Not Everything Brainless is Dead (8 page)

As for big blue Charlie, the moment any zombie caught a glimpse of him, they would start moaning and shuffling off in random directions, or simply short circuit and fall over dead again. Since a zombie’s intelligence rivaled that of say—cardboard, they did not react well to being startled, and their panicked shuffling commonly resulted in plummets down open manholes or repeatedly bumping into walls. One could surmise that a zombie (much like a lemming) would walk off a cliff to its doom without hesitation. Any zombie that did not meet with any of the aforementioned fates met it with Stubbs and his golf cart.

Because of their reaction to him, Charlie began to doubt that the undead had any sort of consciousness in the first place. In order to come to a proper conclusion, some brave zombologist would need to experiment further to discover what was really going on inside a zombie’s noggin. A possible experiment would be to tie a harness to an armless zombie and hang a brain in front of it just to see how long it would walk before it managed to find a way to dispose of itself.

The survivors made it to the end of a block and Charlie stopped them all. “There’s an awful lot of ruckus coming from around that corner,” he said suspiciously.

Captain Rescue thrust his chest into the air. “I’ll check it out.” He strolled to the building’s corner and peered over the edge. “Yes, that is a lot of zombies.”

“Well, big guy,” Dr. Malevolent said to Charlie, “this is your queue.”

The bunny shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t want to push our luck by startling that many zombies at once. Things might get crazy and they could end up eating us anyway.”

Dr. Malevolent peered at the horde of zombies. “I suppose you bring up a good point.”

Charlie tried to determine a good detour to take. Soon, he pointed to a nearby alley. “Let’s go that way.”

“An alleyway?” Captain Rescue asked. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Traversing the alleyway, under normal societal circumstances, would certainly be ill advised. While zombies seemed to enjoy streets and places that previously held a lot of human traffic, much scarier things lurked down dark alleyways. Luckily, considering the state of things, most of those dark figures you would never want to run into would have been long since zombified and posed little threat. Furthermore, zombie threat or not, alleys held much more enjoyable and adventurous prospects. Why rob yourself of those wonderful urban spelunking opportunities just because of a few zombies?

Charlie went on to say, “Can’t really be any worse than what’s out here.”

“Your funeral!” Captain Rescue said with an emphasized shrugging.

“You do realize,” Dr. Malevolent added, “that if there’s anything in that alley that could possibly kill us, you’d probably die too.”

“No… impossible, superheroes are immortal. In fact,” he said, looking at her, “so are most super villains.” Captain Rescue laughed and looked at looked at the others. “You guys though…”

Dr. Malevolent shook her head. “We’re going to have to put this theory of yours to a test someday.”

“Fine by me, I’ve done my research,” the hero said as he crossed his arms.

She shook her head again. “Yes, I’m sure those comic books of yours are a fool proof learning tool.”

Captain Rescue made childish faces of condemnation at super villain as they headed towards their detour. If a stereotypical alley existed—the kind pictured when someone imagined running into a dark figure—this would be it. Naturally lit, it would have been quite eerie, but since the city’s lights were on the fritz, darkness consumed much of the alleyway. Now, only the moon and their flashlights illuminated it.

As the group digested the alley, Stubbs gunned the golf cart and headed straight for a brick wall while everyone else looked on curiously. At the last second, the zombie dove from the driver’s seat and rolled across the pavement. He casually got to his feet as the golf cart inched towards the brick wall. The vehicle finally tapped it, scuffing the paintjob, but nothing else happened. A few seconds later, it exploded wondrously into a miniature mushroom cloud. Stubbs paid no attention to the inferno and strolled into the alleyway, his bewildered friends following shortly thereafter.

“Do I even want to ask?” Dr. Malevolent finally said.

“Ask what?” Captain Rescue inquired.

With a slightly annoyed laugh, she replied, “The golf cart?”

“Yes?” he questioned.

She pointed at the rubble. “How it exploded?”

“They don’t normally do that?” Captain Rescue asked with a head scratch.

Dr. Malevolent rolled her eyes. “No, they don’t.”

Captain Rescue scratched his chin. “Interesting…”

A little known fact about zombies was that they loved explosions, so Stubbs actually did them a favor. The smoldering golf cart drew the zombies like moths to flame. Thee heroes were able to slip into the alleyway without as much as a stray glance from one of the festering corpses.

At first, it appeared as though condensation coated the entire passage. This seemed unlikely since it had not rained here in weeks. However, upon closure investigation, the source of the wetness turned out to be merely blood, which somehow set their minds at ease. If the alleyway had somehow been the source of some kind of random torrential downpour, they would have been quite shocked. The chances of a bloodbath were much higher considering the state of affairs in this fair city.

