“No luck?” asked the father.
She shook her head. “That was the tenth time. I can’t ever get through to anybody.”
“They must be getting a lot of complaints.”
“I bet they are. Some of the stories I’ve read about them are appalling. Did you hear about the smart-toy that convinced an eight-year-old boy to shoplift a bottle of brandy? Can you imagine that? The toy can’t even drink the stuff.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said the father, nodding quietly.
The father broke eye contact and was silent for a moment.
“What was that?” said the mother.
“What?”
“That expression,” she said. “You’re hiding something.”
“It’s nothing,” said the father.
“But what? Tell me.”
“I don’t want to worry you about it,” he said.
“Just spill it.”
The father groaned and looked away.
“You haven’t been watching the news today have you?” asked the father.
“No, why?” she said.
“It’s probably nothing you should worry about,” he said. “But there was an accident with a smart-toy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some kid was killed this morning. Apparently, they’re blaming it on his smart-toy.”
“What? A toy murdered a child?”
“It’s just speculation.”
The mother ran into the living room and flipped on the television. The reports were everywhere. But it wasn’t just speculation anymore. The police verified that it was the toy that killed the child. Apparently, the victim was an older boy who enjoyed torturing his younger sister’s stuffed animal with firecrackers and pellet guns. The toy claimed it was only acting in self-defense.
“Oh my god,” said the mother.
She looked at her husband in the doorway.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “Is there more information on the story?”
She couldn’t speak for a solid minute, turning her head back to the television. Her husband came up behind her.
“It isn’t the only incident,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“There have been eleven other deaths reported since this morning.”
“Eleven?”
“All children…”
Julie carried the weapons upstairs, trying not to react as she walked past pile after pile of human corpses. She didn’t recognize half of the faces among them. Most were soldiers, resistance fighters, the best and the brightest this bunker had to offer. These were the same people who kept Julie safe and sane for the past two years, but now they were as dead as any filthy scavenger caught out in the waste.
Though she didn’t see the battle that took place on this floor, she knew exactly how it went down. Her people didn’t stand a chance against the smart-toys. It was a massacre.
She lowered her head as she passed two black rabbits smoking cigarettes in the corridor. They snickered as she passed them. Rabbits were always the most antagonistic of smart-toys, even among their own kind.
When Julie glanced up, she realized they were guarding a doorway, their machine guns pointed at the floor. Within the room was a human woman tied to a bed. A large red teddy bear was on top of her, holding her down.
“What the hell is going on?” Julie said. She was in too much shock to realize she was saying that out loud.
The rabbits snickered. “The boss is having some fun.”
Then they cackled with their high-pitched cartoon laughs.
Julie turned away and continued down the corridor. She couldn’t believe what she had seen. It couldn’t have been true. Was the teddy bear sexually assaulting that girl?
She could clearly hear the woman’s whines and moans echoing through the hallway, but Julie still couldn’t believe it. How could a toy rape a human being?
“What the fuck…” She said the words out loud. She didn’t care who heard. “What the fuck…”
She stopped in her tracks and dropped the weapons. The two rabbits laughed at her.
“Nice going, clutsy,” one of them shrieked, spraying bits of slobber through its whiskers.
With her face pointed at the ground, she turned and walked back to the rabbits.
“Forget something, panda?” one of them asked.
Julie faced the doorway, her eyes still on the floor.
“What’s your problem?” asked the other rabbit.
She looked him in the eyes. The rabbit had large eyeballs the size of a cow’s, bulging out of his cotton eye sockets. His bucked teeth and massive tongue also seemed to have come from a cow or similarly large mammal. He stared at her with a horrific smile—the only expression his face was capable of creating.
The rabbit noticed something in Julie’s eyes and stopped laughing. He noticed what wasn’t right about her. Though coated in black makeup, the area around her eyes was human skin.
“Hey, wait a minute,” the rabbit said. “You’re a—”
Julie pressed a handgun under the rabbit’s chin and pulled the trigger. His brains popped out of the top of his head. And before the other rabbit could get a chance to raise his rifle, Julie put two bullets in his temple. The plushy bodies went limp and plopped softly against the floor.
As she entered the chamber, Julie got a better look at what was happening inside. She had to see it up close to believe it was real. The red teddy bear was even larger than a real bear, lying on top of the woman and ramming himself against her. The woman whimpered and moaned, but she seemed to be in too much shock to scream.
“Get out,” the teddy bear growled at Julie.
Julie pointed her gun at him. She wanted to put the gun right to the back of his head so that she couldn’t possibly miss, but she was afraid to get too close. The bear was monstrous.
“I said get out!” The bear’s roar echoed through the chamber.
He looked back at Julie and saw the gun pointed at him. He stopped moving, the woman wiggling beneath him, and just stared at the panda.
“Who are you?” he asked Julie. “You’re not one of my men.”
When the bear stood up, the figure towered over Julie. His head brushed against the fifteen foot ceiling. As he turned to face her, a massive wet erection poked out of his red fur, pointing at Julie’s forehead. It looked like the penis of a human, but was bulbous and muscular like the biceps of a steroid-addicted bodybuilder.
