Not Everything Brainless is Dead (13 page)

Freight chuckled at the use of his nickname, and then grew sad that he may not have the opportunity to kill any zombies during this scuffle.

As Charlie went off in search of an elevator, Captain Rescue stared at the zombies, enthralled with their deadness. He reached forward to touch one of them as the creatures slid their fingers through the gaps in the gate.

Dr. Malevolent slapped his hand away. “Are you an idiot? I mean really, what if one of them bit you.”

“I’ve been bitten before. It’s not that bad,” he replied and stepped away from the gate.

Dr. Malevolent squinted at him. “By a zombie?! I think not.”

“Well of course not, but teeth are teeth,” the hero said with a laugh.

Dr. Malevolent pulled him farther away from the gate. “I’m pretty sure that getting bitten by a zombie turns you into one of them, although I don’t want to test it out myself.”

Captain Rescue leapt away from the gate. “What, how could you possibly know that?”

“Firstly, it’s in every zombie movie ever made. Secondly, how else would there be so many of them so quickly.”

Captain Rescue’s eyes narrowed as he thought if over. “Hmm, I guess I’ll have to remember that. Thanks.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it. I’d hate to see you get yourself killed over something so stupid. I still plan to be the one to do it when the time comes.”

Captain Rescue laughed. “Why don’t you just
try
and kill me right here right now.”

“Here? Like this? That would be so wrong… like cheating. I have standards, you know. I can’t just kill you indiscriminately; it has to be at the right time and place.”

Captain Rescue nodded that he understood. Super villains could only kill their superhero counterpart after an epic struggle between the two. No self-respecting villain would ever take a cheap shot at any hero at any time and Captain Rescue knew this. Their world was one of great honor and discipline or the entire dichotomy would never work.

“Over here!” Charlie yelled from nearby; he had apparently found that elevator he so desperately sought, and not a second too soon. The gate gave in with a crash as the flood came pouring in.

The heroes made a run for Charlie’s voice as Dr. Malevolent yelled to Freight, “Okay, big guy, do your thing.”

The mountain of man whipped out his shotgun named Courtney and went to town, strategically taking out zombies that would best slow down the horde. Freight would shoot out a kneecap and a zombie would fall and trip the one behind it. It turned out to be a highly viable method of slowing down the flood, since many of the zombies ended up on their faces before climbing back to their feet while the heroes put more distance between them.

They made it to Charlie, who held the door of a cargo elevator open and ushered them inside. Captain Rescue, Dr. Malevolent, and Stubbs leapt into the elevator, followed closely by her few remaining enigmatic lackeys, who were only really acknowledged when they needed to die. Freight rushed into the elevator, continuing to take out zombies while Charlie slammed the button that would lead them to the surface. The zombies continued to encroach as the gates slowly closed. The bunny slammed the button a few more times, hoping to expedite the process. The linked gate, much like the one they had used to hold back the flood in the stairwell, eventually closed with the horde visible through the openings.

The first zombies made it to the elevator, grabbing hold of the floor and dangling as it ascended. The heroes pressed themselves to the back of the elevator. In delight, Freight stared at the sharply angled concrete ceiling and the arms and fingers clinging to the elevator for dear unlife. The elevator rose as the ceiling descended, and soon the two halves met, chopping arms and fingers off like a butcher’s cleaver, leaving them twitching in the floor of the elevator, globs of congealed blood oozing from the clean wounds left behind.

As the elevator reached the surface and the gate lifted, the heroes poked their heads from inside and looked around for zombies. Most seemed to have all made their way into the subway, and only a few nonconformists lingered here on the surface. In a tight nit group, the survivors left the elevator while steering clear of the severed limbs still twitching on grated floor. Just before heading into the forest, Dr. Malevolent instructed the elevator to descend, hoping to crush the zombies waiting below.

As the heroes exited the cage, the lingering zombies immediately noticed their presence and started moaning for their friends still in the subway. Freight did his best to quell their screams by blowing their heads off—the surest way to shut something up. They crossed the nearby street and without wasting any time, they darted for the trees, where they hoped to lose the undead. As the souls of their shoes clattered against the asphalt, more zombies closed in, but they had little chance of catching up before the group made it into the trees.

Within the blink of an eye, they had crossed the street and thick foliage would soon engulf them, but one sole zombie stood camouflaged against the thicket. As they reached the trees, this single zombie made itself known and lunged for Captain Rescue. He narrowly sidestepped it, and then darted into the trees behind the others. They kept running, but Captain Rescue stopped, distracted by this one zombie. He turned around and went to inspect it. As the two stood face to face, the smelly vermin refused to enter the forest and only stared back at the hero.

