Zombies and Shit (24 page)

As Junko and Scavy get further ahead of Rainbow Cat, one of the mechjaws launches a rocket. The explosion hits between Rainbow Cat and the others, blowing everyone off of their feet. The zombies absorb most of the blast, their body parts flying through the air, black sludge splashing across the pavement. Like a landslide, the front of a building crumbles into the horde. Rainbow Cat runs into a nearby department store to avoid the avalanche. It takes down two of the mechjaws and most of the crowd of zombies.

As Junko helps Scavy to his feet, the mechjaws climb up the rubble after them. They look back for Rainbow Cat, but she’s nowhere to be seen, perhaps even buried under the wreckage. Before the mechjaws have a chance to open fire, they take off running.

Bosco sees Rainbow Cat hiding in the department store, looking out the window at her companions as they leave her behind. The zombies and mechjaws follow after.

A smile creeps up on Bosco’s face, happy that Rainbow was left all alone. If he can get to her in time she’ll have no choice but to let him join her.

“Now you will be mine,” Bosco says to the hippy girl in the doorway of the department store, “my beautiful Rainbow.”

Then he licks his finger and draws a heart in the window glass around Rainbow, as she cowers in the distance, lost, alone, and afraid.

Alone with only a dagger, Rainbow Cat realizes she needs to find a better weapon. Even though Junko had told her being able to run fast is more important than a weapon, Rainbow would feel a lot safer if she had a sword or a large club. She at least needs to find a better knife. The one she has seems better for stabbing than cutting, and she needs a weapon that will cut through limbs.

Rainbow explores the store. She doesn’t require her flashlight because stripes of sunlight brighten the room. It is a five story building but so many floors and ceilings have collapsed, cracked apart, and fallen away, that sunlight reaches all the way down from the roof to the ground floor.

Mostly everything in here is useless from exposure to the elements. The clothing falls apart between her fingers. The wooden bars used as coat racks break in half when she pulls them off the wall. Even the metal parts from the display shelves are rusted and brittle. The building feels as if it could collapse at any moment, so she decides not to search upstairs. She’ll have to go somewhere else. Hopefully she’ll be able to catch up to Junko and Scavy later.

On her way out of the department store, she runs into a figure standing in the doorway, blocking her path.

As she raises her dagger, the figure’s arms raise up.

“I’m not infected,” says the figure.

Rainbow Cat steps forward to see Bosco. A bent smile creeps onto his face, an expression that is like he’s both frowning and smiling at the same time. Rainbow steps back a little.

“I see you’re all alone,” Bosco tells her. “I’m all alone, too.”

Bosco’s tone of voice is one of sleaziness, even though he thinks he’s speaking in a friendly unthreatening tone.

“Get out of my way,” Rainbow says.

“I just want to help you,” he says. “I just want us to team up. I can watch your back, you can watch mine.”

“I already have a team.”

“You don’t need them anymore. I’ll protect you from now on.”

“I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

Bosco raises his weapon, a machete.

“How can you say that?” Bosco asks her. “After all we’ve been through?”

Rainbow Cat is confused. “What do you mean? Do I know you?”

“How could you have forgotten me?” Bosco asks. “You have to remember me. You just have to.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

A tear falls down Bosco’s cheek as he says, “We used to be lovers.”

Although Rainbow Cat didn’t recognize him until now, Bosco was one of the guys she had slept with in Copper to get back at her husband for skipping a day of writing. Charlie had spent the entire day in bed, feeling sorry for himself. He had not written a single word in a day. It didn’t matter that his typewriter was out of ink and that he had food poisoning from the dumpster chicken she brought home the night before. He didn’t meet his quota and she was going to make good on her promise.

She chose Bosco because he was the most pathetic-looking guy in the bar. Sleeping with strange men was not something she enjoyed. She only did it to piss off her husband, so she picked the most worthless pieces of scum to fuck. And because he had not written a single word, she had planned to spend the night with this total loser.

Bosco had never been able to pick up a girl at a bar, let alone get picked up himself. It was like a dream come true for him. There was finally someone who wanted him, who could maybe even love him. And she was far more beautiful than any woman he had seen before. Her tiny pink smile, her lioness hair, her thin muscled arms; she was absolute perfection to him. He fell in love with her immediately. Not just because she was young and attractive, but because she chose to spend time with
him
of all people.

The prostitutes he used to pay to sleep with him had two rules: no kissing on the mouth and no cuddling. No matter how much he offered to pay they refused to do those things with him. This was heartbreaking to Bosco, because those are the two things he cared about most. Sex wasn’t that big of a deal to him. He wasn’t very good at it due to problems with impotency and premature ejaculation. All he wanted was to be kissed by a woman, to hold one in his arms.

Rainbow Cat was the first woman he ever kissed. The first woman who slept in his arms. When she kissed him, she did it passionately, as if he was her whole world in that moment. They didn’t just have sex, they made love. They drenched his bed with their passion. And after he came inside of her, she hugged her naked body to him. He wrapped himself around her and she slept in his arms the entire night. For that one night, she belonged to him. But the next morning she was gone.

He looked for her everywhere after that day, imagining all sorts of excuses for why she had not stayed. He thought she obviously had feelings for him, that she loved him. A week later he learned she worked on one of the farms. But after following her home from work, he discovered that she was married to another man. A horrible man who could not possibly love her as much as he did.

The next time he met her alone in the bar, she didn’t make eye contact with him. She left with somebody else that night. It was a large tattooed man with a blond beard. Dan was his name, a regular at the bar and a real shit head. Bosco tried to be friends with Dan once. He bought the guy a beer and Dan still refused to hang out with him. He thought Bosco was gay.

Rainbow didn’t spend the night with Dan that night. She just let him fuck her against a dumpster in an alley a few blocks down. The way the large muscular man rammed himself into her body was disturbing to Bosco. Dan shoved her head in the trash and repeated said
how do you like that, bitch?
as he fucked her. After he came, Dan smacked her bare ass and left her sitting there naked and sore. She just wiped the slime out of her crotch, gathered her clothing, and went home as if nothing had happened.

On the way back to the bar, Bosco confronted Dan.

“What the fuck were you doing with my girl back there?” Bosco asked him.

Dan looked back with a confused face.

“You?” Dan asked, recognizing him. “Did you follow us you fucking pervert?”

“Yeah, and I saw what you did. Rainbow is my girl. I love her more than anyone ever could.”

“You’re her husband?”

“No, I’m her lover. I love her far more than her husband does.”

“You’re a fucking freak, dude. Get the fuck out of here.”

Bosco got into his face.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “She belongs to me.”

Dan looked down at the scrawny man. “Look, weirdo. You’re starting to piss me off. If you don’t—”

Before Dan could finish, Bosco stabbed him in the face with a broken beer bottle. Dan screamed and fell to the ground, a shard of glass stuck through his eyelid and buried deep into his eye socket. Then Bosco stabbed the bottle repeatedly in his face and chest, until Dan was no longer moving and the bottle had shattered in his hand.

“She’s my beautiful Rainbow,” he said to the corpse, wiping the tears from his eyes.

After that day, Bosco stalked Rainbow. He followed her home from work and watched her sleeping with her husband through their apartment window at night. It wasn’t often that she had sex with other men, but when she did Bosco didn’t let them get away with it. He made sure they shared the same fate as that asshole Dan.

At night, Bosco fantasized about her body sleeping next to his. He wrapped himself around the pillow her head had slept on that night, and imagined it was her body against him. In his dreams, he would kiss her on the mouth and bury his nose deep in her blonde dreadlocked hair. They would make love and live inside of his bed like a tomb for all eternity.