The Hammered Zombie

By W.F. Gigliotti

"A good buzz can kill the pain, at least for a little while, but it cannot numb it in undeath."

During the Zombie Apocalypse of 2051, it was discovered that a select few zombies retained much of their intelligence ...
Handel Mizer was one such zombie.
He would do anything to maintain his drunken buzz.
When the plague struck, Handel Mizer was at the local bar trying to drown his sorrows over his daughter's untimely death. Once transformed into one of the undead, he soon found that it was getting harder and harder to maintain his all-important buzz, forcing him to face what he had done when he had been alive ... and forcing him to face the "significant other," the other intelligent zombie who was stalking him as the world self-destructed all around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.F. Gigliotti
• Release date: Mar 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370502424

Book preview

Chapter 1 – THE WHISKEY AND THE BAR

Beer was never going to be enough.

Hello? I said, my words barely escaping my lips. Can I introduce myself, or is that too much to ask? I looked over at her with only half of a smile.

Not much of a line, the girl said as she sipped at her beer. The woman was petit. She was a brunette, which was a small requirement of mine, and she was cute, too. She glanced over at me only slightly. Her voice was small, like a girl’s, but this was no young girl. She was at least old enough to drink.

My arms were sticking to the bar a bit as I moved. And as I waved one of my hands, my eyes played tricks and it was as if the bar was waving back at me. Must come up with a better line, I thought, a wittier one. I cleared my throat and uttered, Hello, my name is Mister Lizard, come closer, little lady, so I can smell you with my tongue. I winced as soon as I heard myself say it, for it was too harsh. Mister Lizard? Really? That line was just wrong, on too many levels. If she didn’t walk away after this, I thought, then maybe I should be the one to walk away.

She huffed once, grabbed her drink, left her seat at the bar, and joined the crowd of people as she shook her head in disgust. As she left, the din from the crowd returned to me. So, I suppose using my tongue for something more … intimate … is out of the question then? I asked a little louder with a laugh. Oh well, I didn’t want her anyway.

The establishment was dominated by a huge slab of mahogany that served as the bar. The structure that supported it was made from some other wooden material, but was still ornately decorated with nice carvings. The one side of the large room behind the bar was dominated by a wall length mirror. Counters and shelves seemingly floated in midair right in front of the huge mirror. I sat upon one of the antique stools in front of the huge mahogany slab. I let my fingers play on the rim of my shot glass. Behind me were dozens of small tables, each one surrounded by people. There were so many people here, that there were many without a place to sit or a table to stand in front of. The place was hopping, very busy.

Another shot, I called out to one of the bartenders as he passed me by. Maybe he was trying to ignore me. People seemed to be good at that sometimes, especially with me, it often seemed.

Whiskey? It was a bored sort of inquiry. This man didn’t want to lift a finger to work. He was more interesting in the video screen on the wall.

What else? I grumbled. I might as well give him the same attitude back.

He grabbed a square bottle from in front of the mirror. It was a fresh bottle, unopened, a virgin. The brittle paper at the cap ripped with a satisfying crunch as he opened it. He poured a little bit of the light brown liquid into my tiny glass and then set the bottle back in its place at the wall length mirror. He grabbed the five dollar bill I placed on the counter, and then replaced his attention back onto the large wide screen monitor on the back wall. My eyes stayed on the square bottle. That bottle should be mine, I thought.

Though the place was loud with the conversations of the mob behind me, it could have been louder. There were so many simultaneous conversations that it all sounded like white noise to me. However, many of the customers were watching the monitor, just like the bartender, so the din was a little quieter than it had been. Was something important happening up on the video screen? I didn’t care. All I wanted was to drink my way past my pain. My eyes were on the whiskey bottle. The light from the large television was reflecting off of it, staining my retinas with the depictions of violence and mayhem. Something big was happening up there, but I wasn’t in the mood to know about it. The crowd grew even quieter as time went on, as more and more of them started paying attention to the screen.

