by Mark Tufo
‘Yes sir,’ Zurgens answered as Dietrich slammed the phone down. ‘Can you believe this shit?’ Zurgens asked when he went to his brother’s hut and relayed the information.
‘Ya.’ Karl already had his boots on, ready to go back to work.
‘Going to be a goddamn busy night.’
‘Ya.’
CHAPTER SIX
It was 2 a.m. by the time the Americans finally collapsed into their bunks. Zurgens diverted some of the staff to the doctor’s lab; it was not unusual for them to have to go there periodically to help clean something up. What was unusual was Karl standing inside with a loaded machine gun, directing them into the holding cells. Within two hours they had the entire staff, twenty-two people, locked up. There was some crying, some praying, but for the most part they were just confused and scared. The prevailing emotion seemed to be acceptance. As refugees, all they’d ever expected was a difficult life eventually ending in a horrific death.
‘Keep them quiet,’ Zurgens said to Karl. ‘I have one more to collect.’ He used the spare key he’d been given to gain entry to the main house. He walked quietly. Jan was a light sleeper and she kept a handgun on her nightstand. He could not afford for that shot to go off, warning the guests at the reserve that something was amiss.
‘Fucking waste,’ he said as he looked down upon her lithe form. Jan didn’t leave much to the imagination when she went to bed. Having forsaken blankets and clothes, she was nearly naked, except for the satin slip she wore.
Jan woke with a start, and even before gathering her bearings she’d reached over to her nightstand.
‘I have the gun, Mrs. Reynolds.’
‘Zurgens? What are you doing in here?’ She pulled at the bed sheet to try to cover herself.
‘I’m truly sorry Mrs. Reynolds, but your husband is the one that signs my checks.’ Without giving her the opportunity to speak or defend herself he grabbed her exposed leg, deftly flipped her over and plunged the hypodermic needle the doctor had given him into her buttocks.
She kicked out at him, but the powerful sedative was already wresting control from her.
‘You’re fine. You won’t remember anything. By tomorrow afternoon this will all be over.’ He pulled a soft robe from her wardrobe and longingly covered her with it, then threw her limp body over his shoulder. He was halfway across the compound when he caught movement from the corner of his eye. It was Mr. Weatherford, pacing outside his cabin, smoking a cigarette. Zurgens couldn’t fault him for being awake; it was probably the only time he could escape his wife. The cherry on his cigarette lit up brightly and then went out of view as he turned away from Zurgens.
‘Smart little witness, aren’t you?’ Zurgens said as he kept on walking.
What began as mild anxiety on the part of the staff turned into outright terror when their boss, unconscious and half naked, joined them in the cell. If her life was in danger, then theirs was certainly forfeit. Normally Zurgens woke his guests around 5:30 to get the hunt underway, but by that time the doctor had barely finished injecting everyone. Zurgens hadn’t even begun to disguise Jan. At 6:30, Karl was racing to set up the area with the fresh live props. It would be at least another hour before he was back. Zurgens, who hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours, was exhausted by the time he started putting out orange juice and fresh fruit for the guests. He cursed the lack of kitchen staff, but he was confident the Americans would still be drunk or entirely too hung-over to ask too many questions this morning.
Carla and Samuel were the first up. Carla was busy ordering her husband around and talking too excitedly to notice anything out of the ordinary. No, it was Samuel that Zurgens would have to keep an eye on. The small man was looking around; he was definitely aware of the lack of help Zurgens had. He watched as the guide brought glasses and dishes to the table then ran back to the kitchen to refill the coffee urn. Zurgens couldn’t help but be impressed; the man knew something was going on but said nothing. He just walked to the galley and began helping Zurgens carry things out.
‘What time will we be resuming the hunt?’ he asked casually as he placed down a handful of cutlery.
‘I was going to give the Americans another half hour of sleep, they are already obnoxious enough.’ Zurgens tried to laugh at that last comment in the hopes that Samuel would relax and stop peering at him with those inquisitive eyes.
‘You appear as if you could use some extra sleep as well, Zurgens.’
