Line #22 Literature/TheCorpseOfCharlieRull


1	[[quoteright:260:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/deviant_art_gomro_charlie_rull.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:260:Image by [[https://gomro.deviantart.com/art/From-Brennan-s-story-THE-CORPSE-OF-CHARLIE-RULL-677023702 gomro]] on Platform/DeviantArt]]
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4	"The Corpse of Charlie Rull" is a short SciFiHorror story written by Creator/JosephPayneBrennan. Originally published in his 1959 collection ''The Dark Returners'', it was later featured as the second story in 1980's ''Literature/TheShapesOfMidnight''.
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6	It tells the short, horrific tale of [[DisposableVagrant homeless]] [[HollywoodHeartAttack heart attack]] victim [[AntagonistTitle Charlie Rull]], whose body falls into a swampy pool which is saturated with radioactive chemicals [[FreakLabAccident unintentionally leaked]] from a laboratory near the dump where he lived. The noxious waste is absorbed by Charlie's corpse and resurrects him as an [[SuperStrength inhumanly strong]] [[NuclearMutant zombie]]. Remembering nothing of his former life, Charlie feels only pain from the radiation burning through his undead body. Now filled with a vicious hatred of all living things and the compulsive need to expend energy through violent action, Zombie-Charlie proceeds to go on a murderous rampage through the surrounding countryside.
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8	As with ''[[Literature/Slime1953 Slime]]'', a great audio version narrated by Edward E. French can be found [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr_gi4KcqS4 here]].
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10	----
11	!!Tropes used in this story:
12	* TheAlcoholic: What Charlie was when he was alive. It's one of things which contributed to his fatal heart attack.
13	* AmbiguouslyBrown: The hitchhiker is described as "olive-skinned" and "Latin".
14	* AnArmAndALeg: Many of Charlie's victims get their limbs torn off. [[spoiler:Charlie himself has an arm shot off by the cops at the end, among the other injuries he sustains.]]
15	* AssholeVictim: Charlie's first and second victims. The first is a salesman who hits him with his car and initially decides to keep going after he mistakenly believes he's killed the undead tramp, essentially fleeing the scene of an accident in a hit and run. Charlie overturns his car and rips him to bits. His second victim is a hitchhiker [[spoiler:who turns out to be a SerialKiller planning to murder whoever picks him up.]]
16	* BloodlessCarnage: Played straight with Charlie. Because he's a zombie, he has no blood ''to'' bleed. Completely averted with his victims, however; he ends up drenched in the blood of everyone he tears to pieces.
17	* CameBackWrong: Hoooo boy...
18	* DaChief: The police captain.
19	* {{Determinator}}: As a zombie, Charlie very rarely gives up once he sights a victim. [[spoiler:When Cynthia and her mother run inside the house as he chases them, Charlie slams himself repeatedly against the door as well as the side of the house in a frenzied effort to get inside. Although he succeeds, Cynthia and her mother escape out the front door and hide in the tall grass.]] At the end, when facing the cops, Charlie is shot. A lot. [[spoiler:After becoming HalfTheManHeUsedToBe thanks to the sergeant's machine gun, both his upper and lower halves continue coming after them until they just keep shooting him so much he literally falls to pieces. Even then, the bits and pieces of Charlie, infused by the radioactive chemicals, continue crawling around and writhing before finally dying.]]
20	* DisposableVagrant: No one notices poor Charlie go missing after he dies and falls into the swamp, although it could simply be due to the short timeframe, as even his fellow homeless men only realizing anything has happened to him when he turns up at their campsite and attacks them.
21	* EverythingsDeaderWithZombies: Charlie, obviously.
22	* EvilVsEvil: Charlie's encounter with the hitchhiker. [[spoiler:The man turns out to be a wanted serial killer who'd been planning his next attack when Charlie stumbled across him.]]
23	* ExtremelyShortTimespan: The whole story (excluding the three days in which Charlie's body was immersed in the swamp) takes place over a few hours on a single night.
24	* EyeLightsOut: [[spoiler:When Charlie (finally!) dies (again!), his GlowingEyesOfDoom fade out.]]
