Another Remake Chronicles Fiction Extra by Judi B. Castro and Christopher Negelein.

As we prepare the next Remake Chronicles essay, a look at prior versions of some well-known cinematic heroes, we offer this second of our two Halloween fiction offerings – and apologize in advance, as this is pretty damned greasy even for zombie fiction. Ladies and gentlemen, “After the Zombies Passed.”  Copyright 2011, Judi B. Castro and Christopher Negelein.

Murdock smelled it first. For so many of us, the inescapable stench of rotten meat and napalm, had been so overwhelming for so long that our noses had shut down in sheer self-defense. But Murdock still had a sense of smell to torment him, to damn him into the role of our human bloodhound; and he’d been braced for the horrid whiff, wafting through the ruined steel canyons like a warning that the worst was still on the way. He let us know by puking.

“It’s coming,” he gagged.
 
The armies of the living dead had swarmed our city four days before, devouring or turning thousands of us before shuffling over the horizon. We gathered on rooftops lest they come back and imagined the worst over. We were wrong. All those zombies, eating all that flesh; we’d assumed them incapable of digestion.
 
When there’s no more room in zombies, their shit will roam the Earth.

Screams rose from the streets down below: looters who hadn’t heeded the warnings. The first wave — literally a wave, brown, greasy and steaming like the diarrheic aftermath of last night’s rancid burrito — cascaded up the boulevard, overturning cars, imploding buildings, and overwhelming refugees. Bleached bones rode the surface like nuggets of undigested corn. One poor bastard shimmied up a street lamp, his pants torn from his body and naked legs dangling above the torrent; even as we watched, a ropy ochre tentacle snaked up the pole and violated him, pumping so many gallons of itself into his unlucky intestines that he exploded like a flesh balloon, his pieces scattering atop the effluent like sprinkles on chocolate gelato.

Bruce slammed the detonator, blowing the city’s water towers and releasing millions of gallons of industrial disinfectant into the streets. It cut the worst of the grease, but the spattered gobbets congealed, just as malevolent but with a fresh lavender scent. Copters loaded with tanks of lye came in low over the skyline, delivering their payload, but even they were too little too late. One after another, office buildings went gusher, as the invader realized it could climb stairwells. Hundreds of survivors huddled on rooftops screamed as fresh tendrils of hell-feces invaded their own nether regions. Other pseudopods burst from the slate at our own feet, coiling around our legs and probing our nether-sphincters. The pain was indescribable, but our diapers and butt-plugs held. We sprayed bleach from our packs, driving the goo back, but not away.

Bruce flashed a premature shit-eating grin, then screamed as he realized his horrible mistake.

I closed my eyes and covered my ears and felt one last wave of sweet nostalgia for the days when the zombies, the clumsy, slow-moving zombies, had been the worst crap we’d had to deal with.

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