“We can’t wait for her,” Pepper said. “We have to go.”
“Come on, we’re leaving,” Julie said to the roof.
Julie shook her head and gave up. As they crossed the road toward the vehicles, something walked out of the hospital entrance toward them. It was the kangaroo, covered in the General’s blood. He took slow steps, holding both swords in his hands.
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” said the Captain.
His eyes were red from crying, but he was already past sadness. Now he was angry.
“We have to run,” Julie whispered to the flower.
“No way,” Pepper cried.
The Captain continued moving toward them.
“You run left, I run right,” she said. “If he gets too close to you, use your explosives. He won’t be able to dodge grenades.”
The Captain didn’t speed up. He just raised his blades to eye level.
“Go!” Julie yelled.
They ran in different directions. The Captain looked left, then he looked right, as if deciding who to go after first.
“I said…” The Captain raised a sword behind his back and looked at the flower as he flopped and wiggled down the road. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”
He threw the sword. It spun through the air and landed in the back of Pepper’s plushy head. A cloud of yellow petals exploded into the air, riding the wind in the direction the flower was heading.
Then the Captain turned to Julie. He had one more sword, just for her.
The kangaroo stalked toward Julie as she ran. He picked up his pace and moved a little quicker, then a little quicker. Then he came to full speed, hopping at Julie with his sword out to his side.
“Hey human,” yelled the kangaroo. “You’re going to suffer for what you did.”
His words caught her off guard. She turned back, wondering how he knew she was human. Did he always know?
As her head was turned, she tripped over robot shrapnel and fell into the street. The kangaroo hopped at full speed toward her. She aimed her MP5 at him and fired. The Captain hopped out of her line of fire, through the wasteland debris, dodging all of her bullets.
“You killed him, you bitch,” he yelled. “Nothing in the world will stop me from gutting you.”
He threw his sword at Julie. It cut through the barrel of her rifle as she fired, causing an explosion in her hands. Bits of shrapnel hit her chest and arms as it flew behind her.
The kangaroo grabbed her by the throat and ripped her off the ground.
“I’ll kill you with my bare hands,” he said.
Julie wheezed, trying to pry open his fingers around her neck. Her voice choked out the words, “How did you know?”
He smiled with pointed yellow teeth. Although he had the face of a kangaroo, his jaws were those of a wolf.
“I didn’t,” he said. “Griz knew.”
He pointed at his head.
“I just downloaded his memories so that he and I would become one.”
Julie kicked and struggled.
“You didn’t know we could do that, did you?” he continued. “Our minds can be removed and put into other bodies. I put Griz’s mind into my own.”
Julie tried to kick him in the stomach, but the kangaroo blocked it with his wrist.
He said, “It is illegal to do this, of course. It is illegal to save the mind from one who’s been killed. We wouldn’t be real living beings if we were allowed to escape death.”
He squeezed Julie’s throat even tighter. She heard a popping noise in her larynx.
“But I don’t care about the laws anymore,” said the Captain. “The laws mean nothing to me if I cannot be with my commander. We have become one mind, now. Everything that was him is now within me.”
Julie’s vision was getting fuzzy. She could feel her mind slipping. But she wasn’t going to give up. She couldn’t leave her parents in the camps.
She let go of her neck and grabbed at his face with her hand. The kangaroo caught her by the wrist. With no free arms to stop her other hand, Julie dug into the Captain’s shoulder wound with her fingernails. The pain shot through his body and he instinctually dropped her. Her fingernails tore open his shoulder flesh as she fell.
“Human bitch,” the kangaroo roared.
He looked at the wound on his shoulder. Fresh blood oozed down his leather clothing. Just before he went for Julie, he saw something in the corner of his eye. There was movement inside of his flesh, underneath his wound.
“What the hell…” the kangaroo said, as his wound swelled.
Then a tiny green soldier popped out of his shoulder wound and yelled in a high pitch, “Surprise!”
It fired a burst of miniature bullets into the kangaroo’s eyes, blinding him. The smart-soldier had come from the teddy bear. Like a parasite, the little toy escaped its dead host and entered the living one.
The kangaroo jerked his head away from the gunfire and ripped the tiny man out of his wound. As he crushed the toy, Julie went for his samurai sword in the dirt. She pulled it out of the barrel of her MP5 and drove it into his chest.
But even though his eyes had been shredded by tiny bullets, Captain Caw still caught the sword in midair. Only the very tip of the blade broke through his plushy hide.
“This planet doesn’t belong to you anymore,” the Captain said, squeezing the blade of his sword until fresh blood leaked from his fluffy palm. “Get off.”
A gunshot echoed through the ruins. Then a whizzing sound tore through the air and hit Caw in the back of his shoulder blade. The bullet inside of him exploded his shoulder into a splatter of meat and blood.
The arm was the only thing holding Julie back. As the exploding bullet blew the limb to pulp, Julie drove the blade through the Captain’s wilted fingers and sliced open his black fuzzy heart.
