by Jake Bible
“Pay attention, Long Pork!” Jon yells.
I turn and stare at him. “You were gone and then dead when Elsbeth joined us. How do you know she called me Long Pork?”
“You have always been Long Pork, Mr. Torrance,” Jon giggles. “You have always been the King of Z-Burbia.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I say and look at the map. Every detail of the area rushes at me, slamming into my eyes, making me cry out. “Holy fuck!”
“It’s already begun, brother,” Jon says. “You’re doing it. You’re making it happen.”
“Huh?” I respond. “Making what happen?”
He stands straight and grabs me by the shoulders. His eyes are bloodshot and his skin is turning pale then grey. “Stay strong. Do not let all of this be a waste, okay? I didn’t die so you could bring my wife to some strange city and let her get butchered by the Consortium or get eaten by Zs, you got it? I am fucking counting on you!”
“I always thought it was hilarious that you cursed,” I say. “An ex-minister with a potty mouth.”
“They’re just words, Jace,” Jon says as strips of his face start to peel and fall off. “Just words. They don’t have power over you anymore. Do you hear me? Time to wake up and finish this. The words no longer have power.”
He taps me right in the middle of my chest.
“Follow your heart,” he growls. “Follow it wherever it leads you.”
“My heart is actually a little to the side,” I say. “It’s not right in the center.”
“Fuck you,” he smiles and half his teeth tumble out.
“Gross,” I say and then grab him in a big bear hug. His body squishes against me and some foul-smelling gasses escape his rotting corpse. “Dude, you farted.”
“Goodbye, Jace,” he whispers in my ear. “It was a pleasure knowing you. Take care of my Melissa.”
“I will,” I say and he’s gone.
Not gone as in he blinks out of existence. Nope, that wouldn’t quite fit the narrative, would it? He’s gone in like he melts away, his body liquefying into a puddle of Jon juice and pulp. Yuck would be a good word to describe it.
But I’m supposed to forget about the words. That’s what he said. He said the words no longer have power over me.
I try to speak, but nothing comes out. I grab my throat and realize that Stumpageddon is back. My right arm is gone and my head hurts like fucking hell. Screams come from outside the trailer and I turn and walk towards the doorway.
As I get closer, I can see outside onto a landscape of brutality. Everything is on fire and there is blood everywhere. I watch as Stuart and Elsbeth tear into a group of who I can only guess are Consortium soldiers. A few yards from them are the sisters. They move like the whirling dervishes of death that they are. I don’t see Stella or the kids anywhere.
I’m about to turn around so I can climb down and out of the haul truck trailer, but I don’t need to. I’m already on the ground.
“Jace!”
I look about. I don’t see anyone. The scene of blood and fire is gone.
“JACE!”
All I see are the empty streets of the Boulder suburbs. And a fuck ton of Zs coming for me. The fast ones. They are sprinting right at me.
“JACE!”
As the wall of undead flesh gets to me, I bring up Stumpageddon and see that I have some sort of spike strapped to the end by a harness with a bunch of leather straps and buckles. I look like Ash from Evil Dead II, but with a long hunk of sharpened rebar instead of a chainsaw.
The undead slam into me and my spike goes right through one of the Z heads. I pull back and keep stabbing as the Zs try to take me down. But they can’t. I refuse to go down.
“That’s right, motherfuckers!” I scream. “You can’t take Jace down, bitches!”
I stab and stab and stab until there are nothing but brained corpses at my feet.
I look down at them and laugh.
“Groovy.”
Chapter Nine
“JACE!”
I shake my head, really wish I hadn’t, and then look back over my shoulder.
“JACE! Look out!” Stuart yells.
To say I’m a little confused would be a serious motherfucking understatement.
The scene of hell is back and there are people fighting all over the place. Guns are going off, but not as many as I thought there would be. Mostly I see soldiers dressed in black fighting with my people. There aren’t anywhere near as many soldiers as there should be. Which is strange.
