Name's Frank. Frank Swift. To the Dames I'm Francis, to the boys I'm Franky "Fingers". Thas' cuz I tends to break em' when I gets mad.
Anyhoo, I'm a dick, a private one. I specialize in paranormal investigation. If yous got a problem with your dead grandma that just won't stay dead, you call ole' Frankie, and I'll take care of tha' ole' bitch right quick.
So there I was, over on Fifth and Broadway, next to that lil' Greek diner, you the know the one, the one with the constant smell of urine and grease. Yeah, I loves to eat there too. So anyways, there I was chowing down on a squid pita, when who should walk by me, but ole’ Johnny "Right Arm" Heilman. They calls him Right Arm on account of his very large right arm (but no one seems to ever mention the underdevelopment of his left). Ole' Johnny did a ten piece in the joint up north near Frisbane when he curb stomped a young black couple to death. When he got out he had this massive right arm. No one knows why, and no one asks, at least no one that still has a functioning jaw after ole’ Right Arm's right arm puts the cabash to em'.
So there's Johnny, looking all shifty. That one twitchy eye, moving this and thata' way. Today though, he looks a little more pale and twitchy then usual. In fact, judging from the black circles under his eyes and the greenish tint of his skin, I'd say he ain't slept in more then a week.
I says to em', "Hey there Johnny, whatcha doing this side of town? I didn't think ole Pappa Swazzie ever let his boys leave the house."
Now the thing you gotta know here, is that Pappa Swazzie is not a nice man. He's not a small man either. In fact, one would be so inclined as to say that he is one fat mother fucker, but seeing as how their might be broads reading this here rag, I'll just leave it at he was a fat guy. A very fat guy. Jesus jumped up Christ, that poor bastard must weigh something like six hundred pounds, I'm not fucking kidding you...
Oh yeah, back to what I was saying. Ole' Pappa Swazzie runs the East Side Skins, that's one of them neo Nazi gangs that likes to beat up on anyone that ain't white. Johnny here, is a mule for Pappa. That means, that he does a lot of going here, picking that up, and bringing it there, you follow?
"Well if it isn't that kike loving Francis Swift." Johnny says, brandishing the swastika on his gorilla sized right arm and giving me that look like he wants to do more than shake hands.
"You always did have a way with words Johnny", I says as I toss down my pita. I cracks my knuckles to let Johnny know that I'm about to do the charleston up and down his face.
"Whatcha gonna' do their Swifty?" "You gonna' pull out some holy water and make me go poof?"
He squares up his shoulders and gets ready for it. He may got the size on me, but ole' Johnny knows I can scrap with the best of em'.
I lunge forward, and duck under his massive right haymaker and put two quick jabs into his kidneys, but it doesn't even faze him as he drops down that mamoth elbow into the middle of my back. For a moment, everything goes dark except for the little white sparkles dancing around the inside of my eyelids. Then it all comes back to me as I'm sailing through the air from a nice upper cut to the jaw.
I land in a pile of old cardboard and dirty mattresses, rolling with the punch and I'm up on my feet before Johnny has even had a chance to cock back that big meaty paw of his. I reach into my coat and pull out a feather wrapped in bits of leather, with two oversized teeth from a bear tied to it. An old shaman gave it to me when I managed to take care of a Tatooki Bear Daemon last summer. Supposedly this thing will give me the strength of ten men. Well...here's hoping.
I lower my shoulders and run full tilt at Johnny, who raises his fist to bring it down on me like a bag full of locks. At the last minute, I sidestep to the right just in time as his fist slams into the cement, cracking the sidewalk. I step back into him and hit him with all I've got directly under his chin, hoping to take him out with one well placed hit. Instead I hear the sound of bones grating and cracking, and that quick wet snap so commonly associated with spinal injury.
The light in Johnny's eyes go out and he drops like a redwood, face first into a dirty puddle of stale water.
I kiss the feather tightly wrapped around my hand and go to put it back in my pocket when I notice something peculiar about Johnny, I mean, besides and abnormally large right arm. On the back side of his neck it looks like someone took a big ole' bite out of him. I lean down, puzzling over the wound, when the smell hits me. It's unmistakable to anyone that has ever dealt with the living dead before. That smell of decay and burning hair. That there is Zombie stink!
