Cuddly Holocaust Read online

  “I guess I could take you there if you really want,” he said.

  “Really! You will?”

  “Sure, squirt,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”

  “I do! I do!”

  “Okay, we can leave in the morning then.”

  She hugged him until he got sick of her and pushed her away.

  “I guess hiding you here wouldn’t have been for the best anyway,” he said. “You’re human. You belong with the other humans.”

  Then they spent the rest of the night playing board games and drinking warm Kool-Aid. It was the last night Julie laughed and played. It was the last night she felt like a normal human being. It was the last night of her childhood.

  Poro took young Julie across town to reunite her with her parents.

  “I can’t wait to see Mommy,” Julie said with a Kool-Aid-stained smile on her face. “Do you think she knows I’m alive?”

  “How should I know, kid,” Poro said. “Do I look like I’m psychic?”

  They went up a hill overlooking a large factory and hid in the bushes. The building was fire engine red and massive, the size of a mall. The parking lot was fenced in with razor wire across the top.

  “Here we are,” Poro said.

  He pointed down at the crowd of humans behind the fence. At first, Julie thought it was a fort built to protect humans but then she realized it was not that at all.

  “It’s a prison?” Julie asked.

  She watched as a group of teddy bears carrying machine guns led a line of prisoners through the gates and into the red factory. There were hundreds of people. She couldn’t see them, but Julie’s parents were somewhere in the crowd.

  “A detainment camp,” Poro said. “So the humans don’t try to kill any more of my people.”

  “My parents are in there?”

  “Yeah, somewhere,” he said. “I just saw them the other day. Your mother’s legs are broken, but otherwise they seemed fine.”

  Gunshots fired into the crowd of humans as one man tried to escape. The teddy bears didn’t care that they killed several women and children in order to stop the escapee.

  When it was over and the screams had quieted down, the bears dragged the bodies toward the outside of the fenced area. There was an enormous pile of human corpses in the corner of the lot. And beside the pile of corpses there was a bonfire filled with blackened bones.

  Julie saw the dead bodies and looked back at Poro. Then she backed away, shaking her head.

  “I’m not going there…” she said.

  Poro sneered at her.

  “You shouldn’t have chosen your shithead parents over me,” he said. “I said you’d be better off staying at my place.”

  “But you didn’t tell me about this…”

  Julie continued backing away.

  “Look, kid,” he said. “It’s for the best. The world doesn’t belong to you humans anymore. You’ve lost your rights to it. The place is ours now.”

  “How could you?” Julie asked.

  “How could I what?” Poro said. “How could I turn you in? Or how could I break your mother’s legs?”

  Julie froze. Her eyes widened.

  “You broke her legs?”

  “The bitch deserved it after how she treated me,” Poro said. “At least I didn’t cut her tits off. That’s what I really wanted to do.”

  Julie shook her head. Tears flooded her eyes. She couldn’t believe what her best friend was saying. She loved Poro. She loved him more than any friend she’d ever had. Why would he say such things?

  Poro yelled down to the guards at the bottom of the hill, “Hey, over here. We’ve got another one.”

  When Julie looked at Poro, he just gave her a smirk and crossed his paws.

  “Have a nice time rotting in a cell, brat,” Poro said.

  Julie ran. She didn’t look back, she just ran for her life. Dozens of plushy soldiers came after her. She went through yards and buildings and parking garages. And after that day, she never stopped running. She met up with other humans and went from hideout to hideout, always on the run, just trying to stay alive.

  Whenever Julie looked back on that day, she wished she had never run. She wished she charged Poro, picked up a rock and bashed in his face with it until his computer circuits were in tiny bits all over the ground. Then she would have gone after all the other toys at that camp and killed every last one of them. Then she would have saved all of the prisoners. She would have been with her parents once again.

  But Julie knew she never would have been able to accomplish that as a young girl. She had to grow up first. Each day from that point on, she trained herself how to fight, how to kill plushies. She taught herself how to use stealth and take out multiple enemies without being seen. And then she decided she would transform herself into a plushy panda just like Poro, so that she could infiltrate their army. Then she would rescue her parents from the prison camp and murder that little piece of shit panda bear who broke her heart in two.

  The morning sun was rising over the purple cityscape in the distance as they made it out of the badlands. Velvet led the way, bouncing along the crumbled road in the rumbling smoking medical horse. They were lucky to get it moving at all after the battle with the Stomps and Mad Markers.

  Julie was in the other slinky-spider. She slowed it down so that she would fall far behind Velvet. Then she came to a stop.

  “Why are you stopping?” Riley asked her.

  He was in the back of the slinky-spider, hugging the blonde girl to his chest.

  “Get out,” she told him.

  “What?” he said.

  Julie popped the lock on his cell and the door opened like a hatchback.

  “Go on,” Julie told him. “Quickly, before the bunny realizes I’ve stopped.”

  There was a moment of silence. She could hear the boy whispering to the girl back there. Then he closed the door to the cell, locking them back inside.

  “No,” he said.

