Chapter 7: The Worst That Could Happen
So none of our four were particularly well-armed for zombie killing. Sure, Luffy didn't go anywhere without his baseball bat and Nami had her knife, and everyone had at pistol. But that was more for defense than anything. So they had to take precaution before they could start their looting. Precaution today involved Nami throwing a brick through the window of a shop near the Frankystein and waiting to see what would come crawling out. After a minute passed with nothing emerging, they concluded the town must be relatively clear.
"Aww, that's boring!" Luffy pouted. His arms dropped to his sides with a huff.
"I'll take boring over deadly," Nami said. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward the barricade. "Come on, let's see what's in those cars."
The police barricade didn't get too far before it was overrun, it seemed. The cars were parked haphazardly in the middle of the street, and the SWAT van's doors were still hanging open. Upon closer inspection, the police car trunks had all been pried open already, and anything they may have contained was picked clean.
"Aw dammit, someone beat us to it…" Franky muttered, slamming the last trunk shut. Because the lock was busted, it didn't actually close and just sort of bounced partially open.
"They must've grabbed the guns and ran, all the shops are still intact," Sanji noted. He pointed to the buildings on either side of the road, all with locked doors and intact windows. Save of course the Chinese restaurant Nami vandalized.
"Guess people don't care about looting, uh…" Franky looked around at the signs hanging above the front doors. "Restaurants, banks, and jewelry stores."
Nami perked up at that last bit. "Ooh, jewelry store! I'll go check that out!" She started skipping across the street, toward the building next to the barricade.
Sanji started after her. "Ah, wait, Nami! Lemme go with you! Shouldn't go looting without backup, right? Hahaha!"
Nami stopped to look over her shoulder at him. She raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything more. She also didn't say anything to make him stop, so he followed after her. That left Luffy and Franky to fend for themselves.
The duo watched Sanji and Nami set out to pick the lock on the door, and Franky idly kicked one of the cop car's tires. "So!" He said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "While they're doing that, wanna raid the bank?" He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb at the bank across the street from the jewelry store.
Luffy watched Nami let out a cheer as she got the door open and the two of them disappeared inside. He thought about Franky's question for a second. "Hey, that's like hunting for treasure! Nami and Sanji are getting all the gold sceptres and crowns and we'd get all the coins and stuff!"
Franky let out a laugh, "Somethin' like that, kid!"
Money was, of course, useless these days. But as they approached the bank's chained front doors, Franky said "I always wanted to sneak into a bank vault, y'know? Not rob the place or anything, I just wanted to see that much money all in one place!" He gave the chain an experimental tug and pushed on the door. Neither budged at all. "Damn. Guess they were worried about-" the sudden sound of decayed hands slamming against the glass made both of them jump back.
Inside the bank entrance, snarling and clawing at the glass, were at least a dozen zombies, most of which were decked out in riot gear or SWAT uniforms. Helmets, bulletproof vests, and thick jackets. For all the good it obviously did them.
"Whoa! I guess we know what happened to the police guys!" Franky said, running his fingers through his hair.
Something next to them caught Luffy's attention. They hadn't noticed it walking up, but on the window next to the bank's entrance, someone had spraypainted "PRAY FOR US". Luffy scowled at the sign. "They locked them in there instead of just killing them. That's no fun! They're even in uniform, didn't they know how many points that is?!"
Franky crossed his arms and shrugged. "Well, kid, I think these poor saps got locked up back before we knew what was goin' on with all this zombie business."
"That's so dumb. Come on, let's get in there and smash 'em ourselves!" Luffy raised his bat until Franky grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back.
"I don't think that's a good idea. Don't think we could really shoot through those helmets. Just leave 'em be, we'll find something else to do."
Luffy grumbled and kicked at the ground, but he ended up turning away from the oh-so-tempting prize of multiple kills. He looked at the police cars once again and a thought managed to hatch in his brain. "Hey.. Franky! Do you think you could put those police sirens on the Frankystein? Like, put the lights on and stuff!"
Franky looked from the police cars to the Frankystein down the street. He scratched at his chin. "Hhhhuhh… I bet… I bet I could! I bet I could rewire that! Run to the Frankystein and get my toolbox out from under the passenger seat! We can try to rip the lights off!"
While Luffy scurried off and Franky walked back to the police cars, they didn't notice the glass doors starting to crack from the pressure of all those zombies leaning against them.
But you did.
Anyway, while this was going on, Nami was kneeling down in front of the locked jewelry store door, armed only with a bobby pin and determination.
"I didn't know you knew how to pick locks," Sanji said, standing over her with his hands in his pockets.
"Yeah, you can blame my mom for that," she said.
"I thought your mom was a cop."
