The Regulators - 02

by Michael Clary

  I reacted on pure instinct and fired randomly. My weapon was on auto fire, but of course I missed. Georgie fired as well, but Georgie always misses so that’s not a big shocker.

  She jumped the last few stairs and screamed that undead scream.

  I caught her in the air. She smelled horrible. I rolled her to the side and kinda flipped her off of me. She barely weighed anything, so she flew across the room. As soon as she came to a stop though, she snapped back up and charged again.

  I didn’t miss on her second charge. I dropped her just a few steps into it. I never got a clear look at her face. I’m kinda glad about that.

  “Heads up,” Georgie said in a panic.

  The upstairs had suddenly come to life. About fifteen members of the undead club poured down the stairwell after us. The smell of decay was horrendous, I’m not sure how I didn’t notice it until they were rushing us, but we handled it as quickly and quietly as we could. The only scare came when Javie suffered a bite on the arm. It didn’t go through the bite suit, but it was a sobering experience.

  Things were looking pretty bleak. I almost got chomped on by a teenybopper zombie and we shot up half the freakin house taking care of only fifteen attackers. I was the ipso defacto leader if Jax wasn’t around, and I was not handling things very well. My arrogant ass uncle made this shit look easy.

  “Ipso facto.”

  Beg your pardon?

  “You said ipso defacto. What you meant to say was ipso facto.”

  I think you probably heard me wrong.

  “That must have been it. Please, continue with your story.”

  I didn’t hear him wrong; it’s just well known not to argue with Dudley. If he thinks the sky is purple, then even a blue sky over his head isn’t going to change his mind.

  Good idea. Where was I?

  “I believe you were getting to the part where you were now in charge and not handling it well.”

  I don’t like it when you say it. It sounds so much worse.

  I have to laugh at this and this time he actually joins in with me. It’s very hard to tell when he’s joking, because he has such a dry sense of humor. It’s very different from Jaxon’s, because Jaxon seems only concerned with humoring himself, so he’s quick to laugh even when nobody else gets the joke.

  I was saying that he can make the crazy decisions and throw himself in front of the bus a lot easier than I can, because he heals so fast. He doesn’t have to worry so much about getting killed. If zombies charged down the stairs at him, he would have charged right back.

  “From what I hear, the entire group has some pretty amazing recuperative abilities. Wasn’t it you that recovered from a bite?”

  Oh yeah, we do, but it’s not on his level. He’s the Guardian, we just help out. He was born to lead, and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether or not people get pissed at his decisions or the way he talks. It works for him. The rest of us aren’t so lucky.

  Anyway, I realized I was doing a piss poor job. So I decided to sack up and act like a man. I was the first one up the stairs. The boys were right behind me, but I was determined to bring our bad luck around.

  As soon as I took my first step, Mr. Rock-thrower himself called to me through the window.

  I almost shot him in the face.

  “Are they gone? Did you get them?”

  As soon as my heart stopped trying to jump out of my throat I answered.

  “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  “One of them actually managed to turn the doorknob on the back door. Fortunately, I had already taken my family to the roof before they came inside.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “My name’s Adam,” he answered. “You’re not the General, where’s the General?”

  It was a pretty fuckin good question. I was curious about the answer myself.

  “Well Mr. Dipshit, since you decided to let the entire neighborhood of shamblers know our position, he thought it would be a good idea to lead them away from here.”

  “I’m sorry. Those things were in the house. I couldn’t go down and meet you…and earlier today, I saw one of them moving in the house across the street…so I hid.”

  “Why didn’t you just throw another rock at us?” Georgie asked.

  “I was out of rocks. I couldn’t find anymore.”

  “Why are you still outside on the balcony. Why don’t you come in?” I asked.

  “It’s my family; they’re still on the roof. I need help bringing them down.”

  “Why do you need help bringing them down?” Georgie asked. The distrust was damn near dripping from his mouth.

  “They’re hurt.”

  Georgie let out a long breath. Javie was quiet; he doesn’t really talk much during tense situations. Kingsley slumped against the wall. We all had an idea why he needed help with his family. We just didn’t have Jaxon here to handle it for us.

  “His family had been bitten.”

  Yup, we learned since the Safe Zone that a person won’t tell you that they have a contaminated family member. Instead, they tell you they have an injured family member. It’s hard for them to face the truth…and the truth is their family member needs to be put down. I think that they’re hoping the loved one will recover, and they need to protect them from people like us until they do.

  A lot of people have died believing that. It’s unfortunate, but they always turn. There is no cure; it’s a death sentence, unless of course you’re a Regulator.

  Don’t think we’re lucky though. Lucky would be living up in Alaska, far away from this shit and watching it on the TV.

  “Let’s take a look,” I said.

  I climbed out the window after him. Georgie went with me. Javie and Kingsley stayed by the stairwell to make sure nothing snuck up on us. If they were turned, I was hoping Georgie would put them down instead of me. I didn’t want that on my conscience.

  Once on the balcony, we had to shimmy up the chimney to get to the roof. It wasn’t too difficult, but I put some scratches on my mp7. Georgie, being the gun nut that he is, looked at me like I was an idiot.

