Appointment with the General Surgeon

When Hack cracked the codes on those computers and gave me some of General Surgeon's locations, I went into action. My Bots were loaded with weapons and zombie specific fighting programs. I made sure my BarnacleBots were healthy and in my body to fight off any diseases. The ‘Lustful Raider’ was filled with gas and had its tires checked. My crew and ship were in order.

But you know, a good Captain knows when to over load the cannons. I made a few phone calls and got in touch with the only people crazy enough to fight zombies and infections for a small fee. Heck, turns out they were willing to do it for free.

They arrived the next day. Well, more accurately they were standing in front of my bed when I woke up. I didn’t ask how they got in or why my Bots didn’t attack them. You don’t ask many questions when six ninjas in full gear are waiting for you to get up.

“The Six Swords of the Night, at your service,” one of them said. Or maybe all of them said it. It was hard to say.

“I didn’t expect you here so fast,” I said as I looked for my hat. Most of my hair had grown back in but damn; it still looked ratty.

“We are honor bound to fight the undead where ever they may rise,” they said.

“Well, I am not sure they are magical undead. Could be fancy science and biology tricks.”

The Six didn’t care. “Our oath was to slay the undead where ever they may rise.”

I nodded and got dressed. Wow, the rumors were true. Apparently these guys were doing an assassination job when they ran into the hero, Electron Knight. They also ran into some sort of crazy zombie plaque and were almost killed by it if it wasn’t for the Electron Knight saving them. In return for saving their lives, he made them swear to that oath. If the hero was really smart, he would have made them his sidekicks or something but no, he just turned them into a roaming band of monster hunters. Idiot. Oh well, he saved me from having to pay their usual six digit fee.

“Here’s the list of places,” I said. “We’re striking the one I circled first.”

One of the ninjas caught it. He didn’t read it. “We shall slay any unnatural creature we find. When do we strike?”

I looked at the clock. It was an early 8 in the morning.

“How about now? Unless you guys prefer the night for your sneaky Ninja stuff?”

“We shall be slaying when you arrive,” they said.

Then the damn guys just turned and vanished. Handy trick.

“You heard them,” I said to my Bots. “Let’s set sail and hope they leave us something to kill.”

We got to the warehouse in twenty minutes but the front doors were already open and the stench of the no longer moving undead filled the air. A small stack of heads had been placed by the door, I guess in case we were lost and needed to know which warehouse was filled with killer zombies.

HelmsBot stayed in the ‘Lustful Raider’ while I led my crew inside. Holy crap, it was something to see. It smelled like a butcher’s shop in there and the floors were slick with blood and other wet organic material. It was also littered with twitching disabled zombies. The Swords were making a mess of the place.

That’s not to say there wasn’t resistance. Oh no. There were still plenty of crazed zombies running around. They were dressed in the same strange black fetish looking clothes and they had the same vicious ferocity that made them a bitch to fight last time. There were literally crates filled with the zombies stacked around the warehouse and as we made our way in, some crates would spill open with freshly activated monsters. The second time it happened and I nearly wet my pants, I instructed my Bots to just blast crates on principle.

Ah my Bots. I do love it when science and preparation defeats the opposition. I equipped every Bot with chainsaws for their left hands. Yeah, it’s crude but man, did it chop right through a squishy mass of necrotic flesh. The Bots also had their targeting tweaked so they would aim for knee cap shots followed up by head shots. A wave of zombies dropping to their knees slows them down right nicely. Lastly, every Bot was packing more explosives than a pirate living on a diet of beans and ginger ale. If any of my Bots went down today, he was going to take whatever horde brought him down with him.

We pushed through the warehouse like a hurricane. My crew slaughtered zombies or we found the twitching remains of zombies who the Six Swords had already destroyed. The carnage was overwhelming but for every zombie taken down, I like to think General Surgeon was getting another ulcer.

The zombies were horrible but some of the other things we found were far worse. We found an operating area that had more in common with a butcher’s shop than a hospital. I gave the equipment a look over but I still couldn’t figure out how he was animating his army. Oh well, biology was never my strong suit. I had my Bots blast the place to pieces so no more poor bastards would end up on those tables.

More disturbing was the living employees of General Surgeon. A batch of them were holed up in an office and the Six Swords apparently didn’t think their oath covered killing them. When I found them, they tried shooting at us with pistols and the occasional thrown scapel. I debated capturing them and interrogating them, but the longer I looked at their blood stained aprons the less I felt like leaving any alive.

