Episode 34: Gonna Keep it in the Family

“That’s Charles Manson back there,” Camron said very matter-of-factly.
“Right now,” Nole growled, “Let’s be concerned with the serial killers that are coming at us.” He readied his katana, but as always, waited for Camron’s command.
“That’s Lizzie Borden,” Joseph confirmed, taking a step back and readying his rifle.
“And John Wayne Gacy,” Dr. Mabus said in a manner suggesting not fear but fascination.
“Yeah, and I’ll be that one is Jack the Ripper, right? Let’s just kill them!” Nole was almost pouncing forward, but still waited for Camron.
“Yeah,” Camron said, lifting his gun and firing.
Jack bounded towards Dr. Mabus, but his journey was cut short by the careful aim of Joseph. They spring-heeled man lost his control mid bound and went crashing to the ground; instead of staying down, he began to crawl to his feet, still moving in the direction of Dr. Mabus, as Joseph, barely fazed by Jack’s unwillingness to die, fired another round straight into his head. His skull seemed almost to ripple as the bullet entered it, and he only stayed down for a moment. Joseph was fazed this time, but still fired twice more before John Wayne Gacy’s knife tore into his arm. He cried out, just as Nole drove the clown to the ground.
Before Gacy had reached Joseph, he had been facing off against Nole. Nole had repeatedly slashed his sword at the clown, but, grinning, he had jumped out of the way each time. Nole then had taken a wild dash at Gacy, who sidestepped it and ran directly to Joseph and slashed. Nole had quickly gotten up and, after recovering his sword, tackled Gacy and drove his sword into the clown. He twisted it and then moved it up and down, at which point Gacy laughed and threw Nole across the room.
Lizzie, meanwhile, had been advancing on Camron, who held his gun at arm’s length and fired at her. Every bullet connected, causing only a rippling of her being. She didn’t even slow down. She wasn’t going very quickly anyway. Camron pressed himself into the corner, but didn’t cower. He was saving one bullet to shoot her at close range. She was about to reach him when Nole flew into her, knocking her over. The axe fell out of her grip and skittered across the room. Camron ran forward to pull Nole off of her and away.
Joseph had turned his attention to Gacy; he had shot the knife out of his hand, and then had fired directly into Gacy’s eye. Gacy gripped at it and stumbled backwards, at which point Joseph slammed the barrel of his rifle over the clown’s head. While Gacy was on the ground, Joseph reloaded his gun deftly.
Dr. Mabus reached down to pick up the axe that Lizzie had been using, and swung it hard at the once-more standing Jack. It connected just as hard, and forced the ripper back down to the ground. Dr. Mabus looked up towards the back of the room, where Charlie stood laughing with a glowing forehead. It gave him an idea, and he rushed towards the leader.
Nole kicked Lizzie in the face as Camron helped him up, slowing her rise. Nole had dropped his sword once more near Gacy, and was now gripping at his stomach in pain. Before he could help Nole further, Camron spun and fired a round into the approaching Jack, who, mid-bound when the shot connected once more, was knocked out of control again.
John Wayne Gacy had found Nole’s fallen sword, and was lifting it to bring it down on Joseph. Joseph was firing at the clown with one hand, but it wasn’t having any effect. Joseph thought he was finished when a horrible scream erupted from the back of the room, accompanied by a flash of yellow light. The three serial killer combatants froze in the middle of what they were doing, mid-pose, mid-expression. Joseph, Nole, and Camron all expressed their confusion via faces of utter shock. They turned to the back of the room.
There, atop the radiator, stood Dr. Mabus, holding the hilt of the axe, which he had driven into the forehead of the now-screaming Charles Manson. Dr. Mabus’s face was set with an expression of fascinated focus. Slowly, the three frozen serial killers began to lose physical coherence; first, their bodies began to look dried, almost scaled. Then they collapsed into a silvery good and flowed into Charles Manson. Charlie then, moments later, followed suit, becoming scaly and then silvery and finally gooey. Then he appeared to dissolve. The axe that Dr. Mabus had been holding clattered to the ground. He looked across the room.
“That was certainly interesting,” he said before stepping down off of the radiator.

“Daddy!” Dinah squealed happily, as children do when they see their fathers under such circumstances.. She dashed up from her hiding spot, leapt over Nurse Lotus, and hugged the man with the smoking gun. Lotus, gasping faintly for air, rolled her head to watch her go. Fortunately-or unfortunately, in the long term-her body had numbed her neck so that she couldn’t feel the pain. Andy couldn’t decide whether to look at Fiona, who was breathing shallowly, Lotus, who was breathing sharply, Mario, who wasn’t breathing, or Dinah and the man who was apparently her father, both of whom were breathing normally. So Andy decided to look at all four. He looked at all four alternatingly until a couple of seconds later when Dinah’s father had leveled his gun straight at Andy’s head with the single arm that he wasn’t using to hold Dinah. When the gun was pointed at him, Andy focused on the man who held it.
“Thank you for taking care of my daughter,” he said in a tone befitting a generally friendly man who really just wanted to be left alone now and was willing to use a gun to do it. “But you don’t have to do it anymore. You also have no reason to follow me, and at least one reason not to. So it would be wise not to.” He then lowered the gun, turned and swooped away. As he left, those still living in the room heard Dinah speaking to him glowingly and quickly.
Andy didn’t wait for him to leave his line of sight to move over to Nurse Lotus to look at her neck.
“First Aid Kit,” she gasped as soon as she could see him clearly. She pointed to the cabinets behind the triage desk. Andy nodded and ran to the cabinets. As he did, he looked first at Fiona, who was still alive with blood pooling in her stomach, and beginning to overflow. He turned away quickly, wishing he could do something but knowing that he didn’t know enough about medicine. He had to help Nurse Lotus first, because he could do that. When she was better and Doctor Mabus got back, then maybe they could help the bleeding girl. He hadn’t even managed to learn her name, he realized. And then he glanced at Mario, whose name he had managed to learn. And the new shape of his head reminded him of something.
And then he managed to learn Dinah’s father’s name without anyone else in the room.

