And in the back of the crowd is Rainbow Cat. From the wall, Charlie can see his wife running for her life. He wonders how he’ll feel if the zombies kill her right in front of him. He wonders if he’ll feel sorry for her or feel satisfaction that she got what she deserved. He wonders if he’ll feel anything at all.
“They’re doomed,” Junko says. “If that punk kid ditches his girlfriend he might stand a chance, but the other two are already infected.”
Charlie can see how the vomit on Brick’s face and Popcorn’s chest has eaten away at their flesh like acid. Brick’s cheek is dripping from his face like a long bloodhound jowl. His right eyeball is pure white and poking slightly out of the socket.
Far ahead of the others, Brick runs until he makes it through the perimeter into the city street. Once he gets there, his long duffel bag makes a beeping noise as it unlocks. He doesn’t continue running from there. He drops the bag and opens it up, digging for his weapon.
Charlie watches as Brick pulls out a large two-handed sledgehammer. He leaves his bag on the ground and runs back to his friends to help them out, raising the enormous hammer over his head like he’s ready to chop wood with an axe.
Brick and Scavy had been friends for several years, ever since Brick had become a punk. Not many sub-cultures from the old world had survived, but the punk culture was stronger than ever. It had nothing to do with music anymore. It was all about attitude and style. Punks embraced the post-apocalyptic lifestyle. They raged against the authority of Neo New York. They despised the greedy scum living in the Platinum Quadrant.
Brick was born one of the rich kids in Platinum, but the Platinum Quadrant had strict rules for their youth. Three strikes and you’re kicked out. Brick was a troubled kid. He enjoyed breaking into other people’s apartments and stealing their stuff, just for fun. He enjoyed ditching class and getting drunk in his room while his parents were off shopping for new golfing outfits.
Eventually, he was caught shoplifting one of the brand new televisions that had finally come back into production for the first time since the collapse of the old world. It was the third strike, and he was out. His parents disowned him. A rich kid thrown into the Copper Quadrant was like throwing a sheep to the wolves.
Brick was beaten every day. Any money that he made from working on the docks was stolen by one of the many punk gangs that prowled Copper. In order to defend himself, Brick worked out everyday. He had to toughen himself up. By working on the docks, he was able to steal fish that put plenty of protein in his diet. By the time he was seventeen, he was one of the most muscular men in the Quadrant.
He became friends with Scavy the day Scavy and his crew tried to mug him. They asked for his money, but Brick told him no. When they got violent, Brick didn’t back down. He beat one of the punks unconscious with his bare fists. He dislocated one of their shoulders. He sent another running off into the alleyway. No matter how many came at him, he wouldn’t give in.
Eventually, they hit him in the back of the head with a two-by-four, then took his money and left him face down in the mud. But Scavy was impressed. Not just because the guy stood up to his entire gang, but because he did it to hold onto a lousy ten dollar bill.
The next day Scavy asked him to join his gang. All by himself, he approached him while he was at his job, loading boxes on the dock in his gray uniform covered in fish guts.
“Why do you bother working this shit job for shit pay?” Scavy asked.
“It’s all I’ve got,” Brick replied.
“Do you know each fish here sells for $10 each in the Platinum Quadrant?” Scavy said. “That’s as much as you make in a day.”
Brick knew how much things cost in Platinum. He didn’t need some punk reminding him.
“Get lost,” Brick said.
“You know how much I make in a day?” Scavy said.
Brick continued loading boxes onto a cart.
“$500 a day, minimum,” Scavy said.
“Bullshit,” Brick said.
“Okay, not me personally. That’s how much my crew makes. We split it up evenly and shit.”
“What is it that you do to make that much money?”
“We take it,” Scavy said with a smile. “From the stupid.”
“You took money from me,” Brick said. “Are you calling me stupid?”
Scavy laughed.
“In this world, it is survival of the fittest,” Scavy said. “The strong prey on the weak. The weak are left to suffer.”
“So?”
“Do you want to be on the bottom of the food chain?” Scavy said. “Or do you want to fight your way to the top and shit?”
Brick dropped a box and it smashed on the ground, dozens of dead fish oozing out in the mud by his feet. He decided to leave the fish where they lay.
“Honestly, I’d rather fight my way to the top,” Brick said. “. . . and shit.”
As Brick runs through the yard with his sledgehammer in hand, he thinks back on how much better his life had become once he joined up with Scavy. No more working his ass off for shit pay. No more getting beat down by every punk who confronted him on the street. Scavy gave him a new family and a new life. And even if it wasn’t as luxurious of a lifestyle as he had when he was a kid, it was still a hell of a lot more fun.
Brick smiles as he swings his sledgehammer at the first zombie to get in his path. His eyes light up with glee as its skull explodes on impact.
Charlie notices that there is something unusual about Brick’s weapon. It’s not shaped like a usual sledgehammer. Instead of a rectangular shape, the head of the sledgehammer is shaped like two fists, one on each side. When Brick slams the hammer into the next zombie’s face, it is as if he is crushing open its jaw with knuckles made of high carbon steel.
As Scavy and Popcorn pass him, Brick gets in the path between the zombies and his friends. He raises his double-fisted sledgehammer over his head and charges straight into the horde.
Although he thinks of him as a brother, Brick isn’t fighting for the sake of Scavy. He’s fighting for the sake of Scavy’s girlfriend, Popcorn. Even though the gang believes his girlfriend is that slut Gogo, Brick has been in love with Popcorn since the day they first met.
“This is Brick,” Scavy said to Popcorn as they entered her apartment. “He’s my new muscle and shit.”
As they approached her, Brick checked out the thin little punk girl as she painted her toenails pink. She had pink spiky hair, pink tattoos, and she was draped across the couch wearing nothing but pink panties.
When she noticed he was checking her out, she said, “Hey, think fast.”
Then she threw a baseball at him. He didn’t lift his hands in time to catch it and the thing hit him right in the diaphragm at full speed. With the wind knocked out of him, Brick leaned over and gasped, trying to catch his breath. It hurt more than the two-by-four that had hit him in the back of the head a couple days prior.
When he looked up at her, Popcorn was laughing, her pointy breasts shaking at him like children pointing their fingers.
“He’s slow,” she said. “Sure you want another dumbass in the gang?”
When Brick looked up at her, their eyes met. She smiled at him with her bright pink lips. It was love at first sight.
For the next year, Brick and Popcorn were fucking behind Scavy’s back. She said that she loved him, but he wasn’t so sure. She said she wasn’t a one man girl, that she could love both of them at the same time. Even though he didn’t like it, Popcorn convinced him that it was for the best.