Cuddly Holocaust

by Carlton Mellick III

  Julie didn’t have time for this. She had to take care of those little soldiers and deal with General Griz before the Captain came back for her. She was going to have to pull them out of him one by one.

  She ran back into the operating room and hit the ground. Their miniature bullets sprayed across the wall behind her.

  “Okay, you big fucker, time to get your parasites removed,” she said as she crawled across the floor.

  When she arrived at the tray holding the surgical equipment, she knocked it over. Grabbing the tongs and using the tray as a shield, she stood up.

  “Is that all you’ve got you little pricks?” she said, holding the tray in front of her to protect her face and torso.

  Their tiny bullets couldn’t pierce the tray as she marched slowly toward them. Once she was only a foot away, hovering above the bear’s torso, she attacked. Using the pair of surgical tongs, she grabbed one of them and pulled him out of the bullet hole like a maggot from a wound.

  The tiny soldier wiggled and squirmed in the air until Julie tossed him across the room. His little green body cracked into pieces when he hit the wall.

  “Who’s next?” she told the other soldiers.

  As she said that, the other four smart-soldiers dropped down inside of the wounds, burrowing into the flesh like gopher tunnels.

  “You motherfuckers,” she said, digging her tongs into one of the holes.

  As she stuck the metal pliers deep inside, a loud groan came out of the bear. She looked up at him. His eyes were opening. He was gaining consciousness.

  Once awake, General Griz lifted his head and saw Julie standing over him with the pair of tongs shoved inside of his stomach. There was a moment of pause as they just stared at each other—both of them contemplating how the hell they got into that situation.

  Then the recognition flashed through the teddy bear’s eyes.

  “You…” he roared.

  He lunged off of the operating table at Julie. She fell backward onto the floor, watching the gigantic red teddy bear as he pulled himself to his feet.

  “You traitor,” he said in a crackling electric voice, towering over her.

  The bandages fell off of his face to reveal horribly charred flesh. Half of his skull poked through his blackened plushy head.

  As he staggered toward her, the four smart-soldiers poked out of his bullet wounds and fired at Julie. Griz didn’t even seem to realize they were in there as he stomped forward.

  Julie ran across the room and out into the hallway, shutting the door behind her. The bear slammed against it, cracking the wood to splinters.

  Now that half of the hospital had been torn down—the sound of gunfire and explosions coming from outside—Julie only had one place left to run. But as soon as she took two steps in that direction, she saw a horde of snarling Carebears charging down the hallway toward her.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” Julie said, as the screaming Carebears raised their axes.

  Then the giant teddy bear burst through the splintered door.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The hallway was dark but for the light of explosions coming from outside.

  Julie whipped the shotgun off of her back and went for the Carebears first. She was well-trained for hitting multiple targets. If she could take them out first then she would only have to worry about the General.

  As she charged at the ferocious little flesh-eaters, she tried to think of them as nothing but targets, as glass bottles and nothing more. There were five of them, teeth gnashing and axe-blades squealing as they cut along the gritty plaster walls.

  “Feast on her flesh! Feast on her flesh!” screamed the Carebears in joyful high-pitched voices.

  She fired the shotgun three times in a row, pumping and firing just as she trained. The bursts took off one Carebear’s head and hit the other two in their chests. They had hard plastic skin, but were hollow inside.

  After the shells opened up their inner cavity, a noxious gas filled the hall. Julie caught one breath of the fumes and fell to the ground, gagging and dry-heaving at the odor coming out of the broken toys.

  Inside of the Carebears were piles of rotting meat—flesh from all of the victims they had eaten. Since the Carebears were not living beings with digestive tracts, the meat they ate just festered in their hollow cavities until it rotted into a sludgy green soup. When Julie shot them, it was like breaking open a seal. All the gas and fumes that had built up from months of decomposition hit her directly in the face. It was enough to knock her to the ground, putting her into a fit of nausea.

