Bite of the Greasy Dead

It was such a simple order: two number twos, a number nine with honey mustard, and a Bitey Kids meal. It was so simple, in fact, that I didn’t even bother to notice who ordered it:
A person. An actual person. And not just any person: Bruce. Big Bruce, as we called him. I was about to correct him when he apologized and did it himself. He’s been here enough times to know we don’t serve number twos anymore, it’s even crossed-off with spray paint on the menu sign. And even if we did, I’m not sure Big Bruce needed two of them, anyway.
“Okay, forget the number twos, my bad. I’ll just stick with the number nine and the Bitey Kids meal.”
“You got kids, Bruce?” I asked through my headset. There was a little delay before he responded:
“Nah, but- “ he stopped himself, clearing his throat, “I, uh, collect the toys,” he admitted, somewhat embarrassed, “It reminds me of when I used to come here with my dad before- ”
“Was he infected?” I asked.
“Y-yeah.”
“I’m sorry, Bruce. Uh, first window for me, okay?”
I watched Bruce nod through the drive-thru camera as he pulled around to my window.
“Seven-seventy,” I said, taking Bruce’s cash from him, “How’ve you been, Bruce?”
“Fine, brother,” he said, “You?”
“I’ve been good.”
“How’s, uh, what’s her name?”
I glanced across the kitchen to the other window, watching Tina push open the zero-contact window toward a customer. I turned back to Bruce:
“Tina,” I said, “She’s fine. Thanks,” I smiled, extending my arm through the side window with his bag, grease staining the brown paper that sagged at the bottom.
“I pray to God one day y’all will get those Bitey Burgers back. It’s killing me, man.”
“I know,” I said, “Corporate’s teased the idea, maybe doing a veggie option or somethin’, but they don’t wanna risk another outbreak, y’know?”
“I don’t blame ‘em, brother. I should really cut back, myself…but sometimes we need our comfort foods,” he smiled, nodding as he pulled away into the night. I bid Big Bruce a farewell wave before turning to the drive-thru camera again: empty, as usual.
Bruce was right, y’know: we’d get more business from actual people if we had more actual food. I get the Mad Cow really restricts the burger and dairy options but…there’s gotta be more to fast food aside from cheeseburgers, right? What do lactose intolerant people eat for cryin’ out loud?
See, most of the time it’s not actual people that walk through our drive-thru. Call ‘em the infected, walkers, flesh-eaters, biters, or the obvious...zombies, corporate is very strict about us calling them one thing and one thing only: customers.
Our so-called “customers” started showing up some four weeks after the first reports of the massive outbreak. Now, if you’ve watched any horror movies, you might wrongly assume these things to be the living dead. They’re not. Brain-dead, perhaps, but these are infected individuals. We never imagined that BSE could transfer through cooked meats or milk products, but here we are.
The world’s a different place, now, and we had to adapt.
Look, I’ve seen some shit, literally, too: like that dookie some idiot dropped in the sink in the men’s restroom. But not even that could’ve prepared me for what happened on week five.
It was horrible, and that’s even an understatement: literal corpses lining the floor in our dining room, blood splattered all over the walls and ceiling, and those screams; those awful screams. I admit…I took this job for the minimum wage and the chance to work alongside Tina, but after seeing what I saw, the fifteen bucks an hour didn’t come close to compensating.
But thank God I have this job, ‘cause there aren’t many left.
We were this close to bombing the shit out of ourselves: total atomic annihilation. They were gonna corral survivors into bunkers and obliterate the nation from here to kingdom come but…plans changed all of a sudden.
Some scientists found out that the reason for the widespread attacks orchestrated by the infected was due to a specific compound found in the brain. I guess the biters really liked whatever was in ‘em. So, the worldwide governments began pumping the stuff out: manufacturing it, claiming it was chunks of cow brain from all the millions of inedible cattle around the world. A few backdoor handshakes later and…well, we have where we’re at now.
Every fast-food chain was approached with this “billion-dollar” idea: hand out samples of the compound to the infected and receive “financial compensation.” We don’t have an exact dollar figure still, but it must’ve been a lot because they all immediately adopted the program within weeks.