“JACE LOOK OUT!” Stuart yells again and this time I pay attention.
Just before the machete reaches my neck, I duck down and stab the guy coming at me right in the balls with Stumpageddon’s spike.
Holy shit! The spike strapped to Stumpageddon is real! It’s totally real!
The man screams and screams then falls to his knees as I yank Stumpageddon free. Then I plant that spike right in his throat. He gurgles and blood pours out around the steel then his eyes roll up and he’s gone. I yank the spike out and he tumbles over.
“Get up!” Stuart shouts and pulls me back up to my feet.
Which seem to be working fine. In fact, other than the fact I am missing my right arm, everything seems to be working fine. My gunshot shoulder is easy like Sunday morning. My side and ribs hurt, but they aren’t on fire like they were before. No, what’s on fire are a lot of the suburban houses that surround us.
Okay, okay, mental time out. Freeze frame, bitches.
“What the fuck is going on?” I yell at Stuart. He doesn’t react. “Stuart! Answer me! What the fuck is going on? How did I get here?”
He still doesn’t answer me, just keeps pulling at my left arm, trying to get me to retreat with him. I yank it free and grab his shirt.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?”
He doesn’t reply, just slaps my hand from his shirt and starts running with me in tow.
“Whatever,” I mutter.
We sprint, which is so refreshing a thing to do when you’ve been in a wheelchair for days. We sprint towards a barricade that’s set up across the street a quarter mile away. The screams of people follow us. I don’t know if they are our people or the soldiers. Probably the soldiers because there are more of those. No, wait, that doesn’t make mathematical sense. If there are more soldiers then logic would dictate it’s our people screaming because they are outnumbered.
Fuck if I know.
We skid around the barricade and Stella grabs me in a bear hug.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” she yells. She glares at Stumpageddon’s spike. “We gave that to you because you swore you wanted it for self-defense, not so you could go running out there and nearly get yourself killed!”
She hugs me again then slaps me across the face.
“Asshole!”
“Can we hold this?” Stuart yells, looking over at John who has his sniper rifle up and is picking off soldiers one by one through a gap in the barricade.
“Yes,” is all John says.
John. Jon… I saw Jon. The other Jon. My Jon. My closest friend Jon. And he said something.
“What the hell is happening?” I ask. “Last thing I remember was Kramer putting me under.”
Stella frowns at me and shakes her head.
“I can’t understand you,” she says. “What are you saying?” She looks over at Stuart. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Stuart says. “He’s been spouting gibberish since I grabbed him. Look at his eyes. They aren’t all wild like they have been since he started planning.”
“Oh my God! What are you people talking about?” I yell. “I’m not spouting gibberish!”
“That fucking asshole did something to your brain,” Stella snarls. “I’ll fucking kill Kramer when this is over.” She puts a hand over my mouth. “Just stop talking, Jace. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
I pull her hand away. “What the hell do you mean you can’t understand me?” I ask. “I’m fucking spea
king English!”
Then what Jon said to me in my mind dream thing comes back.
“The words no longer have power.”
Oh, that fucking asshole. Stella was right. That fucking asshole!
Kramer done took my words!
“Just be quiet. Please,” Stella says, a tear rolling down her cheek. “We need to get you back past Baseline.”
Baseline.
I look around and realize we are on the Denver Boulder Turnpike. The neighborhoods around us are scorched as fuck. I glance behind us and see an off ramp junction. That must be Baseline.
We have to hold Baseline. They can’t get past that.
Stella starts pulling at me and I yank free. I stomp my feet and glare. If my words aren’t going to work then I need to go all Harpo on her ass. You know Harpo, right? The Marx brother that didn’t talk? The one with the horn and big eyes that always pulled pranks but looked so innocent doing it?
Fuck you if you don’t know Harpo.
I do a quick assessment of our resources at the barricade.
I see John and Reaper, both putting their Special Forces skills to use and taking perfectly aimed shot after perfectly aimed shot. Stuart is with us and he’s shooting, but not as well. The guy looks like he’s had the shit kicked out of him. I’m a little worried.
