Benjamin_Bartholomus

By R. R. Stark

The tall portly man named Benjamin Bartholomus started out as the town’s mighty hero, with an agenda to stop the zombies and their evil master. Soon he became the whole town's worst nightmare!

Dr. Zackary Zombie was a really mad scientist. He was not only mad at the world, but he blamed every living, breathing human being for his despicable, miserable life. One by one he would turn them all into disgusting, slobbering, staggering, stupidly obedient zombies.

The mayor of the little town that the diabolical villain lived outside of had been thwarting his sinister deeds right and left. Dr. Zombie had to do something about that. The slyly aggressive mayor was a tall and portly man by the name of Benjamin Bartholomus. He had his trusting police force out at all hours watching for kidnappings and abductions by the mad doctor, who had been slowly turning the town's population into slobbering groaning zombies. Which they had to kill off one by one, unfortunately. The mayor was stubborn about putting a stop to that, just as much as Dr. Zackary Zombie was even more stubborn at putting a stop to the mayor. It was a war of the wills.

As often as the policemen had to reluctantly kill each and every zombie that had once been a citizen of the town, a crop of new zombies would appear in the streets the very next day, poor victims that had once been the typical citizenry of the town. It was a never ending cycle of insidiousness, perpetrated by that evil insidious madman himself, the hideous Dr. Zackary Zombie!

Mayor Benjamin Bartholomus had to put a stop to the whole insanity. While the mad doctor had to put a stop to the mayor’s stopping him. Each wanted to desperately stop the other.

Then the bad mad doctor had a brilliant idea! He spent the whole evening laughing maniacally, snickering insidiously, and cackling cantankerous.

Then he thoroughly instructed and sent three of his best -- or worst -- zombies out on a particular diabolical errand. It took them only an hour to succeed. They walked single-file up the path of the four-story Victorian haunted house of their evil master, carrying on their left shoulders something in a big canvas bag tied tightly at one end. It had been still for a long time, but suddenly it started squirming and bellowing profane words. The zombie in front lifted a club and whacked the something over the head, knocking it out cold. Dr. Zombie stood on his rickety porch wringing his long-fingered hands together while snickering hideously. Then he instructed the three obedient undead servants to deliver their prey to his basement laboratory.

Now. Laying flat on a rather sinister looking operating table was none other then the tall, portly mayor, known by the whole population of the town has Mayor Benjamin Bartholomus. Nobody knew that he had been ruthlessly abducted by this insidious alien-minded madman.

The uncouth Dr. Zombie was rather unsanitary, because he didn't wear surgical gloves, and he didn't even wear a surgical face mask, so it was rather inconsiderate of him, if not anti-hygienic, that he slobbered and drooled and laughed all at once, slinging germs and bacteria all over the poor body of Benjamin Bartholomus. Not that it mattered, because he was going to be dead in a few minutes -- that is a member of the repulsive living dead race.

The mad doctor inserted a greasy grimy plastic funnel into the mayor's now gaping mouth, poured some kind of ugly creepy bluish liquid from a bottle down into his gullet, emptying the whole contents as he laughed maniacally. This was some kind of sinister mixture, some hideous zombie potion that he purchased from one of those witchdoctors down in Haiti. Then he pulled the funnel out and slammed the jaws shut, causing teeth to shatter. Then he threw a black tarp over the body, waited thirteen days -- that's the magic macabre number -- and when he returned to his basement laboratory, he said a bunch of superstitious occult incantation-type words that he had also purchased from that same witchdoctor, then, as the mad doctor pulled the sheet away, the living dead person arose, arms sticking straight out. The eyes were dark and sunken. The skin was white and parched. The hair was thin and gray, not to mention brittle and falling out. This was once a living breathing person who had become a reanimated corpse of the most hideous kind.