The Bots shot them all and I bet the their deaths were easier than whatever they operated on had suffered through. Hell, I shot two my self. Some villains just don’t deserve to live.

It was after we cleaned out the General’s henchmen that I saw the first of the Six Swords since entering the warehouse. He was lying dead on the floor, torn in two. Smoke was rising from his body instead of blood. His eyes were still glowing though. The sounds of battle came from down the hall so I rushed my Bots in.

The Six, err, Five Swords of the Night had something surrounded. That something was a twelve foot tall monster with four arms, three legs, a crazy scorpion tail, some horns, a freaking two foot wide jaw in it’s chest and weird beret on it’s head. The jaw in its chest kept opening and closing and I realized it was chewing. I found out later it was chewing on a hand from one of the Five Swords.

It saw me. “Ah Scarlett Drake! I thought you would be too much of a coward to fight me yourself!”

This was General Surgeon? Well, he practices what he does to others. He must have had a really bad childhood. Or maybe the love of his life left him. Or maybe he wanted to be a hero but traded his soul with the wrong demon. There had to be some reason why he was a mess of human experimentation and making a zombie legion. It just wasn’t my problem to find out.

“Bots, kill!”

I’ll say this for General Surgeon, the man can take a five minute volley of lasers. Even the Ninjas paused to see if the monstrosity could take it. The General dropped to one knee and the Bots took aim at his head. He must have taken thirty shots to the head but all it did was blow that stupid beret off.

“Nice try!” he screamed as he rushed forward. One of the Swords stood in his way to slash at him but the jaws in the General’s chest spat some sort of nasty green goo at him. The Sword screamed which was a little disturbing. I would have been more disturbed if I wasn’t scrambling for cover away from the General.

BosunBot got in the General’s way and actually chainsawed one of the creature’s three legs off. For that awesome attack, General Surgeon picked BosunBot up by the head and threw him at 1stMateBot and CabinBot. As they went down, CookBot fired a full barrage into the beast’s upper right arm and actually sheared it off with pure laser power.

As for me, I was backing off and firing laser blasts from my BlastKet like a freaking gunslinger. I was aiming for eyes and what passed for a groin on the monster but it wouldn’t slow down. The Swords leaped into the fray and sliced him from a dozen different directions. He still wouldn’t slow down.

“I’ve got you now!” he screamed. He was right. I had backed into a corner with a twenty-foot high wall of crates boxing me in. The Swords had retreated and I think they were weighing whether their oath meant certain doom against something not technically a zombie. My Bots were still shooting but his back just seemed to be soaking the blasts. Crap.

“What is your blood feud with me about anyway?” I shouted.

He paused. “This used to be a quiet city. There were superheroes but they just managed street crime. They were unorganized and were used to facing little opposition. It was a perfect target for my army but you had to rile them up! Defeating Frost Sting? Upgrade? Worse, you let them live and learn from their mistakes! You’re teaching them how to fight intelligent enemies you moron!”

I grinned. “So you tried to kill me cause I’m just a damn good villain.”

General Surgeon roared and came at me. I think he was trying to insult me but it sounded like compliments to me. It’s funny how you can be thinking about such things when a crazed super-villain is charging at you.

Since all my other shots seemed to do nothing to him, I activated my Laser Cutlass. He didn’t hesitate as a red line of crackling death formed out of my glove but hey, he’ll learn from that mistake. His three remaining arms reached for me and I parried one by just cutting it off. His other two arms grabbed me around the shoulders but that was okay. I still had my Blastket in hand and I fired point blank into that grotesque set of jaws he had on his torso. Teeth shattered and a scream of pain came stereo style out of his head and chest.

He still had a grip on me though.

“You bitch!” General Surgeon snarled. “I will rip you apart and put you back together! When I’m done with you, you’ll be my walking toilet!”

“Too much information about your fetishes,” I said. I really need to shut up with the insults some times because that just really pushed him over the edge. His hands dug into my shoulders and I heard bones crack seconds before the pain blinded me. The pain caused me to drop my Blastket. Luckily my Laser Cutlass is hardwired into my glove. Unlucky for me I was in too much pain to do anything with it.

A barrage of shurikens appeared on General Surgeon’s arms. He kept squeezing.

One of the Swords of the Night sunk his blade into the General’s shoulders. That wicked tail of his snapped forth and impaled the ninja and tossed him aside. He also kept squeezing.

