People keep bitching at me to write something that isn't Loudcest...so I'm doing another horror crossover. Lucky you. This time around I'm doing The Return of the Living Dead (1985), my all-time favorite zombie movie. This story's going to be a little different. My previous ones (A Nightmare on Loud Street, Friday the Loudteenth, etc) took the villain and dropped them among the Louds in a totally unique situation. This time around I'm parodying the movie's storyline, and if you've seen it, you'll notice. If you haven't, well, you won't know the difference, so the point is moot. You'll still enjoy it. Maybe.

July 3, 2017

5:30 PM, Central Daylight Time

Lincoln Loud crossed his arms as Frank, his supervisor, lead him through the storeroom. Around him were rows of metal shelves packed with medical supplies: Bed pans, crutches, you name it. There were also...other things, things that were sold to universities, like spilt dogs and real live skeletons.

"We get all our skeletons from India," Frank said, laying his hand on the shoulder of a skeleton hanging from a string. Lincoln shuddered. Frank, a short, jovial man with sparkling blue eyes and what Lincoln thought was a beer belly, looked at him.

"Why?" Lincoln asked curiously.

Frank shrugged one shoulder. "I dunno. Some goddamn treaty or something. You know what gets me? They all have perfect teeth." He pointed to the skeleton's teeth. They were, indeed, perfect. "Who the hell makes it through life with a perfect set of chompers?"

Lincoln unconsciously touched the tip of his tongue to his own teeth. They were chipped and deformed. Certainly not me, he thought.

Frank opened his mouth to speak, but an office door opened and the owner of the company, Bert, came out, shrugging into a jacket. "Well, I'm off to the races, Frank."

"Don't bet too much," Frank said with a grin.

"I'll try not to," Bert replied, coming over. "You okay with Lincoln or do you need me?"

Frank waved a hand. "Nah, we're fine. Kid's catching on quick."

"That's what I like to hear," Bert said, slapping Lincoln's arm. "Hey, am I gonna see you at the big cookout this weekend?"

"I'll be there with bells on," Frank said.

Bert nodded. "Alrighty then, you two lock up and turn out the lights when you're done."

When Bert was gone, Frank looked at Lincoln. "You wanna see something really creepy?"

"Uh...sure?"

Frank grinned. "Come on."

At a big metal door with a latch, Frank paused. "This is where we keep the cadavers for the medical schools. Usually we have a full house, but today we only got one." He unlatched the door and pushed it open; cold air washed over Lincoln, plastering his lank, sweaty hair to his forehead. Frank went in, and Lincoln followed, stopping (along with his heart) when he saw the thing hanging from a hook toward the back. It was a clear bag with a yellowish body inside. "Jesus," Lincoln muttered.

"Yep," Frank said, "that guy right there is leaving us Monday morning for Cincinnati, where he'll be cut up and studied."

Lincoln shook his head as he imagined his own dead, naked body being dissected and examined by a team of med students. There was something so...degrading about it.

"Alright, let's get the paperwork done so we can get the hell out of here, huh?"

Frank led Lincoln to a tiny office off the storeroom. Papers cluttered the desk. Hot July sunshine fell through the blinds, making golden bars across the mess. Lincoln sat down in a chair facing the desk while Frank sat behind it. "You just hang out for a minute, okay?"

"Sure," Lincoln said.

While Frank went over forms, invoices, and whatever else, Lincoln tapped his foot. He took the job at the Uneeda Medical Supply Warehouse because in a family as big as his, money was tight, and he was sick of being broke. He would work the summer then quit when School started in September.

"Hey, kid," Frank said, looking up.

"Yeah?"

"You ever see that movie Night of the Living Zombies?"

"Yeah," Lincoln said. That was one of Lucy's favorites. "The zombies eat the people."

Frank nodded. "You know that was based on a true story, right?"

Lincoln blinked. "What? No way!"

Frank, a tiny grin dancing across his lined face, nodded. "Yep. They changed it all around, though. There was a chemical the army created during Vietnam, I think to gas out the gooks, and there was a spill at the VA hospital in Pittsburgh. All that stuff leaked into the morgue and made the bodies jump around as though they were alive." Frank made a spasmodic movement with his arms.

Even though Lincoln was sure Frank was messing with him, his heart was racing. Zombies...real zombies?

"They got all those bodies and put 'em in barrels. They shipped 'em off to some army depot, but there was a fuck up...and they came here."

Lincoln's eyes widened. He was leaning forward. "H-Here?"

