II: 28 Day Ago
It was the kind of beautiful day that makes you glad to be alive in a world that isn’t overrun with a rage-filled, flesh eating zombie-monkey virus. The sky was blue, with just a few puffy white clouds floating above. A light breeze rustled the leaves of the trees, and the song of the birds and the hum of insects was the only other sound that could be heard. It was warm, but not too hot considering this was Texas in summer.
The shifty and eccentric Johnny Go and his beautiful and psychotic sidekick Dixie Doublestacks sat on lawn chairs at the end of the driveway at Brooklyn Heights Ranch. Behind them, the archway of the ranch stood proudly, displaying the ranch’s name. In front of them, the small country road, known only by its route number, rather and a name, ran past the ranch and had very little traffic save for the occasional dusty pickup truck and rusted tractor. All was quiet and peaceful.
Dixie and Johnny had a cooler full of beer between them, and rainbow umbrellas clipped to the backs of their chairs. Johnny held a string in one hand, which was attached to a stick that was propping up a box at the edge of the road. Under the box, they had placed a bunch of bananas, a bottle of banana daiquiri rum, and a box of cigars because they assumed that this is what monkeys would want. It was a misguided cartoon set up if ever there was one.
“This is way better,” Dixie said, adjusting her sunglasses, which were glittery and shaped like pineapples. She wore a tattered aloha dress and was barefoot.
“Way better,” Johnny replied. He, too, wore some aloha gear: his usual rumpled, threadbare shirt, which was completely unbuttoned. He wore a beach towel around his waist, and a fedora.
“Way better,” Dixie said again. Johnny nodded in agreement.
“Why do all that work when we can just sit back and wait for the monkeys to come to us? Here, hold this while I get another beer.” He handed the string to Dixie and grabbed two more beers out of the cooler.
“I mean, we’ve been out here for a few hours now,” Dixie said. “We haven’t caught any monkeys, but we spent, like, a month in Europe and didn’t get any, either, and that shit was exhausting. At least here we're sitting down.”
“I’m still so mad that you can’t just buy monkeys, you know? It’s offensive.”
“I know. What’s up with that? You can buy other animals. Johnson bought a bull just the other day, and he didn't have to go to a shady black market guy or anything.”
“And speaking of shady black market guys, what the fuck with Tommy? For being our go-to shady black market guy, he really shit the bed this time.”
“He was all, ‘I can only get you five’,” Dixie said, mockingly. “And he calls himself a smuggler!”
“Dick.”
“He acted like a thousand monkeys as so many monkeys.”
“A thousand monkeys is not that many!”
“And it’s not like monkeys are rare. The fucking world’s teeming with ‘em.”
“Well, that’s why it’ll only be a matter of time before we catch all the monkeys we need. And it’ll be free.” They sat for a while in silence. Finally, Johnny spoke.
“I kinda wanna drink that rum we put in the trap,” he said.
“Yeah, me too. Do you think the monkeys'll care?”
“Nah, they still have the bananas and the cigars. And we can always replace the rum with that bottle of ‘shine I hid in the barn.”
“Ok, I’ll grab the rum. Don’t pull the string, though. I don’t wanna get trapped in the box.” Dixie staggered to the box, grabbed the rum, and ran back to her lawn chair. She seemed relieved, and she took a long drink before passing the bottle to Johnny.
“I could kinda go for a hot dog now,” she said.
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
“Should we take a break, or should we bring the grill out here?”
“Eh, I think we can take a break. Besides, I’m getting a little warm, so we could go for a swim while we’re at it.” With that, they abandoned their set up and made their way to the backyard of the ranch house.
“This totally beats doing stuff,” Johnny said as they walked.
“Stuff is hard.”
“Let’s not do anything else for a while.”
“Deal.”
As they disappeared into the backyard, a small, disgusting CHUD crept up to the box trap, snatched the bananas, and scampered back to its underground home.
Three days earlier…
Dixie and Johnny clung to the top of Big Ben in London. They each chugged from a bottle of cheap scotch and clutched long range sniper rifles in their hands. They wore what appeared to be one piece Air Force flight suits, which had sprays of blood stains on them.
Below them was a city in chaos. Car alarms and emergency sirens blared, smoke poured from various windows, fires raged. Above the city, thick clouds of acrid smoke hung in the air, and explosions could be heard in the distance. Military style helicopters hovered, but appeared to be helpless. Far in the distance, some military tanks advanced, but directly below Big Ben was a free for all. Hoards of rabid, zombie-monkey people raged through the streets, searching for flesh and destroying everything in their paths. A large hoard was gathered at the base of Big Ben, and some started to climb the sides, standing on bodies of dismembered people to get leverage and climb higher. Inside the building, other infected people broke through the windows, some falling many storeys to the street, where they managed to get up and continue to rage.
Anyone unlucky enough to still be human and find themselves in the path of one of the hoards was not long for this world. At this point, there were so many infected people that anyone they fell upon would be torn to pieces. However, the transmission of the virus required only a small drop of blood or saliva, and so people were still becoming infected, and the outbreak continued to get worse.
Dixie tucked her scotch bottle between her legs and lifted the rifle. Looking through the high powered scope, she took aim at the hoard and fired. They were grouped so closely together that it was almost impossible to miss. The head of a zombie-monkey person exploded, sending a shower of gore onto those around it. The rest of the hoard didn’t seem to notice. She fired again. And again.
Johnny took up his rifle and aimed for a different hoard. Heads similarly exploded. He accidentally hit a human, but shrugged it off. After emptying the gun, he set it down and picked up his scotch again.
