Cannibals Don't Inhale

By William Leigh

As if things aren't already strange enough in the city of Rochester, an unknown percentage of the population has suddenly and inexplicably turned into deranged cannibals; one minute relatively normal, if rather bland and uninspired men and women, the next insatiable monsters feeding on family, friends and neighbors. Cannibals Don't Inhale chronicles this bizarre descent into human meat-eating madness, tracking the movements of a few small groups of survivors as they attempt to avoid the ongoing carnage and stay alive until help arrives. Assuming it ever will.
The surprising key to their survival, as it turns out, is the lowly cigarette; a fat plume of smoke blown directly into the faces of the cannibals renders them temporarily incapacitated. The near-perfect irony, if one only had the time to appreciate it. Cigarettes, unfortunately, just aren't that easy to come by anymore. The steadily rising clamor for a smoke-free America is close to reaching critical mass; smokers are generally perceived as godless sociopaths, and the few remaining tobacco companies teeter precariously on the brink of extinction. Once the powerful rightwing religious lobby officially hops aboard the anti-smoking juggernaut, offering irrefutable biblical confirmation of a direct link between Satan and the cigarette (you have to read very carefully, but it is there, apparently), nervous lawmakers across the country have little choice but to begin criminalizing tobacco use. Smokers, as the non-smoking majority enjoys quipping, are a dying breed.
No small challenge for the few remaining verifiable humans desperately in need of a smoke. And even if they can survive the weekend in fun-filled Rochester, what guarantee is there that the cannibal plague won't begin happening elsewhere? Or has it already? And how many cigarettes can a person smoke before feeling too sick to even care?

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Leigh
• Release date: Feb 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370078097

Book preview

Prologue

Early Autumn, Monroe County, Upper New York State

All of a sudden Denise is dealing with an avalanche of emotions: anger, fear, shock, regret (if only she had decided to take a taxi rather than walk) and no small amount of this can’t possibly be happening to me disbelief. One minute she’s on the way home from her late night shift at the Riverside Café, one of the new upscale downtown eateries in which the entire floor is a giant illuminated mirror and the waitresses wear very short skirts and no underpants (okay, she isn’t especially proud of it, but the tips are terrific), the next she’s being dragged down an alley and thrown into a pile of garbage by some demented-looking prick whose eyeballs appear to be swimming in blood.

What are the chances? Even in Rochester, a city teetering on the cusp of non-existence, where bad things tend to happen to good people significantly above the national average.

The repulsive creature who has rudely interrupted her life leans in towards her and growls, strands of yellowish drool dangling from his lower lip, his breath like a million times worse than the foul-smelling trash she’s lying in.

Look, asshole, she says, fighting back the tears. What exactly is your problem?

Ignoring the question, the guy grabs her by the hair and pulls her up, his thick, weirdly powerful hands on either side of her head, his expression reminiscent of homeless men staring longingly through butcher shop windows, and then he somehow …

Denise vaguely recalls the scream of excruciating pain, a horrible cracking sound and something else, like a whoosh of wet air, followed by the slow motion sensation of falling backwards down into the garbage. She’s lying there looking up at the guy through a reddish mist punctuated with exploding stars; only thing is he still has hold of what looks like her body. Something is definitely wrong, she just can’t quite put her finger on it …

… rips off her head with one violent snap and begins sucking at the open wound in her throat.

The scene begins to disintegrate. Denise hears a sizzling sound, like steaks cooking on a backyard barbecue. Whatever’s happening, it certainly isn’t even close to the evening she had planned out in her head; a glass of wine, a bubble bath, maybe smoke a joint in the tub, while resisting the urge for a cigarette, and then wait for Rick, the new guy in her life, to come over and screw her senseless. Rick had his flaws, more than a few of them, truth be told, but is still a huge improvement on her last one, Dwayne, the creepy loser from the planet of nightmare boyfriends. So she has a habit of making bad choices, like deciding to walk home rather than catching a fucking cab. She actually liked Rick, could even imagine a plausible future with him. And now this sick shit.

