Category: Zombie Candidate

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Charlie woke with a start. He fumbled around in the wispy, pale moonlight fluttering through the curtains of the open window. With a crash, he found his cup of water, spilling it on the floor of the Airstream trailer.

The dreams were getting worse now that Lizzie had run away. Thoughts began to peek through his rational facade that scared him. He didn’t even have a frame of reference to process his fear that she was somehow telepathically connected with him. He thought of the way that she absorbed the personality traits of those she ate. Maybe it worked both ways. Maybe the Demon was in him, too. He rubbed an old scar from a particularly nasty session with Lizzie. He flashed back to the struggle, wincing while he remembered how she bit straight through his skin when he tried to restrain her.

He knew that the undead had traits that seemed fantastic to the uninitiated, but he and the Scientist could always find a biological reason for those traits. Telepathy? That seemed more Star Trek than Frankenstein.

A clink of glass carried across the trailer from the Scientist’s quarters. Charlie didn’t know what time it was, but he knew he could really use a stiff drink and somebody to talk to. He grabbed a pair of tumblers and a bottle of scotch as he shimmied his way through the public space to the obviously aftermarket door and wall that denoted the start of the Scientist’s lab and personal quarters.

The murmur of a pair of low voices piqued Charie’s curiosity. It wasn’t uncommon to have unannounced visitors come in the night, but usually he knew about it. Following a terse knock, Charlie let himself in. He found himself standing in front of a familiar face that he hadn’t seen for a long time. Abner had to be over 100 years old, but he hardly looked a day over 65. The cause of his youthful look was dribbling down his chin. He finished the iridescent yellow elixir with a swig. The Scientist’s anti-aging serum wasn’t the best tasting drink Charlie had ever quaffed, but one couldn’t argue with the results.

“Abner! What are you doing so far from home?” Charlie’s tone betrayed that he was more surprised at the identity of the messenger than the fact that a messenger was in his trailer in Nowhere, Oklahoma at God-knows-what-hour of night.

“Well,” Abner’s voice cracked as he cringed at the aftertaste of the serum, “I have some good news, some useful information, and an earnest plea.”

Charlie set down the tumblers and opened the scotch bottle. He poured enough in each glass to require care as he handed the Scientist one.

“I take it you don’t want your drink in that,” Charlie nodded at the test tube still clutched in Abner’s fist. Abner looked down at his hand and set the test tube into the laboratory sink alongside a small pile of dirty glassware. Charlie ducked his head out into the kitchen and retrieved a third tumbler.

“I was just telling the Scientist that they sent me here to release you from this dusty perdition. Out of an abundance of caution we wanted to let things cool off after the Clark Panel report, but you can return to Massachusetts,” Abner probed for a reaction from Charlie, knowing full well that the Scientist was too stoic to provide satisfaction. Charlie obliged, sighing relief. The Oklahoma exile was hard for all of them, but Charlie felt like he was starting to go a little bit mad.

“So that’s the good news, what is the useful information?” the Scientist showed uncharacteristically earnest curiosity. Charlie noticed that the Scientist’s scotch glass was already nearly empty.

“Well, you need to return to Massachusetts this week because we have solid information leading us to the conclusion that Elizabeth is on her way to visit Edward.” Abner downed his scotch in a gulp, bracing himself for an onslaught. Charlie flinched at the mention of Lizzie’s name, and again at the mention of Teddy’s. To say that this business of the undead had gotten out of control was an understatement.

“I just want to finish by asking you to think carefully about what you’re about to do. You know as well as I do that Lizzie is a confused girl dealing with more than any,” Abner paused with  a look of unease as he searched for the correct word, “person should have to. Don’t write her off like you did Jack. She can still be saved!”

Without waiting for a response, Abner dropped his gaze away from his compatriots and grabbed a duffel bag resting on a lab stool. He retrieved a lined sheet of paper previously torn from a spiral bound notebook and folded in half. He placed it on the middle of the table with a tangible resignation in his demeanor.

“Martha’s Vineyard by the 19th. You’ll need to hurry, but we don’t foresee Lizzie getting there any sooner. Even if she does, Teddy’s gonna be busy screwing all of Bobby’s fangirls the night before, so he won’t have time for his sister. However, a two day regatta is one day too long for a Kennedy.” With a curt nod, Abner let himself out.

Charlie picked up the note, an address in Massachusetts, and stuck it into his front pocket with an absent minded gaze at nothing in particular. After nearly a year of confusion, concern, and anger it was time to go get Lizzie back.

---

“Mmmmmmmm…… aaaaahhhhhhhhh,” the distinctive nasal voice of Teddy Kennedy would’ve been recognizable by Lizzie even if she was blindfolded. Maybe it was the years they spent together in Oklahoma before he was ready to replace the stand-in. Maybe it was the cloying mix of pretentious New England fart huffer with idiot Boston fishmonger. Whatever it was, it seemed to grate on Lizzie more than in the past. As she lay prone on the floorboard of the Oldsmobile 88, she could hear the unmistakable rhythm of skin smacking skin.

“Ohhhhhhh…. yeaaaaaaahhhhh,” Teddy moaned in pleasure, shaking the car with his awkward thrusts. “mmmmnnmmmm” groaned a feminine voice, resembling more an incoherent gag than a sexual oratory.

