Ela Halloween Special #8

Leaving the zombie in-line hockey zombies behind them, slipping and sliding in vain on a field of marbles, our trepid heroes troop off once more into the dark, cold, zombie-infested night.  Martialla, being one of the only fully ambulatory members of the group remaining, heads out alone to scout.  When she returns, Ela nearly takes her head off with a mighty swing of the axe.  Martialla manages to fall/duck out of the way and looks up at her with eyes wide.  Ela missed, but the side of her head is slick with blood nevertheless.

“Watch what you’re doing Ela, you almost lopped my head off by accident!”

Ela raises an eyebrow “Yes, sure, accident.”

Duke helps Martialla back to her feet “Just a suggestion, it may not be the best idea to sneak up on a group of heavily armed people in fear for their lives and on edge.  Fun, but not a good idea.”

Martialla slaps him on the back companionably “What do you think scouting is, other than sneaking around?”

The doctor looks around nervously, eyes wide like a scared colt “So what’s the lay of the land?”

Ela snorts “We’re relying on Martialla as our scout now? Someone just go head and shoot me now.”

Martialla smiles “It’s funny you should say that because around this very corner here happens to be a sporting goods store.  And a sporting goods store, aside from delightful balls of all sorts and sizes, jock straps to fit any man, and nutcups for all ages, is also going to have guns. That’s the good news.”

“What’s the bad news?”

Martialla nods her head in the direction she came “There’s a whole mess of zombie boy scouts around the corner waiting for us.  I tried to make a deal with the scout master, open up a dialog and reach an agreement beneficial to both sides, but he bit my ear off and at that point negotiations broke down.  I believe the same thing happened at Camp David back in seventy-nine.  I guess it’s kind of cool though, because now I’m like Picasso.  Or was that Raphael?”

Duke frowns “The ninja turtles? I didn’t even know turtles had ears.”

“They don’t after they cut them off.”

Ela gives them both a smack “Shut up about the ninja turtles.”

Elvis nods as if talking to himself “Now that we know they’re there, we can just go around them, go another way.”

Ela peeks around the corner for a second “We need to get in that store and get those guns.  Fighting zombies hand to hand, fun though it may be, is dangerous.  Sooner or later it’s going to get someone killed.” She looks at Duke “Someone important I mean.” She waves her foot-cooler at them “Look what trouble it’s already gotten us into. If we have the guns, we can blast our way through to the airport and get out of this zombie-infested stinkhole.”

Lucien grimaces, trying to hide his pain “So what’s the plan?”

“There’s about twenty or so of them altogether, sitting in the middle of the street so what we do is . . .”

Martialla is limbering up for the fight “I think they were sewing on their patches for flesh eating. Or merit badges.  Do boy scouts have patches or badges?  What is the difference between a badge and a patch anyway?”

Ela swats her “Shut up Martialla, even your recipe for mojitos is too sugary and everyone knows it!  Anyway, here’s what we’re going to do . . .”

Tina adjusts her very tattered and dirty dress “Don’t worry about it Ela, I’ll handle this one. Won’t take me longer than two shakes of a grasshopper’s leg.”  She fires up her chainsaw with a yank and a roar.

“No, god damn it!  Listen to me, this is a very intricate plan, we have to follow my instructions down to the smallest detail with split-second timing, otherwise . . .”

Tina revs the chainsaw “Sorry babycakes, I can’t hear you over the sound of me being awesome.”

Tina tears off around the corner waving the chainsaw over her head and shouting strange war-cries.

“It’s chainsaw time, you zombie mother fuckers!  Tina is going to chainsaw you up Texas style! Step right up, come one come all!”

The first zombie slurches forward at her, eager to feed and Tina swings the chainsaw viciously at it in a whirling motion – really putting her hips into it.  And, as we know, the hips don’t lie.  The deadly flashing blade strikes home, sending a disgusting rotten shower of gristle and bone and unrecognizable squishiness flying everywhere.

