“But you wanted Max’s men to think you were coming in through those entrances correct?”
Exactly, let them chase after some zombies in our clothes while we come up from behind.
So, off we went to the side of the building with our nooses. We selected the best zombies that we could find. By the best, I mean that we selected the least decayed of the zombies that we could find. This wasn’t easy. Most of the zombies that were gathering had been dead a pretty long time. Add the blaring sun and the sudden rain showers that they’d been living in and our crop of zombies to choose from were pretty gross.
When we had a zombie selected, we’d just drop a noose till it settled over their heads and pull them up by their necks. It was rather easy. They just stood around at the bottom of the building reaching up for us and screaming. They barely even noticed the noose till they were yanked off their feet.
Once we had them on the roof, we taped up their mouths, cut off their cloths and put them in bite suits. After that, we taped their hands behind their backs and tapped their legs together. Then, we went after the next one.
We stopped when we had fifteen zombies taped up and dressed like us. On a plus side, we also received proof positive that the bite suits actually worked. One of the zombies managed to take a quick snap at Javie as we were taping it up. Scared the hell out of him and he said it pinched like a mother trucker, but no blood was drawn.
Everything was now ready. It was my turn. I was just hoping that Max wasn’t in the control room with his pal. That could put a serious damper on my plan.
“Did you have a backup plan if he was in there?”
I was gonna spray as many bullets through the window as possible. I doubt that would be enough to keep him down long, but hopefully it’d keep him down long enough for me to bury my tomahawk in his head.
I took one last look at the schematics, but I already knew where I had to go for the control room. The guys were waiting for me by the taped up zombies as I scrambled across the roof towards the edge over the control room window.
I found a nice pipe to tie the rope and began climbing down. When I was beside the window, I took a peek inside.
It was the wrong damn window.
I cursed and growled and made my way back to the roof. I then ran back to the guys and told them the problem. We once again all looked at the schematic. I was definitely at the right window, but for some reason the control room must have moved.
“Mr. Hardin,” I asked after a quick tap to my earpiece. “You there?”
“I’m already on it,” answered Mr. Hardin.
“How do you even know what’s going on?” asked Kingsley.
“I can hear everything with your earpieces,” answered Mr. Hardin. “There’s also a camera in each earpiece, so I can see everything as well.”
We all kinda stared at each other’s ears for awhile looking for the camera like a bunch of morons. It was Javie that finally found the little dot the size of a pen cap.
“Jaxon,” said Mr. Hardin. “It seems that the schematics you have are a few years outdated. The control room has been moved to the third floor. Unfortunately, there are no windows to that room.”
“Well that’s fucking great isn’t it?” I demanded to no one in particular.
We sat around for a little bit wondering what to do. I really didn’t want to lead my friends into a gunfight with experienced killers. Somehow, I just didn’t think those odds were going to turn out in our favor.
I finally sat back against a large air duct made of flimsy metal. It made a slight indentation when I put my weight on it. When I took my weight back off, it popped back into the right position with a soft ‘bonk’ noise…I had a plan…hopefully.
“Hardin,” I said after another tap on the earpiece. “Do the air ducts lead to the control room?”
“I’m checking right now.”
It took some time, but Hardin finally came back with the good news. The air ducts did indeed lead to the control room. In fact, they led directly over the control room and they were big enough for me to fit in.
I pulled my Swiss Army knife out of my sheath and started unscrewing the screws around the ducts opening. It was going to be a tight fit, but I was determined to make it work.
“Do you think they know we’re here?” asked Dudley suddenly as he peered over the edge of the roof at all the zombies.
“How could they know?” answered Kingsley.
“They know,” I answered. “There are too many zombies around the building now. They’re just waiting for us to make a move.”
Kingsley threw his arms up in disgust. His nerves were getting the better of him. The situation was pretty freaking tense.
I grabbed a small flashlight and squeezed into the air duct. It didn’t take long to squirm my way to the control room. Mr. Hardin was giving me directions through the earpiece the entire time. The only difficult part was keeping the noise I was making in the flimsy metal tunnel as low as possible.
As I neared the vent that Mr. Hardin said would drop down into the control room, I turned off the flashlight and inched myself slowly closer to the opening. I peered down into the room and was shocked to discover there were four men in the room.
Three of these men stood with their backs to the wall with a vacant look in their eyes. The final man was seated before a computer terminal with five different monitors. I could only see the back of his head from my position, but his head was moving back and forth in a robotic fashion as he searched through the cameras in an attempt to locate us.
He was clearly agitated, because he was flipping through different images rapidly. He concentrated on the area’s that had the largest concentrations of zombies. The dipshits weren’t smart enough to even think about us being safe and sound on the roof.
Then I got a look at Max’s handiwork. Each of his four men had their heads shaved. There were metal plates attached in places that should have had skin over skull. Whatever else he’d done to them, he obviously played around with their brains. Worst of all were their faces. Their jaws were all clamped shut with metal brackets that ran in and out of raw and infected holes in their cheeks.
