ZA 27: Fuck it. 'bout time someone spoke for Selig, since Selig won't speak for himself.

For a moment, watching Virgil struggle with the decision to shake Selig's hand or reject him, inhaling the smell of Meg's butterscotch-and-human-yearning cookies filling the air, hearing the sound of Cam-zombie noisily licking his lips after consuming a wise-ass fellow mutant, and feeling the rush of Lizzie's magic as--unbeknownst to her--it began flowing out of her and into Selig, Selig felt a curious feeling. It came upon him like a long forgotten lover emerging from a mist. What was it? Something he hadn't felt in years, maybe decades... ...aah. The absence of boredom. How quaint. Virgil spoke. The moment passed.

"You're a vile monster, Selig, but you've done a fair job muscling me into a corner. I'd rather be your slave free than your free slave."

Selig was content to let Virgil have his moment. Meg, however, had less tolerance for overly-cute word play. "That makes no sense at all, Virgil. Cookie?"

"I simply meant that I would rather serve Selig with a free mind, than be free to go my own way with a slave's mind. In other words, no. I would not like a cookie."

"Firstly, Virgil," Selig spoke, beginning to feel a bit awkward with his dragon hand extended but, as yet, ungrasped. "Your mind is not free. Your mind is saddled with an infinitude of tacit agreements about the nature of reality, particularly as it pertains to the human sphere. For example, you still believe in such obviously trite fantasies as temporality, individuality, and--though you will no doubt try to deny it--morality. You believe there is such a thing as past and future, despite the overwhelming and undeniable evidence to the contrary. You believe in the 'you' that sits like a hairshirt over your essential essence--constantly forcing your attention, constantly emphasizing and enhancing your suffering. You believe that there is such a thing as good--regardless of whether you call it aesthetics or moralizing. Indeed, you just betrayed as much with your breathless posturing about free slaves and slaves freed. Your judgment could not have been thicker or more sticky were it the world's largest regurgitated hairy gumwad.”

"Umm...Selig..." interrupted Meg. "Not sure if I’m interpreting the psychic field properly, but I think there’s a problem with the zombie pyramid.”

While Selig appreciated the information--confirming it was so with a quick scan of the psychic field--and while he recognized the great courage it took for Meg to interrupt him, he could not afford to look bad in front of his zombie hordes.

"Button up, cookie witch!" Selig shouted, and slashed Meg's throat open with one of his razor claws. Gasping for air and reeling from sudden blood loss, Meg fell to her knees. In a few moments her wretched invulnerability would kick in and she'd begin to regenerate, but for now, at least, she was humbled.

"Now keep quiet or I'll demote you to zombie washer," Selig snapped.

Meg buttoned up. She no doubt remembered the last time she was assigned to wash the zombies. Alas, the cost of power. Selig truly liked Meg. She was a glorious scoundrel with a heart of coal and one hell of a talent for baking. If only Selig could cast off the mantle of his authority, how much happier he might be. If only Virgil would take his hand...

"We have limited time, Virgil. So I must ask you to make your decision. While you may not fully agree with my methods, you cannot impeach my ends. Humanity was lost and sick. The patient, as it were, was dying. Our reckless and relentless pursuit of that which we could never have—true and lasting control over our own destinies—had all but destroyed the world and ensured humanity’s destruction. It was this" (and Selig waved half-heartedly at the zombies and blood-soaked Meg) "or total system failure. Now, I realize you have a thing for making stands and acting noble, so let me be plain. If you take my hand, your dearest wishes will come true. Indeed, in time you will become so powerful that you will not only be able to depose me, but you will also have the power to reset what I have done, to turn back the clock on my cure and return mankind to the brink of disaster you so quaintly refer to as 'The Time Before.'"

"And if I don't?" Virgil asked.

Selig checked the psychic field once more. A veritable ocean of melted zombie hash was at that moment flooding toward them. In moments, the bunker would be underwater...or rather, undergoo. How could this have happened? As Selig asked the question, he knew the answer. This was Lady M's revenge for the monkey. She'd worked a spell of truly breathtaking magnitude. In that moment, Selig stopped regretting his cruelty to Meg. The witch deserved it.

