Zombie Kong - Anthology (9 page)

Richie––

Donkey Kawng is still a fun game my high score cannot be beat. the games out there now cant compare to the vintage stuff

MurryCasala––

can you imagine the size of this giant ape’s unit? lol

Spinner––

This doesn’t involve me directly so I don’t give a––

AMANDA C. DAVIS

Escape from Ape City

At some point, our first question––the keening, desperate “Where did the giant zombie gorillas
come
from?”––became moot. It was merely academic. The origin of the giant zombie gorillas was as useful to us as the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin. Less useful, in fact––pinprick-sized angels might be somehow brought under our control. Building-sized undead gorillas left us no option but to run.

“They’re like any silly fashion,” said Bradbury to me, one day in the bunker. “One turns up and before long, they’re on every street corner.”

“Fashion!” spat Lillian. “Who cares about fashion?” Before the giant zombie gorillas, she had cared very much. “Only a month and they’ve turned us back into cavemen.”

“Minus the advantages vis-à-vis cavewomen.” Bradbury really was a card.

Lillian, giving him a vicious look, went back to sharpening a curtain rod into a double-ended spear.

Jenny squeezed inside then, through the trapdoor that used to be a basement window. She fell neatly to the ground and landed on her feet like a cat. “Listen to this, you Morlocks,” she said. (She’s a card, too, a good match for Bradbury, I always thought.) “Get your things. Get everything. There’s a boat. We’re getting out.”

We ignored everything but that penultimate sentence, and the shock of it drove us to our feet. “A boat!” said Lillian, for once losing her scowl.

“A warship?” said Bradbury.

“All I know is it floats.”

Lillian said, “It can’t be. Who’s still got a boat?”

“Astor. Rockefeller. Who cares?” said Jenny. “The Laurel Street bunker says there’s a yacht or something not far out to sea and it’s coming toward us at a quick old clip. They think it’ll be here by dark. It must be a rescue. It must be.”

I said, “It’s nearly dark now,” although I had no way to know, other than one page torn out of an almanac and a watch I kept faithfully wound.

“Then pack fast,” said Jenny.

We didn’t need to be told twice. We scattered. Everybody had a corner, and we all went there. Lillian had the corner nearest to mine. She laid out a bed sheet and started throwing clothes and tinned food and tools into the middle of it.

“Do you suppose we’ll have to live on the boat,” said Lillian, “or do you suppose they can take us somewhere nice? Tom, I couldn’t live on a boat.”

“I expect we’ll live there,” I said. I had salvaged precious few belongings compared to her and they all went into my cardboard suitcase without trouble. “I hope you know how to cook a fish.”

I hauled myself and my suitcase across the room before she could work up any kind of a retort.

If I had any proper luck, I’d have never met Lillian; I’d have been hiding in an underground bunker with Bets, my sweetheart and best girl. But I had been at the college the day the giant zombie gorillas popped up, and Bets had been at Macy’s. Of course, everyone knew what happened to Macy’s. By the time I discovered where she had been, the giant zombie gorillas had turned the city into their own dead, iron jungle. There was no getting anywhere. I’d never made it as far as the ruins of Macy’s. And there had been no sign of her since.

I didn’t like to think about Bets. But it was better than actually talking to Lillian.

* * *

They used to say all kinds of things about this city. To hear people talk, nobody liked any part of it, although a whole bunch of people lived here. To be honest, the accusations of squalor were never far off. Now they were dead on.

I didn’t like to go out in the daytime, so I never did it. The destruction was simply too enormous. We squeezed out of the tailor shop’s basement window and the ruin and filth of our little room expanded as far as I could see: cars under buildings, buildings under cars, clothes and papers strewn wherever the wind took them, body parts too small for the giant zombie gorillas to notice. I kicked a crushed baby stroller. I had no way to know whether it had been occupied when the crushing took place.

Jenny beckoned, and we followed her over the mountains of debris. I could see giant zombie gorillas sitting on their rubble thrones not too many blocks away. One put the end of a steel beam in his mouth and tried to chew it like a stalk of celery. The metal creaked under the strain of his vast, flat teeth.

