“What if they’re already dead?” Scavy asks.
Junko looks back at the flames in the distance.
Scavy says, “All three of them could have died in that explosion. We might not have to worry about them.”
Junko takes a deep breath.
“I hope so,” she says, “because I’m pretty sure the only way we’re going to win this thing is if all three of those merc punks are already dead.”
Xiu flies through the air, escaping the explosion, with Zippo gripped tightly to her back. She looks over at Vine as he glides through the air beside her, pulled by his wire. The light of the flames flicker across their sunglasses as they smile at each other in midair.
“We’ll accomplish our mission,” Xiu tells her Arms. “And there is nothing that will get in our way.”
When they get to the street, they run East, toward their goal. The zombies in the area have all been attracted to the flames, so not many of them notice the merc punks as they scurry away.
Xiu’s unit passes a parking garage as they head up a freeway onramp. Once they disappear down the freeway, an engine whirs into life from within the garage. Headlights flip on. Then a large black truck covered in dried blood pulls out of the parking garage. It slowly weaves through the debris in the road, its engine growling, as it heads up the onramp toward the freeway.
As dawn begins to crack, Haroon drifts down the canal on his splintered makeshift raft. He’s wet, itchy, coated in mud, and tired of trying to keep his balance on the half-submerged floatation device.
He’s made it quite a long distance during the course of the night. The few zombies he passed did not even try to come after him. It was so dark out that he was not visible to the living dead from the middle of the canal. But traveling alone in the dark all night has taken a toll on him. For the past six hours, he had been unsure where the canal was taking him, how safe the water was, or how long his raft was going to last.
The blue and pink sky brightening in the East is a comfort to him. Although he’s no longer hidden in the darkness of night, he’s finally able to see where he’s going. He can see the lumps in the brown water are really fallen branches rather than zombies swimming toward him. He can see where the water ends and the algae-coated asphalt wall of the canal begins.
Pulling out his map, his shivering pruned fingers rattle the paper. He’s not exactly sure where he is on the map, but he knows that if he keeps going in this direction the canal will eventually empty into a river. He has to find a boat soon. There’s no way he can make it much further without one.
As he crosses under a bridge, he sees a fat Rastafarian zombie with oil-caked dreadlocks staggering across the road above him. The zombie goes to the railing and looks down at the raft.
“Brains,” the zombie belches down on him.
Black drool sprinkles in the water as Haroon passes underneath. When Haroon comes out on the other side, he hears a splash. The large zombie hits the water, thrashes to keep afloat, and then sinks to the bottom, leaving a coat of green oil on the surface of the water.
Up ahead, a few more zombies on the road running alongside the canal see him coming their way. They shamble toward the water, groaning at him. One of them hops in and sloshes through the thick brown sewage. As Haroon passes, the zombie goes deeper into the water until he’s up to his armpits, then dives for the raft. Mere inches from Haroon’s ankle, the zombie sinks into the murk and disappears under the surface.
Haroon aims his solar-powered shotgun at the bubbling water as he goes by, just in case the corpse knows how to swim. The zombie doesn’t resurface. He goes back to his map. Examining carefully, the river the canal empties into curls north, toward the evacuation zone. If he decides to play the game and go to the helicopter he would have a pretty good chance of making it—a better chance than finding a boat and making it to the ocean. It’s not likely that any river will make it out to the ocean. Even if he knew what part of America he’s in, he knows nothing of the geography. Still, he doesn’t like the idea of playing the game. If he got to the helicopter first that would mean he’d be condemning all the other contestants to death.
But he wouldn’t be able to make it out of the Red Zone without help. And since he knows everyone is headed for the helicopter, that would be the best place to meet up with them. They could draw straws to see who gets to go and who has to stay, then together the remaining contestants can figure out how to get off of the continent alive. He would gladly stay behind, especially if she is among them. With her by his side, he knows they would be able to make it. All he needs to do is find her.
Her name is Nemy. She doesn’t actually have a name, but that’s what Haroon likes to call her. The other people in the research facility called her Nemesis, after the project she came from, or Specimen #5. The Nemesis Project was designed to genetically engineer a soldier capable of surviving in the Red Zone. Nemy is the latest model. Completely immune to the zombie virus, sweat that releases a chemical that is repulsive to the living dead, with the eyes of a hawk and the stealth of cat, she is the ultimate Red Zone survivalist. And her offense capabilities are twice that of her defense. There is no better bodyguard you could have while traveling through the wasteland.
Haroon met her when visiting his friend who had recently been transferred to the genetics division. Terry was his closest associate for several years and it just wasn’t the same working without him.
“They got you mopping the floors I see?” Haroon asked as he walked into the genetics lab one night.
Terry looked up at his old friend, then continued mopping. “Yep. They couldn’t demote me any further than this.”
“That’s what happens when you blow your boss’s finger off.”
“It was your fault. I said those shoddy modules you gave me wouldn’t work. You should be mopping these floors with me.”
“I will if you want me to.”
“Serious?”
“Sure.”
“Take a mop then,” Terry said, rolling the mop bucket over to Haroon.
Haroon went to work, mopping under the work stations across the room.
