Zombies and Shit (8 page)

“In this world, it is survival of the fittest,” Scavy said. “The strong prey on the weak. The weak are left to suffer.”

“So?”

“Do you want to be on the bottom of the food chain?” Scavy said. “Or do you want to fight your way to the top and shit?”

Brick dropped a box and it smashed on the ground, dozens of dead fish oozing out in the mud by his feet. He decided to leave the fish where they lay.

“Honestly, I’d rather fight my way to the top,” Brick said. “. . . and shit.”

As Brick runs through the yard with his sledgehammer in hand, he thinks back on how much better his life had become once he joined up with Scavy. No more working his ass off for shit pay. No more getting beat down by every punk who confronted him on the street. Scavy gave him a new family and a new life. And even if it wasn’t as luxurious of a lifestyle as he had when he was a kid, it was still a hell of a lot more fun.

Brick smiles as he swings his sledgehammer at the first zombie to get in his path. His eyes light up with glee as its skull explodes on impact.

Charlie notices that there is something unusual about Brick’s weapon. It’s not shaped like a usual sledgehammer. Instead of a rectangular shape, the head of the sledgehammer is shaped like two fists, one on each side. When Brick slams the hammer into the next zombie’s face, it is as if he is crushing open its jaw with knuckles made of high carbon steel.

As Scavy and Popcorn pass him, Brick gets in the path between the zombies and his friends. He raises his double-fisted sledgehammer over his head and charges straight into the horde.

Although he thinks of him as a brother, Brick isn’t fighting for the sake of Scavy. He’s fighting for the sake of Scavy’s girlfriend, Popcorn. Even though the gang believes his girlfriend is that slut Gogo, Brick has been in love with Popcorn since the day they first met.

“This is Brick,” Scavy said to Popcorn as they entered her apartment. “He’s my new muscle and shit.”

As they approached her, Brick checked out the thin little punk girl as she painted her toenails pink. She had pink spiky hair, pink tattoos, and she was draped across the couch wearing nothing but pink panties.

When she noticed he was checking her out, she said, “Hey, think fast.”

Then she threw a baseball at him. He didn’t lift his hands in time to catch it and the thing hit him right in the diaphragm at full speed. With the wind knocked out of him, Brick leaned over and gasped, trying to catch his breath. It hurt more than the two-by-four that had hit him in the back of the head a couple days prior.

When he looked up at her, Popcorn was laughing, her pointy breasts shaking at him like children pointing their fingers.

“He’s slow,” she said. “Sure you want another dumbass in the gang?”

When Brick looked up at her, their eyes met. She smiled at him with her bright pink lips. It was love at first sight.

For the next year, Brick and Popcorn were fucking behind Scavy’s back. She said that she loved him, but he wasn’t so sure. She said she wasn’t a one man girl, that she could love both of them at the same time. Even though he didn’t like it, Popcorn convinced him that it was for the best.

“If I was with just you I would get bored too easily,” she told Brick. “This way our relationship will last much longer.”

Plus, she thought it was fun sneaking around behind Scavy’s back. Brick didn’t know it at the time, but she was also sneaking behind his back and sleeping with a couple of other guys in the gang. She also slept with Brick’s faux-girlfriend Gogo from time to time, but Brick already knew about that. Everyone in the gang slept with Gogo.

The night before they were abducted, Popcorn was going to tell him that she and Scavy were breaking up. She was bored with Scavy who had also lost interest in her. She decided that she was willing to give Brick a try for a while, as her number one.

But she never got the chance to tell Brick about it. Scavy’s apartment was gassed while they were drinking beers and playing cards. The producers of
Zombie Survival
got the lot of them. The last thing Brick remembers was his face hitting the floor next to Popcorn’s pink combat boots, as men in gasmasks flooded the room.

Popcorn looked back at Brick as he caved in a zombie’s ribcage with his double-fisted sledgehammer. She could tell he was doing it for her, even though she never got a chance to tell him he’s now her main boyfriend.

She pulls away from Scavy and yells back at him, “I love you, Brick!”

Brick turns around. His pink half-shirt covered in zombie goo.

“You’re my number one!” she says.

Brick smiles wide at her, as the right side of his face slips off of his head to reveal the white of his skull. His right eye drops out of its socket and lands next to his pink combat boot.

Popcorn didn’t realize he was wearing the combat boots she had stolen for him until just now. When she first got them for him, he said he didn’t want to wear them because he would get shit from the other guys. They already gave him shit for wearing pink shirts from time to time. He didn’t want to make it any worse.

Popcorn covers her mouth when she sees the boots. They looked withered and old, as if he’s been wearing them all the time, when nobody else was looking.

Brick turns back to the zombie horde and uses the last of his strength to fight them off, breaking their faces open with his steel fists.

Charlie helps Scavy climb up the wall, and then Scavy lifts up Popcorn.

“We can take the guy,” Junko says. “But the girl is infected. Get rid of her.”

“She’s fine,” Scavy says, crouching on the wall like a cat. “Don’t worry about it.”

Junko is about to push the both of them off of the wall, when a scream echoes through the yard. They look over to see Rainbow Cat has been tackled by the zombie with the sunflowers growing out of its head. It crawls slowly over her, toward her brain.

“Bitch will get what she deserves,” Junko says to Charlie.

But when she looks over at the writer, she doesn’t see a look of satisfaction across his face. She sees a look of horror.

“I’m going after her,” Charlie says.

He leaves his bag and stands up, balancing himself on the top of the wall.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Junko says. “After what she did to you?”

“I know she deserves it,” Charlie says. “But I can’t just let her die.”

Then he walks carefully along the top of the wall to get closer to his wife. A few zombies on the ground follow him below, trying to jump up to reach his feet like snapping turtles.

“Fuck,” Junko says.

Charlie leaps off of the wall, over the heads of the zombies, and lands on his hands and feet. He gets up and runs before the zombies even turn around.

Rainbow screams as the zombie bites down onto her skull, to get at her brain. Its jaw closes down on her head, but misses her flesh. It can’t get through her dreadlocks. When it tries to eat her brain again, all it gets is a mouthful of hair-tentacles.

Charlie kicks the zombie in the face, sunflower petals exploding into the air. He pulls Rainbow to her feet and leads her back to Junko and the others, several zombies following close behind.

Before Junko can help the hippy bitch up the wall, a loud bang vibrates the bricks beneath her feet. She looks over at Laurence. Somehow, the wall next to him has collapsed and a dozen more zombies are pouring into the yard with them. They get between Laurence and the others. He has to fall back, in the wrong direction.

“Laurence,” Junko yells.

“Forget about me,” Laurence says. “I’ll catch up with you all later!”

Then he heads to the south, running over the zombie he had earlier crippled, like a tank.