Not Everything Brainless is Dead

by Not Everything Brainless is Dead (mobi)

  Sitting up here with the common folk, a disc jockey orchestrated the festivities. His goggles, bucket-hat, and long sleeved shirt made it difficult to discern whether the zombie bug had gotten to him. As he opened his mouth to speak, they wished it had.

  The still living disc jockey turned to them and said, “Yo yo yo! Sup dawgs!”

  “Oh lord, can I shoot him. Please, let me shoot him.” Freight begged Charlie.

  “Maybe in a little while, but not right now.”

  The man pulled the goggles from his eyes and placed them on his head, “Whoa, bros don’t be like that. I’m just here for your entertainment. Feast your eyes at the mass of zombies jiggling for your pleasure!”

  “We’ve seen plenty of them jiggling on our way here as we blew their heads off,” Freight said, cracking his knuckles.

  “So, that’s the whole point of this place, to entertain people with zombies?” Charlie questioned, still quite suspicious of the whole shebang.

  The disc jockey crossed his arms and nodded to the beats, “Yeah, man, this is entertainment at its finest.”

  “I’m not sure I’d go quite that far.”

  “Yeah, well, the movie theater’s closed right now, so this is the best you’re gonna get!”

  “As long as this isn’t the last stop on our little adventure.”

  “Whoa, dude, have some faith in your fellow man.”

  “I would if he hadn’t been trying to eat me for the past few hours.”

  “Fair enough, bro.”

  Charlie opened his mouth to speak once more, but stopped with the realization that his friends had already wandered over to the nearby tables and plopped down, wasting no time in taking their shoes off. He looked at the DJ, whose intelligence probably rivaled that of a zombie, and decided he would be better off not arguing with him. Charlie shook off the frustration and joined everyone else. As he sat down and stared over the dance floor, he discovered that, strangely enough, zombie jiggling was oddly hypnotic. In fact, many of the undead seemed to be somehow enjoying themselves as they did the monster mash. He threw his tired feet onto the balcony’s railing. After a long night spent arduously crime fighting, it only made sense to relax a bit.

  As the minutes ticked past, the entranced heroes paid no attention to anything but the jiggling zombies, not to the DJ or his systematic pressing of buttons, or to the clicking of locks as he readied the balcony to be their tomb. Not even to the UFO that landed nearby and deployed an armada of tripods to incinerate them. The UFOs realized that the world had already been ravaged by the undead, so they loaded their tripods up and flew away, hoping to find some other nearby world to enslave.

  The DJ found it surprising just how easily these first victims fell into his trap. He thought it would take much longer for anyone to be drawn here, but all it took was a spotlight and some music. Maybe, with these first offerings, his masters would spare his life, and maybe even grant him untold riches. Oh, how he would love those untold riches. He had not considered what to do with all that money once civilization had collapsed. Swim in it, probably.

  With the trap set into motion, the entire room started to vibrate as gears cranked into place. The commotion snapped Charlie out of his jiggle induced trance. He leapt to his feet and looked directly at the DJ, who grinned wickedly in return.

  “I knew this was a trap!” Charlie exclaimed. His words snapped the others out of their trances and everyone put their shoes back on to avoid stepping in any disgusting piles of zombie goo.

  Charlie’s decapitated head lay on the nearby table. He marched to it, picked it up, and slammed it back upon his shoulders. It was go time. His march continued as he headed straight for the DJ, whose smug look evaporated in seconds. The bunny’s large plush fingers wrapped themselves around his neck and hoisted the tiny man from the ground as the cranking of gears continued to echo through the room. A perturbed Charlie then proceeded to bend and twist the DJ into ways unimaginable as the man screamed and groaned. The bunny grabbed a saltshaker from the nearby table and sprinkled it on the human pretzel. He tossed the DJ aside, and in preparation of the party about to go down, pulled Freight’s shotgun from his bunny trousers and handed it to the man.

