As the T-2000 stomps toward her, she comes at him. In a flash, she zips across the pavement, too fast for Junko and the others to see. The blade of her sword passes over Mr. T’s fist and hits him in the neck.
Mr. T looks down at the blade below his chin. It didn’t cut him, frozen in place. He isn’t sure why she stopped herself. She could have sliced his head from his metal body right there.
Then Mr. T sees the merc punk standing in the distance, over Nemesis’ shoulder. Vine has his arm elevated, pointed at the reptilian woman, his wire wrapped around her sword.
Then Mr. T gives her a big smile, as the merc punk pulls back on the wire, ripping the sword from the woman’s hands. The sword flies over Vine’s head, landing on the far side of the parking lot.
With his other hand, Vine launches his second wire, swiping it toward both of the two contestants. Mr. T leaps twenty feet up to dodge the wire as it slices through the air. Nemesis just stands in place. Without moving her feet, she bends her waist all the way back, in a perfect L-shape, as the wire passes over her. Then she flips out of the way, as Mr. T comes back to the earth fist-first. His metal knuckles cause a crater to open up in the asphalt beneath him. When he looks up, he sees the horde of zombies closing in on them.
“Get to the roof,” Mr. T yells at Junko. “I’ll handle these two.”
Junko doesn’t hesitate. She grabs Scavy, Rainbow, and the lawn gnome, and races toward the building.
Going through the crumbling hospital, Junko, Scavy, and Rainbow Cat make their way up to the roof. They go for the two-way radio.
“We have to call for the helicopter,” Junko says.
She walks carefully along the edge of the roof to the two-way radio. A section of the roof had collapsed when the car crashed into the side of the building. The ground could fall out on her at any moment as she works her way to the communication device.
“We’re here,” Junko says into the radio. “Come pick us up.”
Rainbow Cat looks out over the roof as the parking lot fills with the living dead. They surround the building on all sides, a sea of molten flesh. As a camera ball hovers over Junko’s shoulder, a voice comes on the other side of the radio.
“We can only pick up one of you,” says the voice.
“I know that,” she says. “Just come pick one of us up.”
“Wait right there,” says the voice. “The remote helicopter will be there in ten minutes to pick one of you up.”
“Hurry up!” Junko cries.
She tosses the radio to her feet and returns to the others. Scavy is on the other side of the roof, examining a dead body.
“Who is it?” Rainbow asks, as they gather around him.
“That Haroon guy,” Junko says. “It looks like the strange woman killed him.”
Scavy bends down and picks up the solar-powered shotgun.
“What’s that?” Junko asks.
“Some kind of homemade shotgun,” he says.
“Let me use it,” Rainbow says.
Scavy shakes his head. “It’s mine now.”
Rainbow gives him a dirty look as they move to the helicopter pad.
“Okay,” Junko says. “We have ten minutes to hold up here. Hopefully the gnome has enough juice in it to keep them back that long.”
Peering over the roof, they can already see dozens of the undead entering the hospital from every entrance.
“They don’t know we’re on the roof,” Junko says. “With luck the helicopter will get here before they find us.”
Scavy nods, then looks up into the air. From above, they see Oro circling the rooftop in his flying machine.
As the zombies engulf Nemesis, Vine, and the T-2000, they no longer have space to fight each other, and turn their efforts toward the living dead.
Vine spins in a circle, both wires shooting out at maximum length, and cuts down thirty zombies. Sixty severed legs stand on the ground surrounding him, like freshly mowed blades of grass.
Metal spikes rotate on Mr. T’s body, as he shreds and punches his way through the horde. He picks up a zombie by the leg and swings it around like a bat, clubbing the undead out of his way as he moves closer to his opponents.
Nemesis doesn’t bother with the walking corpses. They ignore her, passing her by as if she’s one of them. She retrieves her double-bladed sword, and ducks down into the crowd, like a snake waiting for its chance to strike.
From his glider-cycle, high in the gray cloudy sky, Oro looks down at the contestants on the rooftop.
