[quote:a2e6b2246e="chrisjordan"] One hand was resting upon an out-jutting hip and the other pointing unabashedly to the sky like a Saturday Night Teapot.[/quote:a2e6b2246e]



And now....: More!

_Light moves faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright, until you hear them speak._

The zombies moved fast. They lurched through street after street and out of the city, well aware of the pursuers at their heels. Hsing and the others were no longer trying to remain inconspicuous, moving just quickly enough to keep reminding the zombies that they were there and that they could blow them to bits with ease if they slowed.

Jesnails, having nearly caught up with them, had suddenly dropped out of the sky, and not been seen since.

They followed the zombies across thick, marshy grass, their formal evening attire and heavy dresses entirely unsuitable for the task, now a good way away from the city beyond the reaches of Cynical Youth's sensors.

'We should have brought cake,' said Rinsamien. 'I want cake.'

And then the zombies disappeared.

'Where'd they go?' said Plaid.

The group slowed to an exhausted stop and looked around.

Cyn froze and listened, trying to quieten his own heavy breathing. 'Can you hear that?' he asked the others.

'What?'

The group strained their ears.

'It's...it's like a...'

The faintest of sounds touched the edge of hearing, an almost insectile buzz sounding nearer and nearer every second.

They looked around nervously, fearing horrors from the dark, their hands tightening around their weapons.

And then came Jesnails, accompanied by the struggling motorised whirr of the wheels in her bulky platform boots. Having provided her with much speed on the asphalt of the city streets (once she had stopped rolling into buildings), they now churned almost helplessly on the grass, and she progressed with a snail-like pace, tipping and tilting with the ground's various undulations.

Cyn sighed wearily as she passed, facing straight ahead. Plaid glared at her, and Hsing threw down her weapon in despair, rubbing her sore, bare feet.

And then Jesnails dropped down a hole.

They crowded around it and looked down. It was small and pitch-black, almost completely hidden in the grass.

'Heh,' said Cyn. 'I think we found their hiding place.'

'Are we going to go down there?' asked Plaid. 'What if it's a trap?'

'We're armed,' said Cyn. He pressed a small button on his belt, switching on a tracking device. 'My team'll be here soon with the Mayor. But I think we should go down now. If they are down there, they could be moving on already.'

'I'll stay here and wait for your team,' said Doctor Kryptlocke. 'We'll follow you in once they get here.'

Hsing had already lowered herself into the hole. 'My legs are still intact,' she said, only her head still visible. 'So no zombies within immediate proximity, I don't think.' She kicked experimentally at the sides of the hole. 'Hm,' she said. 'It doesn't go straight down. It curves. I think it's a...a slide or something.

'As Ambassador, I'd better go and say hello, I think,' she said, and smiled warmly. Before the others could say anything else, she let go of the edges and disappeared.

Doctor Kryptlocke cracked a few glowsticks and threw them down after her, and then Plaid and the others followed, leaving only the Doctor behind to wait for the Mayor.

Hsing skidded to a halt at the bottom practically upright, kicking up clouds of dirt.

She picked up a glowstick. It didn't reveal much ahead of her, but it wasn't the stuffy, enclosed space she had been expecting, although there was still a horrible stench in the stale air. She sensed a much more open space in front of her, and this made her feel exposed and vulnerable. They could have been watching her while she couldn't see them.

And indeed they were, as she found out when bright white circles of fluorescent light embedded in Jesnails' afro illuminated everything.

Plaid appeared at her side. 'Woah,' she said.

They were in some kind of vast underground mausoleum. Jesnails stood down below them, standing on what looked like a stone altar in the middle of an open space. Above her were several levels of stone platforms that ran around the edges of the chamber. Plaid and Hsing were stood on one side of the first. Lots and lots of zombies glared across and down at them from everywhere else, standing at the edges in front of huge, bathtub-sized stone coffins, propped upright against the walls, their great slabs of lids moved aside.

'What the...' said Cyn, as he and the others joined them.

'ZOMBIZZLES!' shouted Jesnails, her outstretched hand apparently clutching a gold crucifix, which she had snapped from a previously concealed chain around her neck. 'TONIGHT IS EXORCISMOLIZZLE NIGHT! COME FACE Y'ALL DESTINY!'

Several zombies, growling, dropped from their high platforms to sort her out. She waited for them to approach, and then thrust the crucifix into the nearest one's forehead. There was a horrifying hiss, the zombie cried out, and smoke curled up from where the hot side of the crucifix had some into contact with its flesh. The zombie stumbled backwards. Jesnails turned, knocked aside another zombie's outstretched hand with the crucifix's longest arm, and then did the same again to this one's face.

