“Guy Boy Man!” thunders a thunderous voice. “This is The Principal!” His booming voice cracks and crashes through speakers dangling from the shattered hallway sky. I thought I’d disabled all those instruments of evil by shooting them repeatedly, but now I see someone has put duct tape over the bullet holes and that’s fixed them. “Guy Boy Man, I thought you were just kidding when you said teachers and certain students would no longer be allowed at this school but now I can see you’re serious!”
“You were a fool to ever doubt my steely resolve, Principal,” I say. “Couldn’t you tell it was steely?”
“Guy Boy Man! You’re expelled from this school!”
“No! This school is expelled from me! Like a turd! I flush you!”
“You can’t flush me, Guy Boy Man! I’ll be here long after you’re gone!”
I frown. “That’s gross.”
“I won’t let you pirate this school, Guy Boy Man!”
“Your days as Principal are done! This is America! We don’t tolerate royalty here!”
“He isn’t really a prince,” whispers Baby Doll15. “That’s what I’m saying,” I whisper back.
“This isn’t over, Guy Boy Man!” thunders The Principal. Then the crackling speakers go quiet.
“That was The Principal,” I explain to Sweetie Honey and his four exotically beautiful Eastern European girlfriends, casually. “He’s my enemy. He’s pretty much the most powerful person in the school.” I shrug. “I’m in the process of destroying him, and it’s pretty dramatic.”
Yesterday, during my sermon, I insisted that we, living high school students, are smarter now than we’ll ever be again, which isn’t very smart, because we’ve been taught the same things that were taught to our zombie parents, zombie grandparents, and zombie ungreat-grandparents, and look what a mess they made of things. Regardless, we, living high school students, are smarter now than we’ll ever be again. (Not that smart.) We might not beat our history teacher on a history test, or our math teacher on a math test, but we could almost certainly outperform our math teacher on a history test and our history teacher on a math test. We’d decapitate our zombie parents on either test. Now is the time for us to make a stand.
“Hey, Sweetie, I don’t think you’ve met my girlfriend.” I tip my head at Baby Doll15. “Look at her. She’s got big boobs, doesn’t she?” Baby Doll15 is wearing a baby blue baby doll (she wasn’t allowed to wear baby dolls when the zombies were in charge of the school. Too sexy. Just one more good reason to get rid of the zombie establishment) over thighhigh white leggings and a pair of baby blue stilettos. “Baby Doll15, this is Sweetie Honey. He’s a ninja and pretty much my best friend. Sweetie Honey, this is Baby Doll15. She’s got big boobs. I said that already.”
Baby Doll15 and Sweetie shake hands and exchange pleasantries, but there’s something suddenly awkward about Sweetie, who’s normally so cool. He looks rattled, not quite flustered, but out of sorts. For a second I think maybe Baby Doll15 and Sweetie know each other already. Maybe they’re having an affair! Maybe they’re doing it in every position imaginable, and in a bunch of positions I can’t imagine, which Baby Doll15 really likes, and she’s just too shy to tell me about, but when I look at Baby Doll15, I can tell she’s never met him before. Plus I remember she’d never had sex before Friday morning when she first had it with me. I look at the four exotically beautiful Eastern European girls, who, I’ve got to say, are an amazing invention on the part of science (although, obviously, I’m waiting for sex robots before I declare the greatest scientific invention of all time) and the girls are frowning at Sweetie, like they’re having the same thoughts I had, but slower, obviously, because I’m done thinking about Baby Doll15 and Sweetie and I’ve moved on to sex robots, which are going to be awesome.
“You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” says Sweetie to Baby Doll15, embarrassed.
“Whoa,” I say. “She’s all right, but come on.”
The four exotically beautiful Eastern European girls scowl at Sweetie.
“No I’m serious,” says Sweetie. “Most beautiful.” He breaks invisible boards in the air. “Ever.”
“Thank you,” says Baby Doll15, uncomfortable. She clings to me nervously.
I take a slug of my whiskey. “I mean, she’s cute, but . . .”
