“Okay,” Junko says. “We have ten minutes to hold up here. Hopefully the gnome has enough juice in it to keep them back that long.”
Peering over the roof, they can already see dozens of the undead entering the hospital from every entrance.
“They don’t know we’re on the roof,” Junko says. “With luck the helicopter will get here before they find us.”
Scavy nods, then looks up into the air. From above, they see Oro circling the rooftop in his flying machine.
As the zombies engulf Nemesis, Vine, and the T-2000, they no longer have space to fight each other, and turn their efforts toward the living dead.
Vine spins in a circle, both wires shooting out at maximum length, and cuts down thirty zombies. Sixty severed legs stand on the ground surrounding him, like freshly mowed blades of grass.
Metal spikes rotate on Mr. T’s body, as he shreds and punches his way through the horde. He picks up a zombie by the leg and swings it around like a bat, clubbing the undead out of his way as he moves closer to his opponents.
Nemesis doesn’t bother with the walking corpses. They ignore her, passing her by as if she’s one of them. She retrieves her double-bladed sword, and ducks down into the crowd, like a snake waiting for its chance to strike.
From his glider-cycle, high in the gray cloudy sky, Oro looks down at the contestants on the rooftop.
“Those simpletons will not be victorious over me,” Oro says. “My genius is almighty. My genius is supreme.”
He aims the rocket launcher at them.
“My genius is absolute!”
Then he fires.
The trio on the roof scatter as the rocket comes toward the helicopter pad. The explosion knocks them off of their feet and blows another section of the roof away.
Scavy rolls over and aims his sniper rifle at the aircraft.
“That was a cheap shot,” Scavy says, as he looks into the scope.
He fires and blows a hole in Oro’s wing the size of a quarter. Scavy fires again, then again. As he hears the bullets tearing into the wings of his glider-cycle, Oro pedals it away from the rooftop, circling back toward the city.
“Shit,” Junko says, helping Rainbow Cat to her feet. “That explosion is going to lead the entire horde up here.”
Scavy switches from sniper to shotgun.
“Prepare yourself,” Junko says.
In the small section of roof that remains, they go back-to-back.
Popcorn and Gogo drive into the parking lot of the hospital, staring at the massive horde of the living dead surrounding the building. When the car can no longer move within the mob of zombies, Gogo opens the door and jumps out.
“Hey!” Popcorn yells. “Where are you going!”
“Brains!” Gogo yells, pushing her way through the crowd. “I’m going to eat their fucking brains!”
“No!” Popcorn yells. “Get back here!”
Popcorn jumps out of the smart-car and chases after her zombie friend, but she quickly loses her in the mob.
“If she hurts Scavy,” Popcorn says, “I’m going to cut off her fucking head.”
Then she continues on, toward the hospital.
Nemesis goes for Vine. As the merc punk cuts down a row of undead, leaving himself open, she tosses her double-bladed sword at him.
When Vine sees the weapon spinning toward him, he launches his left wire at it, catches it in the air. Then he spins in a circle, whipping the sword back in her direction. Zombie torsos are sliced into halves as the wire circles toward Nemesis. She ducks out of the way, narrowly missing the blades of her own sword on the end of Vine’s wire.
The wire continues cutting through the zombie crowd, green and black fluids splashing into the air. It hits Mr. T. Catching the central handle of the sword with his steel fist, Mr. T looks over at the merc punk.
“We should be fighting her,” he yells at the punk. “Not each other.”
The merc punk pulls the wire, ripping the sword out of Mr. T’s grip, cutting a gash into the gold plating of his hand. When he looks at his gold-stripped palm, Mr. T’s eyebrows curl.
“Now you’ve gone an made Mr. T mad,” he says.
The horde of zombies spill onto the rooftop. Junko places the lawn gnome on the ground between them, and revs up her chainsaw arm.
“We’ve only got a few minutes left to wait,” Junko says. “Let’s just hope the roof can hold the weight of all those zombies.”
“You mean this whole place can collapse if they get too close?” Rainbow Cat says.
“Let’s try to hold them back as far as we can,” Junko says.
Scavy raises the solar-powered shotgun and unleashes a barrage of blasts onto the crowd. He doesn’t realize the gun has nearly unlimited ammo, but he fires as if deep down he knows it does. Zombie meat splatters across the roof with each shot. With every body that topples over, it holds back three more trying to get through.
As Mr. T clobbers zombies out of his way to get to Vine, Nemesis flies through the crowd and punches him with an open-handed palm. Mr. T’s face lights up in surprise as he finds himself flying backward into the side of the building.
Mr. T’s body becomes immersed halfway into the brick wall of the building. He leans his head forward and shakes the powdered brick out of his mohawk.
“Damn,” he says. “That bitch is strong.”
Running so fast she looks as if she’s teleporting, Nemesis flies at him. She stops right in front of his face, staring at him with her cold black eyes. Then she raises her hand back, with her fingers pressed together in the shape of a snake, as if she is going to drive her fingertips all the way through to the back of his skull.
Stuck inside of the brick wall, Mr. T can’t protect himself. He just watches as her fingers come toward him.
No matter how many times he fires, even with unlimited ammo, the zombies get closer to Scavy. They surround the perimeter, pushed back by the gnome’s sonic wave. The ground below them begins to crack.
“Fuck,” Junko says. “The roof isn’t going to hold us for much longer.”
The sound of the helicopter fills their ears. They look up and see it coming across the city buildings toward them.
“There it is!” Rainbow cries.
Scavy continues firing the shotgun, only glancing up for a second to see how close it is.
The helicopter hovers over the hospital for a few moments, but finding no place to land it continues on.
“Where’s it going?” Scavy cries.
The helicopter flies low over the parking lot, over the horde of zombies, and finds a clearing on the far end of the street. Then it slowly descends.
“We have to get you over there,” Junko says.
Scavy nods, then continues blasting.
As Nemesis drives her fingers toward Mr. T’s face, Vine shoots his wire at her. Nemesis’ arm is severed at the elbow and rolls down Mr. T’s chest. Then Vine shoots his second wire and it hooks onto her bony spine. She flies backward through the air, as Vine’s wire reels into his wrist. Then he spins her in a circle around him, the razor-sharp wire decapitating zombies as he twirls her through the air.
“Now throw her against a wall,” Xiu’s voice tells Vine. Vine nods and aims her flying white body toward the wall of the hospital.
As the reptilian woman is thrown toward him, Mr. T breaks out of his brick encasing and says, “Time to play a game of bitch baseball.”
Mr. T flexes a fist and charges forward. Like a tetherball, he punches Nemesis in the chest. Her eyes widen as her torso caves in around his fist, blood spraying from the sides of her ribcage. Her body flies off of Vine’s wire, over the zombie horde, and rolls across the pavement.