 “What are you doing, you idiot, get back here!” Dr. Malevolent barked.

Captain Rescue said not a word as he waved at the snarling zombie. It continued to stand there, refusing to enter the forest and take a bite out of the hero, who just turned to the others and shrugged as they came out of tree cover and approached him. More zombies joined the single one, and they all just stood there at the tree line, growling back at the heroes.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Charlie said as he inspected the zombies. “It’s like an invisible wall is preventing them from coming any closer.”

Dr. Malevolent looked to Stubbs. “Did you feel anything as you came into the forest?”

He looked himself over. “I was focusing hard on not letting my legs tear from their sockets to really notice, but there might have been a slight tingle.”

Dr. Malevolent looked deeper into the forest. “Interesting.”

Charlie crossed his bunny arms. “What are you thinking?”

“Well,” Dr. Malevolent began, “if I were to create something as dangerous and unpredictable as a zombie epidemic, I would certainly want some kind of control over them. Even if it was just prohibiting them from coming anywhere near the forest I kept my stronghold in.”

Charlie waved at the zombies before them. “So basically, you’re saying that whoever created this zombie bug somehow programmed them to stay out of the forest.”

“It sure seems that way,” Dr. Malevolent concluded.

Chapter 15: They Do Exist

Captain Rescue and the others turned their backs on the zombie-ridden city and headed into the bug-ridden forest. Stories surfaced regularly of the horrible dangers residing within these wooded walls. From campers that ventured into it and were never heard from again, to hikers abducted by little green men. Even more outlandish stories had people being terrorized by the likes of Bigfoot and The Jersey Devil (even though they were nowhere near Jersey). Then there were the extreme tales of creatures such as The Loch Ness Monster. How it would have been able to survive in a place devoid of any significant bodies of water was of no consequence. One camper even claimed to have seen a Tyrannosaurus Rex. This beast, while more likely than Nessie, would have a difficult time concealing itself from prying eyes unless it ducked beneath tree cover during the day only to rampage quietly at night.

 “Our destination is somewhere in there,” Charlie said to the others as he strained to look through the trees.

Captain Rescue’s frightened words barely made the journey out of his mouth, “But… the forest… death… bad.”

Dr. Malevolent translated him, “I think what our feeble minded friend is trying to say is that the forest is a scary place and he might just wet himself at the first signs of any wildlife.”

He nodded frantically while his lip and knees quivered in harmony. “And on top of that, we’re going to get lost, I just know it! It’ll be years before they find our corpses!”

Dr. Malevolent scoffed at him, “My sense of direction is far too keen for us to ever get lost.”

“AND IF WE DO,” Freight interjected as his words cut through the night like a fully automatic rifle, “I’VE GOT JUST THE THING FOR THAT.”

“Didn’t we break you of that yelling thing a while ago?” Charlie said to him.

He pointed at himself. “NOBODY BREAKS FREIGHT OF ANYTHING.”

“And just what do you have to keep us from getting lost?” Dr. Malevolent asked, not expecting anything too useful.

Freight held up a compass. “LAB’S TO THE WEST. WITH THIS WE GO WEST.”

Charlie leaned in to look at the compass and then said, “Wow nice, I didn’t think they still made these things. Let me see it.”

Freight squinted at him suspiciously, but handed it over anyway.

Charlie took the compass, dropped it to the ground, and then crushed it underneath his plush foot. Freight appeared just as crushed as Charlie unveiled the GPS he had hidden in his pocket. Captain Rescue patted Freight on the back, who returned the hero’s compassion with an elbow to the face. The group then spent the next few minutes huddled around the tiny GPS, pushing and shoving in a war for the best view. Eventually, after a fair amount of zooming in, out, left, right, up, and down, Charlie pinpointed the likely location of the secret laboratory of doom. Locating the structure shouldn’t have been that difficult since the only signs of civilization within the forest just so happened to be the size of a few football fields.

Thus, with a destination logged into the GPS, the heroes made their way into the forest. In preparation of his trip, Captain Rescue pulled his purple super socks out from under his spandex and yanked them as far up his leg as they’d go, creating a most fashionable look. If he feared one thing more than an epileptic seizure, tripods, and tetanus, it would be Lyme disease, easily his most reasonable fear. After allowing everyone else to precede him, Captain Rescue entered the woods. Instantly, the tall trees surrounded him from every direction, and he fought the urge to wet himself—or worse. His eyes darted between the trees he thought were trying to eat him, and the ground he convinced himself held monsters that would crawl up his leg and sink their fangs into places very dear to him. In case anything tried to leap from the underbrush, he kept a can of pepper spray at the ready. In all likelihood, pepper spray would only annoy the creatures lurking within these woods.