As the light in her eyes flickers out and she begins to drift off to wherever brutally murdered young women who aren't wearing underpants drift off to, she manages one final thought: So very strange the way things have a tendency not to work out the way you thought they would.

One

Ben DeWitt made his way through the scattered rubble of broken down men, his tired eyes shifting back and forth from the still unoccupied cot in the far corner to the grime-covered clock on the wall. Mandatory lights out at the South Street men’s shelter was 10 P.M. No exceptions. If you wanted a place to sleep for the night in the usually overcrowded dormitory, you needed to be on your cot by 10. Otherwise you'd be spending the night shivering on some damp, gloomy street corner, cursing fate, maybe wishing for a mile-wide asteroid to appear out of nowhere and vaporize the city, thereby effectively ending your, not to mention everyone else's, misery.

He had almost made it, another ten feet or so, when the old man appeared before him, blocking his way. He knew the guy, at least to the extent that anyone can know anyone else in a place like this. Had even talked to him a couple of times, though certainly not by choice. Gary, or Larry, or something like that. He displayed all the symptoms of long-term homelessness: face falling apart, body bent and twisted into a vaguely human-looking lump, mind mostly missing.

Hey, buddy, the old man rasped, breath reeking of cheap wine and seriously neglected oral hygiene. Have you seem um?

Ben had absolutely no interest in um, whoever or whatever it represented, but realized that not replying would only prolong the encounter. So he asked. Seen who?

Them, the freaks, you know, the weirdos.

Ben glanced around the dormitory, sighed. Yeah, I've seen them.

Not them freaks. I'm talking about the other ones, the real scary motherfuckers.

Ben nodded, mentally willing the old man to vanish, or possibly burst into flames.

Word of advice, Larry or Harry whispered. Whatever you do, don't go outside. You go out there and you're looking at a world of pain, my friend.

Thanks for the tip, Ben said, easing around the clearly delusional Barry and walking quickly to his cot. He was already stretched out when the clock struck ten, relieved to see the old man shuffling off towards the other end of the dormitory. Now all he had to do was lay there in darkness and wait for the moaning and muttering to die down. Not that it ever got what you could call quiet. The common denominator among homeless men - a molten, mutating mixture of alcoholics, addicts and the mentally unhinged - was the snoring. Like a late night symphony of the dead and dying, it was their way of not being completely forgotten, not drifting off into nothingness. By snoring their way through sleep, they were guaranteed at least one more morning of waking up to the inescapable torment of their lives.

Tenacious bastards, Ben thought, reaching into his pocket for the pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and studied it; it’s agreeably cylindrical shape, the way it fit so naturally between index and middle fingers, the scent of its tobacco rolled in the thinnest veneer of white paper. In a way, the cigarette was his last remaining link to reality, the single constant in a world of ever-shifting chaos. Not that he held any illusions about it. Smokers were reviled, despised in the same manner as pedophiles and corporate lawyers. How had the Coalition For A Smoke-Free Planet, or whatever they were calling themselves these days, summed up the smoker's plight? A moment of illusory pleasure wrapped in an inevitable death sentence. Ben had to admit that, as far as empty slogans went, it did have a certain ring.

Not surprising that smoking anywhere inside the shelter was strictly forbidden, grounds for being thrown out on your ear, but the two guys who worked the office at night never ventured into the dorms after lights out. They cared, or at least pretended to, but not enough to risk being jumped by some strung out head case in search of a little extra pocket money. Ben pulled the lighter from the pocket of his dirty jeans, applied flame and inhaled deeply. Almost immediately the complex mix of toxic gases cleared his head, easing him into a state of jittery relaxation. He closed his eyes and, as homeless men are prone, began to ponder the tragic trajectory of his life; inevitably circling around to Darlene, the girl he had fallen in love with and married on an impulsive whim. She had been working in an East End strip club when they met. It hadn't even bothered him that the woman of his dreams earned a living by taking off her clothes in front of strange men. She could have been selling heroin to kids and he wouldn't have cared. All his friends had warned him that it would never last; apparently you dated strippers, never married them. Of course, this was back when he still had friends.

