“But make sure to get the one with the red dress,” Gunther’s grandson told the merc punks the night before their mission. “That was his masterpiece.”
“Red dress?” Xiu asked.
“You’ll know it when you see it,” he said.
Xiu stares at Gunther’s masterpiece on the wall, a 4’ x 5’ painting using the flesh of a woman wearing a red dress. It was Gunther’s first wife. After she had become infected and turned into a walking corpse, Gunther decided to turn her into the most beautiful work of art he could create. He knew that she never wanted to become one of his sculptures, but it was the only way he could be with her and be safe from infection. She would not become an ordinary sculpture, though. She would become his masterpiece. Like the Mona Lisa, Gunther’s wife was transformed into artistic nobility within the frame.
“Mission accomplished,” Xiu says, as she takes the woman down from the wall, wraps her in a sheet, then ties her in twine.
The woman in the painting rolls her eyes into Xiu’s direction, her lips tremble, begging for mercy.
“Let’s go,” she tells her Arms. “The helicopter is only an hour away. Forty minutes if we hurry.”
Her two Arms nod at her. Zippo doesn’t nod very excitedly. He doesn’t want to hurry to the helicopter. He wants their mission to last forever.
Xiu’s unit sees this as a suicide mission. Even if they succeed, they will not be able to return home as a whole. Xiu will have to leave her two Arms behind. Mongol units are always willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the tribe. The money that would be made if this mission is successful is enough to feed their tribe for a very long time.
After three months into the breeding period, Xiu learned that she was unable to have children. No matter how many times she had sex with her Arms, she could not conceive. This was crushing to her unit. It was what they wanted most in the world. Then Xiu’s unit was volunteered for this suicide mission. Because her unit was unable to reproduce, they were considered expendable by the Mongol tribe.
Zippo didn’t want to go on the mission. Even though Xiu was proud to be of service to her people, Zippo couldn’t help but disagree with her.
“I don’t want us to go,” Zippo said to his Head, the day before the mission. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Xiu kissed him on the head. Even though he surprised her with his disobedience, she decided not to punish him.
The thought of leaving them behind was horrible to her. She would rather stay in the Red Zone and die with her Arms than return home without them. There was a part of Xiu that hopes their mission will fail.
“We will always be together,” Xiu said, rubbing his curls out of his eyes. “Even after we die.”
“In Heaven?” Zippo asked.
“Yes,” she said. “On that day we will be combined into one body, together as we were meant to be, for all eternity.”
Zippo laid his head on her breast, a tear rolling from his eye, as she stroked his dark curly hair. Then she saw Vine ready to move out, so she got up and dropped Zippo face-first into the side of the bed frame.
They arrive outside of the hospital with the paintings shifting on their backs.
“This is it?” Vine asks.
“This is it,” Xiu says.
They pause there for a moment, staring at the crumbled asphalt ground. None of them are ready to part ways. Zippo trembles at the thought of losing Xiu. When she departs, they will just be two empty shells, severed limbs lying on the ground, waiting to be eaten by ants.
“Good journey,” Xiu tells Vine.
She wraps her arms around him and kisses him on the cheek. Zippo wishes she was hugging him instead of Vine. Because the unit is Right-handed, she decides to say goodbye to her favorite Arm instead of both of them. He wishes he could feel what Vine is feeling as Xiu cries on his shoulder. He wishes he would have been a Right Arm instead of a Left Arm.
When Xiu lets go of Vine, she turns to Zippo. His mouth widens in surprise as she embraces him as well.
“Good journey, Zippo,” she says, her hot tears dripping down his neck.
Then she grabs him by the face and kisses him deeply. She holds him with all of her strength, releasing all of her love into him through her lips, her tears running down his cheeks.
When she stops kissing, she looks Zippo in the eyes. She tells him she loves him in the telepathic way Heads communicate with their Arms. Although Xiu’s unit is Right-handed, it is only because Vine is the stronger warrior of the two and a better partner in bed. But in Xiu’s heart, she loves Zippo the most of the two. Zippo was her little sweetheart ever since they were kids. She has always loved Zippo. Leaving him is the hardest part of their separation.
“I’ll finish the mission,” Xiu says, her voice cracking. “Our death won’t be for nothing.”
Then she takes the paintings from Zippo and Vine, and straps them to her back. She bends down and clicks her jumper kneecaps on. Then she nods at her Arms in a last quick goodbye. They nod back.
Xiu’s mechanical kneecaps launch her into the air, up to the roof of the hospital. Zippo looks up at her as she flies, his lips curling into a smile. Although they are separating, it fills his heart with warmth to know how much she loves him. He watches her for every last second, not blinking, enjoying his final view of the woman who was his wife, his mind, his voice, his all.
He wants to yell up at her, tell her he loves her for the first time. He has never told her he loves her, because she has never ordered him to do so. In order to tell her this, he would have to speak with his own free will. He would have to do something he wasn’t ordered to do. Even though it is against everything he has been taught, he decides to do it. He has to.
As Zippo opens his mouth to tell Xiu he loves her, a glimmer of light flashes into his vision. Then blood sprays into the sunlight. Xiu’s body falls to the earth in two separate pieces.
When the two Arms see their Head’s body on the ground by their feet, they don’t know what to do. Without her to give them commands, they are just dead limbs.
Zippo looks up at the roof of the hospital to see Nemesis standing there, her white naked body blocking out the sun. She holds out her hand and her double-bladed S-shaped sword returns to her.
“You fucking bitch,” Zippo yells at the genetically engineered super soldier. “I’m going to kill you!”
Zippo climbs up the cracked wall with his scissor-hands, then leaps at Nemesis. He swings his shears at her, clipping at her cold lizard flesh.
Xiu is not commanding Zippo, but he believes that she is. There are thoughts and commands filling his head, telling him what to do. He assumes they are Xiu’s thoughts, giving him orders telepathically from beyond the grave. He doesn’t realize that the thoughts are actually his own.
Nemesis swings her sword at Zippo, but he catches it in his claw and tosses it aside. The voices in his head are telling him to kill this creature, to avenge the woman he loves. He cries out Xiu’s name as he jump-kicks into the air, foot-scissors widening toward the woman’s paper-white neck.
A memory flashes into Zippo’s head. Since his head has always been filled with Xiu’s thoughts, he had completely forgotten the memory until now.
It was a time when they were still kids. They were training in the Red Zone at night. Their mission was to learn how to sleep in the same vicinity as the undead.
While surrounded by zombies, they weren’t supposed to be talking to each other, but Xiu rarely did as she was told. She covered them with a blanket and lit a flashlight.
“I want to show you something,” young Xiu told Zippo.