“Those simpletons will not be victorious over me,” Oro says. “My genius is almighty. My genius is supreme.”
He aims the rocket launcher at them.
“My genius is absolute!”
Then he fires.
The trio on the roof scatter as the rocket comes toward the helicopter pad. The explosion knocks them off of their feet and blows another section of the roof away.
Scavy rolls over and aims his sniper rifle at the aircraft.
“That was a cheap shot,” Scavy says, as he looks into the scope.
He fires and blows a hole in Oro’s wing the size of a quarter. Scavy fires again, then again. As he hears the bullets tearing into the wings of his glider-cycle, Oro pedals it away from the rooftop, circling back toward the city.
“Shit,” Junko says, helping Rainbow Cat to her feet. “That explosion is going to lead the entire horde up here.”
Scavy switches from sniper to shotgun.
“Prepare yourself,” Junko says.
In the small section of roof that remains, they go back-to-back.
Popcorn and Gogo drive into the parking lot of the hospital, staring at the massive horde of the living dead surrounding the building. When the car can no longer move within the mob of zombies, Gogo opens the door and jumps out.
“Hey!” Popcorn yells. “Where are you going!”
“Brains!” Gogo yells, pushing her way through the crowd. “I’m going to eat their fucking brains!”
“No!” Popcorn yells. “Get back here!”
Popcorn jumps out of the smart-car and chases after her zombie friend, but she quickly loses her in the mob.
“If she hurts Scavy,” Popcorn says, “I’m going to cut off her fucking head.”
Then she continues on, toward the hospital.
Nemesis goes for Vine. As the merc punk cuts down a row of undead, leaving himself open, she tosses her double-bladed sword at him.
When Vine sees the weapon spinning toward him, he launches his left wire at it, catches it in the air. Then he spins in a circle, whipping the sword back in her direction. Zombie torsos are sliced into halves as the wire circles toward Nemesis. She ducks out of the way, narrowly missing the blades of her own sword on the end of Vine’s wire.
The wire continues cutting through the zombie crowd, green and black fluids splashing into the air. It hits Mr. T. Catching the central handle of the sword with his steel fist, Mr. T looks over at the merc punk.
“We should be fighting her,” he yells at the punk. “Not each other.”
The merc punk pulls the wire, ripping the sword out of Mr. T’s grip, cutting a gash into the gold plating of his hand. When he looks at his gold-stripped palm, Mr. T’s eyebrows curl.
“Now you’ve gone an made Mr. T mad,” he says.
The horde of zombies spill onto the rooftop. Junko places the lawn gnome on the ground between them, and revs up her chainsaw arm.
“We’ve only got a few minutes left to wait,” Junko says. “Let’s just hope the roof can hold the weight of all those zombies.”
“You mean this whole place can collapse if they get too close?” Rainbow Cat says.
“Let’s try to hold them back as far as we can,” Junko says.
Scavy raises the solar-powered shotgun and unleashes a barrage of blasts onto the crowd. He doesn’t realize the gun has nearly unlimited ammo, but he fires as if deep down he knows it does. Zombie meat splatters across the roof with each shot. With every body that topp
les over, it holds back three more trying to get through.
As Mr. T clobbers zombies out of his way to get to Vine, Nemesis flies through the crowd and punches him with an open-handed palm. Mr. T’s face lights up in surprise as he finds himself flying backward into the side of the building.
Mr. T’s body becomes immersed halfway into the brick wall of the building. He leans his head forward and shakes the powdered brick out of his mohawk.
“Damn,” he says. “That bitch is strong.”
Running so fast she looks as if she’s teleporting, Nemesis flies at him. She stops right in front of his face, staring at him with her cold black eyes. Then she raises her hand back, with her fingers pressed together in the shape of a snake, as if she is going to drive her fingertips all the way through to the back of his skull.
Stuck inside of the brick wall, Mr. T can’t protect himself. He just watches as her fingers come toward him.