I grabbed the shot glass and downed the light brown liquid. Sticky smooth. A small cloud of inebriated sting arose in me after it hit my stomach and started mixing with the cashews and pretzels that waited for company down there.

Bartender! I yelled out. He came back. Another shot.

He grimaced.

I then said, How much for the whole bottle?

He gave me a quizzical look. His pocket was already well padded with the tips that I had given him. He pointed at the monitor on the back wall and said, You should be watching this, Mister.

I shook my head and said, If you’re going to watch TV, as least give me the bottle. I’m good with the cash. I reached into my pocket and withdrew a roll of bills. The top one was a hundred, which made the whole roll look like a wad of hundreds. The mere sight of it usually had the effect of getting me whatever I wanted from those making lower wages, even if all the bills under the hundred were one dollar bills. The bartender reached back and grabbed the bottle and poured another shot, and then he promptly put the bottle back where it was. The trick wasn’t working on him.

He walked away.

He’s going to make me call him over here every single time, I whispered to myself. What a waste. I then thought about what the consequences would be if I climbed over the bar, flipped over onto the floor on the other side, grabbed the bottle, and then hopped back over to where I was sitting. Then I moved my head a small little bit and the world became unstable. Nope, that was not a good idea. Somebody would get hurt. And that somebody would be me. Some large man, who very likely bench presses Ford F-150’s or something for sport, would burst through the kitchen doors and throw me out of the bar onto my ass.

But my name is Mister Lizard, wasn’t it? I could do anything. The super hero iguana is here to save the day! I looked into the mirror at my unshaven face and the dark circles under my eyes. No, my name is Handel Mizer, delivery man for Office Couriers Inc. The name of the company suggested something like me being like one of those bicycle riding message boys you see riding through the streets of New York City, but that was not the case at all. I had a truck, a damned good one too. I moved packages big and small, all around the region. I was a one-man Federal Express, or a one-man UPS, or USPS, whichever flavor you prefer. But I wasn’t working right now. I was on a leave of absence, for bereavement.

My chosen poison that I’d hoped would kill the pain was alcohol, strong alcohol. Indeed, beer was never going to be enough. I chose one thing. It needed to be something fast, something that would get me righteously hammered pretty quickly. I chose whiskey. My eyes were on the square bottle again. I was, once again, playing with the rim of my empty shot glass. It was getting warm in here. Maybe someone could open the door to let the cool air in.

The little woman whom I had been hitting on came back to the bar, and sat to my right, but she was a good distance away from me. She reminded me of someone, with her short black hair and brown eyes. I didn’t want to remember. This was the whole reason I was here: to forget about her, to forget about Minnie. My brain flashed back to some of the bad memories, just small flashes. Jet black hair, brown eyes, maybe a coloring of pink, and a hint of blonde, and blood, lots of blood pouring forth, ending her life in a massive torrent.

Must think about something else, I thought.

The little woman at the bar was ignoring me, or maybe she was trying to. I had sabotaged my own intentions. Was it on purpose? This was a beautiful woman, and usually my words were more compelling. I had ruined my chances.

I didn’t know her name, but for future reference, I’ll call her Skank, though she was far from being one. It made her rejection sting a little less, naming her with such a cruel name. She was looking past me at the television.

A friend of hers came over to her. Can you believe this is happening? Skank asked her friend.

Bartender, I said again. The man came back, clearly annoyed with me. Just hand me the bottle and I won’t bother you again. I pointed at the square bottle that he had placed back upon its shelf. He looked at me, and then looked at the wad of money in my hand. I just want to drink, I said. The bartender was distracted by the TV. He reached for the bottle and set it in front of me. Thank you.

I poured myself another shot and downed it. I carefully set the bottle upright and replaced the cap. I was concerned about the bottle rolling away. Then I realized that a square bottle does not really roll away. Not unless you want it to. But, I was plenty messed up already, so I still used great care.

The sounds from the people in the pub were getting quieter. Nearly everyone was watching the large television now. What could be so exciting that everyone’s attention was so captured?

