Zombies and Shit (30 page)

“Why aren’t you covered in shit?” a Japanese bully asked Heinz the next time they saw him.

There were seven of them this time.

“We told you to wear shit from now on,” said another. “Otherwise we’d kick your ass.”

“I considered it,” Heinz said. “But I decided not to.”

Heinz changed directions to take a shortcut behind a shopping center. The bullies followed.

“Why not, Cum Face?”

“Because I didn’t want to look like the lot of you,” Heinz said.

Two of the bullies got in front of him so that he couldn’t move forward anymore.

“What did you say, Cum Face? You saying our skin looks like shit?”

Heinz got in the kid’s face. “You heard me, insect. Now get out of my way. I’m sick of looking at your filthy skin.”

The kid punched Heinz in the eye. He was wearing an iron skull-shaped ring that cut open the puffy flesh around the Aryan’s eyebrow. Heinz looked back at him, a thin trickle of blood on his cheek.

“Don’t you dare ever touch me again with those disgusting hands,” Heinz said.

The kid punched him again, causing more blood to erupt from his forehead.

“This is your last warning,” Heinz said. “Do not touch me again.”

The kid raised his arm to throw a third punch. Then Heinz stabbed him in the head with a crab fork. The boy screamed as blood squirted out of the hole on his forehead. Two boys tried to grab the Aryan, but he turned on them before they could pin him down.

Heinz stabbed the thin two-pronged fork into one of their eyes, scooping out the eyeball like a scallop from its shell. The kid dropped to the ground, shrieking. Then Heinz stabbed the other in the neck. This bully did not cry out. He stepped back, holding his neck. A look of horror crossed his face as blood geysered from his jugular over his fingers, showering the pavement and the other bullies.

When they saw this, all of the kids ran away, except for two: the leader with the hole in his forehead and the kid with the neck wound, bleeding to death by Heinz’s feet.

“One day all of you cockroaches will fall to the master race,” Heinz told the lead bully, flicking the eyeball off the crab fork.

The bully cried at Heinz, begging for mercy. The blood from his stab wound ran down his nose and mixed with his tears.

“I’m sorry,” said the bully. “I’m so sorry.”

As the bully’s friend lay motionless in a puddle of blood, a horrible stench of feces filled the air. The kid had shit his pants after he died.

Heinz looked at the dead kid’s ass.

“I want you to smear his shit all over your face and hair,” Heinz said, impersonating the Japanese kid’s voice. “If you don’t I’ll kick your ass.”

The bully cried as he pulled handfuls of shit out his dead friend’s pants and rubbed it on his skin and hair. The shit collected in the hole on his head, mixing with the blood and crumbs of skull.

“That is why your race is pitiful,” Heinz said, bringing the crab fork to the kid’s throat. “An Aryan would never disgrace himself like that, no matter what the cost.”

Night falls and the streets fill with the living dead. A cloud covering blocks out all light from the moon and stars, drowning the city in black. The only thing that lights Heinz’ way is the fire from his flamethrower and the burning corpses as they hit the ground.

The zombie mob stretches as far as he can see in all directions, a great sea of writhing molten flesh. The fifteen foot circle around Heinz is the only empty space that he can see for blocks.

In this close of a fight, Heinz discovers a major problem with using a flamethrower as his weapon: flaming zombies. After he burns them, they do not immediately fall to the ground. They continue shambling toward him with their flesh on fire, trying to wrap themselves around him. If the zombies get too close to the gas canisters on his back it is likely to cause an explosion.

Heinz has to switch between the flamethrower and Brick’s double-fisted sledgehammer. Once he ignites the zombies and the flaming corpses come after him, he swings the sledge at their midsections and sends them hurling back into the crowd.

Up ahead, Heinz notices two small lights in the sky. When he focuses his vision, he can tell they are flashlights shining from the window of an office building a few blocks down. Somebody is camping out there for the night.

Heinz knows his fuel tank won’t last for much longer if he continues using it at this rate. He’ll have to move indoors as soon as possible. Perhaps whoever is camping up there in that building has a secure enough setup to last through the night. He decides to make that his destination. Whoever is up there, they will have to share their shelter with him if they want to live.

When Heinz returned home to his father covered in blood, his father was furious. Heinz proudly told him the story of how he stood up to those Japanese insects.

“You idiot,” his father yelled. “You’ve ruined everything!”

Heinz didn’t understand.

“I’ve spent twenty years trying to get to the position I am at now. There are only three other members of the Brotherhood who have infiltrated the Platinum Quadrant.”

“The Brotherhood?”

“The Brotherhood of the Fifth Reich. Our mission is to take this island from those slanty-eyed rodents and convert this nation into a proud Aryan state, under Nazi control. We have people in key positions all over the island. When you were old enough, you too were supposed to play a crucial role in the uprising. Then you went and murdered the sons of important government officials.”

“It was self-defense,” Heinz said.

“It doesn’t matter,” his father said. “You don’t have a future anymore. You can’t stay here.”

“Where will I go?”

“Pack your things,” his father said. “I’m going to send you off of the island, to join the others.”

“What others?”