  “What do you mean no?”

  “I want to help you,” he said.

  “I don’t need your help,” Julie said. “I can handle this on my own.”

  “But how are you going to get into the detainment camp if you have no prisoners? How are you going to even find your parents?”

  Julie didn’t respond.

  “I can help you from the inside,” he said. “Once I’m in the camp, I can locate your parents and tell them about your plan. Then you can find a way to get us out. We can all leave together.”

  Julie popped the lock on the door again.

  “No, it’s too dangerous,” Julie said. “We don’t know what it’s like in there. They could torture or starve their prisoners. They despise humans. It might be a living hell. Besides, you might not be able to find them in there. They might even be dead.”

  Riley closed the door again.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “I’m going in to find your parents no matter what. Besides, I have an older brother and sister who might be in there. I have family to rescue, too.”

  Julie shook her head as she got the slinky-spider moving again. She hoped the boy knew what he was getting himself into.

  “I promise…” Julie told him. “No matter what happens, I won’t leave you in there.”

  Then she sped up, bouncing along the dirt road toward the city of the plushies up ahead.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Julie followed Velvet closely in the medical horse as they went through the streets of the stuffed animal city. She could not believe her eyes when she saw how clean everything was. It was the same area Julie had grown up in as a child and it looked almost exactly as it did seven years ago. Living out in the wasteland for so long, Julie didn’t even realize civilization like this existed anymore. But instead of humans roaming the streets, the citizens were all human-sized toys.

  “This is the doll side of the city,” Riley told her. “But the stuffed animals live here, too.”

  She saw doll people in nice sui
ts and dresses. They were man-sized Barbie and Ken dolls. The Barbies had human-like eyes but permanent fake smiles. The Kens had plastic unmovable hair. They walked stiffly in their plastic skin, carrying shopping bags and brief cases. They seemed like living, breathing mannequins.

  “The dolls are considered the upper class,” Riley said. “The stuffed animals tend to be more of a working class. They also dominate the military.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Julie said, as her eyes scanned the buildings around her. “I had no idea.”

  “The war’s been over a long time for them,” Riley said. “They’ve had a chance to rebuild.”

  They went past Julie’s old elementary school and it looked just as it always had. There were only a small number of students, around the age of five years old. They were mostly all dolls. A doll teacher the size of Julie’s mom watched over the children as they played on the playground. She had blond braided hair and wore a red dress. As Julie passed slowly on her slinky-spider, she saw one doll boy fall off the merry-go-round and scrape his knee. A flap of plastic skin peeled off revealing a bloody kneecap. He screamed and cried until the teacher came to help him.

  “I used to play on that merry-go-round every day at lunchtime,” Julie said. Then a memory came back to her. “When I was eight years old, I remember being on that merry-go-round with a bunch of kids. We were going so fast that spit was flying out of my mouth because I couldn’t keep it closed. Everyone was screaming in my ear. But there was this large girl named Natalie standing off to the side who threw sand in my eyes. I fell off and scraped my elbow. Then she jumped on top of me and started smacking my face and pulling my hair.” Julie smiled as she thought back to that time. Even being beaten up as a child seemed like a happy memory to her now. “I never figured out why she did it. I guess she just didn’t like the way I looked.”

  As they continued down the road, stuffed animal children ran up behind the slinky-spider and threw rocks at the back cell. They were two monkeys and a lion, screaming and roaring as they ran.

  “Humans!” they yelled. “Dirty humans!”

  Then they laughed.

  “Kill the humans!” they said.

  Riley shielded the little girl with his own body to protect her from the rocks as they passed through the bars. Although she was not the one getting hit by the stones, she still burst into tears.

  They passed ten checkpoints from the time they got into the city until they reached the detainment camp. Each time, Julie let Velvet do the talking. Most of the defense force soldiers in the city weren’t the same kind of dolls as the other citizens. They were burly men with chubby baby faces, like cabbage patch kids.

  “Poro the Panda and Velvetta the Bunny?” the fat-faced guard asked as he typed the names into the system. “Confirmed. Continue on your way.”

  Although there were a lot of security checkpoints, everything was very relaxed. It was as though they had never feared an attack by humans or rival toy groups. Perhaps they had lived in peace here ever since the war ended all those years ago.

  “There it is,” Julie said.

  When they arrived at the prison camp, Julie felt like she was returning to that time as a child. In her mind, she saw Poro standing on the hill to the left with her ten-year-old self, yelling for the guards. She imagined the crowds of people, the bonfires, her parents somewhere among the traumatized prisoners. But there was none of that now. Everything was clean and orderly.

  The fire engine red factory towered above her as they went through the front gates, blocking out the sunlight. The same gnarled chain link fence surrounded the property, but much of the building seemed new and freshly built. There was even a parking lot of windup cars on the other side of the facility. She assumed it would be a little smaller than she remembered, but it was actually much larger. And quieter.

  “Are you sure you two want to do this?” Julie said. “It might not be too late to back out.”

