by Tristan Vick
The cowboy finished loading and looked up from under the brim of his hat. Standing no more than two feet in front of him was a hungry-looking dead-head. Its jaws opened, revealing gooey strands of bloodstained saliva. The cowboy raised the Peacemaker and fired it point blank in between the dead-head’s eyes. The bullet pierced its skull and it toppled over. Spinning around, the cowboy took out three other Walkers that were slowly creeping up behind him.
The noise of gunfire only seemed to attract more of the creatures, so Barnes whistled a high pitch to get everyone’s attention. Once he had their eyes on him, he motioned for them to follow him. They ran across the street and ducked into an abandoned Starbucks. Once they were inside, Jennifer let down the blinds.
Zanato, still panting from the mad dash to get out of the street, asked, “Wait, where’s the cowboy?”
Peeking through the blinds, the group watched the cowboy throw off his duster jacket. Underneath were two P90 personal defense weapons strapped to his body. It was the gun that ate Uzis for breakfast.
“Badass,” Barnes said, peeking through the blinds.
Walkers closed in on all sides of the cowboy. With the P90s outstretched, he squeezed the triggers and let loose a chain of fire that could have sawed down a forest. After his cartridges ran dry, he stepped over the piles of bodies, picked up his jacket, brushed it off, and slipped it back on. With that, the cowboy straightened his hat, then headed up the street and disappeared around the corner. The few remaining zombies with any animation left in them dragged their legless torsos up the street and crawled after him, but the cowboy was already long gone.
Noble turned and looked at everyone, who watched in dumbfounded amazement. Stunned expressions were frozen onto all of their faces. Noble shook his head, blinked hard, and, thumbing over his shoulder, he asked, “Who is that guy?”
34
Devil’s Due
Rachael flew out of the cathedral doors and into the dark of night when, all of a sudden, she heard the sound of a dozen guns cocking. Stopping dead in her tracks, she looked up with wide eyes to see Hank and half a dozen of his men armed to the teeth and pointing every available weapon they had at her.
“Drop them weapons,” Hank ordered. “They don’t belong to you.”
Rachael did as she was told. Although she healed well enough, she suspected that she could still be killed if she were put down like a zombie, with a bullet to the head. With Hank riled up, she didn’t want to take any chances. “None of this had to happen, Hank. If you had let me leave when I asked you—”
“You bleeding witch! Keep your lies to yourself,” Hank interrupted with a snarl. “You cursed us all to ruin!”
Rachael reprimanded him with a “Tsk, tsk!” and shot him a sharp glance. “Is that any way to talk to your wife?”
The other men shot sideways glances at Hank and she could tell that having the truth revealed of what he really was lost him favor in the eyes of godly men. Hank quickly shifted the attention back onto her.
“Don’t listen to this witch’s lies! She’s just trying to turn us against each other. If you let ’er catch your ear, she’ll deceive every last one of you like the fork-tongued Devil himself. Do not forget, you are men of God!”
“Bravo,” Rachael said, clapping her hands in jest. “The Reverend douchebag couldn’t have preached it better himself.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about Reverend Campbell,” Hank said as sobs overtook him. “He was like a brother to me. He took me in and cared for me when nobody else would. I loved him! And you ruined everything he stood for. All the good he did.”
“Good?!” Rachael balked, her gut churning in revulsion as if it were full of worms. “Campbell was a psychopath, and his wife was a sociopathic vampire who fed off of his madness. The only good that came out of all this carnage is the welcome thought that those two lunatics will be rotting in hell for eternity.”
“Silence your wicked tongue, witch! God help me, I’ll take off your head if it’s the last thing I do in this life.”
So much for her plan of not setting him off, she thought. The fuse was already lit. Hank pulled the trigger and the blast exploded into her chest.
Rachael flew backward and landed smack on her ass. She sat up, dazed from the brunt of the gunshot. Looking down, she touched the bloody wound with her hand, and examined the wet red residue that glistened on her fingers. Hank walked up to her and, full of rage, kicked her squarely in the middle of her chest wound with his boot. She fell onto her back and gasped for air. But all that remained of her lungs was a large gaping hole in the center of her chest.
