Chapter One: Hey Mon, There Be Some Fart Stuff Here

Real MFG's original story by Max Gardner and Travis Taylor

"Never trust a man in a blue trenchcoat.

 Never drive a car when you're dead."

            --Tom Waits

            The sun hung low in the sky like a huge mango suspended from a string as afternoon waned into dusk, bringing little consolation to Nasty Bitch, who crouched, knees tucked to her chin, on the Adirolf shoreline and wondered what events had transpired beneath the waves following the battle of the clans.  She, Bumpy, Santa, and Fernando had escaped the battleground unscathed, and had been told upon reaching Adirolf that Atlantis' myriad corridors and rooms had become a hospital for the wounded, Atlantean and otherwise--the battle had clearly ended, and the remainder of the Atlantean army had searched the battlefield and the blood-soaked ruins of Whitelodge for survivors.  Nasty had heard odd reports of Atlantean soldiers being overtaken by surviving soldiers of all sides who had apparently gone insane from whatever damage they had incurred during the course of the massive confrontation.  These mad soldiers had appeared in small groups in surrounding villages, and disturbing rumors of cannibalism had reached Atlantis by way of the few small towns who remembered the once-great civilization and remained friendly with its people.

            These varied and, no doubt, exaggerated reports did not stay in Nasty's mind for long; a group of Atlantean medics had quickly relieved the group of Miles upon their arrival on the shore, and his condition remained a mystery.  She wished she could see him, if only for a moment, but she supposed he needed whatever rest he could find.  He would recover, of course.  He had to.  The knife hadn't gone deep.

            "So, um...any word about Miles?" Fernando asked, returning from the direction of the town itself, where he had cleaned his rock and bought a round of beer for the assembled crew which waited restlessly for any information from below the surface.

            "Not yet," she said nervously.

            "Wanna see my buddy again," Bumpy sniffed, a remark punctuated by a brief and unimpressive blast of flame from Santa which ignited a patch of dry beach grass behind him.  Bumpy took a deep breath.  "It smells like the beach here."

            "I suppose we'd better get back to the tavern and buy a room for the night," Nasty suggested with a tired sigh--she hadn't been able to sleep since the battle, and every last inch of her cartilaginous skeleton felt as though it would collapse if she didn't get at least a few hours' rest soon.

            "Aren't you their princess?" Santa asked impatiently.  "Why the hell'd they leave us high and dry up here?"

            "We'd only be in the way," Nasty replied.  "They need all the room they can get."

            "Hey, lookit that!" Bumpy exclaimed, pointing frantically to a dome of silver which abruptly parted the waves roughly thirty yards from the shore.  Nasty recognized it as the cockpit of an Atlantean saucer and waved, hauling herself wearily to her feet.  The saucer hovered above the surface for a moment and drifted toward the shoreline, its dome opening as it did to reveal Larry and one of the other two throne-room guards--Nasty had never been able to tell Moe and Curly apart.  As the saucer came to a shaky halt above the sand, Larry grasped the rim of the cockpit and slid off the smooth metallic surface of the vessel, landing on the wet sand with a dull thump.  Nasty noticed the series of bruises about the guard's face and arms, and saw a growing bloodstain on her prismatic breastplate, which had been punctured in numerous places as if by teeth.  One shoulderpad had been ripped off.  Blood obscured the crimson tattoo around her eye.  She lay on the beach for a moment, eyes closed.  One was beginning to swell shut.

            "By Wendt, Larry," Nasty whispered in horror as the others rushed to assist.  "What happened?"

            "Your pal Miles happened," Larry replied bitterly, spitting blood into the sand.  "He jumped me on my way to get more bandages and ran off.  Dammit.  I really screwed things up.  I could've taken the puny little bastard if I'd seen him coming.  He gave Moe a broken arm."

