I set my alarm to go off early. Not too early, but early enough to be ready to leave right when the sun was fully out. It was out by the time I was dressed and ready to go. I took a different route this time to get a few supplies. I went behind the drug store and looked at the dumpster behind it. It looked disgusting. It looked like an attempted fast-paced kung-fu cow milking through the nose by Jet Li had taken place right over that dumpster. I kicked the dumpster and luckily, I didn't need much more than that. A tall, bearded black man popped up, wearing fatigues and dark sunglasses. Maybe the delay was because he was putting on his shades. I was hoping that was the case, although I don't see why it would affect your vision in a dark dumpster. "Hey, what can I hook you up with?"

"I need some more ammo. I gotta get my zombie shootings in."

"Yeah, I got plenty." He was so reliable. Whatever you needed off the black market, the shady arms dealer had plenty of it. "So, how much?"

"I don't know. Just get me whatever I can get with this." I handed him a few big bills picked randomly from my wallet, which was thinning, but still big enough to get by for a few months.

"Dang, man. That's a bunch of shooting."

"Sure is. Just give me three now and stuff the rest in a bag." I received the three cartridges requested and clipped them on. I threw the one that was in my gun out and shoved the third in there. I received the bag of bullets, which felt surprisingly clean for something that had to have spent some time in the dumpster.

I just threw the bag into my closet and made my actual trip for the day. Once again, I made a trip to that familiar green house. The trip felt much shorter than the first, but I still felt I needed a more efficient form of transportation. I got to the house and knocked. The guy who opened the door looked familiar. It took me a few minutes to recognize who he was. "Hi, can I help you?"

"Yeah. I'd like to know what happened to the guy who was here last night."

"Beats me. He either got eaten or faked his death. I'm Ness. I'll be here for a while." How did I forget him? "You're Captain Strong, right?"

"That's right. Could I come in?"

"Of course. Anything for one of Onett's finest."

I went in and sat on a comfortable sofa in the weirdly empty room. The Apple Kid's junk must have been covering up the sofa the first time I saw this place. "So, when did you get here?"

"I actually got here on my own. I got here using my psychic powers, but something's keeping me from leaving. Every time I try to, I just end up in the same place I tried to leave from."

"Why would anyone want to come here?"

"My friend, Jeff - you know, the geek? - He told me he was coming here to see what happened to his dad. I didn't hear from him for a while, not even on his portable receiver phone. So I decided to try to check up on him."

"Different. You've one through this kind of thing before. Any idea what's going on with the whole zombie situation here?"

"Not really. This is my second day here, so I haven't been able to look around much."

"Nothing at all? I mean, you should know something about these things."

"Well, if you had read my book, you'd know what I think."

"But nobody read your book. So don't be a stubborn jerk about this. What do you think?"

There was a hard knock on the door. "Let me get this first." He walked up to the door and fearlessly opened it.

"Yo foo, you ready to part with some flour?" The unstoppable Mr. T and the equally as unstoppable Ness. It sounded way too much like a sitcom.

"Sure. What for, T?"

"That's Mr. T to you, sucka," he stated, heavily emphasizing the Mr. "I'm making some high-quality baked goods over there. Hannibal, he said he might come over. Foo loves it when a plan comes together, with all evil thrown through walls by me, all I got time to love is when a quality cookie comes together. Real quality, you don't forget that."

"I'm not sure where I have it, so why don't you talk to our friendly police chief over there. I'm sure that he has plenty of things to get out of you."

"Quit this jibba jabba and get me my flour!" Ness obeyed the angry T-Commands. "So, what's up with you, Strong?" He obviously meant well, but if he were to read some fairy tale out loud to some preschoolers, he'd still sound like he was about to rip your spine out in the longest and most painful way possible.

"Not much, Strong. I haven't seen you since we took on that international plot to run all American car companies out of business through distribution of gasoline-eating insects."

"Yeah, that case was fun. Ain't no foo messin with Ford."

Ness returned with the flour. "Here's the entire bag, Mr. T. I don't care when you bring it back. But I only have one request."

"Nothing big. The T don't work for nothing, ron."

"I'm going to prove my theory on the zombies tonight. I just want you and Strong here to watch from your indestructible van."

"That's fine, now let me bake my cookies, foo." Mr. T grabbed the bag of flour and left.

"Now, onto your big anti-zombie theory, Ness."