Somehow he and Darlene had managed to make it work, at least for awhile. Even after she went more than a little wacky in the head, renounced stripping, as well as anything else that could be construed as an earthly pleasure, and pledged her undying allegiance to the latest hardcore evangelical version of religious derangement, he had stuck with her. Everyone, he reasoned, was entitled to the occasional bout of bizarre, some might say psychotic, behavior. He assumed she'd get over it. She didn't. Once the growing momentum of fundamentalist-fueled paranoia got around to setting its myopic sights onto cigarettes, things only got worse. The Devil himself, apparently, had invented cigarettes to corrupt and ultimately destroy the human race. Smokers, suddenly viewed as Satan's subversive underlings, had only two options: stop smoking and start talking to Jesus immediately, or face the unsavory consequences, both in this life and the next. Rather than being repulsed by the glaring insanity of this, Darlene had embraced the cause with a fervor that left even her mother, a church-going Baptist who viewed her own use of tobacco and alcohol as an effective way of assuaging the painful pointlessness of her life, uneasy.

The really scary part was just how many people bought into this demented rant, Ben's employer included, a mid-sized weapons manufacturer specializing in what it liked to refer to as squeaky clean eradication. After a random office drug test turned up traces of nicotine in his blood, he was terminated on the spot. His boss explained that a business so susceptible to public scrutiny, not to mention one with the responsibility of maintaining the highest ethical standards, could not abide any employee whose own sense of morality was, at best, questionable. This from a company that helped make mass murder on a global scale not only feasible, but also relatively carefree.

Ultimately, the marriage didn't stand a chance. Ben continued to smoke, a lot, Denise continued to pray for guidance, eventually hearing directly from God to seek out a good divorce lawyer. As a jobless smoker, Ben was afforded about as much sympathy as a suicide bomber in a children's day care center. Darlene got everything; he was handed a one-way ticket to nameless insignificance as a bum living on the street. Turned out his friends had been half right: Never marry a stripper who also happens to be a fanatical fundamentalist Christian.

The creepy-sounding moans from the the adjacent cot snapped him out of his reverie. He glanced over and saw what appeared to be two guys, one on top of the other. Terrific. Two rank-smelling hobos choosing this particular moment in time to get it on. Bad enough that the possibility of any kind of meaning was receding at the speed of light, that existence itself hung by a tenuous thread. He had to be in the bunk next to the guys who had concluded in the crusty remnants of their still-functional brains that engaging in noisy, public sex was somehow relevant. There was a reason people were called assholes.

Ben lit up another smoke and tried not to listen. Yeah, like that was possible. Moaning guy had started whimpering, interspersed with greedy gasps for air and a throaty gurgling sound that made Ben’s skin crawl. This was definitely not the way he wanted to be enjoying a secret smoke before getting a few hours sleep and then having to face another day as a desperate, quasi-human non-entity.

Okay, look, he said, flicking the lighter and leaning towards the two lovebirds. Could you…

What he saw killed off the words assembling on his tongue. Guy-on-the-bottom was staring at him with terrified eyes that looked about to burst out of his skull. His face was streaked in sweat and what could easily have been blood. His entire body was violently twitching under the weight of guy-on-the-top, who was, as far as Ben could tell in the dim, unfocused light, chewing away at guy-on-the-bottom’s throat.

What the fuck? Ben gasped, the force of his breath blowing out the lighter’s flame. Instinctively, he dragged on the cigarette, willing himself to calm down, then once again flicking the lighter. The disgusting, blood-smeared face of guy-on-the-top was now perhaps five inches from his own, his teeth exposed in a crazy smile that reminded Ben of demented guys in mental hospitals who eat their own feces and then laugh their heads off about it. Ben, who had been holding his breath this entire time, felt his lungs begging for release. He coughed, exhaling a thick cloud of used-up smoke directly into the lunatic’s face, which caused him to have what under different circumstances Ben would have described as a life-threatening seizure. His head shook, his eyes rolled around like planets being ripped out of orbit and from his throat a sound that cats make just before they throw up. Ben didn’t wait to see what would happen next. He sucked the remaining smoke from the nearly burned out cigarette and sent another blast in the general direction of the guy’s head. He fell backwards with a sharp yelp, convulsed on the floor for a minute or so, before getting to his feet and running towards the exit door at the other end of the dormitory.

