The Search for Ball Zero (33 page)

There was a lull in the gunfire. Slash
looked up, they were reloading. He

wasn’t sure another he’d be alive after
another hail of gunfire and looked down at the chimp holding the
shield, his face said,”We’re charging.” The chimps face agreed.
Slash stood up, the bullets in his legs screamed with pain, but he
charged. Trying not to stumble over the pile of dead monkeys, Slash
looked over the shield. They were almost done reloading, they were
going to finish reloading before he could get there and rip their
heads off. One guard lifted his gun and Slash lowered his head and
body behind the shield as much as he could, bracing for the hot
impact of bullets.

One shot went off and then Slash heard a
grunt, not a gorilla grunt though, it was a Human grunt. He leaned
over the shield to look. The guard that was shooting was now
falling over like a statue. A sword stuck out from his chest, a red
line from the base of his neck went down his chest about a foot and
met the sword. Blood spilled out from the red line. The guard
dropped dead, revealing Moon behind him. Moon bared his Baboon
teeth and jumped at the 2nd guard. The guard turned his gun and
fired.

Slash and King were already sprinting down
the hallway, dead macaque monkeys flying up in their wake. They
pounded the life out of the guard, as Moon fell back limping. Moon
fell against the wall, holding his bullet riddled chest piece,
blood spilled out around his fingers and through bullet holes and
Moon fell over.

The Humans scrambled up a few floors, but
with Perry and L both shot, they weren’t making good progress. They
still weren’t sure where they were going either. But they kept
following the trail of bodies and smashed open doors. Finally they
had to stop.

“
I can’t make it.”Perry
said like an old man.

L was in pain, “Yea, lets rest a
second.”

“
Fuck, we can’t wait
here.” Tony said impatiently.”Where the fuck are they going
anyways?” Tony stumbled up a set of stairs, the next door said
“Manufacturing” He opened it into what looked like a garage office
with no windows, there were tools lining the walls and the smell of
oil in the air. He heard the sound of loud machinery working on the
other side.

He walked through the office and looked out
the door. It opened into a massive,

long construction facility that stretched as
far he could see. It looked like too big of a space to be inside
the building. The colossal skeleton of a warstore hung in front of
him.

Hundreds of robotic arms worked on the
skeleton, welding and attaching pieces to it. Pieces of the tank
treads lay on the ground all around it. Tony looked beyond the
warstore in front of him and saw a line of warstores in the
distance. “A fucking warstore assembly line!” He thought. Then he
quickly ran back down to where Perry and L were.

Janis was there. She was attending to both
of them.

“
We gotta go.” Perry said
and looked at Janis.

Janis looked at all of them,”They’re not
coming out. They’re on a one way mission.”

“
Why the fuck didn’t the
tell us that?!” Tony yelled in anger.

The ragtag Tribe was hurt. There were only
less than 10 of them now. Slash and King were the only Gorillas.
Slash was injured badly.

King bashed open the next door. It looked
like another long lab room. King saw two Humans standing on the
other side of the room. One was wearing a white coat like in the
other room, one was wearing a suit like the Humans in the warstore
wore. King ran over, they were both unarmed. They turned, looking
surprised at King, which in turn surprised King because he thought
for a second he was seeing double. They both had the same face of a
Human he had killed twice already, the Captain.

King turned and looked down the long lab,
there were tubes with Humans inside lining the walls. The two
Humans tried to run, but the remaining members of the Tribe chopped
them down with pleasure. King wandered down the isle of tubes,
slightly mesmerized. He looked closer at one, it was the Captain
also. And the next one, and the next. They were all the Captain.
Rage filled King and he smashed open a tube with both fists. The
Human inside woke up, gasping for air. He tried climbing out of the
jagged glass hole, cutting himself badly over and over as he tried
to escape. He was sitting up, head and shoulders stuck out of the
hole in the top of the tube. He would try to stand straight up and
the glass would rip into his belly, he would yell in pain and then
sit back down. He began screaming like a baby and crying.
Fruitlessly, he attempted to stand up over and over, each time the
jagged glass cutting deeper into his body. Blood poured from his
belly. He looked around, crying, looking for his mommy or
something. Chunks slid out of his belly, he reached down and pulled
a part of his intestines out from the gore. He stared at it like an
idiot for a second and then fell limp.

