Not Everything Brainless is Dead (12 page)

***

The doors to the damned dance club flew open, and the heroes rushed through, miraculously still in one piece. Many of the zombies they had just gone through, however, were not—little bits and pieces of them covered their clothes. Charlie, in particular, spent a few moments picking pieces from his plush fur. The zombie bouncer stood dead still with his arms raised high into the sky proclaiming his innocence to all.

“I knew from the start this place had trap written all over it,” Charlie said in disgust as he shook the last bits of zombie from his plush fur.

“I didn’t do anything!” the bouncer declared.

“Well, I don’t believe you,” Charlie started, “and what are we going to do about that?” He paused for a moment. “Hey, where’s Stubbs? Don’t tell me that he’s a turncoat too.”

Right on cue, Stubbs emerged from the club, a female zombie in his arms. She reeked of prostitution (and many other things), her attire exemplifying her profession perfectly. If not a prostitute in another life, then she was well on her way to becoming one. As Stubbs noticed the tattoo on the small of her back, indicating the her pimp’s identity and how to reach him if someone found her wandering, the zombie realized that she had probably been a hooker, or at least a woman with loose morals, and a good sense of humor. True to her profession, she appeared more interested in the living than her undead escort, chomping at them as the two approached.

Stubbs turned to the bouncer, angry that a self-aware zombie like him would be so deceiving and malicious. He slapped the zombie with enough force to tear his hand from its wrist and send it flying. Joining in on the fun, Dr. Malevolent whacked the bouncer once more across the face with her inanimate carbon rod, and then wiped the zombie from it and slid it back into its custom-made holster.

After picking his flopping hand from the ground, Stubbs slapped the bouncer with it once more before popping it back into place. To top this moment off, Stubbs turned and kissed the prostitute. She returned his affection by squirming to get away. Stubbs grabbed her shoulders and stared longingly into her eyes. Finally concluding that zombie love was a farfetched and ridiculous notion, he grabbed the prostitute, threw her back into the club, and closed the door behind her.

The bouncer lowered his hands. “So, am I dead or can I go?”

Stubbs grabbed a handgun from Freight’s waist, held it to the bouncer’s skull, and said in a very gravely and decayed voice, “No.” He pulled the trigger, splattering its brains across the pavement.

Through the darkness, Captain Rescue added, “Whoa, you’re pretty hardcore.”

Chapter 14: Way of the Sub

Everyone marched with rhythm in their steps; the supreme techno beats still resonating through their very souls. With the nightclub behind them, focus turned to their main goal: making it to some lab in the middle of nowhere to press some magical button that would stop the zombie uprising in one fell swoop. Nobody thought it would really be that simple. In all likelihood, the seemingly easy part would only come after a few dozen ridiculously tricky parts. These latter parts excited them the most. Overcoming great adversity in order to save the world would hopefully lead only to fame and fortune—even if nobody remained to enjoy the benefits of said fame and fortune because everyone was, in one way or another, dead. Stopping at the nightclub had lengthened their journey, but not by much. Rather than simply following the city streets to the outskirts of The Haunted Forest, they could now take a shortcut through the subway system. After a short jog across abandoned sidewalks, the group approached the narrow stairwell that led into their detour.

“I wonder how many zombies are going to be down here?” Captain Rescue asked casually.

The excitement permeated Freight’s booming words, “THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT!”

Everyone cringed as the giant man threw himself down the concrete steps and into the subway, but this display of masculinity did not seem to injure him in the least. He leapt to his feet, ready to go to town on anything waiting at the bottom of the stairs, but Freight’s snarl vanished immediately as he surveyed the underground station. He saw nothing within the subway living or dead to shoot at. The disappointment within his bosom welled, but he maintained his composure. Unlike Freight, the apparent lack of zombies lifted everyone else’s spirits. They had seen enough of the mangy beasts to last the rest of their lives, and even Stubbs could not stand the thought of another half-decayed corpse. He much preferred a quiet stroll through a vacant subway station so he could recollect on his time short-lived life and his fruitless quest for love.

Charlie meandered through the subway station while taking note of cleanliness that rivaled that of hospital operating rooms. Surprisingly, the underground system showed no signs of any disemboweled humans, or humans in any other state for that matter. They must have been able to find their way to the surface before meeting any sort of gruesome end. As the bunny watched the dancing shadows cast across the concrete floor by the flickering lights within the ticket booths, he noticed Captain Rescue tinkering with one of the parked subway trains.