What was even scarier than the critters hiding underneath rocks were the natural sounds of the forest. While many would find these noises wondrous, Captain Rescue heard only the horrible sounds of death. Every rustle, every chirp, every howl would send his heart running for cover. In actuality, many of the sounds originated from Charlie, who enjoyed tormenting the man almost as much as his stroll through nature. Where Captain Rescue saw ghastly trees trying to wrap their thin branches around him, Charlie saw ancient and majestic beauties. The truth was somewhere in the middle.

A shriek shattered Charlie’s serene enjoyment of nature. While everyone assumed Captain Rescue saw a caterpillar or almost stepped on a toad, the hero knew the truth. He caught a glimpse of something fantastic weaving in and out of tree cover, something large, bipedal, and hairy. Unable to muster the words to describe his sighting to the others, he simply mumbled incoherently. The irritated group stopped dead in its tracks and turned to him. Behind them, Captain Rescue could see more movement in the trees. The tears welled in his eyes. The spit sprinkled from his mouth. He babbled incoherently, spurting words like “keyboard”, “wallet”, and “hurricane”. Captain Rescue’s sighting crossed the wires in his head, leaving him temporarily even more broken. He closed his eyes and prayed as more of the hairy beasts closed in.

As the babbling idiot fell to his knees, Charlie caught a glimpse of one of the hairy beasts. He shoved Captain Rescue aside and sprinted off towards the source like a blue blur as everyone but Stubbs followed in hot pursuit. Since any attempt at sprinting would cause him to fall apart at the seams, the zombie stayed behind. Instead, he just plopped down on a log and twiddled his thumbs. Luckily, being alone in The Haunted Forest was anything but harrowing for the zombie known as Stubbs. Nothing in this forest could come close to harming him, and even if it tried—it would regret the decision shortly thereafter.

***

A veritable army of foliage flew past Charlie; deeper and deeper into the forest he and the others went, hot on the heels of whatever they witnessed. It felt like these hairy beasts could very well have been playing with them. Just when one came within their grasp, it would disappear, and another would appear nearby. After sprinting for what felt like the entire night, the ground suddenly vanished beneath their feet. These hairy beasts had led them straight to a hilltop summit, and now, in the darkness, they lost their footing. Head over heels they tumbled, receiving a face full of dirt and grass in the process.

As Captain Rescue rolled, he witnessed the moon flip end over end multiple times before finally coming to a stop. The hero and his comrades concluded this downhill journey piled inside a shallow pit dug into the forest floor. As the hero attempted getting to his feet, he discovered a dozen or so wooden spikes with another idea. Captain Rescue glanced around with baited breath and finally saw their slippery quarry face on. Since youth, he held a firm belief that these enigmatic creatures existed, but he never imagined he would have a chance to prove it. His tears and incoherent babbling stemmed more from joy than fear. The beasts now stood before him; seven feet tall and covered with brown hair.

They flicked their spears upwards, and with childlike amazement, he jumped to his feet and stared at the beasts. Captain Rescue then proceeded to do something rather foolish when faced with potentially hostile animals, and poked one their chests with his finger. He giggled with the excitement that they existed—even if they didn’t seem too pleased to make his acquaintance. He suddenly realized he had to document this wonderful discovery, and whipped a cell phone from his utility belt and snapped a series of blurry pictures. Once developed, they would be indistinguishable from a man in an ape suit or a bear on its hind legs. Finally, Captain Rescue’s senses returned to him and he blurted out a single word: “Bigfoot!”

A group of six of the bipedal apes, led by a gigantic alpha male that towered over the others, had intercepted the heroes. The ape, who wore its distrust of humanity plainly upon its face, looked down at the survivors both literally and figuratively. If these people hadn’t been so hilariously dressed, he might have killed them anyway, but he had other orders. Their shaman instructed the bigfoot to bring any humans found within these woods to him. So, their spears motioned for the adventurers to follow. Captain Rescue, who had suddenly overcome his fear of the forest, was first in line. He walked behind the bigfoot with boyish excitement, giggling at their muscular buttocks moving up and down. The hairy creatures led the heroes deeper into the forest, but since all the trees looked the same, they could have been going in circles for the bigfoot’s enjoyment.