  As Freight held his significant other in his hands once more, he felt as though a vital piece of him had returned to the whole. His shoulders return to their natural and upright position. That look of blood thirst and insanity returned to his eyes. His immune system beat the zombie virus back into submission; it had been getting the better of him. He stood tall, ready to implode some undead.

  The cranking continued, and everyone realized the floor would soon become a slide, leading them to a zombie infested dance floor. As their destination became clear, each of their lives flashed before their eyes. Captain Rescue’s life, in particular, played out like a silent movie. Its scratchy and unnaturally fast film replayed important moments in the man’s life. However, the title cards did not match the scenes being played, leaving the viewer confused and, most definitely, quite enraged.

  The pretzel sat in its chair laughing at the misfortune it had personally orchestrated. This sucked for the twisted treat, because Freight had never liked being laughed at, and to remedy his insecurities, he snatched up the pretzel and flung it down the slide. It let out a slew of profanities as it bounced towards the hungry zombies. Freight wiped his hands free of the pretzel’s betrayal and awaited his opportunity to follow it down for some much needed zombie carnage. He could see that the opportunity would soon present itself. He and the others could hardly keep their grip, so he released his and allowed himself to slide. At first glance, this act appeared quite heroic, but the truth of the matter was that Freight did not want to share the zombies with any of them. He wanted to blow the head from the first zombie and the last, not to mention every head in between.

  The strobe lights made the entire experience a slideshow of zombies shuffling towards them—many of which carried pieces of a human pretzel. One just so happened to be wearing the disc jockeys very own goggles, which it had pried from his head, thinking they looked quite stylish. The blaring techno music fit the slaughter about to transpire nicely. They first thought to avoid the zombies all together, but since the dance floor lacked wiggle-room, they simply shrugged and got to killing.

  Captain Rescue, fearing an epileptic seizure from the strobe lights, kept his eyes closed as he felt around the nearby stage for a guitar. After grabbing one, he pretended to play it for a moment, living out his rock star fantasy. Sure, he held it completely wrong, but that did not matter. In fact, this guitar fixation had been for the best, because if he tried to use a gun with his eyes closed, he would have undoubtedly killed one of his friends before he got around to killing any of the zombies. To drive his rocker fantasy home, he began swinging the guitar around blindly, looking for a speaker to smash. His fantasy ended abruptly, and with much heartache, as the guitar found itself embedded in a zombie’s shoulder. He did not let this stop him though, and he continued swinging the guitar without a care in the world. The others gave him a wide berth, not wanting to find that guitar lodged in their shoulders.

  Outside, the lackeys sat on the curb, avoiding any rampant bites given by the feral zombies still corralled behind the red felt rope. They may have not been the brightest bunch, but the screams and yells echoing from within the dance club gave the inclination that something was amiss inside The Zombie Experience. The lackeys, forever loyal, knew their boss most likely needed help, and since finding work as an experienced lackey these days often caused more headache than it was worth, one of the men approached the cheerful arm-crossed bouncer. The zombie might have thought it was being friendly by smiling, but in reality, it elicited only disgust. Nobody wanted to see a half decayed corpse smiling at them, they would rather it try to bite their face off.

  “What exactly is going on in there?” the lackey asked the bouncer.

  He simply shrugged, “I’m sure it’s just some song the DJ put on.”

  “
You mean a song with gunshots and screams?” the lackey accused as he poked the bouncer. His finger easily pierced the zombie’s muscular chest, though the fibrous tissue had long since fallen to decay. The lackey pulled his finger out of the bouncer’s chest and shook off the little bits of meat that clung to it.

  The bouncer covered the leak in his chest with the tip of his finger and said, “If you doubt me, feel free to go check it out.”

  The lackey pushed the bouncer inside and swaggered into the dance club like a cowboy entering a saloon. Inside, the gunfire and screams seemed exponentially louder. He turned around and went back outside.

  “I’m sure they have the situation under control.”

  Frame by frame, the battle for their lives played out like a slideshow. Captain Rescue still recklessly swung around the blood red guitar, and still endangered the lives of those around him more so than any zombie.

