Just Say Zombie: The Silvercrest Experiment, #3

By Albert Aykler

Zombies may seem crazy, but have you taken a good look at the news lately?

Inside the the Silvercrest Muddy Mesa Facility for Mental Rehabilitation, Sid Singleton can say anything but zombie. His treatment includes admitting that the past four years of his life are just a delusion. A bad dream he created out of a dangerous and wayward mind. He's happy to go along. He even learns to enjoy the cafeteria taco pie. And it all would have worked out fine except for one thing: his old pal Ziggy shows up as zombie as ever.

If you like a melon-twisting ride through a madhouse filled with zombies, then this is the book for you.

Fans of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Kafka, and Edgar Allen Poe will find plenty here to please them! This is Book Three in The Silvercrest Experiment. You could try reading it on its own, but it will make more sense if you read the first two books. Besides, they're fun!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Love & Wander Books
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781954497054

Albert Aykler

Albert Aykler lives and writes as a nomad whose remaining connections with the country of his birth are largely digital in nature. Many of his works began as he dwelt in obscure seclusion in the American Northwest while recovering from a period of corporate servitude not unlike that of the characters attempting to survive the horrors and indignities of world of the Silvercrest Experiment Series.

Book preview

1 SPLASH INTO THE GOOD LIFE

Day 16 | 8:27PM | Silvercrest Muddy Mesa Facility

Head down. Eyes fixed. Twist-tied gut. My tired and bloody feet. I watched them going nowhere but could not convince myself they had anything to do with me. The floor under the sneakers. That must be me, right?

I refused to look up toward the guttural zombie sounds in front of me or the wet sucking and chewing coming through the doors behind me.

In front of my slip-on sneakers, clean bone white tiles. Stain and scratch-proof. Institutional seamless perfection. Every tile a perfect one foot by one foot square. I blinked at the reflection of the spastic fluorescent lights flickering into total failure overhead. I looked out across the tile void, wishing I could fall in. One bone blank tile for each bone in my body, connected in a long, mindless row between other identical blank rows. Two hundred feet of flattened human spirit from these strange red sneakers to the gray double doors tinged green under a glowing Exit light.

I could not convince myself I would ever leave through those doors. But the grunting told me it was them or me. And there were a lot of them. Too many.

How do I get out?

One tile at a time, someone whispered. That was me. Me whispering to me.

Easy for you to say, I told myself.

The sound of the grunters’ feast behind me changed; maybe the food ran out. I turned back but held my gaze to the floor, distracted by something less ordinary than zombies running out of human flesh to eat.

Fresh blood. Comically red. Spattered so finely, so expertly, I wanted to find some way to search the Internet for the artist’s name. It must be by that one guy. That guy who did the illustrations with the splatters. You know the guy. I couldn’t think of his name. He would like this. He’s dead, I think. Maybe his estate would sue whoever did this.

In the spatter’s red middle, a round flattened ball. The deformed skin of some strange fruit. To its right, a near perfectly white skull seemed to emerge from the floor as though a piece of tile had risen up in mute rebellion under this small hematological sea. If a psychopathic abstract expressionist took up the challenge of reinventing clown paintings, it might explain the explosive smear behind me.

How did I get here? Where was here? Who did this?

You did it, you fool.

Did I say that out loud?

Yes, you are talking to yourself. We—

I am?

Yes, stop interrupting.

Okay.

We need to get you back here, Sid. I can’t do this alone. I never could.

Who are you?

You, but not you.

Look, it’s past time you made sense. Or I made sense. Or something.

Good. That’s the spirit. Stand up straight. Take a deep breath and…

And my inane conversation ended. Back in one place, one voice, one guy with no idea what to do next. Locked in shock at the exploded head behind me and all the zombie sounds around me. I stood up straight. I took a breath. I found no spirit, unless that itch in your ass telling me to run like hell counts as spirit.

There. On the wall across from me. A name. Silvercrest Muddy Mesa Facility. I pointed to it. I know you. Like a stoner waking from a morning bake session in the back of a high school History classroom. But that stoner had so much innocence. My gesturing fingers threw drops of blood across the sterile floor. Blood looking more than a little like that contemporary art installation behind me.

My other hand came up shaking a wet red silent five-digit chorus of Don’t Forget Me, Baby to the boogie-woogie tremor of my pointer. My bloody hands. Silvercrest Muddy Mesa. A great big institution looking and sounding undone. And I was talking to myself in the middle of it.

