CHAPTER SIX
Young Julie shrieked when she saw them. Strapped into the dentist’s chair, her gums numb with Novocain, she watched in horror as four plastic teeth-shaped smart-toys danced across the table in front of her, singing about proper dental care.
“Get them away from me!” she cried. “Get them away!”
The dancing teeth looked at her with their terrifying cartoon faces—pointy eyebrows, black dot eyes, and smiling mouths that did not move to the correct rhythm of their words.
“What’s wrong?” the dentist asked.
Julie’s mother ran into the dentist’s office, “What’s going on? What happened?”
“Scary!” Julie cried, pointing at the singing teeth.
The teeth did not react. They continued to sing and smile as they danced.
“They’re not scary,” said the dentist. “They want to teach you about flossing and brushing your teeth.”
He picked one up off the table.
“They’re cute,” he said. “Look.”
He shoved the wiggling tooth into Julie’s face and she screamed at the top of her lungs.
“No!” she screamed. “Get it away!”
The doctor returned the tooth to the others.
Her mother just laughed at Julie’s behavior.
“I’m sorry,” she told the dentist. “She’s just being a baby.”
Julie struggled to get out of the dentist’s chair.
“They’re trying to eat my soul!” she cried. “Don’t let them eat my soul!”
The dentist and Julie’s mother just laughed at her and patted her on the head as the singing teeth crawled up her legs onto her lap and proceeded to brush her teeth with a dancing demonic toothbrush.
The memory had been buried deep down in Julie’s psyche, but seeing the singing teeth once again filled her with panic. She backed away as they came up the hill toward her, singing and dancing on their noodle legs. She tripped over a rock and fell backward, losing her machine gun in the tumble.
She was paralyzed by fear as the toy teeth jumped on her stomach and began to dance, singing about dental hygiene. Before they could proceed to brush her teeth, Julie pulled her shotgun out from behind her back and aimed it at the closest toy.
The tooth brushed the barrel of the shotgun just before Julie pulled the trigger and blasted the thing into a cloud of tiny white specks.
The teeth didn’t try to flee. As she stood up, the teeth danced around her ankles. One of them hugged her foot.
“Get away,” she cried, and pulled the trigger.
She continued firing on the dancing teeth until her shotgun was empty. Then she took off, running across the plateau back to the others.
When she arrived, the three plushies just stared at her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Velvet asked.
There were teeth dancing and singing around their legs, but the plushies weren’t doing anything about them. That’s when Julie finally realized the teeth weren’t a threat. They were just trying to teach them about proper dental care.
“Let’s go,” said Captain Caw. “If this singing hasn’t drawn attention to our location those gunshots certainly did.”
Julie felt stupid for panicking, but she decided not to say anything in her defense.
“Thanks a lot, psycho,” Velvet said. “I was having the best dream before you woke me up with your shooting.”
Julie just crawled into her slinky-spider and ignored her, but as soon as she closed the hatch on her cockpit she realized what the bunny woman had just said.
“Wait a minute,” she said to herself. “Smart-toys can dream?”
They now had the organs of living beings, including organic brains, but the ability to dream? Where did that come from?
As Julie followed the others in her slinky-spider, she tried not to look at all the singing teeth they passed on their descent down the hill.
“Not all of the toys are dangerous,” Riley told her from the back of the horse. “A lot of them moved into the badlands in order to escape the war, unable to choose sides.”
Riley knocked on the door of his cell to get her attention.
“Like those wacky wallwalkers over there,” he said.
Julie looked back to see the boy was pointing at giant red octopus-looking toys sliding down the side of an old office building. There were seven of them, wrapping their sticky tentacles around the buildings like something out of a Japanese monster movie.
“Or that jack-in-the-box,” Riley said.
Poking out of a pile of rubble, Julie saw a clown head bobbing side-to-side on a spring. Then five more jack-in-the-box heads popped out of old car tires and discarded toilet seats, bouncing at them as if saying hello.
“Not all of them are your enemy,” Riley said. “Many of them are just trying to survive out here in the wasteland.”
“You sound as if you feel bad for them,” Julie said.
“I feel bad for everything living in this world,” the kid said. “My father always said that it doesn’t matter what happens anymore. Everything’s fucked for everyone forever.”
“Sounds like a great guy.”
“He was.”
Julie could tell the boy was smiling, remembering his time with his father. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she was just being sarcastic.
For the next ten miles through the badlands, they only came across frightened toys that ran away whenever the slinky-spiders moved toward them. The toys seemed like wild animals, like raccoons digging through the city trash. The sun was down but it wasn’t completely dark yet. They could still see where they were going.
“So what else is out here besides these scavenger toys?” Julie asked her prisoner. “Is there anything worse than the Whiners?”
“Much worse,” Riley said.
Julie picked at the collection of scabs beneath her plushy skin, watching a swarm of tiny glowing fairies flying through the drive-thru of an old McDonald’s restaurant.
