Zombie Rules | Book 8 | Who The Hell Is That?

by Achord, David

  “Sounds like it means you can’t shoot worth a shit anymore, am I right?” Tory asked and chortled some more. “You can’t get it up and you can’t shoot. Damn, that’s awful.”

  Trey emitted his own guffaw.

  “Yep, I guess that about sums it up,” Fred said. “As you can imagine, it’s caused me a great deal of worry and more than a few sleepless nights. That’s where you boys can help me.”

  “How?” Trey asked. Suddenly, he was beginning to feel anxious.

  Fred slowly grabbed his jacket and pulled it back behind him, uncovering the pistol on the right side of his hip. He used his left hand to grab the jacket and hold it out of the way.

  “I need to see if I still have it. You see, I can’t simply challenge anybody back there at Mount Weather. That wouldn’t do. So, I told myself I had to find one or two men who were viewed as despicable inbred pieces of shit. Like you two, for example. Tory, you lied about witnessing Zach murder four women, and both of you raped a fourteen-year-old girl a couple of weeks ago. Right?”

  Tory couldn’t help but grin, showing a set of teeth that were threatening to fall out at any minute. “Maybe, so what?”

  “Yep, you two are the pure definition of scumbags. Nobody, and I mean nobody, will care if you die today.”

  Trey scowled at Fred. “You know, you sure do talk a lot of shit.”

  “Yeah,” Tory echoed.

  “Well, boys, if I have offended you, I guess you need to go ahead and make use of those guns you’re holding. Unless you want to go back with me to Mount Weather and turn yourselves in for raping that little girl.”

  The Freitag brothers were not too smart, but they were cagey, and they’d killed before. Without hesitation, they brought up their handguns and began to fire. That was their intention. Unfortunately, they never got off a shot.

  The last thing the Freitags saw was the blur of Fred’s hand and a stab of flame. He shot Trey first. He then angled his handgun slightly and instantly fired two more rounds. It all occurred in under a half-second.

  Trey fell forward like a limp rag doll. Tory turned slightly and fell on his right side. His body spasmed slightly before growing still, his dead eyes staring at his brother.

  Fred stood there a moment before walking up to the two dead men and examined his work without any outward emotion. He thought back to when he shot Calvin Malloy, not so long ago. His loose shot grouping was concerning. When he almost missed shooting that big zed back in Woodbridge, he became downright worried. So worried, when he came back from the recon mission, he spent hours exercising, practicing, and rubbing liniment onto his hands every night.

  Looking at the two Freitag brothers, he knew the hard work had paid off. He may not be as fast or as tough as he once was, but by golly, Fred McCoy was back. He almost grinned but caught himself when he saw Nikki coming out of the trees. She slung her rifle across her back as she approached.

  “I got it all,” she said, holding up the video camera momentarily.

  She walked up beside Fred and squatted by the two Freitag brothers, admiring Fred’s work. After a moment, she stood and grinned at Fred.

  “Those bullet holes are so close together it’s hard to tell you shot each of them twice.” She then shook her head in almost disbelief. “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, Fred McCoy.”

  Fred responded with a small nod, which Nikki now knew was a gesture of immense gratitude.

  “When we show this video, nobody will have any doubt. They admitted to raping that girl and you gave them a chance to surrender peacefully,” she said. “The O’Malley brothers might get a little miffed you did their job for them though.”

  “Maybe,” Fred said.

  The truth of it was, the O’Malleys were at the Roanoke community now, taking sworn statements in order to obtain arrest warrants. They assured the new president they were going to be professional law enforcement officers. Fred knew the O’Malleys would have gone by the book, arrested the men, and brought them to trial. He had no intention of letting it go that far. That little girl deserved justice and Zach deserved justice. He reloaded his pistol and then admired it for a second before sticking it back in his holster.

  “I have a confession to make,” Nikki said. “I know you told me not to interfere, but if they somehow managed to outgun you, I was going to kill them.”

  “I know,” Fred said.

  Nikki arched an eyebrow. “You did?”

  “That’s why I brought you along. I couldn’t tell you to kill them though; it had to be your decision, not mine.”

  She nodded in understanding and stared back at the brothers. “Well, I’d say you’re back at the top of your game, old man.”

  “Yep,” he replied. He stared at the dead men a moment longer before speaking. “Let’s go home.”

  The End

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  Prologue

  “Look at it! Look! At! IT!”

