by Cedric Nye
Jango stood up, and rapped on the bank of stalls with his stick. “Hey, you,” he said loudly, “You almost done in there?” He mentally cursed himself for the stupid question even as he waited hopefully for some kind of answer.
Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. No sounds came from the occupied stall, so he carefully opened the stall nearest to the entrance, and closed it behind him. He shot the puny little bolt that comes standard with all toilet stalls. It was barely even an illusion of safety. The twelve-inch gap at the bottom of the stall, and a three-foot gap at the top of the stall ruined any illusions of safety he might have had without even considering the half-assed latch.
He took off his backpack, and hung it from the coat hook on the back of the stall door while mentally reminding himself to find a shirt. Then, he meticulously built a cushion of toilet paper on the toilet-seat so his butt would not make any contact with what he considered to be a “petri-dish” of human waste. As he worked, he had to keep grinding his knees and thighs together to keep the inevitable from happening before he could finish his safety cushion.
At last! His need to empty his bowels and bladder had caused him to break out in a sweat, and he started getting the shakes from holding it in. He unbuckled his homemade leather belt, fingers frantically fumbling with the buckle, and his hands shaking from holding his bowels. He dropped his pants and underwear, and his rear end hit the toilet just as he lost all control over his sphincter. After he was finished, he wiped and flushed, then put his pack back on.
Jango unlocked the stall, and someone or something with unbelievable strength suddenly and viciously drove the door into his face and body!
The mystery of who his attacker might be was swiftly solved as an obese businessman in butter colored leather loafers with his pants around his ankles fell at Jango’s feet, half in the stall, screaming while he clawed at Jango’s feet and legs.
He kicked the zombie in its head, and then slammed his stick down in a vicious strike that popped the zombie’s head like a ripe melon.
“Fucking goobers, man, slimy, moaning, screaming, drooling, GOOBERS!!” he yelled at the unmoving body. “GOOBERS!” He yelled again.
He had to walk atop the corpulent corpse to get out of the stall, and he nearly fell when one of the man’s mountainous buttocks shifted beneath his foot. He caught himself on the stall, stepped off of the rotund corpse, and left the restroom.
As soon as he exited the restroom, the realization dawned that he had forgotten to wash his hands. “Shit!” he exclaimed as he held his hands out in front of his body as far away as he could stretch his arms, as if that extra distance would keep whatever germs he imagined he had touched from entering his system.
Jango pushed the restroom door back open, then said, “No way, man!” when he saw the fat man’s ankles shackled together by his trousers, and the massive, pale humps that were his buttocks. He let the door close on its spring, and looked at the women’s restroom longingly.
Suddenly, he realized that he could use the women’s room if he wanted to. Who was there to complain? His face lit up in a smile as he kicked the door open and sauntered into the lady’s room shouting, “I’m LAWLESS, do you hear me, LAWLESS!”
He strode into the restroom, and began kicking the stalls open one at a time, looking for any signs of anything, dead, alive, whatever. The restroom proved to be completely empty, so he locked the restroom door, and washed his hands in the sink.
“I wonder why the water is still working.” he asked his reflection in the mirror. No answer came, so he dried his hands, thought about it for a moment, and emptied out the paper towel dispenser and added the thick stack of paper to his backpack.
He unlocked the door, jerked it open quickly, and came out fast, just in case there was something there; there wasn’t. He relaxed, and decided to make a plan of action for his future.
Chapter 10:
Gotta Get Away
Jango made his way to the back of the cavernous warehouse in search of an exit and found a normal sized steel door, similar to the one in the front, and a large steel door that was operated by a motor, as well as a chain fall. The large door had probably been used for deliveries before all the delivery people had become zombies. He noticed a peephole in the normal sized door, and stepped up and peeked through.
The peephole gave him a fish-eye view of a large fenced enclosure. The fence was topped by several strands of concertina wire, and there was no movement as far as he could discern.
