“Victor Tookes,” one of them said, causing me to check my swing. ”Steve follow Max.”
“Two zombies following my son is not likely to make me not kill you,” I said flatly.
“We are Max’s followers, we obey Max.” The other spoke. “This human was called Jason, before it was turned.”
“Max has zombie followers? Is he Ok? Has he been bitten?”
“Max is inside. He was not bitten. We kept him safe. We carried him to humans who would help. The bad guys would have caught us; Steve and Jason are not fast enough. Max tried to get to you,” Jason said.
“What do you know about the inside?” I asked.
“Inside the gate is an open area. The house is to the back. There are other buildings, like storage sheds throughout the yard. We saw six humans with guns.”
“What kind of guns?”
“We don’t know about guns.”
“Were they long and brown, like this?” I pointed to Marshall’s shotgun. ”Or were they black?” I pointed to John’s H&K machine gun. ”Or, were they pistols, like this?” I said holding up my favorite handgun, my Sig Saur p226.
“They had long black guns like that one,” they said pointing to John’s, “and short ones like your pistol.”
“Thank you Jason. Can you get inside?”
“We cannot. Max told us to wait here.”
“And you can’t go help him?”
“We follow Max.”
“Ok. I’m going to leave you two here. If you make a move towards us, we will end your existence,” I said.
“We follow Max,” they said in unison.
“They’re human. I think I’m going to go knock on the gate. I don’t want a fight if we don’t have to.”
Leo moved with me. ”I’m going to blink up to the wall. I don’t think they can see straight down out of those guard towers. I want to be close in case I have to get you out of there.”
John started stomping down the grass, building himself a nest to shoot from. ”Hey Marshall, I need a tree laid down right here.”“Use your backpack. I’m not ripping a tree out of the ground for you, ya damned aussie freak!” Marshall laughed.
Marshall and I walked up to the gate. When we were about 50 feet from the gate, a bell rang and a pair of spotlights lit us up, one from each tower on either side of the gate.
I reached back and holstered my sidearm and at the same time flicked the mic on my radio to ‘voice activated’.
“Stop. Who are you?” Said a voice from the left side guard tower.
“My name is Victor Tookes, I understand that my son Max may be inside.”
“Max is safe here. We can’t let him leave. We don’t know you, but the Savior has to stay safe.” I heard the capital letter when he called Max the Savior. Something was seriously off kilter here.
“Max is my son. He is safest with me. He needs me.” I called up to the guard. ”I would like for you to please open the gate so we can talk like civilized people.”
The shot hit the ground about three inches to the left of me. I heard a return shot from behind me and then saw the silhouetted figure fall to the ground. Marshall and I turned to run, but Leo grabbed us and we were back at the tree line before we could get two steps.
“Well. That was sub-optimal. What the fuck? Max? the Savior?” I said.
“I dunno little bro, but we have to get him out of there. Those people are crazy.”
“Ok, new plan.” I said. ”Leo, take Marshall and I to the gate, then get to the top of the back guard tower, like on the roof of the tower, we’re going to need eyes.” ”Marshall and I are going in, Marshall, rip that fucking gate to shreds,” I continued. “John, when you see Marshall rip the gate off its hinges, you come running as fast as your little stubby Aussie legs can carry you.”
“Fuck you mate. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Ok, but I need you to take out that second gate guard and anyone inside the gate when Marshall opens it.”
“I can do that at a dead run. I’ll be right behind you and there won’t be anyone left alive if they’re at all threatening.”
“I really don’t want to kill these people.” I said.
“I can wing em, scuff their arms, maybe notch a few ears.”
“Let’s give that a try. But if you see any of them start to fire, take them out. I’m not really enthusiastic about getting shot again,” I said. “Are we all ready?”
“Let’s go get the little boy,” said Leo.
“Alright, give me a minute.”
I knelt down and put my hands on the earth. I felt the long blades of grass and the cool moist dirt. I felt centered and calm. I could smell the clean air and hear the men running along the top of the wall. I focused as much as I could. I still wasn’t as strong as I was, but I concentrated as hard as I could on my little boy’s baby blue aura. “Max. Are you in there? Can you hear me? It’s Daddy. I need you to wake up buddy. I’m coming to get you and it’s going to be loud. They won’t let me in, but I’m going to huff and puff and blow their wooden wall down. I’m coming buddy and nothing will stop me.”
We watched the spotlights sweeping the field, looking for us. Leo put her hands on our shoulders and we disappeared in a black swirl.
Chapter 21
Reunion
Leo dropped us off at the front gate and Marshall immediately bent down to search for a grip. Leo poofed again, she was heading for the roof of the rear guard tower. We heard her whisper into her radio “8 at the gate, two rows, four men wide. It looks like they’re going to open the gate any time.”
Marshall whispered “Let’s do this thing then.”
I lay down on my belly, arms out in front of me, Sig ready. John whispered “Go”.
“Open it about six inches.” I said.
