Zombies and Shit

by Carlton Mellick III

Bosco’s tone of voice is one of sleaziness, even though he thinks he’s speaking in a friendly unthreatening tone.

  “Get out of my way,” Rainbow says.

  “I just want to help you,” he says. “I just want us to team up. I can watch your back, you can watch mine.”

  “I already have a team.”

  “You don’t need them anymore. I’ll protect you from now on.”

  “I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

  Bosco raises his weapon, a machete.

  “How can you say that?” Bosco asks her. “After all we’ve been through?”

  Rainbow Cat is confused. “What do you mean? Do I know you?”

  “How could you have forgotten me?” Bosco asks. “You have to remember me. You just have to.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  A tear falls down Bosco’s cheek as he says, “We used to be lovers.”

  Although Rainbow Cat didn’t recognize him until now, Bosco was one of the guys she had slept with in Copper to get back at her husband for skipping a day of writing. Charlie had spent the entire day in bed, feeling sorry for himself. He had not written a single word in a day. It didn’t matter that his typewriter was out of ink and that he had food poisoning from the dumpster chicken she brought home the night before. He didn’t meet his quota and she was going to make good on her promise.

  She chose Bosco because he was the most pathetic-looking guy in the bar. Sleeping with strange men was not something she enjoyed. She only did it to piss off her husband, so she picked the most worthless pieces of scum to fuck. And because he had not written a single word, she had planned to spend the night with this total loser.

  Bosco had never been able to pick up a girl at a bar, let alone get picked up himself. It was like a dream come true for him. There was finally someone who wanted him, who could maybe even love him. And she was far more beautiful than any woman he had seen before. Her tiny pink smile, her lioness hair, her thin muscled arms; she was absolute perfection to him. He fell in love with her immediately. Not just because she was young and attractive, but because she chose to spend time with him of all people.

  The prostitutes he used to pay to sleep with him had two rules: no kissing on the mouth and no cuddling. No matter how much he offered to pay they refused to do those things with him. This was heartbreaking to Bosco, because those are the two things he cared about most. Sex wasn’t that big of a deal to him. He wasn’t very good at it due to problems with impotency and premature ejaculation. All he wanted was to be kissed by a woman, to hold one in his arms.

  Rainbow Cat was the first woman he ever kissed. The first woman who slept in his arms. When she kissed him, she did it passionately, as if he was her whole world in that moment. They didn’t just have sex, they made love. They drenched his bed with their passion. And after he came inside of her, she hugged her naked body to him. He wrapped himself around her and she slept in his arms the entire night. For that one night, she belonged to him. But the next morning she was gone.

  He looked for her everywhere after that day, imagining all sorts of excuses for why she had not stayed. He thought she obviously had feelings for him, that she loved him. A week later he learned she worked on one of the farms. But after following her home from work, he discovered that she was married to another man. A horrible man who could not possibly love her as much as he did.

  The next time he met her alone in the bar, she didn’t make eye contact with him. She left with somebody else that night. It was a large tattooed man with a blond beard. Dan was his name, a regular at the bar and a real shit head. Bosco tried to be friends with Dan once. He bought the guy a beer and Dan still refused to hang out with him. He thought Bosco was gay.

  Rainbow didn’t spend the night with Dan that night. She just let him fuck her against a dumpster in an alley a few blocks down. The way the large muscular man rammed himself into her body was disturbing to Bosco. Dan shoved her head in the trash and repeated said how do you like that, bitch? as he fucked her. After he came, Dan smacked her bare ass and left her sitting there naked and sore. She just wiped the slime out of her crotch, gathered her clothing, and went home as if nothing had happened.

  On the way back to the bar, Bosco confronted Dan.

  “What the fuck were you doing with my girl back there?” Bosco asked him.

  Dan looked back with a confused face.

  “You?” Dan asked, recognizing him. “Did you follow us you fucking pervert?”

  “Yeah, and I saw what you did. Rainbow is my girl. I love her more than anyone ever could.”

  “You’re her husband?”

  “No, I’m her lover. I love her far more than her husband does.”

  “You’re a fucking freak, dude. Get the fuck out of here.”

  Bosco got into his face.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “She belongs to me.”

  Dan looked down at the scrawny man. “Look, weirdo. You’re starting to piss me off. If you don’t—”

  Before Dan could finish, Bosco stabbed him in the face with a broken beer bottle. Dan screamed and fell to the ground, a shard of glass stuck through his eyelid and buried deep into his eye socket. Then Bosco stabbed the bottle repeatedly in his face and chest, until Dan was no longer moving and the bottle had shattered in his hand.

  “She’s my beautiful Rainbow,” he said to the corpse, wiping the tears from his eyes.

  After that day, Bosco stalked Rainbow. He followed her home from work and watched her sleeping with her husband through their apartment window at night. It wasn’t often that she had sex with other men, but when she did Bosco didn’t let them get away with it. He made sure they shared the same fate as that asshole Dan.

  At night, Bosco fantasized about her body sleeping next to his. He wrapped himself around the pillow her head had slept on that night, and imagined it was her body against him. In his dreams, he would kiss her on the mouth and bury his nose deep in her blonde dreadlocked hair. They would make love and live inside of his bed like a tomb for all eternity.