“This shit’s gonna take forever,” he said to Dixie. She put her gun down as well.
“What are you thinking? Total teardown?”
“Eh, yeah, but it just seems so hard. I mean, who would’ve thought London was so big?” he said. He kicked at the stone side of Big Ben. “And so fire-proof. I’m kinda over this. Wanna just go home?”
The day before…
Dixie and Johnny stood in front of the twisted, burning wreck of a helicopter in the middle of Buckingham Palace Garden. Behind them, the palace could be seen, surrounded by a massive number of military and security forces. Another helicopter was lifting off from the roof, presumably taking the royal family to safety.
They surveyed their wrecked copter and noticed that a mangled animal cage was sticking halfway out from under one side, a bloody monkey arm smashed through the wires.
“Damn it,” Johnny said. “That was the only monkey that wasn’t acting all weird.”
“This whole operation has been a bust,” Dixie said, kicking the side of the helicopter. Suddenly they became aware of a sound in the distance, like a furious swarm of bees, only sloppier. The armed forces guarding the palace heard it at the same time, and raised their weapons.
A moment later, a hoard of people infected with the zombie-monkey virus burst through the gates and headed toward the palace in a loud, bloody mass. When they got about halfway to the palace, the guards began to fire, and a spray of bullets took out the first several rows of the infected. But this hoard was massive and it kept coming. With the thinner numbers, it became harder for the guards to hit them. Eventually, some of the hoard reached those guards stationed on the ground outside of the palace and savagely began to devour them. Some of them became infected, turned, and joined the carnage. Others were torn apart until only bloody pulp remained.
Those stationed on the upper levels of the palace, and on the roof, continued to fire, but the hoard seemed never ending, and as the bodies piled up, the hoard began to climb, nearing the top of the first floor.
Dixie and Johnny stayed by their downed helicopter and watched, somehow unnoticed by the hoard or by the guards. The battle went on and on, until finally all of the guards had either died, become infected or fled. With no royal family members inside to protect, who could blame them? Eventually, with nothing left to attack, the hoard moved on. An eerie quiet fell over the palace garden, although the sound of sirens and helicopters could still be heard in the distance.
“Lotta dead guys over there,” Dixie observed.
“Yeah, wanna go take their guns? I’m starting to think we might need ‘em,” Johnny said.
“If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have ditched that shotgun at the lab,” Dixie said. They started walking over to where the guards had been. Many of them were now laying in disembodied, bloodied heaps on the ground. They got to work taking weapons and ammunition from the bodies.
“It kinda seems like it’s the blood or the spit or something that makes everyone go crazy, right?” Dixie said.
“Yeah, I was thinking that,” Johnny said.
“And it doesn’t seem like you have to get a bite or a scratch in order to go all nutzoid, either.”
“So no putting the guns and stuff in our mouths,” Johnny said.
“Right.”
“You think they have a hose at this place?”
***
Dixie and Johnny tore through the city in a stolen, classic London Black Cab. Johnny was at the wheel, while Dixie sat in the passenger seat with a rifle in her lap. Every now and then they passed an infected zombie-monkey person, at which point Johnny would slow the cab, allowing Dixie to roll down the window and take aim. Even drunk, she was a surprisingly good shot.
Rounding one corner, they came up against the rear of another large hoard of infected zombie-monkey people. Johnny hit the brakes.
“I don’t think we have enough firepower to get through that,” Johnny said. “And I’m pretty sure this cab could withstand a bomb blast, but I’d rather not risk it. What do you think?”
“Agreed. Let’s find another way around.” Johnny reversed the car and did a u-turn, heading back the direction that they’d come. They drove a few minutes more before coming to one of those complicated London intersections with no less than six roads feeding into it. Johnny slowed to a stop.
“Which way?” he asked. Dixie looked from one street to the next for a while, then sighed.
“Fuck if I know. Who built this place? Ever hear of planning you assholes!” she shouted. Just then, there was a knocking on the driver’s side window, startling them both. Dixie raised the rifle, pointing it past Johnny’s face toward the window. He leaned back so that the barrel of the gun didn’t touch his nose, then turned slowly to look out the window.
It was two humans.
“Don’t shoot!” the girl screamed, holding her hands up. “We’re human! We’re not infected, we swear!”
“We need a ride!” the boy shouted through the glass of the window.
“Please,” the girl pleaded. “Help us!” Johnny Go cracked the window a tiny bit.
“Sorry, we’re not taking fares right now,” he said.
“We’re off the clock!” Dixie shouted, still aiming the gun.
“Please, we need to get out of here! Those things are attacking!”
“Everyone is dead or turning into one of them!” In response to this, Johnny revved the engine, as if to drive off. The girl grabbed the side view mirror frantically.
“Please! Just help us get to the evacuation point! Surely you want to go there, too?”
“Evacuation?”
“Yes, we just have to get to Heathrow. The radio said that people were being put on flights out of the country. Please, just help us get there.”
“Fine,” Dixie said, bringing the gun back to her lap. Johnny looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “What? I wanna get duty free liquor.”
***
They began to make their way through London, only to find that most of the major roads were gridlocked with panicked citizens attempting the same escape. The two kids in the back of the cab looked frantic and scared. Dixie and Johnny looked bored.
“What the fuck is this traffic?” Johnny asked.
“Must be rush hour,” Dixie replied.
“Really? Isn’t it, like, one in the afternoon? Fucking British people even got rush hour wrong.” The kids in the back seat eyed one another uncomfortably.
