SKIMMING THE GUMBO NUCLEAR
By M.F. Korn
Chapters 41 thru 49

"Facilis Descensus Averni"

Chapter Forty One

In Acadiana parishes, a sovereign swampland, the folks's second language was Cajun French. At football games the cheerleading yell was "Hot Gumbo Cold Cush, come on USL, Push, Push, Push!" In these parishes everyone knew the meaning of red cayenne pepper. How to make Dirty Rice and Jambalaya. There was always deer sausage on the stove, and a gumbo full of oysters, shrimp, crabmeat, chicken, Andouille sausage would brim green bubbling.

To Breaux Bridge in the East, to Lake Charles in the West, to Opelousas in the north, down to Golden Meadow below Abbeville, the entire Atchafalaya had turned into a big Jello mold. That's what it looked like from the raised interstate above Whiskey Bay where one once could see boats below.

"Da whole swamp looks like it done covered up with jelly or something," Guidry said. The gumbo on the stove was rather unusual all brown and full of seafood.

"I ain't eating none of that snake food! Naww eeeiii! No sir!"

"Jes tray a li'l piece dar, Paw!" Guidry said. He speared a chunk of gutted monster meat turned white and nibbled on it.

"You' is crazy, yeah!"

"Dem doctors way it ain't poisonous once it done been dead. And I cleaned it an cut de head off. And put about ten feet a cajun devilish eel in dat gumbo," as he stirred it and chewed on the whitish meat.

"Son, ain't you got respect of de dead?" and said the cajun prayer silently. He looked the other way about the formica kitchen in the cozy little house that his pawran had been living in with Maw Maw for 30 years. Outside were catfish ponds and crawfish farms. It was getting cold cause Autumn was there. They had ben watching CNN every day since the mass tragedy.

"I like tryin new things, pawran," and stirred it some more. It did smell delicious.

"Just because some crazy man bought Louis Catorze's heart and cooked de pickled thing dead a century ago or two, and ate it, dos dat mean you is gonna too?"

"Where did you read dat?" Guidry asked, looking out the kitchen window. The oaks and cypress had lost all their leaves, giving that stark grainy but nice browns of ground. The sun glinted off the water in the crawfish farm. Landry had to come and scoop the ponds because of the jello on top of it.

"Dat's one weird thing ta talk about, Pawran!"

"Please for the Holy Mothers sake don't eat no more of dat devil gumbo! Bless da Holy Saints, Father God an Sonny Jesus, Couchon du lait!"

The old man shrugged his head. His face was bristling with stubble. He hadn't been able to sleep for days. His daughter was still over there where the plague was. He done told her, get outa there!

"Alright, I'm taking da meat out! But da Gumbo is still fulla shrimp and oyster yeah. See, I'm taking dem out!" The Grandfather sighed. He didn't care about no monster gumbo. He hadn't heard from Lawilda, no! Was she alright? He didn't care about dat crummy brother-in-law, no. But she loved him, so maybe he ought so set aside one Rosary for him, too! He couldn't count da Hail Mary's and Our Fathers that he done said since he talked to Father Couvillion. The Holy Father said she was in God's hands. She would get in touch with her paw paw soon enough. Said all communications was not working properly.

Curse dem eel monstas. Maybe he would eat him some Gumbo! If he could eat dem, dem maybe he would feel better about dis whole Thing!

"Put dem pieces a meat back in there, Son!"

"What ya mean, Pawran?" He looked at the old man. An acadiana man of strength, though it didn't show much. He knew Pawran was praying all de time, da rosary yeah! He must mean it yeah.

"Okay there!" He put dem all outa the sink and they went plop in there. The old man watched him do it. He finished.

"Now make me a bowl there, boy!" He still couldn't manage to smile yet. There would be plenty of Novenas at Our Lady of Lourdes, yeah. But for now he would conquer de enemy by devouring it.

"Pawran, you just sit down there and I got some nice brown rice yeah, and watch out it's hot!"

He put the bowl down on da table as the refrigerator was making noise in the otherwise quiet. A nice sort of quiet. There, right in the cool front in Breaux Bridge, where they were starting to make eel po-boys, eel dirty rice, fried eel monster, yeah. All dem little country groceries where you could buy potato logs an spicy chicken; now alongside da boudin and hogshead cheese you could devour da monster like dat man musta felt when he ate Louis Catorze's heart in England! The snappy air blanketed the stark leafless trees. The cypresses leathery like stitched leather. Da Holy Trinity was there, right there above dem all. Dat was why there wasn't no dying round there. Go to Mass and you would be safe. Dat Grand Coteau church was 250 years old, Pawran thought. And he would be buried in dat cemetery out behind it. But when da good Lord want him to be, he thought, not now, and not his daughter and his grandchildren.

"Dis tastes okay, son!" as he cooled a spoonful of brown rice, gumbo and lots of seafood. His enemy flesh he commenced to digest, and he welcomed every morsel of it. If anything would happen to him, den he would join his daughter LaWilda in da Throne of God, yeah! He went ahead and finished dat bowl and had three more. He didn't know he was dat hungry! It tasted kind like Garfish. He thought it was a trashfish, yeah! 

Things died down. The army got most of the bodies off to wherever they send dead humans in large quantities. The refineries continued to blaze. Dow to the Southwest of Baton Rouge, and far off in the distance the Tenneco plant was kind of a free pyrotechnical display. There was a continual noxious smell in the air, a kind of thickly stench like creosote and a chemical chlorine aftertaste.

Ricky Harrison and Kendra Hoerst found themselves in a colony of interesting people. Faculty professors, Theater instructors, Music professors, a Writer-in-Residence, Philosophy Professors, English grads with brilliant precis'. The Faculty Club was a 250-year-old French Tudor mansion that had come dangerously close to being torn down to make way for a natatorium. But fortunately there were enough old ladies with aesthetics and nasty dispositions that fought against the entire Athletic Council.

In an upstairs bedroom Kendra took a bath in an old fashioned wrought tub. Ricky poured himself some sherry. They had long run out of Demurral, Laudanum, morphine, and the various other drugs that she had filched. Downstairs in the dining room and drawing room was engaging reverie of intellectuals who had forgotten that they were alive. They had drenched themselves in endless semesters of boredom.

Kendra got up naked, glistening droplets on her tanned body. She dried herself off with a fluffy large towel. She wrapped it around her hair darkened by clean water. Ricky drank in with his eyes her teutonic beauty. Her cassette player was pouring forth "Brahms 1st Piano Concerto."

It felt for both of them like being in heaven. The carnage was outside, in the foul air. Here they were safe as long as the inoculation held out. It would possibly time out in rather complicated medical terms; Kendra knew that. She had injected everyone in the mansion a week ago, before she had finally come to the Faculty club. Emerging from the shrubs and landscaped lilies, Magnolias, Gladiolus and Hydrangeas, as the air had then cooled much and the end of late summer was marked by the first cold front that had brought cleansing rain which had pulled down the chemicals that the bursting refineries were issuing forth. And the sidewalks had finally been cleansed of death rattled corpses and fluids promulgated and seeped, by this long rain.

But now she was in Ricky's lap with her panties on, his girl for the end of the world now.

"You know you're a national hero, don't you sweetie?"

