Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead (9 page)

The zombies marched toward it.

Recall.

Priority: Sprinter x 2

Maneuver: ?

One of the male zombies, a Sprinter, locked onto its leg, chomping down on it like it was a soup bone. R-1 raised its leg with the zombie still attached and hyper extended its steel-coated fingers of its right hand until sharp blades popped out. It dug the blades into the Sprinter’s back and pulled out a chunk of flesh. The Sprinter stopped biting for a moment then went right back to it. This time R-1 shoved its blades into the back of the creature’s skull, squeezed, and tore out its brain.

The Sprinter stopped moving.

R-1 kicked the body off its leg and into the air where it collided with a Shambler coming toward it.

A female Shambler slapped her hands on R-1’s shoulders from behind and began climbing up its back like a ladder. R-1 reached back and stuck its bladed hand into the creature like a fork and jerked her over its shoulder. It slammed the body on the ground. Just as the Shambler was about to get up, it stomped on its head, sending out a spray of bone and brain matter into the feet and ankles of the other female Shambler stumbling toward it.

R-1 brought forth its pincers and activated the servo-mechanism on its wrist. A soft whirring sound accompanied the now-spinning claw, turning it into a bizarre kind of drill. R-1 stuck its spinning hand into the female Shambler’s face, stirring up the bone and flesh like decayed stew in a mixing bowl, the hand splooshing out the back side of its skull until its force was enough to spin the head right off the neck. A stream of black blood shot up from the neck and the body dropped to the floor.

The male Sprinter was off to the side, digging its fingernails into the chest cavity of the last Shambler.

R-1 advanced toward it with heavy, mechanical footfalls. When the Sprinter caught sight of it, he picked up the Shambler’s body and threw it at the robot. The Shambler glommed onto the R-1 like an octopus around its prey, the creature still very much alive in undeath . . . and hungry. It brought its heavy head down where a coating of flesh was wrapped around R-1’s neck. It bit through the meat, its powerful jaws enough to crack the metal casing around the robot’s neck and into the wires beneath.

Bright blue sparks shot up and around the robot’s face. Some struck the zombie’s skin, burning it in the process. It didn’t care, and kept on eating.

The Sprinter came in, jumped into the air, and struck R-1 feet-first in the chest, sending the robot crashing backward against the pavement. The Sprinter dove into the other side of its neck and began working its way through the metallic casing on that side.

Recall.

Priority: Sprinter x 2

Objective failed.

Maneuver: Rotating claw.

Target: Head. Nearest dead life form.

R-1 drew up its still-rotating wrist and shoved it into the back of the Shambler’s skull. Within seconds it stirred up the head and brain, leaving nothing but a mass of chewed up bone, stringy flesh and oodles of black blood. The Shambler’s body stopped moving.

The rotating hand went for the Sprinter. The Sprinter swatted the mechanical arm away. R-1 went in again. The Sprinter pulled away from its neck, grabbed the rotating arm and tore the spinning pincers from it. Like a wild man, the Sprinter struck R-1 until its visual sensors blacked out. Only the left sensor came back on when the backup optical sensor kicked in. Disabled, R-1 activated the arm-blade; machete-like blades protruded from its arm from shoulder to wrist on its right side.

Internal sensor 1a: Power failing.

The Sprinter worked hard on R-1’s neck, devouring the flesh coating it as well as the wires beneath.

R-1 swooped its bladed-arm in from the side, connecting hard with the Sprinter, cleaving it nearly down the middle of the length of its body. Its skull split in two and toppled to the side like a sliced watermelon.

Objective: Complete.

19

Being a Kid Again

M
ick put a hand over his mouth in an effort to stifle his heavy breathing.

“That’s so unfair,” he said quietly.
What about those who just won on their original bet? Is there a payout? Hard to have “let it ride” otherwise. Sterpanko’s cheating.

“Shhh . . .” Jack said.

“What?”

“I heard you.”

“Which part?” Had he said it aloud instead of thought it?

“What part?”

“Yeah, what part?”

“The unfair part.”

Mick was relieved. “But it is.”

“I know.”

Mick bit his tongue and was convinced this was Sterpanko’s move against
him
and the whole place was now paying for it.

Whatever. As if you expected this to be easy. Just roll with it. Okay, fine. So now we’re getting somewhere. Won that last one. Good. Movement. Progress. Yeah, good stuff. Onward and upward and all that. Stop rambling. But if I had put down more . . . . No, can’t think like that.

Amidst the booing during the last fight thanks to that surprise announcement, he
was
going to bet even more. But if he lost he’d be in way worse and recovery would have been nigh impossible so he kept his bet as was. During that last bout, though, he didn’t know if the robot would make it. Machines were capable of so much, but that was the problem:
so much.
Once the limit was reached, that would be it. This was one of the reasons he had a hard time buying all those end-of-the-world movies—especially now since he’d gone through an apocalypse firsthand—you know, the ones with robots taking over the globe with mankind at their mercy. In the end, machines were still machines, each with limits, each with a power source. All someone had to do was pull the plug and one person usually did with those Electro-magnetic Pulse things. Why they never pulled the EMP out at the beginning of the movie and just won never made sense. But then there wouldn’t have been a movie, now, right?

