by Will Lemen
Unable to pull the downed guard's gun from him due to the sling being wrapped around his shoulders, I let go of the gun and turned my attention toward the Caucasian.
He now stood there almost paralyzed, watching in awe, as Derek beat the living shit out of the second so-called elite palace guard who was still more intent on getting a clean sight picture of me, than stopping Derek's fists from batter his now bloody face.
The grunts and groans that Derek made while he systematically walloped the snot out of the guard seemed to mesmerize the huge albino.
Maybe it was the speed in which the punches were being applied to the man's face, or the profuse bleeding that was the result of those punches.
Who knows?
But whatever the reason for the Caucasian's failure to take action in the midst of that palace coup would serve to be his downfall.
"Cauc!" I yelled, breaking the self-induced trance he had put himself in. "Over here!"
Before the tall pale man had a chance to turn around or even look in my direction, I swung the confiscated machete horizontally at my hip level, which just happened to be right at the kneecap level of the Caucasian.
The amateurish guard that was the first to fall, although totally out of his depth as a guard, was worthy when it came to sharpening edged weapons.
He had honed the blade of his machete to a razor sharp edge, and as I swiped the blade across the knees of my advisory, the flat cutting edge of the long steel blade hacked through the flesh, muscle, tendons, and cartilage in and around the sociopathic megalomaniac's left knee like it was made of warm butter, stopping only when it had cleanly sliced through the last remaining skin on the leg.
The giant albino let out a horrendous guttural scream as I jerked the blade from between the two leg halves, and he fell back toward his chair.
Fearing that other guards would hear their leader's howls, I jumped on the fallen giant and with all the power that I could muster, I swung the machete down vertically onto the top of his head.
The blow was so forceful that it shattered the brittle human skullcap that the man wore so proudly, and plowed the machete deep into the forward portion of his own skull, effectively performing a frontal lobotomy, and ending the tyrannical reign of the dreaded self-imposed ruler of the Indiana Badlands.
Meanwhile, Derek was still beating on the body of the guard that he had bludgeoned to death with his fists.
"Derek, enough is too much! I said. "That sucker is going to wake up and bite your face off."
"Right," he agreed.
"Just stick him in the brain and let's get out of here before more of this punk's guards show up," I warned, pulling the machete out of the Caucasian's head and planting it firmly in the still unconscious sentry's skull.
No guards came rushing to their leader's aid, it seems that they were all accustom to hearing their master groan and howl during what he referred to as his entertainment.
So as the albino freak show moaned and groaned in the agony of defeat, his minions ignored his yowling thinking that it was just another day in the life of their illustrious leader, and reveled in the fact that it wasn't they that were providing that days entertainment.
With the monster in charge taken care of, and no alarm being sounded, Derek and I hatched a quick off the cuff plan to make our escape from the dead Caucasian's compound.
First, we relieved the two dead guards of their dreaded black rifles, and Derek wiped the blood off his hands on the dead giant's robe.
Then we left the Caucasian's throne room as if nothing had happened, hoping that none of the guards in the outer area would check on the well being of their overbearing leader until we were well away from the compound.
The new blood splatter on our clothing matched the old blood splatter that we had brought in with us from outside, and no one noticed the few extra spots, so no one was the wiser.
The first sentry that we met in the hallway was gullible enough to fall for the line of bullshit that we spoon fed him. After all, he was dumb enough to believe that the Caucasian was some sort of demigod or some horseshit like that, so it wasn't too much of a surprise that he would believe that his boss would loan us the fine rifles we were carrying.
After we told him that we had been assigned to go outside and help the Sarge look for his concubine, he even led us to where they had stored our own weapons and allowed us to gear up.
We couldn't wait for the sun to rise the following morning to begin our trek back out into the Badlands, as we didn't know how long it would be until the bodies of the giant albino and his two guards would be discovered, and we certainly didn't want to be anywhere near the place when they were found.
"We need to leave now!" I told the guard at the door.
"You're going outside while it's still dark?" he asked. "That's kind of curious."
"Cauc wants us out there immediately to help Ron find his woman," I insisted, hoping that shortening the name of the leader would cause the guard to infer that there was some kind of favoritism going on. "But if you want to countermand Cauc's orders, that's fine with me. I don't mind going for a swim while we wait for sunrise, even though the water probably is somewhat of an emerald green in color."
The guard's face turned almost as white as the man he was so dedicated to, and he quickly responded.
"No, not at all! I just meant that there's a standing order that states that if anyone leaves the fort at night they have to go in a group."
"That's fine, were leaving now, who's going with us?" I asked, walking toward the front door.
At this point Derek threw in a nice touch by seemingly taking charge of the situation.
"You two, come with us!" he ordered, pointing at two men sitting at a table near the door playing cards. "Here, take these guns your boss gave us and let's go, you can shirk your duties later."
Falling hook, line, and sinker for our ruse, and fearing that we might tell their boss that they were goofing off while on duty, the two men quickly joined us, and departed the premises immediately, carrying the two black rifles we had taken from the guards we had just killed.