            "I--why would--how--?" Nasty felt her heart sink into her stomach, and stuttered incoherently for a moment, entirely at a loss for words.  She finally set about tearing strips of fabric from her sleeves and bandaging Larry's extensive wounds, which hopefully wouldn't prove fatal.  Moe leaped from the saucer, cradling his right arm, which had been bent at an unnatural angle.  Nasty shook her head in disbelief as she tended the last of the brutal lacerations which graced Larry's arm like a spiderweb, and collapsed to her knees, her breath taken away.  "Miles...."

            "Holy shit on toast," Santa grimaced, rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand.  "What the hell's going on here?"

            "I--I don't know," Nasty stammered, "but we'd better get Larry and Moe to Matlock's and get them a room."

            "Listen," Larry said, nearing unconsciousness.  "Things are turning to shit down there, they're...they're all going crazy, they're...."

            Her sentence was left unfinished as her eyes slowly closed and her hands fell limp at her sides.  Her breath was shallow but steady, and Nasty motioned for Bumpy to help her carry the unconscious Atlantean toward Adirolf's main street, which had been left inexplicably deserted after the battle had reached its conclusion--an occasional passerby, the usual faces peering from dirty windows on all sides, but the town had grown eerily silent, and Nasty found herself increasingly uneasy.  With Santa and Fernando following closely behind, she and Bumpy carefully hoisted Larry up the rickety wooden stairs and through the screen door, which slammed shut loudly behind them as if sealing them into the establishment.  Nasty balked for a moment as she recognized the bartender--the same man Santa had incinerated when they had first encountered him, the same sunken eyes and oddly disjointed, jerky movements.  She frowned as she gazed about the strangely empty tavern, and quickly dismissed this growing sense of discomfort as paranoia.

            With Larry safely in a warm bed and with Moe watching over her, Nasty wondered what the hell Miles had been thinking, if it had in fact been Miles who had attacked the guards--Bizkicka had been shattered during the battle, and she couldn't imagine him inflicting such impressive wounds with his bare hands.  Perhaps the same madness which had seized the other soldiers had claimed Miles as well.  Nasty shook her head, pushing such thoughts from her mind.  She would find her answers soon enough.  She gazed out at the beach, where the saucer still rested on its spidery legs, the advancing tide washing over its clawlike feet.

-----

            "Do you have any idea how to fly one of these things?" Santa asked, nervously glancing about the plain interior of the cockpit.

            "We'll see," Nasty replied quietly, her blood filled with a newfound determination: Miles was all right; Larry had been mistaken.  Nasty flicked a series of levers on the stone control panel before her and felt the craft come to life around her.  A low thrumming emanated from somewhere below the cockpit, which abruptly became transparent, providing a full view of its surrounding environs.  It couldn't be all that difficult to pilot; after all, the Atlanteans seemed to manage well enough, and she couldn't help but feel something of an intellectual gap between herself and her people.  She grasped the arms of her seat as the saucer hovered above the beach, its metallic legs retracting into the hatch on its underside.  Bumpy let out a high-pitched shriek as the craft plunged into the waves and began to descend, the water around the cockpit casting a rippling pattern of blue light over its interior.

            The saucer docking bay, located at the tip of the southernmost point of the huge, irregular hub which comprised Atlantis' main building, was in a state of disrepair, and Nasty's heart sank still further as she saw that several of the light orbsset into the perfectly carved stone walls had been shattered.  What little light remained in the docking area was dim and flickering, little stronger than the light cast by a campfire.  Nasty pulled back on the two prominent levers on the control panel and the vessel came to a shaky halt in three feet of water as the bay doors closed behind it.  Nasty breathed a sigh of relief and released the dome.  The air in the docking bay was stale and smelled of old bandages and mildew.  She wondered how often the Atlanteans bothered to clean it.  Her first order of business as princess--

            "Damn," Santa muttered.  "Something's wrong here."

            "Yeah, it's--" Bumpy slipped on the saucer's smooth exterior and fell into the water.

