Haroon is thankful they gave him a fighting chance. As long as he’s alive, there is still hope. It is also nice to be outside in the sunlight after so many years underground. Even if he is going to die, at least he’s able to see the sun again. He did have a sunroof in his lab for testing weapons, but it was only one square foot of light which just wasn’t the same as being out in the open.
And if she is really out here with him, everything will work out perfectly.
Laurence and Haroon go from building to building, searching for the components listed in the blueprint. Some of them aren’t easy to get, but most of them are obtainable at any grocery store. If only they can find one.
“You sure we’ll be able to build that thing?” Laurence asks.
“Positive.”
They move in the direction of the helicopter marked on their maps, picking up items as they go. Because they aren’t firing guns, the zombies aren’t as attracted to them as the other contestants.
“Back at the hotel,” Laurence begins, “you said that you wanted us all to go for a boat instead of the helicopter. That way we all could make it out alive.”
“Yeah,” Haroon says. “I still believe it’s possible. The Asian girl was right, most of the boats would not be useable, but I’m sure we could find at least one boat that would work. Hell, we could probably even make our own.”
“I like the way you think,” Laurence says. “There’s always another way. That’s what I’ve always said. Just because the Man says there’s only one way to survive, that doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Once we get this gun together, I say we collect Junko and whoever else we can, then head for the river.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Haroon says.
“It’s a plan and a half.”
All Haroon has to do is build this weapon and find her, and he knows the plan will succeed. Then they can all get out of there without having to kill each other.
Junko, Scavy, and Rainbow Cat race down a city street, trying to cover as much ground as possible. Unfortunately, there are too many zombies awake already for them to get very far. They go down one street and their path is blocked by a crowd of undead. They go around to another road and run into another crowd of zombies. They take so many detours that they seem to be getting farther away from their goal, rather than closer.
“We have to fight our way through them,” Scavy says. “This pussy running bullshit is getting us nowhere.”
The camera ball floating behind them makes beeping noises as if it agrees with Scavy, annoyed that they aren’t giving it any interesting footage. The camera’s operator, sitting safely behind a computer hundreds of miles away, must be bored out of his mind.
“Trust me,” Junko says. “We want to avoid a fight with them at all costs. Shooting them will only attract more. Melee fighting is only useful when you’re up against one of them at a time, not a crowd. We just need to keep moving, even if it’s in the wrong direction.”
“Bullshit!” Scavy says. “Those badass merc punks fought their way through crowds no problem.”
“You’re not a merc punk.”
Scavy shuts up at that comment. He really wishes he was a merc punk. They seem tough as fuck. He wishes he would have joined up with them rather than Junko and the hippy.
Once they run into yet another zombie mob blocking their path, Scavy says, “Fuck it,” and charges forward.
“What the hell are you doing!” Junko yells.
The camera ball quickly follows Scavy, as if excited the viewers will finally get to see some action.
“I’m sick of going around them,” he says, holding up his naginata spear like a lance. “I’m going straight through.”
He lets out a battle cry and all of the zombies turn their attention to him.
“Braains…” they moan as they stagger toward him.
“Get back here, you dumbfuck!” Junko yells.
Junko stomps her foot and glares over at Rainbow Cat. The hippy girl rolls her eyes. Junko groans loudly and then races after the idiot.
“The only good part about being put on this fucking show,” Scavy says, just as he reaches the first zombie, “is being able to kill shit.”
Then he swings the blade of his spear at the attacking corpse with all of his strength, the blade cuts through the zombie’s neck and decapitates it. The head flies over his shoulder and rolls down the street toward Rainbow Cat.
But the zombie continues its attack. Green sludge spews out of the corpse’s neck hole as it wraps its claws around Scavy’s shoulders. Even though it no longer has a head, it’s stump of a neck still tries to get at Scavy’s brain, as if desperately hoping that there might be a way to slurp the brain into its neck hole.
“Don’t let that green shit touch you!” Junko yells at Scavy. “It’s infectious.”
Scavy pushes away at the headless corpse with the shaft of his spear, as the green sauce geysers in his direction. Then two other zombies grab him by the elbow and neck, going for his brain. The punk thrashes around to prevent them from getting a good bite, but the thrashing causes the green sludge to get onto his clothes.
One of the zombies that has a hold of him is incredibly sloggy and melted. It has dozens of pennies, nickels, and quarters embedded into its flesh, as if it had been hibernating in a wishing fountain for the past few decades. When it opens its mouth to groan, several coins trickle out of its mouth like a slot machine. Scavy laughs at the sight. He wonders if the zombie had swallowed all of those coins in order to eat the brains of all of those tiny metal presidents.
As the coin zombie widens its jaws around Scavy’s ear, Junko smashes its face with the base of her chainsaw arm. Coins fly into the air as it tumbles away from the punk. Then she revs her chainsaw and severs the arms off of the headless zombie and kicks him away. Scavy shoves the third zombie off of him.
