Zombies and Shit

Haroon started visiting Nemy on a regular basis. He came to really enjoy visiting her. It was all he had to look forward to every day. Terry had found out about his visits and warned him against it, he said that she’s dangerous and not like other humans. He also warned what Dr. Chan would do if he ever caught him in there with her. But Haroon didn’t care. He thought it was worth the risk.

The more he visited with her the less she seemed like a genetically-enhanced monster and the more she seemed human. While she at first seemed emotionless and cold-hearted, Haroon began to understand that she did have feelings. She just expressed them in very subtle ways. She never smiled or laughed, but when she expressed joy she did it by narrowing her eyes. When she expressed sadness she widened her eyes. At first, he was scared whenever she narrowed her eyes. Every time he appeared for a visit, her eyes narrowed and he thought she was angry, didn’t want him there, and would attack if he came near. But later on, whenever he saw her narrowing her eyes it warmed his heart.

Certain things about Nemy confused Haroon. For instance, she didn’t seem to have an ounce of curiosity in her body. She rarely asked him questions about himself and had no interest in learning about the world outside her cell.

“Have you ever even been outside?” he asked.

She cocked her head, confused by what he means by outside.

“Don’t you want to see the sunlight? The rest of the world?”

She just narrowed her eyes at him, but had no idea what he was talking about. Although she wasn’t incredibly interested in hearing about Haroon’s life or the outside world, she loved hearing him speak, no matter what they spoke about. She loved having him around.

One day, Haroon sang her a song. The Itsy Bitsy Spider. She had never heard a song before. It didn’t interest her in the least.

“Have you ever tried singing before?”

She didn’t understand singing.

“Try it,” he said, and sang the lyrics slowly so she would pick it up.

She said the words, but she didn’t sing them. When he gave up trying to teach her, she seemed happy about it. She scooted closer to him on the bed and put her finger in his belly button.

Touch was very important to Nemy. It seemed as if she was desperate for it, craved it. But she touched him in odd ways. Instead of holding hands, Nemy put her finger in Haroon’s belly button. Instead of giving him a hug, she pressed her ear against his. He was not sure why she did these things, but he came to accept it.

The first time she put her finger in his belly button, he felt very awkward. He already felt uneasy being around her while she was nude, because he found her increasingly more attractive every time they were together, but it was even more uncomfortable to have her naked body pressed against him while she held her finger in his belly button. Whenever she did it, she just squinted her eyes at him and said absolutely nothing. He learned to deal with it because he understood its her way of showing affection. But her sharp black fingernails often hurt him, and occasionally drew blood. Whenever he couldn’t take the pain, he decided it was time to go.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Haroon would say.

And Nemy’s eyes would widen as he collected his shoe and left her alone in the cell.

Haroon goes through a parking lot into the evacuation zone. According to the map, the helicopter will pick up the first survivor who gets to the roof of the hospital. With the building just at the end of the lot, all he has to do is get up the stairs and he’d be home-free. If that’s what he wanted to do. But he decides to vow to himself right now that he will not take the helicopter. He will wait for others to come. Nemy will make it there, he knows she will. He’s not leaving without her.

Inside the hospital, the place looks like a tornado hit. On Z-Day, the hospitals were hit the worst. Everyone took the infected victims of zombie bites to the hospital, then they turned and it was a bloodbath. Haroon can tell the struggle in this building must have been fierce.

He walks slowly, listening carefully to the walls. There aren’t any zombies he can see in the lobby, but he’s sure there has to be several of them hiding somewhere. He goes straight for the stairs and takes them to the top floor. This level leads to the roof. As his footsteps squeak through the cracked walls, something reacts to the sound. It’s a scratchy, gurgling sound. He keeps going. The roof access door is straight ahead. Trying to step softer, it’s no use. His shoes keep making nose.

The sound of hoarse whispers comes from a room on the right. With his gun pointed at it, he walks sideways to the door. This entrance is where they would bring in emergency patients by airlift. The door is electronic, so it won’t budge open. He tries to pry it open with the shotgun and his flashlight, but they don’t work. He’ll need to find something else.

The only room nearby is the one that was issuing the strange sounds. If there’s anything that can open the sliding doors to the roof, it will be in there. Hopefully, he thinks, it was just the wind coming through an open window.

Haroon moves forward, shotgun leading the way. As he opens the door, he hears another sound. A rumbling, whistling sound. He thinks that one has to have been the wind. It couldn’t have come from a human, not even a dead one. Before entering, he looks over at the sign beside the door and wipes the dust from its surface.

It reads: Maternity Ward.

When he looks into the room, he sees a cracked window. A breeze presses against it, causing a rumbling, whistling sound. The room is mostly a mess of overturned chairs and scattered medical equipment, with a mummified human leg on the floor and what looks to be a pile of dehydrated intestines by the sink. On the other side of the room, behind a broken window, there are two rows of hospital cribs.

Looking around the floor, he tries to find a medical tool that might pry open the exit to the roof. Below an overturned chair, he spots some kind of medical tool that looks something like a monkey wrench covered in a film of ancient blood. He moves the chair with the barrel of his shot gun. The tool actually is a monkey wrench. He wonders why somebody might need a monkey wrench in a maternity ward.

As he walks back toward the door, the sound of a baby crying tweaks Haroon’s ears. A raspy, piercing baby cry. He turns around. The sound is coming from one of the cribs.

“No,” Haroon says. “Please, no.”

Three more baby cries issue from the cribs.

“Don’t tell me that’s for real.”

He steps toward the cribs. He doesn’t want to, but it’s too much for him to accept without seeing it with his own eyes. He’s never heard of the virus infecting infants before. It’s got to be something else.

When he gets to the first crib, all he sees is a pile of clothing inside, covered in shadows. But then he sees movement. He takes out his flashlight and shines it on the shapeless mound.

When the light hits the baby, a hole opens up in the brown flesh and bawls. Haroon doesn’t believe it’s really an undead infant. Even though it is crying, it is just a pile of fabric. His mind has to be playing tricks on him. But on closer inspection, he sees that it is an infant. Its arms and legs have molded into the sides of its body, its back fused to the mattress of the bed, its eyes and nose sunken into its hollow skull where half of its brain had been eaten out. It’s now just a blob of meat with a crying mouth.

Two more zombie infants begin to cry, and Haroon backs away. He runs out of the room, pries open the exit with the monkey wrench, then runs across the roof to the helicopter pad. He doesn’t care about the vow that he made to stay behind. He wants to get out of there. Right now. He isn’t even sure if his Nemy is in the contest at all. He can’t rely on the hope that he’ll find her. He’s going home.

Near the helicopter, there’s a large wooden plank with a red target spray-painted on it. He goes to that. Below it is a two-way radio and three words written above the target: “Call for rescue.”

“Hello?” Haroon says into the radio.

No reply.

“I’ve made it,” he said. “Am I the first one? Or am I too late?”

A camera ball floats down below his shoulder, filming his call.

“Hello?” he cries.

Then a voice comes on the other end. “Congratulations. You’re the first contestant to arrive safely. We’ll pick you up in ten minutes. Just hold on.”

“Ten minutes?” Haroon yells. “Pick me up now, damn it. I want to leave RIGHT NOW!”

But they do not respond. He punches the sign over and yells into the radio.

A figure steps across the roof toward him. When he turns around, his anger freezes on his face. The naked woman comes closer, holding a double-bladed S-shaped sword.

His eyes brightened. It was her. It was really her. She was really on the show as he thought. He tossed the radio over his shoulder and stepped toward her. He didn’t care about the helicopter anymore. He had her. As long as he had her, that’s all that mattered. Because he loved her more than anything in this world.

After two months of visits, Nemy and Haroon had fallen in love. They didn’t talk much when he came to visit her. They spent their time in bed together, making love, caressing each other’s bodies, kissing one another with ferocious passion. Until the day it all ended.

One night, he had not propped the door open with his shoe correctly. The door had closed and he was locked in. Haroon jumped out of bed and went to the glass.

“It’s outside,” Nemy said, pointing at his shoe on the other side.

He rubbed at the tension building in his forehead.

“Come back to bed.” She pulled him to her and pressed their ears together.

Haroon shook her away.

“Do you know what this means?”

She didn’t.

“If I get caught in here I’m not going to be allowed to see you again.”

Her eyes widened.

Haroon banged on the glass, calling out for Terry. But he knew his friend wasn’t there. Terry was disgusted with hearing their lovemaking and started to clean up earlier, before Haroon got off work. Still, he kept banging on the glass until his fists were red.

“Stop,” Nemy said.

He kept banging.

“Stop.” She grabbed his fist. Her grip was so strong that resisting was like trying to bend steel. “We still have now. We should make the most of it.”

Then she wrapped her arm around him and kissed his neck. Tears flowed down his eyes. He wished he had the strength to pull his fist out of her fingers so he could punch the glass one more time, but she pulled his arm down around her body. He released his anger by kissing her with all the power he had in him. He grabbed her around the waist and picked her off the ground, taking her into the bed.

They made love with more passion than they ever had before, because they knew it would likely be their last chance. They tried to put a lifetime worth of lovemaking into a single night, and when all of Haroon’s energy was spent they lay together in each other’s arms. Haroon’s neck pressed against her smooth glistening cheek, Nemy’s finger tip snuggled inside of his belly button.

In the morning, Haroon awoke to a knocking on the glass door. When he looked up, there were a crowd of people gathered outside. A group of ten security guards and five doctors. The man in front was Dr. Chan, a hunched over Asian man with small eyes that sunk deep into their sockets. Haroon grabbed his clothes and put on his pants.

“I was wondering how Specimen #5 had become pregnant,” said Mr. Chan. “I was worried that she was able to reproduce asexually.”

Haroon paused when he heard that, then looked at Nemy. Her eyes narrowed at him.

“I’m sorry,” Haroon said, putting on his shirt. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Didn’t mean to what?” Chan asked. “Fuck my specimen?”

Haroon and Nemy stepped out of the bed and went to the door.

“It wasn’t my intention to mess with your work. I just—

“Get him out of there,” Chan told the security officers. “He’s under arrest for committing an act of high treason.”

“What?” Haroon cried. “High treason?”

Five of the men came into the cell. Haroon backed away. They surrounded him. The two in front grabbed him and pulled him out of the cell.

“No,” Nemy said to Chan.

“No?” asked Dr. Chan, concerned by the disobedient tone in her voice.

“Don’t take him from me,” she said, with wide eyes. “I love him.”

The doctor was not pleased with her statement. “You what?”

“I love him!” she cried.

Haroon looked back. It was the first time she ever put emotion into her voice. A tear was coming from one eye.

Then she jumped at the door and reached her arm through the crack before it closed. She grabbed one of the guards who was trying to take away her love.

“Bring him back!” she cried, then she ripped off the guard’s arm.

As she fell back with the severed arm in her fist, the cell door slammed shut and the glass sprayed with blood. The armless guard dropped to the ground, screaming.

“You’ll never see him again,” said Dr. Chan.

As they dragged Haroon away, he looked back at her eyes wider than they’d ever been. Tears flowed down her face.

“Come back!” she yelled at Haroon. “Come back to me!”

She tossed her bed at the glass and pulled the sink out of the wall.

“We’ll see each other again some day,” Haroon told her. “I promise.”

Nemy dropped to the ground, reaching in his direction with her arms.

“We’ll be together again,” he yelled, as they took him out of the lab and dragged him down the hall.

And he was right. They are together again.

“Nemy!” he cries.

He runs to her.

He can’t stop smiling at the sight of her. They finally found each other. They finally can be together. He doesn’t think he even wants to go back to the island. He wants to find someplace else, where they can live alone together for the rest of their lives. Even if they barricade themselves in a building right here in this city, it would be like they were in her prison cell again. Together. Only he would be the one trapped in the cell and she would come and go, to get food and supplies. Then she can have her baby and they can all live together as one beautiful perfect family.

When he sees her face in the light of the low morning sun, she narrows her eyes at him. The same way she always does when she’s happy. Tears of joy flow down his eyes. He can’t wait to hold her again, make love to her again. He even can’t wait until she puts her finger in his belly button until it bleeds.

Something pushes him backward. He balances himself and looks down. A double-bladed sword is sticking through his chest. It is her sword. When he looks up at her, he sees her hand is raised. She had purposely thrown it at him.

“Nemy?” he says, as his blood gushes down his legs and he falls to the ground.

After Haroon had been escorted out of the lab, Dr. Chan looked down at his creation. She was on the ground, tears sprinkling onto her paper-white legs. He shook his head at the mess she had become.

“Have her memory wiped,” he said to the doctor next to him. “That asshole destroyed months of conditioning. We’re better off starting over from scratch.”

“What about the pregnancy?”

Dr. Chan thought about it as he wiped blood from his white tie.

“I’d like to dissect it,” said Dr. Chan, then he walked toward the exit. “Have an abortion arranged immediately.”

As Haroon bleeds to death on the roof of the hospital, he looks up at the sky. A helicopter flies overhead. A spurt of blood from an artery sprays up into the air. Then he sees his love leaning over him, her pale naked flesh glistening in the light, her eyes no longer narrow.

“At least I got to see you one last time,” Haroon says to her. “My beautiful Nemy…”

The woman bends down to him.

“My name isn’t Nemy,” she says. “It’s Nemesis.”

Then she rips her sword out of his chest, taking his insides out with it.

Scavy and Junko wake in an office on the upper floor of the white-bricked castle. The morning sun shines through on Scavy’s face. His yellow mohawk mostly flat to one side of his head. He didn’t get much sleep during the night. All the screaming and moaning from the zombie crowds outside kept him awake. Junko on the other hand slept like a baby. Curled up under the desk, snoring loudly for hours. He’s surprised her snoring didn’t attract the zombies outside.

When Junko stands up, she stretches and smile-yawns, as if she just had the best night of sleep in her life.

“How were you able to sleep like that?” Scavy asks.

“Practice,” she says. “I slept on the streets of Copper every night until I was capable of sleeping pretty much anywhere, even in the most dangerous sides of town. Contestants rarely get sleep in the Red Zone. Lack of sleep often gets people killed, especially on the third day.”

“Good thing for me we don’t have to worry about a third day anymore,” Scavy says.

“Don’t feel so lucky. It’s going to be damn near impossible to get to the helicopter before those merc punks unless we find some transportation.”

“What kind of transportation can we get out here? Bicycles?”

“Probably not even that. Skateboards maybe, but they would be useless on the street out there even if we knew how to ride them.”

Scavy doesn’t even know what a skateboard is.

“So what do we do?” he asks.

“Get lucky,” she says.

Outside the window, zombies roam the streets. The thickest section of the horde is just below the fire escape they had entered the office from.

“There’s too many of them out there,” Junko says. “We need to find another way out.”

Running down the street, they see a familiar face. Rainbow Cat is dodging through the lumbering corpses, determined to get through to the end.

“Isn’t that the hippy chick?” Scavy asks.

Junko examines her carefully. There is a blood-drenched bandage around her neck, but other than that she looks fine. “How is she still alive?”

As Rainbow moves into the middle of the street, she gets surrounded on all sides. The zombies close in on her. One of them grabs her by the dreadlocks from behind and rips her back.

“Well, she’s not going to be alive for much longer,” Junko says.

Rainbow Cat spins around and flips the zombie over her head. She whips out her machete and severs her captive dreadlock in midair. Then she hacks off another’s arm and then one of their heads. She leg-sweeps three of them, then cartwheels out of the center of the mob.

“Whoa, shit,” Scavy says, smiling. “When’d she get so tough?”

Junko shakes her head. “I knew the bitch wasn’t to be trusted. She probably wanted us to think she was a helpless weak little girl this whole time, so we wouldn’t see it coming once we got to the helicopter.”

A zombie pukes in Rainbow’s direction, but she kicks another corpse into its way to block the green toxic spew.

“Rainbow!” Junko yells to her from the fire escape. “Over here!”

Rainbow looks up and sees them. She gives them a one-minute signal with her finger, then roundhouse kicks the puking zombie over a fire hydrant.

“Meet us on the other side of this building,” Junko yells.

“I’ll be there,” Rainbow says.

Many of the zombies break away from the horde and go for Scavy and Junko. They crowd against the wall, but can’t reach the ladder to the fire escape.

Scavy looks over at Junko. “I thought she wasn’t to be trusted?”

“Yeah, but we need all the help we can get. At least we know where we stand now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Just don’t turn your back on her.”

Junko watches Rainbow carefully as the hippy expertly dispatches zombie after zombie. She wonders if she’s made the right decision letting her come with them. That machete she’s carrying is new. Junko thinks she had to have gotten it from another contestant, mostly likely stealing it or killing the person in order to get it. Although Rainbow will be useful on their trek through zombie country, Junko’s going to have to figure out a way to ditch her before they get to the helicopter.

Scavy and Junko get their equipment together, arm themselves, and prepare to leave the barricaded room. They had not entered through the castle-shaped building, so they have no idea what is in store for them.

“What was this place, anyway?” Scavy asks.

Junko looks at the yellowed papers on the wall and desk. “I believe it’s some kind of indoor theme park, designed to look like a castle from the Middle Ages.”

Scavy doesn’t understand theme parks or the Middle Ages.

“You know, knights, castles, armor, kings, jousting, swords.”

Scavy nods. He understands most of those words.

They remove the cabinets blocking the door and enter the hallway. Much of this area is dark, but the end of the hall is illuminated with sunlight. Junko leads them in that direction. When they turn the corner, they enter a glass bridge overlooking a courtyard. Below them they see a Medieval-themed miniature golf course. At the end of the course, on a platform, they see a large vehicle. It is a hand-built flying device, which looks like some kind of bicycle-powered hang glider.

