Addicted to the Dead Read online

  Addicted to the Dead

  Shane McKenzie

  ADDICTED TO THE DEAD, KNOCK HIS TEETH OUT FOR ME, LIKE A BROTHER

  © 2013 Shane McKenzie

  THE RELEVANCE OF VIOLENCE © 2013 Joe McKinney

  Cover artwork & design

  © 2013 Frank Walls

  Editor: R.J. Cavender

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Addicted to the Dead

  Knock His Teeth Out For Me

  Like a Brother

  About the Author

  Introduction

  by Joe McKinney

  When is it too much? When does horror cross the line from the genuinely terrifying to meaningless torture porn? When does it stop making sense and turn into worthless obscenity?

  Modern horror has been dealing with those questions since at least 1967, when Roger Ebert famously slammed the original Night of the Living Dead. Ebert’s main issue with the film was that it violated an unwritten contract with the viewer. Horror, at the time at least, was palatable for the masses because it was of the variety that could be easily digested by ten-year-olds in double feature batches at a Sunday matinee, which is where Ebert caught Night of the Living Dead.

  According to Ebert, the audience was packed with kids. Young kids. These were children accustomed to filling a theater with good-natured screams of delight as Lon Chaney Jr. and Bella Lugosi did their thing on the screen. Well, they started out screaming during the opening of Night of the Living Dead, but as movie went on, something happened.

  A charming young couple gets burned alive.

  A little girl kills and eats her mother.

  The hero loses.

  Ebert said the screams stopped early on. The theater went silent. The little girl sitting across the aisle from him started to cry.

  Did Night of the Living Dead violate the unwritten contract of which Ebert wrote?

  Definitely.

  Was that a bad thing?

  Probably not, based on the film’s considerable legacy.

  But the film’s success and cornerstone status in modern zombie fiction raises a larger issue—one of horror’s social relevance. Horror fiction has been struggling with its reputation for a long time now. The horrors of Night of the Living Dead gave way to the slasher flicks of the 1970s, which in turn gave way to the over-the-top gore and mayhem of the Splatterpunk movement in the 1980s. Today both movements seem tame compared to the torture porn flicks currently flooding the American cinema.

  Whether for ill or not, violence and bloodletting have become the currency of modern horror, with every generation trying to up the ante on the schlock and gore it grew up on. Our tolerance has been raised considerably. The modern counterpart of the little girl crying across the aisle from Roger Ebert would probably behave very differently. I think we’d be lucky if she stayed awake.

  So what can we make of so much violence? Is there value to any of it? I’ll be the first to admit that a good deal of contemporary horror is utterly without merit. Most of it just seems pathetic, especially the torture porn stuff. And when the ridiculous exploits of yet another weird Hollywood serial killer are put up against the real life devastation of little kids gunned down in their 1st Grade classrooms, horror can seem insultingly out of touch with the pain of human existence.

  Any modern work of horror, especially one that deals in a lot of blood, is going to have to contend with this milieu of real life violence, and Shane McKenzie’s Addicted to the Dead is a good way to illustrate this. Within the first few pages of McKenzie’s zombie novel, we have a savage abduction, a rape, necrophilia, drug addiction and a behind the scenes look at the making of a snuff film. As I was reading the book, I could see the critics of violence and depravity in fiction already sharpening their claws.

  But then McKenzie does something that pulls the rug out from under those critics. He does what so much horror fiction fails to do.

  He makes the violence make sense.

  How?

  Well, strangely, it’s not that big of a mystery…even though you’d think it would be, judging from the legions of writers and moviemakers who seem to have missed it. The answer, after all, was there in the original Night of the Living Dead, for all to see. If you’re going to make horror scary, it has to be relevant. The violence has to connect to something real. Without that connection, horror is just silly. Or, worse, an insult to the horror of real life. Night of the Living Dead was a great horror film, but it was also a very poignant discussion of race relations in America during the ‘60s. That was why it mattered. (Even if Romero claims the metaphor was accidental.) In the same vein, Shane McKenzie’s Addicted to the Dead is an amazingly complex and layered discussion of the economic and moral devastation wrought upon a world grappling with addiction.

