*      *      *

 

 

When they're already dead, how do you kill them?

  Is there no stopping them?  Enter the Zombie Zone!!!

 

*            *            *            *

 

 

Chapter One

Enter the Zombie Zone!

 

R. R. Stark, unrenowned author of worthless crud and mindless drivel, had been staring wide-eyed all day and night and another long day and another even longer night at the mesmerizing screen of his Gangway 3000 personal computer, searching for something he knew not what. Actually, he was off on a death tangent, surfing the wild web waves of the wacky wild Zany Zone, whether he knew it or not.  He and his old pal, Leonardo J. Stroud, used to surf there, and now the old Starkmeister was longingly searching for its intoxicating whacked-outedness again. Considering that the so-called Zany Zone was an extra dimensional plane of existence of illusory non-reality without substance, nor rhyme or reason for its theorized existence, there was a fat chance in hell that he would definitely not find it -- even if his life depended on it, which it probably did anyway, which means he would obviously die trying.

Any time now he expected the arrival of his good friend, Leonardo J. Stroud, so he had to waste time doing nothing in particular while he waited. Good old Leo and himself had been friends since the pathetic fourth-grade.  They had grown up together, scribbled down mindless demented limericks and stories together, wildly chased girls together (with little luck), published bucket-loads of crap together, got married separately, and all for naught -- save for lack of trying,  which didn't seem to do them any good either.

 All blood shot and blurry-eyed, he decided to pull away from this obsessive addiction he called the "other" idiot box. Because the TV set is the original idiot box  -- duh! He often indulged in this routine so he could forget about his ADHD (Attention Defiant Hyper-Maniacal Disorder) by which he often entered wretched seizures of contortional apocalyptic proportions, after which he lay there like a limp puddle of Jell-O, which is an anally retentive brand name we shouldn’t use ruthlessly here, but it was the cherry flavored kind, not that licorice crap the company lost billions over, due to Stark’s flagrant suggestion, since he used to work there, then they mercilessly fired him.

Getting back on track now, from which we were idiotically derailed. . . .

Eyes bloodshot and blurry, as we were futilely saying, he shut down the computer, and strolled haphazardly into his medieval entertainment chamber of horrors, where he plunked down into his soft cushy easy chair in front of the original idiot box, otherwise known as the Zombie Box, the Boob Tube, Max Headroom’s Playground, Frank Brainbox’s Mad Scientist’s Laboratory, and other hideous monikers he himself pathetically coined. In order to relax his weary tender eyes, he turned on his blindlingly brilliant  272" widescreen  TV, which  gave him two-thousand five-hundred and nine cool channels via the In-Your-Face-TV promotional gimmick by Kevin’s Crackpot Cable Service that he won cheaply in a poker game. He yawned as he watched Killer Thriller Wrestlers’ Mega Slam-n-Gorefest, seeing Killer Crush Callahan pick up Bodaciously Big Bad Bob Bosco and toss him into a quadruple layered glass window and a ring of fire where behind that lay a den of ravenously hungry tigers that had been forced to starve for several weeks, and so the ferocious beasts proceeded to tear the poor sap into pieces, whereby the carnage was grisly and ghastly.

Stark grumbled, “This is terrible! What’s wrong with TV these days?"  He sighed heavily and shook his head. "This show’s drab and boring.  There's just not enough action and violence anymore. What’s the world coming to? Sheesh!”

Then he proceeded to slowly reach his index finger over the face of the remote, toward the channel button, then he suddenly nodded off, as he usually did at the boob tube, and his limp finger fell onto a button he didn’t know existed; hence, pressing it, he entered an altered state of total confusion, falling headlong into a swirling spiraling tunnel, going down, down, down, and down into what was known as . . .

. . . The Zombie Zone!

 

To be continued in another dimension coming soon!

