“Where’s Tim?”
“Remo and Ray-Ban have him and a bunch of the townsfolk.”
Townsfolk. Ha! He sounded lame for a professional killer. We crept along a low stone wall near a pharmacy, my arm over Kinga’s shoulder. Brick looked in all directions at once, and it still awed me how these guys were so calm. My cracked melon had a thought, and it was that these guys aren’t afraid because they don’t know how to be. They’re true heroes, and if whoever finds this journal and is undoubtedly standing over my eviscerated corpse was ever in the military I would just like to say thanks. Thanks for everything, and I hope you make it.
A small group of stumblers shuffled past us while we were crouched in the shadows, and I decided that I had been carried enough. I removed my arm from my date’s shoulder, and he nodded, passing me a pistol, butt first.
There were plenty of dead roaming about, but we seemed to be running low on bikers. Apparently the Reapers had been reaped. We crossed in front of a few of those big, green recycle bins when Brick, moving like lightning, grabbed something, beating the shit out of it with about three quick punches. A gun went off, not in our direction, and then the thing was on the ground. It had been the thing’s gun, and it was now disarmed. Brick simultaneously aimed his weapon at a new noggin while checking the new weapon.
Kinga looked around. “They’ll have heard that, let’s bug.”
Brick made to shoot the man on the ground, but he put his hands up in supplication, “Please! I’m not one of them! I’m not a Reaper!”
It was obviously true. He wasn’t a bad-ass biker. We were looking at a skinny guy who had never been in a fight in his life. He had probably never held a gun before the one Brick had taken from him. He had been a lawyer though, in another life.
“He’s not a Reaper,” I told them. The guy stood and looked at me. “He’s worse.” I shot him in the leg and the bastard screamed loud. Brick and Kinga looked at each other, then at me. The douche I had just ventilated was back on the ground holding his thigh. I got down on my haunches and stared at him, almost losing my balance.
“Maybe you can litigate yourself out of this one, counselor.” I looked over his shoulder at the cluster of pus bags on the way to investigate the shots. He made a desperate grab for my pant leg, but was woefully short. I hadn’t even moved. “I’ll tell Tim you said hi.”
The three of us left him there, us slinking away in the dark. “That was some cold shit right there,” Kinga told me.
“He deserved it.” I heard him pleading as we passed another dumped motorcycle, then that high-pitched screaming started from where we left him, but it was brief. Fuck him.
Should have covered him in marinade.
My head was really hurting as we made it to a bank on the east end of town near the water tower. Ray-Ban met us at the door, and Remo popped up from nowhere. He was chewing a toothpick and looked me over. “You look like shit.”
The MARSOC guys had enough gear to supply a flotilla of naval units. Remo had his rifle, a sidearm, and a black t-shirt. “Yeah, well you need a knife.”
I surprised him! He looked surprised, and thus had shown emotion. He also pulled a big-ass knife out of a sheath that I hadn’t seen. Then he smiled, I shit you not. “So do you.”
I made an automatic reach for my chest, and then my hip. My SOG! Those biker douche-canoes had taken my knife!
Ray-Ban told us to get inside, and we did, except Remo, who was gone when I turned around. Guy was an actual ghost, and I have no doubt that video games were based on his past exploits.
The bank was full of people. There must have been thirty of them. Townsfolk as Brick had said. Someone wormed their way through the crowd toward me. It was Tim. He had a bandage on his finger, and I suddenly felt no shame about shooting that prick lawyer. Not that I had shame-a-plenty up to now.
He must have just had a poop-sandwich because he was wearing a shit-eating grin. “You look like crap.”
“I get that a lot.”
Then he did something I didn’t expect. He hugged me.
I’ve been in prison, you know this. The “hugging” they wanted to do in there was a tad different than what was happening to me right then, and in the joint, I was able to assert myself in such a way that nobody came near me. I’m not huge, but I’m big, and my particular prison was medium security, but you still had your tough guys. Tim was not tough. Actually, you know what? Tim is one of the toughest sons of bitches I know. I’m ashamed I just wrote what I wrote and would like to take it back. See? There’s shame.
