seriously, because I’m fighting the urge to kill myself here.”

Tim checked his guns to make sure they were loaded. “I’m not sure. Maybe the house had some sort of acid fumes in it. Maybe we hallucinated it.”

“Maybe,” Francis said, not sounding entirely convinced. He, too, checked his guns.

“Of course we have one problem with that,” Tim said, turning away from the house and walking towards the cemetery.

“What’s that?”

Tim chuckled. “Hallucinations aren’t shared, you dumb bastard.”

“Timmy?”

“Yeah?”

“I hate you.”

They broke out into nervous laughter, the sounds of their mirth carrying through the eerily silent nighttime air. The skull-like full moon shone brightly above their heads, illuminating the landscape around them in a dim, gray glow.

Tim looked up, stared into the stars, searching for the constellation Orion. He longed for the days when was able to sit back and enjoy such a relaxing view. Living in the city, it had been years since he had been able to even see the stars, let alone enjoy them. He supposed he could go up on one of the building rooftops and look at the stars, but somehow that just wouldn’t be the same.

Tim’s cell phone rang, its shrill alarm piercing the silence like a scream. They started snickering when they realized that they had both pulled out their guns.

Still laughing, Tim put away his guns, pulled the phone from the folds of his trench coat and put it to his ear. “Tim here.”

“Did you kill the traitorous fuck?” Pope asked, his deep bass voice booming into his ear. Francis had often joked that their boss’ voice sounded like Barry White.

“Uhhh…yes,” Tim said, knowing that it would be futile to tell him of their little psychedelic experience.

“You don’t sound too sure, Tim. You know how I feel about half-assed jobs.”

“I have a picture of his severed head to prove it. That sure enough?”

“Good, that blooming fuck. Did you make sure he knew why you killed him?”

“Yes,” Tim answered, his heart fluttering when he detected a shadowy movement from behind the gates of the distant cemetery.

Pope’s voice lowered. “What the fuck is going on here, Tim? I want details.”

“Pope, I’m going to have to call you back in a bit,” Tim said, turning off the phone and putting it back into his jacket. He looked over at Francis and then back to the cemetery. “Did you see something moving out there?”

Francis stopped and let his eyes scan the gates ahead. “No…did you?”

As they approached the gate the wind picked up. Piles of leaves twirled by them, colliding into tombstones with the sound of long fingernails on concrete. Tim’s dark trenchcoat billowed around him wildly and he tried in vain to hold it close to his wiry frame.

“What you probably saw was those leaves,” Francis said, scratching at his thick sideburns nervously as they continued walking towards the cemetery gate.

A few moments later, they stood before the iron gate, staring off into the darkness, heads cocked to the side as they listened for the slightest sound.

Drawing their guns simultaneously, they stepped through the gate and into the graveyard. Every time a leaf skittered by on the path before them, Tim would jump back, his finger almost pulling the trigger. Each shadow became a zombie—every noise of dry leaf on stone the sound of fingernails scratching against a coffin lid. Tombstones jutted into the air like jagged teeth threatening to eat the moonlit sky, the wind cutting through them in frigid gusts. Greenish light glowed from the window of one of the mausoleums; dark shadows flickered from inside.

The pair stopped at the gravestone of Willis Mayhue, their bodies as tense as if they were standing before the lit fuse of a dynamite stick. Tim felt a soft vibration under his feet, almost like the rapid beat of a heart.

“Why are we stopping here, Timmy?” Francis asked, staring down worriedly at the tombstone. “Let’s just keep going and get the fuck out of here.”

Tim shook his head. “No. Let’s give it a few seconds and see what happens. It will put my mind at rest that we just hallucinated the whole thing back there.”

“I say we don’t tempt fate and get the hell out—”

The ground exploded beneath their feet, dirt and rocks flying into their faces. Tim and Francis were sent stumbling backwards, holding their guns before them like shields.

A coffin shot high out of the ground, silhouetted for a moment against the full moon above, then arched over and landed on the ground with a soft thud about forty yards away.

Tim looked over at his partner, his eyes wide in the glow of the shining moon. “That wasn’t…”

“Willis Mayhue,” Francis answered, already getting to his feet.

Soft, guttural laughter echoed out of the darkness from somewhere near where Mayhue had landed.  The mausoleum with the greenish cast began humming like a machine, the light reflecting eerily off the tombstones.

Another grave nearby detonated with a loud blast of air, sending a coffin into the sky like a bullet. It hung on the horizon, almost frozen, and then it came crashing down into the graveyard below, landing on a tombstone, the wood breaking into splinters, sending a fetid wave of death-laden air into their faces.

The corpse of a woman crawled out of the wreckage, her body remarkably well preserved for someone who had been dead so long. Her hair hung off her skull in clumps, waving like thick snakes in the evening breeze. Bones rattled underneath her rotting dress. She turned towards them and opened her mouth, a sharp hiss bursting from between her brown teeth.

“Timmy, we’re going to have to go back!” Francis yelled, running. “We haven’t a chance in fucking hell to make it to the other side!”

By the time Tim started to run, Francis was already near the cemetery gate, waddling as he fled, screaming like a woman. Francis broke into a coughing fit, as he usually did when he laughed or yelled, a product of his smoker’s lungs. Once the fit was over, he shrieked once more, again forced into manic coughing. He ran through the cemetery gate and toward the Lime house.

Off in the distance, just beyond the mausoleum, Tim saw an elevator door open, throwing a white light against the tombstones that surrounded it. Inside were himself, with longer hair, and Francis, wearing massive goggles. Dodging another zombie, Tim was forced to look away and continue his flight.

Biting his lip, Tim increased his speed and tried to catch up with his partner, his trenchcoat flying behind him like a cape. Like gunfire from dirt-infested barrels, coffins started shooting into the air all around him. Instinctively, he fired both guns at the airborne coffins, laughing maniacally.

A coffin crashed into the ground directly in front of him, wood fragments and pieces of bone flying into his face and open mouth. Screaming, spitting bone chips, Tim dodged around the broken coffin, narrowly avoiding a skeletal hand that darted out, clutching at his ankle.

A zombie hurtled out of the darkness, screeching as it flew at Tim, teeth snapping, eyes bulging. Tim dropped to the ground, and the zombie sailed over him, crashing into a tombstone, smashing to pieces.

A gun in each hand, Tim leapt to his feet and continued running towards the exit.

Just as he reached the gate, another coffin smashed to the ground just behind him, sending an explosive wave of rancid air and wood chips into his back. Howling, goosebumps rising up on his arms, Tim yanked open the gate, dashed through, and slammed it behind him with a clang.

A raving corpse flew up out of the cemetery with astonishing speed, smashing into the gate so hard Tim was knocked over backwards. He rolled a few times and looked up just as gnashing teeth closed in on his throat.

Tim fired six times, both guns barking furiously, sending the corpse hurling backward with a gurgling shriek.

Francis ran up and grabbed Tim’s arm, pulling him to his feet. “Timmy, what the fuck are you doing? Run!”

Moments later, they found themselves back on the porch of the Lime house, their eyes piercing into the darkness for any sign of threat.

“You left me back there with those zombies,” Tim hissed, his face covered in sweat, his shaking gun held before him and pointed towards the dim, slightly glowing cemetery. “What kind of friend are you?”

“No, Timmy. When I see dead people shooting out of the fucking ground like cannons, I run. That’s what normal people do.”

Bones rattled from somewhere deep in the cemetery and Tim backed up slightly, biting his lip nervously. Francis, like Tim, held a gun in each hand, legs braced wide for attack.

They stood waiting like that for a moment, barely breathing. More bones rattled somewhere just to the right of them.

