dozens of red holes. When the dog’s gun runs out of bullets, Popcorn drops to the street. Scavy lifts his shotgun and blasts the dog until it no longer has a head or any front legs.
Scavy leans down to Popcorn. He lifts her head into his lap.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I can’t move,” she says. “I think I’m dying.”
“You can’t die,” Scavy says. “You’re a zombie and shit.”
She smiles up at him.
“I saved your life out there, big brother,” she says, raising her hand to his cheek. “Or at least what’s left of it…”
“You should have let it get me,” he says. “It might have saved me the pain of becoming a zombie.”
“No pain…” she says. “I feel no pain…”
“Are you doing alright?” he asks.
“Kiss me,” she says.
“Huh?” He becomes confused by the funny look she’s giving him.
“One last kiss…” she says, rubbing her finger down his lips. “From my ex-boyfriend.”
“Okay…” he says.
He leans in to kiss her, while pulling her up to his face by the back of her neck. As their lips touch, Popcorn’s hand drops against his lap. Her body becomes limp. He sits up.
“Popcorn?” he asks, shaking her. “What happened?”
She doesn’t move.
He shakes her again.
“Popcorn?”
Nothing.
“It can’t be…” he says.
She’s dead.
No longer undead, she’s become a normal lifeless corpse.
“What the hell just happened?” the director asks Wayne from the control room, pointing at Popcorn’s dead body on the screen.
Wayne smiles.
“The device doesn’t only act as a repellent for the undead,” he says. “It’s also a cure for the zombie virus.”
The director’s eyes widen.
“Are you serious?” asks the director. “Where did you get this thing?”
“I have my connections,” Wayne says.
“I didn’t even know such a thing existed.”
“Nobody does,” Wayne says. “It’s top secret. Nobody on the island is supposed to know about it.”
“Then how did you get it?”
“I pay my spies well.” Wayne dips a chocolate cruller into his coffee. “I had this prototype built specifically for my show. Those fat cats who run this island are probably shitting their pants now that this has been aired. By the end of the day, I bet every last person on the island, even the wretches in Copper, will know about this device.”
“But why do they keep it a secret?” asks the director. “Do you know what’s possible if we used this on a grander scale?”
Wayne wipes chocolate icing from his white goatee.
“The world would be saved,” he says. “We could move back to the mainland. Rebuild society. Everything would be as it once was.”
“Exactly!”
Wayne gives him a smirk. “But why would they want to do that? They are fat and happy where they are. With this device everyone would leave the island. They would be out of power. Without the citizens fearing the undead, and the big mighty government there to protect them, where would they be? This device is the most threatening thing to their way of life. The most threatening thing they ever could have imagined… a cure.”
“So you put it on the show so everyone would find out?” asks the director. “To save humanity? To give us all a better future?”
“Hell no!” Wayne says. “Fuck humanity! I did it because those bastards pulled my funding. The show was going to be cancelled. After all my hard work trying to prove this show was worth its budget, they decided they would cancel it no matter how well it went. And they did it the day before production!”
Wayne chugs his coffee and then tosses the cup across his desk.
“I’m no hero,” Wayne says. “I just wanted to piss those fuckers off.”
The director falls out of his seat as the door to the control room breaks open. Twenty armed men charge in, filling the room. They aim their guns at each member of the crew. Wayne slowly raises his hands for the soldiers.
“Go ahead and arrest me,” Wayne says. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it. The damage has already been done.”
“We’re not here to arrest you,” says one of the armed men, raising the barrel of his machine gun to Wayne’s face.
Blood splashes against the picture of Adriana on Wayne’s desk, as the armed men open fire.
Scavy figures out that the device in the lawn gnome is also a cure for the zombie virus. That is why Popcorn died on him. Once she had become human again, the bullets in her chest and brain ended her life.
Now he knows that he himself is safe from the virus. He will not join the ranks of the living dead. As long as he has the gnome, he is immune.
Sitting behind the wheels of a smart-car, one that could be operated manually, he lets out a big sigh. It’s going to be a very long journey. He wishes the brain inside of the smart-car could drive him toward the coast, but its organic material within the dashboard didn’t survive the gnome’s cure.
Mr. T opens up the passenger door and sits down next to him.
“Ready to go?” he asks.
Scavy tried to save as many contestants as he could with the gnome, but in the end he could only save Mr. T. The large cyborg was the only one in a good enough condition to survive the cure.
Mr. T looks closely at Scavy’s freshly bandaged wounds. The cyborg had removed the bullets from the punk’s gunshot wounds and stitched up the zombie bites in his legs.
“How’s the shoulder doing?” Mr. T asks. “You gonna be okay to drive?”
“Yeah,” Scavy says. “If I can stay awake and shit.”
Mr. T slaps him on the back.
“Then get a move on, fool!” he says. “We’ve got a world to rebuild!”
Scavy shifts the gear out of park and hits the gas. With a solar-powered car, a solar-powered shotgun, and the cure for the zombie virus, Scavy and Mr. T drive off, into the setting sun, toward a brighter tomorrow.
THE END
Thanks to a new miracle drug the cute little pig no longer feels a thing as she is lead to the slaughter. The only problem? Once the drug enters the food supply anyone who eats it is infected. From fast food burgers to free- range organic eggs, eating animal products turns people into shambling brain-dead zombies- not even vegetarians are safe!
Sex, Death, and Heavy Metal! The Southern Illinois Music Reeducation Center specializes in “de-metaling” – a
