Category: Fiction Factor

What was it Patton once said … “Fatigue makes cowards of us all?” Buddy could relate. After hours of battle, he had reached the point where victory no longer seemed to matter – nor did survival, really.

His own lack of sleep and the animal’s seemingly constant motion had finally worn him down. In this battle of man versus beast, the beast was winning – and had almost won. And that was fine because one way or another, this all had to end.

Before entering the arena, he had been warned. He was too old, too weak, too unprepared to take on something that was simply too, too much to handle. But in his mind, he knew he still had one more fight in him. Well, he thought he did, anyway.

After all, he had done this before – many times, in fact. And there had been myriad occasions when he was so exhausted he could barely hold his head up. Yet somehow, he endured. Day after day, night after night, he tried to break what appeared to be an unbreakable foe.

Had he thought of giving up?

Sure. Honorable or otherwise, sometimes defeat is inevitable.

But he never tapped out, and because he didn’t, his enemies of the past ultimately became his friends for life. And that’s why these battles were irresistible.

So, here he was again, sprawled on the ground and devoid of energy. Coming towards him was the creature – razor-sharp teeth glistening … its eyes bright with mischief. If the man just gave up, perhaps it would all be over.

Yet, he didn’t.

Instead, Buddy reached out with the rope, waved it wildly, and coerced the predator into clamping down on it.

The critter shook it vigorously, growled, and then collapsed.

Why?

The man had no clue.

It seemed to have boundless energy, only to stop briefly and abruptly start back again. Thus, Buddy knew the reprieve would be ever so brief.

The opportunity to take flight was there; he could run, he could hide – he could even race outside, get into his car, and drive away.

Instead, he crawled over to the puppy, kissed it on the head, and managed a smile.

Some things are always worth fighting for, no matter how tiring.

Any time Olympus Tyrrhena walked through the wide double-door of the shelter, his olfactory sense was hit with a chemical-like agent that – while often unsuccessful – was designed to mask odors. Still, for him it was a familiar and welcoming aroma, and one that accompanied a genuine feeling of excitement.

The smell meant there were cages, and cages meant there were animals in them, and those animals were always ready for adoption.

“My friend!” shouted the greeter, Tharsis Cimmeria. “So glad to see you again. We have some new arrivals I’m sure you’ll be interested in.”

“You always do, Tharsis,” Tyrrhena said. “Truthfully, I’m not even sure what I’m looking for today. Hopefully I’ll know it when I see it.”

The Noachis Shelter was the largest in what was once the West Coast of the United States. An old naval barracks that had been converted into an adoption center, it could house as many as 3,000 animals at one time. And it was almost always filled to capacity. It seemed that for every one that was taken away to its forever home, another five were corralled while running wild outside the facility. In a perfect world, all the adoptees would be carefully matched with the adopters, but in recent times officials at Noachis Shelter simply wanted to make sure business ran smoothly – and quickly.

If you had the resources to get an animal, the animal was yours with no questions asked.

“Now, the last time you were here you got Eddie, the male, right?” Cimmeria asked. “I remember him well … always banging against the cage and howling. Not a lot of our customers would take a chance on an animal like that. I hope he’s working out for you.”

Tyrrhena sighed.

“Unfortunately, I had to have him put down,” he said. “I gave him as much time as I could to adjust to his new surroundings, but he could never do it. He was extremely violent and very disruptive. I had to have him destroyed because I was afraid he was going to hurt the other animals, as well as himself. It’s a shame, but when you go through as many as I have in the last couple of years, you get used to it. Well … you never get used to it, but you learn to live with it. Anyway, that’s why I’m here today, to see if I can find one to replace the one I lost.”

With Cimmeria providing a loose follow, Tyrrhena walked down the aisles of the shelter and carefully eyed each individual cage. It was rare when one of the animals made eye contact with him, and when they did it was always fleeting. What he enjoyed most was seeing the ones who were curled up sleeping. Whether true or not, he believed those who were slumbering in the cages would be easier to tame.

Finally, Tyrrhena found what he was looking for. An animal with bushy red hair, and so new to the shelter he still had on his uniform.

“We call him Captain,” Cimmeria said. “We think he was in that group of resistance fighters we captured just last week, but we couldn’t find any identification on him. Now that we’ve all assumed humanoid form and characteristics, they don’t even know who to fight anymore. Soon we’ll have complete control of this hemisphere, so we’re going to need even more shelters.”

Two staffers quickly joined Cimmeria, who prepared to open the cage and quickly tie up Captain.

“So … are you going to keep him at your Earth dwelling or take him back to Mars?”

“By the looks of him, he’ll be more of a labor animal, so I’ll probably leave him here to work the fields,” Tyrrhena said. “Besides, Promethai would kill me if I brought another pet home.”

The studio lights on the set of the Murray Pavlovich Show were almost blinding, so the zombie reached for his sunglasses to tamp down the glare. Given the government designation “Undead Alpha-679-A” – he preferred to be called Al – the reanimated man had spent years hoping to educate the public about his kind.

