Stan Of The Dead
This chapter turned out to be shorter than I thought, but there is only one more to go after this. Promise.
I don't own South Park. Lyrics to Don't Stop Me Now belong to the late great Freddie Mercury and Queen.
Chapter 13
"Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time
I feel alive
And the world is turning inside out yeah
Floating around in ecstasy
So don't stop me now..."
With Freddie Mercury's voice ringing in their ears, Stan and Wendy stepped towards Willie, brandishing their weapons. Stan's first attack caught Willie on the arm, but the zombie barely flinched. He turned towards Stan, allowing Wendy to get a blow in on his back. The pool cue simply bounced off him. It was like attacking a brick wall. Stan tried again and hit him in the stomach. The cue crunched against iron abs. Willie's flailing arm caught Stan on the side of the head and flicked the boy away like an annoying insect. He hit the side of a booth, smacked his head on the edge of the table and slumped to the floor, momentarily stunned.
The world went black for about thirty seconds before his eyes flickered open. Everything blurred together for a moment and then came back into dizzying focus. Stan blinked a few times, allowing his brain to catch up with his eyes.
Willie was trying to sink his teeth into his arm.
Luckily, Stan's instincts were quicker than his mind. He pushed the pool cue against Willie's throat, forcing the zombie back. Wendy rained blows on him, shouting things that Stan couldn't make out. Willie put his hands on the cue and pushed forwards again, his moans coming out as gargles.Stan's arms began to buckle under the weight being put on them. He looked around desperately. Cartman was closest to him, but he had his back to him. The gun dangled by his side.
"Cartman..." Stan spluttered.
"How can you hate this song, Kenny?," Cartman was saying, oblivious to Stan's plight. "Queen are a sweet band. Haven't you ever heard The Show Must Go On?"
This was hardly the time to be discussing musical preferences! Stan wanted to scream at them, but Willie had pushed the cue against his throat. All that came out was a strangled gurgle.
"Car...man..."The room took on a red tinge as he struggled for breath. "Help me..." He reached out and punched Cartman in the leg.
The fat boy turned in surprise and looked down. "Ah shit." He took the gun by its barrel and swung it as hard as he could at Willie. The butt struck him on the nose which was almost ripped from his face by the force of the blow. Blood spurted out of it, some of it landing on Stan. Willie moaned and fell backwards, dropping the cue and relieving the pressure on Stan's throat.
He lay still for a moment, his breath coming out in scratchy rasps. There was chaos around him, but Freddie's voice rose above everything else.
"I'm a superstar racing through the sky
Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity
I'm a racing car passing by
Like Lady Godiva
I'm gonna go go go
There's no stopping me..."
Stan pulled himself to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. He glanced at Wendy. She raised an eyebrow.
"Let's take this bastard down!" he growled.
"Burning through the sky yeah
Two hundred degrees that's why they call me Mr Farenheit..."
Willie, his nose hanging from his face, started towards the rest of the kids, who scattered. Cartman pointed the gun at the zombie and fired. The shot missed Willie by several feet and hit the wall behind him.
"Dude, he's right in front of you!" Kyle cried in disbelief. "How did you miss from there?"
"So my aim is a little off," Cartman said with remarkable understatement.
"Hey Willie!" Stan shouted. He threw a bottle at him, which smashed on the zombie's broad back.
With a low moan, he turned and shuffled back towards Stan and Wendy.
"Now try, Cartman!" Stan called.
"Need to re-load!" Cartman called back, fumbling in his pockets for the box of ammo.
"Goddamit!" Stan muttered.
He and Wendy ran around Willie, hitting him, while he tried in vain to grab one of them. Bizarrely, their blows began to fall in time with the music.
"Don't (hit) stop (hit) me (hit) now (hit)
Don't (hit) stop (hit) me (hit)now (hit)..."
