Zombies In New Orleans

Sharon walked into the dark, blue, New Orleans dance club known as the “Red Room”. She had the same thing on her mind that she always had on spring break – Guys, with a capitol ‘G’. Fifteen minutes after entering the club, Sharon was dancing like all the other drunken spring break students, when a name appeared floating in mid-air before her. She stopped dancing to the pounding trance music and tried to focus on the fuzzy letters, but the more she concentrated, the more the word faded from her view. She drunkenly wondered what the hell God had been trying to warn her about. Then she saw a cute guy, lost her train of thought, and never discovered that it hadn’t been God at all, but rather a drunken voodoo doctor. In New Orleans, everyone is drunk on spring break.

Soon Sharon forgot about the blurry warning, and continued her night of drinking, dancing, and the occasional flashing of her breasts. This activity attracted the attention or a shadowy figure. He limped over with a limp like someone who’d had too much to drink, only, different, somehow. Of course, everyone in the club was too drunk to notice the difference, but it was there, nevertheless. The nameless figure came up behind Sharon and tapped her shoulder with a bony figure to get her attention. She turned around, decided the figure looked mostly male, and flashed it.

"Very nice,” intoned the figure. “You are just the type of girl I’ve been looking for. Would you care to join me in the bathroom?”

Through her drunken haze, the only words from the figure’s almost overly-elegant speech that Sharon’s brain recognized were “nice”, “girl”, “join”, and “bathroom” - just enough for her to get the general idea that whoever was standing in front of her wanted sex. “Sure”, she agreed eagerly. Sharon followed her new-found lover towards the rear restrooms of the building. As the door creaked closed, the Red Room’s pale, skinny DJ cranked up the music, drowning out Sharon’s screams…

***

Detective Greg flicked on the TV set in his meager hotel room to see an interesting ad. “The following is a paid advertisement from the makers of Mattaway,” the announcer’s generic voice came. “Are big annoying singing rocks ruining your day?” The picture faded into the image of a little boy sitting on the side walk, crying next to his crushed toy truck. His mom walked into the frame.

“What’s wrong, Billy?” she asked.

“Matt,” the boy sniffed, “he rolled over it!”

“Sounds like we need some Mattaway.”

“Yes,” broke in the announcer, “It’s Mattaway – the only proven effective way to keep that pestering rock and his oddly unique singing voice out of your life! And you know it’s safe because we’ve tested it on animals!”

The image reverted to the child, now happily playing with another brightly colored truck, while the mom sprayed an aerosol can into the air around them. “Thanks, Mattaway!” she smiled at the camera as the words ‘Available at a parallel universe near you’ appeared at the bottom of the screen.

“Damn, Greg said, “I really need some of that.”

“No you don’t,” Matt argued, as he rolled out the nearby wall, humming the commercial’s catchy jingle to himself.

Greg shut the TV off as his good friend and occasional partner on the P.I. beat, Ralph, stepped out of the hotel bathroom in a stylish zoot suit. Greg had no need to change, because his usual detective’s outfit was stylish enough for nearly any occasion. Yes, even that one.

“You ready to leave?” Greg asked his friend.

“Hell yeah,” Ralph replied. Both were all set to enjoy a kick-ass Mardi-Gras in the best place to celebrate it, New Orleans, Louisiana. As the two strode out, they knew not the peril that would await them just at the first bar they would hop into.

***

As the pair ran from the first bar they’d visited that night, Ralph shouted at Greg “What the hell were you thinking?!”

“Well, just before I sat down,” Greg calmly replied as he ran alongside Ralph, “I was thinking ‘Time to get warmed up.' Then I got warmed up…”

“Yeah, I saw that… I wasn’t aware that was really possible.”

“Possible? Yes. Recommended? Well…” Greg gestured to the angry crowd that was just now exiting the bar in the pair’s wake. “Anyway, I’d call that a good start for the evening.”

“What do you mean, ‘start’?” Ralph growled. “Look at that crowd. I’d say our evening is done, man.”

“Nonsense. I’m not about to let some two-bit mob ruin my fun. Watch this.”

