The Regulators - 02

by Michael Clary

  When the items were placed, I ran back up to where I had left the bike. I could barely see the computer screen in the middle of the road. I climbed to the roof of the same house I had entered to gather my targets. I crawled to the very edge of the roof and peered through the scope at the computer screen in the middle of the road.

  The scope was excellent. I could very clearly see my target. I dropped a round in the chamber and slid the bolt all the way home. I took aim very carefully. I controlled my breathing and held my breath on the next inhale. I squeezed the trigger until the bang actually surprised me.

  My aim was true, and the scope was accurate. The computer screen just about exploded. I retracted the bolt and dropped in another round. I took out the clock with no problem. The vase was even easier. The rifle was awesome. It was going to work perfectly.

  Zombies began to pour out of the nearby homes.

  I didn’t even notice it since I was still staring through the scope, and my vision was limited. I did however hear the screams.

  I pulled out my tomahawk the minute I hit the ground. There were about five of them waiting for me. I took the top of the nearest zombies head off with my first swing. The second swing met my next attacker in the kneecap. I was being as careful as possible not to bang around the rifle too much. I didn’t want to screw up the accuracy.

  I ran the short distance to the dirt bike before the others could grab a hold of me and placed the rifle back inside its case. I could see more zombies in the distance. All of them were headed right towards me. I pulled out my Recon 1 knife with my left hand.

  I took out the three I had just avoided by stabbing one with my left hand and chopping the other two with the tomahawk. The shambler whose knee I had destroyed was crawling my way but not yet close enough to be a danger.

  It was the thirty some screaming mass from farther down the street that worried me. I stashed my weapons in their holsters and jumped on the bike. I gave it a kick. Nothing. I gave it another kick. Still nothing. I could smell gas. The engine must have flooded.

  I hopped off the bike, grabbed the handle bars, put my left foot on the left foot peg, and ran the bike down the road in the direction of the screaming shamblers. I needed speed to pull this off, and fortunately for me, the street I was on had a pretty decent downward slope. I would have much preferred the slope to head away from the advancing horde of zombies, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  As soon as I started picking up speed, I pushed with my right foot to gather some more. I was about ten feet from the zombies before I felt that I had gathered enough speed to pop the clutch. The bike roared to life instantly. I spun it around as fast as I could but not fast enough to avoid the furiously grasping hands. The bite proof material of my clothes protected my skin from being ripped open from the many jagged nails scratching for a grip, but I did somehow take a pretty decent strike to the kidneys before I was able to get up to speed and leave them behind me.

  Overall, it was a good lesson for me. I now knew I only had enough time for one or two shots. If I hung around after that, the area would become infested.

  I rode that crappy ass bike all over the place to confuse all the shamblers. I took so many twists and turns, I almost got lost myself. At the top of Tarascas, I killed the engine and coasted down the hill. The first thing I did was pick up Merrick. She did her normal little dance of greeting for me. I raided some of the homes I had previously entered and managed to scrounge the both of us something to eat. It wasn’t great, and I’m a picky eater.

  Afterwards, the two of us walked higher up the road to the tallest house. I was pretty sure it would be tall enough for my purposes, but there was only one way to find out. I climbed up to the roof with my rifle. When I found a pretty comfortable position, I sighted down towards the roof of the home I used to identify my pursuer. I could see the entire roof perfectly. There wasn’t a single corner that would block a shot. The distance was a bit far. I was a little nervous about that. There just wasn’t anything I could do to get closer and still retain an unobstructed view.

  The next thing I did was walk back to the target house and turn on a bunch of outside lights. I figured if I turned on the lights during the daytime, zombies wouldn’t be attracted by the sudden appearance of light.

  The final thing I did before I began my rest was prepare my exit strategy. Even with only one or two shots being fired, I would need to get the hell out of Dodge. It was late afternoon when I finished turning on all the lights. I simply didn’t have time to look for a new vehicle so I stashed my crappy dirt bike against the side of my new house after I strapped a hard plastic laundry basket to the back of the seat and the back fender.

