ZOMBIES: Chronicles of the Dead : A Zombie Novel Page 16

  "This is Mike and Sondra, they were janitors working over night here when this whole end of the world thing came about," Frank explained.

  Mike was still wearing his janitorial uniform, but Sondra was far too well dressed to be on the job as a custodian, so I figured she had appropriated her wardrobe from the sales floor. I can't blame her for that, everybody else is taking whatever they want, including us. The old rules don't apply in this new paradigm.

  "Hi, I'm Jack, and this is my wife Gin, and these two are Billy and Jacob, they are my sons," I said with a smile, introducing my family to Mike and Sondra.

  The two were civil with their greetings, but quickly turned away from us, engaging each other in conversation, and making it clear to all that they had no interest in becoming friends with us anytime soon.

  Frank introduced us to every person that was holed up in that building that night. Some seemed happy to meet us, others, not so much.

  Some were concerned that we might be thinking of staying, and others concern that we might be thinking of leaving. Frank had already made it clear to us that we would be leaving, however I saw no reason to mention that to any of his people.

  The leader of the so-called assassins guided us over to a display of camping equipment that had been set up in the middle of the store prior to the apocalypse.

  "You and your family can sleep here tonight. Get settled in and I'll be back later, and then we can talk," Frank stated as he walked away.

  Gin looked around, wondering if any of the assassins were watching us.

  "What are we going to honey?" She asked.

  "Yeah dad, what are we going to do?" Jacob added, as he sat down on one of the cots.

  "We better do what we've been doing, namely, keep a lookout tonight, take the same shifts as usual, and try not to look too obvious, we don't know these people and some of them weren't too friendly when we were introduced. If we're not careful, we could wake up dead," I asserted. "So for now, keep your weapons close to you at all times, just like we've been doing. Except for killing them, we need to treat them as if they're eaters, keep your guard up at all times. Don't think for a moment that it was a coincidence that Frank put us out here in the middle of the store. This camping equipment isn't the only thing on display."

  We each picked out the spot that we would be spending the night, and it wasn't long before Frank, came back, and he had brought Mike and Sondra with him.

  "You've meant Mike and Sondra, they're second in command around here. We brought you people some good food to eat, I figured you people most likely haven't had a real cooked meal for quite some time," Frank said, as he and the janitorial crew handed out plates heaping with steaming meat and vegetables.

  "There's no shortage of barbequed meat around here, we've got plenty of propane tanks and brand new grills, eat up," Frank urged.

  We looked around at each other, everyone silently asking the same question. Is the food poison, or drugged?

  Frank shook his head and stabbed a fork into my steak.

  "If we wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead," he said, just before taking a big bite of the meat he had pulled from my plate.

  "It's good that you're cautious though," he added. "We could use a little more of that around here sometimes.

  I thought that remark was rather strange, coming from a man that had let a group of armed strangers into his stronghold.

  "We didn't get this far from home by being careless," I stressed, not willing to mention some of the careless and thoughtless mistakes we had made along the way.

  Frank plopped my steak back down onto my plate, his fork now standing erect in the middle of the meat, and with a loud gulp, he swallowed.

  "You said your people are assassins, and you go out on search and destroy missions. What exactly does that mean?" I asked, handing Franks fork back to him.

  "Like I told you before, we don't kill humans unless they attack us first; we try to help them if we can, just like we're helping you now," Frank insisted.

  "The out-breakers, now that's a different story, we try to eliminate as many of them as we can.

  Our reasoning is this; there hasn't been a lot of people traveling through this city like you and your family are. That makes the population a finite number for the most part, living or dead.

  It's true if you get infected, or just plain die, you turn into one of those things. But we think we can control that to a certain extent by being vigil and aggressive when the need arises. We go on search and destroy missions, and put down as many of the diseased ones as we can find, acting on the theory that once we get rid of all of them, we will be able to manage with relative ease any strays that happen to wander into town. And if we deal with the people that die of natural causes or accidental death immediately, we will be able to sustain some semblance of a normal life. At least that's the theory," Frank explained.

  "Why call yourselves assassins, why not exterminators, or eradicators, or maybe eliminators?" I inquired, as my curiosity was getting the best of me.

  "When we first started the process, the three of us decided that it would be better to first give ourselves a name. That way we would bond every member to part of a team, which would help maintain a sense of esprit de corps within the group. We didn't want some warm and fuzzy name like the cupcake brigade, we felt that a name like assassins was more suited to the grisly tasks that had to be preformed, and there would be no second guessing about what the assassins were all about, thus mentally helping us deal with the psychological trauma involved," Frank elucidated.

  "That's pretty cerebral coming from a couple of janitors," I quipped with a smile.

  Mike and Sondra had remained quiet up to this point, and then Mike leaned over and put his face within twelve inches of mine, stared at me with a cold glare that would freeze molten rock, while saying snidely.

  "You people seen much combat?"

  His threatening demeanor brought out the ex-marine in me and I immediately responded by saying.

  "If by combat, you mean having your dead neighbors break through your back door and try to eat you alive, while getting the pleasure of letting your two young sons watch as you splatter chunks of their brains all over your wife's kitchen? Or having to shoot your way out of your own home, as half of the people that were once your friendly neighbors, try to kill and eat you as well.