Exhaustion crept over Stan again. Wendy looked tired too. The rate of blows was falling. Stan tried to ignore it, but his arms felt increasingly heavy and a few blows were starting to miss their target. No. He had to keep going. If he stopped now, he'd be dead for sure – him and Wendy. And Willie had to go down sometime, right?
Meanwhile, Butters had been watching all this from the safety of the corridor but now something else caught his eye. The barricade over the broken window had held up to this point, but he watched in horror as a chair on the very edge slipped out and fell into the booth. A table slipped from its position, leaving a small gap. Already a zombie was trying to squeeze through it.
He raised his hand and started to call to the others, but they were engrossed in the fight with Willie. He looked back at the wobbly barricade and gulped. There had to be something he could do! He thought for a moment and then turned back towards the fuse box. Maybe if he could turn the jukebox off the zombies would lose interest. He ran up to it and paused, his hand hovering over the switches. If only he could remember which one it was...
A scream from the diner startled him. Panicked, he began flicking switches up and down. As he did, his foot began to tap along to the music. His hands moved in time with it.
"What's going on?" Red shouted, as the lights in the diner went on and off.
"Butters," Craig replied.
Outside, Willie's neon sign flashed on and off rapidly, like some kind of Morse code. The crowd of zombies grew bigger. They pushed against the doors and windows, trying to force their way in through sheer weight of numbers.
Stan heard another crash from the barricade and stopped mid-swing. He saw the zombies at the windows and the doors and along with the tiredness came a feeling of resignation. There were too many of them. Red was right – by leading them here, he had doomed them all. He looked up at Willie lumbering towards him and the urge to fight drained away. Please just let it be quick, he thought.
He shut his eyes and waited. After about a minute, when nothing had happened, he cautiously opened them again. He stared in amazement. A group of six of his classmates had grabbed hold of Willie and were pulling him back. As Willie pulled away from them again, more of the fourth graders rushed in front of him and pushed him back.
"Don't stop me don't stop me don't stop me
Hey hey hey
Don't stop me don't stop me ooh ooh ooh
I like it
Don't stop me don't stop me
Havin' a good time good time..."
Willie found himself moving quickly, the momentum carrying him back across the diner. Together, the kids gave him one almighty shove. He fell backwards into the jukebox, smashing the plexiglass front, just as Brian May launched into his guitar solo. The music stopped. Sparks flew. Willie's body jerked as the electrical currents ran through him. Finally, he became still and the diner became eerily quiet once again. The only sound was the jukebox occasionally spitting sparks.
Stan breathed deeply. "Thanks," he said to his classmates. They nodded.
A sense of calm settled over the diner. It was an eerie calm, the kind you get before a storm – or in the centre of one. The thing about those sort of moments is that they don't tend to last long.
Stan's heart rate had only just got back to something approaching normal when Butters ran in.
"They're trying to get in through the back!" he cried.
"Whereabouts?"
"The fire door!"
No sooner had he spoken, than the rest of the barricade finally collapsed. One zombie fell in through the broken window, quickly followed by another. More began to climb through the gap.
"Oh yeah, and they've broken through the barricade too," Butters said.
Stan glared at him. "Thanks for the warning."
There was a loud creaking sound. The diner's front doors were starting to buckle under pressure. Hands burst through the glass panes.
"Those doors aren't going to hold much longer," Kyle said. "We need to get out of here."
"How? The whole place is surrounded!" Red cried.
Stan thought for a moment. "Butters, are there any coming in through the kitchen?"
Butters frowned. "I don't think so."
"Then that's the way we go."
As they turned towards the counter the doors finally gave way. The hinges shot out with a loud 'pop' and the doors caved in. Zombies poured into the diner, literally falling over each other. Suddenly the kids' escape route was blocked by a wall of the undead.
"Maybe we could pretend to be zombies again," Butters suggested.
"I don't think that's gonna work twice," Stan said.
"What's the alternative?" Kyle asked.
"There's only one," Wendy said. She stood up straight and threw her shoulders back. "We fight our way out."
I love cliff-hangers! Chapter 14 up soon...