“My father said the Whiners are only the third most dangerous tribe in the badlands,” Riley said. “Even more dangerous are the Stomps and the Mad Markers.”
“What are they like?” Julie asked.
“Well, the names pretty much describe what they’re like,” Riley said. “They call them Stomps because they’re huge and crush anything they come across. And the Mad Markers are just complete psychos. They are the most dangerous tribe by far. But they aren’t the most dangerous because they are the most powerful; they are the most dangerous because they are the most sadistic. They love to kill.”
“What do they look like?” Julie asked. “Will I recognize them if I see them?”
“They’re hard to miss. They wear human flesh as clothing, and use human bones and skulls for armor. They also eat the humans they capture.”
“They’re cannibals?”
“Can you call toys that eat humans cannibals?” Riley said. “Unlike the plushies, they’ve never had the operation to implant organs inside their bodies, so they don’t even need to eat in order to survive. They eat human flesh just for the fun of it, while the human is still alive.”
“Fucking hell…” Julie said.
“But don’t worry,” he said. “Mad Marker territory is in the opposite direction. It’s the Stomps I’m more worried about.”
“They’re big, you said?” Julie asked.
“They’re huge.”
“Does that mean we’ll see them coming from far away?”
“It doesn’t matter if we see them coming,” Riley said. “If we come anywhere near a Stomp we’re dead.”
“You said the same thing about the Whiners and we got through there okay.”
“That’s because I didn’t know this thing could jump so high. That worked for escaping the Whiners, but there’s no jumping away from a Stomp. It would just knock you out of the air like a fly.”
Captain Caw slowed down in the thick mud and then stopped at a junction up ahead. Julie’s slinky-s
pider was at the back of the convoy, so she couldn’t tell what was going on. The sun was down and there wasn’t much moonlight through the thick fog. Their vehicles’ headlights didn’t reach very far.
“What’s going on?” Riley said.
The kangaroo was outside of his medical horse. The others were pulling their horses over to speak to him.
“I can’t tell,” Julie said. “They look worried.”
When she made it to them, she told Riley to sit tight and climbed out of the cockpit of the black sphere. A cloud of light gray moths swarmed her like a lamp post.
“Turn the lights out,” Velvet yelled up at her.
Julie did as she was told before she climbed down.
In the darkness, she went to the others to figure out what was going on. They spoke in low voices, fully aware of the dangerous territory they were in.
“What’s wrong?” Julie asked them.
The other plushies looked at each other, then looked away.
“It’s the General,” said the kangaroo. “He’s lost too much blood. He won’t make it in time.”
“How long does he have?”
“I’m not a medic, but he doesn’t look good. He’s hardly breathing.”
Pepper was quiet and kept his distance from the others. The flower was terrified of what the Captain would do to him if the teddy bear died.
“Can’t we give him a blood transfusion ourselves?” Velvet asked.
The kangaroo shook his head. “We don’t have the equipment. The medical horse lost a lot of supplies in Whiner territory.”
“What about a human hospital?” Velvet asked. “There’s got to be one around here somewhere. It could have the equipment we’d need.”
“Maybe,” said the Captain. “But the few human hospitals that are still standing have probably been picked clean by scavengers by now. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to do a blood transfusion, would you?”
Velvet looked down and shook her head.
“I might,” Julie said.
They looked at her.
“I’ve seen one done before,” she said. “I might be able to do the job if I had the right equipment and the right blood.”
Julie had seen dozens of blood transfusions, actually. She spent so much time in the doctor’s cabin while going through surgery that she witnessed all kinds of medical procedures.
“Are you serious?” Velvet asked.
“I can’t promise anything but I can try,” Julie said. “That is, if I have a matching blood donor.”
“I have the same blood type,” said the kangaroo.
“Then get me to the hospital and I’ll see what I can do,” Julie said.
Velvet looked over at the Captain. “It sounds like our best hope.”
The kangaroo grunted in agreement. Then he stepped into Julie’s face.
“I’ll find you a hospital,” he said. “But you’ll do more than just try. You will succeed or you’ll be the first one I execute.”
Then the Captain climbed back into the medical horse and turned east. He led them deeper into the badlands, into what was once the downtown area of the lifeless metropolis. And once Riley knew where they were headed, he told Julie they were going directly into the heart of Stomp territory.
It wasn’t the Captain who found them a hospital. It was Pepper. Before the war, smart-toy flowers like Pepper were often given to sick children in the hospital instead of real flowers. It was a way to cheer them up and keep them company during long hospital stays. Pepper had spent three weeks in this particular hospital, during which he had been given to four different patients.
“It was fun cheering up the sick kids,” Pepper said. “But they always died on me eventually. That wasn’t so much fun.”
The hospital building was mostly still intact when they arrived, but the insides seemed mostly empty. Gutted.
“Wait here,” the Captain told everyone outside of the emergency room entrance. “Keep an eye on the General while I make sure the building is clear.”
As he went for the entrance, Pepper kicked an old pipe across the cracked asphalt. It caused a clanging noise to echo through the street.
