Zombies and Shit (46 page)

Domino and his men did catch up to Scavy in the park, but he brought more men with him than Scavy had anticipated, three times as many. They also brought guns. When they surrounded Scavy, the punk just smiled at him, waiting for his men to jump him from behind. But his men didn’t come.

Scavy’s smile faded when he realized his crew had ditched him. “Fuck.”

“Fuck is right,” Domino said, then punched him in the face.

The poison sets into Scavy quickly. His face is the first thing to go numb, mouth dangling wide open. Then his arms go limp, dangling by his sides as he staggers down the hall. When he trips over a piece of debris, he can’t get himself back up again. He kicks his legs around, but without the use of his arms he can’t move.

Domino’s men took turns punching Scavy in the face and stomach, as the others held his arms behind his back. They bloodied his nose and broke his lip. He drooled blood down the front of his shirt, then looked up and scanned the edges of the park for his friends. He couldn’t see them anywhere.

Domino grabbed Scavy by the mohawk and twisted his head up to yell in his face. “Why the fuck did you jump me and my men the other night? Do you have a death wish or something?”

Scavy spit blood. “You started it.”

“What?” Domino kneed him in the face.

“You raped my friend, Gogo. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“All of this is over that worthless fucking whore? Is she your girlfriend or something?”

“She’s a friend,” Scavy said. “You don’t do that to one of my friends and get away with it.”

Domino laughed. “You’re going to die just because I fucked your stupid bitch whore of a friend. You’re the stupidest motherfucker I ever met.”

Heinz laughs when he sees Scavy lying in the middle of the hall, paralyzed. He limps over to the punk and hovers over him, pointing one fist of the sledgehammer at his face.

“You’re a white man,” Heinz says to Scavy. “Why would you sacrifice yourself to save some worthless Japanese cunt? You should be wearing that uniform with pride, as a true Aryan would.”

“Fuck you.” The words are mumbled as they stumble out of Scavy’s dead lips.

“Call her a whore one more time,” Scavy threatened Domino.

Domino laughed at him.

“What?” Domino asked. “You still trying to be a tough guy?”

Scavy spit again. “You don’t fucking call my friend a whore.”

Domino stared him in the eyes and annunciated every word loudly in Scavy’s face. “She is a worthless, filthy, rotten cunt whore and she deserved everything we did to her.”

As Domino raised his fist to punch him again, Scavy clicked the heels of his shoe. Before impact, Domino’s fist went limp as Scavy kicked him in the throat. The blade of Scavy’s boot-knife pierced through the bottom of Domino’s jaw, up through the roof of his mouth, and into his brain.

The Diamonds just stood there, staring at Scavy’s foot in their leader’s neck. Then Scavy’s men attacked. Brick drove a truck into the park, roaring across the littered beach. In the back, the rest of Scavy’s men fired bullets into the Diamonds gang, taking them down before they could get off a single shot. The Diamonds dropped Scavy and took off running. Some of them got away, others didn’t. The ones who stayed behind to fight were the first to fall.

As Scavy pulled his boot-knife out of Domino’s head, Brick came up to him and patted him on the back.

“You’re late,” Scavy said to him.

“We needed to find a vehicle,” Brick said. “They aren’t easy to come by on short notice.”

“One minute longer and I would have been dead.”

“Yeah, but you pulled through, as always,” Brick said.

“I just got lucky,” Scavy said.

“Now it’s time for you to die,” Heinz tells Scavy, gripping the double-fisted sledgehammer. “If you were proud of your Aryan heritage you wouldn’t be dying for that insignificant Japanese cunt right now.”

Scavy spit blood at him. “Call her a cunt one more time.”

“I’ll call that cunt whatever I damn well—”

Scavy clicked his heels together, and the switchblade emerged from his right boot as he kicked the nazi in the chest. But Heinz catches him by the ankle less than an inch away from his uniform. He bends Scavy’s foot back.

“You’re an idiot,” Heinz says to him. “You bring shame to the master race.”

Heinz drops the sledgehammer, puts his hand into his pack, and into a mechjaw’s neck. Although the mechjaw’s minigun is out of ammo, its teeth are still as sharp as ever.

“I don’t think I’ll kill you,” Heinz says. “You deserve much worse.” He brings the snarling head of the mechjaw toward Scavy’s ankle, below the boot-knife. “I’m going to turn you into one of those things out there.” The dog head snaps at Scavy’s flesh. “You’ll spend all eternity as a disgusting, disgraceful living corpse.”

Scavy kicks him in the calf, breaking his spear-wound wider. Heinz releases Scavy’s leg, and the punk kicks his boot-knife through the mechjaw’s face.

Heinz steps back, clenching his wrist below the dog head. He slips his hand out of the mechjaw’s neck and tosses the growling head over his shoulder. Then he pulls off his glove. Examining his hand, he sees his blood mixing with the dog’s green zombie slime. The boot-knife had gone through the mechjaw’s head, through the glove, and into Heinz’s fist, infecting him with the zombie virus.

Looking at Scavy with distress, Heinz holds his hand, shivering in fear.

“You infected me?” Heinz says.

Scavy sneers through his drooping lips. “Checkmate, motherfucker.”

Anger flashes across Heinz’s face. He retrieves the double-fisted sledgehammer from the floor. The poison has now paralyzed all of Scavy’s body, so the bleeding, burnt up punk just laughs up at the nazi. He chuckles at him as loudly as he can, as Heinz lifts the sledgehammer, aiming for Scavy’s head.