by Wallen, Jack
I nodded.
She nodded.
We all remained perfectly silent.
Outside our little hideaway, the Screamer slammed its fists against the commercial-grade prep table. The metal shuddered under the crushing blow. I stole another glance at the second girl to see her cheeks glistening with tears. Her lower lip quivered. Slowly, I shook my head and placed a finger over my lips.
I opened my arms and she fell into my embrace.
The door to the fridge took a hit. Either the Screamer had slammed itself against the reinforced metal, or decided to play a rousing game of dodge ball with any inanimate object that could be hurled, with Hulk-like strength, at the barrier between him and meat.
The door held.
The girl’s bladder, on the other hand, did not. First, I heard the pitter patter of drops falling to the floor. Next, I got the faintest whiff of urine just under the stench of rot. I glanced down to see the liquid pooling between her feet.
And then fate pimp-slapped us across the collective face. Gravity took hold of the pooled liquid and drew it toward the door.
My eyes went wide. Should the Screamer catch wind of the piss, nothing would stop it from getting to us.
I glanced around the room. There was nothing I could use to stop the stream from making it to the door.
I stepped back, ripped off my shirt, and tossed it to the floor, just in front of the flowing gold.
Mikko glanced to me, eyes wide, and mouthed, “Thank you.”
I nodded.
She followed up by mouthing, “Smokin’ hot.”
I smiled and gave a quick flex of the pecs.
The destruct-o-con on the other side of the door came to a conclusion. We waited, still frozen in time and space, until there was no doubt the Screamer had moved on for a bigger, better meal.
I motioned for everyone to move to the back of the room and gave the emergency bumper a push. The door cracked open and fresh air wafted into my nose. I greedily drew in a lungful and glanced about the room. A fading scream gave me all the proof I needed that the beast had moved along. I released the door and let it swing open wide. We stepped out of the walk-in cautiously.
The crying girl had finally managed to pull herself together.
“You two now understand that this game is serious stuff?”
Both girls nodded.
“If you’re going to play, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes.”
Another nod.
“And you have to know that, in the end, the prize could be death.”
Both girls locked up tight.
I had to ask the hardest question that remained. “Are your parents still alive?”
Neither answered…which, in and of itself, was all the response I needed. Shit. I stole a glance to Mikko, who had clearly read my mind. She turned to face the girls and asked, “How long have you been in this hotel?”
The girls looked at one another and shrugged.
I glanced down at them and said, “Don’t move,” and then pulled Mikko aside. “We can’t take them with us.”
“You’re joking, right?”
I shook my head. “No. They’re too young. You have to know they’d slow us down…or worse.”
“Jingo, we can’t leave them behind…it’d be a death sentence.”
The sound of a door interrupted our conversation. I turned from Mikko to see the exit slowly swing in and out, in and out.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mikko huffed.
Before the impulse took hold, I grabbed her by the arm. She turned and gave me the glare.
“No, Mikko. They had their chance. Obviously, the game is more important to them. Those girls just made it easy for us to walk out.”
“Easy for you, maybe,” Mikko growled, and jerked her arm away.
“You know I’m right, Mikko.”
The stern look on her face melted away. “Fine,” she capitulated. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I quickly scanned the room for something to cover my naked torso, and came up with a chef shirt. It was too big, but I was in no position to complain. Once I was fully clothed, we wasted no time and retraced our path to the point of egress. I stepped in front of Mikko before she attempted a blind escape. I cracked the door open and listened.
An agreeable silence met me. I waved Mikko on, and we stepped out of motel hell. I eased the door shut, propping it open with a brick, on the off-chance we might need to disappear into its somewhat comforting shadows again.
Mikko laughed.
I didn’t join in.
“We went into that place with nothing and came out with nothing. What are we doing, Jingo?”
“Failing, Mikko.”
“We’ve gotta do something about that. We’ll never beat the game like this. Why didn’t we at least walk out of there with knives in our hands?”
