Zombies and Shit (52 page)

Mr. T opens his eyes to find himself several yards away from everyone else. He’s lying in the dirt, watching the zombie SUV tearing across the field. It curves around, then speeds toward him.

As he gets halfway to his feet, a mob of corpses tackle him. They pull his machine body to the ground, piling on top of him, as the vehicle barrels toward them.

Mr. T looks up at a zombie on his chest. It chatters its teeth and shrieks in his face.

“Brrrraaaainnns!!” the zombie cries in a high pitched voice.

The zombie bites down on Mr. T’s head, but it’s teeth can’t break through his skin.

“You can’t bite through Mr. T’s head, fool!” says Mr. T.

Then he headbutts the zombie in the face.

“Mr. T’s head’s not made of metal,” he says. “But it might as well be.”

He headbutts the zombie again, so hard it breaks open the creature’s skull.

Junko chainsaws her way through the crowd. Once she breaks through, she spots the lawn gnome across the field.

“That way!” she cries.

Scavy and Rainbow Cat follow close behind, as she runs through the field. Scavy limp-hops as fast as he can, trying not to rip open his wound.

Once they’re all out in the open, they see the vehicles flying at them. Four more smart cars race through the field, picking up clouds of dust. Rainbow Cat leaps out of the way, as a small black smart-car races by, narrowly missing her.

“The gnome isn’t going to help save us from those,” Scavy yells.

“Let’s get to it anyway,” Junko responds.

As they continue on, Junko looks back at Mr. T. He’s under a pile of zombies, over a dozen thick, with the zombie SUV charging right for him.

The zombies hold Mr. T down, biting at his metal body, yanking on his limbs. Even with his cyborg strength, he can’t lift himself up. The sound of the zombie SUV fills his ears, as it comes closer, only a few car lengths away.

“Think you can keep down the T-2000?” Mr. T asks the zombies growling in his face. “Think again!”

Long metal spikes spring out of Mr. T’s arms and torso. Then the rows of spikes spin in opposite directions, like a meat-grinder. All zombie flesh touching his body becomes pulverized. Zombie muscles are grated apart, hands split down the middle, skin strips away like shredded paper, bones break, meat liquefies.

Mr. T leaps to his feet and roars, mangled corpses flying over his shoulder. As the zombie SUV slams into him, the T-2000 turns and punches the front of the vehicle.

The T-2000 stays in one spot, but the SUV crumples inward. As if it had hit a pillar of steel, the vehicle folds itself around Mr. T’s fist, metal twisting, the back wheels flying up into the air. When Mr. T removes his fist, the SUV whirs and gurgles. His fist had gone all the way through the engine, rendering it useless.

Junko grabs the lawn gnome, then brings it to Scavy and Rainbow Cat. They turn to Mr. T and see the other four smart-cars roaring toward him all at once.

Mr. T leaps over the first one, fifteen times higher than an average human can jump, then lands on the next car’s hood, crushing it into the dirt.

“How much does he weigh?” Rainbow asks.

By the look of the front of the vehicle, flattened all the way to the earth, Mr. T’s robot body must weigh at least a ton.

As the next vehicle comes at him, he grabs it by the bumper and tosses it upward. The vehicle flips twice in the air and lands on its side behind him.

“Think you got what it takes to take on the T-2000?” he yells at the remaining vehicles.

He swats at another car with the back of his hand as it passes. The vehicle spins around in circles, rolling over the zombie horde, throwing bodies into the air.

“I didn’t think so,” he says.

As the last smart-car comes at him, he jumps out of the way, then grabs it by the back bumper. He holds it into place, the wheels spinning in the dirt.

“Come on,” he yells at the other three.

Junko, Scavy, and Rainbow Cat run across the field toward him. They go to the doors of the smart car. As they approach, its wheels move faster, as if it’s trying to get away from the device within the lawn gnome.

Junko breaks a window with the side of her chainsaw and unlocks the door. They jump inside. Her mouth drops open as she notices there is no dashboard in the vehicle, no steering wheel, no controls. There are just two long seats along the sides of the interior. This one wasn’t meant to be driven by anyone but the car itself.

“What do we do?” Rainbow asks. “How are we supposed to drive this thing without a steering wheel?”

“Just get in,” Junko says.

After they enter, Mr. T works his way along the side until he gets to the door. Then he hops in. The smart-car speeds away, driving in the opposite direction. They hold onto their seats as it drives up onto a street and flies down the road, weaving between rotten husks of old automobiles.

“It’s out of control!” Rainbow cries. “We’re going to crash!”

Scavy looks at the direction they’re going in, then looks at the lawn gnome.

“It’s trying to get away from this,” he says, pointing at the gnome.

“Well, we just can’t get rid of it,” Rainbow says.

Scavy grabs the gnome from Junko’s hands.

“No,” he says, “but we can use it to direct this thing and shit.”

He aims the gnome at an angle, and the vehicle turns, heading in the correct direction. Then he hands it back to Junko.

“Just hold it in the opposite direction you want to go,” Scavy says.

Junko moves the gnome to the left side of the car and the vehicle turns right, then she brings it to the other side of vehicle and it turns left. When she holds it in the middle, it goes straight.

“See?” Scavy says. “If the thing is trying to get away from the gnome we can control where we want it to go.”

Junko gets the hang of how it works.

“Good job,” she says, smiling at him. “I’ll take it from here.”

Scavy smiles back through his blackened teeth, then pulls out the map to act as navigator.

“Ahhh,” Mr. T says, leaning back in the comfortable luxurious seats. “It’s about time the T-2000 got a little rest.”

He sits back to enjoy the ride.

Rainbow Cat is too on edge to enjoy the ride. She stares anxiously through the window. At the speed they are moving, they are all likely to be killed if they crash. She tries out the seatbelts, but the buckles fall apart in her hand.

Outside of the window, Rainbow sees something flying in the air. It is a man in a small flying machine, peddling it like a bicycle, gliding through the air.

Oro looks down on the smart-car from his glider-cycle, peddling casually, in no real rush.

“You will not get there faster than I,” Oro says to the vehicle. “I am a genius. You don’t stand a chance against an intellect as grand as mine.”

Gogo and Popcorn arrive at the field littered with broken smart-cars and mangled zombies. They had been watching from the overpass, but didn’t get there in time to join their friends. They go to one of the vehicles that still runs, lying on its side.

“Help me push this over,” Popcorn asks her friend.

“Brains!” Gogo says.

“We’re going to try to help them, not eat their brains,” Popcorn says, as they push the vehicles onto its wheels.

When they get into the car, they aren’t sure how to drive the thing. Gogo leans toward the dashboard of the car.

“Brains,” she says to the zombie car.

The car starts its engines and begins to drive.

“Did you just talk to the car?” Popcorn asks.

“Yeah,” Gogo says. “If we lead it toward brains it will go wherever we want.”

Gogo pukes up green slime on the floor of the vehicle.

“That’s sick, Gogo!”

“I really fucking need some brains,” Gogo says, wiping the gunk from her face with her arm.