I tried to scoot back so they wouldn’t hear me when I radioed back to my friends and the stupid air duct made a loud pop that echoed in my ears.
I immediately froze.
Then, I began to panic. There was no way they didn’t hear the noise. I expected them to start spraying bullets through the ceiling, but nothing happened. I waited and waited and still nothing happened. Finally, I crawled back towards the vent and took a peek. None of them had moved.
I thought about it for a second and then lightly tapped the inside of the air duct. Still no response, so I hit the wall of the air duct harder. They never moved. Whatever Max had done to them, they ended up deaf.
“Jaxon,” said Mr. Hardin. “What are you doing?”
“Relax,” I answered somewhat confidently. “These guys are deaf.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am now, because I’m sitting here talking to you in my outdoor voice,” I answered. “Can the rest of you guys hear me?”
They all spoke up into the earpieces that they could indeed hear me.
“Alright, I was wrong about these guys being at the entrances. They’re all right here in the control room waiting to be sent out. So, take five of the zombies and release them at the delivery entrance and let’s see what happens.”
They radioed back that they understood and were doing what I asked. So, I waited about half an hour and watched the monitors over the man at the computer terminals shoulder. Eventually, he found the zombies in our clothes. They were being dropped off the roof.
At that my moment, as I watched the last two zombies free fall to the cement, slowly pick themselves off the ground and limp around looking for something to bite, I began to truly believe that my plan sucked big time. This was so unbelievable it was almost laughable. Nobody would face plant on the cement in order to gain access to
a building. Nobody could survive a landing like that.
The most amazing thing was that these guys were so dumb the plan actually worked. The guy at the computer reacted immediately. As soon as he saw our decoys, his fist shot up into the air. One of the other guys approached him and after a few signals, he ran out of the room. The guy at the computer never even acknowledged that our decoys were dropping out of the sky and landing on their faces.
“Alright,” I radioed to everyone. “The retards took the bait. Get the next group ready to drop by the parking garage entrance. It might take them a while to wander in front of a camera and make it quicker this time. I want this done in five minutes not thirty.”
I heard the grumbles over the radio, but I just ignored them. I wanted all the pieces in place, before we took action.
The second they told me that the zombies had entered the parking garage I had them drop the remaining group of five off by the side entrance and I sat (or rather laid) back and waited.
The side entrance zombies were the next to be discovered. I saw it on the computer screen a split second before the control room fellow did. He raised his hand, he was approached by Max’s thug, they went through a series of hand gestures and the thug was off and running towards the side entrance.
I wanted to make sure that all of Max’s men were in the places I wanted them to be before I sent in my guys. I didn’t want them to run into one another in a hallway. I wasn’t sure that would end up being a situation my guys could win. Dumb or not, these guys took out Crass’s headquarters. Shooting them in the back would certainly be the safest way to finish this.
Therefore, I was really becoming impatient as I waited for the zombies in the parking garage to be seen on the cameras. It seemed like it was taking forever. Not good. I debated taking out my pistol and trying to take out the remaining thugs, but in the close confines of the air duct I could reach my hand down to the weapon.
“Then how did you expect to shoot the remaining man if you couldn’t reach your pistol?”
To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t thought about that one yet. I was too concerned with getting the others in position.
Finally, one of our zombies crossed in front of a camera in the parking garage and the remaining thug was sent out. I was alone with the remaining man. I waited around five minutes before I sent out my friends to go deal with Max’s thugs and I could hear them break through the door on the roof from where I was in the air duct. I was nervous about Max hearing the noise, but there wasn’t much I could do about that at the moment.
I debated through more than a few ways of taking out the computer guy, but in the end I just smacked the vent cover to the floor with a hard whack and dropped myself into the room behind it. It was a bad move; Max’s thug was on top of me the minute I landed. Luckily, he didn’t shoot, but he had a big enough knife in his hand.
I twisted and turned out of the way of the swinging knife, but I had almost no room to maneuver and no time to grab one of my own weapons. I was rolling left and right and left and right before I was finally able to get in a quick finger poke to the thug’s eye. It bought me enough time to get to my knees, but still not enough time to reach a weapon.
The thug recovered rapidly and charged. From my knees, I lunged in for a takedown and had the man flat on his back. The knife almost got through the fabric of my suit. I could feel the tip of the blade working for penetration as I grabbed the man’s arm.
I broke the arm with a quick twist and snap. The thug was making the freakiest noises that I’ve ever heard. I guess that without being able to hear, they didn’t know how fucked up they sounded when they were in pain.
With the knife out of his hand, I kept him on his back with all of my weight and spun to the side when I was ready, so that he could now get to his knees. He should have known better, as soon as he rose up, I had my arms around his neck. I began to squeeze with all my strength. He made some choking noises while he still had some air, but that quickly ended. The choke I was using cut off both air and the blood supply to the brain. These guys were tough. I could feel his strength as he fought me, but the struggling rapidly turned to simple twitches from the arms and legs. Finally, the man was dead. I rose to my feet and shot him in the head to make sure.