“Uh…Francis?” Tim asked, his voice a low whisper. “Maybe we should go into the house.”

“Yeah, because it’s so much safer in there, what with doubles and hoofed aliens and all.”

Tim kept his eyes glued to the darkness. “You have a better idea? I don’t want to go in there any more than you do.”

Back inside the house it was eerily quiet. All of the lights were off, including the kitchen. Moonlight shined in through the front window, basking the entire room in a chalky, phantom glow. A ghostly titter came from the second floor, hanging in the air a couple seconds then vanishing, suddenly halting, as though shut off by a switch, followed by the popping sound Tim had heard earlier.

“Let’s try the kitchen,” Tim whispered, walking quietly over the carpeting. “Maybe my double can help us get the hell out of this.”

Other than Tim’s double’s severed head—and the requisite pool of congealing blood surrounding it—the kitchen was empty. The head’s chin was missing, the upright skull left resting with its top teeth against the linoleum.

“That’s rather disconcerting,” Tim said, staring down at his own mutilated head.

“And it doesn’t bode well for your future, Timmy,” Francis said, his tone teasing. “Especially when that guy said he was you a week in the future. That would mean that’s going to be you. Fucked, ain’t it?”

“Thanks so much for that thought, Francis,” Tim said, his thin lip curling at his friend. “You are, and always will be, a special friend.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And that unfortunate person on the floor down there was right about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You did scream like a woman out there.”

Chapter 4: Furious Lime

“God must be punishing us,” Tim said, sitting on the ornate bed, his eyes glued to the door.

They had holed up in one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor. The Victorian era furniture gave them the unsettling feeling they had time traveled to the past. Expensive-looking paintings decorated the walls around them, providing an atmosphere that made Tim feel like he was in one of those old haunted house movies with Vincent Price.

“Please don’t bring God into this, Timmy,” Francis said, a deep grimace creasing his face and stretching out his furry sideburns. “We got enough problems as it is.”

One painting, depicting the wrinkled visage of an old man, gave him the unnerving and paranoid feeling that he was being watched. It seemed like every time he looked up, the old man was glaring at him with those beady eyes, a ghastly Mona Lisa-like smile on his face.

Francis sat on the floor, his back to the wall, the window just above his head. They had pulled the shade and were sitting by candlelight, watching the shadows dance and flicker on the wall before them like some old-fashioned picture show.

“All I can think about is those damn corpses in the cemetery. Most likely the whole house is surrounded by them.”

“Lightning-quick bastards,” Francis said, his face half in shadow.

“Definitely. Nothing like those damn zombie movies. They move like wild animals.”

Francis looked up, noticing Tim staring at him curiously. “What the hell you looking at me like that for? It’s making me feel uncomfortable.”

“You know, you aren’t as ugly as I thought, my friend. Hell, the way the shadows darken your face like that you almost look...handsome. I’d shave those bloody muttonchops, though. They’re just plain ugly. Don’t smile either, Snaggly.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Timmy. Things aren’t bad enough now you have to go and hit on me? And then insult me beloved sideburns at the same time? And me teeth as well?”

Tim smiled, his thin, almost painted on, arched eyebrows wiggling up and down. “Don’t get your hopes up, partner. I’ve seen your mug when the light hits it. Pretty, you ain’t. Good thing you have me to attract the girlies to us.”

Francis chuckled and shook his head. “Man, I sure wish we would have questioned your double a bit more. We are so out of our fucking element here it’s almost funny.”

“We’ve been out of our element before, my friend,” Tim said, his eyes growing distant as he recalled a fond memory, his mouth creasing in a wan smile. “Remember that time we got holed up in that shack down in that bayou and that inbred little twig in the flowered overalls was accusing us of ‘killin’ his Pa’?”

Francis smiled slowly, revealing his crooked teeth. “Yeah. You almost got us killed. You had to laugh at him, didn’t you? That cat was one of the scariest, craziest bastards we ever met. He was right out of the movies.”

“How could I not laugh? Francis, the poor chap was wearing flowered overalls for fuck’s sake! And his name was Cletus! Spouting out how he was going to ‘take you in his ring and throw you a smack-down.’ The man was utterly priceless.”

“Heh,” Francis said, laughing, his eyes teary. “I forgot about that. Jesus, that must have been ten years ago.” He paused for a moment, staring at his friend. “We’ve been doing this shit too long. Whatever happened to our plans of retiring and opening up a pub on the coast?”

“I still have those plans, my friend. We’ve been planning that one since kindergarten.”

“I agree. In fact—”

A double-barrel shotgun blast from the hallway suddenly tore the door half apart, the whizzing buckshot dotting the wall between the two men. As the door exploded inward, it showered them with wood fragments. Another shotgun blast erupted from the doorway, sending pellets so near to Tim they messed up his hair. They also tore off the top of Francis’ head, sending it sailing out of the window behind, trailing blood and gore, comet-like, in its wake.

“Francis!” Tim shrieked, spittle flying from his mouth, both hands already shooting his guns into the mangled door. He fired until his barrels were empty—teeth gritted, screaming, his eyes bulging wildly. He let the empty magazines drop to the floor simultaneously and quickly stuck two new ones in like a well-tuned machine, his hands a violent blur.

A gasp came from the hallway and Adrian Lime crashed into the broken door, shattering what was left of the wood and falling into the room with a wet thud. A red pool of blood spread out around him as he bled out.

“Fuck!” Tim hissed, turning to stare down at his dead friend, tears forming in his eyes.

Francis’ skull was an open bowl of blood and brain, his head gone from the bridge of his nose up. Francis’ chubby legs still twitched inside his blood-drenched khakis.

The rattling of bone outside reminded Tim that the dead were still lurking about, and had most likely surrounded the house.

Tim fell to his knees, oblivious to Francis’ warm blood soaking into his pants, and tried to keep his mind from shutting down. I can’t face this alone, Francis, he thought, taking his dead friend’s hand. There is way too much to deal with here.

Chapter 5: Tim Two, The Scary Bitch, And The Bastard

Tim heard someone talking downstairs. He slipped quietly to the broken door, a gun in each hand, and listened. A drop of sweat fell from his brow and into the puddle of sticky blood below with an audible plop. Moving as one with the flickering shadows, he stepped through the broken door and into the hallway.

He almost screamed out loud when he saw the woman at the end of the hall. It was all he could do to keep from emptying his guns at her. Instead, he waited.

Lime’s mistress stood like a statue, her doll-like eyes staring past Tim into the dim hallway beyond. An icy smile creased her full red lips. She held an obscenely long knife clutched in her left hand, her delicate white fingers wrapped tightly around the pearl handle. She looked like a feral Betty Page. Her perfectly parted dark hair hung to her shoulders. She eyed Tim ferociously, seemingly ready to attack.

But Tim knew she was frozen stiff, just like the rest of the loonies and crazies lurking around the house. The voices from the first floor drew him forward and he carefully inched his way past the frozen madwoman.

“God, if you are there, please, please don’t unfreeze her ass until I go by,” Tim whispered as he walked, too scared to appreciate the irony in a hitman praying to God.

Passing Lime’s mistress—who he had dubbed The Scary Bitch in his mind—he hugged the wall, sliding by her with breath held, his eyes squinting as though she was a ticking bomb. For a moment he considered snatching away the knife, but decided against it, fearing she might spring to life.

By the time he reached the elaborately carved balcony, the voices were clear. Ducking down in the shadows, keeping one eye on Lime’s mistress behind him, he peered into the gloom downstairs.

Below were exact replicas of himself and Francis, arguing in front of the massive and cracked grandfather clock. Splattered with blood, the doubles looked haggard and tired.