“Watch what?” Ralph asked as Greg dragged him into the next bar they passed.

Greg ignored him, covered his mouth and shouted, in a low, gruff tone, “He went over there!” Despite the fact that Greg had actually not gestured in any direction in particular, no one in the mob wanted to look like they were too drunk to not know what direction he had meant, even though in truth they all were, anyway. And so, the drunken two-bit mob, unable to come to a drunken consensus about which direction had been implied, split into two drunken one-bit mobs, and headed off in opposite directions. “Wow,” Greg said. “I can’t believe that worked.”

Ralph just sighed and shook his head. “I’m heading to the bar.”

***

Fifteen minutes later, Greg and Ralph were beginning to notice a problem with the club. Though they both had their respective macks on, they appeared to be the only two so macking.

“Greg, why are we still here?” Ralph asked. “The mob is long gone. Let’s go somewhere bumping.”

“This place IS bumping. Or rather,” Greg conceded, “it’s supposed to be.”
Ralph looked at the lifeless club. It was most nearly the opposite of bumping, whatever that was. “Come on Greg. I thought knew all the hot-spots in New Orleans.”

“First, I know all the hot-spots in the nation, and don’t you forget it. And second, I was just here last week. On, erm… Business. And the club was bumpin’. No, something isn’t right here.” Greg looked around the club and thought about what had changed since his last visit. Music? No, the club was still laying down the same phat beats it did every week. Atmosphere? Nope, the Red Room was still the same smoky and ironic blue color it always had been, if just a twitch darker.

Greg couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was there. Something was off. The strobe lights blinking in the corners of the club didn’t help anything. They weren’t really fast enough to be called a “strobe.” More of an annoying blinking, really. In between blinks, though, Greg spotted the problem. As fast as the beats were pumping, the partiers, who should have been up to full Spring Break power by now, were dancing like dead people. Not normal dead people, of course, because dead people can’t dance, but like strange dead people with just enough energy left in their corpses to dance.
Greg tapped one dancer on the shoulder so he could give a simple “What gives?” and hopefully get some answers. He was shocked when the shoulder he tapped fell off the dancer with a dry snap. The dancer, a bit disgruntled about losing his right arm, said “Oh snap!”, then turned toward Greg and snarled dryly. It was then that Greg realized the REAL problem in the Red Room: the zombies. Slowly, the zombies around Greg and Ralph became aware of the non-zombies among them. A zombie roar sounded over the speakers, alerting the entire club to the living interlopers.

Seemingly oblivious, Greg stood there in denial, dancing to the “dum-Dum, dum-Dum” of the blasting bass. In a whirl of arms, legs, and raver skillz, he quickly dismembered many nearby zombies. When Greg woke up from his Trance trance, he realized that the crowds around him were not spectators checking out his dope moves, but rather, a zombie horde bent on killing him and his partner. Greg listened closer, and realized that the bass he had been dancing too was really instructions: “Get them, Get them, Get them,” the speakers were shouting.

“This is not good,” Ralph noted. He lacked Greg’s amazing, if accidental, anti-zombie raving skillz.

“Follow me!” Greg shouted over the noise in the club, as he raved a path through the zombies to the door. Once they’d escaped, they realized that the whole city was a crowd, and they had accomplished nothing.

Greg sighed heavily, and Ralph breathed in from his inhaler. “Well, we survived that.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Greg cautioned. His mind was racing. As he thought, he realized a few things. First, zombies are notoriously stupid. Second, they had seemed entirely contained in that one small club. Therefore, Greg reasoned, they had obviously not realized that there was an expansive city waiting for them outside the doors to the Red Room.

Until now. Following Greg and Ralph through the door, the zombie horde came full on into the crowds of unsuspecting spring breakers, overrunning the helpless, drunken coeds.

“Oh shit,” Greg mused. “They’ve overrun the drunken coeds.” He tapped Ralph on the shoulder and motioned towards their hotel. “Well, what do you say we retire for the evening?”

***

“DAMN!!!” Greg shouted after the pair had returned to their suite. “I just don’t believe it…” He slammed the mini-bar closed in frustration. “Twenty bucks for a bottle of Schnapps!”