Lillian moaned. The giant zombie gorilla paused his chewing and sniffed the air. He dropped the beam––it made a terrible clatter––and began to heave his enormous, rotting simian form onto his knuckles.

“It’s Tubbo,” Bradbury hissed. He really believed he could tell the giant zombie gorillas apart. He ducked to the nearest building and gestured to us all to join him. We picked through debris and jammed ourselves into the door he held open.

It was the old post office. I couldn’t believe the place still stood. The inside walls were plastered with so many notes and posters that you couldn’t tell whether there was any wallpaper underneath. One of them caught my eye: fresh paper, and large letters. I pulled it off the wall.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

OUR BUNKER IS SAFE

BENEATH THE SITE

OF MACY’S DEPT STORE

YOU ARE WELCOME

And beneath that were about thirty or forty signatures in blue ink, all kinds, women’s and men’s and some so scrawly their makers must be either very old or very young.

And I knew one of them.

Bets.

“Look at this,” I said, thrusting the note toward Jenny, not quite willing to actually give it to her. “Have you seen this?”

“Oh, sure,” Jenny said. “All over the city. I guess they’re recruiting. Bradbury, that isn’t Tubbo. Tubbo’s only got one arm now.”

“Do hush,” said Lillian, watching through a bullet hole.

“It’s Bets,” I said. “That’s her name, her signature. It’s her. She’s there. I have to find her.”

Lillian turned to me and said, with icy emphasis, “
Do
.
Hush
.”

I stood there with the note in my hand, no doubt looking as stupid as I felt. I never had made it to Macy’s. I hadn’t found Bets, earthly remains or living ones. I simply hadn’t gone looking.

I said again, “I’ve got to find her,” as if it were the only thing I knew how to say.

Now Jenny turned, too. “Find someone?” she hissed. “In
this
? You’ve got to get out of here, is what you’ve got to do!”

“She’s right,” said Bradbury. “I know you love her and all, but think of the odds. And come on, Tom, how often does a boat come by?”

“Exactly that,” I said. “Exactly that. What if I leave her and it’s the last boat ever to come by?”

“REALLY,” said Lillian, through her teeth, “YOU MUST. HUSH. RIGHT––”

She could not finish before the opposite wall came crashing in.

A vast, rotting hand lunged inside, groping with enormous black-and-green fingers that twitched with infestation at the bony tips. The hair on its knuckles was thick as wire.

Jenny shrieked. Lillian threw herself against the front door and was on the street before any of us. We followed in a mob.

“Stay together!” shouted Jenny. “Head for the docks! Find a bunker!”

I skidded and stopped. The giant zombie gorilla roared behind us, finishing off the post office for good. Bradbury, without breaking stride, turned his head: “Tom! Move!”

“I have to find her,” I shouted. “I’ll see you on the boat.”

“Wait!” cried Lillian.

I didn’t wait.

I ran. I ran like I hadn’t run since grammar school. I cleared obstacles like a show horse. The whole city opened to me, a block at a time, and I owned it yard by painful yard. Behind me I heard the giant zombie gorillas stomping and chewing and tearing apart buildings floor by floor. I couldn’t even hear myself breathe.

And there it was.

Macy’s, which used to be located in between a bank and an apartment building, now resided under them both. Its impressive storefront was a pile of bricks––not a very big one, and difficult to distinguish from the bricks around it. Painted right on the side of the pile of rubble were letters in whitewash, as tall as I was: ‘WELCOME’. There was a big arrow pointing toward a makeshift door.

The door said ‘KNOCK TWICE’, so that’s what I did––softly, because I knew the giant zombie gorillas were never far off. At once, the door cracked open. Someone’s hand took hold of mine and I was hauled inside by a man in a welder’s helmet. The door closed silently, carefully, firmly.

“Bets,” I gasped. “Where’s Bets?”

The doorman raised his helmet. His face was filthy. “You know Bets?”

“Tom!”

Someone broke from the cluster of people in the dim corners of the bunker and came flying into my arms.