Eight more zombies come at them, and Junko charges forward. In a spinning motion, she ducks under their reaching arms and slashes their Achilles tendons. They drop. Before they can grab her from the ground, she runs at the other four. She jumps at one of them and decapitates it, then leaps at another and its head goes rolling. One at a time, she cuts off their heads. Once their heads are off, she goes for their ankles.
When she has incapacitated all of the undead, she turns to the others. “What are you waiting for? Come on!”
Scavy and Rainbow Cat stare at her with wide open mouths.
“That was fucking awesome!” Scavy says, squirming zombie bodies all around him.
“Let’s go,” she says, turning off her chainsaw. “The noise is going to attract ten times as many of those things.” Then she turns and runs.
Rainbow Cat and Scavy follow after her, jumping over the zombie arms that reach blindly across the asphalt. Up ahead, they see a dozen more of the undead coming straight for them.
“Fuck,” Junko groans, as she revs her chainsaw back into life. “I was hoping to avoid this shit.”
Junko knows exactly what she’s doing out there, because she had fully prepared herself for this competition. In the history of Zombie Survival, she was the first contestant to actually know she was going to be selected for the show beforehand. The second she had become blacklisted by employers in the Platinum, Gold, and Silver districts, she knew that it was done for a single purpose: so she would be forced to move to Copper and become eligible for the Zombie Survival contestant selection. And she knew who was responsible for getting her on that blacklist: her old boss, Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla.
She had met Wayne when she was seventeen years old. He was the judge of a beauty pageant she was participating in. She remembers the way his creepy eyes wouldn’t look anywhere else but on her body. She remembers him licking his crusty too-red lips behind his too-white goatee.
Back then she had long black hair, perfect ladylike posture, and a glowing artificial smile. Her mother encouraged her to focus on being beautiful. If she was beautiful she could marry a rich man and live in the Gold or Platinum Quadrant.
If she was beautiful she would be too valuable to be discarded by society into the ghettos of Copper. So her mother made sure she wore the latest fashions, took good care of her nails and hair, learned the art of makeup application, and developed an attractive personality: innocent, joyful, pure. And her mother always put her in beauty pageants. She wanted her daughter’s beauty on display for all the rich men to see.
Even though her daughter was underage, her mother encouraged her to flirt with older wealthy men. When Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla introduced himself to her after she had come in third place in the pageant (the worst she had ever placed since she was ten), she could feel her mother’s eyes telling her: “Don’t fuck this up. He’s interested in you. Smile. Flash your eyelashes. Arch your back. Stick out your cleavage.”
But Junko was more creeped out by him than any man she had ever met. She just couldn’t flirt with him.
“Hi there,” he said, rubbing his white goatee. “My name is Wayne, but people call me The Wiz.”
Junko cowered beneath him, her back slouching, her eyes glancing at the ground, her teeth chewing nervously on the inside of her cheek. She could see her mother glaring at her from across the room for not flirting properly with the older man. Junko wasn’t presenting herself at all in the way that her mother had taught her. Junko knew that she would be punished by her mother for coming in third place, but if she could attract the affection of this older man perhaps she would be forgiven. She wouldn’t have to seriously form a relationship with the man, just give the impression to her mother that he was a potential suitor.
Junko widened her eyes and opened up her body to him, flirting with her neck and smile. She asks, “Why do they call you The Wiz?”
Wayne leaned in and spoke directly into her ear with his rough deep voice, “Because I make magic happen.”
When he pulled away he laughed, as if that was supposed to be a joke. Junko laughed with him. She knows to always laugh at a man’s jokes even if she isn’t sure whether or not he told a joke.
“I’m looking for a young pretty face for a new show I’m working on,” Wayne said. “I think you’d be perfect.”
“A show?” Junko asked. “Like a play?”
“No, a television show,” Wayne said. “Do you know what a television show is?”
Junko shook her head, but kept her fake smile beamed in his direction.
“You will soon enough. Television is finally coming to the island and the show I’m working on will be the biggest hit series of all time.”
“And you want me to be a part of it?” Junko asked, her excited tone of voice was actually genuine this time.
“I want you to be the star,” he said.
Then Junko’s fake smile became a real one.
Junko leads her crew into an abandoned building to escape the zombie fight. They don’t bother barricading the door and allow the zombies to pile in after them. Instead, they zigzag through corridors until they lose them. Then they jump into the pitch-black stairwell. They seem to have also lost the camera ball that was following them.
Rainbow Cat ruffles through her pack for her flashlight, but Junko says, “Leave your lights off.”
Feeling their way up the steps, they pray they don’t run into any corpses. But Junko feels safer knowing that the zombies are even more blind in the dark than they are and have a difficulty with stairs.
They continue climbing, stepping in sticky fluids and tripping over rubble, but they don’t run into any bodies… that they know of.
A wave of relief rushes over Rainbow Cat when they leave the stairwell onto a random floor. The offices here are dimly lit, but the little amount of light they have is enough to know exactly what’s around them. They choose a well-lit office with a large window, then lock the door behind them.