 

*          *          *

 

Chapter Two

The Dance Macabre of the Living Dead

 

Stark mistakenly thought he had awakened, right back in front of his own TV. All seemed ordinary. Except, little did he know -- in fact he didn’t know at all, not one slimy little bit! -- that he had inadvertently slipped into an alternate parallel mirror-image universe somewhere in the awkward and ominous Zombie Zone! Which he had never heard of before. Nor did his TV guide show this as a channel. In fact, it was not a channel, hence, not accessible via any channel on the face of the Earth, nor any mirror image alternate Earth, nor the Solar System, nor the whole Galaxy, nor all of Existence!   And especially not by the special promotional In-Your-Face-TV at Kevin’s Crackpot Cable Service. Therefore, there was no explainable logical way he could have possibly ended up here. Oh, that’s right; he did press the wrong button on his remote, which was the right button to enter the Zombie Zone. Little did he know. Or not at all.

Just in case, he looked around suspiciously, noticing nothing, then shrugged. He began getting all zombified in front of his radioactive Zombie Box.

Then Stark was ruthlessly startled unto severe trauma when the door made a horrible knocking sound -- er, uh, not all by itself, but some creature was hitting it, either with a big club, or probably a large fist. After a brief pause, the ominous sound continued five more times! Stark almost wet his pants, anticipating the sheer stark unknown of what may lie beyond that door!!!

Knock knock knock knock knock!   

Just like that!

Then Stark mustered what little bravado he had, and cried, “Who the freaking heck is it! I got weapons of massive destructiveness here at my disposal, so, uh, beware, stranger at the door!”

“You cornball! It’s only me!”

“Yeah! And just who is ‘only me’? Huh?”

“Why, the old Stroudmeister, of course. Who else?”

“Oh, you scared the lower intestinal tract contents right out of me there, old buddy.” Stark sighed in relief. “Come on in.”

So Stroud clumsily busted down the door by sheer accident of purposeful intent, then plunked his hairy hide down in another chair in front of the zombie box, right next to Stark’s chair, only separated by a small snack table, which was covered with potato chip crumbs and Big Danny's snack cake pieces and their discarded wrappers, and some sticky cans of pop, all of which was covered in smelly vomit, over which orbited a squad of flies.

Stroud waved his hand as if to ward off the rancorous reek that proceeded to enter his nostrils and infiltrate his sinus passages, while bitching, "Don't you ever clean up around here?!"

Stark mumbled incoherently, “Never have time."

"I see that.  You're spending too much time at the boob tube."

"It's a livelihood."

"In your case, that's pathetically sad but true."

"And let's not forget we have hence consecrated it as the Zombie Box."

"That's right, you have a weird penchant for monikering everything around you."

"Yep, and be careful with Dusty there, you slammed into him a little too hard this time." 

"Dusty?"

"The easy chair you carelessly plopped into."

Stroud's eyes rolled up inside his head.  "And what do you call the easy chair you're sitting in?"

“Melinda," he sighed dreamily.  "She's nice and soft."

"Your pathetic."

"I know."

Getting settled into the never-been-cleaned stale and putrid smelling Dusty, Stroud ventured to ask, “So, what’re we watching, old chum?”

“Nothing. I’m still looking for something above boring mediocrity and below sublime mystifying blissfulness that if we watched for too long, we’d ascend into everlasting Paradise.”

“Wow. I’m for that.”

“I’m not ready yet. Still have a few chapters to go in that manual I purchased, Ascension in Three Easy Steps While Sitting in Your Easy Chair.” 

“Ha. I read mine ten times already.  You’re slow-poking around.”

Stark looked over at Stroud in surprise. "You’ve got the same manual?"

"Duh! Don't you remember?  We bought them together at Barb’s & Snowballs Bookslimers. Jeez Louise! You're a senile old goat!"

Stark just shrugged.  “Whatever.  Anyway, I was looking for a good adventure movie here somewhere. Or maybe a comedy. Or possibly a western. Or maybe even a romantic- western-science fiction-comedy-suspense thriller.  I haven’t decided yet.” Stark continued channel surfing, looking for something he knew not what.  He channel-surfed the same way he web-surfed -- idiotically. He viewed each channel only a split second, but then that was an irreparable byproduct of his sad but true ADHD conundrum -- which quite often left him in total confusion, which was his usual state of mind anyway.

"Can’t you stay in one place long enough to see what the heck is going on?"