The zombies of literature and modern media were nothing like the actual revenants, who simply wanted to go about their undead existence quietly. Yes, they were pale, cold to the touch, and sensitive to light. They often had unsightly lesions on their faces. But otherwise, they weren’t all that different than people with a heartbeat. Al had reached out to major news organizations several times in hopes of telling the true story, but to no avail. Once he shared it, he was told “it’s just not sexy enough” or “this won’t hold an audience’s attention.”

Going on a lowbrow program like Pavlovich’s wasn’t ideal, but it was at least something. So, Al waited in the wings as the first guest – a man who married a Standard Poodle – was confronted by a veterinarian who insisted the union wasn’t legal.

A fistfight ultimately broke out between the dog lover and vet, ending when they were drug off the stage by security. Then Pavlovich hyped the high-energy audience for his next guest.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “Only in recent years have we learned that zombies walked among us.”

The crowd began booing.

“We’ve come to believe they eat humans, terrorize communities, practice poor hygiene and lower property values.”

The boos grew louder.

“But today, we’re going to let one of them explain to you – patriotic, red-blooded Americans – why we should allow non-blooded Americans to live and work side-by-side with you and me. Please give a rowdy Murray Pavlovich Show welcome to the zombie next door, Mr. Undead Alpha-679-A. Undead … step into the Murray Zone.”

The zombie was horrified by the screaming, and actually had to duck to avoid being hit by a set of dentures as he made his way to the chair across from the host. Once he finally settled into his spot, the crowd began chanting, “Drop dead, Undead!” over and over.

“OK,” Pavlovich said, aggressively waving his hands. “That’s enough … that’s enough. Let’s hear him out.”

Pavlovich sat down, leaned back, and stared straight at Al.

“So,” he said. “Right now, as you, a zombie, look at me … is the urge to eat my brains strong? Do you take some kind of medication to help you quell your desire to devour living humans?”

Al rolled his eyes, although it wasn’t visible to Pavlovich since he still had his sunglasses on.

“Murray, I have no desire to eat your brains or any other part of your body – or any part of anybody’s body, for that matter,” Al said. “That’s why I came here today … I want to dispel these ridiculous myths.”

The studio audience once again broke into  the “Drop dead, Undead!” chant, and a woman in the front row – wearing a red, white and blue tank stop and sporting a faded Chef Boyardee tattoo on her neck – rushed towed the stage and yelled, “Baby eater!” at Al.

“Calm down, dear,” Pavlovich said. “Let the baby eater explain himself.”

Al shook his head, realizing that those who told him appearing on the Murray Pavlovich Show was a bad idea were absolutely right.

“Good grief … none of this crap you’ve heard is true,” the zombie said. “Why would we want to eat humans? I mean, that’s just gross. Personally, about all I eat are bananas and almonds. Every now and then I’ll get a hankering for dark chocolate raspberry cordials, but not often. We’re dead … we’re not cannibals.”

“But you are evil, are you not?” Pavlovich asked. “You were conjured, I assume, by voodoo or some form of black magic.”

“No!” Al shot back. “Again, those are just ridiculous stories. There are several different ways corpses get reanimated, and as far as I know none of them have anything to do with voodoo or curses or magic. My wife, Edith, was struck by lightning just as her casket was being lowered into the grave. I know a guy in Fresno who got jump-started by a cracked AGM battery and jumper cables. And me? The ambulance taking me to the morgue was involved in a fender-bender and something happened during the collision that sent a charge through my body. All I remember was sitting up on the gurney, hearing an EMT say, “Holy hell, that bastard’s alive,” and then smelling poop. We don’t know why we came back to life, we just did. And we don’t want to bother any of you. We just want to be dead in peace.”

Boos once again filled the studio as Pavlovich stood up, pointed at Al and shouted, “You died for a reason, sir, and I think I speak for my audience when I say we don’t need you pushing your undead agenda on us. I just pray for your next victim.”

Al shielded his face from flying debris as he raced off the stage, running through the corridor and heading straight for the exit while calling an Uber. Although a few audience members had made their way to the backlot and began hurling epithets at him, the car arrived quickly and he was able to escape unharmed.

The trip back to the Romero Housing Complex took only 10 minutes, and he had never been so happy to be away from the living.

“How did it go?” asked Edith, who was waiting for him at the front door.

“Awful,” Al said. “Worse than I thought. I figured it’d be a shit show, I just hoped I’d have a chance to reach a few people. But I didn’t. They had their minds made up before I even got there and they were too busy booing to listen to anything I had to say.”

Edith hugged him, squeezing him tightly with her icy arms.

“Sorry, mister,” she said. “At least you tried. Makes you wonder though … maybe we should eat their brains.”

Al chuckled.

“No point in that,” he said. “It’d just be empty calories.”