“We have to get out of here,” Amy said once she had regained her wits from watching Cherry, Gworkin, and John die, and then coming across the strange naked corpse of the woman that they didn’t know was Judy.
“But Corwin’s out there,” Desiree said, clutching at her left arm. “And he’s going to kill me.”
“He’s not going to kill you!” Amy yelled frantically.
“He’s right, though,” Hunter said slowly. “You’re going to die and become one of them.”
“No she’s not!” Amy said, turning to Hunter with tears in her eyes, ready to attack him.
“Yeah, I am,” Desiree said. Amy turned back to her, not ready to attack anyone anymore. Desiree looked happy and sad at once. It was a look of acceptance.
“Dez...”
“Amy, we all knew that one day some of us would die. We were ready for it.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Amy, you have to promise me something.”
“No, No, don’t ask it!”
“Look, this is all very fascinating,” Hunter began, but the two girls ignored him.
“When I change...” Desiree said.
“Desiree!”
“Amy! As soon as I change, you have to kill me!”
“No!”
“Promise me! I don’t want anyone else to do it, I want you to do it!”
“Desiree, I can’t, I just can’t...”
“Yes you can, Amy.” Tears began streaming down her face as well. “You’re going to have to let me go, and I need you to prove that you can.”
“Desiree...”
“Please, Amy.”
She paused and looked at John on the ground. She shut her eyes. “Okay, Desiree,” she finally said. “I’ll do it.”
“Good.”
“Okay, now that that’s over, we need to find a way out,” Hunter said. “Desiree, as long as you’re still human, you’re still an asset. So try to stay alive for as long as you can.”
Desiree nodded. Amy bit her lip as she watched her.
“How about the window?” Hunter asked. He walked over to it and stuck his head out. He then pulled his now wet head back in and shook it.
“No?” Desiree asked.
“Everything is too narrow and too wet. I think that the dead girl there came in through here. With someone else.”
“You mean... There’s another zombie in the hospital?” Amy asked, trying to get past the fact that she was going to have to shoot her best friend very soon.
“Maybe by now. But she and Gworkin and Cherry were all killed, at least the first time, with a gun. Neither Cherry nor Gworkin used a gun. Which means that there’s someone in here with a gun, probably a man, and a violent rapist at that judging from these girls, who is very dangerous. And probably shirtless.” He pointed to the discarded men’s shirt on the floor next to the girl.
“Maybe he’ll take care of Corwin?” Desiree suggested.
“That wouldn’t be good,” Hunter said grimly.
“Why not?” Amy asked harshly. “We let one problem deal with another, and then we have one less problem to deal with.”
“It just isn’t,” Hunter barked.
“You have to explain that!” Amy yelled. “You’ve just sprung it on us that you really are an alien...”
“Which I told you many times,” Hunter rolled his eyes.
“... And now you’ve got astounding powers of logic and a passion for protecting people who are trying to kill us?”
“Look, Amy, I know it’s a lot, but I can’t exp...”
“You have to explain it,” Desiree chimed in. “You owe us that much.” Hunter scoffed in response.
“I owe you? Oh, that’s rich. You really want to know what I mean? What I’m doing here? I...” He was interrupted by the door behind them finally bursting open.
“Give me Desiree and you two can live!” Corwin screamed, pointing Gworkin’s crossbow at Hunter with his left hand and holding his own sword in his right.

Joseph suddenly fired his rifle. Doctor Mabus looked behind him in time to see Rena Desoto slump against the wall and fall back to her redeath. Joseph decided to take no chances, and spun and fired a round into the skull of Eddie Plant, who had not found cause yet to rise from the dead. The other two patients were in so many pieces that even if they did have enough of their brains still together to become zombies, they would not have been able to really do anything.
“Thank you,” Doctor Mabus said after a moment.
“You don’t sound sure of that, Doc,” Nole growled, still clutching at his stomach.
“Nole,” Camron asked slowly, “are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” the wolfish man growled. “The fat one just stabbed me in the stomach. I’ve had worse.” Camron shut his eyes.
“I know,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”
“Camron, shut up.” Nole growled kindly. Camron smiled weakly.
“Where are you going,” Dr. Mabus said cautiously as Joseph began walking out the door.
“Back down. We found our eight.” Dr. Mabus nodded and followed. Soon after, Camron and Nole, after sharing some discomfort over the Doctor’s demeanor, followed as well.

Andy had brought what looked like a household first aid kit back to Lotus. He had then put a couple of things that he wasn’t quite sure what they were on the small hole through the side of her neck, and then wrapped a bandage around it. She had guided him through the whole process, which would have been much easier had it been someone besides the guide who was injured through the neck.
“Why do you have a normal old first aid kit here?” Andy asked, trying to sound casual, as he wrapped the gauze around her neck.
“If someone sustained a minor injury and there were no doctors available,” she smiled at him gently.
“It was a good idea,” he smiled back. He finished wrapping the bandage, and Nurse Lotus propped herself up. She took a glance around the room, and noticed that Fiona was still breathing. She pushed herself forwards and crawled to the bleeding, gasping, still living girl.
“We have to stop this bleeding,” Nurse Lotus said sharply. She turned to look at Andy. He nodded.
“What do you need?”

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