“DP, go,” Doc said, not mincing words.
Shinobi said, “We’re on the outside of the apartments. Do you have a fix on anyone else?”
“You’re the first to contact us,” Doc said. “I’d hold your position for a few minutes, and I’ll hit you back when I hear more.”
The phones were set to vibrate, but everyone agreed not to communicate directly and run the risk of distracting someone who was in the middle of a battle.
Predictably, Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew entered the skirmish like a bevy of drunken sailors. They sang pirate songs loudly, walking up the middle of the street, and drawing the attention of a pair of Salvadoran MS-13 who were posted on the west side.
“Keep it down, Holmes,” one of them said. “You gonna get shot.”
“That’ll not be happenin’,” Captain Dan said, and they staggered off down the street, looking for a fight.
Chapter 11 – Balloonacy
Team Psycho took a different tack altogether.
“Hit this,” High-C said, pushing a joint in Ultraklystron’s face.
“Uh, I don’t smoke pot, High-C,” Karl said politely.
“Training day,” High said. “’No’ is not an option.”
He reluctantly took a hit and passed it around the circle. Myf fired up another one.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” he said.
“Who wants some blow?” High said.
“No, thank you,” Ultraklystron said. He was already feeling buzzed.
“I’m cool,” EPIC-1 said, hitting a joint.
“Gimme that shit,” eGod said, taking the Bowie coke mirror from High. He hit two huge rails like a seasoned pro snowboarder.
“Fuck it,” Myf said. “Me, too.”
“Um,” Monny said. “What will this stuff do to me?”
“It makes your pussy wet and my dick soft, speeds your thought processes and increases your reaction time.”
“Increases?” she asked.
“Decreases. Whatever. It’s speed. Cocaine.”
“I think I’ll pass,” she said.
“More for me,” High said, finishing what was left and firing up another spliff for himself.
“Got guns?” he asked, holding in a hit.
Everyone nodded in affirmation, silently considering the upcoming dangers.
“Pile in.”
Everyone climbed into Dora, guns drawn. Myf rode shotgun as usual, with everyone else crammed into the backseat, except for Monny, who, like Nursehella, insisted on leaning between the seats and looking out of the windshield.
High-C hit the controls and put the windows down, and said, “Cut holes in the cover.”
“What?” Karl asked.
“Just cut slits in the leather so you can look out of the sides. We need all the eyes we can get. You might have to shoot someone.”
“Uh,” Karl said.
“The life you save just may be your own. Just do it. Dora’s cool with it.”
“Dora, like Heinlein’s Number of the Beast Dora?”
“The very same.”
“You’re cooler than I thought, High-C.”
“Thanks, Mr. Klystron. You’re no slouch yourself.” He handed Karl his knife.
He and eGod each made long slits in the side of Dora’s custom Tonneau cover, then handed the knife back to High.
“Keep it,” he said. “You might need it. Pineapple count?”
“Uh,” Myf said, checking his backpack. “Six grenades, dog.”
“That’ll have to do. Let’s get it.”
He hit play on the CD player, and Cypress Hill’s Hole In Your Head began to play.
“Rollin’ like a psycho with the windows rolled down, who you lookin’ at, you tryin’ phase me, clown?” High rapped along with B-Real.
He put it in first gear, and they were on their way.
“So what’s the plan?” Myf asked him over the music.
“Plan?” High said, puffing on a cone.
He continued to increase speed until they were doing sixty down the empty streets. As they whizzed past the crip and blood posted at the corner, Myf threw up a peace sign.
There was a zombie on the next corner, and High cued up Psychobetabuckdown, which began, “Avast, Cap’n. Blast ‘em.” That was all the reminder Myf needed. He leaned out of the window and unloaded a volley of bullets, two of which hit the zombie sentry in the chest.
“Pure gangsta shit, High!” he yelled gleefully.
“Five points,” High-C said, and Spork dutifully logged it into the app.
“When are we getting out?” Myf asked.
