She whispered as quietly as she could so she wouldn’t wake Vine or attract the undead.
Little Zippo sat up and faced her.
“I made them,” Xiu said, as she pulled out two tiny dolls. One of them had blonde hair and the other short dark hair, both of them wearing dirty black dresses.
“Someday we are going to have children just like these,” Xiu said. “Two little girls. One with blonde hair and one with black. I want you to be the father of the one with black hair.”
Zippo smiled at the little doll. Its face crudely drawn with charcoal.
“I want you to keep it,” Xiu whispered. “Protect her for me.”
Zippo nodded and took the doll. He held it firmly in his arms to keep it safe. His previous Head had never given him anything before. He had never heard of a Head giving an Arm a gift like this, especially not a precious toy.
“Let’s play,” Xiu said. “Let’s pretend they are our babies and we have to take care of them.”
Zippo nodded excitedly. Then she kissed him on the lips. He blushed and looked up at her pretty round face.
“You’re the daddy,” she said. “And I’m the mommy.”
Zippo straightened his back, pretending to be a strong confident father.
“You can break the rules,” she said. “You don’t have to do everything I say when we’re playing.”
“Okay,” Zippo said, though he wasn’t sure how to play without being given commands.
After a few minutes of playing mommy and daddy, they heard a zombie groaning somewhere nearby. Xiu turned off the light and pulled Zippo down, giggling at herself for being so mischievous. She shushed Zippo as they hid from the zombie, her arms wrapped around his body, still cradling their babies in their arms. Zippo could feel her smiling as her lips were pressed against his neck.
As the memory flashes through his mind, Zippo can still feel Xiu’s smile against his neck. He closes his foot-shears around Nemesis’ neck, tears filling the insides of his goggles.
Nemesis grabs Zippo by the ankle. She twists his leg, breaking it in three different places, and drives his foot-shears into his own chest.
Zippo falls to the ground. His body goes limp as the blades of his scissors cut through the outside of his heart. As he dies, he watches the clouds drifting overhead. Within the clouds, he hears Xiu’s soft, sugary voice. She gives him one last command.
“Come to me,” she orders him.
Vine stands next to Xiu’s body, awaiting her orders. She doesn’t give them to him. She is long dead. Like he did as a child when he lost his first Head, he just stands there, not able to think or act on his own. But an Arm’s job is to intuit his Head’s command before she even has to give him one. If she were alive, Vine would know exactly what she would tell him to do.
“Finish the mission,” she would say.
Nemesis drops down from the roof next to Vine. He looks over at her as she steps across the living works of art toward him, spinning her sword like a propeller by her side.
“Finish the mission.”
Nemesis swings her sword at Vine.
“Finish the mission.”
A wire springs out of Vine’s wrist, knocking the sword back. Another wire shoots out of him and hooks onto the roof above. Before Nemesis can attack again, Vine is pulled through the air to the top of the building. He runs across the roof and shoots his wire to the next building, then swings across. He shoots his wire at the next building, swings to that one, then the next building, and the next building, until he gets far away from the woman who killed two-thirds of his body.
As he flees, Nemesis stands above Xiu’s corpse, watching as the merc punk swings from rooftop to rooftop. She does not follow after him. That wasn’t what she was ordered to do.
It was Dr. Chan who approached Wayne Rizla about getting Nemesis on Zombie Survival.
“She’s ready to be field tested,” said Dr. Chan. “I want to get her in the middle of the Red Zone.”
Wayne smirked at the tiny man leaning on his desk. “No thanks.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dr. Chan. “She would be perfect for your show.”
“She would be boring,” Dr. Chan said.
“But she’s nearly invincible. Nobody would survive as long as she would.”
“That’s the problem,” Wayne said. “It would be too easy for her to win. Where’s the drama? Where’s the excitement? She’s immune to the virus, zombies don’t find her edible, she’s fast, she’s a perfect killing machine. Do you know how boring it will be to see her get all the way to the helicopter in half a day completely unharmed? The show would be over before even a quarter of the contestants were killed. No thanks.”
“But the government won’t give me the funding to airlift her out there myself,” said Dr. Chan.
“Not my problem.”
“There’s got to be a way,” the doctor said. “I’m telling you, she would be very fascinating to your audience.” He thought for a minute. “Maybe if we gave her a handicap?”
“A handicap?” Wayne asked, straightening himself up from his chair.
“What if she had the weakest weapon or something like that?”
Wayne shook his head. “She’s still invincible. No, it would have to be something else…”
Wayne stroked his goatee as he thought about it.
“How about this…” Wayne said. “Her handicap is that the helicopter won’t pick her up until all the other contestants are dead.”
“But what if she gets to the helicopter first?” asked Dr. Chan.
“Then she’ll just have to wait there and kill off any contestant who comes to her… until she’s the last one.”
Dr. Chan nodded. “I think this would work just fine.”
“Better than fine,” Wayne said. Then he smiled. “It will be golden.”
Scavy wakes up to the sight of Mr. T looking down on him.
“Almost lost you there,” says the cyborg.
Scavy sits up. He’s in a hotel bed, in the cleanest room he has seen since he arrived in the wasteland. He’s wearing only boxer shorts, with his torso and head wrapped in bandages.
“It’s lucky you were hit with that poisoned dart,” Laurence tells him. “The toxin slowed your heart rate and the bleeding. If it wasn’t for that you would have bled to death before the T-2000 could fix you up.”
Scavy rubs his wound. “Did we get him?”
Junko nods. “You’re a lucky son of a bitch.”
Scavy looks out the window, the sun is getting low in the sky. “How long have I been out?”
“Too long,” Junko says. “With all the sterilization, we’re several hours behind schedule.”
“But it was worth it to get you back,” says Mr. T, handing Scavy his sniper rifle and some new clothes. “We’re gonna need all the help we can get.”
Scavy looks at the clothes they have picked out for him. Musty-smelling khaki pants with a red and white striped polo shirt.
“This is all you could find?” Scavy asks, frowning at his clothing.
“I think you’d look pretty cute in that shirt,” Mr. T says, giving him a big, frightening smile.
Scavy isn’t sure whether Mr. T is coming on to him or if he’s just so comfortable with his sexuality that he doesn’t fear calling another guy cute.
Rainbow paces impatiently behind them. “Are we ready? Let’s go.”
Scavy stands. He’s able to walk just fine, but light-headed and in quite a bit of pain.
“I’ll be ready in a minute,” Scavy says, holding his side. “We got a plan for getting there faster and shit?”
“Yeah,” Junko says. “But it’s not going to be easy, and we’re not sure it’s even going to work.”