“Well look, I’m not wasting my time in this traffic,” Johnny said, turning the wheel and heading the car over to the shoulder of the road. “We’ll take surface streets.”
“NO!” screamed the kids in the back. “The infected people are all on the surface streets! There are hoards of them. We’ll never get through!”
“Don’t worry about it, we have a gun,” Dixie said, stroking her rifle.
“There are too many!” the girl shrieked.
“Please! Stay on the highway!”
“Man,” Johnny said, “are these kids fucking bonerkills, or what?”
***
Dixie and Johnny climbed down the side of the highway exit ramp, their guns strapped to their backs, and disappeared into the warren of London streets. Above them on the highway, a hoard of infected zombie-monkey people stormed through the line of cars and trucks. The people waiting in the stalled traffic attempted, foolishly, to flee. They were devoured.
Dixie and Johnny never wondered what happened to the two kids they’d picked up, but in the days that followed, they often missed the stolen black cab.
Earlier that day...
The helicopter hovered over the replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. The theater was filled with tourists pretending to enjoy a boring and incomprehensibly worded play. Since the theater was supposed to be authentic, it had no modern sound system, and the patrons looked up angrily at the helicopter, which was drowning out the performers.
Inside the helicopter, Johnny Go was at the controls. Dixie sat beside him in the co-pilot’s seat. They spoke over headphones.
“We’re just about there,” Johnny said, “You wanna get back there and get ready?”
“On my way,” Dixie said. She got up from her seat and headed to the rear compartment, which was stacked floor to ceiling with cages full of monkeys. It was clear that these monkeys were not ok. Their eyes were wild, darting back and forth and rimmed in red. They thrashed around in their cages, teeth bared and dripping saliva. Their paws clawed at the bars of the cages, pulling at the wires until their fingers bled. The screeching and wailing could be heard even above the noise of the helicopter’s blades.
“Keep her steady!” Dixie called up to Johnny. He glanced back over his shoulder at her and gave her a thumbs up. She made her way to the side door of the copter and slid it open. A rush of cool air filled the cabin, causing the monkeys to screech louder and throw themselves at the sides of their cages.
Not wanting to get too close to the cages, Dixie took a large crowbar and used it to drag the first stack of cages over to the doorway. The monkeys inside raged. When the cages reached the doorway, she was relieved to see that they filled the entire space. Using the crowbar, Dixie reached around to the front of the top cage and released the door.
Nothing happened. The helicopter continued to hover, and the monkeys continued to shriek. She reached the long end of the crowbar through the rear of the cage and jabbed the monkey in the butt.
“Get the fuck out, you useless disease bag!” she screamed. At the second poke, the monkey lunged forward to the front of the cage and tumbled out into the air. Dixie peered out the little side window and watched as the monkey fell, landing with a thud on the ringed roof of the theater.
“A little to the left!” Dixie called up to Johnny. He looked back and she gestured with her hands. He nodded. She held on while the copter rotated closer to the theater. Once it was steady again, she got to work freeing the other two monkeys. These two were a direct hit, landing among the theater patrons who were standing in the general admission area on the floor of the theater.
“Enjoy the wildlife, peasants,” she muttered to herself.
Dixie continued shifting the cages to the door and releasing the infected monkeys, one at a time, down into the theater, until only one monkey in a cage remained. It was the only uninfected monkey, and they intended to keep him. As the infected monkeys hit the ground, they remained stunned for a moment or two, before leaping up and lunging at the nearest person, sinking their sharp teeth into whatever flesh they could find. The crowd, already frantic, started stampeding toward the exits, which were not up to code. Those who received bites lasted only a moment before turning into vicious, raging zombies-monkeys themselves and immediately falling upon whoever was nearest, attacking them, as well. The virus spread rapidly this way, until it reached those who were at the exits, and spilled out onto the street.
Some patrons, and then the actors, attempted to escape by scaling the walls of the theater, but the monkeys were close behind and better climbers. Infected people fell to the ground, screaming, then immediately turned as the infection took over.
***
A short while later, Dixie and Johnny turned the helicopter, attempting to flee the scene of destruction that they’d created. By this time, news had spread of the strange, violent riot that was taking place on the streets of London. Several news helicopters were also hovering in the area of what was determined to be ground zero. They blocked Dixie and Johnny’s escape route.
“Shit, it’s like we’re surrounded,” he said into the headset microphone.
“What are all these other copters?” Dixie asked.
“Looks like the news,” Johnny said, “Must be a slow news day if they’re all out here covering Shakespeare, but do they really have to box us in like this? I mean, we can’t go any lower because these fuckers are all up on the roof now. I don’t want them jumping onto our skids.”
“Can we try going higher?” Dixie asked.
“Yeah, let’s see if we can get above them.” Johnny worked the controls, and the helicopter rose higher in the sky. When they were a suitable height above the others, he started moving the helicopter forward.
At the same moment, one of the news copters, which was hovering the lowest, had lowered a camera out of the copter. Unfortunately, they were quite close to the top of the theater, on which several of the infected monkeys raged angrily back and forth. With one wild leap, they jumped from the roof to the camera, dangling there. There was panic inside the helicopter as some cameramen screamed at the others to just lose the camera. Lose the camera, man! He couldn’t get there in time, and before they knew it, the monkeys had made their way onto the landing skids and climbed up into the open door. The news team frantically tried to close the door, but the monkeys were already inside.
While this was happening, the pilot, attempting to avoid the monkeys all together, quickly raised the elevation of the helicopter. It shot straight upward, it’s rotor blades clipping the tail of Dixie and Johnny’s copter and sending both into a tailspin.
