Carniepunk: The Sweeter the Juice

by Mark Henry

Genres: Paranormal; Urban Fantasy; Short Stories

Synopsis

Author of the Amanda Feral series Mark Henry lends his brilliantly twisted imagination to the gripping Carniepunk anthology in this creepy zombie short story.

When the zombie apocalypse overtakes New York City, a trip to Coney Island is the most frightening thing of all. A gruesome tale of transformation, Ferris wheels, and transsexuals.

Release date: September 8, 2014

Publisher: Pocket Star

Print pages: 60

Sample

Carniepunk: The Sweeter the Juice

“?The Sweeter the Juice”

Mark Henry

The fruit cart vendor on the curb is persistent if not articulate. He alternates shouting “All da lovely ladies love da frew-its” into his PA system with slapping his palm against his Plexiglas surround.

“You!” he pleads, his voice echoing. “You take. You try!”

He’s annoying me, and I’m already edgy from three days dry off the Jimmy. This can only end in bloodshed.

The drawer embedded in the side of the cart’s guard glass slams out toward me, a slice of mango glistening inside. The dark fruit rests not on a polite napkin but directly on the greasy metal bottom. A red smear of juice sets it off like a gory still life, makes it pop . . . and makes my stomach turn.

I wave my hand, shake my head as apologetically as I can fake.

As I pass, I notice the body in the gutter. A woman’s, perhaps. The pink bouclé Chanel knockoff suit appears part of its flesh, the body’s rot seeping through the weave of the fabric, turning it a murky green in spots, sludgy. There’s a hole in its dimpled forehead, and a sliver of mango dangles between its still-twitching fingers.

I hear a sharp tapping and look up to see the vendor rap a Glock against the Plexi. “Samples for customer who pay-ay!” he says into his mic, and gives me a big gummy grin.

He’s clearly known for his comic banter. Or at least he thinks so.

Zombies don’t pay for fruit any more than they do for dry cleaning. A shame. The suit was actually cute at one time. But worse than a fashion tragedy, the thing’s thin hips and sturdy legs belie a truth I’d rather deny.

The dead woman was a Sister of Perpetual Disappointment.

And by sister . . . I mean the kind with a penis.

The order is strictly my terminology. Don’t get me wrong, at times I feel like a nun, but there’s no convent, unless you consider all the transgendered gathering around Dr. Bloom’s office cloistering.

When death became passé, none of the Sisters expected the harsh toll the epidemic would exact on our small community. The hospitals were hard hit by the infected; doctors and nurses and worse—plastic surgeons specializing in gender reassignment surgeries—were some of the first casualties of the plague. It’s hard to maintain a practice from the inside of a zombie’s intestinal tract.

Go figure.

Needless to say, a heavy blow to transsexuals everywhere. It’s no wonder I took up the Jimmy. A few puffs and I almost didn’t care that I might be stuck with these disgusting crotch accessories forever.

A few of the sisters simply gave up, running windmill-armed into a nest of the undead just to get it over with, leaving behind a crimson concrete smear and an empty pair of stilettos—licked clean, naturally. Sure, suicide by zombie is a tad dramatic, considering handguns sell out of hot dog carts like condiments, but it’s undeniably effective.

It’s easy to go from dead to undead—a cinch, in fact: get bitten—but a bitch to go from man to woman . . . or vice versa.

As the virus began to weaken and some of the newly deceased started to stay dead, you’d think it would have become easier to find a doc somewhere in Manhattan. That they’d ship some in from Buffalo or Amish country, somewhere less affected. But no, for the longest time, it was damn near impossible to find any sort of medical care, let alone a pharmacy with some damn hormones to take care of my hot flashes.

That is, until we found Dr. Bloom, the last sex-change surgeon in New York City.

—

I PRESS THE buzzer of her building on the Upper East Side—too far east to be a decent address, and not far enough for a river view. No doorman, so that tells you something—in this case, that he’s probably dead.

“Yes?” the receptionist’s voice crackles from the circle of black mesh.

