Timothy Long - The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole

Pestilence is beginning to sober up.

“Those fucking demons had better not start bogarting the dope in this town,” Pestilence growls at the general. The dead officer nods and moans hoarsely.

“Did you score that last shit in Reno?” Pestilence asks as the first pangs of need wrack his slender frame.

General O’Coddle stares at him with his dead eyes, both slightly withered from their time in the sun. He shakes his head back and forth.

“Shit,” Pestilence spits.

They trudge on in silence to a third overpass. After passing under it, the town fully encircles them, with tall buildings that rise in all directions toward the sky. Screams and howls of pain distract the zombies, and Pestilence hears the shuffling of their feet moving off from all sides. He turns and looks out from under his hood. His horde is deserting him; stumbling off in search of flesh to feast on.

“Whoa,” Pestilence tells his steed while giving the reins a pull. The horse ignores him, so he tugs harder and yells louder. “Whoa, fucker! Whoa or you’ll be glue!”

The horse stops so abruptly that Pestilence rocks forward and falls off his steed onto the freeway. He lands face first with a sick crunch-thud, but he rolls to his feet and jabs the general in his the chest an instant later.

“Do your thing and call those fuckers back! They are my zombie horde, and they are fucking leaving!”

General O’Coddle turns from Pestilence to the dead soldiers and hippies staggering toward the screams. He puffs out his chest and moans loudly. He huffs and growls, “Rrrraggggerrrrrrrrr! Bbbbbeeerrreeegggrrrrr!”

None of the deserting zombies slows its pace. He turns and looks blankly at the sweating Pestilence. Maggots wiggle out of General O’Coddle’s ears and land on his broad shoulders. The zombie shrugs, and the maggots tumble to the pavement, twisting and writhing as they fall.

“Whatever,” Pestilence grumbles. “If Death hears anything about this, he’ll be pissed. Fuck him anyway; he ain’t here.”

General O’Coddle tilts his head like a dog trying to understand what his master is saying. Pestilence smiles his rotted grin at the general and then reaches up and cups one long-fingered hand on the dead man’s barrel chest. Pestilence mutters something, and a glowing light fills his hand. General O’Coddle’s shriveled eyes roll in their sockets as Pestilence pulls his glowing fist away.

“Hot shit!” Pestilence yells, and he slams his fist back into General O’Coddle’s chest. With a loud crack, the light sinks back through the general’s sternum. The dead man stiffens and swells instantly. His shriveled eyes reinflate like helium balloons. Thick black blood drips from his nose and ears like waves. Tiny white maggots surf to the ground. The general’s gray skin squeaks and pops as it stretches around the sudden violent bloating. Pestilence stumbles back a few steps and covers his nose with his cloaked arm.

General O’Coddle’s body stops swelling, and his dead eyes dart around in their puffy sockets. His chin quivers like he is trying to talk or scream, but his throat is too swollen to open his mouth more than a fraction of an inch. The stiff and swollen corpse twitches and lets out a fart; extensive, deafening, and extremely malodorous. The longer the shit-splattering fart goes, the more General O’Coddle deflates until he returns to his barrel-chested norm.

“What in the red-headed gypsy queefing fuck was that?” General O’Coddle growls. Dark clots of congealed blood fly from his mouth and catch in his white handlebar mustache.

Pestilence smiles at him and says, “It was your soul, you half-rotten bastard. We don’t have time to argue or discuss ethics and shit. Get those dead fuckers back in line and tell me where to find some-fucking-thing to get me high!”

General O’Coddle’s gray lips curl into a crooked smile, and he salutes Pestilence before turning on the balls of his feet to the deserting zombie soldiers behind him.

“Atten-shun!” growls the dead general.

A few of the military zombies stop and turn, but most keep moving. Pestilence’s legs buckle, and he falls to his knees in the middle of the highway. He curses at the ground for scratching his legs, then he turns and scoffs at the general.

Rage flashes in General O’Coddle’s dead eyes, and he stumbles toward the closest runaway zombie. He grabs the dead soldier by the back of his head and pulls it to him, dragging the soldier’s heavy boots across the road. The soldier zombie fights in vain against the general’s iron grip, moaning and shouting loud enough that all the others turn to look. General O’Coddle shakes the dead soldier back and forth until he is sure all are watching.

“I said GET THE FUCK BACK IN LINE!”

With the horde still watching, General O’Coddle digs his meaty fingers into the dead soldier’s eyes. The zombie writhes and moans as O’Coddle lifts it off the ground simply by raising his arms. It kicks its dead legs weakly as General O’Coddle twists his hands in the zombie’s eye sockets and rams his thumbs through the side of the dead soldier’s skull. The zombie’s legs quit kicking as General O’Coddle roars and tears the head from the body in one quick brutal movement. The headless corpse crumples to the highway, and all but one soldier zombie stumble quickly back in line.

General O’Coddle points to the sole deserter and says, “He must have been a hippy at heart,” to Pestilence, who is reaching into the folds of his robe.

The general puffs to yell more, but Pestilence grabs his arm to silence him and help pull himself up. The hooded Horseman regains his feet and pulls a crossbow made of steel and used medical equipment from his cloak.

“My turn,” he grins and winks at General O’Coddle. He takes aim with superhuman speed and shoots a hypodermic needle at the fleeing zombie. The dead soldier stumbles in a zig-zag in an attempt to avoid the projectile.

“So,” Pestilence says to the general while continuing to watch the deserter. “Where next?”

The dart swerves in midair and hits the zombie in the back of his thigh, sending small yellow chunks of bone flying. Yellowish-green bubbles sizzle from the wound as the acid devours the zombie’s flesh. The dead soldier howls, but the acid takes only a matter of seconds to silence it by reducing it to a smoldering pile of ashes.

“I have a junkie brother who is a priest at a church close by,” O’Coddle smiles, “and I’d love to pay his whore-stealin’ ass a visit.”

Pestilence tucks his crossbow back into the folds of his robe and slowly mounts his steed. Once atop his horse, he nods at the general. O’Coddle grunts and steps in front of the horse to lead the horde to Our Lady of Eternal Melancholy. They head off the freeway and into a neighborhood that looks to be accustomed to chaos. The houses that line the street are small and old, their paint peeling away in huge swaths. Most of the windows are boarded up. Demons screech and howl from nearby, but the horde ignores them. Human screams respond to the demon cries, and a muttering of discontent rumbles through the horde, forcing Pestilence to draw his crossbow and level it at the murmuring pack of zombies.

General O’Coddle leads them to a pile of rubble and stops. Across an old wooden sign, the message “A stoned congregation and a disemboweled priest” is smeared in blood and shit. The smell of death hangs in the air around the ruins of the church, and the horde of dead soldiers pushes forward.

“Whoa!” Pestilence yells to his steed.

“Whoa!” he yells to the dead.

Both ignore him. The horde stumbles like a bunch of drunken frat boys, forcing Pestilence out of their way as they converge on the rubble. He stares at the zombies digging away bricks, his eyes bugging out of their sockets. Sweat beads and drips off his forehead, and his throat dries out when he tries to speak. Two zombies pull a body from the rubble and then fall on it with hungry mouths. Soon, the entire horde is feasting on the freshly killed congregation.