Selig, meanwhile, might need to expedite things a tad.

"Cam zombie will pop open your skull cap and eat your brains out of your head while you're still alive.”

Selig pushed his hand toward Virgil again. Virgil took it. Outside, the last of Lizzie’s magic left her and she dropped from the air with a screech. Simultaneously, Selig pumped all of his magic, all of his power through the handshake into Virgil. Now Virgil would be the zombie king and Selig could go back to doing the things he liked. Reading, rock climbing, and seducing innocent farmgirls (if there were any left in the world). Of course, he still had to find his damn penis. And escape the goo. Oh well. Selig glanced at Virgil, whose whole body was convulsing with the surge of power flowing into him. There were worse things.

ZA Chapter 26: Hell's Treadmill

As Lucy leaned close to Blanchett Galadriel, relishing the moment of intimacy in the midst of the chaotic destruction in the high-school-turned-zombie den, Cam could not believe his good luck. A high-school full of zombies to kill, AND the best threesome he’d ever been part of in his life? Fuck yeah!

“Fuck yeah!” he yelled aloud as Lucy leaned into the shimmering vision of the ancient before her.

Blanchett Galadriel grimaced and drew back. “Nice," she said.

“Sorry!” Lucy said. Then she whispered, "Shut up, Cam!"

Cam did.

“Now, where were we?” Blanchett Galadriel leaned in again, fluttering her eyelashes -- for a moment Cam stopped. Was that glitter? Heh, stupid ancient.

Lucy leaned in. Blanchett Galadriel leaned in. Cam leaned in. Blanchett Galadriel’s skin glittered like stars and smelled of the summer wind. Lucy took a deep breath. Cam salivated. They all continued leaning in. They leaned very, very close . . . and Cam and Lucy fell on their face.

“What the--?” Cam spluttered. He looked up from the floor where Blanchett Galadriel stood above them, like an otherworldly smug high-school cheerleader, her hands on her hips and a smirk on her face.

“Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t resist doing that. You flesh-wads are such suckers, you can’t make out with an ancient! We’re incorporeal! Ha, ha, it was pretty funny, though. You can have my shirt, if you like. Once I cast something away from myself it becomes corporeal.”

Cam didn’t know what corporeal meant. Was it like a corporal? But he kept his mouth shut because Blanchett Galadriel was pulling her gossamer shirt up over her head, revealing breasts more pale and glorious than the moon, with tips like pink roses. The shirt, however, got stuck on her elaborate hair and Lucy and Cam had to help her get it off, which was difficult because Blanchett Galadriel was still incorporeal, as was her shirt, so the most Lucy and Cam could do was stand by and give her helpful advice and encouragement – well, Lucy tried to give helpful advice and encouragement, using the small bits of attention she had left over from what Cam spent trying to touch the ancient-yet-youthful incorporeal breasts. Finally the shirt was freed from the ancient incorporeal bobby pins, and Blanchett Galadriel tossed it at Lucy.

The shirt was softer and more transparent than any Lucy had ever owned. “There you are, my chosen one,” Blanchett Galadriel said in her most ancientest and enticing of voices. “This shirt, though it may appear delicate, is made of the strongest material in the universe. Nothing can destroy it. Not fire, not blades, not the strength of lust trying to rip it from your body. It will keep you warm in winter, cool in summer, and yet will satisfy all who desire to look upon your youthful flesh and bounteous breasts. So you will never have to take it off for any reason whatsoever imaginable.”

Neither Lucy nor Cam knew quite what to say to that.

"What if I want to?" Lucy said.

"If you want to, you can take it off. But you can only take it off and put it back on three times. After that it will either dissolve to ether on your skin, or shrink until it breaks all your ribs, collapses your lungs, and compacts your torso into a tiny torso-shaped brick. I'm not sure which. I kinda just grabbed a shirt on my way out so I'm not sure which one this is. You’d better wake up now. The bars of the cage are nearly crushing you both. They have bent in such a way that you will be able to slip through – once I take care of the zombies obstructing your path. Also, you have about one deep breath of oxygen left.”

“How will you—“Lucy began.