“We can’t just keep fighting these doubles, Timmy,” the Francis-double said. “Fuckers are everywhere. We need to figure out a way to get out of here. I’m about five minutes away from completely losing my bloomin’ mind.”

The Tim-double chuckled. “Francis, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a choice in the matter. They are attacking us.”

“Don’t play word games, Timmy. You know what I meant. We’re going to have to make another break for it.”

Tim-Two looked at his watch. “We have a bit of a wait until sunrise, partner. I suggest we go upstairs and hole up in one of the bedrooms.”

Tim felt a rush of adrenaline at the last statement. No way he would be able to handle the both of them.

Francis walked over to one of the windows. “Why don’t they come inside, you think? They just wait out there for us to come out.”

Tim-Two sighed and started to move up the steps. “It’s a scary thought to think they can come in at any moment. Maybe whatever has us held here merely wants to toy with us a bit. They’re just out there like guards, so we can’t get out.”

Tim crawled over to the staircase, moving as quiet as humanly possible. When they were half way up, he stood up in the darkness and shouted, “Freeze!”

Tim-Two and Francis looked up, both of their hands instinctually moving towards their guns.

“That’s one of you up there, Timmy,” Francis said, his hand slipping around his gun.

“Francis, don’t you fucking dare,” Tim hissed. “I’m not having a very good night here and I don’t need to see you die twice.”

“You’re just a double,” Tim-Two said, casually scratching his left hip.

“Take you’re hand away from your hip,” Tim said. “I’m you, don’t you remember? I know you keep the extra gun there. And I’m not a double.”

“You look like a double to me,” Tim-Two said, a hint of humor in his tense voice. He let his hand drop to his side.

“I’ve never been killed,” Tim said, almost pulling the trigger. “I’m the same version of myself that I was when I came to this hell house.”

“I can tell you’re a younger version of myself,” Tim-Two said, chuckling. “Things don’t work like that. Just because you have a memory of arriving here doesn’t make you the original Tim. Doubles seem to come from different time tracks or something. They aren’t really doubles, but the same version of ourselves at different points in time. Pretty fucked up, eh?”

“How the hell do you know this?” Tim asked.

“Because Francis and I have been fighting these things for two weeks now. We’ve had a lot of time to theorize. We’ve learned a lot about that alien thing with the goat legs. Its name is Farron, we call him The Bastard. It’s known as a Manipulator. It toys with us and generally fucks things up. There is another Manipulator called Hawthorne that seems decidedly less menacing. Turns out Lime was some sort of religious nut. Lime used the Necronomicon to let it into our world.”

“How long do we have till one of us goes batshit?” Tim asked, his brain not comprehending anything but the fact that he wanted to stay alive.

“Usually around two hours,” Francis answered. “We teamed up with about three Timmy doubles yesterday. We were able to fight alongside each other for at least fifty minutes. You have no idea how annoying Timmy can be times two.”

“There is a dead version of you upstairs,” Tim said. “In the second bedroom. Your whole head is blown off. Fucking Lime. And his mistress is frozen over here in the hallway.”

“Um…she’s not frozen,” Tim-Two said, his voice rising in panic.

Tim felt his saliva suddenly dry up. “What?”

“She does that all the time. She acts frozen and then comes alive to whip ass.”

Chapter 6: Pope And Grundy

Benny tapped his fingers over the top of his shaven head nervously, a habit he had picked up years ago playing high stakes poker. Grundy’s soggy body lay on the ground before them, his frog-like eyes bulging deliriously, his fingers opening and closing with a watery squishing sound. Grundy’s skin was wrinkled, ripped open in many places.

As Benny watched, choking down the urge to puke, a beetle crawled out of the bullet hole in Grundy’s forehead and fell to the ground. Grundy himself watched the insect exit his head, face purple with rage as he watched the bug fall to the moonlit ground. Grundy shrieked, spewing milky water that splashed Benny’s leg.

“We’re gonna have to call the Pope and see what he says to do,” Benny said, biting his Zapata mustache with his bottom teeth nervously and dancing back when Grundy kicked out a waterlogged leg.

“He ain’t gonna believe us,” Rico said. “He may even put out a hit on us for fucking around.”

“Then maybe we should just take Grundy directly to him. Let him see this crazy shit for himself.”

“How the fuck we gonna get him into the car?” Rico asked. “I don’t want to touch this smelly fuck.”

“I don’t want to touch him either,” Benny said, staring down at the living corpse with disgust. “I got plastic in the car.”

They put a plastic bag over Grundy’s head and managed to get his sour and rancid smelling corpse into the trunk of the Mercedes with little trouble. Grundy’s muffled shrieks could still be heard from within.

Benny couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of it. He had been in some seriously screwed up situations in the last few years since becoming a made man, but he had to admit to himself that this one was a prizewinner.  It had only been recently that he had been paired with Rico, and it didn’t take long for him to begin to harbor a serious hatred for the man. Rico was whinier than a fucking woman.

They got back in the Mercedes, Benny behind the wheel. Benny drove out of the woods and turned onto the dark highway, his brain still trying to comprehend just how the hell this shit could be happening. This was the stuff of horror movies. Not that his life wasn’t a horror movie in itself. He’d seen enough murders and bodies to fill hundreds of movies.

“You hear that Tim and Francis were sent to take out Lime?” Rico asked, lighting up a cigarette and blowing the smoke out of the crack in his window.

“No shit? Lime was stupid enough to mess with Pope? Fucking deserves to die.”

“No shit. And sending Timmy is pretty much gonna guarantee that the man will be dead by sunrise.”

“Shit, that reminds me,” Benny said, pulling the cellular phone out from between the seat. “I gotta call Tim. He wanted me to get him some shit I could dig up on Psycho Mike-O.”

“Ask him if Lime is dead too, if you get a chance,” Rico said, watching him dial the phone.

Chapter 7: Double Call

When both Tims’ cellular phones rang out in stereo, the three men all jumped at once. It was so loud—so normal—in the weird confines of the surreal house. Tim and Tim-Two each took out a ringing phone from their trenchcoats and answered it at the same time.

“Hello,” they said simultaneously.

“Timmy!” Benny exclaimed, happy to hear the British voice of his friend. “I got that info that you wanted.”

“This isn’t a good time right now, Benny,” both Tims said at the same time. Francis watched them talk, still not used to the breakdown of reality.

“Tim? Why does your voice sound so weird? Sounds like I’m hearing two of you.”

The two Tims laughed. “If only you knew, Benny. If only you knew. Listen, things are a little fucked up right now. I’ll tell you more later, but you won’t believe me.”

“Maybe you should tell me now, Timmy. We’re having a little weird shit going down here too. Remember Grundy?”

“Yeah,” the Tims said. “Pope had him whacked….”

“Yesterday,” Tim said.

“Two weeks ago,” Tim Two said.

“Tim what the fuck is wrong with your voice?” Benny asked.

“It’s too complicated to explain right now,” the Tims said. “Just tell me about Grundy.”

“Well, the fucker’s alive. He has a bullet hole in his head. He’s been underwater for at least a day, yet I can hear him screaming in the trunk.”

“This is actually good news,” the Tims said simultaneously. “This means that the whole world is screwed up, not just us. We’re kind of having a corpse problem here as well. It seems Lime keeps popping back up from the dead. Even Francis came back from the dead.”

“Francis is dead?” Benny asked, suddenly feeling numb. He had always liked the cranky Irishman.

“Not entirely,” the Tims said, grinning simultaneously. “He’s standing right here.”

