Zombies and Shit (25 page)

Yesterday night, he had followed Rainbow and Charlie to the restaurant. He assumed Charlie was abusive to her, a horrible human being she wanted to have nothing to do with. That’s why she cheated on him so much. Bosco wanted to help her escape her living hell of a relationship. He planned to kill her husband the next morning, while she was at work. He didn’t want her to go through the anguish of seeing her husband’s murdered body, so he planned to make it appear as if Charlie left her for another woman. Just imagining how happy she would be to get rid of him for good brought a smile to his lips.

But he never got the chance to kill him. At the restaurant, Bosco watched as Rainbow Cat and Charlie collapsed into their plates of food. Their wine had been drugged. Then a man with a white goatee stepped out of the kitchen and went to the couple. Other men in white masks came in from the street, picked up their bodies and brought them into the back. The restaurant was empty save for the manager who appeared to be friends or business partners of the man with the white goatee.

Bosco didn’t know what was going on, but he knew his beautiful Rainbow was in trouble. He pulled a machete out from under his coat, the same weapon he had planned to kill Charlie with, and charged the man with the white goatee.

The men in white masks turned to Bosco as he ran screaming at them. They held out there hands to grab him, but he went in swinging. His machete cut one of their hands in half, split down the middle, spraying blood on the white suit. He chopped another one through the neck, nearly cutting his head off. Before he could get to the man with the white goatee, enough of them had grabbed him to pin him to the ground.

“Wayne,” said one of the white-masked men, “who is this guy?”

“I have no idea,” Wayne said, wiping his hands. “But I like him. Let’s put him on the show.”

They chloroformed Bosco, brought his body in the back, and dropped him on top of Charlie and Rainbow. He didn’t know it through the drugs, but he had snuggled Rainbow Cat again that night, in the back of the helicopter, all the way to the Red Zone.

The producers decided to let him use his own machete in the game. It was the first time anybody had ever been allowed to use their own weapon in the show. When he woke up, Bosco was happy to see that Rainbow was with him. But he was not happy that she was with Charlie. He decided to bide his time, wait for the two of them to separate, wait for Charlie to be killed by the undead, wait to get Rainbow alone, then save her, then they could die together.

Everything had worked out perfectly for him… until he learned that Rainbow Cat had no idea who he was.

“That was a long time ago,” Rainbow told him. “I normally don’t think much about guys after I sleep with them.”

“I’ve never stopped thinking about you.”

Rainbow backs away. “That’s a little strange…”

Bosco steps closer, with his machete reflecting beams of sunlight coming through the ceiling.

“I want you to win this, Rainbow,” he said. “I want to do everything in my power to protect you and keep you safe. All I ask for in return is that you let me die in your arms.”

As he opens his arms, as if to embrace her, Rainbow panics and runs away.

“Stop!” Bosco says.

He chases after her. “Get back here!”

She runs for an exit in the back of the department store. Angry at her for running away, he swings his machete in the air at her back to take out his frustration. He would never hurt her, but right now she’s pissing him off. The sound of the machete swiping at the air behind her makes Rainbow Cat scream.

She trips over some rubble and falls face-first into the cement. Her eyes spin in a daze as she tries to get to her feet.

Bosco drops on top of her and wraps himself around her body. She goes for her dagger, but he pries it from her fingers and tosses it across the room. She kicks at him and screams, but her head is still spinning from the fall.

He snuggles her forcefully, hushing her.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispers into her ear. “I just want to cuddle with you. That’s all I want before I die.”

As her senses return, Rainbow realizes that this freak is snuggle-raping her. He spoons her in the pile of rubble, one arm pressed between her breasts, one leg lying over her legs. She pulls her hand out from under his snuggling arm, then elbows him in the face, breaking his nose

“Get off of me!” she says, wriggling out of his grip.

When she gets to her feet, she faces him.

“You’re so disgusting!” she says.

Bosco stands up, holding his bloody nose.

“You don’t mean that,” he says. “I love you more than anything in the world.”

She says, “I only fucked your ugly pathetic ass to get back at my husband. I figured it would piss him off if I fucked the biggest loser in the bar.”

Bosco points the machete at her. “You don’t mean that.”

She spits at him. “Why the hell would I ever want to be with a loser like you?”

Bosco glares at her.

“You fucking bitch…” he says, angry tears ripping down his face. “I’ll fucking kill you.”

Rainbow bends her knees, getting ready to run away.

