by Will Lemen
So as we approached the chair bound fiend, we could see the gleam of excitement in his glazed over deadened glare.
Unfortunately, for the wheeled abomination, as Beth walked by, she took the liberty of sticking her pocketknife down through the top of its head as it reached for her.
"That eater wasn't even a threat, it was stuck in the wheelchair for some reason," I said. "You didn't even have to waste your time killing it."
"It's never a waste of time killing eaters," Beth replied, using my vernacular.
"That's one reason that I want you to come with me to the Caucasian's place, you're a good fighter, and you've got a good attitude too," I complimented. "You two girls don't even have to go in, just take us there and we'll find a safe place for you to wait while I go in and find the Sarge. Hell I might even let you take a swipe or two at him before I kill him."
"Well since you put it like that, I guess I can help you," Beth answered, with a gleam in her eye.
"I'm not going to run around here by myself, I wouldn't last a week," Jolene pouted, shaking out the last few dislocated maggots still clinging to her dirty blonde hair. "So I guess I've got no choice, I have to go with you guys."
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THE FORTRESS
About a mile from our destination, we found a two bedroom, two-bath ranch-style brick house complete with an attic and a basement and a small amount of food and water in the kitchen. The perfect house for Beth and Jolene to await our return.
"We're only about a mile away from the fortress," Beth informed us. "Go straight down this road and you'll see an old light brown brick high school with a huge domed gym, that's where you'll find the Sarge and the Caucasian."
"Okay, you two stay in the house and stay quiet, there's still a lot of eaters roaming around, we'll be back as soon as possible," I ordered, hoping the girls would heed my warning.
"You've got five days, not a minute longer, if you're not back by then you're most likely dead," Beth asserted, as Jolene nodded her head in agreement.
"Don't you worry your pretty little head, we'll be back, and in the mean time stay the hell out of the attic and the basement, you hear me?" I warned. "You don't want to get trapped in either."
Just before we opened the front door to leave, Beth pulled my head down and kissed me on the cheek.
"Be careful, that's a dangerous place that you're going," she said with a look of concern in her eyes.
Jolene feeling the imaginary peer pressure, leaned over and kissed Derek on the cheek as well.
I cracked the front door an inch and checked for any of the undead that might be ghosting the front yard.
With the lawn and neighborhood beyond devoid of any standing, walking, crawling, or moving corpses, Derek and I ran out the door and covered as much distance as we could to lead any people, dead or alive away from the house.
"Do you think we might want to wait a few hours and do this under the cover of darkness?" Derek asked, having second thoughts about going to the compound, and thinking of Jolene's goodbye kiss.
"If we go in the daytime instead of night, we'll be able to see everything that's going on outside with the so called guards and with the eaters that Beth says circles the place looking for free scraps of humans to feed on," I explained. "Besides, if we show up during the day, we're just a couple of harmless and weary travelers with nothing to hide, looking for an old friend and a safe refuge to pitch our tent. And don't worry; Jolene will still be waiting for you when we get back."
"Who?" Derek asked, very unconvincingly.
"Who my ass, I saw the way you almost popped a woody when she kissed you on the cheek," I teased. "I can only imagine what would have happened if she had kissed you on the lips. I probably would have had to call for a wet cleanup on aisle five."
"Very funny, I almost forgot to laugh," Derek jeered. "You just make sure you don't get us both killed sometime during this little venture of yours. Because when we get back, I intend to do a little more than just kiss that cute little thing. If you know what I mean?"
"Well I hope you mean after you scrub her up, she still stinks of road kill," I laughed.
"I'm forgetting to laugh again," Derek said, grinning.
I paused not bothering to respond to my partner's jest.
"That's got to be it, it's just as Beth described it," I said, pointing to a beige brick building in the distance with a round domed roof. "Start making nice, it's show time."
The Caucasian's fortress was a high school before the worldwide zombie plague decimated everything.
Although the school's mascot had been some kind of rabid looking wiener dog with an attitude. Which seemed fitting, considering Center for Disease Control in Atlanta at one point had surmised that the disease of the dead could have possibly been caused by the overpopulation of feral canines. It looked like it used to be a nice educational institution prior to the planet being dismantled by the deadly virus.
The school was laid out on what were probably four or five acres, maybe more. It was self-contained having its own football field, baseball diamond, and of all things, tennis courts.
I would find out later that along with the schools swim team came an indoor swimming pool, and the basketball gym that sat beneath the dome was nothing short of world class.
That's most likely the reason that the Caucasian picked this particular facility to set up shop.
After all, the school was built close to the middle of the acreage that it sat on, giving at least a two-hundred yard no-man's land killing field on every side.
The whole structure was constructed of brick, and had somehow managed to avoid being blown all to hell during the massive bombing raid that turned that part of Indiana into a pock marked wasteland.
If it weren't for the over abundant amount of undead carnivores inhabiting the surrounding land, I would have considered taking it away from the Caucasian.
