by DeLeon, Jon
“See, boss,” Jones jumped in, attempting to capitalize on the moment. “Yes, we can use this to our advantage.”
“Our advantage?” Joe asked in an accusatory tone. “Don’t you mean his advantage?” Joe pointed at the boss and looked at him. “You are the boss, right?”
“What the fuck did you just ssssay?” the boss nearly yelled back at Joe, clearly insulted.
Joe committed more to his play, maintaining an innocent curiosity in his voice. “Sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect. The way he said ‘our advantage’ just made it feel like you two were a team.”
“We are a team,” Jones said.
The boss cocked his head in Jones’s direction, anger in his eyes.
Jones quickly backtracked. “I mean that we’re a team like Batman and Robin. You give me commands, and I do everything for you.”
“Are . . . are . . . are . . . are you calling meee lazy?” the boss asked, even angrier.
“No! What? No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Jones said, fear filling his voice.
“Then whaat did you meeeeean?”
“I just meant that . . . I’m loyal to you. I’ve done everything for you.”
“You’ve done everrrrything for meeee?” Everything Jones said seemed to make the boss even more pissed off.
“Boss! Stop! Calm down. Let’s just take these needles, kill this man and—”
Joe spoke up, interrupting Jones. “You’re giving him commands now?”
“You shut the fuck up!” Jones snapped at Joe.
“I’m just saying that sounded like a command,” Joe said.
“You shut your mouth! Someone kill him!” Jones screamed at the room.
“Now he’s commanding your men,” Joe said, directing his message to the boss.
“Kill him!” Jones screamed again, this time darting his attention between men in the room. The men didn’t move, unsure of what to do. “What is wrong with you? I’m telling you to kill that man. Obey my orders!”
“No!” the boss yelled. “That’s enough of you making orders in my room.”
“What?” Jones asked, surprised and insulted. “You really aren’t going to kill him? You’re taking this fucker’s side on this?”
“Now he’s questioning you, in front of your men,” Joe said, doing everything he could to escalate the situation. “Not only did he lie to you about a weapon, but he’s also blatantly disrespecting you in front of subordinates.”
“That’s enough from you!” Jones pulled a gun out of his suit coat and stepped toward Joe. “If they won’t do it, I’ll do it myself.” He started to raise it toward Joe. Jones’s arm aim had reached about thigh high when his chest exploded. Joe was spattered with blood. Jones dropped to the floor. Behind him, the boss was standing, a shotgun pistol Joe recognized as “The Judge” in his hand. The boss held the pistol steady, suddenly appearing sober. “Show me the needles. Now.”
Joe quickly opened the case, holding it in the air in front of his body, shielding himself as well as displaying the twenty syringes neatly secured in the case.
“You have seen them injected?” the boss asked Joe, still pointing the gun at him.
“Yes I have, sir,” Joe said.
“Inject yourself with one,” the boss commanded.
Joe paused for a moment, feeling out the situation and deciding to stick with his plan. It was working up to this point, and he was prepared for this. “But, sir, the mayor already gave me an injection and then proved it worked by forcing me to be bitten.” Joe pulled up his shirt sleeve, showing a scabbed-over bite mark that he had glued on, complete with freshly dried blood makeup. “It would be a waste on me.”
“I neeeed to know they aren’t poison.” The boss’s slur was returning, his moment of sober clarity passing.
“I just don’t want to waste an injection,” Joe said. The boss just stared at him, not budging. “How about I inject one of the girls? You’ll see it’s not poison, and I won’t waste an injection.” The boss nodded.
Joe took one of the needles filled with dyed saline out of the case, walked over and grabbed Kira’s arm. “Don’t worry, it will be okay,” he said as he injected her with the solution. Everyone watched Kira for a few minutes. She was unharmed. Joe turned back to the boss. “See, sir.”
The boss waved over his shoulder to the muscle-bound behemoth. The boss whispered to him, a little too loudly, and Joe could hear him. “Take him to the fighting pits. With the shot, he should last longer and make us more. Oh, and make him fight the other girl first. Turn her, and make that man kill her. As for the other girl, we’ll figure out something to do, with her being immune to the zombies.” The boss laughed with an evil grin as the big man nodded.