  But it is not enough to simply make the zombie a metaphor. That alone won’t answer the critics when they ask why we need another horror book. And a shockingly violent zombie book at that. To answer those critics, a book needs to say something meaningful about the human condition, and McKenzie does this through the addicts in his book, who represent a sort of middle ground between the living and the dead. In Night of the Living Dead, there was a definite bright line between surviving and dying. You were either human or zombie, living or dead. Romero may have violated the unwritten contract between movie and audience, but he did it in a way that retained the surety of known elements. Everything in the film is just as it appears to be. But even with those known elements the film made us a more sophisticated audience. We are not the same as that little girl crying next to Roger Ebert. We understand that we live in a world that is both beautiful and cruel, filled with equal parts wonder and hate. McKenzie is writing to that knowledge. He makes monsters of our heroes and gives our monsters humanity. He scares us because he forces us into a morally ambiguous world. What happens in that morally ambiguous landscape holds the answer to the question of why horror matters.

  The pages that follow represent the cutting edge of zombie fiction. I genuinely believe that. I also believe that these pages will prove to be one of the battlegrounds upon which our debates about violence and its place in fiction take place. I hope you enjoy the work you’re about to read, because it is going to challenge you. You will not be able to casually toss this book aside. You’re about to learn how that crying little girl next to Roger Ebert felt.

  I hope you’re ready for that.

  Joe McKinney

  South Fork, Colorado

  January 5, 2013

  Addicted to the Dead

  - Chapter 1-

  Calico dragged the girl down the hall toward the studio by her hair. He kept his eyes straight, not once turning to look at her, even as she pleaded with him.

  “Come on, man. This ain’t right…I’ll pay you guys. I sw—I swear to fucking god.”

  Her bare legs and feet screeched as they slid across the linoleum floor.

  They always begged, the addicts, always made promises of payment. But if they were being dragged from the detox facility into the studio, they’d already been given plenty of chances to pay up.

  Once Calico was called in, it was too late.

  “You’re hurting me, motherfucker…nghh…”

  He jerked harder, felt something tear. The girl yelped and he felt her legs give out, then he jerked again.

  She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, grabbed at Calico’s fist with both hands. “Please…please don’t hurt me.”

  Calico stopped, lifted her to her feet with a hard tug. He stared into her face without blinking, watched a trickle of blood run from her hairline to the corner of her eye where it mixed with the tears. His hand, black with misshapen spots of lighter, peachy flesh, shot out like a
striking cobra and wrapped around her neck. In the same motion, the girl was lifted off her feet and slammed into the wall. Her tongue lapped for oxygen.

  “You addicts make me sick.” He said the words through clenched teeth and his lips curled back as he spoke. “You’re the reason everything’s the way it is.”

  The girl’s eyes bulged like two pustules ready to burst. Her mouth opened and closed, but only a gurgle seeped out.

  Calico dropped her to the floor, kicked her in the stomach. He left her behind as he marched a few more feet to the studio door and swung it open. The sound of muffled talking was silenced once the door slammed against the wall. Calico peered in at the film crew. Just the sight of him pinched their throats closed.

  “I got your star right here,” he said.

  Their heads swiveled on their necks. They looked at each other, the floor, the ceiling, anywhere but at Calico.

  “Uh…bring—bring her in. Please.” The director sat in his fold-out director’s chair, an idiotic smile spread across his face. A pulsating, writhing chunk of meat was pinched between his fingers, and he tossed it into his mouth and chewed slowly. His eyelids fluttered and he moaned. “Go ahead…bring her to me.”

  Calico spat on the floor before he turned back to retrieve the addict.

