by Cedric Nye
“What's your name?” Grandpa Don asked softly. “I just want to know the name of the man who saved our…our Melanie. I have to know.”
Jango looked at the girl, and thought that Melanie was a name that suited her well. He looked at all the faces that were turned toward him and said, “My name is Jango, and it's very nice to meet you all.”
He felt genuinely touched by the reverence with which the older man had asked his name, and Jango felt compelled to ask the man's name as well. “And what's your name, sir?” Jango asked him.
My name is Don Terwilliger, and this is my wife Deanne.” Then he hurriedly added, “But she likes to be called Dee.”
“I am really glad to meet you all, but I need for you to be in the big house right now.” Jango said as he remembered that there was bound to be a horde of living dead on its way there. “I have work to do, and I can’t be wasting my time standing around shooting the breeze like we’re living in Mayberry or something.”
Without another word, he led the way back along the winding footpath to the huge fortress like house at the front of the sprawling property. He still held the Ruger 10-22 rifle. He carried it in his left hand with the barrel pointed behind him, and the butt stock pointed forward. He swiftly led his group of refugees around the large home to the vault like entrance that was the front door.
When they reached the front door, Jango pulled the remote device from his pocket, and quickly explained how the two buttons worked to Don. Don nodded his understanding, so Jango hit the gray button, and then handed the remote device to the older man.
Jango pushed the front door open and immediately felt his hackles rise. He slammed the front door inward and snapped the rifle up into a two-handed grip at chin level, just as he would've held his Ironwood stick.
His hyper vigilant senses served him well as the large bowling ball of a man known as The Killer, his clothing and flesh hanging in tatters from the violent catharsis the girls had taken from his body, charged him with an earsplitting howl. “RheeeeeAAAAAA-eeeeeeeeeeeee!”
When Jango brought the rifle up, the butt stock faced to his right, and the barrel was to his left. He held the rifle by the fore stock in his left hand, while his right hand gripped the rifle just behind the trigger. He swiftly snapped out a stick punch with his right hand as the enormous, tattered zombie bore down upon him and his charges. The barrel struck the monster’s temple unerringly, and Jango immediately followed the strike with a left-handed stick punch that sent the heavy wooden butt stock blurring forward to connect with the wailing creatures left temple. The butt stock hit with a loud, wet "crack" and The Killer died for the second time that night.
The creature dropped as if it had been pole-axed, and then collapsed into a limp unmoving pile. Jango slammed the butt stock against the unmoving creature's skull one more time for good measure, and then handed the rifle to Don. He quickly dragged the enormous body out the front door and onto the paved driveway. Hustling back through the front door, he grabbed the body of the dead Mr. Banks. He dragged him one-handed out the door, and tossed him beside the fleshy body of the now dead again rapist.
Once he was done, he rushed inside, closed the door behind him, and told Don to lock it. When he heard that the lock had engaged, he ushered Don ahead of him to the bookcase that led to the basement of the home. Jango pulled on the same purple book that the girl had, and told Don, “Here, click that gray button. It unlocks this door too.”
When the lock had disengaged, Jango dragged the door open and raced down the stairs. Once he reached the basement, he went straight to the shelving that was loaded with 12-gauge ammunition. He swiftly grabbed an entire case of double ought buckshot, and then looked around to see if he could find any 9mm ammunition.
It only took him a few moments to find the 9mm ammunition, and he grabbed an entire case of it. “Don, I need you to grab me eight of those double-barreled shotguns and bring them out to my car, rikki-tik.” Without waiting to see if Don would follow his orders, he rushed back up the stairs with the two cases of ammunition.
Don wasn't far behind. He made his way up the stairs as he juggled the heavy shotguns.
At the top of the stairs, Jango readjusted the boxes he was carrying so that they were side-by-side, and then he pressed them together with the heavy muscles of his forearms. “Don, just stack those scatter-guns on here, and open that front door!”
Don quickly did as he was told. He seemed to sense Jango's urgency, and when the lock disengaged, he opened the door for him.
Jango hurried out to his car and set his load on the hood of the tan, four-door sedan. He fished the keys out of his pocket, and unlocked the driver’s side door. Reaching around, he unlocked the back door and pulled out his Remington 870. After that, he transferred the pump shotgun to the passenger’s seat and then opened the small boxes of cartridges that were inside the larger box. As he broke open the small five-round boxes, he dumped them into the larger cardboard box so that they were loose. When he had opened about a third of the of the shotgun shells, he set the large cardboard box on the passenger seat.
Quickly, he checked to make sure that all eight of shotguns Don had given him had both barrels loaded. Seeing that everything was as it should be, he turned to Don and said, “I won't be back. I guess this house is yours now. The old owner isn't going to argue with you about it.” Jango smiled.
“What are you going to do?” Don asked him for the second time.
When Jango turned his face toward Don, he saw the strange, feral light that burned within the eyes of the Zombie Fighter. He drew back in fear as he watched the younger man’s aspect change from its normal, soft lines, to the hard planes and angles of the truth that Jango's life had become. Don watched as the man before him seemed to swell, and almost become a different person. Instinctively, he knew that the man who stood before him had to be the very same one that people along the 89 had spoken of. This was indeed the Zombie Fighter. “Zombie Fighter Jango,” Don whispered out loud.
