by T. W. Brown
“I guess.”
“Why not start with how it was that we showed up just as two people were bashing your head in. Had it not been for Big Paisano, they would have probably killed you…or worse, left you for that small herd of undead that were nearby.”
“Big Paisano?” What the hell was a Big Paisano?
I received my answer not more than a heartbeat later as a man walked in the room. He was a shade over six feet tall and had to turn slightly to enter through the doorframe since his shoulders were so damn wide. This man was more than just a little impressive, but he had the warmest, kindest smile that I think I’ve ever seen.
“They told me you were awake,” the man said. His voice was exactly the opposite of what you would expect from a man so large. It was soft; almost a whisper.
“And they were just telling me that I probably owe my life to you,” I replied.
Big Paisano stepped up beside my bed and patted my shoulder with a catcher’s mitt-sized hand and smiled with what looked like embarrassment. Holy crap, the guy was blushing like a school girl!
“I saw you take down all those zombies while that guy just watched. I was going to come help, but then I saw the woman sneaking around and I started following her. It wasn’t hard to figure out that you were being set up.”
It took me a few seconds to process everything. I guess the confusion was clear on my face.
“Why don’t you tell us what you can remember,” Grady said.
It took me a few minutes to gather my thoughts, but at last I started talking. I began from where we had last seen each other when I’d been out on that mission with Dr. Zahn to find a child zombie for her to study and I told them everything up to when I’d been conked on the head.
I kept waiting for questions or some sort of interruption, but none came. Grady just nodded and made a face every so often, like when I told him about how Jake had basically led a suicide mission against the group where Dr. Zahn and the others were now living. I saw a few of the other people that had come to listen flash some looks of concern or, in a few cases, understanding, when I told them about the child zombie ambush that had happened at the wind farm place.
After I finished, I looked around the room. Everybody was just staring at me, and I was beginning to feel more than a little uncomfortable. A thought came and I forced it out of my mouth.
“What about the rest of the group I was with?”
“We let them go,” Grady said.
I started to speak, but he cut me off. “No, we never captured them or anything. What I mean is that we just did not make any attempt to stop them. It was a bit peculiar that none of them made any attempt to come investigate or look for the others.”
“They hung out for about two hours and then headed west, back towards La Grande,” Big Paisano added.
“So can I ask what you guys were doing out this way?” It did seem a bit strange that these people would be in just this spot at just this time.
Grady smiled. “You really don’t know Dr. Zahn very well.”
“What?”
“She sent word the night before you left,” Grady explained.
“How? That town is locked down pretty tight. I don’t see how anybody could get in or out—”
“Some older lady that I didn’t recognize. Carol…” he faltered as he struggled to try and remember.
“Carol Wills?” I said with disbelief.
Now I was really confused. Carol, or Granny Rambo as I often refer to her, was actually one of the citizens of the community we had just joined. How was she roped into running messages for Dr. Zahn? Not only that, but why would Dr. Zahn send one of the people from La Grande out to Grady? She had been very explicit about demanding nobody breathe a word of Grady and his group’s existence.
“Yes!” Grady exclaimed.
I had a lot of questions when I got back. Not to mention a few concerns. Had my inclusion on this run been a set up? I honestly did not think so. Graham had been pretty straight up with me and the others. Yet, there were still a lot of things that did not quite add up. There had been mention of not only Jake, but Jon as well, possibly being crooked or even part of Winters’ group. At the very least, it was implied that we had been led to La Grande under false pretense.
My head was starting to hurt. I needed to get back to the others.
“Dammit!” I cursed. In all the fuss, I had forgotten to ask a very important question.
“What is it, Billy?” Grady asked with obvious concern.
“How long have I been out?”
“Not long,” Big Paisano chuckled. “A few hours at the most.”
“I need to get back.” I tried to get out of bed and my head swam.
“And you will, but take it slow, kid.” Big Paisano kept me in place with one hand and no effort. “We can head out in an hour or so. You need to get your bearings. Plus, you have a pretty nasty concussion. You are going to feel like crap for a couple of days.”
“I’m not waiting a couple of days!” I began to protest. I started loud, but my voice got quiet in a hurry as the noise pounded inside my skull, causing me to end with more of a whimper than a roar.
Another thought formed. I guess I had simply taken it as a given, but I felt the need to ask. “What happened to Joshua and Jessie?”
“They have been…detained,” Grady said with almost no hesitation except for that last word where I could tell he was deciding just what exactly he should reveal to me.
“You mean they are here?” I tried once more to sit all the way up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. This time I took it slow and was far more successful.
“You don’t need to worry.” Big Paisano reached out a hand to help me stand. I took it with a weak but grateful smile. “We aren’t murderers. We will speak with Dr. Zahn before doing anything with them.”
I thought about asking to see them myself, but then I realized I didn’t have anything to say to either of them. I didn’t know why they felt the need to take me out, and I really did not care. I knew that I should, but I simply could not find that degree of anger within myself.