“Where’s Crimmins?” Lizzie matter of factly queried, popping her head up between the seats. Teddy jolted upright, his flinch launching his human codpiece into the dashboard, hard. Teddy’s hands began to shake as he responded.

“Jjjjj- Joan, it’s not what it looks like.” He stammered, covering his throbbing manhood with his fly. He began to zip his pants up.

“Oh, that’s not Joan draped over the console?” Lizzie smirked as she leaned her head into a ribbon of light cutting through the cabin. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, what would Joanie think about this? Little brother Teddy’s out here getting his knob polished by some whore and Joanie’s probably back at home getting freight trained by Teddy’s friends.”

“Shit, Sis! What the hell?!?” Teddy immediately relaxed, turning his head with a faint smile contrasting the beads of sweat forming where his brow previously furrowed. “I don’t even know what you just said, but I’m glad it’s you and not somebody else! Now… get out.” He slammed on the brakes, kicking up a cloud of dust and flinging the unconscious girl in the front seat back into the dashboard.

“Little brother, I can’t get out. I have nowhere to go. I need your help.” Lizzie transformed her personality into the insecure tormented girl that Teddy remembered. “I…. I” she expertly quivered her lip, feigning fear and insecurity “I ran away. I couldn’t take it any more!”

“What can I do about it?” Teddy dismissively retorted. “As you can see, I have enough secret squirrel shit going on in my life right now. I don’t need to go flitting off with my fugitive sister.”

“Teddy, Teddy, Teddy. You always were in need of firm guidance. I’m sorry that Joan can’t keep you better heeled.” Lizzie’s condescension dripped like the blood flecked drool pooling under the passenger girl’s mouth. “You’re never gonna become President if you keep slipping the leash and disappointing all the women in your life.”

“Fuck you, Lizzie! I’m gonna be President like my brother. Like my other brother should have been. I’m gonna do it, and I’m gonna do it the right way! Charlie and the Scientist are fools, but they can get me where I need to be. They can get me into the Oval Office!” He raged while shaking the steering wheel, white knuckles apparent in the gleam of a far off light. “And one more thing, you stupid, conniving bitch! I don’t need any fucking woman to get into the White House. No woman is gonna get me there and no woman is gonna prevent me from getting there! I don’t need Joan, and I don’t need an older sister who nags me like a disappointed mom! You don’t know better! You don’t know jack shit, and I don’t know where you get off coming all the way up here to try to fuck with my head! It ain’t my fault you bailed out on Charlie and the Scientist!”

“I DO KNOW BETTER THAN YOU!” Lizzie roared. “AND I AM YOUR MOTHER! HEED ME OR FEEL MY WRATH!”

As the momentary fear and surprise cleared from Teddy’s face, he began to chuckle. “I guess Lizzie finally found a set of balls. Now, I still don’t know why you’re here and I don’t know why you think I need your advice. I already told you I’m not in a position to help you.”

Lizzie smirked, holding her dramatic pause for perfect effect. “Well, what about the dead hooker in your passenger seat?”

Teddy glanced over unconcernedly. ” She’s not dead, and she’s not a hooker. Look, she’s fine. Here, here you go.” He pulled the girl’s head over to inspect her face. Lizzie noticed that her makeup was smeared like a Picasso painting and her eyelids were halfway open. “Maggie, Maggie! No wait, Martha! No, that’s not right… Mary! Mary Jo! Yeah that’s it! Mary Jo! Wake up, it’s time to go!”

“Unghhhhhhh…. mmmmmmmmmmnnnnmmmmmm” Mary Jo mumbled. Blood seeped from her nose and blended with her hooker red lipstick.

“This girl is going to ruin you Teddy. She has to go.” Lizzie cajoled. “She can’t be allowed to talk Teddy, she’d destroy you and take my plans down with you. She has to go.”

“Wwww-what should we do?” Teddy stammered. “Maybe if I take her home she won’t remember anything.”

“Please, Teddy. She probably has a skull fracture, and your car is covered in her blood.” Lizzie dispassionately explained. “She has to go.”

“No, I’m not one for dirty work like that. I’m not like you.” His fear cut through any fortitude he tried to muster.

“You’re right.” Lizzie whispered, simultaneously grasping Mary Jo’s head and twisting until a gruesome crack echoed through the cabin. “I can handle the dirty work.” She dropped the lifeless body of Mary Jo Kopechne back into the passenger seat without a hint of emotion. “Now drive down to the dike. We need to dispose of the trash.”

After ditching the car in the water, Teddy and Lizzie began the long walk back to civilization, bantering like siblings, reflecting back on their time together 1500 miles away in Oklahoma.

“You’ve really changed Lizzie. That little girl I knew in Oklahoma doesn’t exist anymore. You’re confident, driven. There’s no conflict anymore.” Teddy observed, breaking the silence that had settled in as they walked around the emptiness of Martha’s Vineyard.