She smiled, feeling much different than when the events of their reuniting when the death rattling began. "It was your cure that has saved a lot of people in this whole state." She kissed him.

Close to his face she said, whispering, "Are you proud of me?" ever so quietly, and he smiled and nodded. He had lost a lot of that gutty weight from not eating for about three weeks during the whole nightmare. He was lean, his handsome face much different without that pudge. He was irresistible to her.

"I am alive again," he told her. "I have changed in some conscious way."

"I know," and she did know.

Bourn out of chaos an emerging chrysalis, a large bird leaping out of the foul dust. They sipped sweet sherry and lay down on the king-size bed with satin sheets and immaculate comfort. They slept for a good while like cosmic outlaws, healing themselves whether they knew it or not. They awoke together.

A husband and wife had concocted all the while that they would endure the tragedy as it had unfurled on national television. Round the clock it was a private screening for everyone, glued to the large screen television which once had shown LSU highlights.

"Honey," Harrison said before she bounded down the stairs, "I've got to take a life affirming walk."

She smiled and looked at him.

"How long will you be gone?"

"A day."

"What?" she quizzed, and then nodded.

"I think you are going to walk a good ways."

"I will be back in the morning. It's just something I've got to do."

"Well, go ahead and walk, but please be careful."

"Remember I found that extra biological suit from one of the army reserves guys. And I will be back in the morning."

"Now where exactly are you going?"

"I am going to go downtown, maybe walk through Spanish town, by the Governor's Mansion, past the State Capitol, take a walk over the Mississippi River . . ."

"Is this one of those time you talked about?"

"Let me assure you, one of these times has only been around since we entered the Middle Ages, darling."

"Just be careful, Ricky."

"I'll be wearing a spacesuit. Why, do you want me to carry a weapon?"

"Well, you heard those creepy reports." She brushed her hair with her hand. Her lips moved ever so sensuously, without her knowing just how sexy she was. She was as always a knockout, and she was his. As long as he didn't go flaky on her. Was she just with him because of all this? Was this whole plaque here for his benefit? He was crazy or something. But how long could he have gone on feeling sorry for himself? He in his ambivalent way, was slowing killing himself with lifting bourbon-puffed melancholia. It looked beautiful in the movies but it wouldn't wash in real life. Besides, it didn't feel that fun at the time. It was awful, he realized.

"Okay, I'll find a gun somewhere. There ought to be a pawn shop that will accommodate me."

"That's looting."

"Honey, this whole town is one big super mall giveaway until the folks come back. They won't see me, so they won't shoot me. I've never stole anything in my life. But the worm has turned."

"Hello, Ricky," Dr. Perill said. He was reading a book on John Ford.

"Hey, Dr. Perill. Everybody."

The folks were lounging around. They were putting away the best of a couple of fifths of gin, smoothly mixed with tonic water. There was a fix-it-yourself sandwich buffet going over there by the kitchen; cold cuts, deli meats, dijon mustard and mayonnaise. Kendra made a monster sandwich and bit into it.

"So Kendra, when do we take our next shot?" Dr. Mary Hart, the ex-hippie-turned-computer-science guru asked.

"I think it will be tomorrow or the next day. I've already been told by the medical staff at Oschners once they got my serum, that we can go get some more at Lady of the Lake. I'm going tomorrow morning. They improved it a little than what I had."

"But is there a chance that the second shot won't be as effective?"

"Well, yes."

The room which had been relaxed and chatty was suddenly palled over with quiet.

"I'm going to be back tomorrow morning, about noon or before," Ricky said.

"Going to take that walk, huh?" Mr. Roth, the calculus bum said, pleasantly.

Mr. Roth was that peculiar species of faculty at a huge campus, known as that calculus and differential equations\linear algebra dharma bum. Known for their shabby appearance of oversized knit shirt and belly gut. Unshaven and that mystical look of freedom accorded bums, with topsiders or some other bumshoes. If they did not possess vast mathematical quantities of theorems, trig and 3 dimensional integrals, they would be rifling through dumpsters looking for scraps. A paycheck and professional tennis matches on television and a couple cases of beer to get them through midterms until the more inferior students dropped out. That was all they needed, aside from fast food and an occasional wank on the pud or talking a grad assistant with manageable breasts to perform Avogadro's number worth of sexual perversity upon them. Before they would again sink down into that pathos that was marked solidly upon all men who knew too much for their own good.

"Yes, sir, I'll phone from the governor's mansion if I am in trouble. And y'all just send over a jeep or something to get me out of harm's way."

Dr. Perill snickered. That smile that was worn many times from viewing great Stanley Kubrick movies, Robert Altmann and Peckinpah ventures.

"Just don't become some noon meal for a Night of the Living Dead reject," He said balmily as the gin was making him more charming than the absence of gin made him bitchy like Kenneth Tynan or mean like Peckinpah many times. Recovering Alcoholic for 8 years until all his friends died off, and he's back on the sauce. But unusually tolerable, like a zombie given audible life force, back into the social world again.

As Harrison exited from the Tudor House, the stifling aroma of carnal fodder hit him hard. It was quiet, dark as he walked down the wide parade grounds. The music building across the flat, the law building on the other side, the bell tower looming like an ominous monument. He grabbed a couple of 12 ounce beers from the Death Valley Shell store. Past the vacant ghost of the Varsity Revival house. He swigged back the beers. The familiar winery carbonation sweetly tasted in his palette. There were Army vehicles parked in obtrusive lots. In the distance he heard fire engines. Sirens of city police busting zombie ass, sheriff' deputies given free license to kick black hiney, and target practice to boot.

Harrison walked down Highland, past the White Horse Tavern, which had long ago changed to Shenanigans. An Irish misnomer that was once polluted with frat trash and coed meat. Next to it, the Brass Rail had indeed gone through it's assortment of silly misnomers also.

Now he was at once frozen in time, thinking back on one hand to the mid to late seventies. Traversing forward in time to these perils, to bars with unknown names. Cadavers stacked up really neatly. The refineries were to his left from Highland, over the River and blazing like nuclear bombs gone off. The fires had been constantly lighting that horizon that still couldn't be checked by the vast numbers of corporate thugs trying to save their million dollar chemistry sets. Melting down into that stuff of which they made telephones.

He thought about Kendra, his blond dream come true. She might actually love him. Not back then when the world was on its ass, but now still.

She was now truly a real identity to him. Not just a transient image of remembrance. Not just a goddess implanted from the first night he met her with Juan in the Chimes Bar when it was still normal. Just the fringe before the big meltdown, where he saw the punk rockers playing poolhall billiards whilst on Acid, he had a taste for her. Unthinkable to the Old Harrison once unfettered by a real live woman; he had wanked himself via tattered Playboy centerfolds. Images of ethereal fantasy, not a three dimensional babe who was slowly cleaving to him. And he was . . . hell, he was getting his life back. So why did he have to look around, and see about fifty corpses lined up prettily in a row by the Baskin and Robbins mausoleum there in the parking lot? Why did he have to walk by Joe Delpit's Chicken shack only to see smashed cars, shattered windows. Remnants of rioting? Why was he endangering himself upon hearing shots coming from Roosevelt street.