Dixie and Johnny had the advantage here, given that their copter was not being overrun by the zombie-monkey virus, and Johnny was a skilled helicopter pilot, having trained in much more challenging situations than this. He managed to regain control and move the helicopter away from the scene of carnage unfolding below.
Johnny kept the helicopter in the air long enough to find a spacious, open area free of buildings, people, and infected monkeys, where he performed the most graceful crash he could manage.
The day before...
The streets were quiet as they drove through town, but anything would have seemed quiet compared to the racket that the van full of monkeys was making. They were cruising through a far flung, industrial area of the city, but it still seemed too quiet. Dixie and Johnny looked at one another and shrugged.
“I guess London just isn’t that cool these days,” Johnny said, pulling up to a traffic light and coming to a stop. They were the only vehicle on the road.
“Well, you know, every city has its glory days, and they can’t last forever-” Suddenly there was a loud thump and a wild face appeared in the passenger side window. It was a middle aged man wearing the jumpsuit of a sanitation worker. He had several large red gashes on his neck, as if he’d been scratched by a hand with claws. His eyes were red rimmed and the pupils were completely dilated. Something swirled within them, which Dixie could see clearly for the split second that he held still. Before either Dixie or Johnny could react, the man began screaming and smashing his face into the window.
As he did this, leaving bloody forehead prints, his arms frantically searched for the door handle. Recovering from her moment of surprise, Dixie quickly locked the door.
“What the fuck is with this guy?” she asked Johnny. They both stared at the man as he smashed his face into the window over and over again. “Great quality vehicles here, though.”
“Oh yeah. They just don’t make ‘em like this in the States, you know?”
“If this was a Toyota, he’d have smashed the door by now,” Dixie mused as the man continued to pound his face into the glass.
“Hey pal,” Johnny said to the man, as if he could hear him, “Light’s about to change.” The man continued, and when the light changed, Johnny floored the van through the intersection. The sideview mirror caught the man in the head, knocking him to the ground, but as Dixie looked back, she saw him get to his feet and begin sprinting after the van. By that point, though, the traffic light changed again, and the man made it to the middle of the intersection just in time to get collected by a delivery truck. Dixie laughed, then looked back out the front windshield.
“That was fucking weird,” she said. “First that activist, then this guy. I thought they’d gotten mad cow disease under control here.”
“Oh you know, I forgot all about that. Good thing I didn’t get the burger for dinner last night, huh?”
“I’ll never understand why you always want to try the burger outside of the U.S. You know it’s not gonna be good.”
“There’s always a chance!” Johnny exclaimed.
“Anyway, I credit my preference for a liquid dinner for the fact that I rarely ever get the Aztec Two-Step when I travel,” Dixie said.
“Oh, same!” said Johnny. “When in doubt, just drink your dinner.”
“With no ice,” Dixie added. Then, “Let’s get barbecue when we get back to Texas,” she said.
“Fuck yeah. Only good thing about Texas, you ask me.”
“What about shooting CHUDs?”
“Ok, two things. Also at this point, I’m starting to think another good thing about Texas is that it isn’t London.” They passed a small car that was on fire. A pile of trash blew in the street.
“It’s like we took a wrong turn and ended up in Detroit.” They were quiet for a minute, and the racket that the monkeys were making was overwhelming.
“Are monkeys supposed to make this much noise?” Dixie asked.
“I’unno,” replied Johnny.
“I mean, I’m by no means an expert, but I figured that they’d eventually shut the fuck up. Also, they’re still jumping around in there. If they don’t sit down, how’re we gonna teach ‘em to type?”
“I guess they are acting kinda weird.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” There was a long pause.
“Shit. There are twenty-five. And it took us almost a month to get them.” There was another long pause before Johnny spoke again. “How do you want to get rid of ‘em?”
***
A short while later, Dixie and Johnny’s van pulled into a deserted heliport on the outskirts of London. They had expected that they would need to sweet talk, bribe, or otherwise force the use of a helicopter, but this place, like the others they’d driven through, was empty.
Johnny got out of the van, surveyed the lot, and cracked his knuckles.
An hour earlier...
Dixie and Johnny stood over the body of a militant animal rights activist. The woman wore fatigues and a pair of military surplus combat boots, similar to the ones Sweaty Mulligan wore (although you always got the distinct impression that Sweaty’s clothes were from real military service, even though no one could ever confirm when and if he’d actually served). On her left arm, she wore an arm patch depicting the logo of her group, which Dixie and Johnny didn’t recognize and also didn’t really care about. They always thought joining things was for losers. The activist’s other arm bore the telltale bite marks of a monkey’s fangs, and the remaining half of her head bore the telltale sign of a shotgun blast, which Dixie had delivered a moment earlier.
Johnny walked up to the body and nudged it with his foot. They were inside part of a research facility, and this room conveniently had a drain in the floor that the blood was pouring into.
“Huh,” Johnny said. “I didn’t expect her to be freaking out like that.”
“Yeah, getting bitten by a monkey sucks but that’s no reason to lose your shit,” Dixie replied, resting the shotgun on her shoulder.
“Then again, this chick just screams over dramatic, doesn’t she? I mean, she’s out here playing special forces and trying to free lab monkeys.”
“Anarchy in the animal research lab!” They laughed, then Dixie went through the activist’s pockets, but didn’t find anything of interest other than a five pound note and what looked like a small grenade.
“Well, she was obviously the weakest link. Her comrades should thank us,” Johnny said, watching.