“I know what needs to happen. I have a plan now. I know best. Not Charlie, not the Scientist. I am right, and all I need is the power to make things right.” Lizzie explained. “You can have your Presidency, but I’ll be the first woman President, I’ll make sure the American people act like they should. No more chaos. No more disorganization. I can harmonize it all. I can control the uncontrollable. I can make America do the right thing in glorious lockstep. It will be…” she paused in what appeared to be genuine emotion “beautiful.”

“Lizzie, you’ve made strides in adapting to being around them,” Teddy gestured broadly toward the distant lights of the town, “but you’re not ready yet. Charlie and the Scientist are right to take it slowly with you. You’re a bit much to handle in a social setting. Your emotions are all over the place. You make people uncomfortable. And besides, even if you were ready for the rise to power, America isn’t ready for a woman President. You need to bide your time and make yourself boring. Lizzie Warren should remind people of that caring schoolteacher or the gentle motherly neighbor, not of a thunderstorm personified.”

“You are wise beyond your years, Teddy.” Lizzie patted him on the shoulder. “You’re right. I’ll go reconcile with Charlie and the Scientist. Just like you, I need them for a while longer. Now I’ll go make myself boring. Maybe in a few years I’ll even remind you of that headteacher that I ate.”

Teddy chuckled as they parted ways.

Meanwhile, Charlie started awake after yet another nightmare. Pharoah Lizzie spent all night whipping slaves until they were in a perfect geometric procession. Charlie still smarted from the licks of the lash he had earned as he struggled to keep stride.

“. . . the Declaration of Independence no longer arouses enthusiasm; it is an embarrassing instrument which requires to be explained away. The Constitution is said to be ‘outgrown.’” Lizzie read from her oration lesson for the day. The year was 1963, and despite nearly 20 years of training and preparation, she still fought the trademark multitonal wheeze of the undead when she encountered the letter H.

Charlie winced at the raspy tell, wondering whether parents of kids with lisps felt the same way. The stakes were obviously higher for Lizzie, because at worst the lispy kids would be called fruits like Liberace. Lizzie was the last opportunity to seize the reins of power before the responsibility fell to the next generation. Charlie was too old for another Plan 9.

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow.” Lizzie continued to read through her custom-printed Woodrow Wilson reader, completely oblivious to the cringeworthy irony of the quotation. Charlie had learned during the years of growth, pain, confusion and horror that was the maturation of this abominable creature that each undead monster had its own maturation process. The personal aspects retained from the donors varied greatly between the Kennedy creature and Lizzie. Jack Kennedy had virtually no recollection of events prior to his emergence, and he matured from emotional infancy to adulthood. Physically, he was an adult from day one, but his hormones appeared to be additive or even multiplicative of his donors’ contributions. Poonhound was an understatement.

Lizzie, on the other hand, seemed to have some vague recollections of her past. Her description reminded Charlie of the sense of deja vu one gets about a long forgotten dream. However, the feeling seemed to comfort her, and she preferred to practice her reading, writing, and oration skills using her Woodrow Wilson reader.

“Lizzie, it’s time to go. We’ve packed the Airstream, it’s time to start your whistlestop tour of the US.” Charlie warbled his voice in a faux lecturing tone. Lizzie was a bit too socially dense to understand Charlie’s joviality, but what could the harm be? Jokes go over little kids’ heads all the time. “First stop is Philadelphia!”

Lizzie curled into a seated fetal position, her eyes glazing over. Charlie and the Scientist had been telling her about this trip for a long time, easing her in, but she couldn’t relate to anybody of any age. Her mind was filled with the stern statesmanship of a former President, the nagging insistence of a schoolteacher edging for headmaster (who was really a scorned housewife), and something else, something dark and primal, instinctual but intelligent, something Charlie called the Demon. Other people were so simple, little puppets driven by base urges and simple abstractions piled up like a block tower erected by a 2 year old. They were just asking to be molded, formed, reconditioned… punished. A quote from her reader inhabited her conscious mind, “How is the schoolmaster, the nation, to know which boy needs the whipping?”

Her grasp of the concept of a rhetorical question was limited, but her grasp of the concept of a trick question was well burgeoned by the consistent exposure to Charlie’s wit. She knew the answer to the question.

“They all do,” she half-consciously muttered beneath her breath, unfolding from her defensive cocoon and preparing for the harrowing task of interacting with and learning from ordinary people. Charlie, by now well acquainted with Lizzie’s occasional inability to keep her inner dialogue from seeping out, ignored the seemingly random utterance and returned his attention to packing the mirror polished trailer full of necessities.

---

After a few weeks on the road, having traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast across the northern states, the weather had turned cold enough that the return trip would have to be to the south. The Scientist, the multi-talented genius that he was, had planned all of this out so that they would be back home right as the spring thaw took hold in 1964. So far, the trip had gone off without too many hitches. There was that boy from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma that they caught peeping in the window at Lizzie. He was in for quite a surprise when he saw her less-than-human physique. Hopefully she didn’t mess the boy up too bad. They stopped trying to find schools named for Woody after that incident. Lizzie was disappointed, but she took it in stride.

After an intensely monotonous transit across the desert, they arrived in Dallas in late November.

“How long are we here?” Charlie asked, knowing that the Scientist had already planned and discussed this stop with him. He had already taken Lizzie to a football game because his Eagles were playing the Cowboys, but he wanted to know whether how many additional days’ worth of interpersonal enrichment to plan for Lizzie.