“You wanna go back in? If so, have at it.”
Mikko stared at me, frozen stiff.
“It’s getting late. We need to find a place to crash.”
Mikko glanced back at the hotel.
“And risk getting ripped apart by a trapped Screamer? No thanks. I’d rather face down a few hundred Moaners.”
Mikko nodded. I gestured toward the alley entryway and took off. Mikko fell into step behind me. As we walked, I scooped up a two-foot scrap of rebar and held it tight in my clenched fist.
“My knight in chef’s armor,” Mikko teased.
I swung the rebar in front of me and made a light saber sound.
Mikko laughed. “You know it turns me on when you talk Star Wars.”
three | a plan
The smell of stale Chinese food permeated the building. The first thing we did, upon stepping foot into Number One Take Out, was scour the proverbial pantry for chow. Mikko scored a bag of fortune cookies, and I managed to find a case of Cup Noodle. In apocalyptic relativity, this was a major score.
“You’re not slurping enough, Jingo,” Mikko said before she demonstrated the sloppiest, wettest slurp I’d ever heard. “If you’re not waking the dead with your slurp, you’re not eating Cup Noodle right.”
How could I argue? I couldn’t…that’s how. I jabbed my chopsticks into the Styrofoam cup, pulled a mass of wet of noodles into my mouth, and slurped with everything I had.
“Bingo, Jingo!”
I nodded and mopped up my chin with a Number One Take Out napkin.
It was full-on night outside. The only light within the small building spilled from a single candle. It made for an eerie atmosphere. In other words…standard operating procedure.
“What do you think happened with those girls?” Mikko asked.
I slurped another mouthful before answering. “Not our circus, Mikko. Not our circus.”
Mikko set her empty cup on the floor, crossed her legs in front of her, and sighed. “You realize if we were adults, there’d have been no way we’d have left them behind.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “And if we were adults, we wouldn’t be playing the game.”
“Don’t you sometimes want to say screw the game, Jingo?”
“Every minute of every day,” I answered. “But it’s the new world order. The game is how we survive.”
Mikko turned, spread out on the floor, and placed her head on my lap. “How did it come to this?”
“The apocalypse?”
“The game.”
I stared down into Mikko’s heartbreakingly gorgeous eyes and flattened my lips together. “It’s our generation, Mikko. Since we were in elementary school, we’ve always made a game out of life. Now we make a game out of death. It was the normal evolution of the everyday millennial. You know this.”
“I know the facts. I know the story. That doesn’t mean it makes sense.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Nothing makes sense, Mikko. One minute we’re studying common core math, and the next we’re living out the The Walking Dead.”
Mikko shoved her fingers in her ears. “I can’t hear
you.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled her hands away from her head. “First, it’s not like we’re ever going to have the pleasure of watching television again. Second, spoiler alerts are irrelevant now.”
“So say we all?” Mikko snarked.
“So say we all,” I replied.
A wailing woman raced past the Number One Take Out window. Shortly after, a Screamer zipped by. I glanced at Mikko; she shook her head.
“Dead meat,” we whispered in unison.
“What’s our next move, Jingo?”
I pulled out my notepad and held it near enough to the candle so that I could read. “It’s time we start collecting heads. We’ve fallen so far behind, I’ll be surprised if they even let us back into the group.”
Mikko stared up at me, her almond-shaped eyes rimmed with curiosity.
“I know that look. What are you thinking, Mikko?”
“How long have we been away from the Asylum?”
I answered, “I don’t know. Maybe three, four days. Why? Where are you going with this?”
“We’re surviving, Jingo…on our own. Who’s to say we can’t continue on like this? We’d have no one telling us what we can and can’t do, no one insisting we come back with a string of zombie heads to prove our worth and earn our keep.”
I stroked her jet-black hair. “Where is this coming from?”
Mikko sat up and stared into the darkness. The flickering candlelight cast eerie shadows across her face. “Do you honestly trust Crowbar?”
