The Mulligan Planet

by Zachariah Dracoulis

bottle wrapped in a shirt and I caught it as Steve came to his feet, “How are we meant to track them?”

  I drained the bottle and discarded it before pulling on the long sleeved blue shirt, “No, I'm literally going to sniff them out.” I jumped out the window and landed on the ground with a light thud, “Come on, zeds will be on us any minute with all that gunfire.” Another thud shook the road as Steve dropped down next to me, “Race you up there.” Before the word race had escaped my lips Steve had launched up into the air and straight through the window, “Woah... How did you... hmm.”

  I took a step back, a deep breath, reassured myself and launched off of my back foot and through the air. This was one of the most exhilarating feelings of my life. I was actually gliding as I went through the window, it was amazing. Until my foot hooked on the windowsill and I went face first into the body.

  “Nice one John, so how are we meant to sniff these guys out? And why didn't we just follow them?”

  I brought myself into a crouched position and took a drop of blood onto my finger from the goon's splattered face, “We can't just wait in the shadows, they're looking for us, they'd spot us in a second, and I'm going to show you if you give me a second.” I snorted the blood off of my finger and felt the rush, “Those guys got sprayed in their friend’s blood. Hopefully it soaked into their clothes and will hold off from the rain.”

  I breathed inward and immediately detected the traces all through the room, “Back out the window, it's too pungent in here.” We dropped back to the street and I breathed in once more and could smell the faintest traces going down the street, “I found them, let's go.”

  Our feet hit the floor at the same time as we darted down the darkened street, “What are your plans when we get to these guys?”

  The scent had drifted left, “Ask for the petrol nicely and when that doesn't work we're going to kill them all and take it.” We went around a corner and the faint glow of floodlights in the distance came into view behind the small rows of houses.

  “That'd be the park, let's get onto one of those houses and scope out what we can before heading in there.” We hugged one of the walls as I followed a drain pipe with my eyes, “We climb that and we'll have a vantage point.”

  I felt a tap on my shoulder, “Two seconds,” I peered between the houses.

  “John...”

  I put my hand up, “I'm thinking, shut it.” His elbow pushed between my shoulder blades, “What!? You're acting like a damned child... Oh...”

  While turning, several gun barrels met my gaze, my hands went behind my head without the bandits having to say a word, “I take it we'll be going with you guys then?” That's when the rifle butt met with my temple. From there I zoned in and out, they were dragging Steve and I, oddly enough my biggest cause for distress was the fact that my clothes were getting soaked.

  I came to properly when a light was flashed in my eyes. I was in a chair, my hands bound behind my back while my feet were strung to the front legs of the chair. Steve sat in a similar state across from me, looking on disapprovingly, “I suppose you're going to blame me for this?” He shrugged and looked away, “Oh come on, don't be like that, I'm sure we can figure a way to-”

  A guy in a black suit stepped between us, I could barely make out anything about his face in this lighting, just his glasses, “Get out? Not overly likely.”

  He had a surprisingly kind voice, but it did little to calm my sense of being trapped and I was quickly flexing out of the binds, “You must be the dominatrix, I'll play my part. But master, are you sure this is right?”

  He laughed, “That's a good one, so few reasons to laugh these days, and please don't break out of those binds, they were hard to find,” I heard a familiar click behind me, “and I really don't want to have your brains all over this suit, so please, sit still.”

  I stopped struggling, juggling whether it was worth testing if I was vulnerable to being shot in the head or not, I went with not. “What do you want?”

  I could smell the blood from the messenger, one of the guys was here, meaning he was already terrified, “What do I want? Hm, let's see, control, power-” He paced the tent in front of me before stopping and staring me down, “ORDER!”

  I retreated back into my chair as far as I could, 'Right... He's one of those...’ “One of what's now?”

  I began to doubt myself, had I said that out loud?

  “No, now stop thinking of ways to get away.”

  ‘Telepath, interesting, courtesy of that gas I suppose, must've affected some people differently, but can you respond?’

  He smiled falsely, “No, unfortunately, but this has been useful regardless.”

  I smiled back, “Were you always a crazy nut-bag with a God complex?”