“At least a week, maybe longer. I need to check a few things before I can give you an answer. Lizzie, now is the time that we will use your training.” The Scientist replied matter-of-factly. Charlie didn’t know what training the Scientist was talking about, her training had been used almost every day since they left the lab. She was making slow progress at interacting with normal everyday people after being a shut-in for the first two decades of her existence.

“Yes sir,” Lizzie replied, unemotionally, “I will ensure the weapon is in working order.” She shuffled out of the car and into the trailer, rummaging loudly through the packed gear.

“Weapon? What is going on and why am I not aware of it?” Charlie blurted, his voice rising in incredulity.

“We’re cleaning up your mess, you blithering fool!” The Scientist displayed a rare flash of emotion. He tossed a copy of the Dallas Morning News in front of Charlie. “Storm of Political Controversy Swirls Around Kennedy on Visit” read the front page headline. Charlie turned red faced and slammed the door to the car, angrily pacing on the sidewalk next to the idling car.

---

*BANG* *BANG* *BANG*

Shots rang out across Dealey Plaza. Lizzie nonchalantly packed her highly modified Carcano into her briefcase and walked behind the grassy knoll toward the designated rendezvous point. She didn’t mind dressing like a man, but the suit didn’t fit well and she was self-conscious about somebody disciplining her for not acting like a girl. Charlie had promised her that it was okay in this situation, but she still felt that all eyes were upon her, gawking, probing, hating the Demon. She quickly realigned her thoughts to the mission at hand. She felt a pang of an unfamiliar emotion when she thought of Charlie completing the most dangerous part of the mission, planting the gun on that retard commie librarian. They found the fool a few nights ago strung out in a dilapidated tenement and decided that he would be a better cover than their existing plan. Charlie risked capture, but the Scientist made clear that he would take the bulk of the risk since he did the bulk of the fucking up. Kennedy wasn’t even supposed to be alive in the 1950s, let alone putting together a political career that would culminate in the Presidency.

As she finished her determined path to the rendezvous, she was greeted by a waiting Charlie and the Scientist idling the car in a parking zone. She quickly shoved the briefcase into the trailer and took her appointed spot on the back bench of the car.

“Everything went as planned,” Charlie reported, stripping a pair of latex gloves off of his hands. “If we’re lucky we’ll be able to grab the blood samples for your study. Hopefully we can figure out what went wrong with him.” The only noise for the rest of their short trip was a shuffling of costumes as Lizzie discarded the ill-fitting suit and the occasional crunch of a wrapper as they ate a small lunch.

The Scientist, dressed in a pale blue smock, put a mask on his head and a pair of safety glasses over the mask. He stepped out of the car in front of the employee entrance of Parkland Hospital and opened the back door of the ’61 pastel green Cadillac DeVille, extending a hand to Lizzie and pulling out an ER nurse, white uniform complete with hose and a paper hat covering a perfectly coiffed bun. The makeup was a bit heavy handed, but wasn’t quite to Kennedean hooker status. An unsuspecting bachelor could get himself into quite a pickle if he ran across her all dolled up like this.

The plan was simple, infiltrate the morgue, get past secret service, and draw two vials of blood. Lizzie walked in first, carrying a clipboard and a body bag. The Scientist lagged behind, also carrying a clipboard. They both had forged ID badges clipped to their uniforms. Once the Scientist walked into the hospital entry, Charlie pulled away to park the trailer in an adjoining employee lot. He was dressed as a secret service agent, and he was the backup plan they hoped they didn’t have to use.

He began the short walk to the employee entrance, visualizing his nervousness escaping like ectoplasm with each deep breath he exhaled. Once he reached the door, he paused for a second to steel his remaining nerves, and walked into the hospital like he had a purpose. He knew that he wouldn’t fool the secret service agents in the hospital, but he only hoped to evade the notice of the hospital staff. He knew approximately where to go, but it would likely arise suspicion if he started ambling around the morgue looking for a body of a dead president.

Was the Kennedy creature dead? Although Charlie and the Scientist had studied undead creatures together for over 50 years, he had no clear answer. He had watched the explosive results of Lizzie’s third bullet, but there were rats in the lab that were ambulatory for hours after full decapitation. Knowing Jack, his brainless body was probably humping his pillow.

Charlie rounded a corner, following his pre-planned ingress, when things went sideways. “Excuse me! Excuse me, sir!” A determined voice beckoned from behind the nurse’s station.

Swallowing the catch in his throat and remembering that he was dressed as a secret service agent, he turned to the cute, if a bit pudgy, nurse flittering between files at the desk. “Yes ma’am, can I help you?” he hoped the faux bravado in his voice wasn’t noticeable to her.

“Do you know what’s going on? I heard the hospital is being evacuated!” Her voice contained equal parts curiosity and anxiety.

“No ma’am, not at this time,” he bullshitted, “do you know where the VIP is being kept?”

“Yessir, he’s in observation room 1-128, just down the hall and take the second right.” She obviously bought the act and had no problem blabbing confidential information as long as one looked the part.

