Zombies and Shit (54 page)

“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.