Zomboid Spark by Richard Godwin

ZOMBOID SPARK - RICHARD GODWIN

‘She always said necrophilia would be the death of her,’ Larry said. He paused to flick his Ronson lighter and held it smouldering to his Cuban. ‘And you know what? I agree. She liked a jump and she did it with all sorts. That was her joke. She was getting into some strange areas, bit like a junky needs a bigger hit.’

‘So what happened to her?’

They were sitting in Larry’s restaurant. Lovers Crumble appealed to everyone with its versatile menu, but it appealed particularly to those who loved deserts, especially crumbles. Mick was sitting with Larry at his private table and his eyes wandered around the immaculate shining venue in admiration.

‘Tracy is no more,’ Larry said, blowing smoke upward with a look of satisfaction.

‘Why do I think there’s something you’re not telling me?’

‘Because there is, and I will,’ Larry said.

He took a deep swig of cognac and motioned Mick towards him, watching as he slid his chair forward.

‘How come you gave up the lab?’ Mick said.

‘Tracy always liked a fuck. From the day I knew her she had this thing for waiters, her sparks she called them. The first time she screwed one I ignored it, hired a hooker, but I got madder each time she did it. She said they were a flame that kept her ignited, kept her pretty, well I can tell you she wasn’t too pretty when she fell apart and I mean fell apart.’

‘I figured something was going on with her. I thought she liked your money.’

‘I engineered the serum as you know, I could have retired on that.’

‘The new flesh serum?’

Larry nodded and took another drag.

‘I took Tracy away on a holiday to the Caribbean and hoped she would settle down and stop with her sparks. But there was this one waiter she liked and I found her in bed with him. He was tall and dark, he had the look, women used to turn and look at him. You know the type.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you what happened. I shot him full of serum. I turned him into an android.’

‘So that’s how you made those extra millions.’

Larry leant forward and winked at Mick.

‘All the droids you see, they’re down to me.’

A waitress came over and filled Mick’s glass. He eyed her full figure wrapped inside her skirt and said, ‘She one?’

‘Yeah, she’s a gynoid.’

‘So what happened to this waiter?’

‘I thought I’d take control, see. Let Tracy have her fuck but use the fact that she was screwing an android to curb her dalliances.’

‘So she was fucking a robot.’

‘Not a robot, my droids have human skin, makes them appealing. Touch her.’

Mick reached out and ran his hand down the waitress’s arm.

‘I’d never know,’ he said.

Larry nodded.

‘And they’re good in bed. So I got it all set up, Tracy could get screwed by him but he’s just a machine, except I made one small error.’

‘What?’

‘I’d had too much whisky that night and I mixed the serum with another one I’d taken out there to develop. I created the first Zomboid.’

‘What the fuck is that?’

‘It’s a mixture of a Zombie and an Android.’

‘No shit.’

‘And what happened wasn’t pretty. You see the way it works is the Zomboid can infect a human and that human becomes a regular Zombie.’

‘Which can’t be destroyed?’

‘Oh, no, it can. No brains, no action. Tracy’s getting screwed by the Zomboid one night, I hear her screaming out into the midnight and the next morning she loses a finger in her breakfast bowl. That’s when I figure it out.’

‘So what did you tell her?’

‘I didn’t tell her anything. I let her get screwed again. I always said fucking would kill her in the end but she never listened to me. She was dancing one night, wearing this low cut dress and showing it off, and one of her legs flew off, raced through the air like a prosthetic limb and landed in someone’s desert, a most embarrassing moment. One minute she’s doing a salsa, the next she’s licking the floor. The final scene was tragic-comic, I saw her lying under the Zomboid and he was giving her the action and she was doing that scream she did aah hu aah hu, and, well, let’s just say the mouldy cunt split on us both.’

‘What did you do to her?’

‘I removed her brains, scooped ’em out of her hollow skull like stale scrambled eggs. No more Zombie Tracy.’

‘And what happened to the Zomboid?’

Larry pointed.

‘See that guy front of house?’

‘The good looking dude with the hair?’

‘Yeah. That’s him.’

‘No shit?’

‘Yup. Pulls all the women in.’

‘So you sold the lab?’

‘What do I need to work for now? I got hookers and gynoids.’

Mick stared at the Zomboid as he admitted more customers, shook his head and laughed. Larry flicked his Ronson and watched the sparks rise from his Cuban while he heard the sound of bones cracking beneath a Caribbean sun.

BIO: Richard Godwin is the author of crime novel Apostle Rising, in which a serial killer is crucifying politicians and recreating the murder scenes of an original case. The novel has received great reviews.


It has just sold foreign rights to the largest publisher in Hungary.


He is widely published in many magazines and anthologies and also writes horror and Bizarro as well as literary fiction and poetry. You can find out more about him here. His Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse are popular and penetrating interviews he conducts with other authors at his Blog.


His second crime novel will be published in April of this year by Black Jackal Books as a paperback.