Zombies and Shit

by Carlton Mellick III

  “Just get out of here,” Mr. T yells, tossing a zombie over his shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” Haroon says.

  “I’ll be fine,” Mr. T says, raising his fist to punch out another zombie.

  Before he could throw his punch, a zombie grabs Mr. T’s fist and bites down on his arm.

  “T!” Haroon yells, as the zombie’s teeth break through the fabric of Mr. T’s clothing.

  Haroon turns and moves on. He knows his friend has to be infected now. There’s no hope for him. Haroon has to go on by himself.

  As Haroon disappears down the street, Mr. T gives the zombie on his arm a growling face. The zombie growls back, with his arm in its mouth.

  “How come this guy isn’t dead?” Tim Lion asked his men, as Mr. T still stood there in front of them with three bullets placed directly in his chest.

  “He didn’t even fall down,” one of his men said. “That should have killed him.”

  Mr. T just glanced down at the holes in his red jumpsuit, then looked up at Tim Lion with a snarl on his face.

  “I’m not just Mr. T, fool!” he said, ripping open his clothes to reveal a robot body made of gold-plated stainless steel. “I’m the motherfucking T-2000!”

  The zombie’s eyes roll with confusion as all of its teeth crumble out of its head. Mr. T throws the corpse to the ground and pulls off his hooded sweatshirt. His golden metal body glimmers in the twilit sky.

  Then he swings his fist of steel through three zombies at once, their heads exploding into a splash of red soup.

  When Mr. T was cryogenically frozen, they did not preserve his entire body. They only preserved his head. So before Doctor Jacob Wyslen resurrected him, he had built Mr. T a robot body. One that was powerful enough to go on missions into the Red Zone and still come back in one piece. He still had artificial organs and still had to eat, sleep, and breathe like a normal human, but Mr. T’s new body was not made of flesh. It was made of steel.

  When Wyslen showed Mr. T his new body in a mirror for the first time, Mr. T nodded in approval. Then he pointed at the numbers on the chest.

  “T-2000?” Mr. T asked.

  “That’s the model number,” Wyslen said. “The previous one I built was the S-1000. This is the first one that actually kept its host alive. There are several earlier models, but this is the best of them.”

  “Why did you build these things?”

  “I used to think that the best way to survive in a world of the living dead was for mankind to exchange their flesh for machinery.”

  “That sounds almost as bad as becoming one of those dead things,” said Mr. T.

  “You’re not happy with it?”

  “I didn’t say that, Doc. Living in a metal body is better than being dead with no body.”

  “Good.”

  Mr. T checked his metal musculature out in the mirror, noticing that his muscle size was even larger than his previous life.

  “T-2000,” Mr. T said to himself. “I like the ring to that.” Then he looked more carefully at his hands. “But this drab metal color has got to go…”

  “Oh?” asked the doctor. “We can paint it if you want.”

  “Not paint,” said Mr. T, then he pointed at a mountain of gold jewelry in a crate near his cryogenic chamber. “Melt all that down. Mr. T’s metal body needs some gold-plating.”

  Then he gave the doctor a big twinkling smile.

  The T-2000 stood in front of Tim Lion in his men. Their mouths dropped open at the sight of him.

  “Now do you want to promise to quit selling drugs, or is Mr. T gonna have to pound some sense into the lot of you?”

  Machine guns opened fire on him as a response. The bullets ricocheted off of his body, sending sparks into the air. The T-2000 just swatted them away like mosquitoes.

  Mr. T punched his fist through a gangster’s chest, ripping his heart out through the backside. As the heart stopped beating in his golden hand, Mr. T said, “If you had a real heart you’d stop selling drugs to kids.”

  Then he used the gangster’s corpse like a battering ram and drove its head through a bald man’s stomach. The bald man puked up his guts as he died.

  “All of these scumbags make me want to puke, too,” Mr. T said to the dead gangster.

  After the T-2000 dismembered and decapitated every last gangster in the club, filling the room with blood and gore, he went for the big man, Tim Lion, who was cowering on the floor in the corner, hiding under his green top hat.