Ralph, who was a tad more practical than Greg, stared out the gaping hole Matt had created earlier. He was speechless, but Greg read his expression with familiarity.
“Yeah, I know; I’ll fix that too,” he said. “Just lemme figure out how.” With that, Greg lapsed deep into concentration.

Before he actually had to figure anything out, a glowing letter “G” appeared in the clouds. “Look!” Ralph shouted, “It’s the Greg Signal! But, who even knows you’re here?”

Greg began ticking names off his fingers. “Well, I do, and so do you, but I’m pretty sure neither of us are operating the Greg Signal. And look.” As Greg pointed, the clouds shifted, and what had appeared to be the Greg Signal, which doesn’t exist anywhere outside of New Jersey – or anywhere within New Jersey, either – was revealed instead to be a bright neon sign flashing “GIRLS! GIRLS!! GIRLS!!!” “Come on,” Greg ordered, “We need to get to that building!”

“Because the neon lights are a last sign of some intelligence in the city?” Ralph speculated.

“Ummm…. Yeah, sure.” Greg liked it when he didn’t have to think up his own brilliant plans.

“Okay, but how do we get through there?” Ralph asked, again piping reality into Greg’s pipe-dream mind. “The city is crawling with zombies.”

Greg thought for a moment, then glanced at his PDA calendar. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “There’s only one way through that horde. Quick, Ralph,” quizzed Greg, “what’s the one thing that can repulse even the undead themselves?”

Ralph stammered. “Huh? I dunno…” he shrugged. “Ugly women?”

But Greg was already gone from the room, rushing downstairs.

***

Ralph arrived only a few seconds behind Greg, just in time to hear the answer to the riddle.

“Magic Pro Tour players!” Greg addressed the crowd. “I have need of your special skills! I offer 100 tickets for Magic Online to every man who will form a protective zombie-proof ring around me and my friend here!”

Of course, the players knew Magic Online sucked, and continued drafting. Greg’s trump card, so to speak, was forced. “Okay, okay,” he conceded. “Every man who protects me gets to touch a Beta Black Lotus.” This got the players’ attention.

“Up front?” one asked.

“No, only if you survive,” Greg qualified. Noting they’re dismayed expressions, he quickly added “But you can touch an Alpha Time Walk up front!”

This was too much for the gamers. They all quickly surrounded Greg, who un-sleeved his Time Walk and passed it around the group. When it was safely re-sleeved in his pocket, Greg, Ralph, and their geek shield, headed out as one, towards the strip club.

Greg was quickly dismayed to learn that he had underestimated the zombies’ aversion to Pro Tour players, and was visibly frightened as the gamers began to drop at an alarming rate. Just as the last nerd fell, Greg and Ralph were inside the dark club. As he surveyed the apparently dominatrix style lain out before him, with chains and whips adorning the wall, Greg heard a very un-zombie-like yell from behind. He turned to find an unbelievably hot blonde charging the pair. Having grown accustomed to this action, Greg settled in to accept the young lady. He was a bit surprised when the lady missed, and jumped on top of Ralph instead, who was also a bit surprised.

More than a bit, actually. “Is this how all your day’s go, Greg?” he asked.

Before Greg could answer with an affirmative, the woman spat out “Silence, depalsum!” Ralph looked at Greg helplessly, who shrugged as if to say ‘Go with it.’

The girl chained Ralph’s wrists, ankles, neck, and chest to the stone wall. Then, as Ralph struggled vainly to break free, the girl, who Greg noted was sparsely dressed, even for New Orleans spring break standards, began lighting candles in a circle around her victim. As if under a trance, Ralph quickly fell asleep.

“Alright, alright, hold it. Exposition time,” Greg demanded. “What’s going on here?”

The girl stood up, and her posture seemed to change from the ravaging, fierce warrior woman who just tackled Greg’s partner into a congenial, polite, southern belle. Who just happened to be topless. “Hi!” she beamed. “My name’s Cindy. A Cajun topless necromancer. Nice to meet ya,” she drawled in her enticingly cute New Orleans accent as she extended her hand.