Now his eyes were filled with an ambiguous mix of joy and sadness: joy from rollicking around with his new-found goddess, sadness regarding this plague. He sighted the projects as he trudged further down Highland Road, near the defunct television station up on the hill, Channel Two of this hillbilly paddock. There were some looters off to the right, busting into a defunct liquor store, helping themselves.

They heard him approach. With a stunned, dazed and confused look upon their faces strode towards him about like Festus on Gunsmoke. Wait a minute, he thought. That central nervous kick to their walk . . . only one thing . . .

ZOMBIES! He ran past them. They stumbled after him. He easily outran them. They gave up. No noon meal for them! He paused and huffed away out of shape. You see, he thought to himself. You have long since became an old man. What was it Joe Taylor had said to him? "See that guy? He's already an old man."

Did he realize that he could have been pulled apart like a human pinyata? Look out of every corner. You know, there's still time to turn around and go back. But no, he had something to prove.

He kept the intrepid journey going. Past government Street, past North Boulevard, into that lawyer crypt that downtown had become. He hooked a right to the interstate entrance, up onto that concrete rise.

The sight was magnificent. How many times can you walk down the interstate on purpose and walk right onto that high rise exit like a roller coaster. And walk way up above the Mississippi River, on that monstrosity, the bridge? He was straddling the epic poem now. A peace and utter absolution came over him as he scanned the raging infernos of Dow Chemical, Exxon, the pyrrhic wonders of kaiser aluminum. Smelling all that coffee burning at the Community Coffee plant by the Port Allen locks of the Intercostal waterway.

Someone had to start those fires. A lot of these chemical plants just didn't start by themselves. They were put into some sort of holding pattern, a stasis. So maybe these villagers of the damned were smarter after all? They had some overriding knowledge to do some harm. He saw fire engines run by. Huge diesels and men staring at him. Just a child here on top of the miracle dictum of the Bridge. Looking down, not oven thinking about jumping. This was perhaps his epiphonal moment, a manic spiraling crescendo crashing about in his sensibilities. He was virtually alone for all purposes, in the dark but lit evening. The city all but abandoned. That is, until the good natives came back, which they had already started doing. That inoculation was good for so long, they were told, the medical intelligentsia had told them don't come back! The viral poison is still active. Until that final cure could be found, you could still die! Still die! And yet they were starting to come back. Like lemmings he thought, as he thought he could be such a thing himself. He would have jumped right then, if he hadn't met Kendra.

He scanned the Baton Rouge junkheart, the few high rise structures and the old buildings. He tried to imagine it a hundred years ago, during Reconstruction.

So what was to happen in this maelstrom? Would he get a posse together? A medical team? A green beret crack troop division? Where were those multitudes of redneck sheriff's deputies and state troopers and city cops when the real crime was going down? At home in some internment camp in Tylertown, Mississippi watching the Cotton Bowl, in Natchez getting their wicks dipped at Nellie's whorehouse? There were only so many 24 hour stretches of watching CNN one could stand! He couldn't stay cooped up in that grad school colony forever.

He scanned the horizon, the ships still passing through down below. Hundreds of feet below as he, clown prince once again, walking huge pipes at Exxon refinery.

"So, what did your discriminating eye see?" Kendra said.

"Sweetie, I was standing there, looking at the vast ruins. Edified remains of Baton Rouge, industrial city, lain to waste. I was on the Bridge."

"It's not that far. I roamed around the river road underneath the risers. Then I walked back onto the I-110, and walked up the steppes to heaven's gate."

"You're so poetic!" she said. She walked up to him and hugged him. The CNN new channel was rattling on and on this "National Crisis. The horrid situation." That was about right. He smiled at her.

"Some Zombies almost got me. I could have been a noon meal in leui of some poor Labrador Retriever."

"No crud?" Her face went slack.

"Honey, don't you ever do that again," she lightly smacked him.

He kissed her radiant face, those animated lips drenched in utter sensuality. She was a godsend! That brown face, those blue eyes. That perfectness, the utter precision of this veritable queen. She put all others to shame. And she loves ME, LOVES ME!, he thought. He still hadn't hit ground yet.

"Can we make love before we pack?" Ricky said.

"Come on honey, I already packed . . ," she smiled at him again. He let go of her and looked at the suitcases they had borrowed.

"We packed?"

"Yes Mr. Harrison!" she said with shining resolution. She really wanted to get the hell out of the maelstrom, the hallucinogenic hayride. Baton Rouge, the smoking pit.

"Let's go Kendra, little cutie wootie darling baby wabey, oinkie boo."

"You know. You've got devilish sarcasm."

"Now look honey, I was just clowning . . ."

"No, I don't mean it in a bad way. You are so brilliantly clever but have no common sense. You navigate by emotion. You probably had a girlfriend once that said you had a mean streak." She smiled. The brown woods of the room shined, the sunset backdrop. The filtered autumn, the huge parade grounds out there, the chiming of the Campanile bell tower like a lighthouse, a beacon to find their way back in the blackness.

"You know why I have the mean streak?"

"No. What's the matter? You look. . . don't get upset." "Wait," she said.

He choked back between breaths. He sobbed. Tears welled up in his eyes. He was unhinged, that rubbery face like he got at his mother Marlene's funeral.

"You're mother dying?"

"Ah, (sniff)," He wiped his eyes, the moisture warm and she reached there and wiped them and held his face in her hands tenderly.

"What is it?" He gushed forth:

"My brother's, is . . . Dead!," he cried and held on to her. She tried to sooth him.

"How did that happen darling?"

"That's terrible" she continued. She stroked his hair, his blonde straw like Robert Redford. That beautiful face of his was all contorted, long anguished face.

"He refused to take the inoculation. I called my sister before I came to see you."

"It's going to be okay, darling . . ," over and over to him. He got himself back to normal, a great relief evident on his countenance. His eyes dry, not red and wet, his handsome face back the way it was.

They went down and greeted the coterie, the Colony of Brilliance. Dr. Parril had managed to find on WGN Chicago, Stanley Kubricks' "Path's of Glory."

They had their suitcases, borrowed from Mary Hart, the philosopher turned Computer sensible woman. What anarchy she once had was now replaced with kindness; a great bridge across the chasm of her atheistic nihilism. It was a wonder what her newborn son had on her manifestos. The parlor socialism, the hippie outback, the Abbie Hoffman Whole Earth Catalog; destroyed every scintilla. She was now spoon feeding the child in swaddling cloth and designer diapers, some strained carrots.

They took the Volvo Turbo Coupe out of LSU, onto the interstate, across the bridge wherefore was spawned the epiphanic moment where Harrison had lost himself in the brilliancies of revelations. Lost all sensation of time, and now driving right by the exact spot where he had seen the undulating belly of the river. The barges floating like monsters patiently waiting. Kendra lay back in the passenger seat.

Ricky headed down highway 1 with his full time night woman, the squaw that he packed that he must have found in a Vogue Catalog. A statuesque piece of work, her eyes closed for the nonce. They went through Thibodeaux, Golden Meadow. The nightfall sky met the crashing surf of another grand arabesque of the Gulf of Mexico.

Chapter Forty Two

The shrimp boats were coming in. The porpoise were gliding in and out of the water. The fish nets, shrimp nets like draperies hung out to dry. The vast array of camps built on stilts commanding the ocean to strike them down. The beach was empty. The moon above, the same quaalude moon of 1978 where the whole episode which was Harrison's documented remembrances. Karrie Kilshaw naked and pristine white matched against jet black raven haired siren. Kendra sound asleep in that elegantly feminine but powerful look about her, striking.