“All right,” Jango said exultantly as he turned to go back to the front of the store.
He quickly made his way up front, found the rack of shirts by the front door, and grabbed a tee shirt that said “Guns Kill People Like Pencils Make Grammatical Errors.”
“Pure class,” he smiled as he put the shirt on and replaced his backpack on his back. Jango then grabbed a one-gallon water container and a one-quart water container, and headed back to the women’s restroom.
He kicked the door open, shouting “LAWLESS!” again as he did. Jango locked the door, and quickly filled the large container by filling the smaller container and dumping it into the larger until it was filled, then refilling the smaller container. When he finished, he put the larger container in the bottom of his backpack, and re-packed the jerky around it and on top of it.
As he exited the restroom, he heard a rustling noise from a closed office across the hall. He froze in place, straining his ears for any other sounds. He heard another rustle, like clothing against the floor at the bottom of the door.
Jango didn’t want to leave any threats to sneak up behind him as he left, so he took a deep breath, and kicked the door just beside the doorknob. The door burst in with a rending and cracking noise as the doorjamb disintegrated.
The door stopped as it hit something solid when it was about halfway open. “Owfuck,” squeaked a female voice from behind the door.
He didn’t know much about Zombies, but he was pretty sure they didn’t say things like “Owfuck,” when doors slammed into them.
He couldn’t care less about female company as it pertained to sex or relationships, but he had a crude code of chivalry that precluded the idea of killing a defenseless woman, or even leaving her to be killed. Maybe Jango would get lucky and she would want to stay there. That thought made him feel a tiny bit better, so he said, “Uh, hey, I’m not going to hurt you.” Then he quickly added, “Unless you fuck with me, then I will burn your ass down and piss in the ashes.”
Jango believed that every person would take any kindness from him as a weakness, and they would try to take everything that he had. He figured it was just better to let people know up front. His explanations never really came across as reasonably as he believed they did, quite the contrary; it really put people off and scared them. He didn’t like to threaten women, but these were exceptional circumstances, and he didn’t know if she was alone or not.
“Come out with your hands where I can see them,” he said with a barely suppressed giggle, “We have the place surrounded.” He laughed out loud at his own wit.
“Do you promise you won’t hurt me?” asked the mystery woman behind the door in a small, quivery voice.
“If I was a bad guy, I would just tell you that I promise not to hurt you, then hurt you any way,” he responded in the tone a teacher has when explaining something to a child. Then he added in an angry tone, “Who the fuck are you that I should promise you anything?”
“You sound like a prick,” she shot back at Jango, “Just a stupid prick.”
He cracked up laughing at her reply. A long, insane belly laugh that sounded eerily similar to the laugh of Renfield in the old Dracula movie.
“Mwa-ah-ah-ah-ah, hee-hee-ha-ha,” he laughed for several minutes, until finally, with tears in his eyes he said, “Fine, I promise I won’t hurt you unless you fuck with me and try to take my shit. If you do, then I will twist your head off and hide it in a bush somewhere.” He finished in a reasonable tone.
“Fine,” she
said, and peeked around the door at Jango.
She crawled out from behind the door, and stood up. He saw that the woman was about his own height, with a slim, muscular build like many martial artists got from long practice on a heavy-bag and from sparring. Her hair was light brown and it framed a delicate, elfin face. Her nose had a slight kink in it on the bridge, as if it had been broken at least once. All in all, Jango thought she looked okay.
He glanced at her hands, and saw her slightly enlarged middle knuckles and knew that he had guessed right about her practicing martial arts of some kind. “My name’s Jango,” he said warily, watching her for any signs that she was about to attack.
“My name is Sonja,” she replied.
They stood silently, not quite making eye contact, just two introverts trying to figure out what to say to each other.
Jango finally broke the silence, “Sonja,” he said, “That’s a pretty cool name.”
