The Sunshine Dame of Doom (29 page)

…but not Clark’s.

She jumped back to Shane and slit her throat instead. Totally caught by surprise, the blonde woman gasped with torrents of blood pouring from her windpipe.

But that didn’t stop Lily.

“How about a tracheotomy, eh?” She said while slashing each and every part of Shane’s body with the sharp side of her boomerang. “You got no dignity, you got no honor. You’re not even good as your word. I tried to make you see truth. I even tried to be your friend. But you’re just a balloon filled with ego, you only think of yourself and how to satiate your bloodthirst. Now, you bleed while I decide what I’m going to do to you!”

Grinding teeth, Shane held Lily’s hand to stop the next attack and pierced the other’s broken ribs with very pointy fingernails. The Australian girl screamed in terrible pain.

Shane compressed Lily’s wrist with her thumb to make her drop the boomerang. Then, she gripped the Australian by the neck and tossed her to the nearest wall.

Mate Clarkson crawled back to the truck. He tried to climb into the vehicle, but fell heavily on the ground.

Bleeding like mad, Shane walked to Lily and grabbed her throat, forcing her to stand up.

“Very clever” She said “Deafening yourself to avoid my rhymes. It seems mind control is too sophisticated for you. No more miss nice girl from now on.”

Clark managed to get into the truck. But the engine was off. He pushed the button to start it again with all fingers and thumbs; however, none of his fingerprints were recognized by the system.

“I won’t even break your neck this time!” Shane continued speaking to Lily. “That’ll be too fast for you.”

The tennis player reached for the hockey stick and started to assemble it. However, some parts got jammed at some point, delaying his actions.

“Why do they make these things modular?” He complained to himself with the little voice he had left.

“You might be deaf, but you still can see.” Shane said “Time to look into my eyes and get a real taste of my powers. I’ll give you way more than just a stroke. I’m going to break all synapses in your brain. You’ll be a vegetable for the rest of your life!”

“LILY!” Clark tried to scream, but almost no sound came out of his mouth. It would’ve been pointless anyway because Lily couldn’t hear a thing.

Just the same, Clark tossed the already mounted hockey stick to his friend.

Lily had her eyes stuck on Shane’s. Using her last drop of strength, the Australian thrust a finger into one of Shane’s many bruises. The pain caused her eyes to roll around the sockets. Such momentarily distraction allowed Lily to move her head a bit to the side and she saw the hockey stick coming. She grabbed it with both hands and impaled Shane with it, from her chest all the way to her back and out of the body.

“Gghhh, ughhhh…” Shane coughed, vomiting blood.

“Thanks for helping me decide.” Lily said in triumph.

“This… is… not… even… classy…”

“You’ve never been classy, lass, only selfish.”

“It… doesn’t… matter… any… you… can’t… stop… the… Undertaking…”

“Right now, I settle for stopping you!”

Lily snatched the hockey stick out of the other’s body with violence. Shane fell on her face lifeless.

“Boy, she was shallow!” Lily commented.

Mate Clarkson staggered to her. Lily held him.

“Are you okay, partner?” She asked.

“Yes.” He answered, with his oxygen levels and voice slowly coming back to normal, as well as his natural rosy color. “I won’t be playing much tennis for awhile, but I’m fine. What about you?”

“I need to take a bath.”

Clark laughed boyishly at that comment. Lily couldn’t resist and laughed as well.

“Why are you talking so loud?” Clark queried.

“Because of the bloody white noises in my ears, they’re really annoying!”

“So, that’s how you dodged Shane’s mental powers.”

“Yes. Vince was right. In order for her mind control to work, she needed three things happening at the same time. You had to be at the same place as she was, look her in the eyes and listen to that stupid poem of hers.”

“But if only two of such prerequisites were met, it wouldn’t work, right?”

“Precisely; back at the truck, when Shane took you hostage, I fired the sheriff’s gun twice very close to my ears and the noise deafened me. But as you can see, my hearing is coming back.”

“Glad to know that, partner.”

“Let’s go.”

“Um, Lily… You’d better take a look at your hockey stick. Something got caught on it.”

Lily checked the sport gear and she was also disgusted by what she saw. Shane’s heart was hanging from the tip. It beat a couple of times and then stopped.

“Well, that’s a way to kill a super being” The Australian woman said “By snatching her heart out of the chest.”

Lily rubbed the stick on Shane’s body until the organ was out.

“I hope it doesn’t find its way back in.” Clark observed.