“When we get there,” High said, accelerating.
“Another one!” Veeps said, pointing to the right.
Myf leaned far out of the window and fired a single bullet, which struck the zombie in the side of the head.
“Deerhunter, bitches!” Myf said. “Ten points.”
“Call of Duty?” High asked.
“Nope,” Myf said. “Asteroids.”
“Nice. I remember that move. We’re almost there, I think.”
“Yep,” Spork confirmed. “This is the block.”
High slowed a bit. There was a zombie standing in front of the wall of Router’s apartment block, and he aimed for it. It turned toward them and fired.
Monny screamed and fell to the floor as the windshield shattered. Myf leaned out to return fire, but didn’t have time to draw a bead. High-C accelerated.
“What are you doing?” is all Myf had time to yell.
At almost the last possible instant, High slammed on the breaks to lessen the impact to his passengers, and smashed the zombie into the wall. Dora’s front end crumpled.
“Sorry, old girl,” he said. “Everybody out, quick.”
After they had disembarked, Spork said, “Five points, I guess,” and started to log the kill.
But it was moving, writhing while trapped between Dora and the wall, somehow still alive. High walked up and put a slug in its head.
“Ten points,” he said.
¤ ¤ ¤
Team Gangsta was the first of the three to make it near the apartments, regrouping in an RV that Zealous casually broke into.
“Text home base and let them know that we’re there,” he told Betty once they were inside.
“Gotcha,” she said, and set her thumbs to twiddling.
A full minute elapsed, and he asked if she’d gotten a response.
“Not yet,” she said. “Hold on.”
“Shit,” he said. “What’s the delay?”
“Sorry. Updating my Facebook.”
Everyone groaned.
“Okay, okay,” she said. Finally, she got a reply from Doc. “YT’s checked in.”
Just then they heard a crash.
“One can only assume that High-C has arrived,” Beefy said.
“Let’s do this,” Zealous said. “Set phasers to ‘kill’. Tell DP we’re moving.”
As they exited the RV, they heard a blast from a conch shell.
“That’s Captain Dan,” Wreckshin said. “He doesn’t use a cell phone when he’s in character.”
¤ ¤ ¤
Router commanded her army to attack.
Chapter 12 – Operation Europe
As Team Hacker approached the outside wall of the apartments, YT gutshot the zombie that was standing watch. The blast of the gunshot sounded like artillery in the still night air, bringing several more. Since they didn’t fear death, they ran directly at YT and company, guns blazing.
Sir-Up shot one in the chest, and another in the head, while Chozo fired what seemed like a hundred rounds, taking out four more.
In a flash of inspiration, Quartz Relic raised his hands in front of him and yelled, “I cast magic missile!” A blue ball of plasma flew from them, exploding the penultimate zombie in the pack.
The last was almost upon Nursehella when she shot it in the crotch. “Take that, zombie bitch!” she yelled triumphantly.
“We gotta tak
e cover,” YT said as they ran into the courtyard. He kicked in the first door he came to, and they were relieved to find it was empty.
“Pile the furniture against the door,” he said.
“I saw, like, every zombie movie ever made,” Chozo said as he and Quartz Relic carried a couch over.
“Best one ever?” Wreckshin asked.
At the same time, Chozo said Cannibal Ferox and Nursie said Evil Dead. They looked at each other, ready to defend their choices.
Quartz Relic said, “Actually, I thought Dawn of the Dead was an excellent treatise on American consumer culture, and-“
“Just get some damn furniture,” YT said, “Or you won’t live to blog about this later.”
Nursie stood playing with her phone. “Oh, how cute,” she said. “Demona updated her FB status. I gotta do mine!”
“Demona?” EPIC-1 asked.
“One of Betty’s old nyms,” Sir-Up said. “Ten cool points for Danielle.”
¤ ¤ ¤
Team Psycho’s entrance attracted nearly twenty zombies before they had even gotten past the wall they had crashed into. They were surrounded.