  “You better listen to the T-2000,” he told the cowering drug lord. “Crime doesn’t pay. And even if it does pay, there’s taxes on that pay. And the T-2000 is the tax man, come to collect. And he makes sure you pay your taxes in full, on time. And you can’t write off nothing, not even a company car.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Tim Lion asked.

  Mr. T thought about it and realized his metaphor had gotten a little too convoluted.

  “Forget it,” Mr. T said.

  Then he ripped the man’s brain out through the top of his top hat.

  On the way back to his shack on the beach, Mr. T came across the group of kids who had been doing drugs under the peer.

  The kids began to shrink and tremble as they saw his blood-coated gold metal body towering over them.

  “Don’t worry, kids,” he said. “I took care of that drug pusher for you. Now you don’t have to do drugs anymore. You’re going to have a bright future.”

  Then he gave the kids a bright smile and a thumbs up.

  The kids ran away.

  As he continued down the street, whistling, a man with a white goatee stepped out of the shadows behind a strip club.

  “I want him,” the man said to his associates in white masks.

  “Now?”

  He shook his head. “Wait until he’s at home, asleep. I wouldn’t want to get any more of you killed after that last guy went psycho on us.”

  The men in white masks agreed, staring at the large metal man as he strutted happily down the street, envisioning a brighter tomorrow.

  Heinz walks casually over charred corpses, heading toward the sound of two fellow contestants. It is the punk kid and that Japanese ex-host of the show. Their shoes are caked in thick meat mud as they trample over piles of mannequin limbs and cat skeletons, fleeing down the alleyway. Heinz hides behind a wall of charred yellow bricks, peeking out at them, ready to unleash a cloud of flames as they pass. But then he notices they are being chased by a pack of weaponized cyborg zombie dogs, snarling and thrashing and firing machinegun ammo. He decides it might be best to keep out of this fight.

  Scavy and Junko collapse in a pile of blue flowers growing from black mulch behind a dumpster, catching their breaths.

  “Did we lose them?” Junko asks.

  Scavy looks back.

  “They are chasing one of the floating cameras,” he says, watching the mechjaws jumping up and snapping at a floating camera ball. The camera shoots lasers at their feet, trying to scare them away.

  Junko laughs. She bets it really pisses off Wayne that his own cameras accidentally distracted the mechjaws long enough for her to escape.

  “You think the hippy made it?” Scavy asks, stomping a blue flower into the concrete.

  “Probably not,” Junko says. “Even if she got away from the dogs and the collapsing building, there’s no way a weak little rich girl like her could make it alone out there with only a dagger.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “It’s almost dark,” Junko says. “We should find shelter. Very few contestants who try to travel at night survive long.”

  “Where?” Scavy asks.

  Junko points at a tall white castle-shaped building a few blocks down.

  “There,” she says. “The castle building. It should be safe there until dawn.”

  They get up and head for the white building, passing Heinz pressed up against a wall with his flamethrower pointed at the ground.
<
br />   Heinz steps into the street.

  “So you’re going there, are you?” he says to their backs as they run into the distance. “I’ll be sure to kill you there later, you Japanese trash.”

  Heinz hates the Japanese. He hates all races apart from the superior Aryan race, but the Japanese he hates most of all. That’s why Junko is at the top of his hit list.

  White people are a minority in Neo New York. The dominant race is Asian, mostly Japanese. After Z-Day, Japan was one of the last countries to be hit with the zombie outbreak and one of the first to learn about it. They had plenty of time to prepare themselves. They fortified their cities, they evacuated VIPs to secure islands in the Pacific, they loaded people onto ships and spread them out into the sea. Of course, none of their efforts worked out according to plan. Letting one infected person into a fortified city would wipe out most of the population within a couple of days. Loading up boats full of people and sending them out to sea keeps them from getting infected, but they’re going to run out of food and supplies eventually. Though most of their population was wiped out, Japan still faired better than most countries.