“Yeah,” he said, “Like Red Sonja from the Conan books by Robert E. Howard. She was a total bad-ass, but not like in the movie, no, she was a thief.” Then he hurriedly added, “But Conan was a thief too. They were both good guys, err, good people. Gender didn’t matter, they just kicked ass all the time.” He finished lamely, as he looked down at his feet.
Sonja looked embarrassed at first, and then the ghost of a smile turned up the corners of her mouth.
He looked around for a moment, and then suddenly blurted, “Don’t you have a gun? I mean, you’re in a gun store, why the hell are you hiding, what happened?”
She went back to looking embarrassed and said, “After those zombies started showing up, I came here to get a gun, but, ahhhh, something, well happened.”
Now Jango was getting interested. Any little mystery or anything even remotely resembling a mystery instantly turned him into a member of the Scooby Gang.
“What?” he asked, “What happened?”
Sonja’s face blushed crimson as she said, “The damn stupid shit-ass Zombies scared the shit out of me. I mean like actually scared the shit out of me. I had to go so bad when I got here that I never got a chance to get a gun or anything!” She continued telling her story, “I asked them out front where the restrooms were, and a tall, skinny guy showed me the way back here. I noticed he looked kind of pale, kind of shitty looking, you know? He was twitching and making a messed up noise, kind of like a pigeon makes.” She imitated the sound, ‘ “ Cooooo-hoooo , . ”
He just nodded because he didn’t want to interrupt her story. He recognized the sound she had made. One of the zombies had made the same sound at his hotel. It had been a soft cooing noise, like a happy baby. He shuddered inwardly. He couldn’t stand the noises those things made!
“So I went into the restroom and, oh, man, my guts were cramping like crazy. I managed to lock the door, though, because that guy gave me the fucking creeps.” She continued her story, “So I barely had the time to get a couple of those ass-gaskets down on that disease infested toilet seat, and my pants down before I suffered explosive decompression of my rear main seal.”
Jango stood silently, entranced by her ability to describe the act of shitting so poetically. He also made a mental note to remember the terms “ass-gasket” and “explosive decompression of the rear main seal”.
He nodded vigorously in encouragement. He wanted her to continue her tale, and he couldn’t help but notice that her toilet story closely resembled his own experiences in the restroom here.
Sonja looked up to see if Jango had actually been listening, or if he had zoned out. She seemed surprised to see the look of gentle encouragement and interest on his face.
She continued her story, “So when I finished up shi….uhh, what I was doing, I had just started washing my hands when I heard this awful, high pitched wail from outside the bathroom. I swear the sound almost made me piss myself.”
He completely empathized with her feelings about the noises the goobers made. It made him feel like running away and hiding every time he heard them.
Sonja kept going. “I didn’t hear the noise for a few minutes, and I didn’t want to be trapped in the shitter forever with only my stink to keep me company, so I unlocked the door, and peeked out. There wasn’t anything there, nothing at all, so I came out really slowly, and turned to go back up front to buy a gun and get the hell out of Dodge. Then….BAMMM! That tall, skinny creep comes out of nowhere moaning and screaming with his damn tongue wagging all over the place. I freaked out and side-kicked his chest and he dropped. I know I heard his sternum break, but he bounced right back up, and came at me. Fuck, man, what could I do? I kicked him again, and ran into that office, and I’ve been hiding ever since.”
He nodded absent-mindedly, feeling as if he was overlooking an important piece of information, but not having any luck figuring it out.
“Wow,” he said, “You really kicked a zombie in the chest? That’s bad-ass!” He finished with a nod of approval. Jango could always admire good, honest ass kicking.
Suddenly, the panic alarms went off in his head, “Shit!” he cursed as he threw himself back against the wall and hurriedly looked around them. He had figured out what little tidbit of information he hadn’t factored in; the tall skinny zombie that Sonja had mentioned.
He put his stick in his left hand, and drew the Ruger from its under-arm holster as he scanned the area.
