ZOMBIE'S DOOM? Chronicles of Jack Doom

by Will Lemen

  I had no trouble at all showing my grief when the Sarge asked me about my family.

  "Where's Gin and your boys, I hope you didn't bring them into this hellhole of a place?" Sarge asked.

  The jovial attitude was quickly replaced by one of what I felt was false sorrow when I replied to his question.

  "They didn't make it Sarge, after we got separated."

  "Abandoned is more like it!" I thought.

  "We went north out of Texas and thought we were doing pretty good, you know, surviving.

  Then one day outside a little town in Oklahoma, eaters took them away from me," I told him lying out my ass. "I really don't want to talk about it."

  I really did want to talk about it, but I wanted to talk about it in private, just before I killed the man who was acting so sad.

  "What about Beth, is she okay?" I asked, as I silently counted the men at the Sarge's side.

  Beth is fine, well I hope she is fine, that's the reason we're out here in the middle of this shit, we're looking for her, she's lost," my old Marine Corp friend told me, lying out his ass.

  "Looks like you're traveling light, is this all of your search party?" I asked, with the intention of gathering vital intelligence as to the force of the enemy Derek and I were destined to confront.

  "Looks like we're not traveling as light as you Jack," he answered. "I guess that accounts for all that shooting we heard, got surrounded by the dead did you?"

  "That's the name of the game Sarge," I said. "We pulled through, but I can't say as much for those eaters back there though."

  The Sarge smiled as he drove a Marine Corps bowie knife through the forehead of a nimble brute that tried to grab one of his men from behind.

  "I hate cowards," he announced, as he tweaked the top of the sneaky cannibal's brain sideways and squished it against the inside of its skull by twisting his knife counter clockwise.

  "How ironic, my old buddy the Sarge says he hates cowards," I thought. "I wonder what he says about people that run off and leave their friends to be devoured by a giant horde of eaters?"

  "Yeah, I hate them too," I admitted, kicking the chicken-shit dead zombie in the face as it lay lifelessly twitching at our feet.

  "Come and join us Jack, when we find Beth I'm sure she'll be glad to see you," the Sarge surmised.

  "I bet she will be," I thought. "More than you could possibly know."

  "And I found another sweet setup, almost as good as the YMCA," Sarge bragged. "The only difference is that I'm not the boss, at least not yet."

  Again I thought. "Well, at least that's one saving grace the Indiana Badlands has. He's not the boss."

  "I'll help you find Beth," I answered, nodding my head and acting concerned. "How about you Derek, are you going to return the favor and help me try to find one of my friends?"

  "Sure, tit for tat," he answered grinning, looking down at my leather titty bag tied to my belt.

  "Well let's get moving then," the Sarge insisted, swatting at some dive-bombing flies. "This place is starting to get a little rotten don't you think?"

  Derek and I, the Sarge, and his five men trudged through the tall-uncut grass and weeds of the neighborhood that was once filled with well-manicured palatial manors, in search of the girls that we had hidden away only a few hundred yards from our current location.

  I gradually began to walk slower than the main body of the group, and used subtle hand signals to stealthy and silently urge Derek to do the same.

  When the gap between us and the other men was large enough that I felt it was safe to tell Derek the plan that I had conjured up without them hearing me, I whispered to him.

  "Ask the Sarge how long he thinks it will take to find Beth, because you're anxious to get back to the two new girls you just met. He'll put two and two together pretty fast and then you can lead us all to Beth.

  He never mentioned Jolene to us, so as far as he knows you just know where two females are that you met just before you accidently ran into me."

  "Won't that be like selling out the girls?" Derek whispered back.

  "They both have weapons, and they both know how to fight, well at least Beth does." I replied. "If we're lucky they'll see us coming and ambush these guys. If not the element of surprise will still be on our side, and it will be only six of them against the four of us."

  "That doesn't seem fair, there'll be six of them," Derek said, not smiling this time.

  "You're right, it doesn't seem fair, maybe we should wait until they get a couple more guys?" I said sincerely, while carving the nose off a tumor-ridden corpse in serious need of a good dermatologist.

  "Quit playing around back there Jack and get up here, we've got work to do," Sarge called out to me.

  I quickly preformed my own version of trepanation on tumor with the pointed end of my tomahawk, and Derek and I trotted back up to the pack of concubine hunters where I explained our rear guard actions.

  "Just watching our six Sarge," I told him. "We can't be too careful with all of the eaters roaming around the Badlands, with their newly found balance and dexterity you know."

  "Well just stay close, we got separated once, I don't want that to happen again," my old friend claimed.

  "No chance of that happening," I thought. "Not a chance in hell."

  Seeing an opening, Derek made his move.

  "Hey Sarge, speaking of getting separated, how long do you think we're going to be out here looking for your friend Becka?"

  "Nice touch using the wrong name!" I thought, as I watched Derek work his magic.

  "Why, you got someplace you gotta be?" Sarge asked gruffly, as his men looked at Derek and sneered.

  "As a matter of fact I do.