“Now, let’s get you something to eat and then send you home. I am certain the doc will be frantic with worry when you don’t show up with your group,” Grady said.
I could picture Dr. Zahn a lot of ways, but frantic was not one of them. I followed Grady up a narrow flight of stairs and discovered that I was in a small farm house. Looking out the huge picture window, I could see rolling hills with tall grass looking like green waves as a gentle breeze blew.
***
“I really appreciate you coming along with me,” I said to William Geddes, or, as he was better known, Big Paisano.
“No problem,” BP shrugged as he pulled the sword he wielded, a huge weapon that looked like it had to weigh fifty or sixty pounds, from where it had dug into the tree after cleaving through the head of the zombie he’d just killed.
BP (apparently only I called him that) was a pretty interesting guy with a fairly interesting story. He had been a singer in a barbershop quartet of all things. You would automatically assume that he was the deep voice, but you would be wrong. The guy was a tenor and could sing some stuff that I would only be able to hit if somebody kicked me in the crotch.
When all of this went down, he had been on the road doing a few shows in Vegas. He and the other three guys had driven down on Harleys. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the name of their group; the Birdland Bikers.
Anyways, they were in Vegas when the world fell apart. They had been scooped up and dumped in a FEMA center with a few thousand other tourists and even some celebrities. The shelter fell two weeks later when some of those who were admitted ended up being infected; pretty standard stuff up to that point.
After that, things get a bit strange.
***
BP and one of the other guys from his quartet, Davey Poole, had made it out and ended up in the middle of the freaking desert. They were sitting on a rock, laughing about how funny it was that they w
ould now both die from heat or thirst after escaping the zombie threat.
A low flying aircraft zoomed past at some point and then circled back. BP said that it rocked back and forth as it flew past the second time; obviously the pilot had spotted them and wanted them to know. About an hour later, a massive eight-wheeled ATV rolled up and a dozen military types jumped out. They took BP and Davey Poole back to their base. It just so happened that the base turned out to be the place known as Area 51.
According to BP, the place was really nothing more than a glorified landing strip with a bunch of empty warehouses and office buildings. The one good thing, in a manner of speaking, was that they had a huge communications grid. They were in touch with other installations all over the world for several weeks.
It was from there that Big Paisano watched the world die. They had one theater with over a thousand big screens that were showing live satellite feeds from around the country and at every single base the United States had around the world. There was another theater that ran streaming video from cameras mounted in places like Time’s Square and even Disneyland.
“The military wasn’t taking apart UFOs at Area 51, they were keeping tabs on the country. The entire place was overhauled just after 9/11 and turned into the most high-tech observation post in the world,” Big Paisano had explained. “They could type in a person’s name and then cameras all over the world would start a search. I actually saw the zombie formerly known as Prince,” he said with a chuckle.
BP said that everything was going fine until a herd of close to a million zombies just happened to come stumbling their way. People were given the choice of staying in the underground bunker complex or leaving. Most chose to stay, but BP said that he took that as an omen saying he needed to head home. He had watched his hometown of La Grande in that huge theater on more than one occasion as the citizens fought for their lives.
He was given a solar powered golf cart and enough food and water for a week. By then he was expected to be clear of the worst part of the desert and should be able to forage. Davey Poole had opted to stay behind and so Big Paisano was on his own.
It took him less than a week to find a pack of survivors. They immediately asked him to join them, most likely because he was so large and scary looking. At the time, he still had his big handlebar mustache and shaved head. Unfortunately, these were the sort of survivors that were using the end of the world to their maximum advantage.
It all came to light for BP two days later when they came across a small group consisting of two women and five men. BP watched in horror as the men were butchered and the women dragged off into the brush. At some point, one of the men came up and told BP that it was his turn.
Not being stupid, he knew that if he reacted in any other way than was expected, he would join the corpses lying in pools of coagulating blood in the middle of some vast desert highway. He went into the brush and had to fight back being sick at what he saw. The woman was a mess and near hysterics.
She begged for him to help her, and he felt his soul become just that much heavier when he knew that he could not. He did the only thing that he could think of at the moment; he covered her mouth and nose until she stopped moving.
When he emerged and the next guy went down to “take his turn”, there was a lot of fuss over how BP had killed one of the women. BP waited for some sort of backlash, but all he got was some crude jokes and a few sly winks. He knew then what he had to do.
As they came upon a small housing development that was blessedly clear of any zombies, and everybody split up to forage for supplies, BP took what he considered to be his best and only shot. The man he had been paired up with never saw the blow to the back of the head that crushed his skull.
Moving with what little stealth he could muster, BP set out to hunt down the six other pairs. One by one he found them. He was surprised at how easy it became to take a human life. After the third pair, he actually paused and took the time to consider if perhaps he might become more like these men after committing multiple murders. The image of that woman in the brush came to him and helped steel his resolve.