The gate was made of tree trunks laid horizontally on top of each other. Marshall heaved the heavy wooden gate up like it was a garage door. I yelled “I’m coming in for Max. If you give me my son, we can all walk away from this unhurt.”
“He’s not your son; he’s the Son of humanity. He’s our Son, all of us. We can keep him safe.” Shots rang out, shooting up clods of dirt beside me.
“These people are crazy,” I said.
Marshall heaved the gate up and I started firing. John must have started firing the second Marshall opened it the rest of the way because five were down before the gate came up. He’d shot each of them through and through the outside of the thigh, rendering them out of the fight but not killing them.
I shot quickly and close. I wasn’t intending to hit anyone but since I didn’t have John’s control I waited for him to take them out of the fight. I was mostly firing to keep the heads of everyone inside the compound down while Marshall got the gate up high enough to stay.
Just as Marshall got the gate up a huge guy stepped out from the side of the gate. He was almost exactly the same size as Marshall.
“Fuck, why do I have to have the power that everyone else gets,” yelled Marshall, charging at the second super sized opponent of the night. Marshall and the huge blonde man locked up together, before the blonde threw him into the wall. Marshall stood up and threw the guy over his head across the yard as I got distracted by a smallish woman coming for me.
She shot shadows in every direction, testing me. I did the same. Every decision she weighed I countered and she kept going, trying more and more ways. We were standing there staring at each other before it dawned on either of us that both of us could read the others thoughts. She pulled a gun and shot four times. I saw the shots coming and dove to my left as she was still drawing. She adjusted but not before a shot from John took the bullet out of the air and a follow up shot destroyed the gun in her hand. John was on his game tonight. From the top of the wall I heard a man yell “Dan! Shooter! 12 o’clock at the tree line.”
The man I assumed was Dan went running around the corner, two 9mm handguns in his hands. He ran and fired and I heard John’s H&K fire in return. In a surprising turn of event
s, I heard the 9mm’s fire another round.
John saw Dan come running out of the wooden walled fortress. He watched Dan draw a pair of guns from a chest rig as he ran. Something about the way he ran seemed different to John. Different enough to give him some pause. When he fired his guns, John knew immediately what it was. Dan was a shooter. John watched the guns. Even from this distance of well over a hundred yards John could tell exactly when Dan was going to fire. He raised his H&K and fired off a burst, six shots to intercept the bullet’s coming his way and a seventh to hit Dan’s forehead.
Dan fired another burst from his guns and reloaded them. He was closing the distance and John’s reaction time was now smaller. He fired the last of his H&K rounds and dropped the rifle. John stood and started running towards his opponent, drawing a pair of Glocks from his own vest. Both men fired at the same time. From their perspective the bullets were moving at a snail’s pace. John watched his bullet’s impact every one of Dan’s. They shattered in mid air causing a shower of bullet fragments to scatter into the tall grass. Before the fragments landed, both men had emptied two more magazines each. Like some kind of ballistic red-rover game, both men shot each other’s bullets out of the air again and another cloud of bullet fragments hit the ground.
John had one more set of magazines for his Glocks and loaded them into his guns faster than Dan could. Reload speed combined with the two men running towards each other closing distance quickly, allowed one of John’s bullets to get through. Dan caught that stray bullet with the barrel of his gun. The impact rendered the gun useless, but saved his life. He tossed the decimated weapon and fired until he was dry with his off-hand. They were now less than ten feet apart. John threw one of his empty pistols at Dan, hitting him squarely in the nose.
Dan smashed into John, punching him in the gut. Both men began to circle each other in the long grass.
“Ya got no bloody idea what ya getting into here mate, you’re fucking with the wrong skip.” said John “I ain’t some soft cocked yank number cruncher; I’m a god damned fucking miner from Oz!”
John crouched low spinning in a circle with one leg out, sweeping Dan’s feet out from under him. Dan jumped up and lunged at John who sidestepped and brought both fists down on the back of Dan’s head. Dan tucked and rolled back to a standing position and charged once more, throwing a wild uppercut punch towards John’s jaw. That punch connected knocking John’s head back. He spit some blood and kicked Dan in the thigh at the same time he landed a straight jab to Dan’s jaw. Dan dropped to one knee. John grabbed his hair and pulled the larger man’s face into his rising knee. Dan flew backwards landing on his back and seeing stars. He took advantage of his position. He used the time to pull a small derringer from his boot.
Back inside the wall I was locked in my deadly battle. I heard one more shot fired. John stood over Dan’s corpse holding his pearl handled .45 caliber revolver. A trail of smoke wafted up from the barrel. “Ya brought a cap gun? You brought a fucking cap gun to take me on!” John kicked Dan’s lifeless corpse “Fucking Drongo!” He spat as he ran towards the yard where we were all fighting.
