by Cedric Nye
One of the zombies came into view, and Jango carefully used his left arm as a brace for the shotgun, aimed, and then fired. He had tried to hit the zombie in its head, but he only fired one barrel, and he had missed his mark. The bulk of the shot struck the zombie in its lower jaw, neck, and chest. The impact knocked the zombie down, but it got back up almost instantly to continue its pursuit. He quickly fired the second barrel at another zombie that had pulled up even closer than the first one had. His second shot had hit exactly where he had aimed; on the bridge of the zombie’s nose. The heavy pellets of the double-ought buckshot tore through the zombie’s head, and it fell, unmoving, to the road.
Laying the empty shotgun on the passenger seat with the barrels pointing toward the passenger door, he picked up another shotgun from his lap, and rested the barrels on his left arm as he had before. He managed to kill a zombie with each barrel this time. After that, he placed the empty shotgun on the passenger seat, and quickly grabbed the one remaining shotgun from his lap. Just as he brought the shotgun up, a zombie appeared right outside his window. It was running hard and it screamed its hunger to the world, “RheeeeeAAAAAA-eeeeeeeeeeeee!” Jango fired both barrels point-blank, and watched as the zombie’s entire head disappeared from its shoulders in a spray of black and gray ichor.
Glancing at his side-view mirror, he saw that the entire horde had drawn uncomfortably close to his vehicle. He pressed the accelerator down just enough to keep ahead of the ravening, and ever-growing horde of the wailing undead. Driving with his left hand, he carefully opened each of the three shotguns he had just used, removed the spent shells, and then loaded each shotgun. When he was done, he placed them back on the passenger side with the barrels down on the floorboard, and the butt stocks pointing up.
As he watched the horde of zombies in his side view mirrors, Jango saw more and more zombies join the pursuit. They came running out of every alley, street, and building that he drove past. They were attracted by the hunting howls of their brethren, and as he watched them pour out into the street and give chase, he was irresistibly reminded of how children looked as they chased down an ice cream truck. He began to giggle as he watched the zombies in his mirrors.
“Bong-bing-bong-bing-bing-bong-bong-bong-bing-bing-bong," Jango sang as he led the zombies out of town. As he drove on the overpass that led out of Prescott, and toward Prescott Valley, he looked down to his right as he passed over the cemetery, and laughed out loud. His laugh was the long, rolling laugh of the most dangerous kind of person in the world; a lunatic that believes they are in the right. Someone like Jango was dangerous, because once they had decided on a course of action, they would keep going forward, no matter what was done to them, no matter what kind of force was brought to bear against them. The only way to stop someone like Jango would be to kill him. And people like Jango would take a lot of killing before they could be put down permanently.
As he maintained his speed, and made sure that the zombies still followed, he formulated a plan for dispatching the horde of zombies. Reaching into the back seat with his right hand, he dragged his backpack onto the seat beside him. He pulled out his one quart water bottle, gripped the bottle between his thighs, and unscrewed the top. He put the lid between his teeth, and transferred the water bottle to his left hand. Holding his arm out the window, he started flinging water up over the car to keep the smell of the body he had fastened to the rear of his vehicle fresh enough to keep the zombies interested. He knew that it had worked when the zombies wailing cries grew even louder.
Like a post-apocalyptic Pied Piper, Jango continued to lead the screaming zombies down the mountain. He had remembered that there was a small Indian reservation just a couple of miles away, and that in addition to a casino, there was also a large filling station that was capable of refueling even big rig trucks. Jango decided that it was time to make his move and he pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor. The big car roared forward, and he heard the cacophonous wail of the hungry horde that followed him fade as he left them behind.