Scary motherfuckers, Ben said to himself, reaching into the pack for a fresh smoke. Maybe crazy old Harry wasn't as crazy as he seemed. In the lighter's glow he could pretty much tell that the guy in the next bunk was already dead. He'd seen a lot of weird shit since he began living on the streets, but nothing like this. Not even close. He lay there smoking, just to fortify himself for whatever came next, then slipped on his shoes and grabbed his jacket. It was definitely time to start looking for a new shelter.

Two

Steve Carlton, Chairman, CEO and principle stock holder in Carlton Tobacco Inc., stood in the conference room on the top floor of a bland twelve story glass box, the top three floors of which served as the company's new corporate headquarters, and stared irritably at the latest statistics from marketing. Ignoring the cigarette burning in the ashtray on the table, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a new one and lit it. At the very least, this was a two-cigarette moment. His company was under siege, sales had taken a kamikaze-style nosedive and tobacco products had become the public’s latest perceived threat to the American way of life. Even from the 12th floor, he could hear the angry murmur of protesters assembled on the street below. A beautiful fall day in upstate New York and these assholes had nothing better to do than picket. Get a life, you morons! Clearly, abandoning the high profile New York offices in the hope of a little quiet anonymity hadn't exactly panned out.

Seated before him was his crisis management team, consisting of Henson, Marks and Shaw. Carlton observed them with a sneer that barely concealed his contempt: Dave Henson, an over-the-hill crackpot who should have been forcibly retired years ago and was a light breeze away from full-blown dementia; Bert Marks, a mild-mannered imbecile with a flair for statistical obfuscation and a nose that instinctively sought out the butts of his superiors; Celia Shaw, a strident, red-headed lesbian, rumored, somewhat paradoxically, to have slept her way to the top of the corporate ladder, and who took particular pleasure in the fact that men were dying of so-called smoking-related illnesses three times faster than women. None of them even smoked, for Christ’s sake. Collectively, they were worth less than a gob of his spit, but what was an embattled CEO supposed to do? All the self-serving bastards with any business savvy had abandoned the ship at the first sign of trouble. The only member of the team who mattered, the only one he cared about, was Claire. She was his go-to gal, his perky point person, the blond, blue-eyed face of the tobacco industry’s inevitable resurgence. So naturally, she was the only one who hadn’t made it to the meeting.

Where the hell is Claire? Carlton asked.

The rest of the team collectively shrugged.

Marriage trouble would be my guess, Celia offered.

What marriage trouble? Carlton wanted to know.

Hey, Celia said. It’s not like she confides in me, or anything.

So you’re just making stuff up?

Not exactly. Claire and I do, on occasion, speak.

And?

Let’s just say that her husband is a fairly devout Neanderthal.

Yes, Henson said. But what do a man’s religious beliefs have to do with anything?

Celia looked at him in the same way she might have glanced at a pile of dog turd on the street. What I’m saying is that the man is a total sexist slob. You know the drill, the woman’s place is in the home, in the kitchen, or on the bed with her legs spread and a grateful smile on her face.

I’m sorry, Henson said. But are those no longer relevant social paradigms?

Marks cleared his throat in his habitually annoying way. I just can’t believe that Claire, a strong, self-determined woman, would put up with that sort of nonsense.

Just because you’re a pussy-whipped twit, Celia snorted.

Enough! Carlton coughed, using the cigarette he was smoking to grind out the one smoldering in the ashtray. We can get back to speculating on Claire’s private life as soon as we figure out how to prevent this company from being sucked down the toilet. Now, where do we stand on the legality issue?

It’s not pretty, Marks said. Three more states, Indiana, Nebraska and South Dakota, have criminalized possession and/or use of all tobacco-related products. That brings the total to thirty-four states.

Fucking Mid-west fairies, Carlton wheezed. I mean, for God’s sake, these people are supposed to be Republicans. What ever happened to the no-questions-asked devotion to corporate greed and consumer exploitation?