Hank’s beet-red face towered over her, and his eyes drilled into her with all the hate he could muster. His cheeks shook with rage and the veins in his neck were as taut as tightly strung piano chords. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” he said, aiming the gun at her gut.
Hank fired off another round. Then another. And another. Rachael’s body jerked violently with each blast until it was practically severed in two. By the time Hank stopped firing, only the twine of her vertebrae tethered her torso to her legs. Rachael’s wide open eyes stared vacantly up at the evening moon hanging in the sky. She was dead.
“Get up from that,” Hank snarled. Still filled with a deep-seated hatred, he spat on her mutilated body.
As Hank turned and walked back toward his posse of men he noticed their eyes grow large with a fearful shock.
“What in blazes are you all looking at?”
Hank spun back around in time to see Rachael rise up to her feet. No traces of the gory wound remained. “I don’t believe it.” Hank screamed, raising his shotgun. “Why won’t you fucking die?!”
Shots tore into Rachael’s flesh, shredding it. She cringed, but just as soon as she absorbed the brunt of the blast her body had already begun to mend itself. She concentrated on healing, and it seemed to speed up the progress. The harder she concentrated, the faster her body repaired itself.
“Nooo!” Hank screamed, repeatedly clicking the trigger of his fully emptied shotgun. Filled with rage, he threw the gun at the ground and reached out his hand, demanding someone give him a fresh weapon. His men merely looked frightened and confused, and in their moment of great uncertainty their superstitious fears prevailed. Several of them backed away in protest. “Cowards!” Hank snapped. “You godless, good-for-nothing cowards!”
“Give it up,” Rachael said. “You’ve already tortured me. Brutalized me. Humiliated me. You treated me like dirt for no other reason than I didn’t share your beliefs. Killing me now won’t save your sorry soul—assuming you even have one. But if there is any amount of good left in you, Hank, any shred of human decency, I’m begging you—please, do the right thing.”
Hank hastily snatched one of his men’s weapons out of their hands and cocked the gun. Spinning around, he trudged up to Rachael and put the barrel of the gun squarely against her forehead. “The right thing to do,” he retorted, “is end your miserable existence. You’re an abomination.”
She stared at him with a scorn hotter than annealed steel.
“That won’t be necessary,” a deep baritone voice boomed from out of the blue. Suddenly the whole grounds lit up like Wrigley Field. The high beams of a train of car headlights circled around the entire area, blinding the small gathering. With all of Hank’s trigger-happy gunfire, nobody had heard the vehicles sneak up on them.
Rachael held up her hand to her eyes to block the light and try to see who it was. Leaning against a white Chevrolet Denali, with twenty-two inch wheels and chrome spinners, was a tall black man wearing thin wire-framed eyeglasses.
“I claim jurisdiction in this matter,” his deep masculine voice rattled.
Hank seemed to show the first signs of real trepidation. There were always bigger fish in the sea. And sometimes a shark. Jamal Treslan was a shark. The proof of which ran down Hank’s face in the form of fresh beads of nervous sweat.
“This ain’t none of your business, Treslan,” Ha
nk growled.
“Oh, I think you’ll find it is very much my business. You see, Hank, I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I would check on how things were going with you church folk. As it turns out, we heard what sounded like World War III over here. What kind of neighbor would I be if I didn’t lend a hand to a neighbor in need? So, I felt the least I could do is offer my assistance. You know, it being trying times and all.”
“Like I was saying,” Hank reiterated, “I have everything under control.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Treslan said as he folded his hands behind his back and calmly walked toward where they stood. “But you see, as we arrived to come to your aid, I happened to see something quite fascinating. I saw you unload six rounds into that young woman standing over there, and moments later she stood up again, without a scratch on her. Doesn’t that strike you as, how shall I put it, miraculous?”