  Yesterday night, he had followed Rainbow and Charlie to the restaurant. He assumed Charlie was abusive to her, a horrible human being she wanted to have nothing to do with. That’s why she cheated on him so much. Bosco wanted to help her escape her living hell of a relationship. He planned to kill her husband the next morning, while she was at work. He didn’t want her to go through the anguish of seeing her husband’s murdered body, so he planned to make it appear as if Charlie left her for another woman. Just imagining how happy she would be to get rid of him for good brought a smile to his lips.

  But he never got the chance to kill him. At the restaurant, Bosco watched as Rainbow Cat and Charlie collapsed into their plates of food. Their wine had been drugged. Then a man with a white goatee stepped out of the kitchen and went to the couple. Other men in white masks came in from the street, picked up their bodies and brought them into the back. The restaurant was empty save for the manager who appeared to be friends or business partners of the man with the white goatee.

  Bosco didn’t know what was going on, but he knew his beautiful Rainbow was in trouble. He pulled a machete out from under his coat, the same weapon he had planned to kill Charlie with, and charged the man with the white goatee.

  The men in white masks turned to Bosco as he ran screaming at them. They held out there hands to grab him, but he went in swinging. His machete cut one of their hands in half, split down the middle, spraying blood on the white suit. He chopped another one through the neck, nearly cutting his head off. Before he could get to the man with the white goatee, enough of them had grabbed him to pin him to the ground.

  “Wayne,” said one of the white-masked men, “who is this guy?”

  “I have no idea,” Wayne said, wiping his hands. “But I like him. Let’s put him on the show.”

  They chloroformed Bosco, brought his body in the back, and dropped him on top of Charlie and Rainbow. He didn’t know it through the dru
gs, but he had snuggled Rainbow Cat again that night, in the back of the helicopter, all the way to the Red Zone.

  The producers decided to let him use his own machete in the game. It was the first time anybody had ever been allowed to use their own weapon in the show. When he woke up, Bosco was happy to see that Rainbow was with him. But he was not happy that she was with Charlie. He decided to bide his time, wait for the two of them to separate, wait for Charlie to be killed by the undead, wait to get Rainbow alone, then save her, then they could die together.

  Everything had worked out perfectly for him… until he learned that Rainbow Cat had no idea who he was.

  “That was a long time ago,” Rainbow told him. “I normally don’t think much about guys after I sleep with them.”

  “I’ve never stopped thinking about you.”

  Rainbow backs away. “That’s a little strange…”

  Bosco steps closer, with his machete reflecting beams of sunlight coming through the ceiling.

  “I want you to win this, Rainbow,” he said. “I want to do everything in my power to protect you and keep you safe. All I ask for in return is that you let me die in your arms.”

  As he opens his arms, as if to embrace her, Rainbow panics and runs away.

  “Stop!” Bosco says.

  He chases after her. “Get back here!”

  She runs for an exit in the back of the department store. Angry at her for running away, he swings his machete in the air at her back to take out his frustration. He would never hurt her, but right now she’s pissing him off. The sound of the machete swiping at the air behind her makes Rainbow Cat scream.

  She trips over some rubble and falls face-first into the cement. Her eyes spin in a daze as she tries to get to her feet.

  Bosco drops on top of her and wraps himself around her body. She goes for her dagger, but he pries it from her fingers and tosses it across the room. She kicks at him and screams, but her head is still spinning from the fall.

  He snuggles her forcefully, hushing her.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispers into her ear. “I just want to cuddle with you. That’s all I want before I die.”

  As her senses return, Rainbow realizes that this freak is snuggle-raping her. He spoons her in the pile of rubble, one arm pressed between her breasts, one leg lying over her legs. She pulls her hand out from under his snuggling arm, then elbows him in the face, breaking his nose

  “Get off of me!” she says, wriggling out of his grip.

  When she gets to her feet, she faces him.

  “You’re so disgusting!” she says.

  Bosco stands up, holding his bloody nose.

  “You don’t mean that,” he says. “I love you more than anything in the world.”

  She says, “I only fucked your ugly pathetic ass to get back at my husband. I figured it would piss him off if I fucked the biggest loser in the bar.”

  Bosco points the machete at her. “You don’t mean that.”

  She spits at him. “Why the hell would I ever want to be with a loser like you?”

  Bosco glares at her.

  “You fucking bitch…” he says, angry tears ripping down his face. “I’ll fucking kill you.”

  Rainbow bends her knees, getting ready to run away.

  “Oh yeah?” Rainbow says. “Go ahead and try it.”

  Bosco raises the machete and charges her. She turns to run away, but after ten feet she leaps into the air, spins around like a butterfly, and kicks him in the face. His lower jaw dislocates and he falls to the ground. Rainbow gets into a fighting stance above him, ready to defend herself.

  Bosco never knew, nor did her husband, nor did anyone in the Copper Quadrant, but Rainbow was an expert martial artist. Before she was with Charlie, she was in an abusive relationship. She had a boyfriend who used to beat her. A popular soccer player named Teddy who took a liking to her. This was before she had the dreadlocks, before she read Charles Hudson novels.

