Not Everything Brainless is Dead (11 page)

Chapter 13: Well, if the Shoe Fits…

Just beyond the double doors, The Zombie Experience greeted them all with a wall. To the right, a door labeled humans awaited their entry, while a hallway to their left was clearly intended for the zombies, as its label and disarrayed state implied. Charlie noticed how fortified the human path appeared, and how easy it would be to trap them all behind it to their doom. The bunny turned around and marched right back outside to confront the zombie bouncer.

“Is there a specific reason this door is reinforced like it is?” he asked. At the first sign of anything suspicious, Charlie would be the second one (right after Freight) to blow the heads off every one of these zombies before they could get to his, not that they would find a plush bunny head very appetizing.

“Safety, buddy. These zombies are brainless animals, remember?” the bouncer replied.

Charlie glared at him behind the fake smile of the bunny, and then went back inside without saying another word. Everyone else had simply thrown caution into the wind and walked through the reinforced door. Charlie rolled his eyes, shrugged, and then just slammed it shut. Inside the hallway, everyone found that the blaring techno music, coupled with the darkness, dulled their senses almost completely. It was a state that Captain Rescue found all too familiar, since he barely utilized any of his five senses in the first place. The others found the sensation rather unsettling; they had grown accustomed to theirs.

After a short journey down the hallway, they discovered just where it led: a room overlooking the dance floor. Below, roughly one hundred zombies grooved to the music—in the same sense that cornstarch grooved to the music when a glob of it was plopped onto a speaker. Zombies, no doubt, just liked their insides jiggled, and a zombie would find no better place to jiggle than a nightclub. The extreme decibels reacted quite interestingly with a zombie’s insides.

Sitting up here with the common folk, a disc jockey orchestrated the festivities. His goggles, bucket-hat, and long sleeved shirt made it difficult to tell if the zombie bug had gotten to him. As he opened his mouth to speak, they wished it had. 

The still living disc jockey turned to them and said, “Yo yo yo! Sup dawgs!”

“Oh lord, can I shoot him. Please, let me shoot him,” Freight begged Charlie.

Charlie let out a muffled laugh. “Maybe in a little while, but not right now.”

The man pulled the goggles from his eyes and placed them on his head. “Whoa, bros don’t be like that. I’m just here for your entertainment. Feast your eyes at the mass of zombies jiggling for your pleasure!”

Freight cracked his knuckles. “We’ve seen plenty of them jiggling on our way here as we blew their heads off.”

“So, that’s the whole point of this place, to entertain people with zombies?” Charlie questioned since he was still quite suspicious of the whole shebang.

The disc jockey crossed his arms and nodded to the beats. “Yeah, man, this is entertainment at its
finest
.”

The bunny looked out over the zombies on the dance floor. “I’m not sure I’d go quite that far.”

The jockey laughed. “Yeah, well, the movie theater’s closed right now, so this is the best you’re gonna get!”

“As long as this isn’t the last stop on our little adventure,” Charlie replied.

“Whoa, dude, have some faith in your fellow man.”

“I would if he hadn’t been trying to eat me for the past few hours.”

“Fair enough, bro.”

Charlie opened his mouth to speak once more, but stopped with the realization that his friends had already wandered over to the nearby tables and plopped down, where they wasted no time in taking off their shoes. He looked at the DJ, whose intelligence probably rivaled that of a zombie, and decided he would be better off not arguing with him. Charlie shook off the frustration and joined everyone else. As he sat down and stared over the dance floor, he discovered that, strangely enough, zombie jiggling
was
oddly hypnotic. In fact, many of the undead seemed to be somehow enjoying themselves as they did the monster mash. He threw his tired feet onto the balcony’s railing. After a long night spent arduously crime fighting, it only made sense to relax a bit. 

As the minutes ticked past, the entranced heroes paid no attention to anything but the jiggling zombies. That included the DJ and his systematic pressing of buttons, and the clicking of locks as he readied the balcony to be their tomb. They even missed the UFO that landed nearby and deployed an armada of tripods to incinerate them. The UFOs realized that the undead beat them to the party, so they loaded their tripods up and flew away, hoping to find some other world to enslave.

