Chapter 6
It was audience participation time and so I was hung by my wrists from
the stage and the good folks of Longview had at me with a variety of weapons
ranging from barbed wire whips through chains, finally finishing up with the
ever popular Bowie knife. I was a rather tattered zombie terrorist by the time
that segment of the presentation ended. Then for the grand finale they hung me
using razor wire, which gradually cut through my neck until I was not so neatly
decapitated. A few minutes before my body and I parted company, I was doused
with some highly flammable liquid and ignited. The flames must have jumped
fifteen feet into the air bringing waves of delighted applause and shouts of
glee from the asembled throng. Just as my body dropped away from my head the
fireworks went off right on cue and the good folks of Longview stood as one and
sang the Church of the Crusader hymn of victory. All in all, a good time had
been had by all, except yours truly.
We arrived in Tyler a day and a half later; the main highways were still
damaged to the point that we had to take a number of detours. However this still
gave me sufficient time to reconstitute once we reached our destination. The
show the following evening went off without a hitch. Here the crew was able to
hook up the speaker in my throat to the sound system in the small stadium and
treat the audience to the horrifying sounds that were wrung from this "truly
terrified", (once more the words of the commander) terrorist zombie by the
outraged citizens who took turns demonstrating their hatred for this evil
servant of the godless demons from the Blue states. For a little change of pace
during the grand finale, while I was hanging from the razor wire, they had a
number of local heroes from the war use chain saws to separate my body into a
number of chunks as the audience went wild with patriotic fervor. By now I could
sing the Church of the Crusader victory hymn backwards as well as forwards. Then
it was on to Dallas, for three big shows.
It was a long trip, made necessary because the main highways leading
into Dallas were still under repair, and might still be for the next few years
acording to what I heard from the commander's comments to his underlings.
However after the better part of two days and nights we pulled into the city for
three big shows, all to take place in perhaps the only large, undamaged stadium
in the entire New Freedom nation. The opening show was before an audience of at
least ten thousand people, the biggest we'd had on the entire tour. Opening
night was a bit more brutal in keeping with the size of the crowd.
I was not only sliced and diced with the usual weapons such as barbed
wire, but I also took some terrible treatment from one veteran who used a flail
to shred me to tatters, managing to tear half of one breast away as the audience
roared their approval. I was able to follow the action by looking up at one of
the huge screens that was giving every person here a front row seat. It's a
strange sensation to watch yourself being ripped to pieces and yet not feel a
thing that is transpiring. It's during these moments that I usually concentrate
on watching the faces of those who seem to be enjoying themselves to the limit
of their capability.
You can imagine what I am thinking at that point as well. One of my
intermediate goals is to somehow break free of my bonds during one of these
orgies of violence and run amok in the audience as an exercise of my capability
for destruction. There is a small part of me that grudgingly acknowledges that
perhaps I have now experienced so much violence towards my person that there is
a small element of celebration in what will occur as I work my way through the
hordes of Red staters, leaving a trail of blood and death in my wake. I am
curious about how many Red staters I might dispatch before being forced to flee
into the wilderness to once more stalk the human prey that populate this region.
Once this phase of the event was over, something new was added. The
commander hadn't alerted me to this, so I was as interested as the audience in
what was to come next. A small group of militia, veterans of civil war 2 who
acted to prevent the California survivors from escaping into Mexico, marched
onto the stage. I was still hanging from the chains, the blood pumps working
away to simulate what a living creature might look like after such brutal
handling. I noticed that they were all carrying old style rifles with bayonets
attached. I wondered if I was about to be shot full of holes by what passed for
a firing squad. Then I heard the one in charge of the squad announce "Fix
bayonets!" Then I got it, in more ways than one.
Each member of the group took a pass at me, burying his bayonet into my
body and then tearing it up or sideways in an attempt to create a larger wound.
Quite a few took dead aim at my groin, especially the vulva. Many hit home and
it was interesting to watch the expressions on their faces when one of the more
accurate managed to bury his shaft of steel deep inside my ersatz vagina and
then pull and twist the blade as he screamed and even in some of the more
frenzied cases, frothed at the mouth in their fury. It is moments like this that
steel my resolve to escape and go back to what I was designed to do.
After the "firing squad" got done turning me into what appeared to be a
bleeding piece of meat, I was prepared for the grand finale. By now the audience
was collectively frothing at the mouth , awaiting my total destruction in some
horrible manner. I was manacled to a rectangular frame of metal and wrapped in
barbed wire. Then about a dozen muscular members of the audience used clubs to
drive the barbed wire deep into my body as a warmup for my big finish. All the
time they were driving the barbed wire deeper and deeper into my torn and
tattered body, a couple of members of of the local militia were preparing me to
be hung from my neck using the old tried and true favorite, razor wire.This time
the hook for the crowd of screaming, blood-thirsty humans was the lumberjack
special, a particularly violent and brutal assault on what was left of my body.
Once the muscle men had finished driving the last of the barbed wire
into my private and public parts, the fun began. A noose of razor wire was
looped round my neck and drawn tight, beginning the process of decapitation. It
was now time for the variation in the standard big finish. Two local heroes
armed with axes, the kind used to chop down the local forests for lumber, took
up their stances on either side of me. At a nod from one of the local leaders of
the Church of the Crusader they started hacking away at my body.