Chapter 7:
Beware the Abyss
The speedometer quickly reached over a hundred miles per hour, and Jango made it to the filling station in less than three minutes. He skidded into the parking lot of the abandoned gas station, and smiled when he saw a large fuel delivery truck that had two large gasoline tankers attached to it. Quickly, he made his way over to the truck and found the fuel outlet on the rear tank. He looked around and spotted the welded steel pipe on the bottom edge of the large tank. Jango quickly ran over undid a strong elastic cord that held a small plastic cap over the end of the steel tube. He smiled as he found what he had been looking for: the hose that would connect to the fuel outlet on the rear of the tank. Dragging the four-inch diameter hose out of the steel tube, he ran around the back. Attaching the hose was easy since it used a simple butterfly screw to secure the hose. Once attached, he simply pulled the lever and gasoline began pouring out of the far end of the hose. Jango had left the hose trailing behind him, which caused the fuel to disgorge underneath the other tank. The fuel slowly trickled back down the parking lot and toward the road. Noticing that the openings to the underground tanks were open, he took the time to remove all four of the caps from them.
Jango ran back to his car, and cut the body loose from the rear of the car. Then he heaved the body up over his head, and ran toward the cab of the fuel truck. When he was about ten feet away, he flung the body as hard as he could at the side of the cab. When it struck the side of the truck, the body splattered fluids everywhere. Wasting no time, he quickly climbed up into the cab and slammed the seat back forward, and then pulled the lever and drove the seat forward to strike the horn. The seat hit the end of its rails, but the seat back had missed the horn by bare inches. Cursing, he climbed back down out of the cab. He looked around, but could find nothing that would suit his purpose. Knowing he had only moments before the zombie horde would be upon him, and without a moment to spare, Jango began a butcher's work. He pulled the razor-sharp LMK from its sheath on his hip and began flaying the skin from the body of the former Mr. Banks. With the razor-sharp blade of the custom knife, Jango peeled great strips of skin and flesh from the cold body, which he then flung up against the wall of the filling station, and onto the glass of the window. The gobbets and strips of meat stuck and slid as they hit the glass windows and the brick wall of the gas station. By the time he finished his task, he had turned the storefront into an abattoir that would be sure to draw the horde of zombies into his trap. Jango paused for a moment as he remembered an old proverb that warned people about looking into the abyss. He shrugged his shoulders, and said with a grin, “Needs must, when the zombies are at your door.”
Jango quickly ran to his car and grabbed a handful of paper towels, which he duct-taped to a box of shotgun shells. He left himself a strip of tape about 18 inches long, which he folded in half length-wise so that there would be no adhesive showing. He quickly twisted the paper towels into a rope, and frayed the end with his fingers until it was fuzzy. The finished result looked almost like a flower. He jumped back in his car, and drove it around to the back of the building. He put the vehicle in park, but left it idling as he ran back around the side of the building so he could see the zombies when they arrived.
Jango pulled the butane lighter out of his pocket as he waited. He looked around and made sure that his way would be clear, so that when he was ready to leave there would be no surprises. The portion of the parking lot that he had parked the vehicle in was out of sight from the front, but led straight to Main Street, which came down from the casino that was perched high on top of the hill.
He decided that he would simply drive down the street, and turn left on the 69, which he would take south all the way to the I-17. Jango had fixated on Phoenix, and that was where he would be headed when he finished his work at the filling station.
In a few moments, the screeching army of undead were pouring around the side of the mountain, and rushing
the front of the gas station. The volume and pitch of their unearthly wails was almost too much for him to bear. Even against the horror of their screams, Jango held his position until he felt it was time to act. He lit the flower with his disposable lighter, and watched the paper towel burst into flame. Quickly stepping around the edge of the building, he whirled the weighted flaming mass around his head twice before launching it in the direction of the zombies. The flames engulfed the paper towel, and weighted by the five rounds of 12gauge buckshot, the package flew in a high arc and landed directly beside the fuel truck in the very midst of the zombie horde.