Mick’s breathing slowed. He pulled his hand away from his mouth.

Jack sat slouched beside him, hands on his gut, twiddling his thumbs. The man merely sat there, staring ahead, subtly tapping his top and bottom teeth together.

Bad round,
Mick thought, yet Jack also seemed the kind of guy who could keep a pretty mean poker face if he wanted to.

Mick glanced down at his shoes and, while tapping one foot, did a quick calculation as to where he was at with Sterpanko.
Not where I’d like to be.

He wondered what would happen if he ended up winning big today and came out on top. Would Sterpanko pay him or would any extra won be moot? A part of him thought he might make a big stink about it if he ended up coming out ahead. Another part thought he’d just pretend he never got in the black and would hopefully go home with a blank slate. And even if he did win huge and could have pocketed, say, fifty grand or something, he couldn’t tell Anna. She’d either be mad at him for not trying to keep it if he forfeited it—after all, every dollar counted as they tried to re-set up their lives after the Zombie War—or she’d scold him for taking it because that kind of surplus would be too much of a temptation for him to come back to Blood Bay Arena and blow it on more fights. Mick hated to admit it, but Anna would be right about that last part. He had the bug. He loved the thrill, the “what if?” and the amazing gratification that came from scoring big on a fight you thought you’d lose.

Jack cleared his throat. “You listening?”

“Huh?” Mick said.

“Seems they’re changing things up a bit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Last one had more than one zombie.”

“Yeah. Maybe they’re trying to make it more fair. I don’t remember seeing a robot take on more than one at a time.”
Fair. Yeah right.

“Either that or that bucket of bolts had a few upgrades so they had to compensate.”

“That’s what I just said.”

“What?”

“About making it more fair.”

Jack arced an eyebrow. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, you—look, point is, things are changing up a bit. Got it?”

“Don’t give me lip, man.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

Jack huffed and crossed his arms.

Mick grinned to himself. Tonight might be the last night he could act like a kid. He figured he might as well.

He pulled out his Controller and checked to see what was going down for the next bout. When he found the screen, he took a long hard look at it. Some of these fighters—he couldn’t help but wonder if they were set-ups of some kind, actors on Sterpanko’s payroll. The Space-Time Continuum truly held no meaning anymore, at least not in the way it used to.

Regardless, here he was, in Blood Bay Arena, life as the world used to know it totally screwed up, puked out and messed up.

He thought about his bet. It’d be great if he could drop what he owed by at least half.

His fingers had a hard time committing to the Controller’s buttons. Once a bet was placed, there was no do-overs, not even if you made an honest mistake and mistyped something. What was done was done. Game over, win, lose or draw.

Mick forced his fingers to comply with his thoughts.

He put the Controller back and waited for the lights to go out.

20

Viking
vs
ZombieS

Bet: $225,000

Owing: $569,000

A
bel Meginbjörn stood strong, the weight of his chain mail shirt nothing he wasn’t used to. Neither was he clenching the handle of his sword. At least, not yet. Not until the dead rose. He’d battled many times before, first against men of lesser standing, most not knowing how to wield a sword or axe to save their life. Stealing from them had been easy, whether it was precious metals, food, women or drink. But those days were behind him now. He didn’t quite know what happened to his comrades. One moment they were sailing the sea, laughing, drinking and scouting the horizon for land. Some of his friends were known for ritually sharpening their blades before an attack, whereas others preferred their fists and hadn’t used their knives and swords the last time they made landfall and took what they wanted. So there, on the sea, he gazed off into the darkening sky, sharpening his blade, the mist of black rain hitting the water somewhere off in the distance.

A bolt of lightning cracked overhead. Thunder followed. Then another bolt struck the ship, right where he was standing, striking his sword. A shock raged through him and all went bright blue, then white, then he was in a land not his own. Those he encountered on the ravaged streets suggested his armor would do him well as there were straggling “dead men” about. He encountered one, too, his shield protecting him from the ghoulish man’s snapping jaws and sprays of blood coughed up from between cracked, yellow teeth.

The thrill of running that dead man through left him hungry for more, and as time went on, he discovered he was quite good at it and so eventually made his way here to fight the dead every chance he was allotted.

Abel Meginbjörn didn’t care much for going home. Not anymore. Why pillage a small town or settlement when you could earn so much more by slaughtering the dead and protecting not just oneself, but the living as well?

He adjusted his helmet so it sat more comfortably on his head, enabling him to see just a little bit better. His helmet. Someone who was part of this . . . fighting circuit . . . showed him a picture of what was supposed to be a Viking. The fellow in the picture had horns sticking out of his helmet. Where such a notion came from, Abel didn’t know. It didn’t matter. He was here now, setting history straight, showcasing to those looking on that Vikings were not to be trifled with.