As Charlie stared down at the gallons of blood used to paint this alleyway, he could not help but to imagine how difficult removing the stains from his costume would be. No amount of club soda would magically exorcise the blood that now soaked its way into the plush. He had half a mind to take the costume off, but carrying it around seemed troublesome. Not to mention, the man buried within the blue suit could not to kick this much ass without the guise.

The group pressed forth down the alleyway, and soon ran into a zombie with its head buried under the lid of a dumpster. No doubt, this zombie had been homeless prior to its reanimation. A little known fact about zombies was that if left to their own devices for long enough, the mangy beasts would start to take on aspects of their former selves. Firefighter zombies were attracted to fires—a habit that caused their incineration more often than not. Stripper zombies had an unhealthy fixation with poles. Zombies that drove for a living found their way to the driver’s seat of a vehicle and just sat there with their hands on the wheel. Obese zombies liked to wander in the vicinity of fast food restaurants. Children zombies were often seen at playgrounds scrambling up slides and then falling back down. The list goes on.

Chuckling quietly under his breath, Charlie motioned for everyone to stop as he discreetly approached the homeless zombie. The creature just continued digging through the trashcan and was unaware of the malicious rabbit closing in fast. Charlie crept up behind the zombie and then shoved its shoulders before taking a leap backwards. The creature reeled around, raised its arms into the air, and snarled. Just before lunging forward, it realized what had disturbed it: a giant blue bunny rabbit.

The zombie froze there for a few moments, then turned around and shuffled as fast as it could down the alleyway. It paid no heed to anything in its path, especially not the fire escape or its ladder. The zombie crashed into the rungs, lodging its head between a pair of them. The rest of its body, unaware of this fact, continued shuffling in place as its arms flailed about randomly. As the laughing group passed by, the zombie tried its best to bite them through the ladder’s rungs, but was unsuccessful.

Leaving this hapless undead soul behind, they pressed forth, and any zombies lingering were easily scared off save one. This zombie apparently assumed that it was Easter, because it reacted to Charlie with undeterred rage. The meaning behind this escaped them all. Perhaps this zombie was some weird fluke, or perhaps zombies in general were growing out of their fear of giant blue bunny rabbits. Something all the undead had to do if they wanted to survive in this messed up and crazy world.

Who knew how many zombies it would take for them to overcome their collective fear, but chances are—not many. Unbeknownst to the heroes, zombies all over found the commotion in the alleyway quite alluring. They closed in fast and it would not be long before they found a way around the otherwise insurmountable wall of buildings that engulfed the heroes.

Chapter 10: Dinner and a Show

After finally coming to the end of the long narrow alleyway that had accompanied them for quite some time, everyone kicked the ground in frustration with what awaited them just around the corner. Another alleyway of course, although this one did not seem to abuse blood as the last one did, which only begged the question of what made the previous alleyway so gruesome. Well, this
was
a zombie apocalypse. That alleyway just so happened to be the lowest point in the city. All of the blood spilled since outbreak began flowed straight there, and since many of the storm drains throughout the city had—stuff—clogging them, the blood had pooled to a ridiculous degree.

Aside from the significant lack of gore, one major difference separated this alleyway from the last. Something leveled an entire building, and now its rubble blocked their path completely. Unless zombies found a way to overcome entire buildings, then something more sinister must have been afoot. The most obvious culprit was God, who, from the heavens, smote this one building for some unseen purpose. This divine roadblock forced the troupe of zombie slayers to detour into a building nestled amongst the forest of brick that encompassed the alleyway.

Once inside, the survivors were astonished to see a quaint home unaffected by zombie carnage. Judging by the smell that wafted up from the furnishings, an old woman had once lived here. Now, only the smell remained. At the start of the zombie outbreak, the elderly woman must have gone wandering without her spectacles. When she met with her first corpse, she probably tried to invite it in for tea and scones. The zombie, no doubt, had little stomach for such things and instead opted for finely aged human flesh.

“Anyone else hungry?” Captain Rescue asked.

The thought of a half-digested corpse brought attention to that ache in their tummies. Why not take the time to satisfy it while in humble surroundings such as these? Therefore, the picnic basket that Charlie had hidden who knows where found its way atop a blanket with equally enigmatic origins. Even more mysterious was the fact that this inexplicable picnic basket somehow held sandwiches, drinks, chips, and those small individually wrapped wipes for the ten or so people sitting Indian-style around it.

For some reason, their feasting had much in common with the way zombies feasted on human flesh. Apparently, manners resided near the bottom of their respective priority lists. Except for Stubbs, who, despite his inability to digest food, was an utmost gentleman. The zombie sat with a napkin between his legs to catch the crumbs that fell from his mouth and the many other holes throughout his body. The group made quick work of the meal, and before long all that remained were the crumbs coating their clothes.