"Honey, wake up. We're here." She lifted her pouty face up as he put the gold Volvo in park. The radio off where came out Faure's requiem with Mexican skewed radio waves skittering from a ways further down the globe of man. She woke up. The camp of Dr. Peterson, the etymologist professor was in front of them.

They climbed the wooden steps in the raised camp. Underneath the camp was a nice looking ski boat, and a variety of garden hoses.

They settled in, sitting together on the porch. The sound of the surf crashing against the wet sandy beach was lulling them into a rhythm.

Kendra had that ill repose upon her smooth features. Something had been bottled up in her disposition, and she could hide it only so long.

Harrison wondered what was going on with her those last few days. She had been back and forth from the Faculty House to the Biochemistry building. For her trouble, she could almost win the Nobel prize or something.

The waves came ceaselessly from way out there where blinking oil rigs beacons stood miles away. The clouds were silhouetted by the moonbright enlarged moon. It was dream-stuff them being here, away from the pit. But what was that extra mental baggage she was carrying around? Was it him? They swung in slow ease on the wooden porch swing, mesmerized by the immediate sedateness, and then she spoke.

"There is no permanent cure." She winced a couple of times.

"What?" He looked at her in the absence of lighting.

"There is no vaccine. We are all dead."

"So how do you know?" Ricky asked, scanning again the beacons from the oil rigs like it was West Egg across from Gatsby.

"I just know. Believe me."

"Is that what had been on your mind?" he asked.

"Yes. Wouldn't you be kind of under?" and she gestured wildly with her hands. The silky blonde hair on her brown tanned arms was what he noticed.

Then he looked up to her face; those lips glossed with pink screw-me lipstick.

They sat there somber, silent. The bad news sinking into Ricky Harrison, absorbing it all. The waves crashed silently onto the beach, the wind bristled through the screen. That open sea air was the only thing invigorating. Kendra took his hand and they sat there for hours.

A shorter life, what a bad hand Almighty God had dealt from the bottom of the deck. Holding that hole card in his sleeve hem, calling their bluff. Unoriginal behavior from a better thought-of Being, how thoughtless was His plan.

And so the folks came back to roost, to the soil that they owned in their triple mortgages, where one could think about the oil crunch again, to reclaim their heritage. The traffic was building. The roads were bumper to bumper. It wasn't dead souls anymore; there was animation, movement, social clashes to be had. The Volvos, pickup trucks, college pricks, mothers and fathers who felt it was a race to get back to see if their houses in the suburbs were still there. They did not know that where would not be another chance against this disease malady.

Chapter Forty Four

Ricky Harrison and Kendra Hoerst were having the biggest Mr. and Mrs. argument at the Gulf camp on stilts. Arabesqued ululating waves of water crashed, oblivious to the arguments.

"You quit blaming yourself! I don't care what your brother did to you!" Kendra yelled, that whiskey tenor lightening a bit.

"You don't even know me! Maybe I am not good enough for you! I learned to live with negative thinking! My own brother locked himself in my mothers house and didn't say a word to me for 11 years like I was a Hasidic Jew!"

"Look! My parents divorced! My father had triple bypass surgery! I had boyfriends who looked like they were in the punk rock movement. I took Ecstacy and did whatever those guys told me! Do you want to know where they are now?" she said, steaming and her talons extended.

"Where?"

"Let's just say Billy called me from jail, using his one phone call!"

"Well, it looks like I did it again!" she said. He walked outside, down the stairs and headed to the beach. Kendra just sat there, drinking a maverick screwdriver. She turned on the TV.

She discerned something from a scientific report about the ongoing traumas mounting ever higher and a special report from Johns Hopkins specialists.

She watched with amazement. Inklings of, scintillas of understanding crept into her through that hugely arrogant shroud of hate that had developed within her. Knowledge earned.

She whisked down the stairs in her bikini. That bronzed body trudged, almost skipped onto the sandy beach. The night air hit her; that moon above remained censorious to the situation delineated like a bad dream. She found Harrison sitting by a shrimp boat docked. The crab nets were laid out to dry. The smell of sea water was salty with a slight funk that came with it.

"I know what the problem is!" Kendra said. She came over to him and kissed him. He was simply gorgeous. Not eating for a couple weeks had sweated all that baby fat off him.

"What was the problem?"

"I just saw CNN reporting from the medical teams. It's our dopamine little boxes being crumpled . . .!"

"What?"

"Have you ever heard of the cherry high?" she asked, smiling through her obvious pain.

"Uh." he said and stroked her brown arms with that wisp of golden hair on her lithe but strong aryan arms.

"See? When somebody shoots heroin, or snorts coke, their little inductor box in their brain is crumpled up badly. You see, all our lives, inside our brains, we are drug free. And we have these little sensitive boxes in there that take dopa signals. But if we take a strong drug, that little box gets crumpled. And that is the cherry high, that we will never fell again as long as we live. Because it stays crumpled, no matter how much cocaine we snort we won't get that cherry high back."

"Okay." Harrison said. His blonde hair was fluffed and feathered by the cool sweet sea breezes coming in from the Gulf Stream far away, where past those blinking oil rig lights men navigated by box compass.

"This screwing disease of the plague, it has been known to attack the nervous system. Remember when you showed up at the Biochemistry building? You had trouble walking straight? Hunched over? Well part of that paralysis was the dopamine. The zombies roaming around Baton Rouge are on this constant high. They have been succumbed very badly, which you and I only got a taste of, poison. And they can actually get that sensation of a cherry high over and over again. It's a medical miracle!"

"Some miracle!" he said.

"And the reason we are so mad is we are experiencing that withdrawal from this sugary high of plaque poison. We didn't become zombies. But I think they estimate people all over the place have been arguing a lot more than normal, perhaps even killing each other!"

"That's right. The news teams did say that a whole bunch of crazy things. Murders have been taking place!"

"So thank God we weren't in the last throes like that."

"What do we do?"

"We've got to go back there. There's too much at stake to be sitting around here like it's spring break."

They got up, dusted the sand off each other, and walked back hand in hand. His arm was around her brown shoulder. Her figure beckoned him through his anger suppressed from the reverse cherry high. They packed and got in the car and took off, heading back up to the Pit. The Maelstrom, dark wherein the grave my friend is laid. The hellishness of Pyrahus.

Chapter Forty Five

At the Old State Capitol where armies of doctors, medical staffers, television media hounds, reporters, the buzzword was "hatred Syndrome." Doctor Thompson released his sound bite regarding the strange phenomena of hating one's neighbor with ensuing adeptness and uncalled-for reasoning. It was ephemeral hate-spreading without a permit, coming out of nowhere like St. Elmo's Fire.

Doctor Thompson was a character; tweed jacket, smoking Luckies, long face, eyes not lined up too good.

"So what you're saying is that this plague has a side effect of making people hate their neighbor? Enough to kill them?" the female reporter for the New Orleans Times Picayune said, answering her own question.

"Well, perhaps a loathing with an intensity unparalleled in the history of the human race . . ," Thompson remarked, putting out his 15th unfiltered cigarette and looking rather absentmindedly like a sui generis brilliant genius.