WAKE UP!” Blanchett Galadriel snapped her fingers, and Lucy and Cam awoke in the rank, fetid press of the cage, the bars collapsed so much they were practically pinning Lucy and Cam in place. They couldn’t breath. They were sloshing in some chunky kind of sewage dripping from the top of the cage, puddling in the bottom.

“Sick . . .” Cam growled.

“Take a deep breath and close your eyes!” an incorporeal, tinkling voice demanded.

Lucy and Cam obeyed. No sooner had their eyes closed than the dripping liquid overhead turned to a sudden deluge, crashing down as though a dam had burst above them. Lucy’s first reaction was to freak out – but Cam quickly put a stop to that. He remembered what the hot, half-naked elven chick had said. He hardly ever remembered what naked chicks said. The act of talking while naked didn’t really make sense to Cam – if you were naked you were either sleeping, showering, or fucking – why talk? But when a naked chick was talking about zombies, Cam remembered. The bars would be bent open, for them to get through. He felt around for an opening, ignoring the slime and chunks of not-quite-liquefied bone and glop, and found a big gap between the iron bars. Pinching Lucy’s nipple again to bring her back to her senses, he pushed off the bottom of the cage with all the force his sexy-yet-not-too-strong legs could muster. Then they swam. They forced their body upward with all of Lucy’s physical strength.

Cam! I can’t take it! This stuff is—

Don’t think about it, Lucy!

Ew, sick, that was a leg, I think—

I said don’t think about it!

Oh god oh god oh god oh Cam oh I can’t do this oh my fucking god--!

Lucy! Lucy goddamn it, don’t you lose it on me! Just move for the surface!

She did. When it felt like their lungs were about to burst, they finally crested the surface, and took the deepest, slowest, most audible breath of either of their lives.

There was no getting around opening their eyes, though Cam tried to keep them shut as long as possible -- more to spare Lucy whatever sight awaited them than himself. But opening their eyes was the next awful step on Hell's treadmill. That's what this whole goddamn zombie apocalypse was. Hell's treadmill. It might not get you anywhere, and every step was more horrifying than the last, but you had to keep walking because if you didn't, you'd fall off. That meant the zombies won. YOU couldn't win. But you could lose. Fuck, could you ever lose. So Cam let their eyes open.

What Lucy saw stretching in every direction was a vast sea of putrescence. The goo was basically gray, with brown and black and green streaks and patches and THINGS. Slime covered her face and her hair. The sky was a similar shade as the liquid. Fuck the whole world had gone zombie.

"Now I guess we swim, huh?" she said.

"Unless one of your hot ancient aunts can get us wings or a boat or something."

They treaded goo for a moment. When no boats or giant birds appeared to rescue them, they began to swim, Lucy working her arm and leg, Cam working his. For several moments they just splashed about awkwardly, and then Lucy began to direct them.

"Right, left, right, left -"

"Hang on, Barbie." The left side of their body stopped moving.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, what now?"

"I ain't taking marching orders from a chick."

Lucy sighed. She was all but naked in a sea of liquefied zombie without a shore in sight, half her body was possessed by a rocking hot dude with a rock hard bod and a rock for a brain, and she was about to start her period. She'd had enough. "Yes, you are," she said. "So shut up, suck it up, and deal, Rambo. Right! Left! Right! Left!"

Cam would have continued to protest but he was pretty turned on right now. He concentrated his half a brain on getting them to something solid so he could masturbate her to another hellacious rocking orgasm.

They swam for a length of time that is indefinable, because any length of time spent in a sea of liquid zombie is indefinable. (Especially when some of the not-quite-liquid bits kept twitching and trying to bite.) After this time, though, they spotted something up ahead.

"It's a shore," Lucy said, squinting her eye.

"It's a ship," Cam said, squinting his.

Then they argued for the next two miles about whether the solidness up ahead was a shore-like solidness or a ship-like solidness. Lucy's argument consisted of the questions, "What the fuck would a ship be doing on this necromantic sea?" "Where would it have come from?" and "Who would even be on it?" Also, "You are such a dumb piece of shit." Cam's argument consisted of Cam's belief that everything in the world had turned into zombie versions of itself, and they were simply in what had once been the ocean.