Frank nodded. When he spoke, his voice was low, hypnotizing, a terrible campfire story quality to it. "Five of them. At any moment, they could come back..."

The phone rang, and Lincoln jumped a foot.

Frank laughed richly and clapped his hands. He picked up the phone and put it to his ear. "Hello? Oh, hi, honey. Yeah, I'm almost done. Just...keep the pot roast warm, will you? Alright. Love you too. Bye." He hung up the phone and looked at Lincoln. "Wanna see 'em?"

Lincoln found himself nodding.

"Let's go."

The Loud daughters, save for Lilly, were walking down the sidewalk in a big group. They were in the industrial part of town, factories, warehouses, and other drab buildings surrounding them.

"What time does Lincoln get off, dude?" Luna asked.

"Uh...six-thirty," Luan said, looking at her phone.

Lori sighed. "That's, like, an hour. Why did we leave the house so early?"

"You were the one in a rush to get out the door," Lola said.

"I specifically informed you that given the speed at which we walk and the distance between our domicile and Lincoln's place of employment we would reach it approximately an hour early," Lisa said. She checked her watch. "We are fifty-six minutes and forty-nine seconds early."

"Like, there's nothing to do," Leni sighed, sagging her shoulders.

The warehouse where Lincoln worked appeared across the street. There was a single car in the tiny parking lot. UNEEDA MEDICAL SUPPLY a big sign read.

"We can go in that cemetery," Lucy said flatly, nodding toward the wrought iron gates of graveyard.

"I have a football," Lynn said, "we can toss it around and try not to trip over the gravestones."

"That's totes disrespectful to the dead," Leni said. "How would you like it if someone was playing football on your house?"

Lynn shrugged. "I'd break outta my coffin and join in!"

At the gates of the cemetery, they stopped "Resurrection Cemetery," Lori read. "Ugh. Why not? We literally have all the time in the world to kill."

She pushed the gates open and they walked in. Ranks and ranks of tombstones were bent and crooked, some lying on the ground. The grass was high, and trash littered the entire space. "This burial ground is in deplorable disrepair," Lisa said, pushing her glasses up her nose.

"It's grody," Lana said, her nose crinkling. "I like it."

Across the country, a man in a military uniform comes through the door of a tastefully appointed home, removes his hat and coat, and hangs them up. He unbuttons the collar of his blue uniform shirt and crosses to a wetbar, where he makes himself a drink. His wife comes in. "Hi, dear, how was your day?"

"The usual. Crap," he says. "What's for dinner?"

"Tacos, dear, you're favorite."

"I had them for lunch."

Drink in hand, he goes into the living room and sits next to a strange machine. He taps a few keys and reads the screen with a sigh. Over forty years, and those barrels were still out there somewhere, sitting in a warehouse or a hanger, their deadly contents waiting to come out...the man shivers. If one of those damn things ever woke up, life on earth would cease to exist...if Uncle Sam didn't move quick.

He hoped to God, as he did every day, that no dumbass ever opened one of those barrels...

Frank snapped on the basement light and led Lincoln down a rickety set of stairs. "Watch that fifth step," he said, "it's a bitch."

It creaked dangerously under Lincoln's foot. In the basement, Frank flipped another switch, and muted yellow light filled a tiny space. Five green metal drums with glass tops were bunched together. Green writing was stenciled on the side: PROPERTY OF THE U.S. ARMY; DO NOT OPEN; IN CASE OF EMERGENCY CALL and then a number. Frank went over to one and rubbed the glass with the sleeve of his shirt. "There he is. I call him Tarman."

Swallowing, Lincoln went over and looked inside.

What he saw turned his blood to ice water. A skeletal face with wide, staring eye sockets and grinning teeth. His heart jumped into his throat and he fell back.

"You say that thing was alive?"

Frank grabbed a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. He squirted some of the cleaner onto the glass and rubbed it with the roll. "So they say."

Lincoln's heart raced. "Hey, these things don't leak, do they?"

Frank laughed. "Leak? Hell no. These things were made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers." He kicked the side, and it happened: Greenish-yellow gas shot out and splattered against the floor. Lincoln's heart stopped, but before he could flee, the gas was choking him. He and Frank coughed and tried to flee, but collapsed.

I'm going to die, Lincoln thought as he spasmed on the floor.

Then darkness stole over him.

The gas seeped through the whole building, carried by the air ducts and creeping into the freezer and showering down on the cadaver. After a few minutes, it began to move.

In the basement, the horrible thing that Frank called Tarman opened its eyes and moved its fleshless lips. "Brains," it said in a deep, dark voice.