  He stood back up, putting one hand on his waist and the other on his chin looking around ponderously for a moment before shaking his head slowly, “Yes, one hundred and ten percent.”

  He cracked his knuckles and began for the exit, “Wait!”

  His head dropped, “No, I don't have your friends and I haven't seen them.”

  There was a long silence, “Thank you.”

  He nodded, “You're welcome, now, I leave you in the capable hands of... I don't know, evil henchman twelve.”

  A voice emerged from behind me, “Boris sir.”

  The suited man rubbed his face, “I know, I know, but the true question is, do I care? Watch them.”

  He walked out of the tent and Boris walked between Steve and I, the scent of hard liquor on his breath, “That guy you killed was a good friend of mine you know?”

  I looked past him and at Steve, “Kill him?” He shrugged and nodded as we both shot off of our toes and into Boris' stomach with our shoulders. Instantly crushing his internal organs and causing him to cough a vast amount of blood and gore across my back. After a few seconds of coughing and spluttering we collapsed into a pile on the floor where I was able to bust out of my binds, “Delightful.”

  We stood up, well, except for Boris. It felt wrong killing so many humans when there were so few left, “Oh quit your moaning, it's your fault we're even in here.”

  I tore the bindings off my legs, “Yeah, let's play the blame game right now!”

  The tent door flew open and showed a man with buzzcut brown hair in camo uniform, “WILL YOU ALL SHUT-” His eye's darted from Steven, to me, to the crushed Boris, his mouth wide open.

  I looked at Steven who just tilted his head and pointed at the newcomer, “That's your fault too.” I huffed.

  “HELP!” We darted over as the bandit turned to run and grabbed his legs. Pulling him back in before swiftly jabbing him in the back of the neck, effectively silencing him.

  “Blaming me for everything won't fix anything.”

  An alarm started to blare throughout the encampment. “Yeah, but it sure helps me feel better knowing I didn't fuck up.”

  I grabbed the M4 buried under Boris while Steven grabbed the small pistol from the newcomer's holster, “Can we get through this first?”

  We ran out of the tent, first thing I noticed was the cages filled with people, some alive, some not so much. We managed to drop most of the guards around us before they could even turn around, “No, I want to talk about this, this idea that you should be in charge is ridiculous.”

  We started running through the park, bullets tearing through my new clothes, “What, you want to be in charge!?” I ditched the now empty M4 and caught a fleeing bandit by the head.

  “Yes!” I was caught off guard.

  “Well... You can't.” I realised I was still holding the head attached to a writhing body, snapped it and continued on through the camp, memorising every tiny aspect.

  “Give me one good reason why not.”

  I could see the housing district where we were caught, “I'll give you five, one-” I slammed my foot into another bandit, catching his AK as he flew back, “You're impulsive, two-” I fired two bursts into a rifleman
in a tree.

  “You're aggressive, three-” I sent the gun as a spear past Steven's head and into a knifed assailant's chest, “You have a habit of punching your friends I've noticed, four-”

  We both slammed into the gates that defended the camp from the violent streets, knocking over at least a dozen zombies, “You didn't just scope out that entire base, and finally-”

  I leaped up onto a house and followed the path back to the apartment, “... You'll never be as good as me.”

  A few hundred zeds were making their way through the area, “They really weren't thinking when they set off that alarm were they?”

  I shook my head, “I just hope the guys are ok.” We were making a beeline for the apartment.

  “They'll be fine, even with that gun fire the alarm will be more of an attractant.”

  The alarm cut off as we jumped from house to house, “I'm guessing they figured out it was a bad idea.”

  We were on top of the building across from the apartment, the street had a few dozen zeds wandering around, I looked over to the puffed Steven. “Going through the front door isn't an option. You think we can make that jump?”

  He shook his head, “I need to take a break, my head's still swimming a bit, bright lights, lots of blood.”

  I was worried about Harry and Marcus, we'd been gone a while judging by the moon now sitting a number of degrees from where I’d seen it last, “We can't yell, that'll bring the dead in, how do we let the guys know we're here?”

  Steve started untying his boots, “Which room were