Francis broke in. “I can’t take too much more of this double shit, Timmy.” He anguished, staring back and forth at the two versions of his partners. “It’s giving me a fucking, bloomin’ headache.”

Both Tims laughed, then spoke into their phones, “See, Benny? Still complaining as usual.”

“Timmy, I have no clue what the hell you’re talking about. First it sounds like there is fucking two of you.”

“There is two of us.” The Tims said. “Maybe even three or four.”

“And second,” Benny continued. “You say Francis is dead, but I can hear him talking.”

The Tims chuckled. “I told you it’s very complicated, Benny.”

“Listen, Timmy,” Benny said. “Maybe we should meet up. Try and make some sense of this shit.”

“Well, I’d ask you to meet us here at Lime’s but you won’t be able to get through the army of undead that surrounds the house.”

“Are you fucking serious? We’ll stop at my house, get some guns, and come up there and help your ass.”

“You sure can try,” the Tims said together, simultaneously smirking and scratching absently at their blonde hair like images in a mirror. “But those zombies out there aren’t like the movies, though. They move like the raptors in Jurassic Park. Better bring some serious firepower. Perhaps a flame-thrower would be a handy tool. “

“We’ll use the car like a fucking tank.”

“Who is with you?”

“Rico.”

“Ugh. I know he can handle himself, but he’s such an asshole.”

Benny laughed. “That, my friend, is true. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

“We’ll be waiting,” they said and hung up.

“Now,” Tim-Two said. “We need to figure out what the hell we’re going to do about this double situation. One of us is going to go insane.”

Tim was about to answer when the organ music started to play. It came from below their feet, vibrating the floor with a dull rumble.

“Fuckin’ great,” Francis said. “Isn’t that Proud Mary? That’s odd.”

Tim nodded. “It is Proud Mary. And odd, it is.”

“It’s coming from the basement,” Tim-Two said. “And it’s not so odd really, considering the rest of the craziness that is happening here.”

Francis looked over at Tim-One. “Crazy Lime has a church down there. There’s an organ down there, too.”

“Who the hell is playing it?” Tim-One asked.

“Well, both of you know how to play the organ, right?” Francis asked.

“Yes, why?” the Tims asked simultaneously.

Francis was disturbed that they answered together, wincing as if it pained him greatly to be alive. “Do you two have to keep doing that?” he snapped. “I ask because I was thinking maybe it was one of you two.”

Chapter 8: You Don’t Know That They Got A Grundy In The Trunk

Benny hung up the phone. “That was the single most weirdest call I’ve ever taken. Those poor bastards are stuck up at the Lime house surrounded by zombies.”

Rico laughed uproariously.

“I’m not kidding,” Benny said. “That’s what Tim says anyway. I believe him, though. What with Grundy flopping around in the trunk and all. I think reality has left us. We’re going to go down there and help them. Just gotta stop at my house to grab some firepower.”

“You’re serious?”

“Couldn’t be more serious. In fact—” Benny froze in mid-speech, mouth open. Up ahead he could see the flashing lights of a cop car. It was blocking the road and had another car pulled over to the side. A Mercedes.

“Shit. What the hell is this asshole doing?” Rico asked as Benny slowed the car down.

Approaching the Mercedes and the police car, Benny was stunned to see himself and Rico sitting in the parked car—staring right back at them. The Rico-double pointed at them.

The officer’s eyes widened when his flashlight hit their faces. He had a gun in the other hand. “What the hell is this? You guys some kind of twins?” From the trunk came the sound of Grundy shrieking. “What the hell? Same noise in the trunk? Get out of the car now! Keep your hands up! All of you!”

The Rico-double had been growing increasingly nervous throughout the stop. The Benny-double had cautioned him to stay calm, but after the twin Mercedes with doubles of him and Benny inside pulled up, he snapped. When Benny’s attention was on the cop questioning the doubles, he popped open the door, swung himself out, and opened fire, his gun going off in staccato pops of noise. A bullet went through the back of the cops’ neck, erupting from his throat amidst a misty flower of blood.

As the dying cop fell backwards, he pulled the trigger of his revolver once, then unexpectedly froze in mid-fall just before his back hit the pavement. The cop’s bullet went through the windshield and hit Benny in the forehead. He slapped at it as if stung by a bee.

The dead officer floated about a foot off the pavement, a spray of blood frozen in the air like a twisty demonic snake.

The Benny and Rico who had just stopped turned to see their eerie doubles likewise frozen still. Rico’s double was still firing, gritting his teeth, a flash of light at the barrel of his pistol where the bullet was exiting the chamber. The floating bullet hung just inches from the muzzle. Benny’s double was frozen inside the car, his mouth still open in a howl of anger as he went for his weapon.

Benny and Rico got out of their car.

Benny’s forehead was stinging, and he put his fingers to his brow where he felt something metallic protruding from the skin.

Rico was looking at all the frozen men in awe, his mouth open comically wide. “What in the hell is going on? That’s us, Benny!”

“Rico,” Benny said, his weak stomach turning over in fear. “Can you please tell me what the hell is in my forehead?”

Rico stepped over slowly, his eyes squinting as he studied Benny’s head. He reached out tentatively. “Holy shit, Benny. You have a bullet stuck in your forehead. It’s like…sticking out a little.”

“It fucking hurts,” Benny said, fingering the protruding bullet. “Is it bleeding?”

“No. It’s just sticking there like it’s stuck in your skull bone or something. You got a metal plate there?”

“No.”

“Then you got one hard head, man. A fucking bulletproof head.” Rico grinned. “Do you have any idea how valuable that is in our line of work?”

“I’ll have to worry about getting this out later,” Benny said, looking back at the frozen doubles. “We better get out of here. If you weren’t with me, I’d think I was going insane.”

Rico was running his hand over the hard surface of his twin’s face. “Holy shit. It gives me a headache just to look at this. What the hell is going on? We got a guy in the trunk that’s perfectly alive despite the fact that he’s been shot in the head and drowned. We got Timmy and Francis fighting zombies.” He looked over at the cop still floating above the pavement, his eyes wide with the pain and the shock of the bullet tearing through his throat. “We got that poor bastard there.”

“And we got these…these…things,” Benny said, eyeing the doubles with revulsion.

Grundy began beating his head against the inside of the trunk.

“Do you think that this is us from the future?” Benny asked.

“Huh?”

“Well, they were stopped by a cop. They got a Grundy in the trunk. It seems like it’s us five minutes into the future.”

Rico’s face turned white. “Stop talking like that, Benny. You’re freaking me out. It’s like them old Twilight Zone shows. Besides, you don’t know that they got a Grundy in the trunk.”

“Want to check?”

“Fuck that. One Grundy is enough. Lets get the hell out of here before another car comes along and sees some of this weird shit.”

“Have you noticed we haven’t seen any other cars? Its like we been dropped into another dimension or some shit like that.”

“I told you to stop talking like that. You’re giving me the chills here. Let’s just get up there to Lime’s place, help Timmy out, and hope this shit goes back to normal by sunrise.”

Chapter 9: More Plentiful Than The Cute Little Bunnies

The last words Tim-Two ever spoke were: “The hell with that bloody organ music in the basement. Let’s go check on that crazy bitch upstairs.”

Then a dagger sprouted from the center of his throat, a stream of blood squirting into the air. He fell backwards, landing heavily, blood pouring from the wound.

Francis fell to one knee and began firing both his pistols at the madwoman at the top of the stairs, his crooked teeth clamped together like a vise. Tim-One dropped to the floor and also opened fire, his screaming nearly drowned out by his barking pistols.

Lime’s mistress danced to the spastic boogie beat of bullets tearing through her body as Tim and Francis emptied their pistols furiously.