Who else?
The Fitzpatrick brothers are with us. They have hunting rifles and are knocking down Consortium soldiers like they’re bucks in deer season. A few of Lourdes’s PCs are with us, but I don’t see Lourdes. I hope she’s okay.
Then I hear the shouts and hurry to a small opening in the barricade.
There she is!
Lourdes and the rest of her people rush the Consortium soldiers. Barely a dozen against hundreds. They are going to die so fucking fast I almost want to run away. But I don’t.
They cut into the side of the soldiers and start firing and hacking away. Pistols blasting and machetes whacking. Some of the PCs have only their combat knives.
Jesus, how much ammo do we have left?
The Consortium soldiers are surprised by the attack. Probably more surprised by the small numbers coming at them more than the actual attack itself. Who in their right mind would send barely a dozen men and women up against an army of hundreds?
Then it hits me. Hundreds. There are a lot of soldiers, but not the thousands that were coming at us. How the hell did we cut them down so fast?
I look at Stella and point at the army. I hold up my hand and tick off my fingers then point again. I slowly lower my fingers and hope she gets what I’m saying.
“I have no idea what you are saying,” she says.
Doesn’t matter. All academic anyway. Their numbers are in the hundreds, not the thousands. I’ll take the miracle and shut the fuck up.
I see a man aim his rifle at Lourdes then watch his head vaporize. The heads of the soldiers directly around him vaporize as well, about fifteen in all. The soldiers that still have their heads stop fighting and whirl about, looking for where the attack is coming from. They last all of point one second before they go all headless chic. Bodies are dropping so fast I can’t keep up. Lourdes and her people aren’t even fazed by it.
“Good idea putting some of the sisters up high,” John shouts at me. “They may be good hand to hand, but damn if they aren’t almost better with rifles.”
I give him a thumb-up. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I’ll take the credit if it’s being offered.
He doesn’t see my thumb-up since his eye is to his scope and he’s too busy getting all sniper with it. See what I did there? I switched out jiggy with sniper. I’m hip. Shut up. If I say I’m hip then I’m hip! Fuck all y’all!
I am about to really agree with John, seeing more and more heads go kasplooshy, but then it’s like a juggernaut is moving up through the soldiers. Like some invisible force is just shoving them aside, rolling them like waves, ripping through the army as if it’s not a force made of highly armed men and women.
Then I see a flash of blonde hair amongst the helmeted black of the Consortium. A flash of red hair. A flash of a brunette bob. More blonde, but curly.
The sisters are in it now. Not just shooting from up high (wherever up high is), but now in the thick, in the middle, ripping, shredding, kicking, and killing.
That’s when I realize a very significant fact. It’s probably something the others have already realized. Shit, I probably already realized but don’t remember.
The Consortium may have the numbers, but we have the training. Or at least the sisters and some of us have the training. I wouldn’t exactly say I’m trained in the deadly art of combat. More importantly, I wouldn’t say that about the Consortium soldiers, either.
I look about and see a pair of binoculars on Stella’s belt. I point at them and she frowns. I roll my eyes and give her a pitiful look. She acquiesces and hands them over to me. I take a quick look and smile then hand the binoculars back to her.
“They’re just regular people,” I say. “Survivors like us. Not a fucking army of soldiers.”
Stella sighs. Right. She has no idea what I’m saying.
But even so, I’m right.
The soldiers... No, wait. The “soldiers” are emaciated. I needed the quotes there. If I had two hands, I could do air quotes. I should get some sort of prosthetic for that. Everyone would love it if I could do air quotes all the time.
Anyhoo, they look sickly, like they’ll drop dead at any second. Some of the men and women are barely standing up. They sway on their feet until they get hacked to death by the sisters or get their brains blown out by the sisters or get hacked or shot by Lourdes’s folks.
Long story short: we are kicking their ass with our smaller numbers.
Of course, there is always a grey cloud inside the fucking silver lining. Stupid clouds.
