by Edward Teach
The survivors asked of Jesus, "Tell us messiah, how will our end come?"
Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is. Dead that walk as if Alive and Living that are all but Dead.
Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death or be of the walking dead."
THE HORSEMAN OF CONQUEST
For this reason I say, if the owners of a house know that a thief is coming, they will be on guard before the thief arrives and will not let the thief break into their house, their domain, and steal their possessions. For what is the most precious possession but one’s life and one’s soul?
As for you, then, be on guard against the world. Prepare yourselves with great strength, so the walking dead and the madmen can't find a way to get to you, for the trouble you expect will come, and when it does it shall be like unto a storm.
Let there be among you a person who understands, and let them stand to meet the storm.
Romeo was walking, his feet were cracked and blistered, and a hot wind blew the hair from his face. He stopped, pausing to look behind him, his rheumy eyes settling upon the horde of zombies that trailed behind him, lurching in their hundreds, perhaps thousands now. The sound of thunder pealed through his awareness, and he looked skyward. The air above teemed with hosts of angels locked in mortal combat, and their blood fell like rain upon the parched earth below. The gaze of the walkers behind him followed his own upwards, and as he opened his mouth in a wild scream the voices of the shambling horde joined his own.
The young biker jerked awake in his seat, breathing heavily and clutching his aching head. Cisco seemed to know better than to speak to him in moments like this, and for that Romeo was thankful. The rain fell in sheets across the car, most of the water running off the angled grating, though enough leaked through to create a general dampness in the car. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Romeo began rubbing his aching temples.
They had been driving for nearly half the day, their progress often slowed by the necessity of taking alternate routes to avoid blocked roadways, and as night fell the storm had come. They were careful to avoid larger cities like Austin and Waco, though as they had attempted to skirt the Dallas metro area nearly all the roads were blocked by more than dead traffic. As they looked at the barriers they could see that psychopaths had erected makeshift barricades using dead automobiles and crudely welded corrugated metal. After several attempts to take county roads and service streets it became clear that the psychopaths had overtaken the entire western passage. The men had managed to avoid detection by the guards on the barricades, as they’d taken care to hide the vehicle and use their field glasses.
What they saw had sent them rushing back the way they’d come, towards San Antonio, to warn the others. A large force of psychopaths had begun to amass near the outskirts of the barricaded perimeter. Nearly thirty vehicles had mustered, ranging from cars, to trucks, to nearly a dozen motorcycles. At their center was a convertible muscle car that had been modified to hold a throne, mounted in the middle of the car so that a driver and a gunner could operate in the vehicle. Upon the throne sat the largest man either Romeo or Cisco had ever seen. He had to be nearly seven feet tall, his rippling muscles only barely covered by a patchwork costume of biker leathers and human bones, his broad face covered in swirling tattoos.
Romeo’s knees had buckled, and Cisco had to help him back to the car. Romeo told the older biker that the huge man upon the throne was one of the Riders that he’d seen through the eyes of Zombie Jesus. The men had leapt into their car and floored it in the direction of home. The men had been driving into the night, and the storm had swept in behind them, as if punishing the land as a precursor to the motorized gang that was beginning to make its way forward.
Romeo clenched and unclenched his fists, and told Cisco of his vision. He felt overwhelmed at how enraged Zombie Jesus had seemed with the angels, and the scream had felt like one of defiance. The number of walkers that followed the zombie messiah had increased, many of them bearing the wounds of the messiah’s own savagery, though just as many having wandered into the expanding pack seemingly of their own accord. Romeo hated that they were heading back to the compound, somehow it felt wrong, like they were going in the wrong direction. Cisco admitted that he felt the same, but they had a duty to the Calaveras to warn them that the psychopath horde was rolling.
By the time the two men arrived at the compound the storm had abated. They honked the horn during their approach and slammed into the wall of bodies that surrounded the fortress. The crane took longer to reach them than anticipated, and by the time it lifted them from the street there were several zombies who had crawled on top of the car. When it was set down in the compound the guards had gathered with melee weapons and dispatched the zombies in a flurry of blows.
An inner circle meeting was called immediately, and Cisco presented their findings while Romeo helped the men clean up the mess that had been made of the four zombies. The young biker had fought so hard to become a member of the Calaveras, and found himself thinking back to those days. He had worked hard as a pledge, and had earned his patch with pride and distinction. He felt a connection to this place, and these people, and the patch, yet all of it paled to the growing need to seek his destiny elsewhere. He had been content to be a survivor, counting his blessings not to be one of the walking dead, though now it seemed empty. Simply surviving would not satisfy him any longer, and he was sure that Cisco felt the same.
Cisco and the rest of the inner circle emerged from the building and called everyone together as a club. Cisco recounted their tale to the entire group, his words carrying out across the compound as he shouted to be heard over the din of the zombies moaning outside the walls. The club had already survived one psychopath attack that had nearly torn the compound apart, and that was only four vehicles and perhaps a dozen enemies. This was a motorized gang of what had to be sixty or more psychopaths with minds for murder. It was agreed that even if the psychopaths were defeated that the gate would surely be torn down in the process, and there would not be enough survivors to hold the breach against the teeming mass of walkers.