I went to the computer, which had thankfully survived our struggle. It took a minute, but I was finally able to figure out how to work the cameras. I watched as Kingsley, Dudley and Javie shot Max’s men in the backs. It would have worked flawlessly, but the thug that Kingsley was after had actually entered the parking garage and Kingsley had to follow him there to get him.
The zombies in the garage were already after the thug when Kingsley arrived. The thug was shooting them down and because he was distracted, it wasn’t too difficult for Kingsley to get behind the man and drill him in the back. The problem was that Kingsley still had to get out of the parking garage and back into the building while the remaining zombies were chasing after him.
He probably should have turned and fought. There were about ten of them, but instead he tried to make a run for the door. The zombies had gotten too close (he’s a smoker remember) and he wasn’t able to close the door behind him.
The zombies were in the building.
“What did you do?”
I ran from the room and began to search for my wife.
I no longer had a lot of time. Very soon, the entire building would be crawling with zombies and I wanted my wife to be long gone before that happened.
“What were you going to do about Max?”
I was going to kill the prick. I didn’t exactly know how, but I figured that I’d figure something out when the opportunity presented itself. It only took me a few doors before I found the entrance into balcony of the theater itself.
I quietly entered the theater and looked over the railing and saw that Max had done some redecorating. Pathways had been created through the seating area. The seats normally covered the entire floor of the theater, the back seats being higher in altitude than the front seats and it used to resemble a movie theater with only walkways on either side. Now, seats had been crushed and swept to the sides all over the place, creating little walkways.
Above all these little walkways and the stage itself, a saw chains hanging from the ceiling. Many, many chains were just hanging there. It was rather weird in the dim light to be seeing chains hanging from the ceiling, but whatever. I was already distracted. My wife was sitting or rather tied to a chair in the middle of the stage. Max was sitting a few feet away from her with his legs hanging off the edge of the stage.
“They’re right behind me,” shouted Kingsley in my earpiece. “I’m gonna have to use the shotgun, my pistol is out of bullets.”
Everyone started jabbering into my earpiece after that, so I figured it was time to make my move. Max was going to be on alert when he started hearing Kingsley’s shotgun and I wanted to hit him unawares.
I stood up proudly behind the metal railing of the balcony.
“Hey Max,” I boomed out in my most arrogant voice. “Welcome to El Paso.”
He had just enough time to drop the book he was reading, look up an me and give me an equally arrogant grin that said ‘I’m going to rip you apart’ before he saw my tomahawk thundering through the air towards him.
I’ve got to give credit where credit is due. The man is fast. He managed to lose his grin and move just enough to prevent my weapon from burying itself in his face. It hit his shoulder with a tremendous amount of force instead. In fact, the tomahawk bit into his shoulder so deeply, it went right through the collar bone and buried itself to the wood of the shaft.
Max gave a nice little girlie scream and spun off to the side of the stage.
I laughed a little bit, hopped over the railing and landed on the floor of the theater. From where I landed, I had a straight walk to the stage due to Max’s renovations. I avoided the chains hanging from the ceiling in case they were some kind of lame booby trap and headed for my wife.
; “Jaxon, look out,” she shouted as I climbed onto the stage.
Unfortunately, her warning came just a little bit too late. Max wasn’t down for the count. He spun to his side and brought up some sort of little machine pistol and sprayed bullets right at me. I managed to duck and roll, but I took a few in my left leg and a couple more in my stomach.
Still, I managed to draw my own pistol and returned fire. I hit him dead center in the chest, but somehow even as I fell…Max crawled to a group of those hanging chains…studied them for a second and pulled one.
A gentle cascade of water poured forth from the rafters and drenched him completely before drawing to a trickle. The bastard was healing himself. Well two could play at that game. I immediately crawled towards the group of chains nearest me and pulled one for myself. A cement cinder block fell down from the rafters and smacked into part of my head and my right shoulder. I saw stars, I lost most of my vision and I fell to my knees. I could hear Max getting to his feet, but it was almost impossible to move. I heard my friends babbling in my earpiece as they tried to keep the zombies from overtaking the theater. I had to move. I rose up, just as Max let loose with another spray of machine gun fire.
I dropped behind a pile of what used to be seats and was now just a pile of debris and found that the mess made a decent cover. I was in complete agony. My head was gushing blood, my right shoulder was probably broken and I had at least five bullets in me. Not a good day. This guy was kicking my ass and we hadn’t even fought yet.
I willed movement back into my legs and I willed my vision to clear as Max began to rant and rave.
“You were off to a pretty good start,” he screeched. “I don’t know why you didn’t press the attack while I was injured. Now look at me, I’m almost completely healed. You can have your tomahawk back by the way.”
My tomahawk thudded into the wall closest to me. Max wasn’t stupid enough to try the direct approach. He knew that I was still armed. Instead, he was using his irritating voice to distract me as he kept low and made his way to the side of the room. If he succeeded in getting there, he’d have gotten around my cover.
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