"I am.  Staying right here in Melinda's lap, not moving one inch."

"Have I ever told you you’re pathetic?"

" Constantly."

Stroud sighed and got up off his lard-enhanced duff and professed, “Tell you what. I’ll amble into your disgusting kitchen here and scrounge up some grub for us to devour while you search for something totally worthless for us to watch.”

“Cool. But don’t be long.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t. You find something good and don’t just fall asleep in front of the tube-o-boob like you always do.”

 “I guzzled down five pots of hot sin-black coffee. I’m wired for rounds of sound here, old buddy.” Stark chuckled maniacally, rubbing his greasy hands together like a mad scientist does right before he throws the switch that gives life to his Frankenstein monster. But that’s someone else’s story, so we won’t go there.

"And clean that disgusting mess up you left!  It reeks!"

"Whatever."

So Stroud left for the kitchen, leaving poor Stark all alone to meet fate in the face. As the proverbial couch potato scudded across the vast multiple channels continuum -- a vast spectrum of nether regional dimensions of nonsense and confusion, whilst his trigger-finger happily danced across the remote --his accident-prone index finger hit that evil, ominous button again, which made him dizzy as a spiraling swirl of hysteria enwrapped him like a giant slimy burrito and ejected him into the deeper regions of the Zombie Zone!  Then the mass confusion disappeared just as fast as it had swooshed upon him. He looked around, seeing nothing else out of the ordinary. So he shrugged it off.

However, he didn’t notice that the drapes, walls, ceiling, and other things were different colors than they were suppose to be, but since his eyeballs were locked into the dimension of the artificial TV universe, he blocked that out entirely.

So he proceeded to channel surf again, except all the channels seemed to not be there. Instead all the pictures remained the same, as if there were only one single solitary channel in existence, where he was apparently watching the “Night of the Living Dead Zombies,” or some such idiotic flick. He saw a long line of out-stretched bony arms protruding from lifeless, expressionless, dead-eyed zombies that moaned in low  monotone, walking by the screen, toward some place off-camera. It was a foggy night out on some dark street in some windy, tumble-weed infested ghost town, he observed. Then one of the hideous Zomboids -- as his ghastly face got a tad too close to the screen (complete with torn hanging flesh!) --  turned and winked at Stark with a sickly pallid eye, then he disappeared off screen.

Stark grabbed his cup of ice cold coffee, looked at it suspiciously, figuring he’d made a stranger brew than usual this time, then he shrugged, and took a gulp.

Then another disgusting flesh-hanging-off-bones Zomboid grinned at Stark and waved at him before he dashed off screen, too. Stark reflexively waved back, grinning like an idiot.

“Cool! Interactive TV! About time!”

The next living dead character reached his hand out of the screen and gave Stark the thumbs up before he passed on.

Stark lurched in his chair. Maybe that everything-including-the-kitchen-sink-deep-dish pizza he ate earlier was getting to him.

Then he witnessed the next ghastly zombie walking right out of the 272" widescreen TV! -- yes, it grew! -- and stood there before Stark's bloodshot insect-like bulging eyes, the creepy creature looking very realistically zombie-like, not just some artificial Halloween costumed extra you see on TV. His skin was dry, flaky and gray, and his moon-pale eyes appeared glossed over with tiny dark pupils at the centers, and as he staggered stupidly he held his arms flat to his sides, but other than that he looked kind of like Herman Munster. Then he said, “Oh,” and  reached his arms out straight in zombie-fashion. Then he proceeded to moan zombie like. “Uuuuuuuh, uuuuuuhhhh…” Like that.

Stark shook his head. “Your pathetic. You’ll never make a good zombie.”

Frowning and putting his arms down, and letting his head hang low, the putrid, pathetic zombie said, “I’m not a good zombie anyway. I’m a bad one.”

“I know, a real bad one. You’re rotten at it.”

“Hey, you don’t need to rub it in, bub.”

"But at least you're smelly and wretchedly disgusting, like zombies should be."

"Thanks for something, anyway."

Then Stark got a bright idea, something that rarely happens to him, and if it did, it was usually once-in-a-lifetime.  “Hey! You know what? I can write you a cool script, show you some acting tips, and make you the best zombie ever! Whadya say?”