The moment the flaming projectile had left his hand, he sprinted back to his vehicle, jumped in, slammed the door, put the vehicle into gear, and then pushed the accelerator to the floor. The tires squealed all the way to the end of the street. He tapped the brake when he reached the end of the street, and wrenched the steering wheel to his left as he gunned the engine. The big car revved, and then accelerated hard. He was a mile away before the tanker blew.
When the tanker truck exploded, Jango felt it as much as heard it. The thick, oily smoke of burning gasoline rose high into the air in an ugly black column. There were four more explosions as the underground tanks blew, and each of the new explosions was far more concussive than the explosion of the tanker truck. Smiling, he began to hum a little tune as he drove south toward the I-17, which would take him to the heavily populated metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona.
Chapter 8:
Us and Them
Less than two hours after he had burned several thousand zombies to a crisp in the gas station parking lot of the Indian reservation that nestled between Prescott and Prescott Valley, Jango found himself nearing the town of Black Canyon City. Some instinct, like a twitch in his mind, made him decide to take the turn off for Black Canyon City. His decision turned out to be a fortuitous one.
As he took the off ramp and followed the wide, looping right turn, he spotted movement up ahead at the junction that would lead into downtown Black Canyon City. Once his eyes had zeroed in on the movement, he saw what appeared to be seven men dragging a woman out of her car. Jango felt the cold touch of the beast in his mind, and his foot, as if it had a mind of its own, pressed the accelerator of the large sedan. The car surged forward like an extension of his cold, hard rage, and headed straight toward the confrontation.
When he was about a hundred feet away from what was happening, he lifted his foot off the accelerator, and allowed the large car to coast silently forward. There were seven men in the group. One of the men held a petite woman who struggled and fought against him. In the meantime, another of the men was busy ripping the woman's skirt from her legs as she flailed them in an attempt to defend herself. The other five men were slightly off to the side, and they stood with their backs to him as they watched the drama unfold. Jango angled the silently moving car so that it was aimed directly at the five men who stood off to the side. When he was twenty feet away, he gunned the car and slammed into three of the men like a bowling ball hitting bowling pins. The two men he had missed were now temporarily cut off from their friends by the bulk of the car.Jango immediately pressed the brake, and put the car in park. He grabbed his stick off of the passenger seat, opened his door, and leapt out of his car.
The two men, the ones who had been intent on their struggling victim, reacted sluggishly to his appearance. Jango took advantage of their shock.
He moved swiftly toward the two men who had been attacking the woman. His feet almost seemed to glide across the asphalt as Jango moved in to attack the would-be rapists. The one who had been intent on ripping the woman’s skirt off reached his right hand toward the holster that rode high on his right hip, but the man was too slow. Jango's body uncurled in a blur of motion as he unleashed a lightning fast stick punch with his right hand that struck the man on the side of his elbow. There was a rending snap, followed by the man's screams.
Jango had already brought the stick back to his ready position, and slid forward to strike the other attacker in the head with a left-handed stick punch. Without pausing, he swung around to see where the other two men had gone.
The two who he had missed with his car had come around the back end of the sedan, and each of them held a pistol. The men both wore the confident expressions of two people who believed that everyone would wet themselves with fright when braced by armed men. But Jango lived to disappoint.
In a series of movements that were almost too fast to follow, Jango slung his stick at one of the men with frightening velocity, took ukemi, drew his pistol in the middle of his roll, and shot the other man in the groin.
His stick, in the meantime, had struck the other man on his cheekbone and completely crushed the side of his face. Both of the men screamed in agony as the pain of their wounds slammed home.
The beast roared in Jango’s mind, and links in the chains of his will began to stretch and crack. Jango echoed the beast’s roar. He raised his face to the heavens, and his roar rose toward the sky like an ancient and savage ballad that sang of hidden truths. The dog added his voice to the song, and the albino woman followed suit. The resulting sound was rage, ruin, slit wrists and bed-sheet nooses. He felt himself slipping into a darkness of the spirit, and he forced his way back toward control, and then slowly forged anew the chains of his will that held the beast in check.
