Date of the Dead Page 11
The Formula and the Volunteer
“Skim found her notes on the formula. I mixed a batch, by hand, but I think it might have come out smoother if I had a blender, but there aren’t any lumps that I could see.” That’s when I noticed that Dr. Bliffover’s face was turning red from the strain of holding a twenty-five gallon barrel.
“Doc, I don’t mean to talk out of turn, and I say this with all due respect, and I don’t mean to be offensive, but why don’t you set the barrel on the floor?”
“Good idea. Sometimes we don’t think of the obvious like the time a guy in a dark green vest crawled into my office bleeding from every orifice, his legs severed, his face smashed in and I tossed him my keys and told him to bring my car around.”
“We just can’t run into a horde of zombies and start injecting them.” Laura Lee said, examining Shrimp’s ear hair.
“We could fill water balloons with Doc’s elixir and throw it on them,” Jo offered.
“Maybe we can drink it and pee on them,” Shrimp said excitedly.
“We won’t. We don’t need to. All I have to do is inject all of us. Then we can walk out there get bit and they’ll get disinfected by us.” Dr. Bliffover said like he actually had no idea of what he was asking us to do.
“How do we know it works?” Shrimp and Skim Milk asked at the same time.
“Yeah, how do wees know da damn ting work?” Jo or Joe, and I said simultaneously.
“Vot makes you tink it vil verk? ” Laura Lee, Maria, and Klaus said concurrently.
“Whaaaaagutha mmmmaaakeeesseeee yuuu-eeee-uuuuu—“ Mander said all by herself, one end of the duct tape now hanging down her face— the other end stuck to the roof of her mouth..
“Shut your trap!” Everyone said all at once, while Laura Lee shoved the tape in Mander’s mouth and smacked her a few times. Then we all took our turns. It felt good, darn good. I think Mander actually liked the attention; she sort of smiled, or maybe she was having a stroke. To this day no one really knows. We deliberated on sending her to a doctor who specializes in ugly people’s strokes, but that would have to wait, we had some less disgusting dead people we had to bring back to life.
“We’ll just have to try it with one of us. Any volunteers?” Dr. Bliffover asked.
At first no one answered. The silence seemed to go on forever when in reality it was just 4-and-a-half hours. A few of us killed time by whistling the Notre Dame fight song in Latin several hundred times until that got boring and we sang vol. 1, 2 and 3 of The Sudoku Song Book for Lovers. Jo borrowed my entire porno collection, concentrating on the Girls Who Like Girls Who Like Guys Who Like Guys Who Like Girls Dressed Like Guys Who Like Girls Dressed as Guys Who Like Girls Who Like Girl Guys Who Like Guy Guys And Girl Girls Who Like Girl Girl Guys Who Like Guy Guy Girls That Hate Guys, Girls and Girl Guys and Guy Guy Girls Girls and Guy Girl Girl Guy Girls Who Don’t Know Who to Like Guys or Girls, or Girls Guys and Guys Girls Who Like Gooses, Girls or Goose Girls, or Guy Goose Girls, Series Part 1 and 2.
Finally Laura Lee stopped folding her laundry, after adjusting the drapes she knitted, but before she vacuumed the rugs she replaced on the entire third floor, she spoke up. “I volunteer my extra-large jumbo asshole of date, whose name I don’t remember and don’t want to ever know.” She gave me a look that made getting bit by a zombie the lesser of two frightening evils. At that point I was willing to do anything to escape her gaze, even go on a cruise. “So what do you say, numb-nuts, piss-brain, Ruby Tuesday molester,” which made no sense, but for some reason Mander drooled down her tape. I’ve always been a sucker for women who drool on any kind of adhesive -- duct tape drove me wild. Like I said before she looked good in duct tape.
I took a deep breath and spoke up. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” everyone asked.
“Do what!” I shouted incredulously.
“Just kidding,” everyone said.
Well at least that’s how I remembered it. Who knows if it really happened that way, I was too nervous to take copious notes –I was about to be zombie bait. I wasn’t sure if the cure would work, but it would give the others a chance to get away, especially Mander, who with snot joining her drool, at that moment, was so adorable I overlooked that she was the ugliest human being I’d ever seen. “Ok, give it to me Doc.”
“Give you what?” everyone shouted.
I actually laughed. Mander, reacting to my good spirits, gurgled and a golf ball of saliva slid down the tape. She knew how ugly she was, and that I was blinded by the knockout combo of duct tape, mucus and drool. She watched my eyes slide down to her wrinkled mouth, full of teeth that now looked like sweating maggots, and was milking it for all she could get. A typical ugly broad ploy, but I didn’t care. Hell, I knew my face was also not mirror friendly. I once won a chop meat look-a-like contest.
By now, Doc had pulled out the needle, after trying to remove it by pushing it into and through my body and held it up smiling with delight like a sadist whose partner was tied up, ass in the air and he was holding a long thick broomstick. It was not a “you’re taking one on the chin for the team” kind of expression -- uh-uh. It was a “you’re going to take it someplace much farther south, and I don’t give a damn if you ever recover” expression.
The yellow liquid inside the needle glowed like reservoir water fed by a dozen chemical plants, a few nuclear reactors, and three Great Danes. When he plunged the air out of the needle, I could have sworn I heard it hiss. Then Dr. Bliffover jabbed the plunger into my arm, let it spill into me, slapped his knee a few times and stomped his feet and yelled “Yee-haw!” He left the needle in my arm as he spun around and then threw his other arm out. Laura Lee quickly snatched it and they dosey-doed, while the others immediately started clapping hard and fast like angry percussionists playing conga on Central American prostitute’s ass (female of course). I felt the sting of chemicals seep into my body and I might have clapped along if I hadn’t passed out.