Anyway, I didn’t fight him off. That was the point I just strayed from and took too long to explain. I hugged that little dude right back. It was good to see him alive. We sat down (I really needed it), Tim and Brick telling me their portions of what had happened to them.
Tim’s story was the same as mine except without the head trauma. Nobody had thumped him on the dome with a wrench. They did question him and pull out his fingernail though. That couldn’t have been fun, and having all my nails right now I don’t want to try to compare my headache to his finger pain. Both suck. They were taking Tim to the pens when Remo found him. I’ll get to the pens in a minute, and as you can imagine, it went bad for the bikers with Tim.
Brick’s story was way better. Nobody hit him in the head or tore out his fingernails, and he got to smoke a bunch of bad guys, so it was win-win. They started by doing recon. True recon, not the take a peek over the hill for three seconds shit that they excelled at. They grabbed a biker and got the Reapers story too.
Apparently, there had been some kind of motorcycle rendezvous for all the chapters of the Devil’s Reapers out here at a ranch when the pandemic decided to rear its ugly head. Everybody was dying, but the bikers sat back and watched it on TV and listened to it on the radio. After the cops were either dead or running, the bad guys came out in force and grabbed up what they could, arming themselves and killing anyone that got in their way, or looked funny, or was minding their own business.
When the story was done, so was the biker’s usefulness, and Kinga ended him silently. They now knew what they needed to accomplish, and split up. Brick had gone with Kinga, Ray-Ban would take the guys on the tower when the time was right, and Remo just killed everything he saw.
Brick and Kinga found a bunch of the townsfolk (can’t stop saying it now) during their recon and extracted them as they could, storing them in the bank like a week’s pay. That’s what took so long for them to rescue my ass: getting the people out. They couldn’t get everybody, but they got who they could before they unleashed their nasty surprise.
Remo saw some bad guys pushing Tim around, making him walk in front of an infected. The thing and Tim were tied to a pole together, the zombie just out of reach of my pal, well, vice-versa really. They were apparently going to feed him to more infected, and that’s when Remo found two more tractor trailers full of zombies. The pens that Chains had mentioned. He dispatched the shitheads, destroyed the infected hitched to Tim, and brought my nerdy buddy back to the bank.
They set some generators up to go boom, then killed the bunch of assholes who came to check on the hubbub.
Remo let the infected loose from the pens, radioed to the MARSOC boys that the feces was on the fan, and then the killing really started. They straight up murdered every biker they saw, using zombies to do the heavy lifting and wreak havoc.
Ray-Ban did the guys on the tower as silently as possible, then used his incredibly sexy M14 EBR sniper rifle to deal death from above. He still won’t tell me how many bikers or zombies he killed, prick. He’s the one who blasted the guys in the office with me. I asked him if he had known I was there. His only reply: Nope. But he had seen me come out into the alley and almost get eaten. He didn’t want to smoke the teenage infected that had tried to choke me out for fear of hitting me, but he had shot one of the gorillas (not Petey) and I hadn’t even seen it happen. He let Kinga and Brick know where I was and they got to me just before Ray-Ban would have made the Fuck-
It call, and shot the little bitch that was killing me anyway.
Zombies and bikers and tough-guys. Oh my. The boys moved about, quietly removing threats, or wounding and allowing zombies to remove threats. So I told them my story. My story was lame.
As I was telling my lame story, a pack of undead had found us, and a woman pointed to the window and screamed. There were only a few, but these people weren’t used to infected… Wow. That was a stupid statement. Like anybody is used to these things. Anyway, they started banging on the bank window, and all of a sudden a shadow shows up, kills them, and fades back into the darkness. It was like watching Batman. Not the 1970’s or 80’s or 90’s pussy Batman, the mid-to-late 2000’s Batman that killed everybody. One guess on who it was.