“I don’t think so. It’s an illustrative symbol though. Shane’s never had a heart. Scientists try to create the perfect leader. They add a lot of stuff in the brain, but it seems they keep forgetting the most important part, what really counts.”

At that moment, a very young man came running to them.

“Jeez, I’ve been looking all over for you.” He said breathlessly “My God!” He saw the dead body on the floor, with a heart on the nape and a pool of blood surrounding it. “Is that Shane?”

“Yes.” Lily replied. “But don’t worry about her now. She’s taking a little rest.”

“With her heart outside the body and everything, this is so Mortal Kombat!”

“What can we do for you, lad?”

“My name is Tobias. I was selected to be the official scout of the troops. Listen to this. Situation is under control in the power plant. Soldiers led by Harper encountered little resistance and the guards surrendered fast.”

“What about the zombies?”

“We got some in the Industrial Zone, but not many. Locals are taking care of them. But Uptown is practically overrun and that’s why they sent me to find you.”

“How’s the situation over there?”

“Pretty bad, Hector went there with his friends and some soldiers, but the zombies outnumber them about thirty to one. They are out of ammo and squeezing as best as they can in a supermarket. The population is scared and about to be overwhelmed.”

“Thank you, Tobias. Do you have a knife?”

“Oh yes.”

“Good. Try to reach Tess’ restaurant. Do you know where it is?”

“Oh yeah, everybody does.”

“Go there and kill some living dead on the way, if it’s safe enough.”

“Yes madam!”

“Name’s Lily, not madam.”

“I know! Lily the Apocalily!”

Tobias exchanged high fives with them and ran to the street.

“So, what do you say, partner?” Lily asked Mate “One last crusade to save the world for democracy and the highest values?”

“I’m with you, partner. Let’s save the day for the American and Australian ways!”

Lily grabbed her boomerang. She and Clark got into the truck and sped toward Heavensville. Lily pushed the lever beneath the dashboard back to its original position. All spikes retreated inside the hull except for the two that got bent.

“It seems we got something to fix.” She said.

“I’m surprised something in this rig could break after all.”

“Hopefully not us.”

“Thirty to one…” He pondered. “We need to even those odds.”

“No worries, we got a few weapons and some diesel in the tank.”

“I guess you want your two knives back.”

“No, you’d better keep them. You’re not really planning to kill zombies with your teeth, right?”

“Are you sure? I’m afraid I’ll just slow you down.”

“No way, boykie! On the contrary, you set me on fire!”

At Heavensville supermarket, Hector and Vince tried their best to reinforce the barricades blocking the main glass entrance. But they had to pull back fast. Living dead creatures were everywhere. The city was under siege.

Number made all the difference in the end and lots of cadavers broke into the store, spreading in all directions. Hector used each and every sharp object he found. He killed some, but more beasts came to replace those who died. He was cornered and defenseless.

Reanimated corpses surrounded Maria and were about to bite the guts out of her. The same happened to Pedro, Prashant and Vince, the last ones in the front line, trying a last stand to protect all other living souls inside the place, a battle they had already lost. Men, women and children screamed in desperate, hopeless anguish.

But then, everybody heard it, especially the dead creatures. A powerfully loud honk roared outside, attracting the flesh-eating monsters, which left the supermarket, and other places, one by one.

The
Apocamobile
rode slowly along the streets, so the zombies could catch up with it. In a matter of seconds, the vehicle was completely surrounded by hungry beasts, pounding and shaking it real harshly. Lily pulled the lever and the still functional spikes did part of the work. When the corpses were far enough from populated areas, the Australian girl brought the vehicle to a halt.

“Alright” She said. “This is all we can do in the truck. Now, it’s time for some field work. Are you ready?”

“I was born ready!” Clark responded. “It’s also time for me to finally reach that flag on top of the Empire State.”

“Yes, I know I said that, but I myself don’t know what it means.”

“Oh, I got a pretty good idea.”

“Do you have my…”

Before she finished the question, Mate gave her the hockey stick, already mounted.

“This is cheating!” She complained.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. You’re concentrated enough.”

They jumped out of the truck. And that was it, Swashbuckler and Ninja Knight fighting evil dragons - hockey stick chopping, knives piercing, with an occasional boomerang flight to slash monsters skulls.

And so, Lily was no longer the daddy’s little girl, but a woman with dad’s strength in her heart. And Mate walked a long, arduous path to become a man, however keeping the amount of innocence necessary to exercise the sometimes lost art of understanding.  

“Look at her going!” Nick said, watching the spectacle through the supermarket glass door.