            "Look," Nasty whispered, grabbing the edge of the saucer and dropping into the pool, followed by Santa, whose impact created a series of small waves across the still surface.  A small group of men had gathered in the shadows which had swallowed the farthest corner of the docking bay.  Nasty recognized two of them as Shitty-shama (both in armor covered with blood) and three as Rammsteiners.  A Navarone soldier, brandishing two ornate rifles as if they were precious artifacts from some ancient society, circled the main group, staggering comically.  His left leg was covered in blood-soaked bandages.  One of the Rammsteiners, a skinny little black-clad man with a pair of spoons inserted into his nostrils, reached for one of the Navarone soldier's guns.  The Navarone held onto the weapon for a moment before surrendering it to the other man, who staggered off holding it triumphantly in both hands.  The other four soldiers were gathered around something in the water, something Nasty couldn't see clearly from this distance.

            "Umm, I think we'll stay here and, um...wait for you guys to report or something," Fernando suggested, perching his rock on the control panel.

            "What the hell are they doing?" Santa asked in hushed tones.

            Nasty approached cautiously, taking care to remain in shadow when possible.  She looked down and saw with horror that the water around her had turned red.  The frenzied reports from the Atlantean soldiers in Adirolf all came to her in a rush: the collective insanity which had apparently seized a good portion of the survivors, the rumors of people in neighboring villages being attacked and half-eaten in their homes by the madmen.  She backed away as she saw the object around which the group of wounded soldiers had assembled: it was a corpse, an Atlantean guard stripped of armor and largely of flesh, one eye staring blankly from a bloody skull.  One of the Rammsteiners chewed contentedly on an arm and made a halfhearted attempt to fend off the gun-toting Navarone officer, who tried to elbow his way into the feast.

            "Isn't somebody supposed to be watching the patients?" Bumpy asked nervously, doing his best to hide behind Santa.

            "Patients, my tail," Nasty breathed as the group of soldiers turned to regard the new arrivals with dark, hungry eyes.  "These are the cannibals, dammit."

            "Uh...this really kind of sucks." Santa said, huffing through his chin.

            "Santa, I think we're going to need some of your firepower here." Santa scratched the back of his neck and cleared his throat.

            "Uh...that'd be a bit difficult right now..."

            "What?!"

            "Well, the reindeer were bored, so I started showing them some tricks-"

            "What?!" A few of the cannibals took notice of them and started shuffling toward them.

            "Should have seen those smoke rings though."

            "Yeah," Bumpy agreed with a smirk.

            "Besides, don't you have your crossbow?"

            "I'm all out of bolts right now."  The three stared at each other for a few seconds. It was one of those moments in which no one knew whether or not to run, hit one of their companions, or all cooperate to fend off the attackers.

            "Bumpy! Your shoelace is untied!" Nasty yelped.

            "Huh? Oh thanks, buddy, I would have tripped otherw-AGH!" Nasty shoved him from behind in the general direction of the cannibals, who quickly fell on him, and started devouring his underdeveloped body.

            "Santa, run!"

            "B-but..."

            "He'll be back later, run!" She took off down one of the hallways, with Santa ambling after her.

            "Ho." Santa muttered under his breath.

            "What?!"

            "-ho-ho..."

            "Oh." As the natural light of the day became obscured by the depths of the water, it occurred to Nasty that none of the lights were in working order. She looked around at the shapes in the shadows, unsure of whether or not they were statues, water fountains, or more mad soldiers.

            "Hey, wait a minute!" Santa said suddenly. "Tear off one of your sleeves! We'll make a torch out of that and your crossbow."

            "But the armory's around here somewhere, if we can get to it I'll be able to stock up on bolts and we can start kicking ass instead of running away with our tails between our legs," Nasty whispered, ducking behind the ruins of a nearby fountain.  Cold water still jetted from its spout, which had been toppled presumably by one of the cannibals.  It struck her like a blow from an armored fist: the connection between these "survivors," whom she had assumed were simply soldiers driven insane by their wounds and the sight of their friends being slaughtered, and the creatures the party had encountered in Raccoon Village.  The Rammstein Clan, she realized, must have brought canisters of their zombie gas to the battle, releasing the stuff when the tides had turned against them.  These were no madmen--these were the living dead.  Running away with their tails between their legs suddenly seemed a rather more inviting prospect than it had a moment ago.  She pulled Santa behind the fountain and crouched in the gently-flowing river which ran through these hallways.  "Santa, these guys are already dead...."