He had gotten down to the last two pairs when a cry of alarm sounded. At first, BP thought that he had been discovered. He was considering the option of calling it square when he heard the scream again. He knew it for what it was; the sound of a terrified child.
Just as he rounded the corner of the house where his last two victims would spend eternity—one with his throat slit and the other with his neck broke—BP spotted the man who had followed his “turn” with the woman in the brush. He had been further disgusted when the man had simply shrugged and gone back to commit necrophilia. Of course, he realized that he should not have been so surprised; if the man was willing to commit rape, there was probably very little that fell outside of his depravation level.
The man was dragging a young girl of no more than ten or so out into the street. The young man who had been paired up with this animal was following, but he looked like he was about to cry. BP realized that he had never seen that particular young man go off into the brush with either of the female victims. That gave him hope that he would have one less person to kill. He was about to make his move when the only other two living members of the gang arrived. By the way they were looking around, BP knew they would be expecting the others to show up and take part in whatever sick plan they had for this poor child.
The one thing that nobody lacked at this early stage was firepower. BP’s biggest advantage was that he would have his gun drawn and be able to take down at least the first target before any of them would be able to draw a weapon.
Taking aim with the .30-06 he had acquired, BP sighted in on the man who had been dragging the child out into the street. He was aiming for the middle of the man’s chest since the child was on the ground and not at risk of being hit. Channeling all his anger and disgust, he fired. Shifting to the next target, he took down one of the two men who had come out to join in the debauchery. He lost the third target along with the young man who had not seemed to really want to be a part of the gang’s vile practices.
Rushing out, he scooped up the child and hurried into the closest house. The child was hysterical and still believed that she had fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire. It took BP a few minutes to get her to calm down, but at last he was able to convince the girl that he meant her no harm. She was still sobbing, and in hitched and staggered words that had to be forced through the weeping, she said that her older brother had been killed.
“You just stay put, and I will get you out of here safe and sound,” BP said.
“You promise?” the girl had asked.
“Yes.” BP said that was the last promise he ever made, or ever would make.
Peeking outside, he heard a commotion a few houses down and took off to finish what he had started. Taking off, he sprinted to where he had heard the sounds of a struggle. He arrived to discover the young man who he had dismissed as a target due to his not partaking in the horrors that had been inflicted on the two women a few days back. Unfortunately, it appeared that he had not possessed the stomach to commit murder…even in self-defense. His throat had been slit from ear-to-ear with such ferocity that his head barely remained attached.
BP turned a full circle, hoping to catch any glimpse of movement or indication where the last remaining man of the gang might have disappeared. The answer came in a shrill scream from back the way he had come from.
Feeling his blood chill, BP trudged back to the house where he’d left the child. Sure enough, standing on the porch with the girl before him was the last man. He had his massive and dripping blade against the girl’s bared neck.
“One step and I slit this little cunt’s throat,” the man growled.
BP stopped and held his hands out to his sides. He looked the man in the eyes and did his best to keep calm. “You let her go and I let you live. There is no other outcome here.”
“You some kinda wanna-be hero?” the man spat,
pressing the blade just enough to elicit another cry of pain and fear from the little girl.
“Nope, just a person who is trying to hold on to what is left of his humanity.”
“You sure you just don’t want this little chicken all for yourself?”
“Just let her go and we will go our separate ways.”
In the end, BP figured that the man knew there was no way that could or would happen. Maybe he wanted to die; maybe he was so disgusted by his own depravation. In any case, he slit the girl’s throat, tossed the body aside, and then charged. BP caught the man’s arm as it made a wild slash. Turning the wrist until it gave a resounding snap that brought a scream, BP turned the man’s arm back and drove the blade up into the chest. He stared into the man’s eyes until they glazed over.
He walked over to the girl and was horrified to see her mouth still moving. Just as he reached down to her to see if there might be any way that he could save her, she gave a sudden shudder and died. Her eyes stared up at him in what he swore was reproach and condemnation.
For the next several weeks, he refused to continue his journey home. Instead, he became a hunter of men. He searched for more like those who he had travelled with briefly. His goal was to kill as many as he could until he finally failed and fell victim to a target that would manage to turn the tables on him. He had no fear of the undead and saw them as nothing more than a pest that needed swatting away if it came between him and his target.
Deep into the winter, he scoured the land for the monsters of humanity that had managed to survive and wreak their brand of destruction. He took a few bullets and suffered a shattered hand on one occasion from punching one man in the face over and over in the fit of rage that he slipped into each time he found what he sought. The worst part was in the discovery of just how common and easy it was to locate the worst scum humanity had left behind in the wake of its near destruction.
It was in the deepest and coldest part of winter that he stumbled upon a small military outpost. A dozen soldiers had made an encampment in the foothills just outside of La Grande. He had not realized it, but he had been slowly drifting closer to home.
