by Nye, Cedric
Instantly, he felt better, and he asked Vanessa, “Is there any way I can get something to eat, and drink? I feel really, really hungry.”
Vanessa patted his cheek, and left to get him some food and water.
When Vanessa left, Jango could tell by the nurse's body language that she wanted to say something. Her pursed lips and rigid posture started to make him angry, so he told her, “Well, spit it the fuck out already.”
The nurse's head snapped toward Jango, and her eyes narrowed in anger. He responded to the implied threat of her sudden movement and facial expression by sitting up in bed as he pinned her in place with his eyes.
The nurse's eyes instantly opened wide, and went wet with fear.
Jango forced himself to back down, and he said in his sweetest voice, “Go ahead, tell me what you want to tell me, or ask me what you want to ask me.”
The nurse took several breaths before she spoke. “Vanessa has this idea in her head that she's going with you to Phoenix. I tried to tell her that she doesn't need to go there. All the medication she could ever need is right here.” Then in a softer voice, the nurse said, “And I'm here, and I wish she would stay because she is the most beautiful person I've ever met, and I love her.”
The raw, naked emotion that Jango saw in the woman's face made him wish for a love like that, and it also caused his whimsy to sway. He found himself liking the woman, so he hurried to reassure her.
“Look, uh, wait, I don't even know your name. What is your name?” Jango asked.
“Evelyn, Eve for short,” the woman answered.
“All right, Eve, it's very nice to meet you. Look, there is no reason in the world for Vanessa to go to Phoenix with me. If the medication she needs is here, then she is not going to Phoenix with me. You see, I am walking on the Apocalypse Road, the road of revenge, and that road only leads to the grave. Vanessa is my sister, and I will not let her walk that road with me. I'm a man born to blood and pain, and peace would be a killing blow for me. I eat food and drink water to maintain my body, but what truly sustains me is the vendetta, and worshiping the only God who will have me; revenge. I am a violent man, and I will never be anything else. But Vanessa is different; she was made for peace, and for love. If that's what you are offering her, then you have my support and my blessing.” Jango finished with a sigh.
Eve looked relieved for a moment, but then her face tightened with worry. “I have to tell you something else, too,” she said hesitantly.
“Whatever it is, just spit it out, you don’t have to sugar-coat anything with me, Eve,” he told her. She looked so worried, though, that he started to feel nervous. “What is it? Did you find a tumor or something? Am I going to die?”
One of his deepest fears was to die slowly in the grips of some debilitating disease, and he had sworn long ago that if he ended up like that he would kill himself.
“No, no! Nothing like that,” Eve said. She looked hesitant, but then her face strengthened with resolve and she blurted out, “You should be dead, and your blood isn’t exactly human!”
He felt the icy fingers of dread caress his spine at Eve’s words, and he whispered, “What do you mean, not exactly human?”
Eve looked around to see if anyone was near, and then leaned in close to him. “I examined your blood when you came in because I could not believe that you were still breathing after all of the injuries you sustained. I was also curious about your “super strength.” When you picked up that giant pot, I was stunned. Anyway, I just wanted to know about you, and also see if you were turning into one of those zombies. What I found was that your entire system, right down to the cellular level, had somehow fought the zombie virus to a draw.”
It took Jango a moment to understand what she was saying, and when realization dawned on him, he looked ill.
“So I am…what? Am I half fuckin’ goober?” His voice had a tremulous quality that made him feel disgusted with himself.
Eve looked at him and said, “No, you are something new. Everybody is infected by what Vanessa calls the “Z-Virus.” We all have it. Some people died from the virus itself, but even the people who didn’t die right away are infected. That is why when someone dies, their body comes back. I have examined the “blood” from zombies, and I have seen how the virus changes the human tissue.”
What she said next shocked Jango. “Have you noticed that the zombies aren’t rotting and decaying like movie zombies do? That’s because the virus is turning them into something else; they aren’t dead humans anymore, they are…. something else.”
Eve looked at him and said, “You healed from your injuries at an incredible rate, and you have an unnatural amount of strength. Those are similar to the changes in the zombies. Their changes are more pronounced, though. Whatever Mosnato did, they opened up Pandora’s Box, Jango, and I don’t think it can ever be shut again. The virus’ ability to adapt is incredible, and I don’t think there is any way to predict how it will behave.”
Just then, Vanessa walked into the room with a cafeteria tray that was loaded with mashed potatoes and an enormous bowl of what smelled like beef stew. Jango made a hushing motion at Eve, and smiled at Vanessa.
Jango’s stomach rumbled audibly, “Glergoogloop!” The sound made Vanessa giggle. She set the tray on his lap and pressed a lever with her foot that made the bed fold him into a seated position.
Jango dug in and wolfed down the huge tray of food in just a couple of minutes, and then thirstily slurped nearly half a gallon of water from the pitcher that Vanessa had brought to him.
When he had finished the huge meal, he asked Vanessa, “Where's the rest of my gear, little sister?” He was specifically thinking of the LMK knife that had belonged to Sonja. He hoped that he hadn't lost it.
“All your stuff is here, Jango. It’s right under the bed, every last bit of it,” Vanessa replied.