  Charlie finally grew weary of his shenanigans and knocked the guitar from his hands. He leaned in, screaming into his ear, “You don’t have epilepsy!”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have epilepsy!” he repeated.

  “Epi—what?”

  “Epilepsy!”

  “I don’t follow!”

  “Never mind, just open your eyes.”

  Captain Rescue hesitated, but dropped the guitar for a moment and covered his eyes with his hands, soon lifting his eyelids. He pulled his hands away and almost immediately fell to the ground twitching. Charlie let out labored sigh before he resumed blowing the heads from zombies.

  As the gore progressed, a nagging inclination arose in the bunny’s gut. The zombies seemed less than responsive. They lunged at open space and tried to bite the air. Then, it suddenly dawned on Charlie—the strobe lights messed with their heads. The confused zombies leapt for open space, where they had just seen a tasty human. Apparently, the strobe light induced slideshow forced a zombie’s deteriorated brain to reset every few frames. This confusion made exterminating them relatively easy, something similar to a game—and everyone likes games, as long as the vicious animals they are playing with do not try to bite them. As the zombies encroached further, the game’s fun began to fade.

  Charlie, the most astute of gamers, took notice of their predicament and decided to make for the door rather than become zombie chow, and he urged the others to follow suit. Unfortunately, a sea of zombies jiggled to the music on the way to the entrance. The trip would certainly not be an easy one, but like Moses parting the red sea of zombies, they headed for the door.

  Freight asserted himself the leader of this getaway party and as he led the way, most of the zombies met their end with Courtney. The others found solace in his sledgehammer of a fist. Zombie goo coated him, but he didn’t care, not a zombie on the planet could slay this beast (yes, he thought of himself in the third person and as a beast). Assuming a zombie did not outright tear his head from his shoulders, the man had a point.

  Charlie sat at the tail end of this pain train. He was just as adapt at killing zombies as Freight, but chose not to make such a spectacle of himself. That left Dr. Malevolent and Captain Rescue sandwiched between the two, she for her protection, as any fine woman would be. Captain Rescue, on the other hand, had to be watched constantly to make sure he did not stroll off when distracted by a turnip.

  The only person missing was Stubbs, who had wandered from the tour group, allured by the loud music and his fellow zombies, more notably, the hot cheerleader still in her uniform, clutching her pompoms tightly. After mustering enough courage, he strolled over to her in an attempt to elicit a response. She turned toward him and almost smiled, causing the excitement within him to well, but his heart quickly sank as she meandered past him headed straight for a table. Stubbs sighed as she bent over and begun gnawing on its corner, he then turned towards other prospects within the club, but received only moans and groans in return, and not the good kind.

  The doors to the damned dance club flung open, and the heroes rushed through, miraculously still in one piece. Many of the zombies they had just gone through, however, were not—little bits and pieces of them covered their clothes. Charlie, in particular, spent a few moments picking pieces from his plush fur. The zombie bouncer stood dead still with his arms raised high into the sky proclaiming his innocence to all.

  “I knew from the start this place had trap written all over it,” Charlie said in disgust as he shook the last bits of zombie from his plush fur.

  “I didn’t do anything!” the bouncer said repeatedly.

  “Well, I don’t believe you,” Charlie started, “and what are we going to do about that?” He paused for a moment. “Hey, where’s Stubbs? Don’t tell me that he’s a turncoat too.”

  Right on cue, Stubbs emerged from the club, a female zombie in his arms. She reeked of prostitution (and many other things), and her attire exemplified her profession perfectly. If she had not been a prostitute in another life, she had been well on her way to becoming one. As Stubbs noticed the tattoo on the small of her back, indicating the identity of her pimp and how to reach him if someone found her wandering, the zombie realized that she probably had been a hooker, or at least a woman with loose morals and a good sense of humor. True to her profession, she appeared more interested in the living than her undead escort, chomping at them as the two approached.