I jump up and spin around, pulling out my piece. It's an old .45, one of the first ever made, blessed by an Urban Druid of the Central Park Grove. This lil' lady will put a hole through you the size of watermelon, and if you just happen to be of the undead variety, then it will sanctify your body at the same time, taking all the bad ju-ju out and leaving nothing but a rotting corpse, smoking and crumbling like it's been in the ground for years.
I'm training the end of ole' Bettie (named her after Bettie Paige) on every square inch of the block, but I don't see any sign of any shambling corpses, and that's when it hits me. Actually, to be more specific, that's when Johnny hits me. It's like a Buick has just parked itself in the back of my head, and I'm spun like a top. Bettie goes flying and I do a swan dive, face first, into the side of a building.
The building does its job, and holds me up while I get my bearings. I shake it off and try to get that shuffling noise to stop grinding through my head, and then I realize its Johnny. I wipe the blood out of my eyes and see Johnny, shaky and jittery, like he just learned how to walk, wobbling towards me, his head to the side with a big chunk of bone jutting out the opposite side of his neck. Blood and black bile oozes and bubble up out of the wound as he tries to talk, but all that comes out is this gurgling sound like plumbing that’s been backed up for weeks.
He lunges at me, mouth barred and inky liquid running down his chin. I dance to the side and reach into my coat pocket to pull out the feather, but it's not there. I have just enough time to look around before Johnny's fist goes sailing over my head, and I see it laying about five yards away. I make a dive, but Johnny grabs me in mid air and tosses me an equal distance away from him, as I was from the feather.
Crashing into the windshield of a parked car, I roll slowly down the hood and drop unceremoniously to the ground with a meaty thud. I try to rise and notice from the sharp intake of breath that don't sound like mine, that I have at least three....oh!...make that four, broken ribs.
As slow as these bastards are, when you're reeling from massive internal hemorrhaging, they tend to sneak up on you right quick. I get jack booted to the stomach, and all the air I thought I owned leaves my body.
As I'm laying there, counting grooves in the tarred street, waiting for Johnny to just finish this so I can go to sleep, something jabs me in my side, and for once, it's not one of my ribs. Johnny picks me up by the throat and holds me inches from his fetid breath, leering at me with that hunger in his eyes, I pull out what was poking me in my chest and grin, thanking the Gods for these brief moments of irony.
Johnny opens his mouth wide, all blackness and crooked teeth, ready to bite out my jugular and send me to that big jazz club in the sky, when I shove the stoppered glass flask in his mouth. It shatters as he instinctively bites down, sending a spray of water into my face, and more importantly down his throat.
For a moment, there is a look of utter surprise on his side tilted head, and he lets go of me, holding his throat like he's swallowed a turkey bone.
Smoke rolls out of his mouth as he vomits up black and green chunks of his own digestive track. He switches from holding his throat to clutching at his stomach as it begins to undulate and stretch, like some wild animal trying to get out.
"What's wrong there Ole' Johnny?" I pick up a small piece of glass from the flask and hold it up for him to see the cross etched into its surface, "Ain't you a church going man?"
The look of surprise has long since turned to one of fear and desperation. Johnny tries to take a step forward, but his ankle snaps in half, and he puts down a gore soaked stump. I can see this is about to get messy, as his stomach looks like its reached maximum capacity. My trench covers my face just in time as Johnny's insides meets his outsides in one explosive burst.
Bits of smoking, charred flesh rains down on me like wet hamburger falling from the sky, and I quickly wipe it off before it starts to liquify. You just cannot get those kinds of stains out of your clothes, no matter what you use!
I look down at the puddle that was once Johnny "Right Arm" Heilman, and just shake my head. Even for a jack booted Nazi scum like Johnny, that ain't no way to go out. Nobody should ever have to get up again after the graces that be put him down for the big dirt nap.
This ain't over. Not by a long shot. Where you got one Zombie, you've got more. I need to find out who bit Johnny, and I need to do it fast. Looks like I'm gonna pay Ole' Pappa Swazzie a visit. I better get some boots on cuz this is going to get deep.