Wagging his finger at Rachael, Hank shouted, “She’s a goddamn demon in disguise! That’s what she is.”
Jamal Treslan stopped and looked right at Hank with a glare so powerful it would have sent a fierce tiger cowering back into the jungle from whence it came. “Now, Hank, you and I both know there are no such things as witches and demons, ghosts or goblins. So you best listen up, because I am only going to say this once. Whatever debt Campbell owed me in the past is now paid in full. I’m wiping the slate clean. But in return, this woman is coming with me.”
“Over my dead body!” Hank protested. Hank waved his hand and his men trained their guns on Treslan. Instantly the surrounding vehicles all clacked with the sound of car doors opening. Men carrying machine guns got out of the vehicles in teams of four and five. Rachael estimated twenty, perhaps more, heavily armed men, all decked out in Ethiopian colors.
“That can be arranged,” Treslan said without the slightest hint of distress.
“I heard they called you the Mad Doctor for a reason, but if you want this godforsaken cunt, then you’re madder than I thought. You’ll bring a curse worse than death upon your people!”
Treslan took off his jacket and approached Rachael. “Death,” laughed Treslan. “What would you know of death? I suspect this young lady, on the other hand, knows quite a lot about death. She even knows how to escape it. And that’s a secret I want to learn.”
Jamal Treslan wrapped his jacket around Rachael’s shoulders and escorted her back to his truck. She gladly went along with him. Besides, it wasn’t as if she exactly had any other choice.
“Just know this isn’t over!” Hank hollered at them. “I swear to Christ that I will get my revenge.”
Rachael spun on her heel and looked Hank straight in the eye, and then flipped him the bird. Turning back, she climbed silently into the white Chevy. Treslan shut the door behind her, like a gentleman, and then paused next to the passenger door. He snapped his fingers and all of his men raised their weapons.
Hank knew he was outnumbered two to one. In defiance he spat on the ground and shouted, “I’ll see you in hell, Treslan!”
“I don’t doubt it,” Treslan replied with a suave grin. Treslan turned to get into his truck, and his men let loose a volley of unruly fire. The roaring gunfire mercilessly mowed down Hank and his men. Rachael watched with a sense of vindication as the bullets chopped them to smithereens.
A sinister smile broke out across Treslan’s face as he watched Rachael enjoying the show and, brushing off his jacket, he said apologetically, “Sorry about that. But I couldn’t have that redneck imbecile make good on his promise to kill you. You’re much too valuable.”
She didn’t care if this Treslan fellow was the Devil himself, she was thankful for the rescue and nodded in appreciation. She had been through hell and back again. She even had the ashes to prove it.
Once the barrage of fire died down, the convoy of vehicles flicked off their lights, and one after another the small caravan crept out of the parking area of the church. As they drove quietly into the darkness of night, the church grounds became flooded with the carnivorous moans of the mindless living dead. Treslan looked out the window at the swath of pale creatures lurching toward the church, and chuckled, “Like moths to a flame.”
35
Death Camp
Signs of wide-ranging carnage prevailed as the entire grounds of the base was thick with the coppery smell of the crimson puddles coagulating in the afternoon sun, a field of bodies as far as the eye could see in almost every direction. A very bad sign, by Greer’s reckoning.
The evacuated base looked like a ghost town with its empty fighter jets all lined up waiting on the runway. Empty tanks littered the compound where a last stand had been made. Shells of spent ammunition littered the ground all throughout the base, creating a thin veil of copper bullet casings that shimmered in the light of a setting sun.
Bradley Air Force base was deathly silent. It had been overrun on the third day of the outbreak. How did so many well-trained soldiers get wiped out so quickly? Greer had asked himself that question repeatedly, so he headed to the base hospital and read the doctors’ reports and patients’ charts, and eventually pieced it all together.
An airman had come in with a scratch that got diagnosed as just that—a scratch. And in macho “this is the military, don’t cry because you scraped your knee” fashion, the doctors told the soldier to stop being a pansy-ass crybaby and get with the program. Except it wasn’t just any ordinary scratch. It was deeper. And what festered there in the depths of that wound proved to be the ruin of everyone here.