Before the cold flood of my recent memories could catch me up on things, a head and body appeared from a doorway several feet down the hallway. I doubled down on the recognition moment, but this time with bowel-quivering terror at the thing, a person, whom I knew.

One eyed and hungry. Mischievous and unbalanced.

Stumbling. Stiff but moving.

Dead and alive.

Is he still my last friend on earth? Can I end him this time?

Yes, yes, you can.

Wait. That wasn’t me answering me. That was…

Ziggy?

Wait. Listen. Und zen. Do your worst. Your best. Zombie Ziggy spoke to me as he had weeks before at the El Coyote Gordo. The night the infection took hold of him. The night he became a zombie. His voice raked gristle over coarse gravel to form words shaded by his persistent Austrian accent.

Go, I told him.

Look zer. Behind you. At your feet.

I saw it. That red splash from a room to my left. A splat. Comically accurate to the New Item splash star that every supermarket in the world slaps on the latest fad foods. Instead of something new in its middle, the top of a skull.

Zat is your answer. Zat red splash.

My answer?

Your question too. You did zat. You made doing zat necessary. Zat is what you are. Or are you?

What the hell are you talking about?

I am—I am going to eat you now.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. This must be a nightmare. Another nightmare. More twisted than the last dozen, but still only a dream. I slapped blood across my face. Still here. How could my dead best friend be a talking zombie? A thinking zombie? And if he could think, why would he want to eat me?

Ziggy laughed. Zis is no dream, Singleton. Zis is your reality. You made it. Admit it, take responsibility, or you are lost forever.

He came at me. His one eye bulging. Outstretched hands ready to grab me by the anything to pull me into his bleeding gums and jagged teeth. Lips peeled back. Moving at a jilting, staggering run.

I had nothing. No weapon of any kind. I wore the hospital-issue disposable garments provided to the inmates each day. The most substantial thing on me were the thin rubber soled slip-on sneakers on my feet. Under the right conditions, they might serve effectively against mosquitos, but flesh suckers of Ziggy’s size would chew through them to get at their prey.

Spinning around in search of a weapon or a way out, I saw the double doors to the cafeteria barred closed with a surprisingly sturdy metal mop handle jammed through the push handles. Grabbing that mop would get me nothing but more hungry zombies.

A few weeks earlier, I had hesitated, deciding not to take out my best friend. Now he came at me, his minor hesitation come and gone. To him, I had become the zombie equivalent of a cartoon roasted chicken with legs.

Would my best friend, my only friend, someone who had called me the only person on earth who ever spent more than two hours at a stretch with him without trying to kill him, would that guy, this infected guy bearing down on me in the half-light of this literal madhouse, would he really eat me alive?

Day 0 | time of day unknown | Silvercrest Muddy Mesa Facility

Just say Zombies. I read the scrawled words again. Written in black felt-tip marker across the bottom of a paper box stained red with taco pie grease by someone hurried, desperate, and certain.

Before reading that odd message, I had relaxed into the comfortable notion that I was a crazy man in a sane world.

A doctor had come to the door of my beige pod ¹ in an institution for the mentally unstable and explained to me that all the infected ghouls I had fought, everything I thought I knew about where I came from and who I had forgotten how to be, and Silvercrest, the company behind it all, was all in my head. I suffered from elaborate delusions of zombies. Plain and simple.

None of it was real. My sick brain manufactured everything. My name was Sid Singleton. A day-glo red plastic identification bracelet on my left wrist verified that. It even included a summary of my diagnosis in small text beneath my name: delusional, potentially violent.

I had never suffered from amnesia. Or killed my infected fiancée or myriad zombified friends and associates. In that simple exchange, the doctor unmade my old paranoid world peopled by the undead. She replaced it with one that made sense. I was a hapless nut job, locked up in a treatment facility, who had mixed real names and faces together with horrific hallucinations.

It was all a dream. Like Dorothy waking up from Oz and Neo in the Matrix. With her matter-of-fact explanation, she offered me a permanent means of escaping my awful past and miserable present. My delusions would disappear.

All I had to do to escape the Wizard of the Undead Matrix was click my bare heels, eat the red taco pie, and believe in a better reality. Sign me up.

But this stark takeout box graffiti ruined the promise of that wonder cure. Just say zombie returned me to a world where I could not escape the truth that I had made nightmares real. Someone’s hasty scribble for me and me alone had ruined my chance for a soft landing built on fantastical fiction. That note crashed me into the horror of hard scientific fact.