They had endured this siege long enough, and it was decided that the Calaveras would relocate. It was not agreed where exactly they would go, though generally all agreed that south towards the coast was best. The patched members of the club would ride out to meet the oncoming horde head on, to engage them and thin their numbers while the bulk of the club fled south. The patched members who survived the fight would rendezvous with the remnants of the club the next day on the outskirts of Corpus Christi. It was a threadbare plan, but it was what they had.
Jesus said, "There is light within a person of light, and it shines on the whole world. If it does not shine, it is dark, and that darkness shall ever spread without the light of good men to burn it away."
As the light of dawn crept across the horizon two groups of vehicles left the fortress. One was a column of trucks, cars, and a cargo van that plowed through the mass of zombies at the gate and headed south, while the second sped across the gap in the cluster of zombies and screamed west. Within minutes the compound was empty save for the walkers that flooded the area searching for victims who no longer remained.
The patched members of the Calaveras rolled down the highway in a tight formation, their route already scouted by Cisco and Romeo during their initial foray into the outlands. In the distance the bikers could see dust plumes rising from the oncoming psychopath horde. The Calaveras had come in full force, with twenty motorcycles and three armored autos. They had painted themselves in the muertos style, each of the bikers riding with faces painted as flowered smiling skulls. Typically this was only done for celebrations, though sometimes when the club needed to send a message of violence, those bikers that delivered it would wear the skull-face as a calling card of sorts. Today they rode to halt the psychopaths
before they reached the compound, and that had seemed reason enough.
Even though the charger had now been outfitted with a backseat flame-thrower, Romeo felt good being back on his bike again, the thrum of the engine soothing his frayed nerves. His lever-action rifle was secured in the bike’s mounted scabbard, his revolver tucked into his right cowboy boot, and a machete slung over his shoulder. His patched brothers rode alongside him, similarly armed and face-painted. They neared the oncoming psychopaths and he was thankful for his sunglasses, as the dawn light glinted off of the metal of the enemy vehicles.
For all the advantage the psychopaths possessed by being insane and fearless the Calaveras had advantage in equal measure through skill and experience. Whereas the psychopaths had been common people before the apocalypse, and now changed into the creatures they now were, the Calaveras were veteran bikers and most of them hardened criminals. As the two forces came within firing range the bikers drew their weapons and began to target the psychopaths. A salvo of small arms fire peppered the psychopath horde, and several of the enemy vehicles swerved as the drivers took wounds.
There was enough time for a second salvo from the bikers, which was met with a salvo from the psychopaths. Bullets rained down from both sides, and riders on both sides swerved as they were hit, some crashing into their companions, others taking wounds and managing to hold course. Then the two forces collided in a tempest of twisted metal and blood. The Calaveras fared better, as most of them expertly threaded their motorcycles through the onslaught of enemy vehicles, firing point blank into the psychopaths as they sped past them.
Several bikes exploded in head-on collisions with armored vehicles or other bikes, as the two groups passed through one another and each came around for another pass. Romeo had drawn his lever-action rifle and managed to shoot the driver of one of the armored cars, sending the car careening into a psychopath biker, both vehicles shattering into so much scrap. Romeo pulled the handlebar and brought his bike back around, and set his eyes upon the Rider.
The Rider sat in his throne while idly fingering a nearly six foot long piece of sharpened angle iron, his driver and gunner apparently unscathed, having pulled the vehicle around and coming in for a second pass. Turk appeared at Romeo’s side and the two bikers sped towards the Rider’s vehicle. The gunner opened up with an assault rifle, and the bikers threaded back and forth in a figure eight pattern as they rushed forward. Romeo fired one-handed as he leaned left, then spun the rifle around in a wide arc to chamber another round while Turk looped over and managed to put a pistol round in the gunner’s chest.
As the vehicles neared each other Turk jinked right and Romeo jinked left. Romeo fired across the hood of the car as he passed, his round exploding through the driver’s temple in a spray of blood and brains. Turk zipped past the driver and managed to shoot the rider in the leg before the large man’s angle iron swept the biker’s head from his shoulders. Romeo screamed in rage and frustration as the throne-car passed by and another psychopath biker sped towards him while bringing a machine pistol to bear on him. Romeo dropped his rifle and yanked his handlebars hard to the left, laying his bike on its side. The crash bars on the side of the bike kept his leg from being sheared off, and as he slid on his leathers to a stop Romeo pulled his revolver from its holster. The sideways bike slammed into the oncoming motorcycle, ripping it out from under the psychopath, sending the man into the air.
Romeo rolled over onto his stomach and shot the psychopath through the chest before the other man could get to his feet. The young biker scrambled to his feet, all though of the battle raging around him fading away as his attention narrowed to the large man who walked towards him. The throne-car had come to a stop and the Rider had stepped out with a double barrel sawed off shotgun. As Romeo lurched forward, his leg still numb from scraping across the asphalt, the large man pumped a round into a passing Calaveras bike, sending its rider to the ground.