For the first time, words escaped me. Mikko caught on to my hesitation. “You don’t trust him.”
“Honestly, Mikko, I don’t know. It’s hard to trust adults now. They brought this shitstorm down on us and have yet to do anything about it. This is no different than how it was before chaos struck us dumb. That doesn’t mean Crowbar is using us for some sinister gain. Teenagers are his cash cow. Without us, he’d be dead.”
“How can you know that, Jingo? Think about it; the man set up a game where kids hunt and kill zombies, lop off their heads, and bring them back and win lame-ass prizes. Have you ever stopped to wonder why the man wants the heads of Moaners and Screamers?”
“Every day, Mikko. Every damn day.”
“Then why are your questions ending at that? What about the man’s motivation? Maybe he’s actually a part of the Zero Day Collective, and he’s just setting us all up to either die or serve their master plan.”
I interrupted. “Which we don’t know as fact. That master plan could just as easily be a rumor started by some jealous punk kid…”
“Jingo, we heard it on Zombie Radio…from Bethany Nitshimi’s mouth. We’ve also both read Jacob’s book. How much more truth do you have to swallow before you believe? They want absolute control.”
She had me, dead to rights. Honestly, I never really placed all that much trust in Crowbar and his game. Considering it was the only gig in town, it was a hard one to fight. On top of that, between Mikko and I, it was really easy to tally up the most heads and win the daily grand prize without breaking much of a sweat. That grand prize kept us knee-deep in calories. A full plate, in the middle of the apocalypse, was a rarity.
Slowly, I nodded. “You’re right, Mikko. It’s just hard to give up such an easy meal plan, ya know?”
Mikko returned the nod.
An idea swept through my brain like a kite in a wind storm. Mikko spotted the light blinking on and off above my head and prompted me to speak up.
I complied.
“If we just turn our backs on Crowbar’s game, we’re not really doing anything about it. What if, however, we returned to headquarters, worked our way up the food chain, and destroyed the game from within? We could manage to save so many from so much.”
Mikko’s eyes lit up with passion and thrill. “Or, better yet, we get rid of Crowbar, take over Asylum, and turn it into a refugee camp.”
I pulled Mikko in for a hug. “That’s brilliant. Our very own Teenage Wasteland.”
“There’s only one problem with our plan.” Mikko leaned back and bit her lip.
“What’s that?”
“You’ve seen Crowbar, right?”
I nodded.
“How do you propose two teenage kids take down that juggernaut?”
“Even Goliath had his Achilles, Mikko.”
“You’re mixing metaphors, Jingo.”
A wall of thought crashed into my exhausted mind. I had to concentrate every ounce of energy I could muster to filter out the noise. Like Matrix glyphs falling into my consciousness, an idea coalesced.
“The man has one weakness,” I said, and then paused to add a bit of drama to the moment.
Mikko slugged me for my efforts and picked up my narrative to prove herself as smartass as me: “There’s a woman…a young woman. She’s maybe twenty at the most. He calls her Butterfly and I believe she’s his…girlfriend, I guess. Maybe plaything would be a more accurate title.”
“Gross,” I said, revulsion getting the best of me. “Crowbar’s, like, fifty years old. He probably goes to bed in dingy tighty whities and a wife-beater. All gut and balls hanging out. No matter how many times I hear about him and Butterfly, it still makes me want to toss a bile salad.”
“Thanks for that visual, Jingo. Now I gotta poke out my mind’s eye before I vomit my soul to the floor.”
“Any time, lover.” I winked. “So what’ this plan of yours?”
“We get Butterfly out of Asylum, convince Crowbar she’s been captured by some lunatic, and wait for him to take off on a rescue mission.”
Mikko nodded slowly. “It could work. But what happens once he’s gone?”
“That’s act two of the plan,” I answered.
“So?”
“You’re in charge of act two.”
Another slug…same spot. The girl’s got impeccable aim. “You’re the mastermind, dumb ass.”
