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.

Crotchless Waltz by Richard Godwin

CROTCHLESS WALTZ - RICHARD GODWIN

Every year they came there and partied. They wore the latest gear and stared at themselves in mirrors that stretched in a line of narcissism along the walls of the house that stood on the hill staring down into the valley. Sally and her friends, the beautiful young things, pliant and ready, perfumed and effervescent like a cheap drink. They’d arrive in their boyfriends’ cars and stand fixing their make up in the pale twilight that edged too quickly into blackness, entering the house with smudged lipstick they fixed while their boyfriends got ready for the action.

Sally had bought the house and made it as disrespectful as she could to the small community of labouring farmers that lay below her dreaming of her death with resentment etched into the lines of their hands. They tilled the soil and raised the crops that the crowd on the hill showed little interest in, bringing their own food and drinks.

That summer, Sally turned up with Des, her new fellow, who screeched to a halt in a Porsche and stood scratching his dick while she and her friends went inside.

‘Great place, Sally,’ Mandy said.

‘Yeah, I bought it for nothing.’

‘Place like this costs money.’

‘Nah, something to do with the previous owner disappearing and the bank needing the dough, you know how it goes.’

‘What is this, some hick community?’

‘Don’t know, I only been down there once.’

‘Yeah, tell Mandy what they have in the single shop this place boasts,’ Des said.

Sally laughed.

‘There’s this sign over the door that says “this community looks after itself and always has”. The shop looks about a hundred years old.’

‘What does it sell?’ Mandy said.

‘I have no idea, all I could see was rotten meat.’

Mandy stood knee deep in boots and looked at Des’s friend Eddy. They were eyeing her and tittering as they fixed the girls some drinks.

‘What does her makeup say to you?’ Des said.

‘It says she likes getting fucked in the john,’ Eddy said.

Before long the music blasted out of the house as the others turned up.

The woods were black below them and the faint rustling of leaves troubled some of the animals which headed into the branches. The rhythm was not the rhythm of the usual nocturnal wanderers. The sound from the house boomed down into the trees and between the beats of the music a low breathing like a snarl could be heard in the woods.

In the house, someone stuck on Ice T, and as ‘I Must Stand’ blasted the dormant farmhouses into a sudden eruption of lights and fury, Sally blew Des in a back room.

She leaned over him in her tight skirt and took off her bra as she unzipped him and rubbed him to hardness.

In the woods, he stared out at the night with black eyes that saw spectral shapes and the waves of music rippling down to him as if beckoning him in. He smelt their perfume and felt nauseous.

The party was getting rowdier by the time the visitor arrived. He stood outside in rags and listened to the sounds, smelling flesh and sex in the still night air. He registered the strange incomprehensible sounds of laughter and excitement and wondered what strange breed of animals these were.

It was his smell that hit Eddy as he stepped through the door. The lights were low and he had his hand up Mandy’s skirt and, as he parted her lips, the stench of rotten flesh engulfed him.

‘Fuck me,’ he said, snapping his head back.

Then the screaming started. Some of the partygoers ran, but he held them at the door, ripping their flesh to ribbons with claws that curved like talons. The rest tried to run for the stairs, but he moved too fast and tore them to the bone.

In the back room, Sally had her mouth round Des’s cock.

The playlist moved to Lou Reed’s ‘Sally Can’t Dance’ as she stood up and took off her skirt.

‘I got my new crotchless panties on, honey,’ she said.

Des started to pull her towards him as he heard the screaming.

They raced out of there to see Mandy bleeding. Her top was ripped open and she was pumping blood onto the floor.

‘What the fuck is this?’ Des said, staring at the decayed flesh and rags that walked towards him.

As he got close to him Des began to retch, bending and contracting as he tried to swallow bile.

He reached out a hand and touching Sally with his talons said: ‘Did you dance with Picasso’s illegitimate mistress?’

‘What?’ Sally said.

And he led her across the floor in a macabre waltz.

And as Lou Reed intoned ‘Sally is losing her face’, Sally briefly made the last dance steps of her life, hopping and moving in her new panties before he opened her up from crotch to neck and watched her wobble to a legless halt. He pulled Mandy’s heart out and slung it against the wall. Then he turned and cut open Eddy’s neck in a neat arc, and tore Des to pieces by the door.

It was black outside as he stepped into the night and entered the woods. And below him the lights went off as the farmers went to sleep.