  There was an indention on the roof between two skylights. Two figures were there covered in blankets. One of them was moaning and twisting around. I approached her and saw that it was a little girl. She was as white as a ghost even in the dark of night. She had a bandage on her arm from where she was probably bitten and had a gag in her mouth to keep her from screaming. It looked like she had died just a few hours ago.

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I tied her up. I don’t think she’s gone all the way. Sometimes she stares at me like she remembers who I am.”

  For a second, I almost lost my emotions. This scene was playing very close to my not so distant past. A scared to death little girl and Jaxon, Kingsley and I just praying that she wouldn’t turn from her bite. I was carrying her when she turned. I haven’t forgotten that one. Maybe I won’t ever forget any of them, but that one really bothered me. I was carrying her when she died, and I didn’t even notice until my uncle shot her in the head.

  Georgie put his hand on the man’s shoulder. The poor guy started to cry. He did it quietly, but I could see his shoulders bobbing up and down as Georgie hugged him.

  “You’re not the General,” said the woman next to the child.

  “No,” I answered. “The General would know what to do.”

  “Adam won’t let her go,” she said. “But I don’t want this for her. I can’t even hold her anymore. My baby is gone.”

  The woman was damn near as pale as the child, but even though she looked pretty weak, she was still all there.

  “Were you bitten?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “When?” I asked.

  “A few days ago, we were hiding in a house a few streets over. I was in the kitchen by the window when something broke through the glass and dragged me out. It pulled me up on the roof and started biting me.”

  Now that was odd. A bite to the neck should have
turned her pretty quickly.

  “Let me see the bite,” I said.

  She obliged by turning her head, moving her hair and showing me the bandage.

  “If you get the sudden urge to eat me, give me a warning,” I said as I pulled back the bandage.

  Underneath, was a nasty ass bite, but it didn’t look infected. Zombie bites normally fill up with pus and turn all sorts of nasty colors within about twenty minutes after the attack. This bite just looked like an injury.

  “Were you attacked at the same time as your daughter?” I asked.

  “No, my daughter was attacked today. We left our last hiding place because we kept hearing footsteps on the roof. We thought it might be the same zombie that had bitten me. After I was attacked, Adam boarded up all the windows. The thing on the roof seemed like it was looking for a way in. After a couple nights of it returning over and over again, we decided to find a safer place. Adam carried me the entire way. We only wanted to keep our little girl safe.”

  “Of course,” I said. “What else could you do? It’s not your fault, so don’t ever go and start thinking that way.”

  She started crying.

  “I’m not sure what to do, let me talk to my teammate,” I said. When in doubt, I figured that I might as well be honest.

  The Regulators have a strict policy when someone gets bitten. We absolutely do not put them down until they turn. I had no problems pulling out the father, but there was unfortunately nothing I could do for the mother and daughter because we also had a strict policy about not extracting infected people. Well, I take it back. There was something I could do for them. It just wasn’t going to be easy.

  I pulled Georgie into a brief conference. He agreed with me about evacuating the father and putting down the daughter. However, he absolutely did not want to be the one to do it. He had a daughter of his own and the very thought of shooting a child was too disturbing for him. As far as the mother was concerned, we were gonna wait for her to turn and put her down as well.

  We gave them some space to say their goodbyes, but we kept our eyes on them all the same in case they did something foolish in their grief. It was a pretty emotional scene, I don’t really want to get into it, but it deeply affected both Georgie and I.

  After their farewells were said, Georgie helped Adam move his wife back inside the house where Kingsley and Javie were waiting. Though she seemed rather weak, she had none of the joint pains that other infected people seemed to acquire very shortly after being bitten. I had no idea what to make of the situation.

  Finally, I was left alone on the roof with their child. I wanted to do it quickly and be done with it. I rushed towards her and raised my rifle, but I couldn’t fire. It was a child. I didn’t want to shoot a child. Yet, I had to do it. I had to do the right thing by that little girl and her parents.

  It took a while, but I finally mustered up enough courage and put her out of her misery. There was no loud bang, just a muffled thump as the bullet traveled through the rifles silencer. Her life was over.

  “Her life was over when she was bitten.”

  Yeah, that’s what Jax always tells us.

  Anyway, I was a little sullen after that. I needed a moment by myself before I rejoined the team, so I just sort of sat there on the roof for awhile and waited for the sun to start trying to peak out over the mountains.

  It wasn’t long before Hardin was talking in my ear.

  “Dudley, are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “I saw everything. You did the right thing.”

  I always forget that our ear pieces also have small cameras. I made a mental note to remember that the next time I had to pee.

  Then all of a sudden it hit me.

  “Where’s Jaxon?” I asked.

  “We lost contact with him as soon as he charged the horde. We have air support tracking the mass right now.”

  That’s when I realized that I completely forgot about my ear piece radio. I hadn’t tried contacting my uncle since we first entered the house. I needed to quit making mistakes, people were depending on me.

  “Why don’t you have the choppers open fire on the horde?” I asked.

  “Because we aren’t exactly sure where Jaxon is in the mass, it’s jumbled and chaotic; they are moving fast and traveling through alleys, backyards and homes. We could end up hitting Jaxon by mistake.”