It may not be as bad as we think, said Henson.

Please enlighten us, Carlton suggested.

Well, according to our latest demographic research, virtually no one lives in South Dakota anymore. Sales-wise, the loss of an empty state is, technically speaking, no loss at all.

Celia groaned. That makes about as much sense as the ugly boil growing on your nose.

For you information, Henson snapped, dabbing the growth in question with his handkerchief, it happens to be a carbuncle.

However you choose to define it, it’s repulsive.

Moving on, Carlton rasped.

Celia slipped a video into the VCR and pressed play. What we’re about to watch is an anti-smoking rally outside one of the Jimmy Jester churches in South Carolina.

Are those cartons of cigarettes they’re throwing on the bonfire? Marks asked.

Ten thousand cartons, to be precise, Celia said. Liberated, according to the official press release, from thirty-five shopping centers across the state.

Jesus Christ, Carlton spat. These people are the real criminals. Where the hell were the cops?

Several of them can be seen cheering in the crowd, Celia said.

Sure, Carlton said. Forget law and order, screw the fucking constitution.

Tempest in a teapot, Henson said.

Are you not watching the same tape we’re watching? Marks asked.

Indeed, I am, and what I see is a marginalized group of God crazies running amok. Who really cares?

Key words, Celia hissed. Jimmy Jester, A.K.A. the Bodhisattva of Evangelical TV, with an average weekly audience of sixty-five million.

And I just know the little prick smokes, Carlton growled, imagining that the cigarette he was crushing out in the ashtray was actually Jimmy Jester's hyena-like face. But that’s okay. Even if God hates us, we still have the Chinese, right?

Not exactly, Marks said. While five hundred million Chinese are hopelessly addicted to our product, the Chinese government has temporarily slammed the door on imports. Something about retribution for the Western smear campaign vis-à-vis human rights violations.

Well they can vis-à-vis this, Carlton roared, shooting a middle finger in a vaguely easterly direction.

In their favor, Hanson offered. I have heard that even the unjustly persecuted are permitted to smoke in prison. Or was it mass murderers?

Carlton closed his eyes and attempted conjure up a mass murderer of Chinese descent bursting into the conference room and killing his entire crisis management team, starting with Hanson. One shot to his addled brain. Never knew what hit him. Marks would die tormented by the overwhelming statistical improbability of a Chinese mass murderer suddenly bursting into the conference room and starting to shoot people. In Rochester, of all places. Save Celia for last, maybe torture her a bit first. Perhaps she’d be naked. Or was that going too far?

The red, for-emergencies-only, telephone in the corner starting to squawk yanked Carlton from his reverie. Does somebody want to get that? he said.

Celia walked over and picked it up. What? she asked. All right, hold on. It’s security, she said, aiming the receiver at Carlton. Code purple.

Code purple? Carlton said, coming over and grabbing the phone. What the hell is code purple? Yes? Hey, calm down! First of all, who is this? All right, Brady, what’s so fucking important that you’re interrupting a crucial business meeting? Yes, I know there’s a disturbance on the street. It’s a more or less daily occurrence. I’ve learned to ignore it, why haven’t you? Say what? Are you sure about this? You’re not on drugs, are you? How many? Well, whatever you do, don’t let them inside the building. Of course you’re authorized to use your weapon. Aim for a vital organ and we’ll ask the appropriate questions later. Yes, I’ll assume full responsibility. Just do it, and keep me informed.

Carlton hung up, walked back to the conference table and lit a cigarette.

Problem? Celia asked.

According to security, several people in the crowd outside are killing other people in the crowd.

Killing? Marks asked, his voice rising with alarm.

Not just killing, Carlton said. Apparently they’re also cannibalizing their victims.

As in the feasting upon human flesh? Hanson asked.

Unless you’re aware of another definition of the word cannibalism.

But … why? Marks whined, his face suddenly pale, perspiration soaking through his permanent press shirt. What could it possibly mean?

The blood-curdling scream from just outside the conference room seemed to preclude the possibility of an answer forthcoming any time soon.

