each other’s eyes even though they were too dehydrated to cry. Zippo looked at Xiu for a second, but the moment his eyes locked on Xiu’s they shot right back up to the bed.
“Zippo and Vine are younger than you, by almost two years,” Carlos said. “But I think it will be okay, especially with you becoming their Head. They are more likely to conform to an older girl than a younger one.”
Carlos took Xiu to the other side of the bed. His two Arms stayed in the back of the room. He positioned Xiu in front of the two boys, blocking their view of the bed. “This is Xiu,” Carlos told the boys. “She will be your new Head. She will replace Rosa.”
The two boys didn’t acknowledge her. They shifted their visions, trying to see around them, waiting for Rosa to come back to the bed.
“The tall skinny one with the long hair is Vine,” Carlos told Xiu. “He will be your Right Arm. The short one with curly hair is Zippo. He will be your Left.”
“Hi,” Xiu said, waving at them.
They didn’t acknowledge her.
“Try giving them some water,” Carlos said, as one of his Arms handed him a canteen.
Xiu took the canteen and held it up to the boys. “Want something to drink?”
“Don’t ask them,” Carlos said. “Tell them.”
“Drink this,” Xiu said to them. “You need water.”
“You have to be more forceful,” Carlos said. “Command them. Show them you are their boss.”
“Drink!” Xiu told Vine, shoving the canteen in his face. “I command you to do as I say!”
Vine didn’t respond. Then she tried shoving it into Zippo’s face. He too ignored her.
Frustrated, young Xiu punched Zippo in the face.
“Drink it now!” she told him.
Shocked, Zippo stared up at Xiu, blinking. She punched him again. Vine looked over at his Left Arm, wondering what was happening to him. Xiu punched Vine in the face until he stopped looking at Zippo, and started looking at her.
“I’m your new Head,” Xiu told them. “And you’re going to do as I say from now on. If you don’t drink this I’ll punch you again.”
Then she shoved the canteen in Zippo’s mouth and poured it down his throat. After a couple of gags, Zippo gave in and drank the water of his own will. When she brought the canteen to Vine, he accepted it without incident.
“That’s not the normal method of getting new Arms to listen to you,” Carlos said. “But it seems to have been effective.”
“So they’ll do everything I say from now on?” Xiu asked, almost excited by the prospect. “Like my personal slaves?”
“Not slaves, Xiu. They will become your Arms. They will become an extension of you.”
“But I’ll still own them? They’ll be mine and they’ll do everything I say?”
Carlos nodded. “The ceremony will be tonight. After the ceremonial joining, the three of you will be one unit. One body. Although your bodies will be separate, the three of you will become inseparable from that point on. Three bodies join as one to become the perfect fighting machine.”
Xiu nodded and then ordered her new Arms to stand up. They looked up at her, then at each other. Slowly, Zippo and Vine stood to face their new Head. She placed her right hand on Vine and her left hand on Zippo. Then she smiled brightly at them, red bits of spray paint in her teeth. The two boys smiled back, like mirrors.
Xiu has only one throwing axe left, but with her two Arms she doesn’t even need a weapon of her own. Zippo and Vine are her weapons. In the middle of the two of them, Xiu directs her Arms to blast out a zombie’s knee, leap over a wrecked pickup truck, and slice through a line of undead to get to the sidewalk.
Zippo and Vine are so tuned in to Xiu’s commands, that they know what she wants them to do before she even has to tell them. The Mongols call it
Cutting their way through the industrial district, lined with crumbling factories and warehouses, the merc punks are not able to conserve much ammo. There are just too many of those things. These are the kinds of circumstances merc punks are trained to avoid, rather than fight through. And the farther they go into the industrial district, the thicker the mob becomes.
“To that airplane,” Xiu tells them.
Vine cuts them a path toward the blackened remains of a Boeing commercial airliner that had crashed into a steel mill long ago. The tail of the plane is missing, so they head for entry to the plane on that side. The rest of the plane leans up the side of the half-collapsed building, like a ramp. When they get to the tail end of the plane, Vine and Zippo hold their ground as Xiu assesses the situation.
“We need to get off of the street,” Xiu says. “We’re going to have to cross this area from above.”
Entering the back of the charred aircraft, they climb the aisle upward toward the cockpit. The mob of zombies try to follow, but as they attempt to scale the slanted passageway they only slide back down across their slimy flesh.
The fuselage rattles as they make their ascent. They balance themselves. Zippo holds Xiu from sliding back into the mob below.
“Keep going,” Xiu says, as the building that holds up the plane begins to crumble.
They continue up.
A blackened skeleton sitting in one of the airplane seats nearby turns back and eyes them with black ash- filled sockets. As Vine passes him, the corpse reaches out with burnt twig-like limbs.
“Brains,” hisses the zombie.
But the charred undead corpse can’t reach Vine. Its seatbelt buckled around its waist keeps it securely fastened to the seat.
When they get to the cockpit, Xiu kicks out the door and the unit jumps out of the plane onto the third floor of the building. Once safely out of the plane, Xiu gives her Arms a smirk. Then, in unison, the three kick the side of the fuselage with enough strength to separate it from the building. The plane rolls down into the street, crushing several zombies below.
Xiu laughs at the destruction they caused, and her men laugh with her. But then the building rumbles and chunks of debris rain down from the ceiling. Sections of the floor break open as the building begins collapsing around them.
“Get to the roof,” Xiu says, leaping from a crumbling floor to solid ground.
Zombies come out from the shadows, lumbering toward them, as they head for the nearest stairs. They blast out the zombies’ legs, guarding each other’s backs, as the structure deteriorates quickly around them.
When they were teenagers, Xiu, Zippo, and Vine were the most unruly unit in the Mongol tribe. Raised in the wasteland, Xiu didn’t grow up with the traditions of the Mongols. She was used to doing as she pleased, any way she pleased.
They were supposed to be collecting food deep in the Amazonian rainforest of southern Columbia, but back then Xiu was easily distracted from her missions. Once she noticed there were zombies wandering through the jungle nearby, she wanted to hunt them down and kill them for fun.
Because they were not to be trusted traveling on their own, Xiu’s unit had to be accompanied by a guardian unit. All units are assigned to a guardian unit the day they are formed. This guardian unit becomes like their unit’s parents. The guardian unit raises the young unit, teaches it how to fight, how to scavenge, and accompanies them on missions. A unit is usually separated from its guardians the day the Head of the unit turns thirteen. That’s when the members of the unit are considered adults. And though they continue to train with their guardians, they are considered old enough to take care of themselves.
Xiu’s guardian unit was the same unit that found her in Chile when she was seven years old, the one led by Carlos.
When Xiu was fifteen, her unit still needed to be looked after by Carlos’ unit. At that age, they were one of the weakest, sloppiest, least organized units in the tribe. Her two Arms worked just fine. They did exactly what