  Stubbs then turned to the bouncer, angry that a self-aware zombie like him would be so deceiving and malicious. He slapped the zombie with enough force to tear his hand from its wrist and send it flying. Joining in on the fun, Dr. Malevolent whacked the bouncer once more across the face with her inanimate carbon rod, then wiped the zombie from it and slid it back into its custom-made holster.

  After picking his flopping hand from the ground, Stubbs slapped the bouncer with it once more before popping it back into place. To top off this moment, Stubbs turned and kissed the prostitute. She returned his affection by squirming to get away. Stubbs grabbed her shoulders and stared longingly into her eyes. Finally concluding that zombie love was a farfetched and ridiculous notion, he grabbed the prostitute, threw her back into the club, and closed the door behind her.

  The bouncer finally lowered his hands and asked, “So, am I dead or can I go?”

  Stubbs grabbed a handgun from Freight’s waist and held it to the bouncer’s skull and said in a very gravely and decayed voice, “No,” and pulled the trigger, splattering its brains across the pavement.

  Through the darkness, Captain Rescue said, “Whoa, you’re pretty hardcore.”

  Chapter 14: Way of the Sub

  Everyone marched with rhythm in their steps, the supreme techno beats still resonating through their very souls. With the nightclub behind them, focus turned to the task at hand: making it to some lab in the middle of nowhere to press some magical button that would stop the zombie uprising in one fell swoop. Nobody thought it would really be that simple. In all likelihood, the seemingly easy part would only come after a few dozen ridiculously tricky parts. These latter parts excited them the most. Overcoming great adversity in order to save the world would hopefully lead only to fame and fortune—even if nobody remained to reap the benefits of said fame and fortune because everyone was, in one way or another, dead.

  Stopping at the nightclub had lengthened their journey, but not by much. Rather than simply following the city streets to the outskirts of The Haunted Forest, they could now take a shortcut through the subway system. What wondrous prospects awaited the heroes down in those dark recesses? Why, more zombies of course! Those pesky critters do get everywhere, do they not?

  The group approached the narrow stairwell that led into the subway station, and Captain Rescue asked casually, “I wonder how many zombies are going to be down here?”

  The excitement permeated Freight’s booming words, “THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT!”

  Everyone cringed as Freight threw himself down the concrete steps and into the subway, but this display of masculinity did not seem to injure him in the le
ast. He leapt to his feet, ready to go to town on anything waiting at the bottom of the stairs. However, Freight’s snarl vanished immediately as he surveyed the underground station. He saw nothing within the subway, living or dead, to shoot at, and the disappointment within his bosom welled, but he maintained his composure. Unlike Freight, the apparent lack of zombies lifted everyone else’s spirits. They had seen enough of the mangy beasts to last the rest of their lives, and even Stubbs could not stand the thought of another half-decayed corpse. He much preferred a quiet stroll through a vacant subway station, so he could recollect on his time short-lived life and his fruitless quest for love.

  Charlie meandered through the subway station, taking note of its cleanliness, which rivaled that of hospital operating rooms and showed no signs of any disemboweled humans. The people must have been able to find their way to the surface before meeting any sort of end down here. The bunny watched the dancing shadows cast across the concrete floor by the flickering lights within the ticket booths. He noticed Captain Rescue tinkering with one of the parked subway trains.

  The hero pried open the doors and hopped aboard, finding the inside just as vacant as the train station. Not that he gave it much thought—thinking was not his strong suit, after all. Captain Rescue digested the graffiti covered seats as he made his way to the front of the train, where all the interesting buttons were. He sat down in the conductor’s seat as his friends entered the train, trying to make sure he did not do anything stupid.

  “You don’t suppose we can get this thing working?” Captain Rescue asked as he fidgeted with the controls. Before anyone could reply, the train came to life and started to inch forward. Apparently, he had pressed the right buttons in the right order and then slid the right lever in the right direction. Dr. Malevolent slapped him across the back of the head, but remained silent. After rubbing the soreness out, he justified his actions, “What, would you rather walk down the subway tracks in darkness? At least this way we can sit back and relax.”