by Garth Ono
Banging on the radio didn't help. Kate's new pickup only had one station and it only played classic country music. Turning the tuning knob didn't help. At least the volume control worked.
"I don't care what anyone says, this piece of crap isn't worth $500," she grumbled.
The 1982 Ford F100 looked dirty and battered, with faded blue and white paint and almost bald tires. It was a short bed pickup, so about the size of her stolen Defender. Even more annoying than the barely working radio was the automatic transmission. Kate didn't know what to do with her left foot and she was constantly reaching for a stick shift that didn't exist.
Still, she got a deal from one of Morgan's uncles. He was a farmer, and that was a work truck. He didn't know the true mileage, but it had a new transmission, refurbished engine, and new brakes. She couldn't complain about how it ran.
Kate was coming up to Tennyson on Old Mill Road with two heads double-bagged in plastic shopping bags on the floorboard. She'd been awakened at three in the morning with a call way out of town, practically in the next county. She had already gone there and killed the zombie before Kate realized she didn't have any plastic bags, and that was all the homeowner had. Before she could return to Tennyson, another call came in. Now it was daylight and too late to go back to bed. She was tired and hungry, and desperately need a long, hot bath to soothe her aching body.
She'd spent the night with Daphne. None of her friends wanted her going home yet, even though everyone seemed to believe the smugglers were gone for good. It was too dangerous for them to stay in Tennyson, after all. But her friends cared enough to not want to take any chances. Besides, Kate was worried about Daphne.
While she contemplated if it would be prudent, much less safe, to go home, bathe, and take a nap until the next call came in, her phone rang. She groaned even before she looked. The screen showed it was Sheriff Coleman calling. Better than a service call.
"Thank god you're back," she answered. "You are back in town, right?"
"I'll be there in thirty," he said. He didn't sound in a good mood. "Meet me at the office. Don't be late. I've been up all night, most of it on the road."
And he hung up.
"How rude."
Thirty minutes didn't give her much time. She spotted Deputy Doge's squad car parked in front of the sheriff's office, but the two deputies were across the street in the donut shop. She rolled her eyes, continued out of downtown, and headed for her storage unit. It was finally time to get paid her bounties, and get rid of that damned suitcase.
Kate drove straight to her storage. She backed the pickup to the roll-up door, and started loading heads in back. The two on the floorboards went into the truck's bed, too. Then she placed the suitcase in the cab.
That left her with enough time to drive through a fast food drive-thru, pick up a breakfast sandwich and cola, and eat it on the way to the sheriff's office. She backed into the parking spot and waited for the deputies to return from the donut shop.
"Holy crap!" Deputy Rumpstead said when he looked into the pickup's bed. "Are you on steroids or something? How many heads do you have in there?"
"Twenty-one, but who's counting?" she asked, giving them a single wag of her brows. Kate dropped the tailgate. "You boys want to help little ole me haul these bloody, severed heads inside?"
"Ugh. You have a way with words," Deputy Rumpstead said. "But I could listen to that sexy English accent all day, so okay."
"Nice pickup," Deputy Doge said. "I bet your grandfather drove one of these new."
"Ha ha," she said. "You so funny, Randy."
"Will miracles never cease, she called you by your name for once," Deputy Rumpstead said. "Did you take a blow to the head, Kate?"
She rubbed her still swollen left cheek. "As a matter of fact, yes."
"Well I hope you're feeling better by tonight," Deputy Doge said, giving her a shy smile.
"Tonight?"
"It's Saturday. We have a date."
Kate just stared at him. How could she forget that? She'd been waiting all of her life for him to ask her out. The thought of it made her all tingly, but she was battered and bruised. Bad men might still be gunning for her. And then she saw the fear in his eyes.
"Wild horses couldn't keep me away from tonight," she said. Then she shrugged, pointing at the heads. "Wild things from the Zombie Lands might. I'm on call 24/7, you know?"
"Then we'll fight the monsters together."
