DEAD (Book 12): End Page 4

  That little ruckus was not enough for Gable to turn away from George, and Jody had to marvel at the man’s apparent composure. George said something that Jody could not hear and then charged the man. Gable danced nimbly aside and if Jody would have blinked, he might have missed the quick slash that the curly headed man made on his much larger opponent.

  When George skidded to a halt and spun, his protective vest simply fell away, there was even a dark stain where the knife had obviously cut the man down his right shoulder. George yanked the protective piece the rest of the way off and tossed it aside.

  “I’ll rip your neck off, and dance down your tonsils!” George snarled. This time Jody heard the man clearly.

  George charged again, and just as before, Gable side-stepped the lumbering behemoth and made another swipe with his knife hand. When George turned around this next time, Jody saw a bright red line across the man’s face.

  “You know, the last time I actually heard somebody say that,” Gable spoke casually as if he did not have a care in the world. “it was the American Dream, Dusty Rhodes. I think he was talkin’ to the Four Horsemen. You almost sounded as cool, but I think you gotta put a bit more oomph into it.”

  This time, George screamed and charged. Gable did not step aside from this one. He dropped to his knees at the last possible second and then rolled away, coming up to his feet. George was much slower turning around. When he did, there was a dark stain spreading across his belly.

  George looked down and then dropped to his knees. He stared straight ahead at Gable as his hands came away from the darkness just a few inches above his belt. Even from as far away as he was, Jody saw blood dripping from George’s hands.

  “Fuck you all,” the man spat, and then fell flat on his face with a meaty thud that sent a cloud of dust up around the now lifeless form.

  “Okay,” Gable called as he stood up, “you want to come out and give up, or do you want to stay hidden and be considered a threat that either I or the man with the crossbow will have to kill on sight?”

  “I’m giving up!” a voice called as a man stood up, hands in the air.

  Jody advanced, his eyes still sweeping the area. He was not fool enough to think that this was the sum total of the people involved or responsible. From the way that the kids in the RV had sounded, this was an organized force. Plus, knowing Bill Pitts like he had, he was one individual that would not have been taken down by a couple of thugs and their lackeys.

  “How many?” Jody finally called after he closed half the distance.

  The single visible member of George’s crew looked over at Jody, but his lips remained pressed tight. Without another word, Jody fired his crossbow. The bolt struck the man in the upper thigh and caused him to howl with pain.

  Jody closed the rest of the distance, his eyes no longer scanning for additional threats. Something in the back of his mind told him that Gable was likely more than capable. When he reached the man, he grabbed the end of the bolt and gave it a little wiggle. This caused the wounded individual to renew his screams.

  “I will only ask you one more time,” Jody hissed. “How many?”

  “N-nine!” the man wailed as Jody twisted violently on the shaft to emphasize his point.

  Doing the math, Jody realized that left four people unaccounted for…provided this person was telling the truth. The one thing that was really bothering him was that he had not recognized a single one of these people up to this point. That had to mean something. Most likely, there must be some sort of settlement nearby. That was the most obvious source of these individuals.

  “If you move so much as an inch from this spot, I will cripple you and leave you for zombie bait,” Jody said as he let go of the bolt and turned to Gable. “Did you see Jan?”

  “Nope, and I went all the way around the—” he was saying when there was a yelp and a sudden crash from the second floor. Just as suddenly, a body came smashing through the window above where Jody and Gable were standing.

  The two men dove out of the way, but unfortunately for the injured man on the ground, he was unable to react and ended up on the receiving end of most of the broken glass. He was fortunate in the fact that the falling body landed barely a foot away.

  “Who’s the new guy?” Jan called down.

  “Name’s Gable Matczak,” the man called back up before Jody could answer. “And we still have three unaccounted for, so maybe we could do this later.”

  “Umm…correct that number. We got one left,” Jan hollered back.

  “Okay!” Jody shouted. “We know you’re out there. If we have to look for you, there won’t be any mercy. We will see it as kill or be killed. If you surrender now, you have my word that you will be unharmed.”

  “Is that right?” a voice shouted back.

  Jody spun towards where the RVs were set up. Coming out from behind one was a woman and she had one of the girls that he recognized as having been tied up inside the RV he had entered in front of her as a shield. A large knife was to the young girl’s throat.

  “We heard all about you, Jody Rafe,” the woman called over the girl’s shoulder. “Military dictator who kicks people out if they don’t do things the way he likes. George told us all about y—” the woman’s voice ended with a sharp cry and a figure appeared where she had once stood.

  “She said dick tater,” Danny chuckled as he wiped off his blade and put it in the sheath at his side.

  “What the hell, Danny!” Jody barked once he was able to recover. “We might have been able to make a deal with her.”

  “Screw that bitch!” the young girl who had been the hostage a moment ago cried and then kicked the corpse for good measure.

  “She killed the other kids,” Danny said, allowing the distraught girl to fall into his chest and cry. “All of them.”

