In the instant that passes from the time when I put my finger on the trigger but before I can apply pressure to it, Sweetie grabs Big Max’s head and slams it into a locker. It happens so fast, it happens exclusively in the past. I don’t see or hear anything. I only have vague memories of it. A blur of motion. A sick sound. The lose-your-lunch crunch of bone breaking. The metal crash of instant indentation. One second, Big Max is standing there, larger than life, and living, and the next second he’s falling, limp and dead, to the floor.
“That was awesome,” I say, staring down at Big Max, lowering my nine-millimetre. Fluidly, the colour red pours from his smashed face. The way it forms a dark pool, growing outwards, is beautiful.
“Sweetie Honey,” exclaims Oana, throwing her arms around him, “you’re a hero!”
“Heroes never admit they’re heroes,” says Sweetie, coolly.
“But they’re still heroes, right?”
“Even more so.”
I click the safety back on, stick my nine-millimetre back into the holster on my lower back, straddle Big Max, squat down over him, and stick a finger into the red oil slick of his blood. I draw lines extending outwards from it, like rays of a crimson star. The hallway lights strobe off every time I go back for more “paint.” They turn back on each time I reach the end of a “sun beam.” They animate my work. When I lift my finger, after I’m done turning blood into a childish red giant, I look at the mysterious substance on my fingertip.
It pales on my skin, like a chameleon. For some reason, I stick my finger, covered in the stuff of life, which is also the stuff of death, into my mouth, and suck it off. It tastes like pennies, little bits of money. I’m not worried about catching anything from it because life is an STD and I’ve already got it.
Still with one leg on either side of what was recently Big Max and is now just his big dead body, I stand back up, and look down at him. His use of performance-enhancing drugs, his frequent absences from practice, and his selfish play on the field are all that kept him from becoming a zombie, and now he’s dead. His blood keeps flowing. When it’s almost touching my right shoe, I think about stepping away, but then, for some reason, I don’t, and the red fluid pours into the tread valleys on the bottom of my runner. Suddenly a zombie teacher comes ambling out of a classroom. With his arms outstretched in our direction, he stumbles toward us. He’s wearing the same stainless steel muzzle the zombie students wear, but not the helmet.
His hands are untied too. He is, however, chained to his classroom. Cuffed to his right ankle, the chain is thick. It’s long enough to let him enter the hallway but it prevents him from travelling far. The links clank on the floor as he pushes his way through the kids taking pictures and shooting video with their cell phones. The zombie teacher wears a shredded dark blue sweater through which I can see his mottled greywhite torso. He sports pairs of blood-smeared brown pants and excrement-caked brown loafers that I can smell from here. He has a comb-over, but it isn’t combed over. The bald top of his head is exposed. The long hair he grew to cover his baldness now hangs pointlessly. When he reaches us, the zombie teacher moans.
“This teen”—I explain loudly, pointing my gun down at Big Max repeatedly—“may have been troubled. He may not have been,” I admit, “but that’s beside the point. He made us fear for our lives, which, you know, suck, but they’re all we got, so sometimes, when necessary, we have to defend them with lethal force, and sometimes we have to defend them with lethal force even when it isn’t necessary, as a lesson to those who might, in the future, make us fear for our lives, which will still, undoubtedly, suck, but will still be all we’ve got.”
The zombie teacher groans.
“What’d he say?” I ask one of the bystanders. “He thinks the young man is dead.”
“No, he’s okay.”
The zombie teacher groans again.
“Oh come on,” says Sweetie, irritated. Effortlessly, he picks up Big Max by the back of the pants and shirt collar. Sweetie tries to balance him so he’s standing on his own, but Big Max’s legs won’t cooperate. “He’s fine. See?” The zombie teacher moans.
Sweetie lets go. Big Max collapses to the floor again.
After a second of staring down at him, Sweetie lifts his shoulders and smiles awkwardly at the zombie teacher. The zombie teacher stumbles away down the hall.
When he reaches the end of his chain, he tries to keep going. He can’t. He pulls at what holds him back, over and over, mindlessly. I just stare at him, revolted.