“She spent days searching for anything that you might've dropped,” Eve said with a hint of pride. “She wouldn't give up until she knew that she’d found everything that was yours.”
Jango looked at the two of them, and then decided to go ahead and get his talk with Vanessa over with. He figured it was better to do it sooner rather than later. He believed in untarnished honesty when it came to people who he respected, or who he cared for.
Without preamble, he said, “Vanessa, check it out, Sis. You have everything you need right here. Not only that, but everything here needs you. Do you understand what I'm saying? I've only known you for a little while, but I've claimed you as my blood. If I didn't really give a shit about you, I would let you go to Phoenix with me and I would throw you to the fucking wolves if I needed to. But I love you, and you can't walk the road that I am on. You have a chance to be a part of something here, and these people, they need you. They won't survive here on their own. You know it. If you look at it honestly, and see the cold truth, then you will see that these people will die without you to be their spine. I know you love me little sister, and I know that you would fight the devil himself to save me. But the problem is that I have become my own devil. I was fed the poisons of pain, hate, rage, and madness for too long. When I lost my armor, when Son..." Jango choked on her name for a moment, and then continued, “When Sonja touched me in a way that I'd never been touched before, she tore my armor away. Then when she turned into, into, one of those wailing, screaming pieces of undead shit, I fucking lost it. I can never go back. I used to be able to paste a fake smile on my face and sit around and fool everybody; but not now. All the nasty truth that used to hide in the deepest darkest corners of my mind, it broke loose and came home to stay. And to tell you the truth, I love them, and I cannot imagine going back to the way I used to be. Hiding my truth and my strength under layers of chains? Well fuck that! I am going to walk the ways of death, and bring all the fires of hell down on the goobers and all the human zombies too. My road will only end when I'm dead.” He finished quietly. “You have a chance, Vanessa, the chance to live a life of peace and love.”
<
br /> Vanessa felt the ring of truth in his words reverberate through every fiber of her being. She knew that it was the truth, but that did not stop her from feeling an almost physical sense of loss from the knowledge that Jango had chosen a road that would eventually lead to his death.
She had never known anyone like him before. She had never even heard of anyone like him before, but she had dreamed of someone like Jango all her life. When her father had hurt her as a child, she would go away inside her head and imagine that a knight in shining armor would come to save her. He would whisk her away on his horse to a place where she could be herself, and never be the plaything of any man ever again. Even though Jango wasn't exactly a knight in shining armor, he had been willing to die so that she could live, and that was Vanessa's ideal of a knight in shining armor.
Vanessa felt Eve take her hand, and she gave her hand a gentle squeeze to let her know that everything would be all right. Vanessa looked at Jango and said, “Well, you’re not gonna leave right away, right?”
He looked back at her, stretched his arms wide and smiled his lunatic smile as he said, “Not right away, little sister, first I have to make sure that this area is a ZFZ, a zombie free zone! On top of that, I need to make sure you and your refugees know how to defend your turf against whatever or whoever might try to take your shit.”
Jango turned his body so that his legs dangled over the side of the hospital bed. He reached up to feel his head, and was surprised to find out that his head had been shaved! His thick fingers traced a heavy ridge of scar tissue that went from just above his right eye, up to the crown of his head, and then all the way down behind his right ear.
He pulled out the IV needle that was stuck in his forearm, and tossed the needle tipped tube to the side. Jango put his hands on the edge of the bed, and heaved himself onto his feet. He stood, unsteadily at first, as his muscles shook from almost a month of disuse. His unsteadiness only lasted a moment or two, though.
Jango stood for several minutes as he slowly flexed, and then loosened every muscle in his body so that he could gauge his strength. When he had finished, Jango knew that he was not operating at one-hundred percent, but he also knew that he would be back to one-hundred percent before long.
He turned to Vanessa and said, “Well, we might as well get started. Be a doll and get me some clothes. I can’t gank goobers in this hospital gown!”
Chapter 12:
Zombie Killing 101
Jango's animal vitality asserted itself with vigor, and within a week of having woken up in the hospital, he was as strong as he had ever been. Besides teaching Vanessa and two other women how to hunt and kill zombies, he had set the women to fortifying the housing development.
Numerous rolls of chain-link fence and several miles of razor wire from the local home improvement stores had turned the entire perimeter of the large housing development into a nearly impassable obstacle to anyone, zombie or human, who might try to gain entrance without permission. Jango showed them how to place vehicles all around the development as obstacles to prevent anyone from using a vehicle to crash through their perimeter.
Besides fortification, Jango also set the women loose to loot every store in town that carried firearms or ammunition. He helped to give them focus, and purpose as his fractured mind made sense out of a world that most of the women hardly even recognized anymore.
He had them on the roofs of houses as they installed solar panels, rain gutters, and solar water heaters. Jango felt fierce pride as he watched the women become more and more self-sufficient, and he smiled as he watched them slowly strip the town of anything they might be able to put to use in the future.
