Gogo and Popcorn look at each other. When Popcorn notices Gogo’s condition, she winks. They know that Heinz can’t kill them if they are already dead.
“Now,” Heinz says. “Let’s get to work.”
Then he leads them down the hallway, away from the undead.
Over the course of a few years, Heinz collected followers among the wretched starving youths of the Fifth Reich. He inspired them to hold their heads up high, to work hard, and believe in the future of the Aryan race. Eventually, his men were practically running the ship. They were the strongest, most skilled members of the Aryan population. They were organized and little by little they improved the living conditions of their brothers.
“I’m taking over the ship,” Heinz said to the Captain of the Fifth Reich.
The Captain looked at Heinz. No longer was Heinz a teenaged kid, he was now a fully-grown man and a leader. Behind Heinz, stood a row of his soldiers, armed with shotguns. The Captain stood up from his desk and removed his hat.
“I’m grateful to have you on board,” said the Captain. “You have helped discipline and motivate the men. I haven’t seen the ship run so smoothly in over a decade.”
“So you will relinquish your command?” Heinz asked.
“No,” said the Captain.
Heinz nodded at his lieutenant. Then all of his men pumped their shotguns and pointed them at the Captain.
“I beg of you, Heinz,” said the Captain. “Our people need food, not war. You don’t yet have the experience to run this ship. I’d like you to become my second in command. You can learn the ropes, see what it means to be the leader of this ship before you sit in the Captain’s chair. Then you will understand where I’m coming from.”
The Captain held out his hand in friendship.
“You are weak,” Heinz told the old man. “I would never serve under such a pathetic coward. It is your weakness that allowed this ship to fall into disrepair. It is because of you that your people have fallen into such a pitiable state.”
“And you think you can do better?” asked the Captain. “You think you can reshape these people into the Fists of the Fifth Reich?”
“No,” Heinz said. “That army died a long time ago. We are now the Hammers of the Fifth Reich. And within five years time, I promise the island of Neo New York will be ours.”
Then Heinz turned his back on the old man.
“Don’t listen to him,” said the Captain. “If you attack Neo New York you will fail. They have superior weapons and a larger military force. If you follow this man you will die.”
As Heinz left the room, his men closed in on the ex-Captain. After the chorus of shotgun blasts, Heinz placed the Captain’s hat on his scalp. Marching down the hallway with his head held high, whistling Wagner’s Das Rheingold—the Entry of the Gods into Valhalla.
Heinz takes the girls from office to office, trying to find another way out.
Gogo twitches and holds her stomach as she walks. Popcorn wraps her arm around her shoulder, trying to hold her upright so that the nazi doesn’t realize she’s infected.
“Are you okay?” Popcorn whispers.
“Hungry,” Gogo responds, looking over her shoulder at Heinz. She widens her mouth at him, imagining what it would be like to suck on his fat moist brain.
Although Popcorn never hungers for food, Gogo couldn’t be more different. Gogo is indulgent. She is always hungry for food, drugs, and sex. The three are inseparable to her. She finds the act of eating erotic and sensual. Gogo’s voluptuous body is as close as any citizen of Copper comes to being fat. Not many people have the money to gorge themselves in the poor quadrant. But with the money she takes in as a stripper and prostitute, Gogo has enough to indulge on rich, greasy foods whenever she wants. She is always either fucking or eating or doing Waste.
Unlike Popcorn, Gogo wants to eat brains. She craves to taste a piece of Heinz’s brain. She craves to lay her body in a bed of brains. She craves to lick, suck, and fuck brains all day long.
When she rolls her tongue out of her mouth at Heinz and sucks on the tips of her fingers, Heinz believes the slut is just trying to seduce him into letting his guard down. He has no idea what depraved thoughts are going through her head at the moment. Popcorn yanks her friend forward, trying to get her eyes off of the nazi. If Heinz catches on that the two of them are undead he will surely incinerate them as he did to Brick.
After searching the entire floor, it seems as if the stairwell is the only way out. They either need to barricade the collapsing door or figure out a way to fight through the undead.
“So what are we going to do?” Popcorn asks.
“We fight our way through,” Heinz says.
Within five years, Heinz had turned the Aryans of the Fifth Reich into a lean fighting force. Overpopulation had been the problem under the previous Captains’ reigns, but Heinz solved that by starting the Population Control Program. His men exterminated all Aryans who proved too weak or too useless to join the Hammers of the Fifth Reich. They also exterminated anyone who disapproved of their methods or seemed disloyal to the commander in chief. He executed many of the breeding slaves, stating that they would have plenty of new breeding slaves after they took Neo New York. It was not the time to raise children. It was the time they answered their calling and finally took what was rightfully theirs.
When he tried to send word to his father in Platinum, Heinz learned that his father had died a few years back. Then he tried to get in contact with other operatives who had infiltrated the island, but the majority of them were no longer supportive of the Fifth Reich. They had become fat and lazy, content with the luxurious lifestyle of Neo New York. They cared more of their own happiness than that of their brothers. They had been dominated by lesser races for so long that it no longer bothered them.
This setback was not enough to dissuade Heinz from his mission. He directed the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for Neo New York and went into battle.