  Everything was ready.

  All I had to do was wait around until the shaggy headed woman in the white dress showed up, if she showed up. I was pretty sure she would. She would want to follow my trail and take up the hunt again. Besides, she was probably more determined than ever after I gave her the finger and pissed her off.

  Merrick and I took a nap in the upstairs bedroom of the new house. I can’t say it was the best sleep I have ever enjoyed. In fact, it was rather restless. I was worried that my hunter would come before the sun set. I kept telling myself that she would wait for the darkness because she was a predator and most predators like to hunt in the night. Still, what the hell did I know?

  As soon as the sun had started to set, I was on the roof.

  The waiting game had begun. The hunt was on. Except this time, I was going to be playing the role of the hunter. To tell the truth, I was almost having fun.

  It wasn’t long after the sun had set when she made her appearance. I was once again shocked at how fast she could move. She leapt from house to house until she reached the roof of the home she had spotted me in at the end of the previous evening.

  I knew she would come back there. She needed to pick up my scent again and that was the last place she had seen me. All the lights I had turned on managed to create just enough of a glow that I could see most of the rooftop.

  I sighted her through the scope and watched as she walked around sniffing the air and peering down over the sides of the roof. Eventually, I caught sight of her face, and the scope brought it up close and personal. The skin was an odd, grayish color. It might have been a trick of the lights, but I couldn’t be sure. It was her mouth that bothered me the most. There was a black stain all around her lips. Hell, even the backs of her hands had a black stain on them. It was pretty gross, especially when I realized where the stain came from. She was a drooler, and the drool was for whatever reason colored black. Her hands carried the stain from when she would wipe at her mouth. Other than that, she looked rather normal, possibly even attractive if you took away the black drool and combed her hair.

  She turned and looked right at me.

  How she managed to find me again, I had no idea. I was beginning to really dislike the woman. So I shot her. The crack of the rifle in the quiet evening was loud as hell, but my aim was true, kind of. The bullet punched a nasty hole in the right side of her chest and spun her around so that her back was facing me as she dropped to her knees. The exit wound pretty much took out her entire shoulder blade.

  I heard the familiar zombie screams echoing out from a few streets over in response to the gunshot. I would have company very shortly. Too bad I wasn’t going to be here for them. I had a smile on my face as I stared at the crumpled form of the woman-thing that had been stupid enough to try and hunt me. I can’t even begin to tell you how satisfied it made me feel when I shot her, as morbid as that sounds. In my defense however, let me remind you that she led my entire team into a zombie filled nightmare trap. She blocked off the roads and dinged up a beautiful car and last, but certainly not least, she had been hunting me. She probably wanted to eat me. I didn’t know that for a fact, but she certainly wasn’t human.

  She stood back up.

  I don’t know how she did it. The damage should have been fatal enough for three people, but she stood b
ack up. I shot her again. This time my aim was a bit better, and I nailed her right in the spine. I knew the wound had severed her spinal cord at the very least. She just rag-dolled onto the rooftop. I watched as long as I dared, but there was no further movement, and I could hear the sounds of pounding feet from farther up the street.

  I left the rifle on the roof and jumped down to the side of the house where the dirt bike was waiting for me with Merrick sitting grumpily in the basket. I grabbed the handlebars and ran the bike to the street.

  The zombies were a mere house length away from us, and there were a whole bunch of them. I never actually stopped to count just how many; I was too busy running down the street while they got closer and closer to catching me. The zombies must have been just a few feet away when I jumped on the bike and popped the clutch. None of them even managed to tag me. I was too fast on the bike, and I didn’t need to spin around. It was a straight shot down the hill.

  I heard a chilling scream just as I rounded the turn and sped off down Westwind. It wasn’t a zombie scream. It was something different, and, if you can believe it, the scream sounded somewhat angrier.