“Oh, he survived?” Charlie was genuinely surprised that Kennedy would have been able to return to fully ambulatory status so quickly. The rats sometimes took up to a day to recover from what he and the Scientist best guessed was a comatose state.

“No,” she sighed, “One of the other nurses said he died. They’re waiting until they can secure a place in the morgue for him. What happened anyway? I heard that the President was in town, did one of his aides have a heart attack? This seems like a whole lot of to do for one person.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it. You’ll know soon enough.” Charlie waved in thanks and in departure and followed the instructions to the observation room. He rounded another corner and walked into yet another buzzsaw.

In the hallway stood an animated Scientist conversing with a pair of no-shit secret service agents. Their body language showed impatience and his showed increasing desperation. Lizzie was nowhere to be seen. The backup plan ended up being necessary. Charlie hoped that his dress and demeanor would buy him enough time to execute his part of this intricate dance. He walked with urgency toward the Scientist until he saw one of the agents catch notice of his approach.

“Sir! Sir!” he implored the Scientist. “Sir, if you aren’t on the whitelist, you can’t be here. I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.” He turned his back to the agents and gestured back the way he came. As he twisted back toward the agents, he slid a dart gun out of his trenchcoat and fired a pair of darts into the right legs of each agent, catching them completely off guard. Evidently the scene had been more confused than he thought, because he fully expected to have to outdraw the agents and dodge gunfire as they withered under the chemicals. One agent tried to unholster his pistol while melting like the wicked witch into a puddle of wool suit parts. Charlie defused the situation with a quick palm to the wrist, causing the agent’s hand to slip off the grip and slid down his torso. The other agent brought his left arm up to his mouth, attempting to sound the alarm, but the Scientist intercepted the microphone before it was activated. Almost gently, he returned the man’s arm to his waist and helped him down to his slumber. He grabbed a key from the man’s palm and inserted it into the door.

As Charlie and the Scientist slipped into the darkened room, their eyes met a scene that was beyond their ability to comprehend. The Scientist doubled over and rested his head in his hands, trying to regain his composure. Charlie ducked his head into a trash can next to the door and purged his lunch.

On the gurney was a writhing mass of flesh, pale with discolored splotches, some bare and some covered in patchy blonde hair. The noises emanating from the mass was animalistic and procreative. If this was sex, it was a grotesque, otherworldly, abominable parody of human sex. The bodies weren’t simply thrusting in concert, but they were actively fusing together and disintegrating like a ball of dough being kneaded. Genitals were barely recognizable, but the tell-tale “birthmarks” on Lizzie’s back stood out, as well as the patchy leg hair of Jack Kennedy. The top halves of their bodies were unfused, and Jack stared directly at Charlie. His expression was a mix of shock-induced stupor and that inherent smug charisma that caused him to part ways with Charlie and the Scientist in the first place.

Lizzie, on the other hand, wore a simplistic determination on her face. The pleasurable noises she made interspersed her attempts to lick, suck and chew at the gaping wound in Jack’s head. As she reached climax, she turned her head mechanically and locked eyes with Charlie, a chunk of bloodied brain hanging from her lips. The Demon was in control.

“Lizzie!” Charlie whisper screamed, cognizant of the threat outside the door and the threat mounted on top of the soon-to-be former President. The Demon was capable of many things, but it wasn’t able to stand up to a stronger personality in direct conflict. “Lizzie! Get off of that creature and put your fucking uniform back on!”

The Scientist, regaining his sense of urgency, grabbed Lizzie’s wrist and peeled her off of Jack in a sensation much like separating a pair of stuck together crescent rolls in a Pillsbury tube. Lizzie’s body quickly returned to shape, perhaps looking better than before. The scars and lumps and birthmarks that riddled and pocked her flesh seemed to have faded some small but noticeable amount.

“S-s-s- sorry, sir” Lizzie stuttered, gathering her uniform and covering her nudity. A blush formed across her cheeks as she realized that she was naked in front of the Scientist, who had only seen her bare a few times before. Her modesty wasn’t inherent, but Charlie had trained her enough that it had become a pavlovian response.

With a growl, the Scientist turned his attention to the bloated, heaving body of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Jack definitely got the worst of the intercourse, and the pain in his eyes betrayed the fact that he wasn’t going to be around much longer. His body seemed to be inflating and subtly gyrating like there was a pot of water boiling under his skin. The Scientist looked into his eyes as he inserted the needle for the first blood draw, 30 years of broken relationship condensed into a single shared expression. Hate. Pure, unadulterated hate.

“hhhhh- you! I knew it would be … you,” Kennedy gurgled and gasped, forcing the words out between waves of pain. A fit of coughing interrupted his deathbed rant.

“It washnt enough that you tried to kill me multiple times. I couldn’t have what you wanted so badly.” Kennedy wheezed once more, his breathing becoming labored.

“I die knowing that you will never succeed!” A final exhale signaled the end to John F. Kennedy’s unholy existence.

His body continued to gurgle as the Scientist packed up the vials of blood and Charlie huffed with incredulity. Lizzie, who despite being a product of death had never seen death, sniffed at the body, acting more like a dog than a human.

“Lizzie! Let’s go!” The Scientist snapped, making for the exit. Simultaneously a moan and a cracking sound emanated from the Presidential corpse. Lizzie jumped back and looked on quizzically, completely ignoring the command from the Scientist.

