by Cedric Nye
He looked at the struggling, ravening creature and moaned, “You aren’t my Sonja. You are not my Sonja.” Then, with hot, stinging tears falling from his eyes, and heaving, wracking sobs that tore his throat, Jango slowly, gently, broke the zombie’s neck.
Chapter 19:
Fuck Shakespeare
When Shakespeare wrote, “’Tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all,” he probably hadn’t taken the Zombie Apocalypse into consideration. He also probably didn’t have someone like Jango in mind when he wrote it either.
Jango carefully arranged Sonja’s body on the little bed in the back, and lay down beside her. He lay on his side, staring at her and stroking her hair while he mumbled wordlessly. He had never known love until Sonja smashed all his emotional armor with one lingering high-five. He cried long and hard. His tears fell for what had been, but mostly for what he knew he would never have again. He cursed silently, wishing he had never known the soft, warm, joys of love. He knew that he could never have his armor back. In loving Sonja, he had become a new person in many ways. When he killed her, he had lost everything.
He had always been alone, and he had been used to it. He had the companionship of his own mind, and a limitless imagination to keep him company. Now, having tasted the warm pleasures of love, Jango had changed. His god had been Survival, and his church had been Violence, but those gods were no longer enough for him. Not without…”Sonja,” he whispered, “I, I, loved you.”
He considered suicide for a moment, and then immediately dismissed the idea. Jango had known hate and rage for all his life, but those older feelings were dim and diluted memories compared to the cold fires that suddenly began to burn inside of him as he lay beside the only person in the world who he had ever loved.
He knew the only way he could go on living was if he had a purpose. He had eaten pain, fear, rage, and hate for as long as he could remember, but the loss of Sonja had stolen his ability to exist on anything else now. He needed his hatred and rage. Now Jango had a new God; REVENGE. Revenge, a new God, but he would worship in the same church and at the same altar; VIOLENCE.
He rose from the bed, and looked down at Sonja. Jango saw the knife on her belt, and he gently took it, and clipped it to his own belt. He kissed her one last time before he stooped, picked up both of their backpacks and the duffel, and left the vehicle through the sliding door on the side.
Chapter 20:
Choices
When he left the vehicle, Jango walked over to the store, and placed his load on the ground beside the doors. He knelt down and took all of the loaded pistol magazines from both packs, and distributed them in the various pockets of his pants. He secured the Velcro flaps on the pockets, and stood up to face the task at hand.
He pulled open the glass door, and re-entered the store. Everything was the same as it had been, but the smell no longer bothered him. He had come out on the other side of his agony, and he could no longer be hurt.
Jango went over to the dead deputy, and hoisted him up by his shirt. He carried the body to the front of the store and laid it on the checkout counter next to the cash register.
Then he made his way back to the rear of the store where he had seen a small camping section. He spotted the cans of kerosene right away. They were on a bottom shelf, a neat row of shiny steel cans. Each can had one gallon of kerosene in it. Jango grabbed two in his left hand, and carried them to the front by the register. He repeated the trip until he had all the cans stacked in the front of the store. There were thirty cans in all.
He stepped behind the counter and entered the small office that was in the back. Jango had had several jobs over the years, and had never stayed at one job for very long. One of his jobs had been at a filling station, and he knew that the main fuel tanks for the station would be underground, and that the access caps would be locked. Quickly, he found a set of keys hanging on a thumbtack that was stuck into the wall. He took the keys and headed back outside.
He could still hear the howls and screams from the other end of town as he walked over to the part of the lot he thought the caps to the underground tanks would be. They were there; three steel grates covered the caps, and Jango pulled them off one at a time, and bent to unlock them.
A padlock secured each cap, and he had no trouble figuring out which key would work, as there was only one key that would fit the small keyholes. After he unlocked each cap, he pulled them loose and set them aside.
When he finished, Jango headed back to the motor home, grabbed a can of gasoline from the rear, unscrewed the cap, and went to the side door of the vehicle. Without even looking, he tossed the full can into the camper.
