Teenage Wasteland (I Zombie) (8 page)

Kubrick drew up to me and whispered, “So what’s the plan?”

“We win another round of the game. This time, however, we’re going to return packing as much grub as we can possibly fit into our packs.”

“What’s the endgame there?” Kubrick continued his questioning.

“Feed the world, my friend. Feed the world.”

Mikko shoved her hand into my back right pocket and walked beside me. “Pretty damn noble, don’t ya think?”

“Pretty damn crazy, is more like it. How do you plan on feeding the entire planet?”

I hadn’t intended on laughing…it just came out. “It was a joke, Kubrick. The food is for the kids of Asylum. Some of them are too weak to win the game.”

“And they certainly don’t have it in them to plunder for food out here in the open world,” Mikko added.

I continued. “Every so often we go on a bit of a shopping spree and bring back enough for everyone. We also make sure to win the daily game so there’s plenty to go around.”

Kubrick nodded. “Damn noble of you.”

I opened my mouth for a bit of self-deprecation, but opted to deflect the compliment. “It’s mostly Mikko…she’s both the brains and the brawn of the operation.” Number One Take Out came into view. “There it is.”

Without warning, I took off toward the restaurant. I reached for the door handle, only to have my hand swatted away by Frenzy.

“Oi,” he called in his thick, fake accent.

Annoyance tainted my voice. “What the hell?”

Frenzy pointed in through the window. “That’s what the hell,” he said with a grunt.

I followed the tip of his finger into the building. Standing in the center of the small dining section stood a pair of Moaners.

“Hipsters,” I hissed. “Son of a bitch.”

Two males, each wearing too-tight tee shirts, too-skinny jeans, and too much beard.

Mikko leaned into me. “Is it worth the fight? I don’t recall there being
that
much food left. Besides, we cleaned the place out of coffee.”

She was right…as usual. Unfortunately, this meant having to locate another cache of food.

From behind, I heard Frenzy shout, “Parkour!”

I didn’t even bother to turn around. “Mikko, please tell me he’s not…”

She wouldn’t let me finish. “He is…just jumped up to the top of the building across the street.”

When I turned, Frenzy was standing on the roof, waving his hands in the air. He then pointed downward. My eyes followed to see a sign labeled,
Asiatique Grocery
.

“How did we miss that?” I asked.

Mikko responded just before taking off at a sprint. “I don’t care, as long as it’s wall-to-wall delicious.”

We all converged at the front door, anxiously awaiting Frenzy to appear behind the glass and let us in.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Kubrick repeated nervously. “Still filming, Nicco?”

“When am I
not
filming, Kube?”

“Good point,” Kubrick said, and then leaned into the glass, his hands cupped around his eyes to block the glare. “Oh, God, it’s full. There’s shit on every shelf.”

Kubrick’s voice had an awkward tone—like he enjoyed some strange fetish and was about to have a foodgasm.

“I don’t like this,” Mikko whispered. “Frenzy never takes this long to get into a building.”

Once again, Mikko was right. Frenzy pretty much lived his life in a state of ADHD, but when it came to breaking and entering, the kid had a laser-like focus.

We all stared. The glass reflected the blinking red light of the video camera. In that moment, I wanted to turn to Nicco and smack the camera to the ground, to insist on some respect. I knew that wasn’t my place. Filming was their shtick, and who was I to say “nay nay”?

No one, that’s who.

Before another thought could dance about my brain, a scream rained down from above. My gut dropped and my lungs fist-bumped one another, crushing my heart in the process.

We all stepped back from the building and craned our necks in a vain attempt to look onto the roof. Without warning, Nicco handed the camera to Kubrick and took a running jump at the dumpster near the corner. With a grace I would have never thought possible from his boxy body, he hopped onto the metal container, turned, and made the leap to the roof.

“Should we be filming this?” Fay asked Kubrick.

“You want to try to get up on the roof with this camera?”

She offered no response.

“I didn’t think so.”

“You want some footage?” I asked.

Kubrick looked at me, shocked. “Yeah. You offering?”

“Follow me.”

I raced over to the dumpster and hopped on board. I turned to face Kubrick and held my hands out. He hoisted the camera to me, and I did a quick focus on the roof.