The hero pried open the doors, hopped aboard, and found a train just as vacant as the station. Not that he gave it much thought—thinking was not his strong suit, after all. Captain Rescue digested the graffiti covered seats as he made his way to the front of the train, where all the interesting buttons were. Once there, he sat down in the conductor’s seat just as his friends entered the train in an attempt to make sure Captain Rescue did not do anything stupid.

“You don’t suppose we can get this thing working?” he asked.

Just as he began to fidget with the controls, the train came to life and started to inch forward. Apparently, he had pressed the right buttons in the right order, and then slid the right lever in the right direction. Dr. Malevolent slapped him across the back of the head, but remained silent.

After rubbing the soreness out, Captain Rescue justified his actions. “What, would you rather walk down the subway tracks in darkness? At least this way we can sit back and relax.”

Somehow, assuming nothing obstructed their journey through the subway, everyone agreed. If they did their best to keep Captain Rescue away from the controls from this point forward, they should be able to get through this without a hitch. Charlie pulled the novice conductor from his seat and took his place. He pressed a series of buttons and then slid the lever forward. The train picked up speed; the giant blue bunny rabbit had apparently grasped the ins and outs of piloting one of these things rather easily.

As the train picked up speed, clicking and clacking down the tracks, Captain Rescue stared out the window. The concrete tunnel hypnotized him as it whizzed past, and the lights almost induced another epileptic seizure. The train made it a few thousand feet, and the hero had not looked away once. Just when the others began to accept that this journey would be eventless, save a possible twitching Captain Rescue, the train turned a corner and its headlights illuminated a solo figure just ahead, an instantly recognizable figure, a zombie.

The creature loitered upon the tracks, looking vacantly on as the train closed the gap. Its expression, or lack thereof, persisted as the giant metal wall struck it, spreading green goo across the front of the train. Stubbs thought back to the good old times he had with his golf cart. This, however, was much cooler. Charlie pushed the throttle to its maximum, and they watched in part disgust, and part interest, as the zombie’s remains simply crawled across the window and fell off. Already, they could see more zombies illuminated farther down the tracks. By the end of this journey, they would be speckled across the train like bugs.

After a few minutes of indiscriminately smearing zombie guts across the windshield, the shapes scattered through the subway lines were silhouetted by a pair of bright lights coming from the opposite direction. The possibilities rushed everyone’s mind but Captain Rescue’s, whose thoughts were of only gumdrops and sugar plumb fairies. Could it really be? Could someone else have been alive down here? Perhaps some other group of survivors had survived the oncoming apocalypse, or perhaps a ghost train would soon cause Captain Rescue to soil himself. Charlie slowed the throttle just as the other train slowed as well, and everyone approached the nearby windows enthusiastically.

Much like Charlie, they could see someone sitting in the engineer’s seat, but it was no bunny rabbit. It was a zombie—a zombie like the bouncer and Stubbs—but a zombie. Time came to a halt as the trains aligned. The undead engineer looked on with its dead eyes, and judging by his expression, he lacked the friendliness found in the Bouncer. In fact, he looked quite evil as he pulled on a lever, blasting the train’s horn in their ears. In addition to his demeanor, this engineer appeared to be wearing the traditional uniform, complete with striped hat and overalls, which only brought up more questions than it answered. Subway engineers have never worn such attire. So, how this zombie found such a uniform was a mystery of its own making. Before they could ponder on these and many other matters any further, the engineer whizzed past.

He had been only a taste of what this midnight meat train had to offer. As their self-guided tour continued, the lights within the lead passenger car shined brightly and illuminated the travelers inside, who were just as dead as the engineer, albeit much happier. In fact, they seemed to be having a jolly good time with their coned hats upon their dead heads. Confetti swam through the air, and many of the zombies had party horns protruding from their cracked and dry lips. The variables in this equation added up to one thing and one thing only: it was somebody’s birthday. 

The lucky birthday corpse sat in the center of the festivities, wearing one of the most ridiculous smirks imaginable, and clapping exuberantly as it hovered over its cake. A crown sitting haphazardly upon its head hung down over the corpse’s right ear and jostled about as he shook with excitement. The chocolate cake before it could not have been too appetizing since it did not appear to have included human ingredients. Still, it was the thought that counts. Lastly, sitting in the center of the cake were a series of candles that indicated the zombie’s age at 0.01 years.

Stuck to the outside of the train, just beneath the windows, a celebratory message formed with human intestines read, “Happy Birthday Ryan!” This, at first, appeared quite ghastly, but considering these zombies were of the most docile variety, it was quite likely they had gathered the intestines from their own bodies—they sure did not need them anymore. Stubbs waved to the partygoers, who greeted him and the living with waves in return. Then, as quickly as it came, the train left, taking it and its occupants with along for the ride.

