Читать книгу Beach Blanket Zombie - Mark McLaughlin - Страница 11

Green

A pale creature with infected green fingernails he was, and yet there was something utterly genteel about the way he nibbled at the dead rat. I was determined to save him from himself.

“Good Mr. Social Worker,” he whispered, “your services are not required here. I pray you leave me be. I am expecting old acquaintances...very old! I asked them to visit many years ago—a terrible mistake—and they do insist on returning every now and then.”

“You need help, my friend.” I smiled and patted his bald head. “The department will take care of you. We’ll put the color back in your cheeks.”

“Yes...but which color?” The old man wrapped what remained of his dinner in a sheet of green waxed paper. “You must have other appointments to keep. My guests shall be arriving at any moment. I cannot imagine that time has mellowed their dispositions.” He shuffled over to a cupboard and placed the tidbit in a stack with several other small green bundles.

A single faint knock sounded at the door. Can a sound have a chromatic quality? A tint? Certainly that soft, soft knock was coated with a sickly green patina.

“Hellfire!” the old man whispered. “Under the bed with you, young fellow. It would not do for my guests to find you here.” So saying, he pushed me to the floor—his strength was inhuman!—and rolled me into the suggested hiding place. Then he threw open the door and in they swarmed.

Green was the color of their desiccated flesh and glowing eyes. Green was the mold that grew in huge swirls and splotches on their tattered garments. Their throats, clotted with green dust, coughed forth a mad litany of vicious truths and delicious lies for hours on end. Listening, I learned that these singular individuals had discovered a magical means of turning death back into life...

A greenish sort of life.

In time, one of the dusty guests (his name was Mr. Crowley) brought forth a piece of green chalk and etched the outline of a door on the wall. He made a series of gestures and a portal of green fire appeared, through which the guests passed, dragging the old man. Then the portal vanished and I was alone.

I left the old man’s ramshackle house, my eyes brimming with tears—green tears, because of all that dust. My hands and clothes were streaked with the hideous stuff.

Churning green clouds rolled across the sky as I drove through the city. A growing stench filled the air—a nauseating green reek. I had stopped at the store before visiting the old man, and so sacks of produce and packaged meat rested on the seat next to me. The contents of these bags had decomposed into a thick green slime. I rolled down the window and flung the sacks from the car.

Green concrete towers loomed before me like lichen-shrouded monoliths. The flesh of the people on the sidewalks putrefied before my eyes, taking on a horrid green cast. The other drivers I glimpsed bared their decayed green teeth at me.

Suddenly, there was a furious crash of metal. My head snapped forward and back—bones cracked in my neck. I had collided with a dark green car driven by a smiling green thing in a dusty shroud.

Green mist clouded my vision. Needles of green pain danced in my brain. I stumbled from the car and my legs gave way beneath me.

In a moment, Mr. Crowley began to trace around my body with a stub of green chalk.