The boss lowered his gun and heightened his tone, obviously fake. “You are freeeee to go. This man will esssscort you out. Pleeeease don’t ever let me see any of you again.”
“Thank you, sir.” Joe extended his arm out, and the girls walked to him. He hugged Kira quickly. The man by the door opened it. Joe and the girls walked out, being trailed by the giant man.
Kira whispered, “Joe, there is no way he’s letting us go.”
“I know. When I tell you, reach down my pants.”
Kira looked at him, confused.
“Trust me, and be careful when you pull it out.”
As they exited the box, Joe led them, turning left toward the elevator. Joe laughed loudly and threw an arm around each girl, pulling them close. Joe spoke loudly enough so the man behind them would hear. “Girls, I’m so glad we made it out of here. Let’s go home, NOW.”
Jolie was confused by the way he was talking. She was about to ask why he was yelling, but she was cut off by what she saw next. She watched as Kira reached down Joe’s pants, digging deeply. Jolie was in shock. She nearly gasped as Kira started to pull something out of his pants. She was so surprised that she couldn’t look away as Kira pulled, inch by inch, a long, black knife from Joe’s privates.
As soon as the knife was clear of his pants, Joe stopped, halting the whole group. He took a loud, deep breath. “Let’s just take this moment in, girls.”
“Keep moving,” the man behind them commanded.
Joe held the group in place. “Just soak this in for a second, girls.”
The man put his hand on Joe’s shoulder, pressing into him to make him move. “Move.”
Joe yelled, “NOW!”
Kira twisted under Joe’s arm, stabbing the knife into the man’s stomach.
Joe spun and used his leg to clip the back of the man’s knee, causing him to fall. Joe jumped around the length of the man’s body and wrapped him in a headlock, bending him while holding a rear choke hold.
Without pause, Kira jumped on the man, grabbing the knife. She pulled it out and started wildly thrusting, stabbing him again and again and again, until the man stopped moving. She turned the blade with one final twist as Joe released the choke hold. Kira pulled the knife out, and Joe rolled the man to the side. Joe picked up the AK-47 the man had dropped in the struggle.
“I’ll need that knife,” Joe said. Kira handed it back to him. He checked the rounds in the AK to make sure one was chambered. “We aren’t out of this yet. Let’s go before someone finds the body.”
Kira and Joe started to walk toward the elevator. Jolie was frozen, staring at the man’s bleeding body on the floor. “Jolie, come on,” Joe said in a loud whisper. Jolie, still in shock, stepped toward the body and kicked it. “Come on!” This time, Joe said it through gritted teeth. Jolie shook her head, knocking the cobwebs out, and turned, running now with Kira and Joe.
“Keep going,” Joe said as he ran past them. “We can’t use that door at the bottom without using his key.” About ten feet down from the elevator door, they entered the stairs.
Joe and the girls ran down the stairs. At the bottom, Joe stopped them. He wrapped his face with a piece of camouflage fabric. “Okay, from here we walk slowly. There are three guards down here, who are not expecting us. I
need them not to react immediately, so we are going to make it look like you two are my prisoners. I’m the guard. You’re the captives. And you’re not happy about it, so I need you both to hold your hands behind you, like they are tied, and start crying.”
Jolie and Kira both looked at each other and then at Joe. “We’re kinda all cried out,” Kira said.
“I’m sorry for this,” Joe said. He slapped both girls’ faces, hard. Tears instantly rose in their eyes. Jolie started crying a little. The look on Kira’s face was one of pure betrayal. It cut through Joe’s hard exterior and pricked his heart. That look hurt worse than he could let on right now. He hit her again, feeling the pain himself, but he needed her crying. Instead she steeled her runny eyes into an angry, determined look. That will work too, I guess, he thought. “When the gunshots start, drop to the floor. Now let’s go.” He turned the girls around and pushed them forward through the door, forcefully. The crying girls being led by a masked man was an image the door guards had seen before. In the dim lighting, they couldn’t see that Joe’s outfit was slightly different. The men were cautious but not instantly alerted.