I had killed all those infected people. I did have amnesia. The world could be overrun by zombie hordes. And I was somehow partly to blame for all of it.

Just say zombie. That simple phrase, impossible to rub out or ignore (believe me, I tried), snapped me whiplike at the end of my tether. Back to the world I had always known.

For fuck’s sake. I threw it against the wall. I picked it up. Read it. Threw it again. Rubbed my eyes. Splashed water on my face. I could not wake up. I could not unsee this note.

Ripping the note from the bottom of the container, I tore the rest of it into tiny pieces, to make it look like some crazy guy’s reaction to all the paper packaging. I planned to return the scraps as celebratory confetti the following morning when the good doctor arrived for a wake-up chat. I hid the note under the mattress. From the staff here and from myself. That didn’t help. Everything remained upside down.

I remained a sane man in an insane world. But now, I was trapped in an actual madhouse wearing a disposable hospital smock.

Day 1 | 11:37AM | Silvercrest Muddy Mesa Facility | Interview Room 1370

And what about Sigmund Ratseneager?

Who?

Ziggy.

Ziggy is the last best hope for humanity.

Silence.

And he owes me ten bucks.

Octavia noted my answers in the pages of a manila medical folder on the table in front of her. She looked up at me and sighed. I offered her nothing more about Ziggy.

Today’s questions came from a page of keywords that the mysterious Treatment Team had assembled. By the time she asked about Ziggy, we had nearly exhausted the list and my reserves of smartass answers.

Quiet Kevin the scientist? A chipmunk whisperer with a good ponytail. The ruin of humanity.

Virus Strain 000195 (or as she said it, triple zero one ninety-five)? A song by Roky Erickson or maybe Beck. Also, the ruin of humanity.

Pineapple pizza? Definitely the ruin of humanity.

And on we went for the past ninety minutes. She read off some Rorschach blot definition or collection of oxymoronic terms. I answered in kind.

Octavia, beautiful Octavia, the face that launched a thousand self-doubts every time I gazed into it. Tight, pixie-cut, henna red hair. Her habitual black turtleneck contrasting with her pale silken skin. Blue eyes to make you wonder why you need ever look away from them; the world looked so much more beautiful reflected, bent, and fleeting across their irises. Her right shoulder slumped forward in boredom a millimeter further with each of my sophomoric answers.

The trip through this list came across as her duty, not her idea. And she did not care for it or my flippant half-assed participation in the endeavor.

She moved on to the next item.

Who are the people in orange?

What?

The people in orange hazmat suits. Who are they?

The Orange People are the last best hope for humanity.

Silence.

Also, I think they are my ride out of here.

Scribbled notes with passing amusement. Does that mean Ziggy is one of the people in orange?

I suppose it does.

More notes. Then she flipped back to the checklist, snapping the paper against the top part of the file folder.

And… one more, if that’s okay?

Why not?

Who is Leo?

Leo?

Yes, you mentioned him repeatedly.

In my delirium?

I wouldn’t call it that. But yes, during your most recent episode.

Someone said that the word ‘I’ is a preposition of place? Who said that?

Silence. Her silence this time. In it, I felt cast off into the unbounded sea of my consciousness. One of those moments that defied not only all sense of time but also all sense of identity.

I meant it as a sincere question. I felt confident she could hear that in my voice. But she looked at me as though I had not spoken. Maybe I hadn’t. Leo made me feel unsure of everything. Mentioning his name dropped my reality reception down to one faint bar.

She clicked her pen, preparing to note my next reply. I came back to the facility. A sprawling thing that I sensed filled the entire surface of the geological outcropping of its namesake. Somewhere in the southwest, probably. And I returned to the room. A square windowless cement box, pointedly unfinished in a contemporary art museum kind of way. In it, the table between us, steel legs and top made of finished reclaimed wood. The manila folder and absurd quiz. Her. And a mountain-size orderly by the door. Last and least, me, whatever or whoever I was.

Octavia asked for the second or third time, Who is Leo?

Oh, Leo. Right. Like nothing bothered me. Pretending that reality was too trivial to miss. That her questions were my preferred setups for witty replies. I grinned at her. Leo is the last best hope for humanity.

Silence.

Day 1 | 3:37PM | Silvercrest Muddy Mesa Facility | Interview Room 1378

We need more.

We sat across from one another at an identical metal and reclaimed wood topped table in another cement box, but different than the morning. This one had a window. A one-way glass window. It threw back my reflection as though I were a constellation of stray human fragments floating in a dark void. I could not take my eyes off it.

