by Amber Benson
Now, it was time to wait.
Rabbit sat in the gently rocking rowboat as the last of the candles in the sailboat were extinguished. He knew there would be at least one man on night watch, but that didn’t matter. He had the element of surprise and it would carry him far.
Untying the rope from the oarlock, he stood up, giving the line a little slack so that the zombies would remain underwater as he shimmied his way over the side of the sailboat. When he was safely onboard, he began to pull the rope up behind him. One by one, the zombies flopped onto the deck like air-deprived fish, hungry mouths flapping. It only took a moment to loose them from their binds, but in that moment the lone man in the crow’s nest caught sight of the odd hunting party from his stately perch.
Instantly, he sounded the alarm, taking aim at Rabbit with his shotgun and firing, though his bullets missed the hulking, silver Warbot by a mile. The zombies ignored the cacophony of warning bell and gunfire, their eyes rolling absently in their heads as the scent of fresh meat reached their otherwise deadened nostrils, instantly enflaming their hunger. Rabbit was forgotten in the wake of the zombies’ realization that living human beings were nearby.
He was free to make his next move.
Rabbit hid himself behind the open cabin door as the men below deck rushed up to meet the incoming zombies. Unprepared for the threat—some of them still in their skivvies, eyes caked with sleep—they were quickly enmeshed in battle with the starving undead.
The man in the crow’s nest stayed put, self-preservation his first instinct, but he did what he could for his comrades, taking aim at the zombies below him, though with little effect. Uncertainty, and the fact that he was too far away for his shotgun to do much damage, made the man hesitant with his shots. Rabbit could see that the man was afraid he might accidentally hit one of his shipmates with a stray bullet, and, of course, the man did just that, one of his poorly aimed shots causing a shipmate’s head to explode like a rotten gourd only a few feet from Rabbit’s hiding spot.
Leaving the pirates to deal with his zombie distraction, Rabbit quietly proceeded below deck. His mission: to find Consuela and take her home.
It was dark inside the heart of the ship, the stench of dirty, shiftless men ripe in the air. The ceiling was set so low to the ground that Rabbit had to dip his head forward, moving slowly through the tiny rooms, his eyes searching for Consuela. Each room he entered was in disarray; bunk beds unmade, dirty clothes everywhere, the paraphernalia of canned food—cutlery, dishes, can-openers—littering the floor. Rabbit recognized the cans from their own lighthouse supply, and he wondered what else the men had stolen from the island.
At the far end of the hall, Rabbit came to the only locked door on the whole of the ship.
And he knew what this meant.
He had not seen the leader, the man with the pale hair and yellow-green eyes, since he’d climbed aboard. It only stood to reason that the man would be locked inside this cabin with his ill-gotten prize, letting his men take care of whatever emergency had been declared above deck. Here they were, out on the open ocean where no zombies dared to tread. The leader wouldn’t know—until far too late—that he’d sent his men into a zombie feeding-frenzy, that before he’d roused himself from his cabin, his whole crew would be dead.
Rabbit grabbed a hold of the knobbed door handle, jerking it twice before ripping the metal slab out of its frame. A feminine scream issued from within, one Rabbit recognized immediately—and he knew he’d come in the nick of time.
Consuela was still alive.
He dropped the heavy door where he stood and stepped through the empty doorframe into a dimly lit room. But the vision that greeted his eyes was not the one he’d expected.
“Shoot his leg!” Consuela screamed as she pulled the ragged blanket up around her naked torso.
She was lying on a tiny, twin bunk bed, her dark hair spread across the pillow like the fan of a peacock’s tail.
“The leg!” she shrieked again, pointing at Rabbit’s busted thigh, where oil still leaked in viscous waves.
Rabbit turned his head to find the leader, naked and pale as an albino alligator, standing in the corner of the room, a shotgun in his right hand. His penis was long and hard and Rabbit could see he’d interrupted them mid-coitus.
Without hesitation, the naked man lifted the shotgun and slid his finger inside the loop of the trigger. Eyes locked on Rabbit, he blasted the robot in the thigh, the bullet tearing through metallic exoskeleton, sparks from ruined circuitry shooting into the air and igniting. Rabbit was thrown backward by the impact of the shot, landing hard on his back, his sensors going mad at the magnitude of the damage the man had inflicted upon him and the realization that his leg was ablaze.
Luckily, his body was fire retardant, and the inferno at his thigh was quickly extinguished.
But the boat was another story. The fire leapt across the boards of the sailboat’s wooden hull, the roiling smoke overwhelming the air in a matter of seconds. Rabbit tried to lift his head, to ascertain Consuela’s exact position, but when he raised his eyes to the bed, she had disappeared.
“Now for the head,” the man said to himself, striding over to the Warbot and lifting the butt of the shotgun into the air.