“Greg,” the detective introduced himself, bowing to kiss her wrist formally. “And, not that I’m complaining here, but I thought ordinarily, necromancers were evil.”

Cindy gestured at her shapely body. “Do I really look ‘ordinary’ to you?” she pouted, obviously teasing Greg.

“Good point,” he laughed. He quickly realized, though, that they had more important things to deal with at the moment.

***

When they were finished, Greg pulled up his pants and asked, almost casually, “So, what’s the deal with all the zombies?”

Cindy’s face went back to the serious hunter as she explained: “I am the Selmenta, the only person keeping all of humanity from being overrun by Cajun Zombie Hordes.”

“I see. And, that’s your uniform…?” Greg’s eyes darted from unclad body part to unclad body part on the mythological hottie.

“Well, no, not really.” The friendly Cindy returned. “Ya see, zombie huntin’s kinda a seasonal job, and a girl's gotta eat, ya know?”

Greg understandingly slipped a pair of twenties into the zombie slayer’s red thong, the only article keeping her from being totally nude, except for the thigh straps loaded with what was apparently zombie killing gear.

“Thanks,” she blushed, “but now’s not the time for a lap dance.”

“Yes it is.” Greg flashed her several more twenties.

“Fine,” she sighed, “just a quick one…”

***

Thirty minutes later, a zombie arm flew through the window, interrupting a pair. In the grip of the undead hand was a note, reading:

“To find some of the answers, check the back of the book. But to find them all, go to 109 Spooky Swamp St.”

The note was signed with a large red question mark, dripping in blood. “Geez,” said Greg. “Some people just can’t even other to sign their own names anymore.”

Looking at the address, Cindy mentioned, as though not thinking, “I know that place. It’s the old abandoned were-house on the bog.”

Greg tried to stifle a groan at the obvious were-wolf pun in Cindy’s statement. “Alright then, let’s go!”

“Come on, we can get out through the old underground escape tunnel.”

Surprised, Greg asked “The what?!”

“Oh, you know, all these old strip joints have emergency escape routes.”

“Why?”

Cindy tilted her head as she tried to think of the reason. “You know, I never really thought about it. Go figure.”

Cindy pulled a torch from the backdrop in the back, and the wall opened into a hidden exit. The torch, meanwhile, became a flashlight in Cindy’s hand.

“How’d you do that?” Greg asked.

“A secret from the English isles,” Cindy winked.

As Cindy lead Greg down the dark tunnel, he decided to grow more acquainted with his new partner. In between two bouts of activity vastly inappropriate for a zombie-related emergency, Greg managed to ask “So, what made you want to get into necromancy in the first place?”

Cindy’s answer came as a shock to Greg, who usually was ready for anything: “Jesus,” she chirped. Greg gave her a face that begged for details, so she sat up, leaned back against the rock wall, and explained. “See, as a teenager, I was sorta doubtful of all the biblical miracles, such as the resurrection of Christ. I did some studying and found something crazy. Jesus wasn’t the only dead man walking the streets that day. All of the graveyards were evacuated.

“This stuck me as odd, but when I remembered that Jesus still had his wounds and holes from crucifixion, it hit me. Jesus wasn’t healed by God; he, and the rest of Jerusalem, were zombified. Of course, as an impressionable young teen, I became fascinated with the idea of praising God through necromancy. I practiced and practiced. By the age of fifteen, I had revived a frog I was supposed to dissect. On my seventeenth birthday, I raised my first human.

“However, like Spiderman, I vowed to use my powers only for good. I did some digging, found the role of the Selmenta, and knew I had found my calling. I’ve been doing that, and stripping, ever since.”

Throughout the speech, Greg nodded and grunted agreeably every once in a while, though his gaze never left his partner’s naked chest.

The tunnel wasn’t long, giving the couple plenty of time to waste on their journey, but eventually, the pair emerged from underground, and found themselves at the edge of New Orleans, with wide expanses of swampland all around them. “Over there,” Cindy pointed. “That’s the place.” She stared at the warehouse, listening to her zombie-huntress instincts about the situation.