“Just keep your voice down,” Junko whispers, “and they’re not going to find us.”
They drop to the ground and catch their breaths. When Junko gets a good look at the green slime on Scavy’s clothes, she says, “Did you get that shit on you?”
Scavy looks down. “Guess so.”
“Take ‘em off!” she whispers. “Now!”
She helps him carefully remove his shirt and pants, repeatedly calling him a dumb fuck for letting this happen.
“Did it get on your skin?” she asks. “If it’s soaked into your skin and into your bloodstream you’re dead.”
When he is down to his underwear, Junko examines every inch of his skin for the green substance. She pulls him up to the window to be absolutely certain.
“I don’t see anything,” Scavy says.
Junko frowns. “You look fine, but from now on you listen to me.”
“You’ve got it,” Scavy says.
The punk has a new found respect for Junko ever since he saw her take down all of those zombies. He could hardly stand up to just one, but she made short work of nearly a dozen of them.
“You kicked ass out there,” he says. “Have you fought zombies before?”
Junko shakes her head.
She says, “No, but I’ve worked for this show long enough to know which attacks are most effective.”
Then she lies back to rest for a few minutes, getting off her feet so that they won’t blister.
“I also know what mistakes not to make,” she says with her eyes closed. “Like the mistake you made back there. If you want to survive you will listen to me from now on. I won’t bail you out next time.”
After a long pause, Rainbow Cat asks, “How was it?”
“What?” Junko asks.
“Working on the show?”
It was fun at first. Junko liked being treated like a celebrity, even though she was just a host for the show. The real stars were the people who fought and died for everyone’s amusement. Junko was just the pretty face and cheerful voice that introduced each episode of the season. She liked being pretty for a living. Her mother loved it even more, because her daughter was not just a pretty face but also a major sex symbol. There was no way Junko wasn’t going to end up marrying a very wealthy man.
Then she grew up and the novelty of being a celebrity wore off. Her mother died from choking on a wine cork, and her influence died with her. The desire to marry a wealthy man faded, because she already had plenty of money. She always knew the show she worked for was brutal and cruel, but she was raised to accept these things as normal, just as all children in the upper class districts were.
But one day she was asked on a date by a handsome young man with emerald green eyes. She fell in love with him the first time she looked into those deep eyes.
“How can you do it?” he asked her, over dinner. “How can you work for that horrible show?”
Junko smiled and shrugged. “It’s my job.”
“But it’s so cruel,” he said. “Those people are being sent to their death for our amusement.”
“But people die everyday,” she said. “The world is a cruel place. That’s just the way it is.”
Then he said a single word, one that she never thought to use in her privileged life.
He said, “Why?”
Junko was taken aback.
“Why does it have to be that way?” he asked. “Why does the world have to be so cruel?”
“The living dead took over,” she said. “They turned society into a dog-eat-dog world. We have to do what we do in order to survive.”
“That’s no excuse at all,” he said. “Our government has all the resources necessary to make life better for everyone in Neo New York. Instead it chooses to make life even better for the privileged few, while making life even worse for the unfortunate lower class citizens.”
“But most of those people are criminals,” she said. “They rape and murder each other. They do drugs. They prostitute their children. Maybe the show is cruel, but if anybody deserves it it’s those people.”
“I can’t believe you said that,” he said. “Nobody deserves that kind of fate. Those people are just victims of circumstance. They w
ould have turned out no different than you or I if our government spread out its resources to everyone evenly.”
Junko was confused by his statement.
“That’s stupid,” she said, then took a big bite of salmon.
“Compassion is stupid?” he asked.
Junko continued chewing her salmon with a full cheek. She saw anger in his beautiful green eyes. She regretted arguing with him. If only she lied he might have liked her better.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, standing up from the table. “But only on the outside.”
Then he left the restaurant.
The next season of the show, she recognized one of the contestants by his emerald green eyes. The rest of his face she didn’t recognized. He looked like he had gone through hard times in the Copper Quadrant. When she asked her boss, The Wiz, what his story was, he told her that he was an idiot. He was a wealthy fiction publisher who had decided to close down his company, move to the Copper Quadrant, and give away all of his money to the people who lived there.
“Why would he do that?” Junko asked him.
Wayne’s white goatee fluffed out as he smiled. “He did it out of protest. He said he was disgusted by our way of life in Platinum, so he refused to live here anymore. Can you believe the moron?”
The next day, when Junko saw the young man with the emerald eyes die in uptown Scottsdale, Arizona, his head torn open by crispy sun-burnt zombies, she left the television station mortified. It was the first time a contestant had been somebody she knew. She had seen violent deaths so much since she started hosting Zombie Survival that she had become desensitized to it, but it was different with him. His emerald green eyes lying on the sidewalk next to his corpse was an image she couldn’t get out of her head. She went to a bar and drank until morning.
Although she was under contract to finish the season, she wanted to quit right then and there. But she had no choice but to finish it. She did such a bland job hosting the show that Wayne was happy to get rid of her.
Zombies and Shit Page 10