‘Probably could. Well, there’s always tomorrow. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to find out where my brother is. Please enjoy some breakfast.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Samuel returned to his wife, who looked like she hadn’t even realized he’d left her side. She was still going on about her ungrateful niece or something.
‘Karl,’ Zurgens spoke into his radio. ‘You on your way back? The Americans will be up soon and I don’t want them in camp too long.’
‘Ya.’
‘‘Ya’, you agree, or ‘ya’, you’ll be back soon?’
‘Ya, ya.’
‘You went to the Hamburg Institute of Technology Karl. You got high marks—fourth in your graduating class. You write at a doctoral level; you know more words than should be legally allowed. Why the fuck is ‘Ya’ the only thing you say?’
There was no sound on the other end for quite some time, except the occasional crack and pop of an open communication line. ‘What would you have me say? I like Mrs. Reynolds, Zurgens. The thought of turning her into a zombie so that those armleuchters can blow her brains out, does not sit well with me. Are those the words you were hoping for?’
‘Sorry I asked. We’re in too deep now, Karl. Dietrich goes down, so do we. There is no way we could plead ignorance of what’s been happening here.’ Nothing from his brother. ‘I liked her too Karl, but she was a liability. It would have been her or us.’
‘After all we’ve done, brother, are we so much better that it should have been her?’
Now Zurgens was getting nervous, this was very uncharacteristic of his brother. ‘Karl... what have you done? You can’t just let her go. The doctor injected her, she’s infected now.’
‘I know this!’ Karl answered back angrily.
‘Karl!’
‘She is...safe.’
‘Safe? What the fuck does that mean? Her husband ordered her infected and put in the field. What do you think he’s going to do to us when he finds out she’s alive? What’s your big plan, Karl? Running away to Switzerland with her?’
‘If I must.’
‘Have you lost your damned mind?!’ He rocked back in his chair. Through the window in the communications hut he saw that the Americans were shuffling towards the breakfast table. ‘Shit. I’ll take care of this later. Just get your ass back here so we can start this hunt. Or do you have any other enlightened plans you’d like to share with me this morning?’
There was a curt ‘No’ in response.
‘What a shit day.’ Zurgens watched Jenkins puke all over the breakfast table. ‘Should have made him a zombie.’
Carla had moved herself away with a surprising degree of alacrity. Now she was busy calling him every name she could think of. Zurgens didn’t remember the Aussies having so many colorful insults. Jenkins’ two friends were laughing at the entire affair.
‘I’d better get out there before she punches him and causes an international incident.’
Within five minutes he’d diffused the majority of the situation and Karl pulled up in the truck. He would have liked to question his brother further about what was going on but if he didn’t get these people out on the hunt, and soon, he was going to have more problems to deal with. Karl didn’t say anything to anybody as Zurgens ushered them all onto the top of the truck.
‘This is a clusterfuck, Karl.’
Karl stared silently ahead.
‘Just get us to the hunt. I don’t need your accusing glares anyway. If I wanted that I’d go visit our mother.’
Karl drove for twen
ty minutes; a plume of thick black smoke from the burning oil drums came into view in the distance.
‘How close do you wish me to get?’ Karl asked, as he slowed to a stop.
‘Three hundred yards, the same as always.’
‘We no longer have our snipers; no one is in position in the field.’
On their second safari, two of the hunters had frozen in place and the third had a stove pipe jam in his rifle, thus effectively taking him out of the equation. The zombies had come dangerously close, until Zurgens began to fire. They’d got within twenty yards of the guests before the danger was eradicated. After that fiasco, safety measures were adopted to prevent that sort of thing happening again. One of the measures had been to have snipers in place, well hidden on each side of the approaching herd, and if the zombies managed to get past a certain point it was the sharpshooters’ responsibility to keep the clients safe.
‘It was necessary, Karl.’
‘This is going sideways, brother.’
‘Going? This thing has always been fucking sideways, Karl. We’re shooting at unwilling medical experiments. Which part of that sounds alright to you? You’re making enough money to get yourself some decent professional help, or perhaps you can self-medicate. Whatever gets you through the day.’
‘I can barely make any shit out, are we getting any closer?’ Jenkins asked from the roof.
