by Cedric Nye
She hugged her husband, and motioned to the three children who were standing close-by to join them. She held her family close, and hoped she never saw that man again. She found herself hoping that he and those Amish just killed each other.
“He wasn’t death,” John said, “Well, not the Death. That had to be the Zombie Fighter guy! Man, I can’t wait to tell the ZPC crew on the short-wave.”
“ZPC” was an acronym for the Zombie Preparedness Convention, which had been in full-swing when the Z-Virus had spread its blackened wings across the planet. John, his wife, Kara, and their three children had been at the ZPC. They had flown in from Florida for the convention, and with no way to get back, had made the Phoenix Convention Center their home for several months after the initial outbreak.
The convention had been sold-out. It had been peopled by survivalists, preppers, weapon-makers, novelists like Ian, and more. When the first zombies had appeared, they had shut the doors to the convention center, and fortified the already formidable structure.
Thanks to Arizona’s adherence to the Constitution, there was no lack of guns and ammunition, as gun and ammunition sales people had occupied the majority of the tables at the convention.
When things had calmed down, and stories of the Zombie Fighter clearing the land had begun to trickle in, many people, like John and Kara, chose to go out and “homestead”.
The Convention Center was still home to thousands of people. They had roof-top gardens, and even livestock.
“I can’t wait to tell them,” John repeated with glee. The Zombie Fighter had become a legend of large and dark proportions. The legend grew with each telling of his deeds, passed along on short-wave radios until the legend had spread to other states even.
Kara felt a chill run down her spine as she thought of some of those stories. If that man was the Zombie Fighter, and even half of the stories were true, then he was worse than death; He was hell on earth. She crossed herself again, and shooed her teenagers off to finish their chores.
She shook her head as she heard her husband telling their friends about the man, and she couldn’t help but smile as she listened to him describe the man as being “huge beyond belief.”
After one last look in the direction in which the man had gone, she crossed herself once more, and then closed the steel shutters, put the bar back in place, and tried to forget that horrible smile, and the man who had worn it.
Jango raced, ever faster, after his quarry. The tracks became clearer, and easier to read, and the evidence of their passing was not limited to wagon-tracks. He found burned and gutted houses along the way. He saw the bodies of the dead; all adults, no children.
His fury burned as his feet spurned the ground, and his eyes roved in search of something on which to vent his rage. He ran all night beneath the ghostly light of a gibbous moon. He only stopped to consume a large quantity of the Jay Lane’s jerky, and to drain a water-bottle, before moving on again.
The sun rose, and peeked between heavy, dark clouds as he found himself cresting a rocky hill some fifty miles from the Carefree Ranch, and that was where he found them.
A large settlement was clustered around the center of the valley. A pond seemed to be the central point of the settlement, which made sense in the desert where every drop of water was a precious commodity to be guarded and hoarded.
He slowly lowered himself to the ground, and watched the settlement, trying to gauge how many people he would have to deal with when the hammer dropped. He also studied the lay of the land.
Given the location of the settlement, and the lack of any large motor vehicles or buses, he could only see one option: Kill every adult. There was no way to sneak the children out. The Amish would be on their trail in no time, and he could only move as fast as the slowest child. The Amish were outdoorsmen, and they would be able to track…
So, beneath the lowering sky, Jango girded himself with violence. It had been almost two days since he had begun tracking the group of kidnappers. Plenty of time to fan the coals of his hatred into flames, and now they were in sight.
He lay still and silent as he felt the other personalities that walked the halls of his shattered mind awaken, and it was good. He heard the beast, who he had named B, howl with glee in the dark recesses on his psyche. Not long ago, he had broken the bars of his will that had kept the powerful entity imprisoned in his mind. B was a hulking brute in aspect, but more like a child in personality. He was a creation of all the pain that Jango had taken as a child. B had eyes as green as new grass, and was covered in wounds that never seemed to heal.
He never felt the wounds, though; that was Jango’s job. He was the pain-taker.
He felt the other two frolic in happiness at the nearness of death, and he almost laughed out loud as the sheer joy flooded his mind and body.
Still he lay, as silent and patient as cancer. He watched and waited as the sky darkened. When he felt the first rain-drop fall, he rose. Like a phantom, he moved toward the settlement of kidnappers. His eyes and ears tuned in to the world around him, and, as the clouds let go, and the lightning began to arc across the sky, he found the first sentry.
5
As quiet as a cloud of smoke, he crept toward the guard. When he was ten feet away, he charged. He moved so swiftly that he was little more than a blur in the darkness.
He reached behind him, and filled his hand with a small knife. The knife had an odd shape to it, and a point like a slanted chisel. Then he was on the guard. A quick upward punch with the knife just beneath the man’s sternum, and his life ended in the blink of an eye.
His killer knew that the man would turn into a howling zombie in less than an hour, and normally, he would use that to his advantage; but not this time. He had children to worry about, so he severed the man’s spinal cord with the knife.