  She had turned herself around and was inch-worming her way across the floor. Since the day Calico was ordered by Fleet to pick her up, her wan skin had regained its pinkness, though the bitch still had that sunken, dried up look all addicts had. Just like the director, just like the film crew. Just like almost everybody in the whole goddamn city.

  This girl was ready. She was clean. Not a trace of junk left in her.

  Calico stomped across the hallway and scooped up the skinny girl, tossed her over his shoulder. She screamed and pounded her fists against his back, flailed her legs.

  Calico trudged across the studio, passed the jumpy crew and cameras. The crew watched him pass and licked their dry lips. He dumped her onto the bed where her co-star waited, equally as shaky as the rest of them, his cock as big and erect as a fire hydrant. Calico glanced at him, and the erection began to droop.

  “Get to work!” Calico didn’t want to stick around, but Fleet ordered it. Just in case something went wrong. Just in case one of these addict motherfuckers tried something tricky.

  He glanced down at the girl, who was looking up at him, not with hatred, but confusion. Then she looked around at what surrounded her: cameras, microphones, costume racks. The film crew, as pale as she used to be, all stared at her, like an audience of specters.

  Calico walked back toward the door, then turned to watch. He pulled the Bowie knife from its sheath at his boot, pressed the point to his left palm and spun the blade. Its bite soothed him.

  “Come on, people, let’s get on with it!” The director chewed on another nugget of meat, wiped the moisture from his lips as he moaned and giggled. The crew watched him with wide eyes, some flaring their nostrils, some biting their lips. “Get that dick back up and ready to go!”

  “Yeah…okay,” the male co-star said. He plucked the leather skull mask from the bed and pulled it over his head. He spit into his hand and got to stroking himself back to attention.

  The girl seemed to notice the man for the first time, and her eyes traveled from his hardening cock, being brought to life by slickened violent rhythm, to the skull mask now stretched tight over his head.

  “Wh-what is this?” She tried scooting away from him, but he reached out and grabbed her ankle, pulled her across the bed back toward him. His penis wobbled like a diving board. “No…d-don’t do this. I’ll pay. I’ll fucking pay!”

  Her pleas were answered by a striking fist. She crumpled to the bed and moaned.

  As Skull Face bent her over and thrust into her, and as the girl shrieked and wept, Calico pressed the tip of the Bowie knife deeper into the callused scar-flesh of his palm. The warm blood tickled his forearm as it ran down and dripped from his elbow.

  The film crew was dead silent as they watched, some holding cameras, others balancing microphone poles. The director had his lower lip clamped under his incisors, his eyes half-closed but pinned to the rape in front of him, his hand deep in his pants.

  “Very nice,” the director said. “Do it. Do it now.”

  Skull Face, his member still pumping, grabbed the girl’s hair and yanked her head backward. Her face pointed to the ceiling and her tears shone in the studio lights. Then Skull Face pulled a long blade from amongst the ruffled bed sheets, reached out, and slid it across her throat. The rhythm of their intense fucking made the cut ragged and sloppy, but it opened her up all the same, and the blood gushed forth and soaked the bed.

  The girl’s eyes glowed red and bulged from her face. She gasped and coughed, choked on her blood and cries. Then she was silent.

  Skull Face never slowed, kept fucking and grunting. He tossed the knife away, grabbed her hair with both hands, pulled her limp head back harder, tore her wound wider.

  Calico jerked when he felt his knife hit the small bones in his hand, and pulled it out, shoved it back in its sheath. He clenched his hand into a fist, digging the tips of his middle and ring finger into the leaking hole. Calmness flowed through him.

  The crew watched with still faces, their mouths hanging open. The director continued to pull on himself, giggling at some unspoken punch line.

  “Yes, that’s good. It’s…so…fucking…good.”

  Then the girl woke up.

  A shudder ran through every single body in the room. Calico watched them all, cleared his throat so they remembered he was there, so they remembered to keep themselves under control until the time was right. This girl was to be processed and sold, but Fleet told Calico to let the crew get a taste first.

