The Road to Hell Is Paved With Zombies

by Cedric Nye

  Blow after powerful blow came down on her skinny, dead legs as Jango systematically broke every inch of the tibias and femurs in both of her legs.

  When he was done, he headed out the door with the bat in his hand, and veered toward his car. He began whistling The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” to himself as he neared his car.

  As he exited the office, the seven or eight broken zombies that were still “alive” started wailing at him while they flopped and writhed to get at him. Jango stared interestedly at them for a moment, then walked to the nearest moving zombie, and allowed it to reach his steel-toed boot with its hand before he brought the baseball bat down sharply on the top of the wailing creature’s skull.

  The bat left a deep depression in the creature’s skull, and ended the thing’s life for a second time.

  He then proceeded to dispatch the remaining zombies. One, who had managed to rip its squashed parts loose from the asphalt did a sort of disgusting handstand and ran on its hands toward Jango’s back.

  He spun as he heard the slap of its hands on the pavement and swiped the zombie’s arms from beneath it with a swing of his bat, and then brought the bat down on its larynx when it fell. The zombie’s writhing went from spastic to fever pitch, as it struck the ground with its hands hard enough to spring six feet into the air. Jango rolled forward, and the keening monster landed where he had just stood.

  One hard hit to the head and the thing was done. “So it has to be the head,” Jango said to himself. “At least Hollywood got one thing right.”

  There was one zombie left, and it had ceased wailing. It had started making a crooning sound, like a baby that had just learned to vocalize. The sound was even more unsettling to Jango because it was almost pretty.

  He circled the zombie until he was behind it and swung the bat to the back of its neck. The muffled “Crunch!” of irreversibly damaged vertebrae was followed by the zombie’s death. “Not just the head, eh, Dr. Watson?” Jango mused aloud. He dropped the bat and headed to his car.

  When he reached his car, he opened the hatchback, and flipped back the blanket that was spread out in the tiny cargo area. Underneath the blanket was a heavy ironwood stick, about thirty-two inches long, and almost two inches in diameter. The stick was stained with the sweat of countless hours of exercise, and had an almost palpable aura of violence around it.

  He picked up the stick gently, almost lovingly, the way a person might treat a precious heirloom. For Jango, his fighting stick was precious, more precious to him than anything else in the world, and he immediately felt as if everything would be all right when he had it in his hand.

  Chapter 3:

  Jango Makes A Friend.

  Jango locked up his car, looked around a final time, and went back into the office, checking his running stopwatch as he walked. Forty-five minutes had passed since the old woman had died.

  Upon entering the hotel office, he could feel that something had changed. He instinctively looked toward the old, dead woman. She wasn’t there anymore. Instead, a grey and black trail of blood and other fluids led toward the back door of the office.

  He stopped his watch timer, and checked the time. Forty-six minutes had passed since the old lady had died. “So, it takes less than forty-six minutes for the dead to come back,” he thought as he carefully scanned the room.

  He had a pleased look on his face as he began following the snail-trail of blood that he assumed would lead him to the newly risen zombie.

  When he reached the back of the office, he saw that the trail continued through a back door. He took a couple of deep breaths, opened the door all of the way, and quickly ran into the back yard.

  The sight that greeted him was not a comforting one. The old lady was propelling herself with her arms around a fenced yard. Her broken legs trailed behind her like two wrinkled slim-jims, not even touching the ground due to her abnormal strength and speed. The sight of the old woman zombie doing a solo wheelbarrow race was unsettling enough, but there was also an enormous dog in the yard!

  The dog easily stood over five feet tall at the shoulder and was built to scale. It appeared to be a Rottweiler, but Jango had never heard of a Rottweiler even half the size of that one. Preoccupied with the sight of such an enormous dog being in such close proximity to himself, he had forgotten about the zombie in the yard with him.

