“Fine, but you’ll regret it,” Junko says.
“No, I won’t,” Scavy says. “Besides…” He holds it up to his shoulder and peers through the scope. “How else are we going to take out the competition?”
“We need to move on,” Junko says. “This is the most crucial part of the game. We need to cover as much ground as possible.”
“What’s with this pussy crap?” Scavy is holding up his middle finger to her while he speaks. “I don’t want to just run away. I want to kill some fucking zombies and shit.”
“Then you will die,” she says.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Scavy says. “As long as I have fun with it. Besides, they’re not even that tough.”
“Not tough?”
“Back at the hotel, almost everyone got out alive and they weren’t even armed yet. Once Brick got his hammer he was able to take out eight of those things like they were nothing.”
Junko points her chainsaw at his face.
“You don’t understand,” she says. “The zombies in this area haven’t been in hunting mode for decades. They’ve been in hibernation and are just now waking up. Over four million infected people lived in the area we have to cover, and by the end of today they will all have woken up. They’ll know we’re here and every single one of them will be coming for us.”
“Four million?” Scavy says, his rifle shrinking toward the ground.
Junko nods. “And they’re all waking up as we sit here wasting time.”
After Junko says that, there is a bang in the wall of meshed vehicles behind Popcorn. They turn around. Another bang.
“Let’s go,” Junko says, pulling her bag over her shoulder.
The others go to investigate the noise.
“Forget it,” she says. “Let’s go!”
A zombie bursts out of the mound of rusted metal and charges for Scavy. Most of it is black and charred. Car parts have been fused with its flesh: a steering wheel is jutting out of its shoulder, a muffler is melded into its left leg, rusted engine parts run down its abdomen. Junko guesses that the creature had been hibernating in there for a long time, before the vehicles had decomposed together into one lump.
“Braains…” it says in a deep, barely-audible growl.
The girls get away from it, but Scavy doesn’t back down. He swings the rifle over his shoulder and points his spear at it. The thing stumbles awkwardly forward, tripping on its muffler-fused leg.
When Scavy swings his naginata spear, his gun strap falls off of his shoulder and lands on his wrist, weighing down his arm too much for an effective attack. The blade misses the zombie’s chest by a foot. The creature raises its arms as it comes closer.
“Forget it, come on!” Junko yells.
“Braains.”
Scavy drops the rifle and swings the spear at its neck to cut off its head, but the blade bounces off of the steering wheel. The zombie grabs the shaft of the spear before Scavy can make another attack. The punk kid pulls back, but the skeletal fingers have too strong of a grip. He can’t pull it free.
Junko shakes her head and sighs. Then she turns on her chainsaw arm, revs it up.
“From now on, you listen to me,” Junko says as she cuts the arms off of the zombie.
Scavy pulls back. The zombie’s arms are still attached to the shaft of the spear.
“Now come on,” Junko says, and turns to run.
Scavy picks up his rifle. Then he looks up at the skeleton hands attached to his spear, wondering how the hell he should take them off.
“Braains,” the zombie says.
Scavy shrugs and continues on, leaving the arms still attached to the weapon.
Alonzo finishes boarding up the stairwell to the second floor of the hotel. He decided not to leave with the others. He stayed back, where it was safe. After he saw the writer, Charles Hudson, ripped into pieces from the second floor window, he knew he couldn’t go out there. He just couldn’t.
“Will that hold?” Adriana says.
He looks over at her, the hammer shaking in his hands. “It better.”
They had found extra wood, hammers, and plenty of nails in Housekeeping. The
“There’s only two stairwells we have to worry about,” Alonzo says, then collapses against a wall to catch his breath. “Plus, I don’t think they realize we’re still up here. They went after everyone else.”
“What about Heinz?”
“He’s on the roof,” Alonzo says, breathing so hard he can hardly speak. He pulls off his coat to reveal massive sweat stains under his armpits. Adriana cringes when she sees them. She’s not used to being around fat people.
“Should we go up there with him?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “In a minute. I need a break.” Then he holds his chest to make sure he’s not going to have a heart attack.
There aren’t really any fat people in the Copper Quadrant. There isn’t enough food or money to fatten anyone up. The Silver Quadrant, where Alonzo is from, is full of fat lazy people. The Gold and Platinum Quadrants also have some fat people, but most of them are wealthy enough to hire personal trainers or get their excess weight removed surgically.
Alonzo had been fat since he was a kid. Unlike most people who grew up post Z-Day, he never had to struggle for survival. He had it easy. His father was the foreman of an oil rig when Z-Day hit the mainland. While the majority of the population was being transformed into brain-eating undead mutants, his father was safe at sea. It was hard to get by at first, but nothing compared to the turmoil taking place everywhere else in the world.
Eventually, when society began to rebuild itself, his father was in an excellent position for trade. He traded oil for food and supplies to the walled cities on the mainland that were still around during that time, and eventually to the people in Neo New York as it was being constructed and populated. He took charge of other oil rigs in the region and built an empire. He married and had children. When his parents passed away, Alonzo and his brother inherited the family business. They didn’t have to want for anything for most of their lives.
Eight years ago, the government of Neo New York bought him out of the business and so they decided to retire on the island. He started out in the Gold Quadrant, but ended up in Silver as he realized he was blowing through his money fast. His brother, who had a wife and kids, went through his cut of the money faster and ended up in the Copper Quadrant in just a couple of years. Because they were newcomers to the island, they couldn’t get jobs. Neo New York was overpopulated as it was, so one way to discourage immigration was to encourage companies to hire employees based on residency. Once Alonzo’s money ran out, he wouldn’t be able to earn any more legally. That’s why Alonzo decided to start earning money by illegal means.
“I want you to come work for me,” Alonzo asked his nephew, the night before he was abducted. “I’ve got a little business going in Silver and could use your help.”
Tony, his nephew, was nineteen. A scrawny little good for nothing punk who made next to nothing as a tattooist.
“What kind of business?” Tony asked, mopping blood off the floor of his shop from when two of his punk customers got into a knife fight earlier in the day.
Alonzo sat down on a homemade stool barely strong enough to hold his fat ass off the ground. “Waste.”
“You want me to sell drugs?” Tony asked.
Alonzo laughed. “No, I’d sell it in Silver. There ain’t no fucking money in Copper. I want you to make it.”
“I don’t do illegal shit,” Tony said.
“Nothing’s illegal in Copper,” Alonzo said.
