Chapter 6: Cockroach Juice Cocktail

Cole's brains smelled like cappuccino powder three years past its expiration date.

Rainbow sprinkles tumbled from the corpse's pockets as Luna stomped on the marauder's back and pulled out her steak knife. It was the fifth douchebag of the night to try to get in through the vent pipe, and his accomplice was still outside the door singing "God Bless America" with a runaway tune worse than the sound of corrosive acid rain.

"Three minutes left." She mumbled into the monitor screen, pouring insecticide into a champagne glass.

An eerie neon glow drifted between the shelves. Three days ago Luna had outfitted the warehouse with pink and purple lamps removed from the Love Hotel, and right now they were shining on the handwritten New World Code #42 on the wall:

"Weepers cut off food, bleeders take precedence, gas masks must be worn when mixing drinks."

The sound of fingernails scratching metal came from the ventilation ducts, and Luna set the tequila bottle laced with cockroach carcasses straight, suddenly missing the homeless guy who was always stealing hotdogs from the register. At least he wouldn't have tried to play moral abduction with her with a Bible and Molotov cocktails like the current crowd.

"Baby, you smell like a moldy cheesecake." Luna was throwing the last half bottle of vodka into the blender when the redhead's face poked out of the pipe opening.

Lace bra, snake-print leather boots, a rose with "Love Kills" tattooed on her shoulder-standard doomsday hooker getup. But the other woman's twitching right hand gave away her identity: the pharmacist who'd been evicted three days earlier, when she'd traded fake insulin for a six-pack of tampons.

"I brought gifts." The woman tossed a pink jumper egg, and the device cracked open at Luna's feet, spewing out, however, not lube, but highly toxic spore powder.

The gas mask snaps shut in .3 sec. and Luna tumbles to the back of the freezer, listening to the zippy sound of the spore mist corroding the shelves. The woman took the opportunity to leap down the pipe, and the moment the saber stabbed her in the neck -

"Cheers."

Luna whips up the blender.

As the cockroach juice cocktail splashes in the woman's face, a miracle happens: the poisonous spores react with the insecticide and crystallize into kaleidoscopic patterns on the other woman's retina. The redhead screamed and clawed at her eyeballs until she ripped the optic nerve into spaghetti-like shreds.

"You should try the formula." Luna stomped on her spasming calf, "Use the bitter essence of a speakeasy and add your boyfriend's bile."

There wasn't really a boyfriend at all. But Luna's drone had broadcast the whole thing live when the scum had abused the couple at the gas station three days ago. She remembered how the redheaded woman had used lipstick to draw smiley faces on the dying boy's chest while Cole set his hair on fire with a lighter.

The walkie-talkie on the corpse's waist suddenly burst into a murmur, "Is that little bitch dead yet?"

Luna pressed the talk button so Cole could hear her bite into the rainbow candy. "Hey, you know why cockroaches survive?" She laughed softly into the mike, "Because they know better than humans... Sharing."

The warehouse overhead lights snapped off.

When Cole's mercenaries crash through the spare door, they're greeted by a room full of starlight - Luna has poured fluorescent paint into the cockroach bait, painting the ceiling with a false galaxy. The moment the men froze, vending machines spewed out sodas mixed with shards of glass, and neon tubes began playing the moans of porn stars.

"Party on."

Luna pulled the electric switch.

The stereo cuts to the Frozen theme song as the trap wrapped around the Christmas lights bites into the first man's testicles. The second predator slipped on the lubricant and plunged his head into her special "canned cranium crusher" - a modified meat grinder that was now spewing a thick mixture of broccoli bisque and brain matter.

Cole held up the flamethrower in the doorway.

"You missed an egg." Luna suddenly shatters the floor at his feet with a nail gun.

Three hundred cans of spray cream explode simultaneously.

As fire engulfs Cole's right arm, Luna lifts her blast shield and raises a homemade bazooka made from tampons and dynamite. The recoil sends her crashing into a pile of canned beans, but it doesn't matter, she laughs so hard her gums bleed amidst the shower of cotton and blood that rains down on her.

"Rule number 57." She videotaped at Cole's helmet that rolled to her feet, "Never mess with a girl who can bartend."