"Uh, right . . ," she said. He looked around, bored already. Ready to move on to another algorithm to solve. He loved solving algorithmic perplexes.

"So all these acts of violence, murders within families, squabbles out there in the streets between looters and army soldiers, are because their nervous system if attacked. And instead of supposedly making them semi-paralyzed, it makes them get pissed off?"

"As you see . . ."

She looked at a rundown short list of murders within the last month. 589 altogether, at least those were the ones discovered.

"And these zombie rumors? They are the final stage of this disorder?"

Ah, the zombies. His little children of discovery. A new order of science. The first actual transcendence of man to a truly ennoble animalistic stage. Man at his most basic best. Or bestial.

"Well, we don't call them zombies. They are after all good people who have been and the whole matter is being studied quite thoroughly."

"What do you see happening to this scenario now? Escaped prisoners from Angola, everyone of them loose! Two or three break into the River Bend Facility. Lots of radiation leakage. They still haven't determined how much poisonous waste and radiation has been emitted, now wafting in and out of various parishes. This one, for one . . ."

"Madam, I realize the situation doesn't look good." He sighed.

." . . Look good?! Your people tell us that the initial serum vaccination is no good anymore. A more specific one has to be targeted to the ever changing diseases and maladies. The different stages . . ."

She looked miffed.

" . . . We've got more of the gentry back in their own houses. All miraculously cured at first in those army cot villages set up in Texas and Mississippi. But we couldn't keep them there. They thought they were cured so they've all come back home to roost. Except that the bacilli has landed on its feet again. Changed course, throwing you guys a curve. In the suburbs, convicts are murdering little boys and girls. Looters are still looting. The refineries are blazing away. People are murdering each other because of some scientific reaction . . ."

"Yes." Thompson said.

"Well, what could be worse than that?"

"I don't know. How about if we can't come up with the accurate enough serum this time?"

"Are you joking around about this, Doctor? If you are I will hand my editor a story that says something you boys in white won't like at all . . ."

"Perhaps you wouldn't lay on the threats so thickly if you weren't yourself affected with that pseudo zombie stage where the hatred just starts to seep into your head. Remember, you've got to fight it."

She didn't know what to say.

"That's all I've got to say. We are talking about a cure within the weeks."

"Permanent?"

"No."

Chapter Forty Six

Kendra and Ricky tooled along Louisiana Highway 1 when they heard over the radio again what Kendra had gleaned from CNN.

"I told you. People have been murdering their neighbors and loved ones . . ." Harrison smiled. They found that stoking themselves on antidepressants like valium, methadiazapan in the low 100 milligrams helped.

Outside the starkness of winter in the swampland was evident. That cool crisp air injected up from the Gulf Stream swept down from the arctic regions. The cypresses, oaks, pines, birches were all about, earth tones. The little highway was last added on during the Huey Long Administration. The couple of feet on either side to widen what was once narrow enough for model A fords, or buggy horse carriages. But for now they were spiriting along in the borrowed Volvo Station Wagon.

The radio once again bleating out news like the war torn situation it was: " . . . River Bend nuclear plant had a semi severe leakage due to sabotage by Angola prisoners Thursday evening. One man was killed, Richard Johnson of Springfield, Louisiana. Engineers and scientists managed to stop the damage and stifle the leakage. Environmental Quality Department officials are in an uproar over this; what is perhaps the worst US nuclear accident since Three Mile Island and could perhaps be worse than the Russian Chernobyl accident in 1988."

Kendra slapped the dashboard in anger.

"I can't screwing believe it. We are in worse shape now than when the actual plaque hit!"

"Come on! You're exaggerating." Harrison said, stroking her left thigh. They flew down through Thibodeaux, Golden Meadow, in the night shrouding them in that mysteriousness of this age of apocalypses. So this is what if feels like to be in an Ingmar Bergman movie? To be any creature trapped in the emulsion of some terrible existence. To be preyed upon little creatures of the universe?

They made it finally to the grand mansion on campus, rounding the curve amidst the armed incursion of army trucks. It seemed, Kendra noticed, that the army bastards were starting to bring in more troops? Why? Was there a big slumber party going to happen? Was there going to be a row? A war?

They fell asleep in each other's arms upstairs in their lovely drawing room. Not exactly from the blaming antidepressants but to their bearing witness to the new age of disillusioned dark ages, the pandemic super bowl, perhaps.

"My own brother-in-law's a screwin' zombie!" Buster raved. In the paneled den Buster Collins was a bit frustrated.

"All those sheriff's deputies are gonna get to the bottom of this here Zombie crap!"

The television flashed bluish white patterns about the dimly lit Collins home in Zachary. 'Nuclear plant done pissed in its pants, green. Are we in hell? When did we arrive?', Buster thought.

His better half was in the kitchen trying to stay away from Buster when he got like this. She was making Red Beans and rice with minced garlic, soaked beans, onions, hot Manda sausage, peppercorns, celery. The aroma wafted throughout the rather modest but comfortable collective suburban home in one of those way-the-hell-out-in-nowhere developments. Where your neighbor was a nice guy but his screwin bad ass kids killed your kid's cat, threw it against your front door. Beat up your second son so bad for no reason. Making his life hell in a despicable way. What would a man like Buster Collins do? He shot their dog for rooting around in his tomato and corn garden.

"Honey, get me another Milwaukee's Best." Buster said. He switched from the rampant coverage of a radioactive cloud invisibly soaking into him and his wife and family over to "The Fall Guy" just to see that wiggling woman, from Bimbo Central.

'My own Goddamn Brother-in law!', Buster thought. The screwer never did have no sense. Kept talking about the Love of Christ. Crud! The only sign of anything good last year. Scanning Lawrence Welk show reruns to get the drop shot on the womanhood slung all over that big TV. Sure, once in awhile a good Steve Seagal movie would cone on. As far as Kicks to the Head go, that was one of the best! But his screwing religious brother in law kept telling him to go with him to get laying hands on at Reverend Jenkins ministry. Bullcrud! He wasn't gonna pay for Jenkins whorehouse bill down in New Orleans. Just because he looked like he was crying and having holy business personally on TV, but that was just the whiskey sweating out of the screwin loser-bird.

"Now honey, we don't know for sure that Michael is actually in one of those zombie towns."

"Now you know that Brenda told you that Michael done finally lost his mind, even with them schizo drugs. He started gettin' bad again, hearing voices. She said he saw him heading down by the sewage ditches and treatment plant down by Thompson creek. Where the closest zombie village is to us . . ."

"Now honey, that's just a rumor. We don't know if their really is zombie villages around."

Buster emitted a beefy burp after sucking back that beer. The radiation was penetrating his brain and right in his own living room.

"You and me know the Sheriffs, police, and state troopers are fixing to have an all out screwin war. And we know there's one in Devil's Swamp, Thompson Creek, Comite River, Spanish Lake, and God knows where else."

"And it don't look good. They still ain't got a cure. And the screwin' nuclear plant is leaking radiation. And we gotta sit here and soak it up cause we are all gonna die if they don't find that screwin cure serum!" Buster said. The "Fall Guy" theme was blaring and he clicked his fingers to the groovy sounds.

"Well, we should worry about your brother-in-law," his wife said. She brought him some red beans and cornbread.