  The other two Carebears hopped over their fallen brothers and continued toward her. The stench had no effect on them. They had no sense of smell. Julie tried to raise her shotgun as they charged her but the nausea was so overwhelming that all she could do was cough and gag, plastered to the floor.

  “She’s mine!” General Griz yelled at the two Mad Markers as he charged down the hallway.

  The four smart-soldiers inside of the teddy bear’s wounds fired at both Julie and the Carebears. She protected her face from their tiny bullets, but several rounds pierced through her back and thighs. They were like six-inch needles stabbing into the muscle.

  The Carebears passed Julie and went for the General. They jumped at his knees and bit into the backs of his calves, thrashing like wild pink and blue dogs.

  “You traitor!” the teddy bear yelled, dragging the Carebears with him as he stomped down the hallway.

  Julie crawled to her feet, covering her nose and mouth to block out the odor. She ran past the bodies oozing with rotten meat and went toward the ramp leading downstairs. There were a dozen more Mad Markers coming up the ramp toward her, attracted by the sound of the shotgun.

  She looked back at the hulk of a teddy bear as he staggered toward her. The General didn’t even seem to realize the Carebears chewing on his legs or the army men sticking out of his belly.

  “Who sent you to kill me, Panda?” Griz yelled. His voice was mostly static. She could barely make out his words.

  Julie just stood there for a moment, watching the ferocious plastic animals racing toward her.

  “The dolls? The clowns?” He roared. “Are they planning to break the treaty?”

  General Griz looked down and finally noticed the plastic critters gnawing at his feet, tearing off chunks of fuzzy flesh. He raised one foot and stomped on the blue Carebear’s belly. When it was crushed into the floor, the toy’s rotten stomach contents squeezed out through its mouth and eye sockets.

  “Or are you just a lousy human sympathizer?” asked the General.

  The other Carebear continued chewing on the General’s flesh. It had eaten away so much flesh that Julie could clearly see bone.

  “I didn’t realize there were any human sympathizers among the plushies,” Julie said.

  She turned and looked back at the General. The way she looked at him, the way she was standing there, her posture, her figure—the teddy bear could see it. He could finally tell that the panda was a human.

  “You…” said the General. “How did you?”

  Julie smiled behind her mask. “It wasn’t easy…”

  Anger rose up inside of the bear. He grabbed the pink Carebear on his leg and snapped it in half, tossing its pieces to the side. He roared at the human in panda disguise. Then he came at her.

  Julie said, “But it was worth it…”

  Then she charged him. She fired a shell into his belly, shredding open a hole of meat. The tiny green soldiers inside of him were blown to pieces. The bear continued forward as if it were nothing.

  She only had time to pump her shotgun again before the bear was on top of her. He swung his paw at Julie with enough force to burst her skull open. Blood and tiny soldier pieces rained out of him. But Julie slid across the floor, ducking under his attack, and fired into his leg. The shotgun blast was aimed directly into the wound opened up by the pink Carebear, giving her a clear shot of the bone. The bear’s leg from the knee down was b
lown in half, throwing the General to the floor.

  “Just to take you out.”

  Julie continued down the hallway, leaving the General alive. She went toward the massive hole in the building where the west wing once stood, hoping there would be a way to climb down.

  She looked back at the General. He cried out as the army of Mad Markers reached him, jumping on top of his massive bag of flesh. All he could see was a dozen pairs of metal jaws as they bit into him like a school of brightly colored piranha. The yellow Carebear went straight for his jugular, tearing open his throat and drinking his fountain of blood.

  They didn’t go after Julie, too focused on devouring the General’s flesh into their hollow bodies. She watched until she was sure the teddy bear was dead and wasn’t getting back up again. Once she saw the Carebears fighting over his intestines on the floor like a game of tug o’ war she knew it was safe to say the giant bastard wasn’t coming back to life for a fourth time.