“What the hell is that?” Scavy asks.

Junko puts her hand on the glass and stares solidly at the flying machine.

“I don’t know. But I think it might be exactly what we needed.”

A man steps out from behind the flying machine, carrying a wrench and spool of wire. He’s short, malnourished, and disheveled. His black slacks are brown in the knees. His white button-up dress shirt is ripped up, missing buttons, and covered in grease. His tie is covered in cigarette-burned holes.

“I guess another contestant beat us to it,” Scavy says.

The small man wipes the sweat from his brow, then exchanges tools from a toolbox and gets back to work.

“I don’t think he beat us to it,” she says, shaking her head. “I think he built that thing.”

Oro was a genius, or at least that’s what he called himself. His father owned the only tobacco farm in Copper. Due to this, his family was one of the most wealthy in the quadrant. Oro, the runt of his father’s children, did not want to grow up to be a tobacco farmer like his large older brothers. He had bigger things in mind.

“I am a genius,” he would tell his father. “I am not suitable for the life of a mere laborer.”

This was always his excuse to get out of doing chores. He was above hard work. He wanted to put his brilliant brain to work on greater things. He didn’t have time to waste on his father’s business.

“You’re a citizen of Copper,” his father would say. “The life you have now is the best you’re ever going to get here.”

“When the world sees my genius they will have to let me into Platinum,” he would say. “Then you will understand my greatness.”

Ever since he was ten years old, this is what Oro used to say. He had nothing to back up his claims of genius. He was only a kid. He was uneducated and was slow even when it came to doing simple tasks on the farm, but his dream was to one day be recognized as a great thinker. So that’s what he spent most of his time doing: thinking. It didn’t matter what he was thinking about. He just thought that’s what geniuses do.

He spent large amounts of time at the dump. The other quadrants used Copper and the ocean as their dumping ground, throwing out many items that just didn’t exist in Copper. Although nothing worked, Oro thought the items in this garbage were wondrous, magical devices. From toasters, to oscillating fans, to remote control cars. These were items you couldn’t buy in Copper. He believed the people in Platinum were all great inventors. They all had such strange and wonderful devices there. He thought all of them had been invented by common everyday citizens of Platinum. He wanted nothing more than to become an inventor and live in Platinum with other genius minds.

“You’re a simple farmer,” his father would say. “Nothing more.”

“You will see,” said young Oro. “One day you will see my genius.”

He spent much of his time trying to prove his genius by inventing new items out of the scraps found in the garbage dump. If he could only invent something worthwhile the citizens of Platinum were sure to allow him to live among them. But most of what he built were useless collections of machine parts that had no use.

His earliest projects didn’t do anything at all. They were just crude sculptures that he believed were important inventions. After being laughed at by his older brothers, he focused on inventions that actually did something. He was never more proud of himself than the time he created his first working invention, in his late teenage years. It was a collection of gears and machine parts. When started, the wheels on it would spin. That was all it did.

“That’s all it does?” his father asked.

“Yes, but it is self-propelled. Once it starts, it keeps going. It doesn’t require fuel or cranking.”

“But that’s all it does? It’s useless.”

Oro raised his fists into the air. “It’s genius!”

“If you’re such a genius then invent me something useful,” said his father. “Something I can use on the farm. Then I might actually approve of this hobby of yours.”

“That would be easy,” he said. “For a genius.”

So Oro got to work. He spent day and night trying to figure out what kind of device could be used on the farm. This pleased his father, because Oro was finally taking an interest in farming. Within a year, young Oro understood the technology behind farming more than any of his brothers. He even started pulling his weight around there. His father was proud of himself for finally figuring out how to motivate the young slacker.

But then something happened that surprised his father. Oro had invented something that did actually help his farm. The device was a combine threshing machine which used an upgraded self-propulsion system similar to that of his first working invention.

“It works faster than the old one,” Oro said. “But this one doesn’t require fuel.”

His father and brothers just stared in shock, after seeing the demonstration. It seemed too good to be true.

“The money you save should be quite significant,” Oro said.

“This is amazing,” his father was nearly speechless. “It’s brilliant. It really is brilliant.”

“Of course it is,” Oro said, smoking a freshly grown cigar. “What else would you expect from a genius?”

He had been wanting to say that for a long time, and it was as satisfying as he imagined. The look of smugness grew on his face with every compliment he received from that day forward. That is, until his father started receiving complaints for the substandard tobacco he had been shipping into the upper quadrants. Using the new device, the machine didn’t separate the tobacco plants as efficiently, causing bits of the stalk to mix in with the leaves. This created a harsh, bitter smoke that didn’t burn properly. That year’s crop had been ruined and most of his clients wanted their money back.

“I’m ruined!” the father yelled at Oro. “I can’t believe I actually used something you had built. I’m such a moron.”

“The design can be improved,” Oro said. “I’m a genius. I’ll work out the flaws with little difficulty.”

“Do you actually believe I’ll trust you a second time?” His father grabbed him by the throat, tears of anger in his wrinkled gray eyes. “I’ve had enough of you. I don’t ever want to see your face around here again.”

Oro broke out of his father’s grip.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll leave. I am a genius. I have more important things to build than equipment for your pathetic farm.”

“Get out of my sight,” his father said.

“I will. You don’t deserve one ounce of my greatness.”

“Get out!” His father said, hitting his fist onto the useless threshing machine so hard that it sliced open his knuckles.

While his dad was bandaging his hand, Oro gathered his things, swiped several boxes of his dad’s favorite cigars, and left home. From that day on, he lived in a shack near the garbage dump, trying to invent something of value. He invented other self-propelled devices. From sewing machines to power drills to motorized roller skates to transportable elevators.

Once a year, an executive from Platinum would come to see his inventions. This man was always looking for new devices that would improve the lives of the citizens of the upper quadrants. He was even willing to check out the devices of some pathetic wretch living in a junkyard with atrocious hygiene and delusions of grandeur. Every visit, the executive would look over each of the items and then shake his head.

“No,” he’d say. “None of these interest me.”

“But they are genius!” Oro would say. “Each and every one is brilliant. Nobody else could have invented them but me.”

“But I can’t use any of them,” the executive would say. “None of them would be of any use to the people in Platinum. You’re going to have to try harder than that.”

So Oro tried harder. He built vehicles that did not require gasoline. He created a dehydrator that could preserve meats for years. He invented a one-man airplane that did not require fuel. If he could get just one of these inventions accepted by the executive he would be able to move to the Platinum Quadrant. But none of them were ever good enough.

“I am a genius!” Oro would cry, as the executive returned to the gates of Silver. “Why can’t you recognize that!”

“Genius isn’t enough,” the executive said as he passed through the gates. “I need something that’s going to sell.”

Oro fell to his knees, exhausted. He had constructed great devices, many which would better the lives of everyone on the island. They were recycled from the waste of the upper quadrants and could easily be mass produced with very little expense. But his ideas were all shot down. Nobody recognized his genius. But he would keep trying. He would fight to his last breath to prove his genius to the rest of the world.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Oro sees the other two contestants on the sky bridge behind him. He doesn’t let on that he knows they are there, pretending to be too busy working on his latest creation: the glider-cycle. It wasn’t easy getting all the parts together, but it’s almost completed. He will be the first one to arrive in the evacuation zone because of this machine. His genius is too great for him to fail.

He steps over to his tool chest and takes it around the back of the glider-cycle, keeping his eyes locked on his work. He stretches and yawns, then slowly places his toolbox on the ground. By the time Junko and Scavy figure out what he’s doing it’s already too late. Oro jumps for his weapon—a rocket launcher—and aims it at the bridge.

“Nobody’s winning this contest but me,” he says, as he fires a rocket directly at them.

Oro had a plan from the moment he awoke in the hotel at the beginning of the previous day. He knew he was going to build a vehicle that would ensure his safe arrival to the evacuation zone before anyone else. He refused to team up with any of the other contestants. They were inferior to him. He had no use for lesser minds.

“I deserve to win this more than anyone else,” he said to his reflection in a hotel room mirror. “I am a genius. I cannot fail.”

But there was one major setback. The weapon he had been given was a rocket launcher. With only seven rockets in his pack, it was not the most useful means of defense. The launcher itself weighed nearly 40 pounds, which wouldn’t be that much if each rocket didn’t weigh 17 pounds each. Since Oro himself was such a petite man, his pack ended up weighing twenty pounds more than he did. He could hardly even drag the pack, let alone lift it.

When he left the hotel with everyone else, he dragged the large pack one inch at a time until he got past the wall. When he saw the weapon he had been given, he groaned with frustration. He believed the show’s producers were playing a very cruel joke on him. They probably thought it would be funny to see such a small man lugging around such a large weapon.

Oro had to ditch all but three of his rockets just so that he could carry it on his back, and even then it was slow going. Luckily, he left on the safer side of the building that was nearly free of the living dead. He left with some innocent-looking young lady named Wendy, who tagged along without his consent.

“I don’t need a puppy dog following me around,” he told her.

She looked up at him with puppy dog eyes.

“Get lost.”

Then he threw rocks at her until she ran away.

After a few blocks, Oro was able to get a shopping cart at a dilapidated grocery store which made wheeling around the rocket launcher much less arduous. He was also able to get several supplies for the machine he planned to build.

He decided not to use the rocket launcher against the undead. That weapon had only one use, to kill the contestants who got in his way. For the zombies, he had only one defense. Since he couldn’t run very fast with his shopping cart, he used a variety of chemical sprays on them. While at the grocery store, he grabbed cans of bleach, ammonia, drain cleaner, and bug poison. He grabbed some pepper spray as well, but the aerosol had long left the containers, rendering them useless. He used simple squirt guns to deliver the chemicals, which were still functional even though the cracks in the plastic leaked chemicals over his hands.

As he walked through the wasteland, the zombies came to him attracted by the sound of the cart. But as soon as they approached, he dowsed their eyes with some drain cleaner. Although they were dead, he was still able to disorient them and temporarily blind them long enough to walk by. Whenever there was a horde, all he had to do was combine some bleach and ammonia to make mustard gas and toss a bucket of it in the center of the crowd. It was enough to slow them down.

He continued moving all day, picking up pieces for his machine as he went. Eventually he needed a second cart and that slowed him down even more. By the time he got to the Medieval Times indoor theme park, he found all that he needed. The well-preserved flags of the theme park were just the material he needed for the wings of the glider.

As he closed the gates of the artificial castle, he tossed the last of his mustard gas at the zombies out front. While they shrieked and twitched at the chemicals in their eyes, Oro looked at them and put his finger to his mouth.

“Shhhh,” he said. “There’s a genius at work.”

Then he got started on his flying device.

The brittle glass walls of the sky bridge shatter as the rocket flies through, past the bridge into the upper castle wall. Junko and Scavy dive for the hallway on the other side just before the bridge is engulfed in a cloud of flames.

“Bow to my genius!” they hear the tiny man yell.

Scavy and Junko take the stairwell down to the ground floor. They enter a grand banquet hall designed to look like King Arthur’s round table. There are two crippled zombies writhing on the floor. They are wearing the costumes of serving wenches and look to have been beaten with a golf club until all of their bones were broken. Junko and Scavy peek around a wall overlooking the miniature golf course. They get a better look at the flying machine. It is a bit smaller than they had realized.

“What’s going on?” Rainbow Cat says as she enters through a broken window.

“Crazy fucker with a rocket launcher,” Scavy says.

Rainbow Cat steps over a wriggling serving wench and goes toward them.

“You were awesome out there,” Scavy says. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Self defense lessons,” she says, as she wipes some green slime off of her machete on the bottom of her shoe. “A girl’s got to be able to defend herself from scumbags.”

Scavy smirked. “Where’d you get that machete?”

Instead of answering the question, she leans against the wall and looks around the corner to see their opponent. Her eyes sparkle when they see his flying machine.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“I’m not sure,” Junko says. “Some kind of aircraft.”

“Can we get it from him?” she asks.

“No,” Junko says. “We should get out of here. The explosion is going to attract more zombies.”

“But it’s worth the risk if we can fly out of here.”

“It only looks like it seats one person,” Junko says.

“So? At least one of us can use it. We can draw straws.”

“Forget it. It’s not worth fighting a guy with a rocket launcher.”

“We’ve got a sniper rifle,” Rainbow says. “Come on, we can take this guy.”

“I said forget it,” Junko says. “I wouldn’t even know how to fly that thing, would you?”

Rainbow Cat stays silent.

“Let’s just get out of here,” Junko says, going for the window Rainbow had entered through.

With a loud sigh, Rainbow follows after her.

Oro did eventually invent something worthy of getting him into the Platinum Quadrant. It wasn’t his flying machines or home recycling devices that satisfied the executive. It was a football alarm clock.

“This is it!” said the executive. “This is what every man in Platinum needs!”

It wasn’t even a real invention. It was just something Oro slapped together for fun and he hadn’t even planned to present the item to the executive. He didn’t even know what a football was for.

“Are you sure you don’t want this water filtration system? It turns salt water into fresh water.”

“No, no,” the executive shook his head. “I’d have no luck selling that. Now this,” he held up the football clock, “this I can sell.”

Oro was a bit disappointed that his winning invention took him only a few minutes to shove together, whereas his other projects took months.

“A football alarm clock…” The executive’s face brightened with excitement. “Genius. Pure genius.”

It was the only time he felt bad to be called a genius.

When he moved into Platinum, it was not at all as he hoped. The people there weren’t geniuses. Most of them seemed dumber than his low class father. They were a bunch of fat, spoiled, lazy morons. He couldn’t stand any of them. His football alarm clock sold well though, and he was able to live a comfortable life for a while. And more importantly, he was finally given the respect he rightly deserved.

He got used to the good life. He spent his time on the golf course or at the public swimming pools. He smoked cigars and drank purple martinis on rooftop bars overlooking the sea.

“Ahhh,” Oro would say. “The life of a genius…”

But the good life didn’t last. Oro couldn’t produce another invention as stupid as the football alarm clock and his funds ran out. He was quickly thrown back to Copper, back to his old way of life. The executive stopped making his annual visit to the junkyard. Oro thought he was doomed to stay there for the rest of his life.

Then Oro came up with a plan. While he lived in Platinum, he had seen the first season of Zombie Survival on television. If he could volunteer to go on the show and win then they would move him up to the Silver Quadrant. He would also have a passport to Platinum and could try to sell some new inventions there. He would then come up with the most ridiculous, superfluous inventions possible. He already had plans for creating pedicure slippers, giftwrap cutters, laser-guided golf clubs, and the baconator, which was a cooking device that could infuse any type of meat with the taste and texture of fried bacon. All he had to do was win the contest and he could live the rest of his life in luxury.

But just getting on the show wasn’t as easy as he expected. He had met with Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla at a bar in downtown Copper. He heard the rumor that if you knew an interesting contestant for the show you’d be rewarded greatly. He had the perfect contestant for him.

“So who’s this contestant you have in mind?” Wayne said.

“Me,” said Oro.

Wayne squinted at him. He rarely got volunteers. “You? Why would I choose you for the show? There’s nothing special about you.”

“I am a genius,” Oro said.

Wayne continued as if he didn’t even hear him. “Look at you. You’re a shrimp. You have no muscle, no agility. You’re ugly, so there’s no sex appeal there…”

“But I’m a genius!” Oro stood up in his chair. “I would survive longer than any contestant you could ever find. Perhaps I’m not the strongest, fastest, or most attractive contestant, but I can outwit anybody. You have never met an intellect as impressive as mine before.”

Wayne laughed. Oro slapped the smile off of his face, then found several guns pointed at his chest.

“Put me on that show and I’ll show you what kind of genius I am,” Oro said, stubbing out his cigar on the producer’s plate.

“Fine,” Wayne said. “I’ll put you on.”

Wayne waved at his men and they took Oro by the elbows. Then he said, “I could use another easy kill anyway. Not enough early bloodshed and the viewers get annoyed.”

A few weeks later they gassed him at his shack by the garbage dump. He saw them coming and greeted them at the door.

“Are you ready?” one of them asked.

“A genius is always ready,” was his response.

Oro knows that he can win this contest, as long as he can protect his glider-cycle. He knows where the intruders are hiding. He had seen a girl with blonde dreadlocks peeking her head out from the entrance to the banquet hall.

“You can’t hide from a genius,” Oro says, pointing his rocket launcher at the wall they are hiding behind.

He fires the rocket at the wall, knowing the explosion will kill everyone on the other side of it. The wall crumbles in the fiery blast. On the other side, through the window, the trio of intruders run across the street, safe from the blast. They survived, but at least he scared them away.

The explosion causes more damage than Oro had expected. After the inner wall goes down, the outer castle wall soon follows. Through a ten foot opening through the pile of debris, the walking dead enter Oro’s sanctuary.

“Get back,” Oro says to the scab-encrusted corpses.

Oro grabs his putter and stomps toward the zombies. He hits one over the head so hard it collapses to the ground.

“I don’t have time for your interruptions,” he says, slamming them left and right with his gold club. “I am a genius. I require solitude.”

“Brains!” the zombies cry.

“Exactly,” he says.

As he beats the zombies back with his club, he recognizes that the scabbed-over skin of one of the zombies looks a lot like bacon. It’s like all of its skin had been put into his future invention, the baconator. This gives him an idea for marketing it to the executives: “Even brains can be baconized!”

Oro continues to daydream as he fights the dead. He doesn’t kill any of them. Once they fall down, they just get right back up, but he keeps swinging at them one at a time without tiring. He’s got the adrenalin of his fantasies to fuel him. He’s got a bright future to think about.