Captain Rescue finally worked up the courage to speak. “So,” he tried to think of what to say, but all he could muster was, “how’s the weather in these parts?”

The alpha male turned its head towards him and only grunted a few words in an unintelligible language. Captain Rescue could tell from the ape’s face that he wasn’t exactly in the mood for conversation.

“I see…” he added.

They walked in silence, and the hero kept any additional questions to himself. Not that he really cared about their hospitality, he was happy enough just being here amongst the apes. It was a childhood fantasy of his to meet these creatures and to play board games with them, although as he grew in age his interest in board games diminished. The bigfoot, however, remained cemented in his psyche as a lifelong dream that he hoped to find one day fulfilled. That day had finally come. The apes stopped and encircled a nondescript pile of leaves. Captain Rescue’s childlike glee persisted as they knelt down and moved the camouflaged hatch aside, revealing a tunnel leading into the ground. The pitch black hole could have easily stretched for miles, but this didn’t stop Captain Rescue from diving right in without letting anything waiting at the bottom bother him; be it spike-traps, a pit of snakes, or the Loch Ness Monster.

After a short trek through the darkened tunnel, a faint light appeared ahead. Captain Rescue clapped excitedly and sprinted ahead of the others, who just let him run off. Kid’s got to learn—even if it meant angry spear toting primates impaled him. They watched as the lunatic exited the tunnel at nearly the speed of light. Then, as if he were somehow able to attain the speed of light and his mass had become infinite, he stopped suddenly and fell flat on his face. At first, his friends assumed the bigfoot stopped him (probably with a spear). However, they would soon realize he simply overloaded with enthusiasm and short-circuited. They stepped through the tunnel’s threshold in awe. It opened into a large cavern that seemed natural, but had been expanded; a sprawling underground city the hairy race of bigfoot called home.

Tunnels dug into the cavern’s walls led out in every direction. Throughout the main hall were various makeshift buildings, and some of which had a distinct familiarity to them. One was clearly a market, and another a church. Several of the other buildings had less obvious roles, such as homes or storage. They were all composed of materials gathered from the nearby forest. Hundreds of the hairy beasts went about their business, and only gave the newcomers occasional glances—some suspicious, some not. Their escorts left them at the entrance as they went off without saying—or doing—anything more.

“Would you look at that,” Charlie said as he pointed towards a very familiar zombie who had found his way here before any of them.

Off in a corner, Stubbs chatted away with one of the giant hairy beasts in their native tongue. The bigfoot’s sex was difficult to ascertain, but judging by the flirtation and its chest, which simple cloth covered, female was a safe bet. As adorable as the sight was, it made them all a little sick to their stomachs, she did after all look like a bearded woman. Captain Rescue, on the other hand, thought the two were cutest couple since beauty and the beast, although none of them had a clue which was which. Stubbs playfully nudged her shoulder after chuckling at something she said, and then wiped away little bits of himself that had rubbed off. It took a while for Stubbs and his partner to notice their smirking onlookers.

Charlie finally broke the silence. “So, you speak…Bigfootish?”

“Yeah,” the zombie said, “who’d have thought.”

The bunny glanced at his new friend. “Interesting, that’s for sure.”

“I wonder what possible reason there could it,” Stubbs said with much emphasis. As if the answer was somehow of great importance to them; whoever had created the zombies had a plan in store for the bigfoot as well.

“Hah, you’re weird,” Captain Rescue said as he tickled Stubbs’s stomach. The zombie mimicked a laugh for his sake.

Everyone, including Stubbs and his mistress, roamed through the main hall on a self-guided tour. Some bigfoot craftsman had erected a central column in the very center of the city and painstakingly carved it into a statue. They stood before an impressive depiction of a muscular male holding a large staff above his head. They followed the statue down from there, taking in its beauty piece by piece. When they reached the halfway point, they were mildly appalled to see the statue’s groin staring back at them. While Charlie had half a mind to cover it up with some kind of makeshift loincloth, he decided it was best not to incite a cross species conflict.

“Greetings humans… and rabbit,” an aged voice said softly.

They spun around to see an elderly bigfoot with greying hair and holding a wooden staff in its hands. They looked back up to the statue, and then back down to the bigfoot. The group repeated this motion a few times before finally deciding that the two were indeed the same. Their eyes then traveled to the elderly bigfoot’s waste, which a loincloth conveniently graced.