Sweetie keeps staring in awe at Baby Doll15. The four Eastern European girls keep frowning at Sweetie.
“This is like when you bump teeth during a kiss,” I note.
“I’m so sorry,” says Sweetie to Baby Doll15. “I’m staring. It’s just. Hey. These are my girlfriends. Oana, Iulia, Marta, and Agata. They were genetically engineered and behaviourally modified by diabolical Eastern European scientists.”
Suddenly, Sweetie Honey turns and squints coldly down the length of the broken and sporadically lit hall.
I take my arm off Baby Doll15’s shoulders. I turn and look in the same direction as Sweetie. I don’t see anything in the inconstant and eerie artificial light. However, I trust Sweetie’s ninja instincts. I crouch and set down my whiskey bottle. I stand back up, take one last drag, drop my cigarette butt, and grind it on the floor from side to side under my shoe. The cock fight is over. (It sort of mirrors the verbal exchange between The Principal and I.) One bird lies dead. (Metaphorically, The Principal would be the dead bird. Remember when I flushed him? That was awesome.) The other bird pecks at invisible seed on the floor. (I don’t know how that pertains to me. Oh, wait.) I stick my hand into the front of my ceremonial robe, and I reach back and put my hand on the reassuring grip of my nine-millimetre. “What is it, Sweetie?” I whisper.
“Troubled teens,” he whispers. “Good thing I’m wearing my backpack.” He takes it off, sets it down, and starts getting undressed. “A group of forty troubled teens is approaching.” Sweetie strips naked quickly. Everyone stares. When he gets down to his incredibly tight briefs, everyone gasps. (He’s got a really big penis, in case you forgot.) He probably has to wear incredibly tight briefs to prevent any flopping around because even a sound that (presumably) soft might reveal his position when he’s travelling stealthily, which is the only way ninjas travel. Sweetie picks up his backpack, opens it, and pulls out his ninja outfit. He starts getting dressed.
“Forty,” I whisper, awed. “So many troubled teens.” I let go of the nine-millimetre, opting instead for the pumpaction sawed-off shotgun. I take it off my shoulder, pump it, and curse under my breath as an unused shell goes flying.
I go over, pick it up, and reload it. “Do you have time to make it to your locker and get your swords and throwing stars?”
“Yes,” whispers Sweetie, pulling his ninja hood over his head, and fixing the opening.
Worried, Baby Doll15 grabs my arm. “Guy Boy Man, what are you going to do?”
“Kill.” Coldly, I pump the pump-action shotgun again and an unused shell flies out again. I curse louder this time, retrieve the shell and reload it, and peer down the hallway again.
“Guy Boy Man,” says Baby Doll15. “Violence is not the answer.”
I look down the hallway, steely eyed. “Then I don’t like the question.”
Sweetie and I high five.
“Do you have a match?” I ask him. “I feel like I could light it on my stubble right now.”
Suddenly, almost the entire student body is standing behind Sweetie and me, anxiously. There are hundreds and hundreds of them. They’re counting on us to protect them from the emotionally disturbed kids that our school psychologists failed to reach, or never knew to reach out to, or were unable to reach because we never had any school psychologists. Almost the entire student body is counting on us to protect them from the kids society failed and that now have to be killed like wild dogs—not that I condone
the killing of wild dogs because, surely, if they’re offered food and a loving home, they could be domesticated and turned into treasured members of the family.
A long, empty, flickering corridor full of fallen and broken ceiling
tiles and spraying pipes and blood-splattered lockers stretches in front of Sweetie and me and, obviously, the hundreds and hundreds of students packed behind us for protection. Silently, Sweetie races to his locker. He undoes the lock and pulls out his weapons. He races back toward us. “You stay here,” he tells me. “I’m going to circle around. You just keep them occupied until I get into position. Then, when I’m ready, stop shooting, because you might hit me accidentally.”
“I probably won’t stop shooting until I run out of ammunition,” I admit.
“How much ammunition do you have?”