“The rest of our forces,” said his father. “The Fists of the Fifth Reich.”

Heinz fights his way into the lobby of the building, the zombie mass flooding in behind him. The door to the stairwell is electronically locked. With his back against the wall, he has no other choice but to get through this way. He uses the sledgehammer on the window, which is just a thin strip of plexi-glass down the upper left side of the door. The first blow does nothing. The second swing creates a popping noise. Heinz turns around and blows fire at the mob as it closes in. With the third swing, he uses all of his strength. He won’t have time for a fourth.

“Brains!” cries the mob of molten flesh reaching for him.

The glass breaks open. Heinz sticks his hand through the hole and opens the door from the inside. He enters and shuts the door behind him. The undead reach their arm through the slot, but likely aren’t intelligent enough to get the door open.

Heinz climbs the stairs, using the tiny flame of his weapon to lead him through the dark. As he takes the first flight, he hears the sounds of the undead in the stairwell a few floors down. They are coming up from the underground parking levels, attracted to the echoes of his human footsteps.

The nazis claim there were five notable reichs in history. The Holy Roman Empire was the First Reich. The Great German Empire of 1871-1918 was the Second Reich. When Adolf Hitler was in power, he created the Third Reich which was the birth of Nazism. The Fourth Reich, formed by postwar neo-nazis, was an underground movement that attempted to bring nazi values back to the Aryan people. Now there is the Fifth Reich, which formed soon after Z-Day, after the fall of civilization.

It started with a group of neo-nazi skinheads who had survived in a bunker in Tennessee. They welcomed all survivors into their facility, but only Aryans who supported their ideals were allowed to join them. All others were fed to the undead for their amusement. They grew in numbers until they were able to embark on an exodus toward the coast, where they found their new home for the next forty years: a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. And, like most nuclear-powered vessels of the time, it had enough uranium fuel in its reactors to last them for several decades.

After they cleared the ship of naval zombies and claimed it for their own, they named it the Fifth Reich.

Their mission was to redesign the new world in the way God had intended: a world dominated by the one true master race. They created a breeding program. Aryan women became breeding slaves whose only purpose was to bear their young. Only the purest, strongest, and most intelligent Aryans were allowed to breed with them. Heinz’s father was born through this breeding program. He was bred to be a leader, a man who would one day bring their ideals to the people of Neo New York.

Heinz was delivered to the aircraft carrier by a small fishing boat, owned by brothers of the Fifth Reich living in Copper. On the boat ride over, Heinz imagined how majestic this colony of Aryans must be. A nation of proud, mighty white men. But when he arrived, it was not at all as he expected it to be. Things had changed greatly since the day his father had left the Brotherhood to infiltrate the island of Neo New York.

The people on the ship were starving and weak. They had long lost hope of ever taking the island. And worst of all, they were no longer proud of their race. Since the majority of them had never even met a member of another race, they didn’t understand what was so special about their own. They didn’t understand their own magnificence.

“What is wrong with these people?” Heinz asked the Captain of the ship. “They are weak and have no spirit in them. Do you call this an army?”

The Captain leaned back in his chair and put his shredded boots onto his desk.

“It hasn’t been an army for a long time,” said the Captain. “Not since I’ve been in charge of this ship. My predecessor was your grandfather, a stubborn idealistic fool who was so determined to build a grand army that he didn’t realize that we didn’t have the food and resources to support so many men. He overpopulated the ship. The men were starving, but your grandfather didn’t care. All he cared about was preparing for a war that was never going to happen.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was killed by his own men. After he cut their rations down to a fifth, his men couldn’t take it anymore. They shot him dead one night while he was sleeping. As his second in command, I took over the ship. I promised these people we would focus entirely on our own survival and forget about the war. You might think those men out there are starving and weak, but they are much better off than they were five years ago.”

Heinz slammed his fist on the table.

“Better off?” Heinz yelled. “They would be better off dead than the pathetic wretches they have become. Your men are the Fists of the Fifth Reich. They should have the intelligence to thrive even in the harshest of circumstances. If you were a proper leader you would not have let this become of your men.”

“What the fuck do you know, kid?” the Captain said. “Since birth you’ve lived in the luxury of the Platinum District. What do you know of hardship and survival? You’ve had everything you could possibly want.”

“I have not lived long in Platinum. I was born in the slums of the Silver District.”

The Captain laughed. “The slums of Silver? Any one of these men would kill the both of us just to live one year in Silver. Even the people in Copper have better lives than most of the men on this ship.”

“It doesn’t matter where I’m from,” Heinz said. “I am Aryan and I will not allow my people to live like scum.”

“Get out of my office,” the Captain said. “I’m through talking to you. You’ll learn soon enough.”

“And you’ll learn just what a true Aryan can do,” Heinz said on the way out the door. “The Fists of the Fifth Reich will be strong once again. Stronger than ever before. I will make certain of that.”

“Sure, kid. Just get the fuck out of here.”

By the end of his first day on the ship, Heinz decided he would make it his mission to bring pride back to these fallen people. He would bring them out of the muck and restore them to the great people they were destined to be.