“Shit,” I called out. “They’re gone.”

Without asking permission, I stretched across the gap between dumpster and roof and carefully set the camera on top of the building. With a less-than-graceful bound, I pulled myself to the roof, scooped up the camera, and listened.

I had no idea what to expect. There was no Matrix action going on, no Neo dodging zombie bites in that Wachowski slow-motion dreamscape. There was only roof.

Instinct begged me to call out Frenzy’s name. Fortunately, my rational mind kicked in before I made that tragic mistake. And so…I ran. At the far end of the roof was an open hatch. A fire escape invited me to come hither.

I had no choice, so hither I went.

“Crap, this isn’t going to end well,” I whispered, navigating the ladder with one hand…the other carefully holding the camera.

Both feet hit the floor with a muffled
thump.
The room was dark and offered the faint smell of exotic delight.

A clang of metal shocked me from my starvation-induced revelry. My heart tap-danced over my ribs.

“Oi!” Frenzy’s familiar cry sounded out, immediately followed by a hungry moan. “Over here, you festering, limp-dick Chewbacca.”

“You want some of this, swamp breath?” Nicco’s voiced chimed in.

I held a hand out before me and swatted at the darkness. The last thing I needed was to fall, camera-first, into the unforgiving tile on the floor.

Another clang; this time I was already revved up and waiting for the noise and the funk to be brought.

Moans filled the air.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Nicco answered the moans.

I pushed my way through strips of heavy plastic dangling from the ceiling. When the path was clear, a dim light shone through the front window to reveal the glory that was a shop full of ingredients.

And a zombie.

Frenzy swung out at the Moaner, missing it completely. Nicco stepped up to the plate and whiffed his own
swing and a miss
. They continued like the Two Stooges for far too long. Without permission or shame, I filmed. This moment in time would come in quite handy when it was necessary to bend Frenzy to my will.

Before the clown show got out of hand, I called out, “Frenzy, use your damn knife.”

“Christ, Jingo,” Frenzy shouted, his voice stripped of its usual brogue. “You could have reminded me of that a bit sooner.”

In the bat of an eye, Frenzy had the knife opened. The glint of sunlight caught the blade to send a harsh beam splashing down on the face of the zombie. In the added light, the beast’s flesh looked as thin and frail as wet paper and as pale as dried wood glue. A spaghetti work of veins spread across his face, under the sickly flesh.

The Moaner dove at Nicco, its stick-skinny legs catching together to send it into a dance with gravity. Nicco couldn’t hold the weight of the creature, so they both went down. Before the dog pile grew deadly, Frenzy grabbed a handful of the zombie’s hair, yanked up hard enough to force the Moaner to look toward the ceiling, and plunged the blade of the knife into the right eye of the Moaner.

The zombie went completely limp and dropped to the floor. The sound of the knife slipping out of the eyeball was moist and sloppy. As I stared at the fluid-slick blade, memories of my last girlfriend bubbled to the surface. We were lab partners in Biology and she always managed to be absent on the days we did anything with eyeballs.

“Sara,” I whispered, my brain threatening to spend the next hour romanticizing tenth grade.

Frenzy and Nicco turned back to me and said in unison, “What?”

I shook my head. “Nothing, nothing.”

Nicco rushed the front door, unlocked the dual dead bolts, and invited the gang in. When he returned, he snatched the camera from me and filmed. Every reaction stood in perfect harmony with the one truth we all held precious.

“Food,” Mikko said with an almost reverent tone. She stepped into the center of the room and turned a graceful three-sixty. “If this is a dream, and anyone wakes me, I promise death will come slowly and painfully.”

I leaned into her and dropped a warm kiss onto her lips. When I pulled away, I whispered, “It’s always a dream when you’re around.”

She slugged me. “Don’t taint this moment of pure, unadulterated lust with your vile romance.”

With a wink, Mikko slipped past me and snatched up a shopping basket. “Everyone load up as much as you can. Stuff your packs to bursting; we’ve got a lot of mouths to feed.”

We separated, each in a different direction. To no one’s surprise, I raced off in search of the meal of meals…Top Ramen. I didn’t care how many studies proved the noodly delight would put me in an early grave; with the undead looming over us, shuffling off this mortal coil might not be the worst option available.