"Screwim . . ," Buster said. "Goddamn Christian schizophrenic Psycho!"

A commercial for River Bend environmental bullcrud blasted forth before he could lose himself in "The Fall Guy" again.

"You're not a Rigelian Ass," Mike Alonzo said to the little dude at the Mr. Gatti's on Essen and Perkins, where the Star Trekkies Club and Fandom Association met every Monday. Yes, the city was thriving, inundated, with kids as well as their parents, regardless of the perilous times.

"Quit talking Bizarro universe language," said the little Dungeons and Dragons sucker.

"I am going to stuff a hundred-sided gaming die down your Kelvin throat, if you don't roll the screwing dice."

Claude Parish was just coming in from the T-Shirt painting spree that was his job. At Cortana Mall, where the cops and security people were trying to get windows and plate glass put back. To repair the damage the looters did during the dark ages, not long ago.

"Hello Denebian Slime Devil!" Alonzo said. He lifted his right hand and parted his fingers in half like the Vulcan peace sign.

"Eat it Luke Skywalker's lesbian mother!" Claude said. His inane grin spread all over his face. They were perhaps in arrested development; constantly quizzing each other on which Star Trek episode their trivia could connect to. . .

"'I am Brahms'. . . by Spock."

"The Lazarus episode, written by Jerome Bixby, who is a science fiction writer. He had Spock playing the harpsichord in that episode. He wrote . . ."

"Uh, 'The Holes Around Mars'," Alonzo said. He whipped his head back to the little nimbus creep who was dribbling all over the Cult world gaming table. The pizza was getting worse tasting by the minute.

On the big screen were CNN reports of the nuclear disaster.

"If they would use Dilithiam Crystals, we wouldn't be going breasts up!" Claude said.

"That's okay," Alonzo said. He rolled the die and gave the little dungeonmaster a Three Stooges fingerpoke. The kid flinched annoyingly.

"What?" Claude said. He stuffed a pizza slice down his mouth and then zoomed the slice around the room like it was a starfighter piercing the atmosphere after successfully fighting Darth Vader on the Death Star.

"Act your age. What do you think? You got your vulcan ears in that unfortunate accident with a mechanical ricepicker as a child?" Alonzo quipped once again.

These barrages were the touchstone of the fun of loving "Detective," "Daredevil," "Batman," "Marvel universe," "DC" crap, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." Showing up at Science Fiction conventions with actual samurai swords and decking some punks in the Hucksters room.

"I know that episode. "The City on the Edge of Forever," where Joan Collins plays a social worker in the ghetto. The nazi's get the A Bomb built before us. And Spock builds memory banks out of old radio tubes. . ."

"Yeah. That was easy. Besides, Gene Roddenberry wrote it for him I heard. They had everybody dead in the first 10 minutes."

"That's bullcrud!"

"Besides, haven't you heard, Pencil neck? That the Zombies versus the Sheriff's Department, all the cops and state troopers are going to have some serious warfare in a day or two?"

The little kid looked at Alonzo. For that was the first serious thing Alonzo said.

The kid asked, "is that true? My older brother says we are not going to get that serum in time. And we are gonna die too. And I heard it hurts when you die slowly from this disease."

"That's Rigelian hogcrud, punk!" Alonzo said. "Do you think we would be here playing babysitter for a booger-eating Martian like you if we were gonna die? They said they have already come up with it, and we are gonna get inoculated again. And this time it's for good and we don't have to leave."

"Well, what about the screwin' H-Bomb cloud of radiation that we are in?" the punk asked, moving through the Dungeons and Dragons country in his mind's eye.

"Well, do you mind crudting glow in the dark Lego blocks for the rest of your miserable life?"

"Screw you, Alonzo."

"I know you are but what are I?" Alonzo said, resuming Bizarro universe tactics.

The next morning Patricia Morton brought her son Brandon home from the hospital. The little yuppie whose born days were heralded as yuppie endured as though he were a japanese royal subject. Brandon had radiation poisoning.

"Mommy," Brandon said. "Daddy's gonna fight the evil zombies, huh?"

He sat in the back seat of the Turbo 240 Volvo Sedan, with a gristly 'Happy meal' Burger from McDonald's laid to waste aside the plastic icons of transformers that were perplexing puzzles. Interchanging from jet to robot, car to robot, water to wine. Comic books could have been Byzantine frescos from ancient times. Patricia felt somehow her life was crumbing invisibly. The very backbone of her life as a yuppie mother doting away. She could now envision her little six-year-old son Brandon dying within the next few months. Perfectly fine children succumbing . . .

"What dear?" she said. The cassette player was singing away Fischer Price's greatest hits. Her mind shut away from the hurt, her husband, the lawyer. A recovered cocaine addict. AA meetings attended faithfully by them with other promising yuppies who went astray from the boredom of neighborhood birthday parties and arrivals of yuppie offspring. To wild orgiastic wantonness: snorting parties off beveled mirrors, finest crystal holding devil's brew, Johnny Walker Red. Enough of those and that cute little wife of Bill down the street suddenly started making little striptease motions and pulling you off into the empty child's bedroom, where you could fool around while your wife is next door in the bedroom. Going down on your golf partner while the Caddyshack party in the den was turning into a modern day orgy. Home video cameras previously used to document yuppie offspring, were now used to make pivotal mise en scene' porno with all the cuddly yuppie mothers going down on the young urban professionals who wanted something more. Then that cocaine started messing up. Apologies and embarrassments down at the Jean Vienny Catholic Church amid the flying gossip of the parish. And you find you and your sexy spouse bent over a cup of coffee and Alcoholics all round the tables in a circle talking about how much they craved alcohol and how they could be joyful, happy and free if they just followed those 12 steps. And got so sober they wanted to kill each other in the same of the Serenity prayer and God and man.

So now her son Brandon was very sick. And her husband had resorted to snorting again off bevelled mirrors. And the finely-constructed world had been destroyed and everyone was running around in shock. The world according to law partners and dentists down the street was unknown anymore. And she would witness the last days subject to the final heaving of their kids that they had bought gifts and preened and nursed and babied and spoiled. Only to have them die like mangy dogs only had a right to.

"Mommy. Daddy is going with all his friends, all the policemen in the world? To fight the monsters? Huh, mommy?" His feverish feeble voice crying out like a wolf pup lift alone in the tundra to scrounge around for mice. Like Bambi without a mother. Like Dumbo without his mother. Like Little Foot the dinosaur in "The Land Before Time"; like Fiefal the Jewish mouse corked up in a bottle in the Atlantic basin.

She couldn't take it anymore. She had to scream. No, her son needed her. She wanted to be close to him, to hug him. She knew he couldn't die!

"Yes, darling, Daddy's going to fight the monsters." And she made that turn into Brentwood Estates, the home of after work coke parties, Caddyshack orgies, and sex videos with the other primevals in the tribe or clan. Each nice white collar house that left no indication that White Trash could afford to buy their way into the subdivision. All those Wal-Mart Shoppers and Denham Springs imitations. But now she would gladly live in the crudtiest little backwoods trailer and consent to be sodomized by the grizzliest toothless cracker. If only she could wangle a deal with the Devil. Like maybe Satan is a realtor with Century 21. Or perhaps hell was really a very nice but tortuous shopping mall that one could not escape. If she could sell her soul so her yuppie flesh offspring could live to score his first piece of little yuppie girlfriend ass. Run off to Europe, a junior partner in Granddad's law firm. Or finish school and begin to assume a lethargic lifestyle of scanning womanhood at the elite golf course. Cheat on his beautiful sorority formed wife, and get a paunch from lite wine coolers and too many trips to the Virgin Islands.