The dreary zombie shrugged, “Okay. Worth a shot. All the other zombies laugh at me for being too human-like.”

“Seriously? What do they know? You’re dead, right?”

“Sort of. I’m a living dead zombie that comes out at night.”

“Well, they’re pretty dead too, so it makes no difference what they think. Anyway, zombies can’t think on their own. They’re dead, right?”

The silly Zomboid smiled, “Yeah, you’re right! They can’t!”  Then he frowned. “But that means, neither can I.”

“No problem. I’ll do all the thinking for you. I’ll be your scriptwriter, and your agent too, your director, and your producer, and even your choreographer!”

“Cool!” the living dead dude grinned, showing only three teeth dangling precariously inside his horridly gaping mouth. “I’m just an extra anyway, so I could use a little fame and fortune in my life – er, I mean, in my death.”

“Don’t get a swell brain over it --er, uh, what’s remotely left of it.”

"Actually, there's not much up there at all. But last week the guys stuffed a couple pounds of hamburger up in my empty brain box -- but a bunch of ravenous rats ate it out."  He bent his head down, and with his two bony hands, clutched a little crack in his bare naked skull and opened it into a gaping chasm, revealing screeching rats nibbling leftover bits of putridly smelling spoiled hamburger morsels.

"Hmmm.  I guess there's a few still up there," the zombie realized.

Stark retched horribly as he jerked back in his easy chair, while flailing his arms around crazily, as he cried, "Alright, alright! Take your brainless noggin away from me! Sheesh! "

The grinning zombie complied, pulling his fingers out of the skull hole and letting it shut closed once again, to Stark's sighing relief. Then the decomposing nut-job looked back at the screen, seeing the last of the line of zombies walk by.

“Oh, I gotta go now, or they’ll leave me behind. If I'm too tardy, they’ll burn the skin right off my bones."

"What's left of what little skin you’ve got hanging off your brittle bones, anyway," Stark chuckled.

The friendly zombie waved his brittle bony hand. 

“Catcha later, dude.”

The putrid, rotting fellow stepped back into the screen, got in line, and staggered on with the rest of the living dead-head Zomboids. Then the screen went blank.

Stark thought about what just happened, then shrugged. Then he stretched and yawned. “I think I rested my eyes enough. That was relaxing. I think I’ll get back to work at the computer and work on the poor dead fool’s new movie, The Zombies of the Living Dead Go Hollywood -- or something. Maybe he can ask his other zombie buddies to come along too.” Then his face scrunched. “Darn, I didn’t get his name. Hmm. Oh well.”  He shrugged it off. He decided to call for pizza instead.

He climbed out of his easy chair, and his foot accidentally stepped on the remote which had fallen onto the floor, hence his big toe pushed that mysterious button again. Suddenly, Stark fell down that hideous, spiraling tunnel again, into that cyber-spatiotemporal continuum known as the Zombie Zone!  But hadn't he already slipped into that ghastly place?  Perhaps there are layers upon layers of equally ghastly levels in the ominous Zombies zone. Either way, our wretchedly victimized fool was most likely screwed no matter where he was.

So, what will happen next? Where will he go? Can he order more pizza when he gets there? And will he ever help poor Herman-what's-his-name get a real life instead of a death?

We may never know!

 

BwoooHaHaHaHaHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

 

 

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Chapter Three

Hector and his Creepy Entourage

 

Stark found himself swirling around in a kaleidoscopic spiral of infinitely spiraling swirls of confusion, then he plunked down into a grim, spooky cemetery, pretty much the kind you see in most low-budget horror movies. It was so quiet you could hear a billion pins dropping like raindrops, and the wind howling like a demented coyote, and the tombstones chittering like teeth, and the dead groaning down in their caskets six feet under. Yes indeed, it was that quiet. Then suddenly, hands all over grabbed upward from their gruesome graves, and one of them grabbed his left foot, but he kicked it away and ran, as he circumambulated around a minefield of grabbing ghastly hands. Then he climbed on top of a large tombstone, under which a muffled voice growled, AHey! Get off my roof! I was in a dead sleep!”