Vanessa and the two women, Monika and Jara, had found Jango's teaching methods to be agonizing at best, and downright frightening at worst. He had spent the last month teaching them the killing ways. He showed them how to cover their scent trail, and how to trap and kill the undead. He also taught them his exercise routine. Vanessa had started to call it the Zombie Fighter Jango workout and the name stuck.
Jango was pleased by the progress of his Zombinators. He decided that they were ready to be set loose on the world. The thought of the three hard-core women bringing death to whatever might need killing made him smile.
He could not have asked for a more committed and fierce group of students. He knew that when he left this Amazonian group of women, they would be just fine without him. His confidence was not based solely on their abilities. He knew that no zombies remained in Anthem.
He had been shown a grisly find after he had asked about the sentries that he had killed, and then left to become zombies.
“So, Vanessa, what happened to those sentries that I killed?” Jango asked her the second day after he awakened from his coma.
“Since you warned us about them, we knew they’d be coming. We just drove around the housing development until we lured them out, and then we shot them down with the double barrels,” Vanessa had answered.
Then Vanessa shared another piece of important zombie related information with Jango, information that set his teeth on edge when she told him.
“Those guys, the ones we killed? Well, apparently the reason that there aren't a whole lot of zombies around here is that they lured them all into another housing development on the other side of town and locked them in.” Vanessa continued, “When Eve told me that, I had her drive me over there so I could see.” She shuddered and had a queasy look on her face. “God, Jango, I've never seen anything like that and I never want to see anything like that again. I don't know how many are in there, but it must be thousands and thousands, like the whole fucking town almost!”
Jango immediately insisted on going to see the housing development full of zombies for himself. What Jango saw when he arrived there made his flesh crawl with a primal and raw revulsion so strong that he had to suppress an urge to just start shooting at the milling press of zombies behind the heavy steel gates.
He had noticed lately that zombies had begun to act differently than they had when the undead had first arrived on the scene. Jango had thought from the start that they must have possessed some kind of crude intelligence, maybe even a hive mind or something.
His evidence for that belief was the fact that they had always hunted in packs, and that they used their unearthly wails and screams to communicate with the other undead. When the zombie apocalypse first began, the zombies had been fast, but uncoordinated. Now it seemed that the zombies’ coordination had been improving.
All of those thoughts flashed through Jango's mind as he watched the keening, wailing mass of zombies as they pressed against the steel gates. Their very numbers kept them from being able to apply enough force to the gates to get through. Nevertheless, Jango found himself taken aback as he watched one zombie attempt to climb the heavy bars of the gate. It was attempting to grip the vertical bars and pull itself up, but was impeded by the torn flesh of its hands and their inability to gain purchase on the smooth metal bars. He watched for nearly twenty minutes as the same zombie kept trying to climb the fence. Jango had a sudden premonition, a leap of intuition that caused him to make the destruction of all of the captive zombies his top priority.
The vision the Jango had, the premonition, was that the zombie was going to figure out that all it had to do was climb up one of its fellow goobers and it would be able to reach the top of the fence. His premonition extrapolated and unfolded in his mind, and he knew, he just knew that the other zombies would follow suit when it finally did figure out how to get over the fence.
Jango immediately tried to figure out how he could destroy such a multitude of zombies without breaking the gate and setting loose a flood of the living dead. He mentally reviewed everything that he'd seen in Anthem, and he came up with a plan.
Anthem had many rural homes and large ranches that lay far on the outskirts of town. A lot of rich people with deep pockets had resided in Anthem, and those people that lived on the edge of town would have insisted on having fire d
epartment services despite the lack of fire hydrants.
Jango hunted around until he found a fire department that had a pumper truck. The truck had a large water tank and a powerful pump, which would have allowed the truck to fight a fire even though there was no water source near the scene of the fire.
Once Jango had the truck, he drove it to one of the filling stations that were scattered all over the town.
The pumper truck came equipped with an inlet hose so that its tank could be filled from any large water source, and he used the water inlet hose on the pump to fill the trucks tank with hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel. When he had finished filling the tank, Jango drove back to the zombie-infested housing development.
When he got there, Jango wanted to make sure that every zombie in the walled-in enclosure was in his kill zone. To accomplish that, he walked close to the gate, pulled out his spine cutter, and made a long cut on the back of his left forearm. He gave the blade a quick wipe on his pants leg and sheathed it back on his hip. Jango dipped his fingers in the blood from the wound and flicked it at the zombies that were pressed against the gate.
The zombies responded instantly to the scent of his blood, and a horrendous wail rose from the ravening horde. Their horrible hunting screams spread like fire on a puddle of gasoline. In less than a minute, their combined screams had become so loud that Jango's head felt like it could explode at any moment.
He could not even guess at how many zombies there were, and he really did not care. He just wanted them all dead, all the way dead; forever.
He walked back to the truck and unspooled the thick hose with its heavy brass nozzle at the end. When the hose was unspooled, and he had made sure that it was laid out flat with no kinks, he hit a large red button that was labeled “pump”.
The hose immediately snapped tight as it filled with the diesel fuel. Jango climbed on top of the truck with the hose, and sprayed the thousands upon thousands of zombies that were screaming for his flesh. He waved the hose from side to side, and the arc of fuel followed his movements.