But Brandon would be that incongruity of an unfulfilled life. He would die within three months and die without being formed, grow into adulthood. A small expensive coffin for the best yuppie roadkill. She turned into the driveway and cursed River Bend Nuclear Plant and all the screwing chemistry sets of the gods. The refineries and waste treatment plants that dotted the landscape across that now shoddy brine River of Death.

Chapter Forty Seven

John Ed got the police boys, the sheriff's deputies, the elite cavaliers of the mighty blue Louisiana Troop A State Troopers. And every veteran of the last three wars together for the biggest, kickiest crudfight. Teen rumble between the homeboys and the Zombies.

It was Wednesday night, a very important night. There had been numerous mysterious burglaries. Actual cannibalizations by zombies of blue collar couples in their own beds. Kids kidnapped and brought into the tunnels and swamps never to be seen from again. Baton Rouge wasn't gonna sit too long for that kind of bullcrud to slide from some no good communist outsiders coming in and doing their thing.

They never saw so many Jeep Cherokees, Dodge Caravans, Chevy and Ford double-axled pickups. Mean-looking men who hadn't been this riled since Guadalcanal or Pearl harbor. These men slung big shotguns on their shoulders. Their heavy coats were filled with rounds and shells. There were catahoula hounds and police dogs wagging their tails from the K-9 units, ready to go sniff out monsters. There were vested state troopers with death stares into the starry landscape. Ready to commit swat tactics and basically blast their way in and out. No prisoners. They even got some free hand grenades from the ROTC boys for good measure.

There were five pillboxes and nests as far as they knew, at least that were that important. The rest could go crud in an Easter bonnet; they weren't the real targets. A good bit of these infernal thugs had alleged shake-a-pudding for brains. Walking around with soiled Calvin designer briefs and blood in their once coiffed hairdos. They couldn't necessarily see straight and of course could not render one amp of logical reasoning. Unsentient devils. But there were active combat type members: those that actively sought out victims to bring back once killed. To feed them to the seamy pits of mutated snakes these unfortunates. They knew these creatures were once productive members, but once they were touched, it spread and all was lost.

They were going to hit the Atchafalaya Basin. The lime-green foam gelatin by Gross Tete. Those boys took off for across the river long ago. Then there was a unit of Zachary veterans that showed up for a briefing of the good old boys. Then off to Thompson's Creek. Then the Comite drainage ditches. The Amite River filled with whopping egg sacs of burgeoning monsters.

The men had flame throwers. Many carried plenty of coleman fuel, kerosene and plenty of gallons of unleaded Texaco from Cracker Barrels along the way. Donated free by every Acknahd and Mohammed holyman from the moslem temple that each store had become. The wives stayed behind, hoping that their husbands would come out in one piece without losing the arm, leg or at least with a face. They shuddered at the stories that wafted throughout the downed lines of communication.

At the Worldwide Ministries of Reverend Jimmie Lee Jenkins, there were four lay secretaries in bed in the upper prayer chamber with a heavy set man who got that way from imbibing the grape once too often.

"Come over here, baby, come do stuff to me . . ." Jimmie Lee said. The pretty woman leaned her head over and began sucking away, as if she had a bit more of that Jack Daniels into a Chalice that he had been given from some poor sumbitch.

The women laughed, writhing around as a slide show presentation regarding the plague was fraught upon the wall in the cloistered den of iniquity.

"Now don't suck it too hard, woman!" Jimmie Lee said. He nudged Brother Dodson who was also being serviced by a woman who had a great deal of faith. But ever since Brother Jimmie Lee and Brother Dodson had slipped a Micky Finn into her cocktail she was bouncing up and down on them in a whole month of Sundays! Praise be!

"Now, none of these whores is gonna get us into some kinda . . . whatcha call it? . . . a scandal?"

"Screw no, brother Dodson. I threatened to kill em if they did something like that."

"Brother Jimmie Lee, you wouldn't do nothing like et, would ya?" Brother Dodson said. His paunch hung out, quivering with every delectable swallow of his manhood by this crazy woman, a downright whore. Jimmie Lee was just a squeezing the life out a these big set of titties in his face. He put one in his ear, and one in his mouth and tried to dial Tokyo.

"Looka this, Brother Dodson! Haalloo? Hallo? Who is this?" Of course this woman's breasts were not electronic phone equipment. Brother Dodson tried the same thing with Julie. That little screwin Whore he done fingered all wet and moist. A flash came to Brother Dodson, right in the middle of diddling these four women. He watched the two women on the other side of the mattress going down on each other.

"Brother Jenkins!" Dodson said, after a bout with the windy radish disease from eating too much cabbage and black eyed peas at that screwin fundraiser for some crud as all stupid orphanage in the Philippines. He was rather suddenly come over with malaise.

Brother Jenkins was about to ejaculate inside his lay secretaries little mouth, and she swallowed it all, just like a good whore. He lay back, now finally hearing Brother Dodson's serious tone.

"What is it, Brother Dodson?" he said, reaching down and slapping that chaste white ass of woman so smooth and . . . but he wanted to sleep now, up to his eyes knee deep in Christian womanhood! Amen! sayeth the lord!

"Brother Jenkins, I think we are really going to all go to Hell!" he said, sinking into a depression like he did for months at a time since Mrs. Dodson had lost her breasts to cancer and then died on him.

"What? You mean the plague?" Jenkins said, reaching over and goosing his little sperm swallower. She smiled, and fell into unconsciousness. That Micky Finn done put her to Disney Land, but not before she done sucked his little peepus! The poor man never had a chance to screw around wid the women before, back in Ferriday. So now he took as many women that could stand his mighty holy sword and swallow it. And he didn't even have to think about the Ex-Italian. So what if he done "Fulfilled his ex," like he said. Just don't take my money, whore! And then he wanted to go into a trance and pray. To ask God to forgive him and Brother Dodson's womanhood-slinging activism. To get right.

"Yessir!" Dodson said, laying down on the satin pillow resting on the ass of a fine piece of ass from Gonzales. Mrs. Connie Riche, the finest piece of christian ass that was married or single!

"Didn't you know that our screwin donations to the screwin Christchild have doubled since this bullcrud?"

Chapter Forty Eight

John Ed and two Sheriff's deputies, (one of them looked like he was just a kid, gangly screwer) trudged down to the Comite Bayou through the undergrowth grabbing them by their boots. They got to the thick water's edge of the ten-foot-wide creek where one couldn't see anything. The water splashed a bit as they trudged against the edge. The clay and sand bank was a treacherous walk. The two cops were supposed to be behind them. There was an awful stench in the air; emoted near the far end of that bend beyond, flayed against the strong current. Here it was getting wider. They walked onward still against the malevolent topographical blemishes made even more sinister by the bleakness. The hideous quiet, and the overall muddiness of the trail.