Every couple of days we get shipments of “compound patties” at our backdoor. Now, they claim it’s “cow brains”, but after we forced our lead shift manager to watch Soylent Green, he’s convinced the stuff’s made out of dead people, and we’ve been placing our bets ever since. Regardless of their content, however, the “compound patties” go like hotcakes for the infected. They can’t get enough. And because they’re so busy eating the patties, they’ve got no reason to attack people. Thus, crisis solved…right?
I work at this place called The Bite. It’s not as well-known as the big-name chains, but we keep busy. Essentially, we’re McDonald’s mixed with Checkers (or Rally’s if you’ve survived out in the Midwest, God help you) in the sense that our drive-thru is split in half, with one side devoted to genuine fast food, and the other for, well, the zombies.
Tonight, Tina’s on “compound duty” while I’ve got the regular side. We’re hounded up the ass to keep the sides separated to avoid cross-contamination. We do our best but…I can’t help but visit with Tina on and off.
Aside from us, there’s Dennis, our shift manager, Rebecca, our lobby cashier, George, our lead cook, and Chuck, the GM, who happened to surprise us tonight with a routine “evaluation” which has Dennis, Mr. “Employee of the Month”, shaking in his non-slip boots. Personally, and honestly, I’m not very concerned. It’s Thursday; Thursdays are never busy.
“Oh shit,” Dennis said, wrapping a tight fist around his chin as he bit down onto his knuckle.
“What?” I asked. He pointed to the drive-thru camera behind me, showcasing Tina’s drive-thru side: one hell of a line. And by line, I mean mass horde of the infected.
Did I mention that, on the “compound” side, it’s always busy?
I went with Dennis to grab another frozen box of patties from the freezer, being sure to “wash my hands” as I was told (‘cause God knows that’s helping), but I was stopped when he noticed that Chuck had beat us to it. He looked worried, those calculating eyes of his darting around as trembling fingers gripped onto that company phone. I mean, he was standing in a freezer, but he looked more jittery than usual.
“Dennis, a word please,” he said, looking at me and prompting my excusal. I shrugged Dennis off, turning back to the kitchen where George met me with his eyes.
“The hell’s going on? I’m outta patties.”
“I know,” I said, “they’re having a meeting or something.”
“In the freezer?”
I nodded. I wasn’t going to interrupt my higher-ups, even if we were running low on inventory. After all, it’s pretty stupid that we even bother to cook the things in the first place. Our “customers” clearly don’t care. Corporate said it was something about “keeping up appearances” or something.
The freezer door popped open with a metallic clank after a long, foreboding silence. Neither George nor I mustered up the audacity to say anything. Chuck then marched right past us in a beeline from the freezer in a tizzy, leaving Dennis in his dust. He approached us, not saying a word.
“So...?” I said, trying to read his face: it was a blend of surprise and sheer panic. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“Spit it out, man,” George said, “You got the patties or not? Tina’s running low and I’m all out.”
Dennis shook his head with a glazed-over, fear-stricken look in his eyes.
“The truck,” he sputtered, “it tipped over.”
“What truck?” I asked.
“The truck full of patties,” he said as matter-of-factly as he could’ve. “The driver took a sharp turn and it tipped. Within seconds it was swarmed by a mob of roaming biters,” Dennis shook his head, his thoughts catching up with his mouth, “He shot himself, the driver. Before they could get to him.”
“Hold the phone,” George said, resting his spatula against the hot metal with a fading sizzle, “you’re telling me we ain’t gettin’ any more patties cause some jackass took a wrong turn on I-95? The hell are we supposed to do?”
“Sit tight,” Dennis said, refusing to make eye contact with either of us.
“Sit tight?” George scoffed, “Is that what corporate said? Man, fuck corporate, man.”
The realization of the situation finally dawned on me, physically pushing me back before I could speak:
“So, we’re just supposed to sit here?” I asked, unsure of what really to say.
“Chuck said there’s a protocol for this,” Dennis said, folding his arms and lowering his voice, “He also said they’re going to come for us, Steven.”
“Come for us?”
“Without the patties, they’ll be forced to seek after any available…well, brains they can smell. Namely…ours.”
It was at this point when we were interrupted by Tina, who was attempting to appease the growing crowd outside her window.
