Zombies and Shit

contestants turn into zombies.”

“Not necessarily,” Wayne says.

Wayne turns and goes back to his desk. He brings up the program he used to connect with the satellite system.

“I’ll just have to send the dogs after the scraps,” Wayne says to himself. Then he sends the order through the satellite to the mechjaws, commanding them to hunt down and destroy the final contestants.

Rainbow Cat is locked in a hospital room, sitting on the floor in the corner. Behind the door, dozens of zombies try to break through. They slam against the frame, trying to tear it down, screaming out for her brains.

In front of her, a camera ball films her face. It hovers in the air, in the position she had placed it. She had brought the camera ball into the room with her for a reason. She has something to say to the people in the Platinum Quadrant.

“My husband was Charles Hudson,” she says to the camera. “He was a contestant on this show, as you surely already know. He was the greatest writer on the island. Perhaps the greatest writer who ever lived. I brought him on the show so that you would pay attention to him again. After his publisher went out of business, he wasn’t able to get any more work out there for his audience to read.”

She pauses to wipe away her tears.

“In our home, in the drawer of his desk, is a copy of his last manuscript. The greatest novel he’s ever written. A masterpiece. This novel must be published. It is probably the most significant work of art of the past fifty years. I believe this with every ounce of my soul. I believe it so much that I was willing to sacrifice my own husband’s life, as well as my life, in order to bring this book to your attention.”

The door begins to split down the middle. Zombie fingers poke through the crack. Rainbow’s eyes widen and she begins to shake. She doesn’t have much time.

“Whoever is watching this,” she continues at a much faster pace. “If you’re a publisher or somebody with a lot of money who wants to invest in publishing this book, you must send somebody to Copper to retrieve the manuscript. You must publish it. I swear it will be worth it. Every one of you watching, I beg you to read it. I promise it will be the greatest book you will ever read in your lives. Please, I beg you. Publish his book.”

The door breaks open and the zombies spill in.

“Publish his book!” she shrieks.

Then, as she stares into the camera, she notices something off. The lens of the camera is missing. A tiny spark pops out of the top. She was so busy worrying about her message, that she didn’t pay attention to which camera ball she had grabbed. She took the one that Junko had slammed into her head. It’s broken. It hadn’t been filming anything she had just said.

Rainbow Cat looks up in a panic as the mass of zombies crowd around her.

Scavy and Popcorn walk down a street together, fifteen feet apart. Scavy limps along, using his rifle as a cane. The gnome is in his free arm with the solar-powered shotgun strapped to his back. Whenever a zombie comes near, he pulls up the shotgun and blasts out its legs. Then Popcorn kicks its face into the ground until it shuts its mouth.

“How are you feeling?” Popcorn asks.

Scavy shrugs. “In a lot of pain, I guess. Gogo sure fucked me up.”

“Sorry about that,” Popcorn says.

“It’s not your fault,” he says.

They walk silently for a bit.

“How about the virus?” she asks. “Are you starting to crave brains yet?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’m hungry, but not for brains.”

Another silence.

“She wouldn’t have made it, you know?” Popcorn says.

“Who? Junko?”

“Yeah.” Popcorn brushes her pink hair from her face. “They would have taken her out before she made it back to Platinum. I’m sure they’re pretty cautious about that kind of thing.”

Scavy nods. “I know… Still, I would have preferred not to know for sure.”

“Yeah…” Popcorn says. “I guess not.”

They stop. Scavy sits down on an iron bench and looks out at the wasteland around them.

“Ever think we’d end up dying out here?” he asks.

“Who’s dying?” she says, sitting on the street across from him. “We’re going to live forever. As zombies.”

“You ever imagine something like this would happen to us?” Scavy asks.

Popcorn smiles.

“Strangely,” she says, “this is exactly how I imagined we’d end up. Just you and me. Alone in a destroyed city. Though I always figured we would have been the ones to destroy it.”

Scavy laughs.

“It could have been worse,” he says. “We could have grown old together. Got married. Had kids. Worked on the docks for shit pay.”

“Ewww…” Popcorn says.

Then they sit in silence for a while, staring at the pink and orange light reflecting from the clouds on the horizon.

Rainbow Cat leaps to her feet and holds out her machete.

“I have to find another camera,” she says. “Where’s another camera!”

Gogo pushes her way through the zombies and lunges at Rainbow. The hippy stabs her through the chest, between her breasts. Gogo curves her body as if dancing on the stage of her old strip club, pulling the handle of the machete out of Rainbow’s hands.

As Rainbow tries to punch and kick her way through the crowd, Gogo grabs her around the throat and rips her head off. The zombies swarm her corpse as it hits the ground.

Gogo runs out of the room with Rainbow’s head, away from the other zombies. She cracks the head open like an egg, then tastes her first bite of fresh brain.

“Oh, hell yeah!” she moans, her eyes rolling in absolute bliss.

Gogo sits down, cross-legged, like a little kid eating her favorite sugary cereal. Using Rainbow’s skull as a bowl, Gogo chows down, scooping the brains out with her fingers and slurping them up with her tongue.

As Scavy and Popcorn continue down the road, they run into a pack of mechjaws. Four dogs growl at them, aiming their weapons at Scavy’s head.

“Fuck,” Scavy says. “This little gnome won’t protect me from them.”

“Hand me a gun,” Popcorn says. “Let me help.”

Scavy tosses her the sniper rifle, then lifts his shotgun.

“Let’s do this and shit!” Scavy yells, as the mechjaws open fire.

He fires his shotgun repeatedly, blowing one of them into three pieces. Bullets pierce his shoulder, but he keeps firing. He only has a few moments as a living human, so he might as well go out in a blaze of glory.

Popcorn shoots the sniper rifle, hitting the one with a rocket launcher. When it explodes, it takes out the other two with it. Their flesh flies up into the air and rains down on them.

“That was fucking awesome!” Scavy says to her, as chunks of meat splat on the ground between them.

As Popcorn smiles back at him, she sees another mechjaw coming up from behind.

“Think fast!” she cries.

She jumps into the circle, resisting the intense pain emanating from the lawn gnome, and blocks Scavy’s back.

The mechjaw fires its Gatling gun, shredding her body with bullets. Her pink clothing tears open, revealing