"I didn't say she taught me how to do it. Boom!" At first Sanji thought she was punctuating her own zinger, but in reality she was celebrating her lockpicking success. The door swung open and a bounty of sparkly gold jewelry sealed in glass cases lay before them. "Eeehehehe," Nami cackled, rubbing her hands together greedily. "Jackpot!"
Before anything, they gave the shop a quick sweep. The shop was small and cramped, the glass cases taking up most of the floor space and forming natural walkways between them. There was a staircase in the back, near a supply closet that led up to a loft. Evidently, the shop's owner had lived there. She also died there if the corpse on the bed was any indication.
"Looks like we're all clear!" Nami said, shrugging off the body and gliding down the stairs. None of the stuff was considered high class expensive jewelry before Zombie Day, and of course it had no monetary value now. But that wasn't the point to Nami. She brushed the dust off the cases and looked some of them over. When she found one containing a piece she liked, it wasn't hard to open them. If she couldn't pick the lock, she'd just slam down on the case with the handle of her knife until the glass broke.
"So what are you doing here, Sanji?" she asked without bothering to look up from the bracelet she picked out of the broken glass.
"What uh… What do you mean?" he asked back
"I mean, you aren't here for jewelry. Not that you aren't a snazzy dresser," she said. He thanked her. "You weren't trying to protect me. Well you are, but that's not all it is. So what's up?" She finally looked up at him to see his reaction.
Sanji sucked in a breath. "I uh… I need your help," he exhaled.
"My help? With what?"
"Okay, so… Baby 5. I think… I really like her. And I sort of think she might like me too? And I don't really know how to handle that."
Nami found a necklace that was more interesting than what he was saying and looked it over. "Okay, well, I'm not exactly her friend or anything. I can't help you hook up with her."
"No no, it's not that!" Sanji said. "I just… I want to know how you handled it. I mean, I've never been one for committed relationships and I know you were the same way until Luffy came along. I just want to know how that worked for you."
"Oh." Nami grimaced. "I think you misunderstand. You just had casual flings by choice. My lack of solid relationships was because of… Other reasons."
"Wait, really? What do you mean?"
"I don't know if you're aware of this, Sanji, but I'm kind of what people refer to as a 'fuck-up'. Did I tell you about the time I burned down a motel?"
"No, I don't think you ever did."
"Okay. Well, don't ask Robin about it," she shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you, though. All I really have is some advice a clown gave me when I was first thinking about dating Luffy."
"Wait… A clown gave you advice?" Sanji pondered that for a moment. "What kind of adventure was that road trip anyway…?"
"Just go for it. Do what you feel is right, because otherwise you'll never know for sure. Life's too short these days to doubt yourself." Nami pocketed a handful of rings. "I mean that's what he told me at least. It worked that one time."
Before Sanji had time to consider Nami's advice, the sound of a gunshot rang out from outside. "Speaking of life's too short… What the hell are they doing out there?" Nami said as they headed for the front window.
The boys were working on dismantling the siren lights on a cop car. Luffy was on top of the hood, poking at the siren with a screwdriver because he had no idea what he was doing but he wanted to help. Franky was in the front seat, trying to take apart the dashboard because he also didn't know what he was doing, but he didn't know less about what he was doing than Luffy.
Neither of them noticed when the glass doors holding the zombies back at the bank ended up shattering, allowing them to spill out onto the street. Luffy saw them first, shambling towards their potential meal, and decided the best way to deal with it would be to hop off the roof of the car, grab his bat, and meet the horde. Fortunately, Franky felt the car shift when he jumped off and looked up just in time to scramble out of the car and grab Luffy by the back of his shirt. "Whoa, kid! I get it, you're eager, but guns first!" He drew his pistol, from where is anyone's guess, and opened fire on one of the zombies that were slowly closing the gap.
The bullet lodged itself in the zombie's helmet, which would have probably downed him if he were still alive. Because he was quite undead, he really did not give a solid fart about being momentarily jostled and kept on trucking.
"Welp. Time for plan B," Franky put his pistol away and prepared to run.
"Right! Smashing time!" Luffy also prepared to run, but in the absolute wrong direction and Franky had to hold him back yet again.
"Kid, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but we aren't pulling this one off. Don't think of it as retreating, think of it as advancing towards future victory. C'mon!" He pulled Luffy towards the jewelry store.
Luffy only fussed a little bit, and the two of them burst through the door, nearly knocking Nami and Sanji on their asses. Once Franky regained his balance, he whirled around and shoulder-tackled the door, holding it back against the onslaught of undead SWAT officers who wanted that sweet, sweet living flesh
"What did you do?!" Nami shrieked.
"It wasn't our fault!" Luffy shrieked back. It kind of was a little.
"Hey, this door ain't gonna hold!" Franky growled. It rattled more and more as the old hinges holding it to the wall began to give way.