“George, where the hell are the burgers? I got dozens of hungry customers waiting.”
George chuckled with a wave of his head, tearing his hairnet from what little hair remained atop his scalp.
“There’s been a menu change, Honey,” he said, “and we’re all on it.”
“Wait, what?” she snapped.
“Just, everyone calm down, alright? There’s a protocol in place for our safety,” Dennis said, Sullivan-nodding toward us underneath that “You are NOT Replaceable” sign, plastered beneath the red-eyed security camera. He shot his gaze over to Chuck, who was still preoccupied with his extended phone call. “Right, Chuck?” Chuck looked up from his call with a blank expression. He clearly wasn’t reading the situation. “We’ve got a protocol in place, correct?” Dennis reiterated. Chuck didn’t say a word, and instead of replacing his silence merely placed a finger over his poised lips.
“The hell is that about?” George said, extending a finger at the one crossed over Chuck’s mouth.
At this point, our commotion prompted Rebecca to stroll into the picture, who really didn’t do very much, given the fact that our lobby hadn’t seen an ounce of life for over three months. Her job was probably another one of those ‘keeping up appearances’ charades our corporate overlords seemed to love so much. Basically, they were paying her to play games on her phone.
“Can someone please tell me why it’s so damn loud right now? Jeez.”
We all stopped our bickering and realized Rebecca was right: even without our raised voices, it was loud…outside. There must’ve been at least a hundred of the infected out there. Of course, the glass drive-thru window behind Tina only showcased a good handful or so, but from every corner of the building we could make out the groans and cries of the flesh-eaters; their bodies flailing against the walls of the building as thuds echoed throughout our tiny kitchen. We all instinctively looked over at the camera feed, watching straggling biters roam off the main highway and into the mob, which looked like a bundle of roaches (something we were used to, here).
Then the sound of glass shattering sent the group into a type of shared paralysis. None of us could move. And, even if we could, where would we go?
The pitter-pattering of spongy feet across the lobby floor sent me into a type of fight-or-flight I’d never experienced before. I scrabbled toward the fire extinguisher, yanking it from the wall, and aiming its nozzle into the stagnant darkness of the lobby. I felt the eyes of everyone else, including Chuck, burning into the back of my head, drilling thoughts into it to tell me I was crazy. I was.
After what seemed like a year of waiting, a face emerged from the blackness: a mangled, pudgy corpse-like face. It was that of a large man, his body pulsating with a vile stench of greasy oil and decayed flesh; flesh that hung from his dark face, oozing with puss that seeped out of every pore.
I didn’t hesitate to spray the shit outta him. And when the extinguisher did little to deter the infected, I gripped the nozzle and began beating the zombie with everything I had. Once I landed several blows to the top of that mangled head, the zombie fell, limp, onto the floor.
The inside of the building was now completely silent, aside from my non-slip sneakers as they crept up to the body, lying face-up with white, hazy eyes reflecting the dimly fluorescent ceiling. I kicked the side of it once to make sure it was dead. It was, or at least…dead enough.
The sound of something clinking against the hard flooring broke my panting. I bent down, pinching my nose hard as the oozing, bile-like smell continued to fill my nostrils.
It was a toy. One of our plastic toys from the Bitey Kids meals. It must’ve fallen out of the zombie’s pocket when I kicked it. I instinctively shot my glance to the unconscious face below me.
I must’ve not recognized him due to the decay. It was Big Bruce.
“Okay, what the hell?” I shouted, turning to Chuck and Dennis for answers, ‘cause at this point, I severely needed some. Chuck raised his hands in innocence, lowering them for me to calm down, though he knew we were all tired of his silence by this point.
“You’ve got five seconds to start talkin’,” George said. Chuck sighed.
“I’m gonna be so fired for this, but what the hell,” Chuck said, lowering his defenses and breaking his silence.
“Being fired is gonna be the least of your problems, man,” George said. Chuck nodded stilly.
“The Bitey Corporation received a large sum of money from the U.S. government- “
“How large?” George snapped.
“I don’t know…pretty damn large. They did some company-wide data analysis and realized they were better off post-outbreak, especially compared to our competitors.”
“So?” I said.