25	* FaintInShock:
26	** Cynthia's mother faints when she sees [[spoiler:what Charlie did to her horse.]]
27	** Two reporters covering the cops' battle with Charlie at the end faint after witnessing [[spoiler:the severed upper body of Charlie continuing to crawl forward even after the sergeant shoots him in half.]]
28	* FinishHim: The police captain at the end, screaming hysterically after his men briefly freeze up.
29	-->'''Captain''': Keep firing, you fools! Keep firing! Did I tell you to stop?! Finish it! Finish it!
30	* FiveRoundsRapid: The police captain's initial response to Charlie using ordinary rifles. [[spoiler:When that fails, he has his sergeant unleash MoreDakka with a machine gun, wbich cuts the zombie in two.]]
31	* FreakLabAccident: The only reason the chemical contaminants get into the swamp in the first place.
32	* FromNobodyToNightmare: Charlie Rull was honestly just a down-on-his-luck homeless guy who never hurt a soul until he fell into the radioactive swamp.
33	* FullFrontalAssault: [[spoiler:Because he stumbles through the homeless men's campfire, Charlie's clothes catch fire and burn off, leaving him completely naked for his final battle against the cops.]]
34	* TheGhost: Crazy Zack. He comes up a couple of times in discussion among the local homeless in Newbridge (he's apparently known as something of a mooch), and as Charlie is approaching three of his fellow tramps cooking dinner, they mistake him for Zack initially. Zack himself never actually appears. [[spoiler:Considering what Charlie ''does'' to one of his three friends, he's probably glad he missed supper.]]
35	* GlowingEyesOfDoom: Zombie!Charlie's eyes are described as glowing.
36	* {{Gorn}}: It's pretty nasty for a story written in the 50s.
37	* HalfTheManHeUsedToBe: [[spoiler:Charlie gets completely torn in half by the police sergeant's machine gun. Both halves continue living and crawling around, until further fire shoots Charlie into [[LudicrousGibs so many pieces]] he ceases being a threat.]]
38	* HelpingHands: [[spoiler:When being riddled with bullets by the sergeant, one of Charlie's hands is severed and crawls around like "a crab."]]
39	* HollywoodHeartAttack: When his heart attack comes on, Charlie just keels over dead on the spot.
40	* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: At one point, Charlie happens upon three fellow homeless men who recognize him. Naturally, he attacks them. [[spoiler:One of them attempts to reason with him, insisting he's never crossed Charlie, and reminding him that they shared a drink just that past New Year's. Charlie responds by tearing him apart.]]
41	* ImprobableInfantSurvival: [[spoiler:After the hitchhiker/SerialKiller, Charlie sights and gives chase to a little girl named Cynthia, however her mother grabs her up and escapes with her. After failing to find either of them, he satisfies himself with killing their horse. Upon seeing what's left of it, Cynthia's mother faints, leaving her daughter unprotected; fortunately for Cynthia, Charlie has by this time wandered away into the woods and forgotten about her.]]
42	* InfernalRetaliation: [[spoiler:After killing one of the homeless men, Charlie becomes fixated on their campfire and attacks it, catching his clothes on fire in the process. Although the flames fail to hurt or kill him, and end up burning off [[FullFrontalAssault his clothes]], he staggers around searching for more people to kill before the flames goe out and leaves a trail of fire everywhere he goes as a result. Eventually half of Newbridge's forested areas go up in flames.]]
43	* LosingYourHead: [[spoiler:Charlie's severed head continues living for a bit after the sergeant shoots it off.]]
44	* MoreDakka: [[spoiler:After the initial volley of rifle fire severely hurts Charlie's face, the police captain orders his sergeant, manning a machine gun, to have a go, and his fire completely cuts Charlie in two.]]
45	* NeverMyFault: The salesman who hits Charlie with his car blames Charlie for the accident.
46	* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler:The one good thing that comes of Charlie's rampage is that he saved whoever would've been the serial killer's next target when he makes said killer his second victim, although, being a zombie, he of course neither knows nor cares.]]