            "What the hell are you talkin' about, just gimme the crossbow!" Santa hissed.  Nasty reluctantly handed him the weapon and tore off another strip of fabric from the hem of her tunic.  Santa wrapped the strip around the crossbow, creating a makeshift torch which, Nasty supposed, would be better than nothing.  "That should do--"

            One of the zombies lurched between the two of them with a groan, and Nasty quickly grabbed its ankles before it could regain its bearings.  In its efforts to shake her off, the creature tripped and went head-over-heels into the broken fountain.

            "Ouuuuuaaauugh," it said with an irked expression on its half-chewed face.

            Santa strained and finally managed to create a small spark which lit the fabric tied around Nasty's crossbow.  He thrust the weapon forward, catching the undead soldier's shirt and arm on fire as it struggled to its feet.  The zombie fell back, clutching its burning face.  It shambled off down the darkened hallway, illuminating the corpses of several half-eaten guards slumped against the walls.  Nasty breathed a sigh of mixed relief and disgust, one hand clasped over her pounding heart.  Santa mopped the sweat from his forehead and swerved to face a series of small splashes approaching from the direction of the docking bay.  Bumpy, struggling against the current, staggered into the torchlight.  Nasty wondered if Fernando was safe within the confines of the saucer.

            "Wait a damn minute, how'd that guy just walk off?" Santa asked incredulously.  "We set the bastard on fire."

            "They're zombies, dumbass," Nasty said, gesturing wildly.

            "Huh."

            "Let's get the hell out of here." They looked around, at the variety of corridors.

            "Uh...buddies, which way do we go?" Nasty scratched her chin.

            "Well...the armory's pretty far from here, but I think we can make it. Halfway along is one of the workshops, which'll have saws and whatnot."

            Santa snorted.  "Great, we'll amputate a finger from one of them if they try to bite us. Fuckin' beautiful. Where's my scotch?" He reached into a pocket in his bright red pants a pulled out a small metal flask. "Ah..." He took a hearty swig before putting it back into his pocket.

            "Come on." Nasty darted off to one of the hallways.

            "Nasty, how do you know which way to go?"

            "There's a sign right next to you, dumbass." Nasty felt poorly for snapping at everyone, but they were acting far too casual about nearly being devoured by undead soldiers. Also, she wanted to find Miles. She didn't feel the same way about him as Fernando, but still....

            She hurried to the workroom door and flicked the switch which activated the wall-mounted torches, glad, and not for the first time, that her physiology didn't allow for blushing.  A single torch flickered long enough to illuminate a mess of upturned furniture and twisted steel, and then guttered into darkness once more.  Santa's crossbow-torch did little to cast light over the small, jumbled room, and Nasty kept her back to the wall, prepared to run--the zombies had obviously been here, and some might have remained, waiting for an easy meal.  She stopped dead in her tracks as the torchlight caught something dull and metal: it was an open box of nails, spilled over a largely intact wooden workbench.  The bench, she saw upon closer inspection, was missing a leg, and a can of black paint had been knocked on its side, oozing black over the plain wood.

            "Santa, this...this just doesn't feel right," Nasty said, feeling the shadows creeping in on her.

            "What was that?" Santa raised his torch, throwing a dim orange light over a metal storage locker in the farthest corner of the room.  Two of its doors had been smashed and torn off their hinges.  The third had been severely dented.  From the inside.

            "Maybe it's Miles," Nasty said hopefully as she approached the mutilated locker.  Whatever had been inside was now silent.

            "Maybe you're crazy," Santa retorted, turning his back to the locker.  His own personal torch had apparently rejuvenated, and he was fully prepared to use it if worse came to worse.

