Zombies and Shit (33 page)

Heinz had no idea the military of Neo New York was so large. The aircraft carrier was such a huge vessel that it was seen by the island’s Coast Guard from miles away. This gave the island’s military leaders plenty of time to put all naval forces into action. By the time the Fifth Reich arrived to the island, the carrier was surrounded by hundreds of ships. Heinz had a thousand men in his army, but the military of Neo New York was two hundred thousand strong. He had the largest ship, but it was not enough to put up much of a fight against his enemy.

“One Aryan is worth a thousand of them,” Heinz told his men, his voice shaking as he spoke. “They do not stand a chance against us.”

The men looked around at each other, stepping out of line, staring at the battleships approaching them. They instantly reverted back to the small weak wretches they had been before Heinz had become their leader.

“Victory will be ours!” Heinz said. “We are Aryans! We are the master race!”

His words inspired only anger in the men. They now realized that they had been led astray. They had believed in his stupid impossible dream. They had allowed him to take advantage of them. They had killed their friends, their wives, and their children for him, because he convinced them it was for the good of their people. They had believed all of his bullshit and now they were back where they had started.

The Coast Guard warships ordered the aircraft carrier to turn around or they would consider them hostile and attack. The Fifth Reich didn’t put up a fight. They turned the ship around and fled into the sea. The nazis didn’t stand a chance. Not because they were outnumbered, but because the Coast Guard knew they were coming. The government had long known about the Fists of the Fifth Reich and their plans to attack the island.

It only took a single member of the Brotherhood to ruin their secret plans. An Aryan living in Gold had fallen in love with a Japanese woman, had a family with her, and realized he no longer wanted the Fifth Reich to succeed. After killing two of his Aryan brothers in self-defense, he came forward and explained to the government everything he knew about the Fifth Reich. The government would have sent out their troops right then and there, but they decided the Fifth Reich wasn’t much of a threat to them.

After the Aryans returned to their home waters, they put Heinz and his top officers on a boat and sent them adrift with no food or water. Starved and ill, they eventually made their way back to Neo New York. The Coast Guard allowed them to live in Copper with the rest of the white trash, because they knew that these nazis would work well on the Zombie Survival show. Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla paid the Coast Guard well every time they allowed a newcomer with potential into the Copper Quadrant.

With a small band of men and a new life in Copper, Heinz was determined never to give up the fight. He was beaten, but not defeated. He vowed to build a new army of men out of the citizens in Copper. They would rise up and take the island one quadrant at a time and someday Neo New York would become a utopian Aryan nation as it always should have been.

Only one month after he arrived on the island, before gaining a single new recruit, Heinz was gassed in the bathroom of a Filipino she-male whore house. When Wayne Rizla stood over his unconscious body, he chuckled to himself, noticing the line of she-male cum dribbling from the nazi’s chin.

When Popcorn opens the door to the stairwell, the zombies spill in. But they don’t go for the two punk girls at all, they rush right past them and go directly for Heinz. Heinz wasn’t prepared for that. Frozen in shock, confused over why the zombies ignored the girls, Heinz suddenly finds himself surrounded by the living dead. He opens fire on them as they grab at his sleeves.

Popcorn drops her chair and says, “Later, asshole!”

Then she grabs Gogo and pulls her into the stairwell. Furious, Heinz fires a few rounds into the girls’ backs, but they do not fall. The bullets hardly faze them. He watches as their pink and green heads disappear into the mob of zombies.

Heinz steps backward, firing into the undead as they fill the room. When the gun runs out of bullets, he drops it on the floor.

“Brains!” the zombies cry, closing in on him.

Heinz closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, allowing the powerful orchestral music of Wagner fill his heart. He feels the blood of a strong Aryan warrior pumping through his veins. He tells himself he must survive, he must win this competition, because there is so much more work to be done.