  Whatever, I wasn’t sticking around. Things had gotten way too hot for me on Tarascas. I flew down Westwind and slid around the first turn I came to. I don’t remember the street name, but it wasn’t really important. I grew up around that area; I didn’t need to know what street I was on. I would find Oveja just by heading in the right direction.

  “You were still going back to where you left your team. Even though you believed that you walked straight into a trap the last time you visited that area. Did you believe that the team would still be there?”

  I doubted they would still be there. It’s not good to stay in one place very long when you are visiting a zombie occupied city, but I was hoping that they’d left me some sort of message as to where I could find them.

  Imagine my surprise when I rounded the last turn with my craptastic bike and found my super Jeep waiting for me just as pretty as you please. I can’t even begin to tell you how relieved I was. The Jeeps we were using would plow through just about any road block my shaggy haired, drooler friend could come up with.

  “Speaking of her, did you believe that you had killed her?”

  I wasn’t sure if I had killed her or not. That scream I heard didn’t sound zombie like at all. However, if the scream did indeed come from her, I was pretty sure that I gave her enough damage to keep her off my ass.

  At least, that’s what I was hoping.

  Whatever the case, I was certain that once I reached the Jeep, I’d be safe enough from anything until I could reunite with my team. So, I dropped the craptastic bike right in the middle of the road, set Merrick down in the back seat of the Jeep, and hopped behind the wheel.

  The keys were waiting for me in the ignition. There wasn’t a note telling me how to locate them, but the vehicle did have a computer with a direct link to Hardin. It took a moment to figure it out, but I finally got through to him.

  “Jesus! Jaxon, is that you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” I answered as I turned the key in the ignition and revved up the engine.

  “We’ve been worried sick about you,” Hardin said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “It’s a story to tell,” I said. “But right now I need to find my team.”

  “Yes,” Hardin said. “I think that would be a pretty good idea. Miriam has found something that is worrying her. It has to do with a bite mark on one of the survivors the team extracted while you were missing.”

  “Yeah,” I answered loudly in an effort to cut him off before he really started going. “Just tell me where they’re at.”

  When he told me that they were at the Safe Zone, I started laughing and clicked off the computer before he could start blabbing in my ear again.

  “Why were you laughing?”

  Because I spent the last couple of evenings knee deep in shit and those assholes were hiding out in the relative safety of the Safe Zone. That was kinda funny to me. I had every intention of picking on all of them mercilessly.

  I was about to drive off when a thought occurred to me. So instead I backed up a bit to one of the houses in which the zombies had poured out of two nights ago. The windows had been boarded up. I hopped out of the Jeep and walked up to the front door of the house. The door was reinforced, and the wood along all the locks had burn marks where it had been cracked and broken. Further investigation showed me small shards of some unknown plastic lying on the floor.

  “The locks were blown, weren’t they?”

  I’m no explosives expert, but that would be my guess, and I bet that if I checked out those other houses, I’d find the same kind of damage around the locks. I was now certain. We had walked into a trap.

  I just didn’t understand the why of things.

  When I was about halfway back to the Jeep, Merrick gave a little warning growl. In response, I pulled my pistol out of its holster. I didn’t see any sign of danger on the road, but just in case I moved as quickly as possible to the Jeep.

  As soon as I was in the vehicle, I hit the lights and saw her standing in the middle of the road.

  I was really beginning to hate this woman. I tore off with a very serious attempt to run her down, but as soon as I was about to hit her, she leapt onto the hood of the Jeep, stepped over to the roll bar and dropped over the back.

  She waved to me as I drove off.

  Then she started to chase after me. I didn’t realize it at first; I was watching her in the rear view mirror of course, but I took my eyes off of her for one brief moment to avoid some shamblers in the road, and when I looked back she was gone.