I passed out and then woke up when I hit the ground. Looking up, I saw that 1stMateBot and CabinBot had a hold of each one of General Surgeon’s arms. They had pried him apart and judging from the sounds of metal straining, they wouldn’t hold him for long.

CookBot used his chainsaw to slice off General Surgeon’s scorpion like tail while BosunBot was pumping shot after shot into the monster’s head. The Ninjas took turns jumping in, slicing with their enchanted blades and jumping out while the General wrestled with the Bots on each arm. The General was kicking at the Bots and every kick shattered metal and caused sparks to fly. The open maw on his torso was toothless but still chewing, trying to grab and crush anything it could. It was a mad fight.

One of the Swords dropped down beside me. He picked me up carefully but I still screamed. My arms were useless and hurting worse than a Mardi Gras hangover. I screamed again when he set me down forty feet away.

“You will have to find your own escape in case we can not kill him,” he said.

That was not what I wanted to hear. Damn Ninjas are too ready to die for their honor if you ask me.

“On my right hip I have a box of marbles,” I said. “They’re really explosives. Chuck the box into that lovely open mouth he has on his chest.”

The Ninja took the box in hand. “How do we activate them?”

“Place right hand on my left wrist,” I said. “I will activate it when you yell.”

He did as I asked. Gods, it sucks to not even be able to move your arm but by the Seas, I will push through the pain to push a freaking button.

“I will give you the signal,” he said.

I couldn’t see the battle but I could hear it. An explosion echoed through the place and I knew instantly it was one of my Bots. I hoped the demo charges I packed them with would take out the General but the sounds of battle resumed almost instantly.

The definition of terror is sitting in a warehouse turned zombie factory listening but not being able to see or participate in a battle to the death with a freak of mad science. If another zombie would have come by, I would have been scuttled. If the General won, I would be helpless when he comes by to find me. The Swords could die and the Bots could all be destroyed and I wouldn’t know till the General came by to make me pay for destroying his plans.

A voice whispered behind me, “Do it now.”

I pushed down on the activation button. I turned my head to see who was the voice, but of course there was no one there. The explosion I heard was glorious. Dust and shrapnel billowed through the warehouse and down towards where I was. I laughed when I saw a smoking piece of the General’s arm smash into a wall opposite me. He had to be dead, he had to be.

A long minute later, I got my answer. My Bots, minus BosunBot came around the corner. They were hurting and were barely kept together but they were still functioning. I made sure to command them to deactivate their explosive charges in case any of them fell apart on the way home.

The Swords had survived too. Well, only three of them. They looked down at me with their strange glowing black eyes. For a moment I thought they were going to finish me off. Half their numbers had been killed by this little task and I wouldn’t blame them if they were angry.

“Our brother dived into the belly of the beast, and then the monster exploded with our brother. Was he acting on a plan of yours?”

“Aye, but I didn’t tell him to follow the explosives into the General,” I said. I really wanted that clarified.

“We shall go clean out the rest of the hideouts,” they said in unison.

“Good, you do that,” I said. “I think I’ll drag me and my crew back home. I got what I came for.”

The Swords bowed and did that cool vanishing trick of theirs.

“1stMateBot, return me to the ‘Lustful Raider’. CookBot and CabinBot, loot the place for anything worth keeping.” There was no sense in not making a profit it there was one to be had.

Turn out there wasn’t much in the way of loot but they did find some cash in a safe along with a rather large collection of jewelry. I can only guess that these pieces came from the General’s victims. Either that or he liked to wear a lot of rings and necklaces. Whatever, I sold them all.

As for me, it took me a few weeks to recover. My BarnacleBots worked pretty well as bone fixers, as well as pumping me full of painkillers. Once I verbally instructed 1stMateBot on ordering the BarnacleBots on my treatment, I happily succumbed to a bliss haze of painkillers and bad TV. How much drugs was I on? Let me put it this way, this is the first year I’ve ever watched American Idol. Poor Turkey Cowboy!

As for the Swords of the Night, I never saw them again. They left a scroll on my bed saying the zombie menace was cleared but a more detailed debriefing would be nice. Oh well, I guess Ninjas suck at being open and expressive.

So yeah, I’ve lost two weeks of my life to recovery but you know what? It was worth it. I now have General Surgeon’s flesh blasted horned skull sitting in my lair as a reminder to ummm, myself, that no one screws with Scarlett Drake and lives.

I should maybe put that skull on the van instead.