“Jade Reynolds for Dr. Bloom,” I say. “I have a two-thirty appointment?”

A quick note about the name. Jade. Exotic, right?

My given name is James Dean Reynolds. But my mother, God rest her soul, took to calling me J.D. when I was in single digits. The sound of those two letters together was the one thing I wasn’t willing to give up about my life as Gloria Reynolds’s son.

So I didn’t.

The door buzzes and I push inside. Three floors up in the coffin-sized elevator and I’m dumped into a cramped waiting room full of ugly men in makeup and hard women in stenciled sideburns.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my people; just don’t expect me to be attracted to them.

Speaking of unattractive . . .

“Jade!” Gretta Graves waves a gloved hand from a love seat nearest the receptionist’s window and then lets it flutter dramatically to her distended abdomen.

“Oh, hello” is all I manage.

Gretta pats the seat next to her. “Come on over, doll. Let’s chat.”

I wince, glancing at her belly, but decide to humor her. She could get pretty testy on fake-pregnancy days.

You might want to sit down for this next part.

Gretta is what’s called a maternally fixated transsexual. She goes through cycles of believing she’s pregnant, complete with terribly detailed prosthetics and a delivery routine that’s not a hit at parties. The amniotic fluid is a shoe killer—Gretta uses at least three times as much of that shit as is even necessary to emulate water breaking. When she blows, it’s The Poseidon Adventure. I’m told the “baby” is a disturbingly lifelike infant doll called an Exactie—the breast-feeding is apparently nightmare inducing.

It’s this specific delusion that prevents the doctor from moving forward with Gretta’s surgery.

That’s rule number one: Crazy people have to cut off their own dicks.

It doesn’t stop Gretta from haunting Dr. Bloom’s office, though. Not a bit.

As I scoot in beside her, she leans in close and whispers, “She’s really active today.”

I glance at her swollen belly and before I can shove my hand under my thigh, Gretta locks her fist around my wrist like a handcuff. “Wanna feel?”

Snatching my hand away, I hiss, “No, I don’t want to feel your fake baby! I need to get smoked. I need some Jimmy.”

Gretta nods and leans in close, eyes narrowing shrewdly. “I’ve got a line on something new.”

“You said that last time.”

“Something newer.” Gretta pulls away and nods at me, eyebrows raised lasciviously; then, when I don’t respond, she scrunches up her lips testily and leans back in.

“I’m talking about drugs,” she says, so loud that everyone in the room hears.

The receptionist raises her overly penciled eyebrow in judgment.

“Absolutely not!” I say, loud enough for the judgers amongst us. I have to think on my feet. Scramble. I hate that. “They don’t know what Pitocin will do to the baby! She’ll come out when she’s good and ready, that’s what I say.”

The rest of the waiting room looks away, satisfied Gretta and I are having the kind of regular conversation you might have with a schizophrenic, and not a heated argument between junkies. My gaze settles on the pinched face behind the front desk. The woman’s expression weakens into disinterest, and though she keeps an eye on me, she doesn’t reach for the phone or call Dr. Bloom for a know-it-all report.

Rule number two: Drug addicts are in the same dick-severing boat as crazies.

You have to be of sound mind to mutilate your body—never mind that the predicament itself is enough to drive a person crazy. Imagine spending your day trapped inside someone else’s body.

And not someone awesome.

“When I get done with this appointment, I’ll get you a hot dog and you can fill me in on all your maternity issues. Okay?” I pat Gretta’s belly.

She covers my hand with her meaty mitt, pressing it tight against the arc of the prosthetic. I try to pull away, but she’s persistent and stronger than I am, bullish. A moment goes by before I feel it, a sharp thud in my palm. A cold shiver snakes through me. There’s something in there. Something not a doll.

“What have you got in there, Gretta?”

Her only response is a smile.

“A cat?” I ask. “You’d tell me if it was a cat, right?”

She lets go and turns away, ignoring my questions. But I can’t shake the feeling.

