Zombies and Shit (29 page)

On the way back to his shack on the beach, Mr. T came across the group of kids who had been doing drugs under the peer.

The kids began to shrink and tremble as they saw his blood-coated gold metal body towering over them.

“Don’t worry, kids,” he said. “I took care of that drug pusher for you. Now you don’t have to do drugs anymore. You’re going to have a bright future.”

Then he gave the kids a bright smile and a thumbs up.

The kids ran away.

As he continued down the street, whistling, a man with a white goatee stepped out of the shadows behind a strip club.

“I want him,” the man said to his associates in white masks.

“Now?”

He shook his head. “Wait until he’s at home, asleep. I wouldn’t want to get any more of you killed after that last guy went psycho on us.”

The men in white masks agreed, staring at the large metal man as he strutted happily down the street, envisioning a brighter tomorrow.

Heinz walks casually over charred corpses, heading toward the sound of two fellow contestants. It is the punk kid and that Japanese ex-host of the show. Their shoes are caked in thick meat mud as they trample over piles of mannequin limbs and cat skeletons, fleeing down the alleyway. Heinz hides behind a wall of charred yellow bricks, peeking out at them, ready to unleash a cloud of flames as they pass. But then he notices they are being chased by a pack of weaponized cyborg zombie dogs, snarling and thrashing and firing machinegun ammo. He decides it might be best to keep out of this fight.

Scavy and Junko collapse in a pile of blue flowers growing from black mulch behind a dumpster, catching their breaths.

“Did we lose them?” Junko asks.

Scavy looks back.

“They are chasing one of the floating cameras,” he says, watching the mechjaws jumping up and snapping at a floating camera ball. The camera shoots lasers at their feet, trying to scare them away.

Junko laughs. She bets it really pisses off Wayne that his own cameras accidentally distracted the mechjaws long enough for her to escape.

“You think the hippy made it?” Scavy asks, stomping a blue flower into the concrete.

“Probably not,” Junko says. “Even if she got away from the dogs and the collapsing building, there’s no way a weak little rich girl like her could make it alone out there with only a dagger.”

“So what do we do now?”

“It’s almost dark,” Junko says. “We should find shelter. Very few contestants who try to travel at night survive long.”

“Where?” Scavy asks.

Junko points at a tall white castle-shaped building a few blocks down.

“There,” she says. “The castle building. It should be safe there until dawn.”

They get up and head for the white building, passing Heinz pressed up against a wall with his flamethrower pointed at the ground.

Heinz steps into the street.

“So you’re going there, are you?” he says to their backs as they run into the distance. “I’ll be sure to kill you there later, you Japanese trash.”

Heinz hates the Japanese. He hates all races apart from the superior Aryan race, but the Japanese he hates most of all. That’s why Junko is at the top of his hit list.

White people are a minority in Neo New York. The dominant race is Asian, mostly Japanese. After Z-Day, Japan was one of the last countries to be hit with the zombie outbreak and one of the first to learn about it. They had plenty of time to prepare themselves. They fortified their cities, they evacuated VIPs to secure islands in the Pacific, they loaded people onto ships and spread them out into the sea. Of course, none of their efforts worked out according to plan. Letting one infected person into a fortified city would wipe out most of the population within a couple of days. Loading up boats full of people and sending them out to sea keeps them from getting infected, but they’re going to run out of food and supplies eventually. Though most of their population was wiped out, Japan still faired better than most countries.

It was the Japanese survivors that helped the American survivors build Neo New York. They had more resources and were better organized. When the class system was established for the construction of Neo New York, the Gold and Platinum Quadrants were populated with mostly Japanese survivors, whereas the Silver and Copper Quadrants were mostly American.

Heinz was born in Silver, in a German-American neighborhood. But as a teenager he was moved to Platinum when his father got a position at the new university that had opened up. It was very rare for entire families to be moved from Silver to Platinum, but they made some exceptions for university faculty. The high school Heinz attended was predominantly Japanese, with some Indian and Chinese students. The few students who were considered white were Jewish or half-Japanese. Heinz was the only blue-eyed blond kid in the school.

The other kids didn’t like him. Not only because his eyes, skin, and hair were different, but because he was low class. He had come from Silver. He didn’t belong. Because of his white skin, the kids called him Cum Face.

“How’s it taste, Cum Face?” a Japanese kid told him as he shoved his face into a mound of dog shit. “Does it taste like home? Did you used to have to eat dog shit for lunch in Silver because your family was so poor?”

Heinz wanted to fight back, but that would only make it worse.

“Maybe we should put shit in your eyes, too, so they won’t be blue anymore.”

They rubbed shit in his hair, on his skin. Then the group of five Japanese boys kicked him repeatedly. When they were done, they laughed.

“It’s a good look for you,” one kid said. “You’re not quite as ugly with shit all over you.”

“From now on,” said another, “you have to wear shit all the time. We’re sick of looking at your ugly cum skin and snot-colored hair.”

Another said, “If we see you and you’re not wearing shit on your skin we’ll kick your ass.”

When Heinz arrived at home covered in shit, his father was displeased with him.

“You let those inferior slanty-eyed rodents do this to you?” his father yelled. “You are Aryan, the descendent of Germans. Have you no pride?”

“But there were five of them,” Heinz said.

His father slapped him. “One Aryan is worth a hundred of them. A million. You are racially superior to them.”

His father lifted his shirt to reveal a large black swastika tattooed over his heart.

“Do you see this?” his father said, pointing at his tattoo. “This is a symbol of pride. One day you too will wear this symbol, if you prove worthy of it. You must never cower before such vermin. It is better to die than to shame your race in such a manner.”

“I’m the only Aryan in the school,” he said.

“One day that will change,” his father said. “Until that day you must endure. You must show these scum what a true Aryan is made of. You will not show any weakness. You will prove the quality of your genes. You will show them your race is the master race. Is this clear?”

Heinz nodded and then his father helped him clean the shit off of his face.

Heinz freezes when he hears the sound of growling coming from behind him. He turns around slowly. A large mechjaw is facing him, pointing its Gatling gun at his chest.

“Nice doggy,” Heinz says with a smile. The dog growls at him.

Heinz reaches into Adriana’s pack and pulls out her weapon: a blowgun. Slowly, without making any sudden moves, he brings the blowgun close to his lips.

“It’s okay.” His voice calm and soothing. “No need to shoot.”

Just as the Gatling gun is about to fire, whirring into motion, Heinz blows a dart into the dog’s neck. The gun shuts off before any bullets come out. The dog’s body twitches and then falls to the street, paralyzed.

“That’s a good dog,” Heinz says, placing the blowgun back into the bag.

The nerve toxin in the darts might not do any damage to the undead, but it numbs their muscles and nervous system for a short amount of time, immobilizing them. At first he thought the blowgun would be a useless weapon out here, but now that he’s run into a mechjaw he sees how useful it can be.

Heinz kneels down to the undead dog. With his gloved hand, he pets the hair on its slimy head, staring into its black hungry eyes.