            Nasty darted forward, slammed the locker door open, and leaped back as a diminutive shape lurched out of the jumble of armor and tools within.  The zombie was just over three feet in height, and had been decapitated by some blunt object wielded with considerable force, as ragged scraps of flesh still ringed its neck.  The undead midget crawled forward slowly and grabbed blindly for Nasty's ankle, apparently unaware of the fact that its head was missing.  Nasty reached for a hammer on the nearby workbench and buried its claw in the creature's spine.  Bone snapped with a sickening sound like that of a hammer striking a zombie midget.  The thing groped for its prey again and fell limp.  Nasty held her nose as she noticed the smell which had escaped the locker, rancid and stinking.

            "What in all creation is that stench?" she gagged.

            "It's piss," Santa exclaimed, igniting the midget's remains and adding the unpleasant odor of cooking flesh to the already overwhelming miasma.  "The little fucker was soaked in piss."

            "Oh my Wendt," Nasty croaked after a moment, shaking her head in utter disbelief.  "It can't be....  Miles, what were you thinking...?"

            "At the very least," Santa said, producing another flask, "he'll have wiped out a few of them."

            "Something's wrong with our buddy," Bumpy said.

            "No shit." Nasty looked around for telltale signs of Miles, but no more urine soaked midgets were evident. "Let's try to find the armory. There's a hangar nearby, too."

            "Where's the armory?"  Nasty shrugged.

            "Try going left. I think Miles probably tore down whatever signs he passed."

            They went left.

            They continued for about a half an hour, partially thankful to whatever pyschosis had taken hold of Miles. Nearly every zombie had been beaten into a fine red paste, most of which had a telltale nailhole somewhere in them. Eventually, they came across a massive room filled with ancient towering statues.

            "This is kinda creepy," Bumpy said, regarding the stone sentinels on either side. "It's like they're watching us."

            "That would be hard. All of their heads have been smacked off."

            "Oh yeah....how 'bout that." Bumpy said in a gravelly voice.

            A stifled groan echoed through the room.

            "Dammit!" Santa said, furiously looking around. "Where the hell did that come from?" A figure jumped out fromthe shadows at Santa.

            "Help m-" The figure was cut off in mid-sentence as Santa incinerated him.

            "Uh...Santa?" Bumpy stood over the charred wreckage that had been a person a few seconds before.

            "Yeah?"

            "That was a person."

            "Oh hell, I'm only human."

            "You're the anthropomorphic personification of Christmas!"

            "Close enough."

            Bumpy shrugged.

            "Nasty?" Santa whispered as a faint shuffling sound echoed through this hall of stone warriors--ancient Atlantean heroes, perhaps.  Nasty hadn't taken the time to tour her new kingdom thoroughly.  The shuffling gradually faded into silence, and the three of them breathed a sigh of relief.  "Why'd they make this place so damn scary?"

            Nasty chose to ignore the question, instead motioning for Bumpy and Santa to follow close behind her as the trio navigated the eerie arrangement of stone statues.  The path between this strange garden was strewn with rubble from the decapitated warriors, and Nasty held back a powerful urge to vomit as she noted by the light of the fading torch that a good percentage of the debris was organic in nature; rotting, lacerated arms and shattered skulls littered the network of paths through this strange stone garden.  Miles had passed through here, and not long ago.  Nasty wondered what he had become--a madman like so many others who had found the actual experience of battle far different than the prospect of it, or had he simply fleed the zombie hordes and mistaken Larry for one of their number on his way? She found the second possibility considerably more reassuring than the first, although the demolished workshop indicated that the other was more likely.

            "Gah!" Santa yelped as a thin, overcoated figure ran into him from behind, toppling him to the floor.  Fernando shrieked and darted behind a statue, Bob springing into existence behind him.  Santa picked himself up, dusting off his suit and taking another swig of scotch.  "Shit.  Fernando."