Who was that floating there? I knew someone watched us from behind the glass. But I didn’t care about them. I wanted to know about the guy I saw in the glass. The almost me. I recognized my face in an ordinary mirror, but I could not find Sid Singleton in this partial reflection.

The one-way glass contained fragments of Leo. Only Leo. Any and every fragment of Sid in my face came back as emptiness. I did not recognize Leo as myself, even though we seemed identical. My nose? No, his. My lips? No, his. Fortunately, Leo could not look back at me. Sid got the eyes. The one-way glass showed dark pits under the brow, one on each side of the bridge of his nose.

Octavia waved her hand in front of my face, cutting me free. I looked intently into her blue eyes, aware, but actively ignoring the Leo constellation watching me from over her shoulder. She asked, Did you hear me, Sid?

Yes. I mean, no. I felt fragmented Leo chuckle at me in that darkness. He laughed darkness and doubt into me.

We need more.

More what?

You replied to the items in the list this morning, but you didn’t tell me anything. You shared nothing of what went on in your head.

In my head?

Yes, I believe that there is a whole story there. Something that made sense to you. Maybe still makes sense to you. Or at least justifies your behavior.

You want to know the whole story?

Yes.

I’m not sure it makes as much sense to me as you think. Leo grinned at me in the one-way glass as if to say, You poor sap, why are you bothering? Something spun inside me. Or flipped. A two-faced coin. Me on one side. Leo on the other. It rattled back down in my belly, Sid side up. All fear and no memory of life without it, only a wisp of hope that some sense of security might be out there somewhere. If I could get my head straight. I dove into the placid, cool blue of Octavia’s eyes. It’s all delusion, right?

Is that what you think?

Absolutely. All made up. 100% raving lunatic delusions. It sounded hollow, but that didn’t keep Leo’s mouth from tightening. He wanted to flip things again. I pushed the coin down to keep it Sid side up. I might convince myself yet.

Sid. This isn’t a game.

Oh, I know.

We need to believe you know the difference between reality and fantasy.

Leo came back. The notion that any of it was fantasy ignited his anger and disgust. Yeah? What’s in it for me?

You need to be free of this or everything terrible you saw will visit you again.

The threat of repeating any of my past, even one more zombie death, flipped things back to Sid. What?

Yes. There is only one way out.

So, if I tell you about the zombies, then no more zombies? I needed it dumbed down. Simple and solid. I could put that Sid-Leo coin under that promise to keep Leo from flipping back into control.

Octavia sighed and jotted a note in the ever-growing manila folder of Sid Singleton, psychiatric patient. The Z word made her uncomfortable. She didn’t like infected either. The whole concept bothered her.

As she wrote her commentary, I wondered if she wanted me to tire of talking about it, to run out of stories. That would take longer than she could guess. And up flew that Sid-Leo coin again.

Or maybe, Sid, she knows you better than that. Maybe she knows that if she says it’s off limits, you won’t be able to help yourself.

I’m not a child.

Who says?

Who are you?

You know that.

You don’t exist.

Yet, here I am.

I’ll get rid you.

You wouldn’t dare.

I’ll do it. I said it out loud. And Leo left my head. I was no longer aware of him watching me from the one-way glass, but I don’t think he left the room. The coin landed Sid side up.

Octavia looked up from her notes. I’m sorry?

Tell me, what do you want me to do?

I want you to tell me everything. Ziggy. Gummy worms. The virus. Kevin. The Orange People. Laszlo Murray. Tacos, even. Every last thing in that long list we covered yesterday and anything we left out.

Why everything?

What?

Why not the zombies? Or Ziggy? Why everything?

You mean, why the Orange People?

Why everything? Tacos. Gummy worms. Loon-Boodge.

What?

She knew the name, Leo whispered to me. I felt him at the base of my skull.

I know she knew the name. But it doesn’t necessarily mean what you think.

Yes, it does, asshole.

Stop calling yourself an asshole.

Stop being one.

Loon-Boodge, I said to Octavia.

The catering company?

The what?

Loon-Boodge provides catering at the Silvercrest facilities. But they weren’t on the list.

Right. I shifted in my chair. Leo wanted to say something, but I didn’t want to hear it. Should have been, I think.

No one thought that was part of the delusional episode. They thought you were asking for food.

Food. Right.

A long pause. The kind that packs the empty corners of waiting rooms in rural bus stations and awkward dinners with distant relatives. Not even