Zombies From Bensonhurst, Ep I.

Zombies. That’s all I need right now. I’m never prepared for an encounter with the living dead. Never have a supply of salt or a shot gun. I do have a selection of heavy tools like hammers and drivers in the trunk of the car. But the car was about a half mile away in the parking lot of Home Depot. So that meant Trace, Katie of the Rockettes, Johnny Style and I were on our own in the forgotten wilderness of Brooklyn. All I had was my camera, some gum and a can-do attitude….

I was dying to get some shots of post apocalyptic Coney Island Creek with it’s crumbling decay and carcasses of rotting ships. It was an urban ruin paradise. This area was given up on years ago as industry advanced. Now it is just a dead place behind a Home Depot with strange growth of weeds and trees and earth. Burned and rotting hulks of long forgotten vessels slowly sink into the mud beneath the sluggish brown-green water. There is nothing left of some but the ribs and some scattered decking. There are also remnants of piers and bits of beautifully rusted metal. Listing permanently in the toxic mud is a small rotting submarine, a local celebrity left to die an undignified death among the sludge. It was once destined to help raise the Andrea Doria but an impatient crane operator lowered her prematurely into the water at her launch. She rolled over and her investors disappeared quicker than doughnuts at a Weight Watcher’s Anonymous meeting. You could almost hear the entire place give off a long haunted painful groan.

I wanted my pals to see all this natural beauty before the developers came in and “Disneyfied” it. I unsheathed my camera and began shooting what composed itself in my lens while the others began wondering why they were there. I tend to get lost in my work and ignore everyone else until the feeling passes. Could take hours. Thankfully, The Party Vikings are aware of this and put up with it. I snapped about 40 quick pics when Katie of the Rock began complaining that she had to pee and was wondering if Home Depot had a bathroom. Johnny, also in a state of urinary distress was prepared to relieve himself in the creek. “What? Like its drinkable water…” said he. Crazy Tracy simply sighed and muttered, “Here we go again, I’m going back to the car for a nap.” “Oh, come on, you guys, this place is awesome.” I pleaded. “It’s broken and alone, strangely quiet and left behind.” I said. “Oooh, a total vacation spot, “Johnny said, “ Too bad I didn’t bring the spf 30 and some swim trunks.”

I snapped a few pics of the ships lying half submerged and half on the sand of the shore. Just as we were beginning to make the usual “this is where they dump the bodies” jokes we saw something that sent a chill up my spine: in the distance, off to the side on the shoreline there was a rustling in the reeds. I ignored it at first but then after composing a few more shots with the zoom there was a distinct shape emerging from the thicket. A man in a cammo hoodie and pants appeared and was fumbling around the shoreline. He was making these awkward strained movements, slow and jerky hunched over as if he were trying to lift a heavy sack of flour. He was also fumbling with a fishing pole making very ungraceful cast offs into the shallow mucky water.

“What could he possibly be fishing for out here?” asked Johhny.

“Brains?” Replied Trace. She had a flair for the morbid.

“Ok, now I really have to pee.” said Katie Rock.

Johhny began to worry. “Um, what would that guy be doing all the way out here? There’s no fishing here. There’s nothing alive here.” I reassured them that it was probably just a homeless guy fishing for his supper. We should be respectful and leave him be.

We made our way around the shore by cutting across the inlet keeping the homeless guy to our left. He was in plain sight now though we could only see him from the waist up. The hood was up over his face so we saw no detail, not even skin color. His clothes were somewhat tattered and dirty. He was still struggling with something heavy and awkward. The hump to his back was more pronounced and he moved as if he was in great pain. He still hadn’t noticed us though we made no attempt to hide.

I was anxious to take advantage of the light and low tide to get some great shots of the wood and the metal. We buried ourselves in another area over grown with weeds, trees and cement refuse to get closer to the dead submarine. I was in my glory shooting streaks of rust on concrete, aging blackened wood slowly bleaching in the sun and the murky green water lapping at the old hulls. While I was snapping blissfully away I felt the tug of a hand on my jacket.

“What”?

“Um…” it was Katie. I had assumed she peed herself by now so I just kept at my work.

Another tug, another, “Um….” T’was Trace. I kept shooting, lost in the orange oxide streaking and gleaming in the golden sunlight.

*NOTE: STAR WARS REFERENCE COMING

A final tug and Johnny, “Um…that’s no moon…” Finally in a huff I drop my camera and turn. I see the three of them all facing left and staring wide and glassy. I follow their gaze and finish the sentiment, “…that’s a space station…”

The strange homeless guy was now wringing out what appeared to be a bloody t-shirt. He was grunting softly and struggling to squeeze out the thick liquid that dripped like maple syrup in December.

“Maybe we should go see if there’s a bathroom in Home Depot after all.” I said. We moved together closed tight like a single blood cell silently navigating through an atherosclerotic artery. We were about two thirds of the way to the car moving very slowly to avoid detection. I wanted to get a picture of the man who was now hunched over in the dirt and rocking back and forth with the t-shirt. I raised my camera.

Trace: Is there something wrong with you?

Johhny: Um, serial killers don’t like their pictures taken (in a hushed hiss).

Katie Rock: Dude, seriously.

I presented the evidence: the erratic movements, the strange posture, the groaning, the blood and the inability to see his face- because there was no face. We weren’t dealing with a homeless man but in fact, a member of the undead, a phantasm, a Zombie. Just as I finished, the flesh-hungry undead man suddenly stopped rocking and looked up as if he sniffed something on the air. My heart beat faster. He slowly turned his head to us, his face totally concealed by the hood. He rose and squared himself to us. The front of the hoodie and his pants were stained a wet looking black.

We gasped...

Katie spoke first in a hoarse whisper, “Well, I no longer need the bathroom.”

Johnny replied, “It’s okay, you can run faster now.”

“Romero or 28 Days?” Trace asked as she was tearing the flesh off my arm with her white-knuckle-death grip. She was referring to the type of Zombie. Would this be the slow lumbering kind made famous in George Romero’s Living Dead series or would this be the more terrifying Speed Zombie popularized in recent films like 28 Days? I had no answer. We began to move en masse toward safety. The Zombie followed with his body, took a few uneasy steps toward us... and suddenly charged.

Screaming like a bunch of teenage girls on prom night, we bolted for the car.

It's like I told you at the beginning; I’m never prepared for an encounter with the living dead. Never have a supply of salt or a shot gun. I do have a selection of heavy tools like hammers and drivers in the trunk of the car. All I had was my camera, some gum and a can-do attitude….

To Be Concluded...