  “RheeeeeAAAAAA-eeeeeeeeeeeee!” The zombie wailed as she launched herself into the air, flying straight at Jango. He quickly sidestepped to the right, raised his stick, then whipped his shoulders counterclockwise and brought the heavy stick crashing down on the back of the creature’s neck. There was a muffled crunch, a thud as the body hit the ground, and then there was silence. He looked back up at the dog.

  The dog was sitting down now, but was so large that his head was about even with Jango’s own head. He noticed how calmly the dog was looking at him, so he patted his leg and said, “Come here, doggy.”

  The dog stood up, walked over to him, and leaned against him, just a little bit, as if for comfort. Jango put his hand on the dog’s neck, surprised by the surge of emotion he suddenly felt for the dog, and said, “It’ll be okay, boy, you’re okay.”

  As he scratched the big dog’s neck, his features and posture softened, his eyes lost their feral gleam, and went back to being hazel. His body seemed to shrink slightly, as if some air were being let out of a balloon.

  He sighed heavily and looked around the yard. “Well, boy,” he said to the dog, “I guess you can come with me, if you want to.” The dog’s tail thumped on the ground, and he got up and followed as Jango went through the office and out the front door.

  Chapter 4:

  Jango Gets Sick.

  As Jango stepped out the front door of the hotel office, he spoke over his shoulder to the dog, “We should probably get out of town. There are bound to be some places where there aren’t any zombies”. Then, with more enthusiasm he said, “Yeah! We can, camp out, go hiking, and awwwkkkk!! What the…?”

  He had been caught off guard when the dog clamped down on his left shoulder and sank its teeth to the gums in his flesh. Jango was savagely shaken back and forth. The giant dog was so big and strong that he found himself flung about in the air like a rag doll. He felt the big dog’s teeth grinding against his bones as they savaged his flesh, and his stick went flying out of his hand as he was flung around.

  Jango went berserk, “You ingrate!” he shouted, “I’ll kill your ass!”

  He pulled his gun, and aimed back under his left arm at the beast as it continued to shake him. He pulled the trigger five times, as fast as he could. The dog tossed Jango against the wall of the hotel hard enough to drive the air from his lungs.

  Jango stood on shaky legs, as a sudden fit of coughing almost bent him double. He straightened, and he aimed his pistol at the seemingly unstoppable animal. The dog just gazed at him calmly with human looking eyes.

  “You set me free, Jango, you finally set me free,” the dog said in a deep, gravelly voice that sounded like it came from the bottom of a grave.

  Jango twitched in surprise.

  “Yeah, I can talk,” the dog continued in the same deep voice.

  He emptied his pistol at the dog.

  “Blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam!” Jango fired the pistol so quickly it sounded like one long roll of thunder, and every shot struck the dog in its chest.

  As the slide locked back on an empty magazine, he watched in shock as the bullets slid from the fur on the animal’s chest.

  “You freed me, Jango,” the dog repeated.

  Jango’s mind was screaming, “How does it know my name? Why did it attack me? And why is it fucking bullet-proof?” He noticed that the dog flickered sometimes, like a cheap drive-in movie. He coughed hard, and felt dizzy.

  The dog kept talking. “There is big-time nasty shit coming, and you need to be eyes wide open if you are going to survive it, Jango. You will get very sick, I mean, so sick that you are going to think
you are dying, but you won’t die, Jango, you will wake up.”

  The whole time the dog was talking, Jango just stood in a kind of trance-like shock of pain, and dumb-founded surprise as he watched the oddly flickering dog. He noticed the dog look toward the woods and saw its eyes widen.

  He turned to see what he was looking at, and was slammed to the ground by a fast moving and powerful form. Jango hit the ground hard, but rolled so that his new attacker ended up beneath him. He drew back his fist for a killing blow, but paused in bafflement when he saw that his attacker was a nude woman! She was a very attractive nude woman, who also appeared to be somewhat of an albino, or semi-albino. She was wild looking, feral, with a lithe, athletic body that felt hard and soft at the same time.

  When he paused in confusion, the wild-woman grabbed him by his shoulders, and head-butted him with concussive force, then threw him into the air with more than human strength.