  I met two of the sweetest smelling poontangs a feller could ever want to run into in the midst of a cataclysmic apocalypse," Derek boasted. "It's true their both a little grimy, but as soon as I get back there and find a pond that's not completely polluted, I'm going to scrub them up and then we're going to party, if you know what I mean. Jack and I were on our way to join up with them when we ran into you."

  The look on the Sarge's face was everything that I had hoped for; I could almost see the light bulb hovering over his head as the gears inside turned.

  "What do these girlfriends of yours look like?" the Sarge asked nonchalantly, although he was about ready to pee his pants with excitement.

  "Both of them have a pretty healthy chest on them, one is short and blonde, and the other one is a little taller, and she is really blonde," Derek explained, not revealing too much information. "I really didn't see too far past their tits. I told them to say put while I looked for my family, then I ran into Jack and... well you know the rest."

  "Well I wouldn't want to keep you from anything," Sarge insisted, as his men looked knowingly at each other and smiled. "Maybe we'll just escort you to where you left them, that way you won't miss out on anything. And who knows, maybe they've seen Beth.

  The Sarge thought that he was being clever and that Derek was being duped into showing him where Beth and Jolene were hiding.

  Thinking that I would convince the Sarge that I was helping him out with his ruse, when I was really posing as more of a double agent, I added.

  "That sounds good to me; I'd like to meet these ladies you've been whining about since I met you."

  "Which way?" Sarge asked, looking at Derek as if the matter had been settled.

  Derek pointed to a cluster of treetops that we could see over the roofs of several houses to the southeast.

  "This way, passed those trees," he answered. "Not too far from here."

  As our small troop began to walk in the direction that Derek had pointed to, I knew that I would have to make my move soon.

  Again, I began to walk slightly slower than the rest of the men, and quickly found myself at the back of the pack.

  The only way my plan was going to be brought to fruition, was through a surprise attack.

  I would have to ambush the five total stran
gers in front of me, and I would have to do it before any of them realized what was going on, especially the Sarge.

  In the past, a plan to back shoot a group of strangers that had not tried to harm me in any way would have outraged me.

  Unfortunately, for the men that were blazing the trail in front of me, as I said before, sometimes sacrifices must be made during these times of trouble, and if a small party of alleged Caucasian loyalist needed to be sacrificed in the name of my families revenge, then who is Jack Doom to argue with fate.

  I mean after all, if I was to allow all of them to mosey on back to the fortress and find their leader D.O.A. (Dead On Arrival), they just might decide to hold his murder against me, form a posse, and track me down.

  If that happened, I would be forced to defend myself, and I would hope that the outcome would be the same.

  So I was just saving everyone a lot of time and trouble by purchasing them a first class ticket straight to hell's 35th level, on the express elevator so to speak.

  As we came nearer to the house where Beth and Jolene were holdup, the neighboring area began to look familiar, and I knew time was running out. My quest to slaughter the men before me had to begin soon.

  "We're almost there, it's just past this house and across the street," Derek informed the Sarge.

  Derek had taken a slight detour on the way to the girl's house, a detour that forced us to cross a street just before getting to the home, giving the women inside a chance to see us coming.

  Although it was a good improvised plan that Derek had initiated, as it turned out, our approach to the house didn't matter.

  I had decided to make my move in the middle of the street, thereby leaving no place for my targets to find cover. I was prepared to fire as many weapons and make as much noise as necessary to accomplish my grisly task, and we would all worry later about the horde of undead that it was sure to attract.

  However, as usual, the best laid plans of mice and men have a tendency to go south rather quickly, especially during a Biblical cataclysm like a zombie apocalypse, and again my plan was not the exception to the rule.

  As bad and widespread as the reputation of the Indiana Badlands was, with all of its adopted monsters, like hordes of ferocious zombies, packs of vicious feral dogs, and an assortment of other vile creatures that were ready to snuff your lights out at any given moment, all of which were roaming through the countryside and most of its cities.

  Most people had a tendency to envision the undead as the main threat.

  However, the Badlands seemed to have a special allure to some of the nastier survivors that plagued the country. In fact, the mysterious lure of the region was so strong that it seemed supernatural, almost magical in its power of seduction.

  As a result of this mystical power of persuasion, the Badlands of Indiana was teeming with unsavory types, and not all of them were canines, undead, or your occasional raptor.

  Case in point; after meeting Beth and Jolene in the sewers, we were all so busy reminiscing, killing zombies, and making plans to find the Sarge and see to it that he received his just desserts, that we were totally oblivious to the small group of male humans that were stalking us.

  They had staked out the safe-house where we had left the girls, and when they saw Derek and I leave for the Caucasian's compound, they decided that that would be a good time to do a home invasion scenario with the intent of getting a little strange on the side.

  However, what they hadn't counted on, was trying to invade a house that had a heavily armed and combat tested petite blonde psychopath that was posing as a den mother for a sociopath in training.

  Well, needless to say, although I still will. Beth and Jolene were having none of the scheming male's advances, which actually was very surprising considering Jolene's sorted past.

  Anyway, the girls opened up on the gang of thugs, and before they could say zombie apocalypse they were all lying dead in the street.