  Carl looked to where the angry homeowner–clad only in an open bathrobe and loose boxers–pointed. Not that Carl needed the direction. The problem was plenty obvious.

  Two legs waved sluggishly from a sewer grate in the curb.

  “Yessir, I see it,” Carl said, and propped his hands on his hips. He hadn’t brought the trainee with him from the car. Not yet. He wanted to get a good rapport with the homeowner and an audience or any show of bureaucracy about to swing into action would only infuriate the man further. “Did the collar not pop him at all or don’t you know?” Carl smiled a puzzled half-smile. An ‘I’m just doing my job here, buddy’ smile.

  “I don’t know,” the homeowner said on an outrushing sigh as his shoulders relaxed. “I came out this morning to get the paper and saw him kicking around in there.”

  Carl and the homeowner turned their gazes back to the legs. A low moan issued from the grate, echoing and lost. It still had its head. That much was obvious. They couldn’t groan like that without their heads.

  “Well, you were lucky. I can tell you that,” Carl said. He scratched his ribs and nodded thoughtfully. He made some notes on the clipboard. This was a nice neighborhood, at least one in every five or six houses still standing. This guy was either government or he worked at one of the power companies.

  “Don’t I know it! Sucker coulda come right after me if it hadn’t tumbled into the sewer there. I was hardly awake!” This time, the homeowner’s squawk was excited, a ‘can you believe it? I can’t believe it!’ exclamation.

  “Huh. You were lucky for sure. No question about it,” Carl said. Big house, landscaped nice. Plenty of money here. Good grid system, expensive. The houses on either side and across the street were burned to the ground. Anything unoccupied after the plague had been demolished to control infestation and looting.

  Three more zombies stood in the front yard, spaced out like checker pieces. They moaned and swayed, their attention fixed on the two men. One quarter of the yard was conspicuously empty.

  “Well, let me get this written up and taken care of for you,” Carl said. “How’s the rest of the system been? You’ve had it–what? Six months or so? Any problems?” He liked to ask this to remind customers that there were, in fact, very few occurrences of this nature.

  The homeowner shrugged. “Nope, no problems. Wife hates it, but…” He shrugged again. His belly, a pugnacious basketball, rose and fell. “The ladies are a little soft sometimes. You know. They don’t understand security as well. That’s why I made sure we got all menzies.” A small, unconscious moue of disgust crossed the guy’s face, and Carl understood it. He and the homeowner were probably about the same age, early fifties. Same generation, at least. Some of the terms nowadays: menzies, womzies, kidzies…there was something decidedly wrong with a term almost of endearment associated with those shuffling monstrosities. “She didn’t even want us to have guns in the house much less these here yard zombies.”

  Carl nodded i
n sympathy, but of course, his thoughts went to Annie, his wife. He’d lost her twenty-six years ago now, in the first wave. She’d been so young. They’d all been so young.

  Carl shook off the thought and put his hand out. “I’ll be in touch, but take my card. My scan code is right there. Call if they haven’t set you back up in a few hours.”

  “Well, thank you. Thanks. I’ll do that.” The homeowner pulled his bathrobe together and bent to retrieve the paper. He went up the driveway, whistling. The remaining zombies–one on one side and two on the other–tracked his progress with their hungry, empty eyes.

  Newspaper, Carl thought. Guy must have the big bucks. Probably a government worker, then. Four yard zombies just in the front? Most likely eight out back. Totally unnecessary, but that’s overzealous sales for you. Maybe Candy. She’d be just this guy’s type. He probably hadn’t been able to get his nose from the woman’s cleavage long enough to say no. Course, he wasn’t one of the millionaires, the really high-ups. Those people all had Ze Sheds. Much more attractive than having corpses standing around your yard twenty-four seven. At least with Ze Shed, you could put the damn things away once in a while.

  Not that anyone was having garden parties.

  Not anymore.

  Carl grinned and went to retrieve the trainee and the clipboard. Hopefully, the kid had brains enough to do some of the prelim paperwork. Most likely not, though.

  Trainees weren’t known for their overabundance of brains.

  ONE

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  Your zombie(s) come completely trained. A tone accompanied by a charge alert your zombie(s) to the presence of the laser boundary–factory conditioning keeps them in!* Zones can be cleared for homeowner access with the in-home control pad or Ze Panic!® mobile remote.

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  **A beheaded zombie could potentially pose a threat if you come in close contact with its mouth. Keep children and pets away from a decapitated zombie, and DO NOT attempt containment yourself. The ZI team of Recovery Specialists is here for YOU!