“Mein Fuhrer?” said a young soldier to Heinz.
Heinz stopped marching and turned to his soldier. The boy was only twelve-years-old, but he wore his uniform with pride, holding his rifle tightly to his shoulder, standing in line with troops twice his age. Under Heinz’s command, children had to pull their weight just as much as the adults. Those who could not pull their weight were put to death. He wasn’t willing to waste precious food and water on children who could not work or fight. His men could always make more children later, once they had achieved their goal.
As Heinz looked down on the child soldier, the boy smiled up at him. He was so excited to fight for their cause.
“Yes, soldier?” said Heinz, annoyed that the boy spoke without first asking permission.
“Are we really going to win?” asked the boy. “Are we actually going to live on the island and have all the food we can eat?”
Heinz placed his hand on the child’s soldier and smiled.
“Lieutenant?” Heinz asked the man standing by his side.
“Sir?” asked the Lieutenant.
“Have this soldier shot,” Heinz said, his smile turning to a frown. “I don’t need men who lack faith in our strength. A true Aryan would know that our victory is ensured.”
The boy’s face deflated beneath his leader, tears filling his eyes. The boy cried out as the Lieutenant grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the line. He cried not because his life was about to end, but because he disappointed his leader.
As the gun was fired and the body fell into the sea, Heinz marched down the line to find any other weak-willed soldiers that had to be weeded out. Such men did not deserve the honor of battle.
“We cannot possibly fail,” Heinz told himself, over and over again.
Heinz directs the two women to lead the way down the stairwell. The three of them face the door as its metal frame bends inward.
“How are we supposed to fight them with these?” Popcorn asks, holding up a chair.
Heinz wasn’t about to hand over any
of his weapons to the girls, so he gave them each a chair to fight the living dead with.
“All you have to do is shove them back,” Heinz said. “If any of them get past you I will take them down.”
Gogo leans against her chair, eying the nazi’s body up and down. The hunger builds stronger in her by the second. She’s finding the man completely irresistible. Her mouth fills with drool. She’s dying to sink her teeth into his moist fleshy brain.
“You know how fucking strong those things are?” Popcorn asks. “Especially when there’s so many of them.”
“You have no choice,” Heinz says. “You do what I say or you will die.”
Popcorn groans at him and points her chair at the door.
“Fine,” she says. “Let’s get this over with.”
Heinz gets behind the two girls, pointing the submachine gun at their backs.
“Open it,” he says.
Heinz had no idea the military of Neo New York was so large. The aircraft carrier was such a huge vessel that it was seen by the island’s Coast Guard from miles away. This gave the island’s military leaders plenty of time to put all naval forces into action. By the time the Fifth Reich arrived to the island, the carrier was surrounded by hundreds of ships. Heinz had a thousand men in his army, but the military of Neo New York was two hundred thousand strong. He had the largest ship, but it was not enough to put up much of a fight against his enemy.
“One Aryan is worth a thousand of them,” Heinz told his men, his voice shaking as he spoke. “They do not stand a chance against us.”
The men looked around at each other, stepping out of line, staring at the battleships approaching them. They instantly reverted back to the small weak wretches they had been before Heinz had become their leader.
“Victory will be ours!” Heinz said. “We are Aryans! We are the master race!”
His words inspired only anger in the men. They now realized that they had been led astray. They had believed in his stupid impossible dream. They had allowed him to take advantage of them. They had killed their friends, their wives, and their children for him, because he convinced them it was for the good of their people. They had believed all of his bullshit and now they were back where they had started.
The Coast Guard warships ordered the aircraft carrier to turn around or they would consider them hostile and attack. The Fifth Reich didn’t put up a fight. They turned the ship around and fled into the sea. The nazis didn’t stand a chance. Not because they were outnumbered, but because the Coast Guard knew they were coming. The government had long known about the Fists of the Fifth Reich and their plans to attack the island.
It only took a single member of the Brotherhood to ruin their secret plans. An Aryan living in Gold had fallen in love with a Japanese woman, had a family with her, and realized he no longer wanted the Fifth Reich to succeed. After killing two of his Aryan brothers in self-defense, he came forward and explained to the government everything he knew about the Fifth Reich. The government would have sent out their troops right then and there, but they decided the Fifth Reich wasn’t much of a threat to them.
After the Aryans returned to their home waters, they put Heinz and his top officers on a boat and sent them adrift with no food or water. Starved and ill, they eventually made their way back to Neo New York. The Coast Guard allowed them to live in Copper with the rest of the white trash, because they knew that these nazis would work well on the Zombie Survival show. Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla paid the Coast Guard well every time they allowed a newcomer with potential into the Copper Quadrant.
With a small band of men and a new life in Copper, Heinz was determined never to give up the fight. He was beaten, but not defeated. He vowed to build a new army of men out of the citizens in Copper. They would rise up and take the island one quadrant at a time and someday Neo New York would become a utopian Aryan nation as it always should have been.
Only one month after he arrived on the island, before gaining a single new recruit, Heinz was gassed in the bathroom of a Filipino she-male whore house. When Wayne Rizla stood over his unconscious body, he chuckled to himself, noticing the line of she-male cum dribbling from the nazi’s chin.