“Lots and lots.”
One of the kids who works in my (alleged) big cock fighting ring is dragging two huge duffel bags to me. One huge duffel bag has loaded magazines for my ninemillimetre. The other has shells for my pump-action sawedoff shotgun.
“Just keep them busy until you see heads getting chopped off,” says Sweetie, pushing his way back through the student body. Then he jumps out the window! [All the windows at the school are blacked out (I prefer “opaque”) because of troubled parent snipers; that’s (one of the several) reasons the hallway is always so dark.] Strangely, when the window breaks, it doesn’t make a sound! Ninjas must be trained to jump through windows silently! And, on the way down, they probably grab the broken pieces of glass before they hit the ground! Ninjas are so awesome!
My faithful shoulder-perched raven jumps off me and flies out the broken window, loyally.
“Okay, people,” I say, turning to the student body, authoritatively. “It’s time to get real. Some of you aren’t going to make it. You’re going to get shot. If you’re lucky, you’ll die instantly. If you’re unlucky, you’re going to writhe around in agonizing pain and then die later. I know this isn’t a really upbeat, we-can-do-it speech or anything, but I’m being honest, and I hope that counts for something. Now we need a shield. Something we can hide behind while the troubled kids shoot at us. What can we use as a shield?”
“Fat kids?” suggests somebody.
“That’s terrible,” I say. “Really. You should never call people ‘fat.’ ‘Overweight,’ okay. ‘Obese,’ fine. Never ‘fat.’ Good idea, though. Come on. Let’s get some heavy kids up front.”
The obese and overweight kids step forward, bravely.
“You guys are great,” I say, as they pass. “You’re heroes. Big heroes. I’m serious.” To the others, in explanation, I say, “It isn’t cruel, people. It’s evolution. Okay, okay. It’s cruel but what are you going to do? It’s the way things are. We need a human shield and, logically, it makes sense to go with people who’re extremely large and a genetic drag on the species.”
“I just eat too much and don’t exercise,” says one overweight kid.
“Don’t blame yourself,” I say, patting him on the back. “It’s genetics.”
“I think I could change.”
“Well, you couldn’t.”
He hangs his head and walks to the frontlines.
“Your followers are going to use condoms until they can have vasectomies and tubal ligations,” Baby Doll15 reminds me.
“Yeah,” I acknowledge. “So what’s your point?”
“Their genetics don’t matter anymore.”
“This is largely symbolic,” I confess.
Baby Doll15 tries not to laugh.
“What? Oh. ‘Largely’? Yeah. I didn’t mean it like that but . . .”
“There aren’t enough fat kids to form a human shield!” cries some guy.
“Overweight,” hisses someone else.
I go check it out for myself. When I return, I get close to Baby Doll15. “He’s right,” I tell her, confidentially. “What the hell is going on? This is America! We should have a wall of flab in front of us a mile thick!”
“Didn’t this school get rid of all the sugar-drink and junk food vending machines?”
“Yeah,” I say, remembering. “And now we’re all probably going to die from the unintended consequences of that misguided decision. First of all, it’s un-American. People should be free to eat whatever—”
“You’ve got to come up with something else,” interrupts Baby Doll15.
“Right.” I address all the students depending on me. “Are there any special ed. kids here?”
A kid raises his hand, enthusiastically. “I’m a poor reader!”
“Great!”
“I have problems with math!” calls somebody else.
“Terrific! Come on up, you guys! Hey, everybody! Look how excited the special ed. kids are to contribute! What about disabled people? Do we have any disabled people here?”
In the distance, a clearing appears in the students. In the clearing, a girl in a wheelchair tries to, discreetly, wheel herself away.
“Would somebody bring her up here, please?”
She screams and screams. A couple of guys push her to me.
I crouch down in front of her, because that’s how you’re supposed to talk to people in wheelchairs; they like it when you get down on their level and talk to them eye to eye. They also like it when you sneak up behind them and start pushing them somewhere really quickly because it’s like going on an adventure! But now is not the time. (It is but it isn’t a good time.)
