John Adams - The Living Dead 2

The Master sat at the wheel of his favorite Silver Ghost Rolls on a dais in the center of the room. He gunned the engine and honked the Rolls’ regal horn. The inner circle of devotees locked arms around the car.

A hulking Raider linebacker stepped into the room and got its face shot off. Inside its hollowed-out torso was a veritable Whitman’s Sampler of grenades, RPGs, and a TOW missile.

Even as the hail of lead chewed its helmet and head off, the linebacker fell to its knees and unleashed a holocaust.

The windows and walls blew out of the banquet hall. The secondary explosions brought the upper tier bleachers down on the banquet hall.

But when the smoke cleared, four Raiders were still standing.

“Game over, bitches,” said Ajay’s walkie-talkie. He threw it away and ran for the VIP staircase.

The corridor was choked with burning bodies, but nobody stopped him as he barged through the door and ran down the stairwell.

He got four steps before he crashed into a Raider’s back and hit the stairs on his tailbone. His legs went numb.

DEATH MACHINE, said the name above the number 24 on its shredded jersey. It turned and looked down at him, cocking its head and popping its goggles. Ajay’s skin crawled as he felt someone intelligent looking at him. Someone who was probably miles away.

“I am surrounded by light,” Ajay prayed. “This house is surrounded by light. I am-”

The zombie in the Raiders helmet stopped over him and put a gloved hand on his shoulder, gave his arm a gentle little squeeze. “I’m sorry, dude, but my pizza’s here,” it said.

The gentle hand shoved the nozzle of a flamethrower in his mouth, and pumped a jet of high-octane gasoline down his throat.

“Vaya con huevos, Gandhi,” said Death Machine #24. The jet of gas ignited, and Ajay was surrounded by light.

The Dungeon Master peeled off his VR goggles, and shucked his data gloves. Checked his pulse rate. Breathe, barbarian, breathe.

“Holy shit, that was brutal!” He shivered with a bowel-clenching adrenaline chill, despite the suffocating kiln atmosphere of his server bunker. His muscles tensed and twitched like the dregs of an amyl nitrate rush, still juiced from something that happened to somebody else’s body. He’d sweated right through his silk Deth-klok pajamas. It felt like someone had dumped a cooler of Gatorade on him, from somewhere up above.

Sherman Laliotitis blinked out of his mystic warrior trance and buzzed in the delivery boy, put his hands behind his head and stretched in his ergonomic office chair. His catheter jabbed his semi-tumescent wang as he emptied his bladder. The tube snaked out of his PJ bottoms to join the spaghetti of cables on the floor to the reclamation tub in the closet. Christ, he thought: Life during wartime.

The door thudded shut behind him. “So, uh… Seagull, how much for the pie?” His headset burped in his ear. “Wait. Hold that thought.”

His eyes unfocused as he gritted his teeth and listened to Charlie Brown’s teacher natter in his ear. “Front office is pissed. You’re breaking too many eggs.”

“Excuse me, but you weren’t there, and neither were they! No strategy survives first contact with the enemy-”

“We’re watching the streaming feed now. They wanted to fire you. I told them you knew what you were doing. They’re starting to think you’re doing it on purpose.”

“Wait a goddamned minute! Those eggheads built these teams to take deadheads, but we haven’t seen free-range street-meat in weeks-”

“Calm down, Sherman.”

“No, you calm down! You have no idea what it’s like, running a squad in a hot combat zone! You wouldn’t last two minutes in my fucking chair! Dungeon Master out.”

God damn it. Sherman pushed aside the pill bottles and Hot Wheels cars piled up around his keyboard. He forgot what he was looking for, then remembered he wasn’t alone.

“So who were those guys?” The pizza guy pointed at the screens.

“Those hobgoblins were a doomsday cult from Big Sur. Moved in after we cleansed the city, and started poaching our supply lines, snatching our immigrants. We warned them, but they fed our messenger to their dear leader. That’s him right there.”

With a loaded slice precariously balanced in one hand, Sherman zoomed in on a pasty mummy with a beard down to his knees, licking the windows of the Rolls with a black, cracking tongue. “Watch this, dude.”

Sherman made one of his Raiders punch in the window and feed the mummy a phosphorus grenade. Poom.

“Wow,” said Falcon, or whatever his name was. “I read that dude’s book. So you’re using dead guys against live guys now?”

Sherman killed his Coke and tossed the empty in the trash, found his vasopressin, and shot a blast of synapse-sharpening mist up his nose. Jesus, he was discussing strategy with the pizza boy. Only difference between this bottom-feeder and the meatbags he controlled was that zombies couldn’t ask irritating questions.

His headset bawled like a baby with a dirty diaper. “Hold on. Julio? Sharp air support, dude. Love the way you ghosted my whole op by winging that sentry.”

“Suck it, Halitosis. I didn’t hear you bitching when I saved your team on that ramp.” Julio noisily high-fived somebody, and Sherman almost hung up. God, he hated speakerphone. “Kid, you are making fucking up into an Olympic event.”

Sherman was a sponsored pro gamer on the Xbox Live circuit before he turned fourteen. The Pentagon’s strategic solutions teams all played Necropolis Online, and he pwned their asses daily. Air Force and Army were in a bidding war for his services before he finished high school. If the dead had come a year later, these Navy reserve dipshits would be calling him Sir. “Julio, anytime you want to get promoted out of air support, I always got openings on my team. You’d look good in a Raiders uniform, bro.”

Behind him, Pizza Boy cleared his throat. “Look, man, my other pies are getting cold…”

“Fuck. Hold on, losers.” With a wave of his laser pen over the subcutaneous chip in the hippie’s wrist, he paid for the food.

“Hey, Halitosis,” Julio shouted. “Are you gonna stop jacking off and move your team, so we can clean up this mess?”

The Dungeon Master slapped on his goggles. “Please get out of here now, Pizza Boy.” But he was already gone.

Jeez, thought Eagle. What a douche. Nice tip, though. Thirty-eight creds. That was the thing about rich motherfuckers. They thought they could pay off their contempt with pocket change. And they were right.

They also all liked pizza.

Eagle’s bike was parked outside the penthouse door. It was a chrome green Moots Gristle-a $6,000 mountain bike-the one he chose out of thousands when they gave him a hero’s parade, and his old job back. Talk about perks.

He took a moment to savor the view from the uppermost inner balcony of the Hyatt Regency: gorgeous tiered ultra-modern architecture, sloping down to reveal 802 luxury rooms, all occupied, thanks to him and his friends. His own was #615, and he could see it from here.

Hey, Ma! he thought and waved. But she was dead. And that wasn’t funny.

Eagle rode to the elevator bank, hopped the glass diving bell down to the lobby. Sheets of illuminated crystal dangled overhead, an indoor aurora borealis that looked awesome when stoned, which he was, waving bye to his friends and neighbors as he hit the domed streets of New San Francisco.

Everybody knew Eagle. That was the great thing. Beneath the sheer poison-and-shatterproof plastic that encased the twenty-block bubble of the Green Zone, roughly 8,000 still moved and breathed, and he saw them all each and every night as he made his rounds through the former financial district, spreading joy with whole-wheat crust, fresh tomatoes and veggies, prewar sausage and pepperoni.