  Jango twisted in mid-air like a cat, and landed on his toes and hands with a springy motion. His shock was gone. No more surprise from a talking dog or an albino wild-bitch. He focused all of his being into his center. He willed away his pain and fear, and became a stone.

  He moved toward the albino, and she growled, a deep, ugly growl, as Jango slowly advanced. Then, faster than his eyes could follow, she lunged forward, ducked, and spun into a bone-cracking kick that put him against the hotel wall again.

  As Jango slowly rose, shaking his head to clear his vision, she attacked him again. The wild-woman kicked Jango in the testicles twice in the blink of an eye, and then punched him in the jaw with a trip-hammer hard left/right combo that put him on the ground with a nasty ringing in his ears and blurred vision. The wild woman then straddled him in an almost sensuous way, slapped him on each cheek, spit in his left eye, punched him in the nose, then leaned down and bit him on the same shoulder that the dog had already savaged.

  “Thank you for setting me free,” the wild woman purred as she rose from Jango’s barely functional body.

  He got a good look at her crotch as she straddled him with her hands in her hair, back arched, her nearly white nipples pointing at the sky. She flickered just like the dog had, and Jango thought he knew what that meant, but couldn’t quite catch hold of the thought.

  He found himself strangely aroused as he watched her stretch languorously above him. The woman stepped over him, and turned toward the giant canine as she said, “It was too long in the cage, way too long.”

  Then, with a flash of pale limbs, the wild woman ran and jumped onto the enormous dog’s back as if he was a horse.

  The dog walked over to Jango with the woman on his back, both of them flickering in and out of existence, “You need to get out of here now, Jango, there are a whole lot more of those zombies out there. If you get sick here, they will kill you. You need to be gone. Get into the woods, now. Please just trust me; you will not die if you go out there now.” The big dog looked earnest as he spoke, “Leave your vehicle and walk into the woods, come back when the fever has passed, and your car will still be here.” With that, the dog sprinted into the woods while the wild woman laughed with joy on his back. They were swallowed by the woods, and Jango realized that he missed them.

  He pulled himself to his feet, and picked up his pistol. He took out the empty mag and inserted a full one, stuck his pistol in his waistband, and picked up his ironwood stick. Then with a fatalistic shrug, he walked, coughing raggedly, into the woods behind the hotel.

  Chapter 5:

  In the Grip of Fever

  Jango wandered in the darkening woods for hours in a haze of sickness and fever. His entire body was shaking with spasms and convulsions and his clothing was drenched in a foul smelling and greasy sick-sweat. The acrid, stinging sweat ran into his eyes and mouth as he struggled for breath. He fell to his knees, a dark tide of sickness racing through his veins. His panting grew louder in his own ears, and began to gain a rhythm, a roaring cadence like the ocean, or brain death. He fell onto his face in the thick carpet of pine needles, his breathing became shallower as his vision went black, and then he knew no more.

  Fever-bright images flashed quickly across his field of vision like a Bigfoot sighting, images of death and destruction, life and rebirth. The madness of mankind could never be made more clear or apparent than in the images that flashed through Jango’s feverish mind as his body convulsed and bucked on the forest floor. Forests burning, women and children screaming for help, polluted waters, and the crop that was reaped from the seeds that man had sown; the ultimate horror of the risen dead.

  He saw his father, who had the hard, unrelenting fists of an unapologetic abuser. He saw his mother as she prostituted herself while Jango played in the living rooms of strange men. He saw his strength built of fear and rage, a strength that only deserted him when life was at its best. His mind filled with visions of himself fighting against a sea of screaming, gibbering zombies, millions of them wailing for his flesh. He stood against the rising tide of zombies that filled his fevered mind, and he was all alone.

  Jango continued to flash through insane nightmare visions of his childhood that alternated with strange visions of himself fighting the ravening hordes of the living dead.

