Zombies and Shit (9 page)

The zombies close in around Charlie as he pushes Rainbow up the wall. When she’s at the top, Junko lowers her arm for Charlie to grab.

“Braains!” Charlie hears all around him as he takes Junko’s hand.

Before he makes it up, the zombies grab him by his lower section. They pull him back. Rainbow grabs Charlie’s other hand and tugs on him.

“Charlie!” Rainbow cries.

They pull him out of the zombies’ grasp and get him to the top of the wall. He stands up and looks down. The zombie horde fills the area below them, leaving not an inch of ground.

“Fuck,” Charlie says. “That was close.”

He looks over at Rainbow Cat.

“You came back for me,” she says, tears in her eyes. “Even after what I did to you.”

He shakes his head. “I couldn’t let you die. I still love you, no matter what you did.”

“Brains!” the zombies yell from below.

“I’m so sorry,” Rainbow says, burying her eyes in his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“Forget about it,” Charlie says. “If we’re going to die we’ll die together.”

Rainbow nods her head. “Okay. As long as we’re together.”

As she leans in to kiss her husband, his legs break out from under him. Her lips hit nothing but air. Charlie falls from the wall, into the crowd of zombies below.

“No!” Junko yells, trying to catch him. She reaches out just a second too late.

Charlie screams as they bite into his skull and limbs, trying to get to the neural tissue. From inside of the horde below, Brick licks the blood off of his double-fisted sledgehammer. His eyes lock with Popcorn’s.

“Brains,” he says to her.

Popcorn shakes her head at the sight of her zombiefied boyfriend and jumps down to the other side of the wall.

As they chew through Charlie’s flesh, Rainbow reaches down to him. When he sees her through his twitching eyes, Charlie reaches out for her.

“I love you,” Rainbow cries, his fingers too far out of reach to meet hers.

“I love you, too,” Charlie says with a bloody smile. “…you bitch.”

The tips of their fingers touch for a brief moment, just barely. Then his body is ripped into eight different pieces.

“No…” Rainbow says, still reaching out for his hand as his arm is taken away from his body.

Junko pulls her back, but Rainbow won’t budge. She won’t take her eyes off of her husband’s severed head as it is pulled through the crowd.

“Let’s go!” Junko yells.

Rainbow finally turns away when a zombie cracks open Charlie’s skull like an egg, to get at the runny brains within.

They jump down on the other side of the wall, and run down the street to get as far away from the horde as they possibly can. Junko shakes her head at herself as she runs, realizing that none of the people she is with now are people she would have chosen to team up with. She’s stuck with a useless bitch who backstabbed her own husband and two punks, one who’s infected and one who’s a complete idiot. Still, she knows it’s better than going on alone. Those who go solo from the start never make it very far.

The last thing Rainbow Cat wanted was for her husband to die so soon in the game. If she wasn’t there she knows he would have lasted much longer, perhaps even made it all the way to the end. He had ingenuity, charisma, strategy. He would have been a perfect hero for the show, the one everyone rooted for back home in Platinum. But then he had to go and get himself killed rescuing her.

“That idiot,” she says, as they run into an alley to get off the main drag.

Rainbow lied about her reason for getting Charlie on the
Zombie Survival
reality game show. She didn’t do it for the money. She did it because she wanted people to read Charlie’s new book. Even though he was her favorite writer, she felt his books had gotten worse and worse ever since his first major success. The four books he published while they were living together in the Gold Quadrant were borderline crap. They didn’t have that raw emotion as his early books did. It didn’t seem like he was even trying anymore. For all she knows, his publishing company might have gone out of business just because people were no longer interested in their bestselling author.

But things changed after he was sent to the Copper Quadrant. He stopped writing for the money and started writing for the art. That is when he had created the greatest book Rainbow had ever read. A book about a couple struggling to make ends meet in the ghetto of Copper. It was a story about love and despair, isolation and hope. It was a story that everyone in Neo New York
had
to read. The kind of book that would change the way people think about how they live their lives.

She tried to figure out ways to get people interested in Charles Hudson again. She had sent letters to his old publisher, sent a duplicate of his manuscript that she typed up herself during breaks at work, but she never received a response. His manuscript was returned unopened.

That’s when she came up with the idea of getting him on
Zombie Survival
. She had heard the rumors of this popular television show. The people in the upper quadrants were obsessed with it and idolized the contestants more than any other celebrities. She knew if Charlie was on Zombie Survival he would capture the attention of the public again. He would become a bigger celebrity than he had ever been before. And she knew the public would demand his books come back into print. Then his final masterpiece would be published and it would solidify him as a great voice in the history of literature.