We walked into the parking lot next to the gym and were within fifty yards of the building, when two men dressed in black uniforms with black hats and black tactical vests carrying black AR type rifles opened one of the doors and yelled.
"What's the password gentlemen?"
Not having a clue what the password was, and wondering why Beth had not mentioned anything about a password, I didn't answer, but I did the next best thing.
I pulled my tomahawk from my own tactical vest and carved the face off a rapidly approaching zombie that reminded me of my great-grandmother (on my father's side).
Then without a moment's hesitation, I spun around in a 360° circle to gain momentum, and chopped the left arm of grandma off at the elbow.
As the female zombie continued to lunge at me, relatively speaking of course, I hewed her right arm off at the shoulder after side stepping her advance.
Figuring that I had made my point, I twirled around once more and cleanly sliced the top two inches of gramma's head off.
"So much for harmless weary travelers, uh Jack?" Derek sighed.
"Well you know, the best laid plans of mice and men," I answered sarcastically, before yelling back to the two doormen.
"Doom, the name is Doom, Jack Doom, I'm looking for the Sarge, I was told he was here."
"We don't know any Sarge," one man answered. "Come closer and keep your hands where we can see them, and don't make any sudden moves."
"He also goes by the moniker Ron." I stated, now hoping that they wouldn't ask me his last name, because if my life depended on it I just couldn't remember it, and my life did depend on it.
"Oh, Ron, isn't he the guy that's always smacking around that cute little blonde girl?" One of the guards asked the other.
"Yeah, that's him, I think I heard him say he was a sergeant back before all hell broke loose," the other guard answered.
I bent down and wiped the maggots, and the usual slim off my weapon using grandmother's best Sunday go to meeting outfit as my rag, and then we moseyed toward the two sentries.
"What's your business with Ron?" Th
e curious guard asked, now pointing his rifle at me.
"Exactly," I answered. "It's my business, not yours."
"Are you trying to get us killed?" Derek whispered, trying not to move his lips.
"Relax, everything is going to be all right," I answered, in a very calm voice.
"Nobody comes in here until they state their business, the boss is very particular about who he lets in," the guard announced.
"Okay, fair enough, you're just doing your job," I acknowledged, changing my harsh demeanor to a somewhat friendly one.
"The Sarge is an old friend of mine, we served together in the military, and we fought the dead together sometime back before we were separated, I heard in Oklahoma that he had joined your group, and me and my friend here decided that we might want to join you too.
We'd be a valuable asset to your group. Both of us kill zombies real good."
"It will be up to the boss if you can stay or not, that's not our call," the guard spouted.
"Well if you could be so kind as to inform the Sarge that his old friend Jack is here, I'm sure he'll put in a good word for us both."
"Ron is out looking for his bitch, we don't know when he'll be back," the guard said smiling. "He was pretty pissed when he left, said he was going to kill that little whore when he finds her."
"Holy shit," Derek whispered again, still trying not to move his lips. "These are serious ass holes."
Also trying not to move my lips while maintaining a fake smile for the boys in black, I whispered back.
"Shut the fuck up, and let me handle this!"
For once Derek took my advice without retort, and stood silent as I conversed with the guards.
"In that case I'd... we'd... like to make an appointment to meet with your boss and pled our case," I said, still smiling. "I believe he goes by the name of The Caucasian, does he not?"
"Step inside, your attracting biters," the taller of the two guards ordered, with his gun still leveled at my chest. "And make it fast, we don't need every fly on the planet in here with us."
We wasted no time complying with the sentry's demand and entered the building quickly, waving our arms in a nonchalant fashion to shoo away a few trailing flies before we did so.
"Put your weapons on the floor, all of your weapons, and then get up against the wall!"
Again, we complied with the guards demands.
We stretched out our arms and legs and leaned against the interior wall of the building.
Now with our weapons in a pile on the floor behind us, I was the one having second thoughts about whether coming into the Caucasian's den was such a good idea, and I wasn't even thinking about Beth's goodbye kiss.
The guards search was as thorough as it could possibly be without having us peel our duds and giving us a multiple cavity search complete with a deep-seated anal probe.
Satisfied that we were of little threat without our weapons, we were escorted to a holding room and informed that the Caucasian would be notified of our desire to meet with him.
Time passed slowly as we awaited the Caucasian's response to our request in the small room that most likely housed physical education equipment for the school before this bunch took over the gym.
Finally after what seemed like hours, the guards in black return with the answer.
"The Caucasian will see you now," the sentry said. "But do yourselves a favor and don't fuck with him, or he'll have your nuts in a sling before nightfall, you already killed one of his roaming skin eaters."
"We wouldn't think of as you say, fucking with your boss." I replied, as I thought. "I just know Derek is thinking homophobic thoughts about now."
"It was grandma or me on the parking lot, I chose me," I mentioned in my defense.
The guard ignored my comment as we were escorted up to an upper level of the gym to an area behind where the rollout bleachers were blocking the view of the gymnasium floor.
There we saw our first glimpse of the infamous Caucasian that supposedly ruled the Indiana Badlands with an iron fist.
