by J. I. Greco
He cut himself off as the antenna tip began blinking red, establishing a connection with its paired unit.
Roxanne’s unit. Had to be.
Trip broke into a huge grin and jogged the steering wheel hard left, swinging the Wound to point towards the signal, and fishtailing the car’s back end through a support column in the process.
Rudy grumbled, opening one eye briefly. “Hey, keep it down. Trying to nap here...”
Thirty seconds later. A mile deeper into the All-Mart. The ceiling lights were on now and the signal between the RATpack antennas was growing stronger every second.
Now was not the time for Rudy to be peacefully snoring away, Trip thought. He grabbed the jug of beer from the seat between them and poured it out over Rudy’s crotch. Rudy came awake with a start, groggily looked down at his soaking lap. “What the...?”
Trip handed him the near empty jug. “You were drinking in your sleep.”
“What, again?” Rudy sat up, draining the jug empty before noticing the blinking RATpack antenna. “That mean you’re getting something?”
“Yeah. Decent signal, too.”
“We close enough for contact?”
“Nah, we’re still about three miles off, give or take. But it’s got to be her, and she’s making it easy on us. She’s standing still.”
Rudy nodded, stretched over the back of the front seat to grab another gallon of beer. Sorta-King Morty had stocked them well before sending them off on their mission. He uncapped it, took a swig. “You know, I was thinking... she didn’t get snatched up by herself.”
“Yeah, so?”
“We gonna try and help the others?”
“Hadn’t really thought about it,” Trip said, lighting a cig with the car lighter. He pushed the lighter back into the dash. “I suppose... no.”
“Really?”
Trip shrugged. “I’m focused here. On Roxanne. Everybody else, let them find some other sucker to rescue them.”
“Even the hot ones?”
“Well... okay, but they’d need to have rich dads willing to pony up a reward.”
Rudy scowled. “How we supposed to figure out their parent’s net worth? We gonna screen them?”
“It’s not like we’re gonna make them fill out a multi-page form, no. We’ll just ask them to sign an affidavit.” Trip took his eyes off the road just long enough to see Rudy’s confused expression. “What? You expect me to take their word for it?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a chick for me, dude... doesn’t necessarily have to be rich. Although it wouldn’t —”
A shrill three-tone klaxon from somewhere in the dash interrupted him.
Trip yelled over the klaxon. “Okay, that’s annoying! What is it?”
“The prox alarm,” Rudy yelled back as he slapped his palms over his ears.
“Since when?”
“Since always!” Rudy yelled, thumbing the GameGear’s D-Pad. The alarm went silent. “You just never hear it ‘cause you’re jacked in and the Wound filters it out for you.”
“Well, it’s awful.”
“Supposed to be.” Rudy pointed at the GameGear display. “Check it out.”
Forgetting that the Wound was doing 120 miles per and needed his actual attention to keep going straight, Trip stared at the display and the blue dots popping up on it. Without the Wound’s interface, it took him a few moments to process what he was seeing — with the interface, he just would have felt the dots, known what they meant, no interpretation needed. “Yay, blips?” he asked as the Wound drifted to the right, sheering a support pole in half. It caromed through another and then another before Trip snapped his attention away from the screen and got her under control again.
“Vishnu’s molars, I hate this,” Trip growled, both hands in a white-knuckle death grip around the steering wheel. “How the fuck did people drive without interfaces? How the hell am I supposed to multitask? — But hey, we’ve got blips, right?”
“Yeah, blue blips.” Rudy lowered the arms he’d thrown over his head while the Wound was getting pummeled by support columns.
“So?”
Rudy reached over the seat for the shotgun in the back seat. “The scanner’s infrared. Blue blips mean zombies.”
“You assume.”
“It’s a pretty solid assumption.” Rudy cracked the shotgun open over his knees and shoved shells into it from his bandolier. “They’re not warm, human bodies, that’s for sure.”
“Would they be that cold? I mean, they’re not really undead. Just infected.”
“The nanochines probably sink body temp way down to conserve energy.”