Greg, meanwhile, stared at Cindy, fighting off somewhat similar instincts. “Quit that,” he told himself quietly.

“You say something, Hun?” Cindy glanced back at him.

“Umm…” Thinking fast, Greg said the first thing that came into his mind. “Duck!” Conveniently, a truck passed by, making Greg’s comment much less random to the untrained eye. The pair watched quietly as the truck drove into the dark building.
“Hmmm....” he thought, somewhat slower. “I thought this place was abandoned.”

“Me too,” Cindy agreed. As another truck approached, she added, “I guess we were wrong.”

“Baby,” Greg smirked, “I'm never wrong.” Keeping his gaze on the truck, Greg waited patiently for the right moment to put his brilliant plan into action. He was interrupted, however, by Cindy, who had an even better plan, which involved jumping onto the truck and riding it into the building. Once inside, and past the platoon of zombie guards, Greg and Cindy leap off the truck and tried to blend in as well as a man in a bright red suit and a woman in a stripper's thong could ever blend in.

From behind a box, the two watched as zombie workers loaded large brown boxes into the trucks. Something seemed out of place to Greg, though. Following his keen interests, he scanned the place for exactly what it is that had tipped his instincts off.

Large brown box. No.

Cindy. No.

Zombie workers. No.

Cindy. Nope.

Tractor trailer trucks. No.

Cindy. Again, no, though it obviously wasn't for lack of trying.

Then he spotted it. A large poster showing a girl tossing up her shirt, with only a censor bar between her naughty bits and any onlookers. Something was written on the bar, but Greg couldn't quite make it out at this distance. Dismayed but intrigued, Greg elbowed Cindy, crouching to his left, in the breast, to show her what he had just found.

“Ow!” Cindy's sharp voice pierced the low din of loading machines and zombies. This called the attention of several nearby loaders, who quickly turned and faced the intruders. Matt the rock showed up in the background, and began to sing 'Thriller'. It was crunch time for the zombie slayers.

Ever the models of versatility, the zombies quickly shifted from a loading mind frame to one of brain devouring slaughter, once again proving the advantages of zombies over your regular workforce. “Hey, Cindy,” Greg quipped, “If we get out of this, remind me to look into an army of zombie slaves.”

“I'll make a note of it,” Cindy deadpanned as she began preparing anti-zombie weaponry. Taking her cue, Greg began to check out his own armaments. His two trusty Walther P38 handguns, fully loaded. Greg flipped the safety on each of the guns to off, then looked up to assess how the situation had changed.

It turns out not much had, and Greg learned the essential downside of zombies. They are dreadful, yes, but they are especially dreadfully slow. “On second thought, I guess I won't need those zombie slaves, if this is how fast they move.”

“What do you mean? I need every second I have here!” Cindy seemed a bit overly panicked, considering the less than threatening nature of their predicament. Greg looked over her shoulder and saw her drawing a delicate, intricate design into a leather canvas she'd lain on the floor. Her brow scrunched in concentration as the zombies crept nearer, step by unyeildingly-slow step.

When one of the zombies was finally less than ten feet away, Greg took the opportunity to put a bullet in the attacker's head. He then grabbed Cindy by the wrist and pulled her off the ground, leaving her half completed sketch where it was. Greg headed for the nearest exit he could see, a pair of large steel doors leading further into the complex, which bore the word “WARNING” in big red letters. Greg turned to Cindy. “Do you think you can get these doors open?”

“Y-yeah, but...” she stammered.

“Just do it, I'll hold them off.” With that, Greg whipped his two pistols in the direction of the slow-moving assailants, and began firing. Though many of his shots took off an arm or a leg, it was only a bullet through the head that seemed to be making the zombies stop. Once the third zombie dropped, Greg took a break from firing to reload, and Cindy was finally able to get his attention again.

“Hey, these doors aren't locked or anything, you know,” she said while demonstrating the fact easily.

“Oh,” was all Greg could think to say.