AOh sorry.” Stark climbed off.

So the mentally paralyzed and physically petrified poor guy ran in a panic-stricken fury across the horrifying hand wiggling field of macabre morbidity. Then Stark spied a most peculiar type of tombstone, one that looked like a glowing TV. Yes! It was! And his zombie friend’s face was grinning weirdly in it as he waved, bony fingers and all. Then he said AQuick! In here!”

So Stark got his body into diving position, hands cupped together over his head, fingers pointing straight out like an arrow, and he lunged directly into the screen is if it was a swimming pool, but he found himself crashing through glass, however, he soared into a room full of those heinous Zomboids. Out of the coffin and into the morgue, so to speak. Stark lay on the floor, surrounded by putrid, rotting, dead-faced zombies, but the particular friendly zombie he made earlier said to Stark, AThis is my entourage. Entourage, this is, uh --"

"Just call me Stark."

"Uh, yeah, what he said."

ABut I never caught your name,” Stark said, and not a moment too early.

The dead dude grinned three-toothedly, AOh, I don’t have a name anymore.  None of us have names. Once we died and became pathetic mindless zombies, we lost our identities, personalities, and our minds.”

AWell, how about I call you Herman?”

ANope. I used to be Hector. Call me Hector.”

AOkay, Hector it is. So, do your friends have names?"

 “Nope. All my buddies are also Hector.”

AUh, why can’t they have other names?”

Hector shrugged, shoulder bones creaking eerily, “I don’t know, I’m not good at names, I can’t think of any. I lost my mind, remember?”

AOh yeah, I almost forgot. For a minute there I had a crazy notion that you folks actually had brains -- if not hamburger meat up there.”

"Our grey matter is all dried up mush and rot, Like old stinky smelly glue that reeks like rotten eggs -- pretty much just like our internal organs, and sometimes they’re crawling with worms and stuff. Want a peek?” Hector reached his bony fingers into the middle of his chest cavity and peeled and open, revealing dried up shriveled internal organs but crawling with greasy grimy slithering worms, but the repulsed Stark shirked away, arms flailing about in front of him.

ANo! I'd rather not!” Stark cried.

"Oh, okay."  Hector let go and the disgusting worm-infested chest cavity flopped closed with an eerie hiss.

ASay, got my script yet?” Hector asked.

AUh, I’m still working on it.”

AWork on it harder, we want a job, all of us -- and please do it fast.”

AOkay, give me some time and I’ll crank it out for you soon here. Just get me back to some place safe and sane -- someplace where everyone's not creeping me out.”

AOkay.” So Hector pressed a button on a remote he held in his withered, boney hand, then Stark got sucked back into that horrible whirlpool of total swirling confusion, and then he was extruded back into some normal safe and sane place he was familiar with. Like back in his favorite easy chair in front of his radioactive zombie box. Or so it seemed.

 

 

*            *            *

 

Chapter Four

The Dreadful Dr. Witchdoctor Show

 

Stark’s eyeballs were glued to his shimmering zombie box, literally, since his body was flat dead in his easy chair, empty sockets void and null. Take it as literally as you like.

Anyway, so he sat wide-eyed, glaring unblinking at the vivid colorful hideous screen, and once again, he couldn’t change the freaking channel. He was stuck somewhere in a morbidly gruesome place between here and there, up and down, left and right, black and white; a wretched place where only a few people (who never heard of it before) suspected that it was called the ominous Zombie Zone! Perhaps that was just the stupid name of the channel, but it was more than likely an alternate reality of hideous existence.