  The dead girl, her head still held up by Skull Face, searched the room with bouncing pupils. She didn’t seem to notice the man behind her, ravaging her, getting more and more into it.

  “Ngh…ungh…”

  Skull Face pulled himself out of her, his chest undulating, glistening with sweat. He reached into the folds of the sheets and grabbed a bottle of lube that was hidden there. He squeezed a worm of the translucent gel onto his throbbing cock, smoothed it out, then rammed himself back into her.

  “Good,” the director said, now standing with his pants at his ankles.

  Skull Face growled as he pumped, then reached to his face and unzipped his mouth. His tongue pushed through the leather mask like a worm writhing from the dirt.

  The girl’s eyes never blinked as she looked at the faces staring at her, every one of them licking their lips, shuffling their feet. She tried to crawl away, but Skull Face had her by the hips and he slapped himself against her harder and harder with each thrust.

  Calico stepped closer, watching the crew grow antsier by the second. He was ready to put them all in their place if he had to, hoped he had the chance to.

  Worthless fucking addicts.

  “Nggghhh…” The blood flow from the girl’s throat had become a slow drip, and the muscles of her neck twitched in the open wound as she tried to voice her panic.

  Then Skull Face bent over and bit into the meat of her ass. Tore a chunk away and shuddered as he chewed and swallowed. Then bent down for more. He never stopped fucking her.

  The crew moaned collectively, a single sound that sprang Calico forward. Keeping himself out of the range of the cameras, he stepped between the crew and the scene playing out behind him.

  He pulled his knife back out, spun it in his hand and smiled at them. They all backed up.

  “Oh God, that’s good,” the director said. “Finish it…finish it.”

  Skull Face pulled out and squirted his seed into the ragged holes where he’d bitten her, filling them like tiny swimming pools. He ran his palm up her back until reaching her head, pulled her toward him with a sudden jerk. He sniffed her neck, the side of her face, then took another mouthful of the dead meat from her cheek. He let the dead girl fall ba
ck to the bed and walked off camera. Though no longer being filmed, Skull Face still groaned and ran his fingertips over his naked body. He fell to the ground snickering and touching himself.

  “Cut!” the director said. “Fucking brilliant.”

  Calico slid his knife back into its sheath, stepped out of the way, and nodded.

  It was all the crew needed. Like a tidal wave of pale flesh and bared teeth, they descended onto the dead girl.

  - Chapter 2 -

  “I don’t like you watching programs like that, Paco. It’s bad for your brain.” Mama prodded at the top of Paco’s scalp with two fingertips then lightly slapped the back of his head.

  “But it’s true. The man on TV said that it’s so bad, people can’t even have kids anymore. He said it’s something in the meat that makes it so they can’t make babies.” Paco stopped walking, swatted a mosquito that landed on his nose. “Is that why there’s not that many kids around, Mama? Because everyone is eating so much meat?” Paco could only think of a few other kids in town, but he and his sister Sophia were homeschooled and never got to play with them.

  Mama chewed on her tongue for a minute before ushering Paco along the sidewalk. Sophia hummed to herself and picked the pedals off a yellow flower behind them.

  “You shouldn’t be worrying about things like that, Paco. You have your family, that’s all that matters. When the time comes, when me and Papa think it’s appropriate, we’ll talk about these things.” She sighed. “Whatever show that was, you won’t be watching it again, understand? Think I need to have a talk with Mrs. Addington.”

  “But, Mama…”

  She silenced him with an open palm and he rolled his eyes in response.

  They rounded the corner and strolled into the grocery store parking lot. It seemed like at least half of the town was there, all standing in line for their daily dose of meat. Not a single child in the whole line. Most of the adults kept to themselves, reading newspapers, playing with their cell phones, or just staring off into the distance. Two skinny women in church dresses whispered to each other, taking turns giggling under their breath. Paco convinced himself that they were making fun of him and his family. And even though he was used to people gawking at him and Sophia because they were kids, he still couldn’t help but let it get under his skin.