The general realized that if the infection grew from the inside out, like cancer, then the soldier you were fighting alongside with to take out the monsters might be infected and you wouldn't even know it. That was probably what happened out on the battlefield. Suddenly your commanding officer lunged at you and took a bite out of you, and that was the beginning of the end. You would do the same to your entire unit, and they would spread it to the others, and then it was one big clusterfuck.
Greer pulled out a white handkerchief and wiped his glistening forehead. Looking up at the flight tower, he thought it was strange that there wasn’t a single black-winged scavenger in sight to feed on the field of carcasses that stretched out before him.
General Greer turned and went up the side stairs of the flight tower. Reaching the top, he stepped into the control room and grinned. He was glad to see the satellite link was still operational. He picked up the portable satellite transceiver and the black suitcase sized device, then made the long trek back down the stairs. Once back on the ground, Greer went over to his Komatsu LAV, opened the back hatch, and slid the transceiver inside.
The Komatsu was a sleek armored vehicle used specifically by the Japanese Self Defense Force. Only a handful of them ever made it to U.S. soil, but he had won it in a high-stakes game of Texas Hold ’Em with some high-ups in the Japanese chain of command. They were all pride and no skill. But in order to save face they “loaned” him the vehicle as a gesture of good faith between the two allied forces.
Although Greer had originally gone to Japan for some official business of wining and dining the top brass, in his downtime he was no stranger to the red-light districts of Osaka and Tokyo. Greer was fond of schmoozing and canoodling the wonderfully beguiling Asian women. Their intoxicating olive skin, elegant almond-shaped eyes, and highly reserved and sophisticated etiquette, especially the sort he found in Japan. Every furlough he got, Greer made his way to Japan. He came for the “health” spas, which was the official way of saying, “Mrs. Warren’s Asian profession.”
Wiping the sweat off the back of his neck, Greer tucked the handkerchief back inside his back pocket and then slammed the LAV’s rear door shut. He was a little out of breath from having hauled that goddamn contraption down five flights of stairs. Still hot, he stripped down to just a white t-shirt and his army-green cargo pants to keep cool. From behind him, he heard footsteps approaching and he discreetly reached for his gun. Sliding his finger around the trigger, he spun around only to s
ee a troupe of people headed his way.
Taking his hand off of his gun, he smiled in recognition of the ragtag group. It was Barnes and Noble, along with the two civilians they had rescued from earlier that week. As the group sauntered up to him, he greeted them. “Well ain’t you boys a sight for sore eyes.”
Barnes smiled and saluted. Noble followed his lead and did the same. The general saluted them back, then took Barnes’s hand and shook it heartily. “Though the worst when you boys went AWOL, glad to see it wasn’t something serious.”
“Just got pinned down is all, sir.”
“Have you heard anything from First Sergeant Valentine? She never made it to the rendezvous point as planned. She never got the word out to bring the heavy rain, and as far as I know the president is still waiting for a status report. I was hoping she’d be with you two so we could resolve this issue.”
Barnes’s face grew stiff as he tried to fight back the flood of emotions that sprang up the moment her name was mentioned. The general immediately knew by the reaction on Barnes’s face what the answer was.
“No, sir. I’m afraid First Sergeant Rebecca Miller Valentine didn’t make it.”
“Well, she was a top Marine,” Greer replied, his tone growing grave. “A damn fine Marine, for sure.”
“She was a damn fine woman too, sir.”
Greer simply nodded in agreement. It’s all he could do. There simply wasn’t anything more to be said from his end. She had died in the line of duty, and that made her a bona fide hero in his eyes.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Jesse Zanato interrupted, “what the fuck happened here? I thought the military was supposed to be the best of the best.”
Everyone took a moment to eye their surroundings and scope out the amount of devastation that was wrought by the battle with the living dead. It looked like a jumbo jet had exploded two hundred meters above the base and just rained corpses and random body parts everywhere.