He took the rest of the cans, one at a time, and poured them all over the outside of the motor home, and around the holes that led to the massive fuel tanks beneath his feet. When he was finished, he went inside the store and used his Spine Cutter to pop holes in all the kerosene cans. He watched the flammable liquid run down the counter, and pool around him on the floor. Jango grabbed a roll of duct tape from the small hardware rack by the register, nodded at the body of Randall Hank, and left the store.
He picked up his gear, and headed for the camper one last time. Jango set everything down, and opened the driver’s side door. He tore the towel off of his arm, pulled Sonja’s knife from its sheath, and began making long, deep cuts on his arms. He felt the soft, warm flow of his blood as it ran down his arms. As the blood ran off the tips of his fingers and pattered against the concrete, he howled his misery at the sky.
Jango violently flipped the driver’s chair forward as far as it would go, and then flipped the release that allowed the chair to slide forward on its tracks. He slammed it forward until it contacted the air horn on the steering wheel. The sound of the horn split the air; a howl that could be heard from a long way off. He hit the button to lock all of the doors, and slammed the door shut.
Jango smeared his blood all over the camper, quickly, knowing that the clock was ticking, and time was running short. When he had finished, he opened his pack and took out some paper towels. He roughly cleaned the open wounds on his arms, and the used the duct tape to close the cuts. He put the tape in his pack and turned back to the store.
Now hurrying, he raced back into the store. He had forgotten to grab one piece of equipment he needed; a little disposable butane lighter. With a shrug, he grabbed two packs of unfiltered Camel cigarettes, and jogged back outside.
When he had come back from leading the zombies away, Jango noticed a County Sheriff’s car around the corner, and when he had looked inside, he had seen that the key was in the ignition. He silently thanked Deputy Hank again as he made his way to the car.
By the time he got to the car, the howls of the zombies could be heard over the banshee wail of the camper’s horn. Jango jerked the door open, and tossed his bags and his stick on the passenger seat, then climbed into the car.
He made sure the doors were secured and started the car. The engine roared to life, and Jango put it into gear and drove it back to the store.
He took the car to the far end of the lot where it was unlikely any zombies would notice him. He hoped they would be too busy trying to get into the motorhome to notice him that far out of the way. He put the car in park, but left it idling. Reaching to his right, Jango opened his backpack, and pulled out some of the paper towels he had taken from the G&J bathroom. He twisted the wad of paper towels until he had what looked like a rope with a flower on the end. He carefully shredded the “flower” with his fingers until the paper was frizzy. Then he sat back, lit a cigarette, and waited.
Jango had quit smoking years ago, but the harsh, foul smoke felt good right then. He inhaled deeply, waiting for the enemies that he knew would come. A small smile played across his lips as he exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, and contemplated what was about to happen.
He had almost finished his smoke when he saw that the zombies had begun to arrive in the parking lot, making their inexorable way to the ho
wling motorhome. Jango’s earlier trick had worked far better than he could have imagined, the coppery smell of his blood on the door of that house had attracted nearly all the zombies in the area, and when the horn started blasting on Sonja’s tomb, they had all rallied to the new call. The zombies were frenzied as they tried to tear their way into the motorhome. Jango saw one trying to bite a piece of the vehicle off as it went after the taste of his blood.
Jango waited, as patient as cancer, until it seemed as though no more zombies were going to arrive, then he put the car into gear. He let the car roll in idle, not using the accelerator, moving slowly and silently toward the edge of the writhing mass of undead that were laying siege to the motor home.
When he was close to the edge of the throng, he used the lighter to set fire to the twisted paper towel. The flower lit with a flare as the lighter’s flame touched the frizzy edges of the shredded paper. Jango hit the button to roll his window down, and tossed the small torch onto the fuel-soaked ground.
The effects were much more impressive than they had been in Prescott. The weather was warm, and there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze blowing, so the gasoline had partially evaporated, leaving the air thick with the explosive fumes.