As Dr. Zombie commanded the new zombie to stand up and walk, the bones and joints creaked and crackled with rigor mortis setting in. But since this was a living dead creature, it was a form of living dead rigor mortise, something only witchdoctors understand or knew about, which Dr. Zombie learned from his copy of How to Make a Zombie for Dummies -- that he also bought from that same shyster witchdoctor. In other words, being dead, the creature was stiffening up, yet its still-alive side was still in motion, so there was a strange kind of counterproductive effect going on, a weird tug-of-war struggle going on as each side tried to cancel the other out.

Nevertheless, Dr. Zombie ordered the new zombie recruit, once known as Benjamin Bartholomus, to return to the mayor's office, and order all members of the police force to cease and desist their futile actions in slaying the zombies and trying to stop the towns evil villain, otherwise known as Dr. Zackary Zombie.

This accomplished, the mad doctor was a miserably happy man henceforth. Although some of the policemen were rather reluctant to comply at first, the strangely altered mayor sent two of his zombie henchmen to whack those particular officers over their heads, then deliver them directly to their master for zombification. Long story short, in a few days the whole police force had become an elite Zombie Force. Now Dr. Zombie was free to roam the streets of the town without being hassled. Those dashing blue-suited officers with their swinging nightsticks now escorted their insidious master, protecting him from the outraged townspeople. One by one, with the help of his elite Zombie Force, the townspeople all became zombified. It didn’t take long before the whole town became known as Zombieville.

Dr. Zackary Zombie had accomplished phase one of his master plan: the conquest of a whole town. Soon he would conquer the whole world. His dream was to create something he would affectionately call Zombie World.

So, world, watch out!

* * *

Slash the Mad Zombie Slayer

There lived a cold-blooded, war-hardened ex-Marine who immediately became a psychotic serial killer. Strangely, after a few years of that heinous profession, he grew weary of putting to death living, breathing human beings. For he developed a bizarre new taste, yes, it was a morbid disgusting taste for zombies! His new appeal was to kill something that was supposed to already be dead that acted as if it wasn't; that is, a reanimated dead person, or morbidly resurrect human from the dead. You could say that a zombie was a corpse that mocked life. The idea of violently ending the life of a living dead creature intrigued him. So he enjoyed the thrill of taking something that was dead and killing it again. So this deranged psychopath became a grim stalker and killer of the creepy undead. He became known as Slash the Mad Zombie Slayer.

He always wore military-issue camouflage garb, night-vision goggles, industrial-strength steel-toed boots, a utility belt with an assortment of small yet lethal weapons, and finally a long broadsword sheathed on his back, his dreadful zombie-killing weapon of choice. He knew the only way to kill a reanimated dead creature was to either hack its brains to bloody pieces, or slice its whole head off clean. Which he had been doing for the last few years of his new morose career. He loved the perversity of slaying zombies; the gruesome carnage he caused was eye candy, and the hideous shrieking of a zombie being hacked to pieces was morbid music to his ears. His own maniacal laughter while in the midst of battle signified his glorious arrogant pride for a job wickedly done.

He had just read the morning paper that a whole town had been transformed, rather zombified, and all of its inhabitants had become zombies. The whole freaking burg was running rampant with the hideous living dead creatures. He knew that it wouldn't take long before this so-called Zombieville would be put on the map, perhaps for purposes of tourism -- but not if he could help it. Every unsuspecting tourists wandering into that hellhole would become a member of the living dead race. Slash could not stand for that. If you want to call him a strange kind of hero, so be it. Although he may seem to fight for humanity, as all heroes must do, he was still evil at heart, driven by his weird perverse zombie-lacerating and decapitating fetish.

Contemplating the prospect of his new mission, he laughed maniacally and wrung his hands as he prepared for this new killing spree he was about to embark upon.

Slash the Mad Zombie Slayer was declaring war on Zombieville tonight!

Beware all zombies!

* * *

The Beginning!

* * *

Never coming to a web site near you:

“Zombie Sex Puppets"