Recently I announced that, starting on Monday, zombie teachers and zombie students would no longer be
allowed at this school. The opportunity to go to a school that isn’t infested with zombies probably explains all the new students: the cute pink-haired girl with a unicorn that follows her around, Baby Doll15; the handsome AfricanAmerican ninja, Sweetie Honey; and the four exotically beautiful Eastern European girls, Oana, Iulia, Marta, and Agata. Hey. I just thought of something: Why didn’t the four exotically beautiful Eastern European girls make a play for me? Admittedly, I’m no ninja. But I am alpha. No. If there were something that came before alpha, that’s what I’d be. I’m pre-alpha. That’s how alpha I am. (I’m also post-omega, if you’re keeping track.) I’m a pirate and a spiritual leader! (I know that’s redundant, but I like to emphasize both aspects.) Maybe the four exotically beautiful girls heard I’m not interested in a serious relationship. I’m not dating anyone exclusively. I mean, I’m exclusively dating attractive girls, but I’m not dating any one of them exclusively.
“I’m new to this school,” says Sweetie, staring down at what remains of Big Max. “What do you usually do with your dead bodies here?”
“Bury them,” I say.
Sweetie nods. “That’s what we did at my old school.”
“Sweetie,” says Oana, ignoring the dead body of Big Max. “My parents”—she makes air quotation marks around the word “parents”—“are gone for the long weekend, so after school, Agata, Marta, Iulia, and I are going back to my place to explore our sexual orientation and erogenous zones. Do you want to come?”
“I guess,” says Sweetie, shrugging.
“Great!” exclaims Oana. “See you after school!” She hurries away, cheerfully.
Sweetie starts unpacking his backpack again. I look into his locker, at all the tools of the ninja. “Hey, Sweetie,” I say. “Can I see your sword? The long one?” I point at it.
“I took a vow to never unsheathe it unless I intend to kill someone,” says Sweetie, seriously.
I nod, tapping ashes on the hallway floor. With the two fingers between which my cigarette is pinched, I point. “What about that kid over there?” I ask.
CHAPTER FOUR:
i’m really Wasted right Now
It’s very early in the morning on Friday, a school holiday, and I’m about ten hours late for my date with Baby Doll15. The sun isn’t up yet. The sun never rises. The sun never sets, either. It’s the Earth spinning that makes it seem like it does, but it doesn’t. It’s an illusion. A lie. The sidewalks, front lawns, and parked cars. In the neighbourhoods I’m driving through, everything is lit by streetlights and darkness.
I’m really wasted right now. I always drive wasted. You should never drive sober. It’s suicidal. When a drunk driver gets in an accident with a sober driver, nine times out of ten (not an actual statistic), the drunk driver walks away unscathed, while the sober driver, along with his or her entire family, is invariably killed. When you’re drunk, and you get in an accident, you go limp, which is, apparently, the best way to go in an accident. Unless it’s a sexy accident. My point is this: driving sober is dangerous and not nearly as much fun as driving hammered. When you drive drunk, it always looks like you’re coming to a fork in the road. The trick is to keep going straight, between the prongs, because there really is no fork. Sort of like the spoon in The Matrix.
I turn on the dash-mounted touch-screen HD satellite TV. Wait. The TV isn’t a satellite. It isn’t orbiting t
he vehicle I’m driving. That’d be cool, though. Probably pretty distracting, but cool. No. The satellite TV is called a “satellite TV” because it receives its signal from a man-made satellite orbiting the Earth.
Oh, to be a manmade satellite! In the cold, in the dark! A receiver, a transmitter! Unaffected by everything! Retaining nothing! It hurts so much not to be, and instead, or rather, at the same time, to be!
I look away from the TV and back at the road. I’m drunkdriving for safety, but to double up on safety, I’m driving a bulldozer. It isn’t one of those puny little bulldozers you see toppling trees sometimes. No. It’s an enormous mining bulldozer. It’s the kind of bulldozer you’d use to push down a mountain. I find that when I get in an accident while I’m driving a gigantic bulldozer, it doesn’t really bother me. And huge bulldozers are also excellent for zombie outbreaks because there are always a bunch of abandoned cars and pickup trucks in your way. The driver’s area of my bulldozer is encased in (pock-marked) bullet- and sound-proof glass, overlaid by a chain-link cage that locks in order to protect occupants (me) from the undead and the few living people who escape the Zombie Acceptance Test and fend for themselves in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Anyway, my bulldozer rumbles, crashes, and grinds happily down the street.