As he stood, he saw activity on the far side of the small village. It looked like the people were herding a large group of children toward some kind of livestock pen.
He watched for a moment, and suddenly spotted an enormous man who could only be the leader of which Barbara had spoken.
A smile crept across his face as he thought about snakes. “Kill the head, and the body founders,” he whispered to the night as he unlimbered his M1.
He sighted in on the large man’s chest, center-mass, and softly caressed the trigger. The man dropped as a red mist exploded from between his shoulder blades, and before he hit the ground, Jango had fired another round.
Every shot that he fired killed a man or a woman. He did not discriminate between the sexes when it came to those who harmed children. They needed no judging, only a gun-smoke trial.
When he had fired all eight rounds, and his rifle spat out the en-bloc clip, he dropped the rifle to the ground, and rushed toward the Amish, who were trying to mount a defense against their unknown foe.
Before they could mount a defense, though, death was among them in Technicolor gore. He danced in their midst like some mad dervish. He had drawn the large knife with the over-long handle, and he wielded it with terrible precision.
As he spun and leapt amongst the terrified and confused Amish, the large blade licked out over and over. Each time the blade lashed out, a body hit the ground. Sometimes dead, and sometimes alive and screaming.
The villagers did not know what to do against such an implacable foe. They had used their numbers to overwhelm the homes they had come across, yet now, they found their numbers being used against them.
This murderous shadow seemed to always be just out of reach of their blades, bullets, and bludgeons, and he left only death in his wake.
After an interminable time, the slaughter was over, and Jango stood where once his foe had stood, covered in their blood; victorious. His breath rasped in his throat as he panted from his exertions.
He looked around, and spotted the children, who had been herded into a stockade made of wood and chicken-wire. As his battle-rage passed, he noticed a familiar sound. A high-pitched keening wail
that made him want to run and fight at the same time.
Zombies! He spun around, trying to figure out from whence the noise had come. That was when he spotted it; another pen.
The pen was built more like a large bear-cage, and it was filled with zombies, and every one of the zombies was a child. He gasped at the sight, and then felt dizzy as he saw a smaller pen off to the side of the main pen. In it were ten children who were just beginning to turn into zombies.
“What the hell,” he whispered.
“They were going to turn us into zombies, sir,” a small voice spoke from behind him.
He turned toward the voice, and walked over to the pen. He broke the latch, and opened the gate.
“Come on out and tell me all about it,” he said in a hushed voice.
He was stunned at the number of zombie-children in the huge cage. There had to be several hundred. The still-living children were almost equal to that number.
After several moments of silence, the same voice that had spoken piped up once again. “They wanted an army of zombie kids!”
This time, he was able to see who it was. A little boy, about nine years old, with blond hair and fine features stepped tentatively forward.
Jango immediately recognized the boy, and called him by name, “Hello, Rupert. Your mom asked me to come and get you. So, tell me what the hell was going on here.”
The soul-shaking howls of the child-zombies were wearing at him in ways he could not explain, and he needed to stop it soon.
So, when Rupert began to speak, he told him to wait a minute. He then turned to the zombie pen, and shucked his pack. He reached in, and took out several white phosphorous grenades. He had found out that whatever unnatural virus animated and mutated human corpses, was also very flammable at higher temperatures. He believed that is was some kind of hyper-oxygenation that gave them such speed, and, was also a source of fuel in fire.
When the zombies were tightly packed, as they were in the cage, they would combust like dryer lint soaked in gasoline.
He pulled the pin on a Willy Pete, and tossed it over the wall of the pen. He quickly lobbed four more after it.
“Don’t look!” he shouted at the kids just before the first grenade ignited explosively. The white-hot flames set the un-dead children on fire almost instantly. The flames spread quickly, and the screams faded as the creatures burned to cinders. He watched the flames with a maniac’s love for the cleansing power of fire.
He heard sobbing and retching behind him, and slowly turned back toward the children.
“It’s all over now,” he said. “You are safe, I guess.” He looked for Rupert, and found him holding a little girl that could only be his sister, Maddie.
“So, tell me about what they were up to here, Rupert,” he told the boy.
The story that the boy told would have been unbelievable, but for the fact that he had seen it with his own eyes. The Amish clan had a prophecy that they would inherit the earth from the “Englishers”, and that they would do it with an army of children. The large man had translated that to mean “an army of zombie children”, and, with the madness born of an insular community, had tried to make it a reality.
He was shocked by the madness of it, and repelled by the complete lack of regard these people had had for other humans. He felt sick for a moment, until he remembered that these people would be turning into zombies soon.
He systematically made his way through the scattered corpses, and broke their necks. He always wanted to be sure, so after he broke their necks, he gave each one a savage shake to make sure the spinal cord was severed.
The butcher’s work over, he took stock of their surroundings. Without pause, he began making preparations for getting the children back to the Carefree Ranch. He laughed long and hard when he imagined the look on Barbara’s face when he brought her not only her own children, but several hundred other children as well.