“And keep quiet,” said the Captain. “This is not a friendly area.”
Then he disappeared into the darkness of the hospital.
“Not a friendly area?” Velvet said, looking over at Julie. “Talk about the absolute worst possible area. Downtown in the badlands? We’re just asking to be slaughtered.”
“It’s quiet so far,” Julie said.
“It won’t be for much longer,” said Velvet. “Don’t let your guard down for a second.” Then she looked over at Pepper. “Especially not you, flower-brain.”
Then she tossed a pebble at him and it bounced off his cushy round face.
Captain Caw was taking way too long inside of the hospital.
“Do you think we should go in and get him?” Velvet asked.
Julie shrugged.
“What if he’s dead?” Pepper said. “What if he’s dead in there and we’re next? What’re we gonna do?”
“Relax,” Velvet said. “If he’s dead that means he won’t be able to kill us later.”
“Oh yeah…” Pepper said. “Oh yeah!”
Julie leaned against her slinky-spider and watched for signs of movement on the road. Wind blowing against rusty metal created a deep squealing sound. The scurrying of cockroaches was the only movement in the area.
“So what’s the plan?” Velvet asked Julie, pacing along the road with her sniper rifle at waist level.
“Plan?” Julie asked.
“It doesn’t look hopeful for the General. The second he dies, we need to be ready for Caw. We better come up with a plan. Fast.”
“The Captain heard our conversation back there,” Julie said. “He knows we’ll be coming for him.”
Velvet looked at Pepper. Panic spread across the flower’s face.
“Well…” Velvet groaned. “Shit…”
“We don’t have surprise on our side?” Pepper cried. “Fuck. We have nothing. We’re so fucked!”
“We just attack him hard and fast,” Julie said. “Don’t hesitate. Just shoot him.”
“If I can get him in my sights I’d be able to take him out,” Velvet said. “But I’ll need distance. He might be a master of short range attacks, but I’m a master at long range. I think I can get him.”
Julie nodded. “Then that’s our plan. When I give you the signal you take off running. I’ll try to keep him busy while you find a good position.”
“Get him out in the open if you can,” Velvet said.
“Are we really doing this?” Pepper said. “Are we really going to try to kill Captain Caw?”
“If the General doesn’t pull through,” Velvet said. “We won’t have a choice.”
There were headlights coming down the road toward them. The sound of an engine roared their way.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Velvet said, walking toward the center of the road.
It was only a single pair of headlights from some kind of vehicle driving their way. Julie hadn’t seen a working motor vehicle in years. Toys didn’t drive them. Neither did humans, anymore.
“There’s only one of them, right?” Julie asked.
Velvet nodded.
“It must have been there the whole time, just waiting on the side of the road,” Velvet said.
“Who is it?” Pepper asked. “Who could it be?”
Velvet looked through the scope on her sniper rifle, her purple floppy ear dangling over the side of the barrel.
“Whoever it is, they’re not going to live to tell their friends about us,” Velvet said.
Getting the driver in her scope, Velvet fired. She lowered her gun, waited.
“Nothing?” Pepper asked.
Velvet loaded another round and fired again. Then three more times. The vehicle did not stop.
“It’s not bulletproof,” Velvet said. “The bullets are going through the windsh
ield. The driver should be dead.”
When it came closer, Julie and Velvet backed away from the road. It was a large tanker truck. A big rig. Julie hadn’t seen one of those in a decade. She wondered who the heck could be driving it.
“Pepper, get ready,” Velvet told the flower, but Pepper was already pulling explosives from his case.
The truck slowed down and stopped alongside the hospital. The vehicle was old and rusted. Only faint chips of yellow remained of its paint job. Weeds grew in and out of the metal, like it had just come out of a junk yard after rotting there since the 1970s. Julie was amazed the thing was still working.
The plushies pointed their weapons at the cab of the truck, waiting for something to happen. But the truck just stayed in its spot, motionless, the engine rumbling.
Velvet approached the rig and looked inside the cab. The windshield was full of bullet holes. The seats were covered in shards of glass. Nobody was inside of it.
She backed away and said, “Who the hell was driving this thing?”
“Is it a trap?” Pepper cried. “What if it’s a trap? Should I blow it up?”
“The thing must be haunted,” Julie said, backing toward her slinky-spider.
A hand grabbed her fur from behind. She turned to see Riley reaching through the bars.
“Get out of here right now,” Riley whispered to her. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he was terrified of that truck. “That thing’s a Stomp.”
The second Julie looked back, the rusty tanker truck opened up into thirty sections which twisted and turned like a rubik’s cube.
“What the hell’s happening?” Julie asked.
But Velvet seemed to know exactly what was coming next as she ran back to her slinky-spider.
When the truck was finished transforming, what was standing in the road was a man-shaped machine. A rusted giant junkyard robot with jagged black metal fists.
“A smart-morpher?” Julie said to Riley. “You never said the Stomps were smart-morphers.”
Cuddly Holocaust Page 7
