A Dog and Her 12 Boys. Season one. GATELOCK prime. – episode 14: Zombie Liquid. The Cafeteria of the Damned.. Then we reached it. The cafeteria. Wide. Warm. Tiled with flesh-pink floors. Full of Humans. Or what was left. Hairless. Fat. Wearing plastic aprons soaked in blood. Eating. Bowls of zombie stew. Slices of gray meat stacked like pancakes. Sandwiches made with arm meat and spinal jelly. A fountain of red ichor bubbled in the center. I dropped the cloak. They looked up. We smelled their fear before they made a sound. Then the first one screamed. We charged. Boy Three took the left flank, bashed a jaw with a cafeteria tray, then stabbed through the throat. Boy Two flipped a table and fired three shots point-blank into a cook’s chest. Boy Four dropkicked a diner into the stew fountain. He didn’t resurface. Blood hit the lights. The room flickered. Boy Eight, still limping, used a broken chair leg to rupture a knee. Boy Ten poured scalding stew onto two of them and ignited it. The smell was revolting. We liked it. One tried to run. Boy Five caught him with a meat hook and reeled him in like a fish. Then the floor shook. A low, sucking noise rose from the back of the room. The grease pit, an industrial drain clogged with decades of fat and meat, began to bubble. Chunks of congealed lard floated to the top and then fused into something with a shape. A slick, black, three-eyed thing clawed its way out, dripping fryer oil and human teeth. It shrieked like a boiling pig and whipped a chain of intestines across the tiles. Boy Nine slipped. Boy One dove and pulled him clear as the chain slapped the wall hard enough to leave a smear of bone shards. I barked once. The boys swarmed. Boy Six drove a bread knife into its eye. Boy Eleven leapt onto its back, stabbing with a steak fork until his arms went red to the elbow. The creature thrashed, vomiting a spray of rancid oil and chopped cartilage. Then Boy Seven had an idea. He ripped a tray of cafeteria bread rolls off the counter, dunked them into the puddle of leaking grease-monster juice, and started eating. The others followed. Boys sopped up the monster with bread, chewing like happy demons at Sunday Black Mass Communion. They ripped meat from its body and dragged it across baguettes and sandwich loaves. They stuffed rolls into the empty eye sockets and wounds like sponges. Every bite made the thing weaker, smaller, wetter. By the time it stopped moving, half of it was inside the boys and the rest was mopped up with sourdough. Thirty seconds. All dead. All consumed. We sat. And we ate. Our appetites were endless. They passed the zombie meat like it was a roast. Boy Seven found a skull-stew with some kind of garnish. Boy Twelve hoarded a plate of spinal pastries. I found something that looked like heart jerky. It crunched perfectly. We ate like kings. After the feast, we looted. The kitchen was full of gear, blades, masks, stimulant injectors. We took it all. In the corner, a treasure chest. Old-world lock. Boy Eleven picked it in six seconds. Inside: ration packs, stim packs, antique ammo — and a black card with a silver strip. No name. Just a skull icon. Chip intact. Cryptic-Cred. I froze. These were rare. Pre-fall. Still functional. Worth entire war-zones in trade. Can buy anything that still remembers cost. I wrapped it in a mental seal and stored it in my flank pack, away from their greasy, curious hands. None of them dared touch it. The artifact chimed in my head as if on cue. The back of the room housed a sewer hatch. It hissed when I approached. The boys looked at me. I opened it. The smell hit like a memory, rot, acid, burnt fur. But not bad. Not to us. Not to a dog and her twelve. We descended into the dark following the stronger artifact pulse.