“But look at this here.” Cindy drew the doors closed again and pointed out the lines under the big red WARNING. It read: 'The following content may be unsuitable for children.' “Thats an odd warning, isn't it?” she asked.

“Yes,” Greg mused. “Oddly familiar...” He'd have to think about it later. Now was a time for action. Greg and Cindy passed through the doors, then barred them shut with a broomstick, sealing in the rest of the zombie workers, who then decided to revert to doing their grudge work. Then they turned to find three zombie janitors, dutifully mopping the hallway floor. Before the zombies had a chance to notice the newcomers, Greg shot away their brooms, then laughed as they became confused as to what exactly was happening. They turned and looked up at Greg with an undead rage, the kind of rage only the undead can give you. Greg took aim with one gun and fired at the enraged zombies, lopping off random limbs.

“Ugh,” Cindy grunted impatiently. “We don't have time for this.” She grabbed his other gun out of his pocket, though Greg noticed she hesitated a bit too long on his other gun. After that, she fired three quick shots into three separate zombie skulls, dropping them in less than a second. “Why do you always insist on playing with your targets? Can't you take anything seriously?”

“Of course not,” Greg replied. “Where's the fun in that?” He was much too embarrassed by Cindy's feat to tell her that he had in fact been aiming for their heads to begin with. He lead Cindy down the rest of the hall without incident, and arrived at a large theater room. A wall of TV's showed drunken college girls revealing their drunken college breasts. In the middle of it, a throne-like chair sat, its back to the adventurers.

Without warning, the chair spun to face Greg and Cindy, revealing a girl. Now, Greg had a habit of calling women in their 20's or 30's 'girls,' so to clarify, the person seated in the chair was barely 18, if. She was dressed in a fine business suit, but that only served to contrast her girlishness with an absurdly mature outfit. She spoke with a girlish voice, even. “Hello. How nice of you to join me.”

“Heh, right,” Greg replied nonchalantly. “Look, babe, is your mom or dad in? I think I've got to kick their ass about now.”

“FOOL!” the girl shouted. “Do not tempt the wrath of Kristen, Mistress of the Undead, lest you be destroyed.”

Greg tried his standard Plan B: charm. “In that case, can I tempt the beauty of Kristen?”

“NO! Imputent Mortal, you cannot sway me!”

“What, are you a lesbian? Should Cindy have...?”

“SILENCE! Don't make me summon my elite guard!” Kristen threatened.

Greg refused to be silent, especially when someone threatened him. “You sure? Cindy does the hottest little thing where she...”

“That does it!” Kristen slapped a big red button on her chair's arm. “Come forth, my zombie minion.” On cue, a dark figure jumped into view, in a decidedly un-zombie-like motion, then brandished a smile and a ninja star. “Behold,” Kristen announced, “the ultimate warrior: Snoop Dogg, ZOMBIE NINJA!”

“Oh, hey, Snoop!” Greg went over to shake the zombie ninja's hand, pleased to run into an old friend. He quickly realized, though, that this was not the old Snoop he remembered, and in fact, that this man wanted to kill him.

“I want to kill you,” the zombified rapper snarled.

“Dude, chill,” Greg said, trying his best to act casual in the face of such great terror. “I can pay you back now. I got the money. Don't I, Cindy?” Cindy nodded her agreement, apparently too terrified to move. “I just figured that after you became a big star you wouldn't need it, you know?” Snoop merely snarled in contention, and Greg was forced to continue. “Look, now, lets just cool off for a second. Why don't you take a seat, drop the ninja stars and BURN IN HELL, ZOMBIE SCUM!!”

Dropping the pretense of being a diplomat, which Greg doubted anyone who knew him would have believed, Greg's hands flew to his pistols as he unleashed a barrage of bullets, all of which were handily dodged by Snoop Dogg's outstanding rap dance moves. “Well, fuck,” Greg said, throwing his now empty guns at the zombie in a show of desperation.

The zombie ninja was now thoroughly angered, and took its opportunity to throw a half-dozen stars at Greg. Without thinking, Greg crouched, placing his head between his legs and closed his eyes. He heard several muffled noises, as well as flesh ripping. Greg cursed under his breath. I never got to see Rawanda. After a few seconds, though, Greg realized that he was in fact not dead. Confused, he aborted his fetal position and checked his surroundings.

