Undermeat

Undermeat

By Scott Crowder

Published by r[E]volution Press at Smashwords

Contents copyright © 2013 Scott Crowder / r[E]volution Press

All rights reserved. Any reproduction, sale, or commercial use of this book without express written permission of the author is strictly forbidden.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are inventions of the author. Any resemblance to actual events or people, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover image was found on the internet and I make no claim of ownership to it. If it’s yours and you’d like it removed, please contact me at zombieapocalypse [at] earthlink [dot] net.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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This story was inspired by the Atrax Morgue album ‘Sweetly’, released in 1996.

R.I.P. Marco Corbelli

* * *

Chapter 1

An old car, like from the Forties. He didn’t know much about cars, but it had to be from the Forties; all curves and slab sides, a deep domed hood, a bench front seat that went on for days and a steering wheel like a great big…a giant…

Fuck, man, I don’t know; something big. Why the hell had they ever made steering wheels that big to begin with?

Behind the wheel sat Grandma Munster, driving them down this dark road at a steady and sedate fifty miles an hour or so, the night parting before the headlights like a wound and then suturing itself closed in their wake. Her purse sat obediently beside her. She was short and matronly, in a demure flower-printed dress and sensible low heels, her plump legs encased in nylons, the old-fashioned kind with the seams in the back. She had a round pleasant face and gray hair tied up in a tight bun. She looked like any sweet warm grandmother who’d ever baked cookies for her grandkids and asked for nothing more than kisses in return. Except for the eyes, of course.

Grandma Munster’s got chainsaw eyes.

That was the saying in the Undermeat, and it was less a saying than a warning. Nobody knew that better than the junkie as he watched her from the passenger seat; she turned those eyes to him now and he fought the urge to shiver. They were like nothing more than incisions cut into the flesh of her face, those eyes, gleaming with life fluids and yet lifeless. The eyes of a shark in a cuddly koala’s face.

I make no promises about the amount of time you get. You do understand, don’t you? I can give you the time to try, but I can’t ensure your success.

Yes ma’am, he mumbled in return, eager to be out of the car and away from those chainsaw eyes. I understand.

Good, young man, she replied, turning her attention back to the night unspooling before them. Very good.

They drove in silence for a while longer, the darkness around them impenetrable. No moon, no stars, just the thrumming of the tires on the road. A bump, as if they’d run over a small rock lying on the asphalt, another, then the car rocked violently. A lurch in his gut as if an invisible hand had reached inside him and given his intestines a short sharp jerk. He looked over at Grandma Munster; she looked equally as pained.

Gah, Grandma Munster moaned after the violence had died down. Crossing the Husk’s always rough when Victoria’s upset, the silly bitch.

Her turned away from her again, nausea blooming in his gut. The Husk; the wall dividing this world from the Undermeat – it had this effect on him every time he’d crossed it, as seldom as it had happened.

He breathed a sigh of relief when Grandma Munster fell silent again.

Presently, they rounded a bend in the road and an abandoned gas station swung into view of the head lights, its store-front glass broken, broken shards glittering in the moonlight, pumps rusting, canopy sagging.

This is as far as I can take you, Grandma Munster said. You’ll have to walk from here.

She started to pull up beneath the canopy, but thought better of it after a glance up through the windshield at its decrepitude. She pulled instead to the front of the building, tires crunching over broken glass. She shifted into park and sat watching him for a moment.

Well, she said at last. Are you going to get out or not?

Oh, he said, and opened his door, stepped out into humid heat. After he’d closed the door, she swung around in the parking lot and drew up beside him. As she pulled to a stop she held something out the window to him, a brown paper bag. He unrolled the top and looked in: a baggy filled with a small amount of white powder in it, a black handgun.

These were in your pockets when you first came to me, she said. I’ll put them back there now.

He rolled the top of the bag back down again, clutched it tightly without looking up at her.

Remember what I said, she told him. Your time flees. Make every moment count.