I turned and looked at the crowd. The place was dominated by business men and women from the surrounding office buildings. There were other types, for sure. There was a group of bikers wearing the standard leather jackets that bikers wore, adorned with designs that I couldn’t make out. There were a lot of stereotypical people here, the kind you see most in television commercials, but not exactly in real life. In real life, everyone is different, never the same. If you think otherwise, I’d say you were living in Hollywood’s little fantasy world, but I digress. Near the door stood a group of hipsters, or what I would consider hipsters. They looked a bit like what teens from the 1970’s looked like, except they were more modern. They were showing each other their cell phones. They were either comparing features or the extras that they had purchased. Or maybe one or more of them had just gotten the latest and greatest thing. There were also people on their lunch breaks from jobs that needed them after-hours. There were people that had gotten off work already. There were people fishing for something in the dating pool as well. Even the hipsters with their phones stopped what they were doing and started watching the television on the back wall.

It was a news report.

Turn up the volume, one man yelled out. One of the female employees that had emerged from the kitchen obliged.

… that the outbreak is worldwide, said the announcer on the television. It was a news program. A picture showed a man lying on a bed. He was strapped down with heavy leather straps. We don’t know yet if it is a virus, or some sort of bacterial infection. The tests on this man have not been conclusive. It attacks cognitive functions, as well as the functions of the bodily organs. Even the heart can stop, just as it did for this man.

The man on the bed was still moving. Did they just say what I thought they said; that this man’s heart wasn’t beating? Now I was as interested as the people around me. As my eyes became glued to the Television, a part of me wondered if Skank, who was sitting behind me, was watching me.

Clearly the man is still moving, said one of the men in the video. There is no scientific explanation for what is happening to him. I am reluctant to say this, because it’s so incredibly ludicrous, but it’s as if he has been turned into a zombie, like from some low budget horror movie.

More reports are coming in, said the reporter, of people rotting from the inside out, without a pulse, yet still walking. These people become mindless, their motives that they possessed in life mostly gone.

They switched cameras and the reporter shifted to look at the other camera. Another report came in earlier. This was at a shopping mall in Kentucky. An amateur video showed a redheaded girl, who was clearly a zombie. This is the first recorded incident of this plague. This girl changed a full ten hours before the general outbreak. People were running and screaming. A few dead bodies littered the white floor of the shopping mall. Some of the bodies started moving, having become zombies themselves. Police officers were firing their weapons at the girl, but the shots weren’t doing any good.

There was another video shown. It was an amateur video at a rock concert. The singer up on stage collapsed onto the ground, turned, and regurgitated all over the audience in front of him. Watch closely, the announcer said. The video was sped up a bit, and then everyone started running from the stage as all the people that the singer had thrown up on had become zombies themselves. It seemed that it is spread by bodily fluids, as well as by the air. This part of the plague started at this concert in Las Vegas. A map of Las Vegas was shown. The concert hall was shown in red. The red then spread to take over almost all of Las Vegas. Now, Las Vegas is lost to us.

Great, I thought, a zombie apocalypse. We’re all going to die. It’s just as well. I was dead inside anyway. Maybe if I was turned into a zombie I could better maintain my buzz. Let my brain escape into the oblivion of undeath. At least I wouldn’t feel the pain of my unending remorse.

My head was hurting. I poured another shot and downed it. It was getting warmer in here. Maybe someone should open the front door and let some of the cool autumn air in. I looked out the window, half expecting zombies to be walking around out there. Everything seemed normal out there, except people seemed to be walking at a brisker pace than usual.

These people don’t know real pain, I thought. It was as if I was the only one who could feel it. Minnie’s death was still weighing heavily on me, despite the huge mental cloud that I was creating by drinking this foul brown liquid. I could still see her smile when she was younger.

I drank another shot.

I looked into the mirror, and that’s when I saw her. Martha.

She sat in the opposite corner of the bar, watching me, perhaps even stalking me. She saw me with Skank, and likely saw me trying to hit on her. She had followed me here. I was done, though. I didn’t want her around. But she was stubborn. She had seen me hitting on other