When Popcorn opens the door to the stairwell, the zombies spill in. But they don’t go for the two punk girls at all, they rush right past them and go directly for Heinz. Heinz wasn’t prepared for that. Frozen in shock, confused over why the zombies ignored the girls, Heinz suddenly finds himself surrounded by the living dead. He opens fire on them as they grab at his sleeves.
Popcorn drops her chair and says, “Later, asshole!”
Then she grabs Gogo and pulls her into the stairwell. Furious, Heinz fires a few rounds into the girls’ backs, but they do not fall. The bullets hardly faze them. He watches as their pink and green heads disappear into the mob of zombies.
Heinz steps backward, firing into the undead as they fill the room. When the gun runs out of bullets, he drops it on the floor.
“Brains!” the zombies cry, closing in on him.
Heinz closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, allowing the powerful orchestral music of Wagner fill his heart. He feels the blood of a strong Aryan warrior pumping through his veins. He tells himself he must survive, he must win this competition, because there is so much more work to be done.
Just before the zombies reach him, he opens his eyes. Then he digs his hand into his pack and pulls out the severed head of a mechjaw. Like a wet glove, he shoves his fist through the neck of the beast and grabs it by the brain. Then he straps the mechjaw’s Gatling gun to his arm.
After he had paralyzed the mechjaw back on the road, Heinz realized that he could use the creature as a weapon. Because it was the dog’s brain that controlled its weaponry, all Heinz needed to take was its head and the minigun.
The dog’s skinless severed head snarls in the air, as Heinz points it at the zombies.
“I have a Japanese cunt to kill,” Heinz tells the shambling corpses. “And you’re all in my way.”
Then he squeezes the dog’s brain and the mechjaw’s Gatling gun shreds the zombie crowd into thousands of tiny pieces.
Far ahead of all of the other contestants, the three merc punks traverse the wasteland. They cross a rail yard in the industrial side of the city, ducking through overturned train cars rusted into the earth. Normally merc punks would never travel through zombie territory at night, but the mercs don’t have time to stop for rest. They have to accomplish their mission and get to the helicopter before any of the other contestants.
“Which way?” Zippo asks Xiu, in Spanish.
Xiu takes her homemade metal sunglasses from her eyes and examines the map. Zippo shines his flashlight, tied to his automatic shotgun, over her shoulder so she can see.
“East by northeast for a mile,” Xiu says. “Then east. We should get there early in the day tomorrow if we keep moving. Then we should be able to make it to the helicopter before dark.”
Behind them, Vine stands on a fallen train car, keeping a look out. The area seems free of the living dead, but he knows not to let his guard down. Standing still, even in a remote area, is always more dangerous than being on the move. Those things always tend to sneak up on you out of nowhere when you least expect it.
Vine watches every structure in the vicinity carefully, especially the fallen train. It looks as if a dump truck had crashed into the train decades ago, causing a pileup. Any one of those overturned train cars could be filled with the undead. Vine eyes each one carefully, watching for movement, and watches the top of the hill on the other side of the rail yard, and watches for other zombies that might have followed them in there.
He does all of this without moving his head an inch, not making a sound. Merc punks know that zombies are attracted to movement and noise. Merc punks are trained as children how to stand perfectly still for hours on end, even in the most awkward positions. Vine’s body is contorted in unnatural ways, his limbs bent and twisted, his AK-47 crossing his chest like a crucifix
. He’s so motionless that he looks more like an abstract steel sculpture than a human being. He does this to camouflage his body against the twisted rusted metal of the wrecked train surrounding him. Blending in with the surroundings is another skill merc punks are taught since childhood. It is something they all are trained to perfect.
Over the last five decades, merc punks have developed zombie survival skills that are unknown to the rest of civilization. They know to cover their eyes with sunglasses or masks, because looking into a human’s eyes is the major way zombies can tell the difference between the living and the dead. There are other ways zombies can smell them out of a crowd, but looking into a human’s eyes is a sure way to drive a zombie wild with hunger.
They also know how to fight their way through a horde using only a small amount of ammo. They know how to sleep in the same room with the undead, without ever being discovered. They know how to debilitate a zombie in less than a second, using any found object from a rock to a hubcap to a pencil. They know the types of places where zombies are most likely to hibernate. They know how zombies hunt their prey. They know how the zombies think.
Xiu puts the map away. She hydrates herself with a water bottle, just two sips, then pours some water down her face and scalp, and rubs it across her short black mohawk. Zippo sits motionless, awaiting Xiu’s command.
Merc punks always move in threes. When they work together, they are no longer three individuals. They are one being. They are one Head and two Arms. In this unit, Xiu is the Head, Vine is the Right Arm, Zippo is the Left Arm.
Xiu does all of the thinking for them. Vine is the fast, quick-striking spearhead. Zippo is the sturdy backup. Ever since they were children, this is how it has been. Once they came together, they were no longer individuals. They were one unit, with Xiu in complete command of their every action and thought. Not just in the wasteland, but every waking moment, even when they were back home, on their ship.
Zombies and Shit Page 17