I click through a few channels on TV. I don’t actually fail to find anything worth watching. I never fail, okay? That’s why The Principal of Scare City High is in so much trouble. I vowed to remove him from power, shortly after I discern his whereabouts, and I never fail. The zombie teachers who suggest I do, occasionally, fail are stupid stinking zombie liars! Yeah. I don’t actually fail to find anything worth watching; the TV fails to provide anything worth watching. Stupid TV!
I love TV. Don’t get me wrong.
I turn my attention back to the road. What’s this? I seem to have driven my gargantuan bulldozer through a suburban home. I look over my shoulder at the devastation in my wake. Oh well. I twist my head back around and steer the bulldozer onto a new street. I had to make a turn this way later in any event.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to pick up Baby Doll15 in the early hours of the morning for our date—I’m ten hours late—and for safety, firstly, I’m drunk; secondly, I’m driving an enormous mining bulldozer; and to triple up on safety, I’m wearing a blue bomb-disposal suit, which is sort of like a bullet-proof vest for your whole body and head. I brought one for Baby Doll15 too. People in America have a tendency to shoot at you when you’re driving down their street in a huge bulldozer. Or a regular car. Or if you’re walking down the sidewalk.
On my way to pick up Baby Doll15, I total over 400 cars. On purpose. I total thirty-five by mistake. I also drive through eight houses. Luckily, when I get to Baby Doll15’s place, I don’t need to honk the horn because Baby Doll15 comes running out to greet me as soon as I pull up outside, probably because I rattled the hell out of all the windows in her house and knocked a bunch of crappy ceramic things off the shelves. It’s also lucky because the bulldozer doesn’t have a horn. That I’m aware of.
Gunfire is ringing out from all the neighbouring houses when Baby Doll15 dashes out. With her hands over her ears, she zigzags toward the bulldozer, briefly ducking down and taking cover behind a parked car. Then she races toward me again. Fortunately, I dispatched a large contingent of my absurd number of disposable bodyguards in advance of my arrival for just this sort of occasion. They lay down covering fire, quickly suppressing the neighbourhood malcontents. When the gunfire dies down, I open the bulldozer’s cage, climb out, and drag out the extra blue bomb-disposal suit I brought for Baby Doll15. It isn’t extra blue. It’s regular blue. I guess it’s more navy blue than regular blue, and I suppose you could argue it’s extra blue if you haven’t seen anything blue in years and the sun hits it just right when you’re looking at it or whatever. I’m just saying. It’s extra in the sense that I don’t need it for myself. I brought it for Baby Doll15.
She greets me cheerfully and a little breathlessly. I don’t know if she’s breathless because of her recent run through heavy crossfire or because of me. It’s probably the crossfire but you never know. Baby Doll15’s cotton-candy pink hair is centre-parted and thick; it’s straight until it reaches the tops of her ears: there it flows down in voluminous waves that stretch out to the width of her shoulders. Her eye makeup is smoky black. She’s wearing a baby-pink baby doll over thigh-high white leggings and pink stilettos. Her lips are candy-apple red. She gives me a friendly kiss on the cheek of my bomb-disposal helmet. “How did your strategy session go?” she asks, remembering our earlier conversation.
“It was great,” I say. “I even ran drills. Not exercises. Actual drills. In case I have to vigorously interrogate someone.”
“Cool,” she says, smiling.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay.”
Her white unicorn comes strutting out of the house. Startled, one of my bodyguards shoots at it.
“Hold your fire,” I yell, dropping Baby Doll15’s bombdisposal suit. I lift my arms as best I can with the limited
mobility of the suit. I try to hold up my hands like, stop. The unicorn charges the bodyguard who dared shoot
at it, goring him through the forehead. The unicorn lifts the dead bodyguard and turns around slowly, in a brutal warning to all my other bodyguards. When it’s confident they’ve all seen, the unicorn lowers its head and lets the dead bodyguard flop onto the ground. Then it walks over to us.