            "Oh, I--Mr. Claus, I'm sorry, um--" Fernando staggered, twiddling his fingers.  Nasty saw with a flash of anger that he had taken the time to carry his boulder with him.  It rested tauntingly among the rest of the rubble.  Nasty resisted the urge to pick the thing up and fling it off into the darkness.  "I got sort of scared, so I thought, um--I thought we'd follow you guys instead." He paused and peered sheepishly over the wire rims of his spectacles.  "Is that okay?"

            "Let's go," Nasty muttered as the summoner lifted his rock.  She nodded at Bob.  "And put that thing out, we're going to attract every damn zombie in the place."

            Bob dwindled to roughly the size and brightness of a candle's flame, and as the small group reached an adjoining corridor which had remained largely intact and apparently zombie-free (no remains littered the floor, and no blood stained its walls) Nasty let out a breath she had been holding in for what had seemed hours.  The various narrow hallways which branched off from this main corridor had escaped most of the carnage, and the debris was confined to a few shattered lights here and there.

            "I guess they didn't get this far," Bumpy said.

            Nasty clamped a hand over the boy's mouth as a lone zombie, this one an Atlantean guard with a shattered mask revealing half his face, which had been chewed away by his fellow undead, staggered into the corridor and lifted a hand to his face to shield his eyes from the light.  Curly still clutched a long spear tightly in one hand as he turned to face Nasty, Bumpy, Santa, and Fernando.  Nasty swore under her breath and motioned for Santa to hand her the flaming crossbow.

            "What, are you going to light him on fire?" Santa asked, passing it over.

            "No...I'm giving him the death I know he wanted." Santa nodded solemnly, expecting some sort of dramatic explosion.

            Nasty lunged at Curly, and shrieking wildly, beat him over the head repeatedly with the flaming crossbow.

            "Woob," Curly said before falling over, his face a ruined, charred mess.

            "Rest in peace, Curly," Nasty said mournfully.

            "That's pretty disgusting," Santa said between swigs from his flask.

            "Santa?" Nasty said, wiping the gore from her face.

            "Yeh?"

            "I need a swig of something or other."

            "What would you like?"

            "Hm?"

            "I've got..." Santa started rummaging through his pockets. "...vodka, rum, scotch, gin, tequila-"

            "Whatever." Santa tossed her a small metal flask with a naked woman embossed onto one side. Nasty unscrewed the lid, and sucked down a hearty gulp.

            "Thanks. Let's keep moving."

            The armory was in a state of disarray similar to that of the workshop, but was thankfully free of undead infestation.  Stone shelves and metal lockers stood on all sides, and Nasty grabbed several boxes of crossbow bolts, the points of which she wrapped in strips of fabric torn from her sleeves (which were growing steadily shorter as a result).  Bob grew slightly brighter, giving off enough light to allow her to safely unwrap the crossbow itself and stamp the burning fabric out on the floor.

            "Let's grab what we can and get to the throne room," she said after arming the bow and checking its firing mechanisms.  All seemed to be in order.  Nasty ducked under the table and searched the broken furniture for whatever weapons or other useful items--torches, medical supplies--might remain.  Finding no larger weapons, she eventually settled on a sturdy crossbow harness, which she quickly threw over her shoulder, and a long, curved sword which she found tossed among the debris.  She imagined it would do a nice enough job of taking off any zombie's topmost portion.  Santa selected a handful of throwing daggers from a large display of them, and Fernando reached for a halberd which rested on a pair of metal prongs driven into the wall.

            "Whoa!" Bumpy exclaimed, hefting a crossbow the size of his upper body.  The barrel was a ridiculous contraption which easily held ten bolts at once, and it took the bony young man a few moments to lift the enormous weapon to the level of his shoulder.

            "Wendt dammit, boy!" Santa cursed, ducking behind the table at the center of the armory.  "Watch it with that thing!"

            "If you were running from a mob of zombies, where would you go?" Nasty mused, ignoring Bumpy as he feigned aiming his crossbow at Santa, who leapt on the skinny little freak with a grunt.

            "Huh?" Bumpy wheezed from beneath the fat man in red.