Romeo screamed out as the large man blasted the fallen rider with the second round from the shotgun. The young biker began running forward, ignoring the pain in his leg, firing his revolver wildly. Two of the large bore rounds slammed into the large man, one tearing off a huge chunk of thigh muscle and the other punching a hole in the man’s mid-section. The large man screamed, his face all the more monstrous because of the tattoos, and sprinted forward with his angle iron swinging. Romeo’s revolver clicked empty and he simply flipped it upside down and flung it with all of his might at the Rider’s face. The gun smacked into the large man’s nose with a crunch, buying Romeo enough time to duck the clumsy swing from the angle iron and draw his own machete.
The young biker hacked at the large man’s calf, shearing away more muscle before leaping backwards out of the way of the angle iron. Romeo barely escaped death two more times as the large man swung madly at him with the iron, the biker’s own machete far too short to be of any use. It was then that Harrison sped past them, hooking his crowbar around the large man’s ankle and dragging the man to his feet as the motorcycle lent its momentum to his swipe. Romeo lost no time in leaping upon the large man and bringing his machete down on the man’s head. Romeo kept chopping at the large man’s head and neck, suddenly overcome with a rage not unlike that which he’d felt in Zombie Jesus when seeing the angles battling in the heavens. It all seemed like such a waste, a violent and cruel joke, and he didn’t like being someone else’s divine comedy.
After several minutes of chopping Cisco grabbed Romeo by the arm, helping him to stop. The young biker looked up and saw what remained of the Calaveras. Of the twenty-five men who had ridden out, only seven remained. The psychopaths had been slain to a man, and now the men who survived were stripping the bodies and vehicles for useful items and ammunition. They were victorious, but it had come at a steep price.
They moved as quickly as they could, as the conflict had already drawn a handful of walkers. Guards set up a perimeter and used rifles to keep the walkers at bay while the rest stowed their equipment and prepared the vehicles to roll. Cisco told the other five men that he and Romeo had to keep moving west. They were confused, and so it was that Romeo and Cisco revealed the truth about their experiences. Cisco’s voices and Romeo’s visions were explained, and much to the surprise of the two men the five Calaveras were somewhat un-phased.
In a world where Zombie Jesus had rise, the dead walked, and madmen ruled the roads, it seemed of little consequence that men would have such experiences. They had ridden out as brothers, and parted company as the same. The Calaveras rode south, and the two men left in the battle-worn charger. They took the road west, towards their destiny, towards the Riders, towards Zombie Jesus himself.
Jesus said, "Love your friends like your own soul, and protect them like the pupil of your eye.
I shall choose you, one from a thousand and two from ten thousand, and they will stand as a single one."
THE HORSEMAN OF FAMINE
Jesus said, "I took my stand in the midst of the world, and in flesh I appeared to them. I found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. My soul ached for the children of humanity, because they are blind in their hearts and do not see, for they came into the world empty, and they also seek to depart from the world empty.
Emptiness is what they have sown, and so it shall be what they reap, as they depart as the walking dead or fall into the abyss of madness.
But meanwhile they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, when they find that they hunger for more than emptiness, when they seek more than simple survival, then they will change their ways."
The red sun was beginning to set, and Cisco shivered, though whether it was the cold or the night-fires he could not tell. He and Romeo had been riding hard for several days now, and they had noticed the night-fires as the sun set that first night in New Mexico. Once they’d managed to get to the other side of Dallas the state of Texas was relatively easily traveled across for a single vehicle. They had enough storage space that they could stockpile several tanks
worth of fuel in addition to topping off the tank. After the road battle with the psychopaths outside of San Antonio they’d struck out with a full tank and a trunk of gas cans.
As they moved across the oil rich state of Texas they were able to be flexible in the choice of what fueling stations to raid for refills. They used their additional stores to push wide around Amarillo, then finally deciding to stop at a remote station on the outskirts of El Paso. Romeo had provided rifle cover while Cisco pulled the car around back and used the hand-crank on the core fuel tank to pump the gasoline. Romeo only ended up shooting two walkers by the time Cisco had refilled the tank and the containers, and once more they were back on the road.
In their trek across Texas they had avoided contact with any psychopaths, most of their ranks seeming to have been focused on Dallas. Cisco still could remember the sight of the burning city and the sounds of gunfire that pierced the air as they had skirted the city. Not since the first zombie outbreak had such violence engulfed the cities, and now it seemed as if smaller gangs of psychopaths were fighting each other as much as they were hunting for survivors. Romeo’s vision seemed spot on, as he’d called the large man a Rider, the Horseman of Conquest. To see the organization around the city prior to the rider’s death and the resulting chaos of his demise, Cisco could easily believe in the visions. Without their leader the psychopaths were uncontrollable and just as savage.