  “Jesus,” Jan sighed from above. “Hey, Jody, your daughter is here along with three other women. I’ll bring her down in a minute. Maybe you might want to clean things up a bit first.”

  Jody looked around at the carnage and the protest he was about to make against any delay in being reunited with his daughter faded. There were bodies everywhere, including Margarita’s headless corpse on the porch. His daughter had already seen enough gore and violence to last a lifetime; he gave Jan a nod.

  “I see you won them over with your usual diplomatic charm,” Danny said as he hobbled up looking less mobile than any zombie.

  “Where is Sasser?” Jody ignored the barb and went over to grab George’s lifeless corpse and drag it around to the side of the house.

  “He went to your place to keep an eye on things.”

  “I thought that is what I asked you to do.”

  “Yeah, I was never good at the whole following orders thing.”

  Once the area was at least clean of the dead bodies, although plenty of dark stains marred the area and were drawing flies, Jody returned to the man with the bolt in his leg.

  “Where?” Jody hissed as he knelt in close to the man’s face.

  Obviously, this guy saw something in the eyes of Jody Rafe that made it clear there would not be a second chance. He began talking right away, giving directions on how to reach his settlement. If this person was telling the truth, there were only around fifty people staying there.

  “Around fifty?” Jody asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Yeah, something like that,” the man said between clenched teeth.

  “Okay.” With that, Jody whipped out his military blade and slit the man’s throat.

  “Jesus, Rafe!” Danny yelped, trying to get clear of the blood spray that jetted from the cleanly sliced neck. “What the fuck, over?”

  “He was lying,” Jody said flatly as he rose.

  Without being asked, Gable moved in and gripped the body under the arms and dragged the still kicking but soon-to-be-dead body of the man to the side of the house with the others. Danny glared at Jody, a look of disbelief on his face. Sure, he had just killed that woman, but she had executed a b
unch of children. This man, as far as Danny had seen, had answered every question and shown no signs that he would be a problem.

  “Around fifty?” Jody said slowly.

  Danny waited for the man to continue, but it was obvious that he wasn’t going to so he pressed the issue. “What is wrong with fifty? Hell, I thought you might be glad it ain’t some fucking army.”

  “If we only had around fifty, not only would we know them each by name, but we would know exactly how many people we had in our compound,” Jody said.

  Danny stood there for a minute until what Jody was saying finally lined up and made sense. He nodded and then scowled. “See, that is why they named you sergeant. You always were the smart one.”

  ***

  The following is an excerpt of a diary found in an abandoned cabin on the banks of Spirit Lake near the base of Mount Saint Helens.

  Entry One—

  Evil comes in all shapes and sizes. I have learned never to judge a book by its cover; nor will I dismiss the potential for horrible acts of violence based on gender…or age. Maybe we just forgot about things like gangs after the zombies. Street gangs were a real problem in some of the bigger cites way back in the Old World.

  I guess that is why I was not surprised when I arrived at a small trading outpost as I made my way up into the lush forests that surround Mount Saint Helens. I made the decision to come here simply because I had never seen an active volcano before. This one has been blowing ash into the air for a few weeks and when I first saw it, I mistook the ash cloud for a nuclear warhead detonation.

  The cloud rose way up into the sky and had that mushroom shape that you would usually associate with a bomb. Of course I initially turned away and intended to put as much distance between me and the cloud as I could. After all, I didn’t want to turn into a human glow-stick.

  I came upon a small village and was corrected when the locals explained to me that it was “just the mountain blowing off some steam.” Once I heard that, I decided to go take a look for myself. It is not like I have anything else going on in my life.

  I had come close enough that I was able to experience a few ground tremors. That made for something else that I could check off my bucket list. Sure, they were nothing like those earthquakes from the many times California tried to break away from the continent, but it was still sort of a thrill for me since I had never actually experienced a real, honest-to-God earthquake up until that point.

  Later that day, I arrived at a small outpost beside a stunningly beautiful lake, and that is where I was greeted with a wake-up call. Call it fate, chance, or whatever you like, but it would figure that it had to be me arriving on the scene of a full-scale slaughter. There was one survivor, but he was so hacked up that I could only help him along to meet his maker.

  Before I ended the man’s suffering, he did relate to me how this had happened. It started when a boy no older than fourteen showed up. He said that he had escaped this terrible gang of bandits. The people of this outpost brought him in and cleaned him up, fed the boy, and even invited him to stay if he wanted. They offered him a job helping with the gardens. So basically, these people were some of the good ones; the few and far between types that believe that there is something worth saving when it comes to humanity. Anyway, apparently the boy got up in the middle of the night and opened the security gate after slitting the throat of the guard. (You do remember the part where I told you about the kid being maybe fourteen?)

  Anyways, this group of freaking KIDS stormed the place and hacked everybody up with axes and machetes and spiked clubs. Nice…huh.

