Sunday, July 4, 2010

Dead Planet


Dead Planet

“The street wasn’t dead
yet. Not all the way.”
—Mickey Spillane,
Dead Street

New York newspapers do a heavy business on Mars. With a big chunk of the wrinklies wintering there instead of Florida. Florida didn’t exist anymore. Not for people—not for humans. Not since the Gulf Spill.

A lot of wealthy retirees moved to Mars—the Sunshine Planet. They called it that because it wasn’t a fuckin’ radioactive benzene-dead planet like Earth.

It was expensive to get there—but the Terra-Form Corp. had done a pretty good job. Considering the alternate. Dying back on Earth—breathing poison air, fighting off Redneck Riviera zombies out to kill you.

Or worse yet—gettin’ eaten alive still screaming your fuckin’ head off. Each limb chewed or chopped off. Gangs of ‘em workin’ their way thru the whitetrash trailer court resettlement camps. Lucky those shitty trailers—were loaded with formaldehyde. One step ahead of the morgue dontchaknow.

Ray Cumwad hated Earth. He didn’t wanna go back. He’d been the owner of a small business in Miami. He’d been shot twice and his office and discothèque ransacked along with the rest of the art deco hotels district next door.

The zombies went for the fags first—the rich ones, back when no more sirens came to the rescue. Gold, jewels, cash—was worthless. Ever tried to buy off a fuckin’ zombie? The zombie killers were only interested in one thing—rape and gnawing on fresh screamin’ pussy. Fags weren’t bad snacks either—when the juicy snatches ran out.

“What ya got on this deal, Jack?” Ray asked over the vidscreen.

“Nothin’ much yet.”

“But you’ve got something, don’t ya?”

“Fuckin’ A, man. Look, Ray—I don’t wanna dump my problems on ya, but those slugs are movin’ north now. Headin’ for the Big Apple.”

“Well, what else is new, buddy?” Ray said. “The planet got had a long time ago. Unless you been livin’ in some fuckin’ TPTB bunker down there. With douchedroid cops—guardiin’ the fuckin’ gates.”

“Yeah, I know. Somethin be happenin’ tho…”

“Your wife still hangin’ outta the window on her pillow?”

“Yeah, she’s gone loony-toony on me. Can’t get her into Elizabeth—the joint’s been raided & taken over by zomb’s again. Even the schizoids aren’t safe”

“Jesus, Jack. When ya goin’ get outta there, man?”

“My daughter’s sick. She’s pregnant again. She fell in love with some white trash zombie kid. She wants the baby—wants to move up to Montreal. Where it’s safe, she thinks.”

“Safe? Whatta fuckin’ joke. Wait till that ugly zombie-mutant baby pops outta her, dude. She’ll wish she’d never been born, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I ran outta .45 ammo tho. I woulda put the bitch outta her goddamn misery by now, know what I mean? It’s bad enough havin’ a zombie-bastard as your stinkin’ son-in-law! But a creepazoid rug-rat? Man, wait till she tries to breast-feed the fuckin’ thing.”

“Jaysus Christ on crutches, Jack. It sounds like Night of the Living Dead all over again. Who needs the fuckin’ ammo at this point? Too many of ‘em to shoot anymore anyway. When ya getting’ outta there, hmm?”

Ray looked at his watch—the red radioactive alert light was blinking on & off. Was there somebody or something listenin’ in to their long-distance call?

“C’mon Jack. What’s this deal you been chattin’ me up for, man? You send me the bucks for a shuttle—then all you do is soft-shoe your way into honky Nowheresville…”

“I’m gettin’ there, Ray. Gettin’ too old for this game.”

“So what’s fuckin’ new, Jack. Aren’t we all.”

Ray knew what was comin’ next—a sweetheart deal. Jack had kissed his ass so many times in the past, anybody could see the fuckin’ kissy-ass lip prints smudged down there. They glowed in the dark. Cops never did that to old grandmothers—they just tasered them in bed & stepped on their oxygen hose. To end it nice and easy—once and for all.

“I…I…don’t remember. It seems like…”

Ray yawned. “Sounds like you got the douchebag blues, maybe the plague, dude. Betcha you been doin’ some zombie pussy on the side, huh? Jeeze lueez. How fuckin’ stupid can ya get, asshole.”

“Well, Ray, ya know how it is. A guy gets desperate. Even zombie snatch looks kinda good after awhile. She was kinda cute—if ya put a pillow case over her groady head. And put a gun to her head.”

“I’m gonna hang up, Jack. I don’t wanna hear anymore of this fuckin’ shit. It’s a downer man. I’ll just keep your dough for old times’ sake. And pretend you never wanted to talk to me, you know?”

His mood was grey—dingy dirty dreary grey like the greyhound shuttle getting’ ready to take off. Headin’ up there in orbit to that pirate scow—commandeered by a bunch of ex-cop riffraff and rebel droids.

They ran a black market trade—with the Tacos Boyz back home. Smugglin’ in whitey wetbacks from Dallas—but they weren’t cheap.

Typical Florida-style residential condos went for a couple of million bucks on Mars—single bedroom holes in enormous, expensive multi-story rat-holes with expensive bodyguards and a couple of domestic Cadillac solar junkers to get around in. It was better than Earth tho—if you could afford to escape.

“What ya lookin’ at, Jack?” he said after a long moment of sayin’ or hearin’ nothin’—nothin’ but long distance hum and dead star static.

“Oh, it’s just this zombie bitch,” Jack said. “She’s goin’ down on me real desperate, that’s all. I gave her some of my blood—and it’s been green light for you know what ever since, know what I mean?”

“Well, fuck it. You don’t need me for that. You wasted a couple of grand just talkin’ your way outta somethin’. See ya later, dude.”

“Wait a minute, Ray.” There was a silence at the other end, then some heavy-duty ugly slurpin’ and oozin’ on the other end. He heard a .45 goin’ off—and some zombie brains gettin’ splattered on the wall. Ka-splat!!!

Jack came back on the line—breathin’ hard. “Okay, here’s the deal. I got some fake credentials—we can use. Got ‘em off this dead dude at the morgue—got ‘em cheap. A sure ticket down below—into the swanky el primo Bronx Bunker. All the booze, babes and sex a guy could ever need. You know—like Strangelove happy ever after time? Ten chicks to every guy—every guy a fuckin’ king?”

Ray hung up—they’d been on the line too long anyway. The Ganymede Gestapo pricks were already zeroing in probably—he had a bad passport to nowhere. Not something he wanted the dicks to know. But he was bored too—nothin’ else to do in this Martian shithole.

He was the last one on the shuttle—it cleared the Martian skyscrapers on the way up. The sun was setting in the west—some android pterodactyls were cutting streaks thru the darkening sky.

Why was he doin’ this? Headin’ back home again—to the lousy no-good fuckin’ rotten Big Apple back on Earth again? Why did he even give a shit anymore—about a dead city on a dead planet gone down the fuckin’ shitter anyway? Homesick? For fuckin’ what?

A crummy cosmo-cacophony of helpless human screams? An army of the night full of—dead zombies nippin’ at his heels & takin’ chomps outta his rear end? It didn’t make sense—with FedEx you get one phone call a year. What a waste—he was a fool.

Not every call from Earthside was for the worse tho—just most of them.


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