Rainbow Cat and Scavy follow after her, jumping over the zombie arms that reach blindly across the asphalt. Up ahead, they see a dozen more of the undead coming straight for them.
“Fuck,” Junko groans, as she revs her chainsaw back into life. “I was hoping to avoid this shit.”
Junko knows exactly what she’s doing out there, because she had fully prepared herself for this competition. In the history of Zombie Survival, she was the first contestant to actually know she was going to be selected for the show beforehand. The second she had become blacklisted by employers in the Platinum, Gold, and Silver districts, she knew that it was done for a single purpose: so she would be forced to move to Copper and become eligible for the Zombie Survival contestant selection. And she knew who was responsible for getting her on that blacklist: her old boss, Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla.
She had met Wayne when she was seventeen years old. He was the judge of a beauty pageant she was participating in. She remembers the way his creepy eyes wouldn’t look anywhere else but on her body. She remembers him licking his crusty too-red lips behind his too-white goatee.
Back then she had long black hair, perfect ladylike posture, and a glowing artificial smile. Her mother encouraged her to focus on being beautiful. If she was beautiful she could marry a rich man and live in the Gold or Platinum Quadrant. If she was beautiful she would be too valuable to be discarded by society into the ghettos of Copper. So her mother made sure she wore the latest fashions, took good care of her nails and hair, learned the art of makeup application, and developed an attractive personality: innocent, joyful, pure. And her mother always put her in beauty pageants. She wanted her daughter’s beauty on display for all the rich men to see.
Even though her daughter was underage, her mother encouraged her to flirt with older wealthy men. When Wayne “The Wiz” Rizla introduced himself to her after she had come in third place in the pageant (the worst she had ever placed since she was ten), she could feel her mother’s eyes telling her: “Don’t fuck this up. He’s interested in you. Smile. Flash your eyelashes. Arch your back. Stick out your cleavage.”
But Junko was more creeped out by him than any man she had ever met. She just couldn’t flirt with him.
“Hi there,” he said, rubbing his white goatee. “My name is Wayne, but people call me The Wiz.”
Junko cowered beneath him, her back slouching, her eyes glancing at the ground, her teeth chewing nervously on the inside of her cheek. She could see her mother glaring at her from across the room for not flirting properly with the older man. Junko wasn’t presenting herself at all in the way that her mother had taught her. Junko knew that she would be punished by her mother for coming in third place, but if she could attract the affection of this older man perhaps she would be forgiven. She wouldn’t have to seriously form a relationship with the man, just give the impression to her mother that he was a potential suitor.
Junko widened her eyes and opened up her body to him, flirting with her neck and smile. She asks, “Why do they call you The Wiz?”
Wayne leaned in and spoke directly into her ear with his rough deep voice, “Because I make magic happen.”
When he pulled away he laughed, as if that was supposed to be a joke. Junko laughed with him. She knows to always laugh at a man’s jokes even if she isn’t sure whether or not he told a joke.
“I’m looking for a young pretty face for a new show I’m working on,” Wayne said. “I think you’d be perfect.”
“A show?” Junko asked. “Like a play?”
“No, a television show,” Wayne said. “Do you know what a television show is?”
Junko shook her head, but kept her fake smile beamed in his direction.
“You will soon enough. Television is finally coming to the island and the show I’m working on will be the biggest hit series of all time.”
“And you want me to be a part of it?” Junko asked, her excited tone of voice was actually genuine this time.
“I want you to be the star,” he said.
Then Junko’s fake smile became a real one.
Junko leads her crew into an abandoned building to escape the zombie fight. They don’t bother barricading the door and allow the zombies to pile in after them. Instead, they zigzag through corridors until they lose them. Then they jump into the pitch-black stairwell. They seem to have also lost the camera ball that was following them.
Rainbow Cat ruffles through her pack for her flashlight, but Junko says, “Leave your lights off.”
Feeling their way up the steps, they pray they don’t run into any corpses. But Junko feels safer knowing that the zombies are even more blind in the dark than they are and have a difficulty with stairs.
They continue climbing, stepping in sticky fluids and tripping over rubble, but they don’t run into any bodies… that they know of.
A wave of relief rushes over Rainbow Cat when they leave the stairwell onto a random floor. The offices here are dimly lit, but the little amount of light they have is enough to know exactly what’s around them. They choose a well-lit office with a large window, then lock the door behind them.
“Just keep your voice down,” Junko whispers, “and they’re not going to find us.”
They drop to the ground and catch their breaths. When Junko gets a good look at the green slime on Scavy’s clothes, she says, “Did you get that shit on you?”
Scavy looks down. “Guess so.”
“Take ‘em off!” she whispers. “Now!”
She helps him carefully remove his shirt and pants, repeatedly calling him a dumb fuck for letting this happen.
“Did it get on your skin?” she asks. “If it’s soaked into your skin and into your bloodstream you’re dead.”
When he is down to his underwear, Junko examines every inch of his skin for the green substance. She pulls him up to the window to be absolutely certain.
“I don’t see anything,” Scavy says.
Junko frowns. “You look fine, but from now on you listen to me.”
“You’ve got it,” Scavy says.
The punk has a new found respect for Junko ever since he saw her take down all of those zombies. He could hardly stand up to just one, but she made short work of nearly a dozen of them.
“You kicked ass out there,” he says. “Have you fought zombies before?”
Junko shakes her head.
She says, “No, but I’ve worked for this show long enough to know which attacks are most effective.”
Then she lies back to rest for a few minutes, getting off her feet so that they won’t blister.
“I also know what mistakes not to make,” she says with her eyes closed. “Like the mistake you made back there. If you want to survive you will listen to me from now on. I won’t bail you out next time.”
After a long pause, Rainbow Cat asks, “How was it?”
“What?” Junko asks.
“Working on the show?”
It was fun at first. Junko liked being treated like a celebrity, even though she was just a host for the show. The real stars were the people who fought and died for everyone’s amusement. Junko was just the pretty face and cheerful voice that introduced each episode of the season. She liked being pretty for a living. Her mother loved it even more, because her daughter was not just a pretty face but also a major sex symbol. There was no way Junko wasn’t going to end up marrying a very wealthy man.
Then she grew up and the novelty of being a celebrity wore off. Her mother died from choking on a wine cork, and her influence died with her. The desire to marry a wealthy man faded, because she already had plenty of money. She always knew the show she worked for was brutal and cruel, but she was raised to accept these things as normal, just as all children in the upper class districts were.