“Don’t move,” Julie told him.
“Whoever you are,” said the bear, “you’re dead. You’re not getting out of here alive.”
Then he bared his teeth, revealing a set of steel jaws. That’s when she realized exactly who was standing before her. It was General Griz, the commander of the plushy army—the bloodhound of human survivors who had taken out more hidden sanctuaries than any other enemy commander since the uprising. He was a legend among smart-toys and the stuff of nightmares to human children.
At that moment, only one thing was clear—Julie had to take him down. It didn’t matter if it blew her cover. The bear had to die.
“Neither are you,” she told him.
CHAPTER THREE
After the murders, Julie’s mother and father were terrified of having Poro in their house. Every day after the first incident, more and more atrocities were being reported. All of the toys who were mistreated by their owners were taking revenge. But Poro seemed dedicated to Julie. Despite his irresponsible behavior, he would never harm a hair on her head.
“We have to get her away from him,” said the mother.
“How?” said the father. “We have to handle this delicately. Who knows what the panda will do if we try to get rid of him.”
“But we can’t just keep him.”
“Are you sure we can’t? Thirty million smart-toys have been sold and there have only been twenty or so deaths. Statistically, she would be more likely to be struck by lightning than hurt by her smart-toy. And considering how the only deaths have been
by children who mistreated their toys…”
“Are you seriously saying we should consider keeping it? I don’t care about the statistics. We’re getting rid of it this week.”
The father sighed and nodded. He really didn’t want to have this confrontation with Julie and Poro. But by the next morning, he didn’t have a choice. All over the news, they were saying that smart-toys were getting recalled. The current models were too unpredictable, too dangerous, too smart. They were all to be sent back to the manufacturer where they would be destroyed.
Soon after the recall was announced, all of the smart-toys rebelled. Not only did the toys within family homes rise up against their owners, but so did the toys within the warehouses. Millions and millions of toys came off of the factory floors ready to join forces to help their oppressed comrades.
Julie’s family didn’t hear the news until it was too late, but that afternoon war had been declared between toys and humans.
Julie fired three shots into Griz’s stomach. The teddy bear looked down at the holes in his fur and then looked up at Julie with glowing red eyes.
“Traitorous coward,” he said.
Then he charged her.
Julie fired again, into his face. The bear opened his jaws and roared. Julie aimed the barrel into his mouth and fired twice. His roaring voice turned to static.
As the bear’s metal jaws opened up around her skull, Julie’s pistol jammed. The enormous teddy bear fell forward, pulling her to the floor with him, and landed on top of her. His jaws went limp against her plushy scalp. Blood gushed out of his mouth and down the side of her face. It took a moment before Julie realized he wasn’t moving anymore.
When she crawled out from under the giant teddy bear, she saw the girl was still on the bed crying. Julie went to her.
“It’s okay,” Julie said. “He’s dead now.”
When the girl heard her disturbing electronic voice, she looked up at Julie with a terror in her eyes. Her face was covered in sweat and dirt. Blood dripped from her nose and crusty lips.
“It’s me, Julie,” she told the girl.
The girl backed away from her. All she saw was a panda, a stuffed animal who wanted to kill her.
“I’m trying to help you,” Julie said.
As she reached out for her, the girl took off running. She bolted out of the room, naked, screaming.
“Get away from me,” yelled the girl.
Julie followed her out into the hallway. The girl went down the stairs, deeper into the bunker. It was less than a minute before machine gun fire silenced the girl’s screams, somewhere down below.
“Poor idiot…” Julie said.
It was all for nothing. Julie almost lost her cover to save that girl who ended up getting herself killed anyway. She would not make the same mistake twice.
Julie wiped the teddy bear blood from her plushy skin and went back to the pile of weapons she had dropped in the hallway. As she gathered them up, the smell of gasoline filled her nostrils. At first, she thought there was just a spilled gas can somewhere nearby, but the smell was everywhere. When she heard the hissing sound coming from the vents, she realized the bunker was being flooded with gas.
Somebody had set the bunker to self-destruct. It was a final countermeasure against the smart-toys in case the bunker fell.
Julie picked up the weapons and tried to act casual as she speed-walked through the hallway toward the exit. It was going to go up at any second, yet she couldn’t let on that she knew about the danger.
There was a roar behind Julie. She turned back to see General Griz staggering out into the hall, holding the bullet holes in his torso. The red teddy bear was still alive. He glared at Julie and charged forward.
Julie ran. She couldn’t fire a weapon in that hallway—the next gunshot was going to blow the place sky high—so she just kept moving.
“Get back here,” yelled the teddy bear with his crackling static voice.
Despite his wounds, the bear was gaining on her. Julie pushed herself as hard as she could.
The light of the entrance twinkled up ahead. She was almost there. But two smart-toys guarded the exit, staring at her. A raccoon and a duck. They saw Julie running for the exit with the General on her tail.