Outraged, the rest of them attacked. Plaid was the first of the group to set about putting them down, and did so in the same slicehappy way she had adopted earlier. Following her lead, Hsing charged up the Mega Frazzler and watched the snaked of light dance around in front of her, doing visibly unpleasant things to zombies' faces.

As their weapons fired, the mausoleum became filled with noise and chaos.

'I'm running out of ammo!' cried Cyn, eventually, hitting one of the zombies across the head with the butt of his assault rifle. Another caused him to back down onto the lower level, where some of the others had already been forced. More and more zombies continued to appear, coming out from dark holes like maggots. They were overwhelming.

Hsing struggled to fight back as they closed in on her and grabbed hold of her arms. The Mega Frazzler clattered to the ground. There was no way of escaping.

'BACK OFF OR MASTER GETS HIS BRAINS BLOWN OUT!' boomed a voice that resounded throughout the chamber. The zombies paused and all turned to see Doctor Kryptlocke standing with a pistol to Mayor Electric's temple, flanked by the three remaining members of Cyn's team.

Mayor Electric didn't dare to move. His face was white and drawn.

Hsing looked from Doctor Kryptlocke to the zombies, waiting for what would happen next.

What she didn't expect was laughter. It came from one of the upper levels, and it was unkind, mocking, and distinctly evil. Hsing squinted, and thought she could make out a pale figure standing at the edge of the platform. 'Go ahead,' it said. 'Blow his worthless brains out. You're still going to die.'

Everyone stared up at him. 'Who are you?' demanded Cyn.

'Wait,' said Nester. 'I know that voice...'

'What?' said the figure, peering down into the darkness below. 'Who's that?'

Nester shrugged off the zombies holding onto him as they stared around bemusedly, and stepped forwards. 'What are you doing here, boss?' he asked.

'What am I doing here? What are you doing...gah, don't you ever just stay at home and not interfere with everything?!'

Kennilesque, a little slow, gasped.

'What?' said Rinsamien, even slower. Then, realising: 'Oh!' And then he gasped too.

'Orrdos...' said Plaid, in disbelief.

'Aye!' he said. 'Killed in an unfortunate space-time collapse but now risen from the dead and existing as the indestructible Zomborr!' he declared, throwing up his arms.

To this, nobody said anything. Jesnails scratched her nose.

'REVENGE!' shrieked Zomborr, killing the silence. 'Horrific and bitter revenge! Never again will I be forgotten so easily!'

'Yo, Mayor,' said Jesnails. 'Just which one o' yo' am I exorcisin' here?'

Mayor Electric whimpered. Keeping the gun to his head, Doctor Kryptlocke pushed him forwards. 'You and the Mayor were working together?' she demanded.

Mayor Electric cried out and managed to slip out of her grip. He stumbled forwards, laughing hysterically, and the zombies parted in his way.

Doctor Kryptlocke quickly recovered and aimed the pistol. 'I can still shoot you,' she said.

Mayor Electric sniffed. He looked at her, swaying. 'Do you dudes even know how hard it is to be, like, Mayor?' he moaned. 'I have pressures, dudes!'

Hsing pushed her way through the zombies towards him. 'So you thought you'd kill off half the city by having them eaten alive?' she shouted, walking right up to him and grabbing hold of his shirt.

'Look, dude,' he said, leaning away from her, 'let me explain the deal.'

She let go and pushed him away. 'I'm listening,' she said.

'He promised me control, dudes!' said the Mayor, raising his voice. 'I fucking hate this city! You dudes are always whinging! You, like, have to learn to FUCKING CHILL OUT! But, you never do. But see, if you were all, like, zombies, you'd be so much easier to control. And so easy to satisfy! The deal was, Ambassadude, that I got to stay in my office being all, you know, like, Mayorand chilled out, and Orrdude made the city, like, a totally better place.'

'BRINGING THE CITY TO ITS KNEES THROUGH SYSTEMATIC TERROR!' interjected Zomborr.

'Yeah,' said Mayor Electric.

'And I'll still get away with it too, despite you meddling transvestites!' he added.

'And the ultimate best part,' continued Mayor Electric, 'was where I, like, totally fooled you all by hiring that complete loser to come and do stuff about it. Haha. I rock.

'And now that you're all, like, cosy and stuff here, I'll be seeing you.'

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, and Jesnails slammed the crucifix into his face. His wail was spine-chilling and lengthy as his features melted away. Then he passed out, and dropped to the floor.