My only regret upon leaving the fortress in the middle of the Indiana Badlands was that I didn't get the chance to take advantage of what could have been the Caucasian's gracious yet unexpected hospitality before the day's perilous trek, by utilizing the schools swimming pool that I previously mentioned. Even though the water probably was somewhat of an emerald green in color.
As the sun broke the crest of the horizon the next morning, Derek and I began what I hoped would be the last leg of my long journey to apprehend my former Marine Corps buddy.
The Caucasian had slipped in a ringer just before we were to depart his compound and forced us to take two of his men with us by decreeing a standing order of groups only outside the safety of the fortress at night.
Normally I would have dispatched both men as soon as we were out of sight of the compound.
However, shortly after leaving the building, the men reveled to us that their main job was tracking down what they called misguided people that had seen fit to leave the safety and security of the compound.
Although one of the men had given us the general direction that the Sarge had gone when he had left the building, I felt that it certainly couldn't hurt to have a couple of experienced manhunters guiding our little venture.
I would deal with them later, once they had led me to my prey.
We headed out in a direction that was a few degrees off the course that would take us directly back to Beth and Jolene's hideout.
I hoped that the Sarge's trail wouldn't lead us too near the girl's hideout. They were only a mile or so away from the compound, and if the Sarge and his men were that close, it most likely meant that they were closing in on the girls. If that were the case, having the two girls with us would double our force, but it might still complicate matters slightly in one way or another.
The population of the undead hadn't diminished any in the few hours that we
had taken our uneasy refuge in the high school facilities.
The four of us weren't even off the parking lot before we were accosted by three of the decomposing decadents that we saw bounding toward us from some distance away.
After disposing of the terrible trifecta with our edged weapons, we cleaned them off on the soiled clothes of the downed zombies as usual, before continuing on our quest.
That's when one of our escorts made the comment.
"I think they're a little faster than they used to be. Those three were on us faster than Mr. Chain Blue Lightning his self."
"I don't remember them being that fast either," the other man remarked.
"It started a few days ago; it seemed to happen all at once. They were pretty slow, some were almost dawdling, and then all of the sudden they began to come on like gangbusters," I informed the two trackers. "You guys should get out more, you know, see the world."
"No thanks," said one tracker.
"I'm with him," Derek chimed in, smiling as usual.
The Sarge's trail led us into a residential neighborhood that had a multitude of fenced backyards, and was heavily treed.
Following the Sarge and his men was easy in those surroundings as pieces of wooden fences and the carcasses of butchered zombies littered the landscape where they had been.
As we closed the gap between them and us, the trail of twitching cadavers we followed were more active as their nerve endings had not had time to deteriorate under the relentless feeding of the larvae they hosted.
Hoping to obtain some valuable intelligence and begin formulating a plan for dealing with the group that we were quickly gaining on, I pointed out the obvious trail of rotting corpses in our path and asked our guides.
"They're leaving a lot of carnage in their wake, how many people does the Sarge have with him that they could do so much damage?"
"I don't know for sure how many people Ron took with him, but I know that he wanted to catch up to those women as fast as possible, so he would have been traveling light. My guess is five or six people, seven at the most," the lead tracker answered. "We should catch up to them soon, we just have to follow their trail, they have to check every house, and any other place they think the girls could be hiding.
One advantage to following a group of seasoned zombie killers was that they had a tendency to clear a wide swath of zombie free real estate in front of you, creating a zombie-free zone
However, one disadvantage, at least in our case, is we were trailing a group of seasoned zombie killers that are being led by a seasoned combat veteran, and when we catch up to them we are going to have to deal with all of them in one way or another.
In a zombie-infested world, there's really no such thing as a zombie-free zone, sooner or later the undead will find their way into that zone. This is especially true in the Indiana Badlands where the zombie count had increased exponentially over your normal everyday bloodthirsty monster arena.
"We're getting closer; these twitchers are shivering so much, it's all the flies can do just to land on them," the lead tracker noticed.
"I see that," I said, shooing some of the distressed flies away from my face.
I had barely uttered those words when our lead tracker stepped through a gap in one of the broken fences and was immediately preyed upon by two obese female zombies with the usual murderous rage in their eyes.
The two hungry man-eaters had ambled along the fence line sometime after the Sarge and his bunch had passed, and were inches away from the hole in the fence when the man stepped through the narrow opening. They were on him so fast that he stood no chance of surviving their brutal attack.
He was drug to the side so quickly that by the time any of the three of us could see passed the fence, which was obstructing us from getting a clear shot at either of the two monstrosities, his frantic screams had stopped, and the starving rotund ones had already chewed off most of his face and scalp. Their hunger pangs were apparently just as strong in the afterlife as they were in their pre-zombie existence. The only difference was that their metabolism was much slower now than before, so even as zombies roaming through a zombie apocalypse, they continued to have a weight problem. On the other hand, maybe they were just big boned or had a gland problem?
Because of our alleged close proximity to the troop we were trailing, at least according to the latest update from our tracker whose face was now missing, without asking permission from our remaining chaperone, I decided to send the two bloated behemoth carnivores back to the fat farm with a little less weight attached to their heads.