“I am a genius,” he says to the undead. “You can’t possibly defeat me.”

As Oro clobbers them one at a time, another contestant passes by the castle outside. It is Heinz. He stops for a moment to look at Oro fighting back the mob of zombies. Then he moves on.

Heinz doesn’t mind the small white man when there’s a Japanese bitch that needs to be killed. He can see her just down the street, running through the wandering dead. He’s almost got her. He imagines how her flesh will smell when he burns her alive.

“We’re being followed,” Junko tells Rainbow and Scavy, as she chainsaws a zombie’s head down the middle.

Scavy looks back.

“Don’t look back!” Junko yells. “We’ve got to lose him somehow.”

“Who is it?” Rainbow asks.

A camera ball floating over her head zooms in on the conversation.

“I don’t know.” Junko leads them farther down the road. “One of the less friendly contestants, I’d say. We should move faster.”

They pick up the pace, but the zombies crawling out of the surrounding buildings make it difficult to get away. They can’t dodge them, so they have to hack their way through corpse after corpse. This slows them down. Even worse than that, because they are doing all the zombie killing, their pursuer is able to move down the street quickly without the need to fight the already-incapacitated undead.

“He’s gaining on us,” Rainbow Cat says.

They turn around to see Heinz charging toward them, burning the few zombies left standing with his flame thrower. Junko tries to avoid going face-to-face with any of the lumbering dead, but they just keep coming. A zombie with a newspaper beard grabs her by the chainsaw arm. She fires her 9mm into its head but the small bullets just barely hold it back from biting into her wrist.

Heinz reaches into his pack and pulls out the two mechjaw heads. He straps them to his arms. Then opens fire. The trio use the zombies as cover, but the corpses’ flesh is so thin and liquidy that many bullets pierce through and whiz past Junko’s shoulder.

Rainbow Cat hacks the newspaper zombie with her machete until it lets go of Junko. The three of them duck for cover inside of an old apartment complex.

Scavy knocks back a zombie with his spear as it comes in from the street, then he stares back at Heinz. The large nazi makes a pretty big target, especially with those clunky tanks of fuel strapped to his back. If only he could get a better shot at him. Bullets tear into the bricks near Scavy’s head and he falls back.

“You two keep going,” Scavy tells Junko. “I’ll deal with this guy.”

“Are you serious?” Junko asks.

Scavy holds up his sniper rifle. “I can take him. I’ll go upstairs and find a good vantage point. All you have to do is lure him down the street until he gets past me, then I’ll get him from behind.”

“It’s a bad idea splitting up,” Junko says.

“I can do this,” Scavy says.

Junko stares him in the eyes, assessing him. She doesn’t like the idea of leaving him behind, even if he does end up taking down the nazi. Even though he’s an incompetent slacker, she’s learned she could trust him. Maybe not trust him enough to competently watch her back, but trust him enough not to stab her in the back. Which is more than she can say about Rainbow.

“Okay,” Junko says. “But you catch up to us as soon as you can. Don’t get yourself killed.”

Scavy flips the safety off of his rifle. “Don’t worry about me.”

Junko and Rainbow Cat stand up and prepare themselves to run.

“I’m going to fuck his ass up and shit.”

Junko nods, then the two girls take off running. Bullets mince the asphalt by their feet, as the two girls weave past the shrieking undead.

Scavy looks back at his opponent, to evaluate how much time he has to prepare. The nazi is only twenty yards off, blasting his Gatling gun, the mechjaw head growling against his fist. Then Scavy runs for the stairwell, to find a good sniper’s nest on an upper floor.

Scavy was a worthless, low life, conniving, thieving, drug-dealing, vandalizing, good for nothing punk. But when it came to his friends, he always had their back. If anybody fucked with one of his own he didn’t let them get away with it.

Gogo was the one he regularly had to back up. She was a self-centered whore and a complete bitch, with a mouth that often got her into a lot of trouble. Whenever she didn’t like someone, she let them know. She didn’t care who they were. If a customer in her strip club pissed her off while she was dancing she had no problem spitting on them, kicking them in the head, or even farting on them when she had her dancing bare ass pointed directly in their face. This would often lead to her coming home with a black eye or a bloody nose. Scavy never let a single asshole ever get away with doing that to her, even if she sometimes deserved it. He’d find them and leave them bruised and broken in an alley somewhere.

One time Gogo fucked with the wrong guy. It was Domino, the leader of the largest street gang in Copper. They were called the Diamonds and they had twelve times the man power of any gang in the quadrant. Scavy’s gang didn’t have a name. He thought gang names were pretentious, and there was no gang name more pretentious than the Diamonds. Scavy hated the Diamonds stupid gang name, and their stupid matching leather jackets with the word Diamonds on the back spelled out in artificial diamond studs. Scavy already hated them just for that, but then Domino gave him a much bigger reason to piss him off.

Gogo often slept with the men she danced for, but only if they paid well and she thought they looked fuckable. Domino was a large, balding, scarred-up, punk who Gogo did not find the least bit fuckable. But Domino wanted her, and he thought he deserved to get whatever he wanted.

“Listen, bitch,” he grabbed her by the arm as she walked toward the dance floor. “I know you just fucked that scrawny kid over there. If you can fuck him then you can fuck me.”

Gogo just laughed in his face and called him a limp-dick slob. Then she started her dance. While she was on stage, Domino gave her looks of intimidation. When she leaned into him, teasing him with her breasts to show him up close what he’s never going to get, Domino whispered in her ear. “I’m going to fuck you whether you like it or not.”

Then Gogo grabbed a cigarette from his ashtray and put it out in his eye. He shrieked and jumped back. Gogo seductively bit her lip at him, as her body curved to the music on the stage. Domino clenched a fist and came at her, but the bouncers grabbed him before he could get on the stage. The punk and his crew were escorted out of the club.

But before he left, he yelled back to Gogo, “Your ass is mine, bitch.”

After the club was closed, the bouncers offered to escort Gogo home, but she said she’d be fine. She could take care of herself. That is, until Domino and four of his men jumped her on her way home. They put their hands on her mouth and pulled her into an abandoned slaughter house. There, they beat her until she was in too much pain to fight back, then they took turns raping her. With a switchblade, Domino cut a slit down the center of her lips, then kissed her. She spit blood in his face. Then he headbutted her until she was out cold.

Gogo arrived at Scavy’s place naked and crying. It was the first time he’d seen her in such a fragile, hysterical state. He cleaned her up and put her to bed. She didn’t stop crying until she was asleep.

“I’m going,” Scavy told Popcorn. “Look after her.”

“Shouldn’t you wait for Brick?” she asked, as she washed the blood from Gogo’s tattered clothing in the sink.

Scavy shook his head. “That guy is out there basking in satisfaction right now.”

Opening the drawer of his dresser, Scavy dug through his cache of weapons. There were knives, guns, and railroad spikes, but Scavy decided to go with his old standby: a crowbar. When he was really pissed off at somebody, he used a crowbar on them.

“I want to beat that satisfaction off his face while it’s still there.”

Even though Scavy has just met Junko, he considers her his friend, just as much a friend as Gogo or Brick. She’s earned his respect, proved herself to be one tough chick, and Scavy thinks of himself as a brother to anyone he respects. That’s why he’s willing to do this for her. Plus, he’s been wanting to use his sniper rifle on some asshole ever since he got the thing.

On the fifth floor of the apartment complex, Scavy takes his position. Heinz has gotten a bit further ahead than the punk had expected, but not nearly far enough ahead to get out of his range. A camera ball floats over Scavy’s shoulder, another is filming Heinz. Scavy swats the camera ball away like a fly as it gets too close to his face. When he looks into the scope of his sniper rifle, it’s out of focus. He adjusts the scope, but only seems to blur his vision even more.

“Fuck!” Scavy says, trying to figure out his aim.

Meanwhile, Heinz gets further away. If Scavy doesn’t figure it out soon the nazi will be too far out of range, then Junko and the hippy will have to deal with him on their own. Scavy continues working on the scope, but just can’t get it focused right.

“Damn son of a bitch!” he says, slamming his fist down on the rifle.

A man steps out of the intersection and blocks Heinz’s way. Scavy recognizes the man. It is Laurence, the vagrant who had handed out the bags back at the hotel. Only, the guy looks a lot different now. His body is made of gold-plated steel, glimmering in the mid-morning sunlight.

Laurence stands there, in Heinz’s way, his hands on his hips.

“Shooting women in the back as they’re running away,” Laurence yells at the nazi. “The T-2000 don’t think that’s very friendly behavior.”

Heinz stops his pursuit, staring at the golden metal man with a confused expression. The dog heads on his hands snap and snarl in Mr. T’s direction.

“Mr. T’s gonna have to teach you a lesson in manners,” then he punches his metal fist into the palm of his other hand.

Heinz opens fire on Mr. T, but the bullets just ricochet off the cyborg’s chest. Mr. T roars as he rips off a chunk of the building next to him, then lifts it over his head. The piece of brick wall is the size of a dumpster.

“Here’s a gift for you,” Laurence says, tossing the enormous piece of wall at the nazi. “Courtesy of Mr. T.”

Heinz ducks out of the way and the chunk of debris explodes against the cement wall behind him. Then he continues firing. Scavy adjusts the scope, not sure whether Laurence is on his side or if he’s got to shoot down the both of them. He’s able to see Laurence through the glass, letting it out just a bit to zoom off of his chest.

Heinz’s Gatling gun runs out of ammo, so he drops the mechjaw into his pack and raises his left arm. The mechjaw on his left arm isn’t connected to a Gatling gun. It’s connected to a rocket launcher. Heinz squeeze’s the dog’s brain and the rocket shoots from his fist. It hits Mr. T square in the chest and the enormous cyborg flies back, through a wall, into an old bank building. The explosion creates an avalanche, and three stories of the building cave in on top of the T-2000.

“Fuck…” Scavy says, as he witnesses the nazi take down the cyborg. He wonders if going up against Heinz is such a good idea. If a bulletproof Mr. T with a robot body isn’t strong enough to defeat him how does Scavy have a chance?

Heinz waits for the dust to settle, to make sure the T-2000 will not be getting up again. Once he is satisfied, he turns to the direction Junko was headed for and continues on his hunt.

Scavy lifts the sniper rifle to his shoulder and peers through the scope, aiming for the gas canisters on the nazi’s back. The aim is dead center. Scavy knows that he only has one shot at this. If he misses he’s dead. He takes a deep breath.

When Scavy pulls the trigger, the kickback slams his shoulder hard, jerking back his arm. The bullet hits the street in front of Heinz, missing by over five feet.

“Damn it,” Scavy says, rubbing his bruised shoulder.

Heinz turns around, slowly, and looks up at Scavy. Then he aims his mechjaw rocket launcher at the window and fires.

When Scavy caught up to Domino and the other Diamonds who raped Gogo, they were doing Waste in the back of a broken down van. He crept up alongside the graffiti-coated vehicle, and heard Domino’s low grunting voice and laughter coming from the other four in his crew.

“Smell my finger,” he could hear Domino say. “I still got the scent of her sweet cunt on me.”

“Get that out of my face,” another said. “That shit is rank.”

The others laughed.

Their conversation only pissed Scavy off more. He gripped his crowbar tightly, fantasizing about how it will feel to bash Domino’s face in with it.

When the first of them stepped out of the van to take a leak, Scavy broke his kneecap with the crowbar. The guy fell face-first into the street.

“What the fuck?” Domino said.

Scavy jumped in the back of the van and smashed the closest asshole in the mouth. Blood and teeth splashed across the backseat. Then he lowered the crowbar into another’s forehead, knocking him out with a loud metal clunk. Scavy leapt out of the back of the van before the other two could grab him.

Domino pulled out his switchblade and came out of the van after him. As the knife darted toward his throat, Scavy swung the crowbar. It made contact with Domino’s knife-hand, breaking three of his knuckles. The switchblade flew across the street.

The other punk grabbed Scavy from behind, but quickly found a crowbar in his eye. Scavy turned around and beat him repeatedly, smashing the crowbar against his face, his chest, and his arms that waved out for mercy. When Scavy looked back, Domino was running away. His four men were either out cold or writhing in pain.

“You’re dead, asshole,” Domino yelled back at Scavy from the far end of the street. “Your whole crew is dead.”

The punk lying in the street with a dislocated kneecap went for a gun in his coat. When Scavy saw the gun pointed at him, he clicked his heels together, triggering a switchblade that emerged from the toe of his right boot. With his boot-knife, he kicked the punk in the stomach five times, stabbing him in his guts, until the bloody piece of shit dropped his gun.

Then Scavy picked up the pistol and shot the other three until they stopped moving.

Heinz’ rocket hits the wall below Scavy’s window, taking out the front of the building. The blast knocks Scavy back across the room. When he gets to his feet, Scavy can hardly balance himself. There’s a piercing ring in his ear and the taste of blood leaking from the roof of his mouth. He retrieves his rifle and staggers back to the window. He doesn’t realize his face is charred black, nor does he realize a piece of debris has impaled his side.

The flames in the burning window cover his view of Heinz, but Scavy aims the rifle through the smoke and fires again. The bullet is several feet off target.

Out of rockets, Heinz tosses the dog head and pulls out his flame thrower. He approaches the entrance to Scavy’s building. Riding the adrenalin of being blown off of his feet, Scavy keeps firing. He gets off two more rounds, but shooting vertically at a moving target isn’t a manageable task for a poor shot with a mortal wound. Heinz enters the building unscathed.

The camera ball filming Heinz floats in the doorway below Scavy, hovering in one place as it zooms in on the nazi’s back. Scavy’s bloody teeth open in a smile as he puts his eye in the scope. He aims directly at the center of the camera ball, holds his breath, then fires.

The explosion takes out the entire block, blowing out the first floor of the apartment building, as well as the first floors of every building on the block. Scavy jumps back and dives over a bed, as the flames rise into the air and engulf room. When the air is clear, Scavy lifts his head and laughs.

“Checkmate, motherfucker!” he cries.

Most people assume Scavy is as dumb as a rock, but he’s actually a lot smarter than he looks. Although uneducated, he’s got a natural intelligence. He’s quick-thinking, clever, and a born strategist. Chess was a game he loved to play, and he never lost a game in his life.

When Brick met up with Scavy and saw the four dead bodies of Domino’s men lying in the back of the van, Scavy was already working on a plan.

“Oh, shit,” Brick said, checking for a pulse on any of the fallen gang members. “Why the hell did you have to kill them?”

“I got a little carried away,” Scavy said. “They pissed me off.”

“Do you know what that means? Domino isn’t just going to let you get away with this.” Brick looked around, making sure the street was clear. “We have to go to war now. With the fucking Diamonds of all gangs!”

“They asked for it. If they would have left Gogo alone this never would have happened.”

“Gogo would have been fine,” Brick said. “She’s a fucking whore.”

Scavy got into Brick’s face. “How can you say that? She’s your girlfriend.”

“I know it’s bullshit what happened to her,” Brick said. “But you’re going to end up getting all of us killed.”

“Not if we get them before they get us,” Scavy said.

“Are you kidding? They outnumber us twenty to one and they have more firepower. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“It doesn’t matter how big their gang is,” Scavy said. “We just have to get clever. Outsmart them.”

Brick shook his head. Scavy had never seen the big guy so worried. The reason Scavy became friends with him in the first place was because the guy never backed down even when the odds were against him.

“Trust me,” Scavy told Brick, placing a hand on his shoulder. Then Brick grunted and gave him a nod. “Help me take their jackets off. I have a plan.”

The plan was simple. Although the Diamonds were the biggest street gang in Copper, they were not the top dogs in the quadrant. The local drug lord, Tim Lion, had a much more powerful crew behind him. Domino was a mere cockroach in comparison to Tim Lion. So Scavy, Brick, and a couple of their friends decided to dress up as members of the Diamonds gang using the jackets they took off of the dead bodies of Domino’s friends. Then they robbed a drug shipment that was headed into Silver. Let everyone see the Diamonds jackets they wore. Then they dropped off the drugs on the porch of one of the Diamonds’ hangouts.

When Tim Lion got wind of what the Diamonds had done, he sent his men after Domino. With the drugs in his backyard and all of the witnesses of the robbery, Domino had little chance of proving his innocence to the drug lord. Scavy had fucked him good.

As the smoke clears in the room, Scavy stands up and feels the tightness in his hip. He looks down to see the piece of shrapnel in his side and all the blood soaking his clothing. Because he can’t feel any pain, he realizes that the wound must be even worse than it looks.

“Fuck me,” Scavy says, then wheezes out a laugh.

Something shoots him in the back. A fiery pain at the base of his spine. He rubs the wound and lifts up his fingers to reveal a layer burnt skin. He turns around to the camera ball floating in the room with him. It shoots another laser at him. He jumps over the bed, but the blast gets him in the thigh.

He knew it was against the rules to fuck with the cameras, but he thought the punishment for that was the self-destruction of the cameras. Having other camera balls attack him with lasers was not something he had anticipated.

Scavy tosses a blanket over the camera, grabs his naginata spear, and runs out of the room. The camera ball blasts blindly through the sheet as Scavy closes the door on it. Out in the hall, he sees that all the movement is causing his wound to rip open even more. He needs to pull out the metal but worries that it’s the only thing keeping the blood in his body.

As he steps carefully down the stairs of the apartment complex, Scavy comes face-to-face with Heinz. Not only did the nazi survive the blast, he had come out of it without a single scratch on him. Scavy nearly topples over in shock at the sight of the guy, standing there with his flame thrower pointed at him.

