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All the while I had been running the televangelist on the tube, I had been setting up the grand-daddy of spectacles. It was a top secret project. A need to know, for your eyes only type of thing. Thousands of fission-battery powered cameras had been set up throughout the streets and buildings of Downtown. Squads of privately funded militia had guarded the technicians while they completed this task, and all in all we only lost sixty men during the entire three months of set up. Their sacrifice was well worth the payments of food to their loved ones.

Three days after the preacher pissed me off, he joined nine other criminals and low-lifes as the first participants in my new show. I had combined two of the three popularity genres; sporting events, and reality shows. In addition, we were exercising our rights as citizens to expunge certain dangerous elements from our society.  The show was an instant hit. It would come to be known as the best TV show in the history of mankind. It was certainly the most watched in history, as absolutely everyone with a television watched it, and per capita, that’s living per capita, that was one hundred percent of the population of what was left of the United States. It didn’t take long for me to branch out to other countries either. As a backup, I found myself another televangelist, but I kept her on a short leash.

I got a fantastic host for the show. A former rock star turned survivalist and seriously into guns, he had lived on a fortified ranch in the boonies, but he also had a floor in Bennett Towers, which is where he had been when travel across the US was halted because of the Resurrection. The show itself was easy. It was both a game show and a sporting event, while also focusing on the human element of survival itself. There was only one goal: Be the first out.  There were several rules, such as climbing the wall gets you shot, breaking a camera gets you shot, disappearing off camera for more than two hours gets you shot, but the most important rule was also the goal. If you’re not the first out, you’re not getting out. Make it from gate to gate first. The gates were on either end of a zombie infested Downtown Los Angeles. No maps, no provisions, just go.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Human Race.

The first race almost killed me in my custom leather recliner it was so…awesome. I almost choked to death on my flame grilled filet mignon screaming at the young Hispanic girl, trying to tell her there was a zombie around the corner she was moving toward. Right then and there, with me spitting chewed chunks of meat, and juices running down my chin, I knew I had a winner. Not the girl, the zombie made her look like my spilled filet. The show! The show was the winner.

For the first race, the contestants were trucked to the starting gate and put into their starting cages. The cages were lowered down the wall and onto the street, and it was on. One guy thought he would make a statement about the barbaric nature of the show, and he wouldn’t leave his cage. Never did get out of it. He stood there until a small group of zombies found him, and he died screaming for us to lift the cage as they reached in and scratched him to death. It was great.

It took almost six days for the first contestant to get within sight of the exit gate, and wouldn’t you know it, it was my televangelist buddy. There were several zombies blocking his path, and we all watched him stand in a corner music shop with smashed windows getting up the nerve to make a break for it. The cameras had been focused on him, and when he made his break, even I jumped up and cheered for him to make it. He was a little overweight and soft. Both of those things had come from his sudden preacher fame, and both of them contributed to what happened next.

He ran for it, and he was pretty fast for a fat guy too. From out of the back of a van another guy made a break for it as well. He looked like a biker, maybe a Skin Head. Tattoos and piercings. The guy was all muscle, and I found out later he had been arrested for murdering an old lady for some canned corn in her shopping cart.

Fat guy was going to beat him to the exit cage, so muscles picked up a brick and chucked it at him. He missed, but the preacher turned to see what was happening, and stepped on a forgotten doll. That doll, some baby doll that a little girl had probably been holding when she was torn apart by zombies months before, was the focus of the camera for a solid minute after the race was over. Anyway, the preacher twisted his ankle and went down howling, the biker passing him and making it to the cage. Tattoos was mocking the preacher, yelling about how God couldn’t save him now, when a skinny black kid popped up from absolutely nowhere and shoved a shiv made out of an old toothbrush repeatedly into the guy’s side. The bloody toothbrush was also a post-race focal point.

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