A series of noises that could be mistaken as coming from the back room of a butcher’s shop accompanied a heaving and writhing of Kennedy’s body. Slowly, it cleaved into two, leaving a much more recognizable Presidential husk on the gurney and a human shaped glob of flesh on the floor. Lizzie, far from being afraid, approached the glob and sniffed. She emitted a multitonal raspy sound at the glob, and it returned the call in an immature, high-pitched form.

Before their eyes, the glob transformed into a young man with clear Kennedy genetic lineage and more than a hint of fetal alcohol syndrome.

“What the HELL are we going to do about this one, Charlie?” the Scientist had that same desperate look on his face from in the hallway. “We don’t have time to get this… this… this thing out of here without detection!”

“No, no, no no no no no,” Charlie whispered barely audibly, defeat radiating from him.

After a long silence, he started. “I may actually have an idea to get us out of this. The Kennedy family we created has a fourth son, Edward. Currently, the actor we have portraying him is a fill-in for Jack’s Senate seat. This . . . thing . . . could pass for Ted Kennedy. We’d just have to concoct a story about Ted coming along on Jack’s trip if we get asked any questions.”

“Fine, but what if that thing doesn’t make it easy on us?” the Scientist gestured at the ambulating creature looking more and more believable as a human every second.

“Look at him, he’ll do anything that Lizzie tells him,” Charlie smirked while he watched Ted Kennedy sniff Lizzy in curiosity. They walked around one another in a tight circle, sizing one another up. When Ted faced toward the exit, Charlie addressed him. “Will you come with us?”

Teddy Kennedy cocked his head to the side before returning his gaze to Lizzie. He smiled a disturbingly unemotional smile.

“Kennedy Sandwich!!” He announced in his unmistakably New England nasal voice, tackling Lizzie onto the gurney and repeatedly thrusting his hips, no notice given to the uninhabited shell of his brother-father.

Charlie Lantino tried to cover up his anxiety by rocking back in his chair. He heard the bolt on the front door click open, and carelessly tossed the newspaper on the square table he had been hunched over. In big letters, the headline read “PRESIDENT WILSON DEAD.”

In walked a large silhouette that Charlie instantly recognized as The Scientist. Charlie watched silently as The Scientist turned the corner into the changing room and came out moments later, dressed in a clean apron with leather goggles pushed up into his long brown hair. The Scientist exuded power, from his chiseled face to his hulking body. He wasn’t what Charlie expected from a laboratory jockey. However, he had worked with The Scientist for seven years, and was shown first hand the extreme intelligence The Scientist possessed in the areas of anatomy and mechanization.

“Has there been any word yet?” Charlie blurted, trying to avoid letting his nerves project in his voice.

“Be patient, Charlie.” The Scientist cooed in a fathering tone. “He’ll be here shortly.”

As if on cue, a rattle at the front door signified the end of the waiting, as a large wheeled gurney was rolled into the center of the main room of the laboratory, obviously containing a body under a sheet. The nurse rolling the cart wasn’t much of a nurse. More than a cursory glance revealed the painfully fake wig under the giant white hat, and the masculine shape filling out the bleach white robe. Even without seeing the pock marked, sun seared face occupying the uniform, it was clear that he wasn’t a nurse, and that he had borrowed the clothes from somebody half his size. However, he didn’t need to fool anybody to pull off his heist, he only needed to avoid drawing attention.

“Did you have any trouble finding the body?” The Scientist distractedly asked, focused more on the obscured corpse than on the “nurse.”

“Nah, ’twas right where ya’ told me ta look.” A gruff, weary voice responded from behind the ridiculous getup. “Now, when’s do aye get’s a paid?”

“The money is back here in the cryo-room” The Scientist extended an arm, guiding the nurse back through a doorway opposite to the front corridor.  Once the two disappeared into the cryo-room, Charlie picked up the newspaper and began thumbing through for the sports page. He heard an undistinguishable voice raise in a panic, followed by a single gunshot. He winced at the sound, but recovered quickly and proceeded to pull the sports page out and find the horse racing section. The Scientist would be a while.

---

An hour later, The Scientist was finally done washing and had just changed into a fresh apron when another rattle at the front door signified the culmination of their plan. Another gruff looking man, this time dressed as a milkman, crossed the threshold with great effort, dragging what looked from afar like a sack of potatoes. When he emerged from the shadowy hallway into the harsh light of the laboratory, it wasn’t a sack of potatoes or even a sack at all. It was a young woman in a half-conscious state wearing a simple dress and no shoes.

“What the Hell are you thinking, Abner?” Charlie snapped, gesturing at the woman that Abner had sprawled on the examination table in the middle of the laboratory. “I thought you were grabbing a hooker, not a housewife!”

“Jus’ doin’ what I was told, Mr. Charles.” Abner replied in a practiced cadence.

“There will be searches and bloodhounds and newspapermen!” Charlie’s blood pressure was still critically high.

“I told him to change targets.” The Scientist growled in a monotone. “We need a subject without diseases. You know what happened last time.”