—

DR. BLOOM’S EXAM room doesn’t have windows; it’s lined, floor to ceiling, with library cabinets, and above them a domed fresco of clouds floods the room in a pink hue that seems almost natural. It’s serene, and I realize I like it so much because the buffered room affords a reprieve from the periodic gunshots and screams we’ve all gotten used to.

The doctor sits across from me with her clipboard. My physical exam was routine; the counseling portion, while brief, is where my anxiety kicks up.

“How have you been managing, Jade?” Dr. Bloom crosses her legs and watches me intently.

“Fine, of course. I’ve been working a lot lately,” I say, hoping it’s enough to indicate a lack of free time. Free time in which I might get myself into trouble.

She jots down a note. “In the same place?”

“Yes. City Restructuring Office. Nothing exciting.”

“And you’ve been going to work as Jade, correct? I know you’ve had some backsliding.”

My jaw tenses. “Of course. It’s been fine.”

“How about socially?”

I think of my lover, H.G., probably passed out on dirty linoleum in some public restroom, a needle pegging his arm like a mosquito. He was nearly eaten the last time it happened. Lucky. But he doesn’t have any luck left. Once he’s gone, there won’t be any social life for a while.

“Fine.” I nod, producing a faint smile. Noncommittal. If she didn’t want lies, she shouldn’t make the process so damn difficult.

Dr. Bloom taps her pen against the board and waits a moment. “Have you got something you need to share, Jade?”

“Um”—I feign searching for a memory, when I already have one lined up for this moment—“I’m a little concerned about my weight, Dr. Bloom. I’ve been exercising, but I’m getting a bit of a pudge.”

The statement is enough to send the doctor on an exposition about hormones and the natural progression of the transition. I know all about it, but there’s nothing like acting stupid to distract Dr. Bloom. She loves to be helpful, and the truth is, despite my habit, I follow all the rules.

I am Jade. Everywhere.

I haven’t been J.D. since about six months before the plague hit.

I stand, straighten my skirt, and slip my purse under my arm.

“You’re doing just fine, lady,” Dr. Bloom says. “You keep it up. And don’t worry about a little weight. It’s called curves. Enjoy them.”

I’m about to close her office door behind me when I hear those jarring words: “Please see Annick on your way out.”

—

ANNICK IS A Hun—as in Attila the Hun—both brutish and brooding. She hunches behind an aging computer that’s been hollowed out and turned into a stash box for the bartered items she accepts for Dr. Bloom.

Her lip curls back from clenched teeth. “You’re late with your bill, Mr. Reynolds.”

She’s also decidedly unambiguous about her disdain for transsexuals, which is always pleasant.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t get the ham. My source is out of stock.”

She takes off her glasses, letting them dangle from a knot of twine around her neck. “From the looks of it, no corn, either.”

“Sorry. Next time, I promise.”

“There won’t be a next time, Mr. Reynolds. This is the third time, and you know what they say—”

“Third time’s a charm?” I venture with a crooked smile.

She responds with a smirk and a quick shake of the head. “Three strikes and you’re out.”

“But, Annick, my progress. I can’t backtrack. My chest will start to fur. You know how terrible my cleavage looks with hair!”

Annick sucks at her teeth, her cold stare is unblinking, and I’m certain I’m sunk.

“I’m afraid I have some rather bad news, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Ms. It shouldn’t be that difficult to refer to me as Ms. I am wearing women’s clothes.”

“Yes, well, it’s bad news regardless of gender. You see, it’s come to our attention that your trades have been consistently irregular. A barter system only works if the patient keeps up their end. That hasn’t been happening. We pride ourselves on flexibility, but your doctor can only bend so far before your lack of payment breaks her back. We don’t want that to happen, do we, Mr. Reynolds?” Annick shrugs. “I’m afraid we’re discontinuing your treatment.”

“What? When?”

“Now. Right this very minute.”

“But what am I supposed to do?” I lurch forward, gripping the edge of Annick’s desk for support. “How can I make this right?”