It turned out to be a ship. With big white sails.

"Ha, suck it, Barbie," Cam said.

"Suck what?" Lucy taunted.

As they drew nearer, a voice called down from the ship and interrupted their arguing. "Halt!"

"What?" Lucy and Cam yelled back.

"I said, HALT! Declare yourself!"

"I'm --" Lucy started. "-- Awww, fuck," Cam finished. Just his fucking luck. This sack of horse shit was still alive? Hell's treadmill had just gotten a little more pointless. Cam forced their throat into silence. He was not declaring shit.
But wouldn't you know it - the fuck had binoculars. Of course he did. Standard issue Queller of Hell gear. He saw sweet young Lucy through the binoculars and threw down a rope ladder.

Lucy and Cam climbed the rope ladder, arguing about whether Dar, Captain was "kinda cute" or "a big fucking jackass." They swung themselves over the obscurely old-fashioned wooden railing and were immediately buried under a towel and siezed by the shoulders. "It's okay!" Dar, Captain, was yelling. "It's okay, ma'am, everything's going to be okay! You're safe now!"

"Fuck, okay, I get it!" Lucy squirmed. "Get off me!"

"You are safe now!"

"I told you he was a big fucking jackass," Cam said.

Cam grabbed Dar, Captain's wrist through the towel, and through sheer force of pissed-off-ness, held it still. It had to be pissed-off-ness. Lucy wasn't that strong. She had bird arms. While Cam held Dar, Captain at bay, Lucy toweled the chunks of zombie off herself. The shirt from Blanchett Galadriel was pristine, as was Lucy's body beneath it, so Lucy concentrated on her legs, and Cam focused on cleaning her crotch as thoroughly as possible.

"That's uh . . . that's a lovely garment," Dar, Captain said. Lucy and Cam sneered. "Ma'am, how did you come to be--"

"Listen, dude," Lucy said. "I don't feel like reliving my life story for your benefit, okay? It's past and gone and not very interesting."

"Well, I fail to see how such a lovely young woman in such unwelcome circumstances could have a life story that is dull in any--"

"I just need you to take me somewhere."

Whoa. Cam was impressed. He was starting to get turned on again, actually. His lust went a little slack, though, when Dar, Captain spoke. "Anywhere," Dar, Captain said, smiling cheesily. Shit, is this what guys looked like when they thought they were charming? Cam was glad he had never been charming. Dar, Captain said, "At this point my agenda is virtually . . . well, liquefied. So I'm very open."

Cam sighed and rolled his eyes. Dar, Captain's cheesy smile faltered. "Sorry," he said. "So . . . where to, ma'am?"

"Can it with the ma'am crap," Lucy said. "I just swam an indefinable distance in a necromantic sea of undeath. Could you gimme a minute before you go all sparkly-smiles?" She strode to the bow to collect herself. And have a conversation with her other half.

"So, where to?"

"We gotta get a match."

"A match?"

"Or a lighter. A flare. Something."

"Why?"

"Because the whole world's gone zombie, and that sea is bombie, which means gasoline! I'm making a zombie world pyre!"

"You are such a dumb piece of shit. Will you do me a favor and forget destroying the world for now? We have to get to your body."

"No, we have to get to Virgil," Cam said. Virgil probably wasn't a zombie. V had such crappy luck, he was probably the only other living thing in Zombie World.

"What we should really do is get to Selig . . . Hey, didn't Selig say he was going to see Virgil before he left us?"

"Fuck if I know."

"He did! And if Selig is with Virgil, and if your body is with Selig, then Selig, Virgil, and your body are all in the same place!”

“Kinda narrows down our destinations, don’t it?”

ZA25: The Trouble with Pyramid Schemes

At the end of the hallway, Cam turned right. Or at least, the left half of him turned right, whereas the right half of Lucy turned left, thus leading Lucy to collide with herself and go sprawling.

"What the fuck?" Cam started to say as Lucy shouted, "fuckin' testicle jockey, learn to drive!"

"Whoa!" Cam said, lifting Lucy's left arm and grabbing her-and-his right boob. "How come I can't move my other arm?"