No matter how many times he fires, even with unlimited ammo, the zombies get closer to Scavy. They surround the perimeter, pushed back by the gnome’s sonic wave. The ground below them begins to crack.
“Fuck,” Junko says. “The roof isn’t going to hold us for much longer.”
The sound of the helicopter fills their ears. They look up and see it coming across the city buildings toward them.
“There it is!” Rainbow cries.
Scavy continues firing the shotgun, only glancing up for a second to see how close it is.
The helicopter hovers over the hospital for a few moments, but finding no place to land it continues on.
“Where’s it going?” Scavy cries.
The helicopter flies low over the parking lot, over the horde of zombies, and finds a clearing on the far end of the street. Then it slowly descends.
“We have to get you over there,” Junko says.
Scavy nods, then continues blasting.
As Nemesis drives her fingers toward Mr. T’s face, Vine shoots his wire at her. Nemesis’ arm is severed at the elbow and rolls down Mr. T’s chest. Then Vine shoots his second wire and it hooks onto her bony spine. She flies backward through the air, as Vine’s wire reels into his wrist. Then he spins her in a circle around him, the razor-sharp wire decapitating zombies as he twirls her through the air.
“Now throw her against a wall,” Xiu’s voice tells Vine. Vine nods and aims her flying white body toward the wall of the hospital.
As the reptilian woman is thrown toward him, Mr. T breaks out of his brick encasing and says, “Time to play a game of bitch baseball.”
Mr. T flexes a fist and charges forward. Like a tetherball, he punches Nemesis in the chest. Her eyes widen as her torso caves in around his fist, blood spraying from the sides of her ribcage. Her body flies off of Vine’s wire, over the zombie horde, and rolls across the pavement.
“Homerun for the T-2000!” says Mr. T.
A camera ball watches Nemesis’ body as it lies still on the ground, blood pooling beneath her. The camera zooms in on one side of her ribcage. The ribs are split open in a messy crevice below her armpit. She isn’t breathing.
On the other side of the camera, miles away from the Red Zone, Dr. Chan watches Nemesis from the Zombie Survival control room.
Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla comes up behind the doctor and pats him on the back.
“Looks like your ultimate soldier wasn’t good enough after all,” Wayne says.
He laughs in the doctor’s face, then takes a bite of a chocolate cruller.
The hospital rumbles as the roof begins to collapse under their feet. Junko falls to her knees, nearly landing on her chainsaw. Scavy holds his balance, continuing to fire his shotgun at the reaching limbs.
Rainbow Cat looks down at the lawn gnome behind them. Then she looks back at the other two contestants. Their attentions are elsewhere. Rainbow decides to take advantage of the opportunity.
As Junko gets to her feet, she doesn’t see it happen. Rainbow grabs the lawn gnome, then charges into the zombie crowd. By the time Junko notices, it’s too late.
“Stop her!” Junko cries.
Scavy fires at Rainbow’s back, but the zombies close in behind her. Without the lawn gnome holding them back, the zombies fill in the gap, staggering toward the two unprotected contestants.
The zombies open up a path for Rainbow as she charges through the horde, the lawn gnome under her arm like a football. Her dreadlocks flop through the air, leaping over crippled zombies that can’t get out of her way fast enough. When she goes through the doors into the hospital, she looks back to see Junko and Scavy aren’t chasing after her. They are back-to-back, shooting and slashing at the undead closing in on them, the ground cracking wider at their feet. Rainbow smiles at the sight.
I did it, she thinks to herself. I’m going to win. I’m going to get to the helicopter, get back to the island, and then the world will finally get to see the great masterpiece of Charles Hudson. The greatest writer of our time. My husband.
Droplets of rain sprinkle over Nemesis’ white naked skin. A thundercloud moves in, drizzling on the horde of zombies. Her eyelids flash open, and she stares into the camera ball with her cold black eyes.
On the other side of the camera, from the control room of Zombie Survival, Dr. Chan shakes his head at Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla.
“It’s going to take more than that to defeat her,” says Dr. Chan.