With their newly sated bellies, everyone rose and stood in a tight circle to plan their next course of action—a choice that if chosen poorly would lead to dire circumstances and their inevitable doom. In fact, any choice—good or bad—could easily lead to inevitable doom. They would have to proceed from this point with meticulous planning if they wished to survive the night. The next words spoken would have to be carefully chosen and their meaning clear as glass, or lives could be lost.

“LET’S GO KICK SOME ZOMBIE ASS!” Freight bellowed; his carefully chosen and meticulous words sunk their way into everyone’s soul.

They all replied together, “Hurrah!”

Overexcited from his own motivational speech, Freight went into fit of rage and rushed through the door of the quaint little home, ready to mutilate anything waiting on the other side, zombie or not. In his current state, he could have easily pummeled the first thing to cross his path, be it a fire hydrant or a telephone pole. Maybe even a small dog with a scorched tail that somehow survived this long without becoming the condiment to a zombie’s main dish.   

Everyone dashed through the Freight shaped hole just in time to see him yelling in gibberish at the moon. From his body language and the tone of his yelling, they surmised that the moon had slept with his sister, and then added insult to injury by stealing his record collection. The moon’s transgressions forced Freight into a crusade to yank it from the sky and brutally bludgeon it to death. Anyone could question the validity of this goal, but what there was no question of, however, was the attention drawn by bellowing at the moon. A clamor of footsteps and moans approached from every angle, and the source of which might have certainly been moon-huggers dead set on putting an end to Freight’s campaign against their lord and savior—if these moon-huggers had developed a hunger for something other than moon-justice.

Without his knowledge, a mess of smelly zombies had encircled Freight. The anger he felt towards the two-timing, sister-abducting, record-stealing moon blinded him from the undead’s dastardly ways. Before this, the moon had been a trustworthy friend; that trust evaporated quickly, for not only had it left a cheese shaped impression on his sister’s bottom, it now distracted him from his impending doom. Just when Freight began to accept that the moon would not be directly facing these accusations and would rather cruelly ignore him from its seat in the sky, he realized he had bigger fish to fry. He worried, however, that no frying pan existed large enough for this cook off. Freight clenched his fists in rage. Whom should he blame for this travesty, and where could he find them? They need a brutal bludgeoning.

Oh well, at least he had a shotgun, which was arguably more useful than an oversized frying pan. What followed in the wake of his shotgun was nothing short of art. At the same moment Freight realized the zombies were encroaching, his trusty weapon was already blasting their heads off. One by one, the undead exploded and rained gore all over. As many knew, the act of zombification left the human body more susceptible to spontaneous exploding. Not only from sizzling deer slug, but also more exciting objects like shovels, rakes, or the weighted backpack of a college student. As this rhythm of blasts and exploding zombies found its rhythm, the scene shifted from a slaughter to an elegant dance of zombie gore. Corpse after corpse fell in rhythm, like synchronized swimmers who had swum their last swim.

While the dust and corpses settled, (which happened in perfect harmony, its own special form of beauty) Freight just stood there, shotgun resting on his shoulder, smirking widely at the art he just created. He was a badass, and judging by that smirk, he knew it quite well. As the man reeled around to face the other heroes, his shotgun slipped and tumbled from his hands. Freight went into a scramble and dove for his beloved as it tumbled towards the pavement. At the last second, his hands slipped beneath it, rescuing it from the fall.

Freight cradled his shotgun close to his chest, like a mother and her newborn baby. “WHOA COURTNEY, YOU ALMOST WENT FOR A TUMBLE. IT’S OKAY, I’VE GOT YOU NOW.”

The man took the awkwardness of this moment a step further and caressed the red ribbon around the barrel of the shotgun.

Charlie cautiously approached Freight and inquired, “Did I just see what I think I saw?”

Freight hugged the shotgun tightly. “SHE’S REAL AND SHE LOVES ME!”

Charlie did not want to be on the receiving end of Courtney, so he left well enough alone. Dr. Malevolent, also ignoring what had just transpired, surveyed the zombies torn to shreds around her, and then turned to Freight with a warm look in her eyes. “I have a feeling you’re going to have a rough time integrating back into society once this is all said and done. I guess we’ll have to put you in a plastic baggie filled with dead zombies until you have a chance to acclimate once more with the outside world.”

Freight stared at the ground. “I’M NOT A FISH, DAMMIT”

She patted him on the back.

Charlie laughed. “You’ve been saving that for a while haven’t you?”

She rolled her eyes and nodded.

A streetlamp flickered above. Its eerie light illuminated the street briefly, reminding everyone of where they were: the middle of a deserted street in the dead of night; a deserted street littered with maimed corpses, however artfully placed. After a few seconds of staring blankly into the darkness, everyone silently decided to loiter elsewhere. In a feat of sheer brilliance, they took a moment and back peddled onto the sidewalk, safe from any road raging corpses during this most frightening of nights.