“Oh yeah?” Rainbow says. “Go ahead and try it.”

Bosco raises the machete and charges her. She turns to run away, but after ten feet she leaps into the air, spins around like a butterfly, and kicks him in the face. His lower jaw dislocates and he falls to the ground. Rainbow gets into a fighting stance above him, ready to defend herself.

Bosco never knew, nor did her husband, nor did anyone in the Copper Quadrant, but Rainbow was an expert martial artist. Before she was with Charlie, she was in an abusive relationship. She had a boyfriend who used to beat her. A popular soccer player named Teddy who took a liking to her. This was before she had the dreadlocks, before she read Charles Hudson novels.

She liked him at first, because he was so adored by all the other girls. Then she discovered he was a total asshole. He was a bully and flirted with women behind her back. The first time he hit her was the day she tried to break up with him. He made her change her mind, physically. Then he started beating her all the time. He hit her whenever she raised her voice to him. He would throw her to the ground and kick her in the stomach if he found out she talked to another guy. If she refused to give him sex when he wanted it she would go home with blood stains on her clothing. She was too afraid to leave him, too afraid to tell anyone about what he was doing to her.

Then she started taking lessons in self-defense. She studied several books and practiced every moment she wasn’t around him. The next time she told him she was dumping him, he wasn’t able to lay a finger on her. He threw one punch and she broke his arm.

After that, she studied the martial arts for fun. It helped her build confidence and self-esteem, which is what she needed most after the weak cowering creature that Teddy had turned her into. But after she met Charlie, she quit all of her hobbies. She wanted to devote herself completely to his writing. The reason she decided not to tell her husband about her fighting skills was because she didn’t want it to effect their relationship. She knew it might threaten his macho ego to know that his wife could kick his ass in under a minute. Plus, if Charlie ever did become abusive toward her, she wanted her ass-kicking skills to come as a surprise to him.

“I’ll cut your fucking face off,” Bosco says to Rainbow Cat, but she can hardly understand him with his dislocated jaw.

He swings his machete at her, aiming for her hips, but Rainbow catches him by the wrist and bends back his arm. He drops the machete. She punches him twice in the diaphragm, knees him in the stomach, and flips him over her shoulder into the dirt.

“Don’t get up,” she says to him with her foot in his back.

He doesn’t get up.

As she walks away, she feels as though her skills have become pretty rusty, but they’re still there. She’s going to need them if she’s going to be the one to win this competition.

Bosco retrieves his machete and charges her back, aiming to plant the blade directly in the center of her skull. When she turns around, the machete hits her in the throat. Bosco’s eyes widen with regret when he sees the look of shock and sadness on her face.

He pulls out the machete and blood dribbles out of the wound. Rainbow grabs her neck wound, holding in the blood. Then she looks up at Bosco.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

The blade didn’t hit her jugular, so the wound isn’t fatal. But the idea that he came only a centimeter away from ending her life fills Rainbow with rage.

She charges him.

Bosco holds out his machete to defend himself, but it takes Rainbow less than a second to grab his machete arm and break it at the elbow. A sliver of bone tears through the skin of his upper arm and he cries so loud that it attracts zombies in from the street. She stomps on his knee, dislocating it, and he falls to the ground in front of her.

She wraps herself around his back, snuggle-raping him in the same way he had done to her, and puts him in a tight headlock.

“Wait…” Bosco cries.

She flexes her muscled arms around his head, and slowly breaks his neck against her body.

“Don’t…” Bosco says, just before the loud cracking sound.

His body goes limp in her arms.

She tears a piece of fabric from his clothing and wraps it around her throat to stop the bleeding.

“Braiiins,” says a skeleton as it staggers toward her. Four more zombies follow close behind.

She picks up the machete and wipes her blood off of the blade, ready to hack these living corpses into pieces. Before she charges into battle, she looks back at Bosco’s corpse. He looks even twice as pathetic now that he’s dead. She has no pity for losers like him. They are a waste. She could never respect a man who loved her more than anything in the world. The kind of man she loved was one who put his ambitions above all relationships, like Charles Hudson did with his writing.

Rainbow realizes that she did end up giving Bosco what he wanted after all. When she broke his neck, he died in her arms. As she chops the head off the first zombie that comes toward her, she kicks herself for letting the pathetic asshole get his way. She wishes she would have just used the machete to slice open a major artery, and then left him there to bleed to death all alone.