We sat there for a few hours and I got tired. Tim and Kinga had tried to keep me awake, stating that head injuries were bad, and sleeping with a possible concussion wasn’t the best thing. I told them to screw, and that if I were going to survive a zombie apocalypse, giants, bikers, rednecks, rogue militaries, underground installations, and a super-spy, I would not allow sleep to kill me.
So yeah, with all this shit going on I took a nap.
Wrapping Up and Moving On
When Tim nudged me awake, the sun was shining through the tall glass-front windows of the bank. I sat up fast, reaching for my rifle, which was a tremendous error on my part, as I no longer had a rifle. In addition, the pain and nausea centers of my body decided to collaborate on a paper entitled Don’t Sit the Fuck Up, and were looking to me to publish.
I put my head back down on the sleeping bag, and put my hands to my forehead. “Ow.”
Tim looked at me like a stern, self-righteous physician. “You really should have stayed awake. Sleeping with a head injury can be a serious thing.”
“Got news for you, Timmy,” I said through my hands, “we’re all already dead, and this is Hell.”
Tim looked thoughtful for a second then smiled, “I’m glad you’re still you.”
“I’m not. Everything hurts.” I swallowed, or tried to. “And my throat is…” I looked past my palms, noticing that Tim was holding out a cup of water and some pills. I graciously accepted them, and swallowed the pills on the first try with the entire cup of water.
I looked at my hand. “What were they?”
“Percocet.”
Damn, Tim wasn’t screwing around. He had given me the good stuff.
“So, Remo, Ray Ban, and Kinga have been out clearing the town all night. They have thirteen Reapers in the jail, and have taken care of all the infectoids.” Infectoids? Whatever, he could have that one. “Kinga radioed back to Brick to let him know that a group of Reapers came in at about one this morning on their bikes, totally unaware that our guys had taken the town. MARSOC took care of it, and added some of the bad guys to the jail, and some to the morgue.”
“And the town?”
“Totally safe and with the homeowners in control. Well, those that are left. The Reapers did a number on this place. Our guys found a bunch of girls in a room in their barracks.” He looked away. “It was bad.”
“Wait… Remo allowed prisoners?”
“It was his idea. He thinks that the town should have a trial.”
I perked up at that. “That’s a good idea. Although I can only see one penalty for those assholes.”
A guy appeared to my left. “May I sit down?”
I palm-pointed to the floor next to the sleeping bag I was on. He sat. “My name is Ed Parsons. I was the town assessor. When the Devil’s Reapers showed up after the plague started, they killed the sheriff and the three deputies he had.”
It was almost like I had just heard this shit. Blah blah. Zombies ate my dog. Blah blah. Bikers killed my goldfish. Sorry, Reader, if I seem a tad insensitive, but my head hurts right now, I’ve heard all this guy’s bullshit before, and I just re-figured out that if you’re reading this then I’m probably dead, so I’m pissy.
Parsons was going to be the new mayor, death penalty for all bikers, thanks for saving us, will you please stay and help us. That last one was new. Usually people either couldn’t wait to get rid of me, wanted to incarcerate me, or wished my demise. Deer Lodge was kind of nice, other than the cliché, Road Warrior-type biker gang. I was typically the one disaster seemed to follow, but this place had been pre-disastered by the Reapers, so who knew?
But I couldn’t stay. I had to get back to my homies. I told Parsons he was out of luck on me hanging around, and he smiled and said he understood. No hard feelings, thanks, hand-shake, bye.
Remo showed up with Kinga a moment later and told people they could go home. Some were filing out of the bank when a beautiful apparition appeared on the other side of the glass. It was not a busload of porn stars, but it was close. It was my MRAP.
I smiled and put my head back down on the sleeping bag. This was going to be a good day. They let me rest for a day while the jarheads taught some of the folks in Deer Lodge some tactics. The bikers had appropriated an incredible arsenal, and the military guys showed the ordinary folks how to shoot as well. I thought for sure at least one of the MARSOC boys would stay behind, but they all said that wasn’t part of the mission. Brick had radioed to the carny camp to let the other military dudes know that the Reapers had been dealt a huge blow. They weren’t completely gone, but their numbers were now significantly lower. Brick wouldn’t tell Deer Lodge where the camp was, but he told the camp that Deer Lodge could use some help.