“Wouldn’t it be the other way around?” Trip stared out the windshield at row upon row of rack shelving that was seemingly growing out of the floor directly up ahead, like walls. He slammed on the brakes, took a hard right, and hit the gas, aiming the Wound between a pair of racks, barely a half foot of clearance on either side of the car. “Like, wouldn’t they make their hosts run hotter, what with all that symbiotic energy leaching?”
“Do I look like a nano-engineer?” Rudy snapped the shotgun closed. “Wait a second... there’s a red one. Two red ones... More. Lots more.”
“Damn it.”
“What? It’s probably Roxanne and the Sisters. That’s good news.”
“Probably, yeah — expect I just lost the signal.”
“Just now?”
“Yeah, gone, right when I’m about close enough to contact her mind-to-mind.” Trip fingered the RATpack antenna. It was still firmly jacked in. “Like she disconnected.”
Rudy’s voice dropped. “Or got turned into a zombie.”
“Shut up.”
“Trip, all the reds are starting to turn blue.”
“Okay, enough of this nonsense.” Trip yanked the RAT-pack antenna out, tossed it up on the dash, and grabbed the Wound’s patch cord, snicking it in to his skull. “There we are...” he said, smirking like a madman as the Wound’s familiar puppy-dog consciousness laid itself over his. And at the center of his joint consciousness, a half dozen red dots were slowly being surrounded by a whole bunch of blue ones.
A twitch of Trip’s eyebrow and the Wound banked left, into and through a shelving rack, aiming straight for the cluster.
“A little warning next time,” Rudy yelped, ducking low and throwing his arms over his head again.
“Oh, right,” Trip said, as he had the Wound tear through another shelf. “Hold on!”
CHAPTER 11: MUFFINS AND ZOMBIES
The Wound spat out of an aisle stocked with breakfast muffins and into a cross aisle intersection filled with zombies and nuns. Trip twitched the brakes on just in time to avoid slamming through this old bare-breasted nun, her arms pinned behind her back by one zombie, another zombie trying to force-feed her a muffin. The Wound skidded to a stop, her front bumper stopping just inches short of the old nun’s knees.
“Hey, I know those boobs...” Trip stared through the front windshield while the old nun fought futilely to keep muffin out of her mouth, alternately spitting and screaming, writhing in the zombie’s grip. Both the zombies were wearing some kind of blue vest uniform, with name tags. Trip lit a cigarette.
“What are they doing?” Rudy’s hand was under his t-shirt shirt, tweaking his nipple feverishly.
Trip unconsciously reached for the elephant revolver holstered on his thigh. Consciously, he twitched to lock the Wound’s doors. “I have no idea.”
A third zombie in a blue vest stumbled up behind the old nun, took her head in his hands and held it rock-hard steady. The zombie holding her arms behind her back wrangled his free arm up to hold her mouth open. And that was that — the chesty old nun’s mouth was soon stuffed to overflowing with muffin. The zombie feeding her held his hand over her mouth, forcing her to swallow. As soon as she did, all three zombies let her go and just shambled off.
“My conscious is telling me we should help.” Rudy watched the old nun collapse, convulsing, in front of the
Wound. “But my gut is telling me we should run away, very fast —”
Rudy cut himself off with a yelp as the old nun sprung up, her skin a patchwork of spiderweb-like softly glowing blue lines, her eyes glazed. Hunched, she glared at them through the windshield, her now dark azure tongue licking mottled lips. Rudy sunk low in his seat, his head dipping below the dash. Trip pulled the revolver from its holster, leveled it square between her eyes, and cocked it.
The zombie nun stared down the barrel. After a second’s standoff, she let out a quiet, snorting laugh, then shrugged, spinning around on one stiletto heel and shambling off towards a shelf of iced toaster cakes where another nun-turned-zombie — a cute black chick with exceptionally long legs and ripped fishnets — was tearing into boxes and ravenously stuffing cakes into her mouth two at a time.
Trip smirked and holstered the revolver. “Shatner knows I’ve never agreed with your conscious, and I don’t actually think there’s anything we can do for them... but we can’t run away just yet.” He looked around the intersection, both with his own eyes and the Wound’s sensors. “You see Roxanne?”
