“Why are you sleeping?!” shouted Thor, as mightily as his human lungs would allow.
Catrina wasn’t exactly sure what happened next—as she was safely beyond the robot’s assault perimeter when its defense mechanisms were triggered—but it sounded awfully similar to a jet of flame, an agonized cry of “By Odin’s beard,” followed immediately by an equally as agonized cry of “fuckin’ shit, my eyes,” then something soft, fleshy, and angry punching something confused and made entirely of steel, and, finally, something made of steel being thrown through something made of glass.
Catrina was going to offer her sympathies to Thor by yelling “I told you so” into the lobby, but she found she was laughing far too much to speak.
Forty-Six: Dispersing the Diplomats
Quetzalcoatl was drinking quietly in his corner, humming a song he had heard on someone’s radio at some point in time, possibly, when he was suddenly surrounded by a half-dozen dirty, disheveled faces he had never seen before. Or, more likely, had seen before but didn’t bother remembering. Or, most likely, he was very, very drunk and they were very, very blurry.
“Can I help you?” asked Quetzalcoatl.
Gil, Lil, Hil, Jill, Jack and Mac nodded their blurry heads in unison.
“OK, that’s… that’s not helping. Someone use words. Or pictures, maybe.”
“We’ve been talking to Phil and Will, right?” said Gil. “And, like, we were thinking that, maybe, you know, we should go out as, like, emissaries or something.”
“To, you know, spread the word of what you’ve been saying and, like, make your teachings and stuff known,” added Lil.
“That’s actually not a bad idea,” said Quetzalcoatl. “And you guys came up with it?”
“We did,” said Jill.
“Together,” said Jack smiling too much.
“Yeah, great, good for you,” replied Quetzalcoatl, looking at Jack uneasily. “You’ve certainly got my blessing. Or at least my approval. I suggest you gather whoever else you want and go forth and do what it was you just said you’d do. Now.”
Gil, Lil, Hil, Jill, Jack and Mac nodded their blurry heads again. Then they continued to stand there.
“You don’t appear to be going forth,” said Quetzalcoatl, closing one eye in an effort to focus. “Why are you not going forth? Now?”
“Well, we’re, uh, we’re not really sure where to go from here,” said Jack.
“We didn’t get that far,” added Jill.
“Yeah,” added Hil. “What, uh, what exactly should we tell them?”
Quetzalcoatl sighed and rubbed his palms against his forehead.
“Whatever they want to hear.”
“Oh, man,” replied Gil, “of course.”
“That’s so wise,” said Lil.
“Right,” said Quetzalcoatl, “wise. Get moving.”
Forty-Seven: Motherfucker Got Stuck in a Bathtub
“Hey, guys,” said William H. Taft XLII, “I think that’s our car.”
He pointed to a car down the road. A car with a tree where the engine should have been.
“That car was armored,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, slowing the Volkswagen down, “and then reinforced with more armor. What the fuck is that tree made of?”
The answer was titanium and bad luck. However, Chester A. Arthur XVII was never to discover this, as the possessed zombies who had stolen his car were standing around the damaged automobile looking confused, and his vengeance swiftly overpowered his curiosity. Also, the tree was an extremely convincing disguise. It’s a very long story involving sentient cutlery and cannot be explained without killing the one doing the explaining, so the odds weren’t looking good anyway.
“Hey,” called out Queen Victoria XXX, as the trio of politicians stepped out of the car. “Hey, assholes!”
“Oh shit,” said the cowboy zombie.
“Agreed,” said the other zombie that, judging from the sari, was, at least corporeally, of Indian descent.
“Should we run?”
“I think so, yes.”
The zombies began to run.
Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX ran after them. William H. Taft XLII started to follow as well, but found he was getting winded far more quickly than he had anticipated and changed his mind.
“Go… go get ‘em, guys,” said the genetic reincarnation of the United States’ fattest president between gasps, “I’ll… I’ll be… sitting down here for a while.”
William H. Taft XLII fell onto his colossal ass with a colossal thud.
“Oh, man…”
Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX expressed their concern for their roommate by sprinting down the road and ignoring him entirely.
“You dickheads stole our car!” shouted Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“My iPod was in there!” added Queen Victoria XXX.
“Really,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, continuing to run down the road while turning his immediate attention to Vicky, “your iPod? That’s your main concern here?”
“What?” she replied. “All my music’s on there. All of it, Charlie.”
“So?”
“Do you have any idea how long it would take to re-download all of that?”
“A while, I’m sure. I’m just saying, I think we have more pressing matters here.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What pressing matters? The car’s totaled. We’ve already got a new one. There’s no urgency here.”
“We’ve only got a limited amount of time before the fuckers who stole our car get away. And I’d say that setting those finite limits on our goal certainly creates some sense of urgency.”
“Our goal? What’s our goal, Charlie? Beating the shit out of the corpses who took our stuff?”
“Justice, Vicky, not vengeance, there’s a difference.”
“Seriously?” she asked. “Seriously?! How are you saying that with a straight face? And how come my iPod doesn’t deserve justice?”
“Do you know how much of my blood and sweat went into that car? I spent the better part of a year fixing…”
“And I spent at least that long downloading songs!”
“You can’t honestly be comparing the two.”
“Admit this is just revenge, admit that it’s your pride wrapped around that tree, and I’ll consider reneging my comparison.”
It should be noted that Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX, despite the heated nature of their conversation, did not stop chasing after the fleeing zombies. It should also probably be noted that the zombies had, in fact, stopped fleeing after the first couple hundred feet.
The cowboy and the Indian clothes-lined the clones. The zombies’ arms fell off in the process, but the president and the queen had successfully been snapped off their feet and knocked onto their backs, so the corpses considered it a win.
Forty-Eight: Cowboys & Indians
“Well, well,” said the one-armed, undead cowboy, approaching the prostrated duo, “if it isn’t President Chester A. Arthur his own self.”
“I haven’t been president in over a hundred years, pal, and, in point of fact, I’ve,” he explained, gesticulating to indicate his body, “never actually been president.”
“You know,” replied the zombie, pulling a revolver from behind his back, “I don’t rightly care.”
“Oh, come on, man.”
“Sucks to be you,” contributed Queen Victoria XXX, laughing at her companion and beginning to lift herself from the ground.