“I see what you did there. Nice backhand to your compliment.”
Mikko leaned in and landed a sweet kiss on my cheek. “Act two, please.”
“You’re crazy, you know that, right?”
“It’s part of my charm.”
“Fine. Act the second. We trap Butterfly in one of the abandoned warehouses near Asylum, along with a few dozen Moaners. When Crowbar goes in for the rescue, we lock him inside and let the zombies do that job.”
“What happens if Crowbar takes the zombies out, rescues the fair princess, and returns to Asylum, aware that someone set him up?”
“Act three, then.”
“Good enough for Shakespeare,” Mikko interrupted.
“We gather a small army of sympathizers, armed to the tits…”
Yet another slug.
“Teeth. Crap, Mikko, when did you become such a prude?”
She lobbed a Cheshire grin at me. “Do continue, master story teller.”
I nodded. “Thank you, captive audience, I shall. We gather a small army of sympathizers, armed to the teeth, and take him down when he returns.”
Mikko applauded. “Excellent well, my liege.” She caught the look of disbelief on my face. “No, seriously Jingo, that’s a great plan. All we have to do is get our asses back to Asylum and put it into action.”
My mouth was overtaken by an impromptu urge to yawn. “Yeah, about that…I vote we return tomorrow. I’m exhausted at the moment. Besides, we can’t return empty-handed. We can collect a few heads and show up before the dinner bell rings.”
“Good call, Jingo. I say we go crazy and break our record for biggest collection. Impress Crowbar with our skills to make gaining access to his inner sanctum a bit easier.”
It was my turn to lean in and offer a kiss. “You’re as brilliant as you are beautiful.”
“And you better never forget it, dahling.”
I lowered my head to the floor and blew out the candle. Mikko nestled into me and pulled my arm over her.
“I love you, Jingo.”
I kissed her cheek softly.
&n
bsp; “I love you, Mikko.”
four | number one take out
I woke. Mikko lay in the same position as she was when we drifted off. The dregs of a horrific nightmare faded from memory, and my breath and pulse slowed to normal. I was the bitch to my bad dreams. Every moment I spent sleeping, the same scenes haunted me. Every person who’d been a part of my life had turned into one of the undead nation. They came at me from every angle…moaning, screaming, swinging rotting fingers toward me.
The highlight of the dreamscape was Mikko…all sour milk eyes, blood-caked lips and teeth. She swung out, grabbing for whatever her festering palms could latch onto. Once she finally managed to twist her fingers into my hair, she pulled me toward her warm, gaping maw. This time, however, there was no delicate kiss awaiting my longing lips. Instead, a pair of clacking teeth threatened to dig deep into the meat of my neck.
No matter how I struggled, I couldn’t escape Mikko’s grip, and eventually succumbed to her self-same fate.
I had been undone and remade.
Every freakin’ time, that was the dream. It didn’t matter if I drifted off to slumberland with a wicked smile on my face or not. That nightmare always waited, ready to pounce.
“What time is it?” Mikko moaned.
I kissed her on the cheek and whispered, “Time for you to get a watch.”
“Ha ha, douche wrapper. Seriously, what time is it?”
“It’s who gives a shit o’clock, apocalypse time.”
“What’s apocalypse time?” asked Mikko.
“Time for you to stop giving a crap about anything but me and survival.”
“Done,” Mikko agreed, and turned over with a great grin on her face.
“That’s what I want waking me up for the rest of my life.”
“You mean horror breath?”
“It’s like smelling salts.”
Mikko unleashed a Godzilla-like breath.
“Good God, girl, that’s bitter sweets you’re nailing me with.”
She laughed and sat up with a stretch. “Don’t expect me to brush my teeth before coffee.”
“Blasphemy,” I said, and took the hint. We always traveled with enough instant coffee to get us by for a few days—long enough to scrounge for the real deal. Before cracking open our stash, I scavenged through the Number One Take Out kitchen for some black gold.