As the last sounds of the gunfire echoed through the house, she stood still for a second, staring at them with dumb shock, blood spitting from her body as if she were a human fountain. In her hand dangled another throwing knife.  As it slipped from her hand, she opened her bloody mouth and tried to utter a stifled cry before falling forward and pitching down the stairs.

“We better go down in the basement, Timmy,” Francis said, expertly reloading his guns before Lime’s mistress even reached the foot of the stairs. “It’s more easily defended, and we can check out that organ music.”

Tim stood dazed. The right side of his face was splashed with the blood of his double. “How the hell do you just get right down to business? Your partner is lying there dead and the world is falling apart around your fucking ears. How can you stay so calm? I actually cried when you died, you bastard.”Francis smiled eerily, his crooked teeth gleaming in the light. “You’re my partner, Timmy. And you forget, I’ve been here awhile. This shit ain’t new to me. And I didn’t even cry when my dear mum died.”

“Are you going to act like that if I get shot?”

“I will if you have a replacement about, my friend. Hell, I already saw at least eight of you get killed. You’re more plentiful than the cute little bunnies hoppin’ about a pretty meadow, you understand?”

The two just looked at each other a moment, the organ music playing beneath their feet. Tim shook his head as Francis continued to smile. Then they both burst into laughter.

“We’re going insane, Francis,” Tim said, staring down into the dead eyes of his own double. “I bet this shit isn’t so funny to the normal man.”

Francis snickered. “Well, there’s probably an earlier version of yourself runnin’ about, Timmy. Probably shit scared and crying in some corner. He probably don’t think this stuff is so funny.”

Tim sighed. “More like my future self. Lets go check out who the hell is playing that bloody organ. Benny will be here in about thirty minutes. He probably isn’t going to make it through those zombies outside, though.”

Chapter 10: The Army Of The Undead

Screaming dementedly, Benny jammed his foot down on the accelerator in defiance of the woman’s corpse that had plastered itself on the car’s windshield. Rico had dived into the backseat where he now crouched, gun drawn—a shrill shriek of lunatic fear firing from his mouth like an out of control rocket.

A nest of beetles fell from the corpse’s left eye and onto the cracked windshield. Tufts of blonde hair jutted from its skull like oily, dirty ropes. Its right eye bulged grotesquely, as if some large insect was pushing it from behind. The corpse gnashed furiously as it smashed itself against the glass, smearing it with dirt and reddish brown slime. Spiderwebs of cracked glass snaked across the windshield as it threatened to cave in.

From the backseat, Rico began firing at the corpse on the windshield, further weakening the glass. The windshield caved in and the corpse threatened to crawl in after it, but a sudden bump dislodged it and it fell off the hood and was run over by the back wheels.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Rico howled from the backseat.

“We gotta help Timmy and Francis, you cowardly fuck!” Benny yelled, using his gun to clear away some broken glass that obscured his vision.

The Lime residence could be seen glowing off in the distance like a fairy tale monster, its windows basked in bright gold. The full moon shone down on the hundreds of corpses as they circled around the house, dotting the rolling hill on the horizon. Everywhere they looked, they could see a running or walking zombie.

“Shit!” Benny screamed, spittle flying from his lips. The glass from the windshield had sliced his face in a couple of spots and lines of blood fell down his face like tears. The bullet embedded halfway in his skull stuck out like a bizarre button. Grundy started howling madly from the trunk, again seeming to sense the army of the undead. “They are fucking everywhere!”

“Call Timmy,” Rico said from the backseat.

“What? And don’t think I appreciate you deserting me to the backseat like that either, you cowardly bitch.”

“The cellular phone, dumbfuck. Call Tim. Tell him we’re out here.”

Benny picked up the cellular and hit redial, stopping the car momentarily. He heard Tim pick it up on the third ring. In the background was strange organ music.

“Tim here.”

“We’re outside, Timmy,” Benny said. “These corpses are everywhere. What should we do?”

“You can see the house from where you are?”

“I just said that, Timmy. You going to try and get to us, or what? We can try and cover you, or maybe we can distract them.”

Tim giggled insanely. “Cover us? Benny, there must be hundreds of those things out there. You aren’t going to be able to cover shit.”

“What the hell is going on, Timmy?”

“Well, from what we can make out, my friend, the total and utter fucking breakdown of any semblance of reality. Time lines have snapped off. We got doubles running around here like they are flying off some kind of factory line. Hoofed bastards stirring things up. The Scary Bitch, Willis Mayhue—things are pretty strange. Reality has gone nuclear.”

“Doubles?”

“Alternate versions of ourselves,” Tim explained in a serenely lunatic calm voice. “They are everywhere. I don’t even know what version of myself I am anymore.”

Benny thought he heard Francis in the background say the word ‘six.’ “Oh them,” he answered. “We saw some of them, too. They killed a cop.”

“Benny, I suggest you turn around and get the hell out of here. It doesn’t seem like there is anything you can do for us.”

“Timmy, you know I can’t do that,” Benny said. “You saved my brother’s life. I told you I was in your debt.”

Tim groaned into his ear. “Benny, you are just going to get yourself killed. Not that it matters anymore, I suppose. You probably have a double floating around here someplace, anyway.” There was a long pause. “Yes, I was right. It seems your double is here now.”

In the background Benny heard someone talking, but he wasn’t sure if it was his own voice. It was at that moment that his mind, like the delicate bones of a baby bird, snapped. “Timmy, did you say my double is there?”

“Yes, Benny, I did. Hold on, he wants to talk to you.”

“Turn around!” A voice shouted at Benny. “ For the love of fucking God turn the hell around and go back! It wasn’t worth it, believe me!” The voice sounded funny, but Benny recognized it as his own.

“Eat shit,” Benny said back to his twin. He tossed the cell phone out the window and hit the gas.  “I’m coming in. You best fasten your seatbelt, Rico.”

The Mercedes hurtled forward as the army of the undead turned to face them, the grass shooting out from the back of the tires as they ran off the road. Grundy continued to beat his head inside the trunk of the car as they gained speed, his howling cries filling the air like a twisted movie soundtrack.

Rico was sobbing as they drew nearer to the wall of zombies. The windows of the Lime residence beckoned to them like a safe port in a raging sea of undead.

Benny plowed into the wall of milling undead in a wet collision of bones, severed limbs, and spraying blood. He cackled madly, howling like a football fan.

The car came to a jarring halt.

Rico had never left the backseat, nor had he put on a seatbelt. As a result, he went flying through the broken windshield with an empty scream, his body landing heavily in the arms of the ravenous zombies.

Grundy’s corpse escaped from the popped trunk and scrambled towards Rico, throwing himself upon him, his teeth chewing into Rico’s flesh with the ferocity of a shark.

Benny used the momentary distraction to get the hell out, leaving the car and running for the front porch. A zombie rushed him and he nearly lost his balance as he emptied his gun into its face. The zombie fell backwards and lay still, its mouth opening and closing rapidly. Benny rushed toward the front door, shrieking when he found it locked.

The last thing Benny saw as he jumped through a window and into the Lime residence was his former partner being pulled apart like a butchered animal carcass.

Chapter 11: The Dancing Francis

“My theory is that God himself has rolled some sort of LSD-laced joint and is sitting up there laughing his ass off,” Tim said, sitting in a pew of the underground church, watching one of his own doubles playing a wicked version of Proud Mary on the organ.

“Well, you figure if anyone can roll a masterpiece of a doobie—it’s God himself,” Francis said, nodding somberly. “That’s the kind of doobie that would have one singing ‘All You Need is Love’ in that cartoon Yellow Submarine.”