  Or are you referring to having to hack your way through ten or fifteen eaters with these sickles, hewing off heads and limbs as you go, while trying to escape from a stranger's barn," I replied sarcastically (it's one of my many gifts you know), describing a few of the horrible circumstances we had encountered along the way.

  This was the first time that we'd seen Mike actually smile.

  "I think I like you," he chuckled, backing away from me.

  "Don't be too hasty," I joked. "I haven't even mentioned the river pirates, or the speedboat eaters, or the stench of the river that was enough to puke a maggot off a gut wagon," I said, again proudly employing the same gift as before.

  Now both Mike and Sondra laughed.

  "I like you too," Sondra agreed.

  "It's too bad we can't let you stay here," she claimed.

  "It's okay, Frank already told us we can't stay, and we're fine with it, we've got places to go, and people too see," I said, sticking to my earlier lie.

  "Tell us about the humans, earlier you mentioned other living people," I asked, subtly trying to collect some intelligence about the other groups that occupied part of the town.

  Mike and Sondra stopped smiling as Frank replied.

  "Remember back at the house, I told you that if you killed me, you wouldn't make it out of town alive."

  "I remember that," Billy spoke up.

  "We all remember that," Gin replied, adding her own brand of sarcasm. "That was right neighborly of you."

  Raising an eyebrow and glancing at Gin, a slight smile cracked the straight line of Frank's lips as he explained further.

  "Well it wasn't just
because I had people watching you through the crosshairs of their sniper rifles. Sure, they would have killed you, without a doubt. But even if they hadn't, the odds are you would have either been killed or captured by one of the marauding bands that hold certain parts of the city. If you don't take a specific route back to the highway, you end up traveling through their turf, and I'm confident that they would put an end to you one way or another. You're lucky you ran into us first."

  "So what's your theory on them, I mean after you clear the town of eaters?" I asked.

  "At some point we'll have to deal with them totally. We run across them from time to time, but so far our numbers have been equal too, or greater than theirs have been, so they usually leave us alone," Frank explained.

  "Usually? Say usually a couple of more times, and there won't be any of your people left," I thought to myself, thinking of the twelve dead members of the assassins that had been killed by maunders.

  "What about your sniper's, do they stay out all night?" I asked, thinking that's a job I certainly didn't want.

  "No, they follow us in after ever mission, as a matter of fact, they got back while we were cooking your food," Frank confirmed.

  "By the way Mike, you know those lights we've been seeing at night?" Frank asked.

  Mike nodded.

  "Well, Jim saw one tonight, and Rick's team reported seeing the weird shadows yesterday." Frank told him.

  "Weird shadows?" Jacob asked.

  "What do you mean weird shadows?" Gin broke in. "That sounds creepy to me."

  "Creepier than a zombie apocalypse mom, really?" Billy challenged, tilting his head down, raising his eyebrows, and staring at her.

  Frank then interjected.

  "Since this thing started, some of us have been seeing these strange lights at night and shadows during the day. I've seen them myself, well kind of, you never really see them. You'll see a light or a shadow out of the corner of your eye, and when you turn your head to look at it, it'll be gone. Or if you're outside sleeping, or about to go to sleep, the light seems even brighter, and when you open your eyes to see what it is, it's gone. They're never inside, at least not yet; they're always outside, so far anyway."

  "I've seen them, the first time was within minutes of the start of this catastrophe, I thought it was a news helicopter, but thinking back there wasn't any noise and the gaps in the tree tops couldn't have totally blocked my view.

  Then again on the river, I almost fell asleep on my watch and was awakened by a bright light that was gone when I opened my eyes," I recalled.

  "You almost fell asleep on your watch?" Jacob prompted.

  "Yes once, and only once, and almost is the key word here," I answered, defending my indefensible position.

  Frank quickly interposed. "It's getting late, get some sleep now, and we'll talk some more in the morning."

  The three leaders of the assassins stood up and walked away, Frank stopped momentarily, turned to me, and with a big grin on his face, he said. "Cerebral? Before this zombie war, I was a psychologist."

  Turning away once more, he briskly walked away.

  "That was interesting," Gin said, pulling her blanket over her shoulders.

  "Yes, informative too, I'll take the first watch as usual," I replied, as I lying on my back with my eyes wide open.

  Billy was on watch when he woke us up in the early hours of the morning.

  "Get up, something's going on, everyone's freaking out," he said, sounding the alarm.

  The sounds of a seemingly controlled panic echoed through the cavernous building, as the assassins were running in all directions.

  Amidst the confusion, Mike ran by shouting.

  "Grab your guns and come with me," he ordered, not bothering to look our way.

  We quickly armed ourselves and ran to catch up to Mike.

  We moved to the front of the store where two large boarded up and blocked doors were located.

  "Our guys on the roof say there's a huge gathering of out-breakers outside, most are here in the front of the building," Mike explained calmly. "We're going to take this door as our battle station; you people have a problem with that?"

  Before any of us could answer Mike's question, the familiar sound of Jacob's 9mm carbine pierced our eardrums.