Scavy freezes. His sniper rifle is aimed at the ground. He’s not sure if he can raise it up in time to shoot the nazi before he’s eaten alive by flames. But Heinz doesn’t fire. He too is frozen in his place as he examines what Scavy has on.

“You are a member of the Fifth Reich?” Heinz asks him.

Scavy looks down at the clothes he wears. The uniform he had gotten off of the sculpture of Adolf Hitler in the wax museum is similar to that of Heinz. They have matching swastika armbands. Scavy decides his best course of action would be to play along.

“Yeah,” Scavy says.

“You must be one of the operatives positioned in Copper. I had no idea there was another Brother in this competition.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Heinz notices the look of hesitation on Scavy’s face. He can tell the punk has no idea what he is talking about.

“Why would you help that Japanese cunt you were with?” Heinz’s tone becomes more aggressive. “A true Aryan would have not allowed her to live so long.”

Scavy considers lying and telling him that he was just playing Junko the whole time, and he planned to kill her once she proved useless to him, but he respects the woman too much for that. He’d rather go sniper on flame thrower than sell her out like that.

The camera ball blasts its way out of the apartment on the floor above them. Scavy realizes he’s trapped on both sides: the camera ball hovering down the staircase and Heinz pointing his flame thrower, convinced the punk is an imposter with no right to be in that uniform.

Scavy always finds himself between a rock and a hard place. It’s almost as if such situations seek him out. When Tim Lion and his men hit Domino’s hangout, after killing a good portion of the Diamond crew, he allowed Domino to explain himself. Lion had no clue why Domino would be stupid enough to try to get away with stealing his merchandise, so he was curious.

“How could you be so stupid?” Tim Lion said, pointing his index finger at his head.

Then, somehow, Domino convinced Tim Lion that Scavy set him up and that he had nothing to do with it. Domino mentioned his four dead men with missing jackets. There were four men who hit Lion’s shipment. The packages of Waste were left on the porch unopened. Nobody in their right mind would leave all of that on a porch unless it was Scavy sneaking in at night to frame him. All the pieces fit together. Lion believed him.

So then Scavy in his crew not only had the Diamonds after them, they also had Tim Lion coming for their heads.

“This is even worse,” Popcorn yelled at Scavy. “We’re all dead for sure.”

“Not necessarily,” Scavy said. “We’ve already taken out half of Domino’s men without a single casualty. I’d say we’re doing pretty good.”

“But what about Tim Lion?”

“Lion has no idea who we are. If we can just take out Domino then Lion wouldn’t know how to find us.”

“But he’ll find out eventually. The guy practically owns this quadrant.”

“Let’s just focus on one problem at a time.”

No matter how dire the situation seemed, Scavy had optimism. He knew there was always a way around a problem. He just had to figure it out.

With his fingers tapping on the sniper rifle, Scavy decides to just go for it. He’s going to shoot the guy. Perhaps he will get burned, but it’s possible he can kill the nazi before the fire kills him. As long as he doesn’t miss, he can take the guy out.

“The Japanese girl is smart,” Scavy says. “A lot smarter than you.”

This infuriates Heinz more than Scavy was expecting.

“You went after me and let her get away,” Scavy continues. “Dumb move. I’m not letting you out of here alive.”

Heinz laughs. “Brave talk, for an insect.”

Scavy chuckles with him, exposing his charred bloody teeth. Then Scavy raises the sniper rifle and fires.

The Diamonds knew that the only way to make peace with Tim Lion was to bring him Scavy’s head on a platter, so Scavy didn’t have to hunt down Domino. He just had to wait for the prick to come to him. Domino didn’t know exactly where Scavy lived, but he knew the side of town he hung out in. Scavy, Brick, and the rest of his crew were known to hang out in the Southeastern park by the shore. It wasn’t exactly a park, it was a wide open piece of land that was once a junkyard, where citizens of Copper often dealt drugs, got drunk, got into fights, played chess, ate lunch, and just hung out. Scavy and his crew were often seen patrolling the park like bulldogs. It was the first place Domino was going to check.

“I’ll hang out here, by myself,” Scavy said to his crew. “When they see me that’ll bring them out into the open. I want the rest of you to get them from behind.”

“That’s it?” Brick asked. “That’s your plan? It sounds like suicide.”

Scavy smiled. “All my best plans sound like suicide.”

Scavy gets off a round with his sniper rifle, but Heinz gets him first. The flames engulf Scavy with such force that he drops the rifle as it’s fired. The bullet misses Heinz completely. Unarmed and coated in fire, Scavy thrashes around, trying to put the flames out as he is burned alive. With each flame that Scavy puts out, Heinz covers him in several more.

Then Scavy stops thrashing around and jumps at Heinz, grabbing tightly around the waist. It catches Heinz on fire and they shriek in each others’ ears as they burn together.

“I told you I’m not letting you out alive,” Scavy yells at him.

Heinz screams, “You’re going to get us both killed!”

Then Scavy tears the hose out of a gas canister on Heinz’s back and breaks away from him. Heinz whips his arms around, trying to get the tanks off his back as the leaking gas catches fire.

Scavy dives for cover, just before the explosion. He jumps out of the stairwell into the third floor hall, then rolls on the ground until he puts the fire out on his clothes. His face is charred black, his mohawk burned off, and uniform melted to his flesh, but he’s still standing. He gets up and staggers back into the stairwell to retrieve his weapons. Grabbing his naginata spear, he sees Heinz looking up the stairs at him in anger. Although half-burnt, the nazi was able to get the tanks off before they exploded.

As Scavy grabs his spear from the steps, Heinz pulls out the double-fisted sledgehammer.

“I’m going to squash you like the vermin that you are,” Heinz says, as he swings the hammer.

The hammer smashes into the stairs by Scavy’s feet. The punk uses the chance to swing the blade of the spear at Heinz’s head, but Heinz catches it with his free hand.

“Not good enough,” Heinz says.

Scavy pulls the spear out of his grip, slicing open the palm of the nazi’s hand. Then he ducks as the floating camera ball comes in from behind, blasting its lasers at the punk. The particle beams pass over Scavy’s head and hit Heinz in the chest. Not enough to kill him, but enough to throw him back.

Scavy takes off running—in a hopping, limping, getting-blood-all-over-the-place kind of way—down the hallway of the third floor. Heinz chases after him. Scavy dodges into an apartment, then jumps down a hole to the second floor. As Heinz enters, he doesn’t see Scavy looking up at him from the floor below. Scavy drives the spear through the hole, into Heinz’s leg. The blade cuts through the calf muscle, scraping across his fibula bone. Heinz screams at the pain, then roars at the punk. He lowers the hammer down at the spear, breaking it in half.

Scavy laughs up at Heinz and flips him off. Then Heinz puts his blowgun to his lips and shoots a poisoned dart into Scavy’s forehead. The punk’s laughter cuts off as he sees the dart sticking out from between his eyes. He pulls it from his skin and examines it slowly, as if in a daze, then tosses it aside.

“What the fuck was that?” Scavy’s voice is soft and shaky.

Heinz laughs as he pulls the spear blade out of his leg.

“Fuck,” Scavy says, then takes off down the hall, before the camera ball hovering behind Heinz’s shoulder can take a shot at him.

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.

Domino was dead. The Diamonds no longer wanted to fight a war against Scavy. Then Tim Lion was found dead in his club one morning, murdered by a lone mysterious assailant.

“Tim Lion’s dead?” Brick said to Scavy. “Are you serious?”

“That’s what they say,” Scavy said, lighting a cigarette.

“You’re the luckiest motherfucker on the planet. I can’t believe you got away with it.”

“I think I’ve got a guardian angel,” Scavy said.

Just before Heinz lowers the sledgehammer into Scavy’s skull, something hits the nazi in the back of the head. His neck breaks, his body goes limp, and then he falls to the floor. Scavy looks up to see a guardian angel standing over him. A golden, glimmering guardian angel named Mr. T.

“You forgot this,” Mr. T says, then tosses the twisted casing of a rocket at Heinz’s chest.

Scavy smiles in a daze as his guardian angel picks him up and carries him down the hall. A particle beam is fired at Scavy, but his guardian angel blocks it with his elbow, then swats the camera ball out of his way.

“Hang in there,” says the guardian angel. “The T-2000 knows how to fix you up. You’ll be back on your feet in no time.”

When Mr. T looks down at Scavy, he sees tears of blissful joy on the punk’s face, as if Scavy is looking at the most beautiful angel in all the heavens.

The three merc punks arrive at their destination: the city’s art museum. A fortified white building covered in brown hop vines.

Xiu says, “Let’s get in, get what we need, and get out.”

Her Arms nod their heads and get to work, prying open the barricaded entrance. Zippo uses his claw-hands to cut through the boards and vegetation. Vine uses his wires to rip open the doors. Clouds of dust billow out of the shadowy interior as the merc punks enter.

“The client wants as many as we can carry,” Xiu says. “But most importantly we need to get the masterpiece. He said we’d recognize it by the red dress.”

Her Arms get straight to work, searching the museum for the works of art they were hired to retrieve. Many of the paintings in the museum have been destroyed by moisture and UV rays entering from the cracks in the ceiling. Some of the works of art are so faded that the images are completely unrecognizable, worthless.

Zippo finds one that is still mostly intact. A picture of two little girls gathering acorns. He pulls it off the wall and wipes a layer of dust from the surface.

“That’s not one of them,” Xiu tells him over his shoulder. “The ones we are looking for are different. Unique.”

Zippo smiles and gazes at the little girls in the picture. Xiu wraps her arm around his waist and peers longingly into the image from behind Zippo’s shoulder. They put the picture back onto the wall, then press their foreheads together as they take one last look at the girls gathering acorns.

The day Xiu, Zippo, and Vine became a unit was the day that they were married. In Mongol culture, the ceremony that brings three children together into one unit is also a bond of matrimony. Merc punk units are all threesome relationships. They share the same bed as a trio, they mate as a trio, and they raise children as a trio—until their children are old enough to join their own trio.

When the Head of a unit reaches the age of twenty-three, they can decide whether or not to take time off to breed. They have another chance at age twenty-five, and at age twenty-seven. Xiu wanted to have a child. Even though she would not be able to raise it for long, she still wanted to produce young. Zippo and Vine also wanted to have children badly, because it was what their Head wanted. So Xiu put in a request to enter a breeding period.

During a breeding period, merc punks don’t have to go on missions or do much work of any kind. They get to stay on their boat and spend their time trying to get pregnant. These are the happiest days in a merc punk’s life.

The first time Xiu’s unit made love, they were all very awkward. Because a unit is trained to think and act as one being, sex is more like masturbation.

“Ummm…” Xiu giggled as they sat naked on the bed together, in a circle. They were already completely familiar with each other’s bodies, yet intimacy on this level was new to them. It was mysterious, exciting.

Zippo was the most awkward of the three. As an Arm, he is not supposed to have desires and feelings of his own. He is supposed to put all of his attention into mimicking his Head’s feelings and desires. Arms are trained to empty their minds of their own thoughts and fill them with the thoughts of their Head. They see their bodies as puppets for their Heads, and their consciousnesses as mere spectators that view everything from above the action.

However, Zippo sometimes finds himself with desires of his own. He is in love with Xiu, more in love with her than any Arm is supposed to love their Head. Sometimes he wants to hold her in his arms, kiss her with all of his passion, but if Xiu doesn’t order him to do these things he’s not allowed to. He just has to wait for the moment to come, when she commands him to do so.

Zippo was on the bed, shaking with the thought of being able to make love to Xiu for the first time. He knew that Xiu saw it only as if she was just making love to herself, but he couldn’t stop the feelings from flooding in. He waited patiently for Xiu to order him onto her body.

Xiu smiled at her Arms and giggled. It was as if she didn’t know where to begin. They had all been waiting so long for this moment that they could hardly believe it was finally happening.

Zippo visualized strings connected to the end of Xiu’s fingers as she reeled him toward her body. She giggled as she had him lick her left breast, suck her cocoa-colored nipple into his mouth, rub his hands down her tobacco-scented chest. She leaned back and put her hands behind her short black mohawk, as her Arms followed her telepathic commands. Vine kissed the right side of her neck and ear, as Xiu’s strings pulled Zippo’s tongue further down her body, over her belly button, to her inner thighs.

Merc punk threesomes are not quite the same as a normal threesome relationship. When units have sex, it is always the two Arms having sex with the Head. The two arms never make love with each other. Some units are bisexual, but these are only in the cases where the Head and one of the Arms are of the same gender.

Xiu widened her mouth as she masturbated herself with her Arms. She gave herself oral sex with her Left Arm as she rubbed her breasts with her Right Arm. Then she laid back and brought her Left Arm’s penis inside of her.

The moment Zippo felt his Head’s warm insides, he knew that he was already going to have an orgasm. If he could only pause for a moment he wouldn’t pass the point of no return, but he couldn’t

stop unless she commanded him to. “I’m going to come,” Zippo said.

“Don’t,” Xiu ordered, moaning beneath him. “Keep going.”

Zippo tried to do as he was ordered, but it was the first time he had ever had sex. He couldn’t prevent himself from ejaculating before she ordered him to do so. When she felt his penis become soft inside of her, Xiu’s face filled with shock. Her Left Arm had disobeyed orders.

“Get off of me,” she said.

She pulled his strings and moved him to the far side of the bed, then continued masturbating herself with only her Right Arm.

It is common for a Head to prefer one Arm over the other during sexual intercourse. In bisexual units, the Head might prefer one gender over the other. Or a Head might just find one Arm more sexually attractive, or one Arm might perform better in bed.

Zippo tried not to cry as he was left out of the lovemaking. He wasn’t allowed to be sad if Xiu wasn’t sad. He wasn’t allowed to be jealous of the Right Arm. He was not allowed to look away as Xiu masturbated herself without him.

When a Head prefers one arm over the other, the unit would be considered either Right-handed or Left-handed. Zippo had always thought that Xiu’s unit was ambidextrous, until they started to make love. Then he discovered that her unit was actually Right-handed. Although he was supposed to have no feelings of his own, this hurt Zippo deeply. He loved her so much. He couldn’t bear the thought of her preferring Vine over him, even if it was just a little bit.

They come to a chained door upstairs. After searching the entire museum, this is the last door they haven’t searched. Zippo cuts the chain with his right scissor-arm, and the chains clank against the floor.

“Let’s go,” Xiu says, as Vine kicks the door open.

Inside, the room is a vast hall. It had been designed for special exhibits, and there was no exhibit more special than the works on display here.

Xiu enters first, going toward a sculpture in the center of the room.

“This is it,” she says.

The sculpture raises its head and looks at her.

“Brains…” it says.

The piece of artwork is a zombie that had been torn apart and re-assembled into a twisted abstract sculpture, with steel bars woven through its flesh. The ribcage opened like butterfly wings, a black fist in its chest in place of a heart. A living, writhing piece of art created out zombie flesh.

There are dozens of them, abstract sculptures made out of the flesh of the living dead. Along the walls, there are paintings, also composed of undead tissue. Each one still shifting and wheezing, permanently frozen inside of their frames.

“Get as many as you can carry,” Xiu says. “We need to get them to the helicopter before dark.”

Her Arms nod at her, pulling sheets and twine from their bags, to wrap up the valuable works of art.

Their client is the grandson of a man named Gunther von Hagens, the inventor of plastination. His grandfather was a controversial anatomist known for his Body Worlds exhibits, which blurred the line between science and art. He used the bodies of the dead, fixed with a formalin, dissected into unusual forms, dehydrated and gas-cured. This would preserve the bodies, shaping them into grotesque and fascinating works of art.

After Z-Day, Gunther von Hagens had found himself trapped in the United States, in the very city where this season of Zombie Survival is being filmed. Fifty years ago, he barricaded himself in an art museum and slowly went mad. Whether he admitted it to the public or not, Gunther was an artist and human flesh was his medium. Having found himself trapped in the middle of the zombie wasteland surrounded by the living dead, with an infinite amount of time on his hands, he decided to continue his work, but this time he used the flesh of the living dead.

His sanity had left him on Z-Day, when the sculptures in his Body Worlds exhibit had come to life. The sculptures had become infected by the first zombie he had seen, staggering through the science museum and puking green vomit onto his sculptures. The zombie was only freshly turned and security thought it was just a crazed drunk. They escorted it out of the exhibit and the crowd of bystanders turned their attention back on the exhibits.

The first sculpture to come to life was the infant inside of the pregnant woman sculpture. A man saw it moving in there, wiggling. He leaned in for a closer look, then the pregnant woman came to life, bit into his skull, and ripped out his brains with her plasticized teeth.

The crowd ran screaming as the exhibits came to life. A zombie split into three sections on top of a horse trampled through the crowd. A running male zombie with its muscles sprayed out like fans grabbed a woman from behind, weaved his rope-like muscles around her torso, then ripped her throat out. A soccer-playing exhibit staggered through the crowd with his soccer ball glued to his forehead. A paper-thin slab of an obese man gurgled on top of a table.

When he saw his specimens come to life, Gunther von Hagens fell to the ground, bawling. He looked over at his wife and saw blood spraying from the top of her head. A skinless corpse dangling from the ceiling by wires had torn the scalp off of her head. As he watched his wife shrieking, blood coating her dress, Gunther began to scream.

The zombie dangling from the wires looked over at him, chewing on his wife’s scalp. The sight made Gunther scream louder. This made many of his sculptures turn their attentions on him. They staggered toward him. Gunther found himself surrounded by his specimens. A basketball player growled behind his back, a male and a female joined at the crotch pulled themselves across the floor, a chess player with an open skull cried for his brains.