  Julie stood on the edge of the collapsed hospital, looking out across the badlands. A cold wind blew through her fuzzy skin, carrying the smell of smoke and rotten innards. The faint sound of explosions and squealing metal trailed off along the breeze.

  There were dozens of small fires across the junkyard landscape. Half-transformed trucks and robots lay in fiery pieces. A hundred dead Carebears were like rainbow sprinkles across a nearby dirt lot.

  Then she saw Captain Caw.

  With his two samurai swords slicing through the wind, he raced through a group of fleeing Mad Markers, cutting them down three at a time. He did so effortlessly, chopping them into halves and quarters. The horrid smell that erupted from within them had no effect on the kangaroo. He was able to kill them and move on before the stench reached his nostrils.

  Three large Stomps came at him—a tank, a bulldozer, and a garbage truck. When they reached him, they transformed into robots and attacked. The garbage truck robot hurled a dumpster full of ancient refuse at him, but the Captain cut through it like newspaper. The bulldozer stomped down on him, but he just rolled out of the way. The tank fired its cannon—now positioned on its shoulder like a bazooka—but Captain Caw leapt into the air too quickly, jumping the blast and landing on the tip of the tank-bot’s weapon.

  He ran up the barrel and stabbed his sword into the robot’s face. Then he cut the back of its neck, severing its electronic brain stem. The tank created a thunderous cloud of dust when it fell to the ground.

  “Fuck, that guy is strong,” Julie said, watching in disbelief from the hospital opening.

  Out of the cloud of dust, Captain Caw jumped at the garbage truck robot and sliced through its gas line like a major blood vessel. As the robot staggered back, its fuel gushing out of him, the kangaroo bounced off of the truck’s corpse and leapt at the bulldozer robot. He cut through the gas line on his neck like a jugular vein.

  As the Captain jumped down from the robot and continued cutting his way through the horde of Carebears, Julie heard a gunshot above her. Then both of the bleeding robots burst into flames and fell to the ground in a heap of burning metal.

  It was Velvet who fired. She was still alive up there on the roof with her sniper rifle, firing explosive rounds at the gas-leaking robots. That’s where all of the flaming piles of metal had come from. Captain Caw was cutting them down while Velvet was finishing them off.

  Julie watched the kangaroo as he took down the last of the Stomps and Mad Markers in the area. Even the giant skyscraper-sized robot was no match for him. It rumbled the ground in front of the hospital as the Captain climbed up its side. Hopping from its leg to its wrist to its chest to its neck, there was nothing the robot could do. Caw was too small and too fast for him.

  The Captain entered through the back of the robot’s head and cut through cords and wires. The red lights in the giant morpher’s eyes went dark. Its head rolled off of its neck with a shower of sparks against its black metal body. In the place of its skull, the Captain stood there with his swords covered in oil and his floppy kangaroo ears blowing in the wind.

  “He’s a fucking demon,” Julie said as she saw the look of bloodlust in his cold soulless eyes. “How the hell am I going to kill something like that?”

  Then the robot’s body came crashing down. It landed directly in front of the opening on the side of the hospital, sending a wave of debris and smoke into the hallway. Julie hit the floor and covered her face. The robot’s hand smashed into the wall just one story down. Just a little higher and it would have swatted her into a pulp.

  She looked up. The cloud cleared and Captain Caw walked calmly up the robot’s arm toward her. She got to her feet and held out her shotgun. It only clicked when she pulled the trigger. She was out of shells.

  The Captain jumped into the hallway with her and looked her in the eyes. He disregarded the gun pointed at his chest.

  “How is he?” the Captain asked.

  Julie just stood there, staring at the kangaroo. She knew she had only a second or two before he learned about the General’s demise. It seemed like now was her only chance to catch the Captain off guard, but he was too close and she wasn’t holding the right weapon. She wouldn’t be able to get to the MP5 strapped to her back in time. There was nothing she could do.

  “What’s wrong?” said the Captain.