'But how exactly did you strike this deal?' asked Plaid, drawing her eyes away from the Mayor's decrepit body and looking up at Zomborr. 'You spoke to him from beyond the grave or what?'

'BaMessenger,' said Zomborr, simply. 'Instant messaging is the new and convenient portal for worldwide and efficient contact with the dead!'

'I think we need to send Ba a stern email,' said Doctor Kryptlocke. 'This can't keep happening.'

'A few silly hand gestures, a little bit of blood and a bookful of dead language later, your old friend is back and here to spread the joy! You doomed bastards. And, diabolically, the only way you can stop us is to destroy me, and I'm all the way up here and out of your petty little mortal reach! Ha ha ha!'

Jesnails hurled the crucifix up at him, and it span through the air with style, hitting him on the head with astounding accuracy. 'Ooft,' he said, and dropped from his great height all the way down to meet them. He groaned and slowly got up.

Kennilesque made his way over to him, and rested a hand on his shoulder. 'You're a decent man, boss, but you're giving a bad name to cannibalism, and I'm afraid we just can't let that happen.'

Zomborr scowled. 'Traitors,' he said.

Kennilesque stepped back, and Ambassador Hsing stepped forwards, lifting the snout of the Mega Frazzler up level with his head. 'This time, stay dead,' she said. There was an increasingly high-pitched whine as the Mega Frazzler charged up, and then three snakes of light hit him in the face, sending him flying across the mausoleum.

At the same time, every reanimated corpse present flopped to the ground.

Plaid nudged one with her foot. 'Yep,' she said. 'They're all nice and properly dead.'

Hsing sighed and dropped the Mega Frazzler on the ground. She rubbed her eyes. 'Finally,' she said, her voice a half-whisper.

'Let's get out of here,' said Doctor Kryptlocke. She walked back to the mouth of the slide and began to climb up a length of black cord she had secured to the skids of the grounded helicopter up above. Slowly, wearily, the others followed her, leaving the dead, and the Mayor, behind.

Except for Jesnails, who had already disappeared.


BaMessenger™ 2.0

BaMessenger™, still here after yet another threat to inferiorkind's existence!

FormerPirateJordan: Yarr! I speak to ye from beyond my watery grave! [evilBa]

Plaid: go away, kid.

FormerPirateJordan: Ye cannot vanquish I! I plague ye soul forevarrrr! Yarrrrrrrrrr!

EvilGoatSpirit: Meeeeeeeuurrrrrrrrr! [evilgoatBa]

Plaid: oh great. you again.

FormerPirateJordan: Gah! Avast ye, goat! [avastBa]

BaMessenger™ 2.1 is now available! Featuring NecromanSafe™, for blocking unwanted spiritual contacts! Click to download.

FormerPirateJordan: Yarr, crap. [sulkingBa]

FormerPirateJordan has been removed from the conversation.

EvilGoatSpirit has been removed from the conversation.


Closing theme: Juno Reactor - Mutant Message

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Thanks for reading.

amelia: yo
i am a yoyo.

Chris: yes

Wait, we were meant to read it?!?






[color=white:39b64100b3]secretly: very funny conclusion, a fitting end to the story

but what happened to those that didn't die?[/color:39b64100b3]

(Playing blind Pictionary, me drawing)
Ella: Is it a giraffe?
Me (stops drawing): No
Ella: Star Trek?
Me: Yes!

Well, I just read the whole thing there!

Aprat from the bit where I died (again) and didn't get to destroy the world, it was all damn good

Why are pirates called pirates?

*claps hands*
Très cool! Especially the epilogue...

"Hoher Sinn liegt oft im kindischen Spiel." (Friedrich Schiller)

Wowizzle. Good job Chris!

Bravo! Huzzah! Encore! ENCORE!

That would also be... CONDENSATION.

Hell, thanks for writing. 'Zombizzles' alone made my week.....I kept chuckling to myself in public and being unable to explain what had amused me :oops:

*hands cj a beer* in official bar wench capacity, I declare cj worthy of all the free alcohol he can consumer before closing time at the church of Doors (even if he is dead again).

PhD Student: Research information sheet

There once was a man named Bruce
Who liked to sit on a spruce
He ate lots of chowder
And yelled at me louder:
"I'm talking to YOU, Mrs. Hughes!"
--> The Literary Genius: Mowgli

Bravo.

Theirs "unfunky souls" will stay with me forever.

"Hoher Sinn liegt oft im kindischen Spiel." (Friedrich Schiller)