Weekend at Vidu's: A Dead Drunk Short by Richard Johnson Page B

yelling as he locked eyes with
Julia only feet away. He wanted to comfort her, to say something, anything. But
tunnel vision kicked in and his consciousness poured away like water down the
drain.
    Charlie
grabbed his friend’s squirming legs and pulled him from the dog pile, but Vidu
simply used the freedom of movement to trip a nearby woman and spared no time
feasting upon her with gruesome efficiency.
    That was
enough for Charlie and Jim, and they took off as well, quickly catching an
already fleeing Left-Nut. Minutes later they reached Charlie’s apartment after
dodging countless infected maniacs. But like poor Vidu, their nightmare had
only just begun.
     
     
    *                      
*             
         *
     
     
    Zombie.
Infected. Demon. Moron. It didn’t matter what you called him. With one bite,
Vidu had morphed from a mild-mannered loser to a remorseless killer. The
modest-sized part of the man’s brain responsible for thinking had shut down,
leaving his frequent thoughts of boredom, confusion and sexual frustration a
thing of the past.  In their place was one overriding obsession: the need
to eat. No candy bar, cheeseburger, or even his favorite dish of curried mutton
from back home would do. What Vidu craved was human flesh, and the drive
pushing him to get it was more powerful than any addiction modern man had to
contend with. The hunger was all encompassing and downright primal.
    Vidu took
another sloppy bite from his latest victim and stood up. The man before him had
undergone the change himself, and no longer appeared as a food item. In fact,
as far as Vidu was concerned, it was as if the guy had vanished into thin air.
    Instantly
Vidu’s hunger returned in earnest, and he was back on the prowl. With hundreds
of spectators and runners surrounded by an ever-growing pack of cannibals, it
was a target rich environment before him. The hapless stragglers were like baby
turtles crossing a beach, beset by predators on all sides while being picked
off one by one. The end result for them was much the same, with only a handful
breaking through to “safety.”
    Soon the
finish line area experienced an odd calm once everyone there was either dead or
infected, and the sound of chewing created a dull but rhythmic chorus. Vidu’s
stomach roiled once again, but it was not filled with greasy super-nachos this
time. He was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, but far from satiated. With no
prey in sight he was forced to test his newfound zombie powers. Similar to the
way that a blind person’s other senses become heightened, Vidu’s brain shifted
power to the remaining areas responsible for the primitive tasks of long
forgotten ancestors.
    His nostrils
flared as he breathed in deeply, picking up scents and aromas once too subtle
to detect. Likewise, Vidu’s hearing range had grown considerably. The thinly
built man was no super-villain by any stretch of the imagination, but he was
quite deadly. Several people talking in a nearby alleyway found this out in
short order.
    They had
stepped outside a quiet café to grab a smoke, completely unaware of the
horrendous scene unfolding around the corner. When Vidu approached, ominously
silent in his orange Ed Hardy shirt covered in blood, the two men thought it
was a prank from their zany boss. It wasn’t.
    Vidu bit one
man’s shoulder and absorbed a punch to the eye from the second man without
blinking. He chased both of the waiters out of the alley and into the street
where they were met by a roadblock of teeth.
    Robbed of his
meal, Vidu took off in search of other opportunities elsewhere, and boy did he
find them. Other than a few bullets whistling past his head from a survivalist
trapped on the roof of an Argentinian steakhouse, he met no other resistance.
And so Vidu leisurely snacked, munched, and murdered his way down the middle of
the road.
    As luck would
have it, ten minutes later he ended up right back in front of