Wayne shoves the rest of his chocolate cruller into his mouth and goes to the monitor. He sees Nemesis standing up. Her crushed ribcage expands, the split down her side disappears. Then she raises her severed arm, which is growing nerves and tissue. Wayne’s eyes light up as she grows a completely new hand.
“Like a lizard’s tail,” says Dr. Chan, “she can grow new limbs, only a million times as fast. Her regenerative powers surpass all living creatures on this planet.”
“Fuck…” Wayne says, coughing up bits of donut.
“She is nearly invincible,” says Dr. Chan.
Vine sees the helicopter landing on the far side of the parking lot, as raindrops trickle onto his head. He removes his goggles to see more clearly.
“Now’s your chance,” Xiu’s voice tells him. “You can use your wires to get there before the other contestants. But first you need to get the works of art. You must complete the mission.”
Vine cuts away a row of zombies with his wire. Then he scans the edge of the hospital for the paintings.
“There they are,” says Xiu’s voice.
Vine sees them on the ground, next to his Head’s corpse. “Use your wires to get over there.”
Raising his left hand up, he shoots a wire at the roof of the hospital and is pulled up into the air.
As he soars above the shambling corpses, Xiu’s voice tells him, “You don’t have much time. Grab the paintings and get to the helicopter.”
Nemesis throws her double-bladed sword at Vine as he flies toward the building. The blade hits his left arm, cuts it off at the elbow. Vine falls. He watches as his left arm continues on without him, pulled by the wire up to the rooftop.
Before Vine’s body falls, Nemesis races through the undead, catches her sword as it boomerangs back to her, and then slices the merc punk through the midsection just before he hits the ground.
Nemesis turns her attention to Mr. T. She runs through the parking lot, flying at him like a bullet. Mr. T sees her coming. He charges at her.
“Time for round two,” Mr. T yells.
Corpses tumble from their path as they plow toward each other. Mr. T’s feet crush the ground with every step. Nemesis runs so fast her flesh becomes a white blur.
Mr. T throws his punch, with all of his weight behind it. Nemesis catches his punch, thin white claws wrapped around his golden knuckles, then she buries her sword deep into his metal chest. Sparks explode between them, oils and wires spill out of his abdomen.
“Think that’s enough to stop Mr. T?” yells the cyborg.
As his mouth is open, Nemesis spits a green fluid down his thro
at. She rips out her sword and watches as he falls to his knees, choking, holding his neck in his metal hands.
Her black eyes glare at him as he curls into the mud, beneath the pouring rain.
“You see?” Dr. Chan says to Wayne, from the control room. “She’s invincible. There’s nobody who can stop her now.”
Wayne looks carefully at the cyborg contestant as he writhes on the ground. “What is that she sprayed in his mouth?”
“A concoction I brewed up,” says Dr. Chan. “It is a mixture of snake venom and a hyper-accelerated variety of the zombie virus.”
“Zombie virus?”
“Yes,” the doctor smiles. “Specimen #5 isn’t just part reptile. She is also part leopard, part hammerhead, part spider, and part zombie.”
“Part zombie…” Wayne says, staring at the screen.
“She can only infect a human using her venom,” says the doctor. “But it moves faster through the nervous system and creates a more powerful zombie.”
Wayne turns his head slowly to the doctor. “Why on earth would you give her such an ability?”
“I gave it to her…” The doctor looks back at the producer. “So that in any combat scenario…” He pauses to steal one of Wayne’s chocolate donuts. “She would always win.”
As Junko and Scavy battle the zombies back-to-back, the roof below them finally gives way. It breaks open, dropping half of the undead down to the level below. The ground beneath Scavy goes with it and he falls.
With one arm, Junko catches him by the wrist.
Scavy looks up. “What are you doing?”
“You drew the long straw,” Junko says, holding him with her left arm. With her other arm, she chainsaws the zombies coming in from behind. “You need to get to the helicopter.”
Zombies and Shit Page 29