“Ok now what?” she asked, standing up.
“The rest of her group all scattered when that monkey got out, so I think the coast is clear. You wanna load the rest of the monkeys into the van?”
“Yeah, might as well. But they seem really violent and agitated,” Dixie pointed toward a window that looked into a secure lab facility. It was lined with cage after cage of monkeys, and all of them seemed very angry. They all screeched and threw themselves at the bars of their cages. Their eyes were red and wild, and their teeth dripped with bloody saliva.
“Probably just on accounta this chick screaming and the shotgun sound. I’m sure they’ll settle down once we get ‘em outta here, but maybe we should just move all the cages into the van instead of trying to take the monkeys out.”
“Probably not a good idea to cruise around London with a van load of unsecured monkeys, anyway. This is Europe, so there’s probably a rule about not driving with a monkey in the car if it’s not seat belted in or something.”
“Fucking Europe and its rules.”
They headed toward the lab’s loading dock door and rolled up the heavy iron gate. Outside, Johnny went to get the van and back it up to the loading dock. It was strangely quiet outside now. True, the activists were gone, but it was almost as if the city had suddenly fallen asleep.
Once Johnny backed the van up to the dock, Dixie popped the back doors open and they headed into the lab to start moving the cages. The monkeys tried their best to scratch and bite Dixie and Johnny, but fortunately, the cages were designed for safety and their paws and teeth didn’t fit through the wire.
When they had loaded the monkeys into the van, they jumped into the front and drove off, leaving the doors to the lab wide open, the dead activist’s body on the floor, and the shotgun propped up against the wall where the monkey cages had been.
And an hour or so before that…
Dixie and Johnny stood across the street from the lab, watching a group of very militant activists protesting outside. There were at least twenty people in the group, all dressed in military cosplay and wearing armbands depicting the logo of their group.
They seemed to be split into two factions. The first group stood guard; the second group was working on getting the door open so that they could infiltrate the lab. Dixie and Johnny kept their distance for a while, figuring that they’d let the activist do all the hard work, then move in and claim their reward.
“Damn, they have one of those welding torches,” Johnny pointed out.
“Yeah, they’re really determined. I was just gonna shoot out the window, but this is way less messy.” Dixie had a large shotgun resting on her shoulder.
“Super helpful that they spray painted out the security cameras, too,” Johnny said.
“You know, I never think to do that,” Dixie said.
“I know. It’s weird how it’s not usually a problem for us.”
“Why is that? We show up on cameras, right? We’re not like, whatdoyoucallits?”
“Vampires?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I don’t think so. Remember there was a video of me humping that statue of Eleanor Roosevelt that ended up on the news?”
“Oh yeah!” They both stood, chuckling at this memory, until finally the activists got the door open. They watched as the first group made its way inside.
“There you go!” Dixie exclaimed. “You ready?”
“Let’s roll,” Johnny said. They crossed the street and forced their way through the activists remaining outside.
“Hey!” one of the activists said, stepping into their path. “You aren’t part of the group. What do you think you’re doing here? Are you here to defend the animals?” Dixie lifted the shotgun and used the butt to slug the man in the jaw. He hit the ground without so much as another sound, and they made their way past the rest of the activists and through the door.
Inside the facility, they followed the hallway, listening for the activists who went in first. They could hear them talking quietly to one another, and hear the hiss of the spray paint can as they blacked out all the cameras that were mounted the length of the hallway. Again, Dixie and Johnny marveled at how efficient and thoroughly planned their operation was. They themselves rarely had more than a vague semblance of a plan.
“What’s the plan?” Johnny asked,
“I figure they just wanna free the monkeys,” Dixie said in a whisper. “We either convince them that we’ll take them to our sanctuary, or we just hook it back to the door and catch ‘em as they run away.”
“We kind of are taking them to a sanctuary,” Johnny said. “We have a huge ranch.”
“And I’m not at all opposed to letting them stay in the cabin with the Troubadours,” Dixie said. “They have more than enough room in there, and that’s way cushier than the jungle.”
***
Inside the lab, the activists made their way to a secure medical facility at the back. They passed a room full of cages of very agitated monkeys. A few of the activists peeled off to inspect the cages. The rest entered what appeared to be an operating room. The room was empty except for a monkey that was strapped to a steel table. Its skull had been cut open, exposing it’s pulsing and bloody brain. It was hooked up to electrical monitoring devices, both attached to its body and webbed throughout its brain. It was very much still alive.
The activists entered the room and all of them let out audible gasps at the sight. One of them, a woman, made her way over to the table with the dissected monkey.
“Oh god,” she said, softly. The monkey’s eyes flickered open and it looked at her. She took a step back, tears spilling down her cheeks. The other activist turned to her.
“Keep your shit together,” he told her. She took a deep breath and then, indeed, got herself together. She stepped up to the monkey again.
“Good boy,” she said. “You don’t want to bite me, do you?” Carefully, she released the straps that were holding the monkey to the steel table. In the next instant, the monkey shot up from the table, the monitoring devices ripping out of its skin and brain, and threw itself at the activist. It sank its teeth into her arm with a shocking viciousness. She fell back against the wall, and the other activists rushed to her, trying to pull the monkey off. It bit another activist before streaking out the door of the lab.
Two of the activists who hadn’t been bitten tried to follow the monkey. The others got to work on opening the door to the other area of the lab so that they could free the monkeys in the cages.
The woman started to scream in pain, doubling over and holding her arm. The other activists stopped what they were doing and turned. They watched in horror as the woman continued screaming, howling and at times inhuman.
