by Cedric Nye
He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, “Remember when I was talking about shootouts, and all those bullets flying around?” He continued, not waiting for an answer, “Well, having a lot of guns can make a person get confident. It can make a person get confident in a stupid way, and make them take risks. Plus, you have to carry those guns, and you have to care for those guns. I don’t know if we will be able to drive where we are going, or if we will have to walk, and I just want us to live.”
Jango continued talking, “Say we get a good ride, a tough truck or something, well , we will need fuel for it. Then, take into account that if we use a vehicle, we’ll be highly visible, and we’ll become targets for any bad guys out there who are still human.”
He finished up, “A shotgun would be awesome if we had a safe place to live, then I would want ALL of these guns. But a shotgun isn’t better than a pistol in this kind of situation. If the goobers are far away, we’ll run and hide, and if they’re close, we’ll fight. Pistols, then sticks. For now, I don’t want to be seen or heard. I just want to creep through and live to tell about it.”
Everything he had said made sense, so she went back to finishing her packing and Jango went to get cleaned up.
When he came back, dressed in his camouflage clothes, Sonja smiled at him and said, “Look, we’re already dressing alike!”
Jango groaned, but he smiled. He hugged Sonja, and kissed her on her soft, red lips.
When he had finished kissing her, he looked at her and said, “Shall we?”
Once they had decided it was time to go, they moved quickly. Jango led her to the back door where he looked through the peephole again. The fenced lot was still as empty and bereft of movement as it had been the last time he had checked.
“It looks good,” Jango said, his voice dropping to a whisper as he slowly slid back the massive bolt that held the door closed.
He slowly opened the steel door and peeked out. There was no movement of any kind, so he opened the door all the way, climbed down the four steps that led down from the door to the lot, and stepped out into the early morning air.
Jango thought it had been morning time when he had first arrived at G&J Gun House, so he had been there for almost a whole day!
He immediately noticed a small, boxy, motorhome to his left. It looked like some kind of a custom model to him, but he couldn’t be sure. He could see that it looked well maintained, and that it sort of resembled an armored car.
Jango’s eyes swept the area again, as he looked for any holes in the heavy-duty chain link fence, and searched for any signs of movement; there were none of either.
“Sonja,” he called softly, “I think it’s safe.”
Sonja climbed down the steps slowly, and her eyes immediately focused on the motorhome. She thought to herself, “It would be pretty cool if we could just travel in something like that, instead of walking!” The whole idea of walking all the way to Montana didn’t appeal to her at all, but she trusted Jango’s judgment. She didn’t know why she trusted his judgment, but she did. So she kept her mouth shut, even though she continued to admire the rugged looking camper.
Behind the motorhome stood a large tank that was marked with a sign that said, “Gasoline Only.” The tank had a long hose protruding from the bottom that looked similar to the hoses at a gas station. Jango looked more closely, and sure enough, there was a nozzle at the end of the hose.
As he circled the vehicle, he noticed that the back of the rig had a little flat bed attachment that rode level with the bottom of the vehicle’s frame. There were eight red five-gallon cans on the back. When he unscrewed the cap on one of them, the heavy, acrid fumes of gasoline greeted his nostrils.
“It looks like someone was ready to get out of town,” Jango said to himself as he screwed the cap back on the can.
Sonja looked at the medium sized motor home with longing. She wanted to be safe, sure, but couldn’t they be safe AND be comfortable? She didn’t want to have to trek around in the woods on foot while zombies and bandits roamed all over the place!
While Sonja daydreamed, Jango peeked in the driver’s side window where he saw two comfortable looking captain’s chairs and a door that led into the back of the camper.
Jango started to think about just saying, “Fuck it.” He and Sonja could just take the vehicle and travel in comfort and style.
He heard Sonja say, “Hey, the side door is open a little bit.”
“Sonja, no, no, don’t open it,” he said as he started to run around to the side of the vehicle.
Jango came around the motor home just in time to hear Sonja scream; a high, piercing note that tore at his soul. He saw her as she fell backward, driven to the ground by the weight of a tall, skinny zombie.
He moved as fast as a striking snake, and brought his stick down on the zombie’s head just as Sonja started firing her pistol into the body of the creature.
Jango picked the zombie up as if it weighed nothing, and flung it to the side. His soul felt as though it were being ripped in two when he saw that a chunk of meat was missing from Sonja’s shoulder.
She was still pulling the trigger on her pistol, even though it was empty and the slide had locked back in the open position. Jango swiftly took off his backpack, and pulled out the PEP packs, his water bottle, the erythromycin antibiotics, and the morphine. He quickly washed out her wound with the water, and opened the bottle of antibiotic pills. He stuffed several of the pills into his mouth, and quickly chewed the bitter pills into a thick paste, which he then smeared into her wound.
Sonja was starting to come out of her state of shock, and had begun to panic. “Shit, Jango, shit, he fuckin’ bit me, I can’t believe he fuckin’ bit me!” She started sobbing.
Jango told her, “Shhh, shh, here, just take these pills, everything will be okay.” Then he handed her a double-dose of the PEP. She managed to choke down the large handful of pills.