A man by the elevator door and the man sitting in the chair by the garage door chains stood, aiming rifles at them. “Stop!” the man near the elevator yelled.
“Relax!” Joe said. “Boss killed the guy. He said that he wanted to teach these girls a lesson. Said that he was going to let all his men have their fun with them before he threw them out.” Joe stood behind the girls, wondering if his ruse worked. The third man, who had been sitting in the security office, stepped out.
“Why haven’t we heard about this on the radio?” he asked
“Boss passed out after giving the instructions,” Joe said, thinking quickly.
The man replied, “Give me a second to check on this.”
Joe needed to act now. “Check all you want, but take the girls off my hands! I have to take a shit.”
The man at the security office nodded to the two men. Joe pushed the girls forward. As the two men advanced to grab Kira and Jolie, they lowered their weapons. Joe took the opportunity, raised the AK and fired first into the man walking at the farthest distance. The girls dropped at the sound of gunfire, just as planned. Joe spun the rifle and aimed at the second man, who only had time to turn his head before rounds opened his chest.
Joe aimed his rifle next at the security office. The man had dove inside after the first shots. Joe lit the office up while moving forward. He peppered it with short bursts of shots. “Move!” Joe yelled to the girls. They ran to get behind a cement pillar. Joe sprinted to the other side of the room, firing the last shots the AK had into the now-shattered glass of the security room. He got low and peered around the door. The man was still lying on the ground with his hands on his head, scared of the gunfire.
Joe jumped on him, pulling his knife out and burying it into the back of the man’s skull. Sorry for stabbing you in the back, but you shouldn’t have touched my family.
Joe walked out of the office and kicked open the entry door. Kira and Jolie ran past Joe, and soon they were all jogging away from the arena. Joe stopped them about thirty feet out of the door and retrieved his guns from the trash dumpster. “Hold up. Okay, girls, get to the boat. If I don’t make it there by morning, leave without me.”
“Where are you going?” asked Kira.
“There is something I have to do,” Joe responded. “I can’t let that piece of shit get away with this. He deserves punishment, and I’m going to give it to him. No one comes after my family and lives to talk about it. He is going to pay.” Joe fired a shot into a window across the road. It shattered into a hundred pieces.
“Joe, we should go,” Kira said
“I can’t.”
“Joe, please,” Kira pleaded.
A group of men came around the corner on ATVs. They were all dressed in black combat suits and wearing gas masks. They rode right up to Joe, Kira and Jolie. One hopped off and threw a gas mask to Joe. “Get to the boat,” Joe said to Kira as he caught the mask and checked his handgun.
“Come on, Kira,” Jolie said, grabbing her by the arm.
Joe didn’t look Kira in her eyes. He couldn’t.
“Come on, Kira!” Jolie pulled on Kira’s arm. The two girls took off running.
“So what’s the plan?” the soldier asked Joe.
“The loading dock is clear. Come on,” Joe said. The group ran inside. Joe ran up to the man nearest the elevator, lying in a pool of his own blood. He rummaged through his pockets until he found what he was looking for, pulling out the elevator key.
Joe and six other men all piled into the service lift. He turned the key and pushed the luxury-box floor. Joe slid the mask on over his face. “No one shoot the boss. I have special plans for him.”
The elevator doors closed with a hiss of air.
New Miami Harbor: Outbreak Day +69
Joe walked up to the back of the yacht. The boss and all his main men were dead. Joe knocked on the locked door. No one answered. Joe had a moment of panic. Then he remembered he hadn’t used the pattern.
Knock-knock-knock . . .
Knock . . .
Knock-knock-knock-knock.
A few seconds later, Kira opened the door. The look on her face almost killed Joe. She was an emotional mixture of fear, happiness and sadness.
Joe hugged her
Kira stayed silent, hugging him.
“I should have come with you,” Joe said.