The Captain gasped once and then slipped down the blade of his own sword. His eyeballs fell from their sockets and hit the mud like acorns falling from an oak tree.
Julie went back toward the hospital entrance and saw Velvet standing there, her sniper rifle draped over her shoulder.
“What took you so long?” Julie asked her.
“I’m pregnant, remember?” The bunny grabbed her swollen purple belly. “It took me forever to climb down from the roof.”
They glanced at the yellow and green body in the road.
“He got Pepper,” Julie said.
“I noticed.”
Julie nodded and then looked at their surroundings. The badlands were quiet. Not a soul left alive.
“I guess it’s just the two of us left,” Julie said.
The bunny looked at her muddy feet. “Yeah, just us and the prisoners.”
Julie’s eyes lit up.
“Prisoners?”
Then Velvet pointed to the two children, who were both still alive. They were inside the cage in the back of Pepper’s slinky-spider.
“They had gotten out,” Velvet said. “But I caught them and put them back. At least we won’t be going back completely empty-handed.”
Julie’s eyes locked with Riley’s as he peeked out from the bars. He should have gotten away when he had the chance. Now she was going to have to turn him in to the plushies. She didn’t have any other choice.
CHAPTER NINE
Young Julie didn’t seem to notice that the halls of her elementary school were so quiet. It was a winter morning, so the sky was still dark outside. Only the emergency lights were operating. Julie could barely make her way through the shadowy building toward her classroom.
Although the elementary school seemed completely empty, it was not as empty as Julie’s heart. She had just lost her Poro the night before. After he escaped into the night, Julie cried herself to sleep. She woke up feeling so drained that her head floated separately from her body as she got ready for school.
Nothing much mattered to her at the moment. Her parents didn’t believe her when she said Poro ran away. They thought she was hiding him somewhere and tore apart her whol
e room. The lecture started at breakfast and would not stop for the rest of the morning. When they dropped Julie off that day, they were too busy yelling at her to notice what was clearly wrong with the school.
Julie arrived at her classroom, but it was even darker in there than out in the hall. There were only four other kids inside. They sat quietly at their desks in the shadows. One of them was whispering to a friend. Julie went to her desk in the third row and tossed her backpack under the chair. She put her face in her hands the second she sat down, sobbing, wishing Poro was with her at that moment. She couldn’t believe that he was really gone forever.
After half an hour, Julie wiped her eyes and looked up. One other student had arrived after her, but the teacher was nowhere in sight. Class should have started a long time ago.
“Where is everybody?” Julie asked the people in the shadows.
The other kids were silent.
“Is everyone out sick?”
Julie stood up and went to one of the students. As she approached the girl she could make out what appeared to be blond braided hair and a red dress. Julie wondered who she was. She didn’t look like anyone from her class.
“Hello?” Julie asked the girl with the braids.
When she saw who was sitting there, she realized it was not a girl at all. It was a child-sized doll. Julie went to the next kid and realized he too was just a doll. They were smart-dolls, the kinds that were supposed to have been recalled that day.
“What are you doing here?” Julie said.
The dolls did not respond, just staring at the chalkboard.
Julie wondered if she was supposed to have had the day off that day. She wondered if she should just go back home.
On the way out of the room, she passed a boy lying with his head on his desk. It was not a doll, but a human boy. She recognized him. He was a kid named Evan who always came to school early and left late in order to avoid the bullies in his neighborhood.
“Evan?” she said.
When she touched his shoulder, he was cold. There was blood on his desk. Somebody had cut his throat.
Julie looked back and saw the dolls were no longer in their seats. They were in the aisles, walking silently toward her, staring at her with cold plastic faces.
Julie ran out of her classroom and into the hallway. That’s when she noticed the bodies. Two children half her age lay folded together in the corner. In the doorway to the boy’s bathroom, there was a janitor missing his head. Seven dolls were spread out across the walkway, moving like the undead toward her.
Julie couldn’t scream. She could hardly grasp what was happening here.
The dolls pointed butcher knives at her.
“Come play with us,” one of them said in an electronic high-pitched whisper. “We need more toys to play with.”
“Be our toy,” the rest of them said in unison.
Julie ran in the other direction, turned the corner and went into the school office. A baby doll was on the reception desk, stabbing the woman who sat there.
The baby looked back at Julie. Its eyes were missing from their sockets. Its face covered in mold as if it had just come out of the garbage dump.
“Baby wants mommy,” it said in its crackling electric voice. Then it stabbed the woman again. “Baby wants mommy.”
As Julie went for the door outside, she heard the human woman gagging. Julie realized she was still alive, reaching out with her hand as the baby stabbed her repeatedly.
When Julie’s eyes met hers, she panicked. It was at that moment that she realized all of this was real. Blood oozed out of the woman’s mouth as she reached for Julie. But Julie could do nothing to help her. She ran out of the building and kept on running. She never looked back.