‘Perhaps, Mr. Jenkins, if you hadn’t drunk so much last night you would be able to see more clearly out your scope.’ Zurgens had gotten out and was surveying the area with a pair of binoculars.
‘I guess he told you, James,’ Henry good-naturedly ribbed his friend.
‘You realize I could buy and sell you right?’ Jenkins said, it was phrased as a question but said more as a statement. ‘I mean this is Africa, the capital of that kind of thing.’
‘Getting eaten by large cats also happens out here, and frequently enough to pass as accidental. Against my better judgment I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you, and as an added bonus, I’ll even forget what you just said. We’ll get a hundred yards closer, Mr. Jenkins, and if you still can’t see by then, I suggest an appointment with your optometrist when you get home. Go slow, Karl, I’ll stay alongside.’
Karl lurched the vehicle forward quickly, making his brother have to jog to catch up.
‘That shit isn’t funny, Karl.’ Zurgens said as he came up alongside the passenger door. Karl laid on the gas, leaving his brother behind. What the fuck is he doing? Zurgens didn’t see the brake lights come on until the truck was no more than seventy yards from the zombie set-up point. From this distance the group might be able to see the cage the zombies would be released from and would definitely be able to tell that the ‘people’ in the burning military vehicles were mannequins. The illusion began to lose its shimmer from anything less than a hundred yards, and at that distance there was definitely a diminishing safety factor.
Zurgens could see the zombies stumbling as they came toward the parked truck. Karl must have hit the remote-controlled mechanism that opened the cage gate.
‘What the fuck, Karl?’ Zurgens yelled as he began to trudge towards the truck. He’d not taken two steps when gunfire erupted. Surprisingly, it was Samuel who had got the first shot off and the shock didn’t end there. The little man had landed his mark; Zurgens watched a zombie fall over, its head nearly decapitated from the heavy round.
‘Damn good shot little buddy!’ James clapped Samuel’s shoulder hard enough that he nearly pushed the man out of his seat.
‘I am NOT your buddy, you belligerent fool!’ Samuel stood up and was shaking.
‘What the fuck’s got your feathers all ruffled you little bitch?’ Darren Wheats, usually the quiet one of the trio, also stood and was defending his friend. ‘I’ll knock that head of yours clean off!’
‘How dare you!’ Carla said, also rising to her feet. Her words were steady and low spoken, like the warning growl of a dog that means business. The woman was nearly twice the size of any one on that roof and she was threatening to use all that bulk right now.
‘Has the fucking entire world just gone mad?’ Zurgens could only stop and stare. Even his brother, who was generally unconcerned with just about everything the clients did, had gotten out of the truck to witness the escalation of events, a slightly bemused smile upon his face.
Zurgens might have got a laugh out of the whole thing himself if he hadn’t noticed the pack of zombies streaking uncharacteristically rapidly towards the dysfunctional hunting party.
‘Karl!’ he shouted.
He sensed that disaster was advancing at an accelerated pace and there was nothing he’d be able to do in time to stop any of it. Carla swung the butt of her rifle out in an attempt to strike Darren, but instead she caught Henry Fields in the side of the jaw; two of his teeth spiraled out of his mouth and hit the ground. James, seeing his opportunity, punched Samuel in the temple, the man’s knees buckled and he would have fallen onto the roof of the truck, had space permitted. Instead, his right knee landed on his vacant seat and spun him to the side where his hip smacked into the small safety railing that surrounded the entire seating area. His head pitched over the enclosure, pulling the rest of his body with it.
He landed in the dirt with a bone breaking thud, his left arm bent back at a gruesome angle. The action on top ceased for a moment as everybody watched Samuel’s fall, and then started anew as if the sound of his limbs snapping, like dry twigs in the dead of winter was the cue to renew hostilities. Karl eventually looked over to his brother, whose mouth was hanging open. He looked back as if to say do you see what’s happening here? but he was enjoying himself immensely. It was Henry Of The Bleeding Mouth who found himself the next one forcibly expelled from the roof. If one were observing this scene from afar, they might think it a very violent game of King of the Hill. If bets were being placed, the smart money would be on Carla, who was even now wrestling with James and Darren. Zurgens’ hand went down to the small cannon he had attached to his hip but even as he drew the weapon up, he felt the futility of his actions. His brother stood between him and his intended target and from this range, he dared not take the shot.