Gunther ripped an umbrella from the hand of one of his exhibits and used it to push his way through the walking dead. He grasped his shrieking wife by the wrist and ran out of there, through the chaos of Z-Day, and barricaded himself inside of the art museum.

This is where he spent the next decade of his life, constructing new works of art out of the flesh of the undead. Eventually, he was discovered by a band of soldiers scavenging the wasteland, and brought back to an outpost outside of town. He re-married, had children, and those children moved to the island of Neo New York. But his works of art were left behind.

His grandson hired the merc punks to retrieve his work from the museum, as many pieces as they could carry. The rumors of his grandfather’s work were spread wide through the Platinum Quadrant. He knew they would become popular gallery pieces. All he needed to do was hire some merc punks willing to go there. Unfortunately, merc punks didn’t travel that far into the Red Zone, they only went on missions near the coasts. That is, until he told the Mongol tribe about the Zombie Survival television show. He told them if he could get a merc punk unit on the show, he would reward them handsomely. Of course, only one of them would be able to come back alive.

“But make sure to get the one with the red dress,” Gunther’s grandson told the merc punks the night before their mission. “That was his masterpiece.”

“Red dress?” Xiu asked.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” he said.

Xiu stares at Gunther’s masterpiece on the wall, a 4’ x 5’ painting using the flesh of a woman wearing a red dress. It was Gunther’s first wife. After she had become infected and turned into a walking corpse, Gunther decided to turn her into the most beautiful work of art he could create. He knew that she never wanted to become one of his sculptures, but it was the only way he could be with her and be safe from infection. She would not become an ordinary sculpture, though. She would become his masterpiece. Like the Mona Lisa, Gunther’s wife was transformed into artistic nobility within the frame.

“Mission accomplished,” Xiu says, as she takes the woman down from the wall, wraps her in a sheet, then ties her in twine.

The woman in the painting rolls her eyes into Xiu’s direction, her lips tremble, begging for mercy.

“Let’s go,” she tells her Arms. “The helicopter is only an hour away. Forty minutes if we hurry.”

Her two Arms nod at her. Zippo doesn’t nod very excitedly. He doesn’t want to hurry to the helicopter. He wants their mission to last forever.

Xiu’s unit sees this as a suicide mission. Even if they succeed, they will not be able to return home as a whole. Xiu will have to leave her two Arms behind. Mongol units are always willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the tribe. The money that would be made if this mission is successful is enough to feed their tribe for a very long time.

After three months into the breeding period, Xiu learned that she was unable to have children. No matter how many times she had sex with her Arms, she could not conceive. This was crushing to her unit. It was what they wanted most in the world. Then Xiu’s unit was volunteered for this suicide mission. Because her unit was unable to reproduce, they were considered expendable by the Mongol tribe.

Zippo didn’t want to go on the mission. Even though Xiu was proud to be of service to her people, Zippo couldn’t help but disagree with her.

“I don’t want us to go,” Zippo said to his Head, the day before the mission. “I don’t want to lose you.”

Xiu kissed him on the head. Even though he surprised her with his disobedience, she decided not to punish him.

The thought of leaving them behind was horrible to her. She would rather stay in the Red Zone and die with her Arms than return home without them. There was a part of Xiu that hopes their mission will fail.

“We will always be together,” Xiu said, rubbing his curls out of his eyes. “Even after we die.”

“In Heaven?” Zippo asked.

“Yes,” she said. “On that day we will be combined into one body, together as we were meant to be, for all eternity.”

Zippo laid his head on her breast, a tear rolling from his eye, as she stroked his dark curly hair. Then she saw Vine ready to move out, so she got up and dropped Zippo face-first into the side of the bed frame.

They arrive outside of the hospital with the paintings shifting on their backs.

“This is it?” Vine asks.

“This is it,” Xiu says.

They pause there for a moment, staring at the crumbled asphalt ground. None of them are ready to part ways. Zippo trembles at the thought of losing Xiu. When she departs, they will just be two empty shells, severed limbs lying on the ground, waiting to be eaten by ants.

“Good journey,” Xiu tells Vine.

She wraps her arms around him and kisses him on the cheek. Zippo wishes she was hugging him instead of Vine. Because the unit is Right-handed, she decides to say goodbye to her favorite Arm instead of both of them. He wishes he could feel what Vine is feeling as Xiu cries on his shoulder. He wishes he would have been a Right Arm instead of a Left Arm.

When Xiu lets go of Vine, she turns to Zippo. His mouth widens in surprise as she embraces him as well.

“Good journey, Zippo,” she says, her hot tears dripping down his neck.

Then she grabs him by the face and kisses him deeply. She holds him with all of her strength, releasing all of her love into him through her lips, her tears running down his cheeks.

When she stops kissing, she looks Zippo in the eyes. She tells him she loves him in the telepathic way Heads communicate with their Arms. Although Xiu’s unit is Right-handed, it is only because Vine is the stronger warrior of the two and a better partner in bed. But in Xiu’s heart, she loves Zippo the most of the two. Zippo was her little sweetheart ever since they were kids. She has always loved Zippo. Leaving him is the hardest part of their separation.

“I’ll finish the mission,” Xiu says, her voice cracking. “Our death won’t be for nothing.”

Then she takes the paintings from Zippo and Vine, and straps them to her back. She bends down and clicks her jumper kneecaps on. Then she nods at her Arms in a last quick goodbye. They nod back.

Xiu’s mechanical kneecaps launch her into the air, up to the roof of the hospital. Zippo looks up at her as she flies, his lips curling into a smile. Although they are separating, it fills his heart with warmth to know how much she loves him. He watches her for every last second, not blinking, enjoying his final view of the woman who was his wife, his mind, his voice, his all.

He wants to yell up at her, tell her he loves her for the first time. He has never told her he loves her, because she has never ordered him to do so. In order to tell her this, he would have to speak with his own free will. He would have to do something he wasn’t ordered to do. Even though it is against everything he has been taught, he decides to do it. He has to.

As Zippo opens his mouth to tell Xiu he loves her, a glimmer of light flashes into his vision. Then blood sprays into the sunlight. Xiu’s body falls to the earth in two separate pieces.

When the two Arms see their Head’s body on the ground by their feet, they don’t know what to do. Without her to give them commands, they are just dead limbs.

Zippo looks up at the roof of the hospital to see Nemesis standing there, her white naked body blocking out the sun. She holds out her hand and her double-bladed S-shaped sword returns to her.

“You fucking bitch,” Zippo yells at the genetically engineered super soldier. “I’m going to kill you!”

Zippo climbs up the cracked wall with his scissor-hands, then leaps at Nemesis. He swings his shears at her, clipping at her cold lizard flesh.

Xiu is not commanding Zippo, but he believes that she is. There are thoughts and commands filling his head, telling him what to do. He assumes they are Xiu’s thoughts, giving him orders telepathically from beyond the grave. He doesn’t realize that the thoughts are actually his own.

Nemesis swings her sword at Zippo, but he catches it in his claw and tosses it aside. The voices in his head are telling him to kill this creature, to avenge the woman he loves. He cries out Xiu’s name as he jump-kicks into the air, foot-scissors widening toward the woman’s paper-white neck.

A memory flashes into Zippo’s head. Since his head has always been filled with Xiu’s thoughts, he had completely forgotten the memory until now.

It was a time when they were still kids. They were training in the Red Zone at night. Their mission was to learn how to sleep in the same vicinity as the undead.

While surrounded by zombies, they weren’t supposed to be talking to each other, but Xiu rarely did as she was told. She covered them with a blanket and lit a flashlight.

“I want to show you something,” young Xiu told Zippo.

She whispered as quietly as she could so she wouldn’t wake Vine or attract the undead.

Little Zippo sat up and faced her.

“I made them,” Xiu said, as she pulled out two tiny dolls. One of them had blonde hair and the other short dark hair, both of them wearing dirty black dresses.

“Someday we are going to have children just like these,” Xiu said. “Two little girls. One with blonde hair and one with black. I want you to be the father of the one with black hair.”

Zippo smiled at the little doll. Its face crudely drawn with charcoal.

“I want you to keep it,” Xiu whispered. “Protect her for me.”

Zippo nodded and took the doll. He held it firmly in his arms to keep it safe. His previous Head had never given him anything before. He had never heard of a Head giving an Arm a gift like this, especially not a precious toy.

“Let’s play,” Xiu said. “Let’s pretend they are our babies and we have to take care of them.”

Zippo nodded excitedly. Then she kissed him on the lips. He blushed and looked up at her pretty round face.

“You’re the daddy,” she said. “And I’m the mommy.”

Zippo straightened his back, pretending to be a strong confident father.

“You can break the rules,” she said. “You don’t have to do everything I say when we’re playing.”

“Okay,” Zippo said, though he wasn’t sure how to play without being given commands.

After a few minutes of playing mommy and daddy, they heard a zombie groaning somewhere nearby. Xiu turned off the light and pulled Zippo down, giggling at herself for being so mischievous. She shushed Zippo as they hid from the zombie, her arms wrapped around his body, still cradling their babies in their arms. Zippo could feel her smiling as her lips were pressed against his neck.

As the memory flashes through his mind, Zippo can still feel Xiu’s smile against his neck. He closes his foot-shears around Nemesis’ neck, tears filling the insides of his goggles.

Nemesis grabs Zippo by the ankle. She twists his leg, breaking it in three different places, and drives his foot-shears into his own chest.

Zippo falls to the ground. His body goes limp as the blades of his scissors cut through the outside of his heart. As he dies, he watches the clouds drifting overhead. Within the clouds, he hears Xiu’s soft, sugary voice. She gives him one last command.

“Come to me,” she orders him.

Vine stands next to Xiu’s body, awaiting her orders. She doesn’t give them to him. She is long dead. Like he did as a child when he lost his first Head, he just stands there, not able to think or act on his own. But an Arm’s job is to intuit his Head’s command before she even has to give him one. If she were alive, Vine would know exactly what she would tell him to do.

“Finish the mission,” she would say.

Nemesis drops down from the roof next to Vine. He looks over at her as she steps across the living works of art toward him, spinning her sword like a propeller by her side.

“Finish the mission.”

Nemesis swings her sword at Vine.

“Finish the mission.”

A wire springs out of Vine’s wrist, knocking the sword back. Another wire shoots out of him and hooks onto the roof above. Before Nemesis can attack again, Vine is pulled through the air to the top of the building. He runs across the roof and shoots his wire to the next building, then swings across. He shoots his wire at the next building, swings to that one, then the next building, and the next building, until he gets far away from the woman who killed two-thirds of his body.

As he flees, Nemesis stands above Xiu’s corpse, watching as the merc punk swings from rooftop to rooftop. She does not follow after him. That wasn’t what she was ordered to do.

It was Dr. Chan who approached Wayne Rizla about getting Nemesis on Zombie Survival.

“She’s ready to be field tested,” said Dr. Chan. “I want to get her in the middle of the Red Zone.”

Wayne smirked at the tiny man leaning on his desk. “No thanks.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dr. Chan. “She would be perfect for your show.”

“She would be boring,” Dr. Chan said.

“But she’s nearly invincible. Nobody would survive as long as she would.”

“That’s the problem,” Wayne said. “It would be too easy for her to win. Where’s the drama? Where’s the excitement? She’s immune to the virus, zombies don’t find her edible, she’s fast, she’s a perfect killing machine. Do you know how boring it will be to see her get all the way to the helicopter in half a day completely unharmed? The show would be over before even a quarter of the contestants were killed. No thanks.”

“But the government won’t give me the funding to airlift her out there myself,” said Dr. Chan.

“Not my problem.”

“There’s got to be a way,” the doctor said. “I’m telling you, she would be very fascinating to your audience.” He thought for a minute. “Maybe if we gave her a handicap?”

“A handicap?” Wayne asked, straightening himself up from his chair.

“What if she had the weakest weapon or something like that?”

Wayne shook his head. “She’s still invincible. No, it would have to be something else…”

Wayne stroked his goatee as he thought about it.

“How about this…” Wayne said. “Her handicap is that the helicopter won’t pick her up until all the other contestants are dead.”

“But what if she gets to the helicopter first?” asked Dr. Chan.

“Then she’ll just have to wait there and kill off any contestant who comes to her… until she’s the last one.”

Dr. Chan nodded. “I think this would work just fine.”

“Better than fine,” Wayne said. Then he smiled. “It will be golden.”

Scavy wakes up to the sight of Mr. T looking down on him.

“Almost lost you there,” says the cyborg.

Scavy sits up. He’s in a hotel bed, in the cleanest room he has seen since he arrived in the wasteland. He’s wearing only boxer shorts, with his torso and head wrapped in bandages.

“It’s lucky you were hit with that poisoned dart,” Laurence tells him. “The toxin slowed your heart rate and the bleeding. If it wasn’t for that you would have bled to death before the T-2000 could fix you up.”

Scavy rubs his wound. “Did we get him?”

Junko nods. “You’re a lucky son of a bitch.”

Scavy looks out the window, the sun is getting low in the sky. “How long have I been out?”

“Too long,” Junko says. “With all the sterilization, we’re several hours behind schedule.”

“But it was worth it to get you back,” says Mr. T, handing Scavy his sniper rifle and some new clothes. “We’re gonna need all the help we can get.”

Scavy looks at the clothes they have picked out for him. Musty-smelling khaki pants with a red and white striped polo shirt.

“This is all you could find?” Scavy asks, frowning at his clothing.

“I think you’d look pretty cute in that shirt,” Mr. T says, giving him a big, frightening smile.

Scavy isn’t sure whether Mr. T is coming on to him or if he’s just so comfortable with his sexuality that he doesn’t fear calling another guy cute.

Rainbow paces impatiently behind them. “Are we ready? Let’s go.”

Scavy stands. He’s able to walk just fine, but light-headed and in quite a bit of pain.

“I’ll be ready in a minute,” Scavy says, holding his side. “We got a plan for getting there faster and shit?”

“Yeah,” Junko says. “But it’s not going to be easy, and we’re not sure it’s even going to work.”

“It’s probably impossible,” Rainbow Cat says.

“What are you two fools talking about?” says Mr. T, waving their comments away. “With the T-2000 on the job, ain’t nothin’ impossible.”

They explain the plan to Scavy. While the punk was out, Junko had come across a group of smart-cars on the freeway. If they can get to those then it is possible that they can drive to the evacuation zone. But there is a problem. The smart-cars have become infected with the zombie virus.

Smart-cars were invented a few years before Z-Day. They were state of the art solar-powered vehicles with organic implants. The vehicles were designed so that they could drive themselves. Because they were fitted with human brains, grown in a lab, the smart-cars were basically living beings. They could think, feel, communicate, and even love. Unfortunately, they could also become infected by the zombie virus.

When Z-Day struck, even the smart-cars were not safe from the hordes of zombies. They were cornered, ripped open, bitten, infected, and joined the ranks of the living dead. And because they were created to last forever, without requiring fuel or much repair, many of the smart-cars are still around, patrolling the zombie wasteland.

Junko had seen undead smart-cars on Zombie Survival in the past, but contestants had never tried to ride them before. They were always run over by them if they got too close, then the vehicle would futilely try to eat their victim’s brains. Because they do not have mouths—normally fed a protein fluid inserted through a slot on the dashboard—eating brains was not possible.

“The problem is,” Junko says. “They will attack us on sight. Even if we manage to get inside one of them, we have no idea how we’ll control it.”

Many smart-cars weren’t even fitted with steering wheels. Their insides look similar to the backs of limousines. The brains of the smart-cars were programmed to be experts at driving. It was said that using a smart-car was the safest way to travel. That is, until they turned into mindless brain-hungry zombie cars.

Junko, Scavy, Rainbow, and the T-2000 walk down the freeway through the city, keeping a look out for the smart-cars. The undead vehicles are no longer in the same spot that Junko had last seen them in. They’ll have to seek them out.

“They could be long gone by now,” Rainbow Cat says.

“We’ll find them,” Junko says.

The four contestants cross a freeway overpass, scanning the interstate below. The road stretches for miles, overgrown with weeds so thick it’s like a brown forest dotted by hundreds of wrecked rusted-out vehicles.

A section on Mr. T’s robot body opens and a pair of small binoculars come out. They raise themselves up to Mr. T’s eyes, then he scans the distance.

“The T-2000 don’t see nothin’ out there,” says Mr. T.

The other four of them stare up at him, surprised to see the binoculars attached to the inside of his chest.

“What else can you do?” Junko asks.

The binoculars fold themselves back into his body.

“Well,” Mr. T says, “the T-2000 wasn’t designed to look pretty. The doctor who built this body designed it for missions near the outskirts of the Red Zone, and so it’s been equipped accordingly.”

“Got any weapons hiding in there?” Scavy asks.

“All the T-2000 needs is Brick and Mortar.” Mr. T holds up his two fists. “Those are the names of Mr. T’s fists.”

“Why do you call them Brick and Mortar?” Rainbow asks.

“Because they’re tough like brick and mortar,” Mr. T says.

“But your fists are made out of steel,” Rainbow says. “Isn’t steel stronger than brick?”

Mr. T pauses. He scratches his chin.

“Hey,” Mr. T says. “Mr. T never thought of that before. You’ve got a point.” He thinks about it a bit more. “But Mr. T’s fists can punch through brick and mortar, so maybe the names make sense after all.”

“If you say so,” Rainbow says.

He doesn’t like her snarky tone.

“Mr. T does say so.”

Ahead, the party of four come across a horde of zombies crowded in a circle, gathered around something.

