Natives dropped and spun under the chattering impact of advanced armaments. Drenched with spew, Fearon crawled away from the Volkswagen, wiping slime from his face.
Dead or dying natives lay in crazy windrows, like genetically modified corn after a stiff British protest. Now Ribo Zombie made a second run, his theatrical lighting deftly picking out victims. His stagey attack centered, naturally, on the most dramatic element among the panicking Army, Prince Kissy Mental himself. The Prince struggled to flee the crimson targeting lasers, but his enormous head was strapped to his throne in a host of attachments. Swift and computer-sure came the next burst of gunfire. Prince Kissy Mental’s abandoned head swung futilely from its tethers, a watermelon in a net.
Leaping and capering in grief and anguish, the demoralized Army scattered into the woods.
A swarm of mobile cameras wasped around the scene, carefully checking for proper angles and lighting. Right on cue, descending majestically from the darkening tropic sky came Ribo Zombie himself, crash-helmet burnished and gleaming, combat-boots blazoned with logos.
Skratchy Kat leaped from Zombie’s shoulder to strike a proud pose by the Prince’s still-smoking corpse. The superstar scab blew nonexistent trailing smoke from the unused barrels of his pearl-handled sidearms, then advanced on the cowering Fearon and Malvern.
“Nice try, punks, but you got in way over your head.” Ribo Zombie gestured at a hovering camera. “You’ve been really great footage ever since your capture, though. Now get the hell out of camera range, and go find some clothes or something. ThatPanspecific Mycoblastulais all mine.”
Rising from his hands and knees with a look of insensate rage, Malvern lunged up and dashed madly into the underbrush.
“What’s keeping you?” boomed Ribo Zombie at Fearon.
Fearon looked down at his hands. Miniature parrot feathers were sprouting from his knuckles.
“Interesting outbreak of spontaneous mutation,” Ribo Zombie noted. “I’ll check that out just as soon as I get my trophy shot.”
Advancing on the bullet-riddled Volkswagen, Ribo Zombie telescoped a razor-pincered probe. As the triumphant conqueror dipped his instrument into the quivering mass, Malvern charged him with a levelled spear.
The crude weapon could not penetrate Ribo Zombie’s armor, but the force of the rush bounced the superstar scab against the side of the car. Quick as lightning a bloodied briar snaked through a gaping bullet hole and clamped the super-scab tight.
Then even more viscous and untoward tentacles emerged from the engine compartment, and a voracious sucking, gurgling struggle commenced.
Malvern, still naked, appropriated the fallen crash helmet with the help of a spear haft. “Look, it liquefied him instantly and sucked all the soup clean out! Dry as a bone inside. And the readouts still work on the eyepieces!”
After donning the helmet, a suspiciously close fit, Malvern warily retrieved Ribo Zombie’s armored suit, which lay in its high-tech abandonment like the nacreous shell of a hermit crab. A puzzled Skratchy Kat crept forward. After a despondent sniff at the emptied boots, the bereaved familiar let out a continuous yowl.
“Knock it off, Skratchy,” Malvern commanded. “We’re all hurting here. Just be a man.”
Swiftly shifting allegiances, Skratchy Kat supinely rubbed against Malvern’s glistening shins.
“Now to confiscate his cameras for a little judicious editing of his unfortunate demise.” Malvern shook his helmeted head. “You can cover for me, right, Fearon? Just tell everybody that Malvern Brakhage died in the jungle-wise. You should probably leave out the part about them wanting to eat us.”
Fearon struggled to dress himself with some khaki integuments from a nearby casualty. “Malvern, I can’t fit inside these clothes.”
“What’s your problem?”
“I’m growing a tail. And my claws don’t fit in these boots.” Fearon pounded the side of his head with his feathery knuckles. “Are you glowing, or do I have night vision all of a sudden?”
Malvern tapped his helmet with a wiry glove. “You’re not telling me you’re massively infected now, are you?”
“Well, technically speaking, Malvern, I’m the ‘infection’ in this situation, because the Mycoblastula’s share of our joint DNA is a lot more extensive than mine is.”
“Huh. Well, that development obviously tears it.” Malvern backed off cautiously, tugging at this last few zips and buckles on his stolen armor to assure an airtight seal. “I’ll route you some advanced biomedical help....if there’s any available in the local airspace.” He cleared his throat with a sudden rasp of helmet-mounted speakers. “In any case, the sooner I clear out of here for civilization, the better.”
All too soon, the sound of the departing entomopter had died away. After searching throught the carnage, pausing periodically as his spine and knees unhinged, Fearon located the still-breathing body of his beloved pig. Then he dragged the stretcher to an abandoned jeep.
* * * *
“And then Daddy smelled the pollution from civilization with his new nose, from miles away, so he knew he’d reached the island of Fernando Po, where the UN still keeps bases. So despite the tragic death of his best friend Malvern, Daddy knew that everything was going to be all right. Life would go on!”
Fearon was narrating his exploit to the embryo in Tupper’s womb via a state-of-the-art fetal interface, the GestaPhone. Seated on the comfy Laura Ashley couch in their bright new stilt house behind the dikes of Pensacola Beach, Tupper smiled indulgently at her husband’s oft-polished tale.
“When the nice people on the island saw Daddy’s credit cards, Daddy and Weeble were both quickly stabilized. Not exactly like we were before, mind you, but rendered healthy enough for the long trip back home to Miami. Then the press coverage started, and, well son, someday I’ll tell you about how Daddy dealt with the challenges of fame and fortune.”
“And wasn’t Mommy glad to see Daddy again!” Tupper chimed in. “A little upset at first about the claws and fur. But luckily, Daddy and Mommy had been careful to set aside sperm samples while Daddy was still playing his scab games. So their story had a real happy ending when Daddy finally settled down and Baby Boy was safely engineered.”
Fearon detached the suction cup terminal from Tupper’s bare protuberant stomach. “Weeble, would you take these, please?”
The companionable pig reached up deftly, plucked the GestaPhones out of Fearon’s grasp, and moved off with an awkward lope. Weeble’s strange gait was due to his new forelimbs, a nifty pair of pig-proportioned human arms.
Tupper covered her womb with her frilled maternity blouse and glanced at the clock. “Isn’t your favorite show on now?”
“Shucks, we don’t have to watch every single episode...”
“Oh, honey, I love this show, it’s my favorite, now that I don’t have to worry about you getting all caught up in it!”
They nestled on the responsive couch, Tupper stroking the fish-scaled patch on Fearon’s cheek while receiving the absent-minded caresses of his long tigerish tail. She activated the big wet screen, cohering a close-up of Ribo Zombie in the height of a ferocious rant.
“Keeping it real, folks, still keeping it real! I make this challenge to all my fellow scabs, those who are down with the Zombie and those who dis him, those who frown on him and those who kiss him. Yes, you sorry posers all know who you are. But check this out—who am I?”
Fearon sighed for a world well lost. And yet, after all—there was always the next generation.
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