Zombies and Shit Read Free Page A

guaranteed! If you do a good job and win the game, first prize will be citizenship in the Silver Quadrant, with certified passports to the Gold and Platinum Quadrants. However, there can be only one winner. Losers will be left for dead in the Red Zone.”
    “This can’t be,” says an obese man of Italian descent. “I’m not a citizen of the goddamned Copper Quadrant. I’m from Silver. I was just visiting my dumbshit nephew!”
    The Asian woman hushes him.
    The voice continues: “If you will all make your way up to Room 222, you will find your supplies. Each of you have been left a backpack including survival gear and a unique weapon personalized to your estimated fighting capabilities! The backpacks are electronically locked and will not unlock until you have left the safety of the barricaded hotel. I recommend you go upstairs and claim your pack immediately. If you stay in the lobby for too long you are likely to gain some unwanted attention.”
    The punks rush up the stairs and go for room 222. Everyone follows. Charlie is the last one upstairs, waiting for Rainbow to stop crying and get to her feet.
    “Braaains!” the zombie yells through the glass.
    Looking behind him on the way up the stairs, Charlie examines the zombie banging on the boarded window trying to get in. It rips at the boards with its claws, a cracking sound splits through the wood but the plank remains in its place… for now. Charlie gets a good look at the sunflowers growing out of its empty eye socket and out the top of its hollow skull. Its mulched brain must have acted like fertilizer for the flowers, its head like a pot. He wonders how the thing can think without a mind in its head.

    It’s been seventeen years since Charlie has seen a zombie. Back when he was a kid, he lived in one of the many fortified cities along the coasts of the mainland. Back then, he saw zombies every day, through the barrier, in the wasteland. The dead were constantly trying to get into the city and the living were always reinforcing their perimeters to keep them out. Every capable human was responsible for guarding the perimeter. Charlie’s father was no exception.
    “There are so many of them out there, like an ocean,” his father used to say when they would stare at the zombie wasteland from the top of the guard tower.
    His father was fascinated with the walking dead. He thought of them as almost beautiful, like works of art.
    He handed Charlie his machine gun and had him look through the scope. While zooming in, Charlie saw a black sludge-covered skeleton creeping down a street. Its eyes bulged out of the sockets, its skeletal teeth in a wide smile. Its black flesh melted from its body. The thing looked comical in its bumbling state. It made Charlie laugh.
    “What is it?” his father asked.
    “It’s funny,” young Charlie said. “The zombie looks funny.”
    Then he looked again at its bulging googly eyes and laughed harder.
    His father patted him on the back. “Yeah, perhaps they are a bit funny. From a distance.”
    Eventually, civilization moved off of the mainland completely. They built protected cities on islands, on oil rigs, on aircraft carriers. Most of Charlie’s generation have it pretty good compared to those who had to survive the zombie apocalypse that began over fifty years ago. Very few people have to fight for their lives on a day to day basis anymore, especially those in the upper-class Platinum Quadrant of Neo New York.

    The twenty contestants squeezed into the small hotel room on the second floor. Lying along the wall were twenty bags. They weren’t all backpacks. Some were duffel bags, some were purse-sized packs, some were large mountaineer packs. Charlie guessed the size had something to do with the weapon included within. A good weapon would be a huge advantage, but lugging around a large pack would not.
    The voice came over the intercom: “Your packs will also include a map of the area with the pickup point marked by an X. You