“I spy with my little eye,” Mikko called out, “something that begins with the letter b.”

“Beef bowl,” I shouted.

“Shut up,” Mikko replied. “How’d you…”

“I knows me some Mikko,” I said with an abundance of pride.

“Anything instant is ideal. Just add water is just right for the apocalypse.” I did my best to instruct the gang, even though I was sure everyone know the
modus operandi
for the apocalypse.

The rainbow I chased ended at a glorious pot of gold. “Ramen as high as the eye dare see,” I whispered.

I unslung my bag, opened it, and started shoving pack after pack of instant noodles inside. In my rush to stuff the backpack full of MSG-laden meals, I failed to hear the sound of a shotgun chambering a round behind me. It wasn’t until I felt cold steel against the back of my head that I realized someone was pissed.

“Put the ramen down, or I spill your brains over the floor,” the strange voice said slowly.

I let go of the bag and raised my hands above my head. “No need for violence.”

“Are you kidding? It’s the apocalypse; that’s all the need I require.” The man jabbed the gun into the middle of my back and demanded, “Stand up and face me…slowly. Make any funny moves, and you die.”

I had no choice but to comply. With hands still over my head, I stood and turned.

The stranger was an older Asian man, rail-thin, with the posture of a treble clef. His weapon, on the other hand, was seriously substantial and rail-straight.

“Anybody follow you?” The Asian man poked the shotgun into my gut.

I shook my head, unsure if hearing my voice would set the man off.

Another nudge of the gun. “Speak!”

“No,” I said with a bit too much teen angst. “No one followed us, goddamn it. Now, will you please lower that shotgun before you kill someone!”

The odd, old man leaned in and offered a gap-toothed grin. “That’s the point of a shotgun, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Look, sir.”

Before I could get another word out, the stranger pointed the gun toward the ceiling, pulled off two rounds, and quickly reloaded. The noise was deafening.

“Holy crap!” Mikko shouted behind me. “Whoa, what’s going on here?”

The Asian man leveled the shotgun at Mikko. “On your knees.”

Mikko’s eyes grew wide and her jaw twitched. She swung out, her hand connecting with the end of the weapon like a striking cobra. The old man’s grip relented and the gun tumbled to the floor with a thunk. “The last time
anyone
said that to me, they wound up in the hospital. You wanna go next, old man?”

The look on the guy’s face was priceless. He twitched as if to dive for the gun. I beat him to the floor to turn the tables.

His hands shot into the air. “Shoot me now or shoot me later. We’re all going to die, anyway.”

“Not if we can help it,” I replied. “How long have you been here?”

“It’s my shop. I’m an old man. How long you think I’ve been here?”

I popped the spent shells from the shotgun and noticed lumpy bulges in the man’s shirt pockets. He spotted me and shook his head. “You’ll have to kill me to get the ammo.”

“We’re not going to kill anyone,” I responded.

The Asian man lunged. I ducked and dodged just in time to sidestep his attempt.

“I said we weren’t going to
kill
anyone. Try that again, and you might wind up with a broken leg.”

Mikko glared at me…hard enough to hurt.

I continued. “We just want to fill our packs and leave. There are a lot of starving kids that need to be fed.”

“Let me guess…all of them orphans.”

I stepped in nose-to-nose with the man. “Fact of matter, yes, they are.”

“Sorry…not sorry. Since the apocalypse, we’re all orphans. You want food, you pay for it.”

My laughter rattled the metal shelves. “You’re kidding, right? You want money? What good will
that
do you?”

A wicked grin spread across the man’s face. “Who said anything about money?”

The creep factor in the room dropped to
it puts the lotion in the basket
level. I reached to my lower back to feel for whatever weapon I’d remembered to pack. The second my fingers brushed against cold steel, I relaxed the slightest bit. “What do you want, then?”

“I want the girl,” the man whispered, drool nearly diving from his lower lip. He pointed a bony finger at Mikko.

My right hand clenched into a fist, ready to pulverize his face. Mikko, however, beat me to it. With a single punch, she leveled the old man.

“And scene!” Nicco shouted from behind. “This moment of kick-ass brought to you by Super Girl Underroos. Mikko, you might be the baddest member of this little gang.”