“It burns!” she screamed. Suddenly, the other activist who had been bitten dropped to the ground, clutching his leg where the monkey bit him. He, too, started screaming.
As the others watched, the woman suddenly became still and calm. While the other infected activist clutched his leg and shrieked, the woman suddenly lunged at him, knocking him down onto the ground and tearing at his throat and face with her teeth and hands, leaving a gaping hole where his windpipe had been.
The rest of the activists watched this spectacle for a split second longer, then abandoned all of their noble plans and high tailed it out of the lab. The woman remained crouched over the man, feasting on his flesh.
***
Moments later, Dixie and Johnny strolled into the lab.
“Hey so we’re here to take these sweet, precious monkeys to a beautiful, safe, and loving sanctuary,” Johnny Go announced as they entered the room. They hadn’t seen either the infected monkey or the terrified activists fleeing the building, but as they entered the medical lab, they saw the mangled body of the one activist, and the rage filled, zombie-monkey woman activist standing over him. She looked up at them as they entered and they locked eyes.
“Oh, I see you’re busy,” Johnny said.
“And maybe you’re not actually here for the monkeys, which is great news for us,” Dixie added. At that moment, the woman leaped toward Dixie and Johnny, her teeth bared and a snarl on her lips. Dixie raised the shotgun and fired, hitting the woman in the head and blowing off half of it. The woman dropped to the ground, lifeless.
“Settle down, lady,” Dixie muttered.
One week earlier…
Dixie and Johnny were in a pub in London. They were absolutely wasted, and leading the room in a chorus of Burnin’ Down the House. Dixie stood on a chair, and Johnny clutched a chair in his arms while standing on the floor next to her. The locals loved it.
When they finished the song, everyone cheered for them except a sullen group of jerks in the back. No matter, someone else bought the next round, and the round after that. Dixie and Johnny, though, kept their eyes on the sullen jerks.
A few hours later, they sidled up to the sullen jerks, smiling broadly and holding out pints. The jerks looked up. They were super serious.
“What’s up, fellas?” Johnny asked. “Why the long faces?” The jerks just glared at him. Dixie sat next to one of them and put her arm around him.
“You guys are so serious, sitting here talking when you could have been up there dancing and having a good time. With me.” The guy was totally humorless, but not immune to Dixie’s weird, somewhat aggressive charm.
“How can anyone sing and dance when there is so much cruelty in the world?” he asked, in exaggerated despair. He spoke with a slight accent. His companion shot him a warning look, but Dixie intercepted it. Johnny rolled his eyes.
“Aw,” she said, rubbing his back, encouraging him to keep talking.
“The way our society treats animals,” the guy said, “Is a disgrace. If you aren’t mad about it, then you aren’t paying attention. And if you aren’t planning to do something about it, then you’re part of the problem.” The guy’s companion cleared his throat, but Johnny started talking loudly to him as a distraction. He moved onto the bench seat between the two jerks. Dixie placed her other hand on the guy’s leg and leaned in to him.
“Wow,” she said, “So you’re really out there fighting the good fight.”
“I am,” the guy said, “We’re planning a liberation operation of a local animal testing lab.”
“Juhani!” the companion shouted.
“Tell me more,” Dixie said, taking the guy’s hand and standing up. She led him toward a back room at the pub, saying softly, “I want to hear all the details.” His companion slumped in his seat and hung his head.
“Bloody fool.”
The day before...
“Yes, excuse me,” Dixie said to the woman at the reception desk. “We’re here for the tour.”
“Tour? What tour?”
“The tour of your monkey research lab.”
“I’m afraid you must be mistaken,” the woman said. “This is a research lab, but we don’t do tours and we don’t test on monkeys.” Johnny leaned on the desk, very casually.
“Oh come on, we’re not activists,” Johnny said.
“Or militants,” added Dixie.
“Or weirdos. We just really wanna see how you do the tests, is all.”
“Yeah, we actually hate monkeys and we’re glad you test on them,” Dixie added.
“We think scientific pursuit is more important than monkeys and their feelings.”
“Well, that’s very... good... of you,” the receptionist said, “But as I mentioned, we don’t test on monkeys here.”
“Maybe we should take the tour anyway,” Johnny said, with a wink. The woman let out a disgusted, frustrated sigh.
“As I said, sir, we don’t do tours. And if we did, you would not find monkeys on them, as you are insinuating, because we don’t test on monkeys here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite.”
“Huh. Well, do you know any labs that do test on monkeys?”
“We’re not activists,” Dixie reminded her. With that, the receptionist picked up the phone and called security.
The day before that…
Dixie and Johnny stood in line at the emergency room of a London hospital. They were very drunk but that wasn’t why they were there. When they finally made it to the counter, a surly-faced nurse looked at them with raised eyebrows.
“We need to visit the lab,” Dixie said.
“You don’t come here for lab work. Your doctor should have told you.”
“No, not lab work on us. The other lab.”
“The lab where the monkeys are,” Johnny added.
“We just need to borrow some monkeys.”
“Because the universe is ending.”
“And we wanna show Shakespeare that he’s not the hot shit that he thinks he is.”
“Right, so we need some monkeys.”
“From the lab.”
“Where you keep them and do tests and stuff.”
“Nothin’ like that here,” the nurse said. “This is just a hospital. Although…” She began looking through the files on her desk and eventually came up with a psychiatric evaluation form.
“Let’s see,” she said, mostly to herself while looking at the form, “Bizarre and inappropriate behavior, yes. Disorganized and illogical thought processes, yes. Hallucinations, Do you feel like you’re being controlled by an outside source? Or persecuted?” she asked, looking up.