And what was going through those men's mind? It was a walking-talking nightmare, a two-reeler horrorshow, John Ed thought. He had lost his brother to the plague, and his wife had gone apecrud in the head. So bad that she was forever gone. His army boots tore into that muddy stretch as little splashes came from unknown corners in the river's eddying but flowing trickled torment.

"Y'all know where this big fuggin egg sack is?" the gangly boy, Mark Bodine said. He fingered his revolver in his plastic jacket windbreaker. The other boy had been muttering since they got out of the truck to meet and make the final plans, the war outline.

"Now, it's just up here!" John Ed said. His huge body cut through the greenish vines and sticker bushes.

"Now, no more talking because these things will be let on to the whole thing. Check your weapons," he said. Gangly Mark liked that. The first time he could fire away at a human. Hell, but these weren't human. Well, what the hell.

Up ahead, there appeared to be a pyramid of poles and limbs, about twenty five or more feet across in its base length. Four-square against the water's edge like a beaver mound too close to shore. There was chattering and whistling in little warbly sinister echoing, from one clay high shore to the other. The boys saw before them about thirty feet away, the beginning of the bound-together underwater, egg sacks of foamy green and white. The translucent sacks held embryos of eels and a couple of human carcasses who had willingly given themselves as food for the drones on up to workers, and queen.

"Now hold up here," whispered John Ed. The ex-college linebacker from LSU had more of a paunch now. The men stopped away from this pyramid structure which undoubtedly held the zombies. They looked all about them for the half-conscious mute zombies collecting fuel, food. Or whatever they were deliriously wont to do for the betterment of the commune of symbiotic nurturing. God, thought John Ed, seeing the twenty now or so huge twenty foot egg sacks laying like blown-up beach balls. He saw through them, filled with layer after layer of embryos. The gushy squishiness of the one closest to them was being prodded by the other sheriff's deputy. His gun was cocked, ready for the touch of his stick. The little creatures insides were seen, their little dormant mouths gashing in stifled disturbance now. John Ed looked down to his left, as this deputy prodded it. The former human bodies in the water reached up and grabbed this stick from inside the wretched eggsac!

The unconscious zombie which was half eaten away from the little baby eels, was somehow functioning even halfway submerged from within a sealed saran wrapped existence. John Ed shined his light, which now was the only one. It very dimly shrouded by a cloth cap on the end of it there in the openness of Comite River. He shined this light directly on the human form of food fodder. The human looked up at him and silently an anguished cry for desperate help came from him. The more mature eels were feeding on the left side of his mushy torso. Rendered carcass meat, it was a wonder he was alive; just a head and half a body. One leg askant.

"It's grabbing my stick!" the gangly deputy said, pulling back, letting go of the stick. Then he grabbed it again, now poking the creature with it. John Ed backtrod to see what the boys were doing. Off in the distance at the pyramid structure, things were coming to attention upon hearing the disturbance.

"What you boys got?" He looked down in the middle of the creek and saw inside the translucent sac the rolling around lazily of little teeny snakes. And three humans inside, only one alive.

"Mother of Christ at halftime!," John Ed said, inching forward. The second deputy lept back in fear, much more than just astonishment. All flushed white, all realizing that the crud had indeed come down now. Where were the backup boys?

The zombie had quite a firm grip on the stick, and the deputy wrenched it from him again and began whacking the gurgling creature as it whimpered shrilly. It had a totally deranged look in its eyes as they leered wobbly and unfocused, in a trance. But he still had enough strength to out wrestle the gangly boy-man. But the deputy was getting riled now, he fiercely began whacking away at the thing. Then the other deputy pulled his revolver out and took dead aim at the torso swishing around. Now the egg sack had split quite open. Once popped it spilled out ectoplasm and rotted flesh that had withered off. The symbiotic zombies used it strictly for nourishment for the burgeoning eggs of eels in greenish miniature eggs within the large sack. It was now spilling out that green jello and the most foul odor pierced the air.

After that shot rang out suddenly out of the pyramid nest came five zombies limping. They were oblivious to the men until they heard the rustling against the underbrush and the stomping of the awkward trot stumble. It was an ambush that now escalated to a mini war. They had sticks, fashioned weapons however clumsy and primitive, and John Ed fired a shot right at one man who was still wearing a three-piece suit which was hardly recognizable.

"Crud! Come on! Open fire! Open fire!" The two deputies were basically stunned from the whole encounter which had happened within the span of about twelve seconds. John Ed caught one of them in the hip, and another in the neck. They didn't want to fall! The gangly deputy boy finally got a shot off before he was tackled by a zombie, who immediately bit his ear off. The whole area was sudden activity of hand-to-hand combat. John Ed was jumped by one but pistol-cracked the huge zombie over the head. It looked dazed and fell to the ground, wailing in absolute pain. Still all the zombies were deranged, fell from Hades it seemed. The gangly boy was creaming now that he realized his ear was a separate entity. The singing of the eels began as they came forth as if tuned into the actual combat.

"Crud! John Ed!" the second deputy said. They heard shouts from the backups who had been caught unaware that things had gone down. They appeared through the thicket and these hunters, good old boys, leveled their guns and got one--two--three--and the fourth one wouldn't go down. The big one, as it mauled brutally the gangly boy, the egg sack and jello spilling. Some of the guys started shooting at the ambulatory watercresses zombies rotting in the sac, wailing. It was that screaming, the whistling of the full grown eels. The queen eel was in the pyramid, and one good old marine lobbed a grenade into there. Another two boys chucked a grenade apiece into the egg sacs in the middle of the river.

"Duck! Gawddammit! Incoming! Grenade in the water!" They were all yelling. The fear in the their voices, the white cold frisson of fear while fighting for one's life in the middle of a made-for-TV episode of "Twilight Zone," or "Night Gallery?"

God damn, muttered one man after seeing the gangly boy lying in a pool of blood, severely injured, his chest puncture badly, his head missing one ear, blood streaming down.

"Momma! Momma! I can't find my gun!" the boy said as he lapsed into shock.

The whistling of the eels stopped as the grenades exploded quickly, and then there was nothing but silence. John Ed looked into the murky Comite river morass, and saw the little hundreds of mouths of baby eels mewing and slithering now over the bloody carcass of that first zombie who had somehow miraculously survived being either half drowned, or waterlogged, or turned amphibian. They weren't no scientists.

The zombies were all down, the pyramid lay smoking in ruins now. Two old boys carried the deputy back, as other men were now just coming onto the scene.

"Took his screwin ear off, and chewed on it!"

"Damn savages!"

"I ain't never seen nothing like 'at!" one boy said to John Ed, as he was finally getting back to normal. Breathing not as hard, not hyperventilating; adrenalin swam through him like a cold little fish in his veins.

"Bring that scientist back here to see what the hell we got here exactly!" a rather old veteran said, his face pitted with severe blood vessels from forty years of rethinking Iwo Jima that happened 50 years hence.

"Yes sir," John said as the men poked at the egg sack, kicked or rolled the dead zombies over with their boots, just to take a look at them.

"God damn!"

"What is it?" John Ed asked.

"This here's a Catholic priest!" and the others went 'What?'

"Nooo!, one old boy said.

"This man here used to be a priest over at Lady of Mercy, I'm telling ya. Father Samuel. That's it?!"

"How in the Hell Jesus could that happen to a man of the Cloth?"</