“Listen, wheelchair girl,” I say. “I know you’re scared. We’re all scared.”
Everyone murmurs in agreement.
“Do you go to church, wheelchair girl?” I ask her.
“Yes,” she says, angrily. Her arms are crossed. Her face is splotchy with emotion. Her legs are withered from disuse. “Why?” she asks.
“Because,” I say. “If you go to church, you get to go to Heaven, right?”
“That’s not exactly how it works.”
“Don’t you want to go to Heaven, wheelchair girl?”
“Not right now!”
“Well,” I say, nodding, understandingly. “You’re going.” I stand. “Somebody tie up her hands and push her up with the big ones and the special ed. kids.”
“A spinal injury isn’t a hereditary condition,” she cries when her hands are tied. “I can’t pass it on,” she calls back as she gets pushed to the front.
“Only the strong survive,” I call to her. “Or the heavily armed.” I turn to the student body. “No other disabled people? Really? That’s disgraceful. I’m sure there are all kinds of disabled kids who’d love to go to school with us. They probably have their own school. They probably just sit around, miserable, wishing they were here with us, doing what able-bodied students are doing. Well, I think we can all say, ‘We wish they were here too.’ Right now, anyway. They’d probably make us uncomfortable the rest of the time.”
A couple of gunshots ring out. Behind me, people start screaming. I wrap, unwrap, and wrap my fingers around the sawed-off pump-action shotgun. I pump it. An unused shell goes flying out. I’ve got to stop doing that. I stick the butt of the shotgun into my shoulder, ready to blast. I search for targets over the shoulders of the overweight and special needs kids. What I see takes my breath away. Troubled zombie teens! Heavily armed troubled zombie teens! They aren’t even wearing muzzles!
I turn away. If I wasn’t so pale to begin with, the colour would leave my face. Hell, if I wasn’t me, I’d leave me too.
“What is it?” asks Baby Doll15, concerned.
I walk over to the lockers, lean back against them, and slide down until I’m sitting on the detritus-covered floor. “Those aren’t regular troubled teens,” I say, soberly (well, drunkenly soberly). They’re troubled zombie teens.”
An ungodly moan emerges from the group of zombie teens ambling toward us.
“What did it say?” I ask.
“ ‘We just want to learn,’ ” translates Baby Doll15.
I think about that. I roll the words around in my mind. I change their order. I take them apart and examine the words within the words. I rearrange the letters. I see the undelivered. “What if we’re the troubled teens?” I ask Baby Doll15. “Hey, I can totally see your panties.”
>
“The troubled teens are getting really close,” whispers some random dude.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. I sigh, getting up and turning to Baby Doll15. “It matters about your panties. It doesn’t matter if we’re the troubled teens or not. Right or wrong, I’ve taken a side. My side. They’re on their side.” I pump the shotgun again. An unused shell flies out again. I clench my teeth, furious. My head shakes in anger for a minute. “The wrong side,” I finish. I sling the shotgun over my shoulder, stick my hands into the front of my robe, and I reach back, withdrawing my nines from their holsters. When my hands are reassuringly full of guns, I pull them out, and my robe slips back together in front of me, making the robe seamless.
Most people don’t know zombies can use guns. Rigor mortis doesn’t last very long. Zombies move stiffly because their lives are so fixedly rigid. They keep their arms stretched out like that because they’re searching for something that doesn’t exist but believe is just up ahead.
I look over at all the frightened people looking at me, the people I’m protecting. I know some of them think I’m crazy, but they don’t care, because I’m not boring. I’m okay with that. I’m willing to stipulate the possibility I’m crazy. I wonder if they’re willing to stipulate I could be right. Think about the Earth-isn’t-the-centre-of-the-universe guy. Think about the Earth-goes-around-the-sun guy.
Another ghoulish groan emerges from the undead horde ambling toward us. Baby Doll15 translates, “ ‘Let’s talk about this.’ ”
Ninja Versus Pirate Featuring Zombies Page 9