So while he stared at the boob tube, which incidentally presenting a repulsive  gore-fest of horrors,  he witnessed a grisly spectacle of terror called the Zombie Zone Hall of Blame, a very late, late, late night show for the non-insomniacally-challenged. The strangely weird host of the show was so pale it looked like the face of the shiny full moon, and his twin sockets looked dark and sunken and the eyeballs that bobbed inside them were all dry and rubbery, and red drool drooled down the corners of his mouth. His hair was dead white, his long neck was skinny as a rail, so his jutting Adam’s apple was as big and lumpy as Adam’s first Apple. His pinstripe suit was pitch black with bright red pin-stripes and he wore a big, blood-red bow tie. He had a large rusty ring hanging from his nose, and slimy snot hanging from that, not to mention a ring dangling from each ear. He had little tiny finger bones tied to the ends of his messy unkempt hair that knocked against each other making marimba like sounds. He had a bright crimson tattoo of a skull and crossbones on his forehead, and a jet black dagger tattoo on each cheek. Other than that, the fellow looked perfectly normal. So the weird host proceeded to announce, ABad evening to you, ladies and gentle-zombs. Let me introduce my wretched self to you! I am none other than the late great Dr. Witchdoctor, at your funeral service! Ha! And you’re watching my creepy creep-show on the notoriously ominous Zombie Zone!”

The sound of bony fingered clattering applause was heard along with dry throated hoots and hollers, somewere off-screen.

"And my show is heinously called, drum roll please, The Dr. Witchdoctor show!"

Then there were really dead looking blank-eyed zombies stumbling crazily all over the stage, or what was suppose to be lively dancing, a failed attempt obviously. Their awkward stiff prancing left nothing to the imagination, since most people watching -- like Stark -- veered their imaginations, and their gaze, clear of the pathetically dreadful scene. Hmm. How odd. The gang of knee-bone knockers looked just like Hector and his group of Hectors, otherwise known as Hector's entourage. And this whole rickety routine  must be the movie script Stark was going to write, or vaudeville production, or musical comedy extravaganza, or whatever it was suppose to be. But since he didn't write yet, how could it possibly exist?  In this bizarre Zombie Zone joint, time was a disjointed and confusing phenomenon.

Next Dr. Witchdoctor had no choice but to introduce the hopeless motley lot of horrors. AAnd these are the Midnight Facial Zombies from Hell! So come on in!”  The unlively doctor of the macabre reached a boney hand out of the screen as he ripped out a spine-ripping scream, and grabbed Stark’s shivering hand and pulled him in. The shocked and appalled spectator found himself surrounded by dancing (HA!) zomboies, who stumbled and fumbled and tripped and fell all over themselves. Stepping on each others feet, and knocking each others elbows and knees and heads, they clumsily and klutzily kept stumbling into each other instead of doing some synchronized keenly choreographed dance number they were probably not expected to perform anyway.

In the meantime, the strangely weird Dr. Witchdoctor was explaining to the rest of the viewing audience -- a pile of lifeless corpses sitting on bleached-out bleachers just below the stage -- how people can make their own zombies. AYes! That’s right, folks-that-died-of-strokes! You too can create your own zapped-out zombies! And here’s how?” The mad doctor of morbidity grabbed a living unsuspecting person that just happened to be laying around – Stark. Then the took a heavy duty four-by-four and hit him upside the head-bone, then the body sunk lifelessly to the floor. ADead as a doornail! As if a doornail was ever alive in the first freaking place! Ha! Now for step two! Take this large funnel of fun, stick it down the poor fool’s slimy gullet and poor my magic elixir of death-after-life, with secret ingredients you can’t get anywhere in the world of the living. But you can procure them from my pharmaceutical lab of alchemical horrors! Ha! “

            So Dr. Witchdoctor proceeded to pour the zappolicious zombie juice down the poor victim’s gullet. Then the wretched fool squirmed and wiggled, and groaned something zombie-like. Then he stood up, staggeringly, a blank dead look in his pasty white face as the demented doctor cried insanely, "Behold! Instant zombie! Now, zombies, dance!”

So the zombified Stark stumbled crazily around along with the rest of the wretched dead-brains, trying to follow through with the unprerehearsed, nonchoreographic display of pitifully embarrassment,  then the miserable lot of living dead nutjobs started crashing into each other, fumbling and falling about, stumbling and tripping this way and that, and finally they all ended up in a lifeless dog-pile from hell.

Dr. Witchdoctor frowned miserably, more blood-drool drooling down the corners of his mouth. AUh, they’re all hopeless. That special elixir doesn’t last forever, you know. I gotta make a new batch, folks, and it’ll be just in time for another spectacular life-defying show from hell! And this is Dr. Withcdoctor saying bad night to you all! Bwooohahahahahaaaaaaa!”