  All around him, the forest was silent as his body and mind fought a terrible battle with the virus that threatened to turn him into one of the undead. It was as if the forest waited for him; for it was a respectful and solemn silence, a watchful and hopeful silence that highlighted the horrible convulsions and gut wrenching screams that came from the unconscious man. Then, as the fever rose within his agony-wracked body, steam began rising from his skin, and the fever swept him away on a burning tide of madness.

  Until Now:

  When we last saw Jango, his vacation in Prescott, AZ had been interrupted by nothing less than the Zombie Apocalypse! Jango successfully battled his way through a couple of dozen living-dead, only to be chewed up and tossed around by a giant dog. To add insult to injury, a strange, naked, Albino woman appeared from out of thin-air, pulled some serious Kung-Fu moves on him, and kicked him in the balls…twice!!

  He wandered through the woods in a delirium of fever, until he fell unconscious on the forest floor. That is where we left Jango, moaning and screaming in a fever-dream with visions of madness dancing through his damaged brain. Now we continue the saga of Zombie Fighter Jango. Thank you all for making this journey with me.-Sincerely, Cedric Nye

  Chapter 6:

  A Lamentable Predicament

  Jango regained consciousness all at once, like a light bulb being turned on. He jerked into a sitting position on the carpet of pine needles and looked around him. He made a swift mental inventory of himself to see if anything felt broken, or wrong; nothing felt wrong at all. In fact, he felt pretty good.

  “Damn!” he exclaimed, “I feel GOOD!”

  Jango stood up, and brushed the pine needles and dirt off of his pants. It was then that he noticed all his gear was gone. His stick, his pistol, his shirt, and his spare magazines were all gone.

  “Oh, shit,” he said in a whisper, suddenly feeling….well, naked.

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” he kept repeating to himself as he contemplated a weaponless life in a world full of zombies.

  Then Jango’s eyes fell on the most beautiful sight he could imagine!

  “Oh yeah, baby,” he crooned as he spotted his Desert Ironwood stick lying on the ground a few feet away. He walked over and picked it up with the same reverence a devout Christian might show when handling a splinter from the True Cross.

  Jango’s stick was uniquely his. He had cut the limb himself from a tree that was bulldozed to make way for a housing tract of half a million dollar homes that were made of chicken wire and stucco slapped on top of half-dried foundations; all in the name of progress.

  The tree was over 300 years old, and the limb he took was nearly 80 years old. The rings of growth were so fine that he needed a magnifying glass to count them.

  Jango had pains
takingly dried the ironwood limb for nearly 6 months in the desert air, and then peeled it by hand. He had spent hours sanding and oiling, sanding and oiling, until he had fashioned a weapon that suited him like a part of his own body.

  “Guns run out of ammunition, knives get dull with use, but you only stop working when I stop working,” he softly crooned to his stick.

  A sudden thought made Jango check the right front pocket of his jeans. “Better and better,” he said with a smile as he found out that his Spyderco knife was still clipped inside his pocket.

  The Spyderco was the Mannix 2 XL model. He had won it in a YouTube contest, and it was the nicest folding knife he had ever seen, let alone owned. It held an edge like crazy. Made from CPM S30V stainless steel, the Spyderco was tailor made for someone like him.

  Jango clipped the knife back in his pocket, and took a hard look at the woods around him.

  “Where AM I?” he mused aloud as he continued to scan his surroundings in hopes of finding his way back to Prescott, and his hotel room.

  As Jango surveyed the woods, he noticed what looked like drag marks heading off to his left. On closer examination, he noticed that the marks looked like they had been made by a person dragging their feet. He also noticed that the marks ended at the exact spot where he had regained consciousness.

  “I guess I don’t have to be Sherlock to figure this one out,” he muttered to himself as he adjusted his grip on the stick so that it was perfectly balanced in his hand, and headed back the way he had come.

  Chapter 7:

  Zombie Fighter Jango

  Clad only in his jeans and boots, Jango followed his erratic fever-path for several hours. As he walked, he looked side to side, hoping to spot his pistol, but he never did.