When he spoke the words, “Zombie Fighter Jango,” Jango smiled.
“Zombie Fighter Jango, yeah, I like it,” he said as his face twisted into a madman's parody of a smile.
The lunatic grin that he wore was terrifying to behold, and it made Don’s bladder feel full to bursting as an almost atavistic fear threaded its icy fingers through his mind.
Jango stacked all the double-barreled shotguns barrel-down, and leaned up against the passenger side seat so that they would be easy to grab, and easy to deploy when it was time to use them. Then, gently, almost lovingly, he reached down into the backseat and retrieved his stick. Of its own volition, his hand found its place on the haft of the heavy ironwood stick, and he once again felt like all was right in the world.
Jango's death-rictus smile softened slightly as the positive influence of the familiar stick calmed and soothed him. He stood still for a moment as he felt himself come back into focus.
While he had been getting ready for whatever it was that he had planned, the dogs had finished eating, and made their way up to the big house.
To call the dogs to him, Jango made clucking noises. The dogs went to him, albeit tentatively, and they even allowed Jango to pet them. He mumbled to the dogs as he petted them. “What good dogs, what good dogs, good dogs, good dogs.”
Jango straightened up, and turned to face Don and his wife. “I need you to care for these dogs too. They've had a rough time, just as bad as these girls did. So I need you to promise to take care of them.” His voice was soft as he spoke. “There is no love truer than the love of a dog, and if you take care of them, if you give them love and treat them right, then your life will be the richer for the love of these dogs.” He gently patted the enormous wolfhound mix on the back of its thickly muscled neck as he spoke.
Don smiled a large, genuine smile as he said, “That's an easy promise to keep, Jango, because we love dogs!” Don's wife, Dee, and even the girls all murmured their agreement.
Jango had to shake hims
elf out of the gentle feelings that were trying to worm their way through the tangled briar patch of his mangled mind. Gentle thoughts would get him killed.
“All right then,” Jango said. “You guys have yourself a good home here, double check what kind of battery that little clicker remote takes okay? You guys don't want to end up with a dead battery when you're stuck outside. When you can, look around in there. Maybe there are more of those remotes, or extra batteries. Oh, and if you get a chance, get your asses over to G&J guns on Montezuma Street. Hunt around in the pantry in the employee break room. There is enough food there to last a long time. I remember seeing a bunch of seeds, too. You can start growing your vegetables. Look, you guys have a great set up here. That house is a fortress. And, if you play your cards right, you can loot G&J for all the weapons you could ever need. They have ammunition, food, water containers, and every other kind of survival gear.” Jango knew that time was short, but he needed to finish. “Look, you need to be smart. You have to harden up to survive this. You can't trust anybody. Mrs. Watson… That was her name, right?” The girls nodded. “Yeah, your Mrs. Watson, she opened the door for this Mr. Banks and look what happened. So you don't do that here.” He looked Don in the eye and said, “If someone knocks on your door here,” he paused to point at a second-story window before saying, “You pour boiling water on their fucking head, shoot them twice, and then come out to see what they want.”
When Jango saw that he had made his point, he double checked his array of weapons and ammunition on the passenger side of the car. When he was through checking his artillery, he walked over to the body of Mr. Banks, carefully hoisted him up by his crotch and the front of his shirt, and then carried him over to the car. Jango placed the lifeless body face-up on the hood of his car, and pulled the spine cutter from its sheath on his belt. Jango quickly and efficiently went to work. He split Bernard open from his sternum to his naval with the sharp knife with one, smooth stroke. After cleaning and sheathing the knife, he quickly flipped the body onto its stomach, grabbed it by one ankle, and dragged the body over the windshield, across the roof, and onto the trunk of the car. His actions left a huge smear of blood and other bodily fluids that ran the entire length of the automobile.
Once he had the body on the trunk, Jango reached into the car, inserted the key in the ignition, and started the vehicle. He then pressed the two buttons that rolled down the two back windows. He rolled the windows down a few inches, and then reached in through the front seat and grabbed the duct tape from his duffel bag. Moving more quickly now, he made several wraps of the duct tape around the corpses left wrist and then passed the roll of tape through the window, unspooling it as he went along the inside of the car and then nudged it out the back window on the passenger’s side of the car. Then, he went around the car, grabbed the roll of duct tape from where it hung, and made several turns around the corpse’s right wrist. Jango repeated the action looping over, around, and under until he'd used half the roll of duct tape to secure Bernard on his perch.
When he was done, he positioned the corpse’s fingers just to the inside of each of the automatic windows. Jango went back to the driver-side door and pressed the buttons in the opposite direction so that they rolled up and crushed the body's fingers and effectively held it in place. Then, he hurried back around to the rear of the vehicle, pulled the spine cutter from its sheath again, and made several slashes to the back, buttocks, and legs of the body he had secured there.
He turned to say goodbye to the group of people gathered near the grisly project, only to see that their faces were etched with looks of horror at what they had just witnessed. “What, mother-fuckers? What?” Jango asked. “You think those goobers are just gonna lead themselves away from you? You think your safety doesn’t cost anything?”