They stared at each other a long moment. Deputy Rumpstead brought her back with some comment about getting a room. Her face heated up, she averted her eyes, and they started hauling bags of heads inside. Last, but not least, she took the suitcase inside.
The sheriff arrived thereafter, coming in the back and straight into his office.
"Get back here," he shouted.
Kate led the way into his office. To her relief, he glowered more at the deputies than at her. They stood in line before his desk while Sheriff Coleman bent and stretched, getting the kinks out after his long overnight drive home. Finally, he sat, leaned back in his chair, and shook his head.
"Mayor Gilbert called me at least once a day to complain. Deputies never around. Kate having gunfights at the Okay Corral at high noon."
"Actually, it wasn't noon, it was – "
"Shut up," he said. Her eyes widened, and she closed her mouth. He glared at her a long moment. "The mayor asked why an eighteen year old child was allowed to carry firearms."
"I have a license to carry," she said.
"I know. She didn't like that answer," he said. "She wants me to pull your license. I don't have that authority, so don't worry."
Kate was still worried. She needed her guns. And that thought reminded her that the smugglers stole the sawed off double-barrel her late grandfather left her. Lupara was special to her, over and above how much it helped fight zombies.
"Car chases. Car wrecks, resulting in gun fires. And on and on and on," he said. He caught Kate's eyes. "I think what really ticked her off the most was the high school incident."
"In my defense, Sheriff, I was on a call and it's first come first serve. I couldn't just walk off a job and leave a zombie behind," she said. "And like I told her and Principal Ashcroft, I don't work for them and if they don't like my service they can call 911."
"Hmmm. She told me," he said. "She thinks you're kind of full of yourself, too."
"I think she's…" Kate started, but stopped at his disapproving look. "I try to be fair to everyone."
"And I support you in that," he said, and then sighed gustily. "Lord, why did you do it?"
He looked so sad for a moment. Kate knew him well enough to understand what he meant. The Zombie Apocalypse. His wife was caught in the Zombie Apocalypse. She was killed by zombies, and presumably became a zombie. Mrs. Coleman might still be wandering around out there. No one tried to find out who a zombie used to be after killing them. Their heads and bodies were incinerated outside of the Zombie Lands. Inside, the bodies were left to rot where they fell. So disrespectful, yet Kate didn't have a solution.
Sheriff Coleman hadn't been the same man after losing his wife. Though, being bitten by a vampire and forced to serve as his minion hadn't changed his behavior. Kate wished she could say the same about his daughter. Daphne was definitely getting worse.
"Sir, may I explain?" Kate asked.
He nodded.
Kate paused, licked her lips, and glance at the deputies. They stared back. No help there.
"Okay, the morning after the incident at Hank's Landing, I returned to see if there were any zombies around," she said. "A lot of them escaped, after all. Anyway, I found a suitcase full of money in the woods and a couple dead zombies the crime scene guys missed in the dark."
"There were no crime scene investigators dispatched," Sheriff Coleman said. "The State Police took over and they shut it down. Zombie slaying."
"I know," she said, her tone broadcasting her disapproval. He nodded. "Next thing I know, the smugglers are in town
looking for me. Looking for their money and revenge." His eyes narrowed and his body tensed. "They caught me outside of the diner, pistol whipped and beat me in the back of their SUV, before I started fighting for my life. I managed to kick the driver in the head, which caused the wreck. I grabbed their leader's pistol, and that's when the running gunfight started. I've been in hiding ever since."
The sheriff looked astonished. "Kate, you both amaze me and scared the crap out of me. Do you have a death wish or something? What am I going to tell your parents if you get yourself killed?"
"I lived hard, died young, and left a beautiful memory?"
"This is not the time for jokes."
"Actually, it is," she said. "Listen, I don't want to die. I'm scared out of my wits. I don't know what to do about those men. Maybe they're gone for good, maybe not. But if I don't make jokes, then I'll curl up into a ball and cry like a baby. Jokes are a bit more dignified. After all, I'm English. Stiff upper lip and all that rot."
The three men just stared at her. After a moment, she started to feel uncomfortable.
