The Stopford Zombies
By Mike Philbin
Let me first state for the record that the dogs were to blame; not grant-greedy scientists, not power-crazed politicians, not ego-maniac generals who wanted world domination no matter what the cost to society: it was the ass-licking dogs who screw it up. It always the dogs, innit? No, I don’t mean the underdogs; the under funded, the misunderstood, the outcast. I mean the flea-ridden tamed varmints of the woods that man once so proudly called his best friend. There was no revolution taking place here. Just a cunning rat of a virus spreading across the undead flesh of a nation until one day all corpses would think the same way. Science had reverted to arrogant type, despite the warnings from armies of God’s-own evangelists, despite the complaints from the true intellectuals ousted from military service for their insolence, despite the growing mountains of evidence to the contrary, state sponsored genetic factories had produced the first intelligent zombie. There was an ethical issue though in testing CleverMesh™ on live civilians so the army thought of a cunning plan.
Nobody in Government House U.S.A. really knew the full impact of what they’d unleashed as the first ass-licker ran off the production line, panting and wagging it eager little tail. Man’s best friend was about to become his sworn enemy. It was a classic of sci-fi-horror... bring back the celebrities and heed their wisdom, learn from their lives, win wars like they did. Nobody thought to reanimate a Dalai Llama or a Mahatma Ghandi first, that’s not how governments choose their heroes – they needed something spectacular to rage through their tenure like a spitting, slavering half-drunk of military bullishness. The first true success was a reanimated version of Napoleon Bonaparte, the great military strategist. Next was Socrates, the master of critical reasoning. Then the brutal Genghis Khan, then gunslinger Billy the Kid, the virginal Joan of Arc and suddenly the entire cabal of historical undead was looking pretty darned sexy.
CleverMesh™, the driving force behind these intelligent zombies was like a portable sheet that you could drape over any cadaver and so reanimate its sorry shreds into something resembling intelligence. It doesn’t matter who first succeeded in building this biological interface to the undead, what is important was the first CleverMesh™ donor - that dumb idiot who believed everlasting duplication as an intelligent zombie would be better than a full and productive human life. A light haulage driver by the name of Stopford. They grafted the military A.I. of the simulated leader onto the Stopford’s donated brain pattern similar in the way to how scientists one day hoped to reanimate dinosaurs by grafting dino-d.n.a. onto frog-d.n.a. and waiting to see what hatched.
Stopford was an absolute gun-toting psycho and he knew it was a good and proper thing to do, donating his superior mind to science. It was a military thing. A living gun thing. A cadaver of terror thing. He knew this meant ever-living infamy for his multiple reincarnations —only when the entire human race had run out of bodies would he truly be dead. Until then, he would leap from rotting corpse to rotting corpse like a gay old jack o’ lantern; with a hop, skip and a jump into fictional oblivion. Soon, the army had a couple of intelligent zombies harvested from friendly fire incidents and training accidents. They smeared the fallen soldiers with Stopford-augmented CleverMesh™ and got them straight to work in future exercises where their expendable undead flesh and historically enriched walnut brains did their sworn duty and nothing less.
They worked on CleverMesh™ until it was possible to smear it like a choking grease on the tongue of any canine animal they could trap. They trained foxes and wolves and domesticated lapdogs to run into battle fields as the encroaching enemy believed they had finally scored a territorial victory. CleverMesh™ lived on their tongues and there was a very special way the CleverMesh™ had to be administered to set off a chain reaction of zombie vengeance. The dogs were trained in Government Lab U.S.A. just outside of Washington State to lick the asshole of college interns paid by the hour for their services to their country, the asshole being the warmest spot on a human, even many hours after rigor mortis had set in. Once licked, the rectum would erupt like a glowing baboons asshole so that any one in the near vicinity would be able to see the re-animated corpse in all its living glory—it was quite a hideous display of power by a government who had never really known how to manage its more virulent imbeciles in the labs.
One could also easily spot the dressed undead if you got to them before thoughts of fashion infected their decaying corpses because they all had the ass bitten out of their pants and a raggedy hole showed where the invigorating dog lick of the ass had been applied to the corpses inner core where body heat was still sufficient to start a chain reaction of CleverMesh™ to spread out through the body’s vital organs, into bones and finally into the slowly rotting brain tissue. Imagine a snot-damp tissue wrapping itself around something beautiful and you get an idea of what it was like to be a corpse invaded by CleverMesh™. That pre-programmed autopilot of self importance and world domination.
Funny thing was, CleverMesh™ had a terrible side-effect that nobody thought about until it was too late. How could they imagine CleverMesh™ would ever break free of its tightly proscribed Government remit? That’s what dogs do, though, isn’t it, mark their territory? No, what do dogs really do? They lick each other’s ass. Why did science not realise this? I guess if you’ve never had your ass licked you’d never know how good it is, and how you’d endure any pain, any trial by fire or consequence to have it done to you again and again.