Sanji looked to the back of the store. "Back door! Place has gotta have a back door!" He ran back towards the stairs and groaned in frustration. There was indeed a back door, but the shop owner, thinking it would keep her safe, had boarded it up something fierce. No way they would be able to get it open before the zombies made it through. "Shit, alright, forget that, everyone upstairs!"
There was a cracking sound as the door tore free of its hinges. Franky gave it one final push and bolted for the back, along with Nami and Luffy. The zombies weren't too fazed, but it did buy the living ones a little extra time.
Sanji made it up. Nami made it up. Franky made it up. Luffy, though, stepped on a loose stair in just the right and also wrong way that it came loose. His ankle rolled and his foot slipped out from underneath him. He fell forward, slamming into the stairs, scrambling to get back to his feet. Trying to put weight on his ankle just made him stumble again, though.
"Luffy!" Nami cried out. She dove after him, reaching for his arm and pulling him back up the remaining steps. Both of them collapsed to the floor, and then quickly had to roll out of the way as Sanji and Franky came barreling past, pushing a couch towards the stairs. It toppled down, taking out a few zombies that had just started climbing the stairs, and formed a helpful barrier to buy them some time.
Once they could afford a breath, Sanji groaned out "Now what?! I can't believe we got pinned like this, we've been doing this for years! We're smarter than this!"
"If we could plan for every little thing, the world wouldn't have ended in the first place!" Franky countered.
"GUYS! LUFFY'S HURT!" Nami shouted. She had scrambled back over to him, helping him sit up while he clutched at his ankle. He hissed in pain and Nami tried helping him stand up. The second he put weight on the bad leg, he about toppled over and nearly took his girlfriend with him. She helped him hobble away from the staircase and had him collapse in a recliner. "We can't stay here, we need to find a way down. There's gotta be a fire escape or something, right?"
The loft had three major windows that someone could feasibly climb out of. None of them led to a fire escape. "Seriously!? That is a serious safety hazard! Someone could die because of this!" Nami shrieked.
"We're gonna die because of this!" Sanji shouted back. Luffy groaned at his own uselessness and Franky kept busy by grabbing anything he could find laying around the loft and throwing it down the stairs to keep the zombies back.
Sanji flung open one of the windows, the one that opened to the back of the store. He swore under his breath as he looked down at the ground. Even if they had pried open the back door, there was a pickup truck blocking the way. It was practically directly beneath the window and Sanji made a quick calculation in his head. He was not happy with the results. Not because it wouldn't work, but because he didn't want to do it. "Franky! Toss me your keys!"
"Got it!" Franky threw the key ring towards Sanji, who reached out to catch them… And missed. The keys flew right out the window as Sanji closed his hand around empty air. The other three stared at him in horror and disbelief, and he waved dismissively. "It's all good, I was going that way anyway!"
He climbed onto the windowsill and leaned in, gripping the ledge with his hands. "SANJI! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Nami shrieked.
"Being a big fucking hero, I guess?" And with that, he dropped himself out of the window and onto the hood of the truck.
He hit the hood a little harder than he wanted to, but fortunately no one was around to see it. And also he didn't hurt himself. He scrambled off the hood and scanned the area for the car keys. Scooping them up off the pavement, he rounded the corner back onto the street, at an intersection next to the jewelry store. To his left, several stores down, was the Frankystein. To his near immediate right was a procession of zombies trying to funnel their way into the jewelry store.
Sanji lit up a cigarette and took a long drag to calm himself. This was really going to suck. He stepped into the street, within a decent range of the undead, and then started waving his arms. "HEY! SHITHEADS! OVER HERE! CHECK IT OUT, FRESH MEAL, SMOKED TO PERFECTION!"
Some of them turned toward the new sound and Sanji took a step back. "THAT'S IT! COME ON, THIS WAY! ALL YOU CAN EAT BUFFET!" A group of six split off from the herd, more interested in the noisy meal in front of them. That was enough of a start as far as Sanji was concerned. He Pied Piper'd them away from the store, leading them towards the Frankystein with promises of fresh cut steak at affordable prices.
And then something caught his eye. Only for a second, but as he passed by the alley between two shops, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He immediately looked toward it, worried it might be another zombie. What he saw was even more concerning. He didn't get a good look at them, but he swore he saw a person, a living person, running away, rounding a corner and disappearing from sight just as Sanji turned to look.
What really concerned him is that he swore the person looked familiar.
He didn't get a lot of time to think on it. The sound of snarling a few yards away snapped his attention back to his original task. He made a dash for the Frankystein, slid around to the back, and hopped in. He was facing down six armored walking corpses, but he was in a mobile force of nature. He slammed on the gas, making the tires squeal just as Franky had done earlier. He didn't have quite the speed, but the effect was more or less the same. Four of them were knocked ass-over-teakettle, one of which was immediately flattened underneath the heavy tires, and two were impaled onto the spikes in front of either headlight. Still alive in an unconventional sense, they uselessly swiped at Sanji behind the wheel, no hope of ever catching him.