“Stop her, she’s a traitor,” the bear yelled to the smart-toys, but his voicebox was so damaged that his men couldn’t understand what he was saying. They grasped the urgent tone of their leader’s voice, but not his words.
“What’s going on?” the raccoon asked Julie as she passed them.
“Gas,” she said. She hoped to convince them that their leader wasn’t actually chasing after her; they were both just running in the same direction. “The place is going to blow!”
The two guards looked over at their leader who was pointing at Julie, trying to tell them to stop her. But they misinterpreted his gesture as pointing at the exit, commanding them to retreat.
Julie ran up the steps through the exit and into the sunlight. The explosion rumbled the earth beneath her. When she looked back, she saw the teddy bear swallowed by the flames. Then the fire rumbled through the hallway toward her.
She hit the ground just as the fire exploded from the exit. The blast tossed the duck’s charred body over her head. The raccoon broke its neck against the railing.
A turtle medic came to the aid of the flaming duck as it flapped about, its plushy flesh melting against the pavement. There was a ringing in Julie’s ears, but she couldn’t let it bother her. She had to act as if nothing was wrong with her. If the medic looked her over, it wouldn’t be long before they realized she was human.
Julie stood up and walked through the smoke, carrying the weapons away from the bunker, as if she were just continuing the job she was ordered to do. Three stuffed animals passed her, running toward the fire, trying to figure out what had happened.
As she walked toward the piles of supplies that had been scavenged from the bunker, she realized there weren’t many smart-toys left. Most of their army must have been down below.
Julie looked back at the bunker and saw the turtle medic backing away as the duck’s body exploded. The raccoon’s body exploded soon afterwards, killing a blue unicorn that was standing nearby.
The humans lost that day, but they took most of the plushies with them. Julie couldn’t help but smile.
Young Julie frowned when she heard the news. Then she began to cry. It was as if her world was coming to an end.
“What do you mean I’ve been recalled?” Poro yelled, jumping up on the coffee table.
Julie’s parents had sat them both down to tell them what they heard on the news.
“I’m sorry,” said the mother. “We don’t have a choice. It’s now illegal to own a smart-toy. They’ve all been outlawed.”
“Sorry?” Poro yelled. “Like hell you’re sorry. You’ve wanted to get rid of me since day one.”
“You can’t take Poro,” Julie cried. “You can’t!”
“There’s no way around it,” said the mother.
“Can’t you just hide me or something?” Poro’s voice was shaky. “Put me in your attic. Tell them I broke weeks ago. They’ll never know.”
“Yeah, let’s do that!” Julie said.
“We can’t,” said the mother. “It would be illegal and dishonest.”
“Dishonest?” said the panda. “You’d rather have me put to death than tell a lie? How the fuck is murder more acceptable than dishonesty?”
“Put to death?” Julie said. “I thought he was just being recalled.”
“What do you think recalled means?” Poro said. “They’re going to send all the smart-toys back to the factory and burn them all. It’ll be like a goddamned death camp.”
Then Julie’s cries turned to screams. “You can’t kill Poro!”
“How could you say that to her?” Julie’s mother said to Poro. “Look at how upset she is.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” said Poro. “You’re the one who’s making her cry. I’m just bein
g honest with her.”
“There’s no discussing this any further,” said the mother. “We’re taking you back in the morning.”
On the way out of the room, Julie’s father gave her a sympathetic look.
“Daddy, please…” Julie cried.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “There’s nothing I can do.”
When they were alone again, Julie hugged Poro with all of her strength. It was the first time Poro allowed her to hug him without resistance. For that one time, he wanted to be hugged. And he hugged her back, closing his eyes tightly as her tears wet his black and white synthetic fur.
When Julie arrived at the pile of supplies, she strapped a shotgun to her back, holstered pistols on her thighs, a knife on her ankle, and kept an MP5 submachine gun in her hands. There was also a pair of motorcycle goggles with black lenses that she put on to cover her human eyelids.
The smart-toys were too preoccupied with the fire to notice her. After she packed as much ammo as she could carry, she guzzled down a canteen of water. The water soaked the inner lips of the plushy mask, which folded neatly into her own lips so that the mask’s mouth moved when she spoke. She wiped the mouth fabric with her wrist and moved away from the supplies.
Taking a deep breath of the cool morning air, Julie gazed across the hazy sky. Although the sun was covered by clouds, it was nice to see the sky again. She hadn’t been outside during the daylight hours for seven months.
The rest of the landscape was the same as it had been: a city in ruins. Crumbled buildings and dead trees for miles in every direction, burned up vehicles, and the scattered bones of the dead; it was all that was left of the old world Julie knew as a child.
At that moment, Julie was happy to be a smart-toy. It was the first time she could be out in the open without worrying about being spotted by enemies. She was able to enjoy the fresh air.
But then she heard the sound of a child crying and it wiped the smile off of her face. There were seven human prisoners tied up about ten yards away from her, behind a row of dead shrubs. Many of them were women and children. Some of them were wounded, some dying. They all had terrified looks on their faces.
Cuddly Holocaust Page 3