In front of him he was a totally nude Cindy, who was standing over a beheaded Zombie Snoop and holding her star-torn thong in her hands. Greg's mind raced trying to figure out what had happened, but Cindy filled him in. “I caught the stars in my thong and flung them back at him,” she explained matter-of-fact-ly. “He never saw it coming.” She gave him a confident grin, and this was enough to quell any question Greg might have had about how her flimsy, sheer, silky smooth thong was capable of deflecting six ninja stars; or anything else about her story for that matter.

“No matter,” announced Kristen, though with significantly less confidence than earlier. “You think that was my last line of defense?”

“I don't think,” answered Greg. “I know. But first, why don't you tell us why you did all this.” He gestured to the grandiose display before the three of them. “Why did you unleash Girls Gone Wild on the world?” Cindy gave him a sharp poke in the ribs.
“Oh, and the zombies too. Why the zombies?”

“Its because... I'm fat.” She stared up at their faces and broke down crying. “You'll never understand all the pain and torment I go through!”

“No, I won't,” affirmed Greg. As far as he could tell, Kristen was anything but fat. She was drop dead gorgeous, and hands down the hottest evil villain he'd ever faced. And that was saying something, considering all the evil hot villains he'd faced.

Kristen continued, through streams of tears. “You can walk around with your swagger and luck and fall out of any situation on top, but not me. Look at me! I came into this world ugly and fat. What do you expect me to do?”

“Dammit bitch! You're hot! Get it through your head!” Greg was growing fed up with her sad-girl pity routine. “Besides, you still haven't explained the Girls Gone Wild, or the zombies.”

“Don't you see?” she cackled. “It's my revenge. My revenge on their kind!” With that she pointed at Cindy, standing naked, beautiful, and flabbergast. “And on the guys who wouldn't ask me out because I'm fat. I made zombies out of all the girls who were posing for my camera, then sent out the videos of them to all the horny guys watching Comedy Central at late nights when they SHOULD have been dating me.”

Greg was confused. This wasn't making any sense to him, or Cindy, by the look on her face. He stood silent, though, and let Kristen finish her monologue in peace.

“The first videos were harmless. They were simply so I could build up a following. This latest batch, though, the one I'm currently loading, this one will have subliminal messages, turning all the viewers into my mindless zombie slaves!”

“Shit!” said Greg. “Cancel my subscription!”

“No! In fact... you will be the first to fall victim to my spell!” With that, the video screens linked together, forming one gigantic warning.

“CINDY!” Greg shouted above the cheesy music. “CLOSE YOUR EYES! WHATEVER HAPPENS, DON'T LOOK AT IT!” Over the announcers voice, describing the wild co-eds doing things you've never seen before, Greg heard Kristen's voice cackling madly, then shouts of denial. The poor girl had fallen pray to her own scheme. Greg shot the VCR before opening his eyes to see Kristen, zombified.

“See hun,” Cindy commented, “NOW you look ugly.” She used the gun she still had to end Kristen's insane suffering.

“Nice work, baby.” Greg kissed Cindy. “You make a great sidekick. So, shall we go celebrate?”

“Yes, let's” Cindy agreed. She wrapped her arm around Greg's waste and the two of them left the warehouse, leaving a trail of clothes behind them.

***

Some time later, back at the old strip club, Snoop was on stage, free-styling, while chicks danced on screen behind him. “Snoop Doggy Dogg just came out of da fog...” Ralph remained chained to the wall, no longer bound by the evil spell, but still in no hurry to leave the newly re-opened strip joint. He was enjoying himself quite fine until Matt decided it was his turn to rap. The giant boulder crashed through the wall, got on stage, and began his own free-verse:

“Screw rolling on dubs, I'm rollin' on thugs, and I got the mugs to show them bugs that I did it. Snoopy Dogg and the shiznit, you can learn rap like that from a kit. Snoop you best just sit down fo' we throw down, how does that sound?”

The End