“How’s the shotgun coming?” Terry asked.
Haroon chuckled. “It shoots. Kind of.”
“Still got a long way to go, eh?”
“Give me a few years, it’ll work.”
Haroon mopped down to the hallway and noticed something moving in the corner of his eye. Stepping a bit further into the hall, he discovered a holding cell that contained a woman with long black hair. At first he thought she was a dead body. The woman looked cold and stiff, lying naked in the corner of the cell with paper-white skin and colorless eyes. Once she sat up and looked at Haroon, he jumped back.
“Who is she?”
Terry came over. “That’s number five. One of the mad Dr. Chan’s creations.”
“Is there a one through four?”
“Behind you,” Terry said, pointing to four dead specimens in glass cases behind them. Two were stillborn fetuses. One was a deformed three-year-old girl. The last was a skeleton-thin adult. All of them had reptilian features, some with snake teeth, scales, and lizard tails. “The previous versions weren’t quite as successful.”
“She’s part reptile?”
Terry nodded. “You wouldn’t think so just but looking at her, would you? Reptiles are immune to the zombie virus, so they spliced her DNA with that of a snake or Gila monster or something like that.”
Haroon watched as the woman stood and stepped toward the glass. She looked Haroon in the eyes and cocked her head.
“Put on your clothes,” Terry said to her, knocking on the glass. Then he pointed to the white jumpsuit on the bed.
“I don’t like them,” she said.
Haroon was a little surprised that she could speak. Her voice was a little alien, a slightly higher pitch than a normal female, with a whispery lisp.
“You’re going to drive my friend here mad with lust,” Terry said, then he turned to Haroon. “She’s
always taking off her clothes. They say she’s built to endure in extreme temperatures, so clothes aren’t really necessary to her. Still, the mad doc is a prude and doesn’t approve of the indecency.”
As the woman walked back to her bed to clothe herself, Haroon realized he couldn’t take his eyes off of her body. She wasn’t considerably beautiful. She didn’t have any curves, her breasts were small, she was a little too thin, a little too muscular, her pale skin seemed almost rubbery, and the vertebrae of her spinal column seemed to stick out of her back so far that they looked like spikes, but there was something about the way she moved and the way her skin glistened in the fluorescent lighting that was alluring to Haroon.
“Don’t even think about it,” Terry said to him. “She might look like a human, but deep down she is a cold-blooded killer. If you even stepped foot in that cell she’d probably snap your neck in seconds. She’d pick your corpse clean to the bone by morning.”
“Has that happened before?”
“Not since she was a kid. But that was only four months ago.”
“She’s only a year old?”
“Seven months old. They grow up fast.”
“Huh.”
As Terry went back to the mop, Haroon watched her adjust her jumpsuit. The clothing seemed awkward and uncomfortable to her. She sat on the bed, readjusted the fabric, stood up, readjusted, pulled the sleeves up, put them back down, then she unzipped the jumpsuit and stepped out of it. Haroon laughed. She turned to him and glared with such intensity that he stepped away from the glass. Her inky black eyes looked like that of a snake ready to strike. She didn’t take her eyes off of him as he walked out of the hallway, past Terry, and out of the lab.
The canal empties into the river, and Haroon’s crude raft barely holds together as he hits a faster current. Haroon was expecting the river to be in a more remote side of the town, but the waterway cuts right through the city. It takes him past an amusement park, where rusty warped roller coasters dangle over the water. The river here is full of debris from the amusement park, including old bumper cars, concession stands, and horses from the merry-go-round. Haroon has to push off of the carnival wreckage to prevent his raft from ramming into anything.
On the side of the river, there is the skeletal frame of a circus tent, the last shreds of tent flapping in the breeze. Haroon sees animal cages and a warped Ferris wheel. Through the bleachers, he catches a glimpse of what he believes to be an elephant. After he floats ten feet, his view becomes blocked by a row of scorched food carts.
Three balls in the water float toward Haroon’s raft. At first, Haroon thinks they are more pieces of amusement park junk that has blown into the river, but then he notices that they’re floating upstream. When they get close enough, Haroon can tell they are zombies. They are submerged up to their noses, so all Haroon can see are the tops of white skulls and hungry bloodshot eyes. They look almost like alligators stalking their prey as they swim toward him.
Haroon pumps his shotgun and aims it at the first zombie. He was hoping not to have to fire his weapon, but he doesn’t have a choice. They are blocking his path and seem to be able to swim faster than he can float.
“Braainns,” gurgles the zombie as its head raises out of the water.
Haroon blows off the top of its skull. Its limbs thrash in the water. Haroon shoots off its arm as he passes, just in case it tries to grab for his raft. Then he fires at the other two heads bobbing in the water, blasting them back just enough for his raft to slip past them.
As he feared, the sound attracts more of the creatures. They come out from behind concession stands and the tilt-a-whirl ride. The water splashes all around him as the undead jump into the river. He ignores the ones behind him and focuses his fire on those in his path, the ones capable of reaching him before he can float by. Chunks of green meat spray through the air as Haroon pumps and fires the shotgun as fast as he can.