The entire mass of screaming zombies were instantly set ablaze as the very air around them exploded and caught fire. Jango accelerated quickly to get clear of what he knew was going to be a large blast radius. He pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor, and the big car shot forward, and headed back to the interchange for the I-40.
He watched the speedometer climb up past eighty miles per hour as he hit the overpass that would take him to safety. Jango glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see the first of three separate mushroom shaped explosions erupt from the parking lot of Ted’s Corral Market.
A massive shockwave rolled past him, sucking the air out of the car for a moment. Two more shockwaves passed him, even though he was over a mile away from the site of the explosions now.
Jango sat at the crossroads, not just the junction that gave him a choice between the I-40 which would eventually take him north to less populated areas which would be safer, and the 89, which only led south; back to more populated areas.
The less populated places would have far less zombies, because there needed to be people for there to be zombies. He could find peace in some nice quiet place, maybe find a nice abandoned farm, and grow vegetables. Jango laughed out loud, as he immediately dismissed the idea of peace. His veins burned with the poisons of revenge, rage, and hatred. Peace was now a thing that would kill him.
He lit a cigarette, inhaled the thick smoke deeply into his lungs, held the smoke for a moment, and then exhaled hard. He flipped his smoke out the window, and tossed the two packs he had gotten out the window as well.
Jango was a realist, and he knew what smoking would do to his body. The tar in the smoke would rob him of his endurance, and the nicotine would shrink his vascular system. He had quit smoking long ago for those same reasons. Only now he knew he would need all of his strength to travel the road he was about to take.
He watched as a zombie came into sight, heading toward the now burning town of Ash Fork. It was on the road that would take Jango south, walking up the middle of the road while it sniffed at the air.
Jango knew where the road of revenge led. He had heard a saying that spoke the truth about revenge. “If a man chooses the path of revenge, he had better dig two graves; one for his enemy and one for himself.”
He took one final look at the huge plume of smoke that still rose from the funeral pyre of his beloved Sonja, and made his choice. He gunned the engine and turned south. He aimed the nose of the big car at the zombie he had seen. The push-bar on the bumper struck the creature just above its knees, and it flipped up in the air. Jango heard it thump against the roof before it was flung high into the air.
Jango thought about the saying, and about what revenge meant to him. “Two graves?” He said as his eyes started to smolder with cold rage and barely suppressed violence. “Oh, I’m gonna fill a LOT more graves than that before I’m done.”
The End
Read on for a free sample of Z-Burbia
Chapter One
People that move to a subdivision do so for only a couple of reasons. Ours were price and location. Great price for the size of the house and great location since it was just on the edge of Asheville, NC, down by the French Broad River. Once the dead began to walk the earth, the price didn’t matter so much anymore. It was all about location.
The Blue Ridge Mountains are part of the Appalachian Mountain range, a range that stretches from Georgia up to Maine. Our neck of the range is in Western North Carolina, specifically Asheville, known as the Paris of the South because of its eclectic mix of arts, music, and vacation possibilities. A long time destination for those that think outside the box, Asheville is surrounded by hollows (hollers), coves, gaps, and valleys, filled with generations of hard working North Carolinians that, while free thinking and independent, aren’t known for their outside the boxedness. Conservative through and through, most are used to making it on their own in the best of times. Come the apocalypse? That conservative pragmatism kicks into overdrive and sure comes in handy.
This makes for an interesting dynamic in the region. You see, when the dead began to rise from their graves, morgues, funeral homes, and other places, urban dead are supposed to stay dead, they pretty nearly wiped out the progressive, freethinking population of Asheville. Well, wiped out the living population; the undead population is growing and thriving. Let’s hear it for undead progress! This left a few urban survivor pockets (Whispering Pines being one), surrounded not only by a sea of undead, but by multiple groups, families, factions of rural survivor pockets hell bent on getting, taking, and scavenging what they can from the ruins of Asheville.