"So, speaking of rot," Kate said. "I got heads to turn in for the bounty, and a voucher I want to collect on, too."
Kate rushed into the front room before he could stop her. She began hauling the bags of heads to his office. Lining them against the wall, she finished with the suitcase.
"Count them. Twenty-one heads," she said. Kate slapped her voucher for twenty-two heads. "That'll be two thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars American, please. I prefer tens and twenties."
The sheriff alternated between staring at her and at the heads for a long moment. Then he rolled his chair over and laid a hand on one of the heads.
"They're frozen."
"I couldn't leave them out in the heat to rot and stink everything up," she said. "I'm serious, Sheriff, I need to be paid. Mr. Rose doesn't let me live there free. I don't have theft insurance on my truck, so the insurance won't pay. I'm in dire straits here."
He didn't have that much on hand, so wrote her a check. Not ideal, but she was going to deposit the money in the bank anyway.
"By the way, Kate, one of the things I learned at the conference is we're going to start paying bounties differently," he said. "You'll need to leave me your bank information so I can start direct depositing the money. They're going to stop issuing us cash." He handed her the check, but held onto it. "Another thing, the town council and school district are going to consider proposals about putting you on retainer, so they will have priority. Now give me that suitcase."
Kate would have to think about that whole retainer thing. She didn't like the idea of having her hands tied like that. But she had bigger concerns at the moment.
"Fifty thousand dollars cash, Sheriff," she said, placing the suitcase on his desk and opening it. "And there are men trying to kill me to get it back. Can you do a press release telling the world you have it? You know, before they kill me."
Chapter 17
Max turned on the Land Rover's headlights. The sun set more than half an hour earlier, but he could see fine in the twilight. But it was almost dark enough a cop might pull them over for not using lights. Not that he was afraid of cops, but Max had had enough of unexpected interruptions in the last few days.
"Our main objective tonight is to get our money back," he said. The prospect of being forced to give the Chicago Zombie Mafia another fifty zombies, plus $25,000 back from the lost payment ate at him. At least by recovering the original payment they would make something. "And then we can put an end to Brokenshire. We can have some fun with her if we get the money early enough."
And by fun, he didn't necessarily mean anything she would enjoy. Max had a skinning knife and he fully intended to shred her face and beauty long before he allowed her to die. The thought of skinning her alive gave him a certain visceral pleasure, too.
"Are we still planning to take her body with us?" Nolan asked from the back jump seat. Brody was riding shotgun. Carl and Mike were following in the Camaro. "She's only worth $1000 undead to the boys in Chicago."
That was true, but it was more than just the money. That said, there was no way they'd get a corpse past security on the bridge over to the Zombie Lands. They would have to stash the body along the river shore and cross back over in a boat to pick it up. Max thought the extra effort worth it.
But if he wanted to resurrect her as a zombie and sell her, then that meant he couldn't mess her up as much as he wanted. Max was still going back and forth on what he wanted to do with her.
"Yeah, but it'll be sweet, stone cold vengeance to turn the slayer into a rotter," Brody said. "And then sell her ass into undead slavery."
"You, sir, are a romantic," Max said. "But yeah, what Brody said. We'll have some fun with her by turning her into the most horrific, most bloody zombie ever. I want her to suffer as long as possible."
"You always were a sadistic, vengeful bastard, boss," Nolan said. "A trait I admire."
"It's part of my charm," he said.
He slowed on the highway just north of Tennyson. Kate's vehicle was too distinctive to drive around where people would recognize it. Max couldn't imagine there being even one other Land Rover in the town, at least not another twenty year old model. But the dark green turned to black in the dark, and most people would just see the outline of a SUV. No one would give it a second look at night.
"Carl, do a drive by the diner. See if she's there," Max said. His phone was on speaker with the men in the Camaro. "We'll meet you east of downtown, beside that old burnt down house."