“I was scared fucking witless of the Blue Meanie when I was kid. I remember looking at him and wanting to weep.”

“Yep and that thing with a big long vacuum for a nose—sucking up reality.”

“And that whole Eleanor Rigby part. Scary.”

“Very.”

They watched a Francis-double dancing on top of the organ, kicking and shuffling its way through an ungraceful jig. Every chorus the Francis-double would shout “Rolling!” in its deep baritone voice. Every once in awhile, he would cross his hands over his chest and do a dance that to Tim’s enjoyment, looked Russian.

It was a small church with six rows of pews and a very low ceiling. Candlelight flickered against the windowless walls eerily. There were no statues or crosses, just a pulpit, a piano and rows of candles. A neon pentagram was painted into the floor, a remnant of Lime’s dabbling with demonic realities.

“Even scarier is that I’m starting to enjoy it too,” Francis said, watching his portly double dance with amusement.

“That double is going to get skinny from all that dancing. He’s going to make you jealous.”

“Piss off, Timmy.”

Two coffins rested near the pulpit, the bodies of Tim and Francis lying within. Every once in awhile, Francis’ double would leap down from the organ and run around the coffin repeatedly shouting “Rollin’!” usually during the “These wheels keep on turnin’’’ part.

Nearby, Benny was sprawled on his back on a pew, staring at the ceiling overhead. “Who the fuck keeps a church in a basement?”

“Apparently Lime,” Tim answered. “We’ve even ventured a theory, Francis and I, that Lime is the one responsible for this little breakdown in reality. He let The Bastard into our puny universe.”

“Yes,” Francis chimed in. “Praying to evil gods, and whatnot. Who knows what the hell The Bastard has unleashed on us.”

“Right,” Tim said, smiling deliriously. “And in the middle of all this, is us, gloriously not giving a damn anymore.”

Benny frowned and sat up. “What brought you to this glorious conclusion?”

Tim snickered. “It is only when one becomes insane that genius creeps into the mind. This is our theory. We made it the hell up, of course, but it seems to make sense.”

Benny looked over at the doubles. “And what’s the deal with the dancing Francis over there?”

“Well, apparently, that’s us in like a month from what I gather,” Tim said. “They’ve lost their minds. They’re throwing a funeral for their own doubles.”

“Our own doubles,” Francis corrected. “And we’ve lost our minds as well. We can’t forget that, Timmy.”

“Looks more like a party,” Benny commented.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Tim said, grinning stupidly. “I guess after your twentieth or so funeral, that’s what you do.” He stared at the bullet protruding from Benny’s head. “I didn’t want to tell you this before because things were mad enough.” He paused dramatically, choosing his words carefully. “Benny, you have a monkey’s penis sticking out of your forehead.”

Francis looked at Benny’s bullet, seeming to notice it for the first time. He smirked, looked back at his dancing double, and began to clap his hands joyously.

“What?” Benny asked, following Tim’s eyes and then touching the metal. “I got shot by a cop. It’s a bullet. Fucking thing is stuck there. Can’t get it out.”

Tim studied it with the precision of a man hardened by his reality turning into a bad acid trip. “Hell, Benny, don’t you realize why its stuck there? Its time froze. If I were you, I’d be one nervous bloke.”

“Time froze?” Benny asked, his face growing whiter by the moment, his eyes looking up comically as if he could see his own forehead. “Do you mean this thing can suddenly go the fuck off?”

“Unfortunately yes, that’s what I mean,” Tim said, eyeing the bullet nervously. “That thing is like a ticking bomb. I definitely don’t want to be standing directly behind you when it lets fly.”

“You’re kidding,” Benny said, his voice nearing a whisper. “Don’t be telling me that. That’s crazy—”

Benny’s head suddenly exploded as the bullet unfroze and blasted into his forehead with the sound of a hammer striking a watermelon. Francis was splattered by some brain matter and blood, but just sighed a little and went back to watching his own double jump around.

“Told you,” Tim said, his eyes dancing with madness. He shook his head and began to bob his head up and down to the organ beat.

*      *      *

Later that night, Tim and Francis stood facing the front door, guns in each hand—wide tooth-revealing smiles plastered on their faces. The moaning voices of the undead could be heard through the windows like the buzzing of locusts.

Tim looked over at his long time partner. “Francis, we’ve known each other since we were lads. I love you, my friend.”

Francis smiled wickedly. “Don’t be getting all gushy on me now, Timmy. Besides, we’re only doubles.”

Tim thought about it for a second before breaking out into laughter.

“Why do we find bad shit funny, Timmy?” Francis asked. “Why do we laugh at the worst that life has to give us? We laugh when we really should cry.”

“Because, Francis,” Tim said calmly, speaking with the tone of a man who has philosophized his place in the cosmos. “It is our only way to get back at God and the universe when terrible things happen. It’s our way of showing that no matter what a higher power does to us, no matter how much shite it sends our way—we laugh in the bloody face of death and destruction. We laugh in the face of it to keep us sane. It is a fuck you blast of laughter to a universe that just won’t flinch. A way of showing our strength.”

“That’s pretty profound, Timmy. Especially for one with such a limited capacity for abstract thought as yourself.”

Tim grinned. “Piss off, Francis.”

Francis just nodded, his own smile sad and nostalgic.

“We ready?” Tim asked, inhaling deeply, his eyes sparkling with lunatic glee.

“Yep,” Francis said.

Tim kicked at the front door, breaking it open with one hit. The door flew against the wall of the porch with a resounding bang, startling the undead that stood in the darkness.

Screaming out war cries of fury, smiles still stretching the haggard lines in their faces, they ran into the army of the undead, firing.

Epilogue: Many Months Later: Things Aren’t Good, Ray

“Ever hear of the hog nosed snake?” Tim asked in his crisp, British accent as he studied his partner’s face. He was running his fingers through his thick, blonde hair, a wide smile on his handsome features. “It can play dead so well that its mouth can actually give off the stench of death.”

Ray sighed. This crazy bastard was truly beginning to rub him the wrong way. “And you’re telling me this because?”

Tim pulled absently at his perfectly clipped mustache and looked down. “I’m telling you this because that poor bloke is not dead.”

Ray groaned tiredly. The man lying before them had a bullet hole in his head the size of a golf ball—you just didn’t get any deader than that. A massive pool of blood was congealing around his head like an obscene scarlet halo. Ray leaned down and pulled the blood-soaked T-shirt up slightly. The shirt felt hard, as if it was doused in red paint and then left out in the sun for a few hours. Five clean bullet holes could be seen dotting the chest. He pushed on the corpse’s arm, but it was stiff, well into rigor mortis.

Ray snickered. “Not dead? You could use his arm as a hockey stick if you wanted to.”

Tim just smiled enigmatically, cocking his head slowly to the side like he was listening to a beautiful song that only he could hear. “One moment please.”

Ray moved away and watched the strange man. He had heard a lot of bizarre stories about Tim. The story went that he had once found himself lost in alternative realities and had engaged in a blood-soaked battle with different versions of himself. He had supposedly lost his last partner Francis in the “Reality War” as he had called it. Tim claimed to have whacked over forty-seven versions of his own self. Ray was pissed that Pope had sent him out on a hit with such a lunatic. Ever since they had partnered up last week, his world seemed to have turned into a David Lynch movie starring the cast of Goodfellas and Fawlty Towers.

Tim nodded his head as if in agreement with some invisible companion. He glanced over at Ray dramatically. “Watch this.” Pulling a mirror from inside his trench coat, he placed it over the open mouth of the corpse. The mirror fogged up instantly. “Well, well.” He looked up at Ray and winked. “What do you make of that, my friend?”