“What’s that?” Rainbow asks.

“Not sure,” Junko says.

Mr. T uses his binoculars.

“It’s strange,” Mr. T says. “The center of the mob is wide open, as if something is holding them back.”

Getting to higher ground, they look more carefully. In the middle of the mob, there is a girl lying on the street. The zombies are after her, but something is keeping them from getting to her. It’s as if there is a twenty-foot barrier around the girl, but nothing looks to be there. There’s no railing or glass stopping them. It’s as if an invisible wall protects the girl.

“She’s one of the contestants, isn’t she?” Rainbow asks.

“She was,” Mr. T says. “Look.”

His binoculars shift over to Rainbow and she looks through to see blood on the pavement by the girl’s face. She’s dead.

“I don’t remember her,” Junko says. “What was her name?”

“Wendy,” says Mr. T. “I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did. Back at the hotel, she was a sorry sight.”

When Wendy awoke back at the hotel, she was so frightened she couldn’t speak to anybody. Perhaps she could have joined somebody’s team if she had spoken up, but she couldn’t get the words out. When she saw Oro escaping out of the side door, she followed after him, but he wouldn’t let her follow for very long. She was on her own.

The weapon they had given her wasn’t exactly a weapon. It was a lawn gnome. She assumed it had to have been a mistake, then she assumed it had to have been a cruel joke. She wondered what she was supposed to do with it. Smash zombies over the head with it? Poke them with the pointy red gnome hat? The weapon assigned to each contestant was supposed to match that person’s fighting capabilities. She didn’t understand how they could think she would be capable of fighting off hordes of zombies with a ceramic gnome.

“I don’t need a weapon to fight them,” she said to herself. “My greatest weapon is my faith in Jesus.”

Religion was rare on the island of Neo New York, especially in Copper. But Wendy was a devoted Christian. Her mother and her mother’s mother were all dedicated to the faith. They had passed down their only remaining copy of the bible to her. It was a book that guided her through her life.

“You have to go to school,” her mother told her. “I don’t care what those bullies did to you.”

Young Wendy looked up at her mother. Her eye swollen and black. An agonizing pain in her privates.

“But they’ll hurt me again…” Wendy cried.

Her mother handed her the precious family bible.

“Have faith in Jesus,” she said. “He will protect you from the heathens.”

“But he didn’t protect me yesterday…”

“That’s because you didn’t have strong enough faith!”

Wendy looked down at her scabby knuckles.

“Okay?” her mother said.

“Okay,” Wendy said.

Wendy’s school wasn’t really a school. There were only five students who were taught by a lady from the back of the porch outside of her shack. Three of the students were her children. She taught the other two students for a small monthly fee from their mothers.

Unfortunately, the school wasn’t on the best side of town. Wendy was often attacked on her way to and from school, by teenaged gang members or angry old men, who wanted inside of her. She could have tried to sneak through the back streets to get away from them, but her mother told her all she needed was faith and nothing could harm her. But every time, no matter how much she believed Jesus would deliver her from harm, she was raped by different attackers. Sometimes she was even assaulted more than once in a day. When she would arrive home, her mother would have no pity for her.

“It’s because you lack faith,” her mother would say, and if Wendy ever argued back she would be beaten.

She grew up and got a job in a soup kitchen, but her problem never changed. She was still attacked on the street. Her frail body and cowering posture made her a perfect victim. Predators seemed to be drawn to her. Every day, she believed with all her heart that Jesus would protect her. Some days she would get away with no harm done to her, other days she would come home with a ripped dress and a black eye. The last man who attacked her had a white suit and a white goatee. The next day, she awoke as a contestant on Zombie Survival.

In the zombie wasteland, Wendy knew that she had to believe in Jesus more than she ever had in the past. She had to have faith so no harm would come to her.

As she walked down the street in the Red Zone, she moved with confident strides. She did not take a safe route, because she believed that would show a lack of faith. She went straight toward the goal. With all her heart, she believed Jesus would save her. With all her heart, she knew no zombie would lay a hand on her body.

Wendy didn’t have her bible on her, nor her crucifix. This worried her at first because her mother had always told her that carrying a holy symbol or being in the presence of the bible would increase her faith. These things would give her power, but she had none. This worried her greatly.

When she encountered the first zombie, her faith was put to the test. A zombie was standing in her way, growling, calling out for her brains. She paused for a moment. Without a holy symbol, she wasn’t sure if her faith would be strong enough. So she closed her eyes and put all of her soul into her faith. She visualized the beautiful magnificence of Jesus. She let him into her heart, filled herself with his love, and knew that he would let no harm come to her. She kept on her path, marching directly toward the living corpse.

Then something miraculous happened. As she approached the corpse, the creature got out of her way. It cowered before her, trembling at the might of the holy spirit filling her soul. She smiled as she moved on. For once in her life, her faith was strong enough to protect her. When she looked down at the lawn gnome, she discovered she did have a holy symbol in her possession. A blob of brown paint in the gnome’s coat looked exactly like a crucifix. She hugged the gnome close to her body. She knew that Jesus had come to her in the form of a lawn gnome.

Then she came across a large mob of zombies. They barreled through the street toward her. As she arrived to them, they moved aside, opening a path for her to go through.

“You were right, mother,” Wendy said to the heavens. “All I needed was faith.”

She walked all day with no incident. She didn’t run into any other contestant. Every zombie cowered before her faith. She knew she would be the winner of the contest, because she had Jesus on her side. At night, she bunked down in a hotel room, without even locking the door. She held her gnome tightly to her heart.

“You’ll save me, Jesus. I know you will.”

“Wait here,” says Mr. T. “The T-2000 will be right back.”

The others stay back as Mr. T goes down toward the zombie mob. A camera ball floats after him. He punches his way through the crowd until he enters the open circle. The zombies don’t follow him within. Junko, Scavy, and Rainbow come in for a closer look. Mr. T examines the girl’s body, digging through her pack. He tosses the pack aside and takes a lawn gnome lying by the girl’s side. He lifts it up, inspecting each side of it. When he moves it toward the zombies, they back away. He moves away from the dead girl, back toward the others. As he moves, the open circle moves with him.

“What is it?” Rainbow asks.

Junko squints her eyes. “I don’t know, but whatever it is the zombies won’t go near it.”

As Mr. T moves far enough away from Wendy’s body that the invisible perimeter no longer protects her, the zombie horde pounce on top of her. They screech with excitement, rolling over one another, as they tear apart her flesh to get to her brain.

When Mr. T arrives to them, they all stand within the protective barrier. Zombies quickly surround them. Scavy, Junko, and Rainbow Cat stand back-to-back, aiming their weapons at the shambling corpses. But the zombies keep their distance, they do not attack.

Mr. T holds up the lawn gnome.

“They did it…” he says.

“What?” Junko asks, looking back and forth between the gnome and the undead.

Mr. T explains, “The doctor who built the T-2000, he developed a technology that could keep zombies at bay. Mr. T guesses those scientists in Neo New York got it up and running.”

Junko takes the gnome from him. A camera ball overhead zooms in on it.

Mr. T continues, “Inside this little guy, there’s a device that emits a sonic wave that the zombies just can’t stand.” Mr. T takes back the device and bounces it in his metal hand. “This one’s emitting a pretty low frequency, so it only holds them back a dozen feet or so. But with a more powerful emission this thing could hold back at least a square mile, or even protect an entire city.”

“This technology could save the world,” Junko says.

“If those suckas bothered to use it,” he says. “Mr. T don’t think those fat cats in Platinum care about saving the world at the moment. They’re more interested in their own well-being. The only thing they care to use it for is as a mere toy on this vile television show.”

“So we can use this to get safely to the helicopter?” Rainbow asks. “And even if we don’t get to the helicopter, we can still use it to get out of the Red Zone, can’t we?”

“The T-2000 isn’t sure how long the power supply will last,” says Mr. T. “If it’s solar powered then it will last all the way to the coast, but that’s doubtful. It’ll likely only last for a few days. Maybe less.”

“Knowing Wayne,” Junko says. “It will likely be less.”

“So if this thing protected that girl from the undead…” Rainbow asks, looking back at the mound of corpses attacking Wendy’s body. “Then what killed her?”

Wendy had made it a third of the way to the evacuation zone. Mobs of zombies followed her, surrounded her, but they could not touch her. She believed her faith in Jesus was protecting her, but the power that held the zombies back was really a device hidden inside her lawn gnome.

Then Wendy came across a pack of mechjaws. They growled at her from a distance. When the girl saw these hellhounds, snarling and gnashing their teeth at her, she did not fear.

“Have faith,” her mother’s voice said in her head. “And Jesus will protect you.”

Wendy had faith. She marched forward, directly toward the mechjaws. Then the Gatling gun on one of their backs whirred in a circle. Bullets sprayed into her body. She looked down at the holes in her chest, blood dribbling down her blue dress. Then she fell back into a pool of her own blood.

As she lay dying, she looked up at the clouds. Tears drained from her eyes.

“I’m sorry, mother,” she said to the sky. “My faith wasn’t strong enough.”

The mechjaws growled at her from the distance.

Her last words were, “My faith was never strong enough.” Then the gnome rolled from her limp hands.

“Her body was riddled with bullet holes,” says Mr. T. “I think those cyborg zombie dogs got to her.”

“We have to be careful,” Junko says. “This thing might protect us from the zombies, but it doesn’t protect us from the mechjaws.”

Mr. T grunts in agreement. “And we should watch our backs. A pack of those things might still be in the area.”

The other three nod their heads at the cyborg.

Mr. T gives them a thumbs up.

Then he gets run over by a truck.

The SUV-sized zombie smart-car plows through the zombie horde, slams into Mr. T, taking his body across the field with it. The lawn gnome flies out of Mr. T’s hands, soaring through the air alongside severed zombie body parts. It lands several yards away, on the other side of the mob.

Junko, Scavy, and Rainbow Cat suddenly find themselves in the middle of the zombie horde without protection. The zombies fill the open space between them.

“Go for the gnome!” Junko yells.

The Japanese woman’s chainsaw arm roars into life. She slashes her way through the corpses, taking off limbs and heads. Behind her, Rainbow Cat swings her machete, chopping at the limbs coming in from the back. Scavy stays between them, using the butt of his rifle to push the corpses back.

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.

“We’ll be there shortly,” Junko says, while directing the zombie car with the lawn gnome. “Be ready for those merc punks. They are going to be a lot tougher to deal with then the zombies.”

Scavy nods and loads his sniper rifle.

“So who gets to go on the helicopter?” Scavy says. “If we all do make it there in one piece.”

Junko pauses. It’s a conversation she was hoping to avoid.

“We draw straws,” says Mr. T. “It’s the only way.”

Junko thinks about it for a minute, then sighs.

“I’ll agree to it only if everyone else agrees,” Junko says. “But everyone has to agree to the outcome no matter what happens. The three losers will have to give their life to protect the person who gets the longest straw.”

“Well, the T-2000 agrees to those terms,” says Mr. T. “It’s the only way that’s fair.”

Scavy puts his rifle in his lap.

“Fuck, why not,” Scavy says. “I’m in. If I don’t pull the long straw I’ll still support the winner. You got my word.” He looks down at his hands, then looks up with a smile on the side of his mouth. “The three of you deserve to get out of here more than I do, anyway.”

There is a long pause before Rainbow Cat speaks up. All of them look at her, wondering what she’s thinking.

“Okay,” she says. “I agree, too.”

“You sure?” Junko says.

“Yes.”

“You promise you won’t disregard who pulls the long straw the second you see the helicopter?”

“I Promise!”

Junko takes a deep breath. “Okay. Well, let’s do it.” Then she turns to Rainbow. “Let me see your knife.”

Rainbow pulls the dagger out of her bag and gives it to her. Junko grabs one of Rainbow’s dreadlocks and cuts it off.

“Ow!” Rainbow cries, holding her head.

Junko tosses Scavy the dagger and the dreadlock.

“Cut that into four pieces,” she says. “Each one bigger than the last. We are going to create a hierarchy. If the person with the longest piece of hair gets killed or infected, the person with the next longest piece of hair takes their place. If something happens to that person then the next one in line gets to go. And so on.”

Everyone understands. Scavy begins cutting up the dreadlock.

“That way, there’s still hope for all of us,” she says. “We can still work as a team.”

Rainbow draws the shortest dreadlock.

“What the fuck?” Rainbow cries. “I can’t be the last in line! I need to get back to the island. I need to!”

“Fair is fair,” says Mr. T.

“But you don’t understand,” Rainbow says. “This isn’t about me. It’s about my husband’s work. He’s the greatest novelist of our time. If I’m not the one who makes it back to the island his masterpiece will never be published!”

“You agreed to the rules,” Junko says. “There’s no backing out now.”

“But—”

“No buts,” Mr. T says. “It was a fair draw. Mr. T is third in line, and you don’t hear him whining about it, do ya?”

Rainbow keeps quiet as Mr. T raises his voice. Her face becomes flushed. Junko pulls the second longest piece of hair and thinks nothing of it.

When Scavy is left with the longest piece of hair, his face lights up.

“What?” he says. “I got the longest! No shit!”

“We’ve got your back,” Mr. T says.

“But I don’t deserve this,” Scavy says. “I think Junko should take it. I’m just a fucking scumbag loser.”

“You’re not a loser to me,” says Mr. T. “I saw you take out that nazi fool all by yourself. In my opinion, you’re a first class hero.”

Mr. T smiles bright white teeth at Scavy.

“I’ll trade you,” Rainbow says. “You said you don’t deserve to go, so give me the long straw. You can have the short one.”

Scavy doesn’t want to give her his straw.

“Fine,” she says. “Junko can take the long straw and I’ll take the second longest. How about that?”

Scavy thinks about it. Though he likes the idea of giving Junko the long straw, he would rather not give Rainbow the second longest.

“No trades,” Mr. T says. “We all agreed before we drew. This is the lineup. No matter what, we got to stick with that, or else none of us will get home.”

“I agree,” Junko says.

Scavy puts the lock of hair in his pocket and nods his head. After an intimidating stare from Mr. T, Rainbow nods her head as well.

Vine stands on a rooftop overlooking the hospital. He sees Nemesis, standing on the roof of the hospital as still as a statue. She is naked, her cold white skin glimmering in the sunlight as the sun peeks out from a sheet of gray clouds, her long black hair flowing in the breeze.

His hands shake as he stares at her. Vine doesn’t know exactly what he’s going to do. He’s lost without Xiu and Zippo. He knows Xiu would want him to finish the mission. He has to kill the woman with the paper-white skin, reclaim the artwork, and wait for the helicopter to arrive. But he’s not sure he can fight without Xiu telling him what to do.

There was only one time in his life that Vine was in a similar situation. In his early twenties, Vine had become separated from Xiu and Zippo in a city along the Mexican coast. He was all alone and had to make it back to the ship by himself.

At first, he couldn’t even walk on his own. He was just a dead severed limb. Then zombies started to come for him.

“Cerebros!” they said.

He still couldn’t move. If he had Xiu he could have cut them all down with his wire in less than a second, but operating his wires was difficult for him. It was always as if she was the one operating his wires for him. But then something happened. When the zombies got too close, his survival instincts clicked in and without thinking about it he cut down every last zombie on the street.

He looked at his hands. He was able to move them. He tried his feet. He was able to move them, too. That’s when he realized it was possible for him to move on his own, without the commands of his Head.

But as he crept through the city, he still had problems using his own thoughts. That is, until he channeled Xiu’s voice. He found that if he pretended his thoughts were really Xiu’s thoughts, he could move on his own. Perhaps he wasn’t as efficient of a soldier without his Head, but he was still capable of defending himself.

Zombies ran at him from left and right. His wires darted out of his wrist, cut off their heads, then came back. He shot a wire at a zombie pig, hooked onto its snout, spun around, and tossed the pig face-first into a wall.

Although he did not feel at all whole, he was still a competent zombie-killing machine. He cut his way through the streets, down to the beach, and was picked up by the closest ship. When he met with Xiu again, she rested her forehead against his chest. His thoughts emptied from his head, her thoughts filled it up. From that moment on, he had no need to think on his own. Until now.

Vine focuses his thoughts, attempts to bring back the method he used years ago. He tries to imagine his thoughts are really Xiu’s commands. If he focuses hard enough, envisioning Xiu by his side just out of view, he will be able to complete his mission.

Just as Vine launches his wire at the next building and swings toward the ground, he sees a black vehicle barreling across the weed-coated parking lot, heading straight for the hospital.

“There it is,” Junko says, as they drive across the parking lot to the hospital. “We need to get onto the roof.”

As they race toward the hospital, the vehicle shows no signs of slowing down.

“So how do we stop this thing?” Scavy asks.

Junko looks at him. “I was hoping you had some ideas.”

“I didn’t think that far ahead,” Scavy says.

The wall of the hospital closes in on them.

“Jump!” Mr. T cries, opening his door and rolling out into the street.

“Oh, fuck,” Rainbow says.

Scavy grabs the hippy and they roll out of the car across the fractured asphalt, scraping up her elbows and knees.

When it’s Junko’s turn, she waits for the last minute. When she moves to the side of the vehicle with the lawn gnome, the car swerves. This slows it down enough for her to jump out safely. The car slams through the wall of the building, causing an avalanche of bricks. The entire front of the hospital collapses onto the smart-car, nearly knocking Junko off her feet as she retreats.

Mr. T is helping up Scavy and Rainbow when Junko arrives to them. They are engulfed by a cloud of dust from the building, filling their lungs with grit, blinding them. Junko waves the dust away from her face and tries to focus.