  The noise from the short but lethal firefight had summoned every walking corpse within a three-block area of the house, and they were now patrolling the circumference of the building and the surrounding property. And even though Beth had drilled a hole in the heads of a couple of those uninvited neighbors with her small-bore M-4 clone, the majority of the nosey ruthless renegades just plain refused to leave.

  As we approached the house, and upon seeing the crowd of ravenous cadavers milling around the neighborhood, Derek whispered to us.

  "Eaters are all over the place! There must be fifty or sixty of them."

  "You say your girlfriends are in that house. Then I don't care if there's five or six hundred of them, we'll kill them all. Unless of course, you want to just walk away and leave your new found friends there to be eaten alive?" The Sarge replied, knowing that he wasn't going to allow that option to take place.

  "Sarge, I say we kill them all and let Beelzebub sort them out when they get to hell," I stated categorically, trying to push my agenda forward.

  "Indeed!" the Sarge retorted, not suspecting what was about to happen to him and his men.

  Shoving Derek toward the house, and following him out into the open, the Sarge insisted.

  "They're your friends, you lead the way!"

  With Derek hesitantly leading the way, and the Sarge close behind him almost drooling in anticipation of getting his dick-skinners on Beth one more time, his five men trailing in close approximation to each other, and me bringing up the rear, we left the minimal concealment of the crater pockmarked posh neighborhood and marched into the street guns blazing.

  While the Sarge was preoccupied with the horde, I found the zombie cleansing to be the perfect opportunity to do a little more than just thin the herd.

  Although I was doing my fair share of harvesting the vile creatures in the neighborhood, most of which were now aware that what they were hoping would be their next meal of guts and brains was migrating toward them. My main concern at the time, however misguided it might be, was alleviating the human threat before me.

  With their mouths watering at the thought of devouring the succulent yet well-armed morsels marching toward them, the ravenous man-eating beasts quickened their pace and stumbled toward us from all directions.

  With our group preoccupied with the charging horde, I took the liberty to give a lethal dose of high-speed lead poisoning to two of the Sarge's men, by systematically administering them an epidural with my suppressed M-4 assault rifle.

  I weighted down two more of the Caucasian's followers with lead and watched as they dropped to street level under the poundage of my bullets.

  In the noise and confusion of the battle, no one but me noticed the four men fall to the asphalt, as the attacking zombies dropping all around us was the perfect distraction.

  The bodies of the men quickly began to be devoured by several of the undead, which penetrated the weak point in our perimeter left by the Sarge's fallen comrades, and who I let feast upon their remains.

  Zombies ripping, tearing, and biting at their flesh, would mutilate their bodies enough to hide the gunshot wounds if I was unable to secure my real prey immediately following the fight.

  And their hunger for the brains of the fallen combatants left no need for me to waste a bullet, as their brains would soon be devoured as well.

  The ruckus outside had alerted Beth and Jolene to our presents and they began to pick off the revived dead from a bedroom window.

  Now with only four of us fighting the zombies in the street, and our gunfire attracting even more dead bodies to the area, I began to have second thoughts about my decision to dust off four of the Sarge's soldiers before the zombie menace was extinguished.

  Besides the influx of more ravenous cannibals staggering into the melee, I was also concerned that Beth might take it upon herself to exact her own revenge on the Sarge from that window she was shooting from, and cheat me out of the pleasure of killing him myself.

  However, before Beth could shoot the Sarge, or the ever-growing population of
the horde of zombies could over run our position.

  "We're fucked!" Derek announced loudly, as he saw the first of twelve dogs out of the corner of his eye.

  I had been lucky since Armageddon had raised its ugly head, and this was only the third time since the beginning of our world's undoing that I had had to deal with the Canine Corps.

  Derek on the other hand, had not been so fortunate. Surviving in and around the Indiana Badlands, he had been on the shit end of the fetching stick many times before, and was well versed in the dangers of a feral dog pack.

  He raised his revolver and took aim at the lead dog as he called out.

  "God damned dogs!"

  As he sounded the alarm, the lead dog charged, which signaled four of the other curs to follow.

  Three more came from beside the safe house and darted directly under Beth's position at the window, and four dashed toward us from across an adjacent street.

  Although I didn't say so at the time, my thoughts were the same as Derek's as I raised my rifle.

  We were now not only surrounded by a mass quantity of ravenous dead bodies walking in our direction bent on serving us up as a four course meal, we were also being attacked by a pack of vicious and ruthless mutts that would no doubt be relentless in their pursuit as well.

  And if it wasn't bad enough that the undead had seemed to find their second wind, and were now at least twice as fast and agile as they had been in the past, now we had to contend with a pack of callous curs who's speed and agility far eclipsed the unfed man-eating beasts I call Eaters.

  Just as panic was about to set in among the four of us, and as we each took aim at our respective charging canines, an odd thing happened.

  With my chosen dog perfectly aligned in my gun sights, and my finger applying three pounds of pressure against my M-4's four-pound trigger, my target suddenly changed course and leaped onto one of the stampeding zombies.