The conversation abruptly ended before Charlie could get a word in edgewise because the woman began to regain awareness and began screaming and drunkenly clawing her way off of the observation table.

“Restrain her before she hurts herself!” Charlie commanded. Abner quickly overpowered the woman and latched shackles to her wrists, reducing her to impotent writhing. The pitched caterwauling was annoying, but none of the men paid any heed. The walls were thick and the adjoining building was theirs.

As the men approached the operating table and The Scientist lowered his goggles over his eyes, the woman’s screams turned to pleas. Her imagination had taken over, and she was convinced that she had fallen into the hands of cannibal rapists. Her pleas grew more desperate, as The Scientist cut her clothes off with a pair of oversized shears and the men inspected her body. She became more confused as the men appeared to be no more aroused than her doctor would be. In fact, it seemed more like a physical exam than a sexual assault. Her arms were unshackled in order to be lifted and lowered. Her mouth was opened and inspected. They even tested her reflexes with a little tap to the knee.

In her confusion, she fell silent and began to shiver. Abner, noticing her discomfort, chirped a quick “Yeah?”. Charlie and The Scientist returned their own affirmations and stepped away from the woman. Abner then handed her a thin medical gown and mumbled a “here ‘yar ma’am.” The woman, grateful for the ordeal to be concluding, began to address The Scientist, to which he waved his arm in dismissal and proceeded to check some dials on a machine on the far wall.

“It is time.” He impassively stated.  Abner removed the chocks on the wheels of the observation table and wheeled the woman toward a giant metallic container in the corner of the room. It resembled a large cattle watering basin, but long and thin. Above it was suspended a metallic slab with many wires and rods protruding from the top. The wires ran along the ceiling to a massive wall-sized device with innumerable lights, dials, levers, and buttons. A few of the lights were illuminated or flashing, but the device seemed to be in an idle state.

Simultaneously, Charlie wheeled the cadaver to the metallic container and, with the help of The Scientist, lowered the sheeted body into the container using a hoist. Charlie caught a corner of the sheet just as the body disappeared into the abyss, pulling it out and wadding it into a heap on the gurney. He then stepped over to help Abner with the hardest part.

The woman, sensing the tension in the room and the impending finality of her situation, began to claw and scrape and writhe and scream anew. However, she was no match for the brute strength of Abner and Charlie, and was quickly wrestled into a passive position facing the ground. Her increasingly desperate flails afforded her no escape, and the men cantilevered her into the metallic container. As her head peeked over the lip of the container, she saw a confusing sight. The container was deeper than she thought. It extended below the floor to a depth of perhaps six feet. At the bottom of the container was the corpse, one familiar to her. It was Woodrow Wilson.

After an instant of recognition, she fell into the chasm, landing on the presidential corpse. Before she had a chance to try to escape or even move, The Scientist whipped a crank around in quick rotations, slamming the slab down on top of the container and extending the rods into the sepulcher, pinning the woman down on top of Woodrow Wilson.

Her muffled screams were hardly audible as The Scientist continued to spin the crank, applying more and more downward force on the rods. With a subdued crack, the protestations stopped.

---

 

“How much longer will this one take?” Charlie asked, knowing full well that The Scientist could only guess the answer. It had been twenty years since that last night of wanton cruelty, and Charlie was tiring of the daily monotony of recording sensor values in a logbook and passing the time. He was approaching 50, and was feeling it. The desk job and lack of physical exertion made him feel more like 60. Conversely, The Scientist looked like he aged only 5, maybe 10 years. Charlie always suspected that their work in extending lives was only a piece of the puzzle and that The Scientist was also working on anti-aging elixirs.

“You know this is a slow process. Remember, it took 10 years for the Kennedy boy to ripen.” The Scientist could hardly even hide his boredom these days. “Speaking of the Kennedy boy, you took care of him, right?”

“Of course! We should’ve foreseen the consequences of using the dirty hooker for that experiment. That kid came out of the incubation chamber a poonhound and a boozehead from day one. He obviously wouldn’t ever be able to obtain the power necessary to help us.” Charlie meandered through the rehashed story, staving off a yawn.

“How did you dispose of him?”

“I shipped him off to the Navy to go fight the Nips. He won’t come back.” Charlie paused to light a cigarette and then gestured the lit end toward the incubation chamber. “This one, though. He has the right pedigree. He’ll go somewhere.”

---

Another five years elapsed without any indication of the process completing. Charlie had come aboard late in the Kennedy resurrection. He never got to meet the unlucky bastard who was resurrected by hooker blood, but he certainly got to meet the unholy result. The creature, person, whatever it is, had the sex drive of ten men. The Scientist blamed that effect on the hooker’s chlamydia. The Kennedy creature also had the undead equivalent of fetal alcohol syndrome. The Scientist blamed those deficiencies on the fact that they sedated and killed the hooker well before dumping her into the chamber. After wasting 17 years incubating a drunk womanizer who would likely amount to nothing, there wasn’t time to screw things up again. The Scientist’s anti-aging research appeared to be generating results, but those results appeared to be, at most, a halving of the aging process, and had not yet accrued to Charlie’s benefit. Resultantly, they were both quite motivated to do it right this time; conscience be damned, they used a clean, live woman.

