Cameron Pierce - Abortion Arcade

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.

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.

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.

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.

Feeling like maybe I know what those arrows mean, I punch up. And then left. The helicopter jerks in the directions indicated.

The helicopter shoots into the air.

Below us, the giant hand closes into a gelatinous fist.

Fire swirls around us. We manage to steer clear of the direct blasts. We rise higher until the brick wall appears. It looks so small from up here. Strange to think that until today, it was my lifelong jailer. We zoom full-speed toward it.

I hope Pym has not already bled to death.

The zombie forest ends several hundred yards away from the tremendous brick wall. We are high enough up that we clear the wall as if it were nothing more than a dirt clod beneath our bare feet. The ground below looks gray and blotchy. I realize the blotches are a crowd of people gathered around the wedding tower.

A fireball whizzes by and explodes in the air over the wedding tower, followed by a second and a third.

“Robbie, try to see behind us. What’s on our tail?”

“Helicopters,” he says. “Everywhere.”

I hook around the wedding tower, glimpsing a pale face in the window.

Pym .

She’s not dead!

“Robbie, find the rope ladder like the ones the zombies use.

When we fly close enough, throw the ladder out to Pym.”

Fire bombs whiz past. The crowd around the wedding tower flees. Those people were waiting to witness my execution.

Helicopters swarm us. I can make out the faces of the dead people in the other helicopters. Hopefully their closeness will prevent others from firing on us. I don’t know how zombies feel about killing their own kind.

Robbie prepares to throw the ladder.

Unsure how to get the helicopter to stop right outside the window of the tower without crashing on the bone cage, I press a whole bunch of buttons at once and scream, “Throw it now!”

Robbie throws the ladder.

Pym dives out of the window. She cranes her arms for the ladder, careening into the jaws of the cage, looking like a fallen cloud creature. A ghost.

Her hands touch the ladder.

She stops falling.

She climbs.

Before she makes it into the helicopter, another ladder swings toward her. A zombie hangs from the end of the ladder.