He worked all day, and all night in the rain, and by morning the rain had finished, and so had he. He had torn the cages from the carriages, and loaded every weapon he could find into one of them.
He harnessed up the horses and mules, loaded up what food he could fit into one wagon, and loaded the children into the rest. He had lashed rope between wagons so that when the lead team started, the rope would pull taut and get the next team going.
Before long, he had the mule team underway.
As they crested the hill that separated this valley of death from the land of the living, Jango looked back over his shoulder, and said sadly, “Always the children. ALL the little children.”
Find Zombie Fighter Jango on YouTube, and on Facebook.
Read on for a free sample of Anizombie
Chapter 1
Breaking news
Herb Bennett first heard about the situation in the neighboring city of Decatur, Alabama during his drive to work at the culvert factory in Athens. The radio report was short on details, stating only that several people had been attacked at Decatur General Hospital, and that the authorities were seeking suspects in the brutal assaults.
As the workday progressed, there were rumors that something big was happening in Decatur. Apparently, there had been several murders, and the police were said to be canvassing the hospital, as if they thought some suspects might still be located on the premises.
Herb decided to eat lunch in his truck so that he could try to learn more about what was happening in the neighboring city. According to the news he heard, roadblocks had been set up at every street leading out of the city.
Athens is located fourteen miles south of the Tennessee state line along the Interstate 65 corridor. Decatur is situated fifteen miles further to the south. Herb knew that there were numerous roads leading to the city. According to the report he heard on the radio, city, county, and state trooper units were working together to contain and capture the violent criminals. The public was being advised to stay inside their homes and keep all doors and windows closed and locked while law enforcement officials sought the killers.
That night, Herb ate his dinner in the living room so that he could watch the news about the violence in Decatur. The story had captured the attention of the national news media. Thinking that they had an opportunity to spark another round of draconian firearms legislation, they pounced on the story. They were disappointed to learn that not a single victim of the violence had been shot. Then they discovered that the spokesmen for the authorities who were handling the situation were hiding something and the networks present in Decatur raced to be the first to uncover the truth about what was happening in the city.
Herb was shocked to learn that Decatur General Hospital was still under lockdown and that no visitors were being permitted inside. In fact, no one was being allowed within blocks of the facility, and everyone near it had been evacuated. One reporter, speaking to the camera before the press conference began, said that there had been claims that several patients had been moved to an undisclosed location. During a press conference with city officials and representatives of law enforcement, she asked why the city was covering up the fact that some patients had been relocated, while others were still trapped inside the compromised medical facility.
Herb sat up straighter and leaned toward his television screen with interest. “I don’t know where you got your information, but I can assure you that it isn’t true. Not one living soul has been removed from that hospital,” the Chief of Police stated.
“That’s not true,” Angela Hutton, the young female reporter countered. Then she held up an 8 x 10 color photograph that showed a woman on a gurney being rolled toward a waiting ambulance. “Note that this patient is restrained, and her gurney is being moved by members of a police team dressed in tactical gear,” she added in a tone that conveyed righteous anger. “There were others, but I only had time to prepare one photo before this press conference.”
“Where did you get that?” asked the Police Chief.
“A concerned citizen videoed the incidents and
passed that on to me. My network is going to air it after this press conference is over, so unless you want this story to break without an explanation from you, then I suggest you tell us the truth. What is going on at that medical facility and why are some of the patients being restrained and removed against their will by law enforcement?”
“Those people had become violent. They were a threat to the safety of the other patients and the staff of the hospital. It was necessary to move them for the safety of the rest of the patients as well as the staff. Now, this is an ongoing investigation, and things are still happening in the field that requires my attention. I’ll take a couple more questions from someone else, but then I have to go. Next question?” responded the Police Chief.
“But I still have other questions,” Miss. Hutton complained.
“I’m sure you do. I’m equally certain that that would probably be the case if we devoted the entire press conference to you exclusively, but that would hardly be fair to the rest of the reporters present,” the Police Chief responded. His comments drew support from many of the other reporters waiting to ask their questions.
Minutes later, the press conference ended. Herb learned nothing significant during the rest of that event. He was about to change the channel when one of the news anchors said, “And now for the footage Angela obtained during her investigation of the Decatur violence.”
Herb watched the footage that depicted several patients being loaded into waiting ambulances. Just as the photograph Angela produced at the press conference suggested, the patients were strapped to their gurneys, and they were loaded into the ambulances by what appeared to be SWAT team members.
The scene then shifted back to the male anchor, who said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just received some additional footage from one of our affiliates who was in position to record an incident that just happened. I must caution you that this is raw footage, and we haven’t had time to edit it for content. I warn you that this contains graphic violence and is disturbing. This video isn’t suitable for children, so if you have children in the room, you will need to remove them from the room immediately.”