Ray tapped his fingers nervously on his shaved head. “You are one creepy fucker, Tim.”

Tim looked up at him, and for a second Ray could swear the pupils in his eyes were spinning around in circles, like a psychotic Warner Brothers cartoon character. “You should have seen the last version of me. Compared to him, I’m saner than a priest.”

“I beg you to stop referring to yourself in the…what person is it?”

Tim smirked. “The forty-seventh.” He pulled a small hacksaw from his trench coat.

“Is there anything that you don’t keep in there?” Ray asked.

Tim pulled out a pack of mint gum and tossed it to Ray. “Freshen yourself, mate.”

Ray sometimes wondered if his partner was in fact merely trying to appear crazier than he was, but watching Tim singing in a soft voice, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’’” while casually sawing off the head of a corpse, he had to guess Tim was really out of his fucking mind.

Finished, Tim stood up, holding the dead man’s head by its black hair and studying the face with a scholarly expression. The tongue protruded from its mouth, thrust between yellow, nicotine-stained teeth. Tim reached into his trench coat, grabbed some wire and tossed it to Ray. “You better tie him up.”

“You fucking kidding me? You just cut his head off. Why the hell would I tie him up?”

Tim set the head down on the desk, facing it against the wall. He flicked the back of the head with his forefinger then turned to face Ray. “Do I look like I’m kidding you? If you don’t want to tie him up, then don’t. Just don’t come crying to me when things get trippy.”

Ray frowned. “Tim, I don’t understand. What the hell is going on here?”

Tim pulled a date book out of his jacket and wrote something in it. He put the book back in his jacket and looked up at Ray. “Well, how about the total breakdown of reality?” He sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring. “I can smell it coming.”

Ray actually sniffed the air, then grew angry with himself for doing so. If he wasn’t careful he would let himself get dragged into this crazy bastard’s world.

Tim tied a white handkerchief around the severed head, muttering something about the future, then turned it around to study it.

“Are you sure you and Pope aren’t playing some kind of sick trick on me?” Ray asked, looking at the head in horror. “I swear you guys are filming my reaction to this shit and laughing about it later. Why the hell do you have it blindfolded?”

As if on cue, the mouth on the head began moving up and down, its teeth snapping together in loud clicks. Tim flicked its nose and the mouth gnashed wildly. “It’s just better this way,” Tim explained. “When they can see they can be dangerous.”

Throughout all this, Ray had been unconsciously backing up, not noticing until he suddenly bumped against the wall behind him. He moved forward again so as not to appear scared out of his mind. Seeing this sort of thing in a horror movie had not prepared him for how it feels when it happens for real. He felt like someone had poured a bag of live tarantulas into his stomach and now they were scurrying around violently in a vain effort to get out.

The foot of the corpse lashed out and kicked his shin. Ray literally turned around and ran straight into the wall, smacking his forehead brutally. In a daze, he fell backwards, landing heavily on the body like it was a soggy cushion. Blood soaked into his shirt from the many bullet holes in the chest of the corpse. Tim pulled Ray to his feet, giggling like a madman.

The corpse stood up, feeling around blindly. Tim watched it as it stumbled about, rubbing his hands together gleefully.

“Did I not tell you?” Tim asked. “Stay back, this is the fun part.”

The corpse started touching the walls blindly, probably looking for its own head.

Backing away, Ray watched in absolute terror as Tim engaged in a macabre combat dance with the headless corpse, slapping it on the shoulders, then twirling away gracefully before the dead thing could hit him back. He tapped the body’s chest with the hacksaw and manipulated it into running right into the wall. The body spun around spastically, then fell onto its stomach. Tim pinned it down with his foot, grinning triumphantly.

From the tabletop, the blindfolded head hissed in anger, bubbles of saliva falling from its mouth into a slimy, red puddle.

He turned to Ray. “What would you do without me?” he asked, his eyes burning madly. “Isn’t the irony sickening, partner?”

Ray ran his arm over his sweat-drenched forehead. “What do you mean?”

“Well, here we are, hitmen trying to survive in a world where the dead walk again.” He slammed his boot down into the corpse’s back and grinned when the bullet holes shot six fountains of blood into the air around him. “Doesn’t the irony just…” He stared down at the crimson spray on his pants leg. “Bleed?”

Tim bent down and began working with his saw while his partner watched in disgust. Within minutes, Tim was surrounded by five hunks of flesh, four limbs and a torso. “There, now it will stay dead. It will probably stop moving in a few minutes.”

Ray was pale and sweaty. “Tim, please tell me that you’ve been slipping drugs into my Coke all week. I can’t take this. I want to be back in a world that when you whack a guy, he stays fucking whacked.”

Tim nodded. “Well speaking of that, we have to go kill Psycho Mike-O.”

“Um, I heard he got whacked two weeks ago, by you in fact. What the fuck are you—” Then it registered.  “Oh.”

“Yep,” Tim said, kicking a severed arm under the table. “I whacked him a few weeks ago. It’s all my fault, really. I shouldn’t have been messing with the structure of reality I suppose.”

Ray had no idea what Tim meant, but didn’t have the energy to ask. Silently, he followed Tim out to the car and got inside. Thinking about all the men he had whacked over the past year, he wondered how many were coming back to life and just how pissed they might be. He turned to Tim, who was toying with the radio. “Where the hell did you put the corpse of Psycho Mike-O?”

Tim found a station with Fisting Laura singing “You Know I Can Break You, My Love.” He began bobbing his head to the menacing beat. “In the cemetery, of course,” he said. “In the same coffin as his dear old mum.”

Ray thought of Psycho Mike-O and shuddered. He had only met the deranged fucker once, but that was certainly enough. Mike-O could only be described as a nuclear version of Charlie Manson. Although he was small, his bulging muscles more than made up for his height. Word was that Mike-O was whacked for disobeying one too many of Pope’s orders. Killing him once must have been hard enough.

“Didn’t you kill Mike-O’s brother, too?” Ray asked.

“I’ve only been back for three weeks. Another Tim must have killed him.”

Ray gave up. “I don’t think I want to know any more about you.”

Tim grinned. “Trust me, sometimes I’m not even sure if I’m myself. It gets kind of confusing when your reality continues to fall apart. I’m not sure if I’m the original Tim, but I’m definitely an earlier version. Maybe Tim five, maybe six.”

Ray just shook his head. After tonight, Tim’s words didn’t seem quite as fantastic.  As they drove towards the back woods graveyard, he watched the yellow lines in the road like they were the lit fuse of a bomb. He froze suddenly, realizing something truly frightening. “We’re going to a cemetery during the same week when the dead are walking the earth?”Tim nodded. “Yes, but we don’t have to worry about the others. Just Mike-O.”

“But what if Mike-O already got out of the coffin?”

“That’s doubtful, he’s in a stone mausoleum, no windows.”

“Well, then why don’t we just leave him there then? Let him rot?”

“Because we can’t take the chance anyone can let him out and I don’t like to leave a job unfinished. Pope already paid me to kill him and if he’s suddenly back alive, Pope’s going to be pretty pissed. Pope is one man I want to stay on the good side of.”

Ray chuckled. “That’s funny. You have no fear of fucking zombies, dancing around with headless corpses, fighting with your own alternate selves and yet you’re afraid of Pope.”

“Well, as you can see, I have enough enemies as it is.”

“This is insane. It’s going to be swimming with fucking corpses.”

“If you were a prisoner and you somehow escaped the prison—would you stick around right outside the place? Or would you go as far away as possible?”