Rudy craned his neck to peer out over the dash. “I don’t think so.” He sunk back down, grabbing the shotgun from the dash as he did and hugging it tight to his chest.
All around the intersection, nuns turned zombies were rifling the shelves, tearing into food. Trip did a quick headcount. Nine nuns. All zombies. The blue-vested zombies with the name tags were long gone. “Me either.”
“Maybe they didn’t get her,” Rudy said, his optimism betrayed by his voice breaking. “Or she got separated...”
Trip sat back, closed his eyes, and focused on what the Wound’s sensors were showing him. “There’s a red blip a couple rows over and running. Might be her. She’s got a couple blue blips on her ass. Grab something.” He twitched the Wound’s brakes off and hit the gas, sending the Wound barreling down an aisle, just missing a nun-zombie tearing into a bag of All-Mart branded cheese-curls.
Bernice was half-running, half-hopping down an aisle of baby toys. Ten or so strides back she’d lost a stiletto heel, which wasn’t making it any easier to stay ahead of the pair of snarling, slobbering zombie things in blue vests lopping after her.
Run faster! Bernice’s id yelled at her between gasps for air.
Her ego panted back: You know running’s not my thing. Now sleeping, that I could do faster...
Run faster damn it!
You run faster, I’m about dead here.
For the love of the gods, shut up and just run!
Or I could give up.
How about running faster?
How bad can being a zombie be?
Bad. Very bad. That-time-when-we-were-nine-and-Uncle-Stanislaw-put-his-hand-on-our-inner-thigh bad.
Okay, sure, the chances of us ever getting laid might go way, way down, but there’d be food — lots of food.
Seriously, just run!
The left side of her stomach cramped up, her pace slowed. I’m so tired, and they have donuts... her ego sighed.
Okay, okay, how about we make a deal? her id suggested in a panic while she pressed down hard on her stomach with the flat of her hand.
What kind of deal?
You keep running and when we get out of this, diet’s off.
Oh no it’s not, her super-ego chimed in from the depths.
Quiet, you, her id and ego shot back simultaneously.
Don’t listen to her, her id continued. We’ll make it happen. No diet.
Yes, her super ego said, because we all know men really dig fat chicks. The fatter the better. Uncle Stan loves ‘em fat.
Is now really the time to be having this discussion? her id asked.
We can’t get a man now, her super ego went on, and you’re ten pounds shy of Rubenesque, so let’s put on more weight... yes, that makes sense.
Rubenesque? Her ego protested. More like Amazonian...
Her super ego snorted. About a foot and a half shy for that, dear...
Will you two shut up? her id pleaded. They’re getting closer!
“Closer?” Bernice whispered aloud, glancing behind her. The zombies were right there, on her heels, arms outstretched, gnarled fingertips reaching for her, inches from her shoulder.
She screamed.
And then they were gone.
Swept up and slammed away as something big and brown and fast and armored-plated came skidding sideways through the shelving on her right. Reflexively she crouched, throwing her arms over her face, peeking out to watch as the car kept sliding, slamming the zombies into the opposite rack of shelves and pining them between the shelves and the passenger side before finally coming to a stop.
Bernice lowered her arms and slowly stood up, stared at the zombies, their bodies crushed and all jangled up with the mangled shelving. After a good long second Bernice realized she was still alive and remembered to breath.
Then this tall, kind of horse-faced guy wearing a long-tailed tux jacket and black jeans was getting out of the car, pulling a comically oversized revolver and raising it over the open car door, pointing it at her.
All she could do was stare down the huge barrel, eyes wide, like a deer caught in headlights.
“Down!” the guy shouted, cocking the gun. “Now!”
She dropped like a stone, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing herself flat against the concrete just as the guy fired over her.
BOOM!
The retort was deafening. Blanked out all other sound with this high-pitched whine.