“We need to move,” Junko says, hacking up bits of rubble. “That crash is going to attract a lot of zombies.”

“But aren’t we safe from them with the gnome?” Rainbow asks.

“Not if the battery runs out,” says Mr. T.

The sound of screaming zombies echoes in the distance. Coming from every block surrounding the hospital, the undead are on the run, forming together into the largest horde of the undead they have yet faced. Beyond the parking lot, a tidal wave of zombies flows in their direction.

“Here they come,” Junko says, holding the gnome tightly to her chest.

As the dust settles, they see a lone figure standing on top of the rubble: A nude woman with a double-bladed sword.

“Who’s the bitch?” Scavy asks.

“Is she another contestant?” Rainbow asks.

Junko squints her eyes, then shakes her head.

“I don’t think so,” she says. “If she was a contestant she would have taken the helicopter and gotten out of here already.”

Nemesis stares at the four contestants, determining which target she should take down first. The large man with the metal body is obviously the strongest. If he is eliminated the others will have little chance of survival.

Mr. T jumps between the woman and his friends, as Nemesis tosses her curved double-bladed sword at them. He reaches out to grab the weapon on the air, but it cuts off the little finger on his left hand. The blade continues spinning through the air, curving across the parking lot, and returns to Nemesis’ hand. Mr. T looks down at the sparks fizzling from the remains of his finger. He clenches a fist.

He looks up at her. She leans on one leg, her head cocking to the side.

“That’s how you say hello?” Mr. T yells at her. “Let the T-2000 show you the proper way to greet somebody.”

Mr. T charges her. His steel feet crush the asphalt beneath him, rumbling the earth with every step he takes. As he runs, his legs move faster and faster. He holds out his fist into a cannonball flying directly for her head. But once he arrives, Nemesis flips into the air and lands on the other side of him. His fist crashes into the building, knocking another section of wall into the street. He turns around and charges her again.

As the T-2000 stomps toward her, she comes at him. In a flash, she zips across the pavement, too fast for Junko and the others to see. The blade of her sword passes over Mr. T’s fist and hits him in the neck.

Mr. T looks down at the blade below his chin. It didn’t cut him, frozen in place. He isn’t sure why she stopped herself. She could have sliced his head from his metal body right there.

Then Mr. T sees the merc punk standing in the distance, over Nemesis’ shoulder. Vine has his arm elevated, pointed at the reptilian woman, his wire wrapped around her sword.

Then Mr. T gives her a big smile, as the merc punk pulls back on the wire, ripping the sword from the woman’s hands. The sword flies over Vine’s head, landing on the far side of the parking lot.

With his other hand, Vine launches his second wire, swiping it toward both of the two contestants. Mr. T leaps twenty feet up to dodge the wire as it slices through the air. Nemesis just stands in place. Without moving her feet, she bends her waist all the way back, in a perfect L-shape, as the wire passes over her. Then she flips out of the way, as Mr. T comes back to the earth fist-first. His metal knuckles cause a crater to open up in the asphalt beneath him. When he looks up, he sees the horde of zombies closing in on them.

“Get to the roof,” Mr. T yells at Junko. “I’ll handle these two.”

Junko doesn’t hesitate. She grabs Scavy, Rainbow, and the lawn gnome, and races toward the building.

Going through the crumbling hospital, Junko, Scavy, and Rainbow Cat make their way up to the roof. They go for the two-way radio.

“We have to call for the helicopter,” Junko says.

She walks carefully along the edge of the roof to the two-way radio. A section of the roof had collapsed when the car crashed into the side of the building. The ground could fall out on her at any moment as she works her way to the communication device.

“We’re here,” Junko says into the radio. “Come pick us up.”

Rainbow Cat looks out over the roof as the parking lot fills with the living dead. They surround the building on all sides, a sea of molten flesh. As a camera ball hovers over Junko’s shoulder, a voice comes on the other side of the radio.

“We can only pick up one of you,” says the voice.

“I know that,” she says. “Just come pick one of us up.”

“Wait right there,” says the voice. “The remote helicopter will be there in ten minutes to pick one of you up.”

“Hurry up!” Junko cries.

She tosses the radio to her feet and returns to the others. Scavy is on the other side of the roof, examining a dead body.

“Who is it?” Rainbow asks, as they gather around him.

“That Haroon guy,” Junko says. “It looks like the strange woman killed him.”

Scavy bends down and picks up the solar-powered shotgun.

“What’s that?” Junko asks.

“Some kind of homemade shotgun,” he says.

“Let me use it,” Rainbow says.

Scavy shakes his head. “It’s mine now.”

Rainbow gives him a dirty look as they move to the helicopter pad.

“Okay,” Junko says. “We have ten minutes to hold up here. Hopefully the gnome has enough juice in it to keep them back that long.”

Peering over the roof, they can already see dozens of the undead entering the hospital from every entrance.

“They don’t know we’re on the roof,” Junko says. “With luck the helicopter will get here before they find us.”

Scavy nods, then looks up into the air. From above, they see Oro circling the rooftop in his flying machine.

As the zombies engulf Nemesis, Vine, and the T-2000, they no longer have space to fight each other, and turn their efforts toward the living dead.

Vine spins in a circle, both wires shooting out at maximum length, and cuts down thirty zombies. Sixty severed legs stand on the ground surrounding him, like freshly mowed blades of grass.

Metal spikes rotate on Mr. T’s body, as he shreds and punches his way through the horde. He picks up a zombie by the leg and swings it around like a bat, clubbing the undead out of his way as he moves closer to his opponents.

Nemesis doesn’t bother with the walking corpses. They ignore her, passing her by as if she’s one of them. She retrieves her double-bladed sword, and ducks down into the crowd, like a snake waiting for its chance to strike.

From his glider-cycle, high in the gray cloudy sky, Oro looks down at the contestants on the rooftop.

“Those simpletons will not be victorious over me,” Oro says. “My genius is almighty. My genius is supreme.”

He aims the rocket launcher at them.

“My genius is absolute!”

Then he fires.

The trio on the roof scatter as the rocket comes toward the helicopter pad. The explosion knocks them off of their feet and blows another section of the roof away.

Scavy rolls over and aims his sniper rifle at the aircraft.

“That was a cheap shot,” Scavy says, as he looks into the scope.

He fires and blows a hole in Oro’s wing the size of a quarter. Scavy fires again, then again. As he hears the bullets tearing into the wings of his glider-cycle, Oro pedals it away from the rooftop, circling back toward the city.

“Shit,” Junko says, helping Rainbow Cat to her feet. “That explosion is going to lead the entire horde up here.”

Scavy switches from sniper to shotgun.

“Prepare yourself,” Junko says.

In the small section of roof that remains, they go back-to-back.

Popcorn and Gogo drive into the parking lot of the hospital, staring at the massive horde of the living dead surrounding the building. When the car can no longer move within the mob of zombies, Gogo opens the door and jumps out.

“Hey!” Popcorn yells. “Where are you going!”

“Brains!” Gogo yells, pushing her way through the crowd. “I’m going to eat their fucking brains!”

“No!” Popcorn yells. “Get back here!”

Popcorn jumps out of the smart-car and chases after her zombie friend, but she quickly loses her in the mob.

“If she hurts Scavy,” Popcorn says, “I’m going to cut off her fucking head.”

Then she continues on, toward the hospital.

Nemesis goes for Vine. As the merc punk cuts down a row of undead, leaving himself open, she tosses her double-bladed sword at him.

When Vine sees the weapon spinning toward him, he launches his left wire at it, catches it in the air. Then he spins in a circle, whipping the sword back in her direction. Zombie torsos are sliced into halves as the wire circles toward Nemesis. She ducks out of the way, narrowly missing the blades of her own sword on the end of Vine’s wire.

The wire continues cutting through the zombie crowd, green and black fluids splashing into the air. It hits Mr. T. Catching the central handle of the sword with his steel fist, Mr. T looks over at the merc punk.

“We should be fighting her,” he yells at the punk. “Not each other.”

The merc punk pulls the wire, ripping the sword out of Mr. T’s grip, cutting a gash into the gold plating of his hand. When he looks at his gold-stripped palm, Mr. T’s eyebrows curl.

“Now you’ve gone an made Mr. T mad,” he says.

The horde of zombies spill onto the rooftop. Junko places the lawn gnome on the ground between them, and revs up her chainsaw arm.

“We’ve only got a few minutes left to wait,” Junko says. “Let’s just hope the roof can hold the weight of all those zombies.”

“You mean this whole place can collapse if they get too close?” Rainbow Cat says.

“Let’s try to hold them back as far as we can,” Junko says.

Scavy raises the solar-powered shotgun and unleashes a barrage of blasts onto the crowd. He doesn’t realize the gun has nearly unlimited ammo, but he fires as if deep down he knows it does. Zombie meat splatters across the roof with each shot. With every body that topples over, it holds back three more trying to get through.

As Mr. T clobbers zombies out of his way to get to Vine, Nemesis flies through the crowd and punches him with an open-handed palm. Mr. T’s face lights up in surprise as he finds himself flying backward into the side of the building.

Mr. T’s body becomes immersed halfway into the brick wall of the building. He leans his head forward and shakes the powdered brick out of his mohawk.

“Damn,” he says. “That bitch is strong.”

Running so fast she looks as if she’s teleporting, Nemesis flies at him. She stops right in front of his face, staring at him with her cold black eyes. Then she raises her hand back, with her fingers pressed together in the shape of a snake, as if she is going to drive her fingertips all the way through to the back of his skull.

Stuck inside of the brick wall, Mr. T can’t protect himself. He just watches as her fingers come toward him.

No matter how many times he fires, even with unlimited ammo, the zombies get closer to Scavy. They surround the perimeter, pushed back by the gnome’s sonic wave. The ground below them begins to crack.

“Fuck,” Junko says. “The roof isn’t going to hold us for much longer.”

The sound of the helicopter fills their ears. They look up and see it coming across the city buildings toward them.

“There it is!” Rainbow cries.

Scavy continues firing the shotgun, only glancing up for a second to see how close it is.

The helicopter hovers over the hospital for a few moments, but finding no place to land it continues on.

“Where’s it going?” Scavy cries.

The helicopter flies low over the parking lot, over the horde of zombies, and finds a clearing on the far end of the street. Then it slowly descends.

“We have to get you over there,” Junko says.

Scavy nods, then continues blasting.

As Nemesis drives her fingers toward Mr. T’s face, Vine shoots his wire at her. Nemesis’ arm is severed at the elbow and rolls down Mr. T’s chest. Then Vine shoots his second wire and it hooks onto her bony spine. She flies backward through the air, as Vine’s wire reels into his wrist. Then he spins her in a circle around him, the razor-sharp wire decapitating zombies as he twirls her through the air.

“Now throw her against a wall,” Xiu’s voice tells Vine. Vine nods and aims her flying white body toward the wall of the hospital.

As the reptilian woman is thrown toward him, Mr. T breaks out of his brick encasing and says, “Time to play a game of bitch baseball.”

Mr. T flexes a fist and charges forward. Like a tetherball, he punches Nemesis in the chest. Her eyes widen as her torso caves in around his fist, blood spraying from the sides of her ribcage. Her body flies off of Vine’s wire, over the zombie horde, and rolls across the pavement.

“Homerun for the T-2000!” says Mr. T.

A camera ball watches Nemesis’ body as it lies still on the ground, blood pooling beneath her. The camera zooms in on one side of her ribcage. The ribs are split open in a messy crevice below her armpit. She isn’t breathing.

On the other side of the camera, miles away from the Red Zone, Dr. Chan watches Nemesis from the Zombie Survival control room.

Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla comes up behind the doctor and pats him on the back.

“Looks like your ultimate soldier wasn’t good enough after all,” Wayne says.

He laughs in the doctor’s face, then takes a bite of a chocolate cruller.

The hospital rumbles as the roof begins to collapse under their feet. Junko falls to her knees, nearly landing on her chainsaw. Scavy holds his balance, continuing to fire his shotgun at the reaching limbs.

Rainbow Cat looks down at the lawn gnome behind them. Then she looks back at the other two contestants. Their attentions are elsewhere. Rainbow decides to take advantage of the opportunity.

As Junko gets to her feet, she doesn’t see it happen. Rainbow grabs the lawn gnome, then charges into the zombie crowd. By the time Junko notices, it’s too late.

“Stop her!” Junko cries.

Scavy fires at Rainbow’s back, but the zombies close in behind her. Without the lawn gnome holding them back, the zombies fill in the gap, staggering toward the two unprotected contestants.

The zombies open up a path for Rainbow as she charges through the horde, the lawn gnome under her arm like a football. Her dreadlocks flop through the air, leaping over crippled zombies that can’t get out of her way fast enough. When she goes through the doors into the hospital, she looks back to see Junko and Scavy aren’t chasing after her. They are back-to-back, shooting and slashing at the undead closing in on them, the ground cracking wider at their feet. Rainbow smiles at the sight.

I did it, she thinks to herself. I’m going to win. I’m going to get to the helicopter, get back to the island, and then the world will finally get to see the great masterpiece of Charles Hudson. The greatest writer of our time. My husband.

Droplets of rain sprinkle over Nemesis’ white naked skin. A thundercloud moves in, drizzling on the horde of zombies. Her eyelids flash open, and she stares into the camera ball with her cold black eyes.

On the other side of the camera, from the control room of Zombie Survival, Dr. Chan shakes his head at Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla.

“It’s going to take more than that to defeat her,” says Dr. Chan.

Wayne shoves the rest of his chocolate cruller into his mouth and goes to the monitor. He sees Nemesis standing up. Her crushed ribcage expands, the split down her side disappears. Then she raises her severed arm, which is growing nerves and tissue. Wayne’s eyes light up as she grows a completely new hand.

“Like a lizard’s tail,” says Dr. Chan, “she can grow new limbs, only a million times as fast. Her regenerative powers surpass all living creatures on this planet.”

“Fuck…” Wayne says, coughing up bits of donut.

“She is nearly invincible,” says Dr. Chan.

Vine sees the helicopter landing on the far side of the parking lot, as raindrops trickle onto his head. He removes his goggles to see more clearly.

“Now’s your chance,” Xiu’s voice tells him. “You can use your wires to get there before the other contestants. But first you need to get the works of art. You must complete the mission.”

Vine cuts away a row of zombies with his wire. Then he scans the edge of the hospital for the paintings.

“There they are,” says Xiu’s voice.

Vine sees them on the ground, next to his Head’s corpse. “Use your wires to get over there.”

Raising his left hand up, he shoots a wire at the roof of the hospital and is pulled up into the air.

As he soars above the shambling corpses, Xiu’s voice tells him, “You don’t have much time. Grab the paintings and get to the helicopter.”

Nemesis throws her double-bladed sword at Vine as he flies toward the building. The blade hits his left arm, cuts it off at the elbow. Vine falls. He watches as his left arm continues on without him, pulled by the wire up to the rooftop.

Before Vine’s body falls, Nemesis races through the undead, catches her sword as it boomerangs back to her, and then slices the merc punk through the midsection just before he hits the ground.

Nemesis turns her attention to Mr. T. She runs through the parking lot, flying at him like a bullet. Mr. T sees her coming. He charges at her.

“Time for round two,” Mr. T yells.

Corpses tumble from their path as they plow toward each other. Mr. T’s feet crush the ground with every step. Nemesis runs so fast her flesh becomes a white blur.

Mr. T throws his punch, with all of his weight behind it. Nemesis catches his punch, thin white claws wrapped around his golden knuckles, then she buries her sword deep into his metal chest. Sparks explode between them, oils and wires spill out of his abdomen.

“Think that’s enough to stop Mr. T?” yells the cyborg.

As his mouth is open, Nemesis spits a green fluid down his throat. She rips out her sword and watches as he falls to his knees, choking, holding his neck in his metal hands.

Her black eyes glare at him as he curls into the mud, beneath the pouring rain.

“You see?” Dr. Chan says to Wayne, from the control room. “She’s invincible. There’s nobody who can stop her now.”

Wayne looks carefully at the cyborg contestant as he writhes on the ground. “What is that she sprayed in his mouth?”

“A concoction I brewed up,” says Dr. Chan. “It is a mixture of snake venom and a hyper-accelerated variety of the zombie virus.”

“Zombie virus?”

“Yes,” the doctor smiles. “Specimen #5 isn’t just part reptile. She is also part leopard, part hammerhead, part spider, and part zombie.”

“Part zombie…” Wayne says, staring at the screen.

“She can only infect a human using her venom,” says the doctor. “But it moves faster through the nervous system and creates a more powerful zombie.”

Wayne turns his head slowly to the doctor. “Why on earth would you give her such an ability?”

“I gave it to her…” The doctor looks back at the producer. “So that in any combat scenario…” He pauses to steal one of Wayne’s chocolate donuts. “She would always win.”

As Junko and Scavy battle the zombies back-to-back, the roof below them finally gives way. It breaks open, dropping half of the undead down to the level below. The ground beneath Scavy goes with it and he falls.

With one arm, Junko catches him by the wrist.

Scavy looks up. “What are you doing?”

“You drew the long straw,” Junko says, holding him with her left arm. With her other arm, she chainsaws the zombies coming in from behind. “You need to get to the helicopter.”

The zombies on the floor below reach up for Scavy’s boots. He kicks the skeleton hands away. Then looks back up at Junko.

Scavy shakes his head. “Fuck the straws. Let me go. You have to catch up to that hippy bitch before she gets away.”

“Not a chance,” Junko says, pulling him up with all of her strength. “I’m going to make sure you’re the one who gets on that helicopter. We had a deal.”