“So,” he said, breathing in heavily before he spoke again, “-so they started putting shit into the food.”
“What kind of shit?” George asked.
“I don’t know!” Chuck shouted.
“Bullshit!” George snapped back.
“Tallow!” Chuck admitted, “They started using beef fat for the oil!”
I watched as George’s face contorted from rage to a frightening realization. He looked back at me, then at the others, then at Chuck.
“So, you’re saying we’ve been turning people into zombies?”
Chuck nodded, looking down at the floor. There was a staggering group sigh as we all realized what was going on. I looked up at Tina, perhaps the only safe one through all of this, given the fact that, ironically, she didn’t eat meat.
The rest of us, though, were screwed.
“How come it didn’t work on Bruce until tonight?” I said, pointing at the body before us.
“They just implemented this new strategy,” Chuck said, shaking his head, “Only the newest shipment had the beef oil on it. That’s why.”
George let out another sigh as heads continued to snap from face to face, eyes locking and unlocking.
“So, what’s the plan now? What’s this…protocol?”
“The protocol is we hang tight. The cops have been dispatched, but the only road to this location- “
“-is the road where the semi flipped,” Dennis nodded.
“So, you’re saying we’re fucked,” George said.
We all realized we were. The only way we could buy some time was to-
No, we couldn’t-
I looked around at the others. I wasn’t alone in my thought process.
“What’re you all looking at?” Chuck asked with a raised, defensive voice. George nodded at us and grabbed him by the arm.
“If I’m going,” George said affirmatively, “you’re going too, you son of a bitch.”
“What’re you talking about? We’re supposed to- “
“Hang tight?” George asked, “In case you didn’t notice, we’ve got a hole the size of Texas through the front window. They’ll be coming in any second.“ George began dragging the lightweight Chuck through the kitchen, he turned to face us amid Chuck’s cries for help. “If any of y’all have eaten here since the last shipment, I suggest you follow us. At least you’ll die with some dignity.”
George nodded a goodbye as he pulled Chuck through the opening in the glass window. I prompted Dennis to follow me as we upturned a handful of tables and barricaded the hole. As we shoved the tables in place, one by one, we could hear the trill screams of Chuck and George, followed by silence for but a moment, before the tearing of skin and snapping of bones resonated from the parking lot outside. We both queasily winced at the noises, gritting our teeth, and bearing it as we returned to Tina and Rebecca in the kitchen.
Both of the girls quickly adopted the terror plastered on each of our faces. I could tell they wanted us to comfort them or offer some reassurance, but both of us stood without a word. That is, of course, before the inevitable next question arose:
Who’s next?
Another loud crash jolted us all from our silent stares; mine toward Tina, and the others toward the floor, stained with rancid blood oozing from Bruce’s wounds. Time was running out, and the lack of sirens meant we were still on our own. The inhuman and disfigured voices chanted in unison around the walls of the small building, all reprising their collective request of: “BRRRAAIIINS!”
“Alright, who’s next?” I said, sucking back a gasp of air and holding it tightly within my chest. The gazes from the others met mine, none in shock as if we all had the same idea.
“We can draw straws,” Dennis said, “there’s some in the lobby.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Rebecca said, “you’re the one that got us into this shit, Dennis. You oughta go first.”
“Me? I didn’t- ” he paused, noticing he was outnumbered. He slowed his voice, “I didn’t do anything. Chuck merely asked that I kept quiet as to not scare you all. I had no idea about the beef. I swear.”
Maybe it was the fact that the brink of death was so close but, for whatever reason, I believed him. Obviously, Tina did too.
“Straws, then,” Tina said. I nodded, hemming back a raspy cough as I stepped over Bruce’s lifeless body on the floor, retrieving a handful of straws from the lobby. I felt a shiver run up my spine as I turned to face the glass window behind me: there were more of them.
The infected studied me with wide eyes, ripping from their sockets without lids to hold them back; their tongues glued to the chilled glass hazed with what hot breath they had left. I swallowed a warm mouthful of spit as I returned to the others with the straws.
Tina cut them up with one of George’s kitchen knives. We all watched as she scrabbled the various lengths around in her balled-up fist, unable to tell the difference between them.