Sanji stopped a few yards from the entrance of the store and leaned out the driver side window. He grabbed the shotgun mounted where the side mirror would've been and aimed it at the zombie impaled on the spike. He pulled the trigger and blew the thing's head to pieces, and the kickback tore the shotgun from its mount. Hey at least now he had a better weapon than his pistol.
In order to draw them all out of the shop, Sanji slammed his hand on the horn. Inside the loft, Franky had heaved a bowling ball down the stairs and beaned one zombie right in the head, smashing the front of the helmet and turning its skull to mush. "HA! FINALLY GOT ONE!" He yelled. He yelled even louder when all three of them heard a horn rendition of La Cucaracha playing from outside. "Hey, Sanji made it! That's the Frankystein's horn!"
"Of course it is," Nami muttered to herself.
Of the remaining five, three of them broke off to investigate the noise. Sanji scrambled out of the jeep and hid behind it, waiting for something to show up. When they emerged from the shop door, Sanji took aim and blasted them away. The recoil forced the gun into his shoulder and he staggered back. He had never really used a shotgun before, but the nice thing about them is you don't have to aim.
There were only two left, still trying to claw their way past the shop. Sanji dashed back through the front door, planted himself in front of the last two, and yelled out "SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED!"
Then he yelled out "SON OF A BITCH THAT HURTS!" because he pulled the trigger and the recoil again jammed the butt into his shoulder, right where it had last time. At the very least, they were all dead.
"Alright! Guys?! You still up there?!" he called out up the stairs.
"We're all fine!" Nami called back. "Well, except for Luffy…"
"Good! Let's get the hell outta here and go home." Sanji let himself relax and surveyed the damage he had done. He had to admit, he was pretty proud of himself.
It was a bit of an ordeal getting Luffy down. Franky had to go first, letting Nami support Luffy on her shoulder. She helped him climb over the couch and helped him hobble to the car. He grumbled most of the way there. But it was less because of the pain and more because he could see all the zombies he didn't get to kill. "That's like… Over a hundred points! That's so unfair!"
Sanji leaned back against the jeep, looking as cool as he possibly could. "One hundred and twenty points.
"Hundred and ten. That one's still alive." Nami pointed to the other zombie impaled on the Frankystein's spikes.
Luffy, briefly gaining some hope that maybe this trip wouldn't be a total bust, started to raise his arm, bat in hand… Only to watch in horror as Sanji yanked the thing's helmet off and stabbed it in the head. The body went limp and Luffy's heart shattered.
"Hundred and twenty."
They loaded Luffy into the Frankystein and Nami had him lay his leg over her lap to keep it elevated. She sighed at the way he was pouting in the backseat. His leg hurt, yes, but he was far more angry that the injury kept him from bumping up his score. He hadn't had a chance to rank up since they arrived in Little Garden.
"Stop frowning, little baby. We'll go out and find a fire station or something for you to massacre," Nami said. "Once you're all better." Luffy seemed to brighten up a little at that.
Baby was there to greet them when they arrived back at Little Garden, opening the gate and letting them in. She climbed down the balcony to more closely investigate the gore splattered across the front of the jeep. "Ah… I see you four were busy?"
"You could say that. Gimme a hand here?" Nami said, easing Luffy up and helping him out of the truck. He slid off the back and Baby rushed to grab him.
"Oh, Luffy, did you hurt yourself?" Baby asked, looking him over. Nami hopped off the back as well, followed by Sanji.
"I didn't get to do anything cool…" Luffy mumbled. Baby stifled her laughter and passed the guy back to his girlfriend.
"I'm gonna take this thing in to get it hosed off! You guys gonna be okay?" Franky asked, leaning out the driver window. The others waved him off and he pulled into his and Sanji's driveway.
"Soooo? What happened?" Baby asked. "Zhe jeep is covered in gore and Luffy cannot walk!"
A lightbulb lit up above Nami's head and she grinned as wide as she could. "Well, I need to get Luffy to Law, but Sanji would be more than happy to tell you how he saved our lives!"
Baby's eyes widened and she turned to Sanji. "Is zhis true?! You were a, how you say, hero?"
Sanji's heart started racing and he had to struggle to force his words out. "Well, I guess you could-"
"You're damn right he was a hero! Go on! Tell her all about it! Big damn hero," Nami said as she started walking Luffy towards Law's house. She looked over her shoulder to catch Baby listening to Sanji's every word with rapt attention as he regaled their adventure. His eyes caught with Nami's and he gave her a quick nod. She responded with a thumbs up, which left her boyfriend confused.
"What's… What's going on?" he asked.
"Oh nothing, don't worry about it~ I'm just doing my job as the kindest, most generous person in the world~"