  It was the Japanese survivors that helped the American survivors build Neo New York. They had more resources and were better organized. When the class system was established for the construction of Neo New York, the Gold and Platinum Quadrants were populated with mostly Japanese survivors, whereas the Silver and Copper Quadrants were mostly American.

  Heinz was born in Silver, in a German-American neighborhood. But as a teenager he was moved to Platinum when his father got a position at the new university that had opened up. It was very rare for entire families to be moved from Silver to Platinum, but they made some exceptions for university faculty. The high school Heinz attended was predominantly Japanese, with some Indian and Chinese students. The few students who were considered white were Jewish or half-Japanese. Heinz was the only blue-eyed blond kid in the school.

  The other kids didn’t like him. Not only because his eyes, skin, and hair were different, but because he was low class. He had come from Silver. He didn’t belong. Because of his white skin, the kids called him Cum Face.

  “How’s it taste, Cum Face?” a Japanese kid told him as he shoved his face into a mound of dog shit. “Does it taste like home? Did you used to have to eat dog shit for lunch in Silver because your family was so poor?”

  Heinz wanted to fight back, but that would only make it worse.

  “Maybe we should put shit in your eyes, too, so they won’t be blue anymore.”

  They rubbed shit in his hair, on his skin. Then the group of five Japanese boys kicked him repeatedly. When they were done, they laughed.

  “It’s a good look for you,” one kid said. “You’re not quite as ugly with shit all over you.”

  “From now on,” said another, “you have to wear shit all the time. We’re sick of looking at your ugly cum skin and snot-colored hair.”

  Another said, “If we see you and you’re not wearing shit on your skin we’ll kick your ass.”

  When Heinz arrived at home covered in shit, his father was displeased with him.

  “You let those inferior slanty-eyed rodents do this to you?” his father yelled. “You are Aryan, the descendent of Germans. Have you no pride?”

  “But there were five of them,” Heinz said.

  His father slapped him. “One Aryan is worth a hundred of them. A million. You are racially superior to them.”

  His father lifted his shirt to reveal a large black swastika tattooed over his heart.

  “Do you see this?” his father said, pointing at his tattoo. “This is a symbol of pride. One day you too will wear this symbol, if you prove worthy of it. You must never cower before such vermin. It is better to die than to shame your race in such a manner.”

  “I’m the only Aryan in the school,” he said.

  “One day that will change,” his father said. “Until that day you must endure. You must show these scum what a true Aryan is made of. You will not show any weakness. You will prove the quality of your genes. You will show them your race is the master race. Is this clear?”

  Heinz nodded and then his father helped him clean the shit off of his face.

  Heinz freezes when he hears the sound of growling coming from behind him. He turns around slowly. A large mechjaw is facing him, pointing its Gatling gun at his chest.

  “Nice doggy,” Heinz says with a smile. The dog growls at him.

  Heinz reaches into Adriana’s pack and pulls out her weapon: a blowgun. Slowly, without making any sudden moves, he brings the blowgun close to his lips.

  “It’s okay.” His voice calm and soothing. “No need to shoot.”

  Just as the Gatling gun is about to fire, whirring into motion, Heinz blows a dart into the dog’s neck. The gun shuts off before any bullets come out. The dog’s body twitches and then falls to the street, paralyzed.

  “That’s a good dog,” Heinz says, placing the blowgun back into the bag.

  The nerve toxin in the darts might not do any damage to the undead, but it numbs their muscles and nervous system for a short amount of time, immobilizing them. At first he thought the blowgun would be a useless weapon out here, but now that he’s run into a mechjaw he sees how useful it can be.

  Heinz kneels down to the undead dog. With his gloved hand, he pets the hair on its slimy head, staring into its black hungry eyes.

  “Why aren’t you covered in shit?” a Japanese bully asked Heinz the next time they saw him.

  There were seven of them this time.

  “We told you to wear shit from now on,” said another. “Otherwise we’d kick your ass.”