As she pulls Scavy up by her left arm, a zombie grabs her chainsaw. It bites down into her wrist. She screams out and nearly drops Scavy, as a chunk of meat is pulled out of her arm. She thrashes the chainsaw until it cuts the zombie away from her.

“Let me go,” Scavy says.

But it’s too late for her to back out now. She continues pulling him up. Another zombie bites into her shoulder. Another bites her on the thigh. Junko squints her Asian eyes tightly to resist the pain, as she gets the punk back onto the roof. Once he’s safely on his two feet, Scavy turns around and cuts the zombies away from her in one clean stroke. Scavy fires his shotgun at them, blasting their knees out of their legs.

When Scavy looks over at Junko, he sees the bleeding wounds on her body.

“You’ve been bit?” Scavy asks.

Junko’s face grows solemn. “It’s okay. You’re the one who drew the long straw. Let’s get you to the helicopter.”

Scavy can see a look of disappointment behind her eyes. Even though she wasn’t planning on getting on the helicopter while Scavy was alive, he can sense that she had really wanted to go. She had a mission to go back to the island and take her revenge on Wayne “the Wiz” Rizla. Now she would have to stay back, and let Wayne get away with sentencing human beings to death for the sake of amusement, for the sake of money. Scavy knows this is why she is disappointed. She had told him all about what she would do if she won the contest.

“Junko,” he said to her, looking her seriously in the eyes. “Don’t worry. If I’m the one who gets back to Neo New York I won’t let that motherfucker get away with this anymore. I’ll kill his ass and shit. For you.”

Junko smiles at him, like he’s a kid who just said the cutest thing. Then she kisses him on the cheek, in the one spot that isn’t horribly burned.

“Let’s get you on that helicopter,” she says.

Then she revs her chainsaw arm and cuts them a path through the zombie horde.

Mr. T squirms on the ground as the virus pumps through his blood and circuitry. Fat green veins pulse up his neck and face. His eyes become bloodshot. He looks over at Nemesis as she walks slowly toward the hospital.

“Mr. T’s down,” says the cyborg, as he pulls himself to his feet. “But that don’t mean he’s out.”

Nemesis turns and whips her sword at him. Mr. T catches in midair. Then breaks it in half against his knee.

“Enough with the toys,” he says. “The T-2000’s not playin’ anymore.”

He charges her and leaps into the air. Before he reaches her she flies at him, and kicks him in the chest. He flies across the parking lot, smashing through the zombie crowd. Torsos explode on impact, spraying black goo into the air, as Mr. T’s metal body hits the undead.

Wiping zombie guts from his eyes, Mr. T gets up and charges again. This time when Nemesis kicks him, he grabs her by the leg and smashes her against a smart-car as it drives toward the hospital. Then he tosses her across the parking lot, through the undead masses.

Vine crawls across the ground, holding in his guts as blood and intestines spill out of his deep wound. When zombies come at him, he gets up on one knee, and using his one remaining arm he shoots the wire through their heads. The zombies stagger after him as he crawls, crowding up around him.

“You have to get to the paintings!” Xiu’s voice cries. “You must complete the mission! Or it will all have been for nothing!”

He pulls himself to his feet and slices down a row of zombies. Then he sees Nemesis’s body fly over his head into a light pole.

Junko and Scavy run through the hospital corridors, looking for Rainbow Cat. Through the missing section on the side of the building, they see Rainbow two levels below.

“I’ll get her,” Junko says.

She jumps down to the level below, then jumps down to the next level below that. Scavy covers her, blasting zombies with his solar-powered shotgun as they spill out of hospital rooms.

Junko drops down behind Rainbow Cat. She sees her running down the hallway with the gnome under her arm, her deadlocks whipping through the air like medusa snakes. A camera ball floats directly behind her. Junko charges the hippy.

As she catches up to her, Junko grabs the camera ball from the air and slams it into the back of Rainbow’s head. Sparks scatter from the camera ball as it wobbles away from Junko’s hand. Rainbow hits the ground, fumbling the lawn gnome. It rolls across the floor of the hospital waiting room.

Rainbow turns and swings her machete at the Japanese woman. Junko jumps back, revs her chainsaw.

“You ready to rumble, bitch?” Junko says, her chainsaw roaring against her arm.

“I need to get to the helicopter,” Rainbow says. “It’s more important that I get back to the island.”

Junko swings her chainsaw at Rainbow. The hippy blocks it with her machete, then kicks Junko in the stomach to knock her back.

“My husband’s manuscript must be published,” Rainbow says.

Zombies fill the waiting room. Junko grabs one and tosses it at Rainbow, but the hippy chops it open with her machete, then kicks it back to Junko.

As Junko chainsaws off the zombie’s arms, Rainbow gets back into the circle, protected from the living dead. After Junko follows her into the circle, the zombies crowd around them.

“Ever see a sumo match?” Junko says, looking at the surrounding zombies. “Don’t get pushed out of the circle.”

Then Junko charges Rainbow, spinning her chainsaw at her. Rainbow is forced back, toward the edge of the circle, zombie arms reaching out to her. One of them grabs a dreadlock.

Held in place, Rainbow can’t duck as Junko’s chainsaw slashes across her chest. Her shirt breaks open, revealing a bloody gash that drips down her stomach.

Rainbow cuts off her dreadlock with the machete, then elbows Junko in the face, breaking her nose. Junko stumbles back into the zombie crowd. They bite into her shoulder. She rips herself away from their grips, then chainsaws their arms off.

“You’re already infected,” Rainbow says. “Why do you even bother?”

Junko wipes away the blood draining from her nostrils.

“I’m not doing this for me,” Junko says. “Scavy is the one who’s supposed to get on that helicopter.”

They face each other, moving sideways along the perimeter of the circle. The zombies growl at them like a roaring crowd.

“Brains!” they cry.

Junko swings her chainsaw and Rainbow kicks it off of her hand, over the top of the crowd.

“You’re trying to stop me so you can save that worthless punk?” Rainbow says, as she brings her machete down on Junko’s back.

The machete cuts through Junko’s tank top, carving a strip of red down her back. Junko falls to one knee.

“I’d rather save him than a stuck-up bitch like you,” Junko says.

Mr. T charges through the rain as Nemesis gets up off the ground. She grabs a zombie by the arm and throws it at the cyborg. Mr. T catches it in midair.

“Show a little respect for the dead,” says Mr. T.

Then he rips the zombie in half and tosses the pieces aside.

He rumbles the muddy earth as he races across the lot toward her. She runs at him, her claws spread out to her sides. When they collide, Nemesis buries her arm deep into Mr. T’s torso. Then Mr. T grabs her by the arm. He smiles with big bright teeth. Then he stomps on her foot.

The massive weight of his robot body crushes her foot into pulp. She shrieks like a banshee in his ear.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “Mr. T’s not the best dancer. Always stepping on ladies’ toes.”

She twists his arm, picks his massive body up over her tiny figure, and slams him to the ground. Then she drives her knee into his crotch, shattering the metal casing.

Mr. T looks down at the crushed metal between his legs. He doesn’t feel a thing. Although the body of the T-2000 is equipped with fully functioning sexual organs, they did not come with the ability to feel pain. Mr. T laughs at her.

As he laughs, Mr. T doesn’t see the attack coming. Nemesis opens her mouth, dislocating her jaw like a snake, stretching it so wide that she can fit the cyborg’s head between her lips like a lollipop. She goes to bite into his skull, but Mr. T dodges. Her teeth catch the strip of hair on his head. She takes a chunk out of his mohawk.

When she spits the clump of hair out of her mouth, Mr. T’s forehead wrinkles with anger. She has just fucked up Mr. T’s mohawk. Nobody fucks with Mr. T’s mohawk.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” says the T-2000, feeling the hole in his mohawk. “Now you’ve really gone and made Mr. T mad.”

She goes to punch him through the skull, but he punches back at her. Their fists collide. Nemesis’ hand pops, bursting into a soupy mess, on impact with Mr. T’s robot fist. His knuckles break all the way through her arm, then punches her in the face. She rolls off of him.

Mr. T gets to his feet and roars. He grabs her bony spine and tosses her high into the air. Before she lands, Mr. T punches her back up into the air, over the zombie crowd. Then he charges after her and punches her again, across the parking lot, through a light pole.

When Mr. T catches up to her again, he grabs her around the neck and picks her up off the ground.

He says, “I pity the fool who messes with the T-2000!”

Then he smashes her face into the street. Her skull explodes. Reptilian brains splash across the pavement. The rest of her body flops down into the gore, twitching, coiling up like a snake with its head cut off.

Mr. T collapses on the ground next to her, the virus taking over his nervous system, sparks shooting out of his abdomen. He lets out a big sigh, as rain pours down on his face.

In the distance, he sees the clouds opening up and a bit of sunshine coming through. A rainbow arches across the sky.

“You know…” he says to Nemesis’ corpse. “Mr. T never did like the rain. The cold winds, the gray skies. Too depressing. But rainbows…” He squints his eyes at the rainbow. “Mr. T likes rainbows.”

He smiles at the sky as his metal hands drop to the side of his golden robot body.

Dr. Chan’s eyes can’t leave the monitor as he sees Specimen #5’s brains splattered across the pavement.

“Invincible, huh?” Wayne says, then he laughs.

Dr. Chan straightens his tie and stands up. Then he leaves the room.

Scavy blasts his way into the waiting room to find Junko and Rainbow Cat fighting in the middle of a circle of zombies.

Rainbow slashes twice at Junko, but the Japanese girl dodges. Then the hippy roundhouse kicks her in the face. Junko staggers back.

“Junko!” Scavy says.

The Japanese woman looks back at him.

“Kick her ass!” he yells, pumping his fist.

Rainbow Cat runs at Junko with the machete while her attention is turned. As the machete lowers down toward her head, Junko drop-kicks the hippy, sending her flying back into the zombie crowd.

“Wait!” Rainbow cries, as the zombies grab her by the arms.

The living corpses bite down into Rainbow’s flesh. She shrieks.

“You can’t,” she screams. “No!”

Junko grabs the gnome and runs toward Scavy, leaving the hippy completely unprotected. The zombies close in on her.

“You fucking bitch!” Rainbow screams, as muscles peel out of her skin between zombie teeth.

Junko gets to Scavy, bringing him into the circle of protection. He grabs her up into his arms.

“That was awesome,” he says.

Junko pushes him away.

“Don’t touch me,” she says. “I’m infected.”

Scavy steps away.

“Now,” she says, “we need to get you to the helicopter. Let’s go.”

They take off down the hallway.

As the zombies sink their teeth into her flesh, Rainbow Cat fights back. She elbows them in the face, chops off their arms, and thrashes out of their grips.

After she gets free, she slashes her way through their bodies until she breaks out of the crowd and runs down a hallway. She grabs a floating camera ball and charges down the corridor.

“It’s not over yet,” she says. “I can still do it. I can still make the world love Charles Hudson again.”

Junko and Scavy exit the hospital, out into the pouring rain. They see the helicopter on the other side of the parking lot and run toward it.

“Come on!” Junko yells at Scavy as he limps too far behind. “We’re almost there!”

Scavy picks up the pace.

As the zombies separate out of their way, Gogo emerges from the crowd.

“Brains!” Gogo shrieks.

She pukes green vomit at them. It sprays across the barrier protected by the gnome, and splashes Scavy in the face.

Scavy cries out and falls to the ground. The vomit burns through his neck and cheek, melting into his bloodstream. He can taste it in his mouth. Junko doesn’t see it happen. She keeps moving with the lawn gnome in her hands. As Scavy’s legs leave the barrier, zombies grab him by the feet.

Junko stops when she hears his screams. She turns back to see Gogo biting into the backs of his knees, tearing into the nervous tissue. Other zombies try to get a bite, but Gogo pushes them back.

“Mine!” Gogo says. Then she gorges on Scavy’s flesh, savoring every nerve ending against the tip of her tongue, too gluttonous to share with the other zombies.

Popcorn breaks through the crowd and kicks Gogo away from him.

“What the fuck, Gogo!” she yells.

She blocks all other zombies as Scavy crawls back into the circle, falling into Junko’s lap as she bends down to him. At the edge of the circle, Popcorn punches Gogo until her conscience comes back. Gogo sees Scavy lying there with bloody legs, the flesh on his face and neck burning red.

“I’m sorry…” Gogo says to Scavy.

Scavy doesn’t even look at her. She looks over at Popcorn.

“I didn’t mean to…” she says to Popcorn.

Then Gogo runs away, out of the crowd, toward the hospital.

Popcorn looks at Scavy as if it’s her fault. She wants to hold him, make him feel better, but the noise filling her head when she gets too close to the perimeter of the circle is too much for her to bear. It’s like thousands of needles stabbing her in the brain.

Junko holds Scavy in her arms, looking down on his burnt face. With all the rain pouring down on them, Scavy doesn’t notice the tears rolling out of her eyes.

“So does Laurence get the seat on the helicopter now?” Scavy asks.

Junko scans the parking lot until she sees Mr. T, smashing his way through the horde. When she gets a look into his empty white eyes, she can tell he is no longer among the living.

“No,” she tells Scavy, shaking her head. “He’s infected, too.”

Scavy looks over at the T-2000. The cyborg zombie smashes everything that moves, rumbling the earth beneath his feet.

“Fuck…” Scavy says. “Zombie Mr. T…”

Then he looks up at Junko. “So now what?”

Junko looks back at the helicopter. Then looks around to make sure none of the camera balls are close enough to hear.

“Plan B,” she says. “One of us will still get to that helicopter. We’ll get back to the island of Neo New York. Then unleash the virus on those fat cats in the Platinum Quadrant, starting with that motherfucker Wayne Rizla.”

Scavy smiles. “That would be punk as fuck. Sounds like a plan.”

Junko lifts him to his feet, but he screams and drops down to the ground.

“I’m not going to get anywhere like this,” Scavy says. “You go. I know you can do it.”

Junko nods at him.

“Okay,” she says. “But I’ll leave the gnome with you.”

“Take the shotgun,” Scavy says. “This thing is awesome.”

She pushes back the barrel of the gun.

“No, keep it,” she says. “You can cover me.”

“Okay.” He nods, then smiles. “Give them hell and shit.”

She stands up.

“I will,” she says. “…and shit.”

She smiles brightly as she revs her chainsaw, then runs into the crowd toward the helicopter.

Scavy looks back at Popcorn and says, “I love that woman!” Then he turns back to Junko, firing his shotgun at the zombies in her path.

Vine cuts his way through the zombies to the hospital and tries grabbing the artwork with his one arm, but he can’t get it onto his back. A zombie comes at him and his wire slices it in half down the middle.

“Make sure to get the masterpiece,” says Xiu’s voice.

Vine leaves all of the artwork except for the masterpiece. It is light enough for him to strap it to his back with only his right arm. One at a time, he straps a few more of them to his back.

“That should be enough,” says Xiu’s voice. “Now get to the helicopter before it’s too late.”

Vine looks over at the helicopter across the parking lot.

“Don’t let our deaths be for nothing,” says the voice of his Head.

Zombies explode left and right, as Junko runs toward the helicopter. On the other side of the parking lot, she sees Mr. T running alongside her, staring at her with raging hunger. He slams corpses out of his way as he tries to cut her off before she gets to the aircraft.

Junko swings her chainsaw like a ballerina as she runs, jump-spinning in the air and slashing zombies into halves. Scavy blasts those that come in behind her, throwing them back into a cloud of meaty chunks.

Halfway there, Junko sees something coming down from the sky. It lands between her and the helicopter, safely away from any of the living dead.

Scavy sees it from his seated position. His mouth drops open as he recognizes what it is.

It’s Oro’s glider-cycle.

Oro steps out of his glider-cycle and walks casually over to the helicopter.

“Just in time,” he says, wiping dust from his shirt.

He looks back to see Junko running toward him from the distance.

“Didn’t you know?” he says to her figure across the parking lot. “Geniuses always win.”

He snickers as he steps up into the helicopter.

The aircraft has no cockpit, as it is computer-controlled. The inside of the craft contains only one seat. Oro sits down in it. He puts his last cigar into his mouth and lights it up. Takes a puff, then laughs loudly.

“Of course I would win,” he says. “I am a genius. I deserved to win!

He chuckles as he sucks on his cigar. Then he looks over to his right and sees zombie Mr. T staring back at him, only a few inches from his face. The cigar falls out of Oro’s mouth.

“Gimme them brains, fool!” yells the zombie T-2000.

Oro screams as he is ripped out of the aircraft and dragged across the ground.

“But I’m a genius!” he cries. “You can’t eat my brains!”

“Quit yo’ jibber jabber,” says zombie Mr. T.

Then he bites into his skull and eats his brains.

Vine rushes toward the helicopter with paintings strapped to his back. He slices through rows of zombies, blood draining down his side, his intestines uncoiling out of his belly.

“You have to get there!” Xiu yells. “Get close enough to use your wire!”

Vine trips over his own intestine and falls to the ground. He slashes the oncoming zombies as he gets up and continues on.

Junko runs past Mr. T to the helicopter. She glances over at him as he tears into Oro’s brains with his big bright teeth. He growls and thrashes at the brains like a mad dog.

Cutting down the last zombie in her way, Junko boards the helicopter. She collapses against the seat. Her head leaning back against the metal casing, catching her breath.

As the helicopter lifts off, she turns off her chainsaw and looks down at the chaos below. The aircraft ascends high into the sky.

Below her, she can see Scavy sitting safely within the circle, protected by the lawn gnome. He waves at her, pumping his shotgun into the air.