This was no completely berserk attack, it was done with a degree of
precision considering the implements they had to use. Almost simultaneously my
feet were chopped off, then my legs at the kneecaps, and finally at the juncture
to my torso. By now one of the men had taken a small lead over his companion. It
was then that I realized it was a contest. I was unable to ascertain what
defined victory, but I would discover that very soon at the rate they were
butchering me. All the while this was going on, the wire was doing its job as
well, first slicing slowly across my neck and then gaining speed as the amount
of material holding my head attached to my body was reduced.
The one slightly ahead landed a pair of vicious blows to my midsection,
leaving the remainder for his opponent to hew away, and then moved up to neaty
hack one of my bleeding breasts from my chest wall. He then took his stance,
readying himself for the winning blow, which would result in my head being
separated from the chunks that used to be my body. It was then that I realized
there were two things that constituted victory, arriving at my neck first and
then slicing my head off before the razor wire did. It was close, but the razor
wire did its work a fraction of a second before the blow landed. This distracted
the axe wielder just enough that he managed to shear away the lower portion of
my face, bringing a frenzied roar of approval from the mob of totally insane
folk. In retrospect I had to admit that for unmitigated violence and sheer
barbaric behavior, this one was very near the top of the scale.
It took most of the time between performances for me to reconstitute my
badly damaged body. I received no sympathy from my manager who expressed a great
deal of unhappiness in some of the unplanned actvities that had occurred at last
night's performance. At the next performance there were no surprises as far as I
was concerned. The militia did their thing and the rest of the activities went
off as planned, "by the book" as the commander said. Then it was time for the
grand finale and this was the first time in a while that more modern technology
was employed to destroy me before the eager throngs of Red staters.
My torn up body, bleeding profusely from various areas, was chained to a
group of motorcycles, and dragged slowly around the stadium to give everyone a
good close look at the terrorist zombie being prepared for her just desserts.
Four heavy links of chain ran from the metal collar around my neck and were
connected to the rear assemblies of the motorcycles. My arms were manacled
together at wrist, elbow and bicep, but otherwise I was unfettered. I could see
a crew of men working on the surface of the oval track upon which I was to be
dragged once more, but they were too far away to show me exactly what they were
doing. I found out shortly.
They took one circuit at a fairly respectable speed as I bounced along
behind them , scraping off patches of skin and opening up some new cuts. My
breasts, that had been turned to twin lumps of bleeding meat, were taking a
brutal beating, but my head was relatively unscathed, which I'm sure was no
accident. Then they gunned the engines of the bikes and tore around the track
one more time to the roar of the crowd, which was on their feet and screaming.
It was difficult to see since my body was bumping from side to side and on
occasion becoming airborne so that I skipped like a stone across the surface of
water.
Then I struck something that ripped my body into shredded meat. I was
twenty yards beyond the point of impact before I realized I'd been dragged
across at least three circular ripsaws that had been running at top speed. I was
positive they hadn't been there on the other laps. They must have been buried
and then deliberately raised on this, my last lap for the night. My arms and
legs were gone and my torso had been ripped apart from neck to vulva. Only a few
scraps of skin and shredded meat were holding what was left of my torso to my
head. The audience was going crazy. Then the fireworks went off and the mob
began bellowing the victory hymn on cue as its words began to course across the
giant screen that was also showing what was left of me being dragged off the
track as the motorcycles headed beneath the stands.
After another lengthy reconstitution, more on that subject in a moment,
I was barely ready for the third and fnal show for the Dallas people. As it
turned out, I'd seen and experienced it all before, so I managed to get through
the last show on shall we say, automatic pilot. This time the grand finale was
sort of meat and potatoes. After being multilated beyond recognition by the good
people of Dallas, my body was chained to four ATVs and my limbs ripped off as
the drivers gradually eased their vehicles from one gear to the next. Then a
squad of local dignitaries, some I'd already encountered in the private session,
buttressed by some local citizens who had been chosen by lot, proceeded to chop
my torso into bits with saws, axes and even those ubiquitous Bowie knives that
seemed to abound in this area of New Freedom. A good time was had by all, except
this terrorist zombie who was beginning to wonder if she had made the right call
when offered this opportunity to continue waging war against the Red states and
their citizens.
On the way to the thriving metropolis of Denton for yet another show, I
remember assessing the situation once again and coming to the same conclusion.
It was still to my advantage to keep taking whatever these people could dish out
in hopes of beating the odds just one time. Early in the tour it appeared that
luck was with me when the vehicle carrying my head had an accident and the
following vehicle, containing my body, inadvertently got within a hundred yards
of me before being warned to keep its distance no matter what the situation.
That bit of luck had kept my confidence high for most of this tour.
Nothing unique happened in Denton. It was the usual rape and mutilation
at the private session and more audience participation and additional mutilation
at the "patriotic manifestation of unity" event. The only thing that was
beginning to concern me was the fact that my original animated body had lost
almost ninety percent of itself through the various travails that it was put
through during this grand tour. It was not common knowledge, but if by chance
all my original material was somehow spread out over the entire area of New
Freedom, it would not be possible to reconstitute me. Original material was the
source of the nucleation that allows the other ersatz material such as cadaver
parts or even carcasses of dead animals to grow into a zombie. Take away the
seed, and no growth, just a head that can do very little without a body. My
handler/manager was aware of this fact, having been given intensive briefings on
the subject of the operation and maintenance of a zombie.