  She liked him at first, because he was so adored by all the other girls. Then she discovered he was a total asshole. He was a bully and flirted with women behind her back. The first time he hit her was the day she tried to break up with him. He made her change her mind, physically. Then he started beating her all the time. He hit her whenever she raised her voice to him. He would throw her to the ground and kick her in the stomach if he found out she talked to another guy. If she refused to give him sex when he wanted it she would go home with blood stains on her clothing. She was too afraid to leave him, too afraid to tell anyone about what he was doing to her.

  Then she started taking lessons in self-defense. She studied several books and practiced every moment she wasn’t around him. The next time she told him she was dumping him, he wasn’t able to lay a finger on her. He threw one punch and she broke his arm.

  After that, she studied the martial arts for fun. It helped her build confidence and self-esteem, which is what she needed most after the weak cowering creature that Teddy had turned her into. But after she met Charlie, she quit all of her hobbies. She wanted to devote herself completely to his writing. The reason she decided not to tell her husband about her fighting skills was because she didn’t want it to effect their relationship. She knew it might threaten his macho ego to know that his wife could kick his ass in under a minute. Plus, if Charlie ever did become abusive toward her, she wanted her ass-kicking skills to come as a surprise to him.

  “I’ll cut your fucking face off,” Bosco says to Rainbow Cat, but she can hardly understand him with his dislocated jaw.

  He swings his machete at her, aiming for her hips, but Rainbow catches him by the wrist and bends back his arm. He drops the machete. She punches him twice in the diaphragm, knees him in the stomach, and flips him over her shoulder into the dirt.

  “Don’t get up,” she says to him with her foot in his back.

  He doesn’t get up.

  As she walks away, she feels as though her skills have become pretty rusty, but they’re still there. She’s going to need them if she’s going to be the one to win this competition.

  Bosco retrieves his machete and charges her back, aiming to plant the blade directly in the center of her skull. When she turns around, the machete hits her in the throat. Bosco’s eyes widen with regret when he sees the look of shock and sadness on her face.

  He pulls out the machete and blood dribbles out of the wound. Rainbow grabs her neck wound, holding in the blood. Then she looks up at Bosco.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  The blade didn’t hit her jugular, so the wound isn’t fatal. But the idea that he came only a centimeter away from ending her life fills Rainbow with rage.

  She charges him.

  Bosco holds out his machete to defend himself, but it takes Rainbow less than a second to grab his machete arm and break it at the elbow. A sliver of bone tears through the skin of his upper arm and he cries so loud that it attracts zombies in from the street. She stomps on his knee, dislocating it, and he falls to the ground in front of her.

  She wraps herself around his back, snuggle-raping him in the same way he had done to her, and puts him in a tight headlock.

  “Wait…” Bosco cries.

  She flexes her muscled arms around his head, and slowly breaks his neck against her body.

  “Don’t…” Bosco says, just before the loud cracking sound.

  His body goes limp in her arms.

  She tears a piece of fabric from his clothing and wraps it around her throat to stop the bleeding.

  “Braiiins,” says a skeleton as it staggers toward her. Four more zombies follow close behind.

  She picks up the machete and wipes her blood off of the blade, ready to hack these living corpses into pieces. Before she charges into battle, she looks back at Bosco’s corpse. He looks even twice as pathetic now that he’s dead. She has no pity for losers like him. They are a waste. She could never respect a man who loved her more than anything in the world. The kind of man she loved was one who p
ut his ambitions above all relationships, like Charles Hudson did with his writing.

  Rainbow realizes that she did end up giving Bosco what he wanted after all. When she broke his neck, he died in her arms. As she chops the head off the first zombie that comes toward her, she kicks herself for letting the pathetic asshole get his way. She wishes she would have just used the machete to slice open a major artery, and then left him there to bleed to death all alone.

  After they find all of the components necessary to build the weapon laid out in the blueprints, Laurence and Haroon look for a safe place to put them all together. They cross a street to a gas station and climb a ladder to get to the rooftop. Junko had told them that zombies were horrible climbers, so Haroon figures that’s the safest place for them at the moment.

  On the mold-coated roof, Haroon empties the pack. He spreads out all of the items in the black slime. Then unfolds the blueprints to figure out how to construct the thing.

  Haroon knows his way around building weapons, so this isn’t much of a challenge for him. He can tell it is some kind of gun. He puts together the barrel first, then the trigger and the power supply. In less than half an hour, the weapon is constructed: a mess of wires and cables formed into the shape of a rifle.

  “What is it?” Laurence asks.

  “It can’t be…” Haroon says.

  “What?”

  Haroon examines closely.

  “It’s a completely different model than mine,” Haroon says. “But they perfected it.”

  “Perfected what? Spit it out.”

  “My solar-powered shotgun,” Haroon says. “This is it. The weapon I had been working on for years… But this thing looks like it could actually work.”

  “Let me see,” Laurence says.

  He picks up the weapon and aims it at a zombie in the distance. When he pulls the trigger, nothing happens.

  “Brains!” the zombie yells at him from the distance.

  “It doesn’t work,” Laurence says.