  The zombies were beginning to swarm on the area. There weren’t too many to make me nervous, but that was going to change rapidly. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t going to be there, but it made me wonder if my new friend left the scene to avoid the zombies.

  Merrick began to whine as soon as I hit open road. I looked back in my rearview mirror and there she was, running behind us. I freaked out a bit and hit the gas, but even full throttle she was gaining rapidly.

  As soon as she reached the back left corner of the Jeep, she rammed it with her shoulder. Merrick and I spun around at least twice before I managed to bring the vehicle under control once again.

  I didn’t waste much time looking for her as we came to a stop. There were zombies all around the vehicle. I’m not sure where they came from; I had been too busy dividing my attention between the road and the evil bitch chasing us down.

  It sorta freaked me out.

  I stopped the spinning, tried to grab a quick breath of air and suddenly there were a bunch of decaying hands grabbing at me. Merrick began to savage the first zombie that tried to crawl over her as I smacked away some hands, put the Jeep in gear, and tore out of there like a bat out of hell.

  There was a zombie clinging to the back of the Jeep. I pointed him out to Merrick, and she gleefully hopped into the back seat and tore chunks out of its hands until he fell away.

  I looked into the rearview and saw her once again. She was tearing right through the mass of zombies. She was like a force of nature. Anytime one of them got in front of her, she just smacked them out of the way like a little kid knocking down a stack of dominos.

  It wasn’t long before she reached the rear corner of the vehicle once again. This time, however, I was ready for her. When she rammed the side of the vehicle, I counter turned just right and kept the Jeep from spinning.

  This must have pissed her off, but I’ve been driving Jeeps since the day I turned sixteen. She wasn’t about to make me lose control again. I responded to her attempt by hanging my left arm out of the side of the vehicle and giving her the finger again.

  She punched the side of the Jeep in frustration. I had a laugh at her expense, but I also noticed the dent she just added to my armored vehicle, and the damage to the rear left corner where she had been ramming me.

  The evil bitch was strong. She
was also running up farther along the Jeep towards my open window. I waited till she reached out for me, and I felt her hand scratch along my sleeve. The crushing grip of her fingers was agony. I shot her point blank in the face.

  “Bastard!” she cried as she tumbled away on the street.

  I took the brief moment her fall had provided to contact Hardin on the computer and tell him to connect me to Dudley.

  As soon as he was on the line, she was back once again. I was shooting at her even as I spoke with Dudley to make sure that my team was still in the safe zone. I continued shooting at her as I told them all to wait in the watchtowers and be ready to shoot anything that they saw chasing after me.

  Right when Dudley clicked off, she was at my side again, and my pistol was empty. She grabbed at my arm, and I backhanded her in the face. She reached farther into the Jeep and began to claw at me. I lost control of the vehicle. I felt the bumps, bangs and the eventual crash as we collided with something and came to a stop.

  I saw none of this, though, because my attacker had shoved me out of my seat and onto the floor of the vehicle. Most of her body was inside the Jeep. She was scratching at my chest with her ragged nails. She was banging my head against the metal flooring.

  I reached towards my utility belt and felt for my knife. It seemed to take forever before I actually felt it in my hand. I briefly saw Merrick biting at her head as she attacked me. I plunged the knife into the side of her neck, and she screamed. Black blood erupted from the wound. It was an impossible amount of blood; it sprayed all over the interior as she thrashed and jerked on top of me.

  Suddenly, her weight was gone. She had pulled herself out of the Jeep and was stumbling and thrashing on the road. There were shamblers running towards us; I heard their pounding footsteps and their screams.

  I hit the lever to the armored top of the Jeep. Protection erupted around me at an alarming rate. I was safe inside the Jeep as the zombies began to swarm on top of my pursuer. They brought her down in seconds. I saw her fighting against them as one after another began to pile on top of her. Eventually, I couldn’t even see her underneath the pile of bodies. All of a sudden, the pile erupted.