In short, I blew their fucking brains out of their skulls with my Glock, at the same time hoping to send a signal to the Sarge that other people were in the area, and lead him away from Beth and Jolene if he were somewhere near them.
"Are you trying to get us killed?" The surviving tracker reeled. "The dead will hear us!"
"Your dead buddy said we were close to catching up to the Sarge, if he was right then the Sarge also heard those two shots," I replied, pulling the trigger on my Glock one more time to end the faceless guides torment permanently.
"Sorry, three shots," I said, correcting myself.
The remaining tracker must have had some kind of relationship with his fallen companion, because he didn't take too kindly to my nonchalant attitude about putting my third bullet into the base of his partner's skull.
In fact, he was so upset by my final termination of his friend, that he made the mistake of pointing his rifle at me while I still had my pistol in my hand.
His spontaneous attempt to intimidate me, or kill me, was the last ill-advised thing that the man would ever do.
I didn't wait around to see which choice he was going to make with him pointing his loaded weapon at me.
As fast as my reflexes could make my muscles react to the threat, I aimed the four-inch barrel of the Austrian made handgun at the dead center of the man's torso and repeatedly pressed the trigger of the weapon to the rear. Five times, as fast as I could I squeezed the trigger, and five bullets sped the short distance down range and into the man's body.
The first two shots were so quick that the second bullet fired entered the man's body through the same hole that the first bullet had made, shattering his xiphoid process, and dropping him faster than I had dropped the Latin class that I'd mistakenly signed up for in 9th grade.
The following three projectiles walked themselves up the man's body as he collapsed to the ground, the fifth one tearing through his Adam's apple and ripping out the back of his neck.
"You put two full metal jackets right into his solar plexus," Derek said gleefully, as he watched our former guide squirming on the ground. "Right through the same hole."
"They were hollow points, but I get your drift."
Actually taking the time to aim my pistol, I pulled the trigger one more time.
"One more for good measure," I said quietly, as I ventilated the tracker's head, putting one final slug into his brain.
As predicted by the misguided companion that had pointed his gun at me, some rogue zombies were now narrowing the swath of zombie-free turf that the Sarge and his compadres had graciously, however, unknowingly left for us.
Amid the moans, groans, slurps, growls, and slobbering sounds made by the undead as they approached us and were each hacked to pieces one at a time, a single gunshot was heard in the distance.
"Did you hear that?" Derek asked, pulling the heavy blade of his chef's utensil out of the cranium of a gray-haired zombiefied Catholic Priest who was dressed in full regalia and had fallen prey to the Devil's handy work.
"No doubt that's the Sarge's bunch thinking the gunshots were from one of the Caucasian's clan," I answered speculating.
"Well they're half right, well they were half right, before our other half bought the farm," Derek attested with a grunt, and smiling as he jerked his cleaver from deep within the Father's diseased brain, before wiping the gore off his blade on the hem of the embellished hypocrite's bla
ck frock.
"It sounded like it came from that way," I said, pointing in the direction of the shot with my left hand as my right hand firmly gripped the handle of my tomahawk and twisted it out of the head it had just split.
We walked another hundred yards dodging the bomb craters and the clumps of twitching ex-humanity, not to mention the massive amount of harassing flies that they sponsored.
Just as I was about to let loose another round to signal to whoever it was that was ahead of us, and hopefully get the same response in return, a man's gruff voice warned.
"Don't do that again!"
Then the tone of the voice abruptly changed.
"Jack! Is that you Jack? Well I'll shit a brick house. It is you."
Peeking out through a rather large hole in the side of a once very expensive mansion, was a red haired man with a familiar face.
Putting on my best I'm so glad to see you face, which wasn't all that difficult to do considering that I'd been searching for this elusive man for quite some time, I answered enthusiastically.
"Sarge, buddy, is that you?"
Considering that I had no intention of going back to the Caucasian's fortress, and now that I had found the Sarge, I had no intention of letting him go back either, I saw no need to even mention the tall freak or his compound. After all, the weaklings that the albino's standing order had saddled us with sure weren't going to rat us out.
"What in the living hell are you doing in the heart of the Indiana Badlands?" I asked, hoping that Derek would go along with my ploy.
Fortunately, for us, Derek had no desire to return to the compound either, so he kept quiet and watched as I lied my way through the reunion with the Sarge.
"Holy shit Jack, I could ask you the same question, I mean after all this isn't exactly a vacation paradise you know," he answered.
"I took a wrong turn somewhere, and ended up here in... what did you call this place? The Indiana Wastelands?
"The Badlands, the Sarge corrected me.
"Yeah, well anyway, I met this guy here a couple of days ago, his name is Derek. He thought his family had headed up this way, and when we met, somehow he talked me into helping him try and find them, and then he was going to lead me out of this hellish countryside," I said pathetically. "We didn't have any luck finding them, all we found was a whole lot of eaters, so we decided to give up the chase and head back south, he's got a couple of friends waiting for him not too far from here. We were on our way to meet up with them and then get the hell out here."