Sonja, at the first sign of trouble, had thrown herself back into the room she had just left, and grabbed what looked like a leg from an old table, which she wielded like a baseball player as she tried to look everywhere at once.
“What is it,” she asked him quietly, “What did you see?”
“Nothing…YET,” Jango murmured back to her, “Just looking for the tall guy you mentioned, he has to be around here someplace.”
Then a thought occurred to him. Maybe he wasn’t there anymore. The front door had been open, and there was that huge crowd of goobers parked in the feed store loading area. Maybe the creep had flown the coop and was running around outside with the rest of the zombies. The thought cheered him up a little.
He visibly relaxed. Sonja seemed to take a cue from him, and she relaxed as well. She kept the table leg in her right hand, though.
Jango holstered his pistol, and closed the snap to secure it. “Look,” he told her, “We have to get you a gun, and get the hell out of here. This place is starting to give me the willies. I think I need some fresh air.” He finished, with a look of grim determination etched on his scarred face.
Sonja nodded approval of his plan, especially the part about getting her a gun. “Let’s go!” She exclaimed happily.
He didn’t move, he just looked at her. He might be chivalrous, but he would be damned if he was going to let a stranger walk behind him, especially a stranger with a table leg and martial arts experience!
She seemed to sense what he was thinking, and she turned to lead the way to the front of the store. He followed behind her, looking all around. He was hyper vigilant as he searched for signs of danger, aware that now he had to look out for not only his own safety, but her safety as well. Jango’s code demanded it.
When they entered the sales area at the front of the store, it was still as silent and empty as it had been a little while ago.
“So what kind of gun did you want?” he asked her.
“I, I really don’t know,” she stammered. “I don’t know anything about guns, well, except for what I’ve seen on TV,” she concluded.
“Well,” he said without any judgment at all of her lack of knowledge, “You have strong looking hands and arms, so you can probably handle just about anything in here.”
Jango didn’t intend to flatter her with his observations, but Sonja’s face showed that by viewing her as a fellow warrior he had, indeed, flattered her.
He continued on, clueless to anything except helping her choose the right handgun for her needs.
“My advice, I mean, if you even want it,” he said, looking at her for any signs of a yea or
nay.
Sonja hurriedly assured him that she wanted his advice. “Yes, please!” she told him.
He smiled in relief. “Okay, so my advice is to get a semiautomatic pistol chambered for 9mm,” he rushed to explain himself, as if he thought she were about to damn all 9mm weapons as worthless.
“See, 9mm is an excellent round for all self-defense purposes. Now, when I say self-defense, what I really mean is killing a mother-fucker before they kill you.” He was on a roll now. “So what the 9mm gives you is more muzzle velocity than a .38, that’s the speed that the bullet moves at when it first comes out of here, the muzzle.” Jango pointed to the business end of a revolver in the glass case beside him.
“Here, come over here,” he told Sonja, as he steered her over to the already broken case full of Ruger pistols. He pointed at the collection of 9mm pistols, and asked her, “Do you like any of these?”
Sonja spent a good twenty-five minutes handling each pistol. She carefully weighed them, one by one, in her hand , to get a feel for them. She didn’t have any experience with firearms, but she had plenty of experience with many other kinds of weapons. With twenty-five years of martial arts practice behind her she knew that, ideally, a weapon should fit the person who would be using it, so she took her time to ensure that she would choose the right gun.
Jango watched her with rapt attention, admiring the way she took her time deciding. His patience would outlast the stars as long as he wasn’t bored. And Sonja wasn’t boring him at all. He hadn’t spent this much time around a person in a long time and he was surprised to find that he enjoyed her company.
After twenty-five minutes or so, Sonja held up a KP95, very similar to Jango’s KP89 and said in an excited tone, “This is it!”
The pistol she had chosen would take the same magazines as Jango’s pistol. He decided just to get her the ten-round magazines from the wall rack. When he got to the rack, he noticed the super high capacity magazines. Some held twenty rounds, and some even held thirty rounds of ammunition.