Three

Claire Haskell stepped out onto the backyard patio and lit up. Another energy-sucking session with her husband, Carl, had pushed her stress levels through the roof, tying up the muscles in her neck and back into tight little packets of pain. She inhaled deeply, ignoring the long-term dangers to her well being in favor of a little short-term relief. Not that the latest battle was any surprise. The fights had been more or less constant for quite awhile now, a kind of recurring nightmare, whose familiarity did nothing, unfortunately, to lessen their ugly impact. Like most couples in hopelessly failing marriages, fighting was the last thing she and Carl had in common; to give up the struggle would have been to admit that there was absolutely no reason to stay together. Claire already knew that bad habits died hard. Giving up on an asshole husband was almost as difficult as quitting smoking. Cigarettes had the edge because they never screamed in her face about doing the housework, or accused her of being a whore, or weren’t able to get it up on the rare occasions when sex was even an option, and then blame the failure on the fact that Claire was distant, preoccupied with her job, not to mention a smoker. In Carl's warped version of reality, Claire's tobacco habit somehow translated into the cause of his erectile dysfunction.

Are you going to stand there and with a straight face and tell me that you are not sleeping with that slimy boss of yours? he had asked.

Yes, Carl, I am.

So what are you saying, that all the promotions and pay raises are based on your ability?

As outlandish as it may seem.

And you seriously expect me to believe that?

Carl was bad for her health in ways cigarettes would never be.

Not that she was incapable of being sympathetic. It couldn’t be easy for a man to lose his job as a minimally successful advertising exec and then be forced to sit around the house all day drinking, feeling emasculated, thinking of new ways to torment his wife, who, by the way, was the one working fourteen hours a day making the money to pay the bills. Men have to put up with so much. To his credit, Carl had come up with a way to equal things out. His mother. But then why wouldn’t an angry, unemployed alcoholic pull his demented, I-am-the-embodiment-of-pure-evil mother out of the retirement facility Clair paid for and bring her home to live with him and his wife? Just trying to economize, Carl had announced with an insipid smile on his face. It hardly mattered that Mother Haskell complained with every waking breath, about everything, or that she wore adult diapers that had to be changed at least five times a day, or that she exuded hatred for everyone and everything around her, with the single exception of her son, whom she continued to love with every twisted fiber of her repugnant being.

Hey, Carl had demanded to know. Is there anything wrong with a man wanting to care for his aging mother?

No, Claire had replied. Especially if he’s a little sissy boy failure whose dick is, for all intents and purposes, deceased.

A provocative thing to say, she had to admit, but it was impossible to resist. That had been the first time Carl had seriously struck her, a loping roundhouse right to the side of her head, knocking her into the wall and rendering her pretty much unconscious. She should have left him right then, but of course she hadn’t. Instead, she had put all her energy into rationalizing: too busy at work, too much trouble to move out and find a decent lawyer, and then the whole debate over whether or not to murder Carl and his mother in their sleep before moving on to bigger and better things. Maybe on some less than healthy level she actually needed the abuse of a hopelessly insecure man and his deranged mother, maybe it kept her tough and on edge, with just the right amount of foul-tasting bile in her system to be able to get through the day.

Claire lit another cigarette and imagined all the passive smoke damage Mother Haskell had incurred since moving in. For the past several months she had been sneaking into the old woman’s room at night, lighting up and exhaling the smoke directly into her snoring face.

Mom seems to be developing a cough, Carl had said one evening, while Claire was doing the dinner dishes.

Really? she had exclaimed. Gee Wiz, maybe she’s dying.

What the hell are you talking about, Claire? My mother isn’t dying.

No? Well, give it a little time.

You’re a real bitch, Carl had shouted, storming off in the direction of the TV room.

Claire looked up at a sky dotted with stars, whose light, she knew, had probably been traveling through space since before the time of the dinosaurs and thought about the ‘ultra important’ meeting she had missed. Carlton would forgive her, of course, but she still felt bad letting down the team, particularly in a time of crisis. Although what could she really do to save an industry on the verge of being