My noggin felt better the next day. Kind of like a bad hangover, but not the throb session it had been. Baldy Mountain had seemed like a million years ago, but it had been only a few weeks past. All those people…all the people here… The death just kept coming.
Our gear and weapons had been stored at the sheriff’s office, so I got most of it back. My 416 was fully loaded, with my extra six magazines. I laid her out on sleeping bag and cleaned her before it was time to leave. All the stuff from the MRAP was still in it, and the grateful folks of Deer Lodge gave us some more supplies, and we now had a shit-ton of ammo. I was sad I didn’t get my SOG back. That was as important to me as my rifle, or even the truck. I didn’t really know anybody as I had slept while the leathernecks schooled the townsfolk—damn, hard not to say that now—so I didn’t really have anybody to say good bye to. That was good. I waved and got in the truck. Remo was on one bench chewing a piece of gum. Ray-Ban looked back from the driver’s seat, not a little chagrined when he saw the look I gave him, but I smiled and told him the driver’s seat was all his today. He nodded, and when the door slammed behind us, he fired that mother up and we drove off.
I-90 sunk south through the map for about twenty miles, (I wanted to sound cool and write “klicks” right there, but I don’t know what a klick is. I will have to ask the boys), then hooked to the east and in another ten or so miles went right through Butte. Butte once had a population of about thirty five thousand the atlas told me, so we decided to head south on I-15 prior to heading into that particular nightmare.
I-15 had been bombed. Nothing else could have accomplished the destruction we were seeing. The highway was simply gone. We saw the occasional car, and the occasional stumbling corpse, but no crowds. Passing signs for Beaverhead National Forest, we saw a group of about thirty live people. They were heading down the forest road on foot, and hid in the grass when we drove by. We left them alone, and within the hour passed into Idaho.
We stopped the first night after Deer Lodge about fifteen miles north of Idaho Falls. It was dark, and we decided to eat outside with a real fire as there wasn’t anything around us but the flat landscape for miles. We were tired of the MRE heaters, and had some of the provisions that the folks in Deer Lodge had given us as a going away present.
We pulled a big log, which had no business being anywhere around here as there wasn’t a tree in sight, over onto the side of the road and sat on it. Brick built a fire out of some trash and a few choice pieces of wood hacked off the log. Remo was chewing on a piece
of jerky when he sat down next to me. He looked at me and nodded, then reached into his webbing and pulled something out. He handed it to me, and even in the firelight I knew what it was.
It was my SOG. This Jarhead bastard had had my knife the whole time. Everybody, even Tim, started chuckling. Sons of bitches! Of course I started laughing too, and soon we had a great guffaw. Then we talked. Not about our current world, but about shit before. We talked.
It was great. These guys were guys I would have hung out with prior to this tiny little undead issue. Except I had been in prison.
Brick told us about his surfing buddies in California. He told us about endless parties and tanned legs before he left for the Navy. Kinga was on the opposite coast, and was at Holy Cross in Massachusetts before serving. Ray Ban had joined the military right out of high school. He’s twenty-one years old. Tim told us what I already knew; he had worked for the NSA as a computer nerd for ten years now.
We were all laughing and joking when I caught Remo staring at me.
“What?” I asked between chuckles.
Everybody stopped talking and looked at us, the laughs slowly subsiding.
Remo reached into his vest, pulled out something and passed it to me. It was a laminated piece of paper. I looked at it and then at him.
He put a toothpick in his mouth, an elbow on one knee, and a hand on the other leaning forward. Then he raised his eyebrows.
Crap.
The other three MARSOC boys and Tim remained silent, expectant looks on their faces.
I handed the card to Brick, he looked it over, then passed it to Kinga. When it at last made it to Tim, Tim looked scared.
Everybody was looking at me.
“I’m immune.”
Remo stood. “I need a piss.” He strode into the shadows.
Conspiracy Theory (The Zombie Theories Book 2) Page 17