The DJ found it surprising just how easily these first victims fell into his trap. He thought it would take much longer to draw anyone here, but the spotlight and some music did the trick. Maybe, with these first offerings, his masters would spare his life, and maybe even grant him untold riches. Oh, how he would love those untold riches. He had not considered what to do with all that money now that civilization had collapsed. Swim in it, probably.

With the trap set into motion, the entire room started to vibrate as gears cranked into place. The commotion snapped Charlie out of his jiggle induced trance. He leapt to his feet and looked directly at the DJ, who grinned wickedly in return.

“I knew this was a trap!” Charlie exclaimed. His words snapped the others out of their trances, and everyone put their shoes back on to avoid stepping in any disgusting piles of zombie goo.

Charlie’s decapitated head lay on the nearby table. He marched to it, picked it up, and slammed it back upon his shoulders. It was go time. His march continued as he headed straight for the DJ, whose smug look evaporated in seconds. The bunny’s large plush fingers wrapped themselves around his neck and hoisted the tiny man from the ground as the cranking of gears continued to echo through the room. A perturbed Charlie then proceeded to bend and twist the DJ into ways unimaginable as the man screamed and groaned. The bunny grabbed a saltshaker from the nearby table and sprinkled it onto the human pretzel. He tossed the DJ aside, and in preparation of the party about to go down, pulled Freight’s shotgun from his bunny trousers and handed it to the man.

As Freight held his significant other in his hands once more, he felt as though a vital piece had returned to the whole. His shoulders return to their natural and upright position. That look of blood thirst and insanity returned to his eyes. His immune system beat the zombie virus back into submission; it had been getting the better of him. He stood tall, ready to implode some undead.

As the cranking continued, everyone realized the floor would soon become a slide that would lead them to a zombie infested dance floor. Their lives flashed before their eyes. Captain Rescue’s life, in particular, played out like a silent movie. Its scratchy and unnaturally fast film replayed important moments in the man’s life. However, the title cards did not match the playing scenes, leaving the viewer confused and most definitely enraged.

The pretzel sat in its chair laughing at the misfortune it had personally orchestrated. This sucked for the twisted treat, because Freight had never liked being laughed at. To remedy his insecurities, he snatched up the pretzel and flung it down the slide. It let out a slew of profanities as it bounced towards the hungry zombies. Freight wiped his hands free of the pretzel’s betrayal and awaited his opportunity to follow it down for some much needed zombie carnage. Since he and the others could hardly keep their grip, Freight saw that the opportunity would soon present itself, so he let go and allowed himself to slide. At first glance, this act appeared quite heroic, but the truth of the matter was that Freight did not want to share the zombies with any of them. He wanted to blow the head from the first zombie, the last zombie, and all of the zombies in between.

The strobe lights made the entire experience a slideshow of zombies shuffling towards them, and many of which carried pieces of a human pretzel. One just so happened to be wearing the disc jockeys very own goggles, which it had pried from his head under the impression they looked quite stylish. The blaring techno music fit the slaughter about to transpire nicely. They first thought to avoid the zombies all together, but since the dance floor lacked wiggle-room, they simply shrugged and got to killing.

Fearing an epileptic seizure from the strobe lights, Captain Rescue kept his eyes closed as he felt around the nearby stage for a guitar. After grabbing one, he pretended to play it for a moment, living out his rock star fantasy. Sure, he held it completely wrong, but that did not matter. In fact, this guitar fixation had been for the best, because if he tried to use a gun with his eyes closed, he would have undoubtedly killed one of his friends before he got around to killing any of the zombies. To drive his rocker fantasy home, he began swinging the guitar around blindly, looking for a speaker to smash. His fantasy ended abruptly, and with much heartache, as the guitar found itself embedded in a zombie’s shoulder. He did not let this stop him though, and continued swinging the guitar without a care in the world. The others gave him a wide berth since they did not want to find that guitar lodged in their shoulders.