King jumped up on another tube, kicked down
and smashed open the glass. The Captain inside jumped up gasping
for breath, just like the previous one. King took off down the
line, smashing a hole in each tube. There were dozens, if not
hundreds. A line of Captains behind King woke up as he ran along
the tubes, smashing each one. A hundred unfinished clones, unable
to survive on their own, like fully grown premature babies. They
all gasped for breath and gored themselves on broken glass, trying
to escape their mechanical wombs. They all flailed, cried and
mindlessly ripped their own bodies to death in a chorus line of red
torturous screaming.

The tribe enjoyed watching this show.

Back in the stairwell the Humans talked with
Janis.

“
Shh! Shhh!” Perry
said,”Someone’s coming.” And he looked down. They all

listened. They all heard something. It
sounded like one person. Tony got up and pulled out a gun, pointing
it down the stairwell. Suddenly, Bob Marley turned the corner
running at full speed up the stairs. Tony was pulling the trigger
before he saw who it was and had to pull his aim, a bullet whizzed
past Bob’s head.

“
Shit! Sorry!” Tony
yelled. Bob had his hands up.

“
Damn mon!” Bob
said.

Tony put the gun away,”What the fuck
man!?”

Bob was dead tired,”Sorry mon.” He took a
couple deep breaths. “Humans go.”
“
Why what’s going
on?” Perry asked.

“
We’re on your side man?!
We’re here to help, tell us what the fuck is going on?!” Tony
pleaded.

“
Self destruct da store
mon.” Bob said looking down.

“
What?” They all looked at
each other.

“
I be settin da self
destruct mon.” He looked at all the Humans. “I set for 2 minutes. 1
minute ago mon.”

“
Holy fuck!” Perry yelled
and jumped to his feet.

Tony was already helping L to her feet.
“Fuck Bob!” L had her arm over

Tony’s shoulder and they started down the
stairs. “Come on!” He yelled back at Bob. Perry jumped in front of
them bounding over dead bodies like he wasn’t shot or tired at
all.

Bob shook his head. Then motioned for them
to leave. “Good games mon. You be good at Art of War. Da Tribe need
to do dis mon. Dis Company created us, torture us, kill us. Blow up
company, dis is our Ball Zero mon.” Bob smiled. Tony looked at him
for a long time considering the circumstances. “You be having less
dan a minute mon.” Bob said. Tony turned and took off.

They raced down the stairs, Perry a few
floors ahead of L and Tony. L would

run for a few floors, one hand holding her
shot breast. Tony stayed behind her, helping when she needed. Perry
hit the bottom like a mad man and ran through the lobby. Tony and L
heard his shotgun go off multiple times. They got to the lobby and
saw fresh, newly dead Humans.

They ran out front. Perry was standing
there, looking around. They were in a

war zone. Craters, fire, smoke, like the end
of a movie. The warstore they drove in on was bent over, completely
wasted, an almost unrecognizable smoking mess. Bob’s warstore had
red flashing lights all up and down it, obviously some sort of
warning.

Perry looked panicked, “Maybe we can turn it
off?” He took a step towards the

warstore. “No.” He thought out loud. He
looked back and forth again,”Let’s run for it.”

L, being held up by Tony, pointed weakly.
Tony immediately took off in that

direction.

Perry looked over and saw Lemmy’s Jeep
sitting there, Lemmy was no where to

be found. “Ohh shit yea L! Good idea!” Perry
yelled and took off with them.

L labored to get in the passenger seat and
Perry jumped in the back. Tony

jumped in the driver seat, turned on the
Jeep and hit the gas in one motion. The Jeep threw dirt back in a
rooster tail that Lemmy would be proud of. They sped off as fast as
they Jeep would go.

Perry was looking backwards at the tower.“If
Bob wasn’t lying to us it should

go off any..”

Perry was interrupted by a deep, short
humming sound, it went from deep to deeper, almost like when the
Death Star cannon blew up Alderaan. Tony covered his face with an
arm and pressed the gas even harder, L curled up into a ball in the
passenger seat and Perry stood on the back of the Jeep facing the
warstore. For a millisecond, Perry thought he saw the warstore
expand, deep orange and red filling in the gaps of the expanding
pieces. It contracted a bit, and then the warstore’s nuclear power
source exploded.