            "If anyone's survived this," Nasty continued, "where would they be hiding?"

            "Anywhere they can," Santa shrugged, giving Bumpy a pile driver for good measure and bending his leg at an odd angle.  "AVALANCHE!"

            "Will you two be serious?" Nasty bellowed, and the two wrestlers glanced up from their sparring match.  "Look, if there's one place they'll think to go to, it's the throne room." She scratched her head.  "The problem is getting there.  Let's stock up on whatever we can find and make a break for it.  As long as they're split up, the zombies shouldn't be much of a problem, and I don't think they're smart enough to travel in groups any larger than the one we saw in the docking bay.  Any questions?"

            "What happens if we get split up?" Bumpy inquired, attempting to draw sufficient breath into his lungs (no doubt half-collapsed under the weight of the larger man).  "What if we do run into a lot of 'em at once?"

            "You ask too many questions, my little monkey," Nasty replied, loading a series of bolts into her crossbow and taking aim at an imaginary opponent.  "If we lose each other just run for the throne room.  If you run into a group larger than ten...well.  Just try to take a few of them down with you."

            Bumpy gulped nervously and lifted the crossbow to his shoulder, straining to support its weight.  Santa unbuttoned the flap at the back of his pants.

            The corridor outside was quiet and dark, and Nasty kept on her guard for zombies--they had obviously either broken the lights or tampered with whatever unknown power source supplied them with their glow.  The first possibility was thankfully the case, as her feet crunched into a pile of broken glass on the floor below where the nearest glow-orb had been located only minutes before.  Perhaps the undead creatures had simply bypassed the armory in the darkness, or maybe...  Or maybe they weren't hungry, Nasty thought with a shiver.  It was a wonder Santa and Bumpy hadn't attracted every zombie in Atlantis with their bickering, and Fernando stood with his halberd clutched to his scrawny chest, radiating fear, a rancid, sweaty smell which followed him like a cloud of gnats.

            "There," Santa whispered, pointing shakily at a vaguely humanoid shape in the darkness, a silhouette barely visible in the dying sunlight.  Nasty struck a match and set fire to the torch she had retrieved from the armory.  She felt her stomach churn as she saw that the zombie was crouched over the body of another undead soldier whose arms twitched spasmodically, a last bit of whatever unlife drove the creatures still stubbornly refusing to let go.  "That's disgusting."

            "Other way," Nasty murmured, pushing her three companions in the opposite direction.  The zombie tore a chunk of flesh from the corpse and abruptly swerved to face the sound of Santa's heavy footsteps.  "Shit."

            The zombie stumbled awkwardly to its feet and lurched toward the group, its arms outstretched.  Nasty winced as the corpse hauled itself after the undead Shitty-shama which had been devouring the contents of its chest cavity.  It might have once been a Foot soldier, but Nasty could no longer recognize the bloodied uniform--it might have been a Rammsteiner.  She couldn't tell, as too much of its face had been eaten to hold in any silverware which might have been shoved up the nostrils or through the cheeks.

            "Wendt," Nasty gasped, leveling the crossbow at the first zombie and burying two bolts between its glazed eyes.  The armored man fell without a sound, and the pathetically stumbling zombie behind him tripped over the body, regaining its bearings with considerable difficulty.  Nasty held a hand to her mouth, certain she was going to vomit, and averted her gaze as she pulled the trigger.  The bolts fell short and lodged in the wall.  The zombie eagerly closed the distance between Nasty and itself, and she felt its unnaturally powerful grip, slick with blood, on her arm a moment before she brought the crossbow to bear and knocked the creature back with a well-placed arrow in the forehead.  The zombie collapsed on top of its companion with a disappointed groan.

            Nasty didn't need to ask Santa for his flask of scotch, as he passed it to her with an expression of admiration as well as disgust.

            "I--let's go," Nasty said, her voice wavering slightly as she motioned for Santa, Bumpy, and Fernando to follow her down the darkened corridor.

-----

Chapter Two: Don't Call Him Sean, Call Him SEEN!!