“I told you she was for real.” Paul replied.

“She’s everything they say and more.” Susan commented.

“But her hair is awful.” Maria spoke. “I’ll fix it when I get the chance.”

“Who’s the guy with her, the one with the little knives?” Becky asked.

“Mate Clarkson” Hector answered “a tennis player who would’ve surely been number one if the planet hadn’t come to an end.”

“He’s cute.” Becky said.

Paul and Nick looked at her.

“I dig freckles!” The young woman explained.

In twenty-seven minutes and fifteen seconds approximately, all creatures from that batch were finished, harmlessly littering the streets. For Lily and Clark, that was too much time. Then again, there were a lot of zombies.

“We just killed this bunch.” Lily announced to the crowd in the supermarket. “More will come.”

“Yep, it seems we never run out of them.” Vince observed.

“Well, a lot of people were infected.” Clark spoke. “This disease, this fever, whatever they call it went global. Damn it, we don’t even have a name for it.”

“Let’s call it
zombities
.” Vince suggested.

“You have to rebuild the walls around the city” Lily said “and quick.”

“No worries” Hector replied. “We got more than enough qualified people for the job, they’re already on it. Nick and Paul are taking care of the details.”

“What about that minister guy?” Clark queried.

“I searched the whole TV Station with some soldiers and no sign of him.” Vince replied. “It’s like the bastard vanished in thin air.”

“Have you guys decided what you’re going to do from now on?” Lily asked.

“We’re going to need a new mayor.” Maria responded. “Susan here got a lot of possibilities. She’s been on TV and all. But Nick and Pedro also have their eyes on the chair, with good chances too. What do you think, Hector?”

“I don’t care who is next in command, as long as there is a vote.”

“Oh, there will be.”

Hector turned to Lily “What about you? If you run for mayor, you’ll surely win by a landslide.”

“And why is that?” She queried.

Hector frowned at the question.

“Well, after everything you did…” He said.

“It was a team effort.” Lily spoke. “Besides, I almost did nothing.”

“I talked to Tobias on the radio.” Vince intervened. “He told me how you released Shane from the burden of carrying an evil heart in her chest.”

“And your performance at the TV Station, taking the soldiers down all by yourself, wasn’t bad either.” Maria pointed out.

“Besides, you brought us together.” Hector said.

“How?” It was Lily’s turn to frown. “I don’t understand.”

“When I was in the equipment room, Shane paid me a little visit. And she said that she’s the demon that inhabits the darkest paths of human soul people are afraid to walk. In a way, she’s right. That’s why we also need an angel in our hearts to counterweight the devil, so we won’t feel so bad next time we look in the mirror.”

“Maybe” Lily responded “but this angel has to have your name, not something as crude as Apocalily.”

“I agree, but sometimes it feels good to know there’s someone out there you can take inspiration from in difficult moments. Perhaps, you shouldn’t be so resistant to this title. It brings good in people.”

“Are you running for mayor, Hec?”

“I’ve never been a politician. Sure as hell I’m not starting now. I was thinking of taking care of the power plant for awhile. Run a business is not new to me.”

“Yes, but high voltage is not exactly our thing.” Vince pointed out.

“We need to keep water and power coming. Besides, it’s always a good chance to expand our horizons.”

“And I’ll surely make a great manager, what do you say, bro?”

“Manager? We are partners!”

“Well, pay is better anyway. But the work is tougher.”

“See Vince, I told you we’d be right on top again.”

Missus Hildenbrandt came to Hector and said:

“And I’d really appreciate if you could please take some time to address the students of my school, and tell them all about the benefits of honest, hard work. My teachers and I would be very honored.” 

“The honor is all mine.” Hector agreed.

“Me too” Vince said. “I’ll speak to the students too. I’ll teach them everything they need to know about picking locks, pockets, hot-wire cars and all. Then, I’ll give a lecture only for the boys, to tell them how to get girls.”

Not very friendly eyes turned to him at the same time.

“What?” Vince spoke. “This is also hard work.” 

“What are you going to do?” Maria asked Lily. “There’re a lot of ways you can contribute to this town.”

“I’m not staying.” The Australian woman announced. “At least for the time being, my future is there.” She nodded at the truck. “I’m not sure where I’m going, or what’s waiting for me on the way, but I’d rather find the answers on the road.”

“I can understand that.” Vince said. “Anyway, there’ll always be zombies to fight, cities to release from ruthless dictators, prefab villains to face…”

“I hope not!”