Yet another monotonous day of make-work research was punctuated by a subtle indication of change. One of the panels began to light up. The green indicator that was a daily accompaniment for 25 years was joined by an amber indicator and in close succession a blinking red indicator. The Scientist, not even attempting to hide his giddiness, pushed a few buttons and engaged a lever before shuffling off into the transition room to prepare for the new arrival. Charlie, who had experienced this part before, began putting together a mental checklist for when he went to the grocery. Returning from the dead consumes a lot of energy, and the new creature would likely eat through multiple times the amount of food as a normal man, at least until the biological processes stabilized in a few weeks.

The next three days were a whirlwind of activity, from buying enough food for a small army to acquiring various medical supplies, mainly for cleaning and wrapping open wounds. Much like preparing for a baby, Charlie was nesting. The creature would awake with adult intelligence, but the physical transformation isn’t complete for a few months. During that time, Charlie would be Mama, nurse, and therapist all in one.

Finally, the time came for the grand reveal.

“Charlie, keep the vacuum pressure up while I raise the lid, it’s a bit more humid than last time, and we don’t want any condensation to form,” The Scientist muttered while staring at a bank of dials and adjusted a lever.

“I’m getting a failure indication on the table lift motor,” Charlie replied, tapping the indicator with his knuckle.

The Scientist replied with a dismissive wave. “It’s probably just the sensor. It is quite finicky. If the motor doesn’t engage, you’ll have to manually crank it up.”

With a complete lack of fanfare, The Scientist engaged the lid motor, and a small hiss broke the airtight seal. A breathtaking stench of death wafted through the laboratory, inducing a wave of nausea in Charlie. It doesn’t matter how many times you unseal the undead, the smell never fails to hit you right in the gut.

Charlie flipped a switch and the table lift motor sputtered to life. The sensor was bad, just like The Scientist said.

What emerged wasn’t quite human. It was covered in gore and pustules, skin not fully formed. It gasped a phlegmy breath, filling its underdeveloped lungs with the relatively fresh air of the laboratory. A sound of firecrackers caused Charlie to flinch as the creature cracked out 25 years of joint stiffness, moving its mummified limbs only a small amount before letting out a muffled yelp. Its jaw hadn’t yet unstuck, and its tongue likely wouldn’t be fully functional for a week or two.

“This one doesn’t seem to be as well developed as the Kennedy creature. Look at those giant pustules on his chest,” Charlie vaguely gestured to the creature.

“Those aren’t pustules,” The Scientist growled, rushing over to a panel on the monitoring device. “Those are breasts!”

Charlie stood agape for a quick moment before rushing over to a pile of ticker tape collected in a bin.

“N21, nominal. C17, within tolerance. Q-factor, minimal” The Scientist mechanically checked the relevant sensors that would betray the sex of the creature. He ran his fingers over the class window of the Q-factor dial when a small piece of flotsam caught his eye.

Plink. Plink. Plink. The Scientist flicked the axial rod of the dial until the junk dislodged from the dial arm. The arm slowly erected like an Egyptian obelisk, leaving the masculine minimal range behind. The elevated Q-factor explained the buxom breasts. The creature was female.

“How could this have happened?” Charlie nearly sobbed, the magnitude of this failure finally setting in. “We didn’t have this problem with the Kennedy creature!”

“eeeeeeeeeeshhhhhhhhhtttt” the creature exhaled, trying to communicate with Charlie. He didn’t need to interpret the slurred language to know that she was famished. He helped her off of the table and into a wheelchair, her every move eliciting a groan of excruciating pain.

After a few minutes of quite unladylike gorging, the creature was temporarily satiated. Charlie knew that it wouldn’t last more than 30 minutes. The transition room was configured like a burn ward, and the creature’s every want and need could be attended to without leaving her bed. Charlie was mentally preparing for spending the next 6 months in this room nurturing this beast.

The Scientist walked in, obviously fuming but trying his best to hide it. Charlie, not one to know when to shut up, blurted out what was on his mind. “How the hell are we supposed to gain the power we require with a damned woman? Not only did we fuck up with the Kennedy creature, but he’s coming home a fucking war hero! Now we have a fucking housewife who is supposed to seize the levers of governmental power! Either the divine is putting up roadblocks, or we’re too damned incompetent to pull this off.”

Charlie sighed, having said his peace. It had been a trying few months, and this disappointment broke him. The Scientist, at first resolute to ignore Charlie’s outburst, turned to address him. However, the creature beat him to the punch.

“hhlllliiiiiiiishhhhhhh…. aaaeeeeeeeeeeeee…. wuuuurrrrrrrrrr…. uhhhnnnnnnnnn” she breathed, trying her hardest to form the words with her misbehaving tongue.

“What did she say?” The Scientist asked nobody in particular.

“Is that her name?” Charlie answered anyway, unsure why the creature picked this exact moment to name herself, “Lizzie Warren?”

The creature flinched and fluttered in an uncomfortable looking contortion. If it was a response to Charlie’s guess, neither of the men knew what it meant. Lizzie Warren quickly realized that she was unable to communicate her frustration to these goons. She laid back on the hospital bed in resignation. “IS A WAR ON??!?” her inner Wilsonian voice screamed to an empty theater.