Zombies and Shit (21 page)

Once every inch of their skin below the neck is covered up, they head back toward the entrance. But something of interest has captured Rainbow’s attention.

“What’s that?” she asks Junko.

It is a wax sculpture of a cyborg dog.

“Was it from a science-fiction television show?” Rainbow asks, approaching the soggy animal sculpture.

Junko looks carefully at the animal near Rainbow. It is a large black German shepherd inside of a metal exo-skeleton. Long metal talons protrude from its paws, and mounted on its back are miniature Gatling guns and rocket launchers.

When Rainbow Cat leans down to look into the dog’s eyes, she says, “It looks so fake.”

“Back away from that thing,” Junko tells her.

“Why?” Rainbow says.

She backs away once the wax sculpture begins to growl.

“It’s not fake,” Junko says.

Then the creature lunges at Rainbow.

Junko pulls out her 9mm and fires at the dog’s snarling face, bits of tooth and eye spray over its snout as it barks ferociously. It ceases its attack, giving Rainbow Cat a chance to get away.

As Rainbow gets behind Junko, the Gatling gun on the dog’s back spins at them.

“Get down!” Junko cries, and the trio drops to the floor.

The gun whirrs, but no bullets are fired.

“It doesn’t have any ammo,” Junko says, as they get back to their feet. “Get it!”

Then she charges the creature, revving her chainsaw. The creature charges at her, then jumps in the air with its blade-like talons spread, aiming for her throat.

She cuts its head off in midair. When the headless body lands, it keeps charging forward. It runs past Scavy and Rainbow Cat, piling straight into a display of the cast of M.A.S.H. and attacks the set with its blade-like claws.

As the body of the cybernetic zombie dog rips apart a wax sculpture of Alan Alda, Scavy looks down on the severed dog head. It bites rapidly at the air and licks the pavement with its black tongue. Inside of its neck, there are wires and gears moving within the oozing flesh as if they’re a natural part of the animal’s body.

“I thought you said we should always run away from the zombies,” Scavy says. “But you fought that thing head on.”

“There’s no running away from those things,” Junko says, wiping blood off her chainsaw with a Doctor Who scarf. “They’re just way too fast.”

“So we get to fight these things when we come across them?” Scavy asks, excitedly.

“Not if we can avoid it,” Junko says. “If we run into one that’s fully armed we’re all dead.”

“What are they?” asks Rainbow Cat.

“Mechjaws,” Junko says. “You’ve never heard of them?”

They stare at her blankly.

“These things are responsible for the entire zombie outbreak, fifty years ago.”

Mechjaws were built by the US military several years before the zombie outbreak. They were designed to be immortal killing machines that could replace humans on the battlefield. One mechjaw was worth a thousand soldiers. It could not be killed by bullets. It had no need for food or sleep. It could survive in any terrain. Its orders could be beamed directly into its head from satellite. They were furry machines of death.

But they didn’t realize the serum designed to keep the animals alive could be transmitted by blood. They discovered this during their first field test. The first mechjaw was sent into the middle east to take out a terrorist cell. The researchers observing the test were pleased with the speed at which the mechjaw shot down each of its targets, but were then shocked by what it did to the corpses after they were all dead. The mechjaw ate all of their brains. Not their flesh, just their brains.

Then, like a virus, the chemical serum was transmitted to the dead terrorists. It brought them back to life and they became brain-eating monsters. The zombie outbreak was contained two days later and, despite the drawback, the project was considered a success.

The US military continued making mechjaws for several months until they learned that the outbreak had not been fully contained. A zombie foot had been left behind in the desert and was eventually eaten by a stray dog, which had become infected and bit a child who had become infected and bit his parents. Within a few days, the outbreak had spread throughout the Middle East and was already hitting Africa and Europe.

When news of the outbreak hit the U.S., the mechjaw project was cancelled. They were just about to salvage the mechjaw machinery and dispose of the organic material, when a group of militant animal rights activists broke into the mechjaw facility and released the dogs. Over two hundred mechjaws were unleashed on the east coast, killing and infecting every human in their path. With no orders to follow, they just followed their instincts: eat and destroy.

Z-Day, as the survivors called it, happened forty-eight hours after the mechjaws were released. That was the day practically every city on the planet had become under siege by the living dead. Some cities had it worse than others, but every city on the mainland was fighting for survival against the hordes of brain-eating undead.

The scientists who created the mechjaws had no idea what they had done. They never knew the serum would work on humans just as well as dogs. In later days, it was discovered that many species could be infected with the virus. It’s mostly restricted to large mammals, from dogs to bears to elephants to pigs, as well as water-dwelling mammals such as whales and dolphins. Smaller mammals, such as rabbits and cats, are immune to the virus. Nobody has ever researched why the virus doesn’t infect smaller mammals. If a cat is bitten by a zombie it does not become a zombie cat, it just dies. Some predict that it has to do with brain size, but that has never been proven.

Junko keeps her eyes on the mechjaw dismembering the wax Alan Alda, as she leads her companions toward the exit.

“We’re going to be in trouble if there’s more of those things in the city,” Junko says.

“Do they usually kill a lot of the contestants in the show?” asks Rainbow.

“No,” Junko says. “They’ve never been in the show before. Wayne always hoped to have mechjaws in the show, but no contestant has ever run into one. There are only a couple hundred of them on the entire continent.”

“So you think we won’t run into any more of them?” Rainbow asks.

When they step out of the door and check to see if the coast is clear, Junko runs into the floating camera ball that zooms in on her face.

“I hope so,” Junko says, then she looks into the camera. “And it would piss the fuck out of Wayne if he knew the only mechjaw attack to ever be on Zombie Survival happened off-camera.”

As they run down the street in their new extra-padded clothing, Scavy thinks about it for a minute. He’s seen enough stray dogs in Copper to know something about their behavior.

“But don’t dogs travel in packs?” he asks.

Junko freezes when she hears his words, then she turns to her left. Staring back at her is a pack of eight mechjaws, licking their scabby lips at her from the windows of a crumbling retro arcade.

“This time we run,” Junko says.

But Scavy is the first one to take off down the street as the mechjaws’ fully-loaded Gatling guns open fire.