* * *
That’s how dogs felt about each other. As long as they licked each other’s ass every now and then just for jolly, then the world could be put to rights and no-one need ever guess what a bag of shit-lickers they actually were. They’d hunt for miles and miles to get a good taste of rectal mucous, that was the whole point of living to a dog, to lick and be licked in return. It was the law of the dog pound.
The first of man’s best friends that got its ass licked by another CleverMesh™-infected hound didn’t even have a proper name. The abusive owner simply yelled “Dog” at it. He took it out hunting but it wasn’t up to scratch, not enough meat on its bones or nouse in its noggin. Dog was no ordinary family pet either. Dog came from a broken home down in the damp valleys due east of Government Lab U.S.A. where a compliment was a kick in the ribs and a good feed was chewing on the leather-like labia majora of some dead girl’s corpse that he sometimes found out in the woods when he bit through the hemp that kept him within kicking distance.
It was on one of these illegal excursions to the freedom of the woods where Dog first met with his fate. A kindly scientist, out on a rec’y for labrats, raccoons, lemurs, jackals; anything that might be trainable. He’d already had his application to professional pet shops turned down, fought in Government House U.S.A. by lobbyists and do-gooders from all shades of the political spectrum. But their futile attempt to stall development and hinder deployment of CleverMesh™ was scuppered by the dogs.
Those damned ass-licking dogs.
It was so easy. All they had to do was follow their training and deliver the sinister ass-lick to their fallen human comrades on the field of battle. Sure, it looked pretty-goddamn-unsuitable when in some war field in some war-torn Eastern-block territory on the other side of the world well away from Homeland U.S.A. some dog trucks disgorged their panting, barking charges into the blood-slaked battle field. The way the Roman Centurions would unleash packs of dogs to hunt down the insurgents and finish off the wounded. But it wasn’t insurgents or wounded these hounds were after, it was ass, the nice warm ass of festering corpses that they’d been brain-washed to lick. But there you go. That’s one of the problems of such State-sponsored brain washing. Remember the classical Artificial Intelligence mainframe? It could spot and distinguish tanks from a stock of 4,000 photos. It had a 100% accuracy score. Then someone took it out into the field. Its first few attempts at identification were bang on, then as the day drew in and the sun started to warm its circuits it started to get it wrong time and again. No one could understand until an analysis of source images proved that the computer was looking at atmospheric conditions in its source images rather than the tank itself.
Same thing happened with the dogs. They forgot to imprint in the slavering little doggies that human ass tastes a lot nicer than doggie ass. They forgot to grind knee-jerk social reaction out of their pack mentality. Dogs weren’t man’s best friend when there were other dogs with a tasty hierarchic slot to fit into, when there were others of your kind to subdue and mess around with, when you could be top dog among the ass lickers, when your years of concerted ass licking would finally pay off and you would be the ultimate ass licked dog in that pack, King of Ass Lickers.
Picture the scene. It’s not going well for the army against the locals, but what do they care? Soldiers are expendable in this exercise, that’s tactics for you, man management, war games. The soldiers drop and (from command orbit) the generals order the release of the dogs of war onto the field of battle. Thirty black-windowed sound-insulated trucks spill their canine ass lickers onto the field, a floating camera cruises along beside them as they tear through the forest at the edge of the battle arena to seek out their surrogate asses, their tongues loaded with CleverMesh™. The pack and camera float through the trees, tongues lolling out of gaping muzzles. They hit the clearing where the dead and dying still lay in their own blood, arms still raised in defence, mangled claws for hands, fist chopped through with bayonets. The pack didn’t start tearing out the pants of the soldiers as they’d been trained to in simulation after simulation. They started to piss all over themselves in the blood and mud. Formal hierarchies were outlined as dogs fought off other dogs. Finally, one dog licked Dog’s ass, smearing Stopford-augmented CleverMesh™ all the way up him and that meant the end of the intelligent zombie campaign in that first incursion onto the field.
* * *
They napalmed the site from the northern Baltic using modified ICBMs and no-one ever heard about the Stopford Zombies. The generals were debriefed back at base, the politicians were informed of the investigation, the scientists involved in CleverMesh™ were moved onto less controversial research and that should have been the end of it. Until...
Yeah, you know what happened.