“Well, you don’t see that every day,” Dr. Malevolent said.

“Birthday parties? They happen every day!” a confused Captain Rescue exclaimed.

Dr. Malevolent glared at him. “I’m beginning to think you’re doing this on purpose and that you’re a lot smarter than you let on.”

“People are born every day! Birthday parties are not uncommon,” the hero replied, unable to comprehend Dr. Malevolent’s near-compliment.

She almost let loose another snarky remark when two more zombies collided with the front of the train, signaling that her efforts were better suited elsewhere. Dr. Malevolent turned her attention to the oncoming tunnels just as more lights appeared ahead. They were too dim and unfocused to be that of another train, and sure enough, they were not. A station as deserted as the one they entered through blurred past, and they soon returned to the darkness of the tunnels.

Charlie pressed down on the throttle and the train picked up speed. While the train continued to catch plenty of zombies, Captain Rescue referred to a nearby map of subway lines to figure out how much longer they would be down here. He had actually never taken the subway before, and found the experience new and unusual. He would have never expected zombies to be part of the subway experience without realizing that they normally were not.

“Judging by this map,” Captain Rescue began, the others were positive that whatever he was about to say would be of the utmost hoot, “we should arrive at our destination in about fifteen minutes.”

A wave of disappointment drowned everyone underneath its waters. He unexpectedly nailed it. They stood dumbfounded as more zombies spattered against the train car, and the window grew increasingly opaque. Charlie flipped on the wipers to clear the messy stew of zombie giblets so everyone could clearly see the darkness ahead. He wondered for a moment why an underground train would need windshield wipers (he doubted it rained down here regularly, if at all), but as a couple more zombies exploded against the front of the train, Charlie just chose to be thankful. The last leg of their trip through the subway was uneventful except for the continued bombardment of zombies that that decided the underground tracks were the perfect place to dawdle. They were gravely mistaken.

Before the heroes knew it, their destination station appeared ahead, and of course, it had everything in common with the stations they had already passed by: dimly lit and vacant. Charlie pulled back the throttle, and the train screeched to an abrupt halt. Almost everyone grabbed hold of the grips hanging from the roof. Captain Rescue, instead, took the opportunity to practice the flying ability he noticeably did not have. Before he could do any real damage to himself or the train, the windshield broke his horizontal fall. He stayed plastered to the glass for a few seconds before gravity caught up with him, and he peeled away from the window and fell flat onto his back.

As the hero picked himself up off the cold steel floor of the train, face imprinted with the metal grating below, the others simply ignored the man and his predicament. They were eager to make it through the deserted train station and meet with the surface once more. Captain Rescue rose back to his feet and darted off after them, stumbling briefly on the space between the train and its platform. The clamor echoed through the vacant space around him, and he worried for a moment that the noise might alert anything hiding in the shadows, but luckily, most of those threats had already found their way to the front of the train during the journey.

They had actually waited for him, standing at the bottom of the narrow stairwell. Captain Rescue found the cockles of his heart warmed; he had expected to find the stairwell closed off and to have been left down here to rot. And so, the reunited fellowship cautiously ascended the stairway, half expecting the zombies to have somehow set a trap and to find a few hundred of the smelly cadavers waiting on the surface to eat them, and sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. Faced with yet another impenetrable flood, Freight raced up the stairwell, ready to face them head on, but the more sensible Charlie grabbed his arm and yanked him back down the stairs and then the bunny shut and locked the gate to hold back the flood temporarily.

Freight grabbed the bunny and lifted him from the ground. “WHY DID YOU DO THAT? I HAD THE SITUATION UNDER CONTROL, I OUGHTA KILL YOU.” Freight looked into the cheerful smile of the bunny rabbit and soon realized that he could not stay mad at it for any longer than a few seconds.

He cooled off and dropped the rabbit, who replied, “I think even THIS SITUATION is not something we could make it through in one piece. Rule 1 of any zombie movie is never to let them surround you. It doesn’t end well.”

With a shrug, Freight admitted that Charlie had a point. He could not be the zombie-blower-upper without a care in the world if he had been reduced to a few billion pieces spread across the stomachs of a few hundred zombies. They had to think of something quick, though, the zombies had smelled their lovely flesh and now pressed against the gate to get at them. It would not hold for long.

“How are we going to get out of
this
?” Dr. Malevolent asked as Captain Rescue approached the gate to get a better look at the zombies.

Charlie thought for a moment and then spoke, “Well, I’m sure there’s a freight elevator somewhere nearby that leads up to the surface, we might be able to avoid the zombies all together.”