47	* NightmareFace: Being a bloated, radioactive corpse, Charlie has a pretty nasty-looking face. [[spoiler:It gets worse after his fight with the knife-wielding hitchhiker, who slashes him several times and even cuts off his left ear. And then even ''worse'' at the end when rifle fire from the police tears half of his face away.]]
48	* NinjaPirateRobotZombie: Charlie is an inhumanly strong, radioactive zombie hobo serial killer.
49	* NoNameGiven: Most of the characters are identified solely by their roles/jobs; the salesman, hitchhiker, the three tramps, the captain and his sergeant all don't get names. In fact, the only named characters in the story besides Charlie are Cynthia Mellett and her mother, Mrs. Mellett, as well as "[[TheGhost Crazy Zack]]."
50	* NothingIsScarier: Although Brennan describes in pretty grisly detail how Zombie-Charlie kills and dismembers his human victims, we aren't told what happened to [[spoiler:the horse]]. Only that the sight of it causes Cynthia's mother to faint.
51	* NuclearMutant: It is radioactive chemicals from a laboratory which bring Charlie back to what could charitably be called "life" and makes him inhumanly strong.
52	* OffWithHisHead: Charlie tears the salesman's head off attempting to pull him from his overturned car. [[spoiler:At the end, the police sergeant's machine gun decapitates Charlie completely.]]
53	* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Charlie is resurrected by irradiated chemical contaminants in the swamp water he falls into, and isn't interested in eating his victims, only mindlessly killing them, like a Rage virus victim in ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'' (minus the TechnicallyLivingZombie part; it isn't called "''The '''Corpse''' of Charlie Rull''" for nothing). He is constantly in pain from the radioactive energy coursing through him, and commits violent acts as a means of expending that energy. He is also driven by an intense hatred of all life that isn't in the same kind of pain as him.
54	* OutOfFocus: The scientists at the lab where the radioactive chemicals came from.
55	* PoliceAreUseless: [[spoiler:Averted. The local police captain and his men very quickly believe survivors' stories, and their hastily thrown together defense involving rifles, machine guns and searchlights is able to sufficiently deal with the killer zombie hobo.]]
56	* PowerGlows: Because he's infused with radiation, Charlie emits a kind of SicklyGreenGlow in the darkness.
57	* SerialKiller: What Charlie becomes. [[spoiler:His second victim also turns out to be a serial killer himself, and is in fact planning his next crime before he gets interrupted by Charlie.]]
58	* SinisterSwitchblade: [[spoiler:The SerialKiller hitchhiker who ends up as Charlie's second victim prefers murdering people with a switchblade. He even uses it against Charlie in an effort to defend himself, to no effect.]]
59	* SuperStrength: Due to the radiation which brought him back to life, Zombie-Charlie is now strong enough not only to rend fully-grown adult humans [[spoiler:(and, presumably, horses)]] to pieces, but also to lift up entire cars.
60	* SwampsAreEvil: When he dies from his heart attack, Charlie falls into the fetid and polluted swamp near the junkyard where he lives. Due to the pollutants from the nearby research facility's FreakLabAccident, said swamp is just a lifeless expanse of dead plant life, devoid of any animals. Between this and ''[[Literature/Slime1953 Slime]]'', it seems Joseph Payne Brennan really had something against swamps.
61	* {{Theremin}}: Used in Edward E. French's audio version.
62	* VillainProtagonist: As with ''[[Literature/Slime1953 Slime]]'', the story is told almost entirely from Charlie's point of view [[spoiler:and ends right after he gets killed (again)]].
63	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: [[spoiler:We never learn the fate of the other two homeless guys Charlie attacks. It's likely they escaped while he was killing the third and/or while he was [[ItMakesSenseInContext attacking their campfire]], but some clarification would've been nice.]]
64	* WouldHurtAChild: Because the resurrected Charlie hates ''all'' life, he has no qualms about chasing after a little girl named Cynthia and attempting to kill her. [[spoiler:Fortunately, he fails.]]

Context Literature / TheCorpseOfCharlieRull