  Julie’s lack of response caused a deep emotion to rise inside of the kangaroo. Instead of saying a word, Julie lowered her head and stepped aside.

  When the Captain saw his fallen leader on the other side of the hallway, his eyes widened and his jaw went slack. He stepped forward, passing Julie. Then he charged at the Carebears who were devouring Griz.

  “More flesh! More flesh!” cried the Carebears.

  The enraged Captain sliced at the Mad Markers with bulging red eyes, but he didn’t kill any of them. He cut off their arms and legs, stabbed out their eyeballs, opened their bellies. It was almost as if he wanted to wait and finish them off later, when he had time to savor their deaths.

  But not killing them quick enough came at a cost. One of the Carebears got through his defenses. As he cut the thing’s arms off, it leapt up at him. Its metal teeth dug deep into the Captain’s shoulder, creating a blood-filled pit near his neck.

  The Captain crushed the Carebear’s skull with the handles of his swords and dropped its body into the pile of squirming wounded toys.

  Then he looked down at the General. For several minutes, he just stared. Then he cried.

  “Griz…” he said to the body.

  He dropped his swords and buried his face in his hands.

  “Griz…”

  Julie didn’t think such a killer knew how to cry.

  “Nothing matters anymore,” said the kangaroo to the dead teddy bear. “The war, the army, the future of our people… there is no future without you, Griz.”

  He kneeled to the General. His tears rained into his red fur.

  “This world means nothing without you,” said the kangaroo.

  Then he lifted the teddy bear’s giant blackened face and kissed him deeply. His tongue entered the corpse’s mouth, his tears flowing down both of their cheeks, as he kissed the dead bear with all of his passion.

  Julie’s mouth dropped open as she watched the kangaroo passionately kissing the dead body.

  “What the fuck…” Julie said, as she backed away from the scene.

  She climbed down the robot’s arm to get out of the hospital and find the others. When she looked back, the Captain was still making out with the dead teddy bear. But now he was getting more into it, wrapping his arms around the corpse and rubbing his guts all over him. Julie was just happy he didn’t kill her as promised.

  When Julie got to the front of the hospital, she looked everywhere for Riley and the little girl he was protecting. They were nowhere in sight.

  “Riley?” she called out.

  There wasn’t any answer.

  She didn’t see their bodies anywhere, so she hoped that they got away. Riley seemed to know mor
e about the badlands than anyone she’d ever met, so she figured he would be fine. He would surely know the safest way out of there. He was probably in less danger than Julie at that moment.

  “Poro!” cried the flower as he raced out of the rubble toward Julie.

  He was frazzled and covered in black ash. Three petals were missing from the side of his head. The sunflower looked like he had been through hell.

  “We did it!” he said. “Can you believe it? We took them all out. Just the four of us. Their whole army was obliterated.”

  Julie wasn’t as excited about surviving as he was.

  “We should get out of here now,” Julie said.

  She went toward the slinky-spiders.

  “Why?” Pepper asked.

  “The General didn’t make it,” Julie said.

  The flower stopped in his tracks and stared at her.

  “You mean…” he said.

  “The Captain has already seen him,” Julie said. “The moment he’s finished mourning he’ll probably come after us. We should run.”

  Pepper’s remaining petals began shaking on his head.

  “But how…” The flower was having a difficult time thinking straight. “What are we going to do?”

  Julie kept moving.

  “There are only two horses left, right?” she said. “If we take them both he’ll have to follow us on foot. That will give us a good head start.”

  “But he’ll hunt us down,” Pepper said, grabbing Julie by the arm with his soft noodle fingers. “That’s what he’s best at—hunting people.”

  “Would you rather stay here?” Julie asked.

  She looked up at the roof and called out for the sniper bunny.

  “Velvet,” she yelled.

  The bunny didn’t come to her.

  “Velvet?” they both called out.

  Pepper looked at Julie. “Is she still alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Julie said. “I thought she was.”

  “Are you up there?” Julie yelled at the roof.