By the time they arrived at the graveyard, most of the corpses were already off to wreak havoc or avenge themselves. Dozens of empty holes dotted the graveyard, a reminder of how surreal the world had become.

Tim parked the car and popped open the trunk, removing two obscenely large double-barrel shotguns. He tossed one to Ray. “Make sure you don’t fire that thing if I am even twenty feet to the side, it’s like a bloody elephant gun. You shoot that at one of the zombies and it will probably cut the poor bastard in two.”

Ray nodded weakly and stared out into the darkness of the graveyard. The tombstones jutted into the air like warning signs, giving the place a menacing edge that he would rather not have felt. Every time he saw a shadow move across the moonlit cemetery he had visions of a walking corpse. They started walking through the tombstones.

“How many people have you buried here?” Ray asked, scanning the hazy blackness as they walked through the wet grass.

“How many have I buried here literally, or technically?” Tim asked, lighting up a cigarette nonchalantly as they moved towards the end of the burial grounds.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Ray asked.

“Well, literally, I’ve buried about ten or so people here. It’s the perfect place to do it. Cops just don’t think about looking for a dead man in the most obvious place. As to how many people I have caused to be here, I have no idea. I’m sure it’s a lot.”

They came across a zombie stuck halfway out of its grave. It clawed at the dirt when it saw them, hissing and growling in fury. Tim shined a flashlight into its face. The zombie squinted and began to snarl and slash at the light. Although very decomposed, its eyes were still almost normal. It stared at Ray furiously, eyeing him like a predator studies its prey. Moaning, it pulled its lips back and exposed yellow, mud-covered teeth. Its hair stuck out in matted tufts and tiny, tick-like insects were crawling out of the bullet shaped hole in its forehead. Tim turned the light on the tombstone behind the zombie.

“Gabriel Walker,” Tim read. “Died only two months ago. I remember him! Snuff film maker and star! Cops shot him!” He shined the light back into the zombie’s face. “Pretty well preserved for being down there eight weeks, don’t you think?” He clicked the light off and continued walking. “Let’s move along.”

“You’re not going to kill him?” Ray asked, his voice filled with alarm.

“He’s already dead, fool.”

“Man, you can be such an annoying prick.”

“That, my friend, is true. Doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Why is that?”

“Gabriel didn’t have any legs. That’s why he was stuck.”

When they arrived at the mausoleum that held the body of Psycho Mike-O they both grew quiet. Even Tim seemed nervous for the first time that evening. The door of the crypt was already hanging open and Tim gasped, his wiry frame stiffening, like a metal rod had been shoved up his ass.

“What!” Ray hissed, holding the shotgun as he spun around in a circle.

A body was lying before the mold covered steps of the mausoleum. Tim shined his flashlight onto the body and Ray was stunned to see his own blood-covered face in the glow.

“What…the…hell?” Ray muttered, backing away. “That’s…me.”

“Another reality break,” Tim said, cocking his shotgun. “Things aren’t good, Ray.”

“Godammit, Tim! What the fuck do you mean a ‘reality break’!” Ray shrieked, copying his partner and cocking his shotgun as well. “What the fuck kind of sci-fi shit is that?”

“It happens a lot. My double is here and so is…was yours. When two doubles enter the same reality track one of them goes batshit. I think it has something to do with brainwaves not being able to be shared, but that’s only a theory. And not only that—”

Tim was cut off by the detonation of a shotgun. The blast sent him hurling backwards into a tombstone, a cloud of blood spraying from the massive hole in his chest.

“Ray!” Tim’s double shouted as he emerged from the darkness. “You’re back alive! How fucked up is this? Sorry about shooting that double, but it had to be done. I got Psycho Mike-O too, but you’re going to have to help me cut up the rest of him.” The Tim-double had a large, bloody bag tied to his waist and he patted it. “Got his head in here. Tough bastard, though.”

“Fuck you!” a raspy, wet voice howled from the bag.

“Cocky bastard, too,” he said to Ray, smiling.

“Fuck you!” the bag squawked.

Ray looked over at where Tim’s bloody corpse lay in the moonlight and then let his gaze move slowly back to the double. He tried to speak, but the only thing that emerged from his mouth was a mouse-like squeak. He started crying, his body shaken by sobs.

“You going to help me go cut the rest of him up, or what? Don’t get all upset about me having to kill my own double. It happens at least once a week. You get used to it after awhile.”

Ray swung his shotgun around and fired point blank into Tim’s stomach. The hitman sailed into the darkness, eyes wide with surprise.

“Oh dear God, let it end with him,” Ray said aloud, reloading his shotgun in a panic. “My life was normal until I met this crazy dude.”

Ray’s own corpse sat up from where it lay on the steps of the mausoleum, and Ray’s sanity shattered into little fragments. At the moment, he fully understood what it was like to be Tim, his brain spinning around inside of his skull like a child’s top. He emptied his shotgun into the corpse and grinned wickedly.

He was busily sawing up the corpses into little pieces when the third version of Tim arrived. “You want any help, mate?”

Ray turned to face his partner and laughed maniacally. “Damn straight! We have a lot of work to do! Pope’s gonna be happy when we bring him the head of Psycho Mike-O!”

“Fuck you!” Psycho Mike-O’s head shrieked from the bag.

Tim and Ray both giggled simultaneously. It wasn’t until later that things really got out of hand. Often, they felt that sanity was seriously overrated.

About The Author

DAVID WHITMAN is the co-author of the collection Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed horror novel Harlan.

David’s award-winning short fiction has been published in over 100 publications, including Gothic.Net, The Edge, Black October, Electric Wine, and Twilight Showcase to name a few. He has received several honorable mentions in Ellen Datlow’s and Terry Windling’s Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.

Future projects include a sequel to Deadfellas.

INNOVATING DARK FICTION

www.darkside-digital.com

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Tim, Francis and Lime

Chapter 2: Benny, Rico And The Dead Grundy

Chapter 3: The Lime Graveyard

Chapter 4: Furious Lime

Chapter 5: Tim Two, The Scary Bitch, And The Bastard

Chapter 6: Pope And Grundy

Chapter 7: Double Call

Chapter 8: You Don’t Know That They Got A Grundy In The Trunk

Chapter 9: More Plentiful Than The Cute Little Bunnies

Chapter 10: The Army Of The Undead

Chapter 11: The Dancing Francis

Epilogue: Many Months Later: Things Aren’t Good, Ray

About The Author

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Tim, Francis and Lime

Chapter 2: Benny, Rico And The Dead Grundy

Chapter 3: The Lime Graveyard

Chapter 4: Furious Lime

Chapter 5: Tim Two, The Scary Bitch, And The Bastard

Chapter 6: Pope And Grundy

Chapter 7: Double Call

Chapter 8: You Don’t Know That They Got A Grundy In The Trunk

Chapter 9: More Plentiful Than The Cute Little Bunnies

Chapter 10: The Army Of The Undead

Chapter 11: The Dancing Francis

Epilogue: Many Months Later: Things Aren’t Good, Ray

About The Author

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Tim, Francis and Lime

Chapter 2: Benny, Rico And The Dead Grundy

Chapter 3: The Lime Graveyard

Chapter 4: Furious Lime

Chapter 5: Tim Two, The Scary Bitch, And The Bastard

Chapter 6: Pope And Grundy

Chapter 7: Double Call

Chapter 8: You Don’t Know That They Got A Grundy In The Trunk

Chapter 9: More Plentiful Than The Cute Little Bunnies

Chapter 10: The Army Of The Undead

Chapter 11: The Dancing Francis

Epilogue: Many Months Later: Things Aren’t Good, Ray

About The Author