“What happened?”
The Boss’s Luxury Suite:
Outbreak Day +69
Joe and the men lined up on either side of the double doors. Joe was on the front of one of the two columns of men. He and the other front man opened the doors slightly and tossed in tear-gas grenades and flash bangs. Four muffled explosions went off. Random gunfire followed for a few seconds. A few rounds burst through the wall above Joe. After a few seconds of silence, they infiltrated. The men cleared the room with military precision, using short, controlled bursts until all the men guarding the boss were dead. Rounds of ammunition had ripped through walls, couches and flesh. The only man left alive was the boss himself. He was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, coughing, choking and crying. Joe pointed two fingers toward the bathroom door, and two men went to it. They opened the door and fired rounds into a man hiding behind the toilet.
Joe barely heard the shots as he walked up to the boss. His focused anger was about to be let out. He saw the boss reaching for the pistol shotgun he had dropped at some point in the fray. Joe grabbed it before the boss could.
“Fuck you!” the boss screamed.
Joe took off his gas mask, and the remnants of tear gas burned his eyes. Joe didn’t care, as he wanted the boss to see his face. A little pain was worth it. Joe used “The Judge” against the boss, firing a .410 shotgun round into the boss’s foot. Fat, skin and bone disappeared, a giant hole left.
“Ahhhh!” the boss yelled, bending over but unable to reach his foot, his stomach getting in the way.
Joe started laughing, an evil taking over his mind. “Ha ha ha. Look at you! You fat fuck!” Joe shot the boss’s other foot too.
“Ahhh!”
“I’m sorry, does that hurt?” Joe yelled at him.
The boss yelled back at him. “Fuck you!”
“That’s only a small amount of the pain you’ve inflicted on people! You!” Joe started hitting him with the butt of his gun as he yelled. “You! Piece! Of! Shit! You! Are! A! Waste! Of! A! Human! Being!” Sweat beaded down Joe’s face as he kept hitting the pathetic image in front of him. Exhaustion finally stopped the bludgeoning.
Joe stepped back, looking at the crying, bloody and bruised pile of man. Joe regathered himself and caught his breath. He walked over to the metal case resting on the kitchenette bar top. Opening it, he pulled out a syringe
“This isn’t actually an immunization. This is Enerjax. Who has the enhancer?” Joe asked the room. One man, still wearing his mask,
stepped up holding out a metal cigar tube. As Joe reached for it, the man spoke.
“We should just end this.”
Joe grabbed the tube from him. “It ends when I say. That was the deal.” Joe opened the tube and pulled out an enhancer syringe. He walked over and stabbed him with the Enerjax. The boss quickly began to convulse, his fat jiggling. Then it all stopped. Joe walked over and, using his knife, cut the boss’s Achilles tendons and wrists deeply
A few seconds later, a scream came tearing out of the fat man’s throat. The boss zombie was born. His head snapped up, and his white, milky eyes popped open. As he attempted to rise and attack Joe, who was closest to the creature, the cut Achilles caused his massive form to fall to the ground. The zombie boss tried to push up, but the cut wrist tendons made his hands unable to function.
Joe watched as the fat zombie blob tried to crawl toward him, but his weight held his body to the ground.
Joe watched him spit and struggle.
“Look at him,” Joe said.
“Sir?” the man who gave him the Enerjax-enhancer needle asked.
“Now he looks like the monster he really was.”
“Sir. Let’s be done with this,” the man said.
Joe walked up and injected the large creature with the enhancer. A few seconds later, the boss began convulsing again and then fell still, this time for good.
Joe fired one shot through his skull just to be sure.
New Miami Harbor: Outbreak Day +69
“Let’s just go get Kurt and leave this place behind, and never talk about what happened in that room.”
“Okay,” Kira said. “This has been a long day, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Transatlantic Convoy:
Outbreak Day +70
The sun was rising over the horizon as the go-fast boat came sailing out of the convoy again. Joe slowed down the La Vida Dulce. The voice of the security man from earlier chirped over the radio.