"Sure, why not? Back when I was saving your ungrateful butt from world dominance, I had to come through this place during a more low-profile zombie invasion. Who knows? This might be just as low-profile. Anyways, I wasn't even able to get in until I got some help from the Runaway Five. We just got in our bus and ran through with some of their music blaring from the bus. Then the rest was just a matter of force." Simple and efficient. I was hoping Ness's fate would be completely different from Dr. Andonuts's just like his style of explanation was.

"So are you going to sing to them or just kill them off? You could always do both, but if you do, I don't want to be there to see which comes first."

"I'm going to try my loud music theory first, but I'm ready to kill if I have to."

"So we got quite a bit of time to burn. You mind if I go help Mr. T over there with some of this?"

"Be my guest." I left the cocky fool and jogged over to Mr. T's house next door. He had popped the cookies into the oven and I explained the situation over some European racing. By the time the race was over, Ness had come over for both the cookies, which had been taken out during one of the slow points of the race, and also to gather his two-man audience. We went into Mr. T's big, black 80's van. It was pretty roomy, although it felt a bit old.

"Ok, we're going in the back yard," he informed me. "That Ness is a crazy foo and don't want no assistance. It'll be dark soon, so he should prove them crazy theories soon." We didn't need to wait long, but still got some small-talk going. "So, you into the NBA, Strong?"

"Not really. The games just seem so watered down now."

"For them Califoos, it must be a blast. But I got a method to stop Shaq's nonsense?"

"Really? I always thought he was unstoppable. Unless he hurts his toe, of course. One of these days, he's just going to have it amputated and replaced with a five million dollar bionic toe."

"That fake toe won't be on long if I get into managing."

"Why's that? You'll throw him through the stadium and stuff him into this van?"

"No, Hannibal helped me with this one. Foo's gonna get leprosy a few days before he plays me. He'll still play, but won't be worth a Vanilla Ice with those lack of legs."

"What if his legs don't fall off? Then he'll just be more unstoppable than ever. I don't know about you, but my mom told me never to join the NBA if you were going to be stuck defending a 7 foot tall leper."

"You got a point there. Maybe the foo does need to be thrown through a few roofs." I checked my watch. It was around 2:20 when Ness set up the table, which I wasn't expecting to hold up. He went back into the house and came out with a boom box, connected inside with a long extension cord. He was rifling through a CD case and looked a bit clueless. He came up to the van for some advice.

"Hey, I got some CDs from one of those weird Tenda guys next door. So which would you prefer to hear? Best of the Village People? Celine Dion? Or should I just take a risk on this blank CD?"

"Man, foo ain't got none of my guest-stars in there? No Bruce Willis? None of Don Johnson's stuff? Guy just ain't right."

"Well, I guess there could be some of that on the blank disc," Ness muttered to himself as he walked back to the table. He sat on the table and went through the contents of the CD. He didn't seem very satisfied. While he was going through, Mr. T saw something in the distance and smacked the horn twice. Ness knew what this meant and jumped up onto the table and held the boom box over his head. He turned the music up as loud as it could go and waited for the zombies as he had some crappy 80's rock ballad going. He didn't look concerned at all as the first pack began approaching. They stopped after they got within a few yards of the point of the music's origin and looked like they were discussing something. Ness must not have seen this and gave us a big thumbs-up. When he put his focus back on the zombies, they were ready to much on some shin. He saw he made a mistake and broke the boom box over the closest one's head, hopped behind the table and threw that as well.

The boom box and table weren't able to keep the zombies down for long. Ness stepped back, looked at the growing group of something and muttered something to himself. I wasn't able to see much of what followed. He must have used one of those weird psychic powers. He let out a big, bright thing of energy and light. The zombies tried to get closer, but weren't even able to handle Ness's attack. Many of them started falling apart, starting with the melting of their zombie skin. I was surprised to see there wasn't much behind that. I guess the nut complaining about evil skeletons wasn't that crazy.

However, Ness's psychic blast was interrupted as some projectile was lodged into Ness's head. Only half the disc was showing, but I could tell from the lettering and distinctive colors that it was the Village People Greatest Hits CD. There are so many different ways to kill with disco. It's too bad none of us saw that method coming. They closed in on the motionless body of Ness and finished the job. Mr. T decided it was time to give up his lack of attention, test the strength of those 80's fenders and got the van going. He plowed over a few zombies waiting for a piece of the Brain and skillfully drove around the house and back into the street. The van reached speeds I never would have expected as I gave him directions back to the bakery. There weren't many other zombies to split in half on the way back, but I was brought home in one piece.