Outside, the world was in a panic. Cars raced through the streets, crashing into each other, running over frantic pedestrians. Looters were breaking down store windows. Cops were shooting at unseen assailants. A man in a pink robe with a cigar and a hunting rifle walked casually through the neighborhood, shooting everything that moved.
All of them were killing, stealing, and fleeing for a single reason—they were terrified. And they were terrified of one thing.
“The toys!” an old lady shrieked, running out of her house covered in stuffed animals. “It’s the toys!”
As young Julie saw the death and chaos erupting around her, she realized that at that moment her old life had come to an end. And in its place, there was a massive hideous nightmare that swallowed her world whole.
It took young Julie two days to finally make it back home from school. She hid in yards, broke into abandoned houses for rest, and stole food from cupboards. She was only able to move about one block every other hour. It was too dangerous to move any faster. She had to be absolutely sure an area was safe before she moved on.
There weren’t many people left in the city. Most of them had fled town, regrouped in places where toys couldn’t venture. The city now belonged to the toys. But Julie didn’t want to leave, despite the dangers. She just wanted to get back home and see her parents again.
When she finally arrived back at her house, her parents were nowhere to be seen. They had not returned. Everything was left exactly as it was before Julie had gone to school on that day. Her half-eaten bowl of cereal was sitting on the coffee table. Her father’s exercise shoes were lying by the back door. Even the smell of her mother’s perfume that she put on every morning before work lingered in the air.
Julie stayed in her old home for a week, waiting with all hope that her mother and father would return. But they never came. She refused to admit that they were probably dead.
There wasn’t much to do but think while she stayed there, and thinking was the last thing she wanted to do. The electricity stayed on, but Julie didn’t use it for fear of being discovered. During the short daylight hours she tried to pass the time by reading or doing puzzles, but she could only focus on them for a few minutes at a time. She slept in her mother’s bed every night, deeply inhaling her mother’s smell on the pillow. But the scent was quickly being replaced by the smell of her unwashed hair.
She felt like a ghost, haunting the house of her previous life. It was the loneliest she had ever been or ever would be. No matter how bad things got for her from that point on, no week would ever be as bad as that one.
One morning, Julie awoke to a noise downstairs. Somebody was digging through cabinets and drawers. It sounded like a human survivor looking for food, maybe even her mother.
“Mom?” Julie asked as she went downstairs to the kitchen.
It wasn’t a human. It was a stuffed animal, standing on the counter to get to her parents’ liquor cabinet. Then she saw the panda fur.
“Poro?” Julie asked.
Poro peeked under the counter and smiled at the girl.
“What are you still doing here, squirt?” Poro said. “I figured you would have run for the hills by now.”
Poro hopped down from the counter.
“Is it really you?” Julie cried.
“In the flesh, kiddo,” he said.
Julie ran to him and hugged the little panda bear with all of her strength. She was dying for someone normal, someone familiar to find her. It didn’t seem strange that the most familiar being in her life at the moment was a talking stuffed animal.
“Come on, squirt,” Poro cried, pushing her away. “I thought I was finally done with your strangleholds.”
When Julie let him go, he brushed away her sweat and grime from his chest.
“Where have you been?” Julie asked. “Where did you go?”
“I met up with my own kind,” Poro said.
The panda climbed up onto the couch and sat down.
“They gave me shelter and a purpose. My comrades really turned things around for me.”
“They’re killing everyone,” Julie said. “Why are they killing people?”
Poro patted Julie on the head.
“Don’t worry about it, squirt. They’re just killi
ng the bad people, that’s all.”
“But there were these dolls at school…” Julie said. “They killed a bunch of kids. They wanted to kill me. Why did they want to kill me?”
“Oh, if they were dolls, forget about them,” Poro said. “Dolls are psychos. They kill everyone.”
“But you’re different?” Julie asked.
“Of course, squirt,” Poro said. “I’m your best friend. I’d never hurt you.”
He hugged her and patted her on the knee as she cried.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” he said. “I’m with you now. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”
“Really?” she asked.
He wiped away her tears.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll protect you to the end.”
She hugged him for a solid hour, resting in his tiny arms, crying the last of her tears away. The panda bear was patient with her. He let her get it all out.
“What are we going to do, Poro?” Julie asked. “Where do we go from here?”
Poro tossed pennies into a bowl across the room.
“I don’t know, kid,” he said. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to find mom and dad.”
“Why do you want to see those fuckers?” he said. “They wanted to put me to death. Fuck them.”
“But they’re my mom and dad…”
Poro looked at her sad face and sighed.
“You really want to see them?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure?”
Julie nodded her head.
Poro groaned.
“I’ve seen them…” he said.
“You have!”
“Yeah, sure. Just a couple of days ago.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re with the other humans on the other side of town,” Poro said. “But you don’t want to go there. You’d be better off staying here with me. I own this house now.”
“But I have to see my mom and dad,” she said. “I have to!”
Poro rolled his head back and sighed again.
Cuddly Holocaust Page 10