My opponent and I fought the most deliberate fight in the history of hand to hand combat. We moved only when an advantage was to be had. She maneuvered me into a corner and my best option was to take a solid kick to the forearm which rendered my left hand numb. I got the jump on her and landed a blow to her head. We would circle and feint, dodge and weave, neither of us launching an attack until we came up with something so cunning or so stupid the other had no counter for it.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“None of your fucking business,” she replied.
“All of this is senseless. Let me have my boy and we can all be friends. We have resources to share; we have equipment and fuel and our two groups would be a hell of a team.”
“The only team we’re on is Max’s. You are the devil trying to take our savior from us before he has a chance to grow up.” She replied, fire in her eyes.
Just then I heard Leo let out a yell and saw a man go flying backwards off the top of the guard tower. He flew the forty feet to the ground only to disappear in a cloud of black smoke just before he landed. Leo appeared on the ground, grinned at me and yelled “Finally! They have someone who can fight!” Then she disappeared again and I lost sight of her.
My opponent glanced upward, tipping me off that there was someone on the wall behind me. I turned my head slightly and saw shadows landing on either side of me. The one directly behind me solidified and I took a large step backward and started the hardest front-kick I could muster. The man from the wall landed directly in front of me and my foot connected with his groin with all the power I had, launching him back forward into my counterpart.
I stepped back towards my opponent. The man was unconscious on top of her, passed out from the extraordinary pain. I kicked her in the skull. My steel toed boot connected with her temple rendering her unconscious.
I heard a huge grunt from Marshall and a fading yell from his blonde oversized opponent, but was distracted when Leo and her opponent reappeared in the middle of the yard. His face was bloody and one eye was swollen shut. She appeared a split second before him and was already mostly through her punch when he appeared directly in front of her fist. She connected with his other eye, sending him sprawling to the dirt. Before he landed Leo appeared behind him and kicked her foot, sending him flying the other way. Once again she reappeared in front of him, now on the other side, and caught him with an uppercut. The blows rendered him completely senseless. He collapsed in a heap.
John caught up to me just in time to see Leo finishing her counterpart. She limped over towards us just as Marshall stepped in line with us. The four of us had taken half a dozen steps towards the house where we assumed Max was when the gigantic blonde man landed directly in front of us.
John said, “Fuck, Marshall. How high did you throw him?”
“I dunno,” Marshall replied. “High enough, I suppose.”
When we mounted the porch, an older black woman stepped out holding a little boy.
“Daddy!” Max shouted. ”I knew that was you!”
I stepped up to take him from her when she spoke for the first time. “I'm inside his mind. One wrong move from you and I’ll wipe out any memory he has of you and replace them with memories of me. Now that I know what you look like, they’ll be easy enough to find.”
I read her aura and didn’t see the slightest hint of a lie in her statement. I was considering her options, when her aura blinked out. All of our auras blinked out. Once again I could no longer see people’s decisions or intentions. Once again I was powerless.
“Mrs. Goddell, You will put my son down and let him go, this instant,” said a disembodied female voice. All of the strength drained out of my legs and I hit the floor, hearing Candi’s voice for the first time in months.
“I won’t. Max is the savior of our race. I must keep him safe,” replied Goddell.
“You are right; he is the savior of our race. But you are not his protector. Victor is. Release Max, or I will destroy you,” said Candi.
“Candi! Where are you?” I asked.
“Not now Victor, I’m a little busy.” She replied directly to me.
Goddell turned to run inside the house but she fell halfway through her turn. She laid there on the porch. Her eyes were wide open, and she was breathing. A foamy drop of spittle ran down her cheek.
Max hit the floor and ran the four steps towards me. I picked him up, wrapped him in my arms and gave him the biggest hug I could muster. “I love you buddy. I will always come for you.
“I know you will Daddy. Mommy won’t let you fail.”
As Max spoke, I was once again aware of his aura and could see people all around me making mundane decisions. No one in the camp was making any moves towards us as we walked out, the four of us and Max. I was holding Leo’s hand on one side, Max’s on the other. Max was holding John’s hand and Marshall strode be
side all of us.
As we were climbing into the Jeep, Max spoke for the first time since the porch of the house. ”Hey, Uncle John! I talked to Sean last night. He says to tell you ‘I’m gonna deck ya when I see ya next, dickhead.’ What’s deck ya mean?”
“You talked to Sean?” asked John.
“It was almost a week ago John.” I said, filled with worry at how John would take the news that his family was surviving in Australia.
Chapter 22
Homecoming
“Are you fricken kidding me Tookes? I have dedicated my life to protecting and working with you all because you are like family and… And you don’t tell me my family is alive and you knew!? It’s time you opened your eyes to just ‘us’ mate. You need to see it as a whole. If Max can talk to Sean it means Sean is one of us, which means there are more of us fighting this battle. Do you think we can fight all of the fucking zombies by ourselves and win? I know your not going to put Max in the frontline and we are all still working out our skills as it is. I know the risks and I thought I knew the odds. I now found our fucking odds can be improved by having my family with me!”
What Zombies Fear (Book 2): The Maxists Page 17