The ground quakes around him and a rumbling fills the air. Once Haroon hears a shrill trumpet call, he knows what’s coming. The zombie elephant crashes through a fallen roller coaster track and dives into the water, trampling human corpses into the brown murk. Its flesh is black and soggy, riddled with pus and sores. The flesh on the left side of its abdomen is missing, revealing the ribcage and rancid organs. From within the creature’s stomach, the arms of a zombie clown reach out through its rib bones. Decades ago, the elephant had swallowed a circus clown whole in order to eat its brain, and when the clown had come back to life it found itself trapped permanently within the creature’s belly.
As Haroon continues firing at the zombies in his path, he realizes that the elephant is moving too quickly for him to get away. He turns the shotgun on the monstrous animal and aims for its front left leg. He doesn’t aim for anything else, just shooting that leg in the exact same spot, hoping to slow it down. Unfortunately, he’s not a trained marksman. His shots hit the water, hit its face, and its chest. Only a few hit the leg, but none of them in the exact same spot. If his gun wasn’t solar-powered he would have been out of ammo by now. He turns and fires at zombies in front of him, then turns back to the elephant. No matter how many times he shoots it, the creature doesn’t slow down.
The zombie elephant’s trunk raises and creates a blasting trumpet noise. Green toxic vomit sprays from its trunk in a geyser across the water, barely missing Haroon’s raft. He raises his shotgun and aims for its face. Firing six consecutive shots, he blows off the creature’s trunk as well as shredding both its eyes. This slows it down, but it keeps plowing blindly forward.
Haroon turns to the zombies in the water ahead and notices a bend in the river. That’s his chance. He decapitates a few of the zombies, then paddles with his free hand to take the curve without getting stuck on the rocks along the shore. After the bend, he looks back to see the elephant trampling over the rest of the zombies straight onto dry land. It doesn’t change directions, stomping forward into the carnival parking lot at full force.
The second time Haroon saw Nemesis, she was sitting on the bed staring at him in such a way that it seemed as if she was expecting him. He had come to see Terry after the lab was shut down for the night, but Terry was gone. His mop bucket was in the middle of the floor, but he was nowhere to be seen.
But Haroon didn’t just come to see Terry. He also wanted to see the reptilian woman again. Ever since he saw her he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head. She scared and disturbed him, yet he found her strangely attractive.
He went up to the glass and just looked at her for awhile. She was cross-legged on the bed, topless, eyeing him. After a few moments, she stood up and came to the glass. She put her hand on the door.
“You can come in if you want,” she said.
Haroon was surprised to hear her say that. He didn’t know how to react.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She pointed at the door handle. Haroon walked slowly to the glass. He wasn’t sure what possessed him to do it, but he went inside with her. She lunged at him and grabbed the door before it closed.
“Don’t let it shut,” she said, as she held the door open a crack. “You’ll be locked in. If Dr. Chan found you in here with me he wouldn’t be happy.”
Haroon took off his shoe and put it in the door.
“I thought you were trying to escape,” Haroon said.
She cocked his head at him, as if she didn’t understand the word escape.
“Let’s get started,” she said.
Haroon’s questioning face turned into a face of alarm as she crawled onto the bed and pointed her ass at him, as if she wanted him to fuck her doggy style.
“What are you doing?” Haroon asked.
“Aren’t you going to have sex with me?”
“What!” Haroon yelled.
She sat upright. “Isn’t that why you came here?”
“No, I—”
“I assumed by the way you were looking at me…”
“No, I just
wanted to talk. I think you’re fascinating. I wanted to learn more about you.”
“Oh,” she said, perplexed. “That’s usually not why people come here.”
“I’m sorry, I think I should go.” Haroon stepped toward the door.
“No,” she said, her hand slapping against the door to keep him from opening it.
Haroon wondered how she got off the bed and across the room so fast.
“Don’t go,” she said. “I’d love to talk. Nobody ever talks to me.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice shaking a little. “Yeah, that would be good.” He smiled at her. She didn’t smile back, but cocked her head a little.
Haroon held out his hand.
“My name is Haroon,” he said.
She didn’t take his hand.
“I don’t have a name,” she said.
“What do they call you then?”
“I’m from the Nemesis Project so sometimes they call me that.”
“I don’t want to call you Nemesis. It sounds inhuman.” He paused nervously after the word inhuman, but it didn’t seem to bother her. “What if I call you Nemy?”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“I’d like that,” she said.
But her expression appeared as if she wanted to tear his throat out if he ever actually called her by that name.
Haroon comes to a shop on the edge of the river. Three giant blue letter Rs dangle from an ancient sign, above the words River Recreation Rental. On the dock, there are rows of yellow plastic kayaks. The area seems clear of the undead, so he directs his raft to the shore to take a closer look at the boats. If any of them are useable it would be much quicker, safer, and more comfortable than the tied-together driftwood he’s been riding.
Dragging his raft into the bushes along the shore, he goes to the kayaks. They look warped and brittle, not very promising. He taps one of them with the tip of the shotgun and the barrel breaks right through, more fragile than paper. Pounding on each one them with his fist, they are all useless. The sun shining on them for several decades has deteriorated the plastic practically to dust.
Zombies and Shit Page 20