Jango looked them all in the eye before saying, “Sometimes you have to do something ugly so that something beautiful can have a chance to grow.” Sadness was etched on his face as he spoke.
Shaking himself out of his melancholy thoughts, Jango realized that he was thirsty and hungry. He reached over the seat, and pulled out a bag of beef jerky and a plastic water-bottle from his backpack. He spent several minutes alternating between chewing strips of beef jerky, and taking sips of water. When his hunger was satisfied, he closed up the bag of beef jerky, replaced it in the backpack, and then drained the container of water in one, long gulp. A sudden thought made him reach into his backpack and withdraw a one gallon container of water. He refilled the one quart container that he had just drained, and then splashed some water from the smaller bottle into the wounds on the body affixed to his car. He figured that the blood-scent would be stronger if the wounds were kept moist.
He went ahead and turned toward the silent group of people, and said, “Well, this is it. I’m all done here. I wish you all the best. Stay sharp, keep your heads up, and don't take any shit off anyone. Do right, and be right. Oh, and be good to each other.” Jango climbed into the front seat of his idling car, and closed the door. He buzzed his window down and rested his elbow on the doorframe. “It's time to chum the waters. The zombies are a bunch of straight line mother-fuckers, and they just go wherever they're going in a straight line, except when there is a road that runs in the general direction they want to go. And I think I've been noticing, I mean, I am sure, that these goobers are starting to act differently.”
Jango thought of the giant zombie near the lake that had been coordinated enough to grab at him. That was definitely something new, and also something to think about. But he could think later.
“So, you all watch your backs, and, oh, hey, don't forget to get yourselves bunkered in tight for a little while. Give it a few hours, then you can go loot and pillage as much as you want!” With those last words, Jango laughed maniacally, put the vehicle into gear, and motored off down the driveway.
The twenty-three girls and their new guardians stared down the driveway long after Jango was out of sight. Each of them were thinking their own thoughts about the man who had so drastically changed all of their lives in such a short amount of time. They all knew that they would never forget the man who they had come to know as Zombie Fighter Jango.
Chapter 6:
Farewell, Sweet Zombies
Jango drove his vehicle down the long and winding driveway at a breakneck pace. He wanted to put plenty of distance between himself and the people in that house. He knew that the sounds of gunfire would have attracted the attention of any zombies in the area, and he also knew that the zombies would take the easiest path toward their goal. He knew that the road was the path the zombies would take. These zombies, these creatures, weren’t really that different from the human zombies in that respect. The human zombies, the ones that the news liked to call sociopaths, and any other person who had that insatiable appetite, that black hole in their spirit that they could never fill; they were what Jango used to call zombies. They always took the easiest path as well. Human zombies, undead zombies, it didn’t matter; they would always take the easiest path toward their fix as they searched for temporary satiation of their ever-growing and all-consuming appetites.
Lost in his reverie, he slalomed around the turns on the dirt road on auto-pilot until he came to the place where gravel segued to pavement, and then he pressed the accelerator down to the floor. The big car surged forward with Jango calm and relaxed behind the wheel.
He had made it almost all the way down the mountain before he saw the fast-approaching horde of the living dead that had been drawn by the sounds of battle on the mountain above. Jango eased off of the accelerator, and backed his speed down to about fifteen miles an hour.
As Jango and the fast-moving horde of living dead approached each other on the narrow two-lane road, he found himself laughing as he imagined that he was engaged in a game of chicken between himself, and the fearless horde of zombies.
The heavy, reinforced push-bar on the front of his car made contact with the front ranks of the undead army, and the car lurched
with the impact. Jango made sure he kept the speed steady enough to keep the vehicle moving, but not so fast that he would lose control as the tires became coated with gore from the wailing creatures that fell beneath his wheels. He made sure that his window was all the way up, as he forced his way through the loose ranks of the living dead. The sheer number of zombies was so great that it took him several minutes to break through the mass of hungry creatures.
Jango looked in his side view mirror and saw that the entire horde had turned around, and were now following him. He kept his speed at around fifteen miles an hour so that the zombies would be able to keep up. Once he was sure he was through the army of zombies, he put his window back down. Continuing down to the end of the Governor’s Highway, he made a right-hand turn that would take him out to the 69A, a highway that led to a lot of empty desert. The highway also led to several gas stations along the way. Jango had a madman's affinity for fire, and firmly believed in its use as a reasonable solution for almost any problem.
He looked in his side view mirror again, and noticed that about six or seven of the screeching undead had gotten more than thirty feet ahead of the rest of them. The zombies out in front gave him an idea, and he slowed down just a little bit.
Jango reached over with his right hand and grabbed three of the double-barreled shotguns by their barrels, and stacked them on his lap with the barrels pointing toward the car door. Then he carefully cocked the hammers on all three shotguns, and watched the side view mirror as the zombies slowly drew closer to him. Letting his car coast to the furthest right extreme of the road, he grabbed one of the shotguns, and rested the fore stock on the frame of the car door. The zombies, seeing his movement veered toward the driver’s side window.