 

 

*            *            *

 

Chapter Five

The Attack of the Hideous Zombies

 

The screen went black as death itself and Stark woke up, since he realized he must have been dreaming . . . yes, dreaming of a nightmare from hell. But then he noticed that he was not only still sitting in his favorite easy chair, his favorite TV set still in front of him, but that he and it were outside, somewhere in the deep dark dank woods, where a wolf howled mournfully in the distance, where fog thick as cream chicken soup began to roll in upon him, where the leafless branches of trees where wicked and gnarled like long witches’ fingers and even longer fingernails. Then he heard a noise, the shuffling of feet through the rustling of dead dried leaves, and he also heard deathly dry and brittle groaning. Oh no! It was the attack of the Zomboids from Hell!

Off in the remote close-at-hand distance, he saw a crowd of lifeless, stiff-legged, staggering once-human dead creatures from the Underworld with outstretched arms and boney fingers drooping and dead-eyes sightlessly glaring dead-ahead at nothing. A hollow groan extruded from the extremely parched, cracked lips of the dreaded dead-heads. They approached, and as Stark tried to get out of his chair, he realized he was paralyzed and petrified and panic-stricken. He could only frantically roll his eyes around crazily, as if his eyes could pop out of their sockets and get away without their body. But they chickened-out and stayed in their safe cubbyholes for now, or at least until a better plan came along.

But then he surmised that this was just a dream, just a horrible nightmare, from which he would soon wake up, any second, yes, any minute now, okay, any hour . . .

The zapped-out Zomboids shuffled closer and closer and even closer still! And  Stark did not wake up! For he was in the disgusting Land of the putridly  Living Dead where you wake up into it, not out of! Nightmare of nightmares this be! The sound of slowly shuffling and dry groaning -- and the horrifying sight of dead things creeping relentlessly toward him -- got on his last unrighteous nerves.  Even if he had a gun or a butcher knife or some kind of lethal weapon of miserable destructiveness, he couldn't kill them since they were already long dead. Perhaps if he cut the bodies into little bitty pieces, that would stop them -- are with those pieces move on their own, and so hundreds of pieces of body parts would continue to stalk him.  Now that wasn't a pleasant thought, but since he didn't have a butcher knife on hand to do the job, that plan went down the drain.

What will he do now? What can he do now? Nothing! He was strapped and trapped into the hideous and ominous Zombie Zone! BwooooHaHaHaHaHaaaaaaaaaa!

 

*            *           *

 

Chapter Six

Stark's Cowardly Return from the Zombie Zone

 

Joy of joys! For right at Stark’s finger tips, he saw a remote sitting there on the arm of his chair. He stretched his fingers, stretched them as far as they could go, as the terrifying Zomboids --not the fun-loving knuckle-headed bunch of Hectors either-- got heinously closer, as their out-stretched decrepit hands almost touched him. And now their putrid hands were surrounding him, groping and poking at him, as the hellish moans got weirder and weirder! And their disgustingly putrid breath and B.O. was enough to make a poor fellow curl up and die.  Then his stretching index finger pushed that magical button at last! He observed the usual swirl of spiraling whirlwind nonsense whoosh around him and drop him smack dab back into his favorite easy chair, yet in another parallel dimension, not back in the hideous joint he just came from.  He sighed heavily -- then suddenly heard  low groans and moans, as he saw the pathetic zombies still there! Drat! He had brought them with him back into his world! Horror of horrors! Then they reached down and proceeded to tickle him to death.

One dead dude said, "I hear the Living Ones can die from being tickled too much.”

Stark yelped, "That’s just a myth! It’s not true! I’ll just go crazily mad instead!”

"Cool! Madness is death’s first cousin.”

Stark managed to squirm his way out of the chair, knock a few heads together and bash in a few ribs, then he bolted into the closet with remote in hand, and punch that button again. Nothing. Darn! He even tried the MUTE button. That didn't work either, because he could still hear their terrifyingly nerve-racking moaning.