The fire didn’t seem to faze the man as he stood above Rabbit, appraising the Warbot with a cold, calculating stare. Rabbit had no time to do anything but lie there as the man with the deep, yellow-green eyes pulled the trigger; the shot catching the robot square in the face.
His vision flickered and sputtered, but his cognizance did not slip away. He may have been blinded, but his other senses were on high alert. Not waiting for the man to fire another shot into his middle—something that might surely end him—he rolled onto his front, slowly dragging himself away from the fire.
As he lurched forward, his hands gripping at the slick floor, he could hear the man belatedly slapping at the fire with the blanket—though even Rabbit knew the boat was a goner.
Leaving the man to his own fate, Rabbit pulled himself toward the stairs. Above him, he could hear the pirates as they continued to lay waste to the zombies, the smoke below not having reached their senses—and he wondered when exactly they would notice.
“Rabbit...?”
The voice was small and hesitant, coming from the stairs. It stopped him in his tracks.
“Rabbit, can we go home now?”
He knew that voice like he knew the ticking of his own internal components.
“Rabbit?”
That she’d tried to destroy him was superfluous.
“Rabbit, please?”
He would get Consuela home.
No matter what the cost.
This was his final directive.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amber Benson is an actor, filmmaker, novelist and amateur occultist who sings in the shower. Best known for her work as Tara Maclay on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, she is also the author of the Calliope Reaper-Jones series for Ace/Roc and the co-director (with Adam Busch) of the feature film, Drones. She can be stalked on her blog (amberbensonwrotethis.blogspot.com) and on twitter (@amber_benson) and facebook (facebook.com/amberbensonwrotethis).
“I just wanted to write a simple story about a girl, her robot...and some zombies. There might be a little full frontal male nudity in there, too, but you gotta read the story to find out if it’s human, robot or zombie!”
— Amber Benson
THE IDW ZOMBIES VS. ROBOTS “8X8 PLAN”
All New ZVR Mayhem – In Words!
An Original Prose Story Every Week for Eight Weeks
Only 99 ¢ each. “COLLECT THEM ALL!”
ZVR “8x8” Checklist
Brea Grant — “Pammi Shaw: Creator of Gods and Also Blogger”
UnderCity’s lone survivor continues her blog and meets a digital deity with its own ideas about the zombie apocalypse.
Steve Rasnic Tem — “To Denver (With Hiram Battling Zombies)”
What happens when high-gr
ade chronic is tainted by zombie blood—find out here.
Nancy A. Collins — “Angus: Zombie-Versus-Robot Fighter”
A young man is trained by his scientist father to fight zombies, robot-style. What could go wrong?
Nick Mamatas — “Throckmorton’s Bad Day”
Well before the arrival of the zombie apocalypse, young Herbert (seen later as Dr. Throckmorton in the ZVR comics) tries out his special drug concoctions on the local population of addicts. The results will have unforeseen consequences for his future self.
Amber Benson — “Mademoiselle Consuela and Her Army of One”
Like a princess in a tower, young Consuela lives alone on a secluded island with only her loyal Warbot for company. And then the pirates come.
Don Webb — “The Wizards Versus The Bots”
Can black magic control zombies? What about Warbot?
Kaaron Warren — “The River of Memory”
An Amazon goddess thinks she can restore zombies back into humans. A warbot has its doubts.
Lincoln Crisler — “Kettletop’s Revisionary Plot”
A desperate scientist goes back in time in order to prevent the original release of the Z Virus and save his wife. (This is sure to work.)
COMING IN MARCH, 2012
THE FIRST ZOMBIES VS. ROBOTS PROSE COLLECTION
Featuring “New” Technology: “The Words Create Pictures In Your Mind!”
11 Tales of ZVR Mayhem From (in Alphabetical Order):
Jesse Bullington (British Fantasy Award nominee)
Nancy A. Collins (Bram Stoker Award recipient, Eisner award nominee)
Lincoln Crisler (prolific award-eligible writer and critic)
Brea Grant (writer, actress; co-creator of We Will Bury You)
Nicholas Kaufmann (Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and ITW Thriller Award nominee)
Joe McKinney (Bram Stoker Award nominee)
James A. Moore (Bram Stoker Award nominee)
Norman Prentiss (Bram Stoker Award recipient)
Rachel Swirsky (Nebula Award recipient; Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee)
Sean Taylor (writes the Gene Simmons comics, magazine industry award winner)
Steve Rasnic Tem (World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Award recipient)
Collection Edited by Jeff Conner (World Fantasy Award recipient)
Learn more at idwpublishng.com/zvr
Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
Mademoiselle Consuela and Her Army of One
About the Author
ZVR 8x8 Checklist
ZVR: This Means War