“We need to make it to that bank, who remembers where it is?” inquired Captain Rescue.

Dr. Malevolent spun around to face him, and then said, poking his shoulder in rhythm with each emphasized word, “You
live
in this city. You
work
in this city. You were
just
there earlier today, and you don’t know
where
the bank is?”

The hero rubbed his shoulder. “You know how it goes, you ride along for years, but when you actually have to navigate somewhere everything is so foreign.”

Dr. Malevolent stared him down. “What do you mean ‘ride along’?

“The Rescue Machine has one of those… those…auto-drive things,” he stammered.

She shook her head. “No it doesn’t.”

“Yes it does,” Captain Rescue argued, “and besides—how would you know?”

She laughed. “Nobody’s marketed one yet. And even if they had, I doubt you’d be able to get your grubby mitts on it.”

The hero smiled, thinking he had her right where he wanted her. “Then what about all those times my trusty steed has come to my aid in fierce battle?”

“I don’t know—maybe it’s possessed?”

“Possessed?” Captain Rescue’s face went pale and he started to shiver uncontrollably, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Dr. Malevolent pointed down the darkened street. “Suit yourself, we better things to do, wouldn’t you agree?”

Charlie slipped into the conversation, “Would you two ninnies pull yourselves together, we are in the middle of a very serious epidemic. The fate of humanity rest could rest solely in our incapable hands.”

Dr. Malevolent laughed heartedly. “Or, the military could have already quarantined us off and are currently sitting somewhere in a tent, with popcorn, giggling.” She waved in random directions and the possible locations for camera drones.

“Now,” Charlie continued, bunny tail wagging away, “as Captain Rescue inquired: The Bank is actually just down the road a little ways. Let’s get there and figure out where to we need to head to put an end to this.”

Captain Rescue rolled his eyes. “Lead the way, Bugs.”

“Don’t mock me,” the rabbit started, “if you think you’re man enough, I’ll follow in your lead.”

He placed his hands heroically upon his waist. “I do believe I am.”

Captain Rescue pushed Charlie the Bright Blue Bunny Rabbit aside and marched out in front of him. The hero was ready to lead everyone to victory and salvation. This lasted for three harrowing steps before he came to a halt and raised a fist. His head jerked to the left, then to the right, and then to the left again, and then to the right again. This continued for another fifteen or so seconds until someone kicked him in the back. The hero inched forward; he knew danger lurked just ahead. He could feel it. Either that or the hotdogs he sodomized earlier were not of the best stock.

Just then, a corpse shuffled out from the shadows and waddled past Captain Rescue, ignoring him completely. This, of course, agitated the noble hero. He single-handedly witnessed these lifeless masses of flesh eat anything that moved, and this one didn’t even look at him. As he gazed at the bleeding and grotesque creature, the anger in his gut burned. For some demented reason, he wanted this zombie to turn and lunge for him—a notion that if pondered on for enough time would prove itself to be quite misled.

The furious passion rising deep within Captain Rescue propelled him forward. He shoved the zombie as a bully would on the playground during recess. The cadaver stumbled backwards without immediately taking notice of its aggressor. After it came to a stop and righted itself, the zombie slowly fixed its gaze on Captain Rescue. Step by unsteady step the zombie shuffled towards him, eventually coming face to face with the hero. If it had breath to breathe, Captain Rescue would be able to feel it gliding down his neck. The zombie snarled fiercely and then, in some random subconscious impulse, proceeded to shove the hero back. The force, however, tore what few ligaments remained in the zombie’s arms and caused them to rip from the elbows. The stunned cadaver waved its stumps around curiously, but did not attempt to bite anyone—easily its best course of action. As the poor corpse’s arms twitched uncomfortably down there on the cold pavement, Captain Rescue took a disgusted step backwards and shook his hands like a teenage girl (or elephant) that had just seen a mouse.

“Just shove the thing aside so we can keep movin’,” Charlie said, interrupting the tender moment between Captain Rescue and the zombie.

The hero pulled a hankie from his utility belt and lightly pushed the zombie aside with utmost care, cautious of whatever diseases the thing might be carrying. Especially tetanus, boy did he hate tetanus. Charlie, who had the opposite, less cautious approach, shoved Captain Rescue down the sidewalk. Stubbs gave a sad nod and a smile to the armless corpse, who did not seem to care about his fellow zombie or the big blue bunny rabbit that had just strolled past it. Perhaps he had other things on his mind, such as the cyclist he had eaten a while ago, and the bicycle it was excited to ride, but could not because it lacked arms. Perhaps, the reason its mind appeared to have wandered was that it had literally done so a short time ago, leaving behind a vacant cranium as it went off in search of greener pastures. The drooling zombie turned and watched the heroes as they headed deeper into the city.