Date of the Dead Page 9
Porn, the Lab, and the Experiment
I was pleased to see that the porno store had a wide range of selections, from weird fetishes to religious triple x priest on priest, nun on nun, nun on priest, bishop on priest and nun, priest on cardinal while being watched by a pope who was dry humping a steeple. I was even happier to see that they didn’t carry priest, nun, bishop, cardinal, or pope on altar boy videos. It almost made me forget that I was assaulted by a priest and a nun. Of course, I was twenty-eight and dressed as an altar boy and it was a Halloween party thrown by an atheist hate group. Laura Lee and I were on the same page in our loathing of Halloween, although she also despised Christmas, Easter, New Year’s, July 4th, Mother’s day, Father’s day, Valentine’s day, Martin Luther King’s birthday, Lincoln’s birthday, as well as Presidents day, Memorial day, Bastille day and everyone’s birthday. She especially despised the anniversary of Eisenhower's niece’s friend’s Bar Mitzvah. She did however like March 5th when it fell on the first or third Tuesday in June (at least that’s what she had tattooed on the bottom of each foot ).
We decided to make home base on the third floor near where the actual lab was. They hadn’t found any zombies, which seemed odd, so we kept a sharp look-out. We did find one zombie, a former doctor who in his haste must have sewn his shirt tail in the stomach of a chimpanzee. The chimp was alive and pulling the zombie around the operating table. The zombie would lunge for us, then get pulled away by the monkey, who he would chase. If zombie-hood had not gone viral, the video we were taking certainly would. Before shooting the zombie doctor we took still photos we’d hoped to make into post cards.
It took me five trips, three of them with two other guys to get all the porn up to the fourth floor, which didn’t have any zombies either, but had lots of screens we could hook the DVD players up to and doors we could lock from the inside.
I had to get back to saving the world, so I set a ten video limit, five if I found myself pausing and replaying sections. When I got back to the fourth floor, I was satiated, hungry and for obvious reasons Laura Lee didn’t turn me on, and Mander was almost lookable.
I wandered into the lab, searching for the cafeteria. Dr. Bliffover, with the help of a few of the Times’ workers had strapped Klaus to an operating table and were running tubes and electrodes to both his arms. I asked the doc what he was doing and he told me in layman’s words.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? What do you have going into his veins?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Dr. Bliffover said as if I should have known. “It’s either one of two types drugs, one will make him sleepy and the other will make him tell us anything we want to know. If you have any questions feel free to ask. He had a picture of his wife in his wallet and she was smoking hot so I have few personal questions.”
“Is that ethical?” I asked.
“What do ethics have to do with it? I’m a doctor. I heal the sick. Okay, sometimes I make mistakes and kill them. Like the time I gave a woman a lobotomy instead of tracheotomy, or was it a hysterectomy, although it may have been a colonoscopy. She, like Mander, although not in her class, was a hideous creature. It was tracheotomy, I remember I gave her a hickey or a yeast infection to mark the spot. What does it matter that the woman died and I was out a ball point pen?” Dr. Bliffover stopped and checked his own pulse. “I’m alive! I’m alive! Sorry, I’m a big Gene Wilder and I love saying that.” He sighed. “It’s something I could never say after working on a patient. I’m pretty sure it was me who likes Mr. Wilder. I’ll have to ask myself later in private.”
“Are you sure you’re a doctor?” I asked sarcastically, but as the words came out I dreaded what his response might be, good thing he started to hyperventilate while he was crying.
Before he could recover enough to answer, Laura Lee, Skim Milk, Jo, Maria and Shrimp walked into the room asking if I had found any American Idol DVD’s.
“No, it was a porno store, all they had was American Oral, or American anal, or Dancing in the Stirrups–”
Laura Lee interrupted, “Sorry, I forgot you were, over sexed, insensitive, and perverted enough not to like reality shows.”
I didn’t have answer for her so I started to sing the theme song to the “Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” in the original language it wasn’t written in at the time.
When the zombie half of Klaus started to roar, everyone turned thinking he was trying to sing along. In fact Dr. Bliffover had started to play the air guitar and Jo had begun to clap to the rhythm (I found out later this was a group of avid clappers). It wasn’t until the zombie roar got too loud did they stop clapping and started sporadic skipping.
“I think Klaus’ zombie half is reacting to whatever the hell I put into his veins. I suppose I should find out, huh?”
Klaus’s zombie half was growing more irritated. Dr. Bliffover, who couldn’t find his glasses asked Laura Lee to read the label on the solution that was attached to his IV.
“I think it says Lemon Margarita mix but I could be mistaken since I have a learning disorder and can only read labels at a second grade level,” Laura Lee said through a blush that was egged on by embarrassment.
I wanted to make fun of her, but I knew this wasn’t the time, so instead I just called her a dumb bitch.
Laura Lee must not have been used to such wit because she didn’t react badly or insult me back. Sure hitting me a chair could be interpreted as a negative reaction, but I chose to see the silver lining in getting my nose broken in three places. The swelling that spread across my face made up for not having check bones.
The doc never found his glasses, but finally remembered that he didn’t need them to read. According to him the solution he gave Klaus was either a mild sedative or speed, mixed with an out-of-date histamine. The more he gave Klaus the angrier the zombie got, the reason became obvious – the zombie half was getting hives and since his zombie hand was strapped and partially eaten off he couldn’t scratch himself.