  While the rest of us were busy listening to Mike queried us about our willingness to fight alongside the assassins. Jacob had seen a zombie pushing through the door blockade and exposing its arm and allowing several of the all too prevalent houseflies into the building.

  Jacob's full metal jacketed lead projectile slammed into the humerus bone of the dead assaulters right arm and chipped off a large portion of the epicondyle, rendering the arm useless, but not deterring the zombie from clawing and shoving at the barricade with its left hand, allowing even more of the common pests to intrude into our sanctuary.

  "Does that answer your question, Mike?" I asked, again using my best sarcastic tone.

  Mike didn't answer, instead he lunged toward the open portion of the barricade, stuck the barrel of his SKS through the opening provided by the zombie and pulled the trigger, effectively blowing off the top of the eaters head and splattering its cranium juices into the faces of the surrounding undead.

  As soon as that attacker fell, another one took its place at the opening and was eliminated in turn the same way. Then another took its place, each one more grotesque than the previous, having been soaked and pummeled with its predecessor's bodily fluids and the remains of their formally intact body parts.

  Rushing to the barricaded door, we each found a port that allowed us to attempt to fend off the army of the undead that had congregated on the other side of the wall.

  "There must be a hundred of them," Mike yelled as he fired through different gaps in the protective cover.

  "At least a hundred, looks like you assassins have your work cut out for you if you're planning to rid this town of all of these eaters," I insisted, while using my sickle to cleave off the intrusive fingers of an overly aggressive zombie that had managed to stick his hand through a narrow crack.

  Sondra had taken her place by the other door, joined by four other female assassins. They were struggling just as much as we were to repulse the onslaught of flesh eating brutes whose numbers were starting to influence the structural integrity of the once solid fortification.

  "There's too many of them," Sondra screamed. "Our door is starting to give way."

  "Ours isn't doing much better," Gin screamed back as she fired her pistol point blank into the face of a pre-teen zombie.

  Little by little, the surge from the mass of post humanity inched our barricade inward. Most of the assassin's group had gone to the roof by now, and was firing down into the mob from there, leaving our small troop to defend from inside.

  The surrounding walls muffled our shots that originated from the inside; however, the shots fired from the rooftop, although very effective in thinning the herd, the noise of the gunfire served to invite even more of the hungry fiends to our location.

  "If they break through these doors we're through," Mike announced loudly.

  "I've got an idea," I said. "I'll need a couple of your people to come with me."

  "Sondra," Mike yelled. "Take Megan and go with Jack."

  "Billy, you come with us. Honey, we'll be right back," I assured Gin, as if anyone could give reasonable assurance of anything.

  With my new backup crew in tow, we ran to the back of the building where our Hummer was parked.

  "Billy jump in the turret and warm up the mini-gun, we're going outside," I said. "Sondra, you and your friend, what's her name, open the door and shoot any of them that try to get in."

  Megan, a short brown haired girl dressed in what looked like store bought urban camouflage sneered at me, and said. "It's Megan, not what's her name."

  "Whatever, just shoot anything that's not human, we don't have much time," I shouted angrily, not being in the frame of mind to want to deal with some moody little bitch tha
t seemed more intent on hearing her name pronounced correctly than doing her job.

  Sondra pushed the green button that activated the electric door, and as the gap in the entrance grew, I blurted out to Billy.

  "Ready Billy?"

  Billy responded with a resounding.

  "Ready!"

  Sondra and what's her name began shooting at the few zombies that now were walking toward the doorway, and when the door was raised high enough, I floored the Hummer and out the door we went.

  Retracing the route we had taken on the way in, we quickly found ourselves at the front of the building facing a considerable amount of zombies.

  Acting without an order to shoot, Billy released the fury of the mini-gun on the crowd of undead citizens that were trying to force their way into the assassin's fortification.

  We eased forward along the front of the building, close enough to crush some of the bodies of the zombies that we had killed or wounded earlier from inside the store.

  As we inched forward, I hoped that Mike and the other assassins still inside, would hear the buzzing of our mini-gun, and would hold their fire as we passed.

  We cleared a wide swath moving slowly forward, painting the front of the building red with the spattering of blood, and adding texture to the mix with pieces of brains, chips of bone, and strands of intestines and hair.

  It was the usual blood and guts scenario we were growing accustom to seeing exiting from the mutilated zombie hordes as we slaughtered countless numbers of them.

  Once we had made the first pass by the front of the building, killing zombies and enduring the usual putrid stench and swarming flies (yes, even at night) that seemed to always accompany the undead, I threw the Hummer into reverse. Using the path that we had just created, we backed over many of the zombies we had just put down, breaking most of their bones that had remained intact, rendering immobile those that were only wounded, as Billy laid waste to the monsters on the outlying area of the parking lot with the mini-gun.

  "There's not much ammo left dad," Billy yelled.

  "There's not many of them left either," I yelled back. "Hold your fire for a minute."

  I turned the vehicle toward the parking lot exit, and we drove into the street. We could hear the mop up effort of the assassins on the rooftop as they picked off the remaining bands of zombies that were scattered throughout the parking lot.