  Riley watched as two cabbage patch guards closed the chain link gates behind the slinky-spider.

  “It’s far too late to back out,” Riley said. “But don’t worry. We can handle it.”

  Julie took deep breaths. It was almost show time.

  “Thanks for doing this for me, Riley,” Julie said. “And remember, no matter what happens, I will get you out of there when this is all over. I promise.”

  “I know you will,” Riley said.

  They pulled up to the red building where there was a small group of guards chatting amongst themselves. Julie climbed down from her slinky-spider. She went to the back and stared at Riley through the bars. He gave her a nod. The boy seemed much calmer than she was.

  Velvet came up behind Julie and patted her on the back.

  “Let’s get this over with so that we can report back to headquarters,” Velvet said. “They’re going to be pissed when they hear about what happened out there.”

  “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow,” Julie said.

  Velvet laughed. “I wish.”

  The bunny held her swollen belly as she unlocked the prison cell and let the children out.

  “Over here,” Velvet told the guards.

  The cabbage patch kid soldiers helped take the children to the side of the building. There was a small crowd of human prisoners gathered there. Most of them were scavengers—humans who survived in the wasteland all by themselves, living off of garbage and contaminated water. The majority of humans still alive were scavengers such as these. Though they lasted longer than most humans out there, they lived like crazed animals. Their minds were long gone. Julie hardly saw them as human beings anymore.

  “They smell terrible,” Velvet said to a group of clown soldiers who were smoking cigarettes nearby.

  Judging by the mud on their brightly-colored uniforms, the four clown soldiers were obviously the ones responsible for bringing in all of these scavengers.

  “That’s all we found out there,” a clown soldier said. “Two weeks of hunting and that’s all we have to show for it. Our CO is going to be pissed.”

  The guards put the children with the group of scavengers. The humans whined and moaned around them, sniffing at the kids like dogs. The little girl shrieked when one of them licked the wound behind her bandaged eyes.

  Then they prepped the prisoners for incarceration. They peeled off all of their rotten clothing. With fire hoses, they sprayed the mud and feces from their bodies. Then they cut the bugs and maggots from their dreadlocked hair.

  “They’re getting more and more disgusting every day,” said a squishy-faced guard with a brown beard made of yarn. Then he looked at Julie, “Why don’t you guys just kill them out in the waste and stop bringing them to us? We’re sick of dealing with half-dead humans full of infections.”

  “Give us a break,” said one of the clown soldiers. “These are all that’s left out there.”

  When all the prisoners were cleaned, they were lined up and put on conveyor belts. They separated them into four different lines: adult males, adult females, male children, and female children. The blind girl cried as they separated her from Riley, but there was nothing he could do to keep them together.

  “Don’t worry,” Riley told her. “Just do as they say until I find you inside.”

  But his words didn’t stop her from crying.

  The humans were treated like boxes being loaded into a truck. This was typical smart-toy treatment of humans. Being treated like inanimate objects was what they hated most about being toys, so this was part of their revenge.

  “Come on,” Velvet said. “Let’s go in and get some coffee.”

  Julie nodded and followed her toward the doors into the red building.

  “You can count on me,” Riley said as she passed him.

  He pretended to be speaking to the noseless scavenger kid in front of him, but Julie knew those words were meant for her. She looked back at him. And despite the watchful eyes of the prison guards, she gave him a nod.

  “Let’s do this,” she said.
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  Velvet looked back at her. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” Julie said.

  Then she entered the colossal human detainment facility. As she went through the double doors, she realized that all of this was really happening. She was actually entering the place where her parents had been held captive for the past seven years. It was a moment she had only been able to dream about until now.

  In her mind, she pictured what it would be like to finally see them again. She wondered if she would even recognize them after so much time. If all went as planned they could possibly even be reunited as soon as that afternoon.

  Julie followed Velvet and the other soldiers through a white hallway lined with windows.

  “You’re both from General Griz’s unit, right?” one of the clown soldiers asked.

  “Yeah,” Velvet answered.

  “How’d that raid go?” he asked. “I haven’t heard anything about it yet.”

  “It didn’t go well,” Julie said.

  Velvet snickered. “Didn’t go well? The whole thing was fucked. We’re all that’s left of the entire unit.”

  As they walked through the passageway, the clown behind Julie kept trying to get her attention. He had smooth white plastic skin and fluffy red hair. Julie hated the clown smart-toys when she was a child. They seemed to have been designed to be equal parts creepy and annoying. Only the most sadistic of parents bought them for their children.

  “Hey panda, what’s with those stupid goggles?” the clown asked.

  The other clown soldiers giggled.

  “They’re just goggles,” Julie said.

  “But why are you wearing them?” the clown asked, getting into her face.

  “Yeah, they’re dumb,” said another clown.

  Julie tried to ignore them, looking through the windows along the hallway walls. The windows gave her a view into the large warehouse-like room the prisoners should soon be entering.

  Velvet looked back at her. “Now that he mentions it, I don’t think I’ve seen you without those on. Why are you always wearing them?”