Sonja started crying, then; deep, wracking sobs that sounded like they came from the depths of her soul. “I don’t want to die, Jango. I don’t want to die, Jango,” she repeated several times, like a mantra or a prayer. “I don’t want to be one of those things. You promised, you promised, you have to kill me right now.”
“You’re going to be fine,” Jango said to her, knowing it was a lie as he saw the legions of undead that had started to pour around the sides of the building.
When Jango had made his break for the front door of G&J, he had roused the zombies, and their hunger. Their hunting cries, those screeching wails, had drawn every zombie for miles around. Their numbers had continued to grow the entire time Jango had been inside. Sonja’s screams and the sound of gunshots had drawn them, and now there was no way out.
He looked down at Sonja’s face as he realized that there was no way out, and that they would die here.
He suddenly noticed movement in his peripheral vision, and he instantly rose to his feet, ready to fight as he faced the spot where the movement had been. He froze when he saw what it was.
The movement he had seen was the giant dog, and the albino woman who had assaulted him so badly outside his hotel. They were flickering in and out of existence. Jango shook his head side to side, trying to clear his head. He knew that he had missed some vital clue, and that he should know why they were there.
Then he had it. “You aren’t real,” he said to the woman and the dog.
“You’re half right, Jango,” the dog said in that deep, gravelly voice that sounded like it came from the bottom of a grave. “We are as real as you, because we ARE you.”
The truth slammed into Jango like a fist. He, the damaged, beaten, abused little boy, had been broken into pieces by the trauma of his childhood, and now he was seeing parts of himself he hadn’t known existed.
In one of the state homes he had been in as a child, Jango had been given a battery of tests, one of which was an I.Q. test. He had scored high on every section because he was highly intelligent. And right at that moment, every
part of his powerful mind was working as he tried to fit together the puzzle of his damaged psyche.
Jango remembered the movie, Sybil, which made him ask, “What are your jobs? What do you represent, or whatever?”
He had forgotten about Sonja. She lay shaking as she watched him carry on a conversation with himself. He would speak in a regular voice, his own voice, and then answer in a frightening voice that sounded like rocks being crushed. She tried to sit up, but her body was weak and shaking, so she lay back down, and closed her eyes.
The dog answered Jango first, “I am the strength in our arms and the steel in our hands. When someone tries to hurt us, I fill our muscles with righteous fury.”
Then the albino woman spoke in a voice like arsenic and honey that had been laced with rough sex, “I’m the poison in our fangs, baby boy. I know all the tricks, all the weapons, and how to hurt people soooooo good. When we need to fight, I am the reason we don’t have to think about it.” The albino woman sucked on her forefinger and pinched one of her pale nipples as she gave Jango an exaggerated wink.
Jango asked them, “What about me? What is my part? What do I even do for us?”
The dog and the albino woman looked at each other, and then looked at him sadly, and the dog replied, “You take all of our pain. You are the spine. You are the blood soaked rag that holds closed the wounds in our soul.”
He saw the truth in all that they said, and he could see why they had been caged deep in the recesses of his mind. They were dangerous, rabid, and as much as Jango hated it; he loved them both.
“Why are you out here now?” He asked them.
“We want to come home,” they said in unison. “We miss you, and we want to be a family again.”
Their figures seemed to morph and shift, as if seen underwater, and Jango shook his head again, as he tried to clear out the foggy feeling that had crept in around the edges of his mind.
“You felt us break loose, Jango,” the dog said in a gentle voice. “When you were in that parking lot, with all those zombies coming at you, you felt us break out. Didn’t you?”
Jango remembered he had felt it; it had been like a dam breaking in his mind. It made a weird kind of sense. He had been sick with the Z-Virus when these two parts of his mind had broken free of their chains. His mind had just made up a story to introduce these two parts of himself.
The dog and the woman were flickering, faster and faster, like the picture on an old reel-to-reel film. As he watched, the two melded into one image. Jango looked at the ravening legions of zombies that pressed against the fence all around him, and he made his decision.
He opened his arms wide, as if to embrace the strange constructs his damaged mind had produced in childhood. He opened his arms to the only friends he had ever had. “Come on, then,” he whispered. “Come home.”
Chapter 16:
Fire Kills Everything
When the fragments of his mind reintegrated with him, Jango felt a sense of oneness that he had never known before. He had always felt like a part of him was missing. He had that hole inside of him that every person with Borderline Personality Disorder had. The children of abuse all ended up with that hole inside, though to differing degrees. Child abuse was a splinter that festered deeply in the mind of an abused child, and that splinter would become a worm if the child didn’t get help and support. The worm that abuse left behind would eat a hole into the psyche of a child; a hole that would stay with them forever. Some would try to fill the hole with drugs, sex, self-abuse and self-mutilation, or even suicide. Jango had tried all of those different paths, and never once felt whole; now he did.
Jango felt around in his mind, and couldn’t pinpoint anything different. That was because EVERYTHING was different. He was complete for the first time in his life.
He took stock of his surroundings again, and with his mind finally fully intact, he made a plan in only a few seconds.