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked.

  “We are hoping that he will lose his pursuers and find a way to contact us.”

  “I want you to keep me informed on this. In the meantime, I have an extraction. It’s a man and woman, the woman is infected, so we’ll wait that out and take care of it. It probably shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Right, we’re on top of it, we’ve already located the nearest extraction point.”

  I forgot about the damn cameras again.

  “Alright, we’re going to stay here until tomorrow evening, just in case Jax makes his way back.”

  I finally went back inside the house as the sun rose in the sky and had everyone gather up in the living room. The poor girl’s parents were filled with grief. I had Kingsley and Javie move all the corpses we’d shot up to the front and back exit of the house in an attempt to mask the smell of the living people inside. I wasn’t sure it would work, but they smelled pretty bad to me. Hopefully if a shambler happened to walk by, they wouldn’t be able to sniff us out.

  Those things have some serious nose power.

  When all was said and done, we all settled down to rest. The team took turns on guard duty. Fortunately, nothing exciting came our way, and we were able to relax a bit. I was even able to get some food and liquids into Michelle.

  “Michelle is the girl’s mother?”

  Yeah, Adam’s wife, I finally got her name. She was actually starting to look a lot better. I couldn’t explain it; I thought for sure she was a dead woman. I was seriously out of my depth here, so after examining her wound again and applying some antibiotic, I gave my earpiece a tap.

  “This is Miriam.”

  I was expecting Hardin. To be honest, I really didn’t know Miriam all that well and I’m not sure if we had ever even spoken.

  Dudley is well known to be very quiet around people he doesn’t know. However, that all changes once he becomes used to them. When that happens, well, everyone tells me that they need some earplugs if they expect to get any sleep.

  “I was looking for Hardin,” I said.

  “He’s taking a break. Is this about Jaxon?”

  I had been pestering them all morning for information about my uncle. They were probably getting pretty tired of me, and I was getting pretty sick of them not having anything new to tell. That last decent bit I heard came shortly after sunup and all they knew for certain was that the large group of undead in pursuit of my uncle had broken up and begun to disperse.

  “There was no sign of the General?”

  None. He seemed to have vanished, and the zombies were going back to doing whatever it is that zombies like to do when they aren’t chasing and eating people. On the plus side, when the sun came up enough to see clearly, the helicopter was able to fire into the remaining groups of shamblers and start dwindling down their numbers.

  “Were you worried?”

  A little bit, but I knew he got away. If he got caught, they would have seen that massive horde come to an abrupt stop while they ripped into him. They don’t need to positively identify someone to know whether or not they are being devoured.

  My worry was how he was going to find his way back in hostile territory. When the horde finally began to disperse, they were miles and miles away on the opposite side of Mesa towards the Sunland Park Mall. Go ahead and feel free to insert a number of mall related zombie jokes.

  I’m sure everyone will get his reference, so I’m not going to explain it.

  “It wouldn’t be very original if he hid inside a mall would it?”

  Absolutely not, and if Jaxon is anythin
g, he’s original.

  This, however, wasn’t about Jaxon. This was about Michelle and me being out of my depth.

  “No, it’s about this woman with the bite,” I told Miriam over the radio.

  “Is she getting worse?” Miriam asked.

  “No, it’s the opposite. She seems to be getting better.”

  “Dudley, there is no getting better from a zombie bite. The onset of symptoms varies depending on the severity of the bite, but the conditions will only worsen.”

  “Okay, well what about some kind of remission?”

  “No such things with a zombie bite, things just go from bad to worse.”

  Now, just to give you a little back story, Miriam knows what she’s talking about. She works with our team in a sort of advisory capacity.

  “I’ve certainly heard of her, yet I’ve never met her or even seen her. If I remember correctly, Skie told me that she’s a three hundred year old witch. Can you tell me in what sort of way she advises the team?”

  She’s an expert on the scary stuff. She knows all about what’s out there going bump in the night. In other words, she knows stuff about monsters.

  “I get it.”

  Awesome, so we’re on the same page?

  “Yes we are.”

  Then you can understand how confused I was, because right in the next room was a woman that seemed to be improving after being bitten by a shambler.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “I just looked at the bite mark and it really doesn’t look too bad. It actually looks like it might be healing. On top of that, the woman herself seems to have a lot more energy, and she’s taking foods and liquids.”

  “Really?” Miriam asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “Are you sure she’s not faking. The poor woman is probably scared to death.”

  “I guess she could be faking the whole feeling better part, but I’m not sure how she could be faking a healing wound.”

  “Do me a favor and put the camera close to the wound, so I can see it this time,” said Miriam.

  I did as Miriam asked. I went back over to Michelle; I took my earpiece off and held it close to her bite mark for a few seconds. After that, I place the contraption back on my ear, I think my actions kinda freaked out Michelle, but the woman didn’t get emotional or anything. That actually impressed me. I remember when I was bitten. I was freaking right the fuck out, and I would have probably freaked out a lot worse if I had started to feel any major symptoms. The sigh of relief I breathed out when I realized I could heal was enormous.