“Back to back!” High shouted, and they got in a tight formation and started blasting. The bodies fell so fast they were stacked on top of one another like console cartridges, and they kept coming.
When they first zombie began shooting, Karl raised his hands over his head, encasing them all in a translucent yellow rectangle. The bullets struck it and bounced off. But four zombies stood outside the force field.
“Now what?” Betty asked, taking close-up shots of them with her phone.
High raised his Glock and put it against the shield, casually shooting one between the eyes.
“Ten points,” he said.
“Fuck you, High-C!” Karl yelled. “What if that bullet had bounced around in here? You could have killed us!”
“You’re too smart for that, Karl,” he said. “Would Ultraklystron make such a shoddy force field?”
“Uh, no, I guess not,” he said. “But I didn’t think about it when I did it.”
“Get you some,” High said, and Myf, eGod and Spork each scored a headshot.
“Let’s go,” he said, and promptly walked into the shield, smashing his nose. “Ouch.”
Veeps laughed.
“Can’t you make it mobile?” he asked Karl.
“I’m only level forty-three. Who has time to play Wow?”
“Wow? What about D and D?”
“I don’t play D and D,” Karl confessed. “Shadowrun.”
“Ten cool points for Karl,” High said.
¤ ¤ ¤
Captain Dan and his men walked into the courtyard swinging cutlasses and cutting down zombies, and saw Krondor Krew doing the same with katanas.
“Avast, mateys,” Dan called out to them. The ninjas waved and continued to hack away at the now dwindling horde.
¤ ¤ ¤
At the entrance to the courtyard, Team Gangsta entered in time to see the last of the inner ranks of zombies go down.
“Damn,” Zealous1 said. “Fun’s over already?”
Just then, gunfire erupted from two different apartment windows upstairs, pinning them down in crossfire. A bullet tore through the flesh of Zealous1’s tricep.
“Damn,” he said again.
“In here,” Beefy said, ramming into an apartment door. The crew went in, and Zealous went last, spraying the upstairs windows along the way with shots from a .44.
“Punk motherfuckers,” he said.
¤ ¤ ¤
Team Psycho heard the gunplay and approached at a crouch. But all they found were dead bodies.
“Ambush, me hearties! Stay low,” Dan called out from the shadows.
“Veeps,” High said. “Which apartment?”
“That one, I think,” she said, pointing diagonally away from them.
“There’s no apartment number?”
“Uh, no. But the map shows that apartment.”
“It’s a 2D map! Upstairs or downstairs?”
“It doesn’t say.”
High-C sighed. “Sometimes I think you geeks are too clever by half. A fancy-ass app, when all I needed was a street address and an apartment number. Call the Doctor.”
“Doc!” Veeps said. “We’re in position for Operation Europe.”
“What’s that?”
“The Final Countdown. I thought you were a hipster?”
“I am,” he said. “But I have taste.”
“Where is everyone?” she asked him.
“They’ve mostly all checked in. YT and Zealous’ teams are inside the apartments. Bbear’s on the roof as lookout and sniper. The only people we haven’t heard from are Krondor Krew and Captain Dan.”
“Dan’s here,” Veeps said. “We heard him.”
“Krondor operate in silence. They’re probably there, too.”
“So what do we do?” she asked him.
“I’m just a communication hub, not logistics,” Doc said. “It’s up to you guys to solve this one. Anything else?”
“Yeah! What apartment?”
Router set off an electromagnetic pulse, and all the phones went dead.
“Fuck!” Veeps yelled. “The phone died!”
“See where your overreliance on technology will get you?” High asked rhetorically.
“Lecture us later, perfesser,” Myf said. “We gotta find that apartment.”
“Karl?” High asked.
“I’m not picking up anything.”
High-C closed his eyes and concentrated.
“There,” he said when he opened his eyes again.
He pointed at an upstairs apartment, twenty-one, and the door was framed by a green light. A zombie took a potshot at them, and it struck above their heads, dropping bits of shattered brick on them.