“Hey, unicorn,” I say, pleasantly.
It looks at me, snorts, and looks away.
“Okay, fine. Be like that. I don’t care. I’ve got plenty of friends. Real friends. Not mythical ones.”
“Come on, you guys,” says Baby Doll15, trying to make the peace.
I cross my arms, turn away, and shake my head, hurt. “So are we going straight to your castle or what, Guy Boy Man?”
Gothic castles are impossible to find in America, but, during a series of exciting adventures I can’t be bothered to relate here, I managed to acquire one, with a little help from an unreal-estate agent.
“I suppose,” I say, still turned away, with my arms still crossed.
“Come on, Guy Boy Man,” says Baby Doll15, moving in front of me so I can see her. “Don’t let the unicorn get to you. Please? I need your help, remember?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I say, uncrossing my arms. “I’m
sorry. I’m just a really sensitive person.”
“It’s okay,” she smiles.
“I’m sorry I called you mythical,” I tell the unicorn. “You
just haven’t been seen since Biblical times.” I turn to Baby
Doll15. “I brought you an extra blue bomb-disposal suit.” I bend over, pick it up, and hold it out to her. “Well, it’s not extra blue.”
“I love it!” She tries to take it from me, but it’s so heavy it falls to the ground, and it pulls her most of the way forward.
After I help her get into it, and up and into the bulldozer, she asks me, through her bomb disposal helmet, “What about the unicorn?”
“I was going to get some of my bodyguards to help me strap it to the roof. Is that cool?”
“I guess so.”
I close the door, climb down the bulldozer, walk in front of it, and look around, but the unicorn has disappeared, at least seemingly, not that there’s any difference. I do a complete three-sixty. No unicorn. I even look up. Can unicorns fly? I don’t know. I put my hands on my hips, staring at the spot where I last saw the unicorn. Powers of invisibility, maybe? Carefully, I walk forward, waving my hands around in front of me, trying to find the unicorn by feel. I keep my head turned to the side. If that stupid unicorn pokes out my eye with its spiralled horn, I’m going to kill it with a hatchet! A thorough hand-search of the unicorn’s last known location yields no positive results. I climb back up the bulldozer and knock on the cage. Baby Doll15 turns so she can see me.
I’m frowning and biting my lower lip. “Are you
really attached to that unicorn?”
“I kind of love it,” she admits.
“I may have lost it.”
“May have?” she says, eyeing me.
“Might have?”
“I’m not questioning your grammar.”
“Okay, well, yeah. There are certain things I don’t know about unicorns. Like, for example, can they fly? Or can they jump so high and far it really makes no difference? Not that they jump so high it doesn’t make a difference, because, obviously, if they jump really high and far it’s going to make a difference, at least in comparison with their initial position, although, as you may or might already know, from having seen and heard my sermons on HowToEndHumanSuffering. com, I believe all distance, time, and perception thereof is a trick of the mind, and there is really only one thing, one moment, and one place, and there’s no separating them, and everything else is an illusion, the illusion of difference, and anyway, what I’m basically trying to say is, I don’t know what the hell is going on with your unicorn right now.”
“Unicorns can look after themselves,” she says, turning away and staring straight ahead. “Let’s just go.”
“Is that a general rule? I mean. Do you have to feed them? Do you have to put out a bowl of water for them and take them for regular walks and, you know, that kind of thing? Or do they just look after themselves?”
“Please, let’s just go, Guy Boy Man.”
“I was only trying to express interest in something I thought was close to your heart,” I say, sighing, climbing into the bulldozer. “Bitch.”
When we get to my gothic castle, the unicorn is there, waiting for us. There are a couple of dead bodyguards lying around who, apparently, didn’t receive my “hold your fire” order in regard to the unicorn, which I made sure was relayed ahead of us from Baby Doll15’s house, and there are a bunch of Mexicans running to the scene with body-bags and garden hoses. The unicorn stares at me as I park the bulldozer. Maybe it wants something from me. Feed? Some sort of magic oats? I’m telling you right now if that unicorn wants magic oats from me, it’s going to be disappointed because I don’t have any magic oats!
Ninja Versus Pirate Featuring Zombies Page 5