Bernice opened her eyes, looked back at what the guy had shot at. Another zombie, his blue apron splattered with his own blue-gray blood from the jagged hole punched through his right shoulder. His arm was just dangling there loose by a few ligaments, but the zombie was still running, still heading towards her.
BOOM!
The shot tore into the zombie’s abdomen, ripped it open, taking a good portion of intestines, stomach and kidney with it as it punched out through the zombie’s back.
But the thing still kept on running. Faster, now.
The zombie let out an angry yell that pierced through the white-noise whine of the gunshots, and leapt. Right over Bernice and straight for tall guy.
BOOM!
And just like that, the zombie had a hole the size of a bowling ball through his chest and Bernice was being showered in bits of blue-gray lung and bone.
The zombie went limp in mid-air. Tall Guy stepped to the side — putting the revolver barrel’s tip to his lips and blowing away the smoke — just as the zombie hit the floor in a crumpled mess where he’d been standing. Tall Guy smirked, poked the toe of his red high-tops into the zombie’s side.
“Hey, lookie there, it’s dead,” Tall Guy said, smiling at himself. “Yay, me.”
“Yeah, well,” said a second guy, getting out of the driver’s side, “I would’a had him if you hadn’t pinned my door shut.” He was short, muscular, cute — especially the darling little red soul patch — and carrying a sawed-off shotgun. He walked around the front of the car to stand next to Tall Guy and stared down at the zombie.
“Did you a favor.” Tall Guy holstered the big revolver. “If you’d tried to down him with that pea-shooter of yours, you’d be picking zombie teeth out of your neck right now.”
“Bullshit!” Soul-patch touched his bandolier. “These shells are packed with high-density micro-explosives. They would have vaporized his head into a cloud of fine red mist.”
“Sure, once he got within range.” Tall Guy lit a cigarette. “Which is what? About zombie-arm length, right? Like two feet?”
“Three,” Soul-patch said, frowning. “Okay, two-and-a-half.”
Bernice sat up, cleared her throat. “Never mind the damsel in distress here.”
Tall Guy glanced at her and smirked. “You’re welcome.”
“Oh, sorry, yeah,” Soul-patch said, slipping the shotgun into a harness on his back and walking over to her. He extended a hand down to her and grinned optimi
stically. “You okay?”
“That depends.” Bernice took his hand. Firm and strong. She let him pull her up. He didn’t strain at all. “You gonna get me out of here?”
“Your parents got money?” Tall Guy asked as he strode up next to Soul-patch.
“What?” Bernice asked.
“Ignore him,” Soul-patch said. “We can get you out of here.”
Tall Guy rolled his eyes and walked off to examine the zombies the car had pinned to the racks.
Bernice checked herself out. Nothing broken or missing. Just a lot of blue-gray zombie blood splatter. “Then, yeah, I’m okay.” When she looked up, she noticed Soul patch’s camos were wet in the crotch. “What’s with the... you have a little accident?”
He blushed. “Oh. No. Spilled some beer.”
“Beer? You got any left?”
He smiled. Dopey, but cute. “Whole backseat.”
Bernice returned the smile. Normally, that’d be the whole of it — she’d clam up and look away, embarrassment over actually talking to a guy catching up to her. But not this time. Roxanne’s advice to be aggressive rang in her ears — and given extra urgency by the absolutely shitty day she’d been having. “My kind of guy.”
His smile got a lot bigger and dopier. “Really?”
Bernice grabbed his head between her hands and pulled his surprised face towards hers, planting a long, deep kiss on him.
After a moment, she let him go. He just stared at her, wide-eyed.
“For rescuing me,” she said. A pause, then, “Too much?”
His wide-eyed stare broke into a panicked head-shaking. “No... no, not at all...”
“All right, there’ll be plenty of time for you two to get acquainted in the back seat later,” Tall Guy said, returning. He pointed his cigarette up and down Bernice’s body. “I’m assuming by the getup, you’re a Sister of No Mercy, so I’m betting you know who Roxanne is.”
“Roxanne... sure, she’s — Oh, shit!” Bernice exclaimed. “You’re the guy! You’re Mr. Hunter McRealMan.”
