Finally, we discover a gap in the wall large enough to crawl through. I shove Robbie through first. The sky is pinkish now. The zombies will be opening the wedding chamber soon. They will find two dead women and no man to harvest.
Maybe they will choose some random person from the crowd to harvest instead.
I hope it’s that mustachioed bastard.
Outside the slaughterhouse, we’re surrounded by giant zombies. I can no longer see the brick wall, only giant zombies in every direction.
Something sticky touches my hand and I jerk away.
It is only Robbie, reaching for me. I let him hold one finger as we look up at the giant zombies.
Every giant is rooted to the ground by mushy brain feet. Between the feet of the nearest zombie rises a spiral staircase, leading up into a little fissure between the legs.
There are some windows in the torso, scattered haphazardly across the back of the structure. The arms of each zombie are stretched out similarly, forming a thin canopy above us. The heads are massive, some with huge black holes for eyes, some yellow circles in the distance. These zombies are taller than the wedding tower, but not as the brick wall, which explains why we could not see them from the farm. Their hands are helicopter pads.
I wonder if everything I’m seeing is true, or if what I know of the world is entirely wrong and zombies do not live inside of giant zombies, but everything I think and see and feel tells me that yes, zombies do live inside of giant zombies.
It makes me so sick.
I wonder if anyone on the farm knows where brains truly go once they are harvested.
As we stand frozen with our backs to the brain factory, a faint whirring echoes off the giant zombies. I recognize it soon enough as the sound of a helicopter.
I know what we have to do.
All my life, I have felt that everything is doomed, but Pym has always given me a little bit of hope. Now she is far from me, bleeding to death alone. Was the hope she instilled in me a monstrous illusion? Is she herself a monstrous illusion?
Would I persist in the fight for beauty, knowing that she was?
Yes.
Would I steal a helicopter for her?
Yes.
Would I give up my life?
Yes.
“Pym needs us,” I say, as a helicopter bursts into sight from above.
Forced Entry
The giant zombies quiver in the pink and yellow light of dawn. Standing near the foot of one, I feel like a dwarf. I’m the size of the giant’s big toe. The zombies crowd together, forming a gray canopy of limbs and torsos and heads that block out the light as we proceed out of the slaughterhouse. Between the legs of each giant, a spiral staircase rises, disappearing into a black chasm that appears to give entrance into the zombie house. The staircase in the wedding tower is identical, only much tinier.
Hopefully some passage from the groin leads to the helicopter landing hands.
I yank my finger from Robbie’s grasp and limp quickly, seeking cover.
I nod my head toward the nearest ladder, letting Robbie know that’s the one we’re going to climb.
When I hit the stairs, my bad leg collapses under me.
Robbie throws one arm across my shoulders and helps me to my feet.
Halfway up, the helicopter zooms in on us, hovering at close range. Flaming orbs erupt from tubes on both sides of the cockpit. The flames melt the lower half of the staircase into bubbling black goop.
They blast another round of the flaming orbs but miss us entirely, instead destroying the staircase of the giant zombie closest to the one we’re climbing.
When we reach the top, a door made out of brains slides open and we clamber into the giant zombie, hopefully safe.
We proceed cautiously. The squishy floor muffles our footsteps.
A light switches on somewhere above us. The groan of zombies breaks out in other corridors. The groaning nears.
I look around, searching for a way out, a place to hide, anything. Our only option is to return back through the door. We barely evaded the helicopter’s attack the first time. I don’t want to chance another round, but then hands break out of the walls around us.
Zombies are climbing out of the walls!
We flee through the door, ducking to avoid the chopper blades spinning perilously close to the entrance.
Backed against the outer wall, I stab a finger into the giant zombie’s flesh. The surface breaks and my finger slides in. I pull my finger out. It is covered in brain goo.
“Hold your breath. We’re going in,” I say.
Robbie nods his head.
I throw my arms around him and dive into the inner thigh of the giant zombie.
We break through, and we swim like hell.
Climbing Again
We pop out in the middle of the giant zombie’s back.
That’s as long as either of us could hold our breath, hopefully enough to throw our pursuers off course.
We dig our way up the backside, leaving behind a trail of gashes that heal over almost as soon as we make them.
I reach out to pull myself onto the shoulder. Now I can see the blades of a helicopter perched on the palm.
Then angry dead faces and clawed hands burst out of the brainy surface around me. The zombies have swum up and cut off our path.
I scramble onto the shoulder, kicking my feet into the folds of teeth and claws as Robbie does the same.
The zombies shout at me, but I cannot understand what they are saying. I’m not even sure if I’m meant to understand. Two hands clutch my bad leg and squeeze, breaking it if it wasn’t already broken. I cry out.
More hands grab me, dragging me into the zombie house.
I flail my arms, hoping Robbie will help, but he’s sinking as well, being dragged down. I wonder if we’ll drown before they eat us, or if our brains will be turned into houses.
Then there is a creaking and a huge hand sweeps toward us from above. Another giant zombie bends forward, its eyes glowing yellow and its head so close and big that it smothers the brightening sky.
The hand plucks Robbie and me from the hands of the zombies pulling us under. It sets us right next to the helicopter on the palm of the giant we’ve been climbing.
The house has saved us.
I wonder if all houses are friendly, or if I happened to know the owner of this one’s brain from the farm. Are you my father… my brother… Bill? I wonder.
And then the head of the friendly giant is engulfed in flames.
Helicopter
The house we’re on begins to move, leaning forward like it has a stomachache. All the houses near us start moving too, stretching out various limbs, trying to reach us, making obvious efforts to uproot their mushy feet and step to the aid of their fellow zombie house. Hopefully they don’t blame us for its destruction.
More fiery blasts tear apart other zombie houses.
“Get in the helicopter!” I shout.
I leap into the machine and look around.
I have no idea how to fly a helicopter.
I feel intense sensations of anxiety coupled with crippling fear and physical panic.
Four massive fingers curl up in front of us. The giant we’re on is closing its hand. Maybe this one is not a friend.
We are about to be crushed.
Robbie slaps something in front of me and the helicopter rises.
He has pressed a big green button marked GO.
I nod, feeling good about his decision. That was a good decision. GO is a good bet.
Four red arrows, one pointing up, one down, one left, and one right, encircle the GO button.