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THE CAUCASIAN
When we first laid eyes on the man that was known as the Caucasian. It all became very clear to us both why the leader of this feared cult in the heart of Indiana had such a name.
There before us in that abandoned school gym, sitting between two want-to-be paramilitary types that were armed with the dreaded black rifles complete with fixed bayonets, and sporting various other lethal weapons that were attached to their belts such as billy clubs and machetes, sat a giant.
The Caucasian was a full-fledged albino male, and I guesstimated he was every bit of seven feet tall and most likely even taller, although it was hard to calculate his exact height while he was sitting down.
The man's high and bulbous cheekbones seemed to magnify his already pale elongated face, giving it the illusion of being even larger.
Piercing pink tinted eyes with their pale crimson irises gave his stare an eerie and presumed evil intent, a premeditated persona that I figured the gigantic man was pleased to project.
His extremely long arthritic looking bony fingers adorned with their light pink fingernails were reminiscent of King Crab legs dangling at his sides.
Long snowy white locks capped with a bleached out and polished real human skull for a hat, hung straight down, and allowed his huge ears to peek out from behind the strands of hair as if they were peering through a curtain.
He sat hunched up in his chair, which was several sizes too small for his freakishly large body.
As I gazed upon the giant a weird thought crossed my mind, and for the first few seconds of our encounter with the gangly freak, all I could think of was. "Where in the fuck did this guy find a skull bigger than his own grossly protuberant head? One big enough that he could hollow it out and wear as a skullcap."
Spreading his legs slightly, and staring at me through his elephant-man looking knees that were prominent as they peeked out from under his friar's robe type garb, he began to speak. The sound of his deep voice brought me back into the moment.
"Mr. Doom I presume?" the Caucasian asked, with an accent that I couldn't quite place.
"Yes," I answered, then adding to avoid any confusion. "That would be me."
"May I call you Mr. Doom?" he asked, not waiting for my answer.
"Mr. Doom, in my line of work, I have had the pleasure of coming into contact with many naive travelers that think that their journey through this here zombie apocalypse of ours is just another chance to gather around a roaring campfire and hold hands with the people that they meet along the way. A chance to roast marshmallows and sing a few choice choruses' of I'd like to buy the world a Coke in perfect harmony, and then hang together in peace and euphony forever after."
"I've ran across a few of those nimrods myself," I admitted to the giant."So what's so pleasurable about having to deal with those fools?"
"Well, they are much easier to get along with than people like yourself that seem to know the real intent of that thing that is called human nature."
"By the way, nice skullcap," I said sarcastically, to the abnormally tall cult leader.
"Thank you Mr. Doom, it was a gift from one of my followers. He inadvertently crossed paths with one of the outside beasts that seemed to have contracted a rather extreme case of macrocephaly," the huge albino explained to me, as if I knew what in the hell macrocephaly was. "After he had sliced the top of the biters skull off with his rigging ax, he realized that the big head disease (now I knew) had formed a rare and unique find, and that I had no such adornment in my collection. He surmised that this calcified cranial cap would be a suitable gift to present to his master, so he cleaned and bleached the bony cap, and polished it to give it the brilliant sheen it now displays."
When the freakish dolt was finished bragging about his grotesque head cover, and making me wish that I had never mentioned it, I introduce Derek to him.
"Yeah, and this is Mr. Derek," I told him, not knowing Derek
's last name.
"Hi!" Derek said cheerfully. "You can call me Mr. Derek."
Standing up, his disproportionately tall stature seemed dwarfed by the massive dome roof of the high school gym.
"Mr. Doom, Mr. Derek, come, I will show you how I get along with people unlike yourselves, provided that Mr. Derek is just like you Mr. Doom." the Caucasian said, as he led us through a side door and down a flight of stairs, leaving his two guards waiting in his chamber for our return. "They are just outside this door."
"What are they doing out there, having another sing along?" I asked snidely, winking at Derek.
The pale-skinned man bent down and swung open the door.
"No Mr. Doom, they are just hanging around out there," he said, making grotesque facial distortions as he spoke.
As the door opened wide, the stench was like a freight train smashing into my nose, even though it was a smell that I'd endured many times before, I was just starting to get used to the musty locker room odor in the high school gym.
Outside the gym, we could see hundreds of snapping heads hanging in small net bags on what looked like rows of make shift clotheslines made of heavy gauge wire.
Along with a slight breeze that was also sweeping their reeking stink into the building, the constant opening and closing of their chopping mouths propelled their motion as they bit at the flies that hovered all around them.
Under each bag were varying sizes of maggot filled saliva pools giving off an eerie illusion of life, as the small larvae squirmed in the juices of the still propagating spit glands constantly secreting as the severed heads pumped their jaws.
"Every Saturday and Sunday nights, we have what my followers refer to as fight nights; some of the heads that are hanging in front of you are from the fighters that lost their battle on fight nights.
However, most of the heads you see swinging in front of you are the weaklings of this world that thought they would... how did I put it before? Oh yes, they thought that they would buy me a Coke!