“YT!” High yelled, using most of his lungpower.
No answer.
Instead, he closed his eyes again and tried thinking it. “My handle is the YTCracker” played in his head.
“What up, G?” YT thought back.
“We need Sir-Up on the roof. He and Bbear can pick off reinforcements as they come in. There’s a ladder in the north alley.”
“Roger that,” YT shot back.
High opened his eyes.
“You okay, nutjob?” Veeps asked. “Ya’ kinda spaced out there for a minute.”
“Sir-Up needs cover,” he told them. “Get ready.”
“What?” Monny asked.
Sir-Up bounded out of the apartment they were hiding in, and zombies began busting out the windows, firing at him as he ran. Myf, eGod and Spork took them out like ducks at a shooting gallery.
As he was nearing the corner, a zombie stepped from around the wall. It was nearly seven feet tall.
“Everything really is bigger in Texas,” Sir quipped.
Before he could raise his rifle, a volley of shuriken caught it in the neck and chest. It clutched at them and fell forward.
“Thank heaven for little ninjas,” he said as he fired into the back of the creature’s head for good measure. Nick slung the gun onto his back and ran to the alley, where he joined Jake in the sniper’s nest.
“What took you so long?” Bbear asked him.
“I got in the middle of a zombie-ninja turf war, so I stopped and bought a t-shirt.”
“Lulz,” Bbear said. “I’ll take south and east, you cover north and west.”
“Way ahead of you,” Sir-Up said, raising his rifle and plucking off an incoming attacker.
¤ ¤ ¤
“Zealous!” High yelled. “Apartment twenty-one. We need cover.”
The living room window of the apartment that Team Gangsta was hiding in was shattered by a shotgun blast from the inside.
“Gotcha, homey. Go!” Zealous called back.
Team Psycho ran upstairs single-file, High-C in the lead, and Monny bringing up the rear. To their amazement, they drew no fire as they made their way to Router’s lair. When the
y got there, Spork bashed at the door and they learned that the green glow was a shield enacted by her magic.
“Windows?” Myf asked.
“Sucks?” High replied. He put a shot through the glass, but the force field remained intact.
“Karl, you got anything?” High asked him.
“Are you kidding? Against Router? She’s level eighty, plus she cheats. Hates to lose.”
“Veeps?” High said.
They turned around to look for her, and she was gone.
“There!” Myf said, pointing to the first upstairs apartment they had passed. Everyone looked to see a dark figure close the door.
“Myfster,” High said. “You’re in charge. Get the other crews up here and find a way to take out Router. I’m going to get Monny back. Chozo’ll never forgive me a second time.”
“Alone?” Myf asked.
“It was my fault. She was defenseless. I could have seen this coming. So I’ll save her. It’s the burden of leadership. Got any grenades left?”
“Yeah. Uh, they’re downstairs…”
“Try that, first. I’ll be back. And do me a favor? Don’t tell ‘em I lost Veeps.”
Chapter 13 – Locked Down
Myf ran down to retrieve the grenades.
“Cover me,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
But the complex was silent. He met YT and Zealous1’s crews at the base of the stairs.
“Force field,” he said. “I’ve got grenades.”
“What color?” Zealous asked.
“Grenade-colored.”
“No, the force field.”
“Oh. Bright green.”
“Damn,” Zel said.
“Is that bad?”
“It ain’t good, cuz.”
¤ ¤ ¤
High tried the doorknob, and it was unlocked. He opened the door a crack, but didn’t see or hear anything. With the certainty that he was stepping into an ambush, he went inside, leaving the door open to use what little light was available.
It was a trashed but otherwise empty living room. He paused, letting his eyes adjust, and listened. The only sound he heard was his own ragged breathing, and his heart pounding in his chest.
When he could see a little better, he pushed on into the hallway, which was even darker. Every horror movie he had ever watched flashed in his head, but what ultimately stuck wasn’t a zombie movie, but Alien.
Zombie Killa Page 5