“Well yeah, we all are, but-” Johnny looked at Dixie. “Wait a minute! That’s a psych eval! Run, Dix!” They bolted out the doors to the hospital and into the night.
And the day before that…
A pair of security guards, one on either side of Dixie and Johnny, escorted them through the gates of the London Zoo.
“Look, we just wanted to borrow the monkeys for a little bit!” Dixie said. The guards said nothing. Visitors pushed past them on both sides, as they fought the incoming traffic of people arriving at the zoo.
“Yeah, and not even for the project, because we know these are zoo monkeys. They’re special.”
“Right, but we thought maybe they could lead us to the lab we’re looking for. Like, use their monkey senses.” Outside of the gates, the guards stood, arms crossed, and waited for Dixie and Johnny to walk away.
“Say, Burley,” Johnny said, “You don’t know where that lab is where they test all the messed up shit on monkeys, do you?” The guards stared at them for so long, in silence, that eventually Dixie and Johnny gave up and wandered away.
One week earlier…
Dixie and Johnny sat on the porch of the ranch house. They each had a rifle on their lap, and a bottle of malt liquor in their hand. Many empty bottles littered the porch. Out on the lawn, they had thrown a variety of food, including leftover burgers, spoiled meat, and a bunch of biscotti that Chichay had brought back from a job in Italy, but that Johnny declared to be his enemy.
Every now and then, a revolting CHUD would make its way across the lawn to inspect some of the foodstuffs thrown there. When it did, Dixie or Johnny would take aim and fire. They were both surprisingly good shots, even when drunk. Especially when drunk.
“I mean, why didn’t he just write it like normal, you know?” Dixie asked.
“Because he needed to cover up for how shitty his ideas were by making the stories really hard to read,” Johnny replied, matter of factly.
“Dick,” Dixie said.
“Well, don’t worry about it. Once we get our monkeys, we’ll be able to prove to everyone that pretty much anyone can write Hamlet.”
“Or anything.” At this, they high fived and chugged their drinks.
“Speaking of monkeys, I’m gonna go give Tommy a call and place our order,” Johnny said. He got up and made his way unsteadily into the ranch house. Dixie stayed seated on the porch and listened to Johnny through the open window.
In the living room, Johnny picked up a ukulele with a phone cord plugged into the back. He strummed it a few times, then put the whole instrument to his ear and listened. A moment later, he spoke.
“Tommy Sciola, you assahola!” he shouted, then, “You know it! How you been, my man? Keepin’ it sleazy?” As he spoke, Dixie noticed another CHUD on the lawn, took aim, and fired.
“That’s great, man,” Johnny was saying as the sound of the shotgun blast dissipated. “So listen, reason for my call is me ‘n Dix need to get our hands on a coupla monkeys for this thing we’re working on.” Johnny scratched his ass while listening to Tommy on the other end of the line. Out on the porch, Dixie reached down and cracked another drink.
“We’re gonna need a thousand,” Johnny said, and waited. Then, his face changed into the closest Johnny Go ever got to anger. “What do you mean you could do five?!” Dixie turned and looked into the window, catching Johnny’s eye and giving him a ‘what the fuck’ look. He nodded.
“Tommy, what the fuck am I gonna do with five monkeys? What? What the fuck are you talking about? How could monkeys be hard to come by? The fucking world is swarming with them, man! They stole my pack of Passatempos when we were in Rio!” On the porch, Dixie took another drink.
“Forget it, Tommy, you useless sack of sandcrabs. We’ll fucking handle it ourselves,” Johnny was about to hang up. “What? Of course I still want the rocket skates! Send ‘em to the ranch, you fucking trash lizard.” He slammed the ukulele phone down and stomped out onto the porch.
Before saying anything to Dixie, he picked up his gun and aimed at an approaching CHUD. He fired, and the CHUD burst into pieces. Sighing, Johnny sat down.
“Fucking Tommy, man.”
“What’d he say?”
“That he could get five. Can you believe that? Fucking five!”
“That guy once got us a crate full of actual Smurfs. Why would he only be able to get us five monkeys?”
“Says they’re hard to get,” Johnny said, throwing his empty bottle out onto the lawn and picking up another. “Endangered, protected, I’unno. ‘S bullshit.”
“Literally millions of monkeys in the world,” Dixie said, “He’s just not trying hard enough.”
They sat in silence and shot two more CHUDs each. Finally, Dixie spoke again.
“So now what?”
“We gotta come up with another way to get these monkeys, I guess.”
***
Dixie and Johnny were sprawled on the couch in the living room of the ranch house. The room looked significantly better now that Chichay was back, and had hired a weekly cleaning crew. The tv was turned on and Johnny was flipping idly through the channels while Dixie ate a freezer pop. After a few minutes, Chichay Milano came in from the back porch. As she passed the living room, she stopped and looked at them.
“What’s up, you guys? I didn’t hear anymore shots and now I come in here and you both look… weird.” She came into the living room and sat down on the new couch (which had replaced the couch that Dixie and Johnny turned into a ball pit). “Johnny? Dixie?”
“What?” Johnny asked, turning to look at Chichay.
“I said, what’s up? You guys are both acting really weird.”
“We’re just thinking,” Dixie said.
“About?”
“How we’re gonna get these monkeys,” Johnny said.
“What do you need monkeys for?” Chichay asked. “Can you use a different animal instead?” Johnny sighed.
“The story specifically says monkeys.”
“What story?”