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  _ _ _

  The SUV was a Mazda Zecon with black-tinted windows and a complete black wrap with the Zombie, Inc., logo on each side in white, an Assessment Team scan code on each door panel, and a photo-realistic, life-sized horde of zombies plastered across the entire back. Classy, Carl thought and popped the passenger door open. The trainee sat in the driver’s seat, wide eyed and shaking. She had a small Ze Cross!® gas canister crossbow and bolt trained unsteadily on Carl’s head.

  Carl raised his eyebrows. “Don’t get out much, Dillalia?”

  She lowered the bow and breathed out a long, shaky whistle of air. She smiled, but even the smile was tentative. Carl had come to believe that people of Dillalia’s generation were hardened, insensitive. Not this one, though. She was smallish, not more than five four. Thin but strong looking and neatly turned out in the ZI Assessment Team uniform of white button-down Oxford, and tan khakis. It was an old-fashioned outfit, a throwback to the ’20s and before, when service-people in many fields wore such things. Of course, Carl remembered when men (mostly) had worn them in earnest. It hadn’t been a uniform back then, it had just been business casual.

  “It’s ze-cedure, though,” Dillalia said. Her tone was questioning. She was looking for confirmation, instruction. “It’s right in the handbook to be on the defensive when you’re in the wild.”

  Carl snorted and slid heavily into the passenger seat. “The wild, huh? That what you kids are calling it these days, Dill?” He shook his head. “That meant something entirely different when I was your age.”

  “Right, I know. Jungles and stuff.”

  Carl snorted again. “Well, kind of. Not really, though.” He shot her a look. “And please don’t call it ‘ze-cedure’ again. Just call it ‘procedure’–call it what it is. Believe me, all the ‘ze’ this and ‘ze’ that is not going to catch on if it hasn’t yet.”

  “But the handbook–”

  “The handbook is ninety-nine percent crap once you’re in the field,” Carl said. “File it away for the information regarding health care and whatever, but I’ll tell you one thing right now that will help us get along–don’t contradict me with handbook bullshit. Okay?”

  Dill nodded, her face untroubled but intent, and Carl wondered what his reputation at ZI had become. Of course, everyone in Field Assessment was considered a little bit of a loose cannon. Assessment was the front line, the ones who left the safety of the ZI compound to do the dirty work. Assessment decided next steps, further measures and compensation. It took a lot of training, a lot of practice. There had been two trainees before Dill that hadn’t made it. One dead, one quit, and they both went against Carl’s record. It wasn’t bad over the course of a career to lose one or two, even four or five depending on how long you were training and the adversity of your territory, but to lose two in a row had been bad luck.

  There was every possibility that Dill, herself, was Assessment, too–Employee Assessment–the most hated and feared group in ZI.

  “Scan for the Wranglers,” Carl said. Time to get down to business. “We’ve got a menzie stuck head first in a sewer grate.”

  “Collared or…?”

  “Yep, pretty sure. Not popped from what I can tell. One Wrangler truck is enough.”

  Dill flipped down the visor and touched the corner of her eye. A laser bloomed from the small scanner tucked next to her eyelid, and she trained it on the code under WRAN. A blip came from the vicinity of her ear, and she touched her earlobe lightly with two fingertips. “This is FA 12382, and we are requesting one Wrangler truck. Location broadcast.”

  “Okay, Field Assessment, Wrangler truck on the way.” The automated voice was good, very close to human, but there was always a hitch when it switched. “Is this containment?”

  Dill glanced at Carl and without looking up from his clipboard, shook his head. “It’s already contained itself,” he said, muttering distractedly. “There’s nothing to panic over.”

  “No,” Dill answered the voice and removed her finger from her earlobe, ending the call. “What’s next? Do we go wait out near the one in the gutter?”

  “Christ, no,” Carl said. “We wait until the Wranglers–” Carl shuddered, “–get here.”

  “Are they really that bad?”

  Carl raised his eyebrows at her. “You haven’t seen the Wranglers yet? No? Well, they’re just, you know, different. Not as bad as the Cleaners, but you wouldn’t want to hang out with Wranglers on a regular basis.”

  “I’ve heard that about them.”

  Zombie Inc. is available from Amazon here!

  Or find more great zombie books at www.severedpress.com

  br />   Achord, David, Zombie Rules | Book 8 | Who The Hell Is That?