  “I considered it,” Heinz said. “But I decided not to.”

  Heinz changed directions to take a shortcut behind a shopping center. The bullies followed.

  “Why not, Cum Face?”

  “Because I didn’t want to look like the lot of you,” Heinz said.

  Two of the bullies got in front of him so that he couldn’t move forward anymore.

  “What did you say, Cum Face? You saying our skin looks like shit?”

  Heinz got in the kid’s face. “You heard me, insect. Now get out of my way. I’m sick of looking at your filthy skin.”

  The kid punched Heinz in the eye. He was wearing an iron skull-shaped ring that cut open the puffy flesh around the Aryan’s eyebrow. Heinz looked back at him, a thin trickle of blood on his cheek.

  “Don’t you dare ever touch me again with those disgusting hands,” Heinz said.

  The kid punched him again, causing more blood to erupt from his forehead.

  “This is your last warning,” Heinz said. “Do not touch me again.”

  The kid raised his arm to throw a third punch. Then Heinz stabbed him in the head with a crab fork. The boy screamed as blood squirted out of the hole on his forehead. Two boys tried to grab the Aryan, but he turned on them before they could pin him down.

  Heinz stabbed the thin two-pronged fork into one of their eyes, scooping out the eyeball like a scallop from its shell. The kid dropped to the ground, shrieking. Then Heinz stabbed the other in the neck. This bully did not cry out. He stepped back, holding his neck. A look of horror crossed his face as blood geysered from his jugular over his fingers, showering the pavement and the other bullies.

  When they saw this, all of the kids ran away, except for two: the leader with the hole in his forehead and the kid with the neck wound, bleeding to death by Heinz’s feet.

  “One day all of you cockroaches will fall to the master race,” Heinz told the lead bully, flicking the eyeball off the crab fork.

  The bully cried at Heinz, begging for mercy. The blood from his stab wound ran down his nose and mixed with his tears.

  “I’m sorry,” said the bully. “I’m so sorry.”

  As the bully’s friend lay motionless in a puddle of blood, a horrible stench of feces filled the air. The kid had shit his pants after he died.

  Heinz looked at the dea
d kid’s ass.

  “I want you to smear his shit all over your face and hair,” Heinz said, impersonating the Japanese kid’s voice. “If you don’t I’ll kick your ass.”

  The bully cried as he pulled handfuls of shit out his dead friend’s pants and rubbed it on his skin and hair. The shit collected in the hole on his head, mixing with the blood and crumbs of skull.

  “That is why your race is pitiful,” Heinz said, bringing the crab fork to the kid’s throat. “An Aryan would never disgrace himself like that, no matter what the cost.”

  Night falls and the streets fill with the living dead. A cloud covering blocks out all light from the moon and stars, drowning the city in black. The only thing that lights Heinz’ way is the fire from his flamethrower and the burning corpses as they hit the ground.

  The zombie mob stretches as far as he can see in all directions, a great sea of writhing molten flesh. The fifteen foot circle around Heinz is the only empty space that he can see for blocks.

  In this close of a fight, Heinz discovers a major problem with using a flamethrower as his weapon: flaming zombies. After he burns them, they do not immediately fall to the ground. They continue shambling toward him with their flesh on fire, trying to wrap themselves around him. If the zombies get too close to the gas canisters on his back it is likely to cause an explosion.

  Heinz has to switch between the flamethrower and Brick’s double-fisted sledgehammer. Once he ignites the zombies and the flaming corpses come after him, he swings the sledge at their midsections and sends them hurling back into the crowd.

  Up ahead, Heinz notices two small lights in the sky. When he focuses his vision, he can tell they are flashlights shining from the window of an office building a few blocks down. Somebody is camping out there for the night.

  Heinz knows his fuel tank won’t last for much longer if he continues using it at this rate. He’ll have to move indoors as soon as possible. Perhaps whoever is camping up there in that building has a secure enough setup to last through the night. He decides to make that his destination. Whoever is up there, they will have to share their shelter with him if they want to live.