The Camaro passed them at high speed. Max turned down a residential road and then slowed to a crawl. They heard Mike's and Carl's banter as they reminisced about banging the sheriff's daughter. They thought she was a smoking hot Goth chick. Max didn't think any Goth girl could be considered hot, but what little he saw of her she did look pretty good. Now if half of what they said was true, she was amazing in bed and willing to do anything.
Their banter brought up thoughts of Kate. Her youth and beauty excited him, because he was going to leave it in utter ruin. The prospect of hearing her screams of agony and horror, of listening to her pathetically begging for mercy, made him all warm and tingly inside. Max was going to force her to grovel and beg for mercy he didn't have within anymore. He would savor her death rattle.
"We just passed the diner, boss," Mike said. "Only one customer, which isn't Kate."
"Excellent."
He didn't want her to be there. Max wanted her to be home. The chances of that were pretty slim, too. They weren't sure what they'd do if she wasn't back in her apartment. Max rather liked the idea of grabbing her friend Daphne and using her as bait to pull the slayer into a trap. And in the meantime, he could practice all he planned to do to Kate with Daphne.
It didn't take long before he crossed Main Street and spotted the Camaro waiting for them. He drove past Carl and Mike and continued down to Sherwood Street, while they followed.
Jason's house was near that intersection. They pulled over and parked halfway between Jason's house and Kate's apartment. The Victorian she lived behind was lit up. From the look of it you wouldn't know just one old man lived there. His lawn was immaculate. Max couldn't understand why anyone would put that much effort into grass and flowers.
Max parked with line of sight to Kate's carriage house rental. Looking between the houses, he saw that her lights were on. That was the first time he'd seen that. There was no sign of a vehicle, but the garage doors were closed and he was driving her truck. He didn't know if she had a second car.
"Okay, boys, it's party time. It looks like our girl is finally home," Max said. "For the last time."
He let them get the crude remarks and suggestions out of their system. A shadow moved across the windows as he watched her place. He smiled with satisfaction and turned off the engine, feeling the adrenaline begin to pump. His heart raced just a little, while his hands curled into fists and his eyes narrowed.
"Carl, I want you to
hide on the other side of the carriage house. Mike, I want you directly behind it," Max said. "Nolan, you guard this side. Once you are all in place, Brody and I will go in. I'll call the rest of you in as soon as we subdue her."
Max wasn't going to let her slip through his fingers again. He wasn't sure if there was a back exit, but there was a small back deck. No stairs off the deck, but she could jump down and escape. His men would ensure that didn't happen.
"Go," Max said. "Time to teach this bitch a very painful lesson."
Chapter 18
"What was I thinking? I can't do this," Kate said.
She stood in front of her bathroom mirror. Hair and makeup were done. Kate hadn't been that put together since prom. Or so in your face sexy.
She wore a red halter dress that was super snug, displaying all of her curves to spectacular effect. Spaghetti straps precariously held it up, with a plunging neckline that displayed a scandalous amount of cleavage. The hemline was barely low enough to cover her butt.
It was an eighteenth birthday gift from her sister Haley, along with the Christian Louboutin pumps on her feet. Kate thought she looked like a stripper in that outfit. About right, since her sister did strip for a year before becoming a zombie slayer. Her long tan legs were bare and smooth as a baby's butt. She'd just hung large silver hoop earrings off her ears, with three matching bangles on her left wrist.
"Randy will have a stroke," she whispered, giving her boobs a push up. "Or he'll jump right on top of me and we'll never make it out the door."
It proved too much. She rushed back to her bedroom, kicked off the shoes, and removed the dress. Then she put on her good butt jeans, which were perfectly tight. She paired it with a black tank top, also quite snug to show off her curves. And then went back and forth on whether she should wear heeled boots or cowboy boots.
"Randy likes heels," she said, so pulled on a pair of black knee boots.
Kate decided to keep the hoops and bangles, even though the big hoops were considered quite risqué in that area. After spending day in and day out fighting the undead, shooting, and chopping off heads, she needed to get all girlie. People needed to understand she wasn't just some kickass zombie slayer. She was a woman.