***

Outside, the lackeys sat on the curb, avoiding any rampant bites given by the feral zombies still corralled behind the red felt rope. They may have not been the brightest bunch, but the screams and yells echoing from within the dance club gave the inclination that something was amiss inside The Zombie Experience. The lackeys, forever loyal, knew their boss most likely needed help, and since finding work as an experienced lackey these days often caused more headache than it was worth, one of the men approached the cheerful arm-crossed bouncer. The zombie might have thought it was being friendly by smiling, but in reality, it elicited only disgust. Nobody wanted to see a half-decayed corpse smiling at them; they would rather it try to bite their face off.

 “What exactly is going on in there?” the lackey asked the bouncer.

He simply shrugged. “I’m sure it’s just some song the DJ put on.”

“You mean a song with gunshots and screams?” the lackey accused as he poked the bouncer. His finger easily pierced the zombie’s muscular chest, though the fibrous tissue had long since fallen to decay. The lackey pulled his finger out of the bouncer’s chest and shook off the little bits of meat that clung to it.

The bouncer covered the leak in his chest with the tip of his finger and said, “If you doubt me, feel free to go check it out.”

The lackey pushed the bouncer inside and swaggered into the dance club like a cowboy entering a saloon. Inside, the gunfire and screams seemed exponentially louder. He turned around and went back outside.

“I’m sure they have the situation under control.”

***

Frame by frame, the battle for their lives played out like a slideshow. Captain Rescue still recklessly swung around the blood red guitar, and still endangered the lives of those around him more so than any zombie.

Charlie finally grew weary of his shenanigans and knocked the guitar from his hands. He leaned in, screaming into his ear, “You don’t have epilepsy!”

With closed eyes, Captain Rescue glanced around aimlessly. “What?”

“You don’t have epilepsy!” the bunny repeated.

“Epi—what?” the hero yelled into a zombie’s shoulder.

Charlie kicked him in the shin. “Epilepsy!”

“I don’t follow!” he said, hopping up and down on one leg.

The bunny gave up. “Never mind, just open your eyes.”

Captain Rescue hesitated, but dropped the guitar for a moment and covered his eyes with his hands before lifting his eyelids. He pulled his hands away and almost immediately fell to the ground twitching. Charlie let out labored sigh before he resumed blowing the heads from zombies.

As the gore progressed, a nagging inclination arose in the bunny’s gut. The zombies seemed less than responsive. They lunged at open space and tried to bite the air. Then, it suddenly dawned on Charlie—the strobe lights messed with their heads. The confused zombies leapt for open space where they had just seen a tasty human. Apparently, the strobe-light-induced-slideshow forced a zombie’s deteriorated brain to reset every few frames. This confusion made exterminating them relatively easy; something similar to a game—and everyone loved games, as long as the vicious animals they were playing with did not try to bite them. As the zombies encroached closer, the game’s fun began to fade.

Charlie, the most astute of gamers, took notice of their predicament and decided to make for the door, rather than become zombie chow, and he urged the others to follow suit. Unfortunately, a sea of zombies jiggled to the music on the way to the entrance. The trip would certainly not be an easy one, but like Moses parting the red sea of zombies, they headed for the door. Freight asserted himself the leader of this getaway party, and as he led the way, most of the zombies met their end with Courtney, while others found solace in his sledgehammer of a fist. Zombie goo coated him, but he didn’t care. No zombie on the planet could slay this beast (yes, he thought of himself in the third person, and as a beast). The man had a point. Assuming a zombie didn’t outright tear his head from his shoulders, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Charlie sat at the tail end of this pain train. He was just as adapt at killing zombies as Freight, but chose not to make such a spectacle of himself. That left Dr. Malevolent and Captain Rescue sandwiched between the two. While she was there for her protection, as any fine woman would be, the survivors had to watch Captain Rescue to make sure he did not stroll off when distracted by a turnip. The only person missing was Stubbs, who found himself lured away from the group by the loud music and his brethren. After some searching, he actually discovered an especially enticing cheerleader still in her uniform and clutching her pompoms tightly. With some courage, the zombie strolled over to her in an attempt to elicit a response. She turned toward him and almost smiled, causing the excitement within him to well, but to his dismay, she meandered past him. Stubbs watched the cheerleader head straight for a table, kneel over it, and begin gnawing on the corner. He let out a sigh and then turned towards the other prospects within the club, but received only moans and groans in return—and not the good kind.