He walked quickly back to Sonja where she lay, unmoving, on the ground. He knelt beside her and felt her neck for a pulse. He found her pulse; it was feathery and soft, but steady. Jango sighed in relief, and stood up.
He knew the only way to get out of there was in the vehicle. He also knew that even the powerful looking motor home couldn’t drive through the press of the thousands of zombies that now encircled the fenced lot.
Jango only saw one way out; fire. Without a moment’s hesitation, he sprang into action. He scooped Sonja off the ground, backpack and all, and climbed into the open door of the camper with her in his arms. He quickly laid her on the bed he found at the rear of the space, and then jumped back out of the vehicle.
Jango went to the driver’s side door, and opened it, relieved to find the key in the ignition. He hadn’t been looking forward to having to search the zombie’s pockets for the key.
He started the engine, which turned over immediately with a loud, powerful growl, then settled into a strong sounding purr. Jango put it in reverse, and backed it away from the large gas tank. He made sure to put plenty of space between the vehicle and the tank.
He put the gearshift into park, and left the vehicle running as he ran around to the rear of the camper. Jango grabbed one of the five-gallon gas cans from behind the vehicle, unscrewed the cap, and picked it up as if it weighed nothing. He took a running start at the fence closest to the large gas tank. When he was about ten feet away from the fence, he turned his left shoulder forward, and let the can trail behind him in his right hand. Then, with a powerful surge, he flung the can over the ten-foot high razor-wire topped fence. The can arched over the fence with several feet to spare. For a split second, Jango marveled at his strength as he paused to see the results of his throw.
The zombies had become so pressed together, and their numbers so great, that the gas can landed on the screaming, moaning mass of writhing bodies and crowd-surfed slowly on their heads as it “glug-glugged” it’s flammable contents onto the zombies below.
Satisfied that his plan would work, he quickly repeated his actions with three more cans, spreading them out among the crowd of zombies for maximum coverage. When he finished tossing the cans, Jango turned to the large storage tank of gasoline. He knew that time was running out. The pressing weight of the zombie’s had bowed the strong fence far inward, and he knew that they were going to break through at any moment.
Moving faster, ever faster, Jango grabbed the pump handle from the tank, and ran toward the fence. He took the gas hose to its full extent, and depressed the handle. A long arc of clear liquid shot out almost twenty feet, and covered the keening creatures in gasoline. He focused the stream of fuel on the zombies nearest the building.
He hosed them down for a few more moments, then let go of the handle and dropped it. He knelt near the fence, and pulled the ferro-rod from his pocket. He swiftly scraped the back of it to get some magnesium shavings in a small pile on the edge of the slowly spreading pool of gasoline, and then hit the rod several times with the steel striker in a sharp, downward motion.
Sparks flew from the ferro-rod, and ignited the magnesium, which in turn, ignited the massive amount of gasoline among the moaning, un-dead horde. The gasoline ignited with a whooomph that sucked all the air away from him. The fire spread quickly, flaring up in small explosions when it reached the gas cans that Jango had thrown.
He cheered inwardly as he saw the burning figures of the zombies stumbling around as the rest of the horde drew back from the fire. He could hardly believe it! The zombies were afraid of fire. He filed the information away for later use, ran back to the idling motor home, and jumped into the driver’s seat.
He watched intently through the front windshield as a huge area directly in front of him became mostly cleared of goobers. The flames still danced along the ground, less than a foot tall, but apparently, enough to keep the un-dead at bay. He felt a dark, vicious joy rise within him as he watched the burning zombies stumble into each other, and then fall as the heat of the fire destroyed them as effectively as a bullet
to the brain would have.
He knew he would never have a better chance to get out of there; he put the vehicle in gear, and stepped on the accelerator. The huge motor roared as the camper shot forward, crushing the fence to the ground. Jango slewed across the dying flames and the corpses that littered the still burning ground, slowed, then turned left around the corner of the building and accelerated once he saw the way was clear.
Jango drove through the now deserted front parking lot, and stopped when he reached the main road. He knew that if he went left, he could make his way north. Highway 89 led to woods, water, and some semblance of safety for Sonja and him. He knew that there would be fewer zombies if he went to a place that had fewer people to begin with. Without any more thought, he turned left and drove toward whatever the future might have in store for him.
Chapter 17:
On The Road
As Jango drove, he kept his eyes sharp, watching for anything out of the ordinary or threatening. He dismissed the signs along the way, not even caring what information they might hold. The names of campgrounds, hiking trails, and convenience stores meant very little to him. All he wanted was to keep moving until he was somewhere safe. He knew that the 89 went all the way north to I-40 which would take him west. He would slowly make his way north from there.
He noticed a lake on his right. It was called Watson Lake, and it had a large mobile home park beside the lake. What really caught his attention were the zombies who were running out of the park, probably attracted by the sound of the motor as he drove by. Jango accelerated, and he continued glancing in the passenger side mirror long after the zombies were out of sight.
The pristine barrenness of the road was intermittently marred by the unmoving forms of abandoned and wrecked vehicles on the sides of the two-lane road. Jango was glad that the cars, trucks, and SUVs had been wrecked and/or abandoned on the SIDES of the road rather than the middle of the road.