“The one that says a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters could write Hamlet in a thousand years.”
“Oh, this again,” Chichay said quietly before addressing Johnny. “You’re still planning on doing this? I don’t see why, you aren’t even going to be alive in a thou-” Johnny cut her off.
“Chichay, if you have to ask, you’ll never understand.”
“Fine,” Chichay said, rolling her eyes, “Then what’s the problem with getting the monkeys?”
“That we don’t know how we’re gonna do it,” Dixie chimed in.
“Don’t you have a black market guy you can ask? I’d ask mine, but she really specializes in weapons, and-”
“We have a black market guy. Duh. He said he can only get us five.”
“And we need a thousand.”
“We also tried to just buy them, and there’re no stores or breeders.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” Chichay said.
“So now we don’t know what to do,” Chichay considered this for a moment.
“And you’re sure you can’t do this project with a different animal? Or maybe with the five that your guy can get?”
“Goddamn it, Chichay!” Dixie shouted, “We didn’t make the rules here! The legend calls for one thousand monkeys!”
“Ok, ok, I didn’t realize it was a legend now,” she said, holding up her hands. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you should just wait for them to come to you?” With that, she stood up and headed upstairs to her room.
“Lotta help she is,” Dixie grumbled. Johnny went back to flipping through the channels.
“She makes a good point, though,” Johnny said. Dixie looked at him suspiciously. “Maybe we have to figure out where the monkeys are, and when we do, they’ll just come with us.”
“That makes sense,” Dixie said. “Where has monkeys?”
“Well, there’s the jungle,” Johnny said.
“Eh, it’s so humid.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it? What’s the place with the animals called?”
“Slaughterhouse?”
“No.”
“Sex ranch?”
“No.”
“Pet cemetery?”
“Nah, we need them to be alive, remember?”
“We could do a spell.”
“Too hard. And anyway, I’m thinking of something else.”
“Petting zoo?”
“No.”
“Regular zoo?”
“That’s it!” Johnny exclaimed. “We could go to the zoo and get monkeys!”
“Is the zoo gonna have enough?”
“Damn, probably not.”
“Well look, I think maybe we might have get the monkeys in a couple of places, so what if we take them from, like, a couple of zoos?”
“That could work. Let’s go to one tomorrow.” He turned back to the tv. A zombie movie came on. “Hey, remember that movie?”
“Which one?” Dixie asked.
“The one where that zombie outbreak destroys London?”
“Fucking Shakespeare,” Dixie said. “What about it?”
“Well, I was just thinking about how it started because of a monkey. Which was in a lab. In London.”
“Oh yeah!” Dixie said, “They make monkeys in labs now!”
“Right!” Johnny said, excitedly, “So another place we could get monkeys is from those weird research labs.”
“And those ones’d probably be way smarter than the normal ones. And we’re gonna need smart ones.” Dixie pointed out.
“Oh yeah,” said Johnny, “Everyone knows that the smart monkeys are in labs and the pretty ones are in zoos. The wild ones, you ask? Well, they’re wild.”
“So, you wanna hit the road?” Dixie asked. Johnny got up.
“Sure, where to first?”
“Well, I think we have to go to that lab in London, right? I mean, sure, they made zombie monkeys back when that movie was made, but it’s a few years later now. They probably perfected whatever smartening they were doing.”
“Good point. Let’s go. And while we’re over there, maybe we can stop by Shakespear’s place and let him know that we’re coming for him.”
They got up and, without so much of a glance back, headed out of the house.
“Brace yourself, Billy,” Dixie said, “You’re about to be exposed as the no good, clam stench hack that you are.”
One week earlier…
Chichay Milano and Sweaty Mulligan were inside their bedroom at the Brooklyn Heights ranch house. Sweaty was covered in a fine, red dust and he paced around the room anxiously. Chichay watched him for a while before speaking.
“Ok,’ she said, “I get why this will eventually be bad, but I don’t understand why you’re so upset about it. It’s not like any of us will be alive in a thousand years to even see the universe end.” Sweaty stopped pacing for a moment and turned to her.
“First of all, Chichay, you should never bank on the reliability of time. Secondly, the universe is ending. Literally all life! That’s horrible!”
“Sorry,” she paused. “So what do you want to do? Should we try to stop it?”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Sweaty said. “But I’m gonna have to time jump in order to do it. I might be gone a while.” She gestured for him to come and sit beside her on the bed, and when he did so, she put her arms around him, and he hugged her back. They sat there like that, for a long while before they spoke again.
“You do what you need to do, Sweaty Mulligan,” Chichay said. “I’ll always be right here when you get back.” Sweaty stood up, but continued to hold her hand, and kissed her on the forehead.
“Besides,’ Sweaty said, “Someone needs to be here to keep an eye on the two of them. I mean, last time we didn’t watch ‘em, they destroyed time and the universe.” They both laughed.
“Well, after you told them that the universe was on a thousand year countdown to nothingness, they got all excited and started talking about Shakespeare.”
“Yeah, they’re definitely going to get up to something. But you’ve got this, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He paused. “Oh, and can you check in on Ella?”
“Your cow?”
“Yeah. Don’t let the Troubadours turn her out with the others. She’s not ready.”
“Sure,” Chichay said with a smile.
With that, Sweaty took an oven timer off of the bedside table and twisted it a few times. He then stepped to the center of the room, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and vanished. Chichay sat for a few minutes, then crawled into bed.
“Those fools better not try to bring any monkeys into this house,” she said to herself as she turned off the light and drifted off to sleep.
Monkeys Collected: 0