With that, she rolled up her window and pulled back out onto the road headed back the way they’d come, accelerating smoothly until her tail-lights were lost in the dark. He turned to look the other way down the road, the direction in which he needed to head, and started walking that way. Somewhere at the end of this road, New York City waited, and Sweetly.

More darkness, like a shroud of black ash…

* * *

He soon found out from people who stopped to pick him up as he hitchhiked that Grandma Munster had dropped him off just north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Three days later, he’d walked and hitched about seventy miles, stopping at gas stations and houses, stealing Twinkies from shelves and Pepsis from coolers and jeans from clothes lines, right out from under the noses of clerks and housewives and farmers. By that Sunday, walking along U.S. 78, he’d reached the outskirts of Allentown, and at Asbury United Methodist Church, he’d stolen two 20 dollar bills from the offering plate under the pretense of tithing. That evening he’d stopped at a fast food place to get something to eat with his newly-liberated funds, and it was here, as it turned out, that he learned about the elephants…

* * *

The evening sun had been behind him as he’d walked toward the door of the restaurant, so he’d been unable to see anything inside for the glare. Behind him, traffic on 78 was a droning roar as it crossed State Highway 100. Later he would understand that this roar was the reason he couldn’t hear the screaming.

Couldn’t see for the sun, couldn’t hear for the interstate, and thank god for them both. Otherwise he never would have met Stafford J. Pickering, and the elephants would have remained a mystery forever.

* * *

The restaurant door opened as the junkie drew near and a naked man stepped out. He was covered head to toe with blood. Some of it was his own, by the look of it; he’d been castrated, his crotch now a flat plain of butchered meat. It couldn’t all be his, though; it looked as if he’d showered in it. The junkie stopped a few feet away. The naked man nodded at him like any other man on the street.

That had to hurt, the junkie said, indicating the hideous wound between the man’s legs.

Not really, the other man replied. Comparatively speaking. He held out a blood-stained hand and the junkie cautiously reached out, shook it. Stafford J. Pickering, the man said. Pleased to meet you.

Likewise, the junkie replied. A young black man eased the door open behind them and they both turned, the junkie and the castrated man, to watch him as he crept away slowly, never taking his wide and terrified eyes off Stafford J. Pickering. As soon as he was no more than a few feet away, he bolted. After a moment, others in the restaurant, apparently emboldened by the young black man’s success, followed him, all of them giving Pickering as wide a berth as possible, eyes filled with terror and tears and disbelief. In mere seconds, they were gone, all of them, leaving the junkie and the castrated man to stand silently in the evening glare and the interstate’s drone, Stafford J. Pickering clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back and forth on his heels like a man waiting on a bus.

I wanna tell you something, he said, turning to the junkie. Something important. You promise to listen?

Yeah.

You promise?

I promise.

Pickering stared at him for a moment, as if trying to judge his trustworthiness.

You take away his elephant, Pickering said at last, a mahout’s nothing but an asshole with a whip and a chain. He rocked back and forth on his heels some more. You remember that.

Now it was the junkie’s turn to stare for a moment, wondering if he was being had.

But no, he decided after a short moment. That wound down between the man’s legs; there wasn’t a thing funny about that.

The hell’s a mahout? the junkie finally asked him.

Indian elephant driver, Pickering said. They make elephants work like pack animals over there. They whip ‘em, beat ‘em, elephants go crazy, kill people in a rampage. They put ‘em down like rabid dogs.

You just put down an elephant? the junkie asked.

Nah, Stafford J. Pickering answered. I put down the mahout.

Good for you, the junkie said, and after another moment: Well. I’d better be on my way. Miles to go before I sleep, so the saying goes.

Nice meetin’ you, Pickering said.

Likewise.

And with that, the junkie turned and made his way back toward the interstate, not at all hungry anymore, and not at all caring about the blinding sun in his eyes, focusing instead on the asphalt passing slowly by beneath his feet.