“You should have considered that before you started taking drugs.”

“I—I haven’t.”

“Of course, not. I’m certainly mistaken.” Her crinkled lips form a crooked, empathetic circle. “But not about this bill. You’ve made promises you haven’t kept. And there are others who don’t seem to have any problem making appropriate trades.” She pouts and puts her hand over both of mine. Pats them gently. “I’m sure you’ll find other . . . arrangements.”

“Like what? What is there? I’m six months from surgery. I’m in the middle of something here. I can’t just live this . . . this . . . half life.” I grab my breasts as a reminder.

“Well.”

“Well?”

“I’m sorry.”

And with those words I feel the hope slip away. One moment I’m a transitioning woman with a plan, the next I’m a thing, with hormone-enhanced breasts and a shriveled dick. I imagine what will come next: the horrible decision to hack it off like the rest of the unfortunates who can’t work out a deal with Dr. Bloom, dick in a jar of brine, my balls and groin cinched up with dental floss.

Annick taps a pencil on the desk, her eyes narrowed in thought. “There may be something. We’ve heard word of an alternative to the surgery. A . . .” She pauses, searches the room for a word and then seeming to find it, her eyes snap back to mine. “Transformative agent.”

“What does that even mean?”

“We only know that it’s called Zed. We don’t know who’s supplying it or where it comes from. Just that it’s post-pharmaceutical, so there hasn’t been any testing done, obviously. No guarantees of efficacy. But there have been claims of transformations. Body changes. Miraculous to hear them tell . . .” Her voice trails away. “If you were to verify this for Dr. Bloom—and bring some back, of course—your entire care here would be gratis.”

The words don’t register quite right.

“Gratis,” I repeat.

“It means free treatment, Mr. Reynolds.”

Free treatment. Let’s bask in that for a moment. I’m not a lucky person. I never have been. Except surviving the zombies—that’s pretty lucky. Still, I think you’ll agree, that little trick was entirely offset by being born into the wrong body.

I nod that I understand, lost in thought.

It’s not the worst thing that could happen. In fact, it could be a godsend. Black-market meds for Dr. Bloom in exchange for the freedom I’ve always longed for—freedom from this torturous prison of a body . . . and these horrible, foreign genitals.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like I’d be providing a service to the Sisters of Perpetual Disappointment. Bringing hormones to my people. Like Moses, only instead of slaves from Egypt, I’d deliver the transsexuals from crippling dick dependence. Obviously, there’d be no Red Sea parting—because, FYI, a monthly period cannot be re-created through surgery.

I’m woken from my daydream by fingers drumming.

Annick glares like I’ve just shit in her oatmeal. “Why are you still here?”

—

IF I’VE LEARNED anything from the zombie apocalypse, it’s that you take advantage of every spot of fortune that comes your way. Those moments are fleeting. Think you’re safe enough to relax? A zombie horde pops in for a surprise party—one in which you’re the cake. You’re well fed and your pantry’s stocked? Your place is targeted by scavengers and cleaned out. Sex-change financing in the bag?

Shit. I don’t even want to think about how that could fuck up.

I have to move quick. I have to be smart.

Outside, I’m confronted not by the fruit vendor, who’s sadly packed up his stand and disappeared—“sadly” because I could really go for a mango now—but by an impromptu street carnival.

It is the smell that hits me first.

Already steamy in the afternoon heat, the air rumples with the all-too-common stench of rotten flesh.

And then Gretta stumbles into me, clutching my shoulders like a railing and pressing the hard shell of her fake stomach against my back.

“Jesus,” I mutter.

She gropes and clings and struggles to remain upright. I finally have to twist on my heels and snatch both of her arms to balance her. When she’s settled and I’m sufficiently fondled, she looks over my shoulder, lets out a sharp whistle, and says, “Now, that’s a float.”

And she’s right.