Peppers, the sixty year old Cambodian chef, who only the night before had been preparing all of their meals, crashed into Karl’s side at a full sprint. They both went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Peppers’ jaws were snapping open and closed viciously, his teeth cracking against each other as he desperately sought purchase with the weathered skin of his intended victim. Blood poured from his mouth as his broken, jagged teeth bit into his own cheeks and tongue. Karl had one hand around Peppers’ throat and had sent a punch towards the side of Peppers’ head in a desperate bid to dislodge the attacker, but Peppers had turned his head just as the fist was being delivered. He bit down hard on Karl’s knuckles, taking a shard of bone with him as he tore the meat from the top of the hand and fingers. Karl screamed out in pain and rage.
Samuel was slow to regain himself; his dislocated arm causing him to moan. Julia, previously the Z-Hunt hostess, was the first to see the helpless man lying within easy reach. She dove straight for the blood leaking from his compound fracture. Samuel was in too much of a fog to even mount a defense. She stripped away arm meat like a bar patron might a chicken wing. It peeled away in one long slab, Samuel only managed a small bark before his eyes crossed and he passed out. He would awake in a far different place.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ It was Jenkins, looking down upon the scene from the perch. Carla slowly stopped fighting once she realized what was happening all around them.
‘Help me the fuck up!’ Henry shrieked. Three zombies were nearly upon him. Darren and Carla reached down to grab him, but James backed away. A brief comprehension of betrayal crossed Henry’s features and at the same time, two zombies ran headlong into him. The first, Reikali, the head grounds keeper’s skull collided with Henry’s in splintering concussive force. Kylie, one of two waitresses on staff, bit right t
hrough Henry’s neck, pulling on the tough cordage that pumped blood into his brain. His mouth and lungs filled with blood entirely too fast for him to even utter a sound as he collapsed under the weight of a third zombie piling on, wanting his fair share.
Karl had finally pushed his attacker away, his hand hemorrhaging from three different wounds. With his good hand, he reached across to his holster. Shaking, he shot the man, once in the chest at mid-sternum—he staggered back but did not fall. The second bullet pierced his stomach, exploding the tissue out in a mushroom plume. He dropped to his knees, yet still his mouth snapped at air, attempting to get at his meal. Karl’s third shot struck above the man’s right eye, rolling the orb all the way back like a slot machine reel. He moaned deeply and fell backwards. Karl was turning to the next threat, Jordie, their maintenance man, who had never once moved faster than required and yet now launched himself into the air. His outstretched hands raked across Karl’s cheeks.
‘Dick,’ Karl said, in response to Jordie’s suddenly impressive speed. The confrontation was over nearly as quickly as it had begun. Karl’s nose entered directly into Jordie’s mouth and the maintenance man had bit down hard. He easily chewed through the cartilage and swallowed the whole appendage down in one thick, congealed mass of tissue. Jordie quickly moved on to Karl’s eye. Karl had his hands wrapped around his attacker’s head, but it was too late. Carla, James, and Darren finally began to fire into the crowd of zombies. Zurgens found himself in no-man’s land. He thought perhaps he should turn and start running away. If the zombies noticed his sudden movement, that would be the end, though. In test trials, zombies had run for twelve solid hours at full speed in an effort to get the bait that had been suspended behind the Land Rover.
He’d given his brother hell a couple of times because Karl had slowed down, allowing the trailing zombies enough time to get close to Zurgens, who would stand on a special platform on the rear bumper. When the injection had finally worn off, hours later, all three subjects, now human once again, had died from exhaustion, dehydration, and heat stroke. But not one of them had slowed their pursuit while the serum was active. Zurgens knew he was in good shape, but not that good. He’d be able to sprint for a half mile, then keep up a decent pace for maybe three more, before slowing to a jog The camp was more than a dozen miles away. So, that was simply not doable. Getting into the Land Rover was his only option, though the situation was rapidly deteriorating: the vehicle was nearly surrounded as the zombies, with the feast on the ground now finished up, were trying to get to the people on top.