Jango felt a movement behind him, and he ducked as he spun around to see what it was. He had turned around just in time to see the woman who had been assaulted slashing at the man who had ripped her skirt from her body. The man had grabbed his pistol with his left hand, and Jango assumed that the man had been about to shoot him in the back when the woman had struck. She had given the man a series of shallow cuts, none of which were life-threatening, but they had been enough to keep the man from shooting him.
As he assessed the woman, Jango immediately noticed that she had male genitalia, but didn’t give it any thought since the information meant nothing to him. A person was a person in his mind, and good people were such a rarity in his world that he refused to limit those whom he might help or befriend by things like gender, race, or sexual orientation. He judged people based on their behavior, because that was what told the truth.
As he walked toward the man who had just tried to shoot him, he glanced over to assess any injuries the woman might have. She had some abrasions on her knees from the road, but otherwise seemed relatively unscathed by her ordeal. She panted with fear and exertion as she gripped the knife like it was her entire world.
“Thanks,” Jango told her as he turned back toward the two men who had drawn down on him.
The man who had been shot in the groin had started to gibber and cry at the same time as he clutched his ruined crotch with both hands. The other man lay where he had fallen. His cheek was caved in, and his eyes were open. As Jango drew closer, he could see that the man’s pupils were different sizes, and that his breath was ragged and shallow. He picked his stick up from the ground, and snapped the stick down in a move that he called “The Finisher.” His stick turned the top of the man’s head into a canoe-like shape, and it killed the man instantly.
After giving the groin-shot man final mercy, Jango turned back to the moaning man whose arm he had broken, and slowly walked toward him. As he stood over top of the whimpering attacker, he asked the woman, “Would you like to do the honors ma'am?”
“What, what do you mean?” The woman asked in a voice that was scratchy and tight with fear. She clutched her knife even more tightly, never taking her eyes off Jango, and leaned over to get the ruined remnants of her skirt.
He looked at her for a moment, then drew his foot back and sunk a powerful kick into the man’s genitals. He curled up in the fetal position, and Jango withdrew his foot just as the man vomited in pain. As the man lay writhing and moaning in a puddle of vomit and blood, Jango turned back to the woman and said, “That's what I mean.”
The woman managed to give him a weak smile, and shook her head
as she tried to cover her exposed genitals with the ragged remnants of her skirt. Jango noticed her trying to cover herself, and looked over at the man whose head he had smashed just moments before. The man wore a pair of loose fitting black sweatpants that had a draw-string on the front. He swiftly and efficiently removed the pants from the man and then took them over to the woman. He kept his head turned to the side as he held the sweatpants out to the woman.
“Thank you,” The woman said in a small voice as she accepted the pants from him.
While the woman got dressed, he walked back over to the man who still lay moaning in his own vomit, and calmly brought his stick down on the man's temple. The man died instantly. Jango stood looking down at the twisted human, and remembered what it was like when the twists had been looking down at him. He had been dealing with this kind of human for as long as he could remember. He found himself wondering how this man could look so similar to himself, yet be so evil as to attack and rape a woman.
“Are these human zombies a different species than me?” He asked out loud. After a moment of rumination, Jango shrugged and turned back to see if the woman had finished getting dressed yet.
He saw that she had gotten dressed, and that she was standing and staring at him with wide, almond shaped eyes. He was genuinely surprised to see that the look on her face was not disgust, fear, or revulsion; the look on her face appeared to be an expression of gratitude. He was somewhat confused, and was unsure whether he had read her expression correctly. His confusion ended when the woman spoke.
“Thank you so much, sir. Thank you for saving me,” the woman said in a honey-smooth voice that was laced with the slow twang of a soft, southern drawl. “I don't know what I would've done if they had done, well, what they were going to do.” Then she added in a whisper, “I would have killed myself, I swear it.”