Tina raises her hands to the sky and mimes roaring fan noise “And the crowd goes wild! T-Na!  T-Na!  T-Na!  It’s just like Army of Darkness, hail to the king baby!  Er, I mean queen.”

Of course one second after that, the rest of the zombie boy scout horde bum rushes her from behind and she’s buried under a landslide of flapping zombie arms and legs as well as viciously snapping zombie teeth. As she goes down, the chainsaw flies out of her hands and tumbles end-over-end through the air.

“Heads up!”

Everyone in the gang scatters as the whirling chainsaw starts to come down.  Everyone that is except the good doctor, who stands like a deer in the headlights clutching his bag of medical supplies. He looks up in horror as the chainsaw comes down directly at him – the nasty end first.  The rest of the group turns away at the last second.  They don’t dare to look until the horrible grinding sound has stopped and blood has quit splattering on their backs. The poor doctor is no more, alas we hardly knew he. They stand staring at what’s left of him until Ela’s urgent shouting brings them back around. She sprints for the sporting goods store – as well as a one-footed woman can sprint anyway – and everyone else runs to try and save Tina.  They start pulling zombies off and throwing them aside, but soon they’re all in trouble – back to back surrounded by the zombie boy scouts with only their axe and sledgehammer and rakes keeping them at bay.

Martialla’s head is whipping around “Where the hell is Ela?! Some leader, she ran off and left us all to die!”

Duke has tears running down his face “Martialla, since we’re going to die I want you to know that I love you. Well, not love really I guess, but I could see us going out.  Not long term, but like a couple times. Well maybe not going out exactly, but if I got drunk and ended up in bed with someone I’d want it to be you. I mean if someone else who was better wasn’t around.  You have such a great ass . . . or you did before you got fat anyway.”

Martialla sniffs “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Lucien covers his face with his hand for a second, shaking his head and saying something in Canadian.

Duke looks over “What did he say?”

“It doesn’t translate to English exactly, but something about how he can’t believe he’s going to die with morons surrounding him.”

That’s what it looks like is going to happen, the zombies surge forward for the kill, but across the street Ela comes sauntering out of the sporting goods store, as well as a woman with one foot can saunter anyway.  She’s got a heavily laden gym bag hung around her neck. Gone is her trusty axe but she’s replaced it with a pump-action shotgun.  She has a double-barreled shotgun in her other hand with the cooler and she has a whole bunch of shells stuffed in the front of her bloody clown shirt. She advances with the pump-action, blowing zombies away until she runs out of ammo – then discarding it and taking up the double-barreled number. Luckily enough at that point, there are just two zombies left – one for each barrel.  Setting the cooler down, she puts her charred stump on it and pops open the shotgun, expelling the spent cartridges.

“God made some people big and some people small.  And guns made them all the same size.”

Elvis is staring at her lumpy shirt laden with shotgun shells “Wow, Ela you should really have yourself checked out because that does not look healthy.  When’s the last time you did a self-breast exam?  Next time you’re in the shower here’s what I want you to do . . .”

Ela smacks him as she reaches into her shirt and re-loads “Shut up! Who here knows how to use a gun?”

Martialla raises her hand “I do, I was in the army.” She gestures “So was Lucien.”

Ela laughs “The Canadian Army?  Do they even have guns?  I think they just tickle their enemies with maple leafs.  Does anyone here actually know how to use a gun? It’s not too complicated, just point at what you want to make dead and then pull the trigger.”

Lucien frown “It’s actually a little more complicated than that [untranslatable Canadian gibberish].”

Ela shakes her head and tosses the bag to Lucien “No, it isn’t.”

Elvis reaches for the bag “Hey, why does he get all the guns?”

Duke also moves that way “Yeah, I want to shoot stuff, too.”

Ela slaps them both down “Lucien gets all the guns because I trust him not to freak out and shoot me in the back at every little noise.  You and Elvis are too jumpy to trust with guns, I’d give a chimp a gun before I gave you one.” She snaps the shotgun shut “Now let’s get out of here, it’s past my bedtime.”