"It's not your arm, half wit."

"Listen, babe, if you don't start talking nice to me, things are going to get real ugly."

"As opposed to now, when we're somehow stuck in a hallway of my former school--presently a well known den for zombies--with hundreds of bombies exploding behind us threatening to suffocate us with the noxious smoke from their burning corpses since we can't actually move our body away from said smoke since we can't seem to even walk straight since our minds have now each taken control of one hemisphere of our tragically shared body and your first reaction is to grope my fuckin' boob such that I apparently now have three boobs, one being groped, one inexplicably naked, and one living in my head? You're telling me that despite all that I should worry because you're starting to get your fucking feelings hurt?"

Cam pinched Lucy's nipple. Hard. Unfortunately this had an opposite effect from the one desired and the two halves of Lucy spent a moment reeling from the rush. A swirl of pleasure and pain not unlike that experienced by a homophobe sucking a sour candy from the sweet cleavage of a suddenly revealed transsexual.

"Alright, listen, Cammy," Lucy said when the rush subsided. "I know this place, can you just back off the stick and let mama take us outta here?"

"Whatever, just so long as I get to smash some fucking zombie heads, soon. You make me itchy."

With that, Lucy picked herself up and took the left turn she'd been wanting to take, strode down the hall and was about to turn toward an exit when she heard a voice talking from a nearby classroom. Cautiously, she edged to the door and peeked inside, hoping against hope that Selig Retsuc would be in the midst of some shit-faced discourse to his legions.

Instead, Lucy saw a room full of zombies in varying states of decay looking up at a chalkboard. This might not have been so odd if the zombies weren't all identically dressed in perfectly pressed zombie tuxedoes with red bowties, or if the presenter zombie weren't pointing at a drawing of a triangle and saying in a British accent,

"If any of you has just three friends who'd be interested in not only buying some of these exciting products, but selling them as well, you can go into business for yourself, and before long you'll understand my patented Wealth-o-Rama 5000 system." At which point, the presenter zombie winked, smiled, and gave a thumbs up. And then his eyebrow fell off. And then his left ear. And then his jaw.

And then all the zombies in the room began to melt, oozing out of their tuxedoes and turning into zombie goo. The smell was about what you'd expect from liquefied zombie, which is to say it was the kind of smell you'd expect from an over-felched gerbil, left to stew in the anal canal of an unbathed meth junkie who'd died three days ago whilst pawing around a garbage dump looking for a rat to stick up his ass to get out the other rat he'd stuck up there to get to the gerbil.

Happily, the smell was replaced by a waft of roses as a lovely elven creature in a transparent silk blouse strode down the hall to stand beside Lucy.

"Who are you?" Lucy asked, though she had the squidgiest feeling she somehow already knew.

"I'm an ancient. Name's Blanchett Galadriel. I'm here to tell you to wake up."

"Fuck you talking 'bout?" Cam asked.

"None of this is real. You two are still inside your cage. There's a pyramid of zombies rising above you. You've passed out from the fumes and only imagined you somehow managed to fall through a hole in solid ground and land in the gymnasium of Lucy's old school several miles away. Physics, after all, is not so negotiable as you'd like to think."

"So no hole-in-the-floor trick?"

"No. No hole-in-the-floor trick. It was lame."

"It was a hell of a lot more original than a fucking dream sequence."

"I admit, it would be terribly cliche to just pretend that something that supposedly happened didn't happen because you merely dreamed it. That would be cliche and, truth to tell, rude. That's why this is actually a vision. A vision wrought by bombie fumes. How else do you think your otherwise passably dressed person became naked but for a thong?"

"This vision sucks."

"Would you prefer it if we were making out?"

"No," Cam lied, mostly out of spite.

Lucy, however, didn't hesitate. Between the prospect of waking up in a cage at the bottom of a zombie pyramid and making out with a hot elven-looking chick whilst the two of them were mostly naked, Lucy didn't figure there was much of a contest.

ZA 24: Falling for You

Lucy sat up and said with Cam’s voice:

“Fuck me, that’s a good plan.”

“We have to stop him,” Lucy said. “He’s destroyed everything, and now he’s trying to remake the world in his image.”