“Oh, fuck me,” I mutter. Pretty sure it sounds like “gubble flup flup.” My ears are starting to get used to how I actually sound. With some luck maybe there’s a pattern and I can create my own language. I’m sure that’s just what everyone wants to learn, some Jacese.
The fuck me was because through the smoke and blood of the battle I can see something coming. It cares about as much for the pitiful soldiers as the sisters do, crushing them with abandon as it rolls forward.
Guess what it is? No, come on, you have to guess. Fucking guess!
Fine, fine, I’ll tell you.
A tank. A big beige tank. The Consortium must have picked it up at an Iraqi War yard sale. Unlike the soldiers, though, it looks legit and ready to fuck us all up.
The first shot goes wide and long, blasting apart what looks like a set of campus condos. Cracked, red tile flies up into the air and a geyser of flames shoots out towards the road behind us. None of us are hurt, but it sure as fuck makes us realize that probably won’t be the case the next time it fires.
Which it does in about three seconds.
The shell screams towards us and I’m ready to kiss my ass goodbye, but it misses again. Once the dust and smoke clears, there’s a fifteen-foot-wide hole in the Turnpike. I look about and we are still unharmed, but the barricade has started to shift and crumble from the impacts. You can only rock and roll so long before things fall apart.
“Fall back!” Stuart yells and everyone at the barricade gets up without hesitation.
We’re turning and running as the third shell hits. Bulls-fucking-eye!
The barricade is gone in a flash. Hunks of concrete and furniture and whatever else it was made of fly past us. I catch something across my spine and scream as pain radiates up and down my legs. I tumble to the ground and lie still for a minute, my ears ringing and my back telling me I’m not a young man anymore, so why the fuck did I decide to get in the middle of an apocalyptic war? Stupid, old man.
I still can’t hear worth a shit when Stella helps me to my feet. I can stand and I can move, but doing both hurts like a motherfucker. We keep running, or really stumbling, along the Turnpik
e, headed towards Baseline Road.
Without the barricade as a target, the tank is just firing at random, hoping shells blast us into smithereens. Great word that. Smithereens.
A shell lands about ten yards to our right and suddenly I’m flying through the air, Stella by my side, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, smash!
I’m choking on dust and Stella is on top of me. No, wait, I’m not choking on dust, I’m choking because Stella’s arm is across my throat.
“Sorry,” she says and rolls off me.
The ground is shaking underneath us and I know exactly why. Here comes the tank.
It rolls up towards us and we are fucked because the barrel starts to zero in our exact position. A tank seems a little like overkill, but fuck it, what a badass way to die, am I right?
Then the sound of the tank’s treads is joined by something else. A different sound. A whumpa-whumpa-whumpa sound.
“There!” Stella yells and points up into the sky.
I look up and see one of our choppers fly by. Okay, fly may not be the best word. How about fall by?
The chopper dives straight for the tank and if I thought tank shells were loud, the impact from some chopper-on-tank action puts that right out of my head. It also nearly puts my head right out of my head. It makes sense. Shut up.
Stella and I roll and roll until we are in a ditch next to the Turnpike. Burning hunks of metal rain down around us, but luckily we avoid getting hit by the fiery shrapnel. We stay there, our arms over our heads, for quite a while until we think the coast is clear.
It’s a painful struggle to get up on our feet, but we make it. Holding on to each other, we stumble back towards the barricade, our mouths hanging open at the sight of the burning wreckage of chopper and tank.
“You okay?” Reaper yells as he comes up to us. He pats us down, which is a little invasive, then nods as he realizes we aren’t wounded. Well, not anymore wounded than usual. He sprints off to find those that are.
We make it around the wreckage and through the remains of the barricade. It’s probably not the best idea, heading back to the fighting, but neither of us hesitate in the slightest. We have to see what’s happening.
There are moments in your life that will always be etched in your mind. Like a photograph has been permanently exposed against the grey matter of your brain.