Good times for all.
So, I stand in front of my bathroom mirror, razor in hand, wondering what will become of my family, as I hear a stray gunshot here and there from outside our two-story, 2700 square feet, cookie cutter house. The image in the mirror is of a forty-year old man, blond-red beard, soon to be bald head (okay, balder head since growing hair hasn’t been my forte for years), six feet, 200 pounds, exhausted, and semi-malnourished. Yeah, I’m a peach.
Another gunshot goes off and I set the razor down. Normally, I’d yell from the bathroom at the kids to find out what is going on, but that was pre-Z (pre-zombies). In today’s world, you keep your mouth shut and stay quiet. Noise attracts the undead. We take the whispering part of Whispering Pines, very seriously nowadays.
So I’m a little more than alarmed as to why I hear gunshots. Guns are noisy. We’re an arrows, spears, slingshots, and other quiet projectiles kind of subdivision. This was signed into the covenants by the HOA (Home Owners’ Association) Board and ratified at one of our first post-Z HOA meetings.
“Jace?” Stella asks from the bedroom door. “Have you heard anything?”
Stella Stanford, my beautiful wife and mother of my two children (boy: Charlie, sixteen, and girl: Greta, thirteen), the rock that I rely on, and asker of the obvious.
“You mean other than the gunshots?” I ask as I grab a shirt and pull it on before coming out of the bathroom.
“Don’t be an asshole,” Stella says. “Have you heard anything over the Wi-Fi?”
Wi-Fi, you ask? Oh, we have it. No internet, since the apocalypse ruined that, but local Wi-Fi which helps us all stay in touch in the neighborhood.
“I haven’t checked my messages,” I reply. “Hand me my phone.”
Stella crosses her arms and gives me a stern look.
“Please?” I ask. “Sorry for being an asshole.”
She hands me my phone and I see a text from Jon Billings, my best friend in the neighborhood and Head of Construction. Jon is one of the few people I truly trust in Whispering Pines. Everyone else we watch with caution and keep at a friendly distance. Makes it easier to shove a crowbar through their
heads if you don’t get too attached.
“Bums down by the gate,” the text reads. “You coming? You know Brenda is going to want you there. I’m sure she’ll pick apart any ‘weaknesses’ she sees in the gate.”
“Who’s shooting?” I text back.
“The bums,” his reply comes quickly. “Where the fuck are you, Hoss? Get your butt down here. Brenda is already trying to redesign the entire gate structure. Jesus…”
Jon is also a minister which cracks me up when he texts. He saves all his cursing for texts to me. No one has a clue, otherwise.
“On my way,” I text back.
“Bums,” I say to Stella. “I need to bike down ASAP.”
“Brenda?”
“Yep. Brenda,” I nod as I grab my socks and hurry to the garage. I throw on my sturdy, steel-toed work boots and snag my mountain bike.
I barely wave at the inquiring faces of my neighbors as I speed by, focusing on the twists and turns, dips and rises of the neighborhood. I race down the last hill towards the gate that is set at the entrance to Whispering Pines, blocking all access to the neighborhood from the former State Road Hwy 251. I say “former” because there really isn’t a “state” anymore, and I’m pretty sure the DoT has lost its jurisdiction during the apocalypse. Or maybe not. They could be planning to re-paint the yellow lines next week for all we know.
“There you are, Hoss,” Jon says as I brake to a stop by him. “Brenda thinks we need more spikes on the outside, because spikes are apparently a deterrent to starving bums.”
“Jesus,” I mutter.
“Hey, Lord’s name and all that?” Jon smiles.
“Smart ass,” I smile as I walk past him to the watchtower sitting to the side of the fifty-foot gate.
“I am sorry for your situation, folks,” Brenda says, trying to whisper and shout at the same time which comes out as some grotesque croak. “But Whispering Pines is a gated community and we are not taking new residents at this time. You will need to move along please. Again, I am sorr-.”