An old El Camino fitted with a wooden stage cantilevered over the bed of the truck by a good six feet on either side creeps up the street. It’s flanked by several scantily clad women and men, both young and old, some horrendously sagging but all unapologetically gyrating, kick-stepping to big band music blaring from a pair of precariously duct-taped speakers on the roof of a trailing taxi. Atop the stage, in all its macabre glory, a family diorama is on proud display. Three corpses positioned in the roles of swing dancers, two males dressed in zoot suits and a female, hair in victory rolls and a retro dress tight enough to keep her withered flesh from falling apart.

As is customary, the immediate family follows behind, puppeting the movement of their beloved dead, with rods fitted with slipknots strung around decaying wrists, necks, and precarious kneecaps.

These are no ordinary dead. They are the blessed, the unrisen, the precious few who have died since the plague and were unmoved by reanimation.

They are the new American iconography.

I find the entire display almost tasteful. But I’ve attended some where the celebrants were clearly half-assing it. Shoddy costuming. Incongruent theming. Missing body parts. It’s enough to make me want to judge them openly, like when we used to have Olympics.

This float earns at least an eight point three—points off for not working in a Mexican theme with the El Camino.

But festive nonetheless.

“Annick made me an offer,” I say. “I need to track down this drug. Zed.”

Gretta nods. “This is a job for Neuter.”

The name sends a shiver up my spine. Neuter is the epitome of a botched sex change, right down to the name. He represents the kind of failure that terrifies me. A place where we all might end up without the kind of prospects Annick has offered up. Plus he tries to make out with everyone, which is only okay if I’m really really stoned.

“Seriously?” I ask.

She nods.

I groan, but I know it’s true. Neuter is also a gigantic drug addict. Nearly to the point of fetishism. He collects information on new drugs and where to get them like girls used to do with high heels. If he doesn’t know where to find Zed, no one will.

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”

“After the parade, okay?” Gretta asks. She leans back on the stoop, rubs her belly, and bops her head along to the music.

—

EVENTUALLY I NOTICE that somewhere behind the music, and outside the possibility of speaker feedback, another sort of buzzing vibrates, familiar enough to have me collecting my things and searching the street for an escape route.

Pat-pat-pat.

Not close, but coming.

The taxi stops first. Its driver, a curious youth with more ink than not and a bulbous head crammed into a wool cap, sticks his needle neck out the window, putting an ear to the wind. He twists off the tunes and the El Camino stops too. The parade goes still.

Slap-slap-slap.

The sound is like cards being shuffled through thumbs. Slap. Slap. Slap.

I turn to Gretta; everything about her face is wide open: eyes, nostrils, mouth. That’s the look. Zombie radar.

Alleys and streets begin to echo with their footfalls. There are no groans like the films have led us to believe. Zombies have no use for their vocal cords. The only thing their throats are good for is inhaling large quantities of flesh. Gulping back the wet stuff. They don’t even bother to chew. I came across one, once, lying on its side like an opium addict, an intestine dangling from its mouth. It slowly pushed the organ down its esophagus with a loose chop-stick. It watched me but wasn’t interested in anything fresher. They’re pretty calm once they are eating.

But there’s always that smell. Acrid. Cloyingly sweet. A human innately knows the smell of their own kind’s rotting flesh. The first couple of times, it wrenches the bile out of your gut, but after a while you learn to use it as a tool.

A warning.

The approaching horde has either figured out how to hide their own putrification—unlikely—or they are an unusually fresh group of undead. Whatever. They are clearly coming toward the impromptu carnivale like the once-happy family staging it rang a dinner bell.

Gretta claws at my back. “Save yourself!” she cries dramatically, hand fluttering at her chest like an honest-to-God self-sacrificing southern belle. “I’ve already lived a life!”

Normally, I’d be fine with that, but something’s wrong here. Something that stops me from climbing atop her like a drowning victim.

In an alley across from where the El Camino idles, its desiccated passengers abandoned by the scattered revelers, shadows begin to stretch up the brick walls. I push us back into an alcove, Gretta’s fake pregnancy bump jutting into my suddenly aching back. I feel a thud and worry about whether the cat or whatever she’s smuggling in the shell under her dress is getting enough air.