Chapter 2

Sweetly could understand the attraction of an expensive call-girl. You pay two, three grand, she spends the weekend at your luxurious penthouse apartment, maybe goes to some kind of posh soiree with you; she’s refined and elegant, smart, witty. In short, she provides you with companionship and conversation, and not just a cunt in which to poke your dick.

But a two-bit hooker from the ‘hood?

Why? Why would you pay a two-bit hooker from the ‘hood to let you fuck her? She doesn’t care about you, she doesn’t want to know your name or talk to you, get to know you, and all she’s looking forward to is you finishing without busting your nut on her clothes and making a mess.

For god’s sake, go home and jerk off, she wanted to tell the men who came to her with money in hand and dicks a-swingin’. At least you’ll be with someone you care about, and it won’t cost you a damn dime.

Capitalism and a free market economy dictated otherwise, though; the bull-market that was Dylan Rose, demanding that everyone he meet buy, buy, buy! So here, now, she dropped her jeans, peeled off her panties, exposing the tattoo of the rainbow-colored cobra spiraling down the length of her left leg from hip to ankle. It matched her full sleeves of tattoos, and the shredded angel's wings in black and purple on her back.

She reclined on the grungy bed in this grungy little room that Dylan kept for just such circumstances as these. At one time it had been a maintenance office and it was barely big enough for the bed; there were still wire shelving and plastic bins bolted to the walls. Dylan owned it, this room, and he owned the shitty apartment building around it; and on the infrequent occasions that she chose to be honest with herself, she would grudgingly admit that he owned her, too.

Robbie T looked down at her leeringly and she frowned at him. She’d seen him around the neighborhood from time to time, and he’d always had a nod or a slight smile for her, this black man of sixty or so. He’d always seemed so nice, walking around arm in arm with his…

Where’s your wife today, Robbie T? she asked.

No, he said quickly, pausing as he prepared to drop his pants from his bony hips. No, no, no. Don’t mention her. Not here. Not now.

There I go, she wanted to tell him, thinking you were a specimen of that rare, endangered species, human being. Instead, you’re just another dick with a man-shaped tumor dragging along on the ground behind it.

Okay, she said instead. Sorry. He finished dropping his pants and skivvies, and stepped toward the bed, his dick already hard and bouncing.

Wrap it, she said, throwing a condom on the foot of the bed and indicating his penis with a sharp jerk of her chin.

Damn it, he said, his lined face falling. Really?

No wrap the pickle, no slap and tickle, she answered.

That’s pretty good, he said, grinning again. You come up with that on your own?

She only smiled as he picked up the condom, opened it, and rolled it onto himself. Then he climbed on the bed, too, and lay atop her. She reached down and guided him into herself, feigning a groan of satisfaction as he slid in.

He began to move inside her, back and forth, up and down, and had not hundreds of men though the last few years performed the same movements hundreds of times, she might have paid attention. As it was, she let him find whatever rhythm worked best for him, and she wandered away in her mind to someplace less…mundane.

* * *

Robbie T’d begun to grunt as his orgasm neared, his bony hips jerking and thrusting, when the door to the room slammed open. In it stood Dylan Rose. Robbie T bounced to his feet and whirled toward him, his be-condomed penis bouncing and pointing like an accusatory finger.

"Cain’t a man get no got-damn privacy around here?"

You ain’t payin’ by the hour, Dylan growled. Hurry up.

Dylan’s eyes dropped from Robbie T to Sweetly for a moment, glaring with all the anger she’d come to expect from him, Dylan who owned this shit-hole apartment building as well as the strip club Sweetly danced at, Dylan who pimped her out to anybody and I do mean any-fucking-body with a dollar in his pocket, Dylan who referred to his dancers as his scrumptious pie-holes, who was as ugly as he was fat and as tall as he was mean, whose girth was matched only by his opinion of himself, and whose opinion of himself was matchless.

He glared at her fiercely for a moment, his eyes like two piss-holes in the snow, the warning