  It took me the better part of three hours to gather the bodies into a central location, spike the heads of the few that started waking up (which told me two things that I consider important: one was that some of these people had been Immunes; and two, that this had happened very recently), and then build a pyre to dispose of the bodies.

  Yes, I could have simply gone on my way. After all, this didn’t have anything to do with me, right? And it wasn’t like I got hired to do a job and owed anybody. I guess that is why I felt the need to stop here and try to figure out who had done this if possible.

  I have done over a hundred hired jobs since I started offering my services. I am always paid handsomely. I think there was a part of me that started to feel guilty about how I made my living. After all, people hire me when something terrible has happened. They expect me to find the perpetrator or perpetrators and execute them. Sure, there are a lot of ways I could try to make that sound better…nicer. But why should I try to pretend? Haven’t we come to a point where that is no longer needed? I think we should all just be content with whom and what we are and not try to be something else. Certainly most of those I hunt have adopted that ideology.

  I went back to that little village that educated me about the cloud belonging to a mountain. When I related what I discovered, you could have heard a pin drop…if anybody would have had one handy.

  “The New Aryans,” one of the men finally said.

  Great. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are eliminated from the face of the earth, but racism manages to survive. If the reports I have are true, this group is made up mostly of late teens and early twenty-something kids. Apparently they have an older man as the leader, but nobody can actually tell me anything about him. He stays in the shadows, slips into communities and poaches some of the disgruntled youngsters. A little programming and viola, he has a shiny, brand new racist.

  Entry Two—

  This is not a hired gig. I repeat, this is NOT a hired gig. The good people of that village were very happy to hear that I was going after this Aryan gang, and they even offered to send a few of their people with me. If they thought that I didn’t catch the look of relief on their faces when I said no, then it is good that I did refuse, because they aren’t very perceptive.

  I was told that there is an old observatory where these punks supposedly call home. Seems like a pretty straight up deal. My only issue will come when I can get a real assessment of their numbers. Five or ten would be no problem. Humans are lazy and sloppy by nature. I would have half of them dead within the first few hours I found them. After that, it would be a matter of staying out of sight until they fell back into their old routine after the initial excitement wore off.

  Once you are talking about groups of twenty or more, the tactics change dramatically. Oh well, at least I will still get to check out this volcano up close. This observatory apparently faces the open crater of Saint Helens; basically looking right into the throat of the thing. I am just to the east and will be moving behind a long ridge until I reach what the people of the village assure me is an easy location with which to spot the set of buildings that sit up on the top of the ridge.

  That is where things will be a bit dicey. This compound is supposedly on top of a long narrow hill with a flat top. By all descriptions, the place is in a wide open clearing and is basically impossible to sneak up on. In my experience, that is never quite true. For one, it isn’t like they have spotlights scanning the area. The world is a much darker place without electricity.

  I should know. I have been down near what used to be Las Vegas where there is an actual community with honest-to-God hydro-electric power. Of course that place is the zombie apocalypse equivalent of North Korea. The region is ruled by a ruthless warlord and nobody gets in that area around the Hoover Dam without being allowed in, but that was a few years ago. I have no idea if it is still in existence, but I am daydreaming.

  I have at least a five day hike to reach the place where these New Aryan types live. One good thing about this region, I don’t have to worry about food or water. I don’t think people felt comfortable drinking directly from these rivers and streams back in the Old World, but these days it is not really a problem. That said, I won’t lack water for sure. In addition, there are plenty of edible plants and berries to be had, and then there is the fish. The salmon can be so plentiful at the right times of year when they are spawning that you can
actually reach in and scoop one out of the water by hand.

  I think they used to have a name for this…what I am doing. I think it was once called a working vacation.

  Entry Three—

  I almost forgot why I was out here; at least until this afternoon. I was moving along at a fairly leisurely pace, staying parallel to the trade route. The scenery can really become so amazing that you forget everything. I am considering the possibility of making this area my choice for retirement.

  I was perched on a boulder that looked out over a large open meadow. There were three deer grazing. Hmm…is it deer or deers? Okay, so there I was, just watching out over the meadow and nibbling a handful of berries, communing with nature and all that crap.

  It happened so fast that I think I actually popped another berry into my mouth like I was watching a movie or something. Two of the deer dropped, each had a few arrows jutting from them that made the location in which they fell an easy thing to spot with the shafts poking just above the grass. That other deer hauled ass, bounding away gracefully. A moment later, these two figures emerged from the trees almost directly across from where I am sitting and watching.

  They flipped back their hoods and I could see one was a boy, the other a girl. They were pretty young; perhaps early teens. I am not a believer in coincidence.

  Pulling my tomahawk from my shoulder, I dropped down and circled the pair. They went on like they didn’t have a care in the world. I made up my mind what my course of action would be before I’d even swallowed that mouthful of berries, so I didn’t really feel anything when I popped up just a few steps away from them just as they had finished field stripping that first deer. (In other words, I crept forward very slowly.)