She held out her hand and waited. None of us dared to start.
Screw it.
I grabbed a straw, somewhat on the taller side. I was safe.
Tina immediately followed. The largest. Thank God.
Then Rebecca. She reached in, yanking the smallest out.
“Shit. Listen, you can’t- ” she fearfully stared back at all of us, “-I’m pregnant.”
Dennis’s mouth dropped open at the bombshell. I honestly didn’t have a comeback for this one.
“Bullshit,” Tina said, calling her bluff.
“It’s true, Tina,” Rebecca said, nodding spastically.
“How many weeks?”
“Twenty.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Girl.”
Her answers were pretty snappy. If she was lying, she was doing a damn good job.
And that’s when the biter entered the pictured.
See, despite our bureaucratic straw-drawing debate, the crawlers outside were far less cordial. It didn’t matter that we were deciding who would be their next meal. To them, all that mattered is that they got it.
I don’t know how he got in, but he did. Out of nowhere, this walker ran in and clasped his jaw, unhinged like a snake, right down on top of Dennis’ head, peeling some of his scalp off and cracking straight-through his skull, spraying his blood all over that “The Customer is ALWAYS Right” sign he had just put up last week.
We tried our best to pry the thing off of him, but our efforts were in vain. Tina rushed by me as she pulled the emergency exit door shut. Somehow, the biter must’ve figured out how to use a door handle. Rebecca then handed me the knife Tina used to cut the straws, and with one stab after another, I jammed the thing through the biter’s face, causing it to spasm and gargle on its own blood until it, too, fell limp.
Rebecca helped hoist me up to my feet, overlooking the mangled corpse on the kitchen floor. We were both silently waiting for the thing to twitch when that emergency back door began to rattle from behind Tina, the squeals of the infected pushing their way through. Tina pounded on it as she screamed for them to stop. They didn’t, of course. They kept slamming on it, and I feared that cheap-o door wouldn’t be saving us for much longer.
“What now?” Rebecca said, heaving with her chest. She looked at Tina and me, back and forth.
“Now,” Tina said, pulling the now red-bladed knife from the biter’s face, “you go outside, Becca.”
“What?” I said. What was Tina-
“Look at her,” she said staring intently at me, “Does it look like she’s twenty weeks pregnant?”
“I dunno,” I shrugged desperately, “How am I supposed to know?”
“Trust me, she’s not.”
“I am! You’ve gotta believe me!” Rebecca shouted.
“They’re gonna bust through that door any minute,” Tina said, “and the cops still aren’t here so we’re all gonna die if someone doesn’t go outside.”
Tina held the knife up at Rebecca, who turned to face me.
“What happened to women and children first, huh?” she cried.
“If you insist,” Tina said, shouldering Rebecca toward the door, causing her to trip over the body on the floor. I took a step back as the ensuing catfight began, ending with Rebecca being pinned against the emergency exit at knife-point. “Sorry Becca,” Tina said as she unlatched the door, forcing Rebecca into a swarm of the infected. Her screams shot through the tiny kitchen until Tina slammed the emergency exit, muffling the shrill shrieks.
Tina sighed aside the "Fresh, Not Frozen, Beef" sign and pulled herself through the kitchen with what little energy she had left, Rebecca’s screams cutting off as it was probable they reached her vocal cords on their way up to her brain.
Everything became silent then, aside from the hum of perpetual moans that plagued the place, and the ice machine. Tina stood before me, wiping away a tear and sniffling.
“I sure hope she was lying to us,” she said. I nodded as I extended an arm, embracing her.
“Y’know, there’s something I’ve never told you, Tina,” I said.
“What?” she said, her voice muffled as her cheeks dug into my shoulder.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“No, go on,” she said. I swallowed.
“If somehow, I get the chance…I wanna take you out,” I said. Tina laughed against me.
“Deal. Just as long as it’s not fast food.” I felt her smile widen against my arm.
As I held onto her so tightly amid that cramped-up kitchen, my nose atop her blonde locks, my lips pecking a kiss, the only thing that began running through my mind, now, was the taste of that number nine I had on my lunch break, and how it smelled just like the inside of her head.
Category:Beings
Category:Dismemberment
Category:Places
Category:Weird
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