SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

We helped each other across the scrub, increasingly paranoid, until the ground was so rocky that they’d have to drill a hole to stick an explosive into there. I checked my phone for the time. My phone was dead. I groaned and shoved it back into my pocket.

"Mine’s good," Erika said, but I barely heard her because there was a noise so loud I barely registered it as the thump until it had passed. I ducked and so did she. "That’s it!" She pointed. "I saw it!"

"Saw what?" I didn’t see nothing. I followed her finger with my gaze up to the sheer cliff face above us. I craned my neck, but Erika leg’um up the mountain into a bunch of scrawny haole koa trees right before the rock got just about vertical. She climbed up there and then she vanished into the scrub with a little yell, just gone, outta sight.

"Hey!" I called after her.

No answer.

When I caught up I saw it wasn’t a little bit haole koa, it was a big ol' pile of california grass covering one gaping puka in the lava rock. I peered into the hole and saw a thin light way down in the cave. Erika’s cell. I patted my useless one in my pocket, and seriously considered just ditching her and walking back off down the highway to the beach before some menehune or whatever lurked in mountain holes got me. But man, she’d trusted me enough to hop in a truck that morning. I crouched to see how well I fit in the hole. Pretty well. Even my shoulders were skinny.

"Come on!" Erika called. I took a deep breath, and crawled in. The pāhoehoe dug rough, but not sharp, into my hands so I scooted forward fast instead of careful. I almost ran my head into her butt, and she shined the cell light in my face and then laughed, I guess at how red my face was. I apologized and she laughed more; "you can’t see back there at all, huh?"

"No way," I said. The crawl wasn’t too long, which was good for our knees, coz even with that little crawl they got scraped bloody. Take my advice, man, don’t spelunk in board shorts. We squeezed out the other side, in the shelter of a copse of koaia, but not into the other side in Maunawili like I expected. The sky was getting dark, and it was raining, big walls of rain passing through every few minutes with the trades. The clouds cast mottled shadows over the bare stone walls, but the alcove kept us dry. Erika shaded her eyes to squint into the dusk.

We’d found a little valley carved into the actual mountain, like a knife had cut down the sides and lifted one slice of mountain-cake out and away into the sky. Netting and new plants sheltered the valley from the air. Built into one side, just like the old WWII bunkers, was a towering concrete launch pad, and on the launch-pad stood a machine big as an apartment building and probably as heavy as one. It was painted mottled grey and green, pixelated camouflage. Long antennae like Lü Bu’s helmet swept back from the machine’s crested head, red mud splatted all up the bulky legs. It looked like a person, if a person looked like a tank.

You wouldn’t think they could hide something that size on an island.

But they do.

Erika and I stared down at it, from our vantage on the cut-up mountain. I was too dumbfounded to even start to put words together, but Erika wasn’t.

"Holy shit," she said. "It’s a fuckin Gundam."

We’ve been going out ever since.

Originally published by ZEAL, September 2015

Before you leave the safety of our encampment to fight the zombies, make sure your eyelashes bat thick and full. Cover scars and lesions with foundation and powder, and apply gloss or lipstick liberally, but neatly. Do not cake on foundation too thickly. The inherent risks should be obvious. Use glitter sparingly, and try to avoid bedazzling prosthetics, jackets, faces, or weapons. Flashing attracts attention.

In-between raids you may need to stop, adjust your hair, powder down your face and wipe away smudges; a compact mirror is essential on longer missions. Hair conditioner is in short supply now, of course, so if you come across malls, supermarkets or a convenience store, be sure to check the health and beauty aisles first. Hair salons are high-priority targets, but avocados, olive oil and mayonnaise are acceptable substitutes to keep your hair lush and high-luster, if products cannot be found. Tooth whitener strips should be applied after eating heavily pigmented foods. If possible, avoid coffee and black tea; if you need caffeine, energy drinks and nicotine patches are preferable, but they may still cause bags under the eyes. Bottled water and Vita filtering systems are also priority supplies, as sallow cheeks and dry skin are among the first signs of infection. Other hydration sources may carry the virus if not boiled.

Make sure that while you have a unified aesthetic in some way, no two members of your team are dressed too similarly; for example, only one person in the group at a time may don a bomber jacket or hat. If multiple members of the group are missing an eye, encourage one to use an eyepatch and another to either wear sunglasses or utilize a glass eye in a pleasant complimentary shade to the color of their biological eye. Safety in numbers may seem to be a tactically intelligent choice, but this is the logic of the enemy. Keep squads to five members maximum.

When at all possible, eschew a paramilitary look. Showing some shoulder or leg can be classy on persons of any gender. If you are accessorizing a miniskirt, make sure stockings are at least over-the-knee and paired with a garter belt to avoid slippage and tangles. Should your leggings or tights develop runs, either discard them immediately or consider adopting an edgier look. Don’t overdo it. Some zombies have developed a keen sense for detecting sub-cultures.

Remember that the zombies are attracted to human scent; deodorant and perfume should be worn at all times. Similarly, you must avoid all sexual conduct in the field, whether intra- or inter-personal. Minor flirting is fine, so long as it contains the requisite amount of sass. If you do not come up with quips handily under pressure, be sure to memorize a few before you leave. Manicures and pedicures are good team bonding activities.

If you are wounded in the field, prioritize a solution to the wound that maximizes mobility and prevents any decay or unsightliness. Hydrogen peroxide with surgical clippers can be useful both for personal hygiene and to snip away extra flesh or sterilize cuts during emergency surgery. If bleeding is profuse, be sure to compress the wound and wrap the bandages neatly. If bandages are not available, rip white shirts up for bandages; white shirts dirty so quickly that you may carry them as supplies but never, ever don them as part of your uniform. Sloppiness kills. If your wound heals in a non-aesthetically pleasing manner, embellish the scar. In a pinch, fastening a weapon such as an assault rifle or machete to a lost limb will at least ensure a minimum of practicality. In a best-case scenario, try to emboss the prosthetic with a meaningful but enigmatic symbol, or at least your name so that your squad mates know what happened to you when they find it.

If a member of your squad has been severely injured or has lost their nose, there’s no recovery. Be sure to place a tasteful assortment of flowers over their grave marker.

If you come across survivors, wipe down their faces with a damp cloth immediately, and apply correctly-toned makeup to cover any scars. When your medic administers the physical in a secure area, be sure they are accompanied, as this process can often make the infected violent or belligerent, particularly if they are under the delusions that obvious signs of infection such as severe facial acne, extreme body odor, matted hair, and ill-fitted clothing are in fact ordinary human traits. If you discover a group of children, though they are more resistant to infection, try to only escort one child back to the encampment at a time; they’re noisy, have difficulty following instructions, and resist efforts to introduce and maintain the proper makeup protocols. Be sure the child has one, but no more than one, stuffed toy. If you find teenagers, be sure to introduce them to each other and instruct them to act as close—but not too close—friends. Enmity within groups of survivors is easily sensed. Once inside, survivors will be quarantined for twenty-eight days before being released into society, or what passes for it these days, anyway.