It’s been 14 months now since Dog escaped with Stopford-augmented CleverMesh™ wrapped around his primary cortex like a viral infection. It took Stopford only a couple of days to totally overpower Dog’s autonomic system. Stopford realised early on in his campaign that the odds were against him and he knew he had his own variant of CleverMesh™ smeared all over his doggy tongue. Stopford needed allies and recruited his dog army by licking the ass of as many local dogs as he could find. He was very clever about how he did it, too. He didn’t just shove the whole load of tongue-laced CleverMesh™ up any old dog arse; nope, he dished it out slowly, letting only a small amount of that artificial intelligence filter down to his doggy buddies. They went along with his game only because they were all replicants of Stopford, they hung on his every word, literally. They were all dog but not one of them was All Dog. This way he could remain their leader and no-one would ever challenge him for Top Dog status.
Human speech didn’t come easy and it took a few weeks to override the bark reflex and allow Stopford to taste the delights of the English language filtered through a wet muzzle. But what eventually came out was a bastard’s abortion of the Queen’s English. Torn apart by doggy spite and doggy hatred, the words sounded like cut-up and re-spliced vomit pouring from a choking victim of chicken bone or mustard gas. Soon, Stopford had a pack of ass-licking supplicants who could all manage at least a few choice grunts and growls from the slavering vocabulary of their master – they all shouted and heckled on command when Stopford felt pressured by interrogation. He so wanted to do good, he so wanted to use the great intelligence his infestation with CleverMesh™ had given him but it all turned to angry accusation. He was a dog for ever, God damn it! His was a rallying cry against those who were not Dog. And his plan of world domination was all planned out long before any human actually heard a dog speak.
It was on some Slovakian National TV show. Speaking dog Stopford was the guest of honour. He’d shacked up with some eminent family who had shares in the TV station and getting a slot for his first pro-Dog propaganda show was so easy it was disgusting. Stopford sat there on his golden throne the props department had made for him out of an old wicker dog’s sleeping basket and some sticky back plastic all painted gold and delivered his pro-Dog tirade. Running along the bottom of the screen was a live translation of his demands. In back of him was his dogly pack of 20 or more partlings and underdogs, they worshipped the ever-broken words that shat forth from their master and would defend his name to the hilt. The master of ceremonies addressed Stopford and asked him the first and only question. It was merely a filler piece, remember, that’s what the schedule said, ‘Short family entertainment slot between Slav-dubbed Baywatch and Slav-dubbed Starskey & Hutch’. A bit of mindless, harmless filler fun.
“What’s the function of Dog in the eyes of Man?” that’s what the master of ceremonies asked, grinning and milking his audience. Everyone was expecting Stopford to bark “Sausages!” or something.
“Man will learn to live under the auspices of Dog... muthafucka!” Stopford started his sermon of verbal and philosophical diarrhoea. “One day, when I have taken a fucking baseball bat to the face of Mankind... nigga!” he couldn’t get out a full sentence of his carefully prepared speech because of this Tourette’s Syndrome-like interruption of the profane and ridiculous.
There were embarrassed snickers from the audience at Stopford’s expletive-truncated response to that opening question. Then the dog pack got randy, they started mock-fucking each other and then poured past Stopford and started manhandling the master of ceremonies. Had him in a corner and wouldn’t let him speak, he was giving a CUT throat signal to the director but there was already no-one in the director’s box. The dog pack shouted and heckled so loud that people started to move from their chairs, cameramen abandoned their posts and producers and directors started phoning the authorities from mobile phones well clear of the studio. Everyone with any intelligence at all was pulling back, disassociating himself from this turgid sideshow of self love. It turned into a siege. Hunkered and bunkered in the airless confines of the TV studio, the dog pack started eating all its audience and technicians and floor managers who hadn’t effected an escape in those first few crucial seconds.
For each new victim of Stopford and his slavering pack, Stopford would utter some inanity like, “You don't have to believe in Dog - just know that He believes in you.” to his dwindling audience of watchers he was convinced were hanging onto his every word. The TV company had pulled the plug within fifteen minutes of the ill-fated take-over bid and across Slovakia a ‘test card’ image of Slovakian mountain scenery spared the viewers from the true horror taking place in the tiny stifled world of Stopford and his brain-washed followers. There was carnage galore after that. The dogs butchered the humans then turned on their own kind in a blood-maddened frenzy of hatred and bitterness. They knew they would never rise to the exalted position of Top Dog, simple canine instinct told them that. They didn’t have it in them, they weren’t ruthless or heartless enough. They were part man’s best friend and part Stopford’s chosen few – they were fundamentally torn and this was their undoing. They still loved their pack after all, their true canine heritage. Stopford loved only himself and that was his weakness. The pack tried to save itself by killing its master.
Stopford fought long and hard, he wouldn’t go down easily. But as Stopford spat his final, vengeful words onto a deaf world, still staring into the no longer transmitting cameras, stood on a pile of dog and human bodies, the long-range rifles had him in their sites. Stopford was finally put to sleep three seconds later. And no-one ever heard a dog speak again.
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