The first of the marauders appears. He’s small and angry, and what looks to be a port-wine stain blotches the area around his mouth. Something glints in his hand in the seconds before he bolts into the street. And then it’s slashing its way through what’s left of the crowd.

A knife.

Knives. His compatriots flood the street.

There are too many of them to be zombies. There hasn’t been a decent horde in weeks; they just can’t assemble like they used to. These folks are different, and as they each appear from the alley, darting into the street to join the fray, it’s clear exactly how different. Besides being blind with fury and armed—zombies never carry weapons—each and every one of them is disfigured by a purpling splotch radiating from their lips. One of them, a craggy branch of a woman, staggers up and points a metal skewer at us. Her stain is as dark as plum and stretches across her cheeks like a black doctor’s mask. We make eye contact, and her eyes narrow.

Alive . . . and crazy. Clearly.

I hold up my hands instinctively, but she isn’t interested in us.

“Bitch is trippin’, ” Gretta whispers.

“For real.”

The woman’s eyes roll back into her head as she catches the scent of what the group is really after, and her head lolls to the side, facing the family iconography. Two men have already heaved themselves atop the El Camino’s stage and are busy tearing at the corpses. An arm detaches and lands on the hot concrete, and I could swear I hear the damn thing sizzle before the woman dives atop it, grips it between her clawed hands like a hoagie, and begins to gnaw at the bone end, tugging at the dry flesh as a dog does with rawhide.

Soon the street turns into a smorgasbord for the living carrion. Even the Sister of Perpetual Disappointment lying prone in the gutter isn’t immune to their savage foodfest. A pair of the grape-mouthed sickos tear at her clothing and dig into the weak flesh of her abdomen, using their spread fingers to wind up intestines like spaghetti caught in the spinning tines of a fork.

A niggling stitch winds in my stomach as I try to hold back my disgust.

They devour dead flesh like vultures but seem to be completely uninterested in the living. A reversal of what we’ve become so used to with the undead.

Gretta, who can’t be bothered with discretion, retches behind me, bumping me forward onto the sidewalk in the process with that disgusting growth of hers.

“Dammit, woman!” I shout.

The movement catches the feeders’ attention, and before I can back away, one of the bigger freaks—a real pushy bastard—rushes past me, sending me spinning into a tumble across the concrete. I hear Gretta’s hoarse screams first, followed by the rapid clops of her gigantic platforms.

The man is gaining ground on her and, like any good pseudo-acquaintance would, I reach for the gun in my purse, kick off my heels, and give motherfuckin’ chase. I’ve never shot a person, living or dead, that I recall—though things got pretty hairy in the thick of the apocalypse, so you never stuck around to see if your bullet found a soft home.

That I’d be totally conscious of this, paired with the way my day was going, brings a tiny smile to my face.

Gretta ducks into the gaping doorway of a ground-floor apartment decorated to look like the dash of a third-world cab. A rope of fuzzy puffs garlands the frame, and instead of a knocker, a brass Virgin Mary clings to the open door. The guy darts in behind her.

I leap the three stairs and rush inside, but what I’m witness to isn’t altogether clear. The carrion eater has Gretta Graves on the floor, backed into a corner and screaming her head off. Her legs are spread and he’s chomping away, and at first I wonder if they’d like some privacy, and then I realize I hear the scraping of teeth against plastic.

“What the fuck?” The words escape without any real control on my part.

Grape Ape’s head pivots in my direction and that indigo tongue of his laps at bleeding black gums. Whatever he’s been eating is staining them from the inside out. His eyes are crazy, and I’m certain it’s drugs. I look past him to my friend’s torn dress. The man’s blood trickles from the fake navel of Gretta’s prosthetic gut. Beside the belly button a dark spot. The freak managed to puncture it, and the hole is just large enough for what’s inside to make itself known.

“Oh, Jesus, Gretta,” I say.

The freak’s head jerks back and it h