Zombies and Shit (37 page)

of all of the remaining contestants spread throughout the Red Zone.

Rainbow Cat sees the explosion from an office window, as she sharpens her new machete against the sole of her leather shoe. Ever since she killed Bosco, her face has grown colder. She is determined to win this game, no matter what she has to do. She will kill even Junko if she has to. Nothing and no one is more important to her than getting back to Neo New York so that she can get her dead husband’s masterpiece published.

Haroon looks up at the explosion from a homemade raft. He drifts down a canal, hoping that it leads to a river, hoping that his raft doesn’t fall apart along the way. He built it by tying together a collection of boards and driftwood. As he floats, he prays that he finds
her
. He shines his flashlight on the bank of the canal, hoping to see her standing there, waiting for him. That’s the kind of thing he would expect from her. She always knew what he was thinking, what he was planning, what he was going to do next. If he doesn’t survive this thing, he prays that he will at least get to see her face once again.

Popcorn looks up at the cloud of flames rising in the distance. She walks down the street, in the middle of a crowd of rancid shambling zombies, dragging Gogo with her. Gogo holds her stomach in agony, groaning, and puking black saliva into the street.

Gogo glares up at the explosion with wild, hungry eyes. She cries, “Brains! Get me some fucking brains!”

Wendy sees the explosion from the balcony of a luxurious downtown hotel, petting the curls in her hair. In her lap, a lawn gnome stares up at her with its red hat and smiling chubby face. She grips it tightly, as if it is the most important thing in the world to her.

Laurence sees the flames rise in the sky over the shoulder of a zombie, while punching its head off of its body. As he charges across the street to another walking corpse, he wonders if anyone got hurt in that explosion. He hopes that whoever is over there got out okay. That is, unless that person happens to be a real scumbag. Then he’s glad they got their ass blown up.

Heinz glances over at the explosion through the window of a barricaded studio apartment, then goes back to tidying his things before bed. He hums orchestral music that plays in his head, standing in his boxer shorts, his black swastika tattoo reflecting in a broken mirror. He folds his uniform into a neat stack and organizes his weapons in order of size. He pats the snarling severed heads of two mechjaws propped up on his nightstand. Then he crawls into a dust-caked bed, lying back and sighing with relief.

Nemesis pays little attention to the fire in the distance. She stands in the middle of a high school football field, naked. With her arms spread to her sides, she breathes the air in deeply, her eyes closed, letting the soft breeze press against her bare pale-as-paper skin.

Oro hears the explosion from over his shoulder, but he is too busy trying to make his shot. Within an indoor miniature golf course, he hits a golf ball with his putter. The golf ball goes across the artificial turf, up a ramp, through the windmill, down a hole, comes out the back, and then enters the mouth of a decapitated zombie head.
Hole in one
, Oro says to himself. He smiles on one side of his mouth, then lights up a fresh cigar.

“Shit,” Junko says as she sees the explosion in the distance.

“What?” Scavy says.

They are looking out of a window of the white-bricked castle-shaped building downtown, looking at the fire rising in the sky.

“It’s those merc punks,” Junko says. “It has to be.”

“So?”

“If they are all the way over there then that means they are ahead of us by far more than I anticipated. They’ll probably get to the evacuation zone sometime tomorrow.” She looks Scavy deep in his eyes. “That means we don’t have three days to get to the helicopter anymore. We have to get there by midday tomorrow.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“I have no idea. Moving around is going to be twice as difficult tomorrow as it was today. It’s probably impossible.”

Scavy looks down at the sniper rifle in his hands, trying to come up with a plan.

“What if they’re already dead?” Scavy asks.

Junko looks back at the flames in the distance.

Scavy says, “All three of them could have died in that explosion. We might not have to worry about them.”

Junko takes a deep breath.

“I hope so,” she says, “because I’m pretty sure the only way we’re going to win this thing is if all three of those merc punks are already dead.”

Xiu flies through the air, escaping the explosion, with Zippo gripped tightly to her back. She looks over at Vine as he glides through the air beside her, pulled by his wire. The light of the flames flicker across their sunglasses as they smile at each other in midair.

“We’ll accomplish our mission,” Xiu tells her Arms. “And there is nothing that will get in our way.”

When they get to the street, they run East, toward their goal. The zombies in the area have all been attracted to the flames, so not many of them notice the merc punks as they scurry away.

Xiu’s unit passes a parking garage as they head up a freeway onramp. Once they disappear down the freeway, an engine whirs into life from within the garage. Headlights flip on. Then a large black truck covered in dried blood pulls out of the parking garage. It slowly weaves through the debris in the road, its engine growling, as it heads up the onramp toward the freeway.

As dawn begins to crack, Haroon drifts down the canal on his splintered makeshift raft. He’s wet, itchy, coated in mud, and tired of trying to keep his balance on the half-submerged floatation device.

He’s made it quite a long distance during the course of the night. The few zombies he passed did not even try to come after him. It was so dark out that he was not visible to the living dead from the middle of the canal. But traveling alone in the dark all night has taken a toll on him. For the past six hours, he had been unsure where the canal was taking him, how safe the water was, or how long his raft was going to last.

The blue and pink sky brightening in the East is a comfort to him. Although he’s no longer hidden in the darkness of night, he’s finally able to see where he’s going. He can see the lumps in the brown water are really fallen branches rather than zombies swimming toward him. He can see where the water ends and the algae-coated asphalt wall of the canal begins.

Pulling out his map, his shivering pruned fingers rattle the paper. He’s not exactly sure where he is on the map, but he knows that if he keeps going in this direction the canal will eventually empty into a river. He has to find a boat soon. There’s no way he can make it much further without one.

As he crosses under a bridge, he sees a fat Rastafarian zombie with oil-caked dreadlocks staggering across the road above him. The zombie goes to the railing and looks down at the raft.

“Brains,” the zombie belches down on him.

Black drool sprinkles in the water as Haroon passes underneath. When Haroon comes out on the other side, he hears a splash. The large zombie hits the water, thrashes to keep afloat, and then sinks to the bottom, leaving a coat of green oil on the surface of the water.

Up ahead, a few more zombies on the road running alongside the canal see him coming their way. They shamble toward the water, groaning at him. One of them hops in and sloshes through the thick brown sewage. As Haroon passes, the zombie goes deeper into the water until he’s up to his armpits, then dives for the raft. Mere inches from Haroon’s ankle, the zombie sinks into the murk and disappears under the surface.

Haroon aims his solar-powered shotgun at the bubbling water as he goes by, just in case the corpse knows how to swim. The zombie doesn’t resurface. He goes back to his map. Examining carefully, the river the canal empties into curls north, toward the evacuation zone. If he decides to play the game and go to the helicopter he would have a pretty good chance of making it—a better chance than finding a boat and making it to the ocean. It’s not likely that any river will make it out to the ocean. Even if he knew what part of America he’s in, he knows nothing of the geography. Still, he doesn’t like the idea of playing the game. If he got to the helicopter first that would mean he’d be condemning all the other contestants to death.

But he wouldn’t be able to make it out of the Red Zone without help. And since he knows everyone is headed for the helicopter, that would be the best place to meet up with them. They could draw straws to see who gets to go and who has to stay, then together the remaining contestants can figure out how to get off of the continent alive. He would gladly stay behind, especially if
she
is among them. With her by his side, he knows they would be able to make it. All he needs to do is find her.