Just before the zombies reach him, he opens his eyes. Then he digs his hand into his pack and pulls out the severed head of a mechjaw. Like a wet glove, he shoves his fist through the neck of the beast and grabs it by the brain. Then he straps the mechjaw’s Gatling gun to his arm.

After he had paralyzed the mechjaw back on the road, Heinz realized that he could use the creature as a weapon. Because it was the dog’s brain that controlled its weaponry, all Heinz needed to take was its head and the minigun.

The dog’s skinless severed head snarls in the air, as Heinz points it at the zombies.

“I have a Japanese cunt to kill,” Heinz tells the shambling corpses. “And you’re all in my way.”

Then he squeezes the dog’s brain and the mechjaw’s Gatling gun shreds the zombie crowd into thousands of tiny pieces.

Far ahead of all of the other contestants, the three merc punks traverse the wasteland. They cross a rail yard in the industrial side of the city, ducking through overturned train cars rusted into the earth. Normally merc punks would never travel through zombie territory at night, but the mercs don’t have time to stop for rest. They have to accomplish their mission and get to the helicopter before any of the other contestants.

“Which way?” Zippo asks Xiu, in Spanish.

Xiu takes her homemade metal sunglasses from her eyes and examines the map. Zippo shines his flashlight, tied to his automatic shotgun, over her shoulder so she can see.

“East by northeast for a mile,” Xiu says. “Then east. We should get there early in the day tomorrow if we keep moving. Then we should be able to make it to the helicopter before dark.”

Behind them, Vine stands on a fallen train car, keeping a look out. The area seems free of the living dead, but he knows not to let his guard down. Standing still, even in a remote area, is always more dangerous than being on the move. Those things always tend to sneak up on you out of nowhere when you least expect it.

Vine watches every structure in the vicinity carefully, especially the fallen train. It looks as if a dump truck had crashed into the train decades ago, causing a pileup. Any one of those overturned train cars could be filled with the undead. Vine eyes each one carefully, watching for movement, and watches the top of the hill on the other side of the rail yard, and watches for other zombies that might have followed them in there.

He does all of this without moving his head an inch, not making a sound. Merc punks know that zombies are attracted to movement and noise. Merc punks are trained as children how to stand perfectly still for hours on end, even in the most awkward positions. Vine’s body is contorted in unnatural ways, his limbs bent and twisted, his AK-47 crossing his chest like a crucifix. He’s so motionless that he looks more like an abstract steel sculpture than a human being. He does this to camouflage his body against the twisted rusted metal of the wrecked train surrounding him. Blending in with the surroundings is another skill merc punks are taught since childhood. It is something they all are trained to perfect.

Over the last five decades, merc punks have developed zombie survival skills that are unknown to the rest of civilization. They know to cover their eyes with sunglasses or masks, because looking into a human’s eyes is the major way zombies can tell the difference between the living and the dead. There are other ways zombies can smell them out of a crowd, but looking into a human’s eyes is a sure way to drive a zombie wild with hunger.

They also know how to fight their way through a horde using only a small amount of ammo. They know how to sleep in the same room with the undead, without ever being discovered. They know how to debilitate a zombie in less than a second, using any found object from a rock to a hubcap to a pencil. They know the types of places where zombies are most likely to hibernate. They know how zombies hunt their prey. They know how the zombies think.

Xiu puts the map away. She hydrates herself with a water bottle, just two sips, then pours some water down her face and scalp, and rubs it across her short black mohawk. Zippo sits motionless, awaiting Xiu’s command.

Merc punks always move in threes. When they work together, they are no longer three individuals. They are one being. They are one Head and two Arms. In this unit, Xiu is the Head, Vine is the Right Arm, Zippo is the Left Arm.

Xiu does all of the thinking for them. Vine is the fast, quick-striking spearhead. Zippo is the sturdy backup. Ever since they were children, this is how it has been. Once they came together, they were no longer individuals. They were one unit, with Xiu in complete command of their every action and thought. Not just in the wasteland, but every waking moment, even when they were back home, on their ship.