Cam, with Lucy’s eyes, looked up at the dead, gray flesh that pressed against the bars of their cage. One of the zombie’s faces was wedged between the bars. Its cockeyed eyeballs looked in two different directions, and its jaw hung limp. Its teeth clacked together feebly every now and then as it bit at them. The stench was unbearable: rotting eggs, rancid chicken and gasoline. As more and more zombies piled on top of their cage, the light dimmed.

“What’s this horseshit?” Cam said.

“I don’t know,” Lucy returned.

Cam cleared his throat. It was damned inconvenient to sound like a girl every time he talked. A hot girl. A hot girl who fondled herself to one hellacious, rocking orgasm in the middle of a room full of zombies. This was a fucking trip. He felt like his brain was sprained. “I don’t know what to do with you,” he said.

“Help me defeat Retsuc.”

“Duh,” he said.

“And fuck me every now and then.”

“I don’t know if you’ve been readin’ the paper lately, but I don’t have a dick anymore. Or anything else, for that matter.”

“You’ve got me.”

That was a reality that Cam couldn’t deny even if he wanted to. And he didn’t want to. After what he’d just felt thrilling through his –er, Lucy’s– body, he didn’t.

The light went out as the zombies mashed themselves against every available area of the cage.

“Okay, this is fucking creepy. I can’t believe you talked me into dropping The Cleaning Lady.”

“Wouldn’t do you any good,” Lucy replied to Cam-Lucy. “These are bombies. Can’t you smell the gas?”

“Yeah,” Cam said, grinning. “Imagine how this whole fucking place would go up.”

“Aren’t you afraid of dying?”

“No.”

Lucy trembled with a little aftershock.

“Fuckin’ stop that, you’re distracting me.”

“Sorry,” Lucy said.

They sat in silence as undead bodies shifted, slithered and groaned above them. The stink intensified. The zombie face above them said, "Rrrrggflf."

“I think we’re going to suffocate in here,” Lucy pointed out. One of the iron bars groaned. Cam reached up with Lucy’s hand and touched it. It had bent under the weight.

“Or something worse is going to happen quicker,” he said.

“What’s worse than suffocating?” she asked. He felt her heart beating faster as adrenaline hit their system.

“Calm the fuck down, Jitters. It’s not going to do a damn bit of good going to pieces now.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” Lucy said. “How are we going to get out of here?”

Cam smacked himself in the face, wincing at the sting. Lucy quieted down.

“Don’t you got that magic of the Ancients thing?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“Well, the shit sucked the gas out of the Cleaning Lady and smacked me right outta my head. Ain’t you got a zombie-melter in there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what the fuck do you know?”

“I know that I like you.”

“What are you, twelve?”

“I don’t know what the Ancients are going to do! I didn’t study them, that’s Lady M’s schtick!”

It was getting tough to breathe. Cam could feel their lungs working harder and harder.’

“Who the fuck needs to study? Just let ‘er rip!”

Cam felt Lucy retreat into their mind. He followed, just to see what she would do. They headed toward a light, which got brighter and brighter. But before they reached it, Lucy mumbled something that sounded like “Deepfried barbell hooters” and the bright light flashed and turned everything blinding white.

Cam felt like he was falling. And when the fucking floor slammed into his back and elbows, he realized he had fallen. Fresh air whooshed in to surround them, and he sucked in a deep lungful of it. Wire-covered lights illuminated the painted cinderblock walls. “Gymnasium” was written in foot-tall black letters with an arrow pointing to the right. He looked up and saw the cage over the hole in the ceiling with the zombie pile still smashed against it.

“Nice!” Cam said. “The ancients fuckin’ rock!”

“The old hole-in-the-floor trick,” Lucy said, “Gets ‘em every time.”

The iron cage groaned as if in response, then snapped and zombies started tumbling through the hole like lemmings. Exploding lemmings.

Lucy shielded her eyes while Cam laughed. Lucy took control of the body. “We’re getting the hell out of here,” she said. Glancing down at her clothing, which at this point consisted of nothing but a wet thong, she threw up her hands and sprinted up the hallway, Cam’s laughter trailing from her open mouth.