She believes it would have all worked out perfectly, but her plan backfired. When she was also brought onto Zombie Survival as a contestant, everything got fucked. She was the one who was supposed to negotiate the publication of his last book after he had been killed. She was supposed to dedicate the rest of her life making sure that Charles Hudson was remembered. But without her, it is likely that nobody is going to know that his last manuscript ever existed. Not only that, but because of her Charlie was one of the first contestants eliminated. She doubts any of the viewers will care about him now that he’s gotten killed off so quickly.

She wishes she would have been the one to get killed off instead of Charlie. Once she realized she had been brought onto the show, she came up with a backup plan. She was going to let the audience perceive her as the bad guy, Charlie’s horrible wife. They would have felt sorry for him and empathized with him as a victimized hero-type. Then the audience would have relished in Rainbow’s death, she would play the role of the bitch who got what she deserved. As long as Charlie was cheered on by the audience, there would be a renewed interest in his work. Perhaps they would even find his final masterpiece at some point, locked away in their apartment.

But now Charlie is dead and she has to come up with a new plan. As Rainbow runs down the alley, leaping over ancient garbage cans and cat skeletons, she decides that her new plan is to be the winner of the
Zombie Survival
reality game show. With that kind of celebrity status, she will be able to direct the attention of the masses on her husband’s work. She can explain why she betrayed him. She can explain how her husband’s book is so good that it was worth sending him to his death just so that it could be read by the world. Then his masterpiece will be published. Then he will be remembered as the greatest writer of their generation.

But first, she has to win the game. If she can win then it will all work out fine. The only thing she will regret is that Charlie died thinking she sent him to his death for the sake of money, when in reality she sent him to his death because she loved him so much.

If Charlie were still alive and found out the reason behind Rainbow’s betrayal, he would have said, “You didn’t send me to my death because you loved me, you sent me to my death because you loved my books.”

Then, after a long pause, Rainbow would have said, “I don’t understand the difference.”

Junko leads them to an isolated area in the parking garage of an old grocery store. They duck behind a wall of scrap metal, which looks to have once been several wrecked vehicles that have rusted together into one giant slab the size of a garbage truck. There is a ten foot buffer between Popcorn and the others. Nobody wants to get near her.

“Let’s see what we got,” Junko says, kneeling down to unlock her duffel bag.

The others sit down and place their bags into their laps, as they catch their breaths. A camera ball floats over their heads, panning across their powwow. Revealing each of the contestants’ weapons is one of the viewers’ favorite moments of the show.

Scavy unzips his bag first and pulls out two rods, one with a long jagged blade attached to it. He holds them up to the camera, as if giving his audience what they want to see.

“What the hell are these?” Scavy says. “I wanted a fucking machine gun and shit.”

Junko looks over at his weapon.

“You screw them together,” she says. “It’s an ancient Japanese naginata spear.”

“A spear?” Scavy says. “They said the weapons would be personalized to our fighting capabilities. Why would I get a spear?”

Junko shrugs. “Because the blade matches your mohawk?”

“I’m totally a machine gun kind of guy,” Scavy says.

Junko’s eyes light up when she spots the weapon in her bag.

“Well, they got mine right,” Junko says, pulling a chainsaw out of her bag. “I’m totally a chainsaw kind of girl.”

It is a custom-designed chainsaw built specifically for the game. It is long, thin, and lightweight, created to strap onto her right arm.

“Chainsaw arm!” Scavy says. “You lucky bitch!”

Rainbow Cat is the most disappointed in her weapon. With her thumb and index finger she lifts it out of her purse-sized bag by the handle, holding it like a dead rat by its tail.

“A dagger?” she whines.

They look at her.

“That’s it?” Scavy says. “Just a knife?”

Junko chuckles. “They did that on purpose.”

“Why?”

“You got a dagger because you stabbed your husband in the back,” Junko says. “The people back home are probably laughing their asses off right now.”

“That’s bullshit,” Rainbow says. “How am I going to get anywhere with this?”

“All you really need is something to cut them off when they grab you,” Junko says. “A lightweight weapon has its advantage. You’ll be able to run faster and it won’t give you a false sense of security.”

Rainbow pulls up her skirt and straps the dagger around her thigh.

Junko continues, “Too many people get killed off early on in the game by thinking their weapon is powerful enough to take on a whole horde head-on. The people who get the furthest are those who don’t stay and fight, but run away. Avoiding confrontations is best way to survive.”

When Popcorn pulls a 9mm handgun out of her bag, Junko snags it away from her.

“Hey!” Popcorn cries, reaching out to take back her gun.

Junko dodges her hand and digs ammo clips out of her bag, then places them into her own. “You don’t get a weapon. You’re infected.”

“I’m fine!” Popcorn says.