The doubts evaporated the moment she spoke.

“Gosh, here you are!” she said. “I thought––that is to say, I didn’t think––oh, come here, you.” And she tried to break all my ribs at once.

I reciprocated. But there wasn’t time to enjoy it. I pulled back and took hold of her arms.

“Bets, there’s a boat coming in to port. Our bunker was going to try to catch it. We think it’s––well, something like a rescue.”

“A boat!” she said. “It can’t be. Not after the––”

“It is,” I said, “and I mean to be on it when it leaves this lousy city. Come with me, Bets. Life on the open seas. Away from the giant zombie gorillas. What do you say?”

She hesitated. “But Tom… we’re doing all right here.”

Her words struck me cold. I never expected them. “What do you mean?”

“We––we’re doing all right.” She gestured around. “We have food enough for a while, and sometimes new people come by––like you did, just now. We’re safe enough. Safer than most. We thought we could make this a sort of town hall when things settle down. Do you really want us to leave this? A boat might be dangerous. It might not be a rescue at all.”

I took a hard look around. The ceiling was low and the walls damp. People sat or paced. But I could smell food cooking (the same humdrum tinned stuff we lived on) and I heard talk and laughter. Even with Bradbury and Jenny around, we had rarely found occasion to really laugh.

“I… I said I’d meet them at the boat.”

Bets took my arm. “Let them do what they think is best. Now you know about us. You do what you think is best.”

“Bets, are you… ”

“I’m staying,” she said.

A month ago, my future had been shattered with one great blow, breaking my dreams like a window. Bets broke the glass again. Could I live underground forever, always on the end of my nerves, with her at my side? Could I live on a free, open vessel without her?

I watched the possibilities of my future wind out in twisty strands before me, wild and fragile. My vision shook. Then I realized it wasn’t my vision at all: the things around me––the walls and the ceiling––actually
were
shaking. The building quivered around us. We quivered within it.

“Tubbo!” I gasped.

“What?” said Bets.

“He’s the one––never mind, it’s too foolish. One of them. He must have followed me. We have to get out of here!”

Bets took a firm hold of my hand. “No, we don’t. The giant zombie gorillas find this place once or twice a week. We’re underground. All they can do is shift the rubble a bit and maybe block off an exit. Then they all grow bored and leave. It’s like I’ve been trying to tell you, Tom. We’re safe here.”

The walls shook again.

“Bets!” I said.

She frowned. “It
does
seem different than usual. I wonder… ”

As she spoke, a young girl in an oversized hardhat came tearing inside from a door in the back. She got hold of the man who had let me in. “It isn’t the giant zombie gorillas!” she cried, taking him by the sleeve. “We’re being shot at!”

“What?” said the man. “By who?”

She spread her arms wide. “How should I know? There’s fog everywhere! But it was coming from the ocean. It was cannonballs! Hitting this, that, and everything!”

Cannonballs! I went to the pair of them. Bets came along. “We heard that the Laurel Street bunker saw a boat of some kind coming in to port not a few hours ago,” I told him, since he seemed to be in charge.

“Great Scott!” he said. “Where’d anyone get a boat nowadays?”

“Search me, sir,” I said, adding the ‘sir’ because his tone demanded it. “Some of my friends were going to try to board it. They think it’s a rescue.”

“Sounds like an invasion force instead!” he barked.

“Well, we ought to find out for sure,” said Bets. “Is the radio picking up anything?”

The girl in the oversized hardhat went dashing off. She returned in an instant. “No sir,” she said. “Just white noise. But I’ve got them listening close!”

“Sir,” I said, “I’m Tom, by the way––maybe the giant zombie gorillas can’t break your bunker and you’d know that better than I, but I’ll bet a mortar shell could. And if somebody is shooting at the giant zombie gorillas, shooting something big enough to sting, these monsters will be kept busy for a while. This might just be the time to make an escape.”

He tilted his lid a little to get a look at me. “Tom, you may not like this particular frying pan, but I promise you the rest of the world is the fire.”